What helped in this was ignoring Aidan. It had become totally, totally clear that Aidan made everything go all weird in her head, like something that messes with the reception of a radio. Her incredibly brilliant solution was a little game called You Do Not Exist.
When Aidan came into the kitchen to get on her case about dinner, she smiled pleasantly and forced her head to repeat the words “you do not exist” over anything else it tried to tell her. When he passed by and leaned over her drawings of Ollie and made more comments about his ironic fashion choices, she thanked him and ignored him. Because he did not exist.
Of course, he did exist. And she felt her pulse race when he sat too close. He was making her nervous. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She noticed he tended to avoid Elsa too, choosing instead to hide in the workroom and play video games on his computer all night. She knew that was what he was doing because she had listened at the door. (Yes, yes, listened at the door. It’s best to know where the source of your irritation is lingering.)
Elsa was the restless one now. Since the day onshore with Aidan, nothing had happened between them, as far as Clio could tell. The calm that she had exhibited in the early days gave way to frayed nerves.
“I need to do somethng about this,” she said to Clio one morning after coming downstairs. She stood around in the galley as Clio cleaned up and picked at the leftovers of breakfast.
“You need to what?” Clio asked.
“There must be kissing,” she said. “There must be bodily contact. But it’s impossible to do anything on this bloody boat. We’re all on top of one another. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing.”
Clio scrubbed away at a particularly sticky bit of egg and nodded sympathetically.
“What I don’t understand,” Elsa went on, “is the fact that he says nothing. He runs off and hides. Every once in a while he looks at me, but that’s it. I mean, this is good to look at, right?”
She stepped back and presented herself for inspection.
“I’d date you,” Clio answered. “But I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s always seemed weird to me.”
“It’s dive time,” her father called as he passed by. “Can you come give us a hand?”
Martin was changing into his wet suit out on the deck, stumbling as he tried to get his leg into the skintight rubber. Clio turned her head as Julia helped her dad do the same.
“I think I’ve gained a little weight out here,” Martin said to her. “You cook too well. Oh, would you mind?”
He nodded to his shirt and a key on a lariat.
“Don’t lose that,” he said with a smile. “It’s a master key.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Clio said, slipping the key around her neck.
Aidan joined them, mumbling something about iron. When Martin and her dad had gone in the water, Aidan lingered, slouching down in the corner of the deck with his laptop. He didn’t bother to say good morning or look up at Clio.
Elsa trailed out with one of her textbooks and mouthed Italian phrases toward the sun.
And Clio watched. And did some mental math.
Two people on the deck. Julia had gone up to the wheelhouse. Two people in the ocean.
And one key around her neck. A key that lay on top of her heart.
Just because she had been well behaved all week didn’t mean that she was any less interested in what was behind this trip—it was just that she had chosen not to act on it.
Being given a shiny key is a temptation. Keys open things. And from the moment it was around her neck, her senses were tingling. The same senses that told her what aisle to find Ollie in or what chair Suki was crouched under—these were the senses telling her to take this key and do something with it.
But the place her brain was telling her to go was simply not right.
“I have to go get something,” she said to Elsa and Aidan. “Can you keep an eye on them for me? Call me on the com if anyone signals.”
“Sure!” Elsa said. Her sunny smile meant that she thought Clio was doing her another favor by leaving her alone with Aidan.
Clio hurried inside. On the one hand, her brain was telling her no. No, she was not allowed to do this. This was a serious breach. The other side was forcing her downstairs quickly because there wasn’t a lot of time for this, if she was going to do it.
She found herself standing in front of Julia’s door, not breathing, holding the key in front of the lock. This was where the answers on this boat were. This was where anything of real interest was going to be found. Something told her that this was absolutely necessary.
But if she got caught, there would be no recovery. It was just an insane whim.
She felt the key slipping into the lock, as if some force was putting it in there and not her hand.
Julia’s room was small but very tidy. It looked fairly unused, except for storage. Clio started by just glancing around, but she soon gave it up and started opening drawers. In the small bedside cabinet, there was a baby blue pack of birth control pills. Clio cringed. It sat on a clear plastic box, which Clio could see was full of stones. She gingerly moved the pills aside and took the box. The stones were all different, though most of them looked like they had been chipped off larger surfaces. All were covered in symbols, the same symbols—a bunch of lines crossing each other in meaningless ways. Some were carved deeply, some just scratched. A few bore deep impressions that had probably been made in wet clay and allowed to dry. One was a tiny piece of jade that had been chiseled precisely. The symbols were obviously writing. They repeated, and they were in clean lines. Clio turned the stone around several times. She had seen Greek characters, and Julia knew lots of Greek. But these definitely didn’t look like Greek characters.
She set the box back, replaced the pills, and kept looking. There were piles of paper around the room, mostly thick folders filled with printed-out academic articles about languages or translations, a few dissertations. Lots of photocopies of Greek documents. Julia’s personal belongings were fairly simple. She had neatly folded clothes, a collection of exotic jewelry, a few thick, very literary-looking novels that Clio had never heard of.
Nothing interesting, really. And she had to be running out of time.
She was about to turn and go when she noticed a black travel file on the floor. She reached down and opened it up. It spread open, accordion style, revealing a few papers. Mostly it was empty. Clio shuffled through the pockets. In the back were many more photocopies of the strange symbols on all kinds of surfaces. It looked like the front pockets were empty until Clio spread them open and had a good look at each one. In the very front was a small piece of paper in a plastic sleeve.
The thing that first caught her eye was the round rubber stamp mark in the corner that read: ARCHIVED, 17 MARCH 1926. The paper was old, and the letter had been written with a loose ink pen that dripped along the page, soaking it in spots, running dry in the middle of some sentences. Clio could see where the writer had had to re-dip the pen and renew the ink. The scrawl was quick but elegant.
My dearest Marguerite,
I write this from Naples, where I am to board the Bell Star in only a few moments.
I’m not sure which will get to you first, this letter or me. Even so, I take the chance. My excitement compels me to write to you and deliver this news.
In the villa in which I have been working in Pompeii, there is a library. But there is something else, something quite extraordinary. On one of the walls, there is mounted a piece of elegantly engraved marble. Unless my eyes very much deceive me, it is written in that strange script we have been discussing for so long.
Here is the extraordinary bit—the writing is then translated into Latin. I believe the owner of this villa had works written in the script and this was a translation tool. I have found more scraps of the papyrus. It could be that this is a library full of works more ancient and more important than any we have ever known. And now, with the aid of this stone, we can read them.
I obtained permission to take it with me. When I reach London, we will take it directly to Hill and begin our work. Until then, I think only of you.
Your loving father
Obviously, this letter was important. It was old. It had a plastic sleeve and its own pocket at the front of the file. Important things always go in the front. But unlike the paperwork that was out and around the room, it didn’t look like this was frequently needed.
She stood there, reading the letter over and over. A few things stood out. There was a ship in this—the Bell Star. They were looking for a ship. There was something important on the Bell Star—a stone from Pompeii, a stone that would enable its finder to translate unknown languages.
This was exactly the kind of thing that Julia would want. Especially considering the box of stones with letters on them. Letters that weren’t Greek. But the phrase that Clio couldn’t get out of her mind was: It could be that this is a library full of works more ancient and more important than any we have ever known.
“What is all this?” she said to herself.
Clio took a deep breath in through her nose, then closed the file and pressed the clasp shut, taking the letter with her. As she came upstairs, she glanced out the glass doors and saw that it looked like the divers had already come up. Julia and Aidan were both by the back of the boat. She ducked into the galley for a moment and slipped the letter in between the pages of the Indian cookbook, then continued out. Something wasn’t right. There was too much activity. Her father was standing on the deck, but it looked like he was pulling something out of the water.
Except it wasn’t something. It was Martin.
A Kind of Truth
Martin was ashen-faced and sitting on the platform with his head between his knees.
“I’m all right,” he said. “Sometimes it just doesn’t agree with you, that’s all.”
“You sure?” her dad asked. “You don’t look good. Did you skip a stop on the way up? Are you experiencing narcosis?”
“Should I call a doctor?” Aidan asked.
“No,” Martin said. “It’s not that bad. I just got woozy on the last bit. Let me catch my breath, and then I’ll go and rest for the afternoon. I’ll be fine.”
Aidan and Clio’s dad helped him up and to his room, where he stayed for the rest of the day. That night, Clio made an Irish stew for dinner. That seemed like the kind of thing that might be good for someone who wasn’t feeling well. All day long, she was aware of the letter that was right there with her.
When she brought him his dinner, Martin was looking much better. He sat propped up in his bed in his tiny cabin, reading a book by the light of a little fixture that came down over his shoulder. This room was no Champagne Suite. It was even smaller than Julia’s.
“I could smell something good,” he said. “And I didn’t feel like getting up. Clio, you’re a saint.”
He accepted the tray and set it on his lap.
“Are you feeling better?” Clio asked.
“Much,” he said, picking up a spoon and sampling the broth. “Oh…that’s good.”
Clio reached behind her and shut the door.
“Are you okay enough for me to ask you something?” she said.
“I have never been injured by a question. Shoot.”
“Are we looking for the Bell Star?”
He smiled and poked a carrot around the bowl.
“What makes you ask something like that?” he said.
Clio produced the letter from the front pocket of her sweatshirt.
“Who wrote this?” she said. “Who’s Marguerite?”
One of Martin’s many good qualities was that he saw no sense in wasting time with lines of inquiry that would clearly get him nowhere, like, “Where did you get that?” He already knew the answer.
“The letter in your hand is from Dr. Alexander Magwell,” he said. “He was a professor in the late 1800s, specializing in antiquities. He left teaching to work with the British Museum. He worked at Pompeii for a few months each year. He was returning home from an expedition when he boarded a ship called the Bell Star. Before he left port, he mailed this letter to his daughter, Marguerite. He never made it home with what he found. That letter was put in with his papers, which were given to the British Museum.”
“So, we are looking for the Bell Star, right?” she said.
“Right.”
“And we’re looking for this stone?”
“Right again,” he said.
“So, we’re not just looking for a boat, which is hard enough. We’re looking for a rock on a boat.”
“Again,” he said, “you’ve nailed it.”
“That’s…” Clio’s hands clawed up in frustration. “It’s not even insane. It’s something else. Insane can be fun. This is just bad.”
“It’s not impossible,” Martin said.
“No, it’s not impossible,” Clio said. “But do you think it’s going to work?”
“Stranger things have happened,” he said.
“I lost a really cool sock a few years ago,” she said. “Can we go look for that next?”
“We actually know a lot,” Martin said. “The Bell Star was a British-built ship. For the last five years of her life, she ran between Naples, Italy, and Marseille, France, handling passengers and cargo. She left on her last run on May 25, 1897. No one knows exactly what happened, but she definitely went down sometime between the twenty-sixth and the twenty-seventh. She often stopped in Civitavecchia, which is just north of here. They were expected to stop there on this journey. They never did. So, using the spot where the Bell Star was last sighted as a point of reference, we’ve figured out three likely places where she could be. Plus we have a few potential sites that we got from divers and some hang numbers from a fisherman.”
“You mean dive coordinates?” Clio asked.
“I mean dive coordinates,” he said. “Right. Wrecks are often found in places where the fishing is really good or nets get stuck or lost. We’ve already hit the first four. We have a few more to go.”
“Okay,” Clio said. “Maybe we can find the boat and maybe even the stone. It’s not likely, but okay. The question is why. Why us? Why do we care? Why is my dad funding this and not Cambridge, or the British Museum, or some big organization?”
“That is a slightly more complicated question,” he said. “One I can’t really answer.”
“And the secrecy,” Clio went on. “Why is everyone being so CIA about an old rock?”
“I think that’s Julia’s request, but your dad is doing it in his normal style. A little over the top.”
“Martin,” Clio said, leaning in. “I have been in some strange situations in my life, but this is definitely the winner of the Weird Olympics. This letter? It’s an original. Not a copy. So how did it get out? My mom works in museums. They’re serious about keeping their stuff. So how did it end up with us?”
“Julia said that a colleague turned up with it one day, that it must have gotten out of the museum years ago, just gotten lost in the shuffle, sometime back before computers, before there was sophisticated security. They have a lot of documents at the British Museum. Millions upon millions. It’s one of the world’s largest collections of…anything, really. And it’s not an especially important letter, as far as the museum is concerned. I’m sure no one ever noticed it was gone. It was just a personal letter from a long-dead academic.”
“A colleague?” Clio repeated. “That’s not very specific. Someone just walked in one day and handed her this letter, and she showed it to my dad, and then he bought a yacht to go find it? Come on, Martin. It’s time to tell me everything.”
“I’ve just told you everything I know,” he said. “Really. I wanted to tell you ab
out the Bell Star sooner, but I was asked not to. But even I don’t know much. I came along because I thought maybe your father was jumping into this a bit too fast. I did have the time, and I thought it would be fun to learn to dive. The boat was an extreme move, I admit. But he can resell it. This might be very worthwhile.”
He reached over to the bedside stand and fumbled around for his key, which he passed to her.
“This is a master key,” he said.
“I know.”
“I figured you did. Take it and put that letter back where you found it. I’m going to eat my stew.”
Martin picked up his fork and started in properly. Clio caught sight of a small bottle tucked behind the alarm clock. It had been hidden until he had reached for the key. She picked it up.
“Nitroglycerin,” she said, reading off the label. “Isn’t this for heart problems?”
“What,” he said with a smile. “Are you a doctor?”
“No,” Clio said. “I watch a lot of TV. I’ve seen commercials for medicines. Plus there’s a sticker of a heart on the bottle.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well spotted.”
“Martin, are you…okay? Really?”
“Just a little chest pain,” he said. “I’ve had it for a while. It’s nothing serious.”
“Should you be here, doing this? Diving?” she asked. “Does my dad know?”
“The exercise is good for me,” he said. “I never got enough before. And the problem isn’t serious. I’m on plenty of medication for it, believe me. I’ll be fine. I just wore myself out a little today. You worry too much, Clio.”
He looked tired and like he wanted his dinner. Clio stood.
Girl at Sea Page 17