A full moon. It's taken me this long to notice.

Father Time reaches into his pockets for a sulfur match and strikes

THE BLACK TOWER 179.

it against the nearest tree. Instinctively, I turn to look for Charles . . . and find him ten yards off, standing before a linden tree. Slowly tracing a long cross.

The initial wound of that X has been healed over so many times that I might have walked by it a hundred times and noticed nothing out of order. But it's there all the same.

From Father Time's limp mouth, a yellow smile buds forth. "You've done it!" he shouts. "All we need do now is look up. Find Jupiter. Ah, there he is ! And now . . . walk north. . . ."

He takes one pace . . . two . . . three. With his boot, he gouges a circle in the ground.

"Shall we begin?" he asks.

"Begin what, Monsieur?"

"The digging!"

I strip off my coat. Grab the spade and drive it straight down. The soil, still compacted from a long winter, answers with a dreary clink.

"How far do we need to go?"

"Oh, no more than four or five feet," says Father Time, easily. "Do get a move on, my boy. It's a bit nippy."

On its first sally, the spade claws out no more than a few thimblefuls of dirt. It's several minutes more before the surface layer is cleared away. From there, the soil grows more yielding but only for a short time-until I reach the stratum of clay.

And now the sweat blossoms right out of me . . . the breath comes in gasps . . . I hear:

"May I try, Hector?"

If anyone else had asked me, I should have answered yes immediately. What makes me hesitate with him?

"Please," says Charles. "I'm very good at this sort of thing."

In fact, he's a natural wonder. Exerting half as much effort as I, he works at three times the pace. Every so often, he pauses to finger a lock of hair from his eyes, but mostly he digs, with a fixity of purpose that breaks down the earth's last reserve.

I watch, dazzled, as the chunks of soil f ly past me. The only thing that stops him finally is a sound-can you hear it?-a muff led concussion like . . .

Fwook.

"Uh-oh," says Charles.

"What is it?" cries Father Time. "What's happened?"

"We've struck something," I answer. "A stone. A root, possibly."

"No root," says Charles.

Fwook, cries the spade once more. At last Charles bends down and extracts his prize.

A simple wooden school box. The kind that, as a boy, I might have used for storing my pencils and quills.

"What's in it?" asks Charles.

"Why, it's the archive! " answers Father Time.

I gaze at that strange box, with its carved swan, its f laking green and gold foliage, its painted tulips popping out of a rust red field. An archive.

"But why did you bury it?" I ask.

"Oho! You'd have left it in the house, is that it? For the Committee to find? Dear me, I'd forgotten about the lock. Hector, can you . . . ?"

I grab the spade and swing it down. Three blows, and the lid springs open, like a mouth gulping for air. And there lies a tiny sketchbook, bound in green calf 's leather and girt with a linen cord.

I open its thick, calcified pages. I read:

13 Thermidor Year II

1st meeting with Prisoner: shortly after 1 a.m. Prisoner alone in cell. Dinner had not been eaten. Nor breakfast.