The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict

by Trenton Lee Stewart

  What is he talking about? Violet signed to Nicholas.

  “A distraction,” Nicholas said, exchanging grave looks with John. “And a sacrifice.”

  They wasted no time. Having bidden farewell to Violet until the next clear night, the boys hurried back to the Manor. They did not part ways in the park as usual. Instead, Nicholas accompanied John all the way to the back door, where John handed Nicholas the boots, dried his feet with the rag, and prepared to slip inside. They had already made the arrangements: John would start screaming in exactly ten minutes.

  “One… two… three…,” Nicholas whispered, establishing the rhythm.

  “Four… five… six…,” John whispered at the same pace.

  They shook hands, and—his lips moving soundlessly as he continued to count—John tiptoed inside.

  Nicholas hastened to the side door and up the servants’ stairs to his room, avoiding every creaking board without needing to think about it. He had memorized them all long ago. Quickly he stashed his things and changed into his pajamas. Do not go to sleep, he ordered himself, for he was beginning to feel very sleepy indeed, despite his hammering heart. Do. Not. Go. To. Sleep.

  When Nicholas entered the library, his face still damp from the cold water he had splashed on it, eight minutes had passed. He stuffed his blanket into the crack beneath the door, lit the candle stub he’d brought, and held it aloft. There was the book. Top shelf, far right corner. He went to the ladder, gauged how far he would have to pull it along its squealing tracks. Not far. Six feet or so. He should be able to do it quickly, and John had agreed to scream as long as he could without raising suspicion—ten or fifteen seconds, probably. By then Mr. Griese, who was on duty tonight, would surely be shaking him like a maraca, and John would have to pretend to wake up.

  Nine minutes.

  Nicholas was about to turn from the shelves and put down his candle when he noticed, on the shelf just beneath Clippings, a book titled The Secrets of Marriage. Every nerve in his body jolted, as if he’d been shocked. What if that book was the one? For that matter—Nicholas was pacing now, holding the candle up, reading the titles of the books on the second-highest shelf—what if it was yet another book, a book at the opposite end of the library?

  “No, no, no,” Nicholas whispered as he read not one, not two, but three different titles that might have been good clues. How had he been so blind? Weren’t any of the higher shelves possible hiding places? Any shelf that required the ladder to reach? That book on extrasensory perception had drawn his eye to the top shelf, and so it was the top shelf alone that Nicholas had been focused on. And when he’d spied that title, Clippings, so perfectly placed in the top corner—well, that had settled it for him. In his excitement, he had turned right away to planning how to get it.

  He had thirty seconds to make a decision, assuming John had continued counting at the same pace. Desperately he thought, Slow down! I need more time, John! But he had no hope that John would hear his mental plea. He had to figure this out, and he had to do it now, or John was going to suffer for nothing.

  Nicholas decided there was no time to consider anything but the top two shelves. Besides Clippings and The Secrets of Marriage, the other suspicious titles on those shelves were What Modesty Requires, The Hidden Word, and Legerdemain (a word that meant “sleight of hand,” which was the way Mr. Rothschild had described sneaking the clippings out of his wife’s sight). The Hidden Word and Legerdemain were very near to each other, in a small section of books about puzzles, codes, magic, and that sort of thing. He couldn’t say for sure about Mrs. Rothschild, but Nicholas found such topics fascinating. Perhaps Mr. Rothschild would have thought those books too tempting—his wife might want to read them.

  Twenty seconds.

  What Modesty Requires was a different matter. If Mrs. Rothschild truly was as shy and modest as Mr. Rothschild claimed, would she not be embarrassed to be seen reading a book about modesty? Especially if she had to ask her husband to bring it to her? It might depend on what kind of book it was, Nicholas thought. It was in a section of…

  He blinked. What Modesty Requires was surrounded by books about geography. It was clearly out of place! Had Mr. Rothschild put it there on purpose? Had he chosen a book he doubted his wife would ask to read—a book whose title reminded him of its secret contents—and hidden it among other books in which she had no interest? Did Mrs. Rothschild like geography? There was no mention of any such thing in the diary.

  Ten seconds. He couldn’t think about it any longer. He had to make a choice.

  Nicholas set the candle on the floor and grabbed the ladder, ready to move it. He thought, She was an avid reader, very curious. John and Violet thought she was like me—and I’m interested in everything. Everything. And I notice when books are out of place.

  He looked up into the top corner. It was hard to see. Was it possible, after all, that his first suspicion had been correct? Was it possible that something in his mind—something of which he was not even aware—knew which book was the correct one? Might it have known the answer all along?

  “I don’t know,” Nicholas whispered despondently. “I don’t know, I don’t know!”

  And then the screaming began.

  When John appeared at breakfast the next morning in the dunce cap, he looked so ridiculous that Nicholas felt a fleeting—a very fleeting—impulse to tease him. But though John was doing his best to look defiant, or at least unaffected, it was clear he was miserable. And because all eyes and ears were upon him—the Spiders had already passed the word to watch for crying, or even sniffling, because they wanted to jeer if it happened—he and Nicholas were unable to talk at all. As soon as he sat down, though, Nicholas gave him a significant look, and John managed a weak smile and nodded.

  “Hey, Spotty!” Iggy called out. “Spotty the Clown! Did you have a scary, scary dream last night? Did you cry and cry?”

  Titters and snorts erupted all over the room, and John’s smile faded and did not return, not even when Miss Candace sent Iggy away without his breakfast. He ate his own breakfast in silence, without interest.

  So the day went for John. Set apart as usual, but even more than usual an object of scorn. Every time anyone laughed, he assumed they were laughing about him. When, during free time, he was sent to the farm to churn butter, an extra chore that not even John enjoyed, Nicholas knew he must feel relieved. At least at the farm no one was making fun of him.

  Nicholas, for his part, was definitely relieved about something: Not a single person had noticed that the ladder had been moved. Nobody mentioned it or even gave it a second glance.

  The mission had taken its toll, but it had been a success.

  That night Nicholas waited in vain for John to show up. Perhaps the day had been too wearing on him and he’d fallen asleep. Whatever the reason, Nicholas thought, it was a shame. After such a hideous and lonely day, John surely could have used some time with his friends at Giant’s Head, and it would have done him good to see the rewards of his sacrifice—to say nothing of how excited Nicholas was to share the information he’d uncovered. Instead, Nicholas spent half an hour pacing under the towering old oak trees, thinking, I’m in the park marking time in the dark starting rhymes as a lark, before finally marching up the hill alone.

  In the observatory he had to wait still more, for Violet did not arrive for some time, and when she did, Nicholas saw at once that the news he was so eager to break would have to be delayed even longer.

  Even in the wan light of the lantern, Violet’s eyes were obviously puffy and red. She had been crying, she admitted (when Nicholas inquired), because her parents had sat up late in the kitchen, privately discussing how to tell her the truth about their limited savings. Usually they went to bed much earlier, she said, her father being so exhausted from his day’s work; and Violet, noticing a lamp was still lit downstairs, had crept to the top of the stairs and peered down. She could see her mother in the kitchen, signing, and in this way she was able to make out much of t
heir conversation. Her parents didn’t realize, she said, that she already knew art school was out of the question. The last time they had discussed the matter was the year before, when Violet’s first chance to apply for admission had passed.

  At the time, Violet signed, we were all so upset about my brother, art school seemed the least of my concerns. I told them then not to worry about me, that I would hold out hope for this year and that maybe a miracle would happen in the meantime. They assumed I meant the mining company might still come through for us somehow, and I suppose I did, though I didn’t truly believe it. Now that the contract is about to expire, they expect me to ask about it. They so dread breaking my heart.

  “That’s why you got upset?” Nicholas asked. “Because they’re so worried about you?”

  Of course. Tomorrow I intend to tell them that I don’t care to go to art school anymore. I can’t bear how sad it makes them to disappoint me. And who knows? Maybe a miracle will happen, after all. Just not the one anyone expected.

  “If you mean the treasure,” Nicholas said, no longer able to resist talking about it, “we’re one step closer to your miracle!” With an impish grin, he withdrew a handful of papers from his flour-sack backpack and waved them with a flourish. “I got the clippings! And I found a clue! No missing diary pages, unfortunately, but still, we have something new to go on!”

  Violet brightened at this news, her face taking on its familiar radiance, and she grew very intent as Nicholas told her all about the night before, how he had been forced to make a last-second decision with so little to go on, how in the end he had stuck with the original plan.

  “I also snagged The Secrets of Marriage,” he said, “since it was in easy reach, too. But it turned out to be an awfully dull set of rules about working hard to accommodate each other, being respectful, and so on, and of course it contained no real secrets at all. Clippings, on the other hand, was the jackpot! It was a collection of barbershop stories, by the way—meant to be amusing but actually quite dreary. If you ask me, I’ll bet Mrs. Rothschild had already read it and found it just as dreary as I do, and Mr. Rothschild knew she would never want to read it again.”

  As he spoke Nicholas was laying out the clippings on the floor for Violet to read, and she was rapidly and somewhat anxiously glancing back and forth between his lips and the clippings. Nicholas quit chattering and let her devote her attention to the papers, which naturally she was eager to read for herself. There were seven in all, five of them being gossip columns, one being an engagement announcement, and the last being an obituary of Mr. Rodney Rexal, the rich shipping merchant who had been Mrs. Rothschild’s father. Violet bent over the engagement announcement for a closer look at the photograph.

  She’s quite plain, Violet signed. Her dress is beautiful, but Mrs. Rothschild—or, I suppose, Miss Rexal at that time—is not pretty at all. From what you told me, I had expected her to be lovely.

  “Well, remember,” Nicholas said, “Mr. Rothschild’s diary might have given you that impression, but we know his opinions can’t exactly be trusted.”

  Violet frowned. She pointed out that some of what Mr. Rothschild had written about his wife had to be true, after all. Had Nicholas not made his decision about which book to fetch based upon what he knew of Mrs. Rothschild from the diary? You told me you thought she was too intelligent and perceptive not to have noticed that book being in the wrong section. That Mr. Rothschild wouldn’t have taken such a chance, and that someone must simply have mis-shelved the book since then. And were you not correct?

  “That’s true,” Nicholas admitted. “But when I made my decision, I was really just considering Mr. Rothschild’s high opinion of his wife—not Mrs. Rothschild herself.” He gestured toward the clippings from the gossip columns. “Still, other people did seem to share his opinion of her wit.”

  Violet returned to her reading. Nicholas, of course, already knew it all by heart: paragraph after paragraph about the charming, the dazzling, the gracious and funny Mrs. Rothschild—always followed by a paragraph of complaint that Mrs. Rothschild, as a rule, chose to keep these entertaining gifts of hers hidden away on Mr. Rothschild’s elegant country estate, instead of making regular appearances in Stonetown’s high society. The tone was always chiding, even wounded, as if Stonetown’s high society was deeply saddened and offended that Mrs. Rothschild did not care very much about it.

  The longest of the columns described indignantly how Mrs. Rothschild had “so far attended only a single event” during one lengthy visit to the city—a “literary ladies luncheon, ever since which, citing other ‘important obligations,’ her elusive ladyship has declined all further invitations!” The column was accompanied by a photograph of Mrs. Rothschild at the luncheon, laughing with another woman, both of them carrying a sizable armload of books. The photograph caption read: “Overbooked!”

  Violet had moved on to Mr. Rexal’s obituary, then back to the other clippings. The dates all match up, she signed. She got married, her father died soon after, and at least two of these columns mention the fortune she must have inherited. She looked up at Nicholas. But where is the clue?

  Nicholas picked up the column about the literary luncheon. “Did you read this one?”

  Rather quickly, but yes. Why?

  “Well, think carefully about the last paragraph.” And without looking at the paper itself, Nicholas began to quote from it: “ ‘Readers of yesterday’s column know exactly where and with whom Mrs. Rothschild has spent her days thus far, and how dull and dry these days must have passed for the lady! Could it be that Mr. Rothschild insists that his wife accompany him to such business meetings, to such horrid appointments with agents and accountants and others of their ilk, because he is jealous of her company? If so, for shame, Mr. Rothschild! Allow the lady livelier days! Meanwhile, curious readers may rest assured that tomorrow’s column shall be a continuing chronicle of her lady Rothschild’s oh-so-important obligations!’ ”

  Wait, Violet signed, rummaging among the other clippings. But these are all from other months, even other years! Not one of them is from that week!

  Nicholas tapped his nose and pointed at her. “Exactly! There should be at least two other columns from that week talking about where Mrs. Rothschild was spending her time. She was being elusive, this one says, and spending all her time with Mr. Rothschild at meetings. What if they were making private arrangements to purchase the treasure? The timing is right—it’s the same year as that obituary—and Stonetown is the perfect place to arrange for shipments of valuable goods, clandestine or otherwise. It’s the biggest city in the region and has the biggest port!”

  Violet looked excited. So if we knew more about what the Rothschilds were doing that week, we might have a clue about the treasure.

  “The business districts they visited,” Nicholas said, ticking off on his fingers, “the names of the agents they met with, whether or not they spent time with art dealers, or gold merchants, or purveyors of Oriental rugs—”

  Purveyors? Violet signed.

  “Another word for suppliers or merchants,” Nicholas said rather impatiently. “The point is that if we can figure out what the treasure is, we might be able to narrow down where it’s hidden. Or, even better,” he added with a gleam in his eye, “if we can learn who Mr. Rothschild hired to construct this observatory, we might be able to find out if there really is a secret to the cranks!”

  Do you really think so? It was a long time ago.

  “If it’s a family business,” Nicholas said, “there might be a child or even a grandchild who knows the secret. Honestly, if you were an architect or builder, and you were asked to install a secret mechanism in an amateur observatory—and maybe some sort of secret panel leading to a secret room—don’t you think you would pass on that little tidbit to your children, and they to theirs? It’s a great story, after all.”

  This is really exciting, Violet signed, and her shining face confirmed her words. But where do you think we can find out these things? The
other clippings must have been among those Mr. Rothschild burned. Do you think someone else saved them?

  “Not necessarily a person,” Nicholas said grinning, “but a place.”

  A library!

  “Yes. Stonetown Library, to be specific. I’ve read that it has a repository of newspapers from all over the country. You can bet it has all the old Stonetown papers. I just need an excuse to go there. Once I learn the names of the people the Rothschilds met with that week, I can track down information about them. I can find out all sorts of things.”

  How in the world would you manage that? Violet wondered. Do you think Mr. Collum would let you go?

  “Not yet,” Nicholas confessed. “But I can be very persuasive. I’ll find a way.”

  I can’t believe it. This is really happening! We’re really making progress!

  “I know!” Nicholas said. “I only wish John were here—this would surely cheer him up.”

  Violet’s expression changed abruptly. What’s the matter? What happened?

  Nicholas told her about John’s terrible day. Nor did he stop there, but for some reason went on about how miserable John usually was during the days, even when he was not being compelled to wear the dunce cap. He explained that the John whom Violet knew at Giant’s Head and the John who lived doggedly and grimly as an outcast at Rothschild’s End were two different boys entirely. He said he had rarely seen John smile even before his Spider-induced exile began, and that since then John’s smiles were scarcer still.

  “You wouldn’t believe the difference,” Nicholas said emphatically (in the course of his speech, he had grown quite animated), “between that John and the one you know. You couldn’t! Why—”

  And then, abruptly, Nicholas fell silent. As he’d been speaking, Violet’s face had grown longer and longer, and the sight of her sad expression had distressed him extremely, yet some strange impulse had propelled him forward, causing him to speak with even greater fervor and emphasis, until at last he’d seen her eyes fill with tears, and Violet had covered her face with her hands and begun to cry. Only then, when there seemed to be no point in continuing to speak, was Nicholas able to shut off his flow of words, and in doing so he was brought to wonder what had motivated him to go on so.