“Which places it closely enough in Dee’s time.” Alex stood up and crossed the room to a box file on a bookshelf. He returned with it and drew out a heavy folded leaf of aging vellum in front of them both. “This is the original—Will left it here with me for safekeeping and took a copy on the road with him. That’s among his things, too. Calvin was asking me about it in the church.”

Lucy had listened attentively, but now spoke with surprising strength. “Alex, this has nothing to do with me, so perhaps I shouldn’t say anything. But like Simon, I didn’t feel at ease with Calvin. He has a way of not looking at you openly—or rather, shifting his eyes away again quickly, as though he can’t meet your gaze. I agree with you, Simon. He wanted to take the key. And silly as it sounds, I had to stop myself from giving in to his intensity and just handing it over to him. My own impression is that it must unlock something he’s particularly curious about, and perhaps he even knows what that is.”

“‘The most precious jewel,’” Simon reminded them with amused mockery.

Alex laughed. “Any precious jewel would have been plundered long ago. The house in the country belonged to my mother’s family; and there are some old books and a few pretty things. But they weren’t rich. I’m sure anything of value would have been redeemed before now.”

“Could I look at this?” Lucy put the cat softly from her lap and leaned toward the vellum, which Alex passed to her with care. A card dropped from the pleat inside and fell to the floor. Lucy picked it up without looking at it properly and placed it on the table, keeping her attention on the vellum. She knitted her brows. “So this is sixteenth century?” A thought crossed her mind that she should possibly handle it with gloves.

“Or early seventeenth.” Simon came and crouched beside her to look at it again. “It hardly looks like a conventional treasure map.”

“But this is only part of it.” Lucy spoke with authority, which surprised them both. “Whatever the key unlocks contains another piece.”

They stared at her. “And how does Cassandra know this?” Alex couldn’t help a dry inflection.

“I’m not sure. But I feel I’m right.” Lucy’s voice contained no mystical tones or any petulance; but it was firm. “This is the ‘key piece,’ if you like, so if there is another page, this one is dominant.”

Alex listened carefully to what she said but made no comment.