Free December by Gabrielle Lord

library! I’ve never seen anything like it, except in movies.’
    ‘Coolest library ever,’ exclaimed Boges, leaning over the railing beside me. ‘Look at allthose ancient books! There must be millions in here!’
    ‘Not quite,’ said Dr Brinsley. ‘We house over two hundred thousand antiquarian volumes, and the Book of Kells is just over there, in the Treasury building.’
    I didn’t know what the ‘Book of Kells’ was, but it must have been important.
    ‘You have a treasure of your own,’ continued Brinsley, ‘which I am most anxious to see. Let’s take a look at it, shall we?’
    His eager eyes shone with greedy anticipation as he cleared some space on a nearby desk, piled high with ancient books and papers. The Keeper of Rare Books removed some boxes from a bench and an armchair, and gestured to us to sit down, before sitting behind the desk himself.
    What if Brinsley had been waiting for this moment—a moment to seize our ‘treasure’? Any moment now he could draw a weapon and turn on us.
    Or would Rathbone suddenly jump out from an alcove, demanding someone ring the Garda and waving extradition papers that would have me on the next flight back home to face arrest?
    I couldn’t tell if I was just being paranoid or cautious. With the stakes getting higher now the end was so near, I didn’t want to stuff up.
    My friends and I sat down and I carefully drew out the Ormond Riddle. I placed it on the Keeper’s desk, just in front of me, my fingers firmly holding it in place as he leaned over it, fervently.
    ‘Ah! Here it is at last! The Ormond Riddle,’ he breathed. ‘We all thought it had been lost forever. Can it be true?’ He snatched up a magnifying glass from a drawer and started scanning the medieval script.
    Finally he straightened up and his face was shining. His eyes looked watery with elation.
    ‘All my life, ever since I was a little boy and first heard about the Ormond Singularity, I’ve wished that I could find the truth. My grandfather first told me about it. He’d heard about the legend from his grandfather. He’d grown up in Kilkenny, where it was rumoured that the huge secret concerning the Ormond family was hidden in one of Black Tom’s castles.’
    ‘Kilkenny?’ I interrupted, thinking of Great-uncle Bartholomew’s property in Mount Helicon. ‘Kilkenny’ must have been an important place for him to name his home after it. I dug out one of Dad’s ruin photos. ‘Is this a castle in Kilkenny? One of Black Tom’s castles?’
    Boges and Winter, who’d been keeping pretty quiet, both shot me wary glares.
    Dr Brinsley took the photo from me, looked at it and shook his head. ‘That’s certainly not the famous Kilkenny Castle. Kilkenny Castle was saved from ruin, and is open to the public—you should visit it. But this,’ he said, examining the photo, ‘is unfamiliar to me. These sorts of ruins are all over Ireland. It could be anywhere.’
    Kilkenny Castle definitely sounded like something we should check out, but my shoulders slumped. Finding the location in the photos was going to be much harder than we’d anticipated. I wondered how we could find out whether it was one of Black Tom’s castles—one of the castles that could be hiding the secret of the Ormond Singularity.
    He peered closer at the picture, picking up the magnifying glass again. ‘What’s that figure there? Carved in the stones? That’s very unusual for the times.’
    I stared hard and tried to make it out. I could almost see a figure cut into the stones of an upper turret, but I couldn’t make out the detail. The angle of the photo made it almost impossible.
    Dr Brinsley straightened up, and handed the photo back to me. ‘My grandfather also said that the Ormond Singularity gives passage to unimaginable treasure and wealth,’ he said, as though he were recalling an ancient myth. ‘Asto the treasure trove,’ he continued, ‘you know how these stories grow over the centuries. Who knows what it