There was logic in that. I followed the arrow. “If up is north, then maybe it means… the king rides from Whitehall? If that’s what this horse is? He goes southwest… and that is the direction of Hampton Court. So is this arrow supposed to be the road?”

“Does the road bend like that?”

I didn’t think so.

“If it is the king’s route,” Tom said, “why does it go past the crown? There’s an X over here, by the tree, but there’s nothing where the crown is.”

“Maybe that’s supposed to indicate the king is going that way, not that he’s there.” Though that didn’t seem right to me.

“I don’t understand how anyone’s supposed to follow all these twists and turns anyway,” Tom said. “This looks like a path through a maze. But without the maze.”

A maze? I thought.

My mind began to race.

A maze, Master Benedict said, and nodded.

That was it.

CHAPTER 43

“YOU’VE DONE IT.” I GRABBED Tom’s arm and shook him. “You’ve done it again.”

“Naturally,” he said proudly. “Er… what did I do?”

“This diagram. It is for a maze.”

“Which one?” Sally said.

“The same one we’ve been complaining about since we got here.” I reached under my apothecary sash and pulled out the map that Dobson, the old servant, had given us. “It’s Whitehall. The arrow is a path through the palace.”

“Look,” I said. “Over here, on the right side, is where we are now. The stables. And look at the letter—there’s a drawing of a horse. If you follow the arrow…” I traced a route along the map. “Remember what Dobson said? The numbers on the map show who’s lodged where. Number 1 belongs to the king—and that’s where the crown is.”

Tom peered at it. “It does look like that.”

“It is. In fact—come on.” I rushed over to where a torch was burning in a sconce on the wall. Carefully, I laid the page with the arrow on top of the map. Then I held the whole thing up to the flame.

The light shone a soft orange through the pages. Held this way, the ink was visible on both of them.

And the arrow traced a route through the palace exactly.

“That’s it,” Sally said, amazed. “The horse is right on the stables… the crown is on the king’s rooms.”

“So we follow it, then?” Tom said.

“We do,” I said. “And see what we find.”

It was a long and convoluted route. I had a mind to simply run to where the tree was marked, but I thought there might be something to see along the way. So we hurried, as fast as we dared, while still keeping our eyes peeled.

We started where the arrow started, back at the stables. When the groom spotted us again, he stormed toward us, fists clenched. We got out of there soon enough.

From the stables, we crossed Scotland Yard, then into the Court. From there, it was a path through the pastry and the kitchen and around the buttery, before entering the heart of the palace via the chapel. We passed close to our quarters; then a zigzag path through the corridors led us straight past the king’s section of the palace.