Thatcher demanded, his tone sharp.

“No, sir!” Ian said quickly, astonished that his new schoolmaster could possibly think that. “That was there when I first came into the cavern.”

“My good man,” said the earl to Thatcher, “please tell us what it says.”

Thatcher turned to his employer, his lips pressed tightly together as if he were weighing something. Finally, he said, “It literally translates, ‘Young boy, Wigby, come this way’”

Ian and several others in the cavern gasped. He was so stunned that he simply stared dumbly at Thatcher for a long moment.

The silence that followed was broken by the earl as he gave a snort of laughter. A moment later, Alfred, Henry, and Ciaran followed with chuckles, and Ian grinned in relief as he felt the tension leave his shoulders. His schoolmaster was obviously joking.

“Now, come on, Master Goodwyn, what does it really say?” Ciaran asked after he’d had a good laugh.

“I’m not joking,” Thatcher said, his words clipped and his face never breaking out of its serious expression. “It truly says, ‘Young boy, Wigby, come this way’”

The earl cocked his head, as if he were waiting for Thatcher to give up the joke, but the younger man’s expression held. Slowly, the earl turned away from him and looked directly at Ian. “Master Wigby,” he said sternly, “tell us the truth, lad. You wrote this on the wall, didn’t you?”

Ian’s heart was racing wildly. He couldn’t take his eyes off the big black lettering. Something about it seemed oddly familiar, but he was sure he’d never seen such a message before, and he knew nothing of the Greek language. “My lord,” he said in his most sincerely honest tone while he held up his good hand. “I swear to you on my honor, I had nothing to do with that. It was already here when I came into the cavern yesterday for the first time. And for that matter,” he added, willing the earl to believe him, “I don’t have the foggiest notion about how to read or write in Greek.”

No one spoke for several long seconds and it seemed to Ian that every person in the cavern was taking a measure of him and the truth of his words. He especially hated the feeling that the earl might believe he would do such a thing. “I swear to you, my lord!” he insisted, hoping it was enough to convince the man he so admired.

Finally, the earl gave one curt nod and said, “All right then, Ian. I believe you.”

Ian let go of the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you, my lord,” he said.

The earl looked round at the others as if to let them know that they were not to hold Ian in judgment, and said, “Let’s move forward, everyone, and look for the beast. Maybe we’ll learn more about who it was that wanted Ian, in particular, to travel deeper into these tunnels.”

Ian walked over to the tunnel leading out of the cavern, anxious to get the attention off him and back onto hunting the beast. He paused and glanced back at the earl, unsure if his patriarch wanted him to go first.

The earl waved his hand and said, “Yes, Ian, you lead us forward. Perry, stay right behind him and have that rifle ready.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Perry, pulling his hunting rifle off his back and readying it to follow Ian.

Ian gave one more look behind him and noticed anxiously that Thatcher was scrawling the message from the wall down in a small notebook he’d brought with him. Ian frowned, because he thought he might not have heard the last about his role in the writing on the wall. Still, as he turned toward the dark tunnel in front of him, he reasoned that Thatcher could at least double-check his translation and might even discover he’d gotten it wrong.

He almost felt better until he remembered with a quick twang of apprehension that the sides of the second cavern held far more writing. He wondered if Thatcher’s translations there would point an additional finger of suspicion at him. He could only hope that his name wasn’t among the scribbling on that wall, and he wondered what he might say in his defense if it was.

He waited until Thatcher had finished his copying, and with a hand motion from Perry, he entered the narrow tunnel. Over his shoulder Perry said, “Here, Ian, you’ll need this to see.”

Ian glanced back and saw that Perry was handing him a torch. “Thank you, sir,”