by Anne Groß
“There’s nothing wrong with my ears. I was under the impression that the British Museum is open to all curious and studious persons?”
“Curious you may be, but studious?” his mustasche wagged derisively. “Hardly. You’ve not even the sense to studiously attend to your toilet before exiting your home. Leave, harpy, or I shall have you hoisted away.” He made a face as if the very idea of touching her was distasteful.
Mrs. Southill battled to keep her outrage hidden, but she could feel the steam building. She wasn’t less than anyone else. She was, in fact, worth more than most. She didn’t need anyone else’s approval—until, of course, that disapproval kept her from entering into society’s most interesting places. She opened her mouth to make further protest but found she couldn’t form any words. So she did the only thing she could do and brought the tightly rolled scroll of paper down hard over the man’s head. The violence felt so satisfying that she did it three more times before she left. She might even have gotten in six thumps, altogether.
Late that night, Mrs. Southill blinked in the dark chamber of the British Museum, waiting for her old eyes to adjust to the light. Hulking figures of stone statues, an audience of standing gods, loomed along either side of her, eerily lit from below by the lantern she held. Unable to see their expressions, she imagined the statues to have affronted looks, as though listening to a speech that had suddenly taken a controversial turn.
She approached one of the stone figures and squinted at it from top to bottom: massive headdress, broad shoulders, narrow waist, loincloth, muscular legs. Then back to loincloth. Then back to massive headdress. Then back to loincloth. The Egyptians must have been quite large, she thought with some admiration.
It hadn’t been difficult to get access inside after closing. Once the museum closed, the housemaids entered with their brooms, pails, and dust cloths. Mrs. Southill knew many of these laborers. They came to her all the time, thinking nothing of traveling the narrow path through her protective forest. They came wanting to be pregnant, wanting not to be pregnant, terrified for their first birthing. They came concerned about the stinging urine, the hacking cough, the twisted ankle. They brought her their babies to cure croup, diarrhea, fever. They brought her their burns when their skirts caught fire in the kitchen, or after they’d been scalded in the laundry. Mrs. Southill knew a maid or two, that was sure. And she’d merely had to ask one that worked in the British Museum to open the door.
She’d waited until very late to enter, in order to make sure there would be no one to bother her. There was still no guarantee that there wasn’t someone still lingering over some old manuscript somewhere in a dark corner, but she had a plan should she encounter the lone academic. She’d just start scrubbing something with a corner of her apron.
In fact, Mrs. Southill felt quite relaxed about having illicitly gained entrance to the museum. She’d be quite comfortable spending the entire night in this scholar’s palace, multiple nights even. It had the same quality of solitude, the same feeling of safety, as her forest clearing. Here, after hours, when the crowds of tourists had left with just as little in their heads as they’d had when they’d arrived, the building could breathe again.
Unfortunately, a full night was not possible. There were only a few hours in which Mrs. Southill could linger as dawn was nearing quickly. She turned from the handsome statues and walked right past a wrapped mummy, despite the allure of the mysterious symbols on the coffin in which it slept. She didn’t bother to stop and look at a collection of painted amphorae resting on a table. She did, however, hesitate over cuneiform on unrolled papyrus, but then shook herself out of it. Mrs. Southill had a job to do. She singlemindedly headed towards her true goal, paper scroll in hand.
The scientists and scholars Napoleon sent with his army couldn’t resist stealing the art from out of the sacred temples of Egypt, chipping them from the walls and changing the very nature of architecture thousands of years old. It had been part of the emperor’s grand plan to bring science and modernity to Egypt, but the opposite had occurred. Instead of studying Egypt within the country of Egypt, French academia dictated that Egypt be plunged in alcohol and taken away in jars. Then, when the English defeated the French in the Battle of the Nile, the plunder changed hands and England took Egypt away from France. And here it was now, spread before her.
But it wasn’t statues of Isis or the gold of buried kings that Mrs. Southill was after, it was a simple hunk of black granite. The rock had once been nothing more than a brick in a wall at Fort Julien, recycled from another building in another location, pulled down by time, or war, or both. It had been discovered, not by one of Napoleon’s 151 men in the Commission of Sciences and Arts, but by a mere soldier, who recognized its potential significance immediately. This brick, however mundane, was actually a miracle of lost information. La Pierre de Rosette, the French called it. The Rosetta Stone.
Mrs. Southill stood before the hulking stone, breathless with wonder. It was more like a large boulder than a brick, nearly four feet tall. Its low pedestal gave it a few more inches, making it nearly as tall as the witch herself. On the bottom, carved lightly in its polished surface, was Ancient Greek writing. Translated, it revealed itself to be a decree announcing a new ruler, and how he should be worshiped. Above the Greek, two other sections were inscribed, each with its own language and system of writing, one being the strange pictographs of the ancient Egyptians. It was presumed that the top two sections were translations of the Greek decree, so that all persons in the land of Egypt, no matter their language, would understand the same new law. If this truly were the case, then the words in Greek would be the key to unlocking the meaning of each Egyptian hieroglyphic. This rock, this miracle of linguistics was about to release the tale of Ancient Greece’s sister in significance—just as soon as someone could figure out the code.
Mrs. Southill could feel her heart pounding in her neck. Egypt was the seat of all Western culture. The thought of how much human knowledge had been lost because no one had been able to decipher hieroglyphics was more than a tragedy. It was unconscionable. The Rosetta Stone would remedy the loss. There was the Greek, right there at the bottom. Up above was the Egyptian. The one mirrored the other. It should have been simple enough to break the code.
Yet it was clearly a problem. The Rosetta Stone had been in England’s possession for six years, and still no one had figured it out.
Mrs. Southill drew her roughened fingertips over the smooth surface of the Stone and was surprised at how delicate the engravings were. It certainly looked curious: falcons, seated figures, and eyes were aligned as though each picture was a word, scythes over jagged lines. It was hard to believe the key to reading the ancient formulas in the Book of Thoth were right here, under her very nose.
But it wasn’t for her to unlock this mystery. She’d let the other women worry about deciphering the hieroglyphics.
Carefully, she unrolled the large scroll of paper and smoothed it up against the surface of the Stone. With a wide piece of graphite, she rubbed the paper vigorously, with the expectation that the graphite would transfer all the Stone’s engravings onto the paper. Mrs. Southill filled an entire corner of the page with gray, but the hieroglyphics weren’t copied. She peeled the paper away from the stone and ran her fingers over the engravings. They were too finely done. She’d have to think of another way.
“Meg?” Mrs. Southill called out into the hallway. “Meggie? Are you about?”
There was a splashing noise, the sound of a wooden scrub brush being dropped back into a bucket. “Coming Mother Southill,” Meg yelled back. The glow of a second lantern revealed her approach, a gray maid in a yellow light.
“Look at this,” Mrs. Southill said, “the rubbing doesn’t work.”
“Did you try rubbing the paper harder?” Meg asked, setting down her lantern to push a damp curl out of her eyes. She was sweaty from the effort of scrubbing floors.
“Doesn’t matter how hard or soft I rub. It doesn’t wo
rk. Do you think there’d be any pots of ink about?”
Meg thought for a minute, then nodded. “How many will you be needing?”
After five pots of ink, forty-five minutes later, Mrs. Southill found herself scratching her head again and staring at the Rosetta Stone. “That didn’t work either.”
“It’s a right fine mess you’ve made for me,” Meg tutted.
The two of them had painted the entire engraved surface of the stone in a thick layer of ink. Then Mrs. Southill had done her best to press the paper on the stone as quickly and carefully as she could, as one might do in a printing press, but the stone hadn’t taken the ink very well. It rolled off its surface as fast as they brushed it on, and pooled upon the parquet floor before she could get an imprint.
Now the expensive scroll of paper was ruined, smeared all over with black blots and hand prints. Meg had a long ink smudge on her forehead where she’d pushed her hair out of her eyes and Mrs. Southill knew she likely had it worse. “I’ll clean it,” Mrs. Southill said. “It’s not right to make you do it for me.” She felt deflated. “I’ll just have to draw the entire thing. Might you let me back in again tomorrow night?”
Her fingers felt cramped just thinking about the chore. She’d have to come back every night for the rest of the week. La Société wouldn’t be pleased by the delay—they were already six years behind. Six years of letters demanding the right to a facsimilé in order to study the hieroglyphics; six years of being pushed aside by all the scholars, English and French, who were themselves working on the translations. A society of old women who dared to think they could do what the men hadn’t yet accomplished? The notion seemed to be absurd to the academics in charge.
Meg, already scrubbing on her hands and knees, didn’t look pleased. “I don’t understand why you’re wanting to make your own paper.”
“Thousands of years ago, Mankind forgot how to read this language. Wouldn’t it be nice to learn how to do that again?”
“I can’t even read English, and I’ve done just fine.”
Mrs. Southill sighed. She had no salve for the poverty of mind. “I know dear, but do you not enjoy being told stories? Think of this as unlocking the door to a lost library of stories.”
The maid shrugged. She didn’t have time for stories. “I still don’t understand why you’re marking your own paper. I can get you a paper.”
“None as has this stone on it.”
“Indeed, you are wrong. Mr. Smith and Mr. Babbins both have a sheet of paper like yours, big as the stone, with all its markings clear as day.”
Mrs. Southill stared at the maid in surprise. “Here? They have it here?”
“Well, not here. Not in this here hall. Those two have desks in the library, three halls over.”
PUKING
They hoisted anchor early that morning as the fog drifted in. Elise couldn’t figure out how the captain had decided the weather had changed and the sailing would be smooth. Had the moon been veiled by a thin cloud at midnight? Did a bird crap on the left shoulder of the first mate? Perhaps the captain had licked two fingers and raised them to the wind—at least that would have had a smidge of science involved. Whichever method used to figure out when to leave Cork’s protected harbor didn’t matter now. It was obvious to all that the oracle he consulted for weather information had been as drunk as the rest of the crew on board HMS Valiant.
For two days the army had been confined below the gun decks in dank and crowded quarters as the ship heaved through stormy seas. No one wanted to be washed overboard in the storm, so no one complained. As the hours rolled by, the air, confined as they were, became thin on oxygen and thick on odors. The officers wouldn’t let them light candles, and lanterns were only lit as-needed, so everyone mostly stayed in one place instead of stumbling around in the dark.
Elise was parked on a pile of crates under a grate in the low ceiling where a very thin light shone from the gun deck above. Once again she was alone with only the bad companionship of her thoughts to keep her company as she fought the swelling seasickness to keep down her meager dinner. At least now she could notch suicide off her list of possible methods for returning to Tucson. Drowning hadn’t worked and her one moment of courage was a moral outrage to just about everyone else. Those who hadn’t seen her suicide rescue, heard about it as word raced from stern to bow. The act was one more reason for Richard to feel humiliated by her, and he gratefully accepted the others’ silent condolences and looks of sympathy. No one had any sympathy for her, Elise noted wryly.
It had been a stupid decision to marry Richard, but Elise hadn’t had any other ideas. She couldn’t bring herself to sell the emerald, and she didn’t have any other money, so as far as she could see, marrying Richard and becoming an army camp follower was the only way she could get to America. And now she was stuck.
As the ship heaved over the sea, Elise tried to forget where she was by thinking of where she wanted to be. Nostalgia and wishful thinking helped her cope. Shivering in the cold, she wistfully recalled experiencing the opposite misery of too much heat. How many times had she heard, “but it’s a dry heat” when she’d been suffering through temperatures over 100 degrees? She thought of better days, when a drive across Tucson towards the Catalina Mountains was considered a desperate act in self-preservation.
Considering the way Anita drove her Jeep, desperate wasn’t too far from the truth. Elise lit the end of her cigarette and rolled down the window.
“Do you have to do that now?” Anita flapped one hand in the air to clear the smoke. “You’re letting all the AC out.”
“You should leave the doors off this baby. It’d be more fun. You know, treat it more like a Wrangler and less like a fashion accessory. Have you even taken this thing off-roading?” Elise caught the dirty side-eye Anita shot her. “Fine, fine. I’ll just smoke half,” Elise consoled. “Hey! Keep both hands on the wheel, please.” Anita had reached under her seat for an abandoned mailer and was using it to vigorously fan the smoke out the window. “Okay! I’ll put it out.” Elise grabbed the dashboard as the Wrangler wove in its lane.
“Damn it, Elise. Not in my ashtray. You’ll stink up my car!”
“Do you really want me to throw it out the window and start a grassfire?” Elise slammed the tray back into the dashboard. “I didn’t think so.”
All three smoldered angrily as they headed up Catalina Highway—the two friends, and the cigarette still smoking under the dash.
Elise missed Anita with a full-body ache.
As the ship pitched over the waves, her stomach surged with it. She breathed with pursed lips, in through the nose, out through the mouth, concentrated, steady. Sweat beaded on her forehead. The waves broke against the side of the Valiant with sickening regularity. A cigarette would be a terrible idea, considering she was hugging a bucket, but she wanted one so badly. Just a single puff.
There was a rush of feet in the gun deck above as sailors moved quickly to answer sudden orders. Their dark shadows thrown through the grate in the ceiling flitted like ghosts. Their footfalls were thunderous in comparison to the silence of the seasick infantrymen. When the sailors had gone, presumably to the weather deck, the eerie sounds of stretching rope, creaking wood, and rattling chains resumed, harmonizing with the storm raging beyond the walls of the ship’s hull.
In this grim atmosphere, Elise heard someone yelp in pain, far aft of where she was sitting. “Get off me you fiddle-scraping blockhead! Watch where you’re going!”
It was too dark to see who was approaching, but Elise knew all the same. “Begging your pardon,” came the obscenely cheerful reply.
Then, closer, “Look out! Damn your eyes—you’ve trod on my foot.”
“Your pardon. . .” The sound of protests from various soldiers got louder as the man eliciting the ugly curses made his way up the center of the narrow corridor and was tossed about by the pitching floor. Elise sighed resignedly.
“What are you doing up there?” Richard asked when he finall
y reached the stack of crates where she perched. His face twisted into a look of annoyance. “Come down from there. It isn’t seemly to have you crawling all over the cargo. You’ll hurt yourself.”
Elise ignored him and looked across to the starboard side of the deck. The shadow of O’Brian’s hunched back loomed against a wall of stacked crates. He was retching into a bucket. After the fight, she’d given him a poultice for his black eyes and he tried to return the favor with a kiss. Instead he got a mouthful of hair and a hard shove. It wasn’t the first time some idiot mistook the use of her nursing skills with making a pass. It was nice to have O’Brian occupied with nausea, since that effectively stopped him from leering at her. The sexual vacuum created by the loss of the Irish women was felt by everyone, especially the remaining women who were only about six percent of the population on board. It didn’t even seem to matter that they were all married. To the women’s delight, they were still petted and flirted with. All but Elise.
Richard gripped her ankle as the floor dropped out from under them. The ship was falling into a deep trough in the waves. She clung to the chains that anchored the crates in their stack against the curved wall and held on tight as Richard pulled. “Get down here at once,” he ordered. “This entire nightmare is your fault.”
Elise weakly kicked her leg to dislodge Richard’s hand while her mind floated back to Tucson.
“Slow down,” she had said to Anita. “If I get sick in your car it’ll be your own fault.”
“Seriously?” Anita protested. “I’m not going all that fast.”
“Just slow down around the curves.” G-forces slammed Elise’s stomach against her ribs.
The way to the top of Mount Lemmon was normally a pleasant drive on a twisting two-lane road. The air cooled as the miles melted away. Elise rolled the window down again and felt the wind slip under the sleeve of her shirt when she hung her arm out of the car. It raised goosebumps on her skin, smoothed away the sweat, and brought her the sharp smell of piñon pine as they moved out of the low desert and into the coniferous forest.