The Knowledge Stone

by Jack McGinnigle

  Carrying it over to the single small window in the room, she examined it carefully in the stronger light. She saw that the small box was made of finely grained wood and that the top lid was adorned by a simple pattern that had been carved carefully into its surface. The girl attempted to open the box but the lid wouldn’t budge. There were sturdy hinges at one side of the lid and a small keyhole set in the opposite panel. Clearly, the box was securely locked.

  Now Kati could have looked around the area where the box had been concealed to see if the key had fallen from the lock at some time in the past. But this was not Kati’s way – she had little patience and insisted on achieving what she wanted in the shortest possible time, no matter the method or the consequences.

  Looking around, she seized an old, rusty broad-bladed knife from a box of tools. ‘This will help me to get it open,’ she thought, forcing the blade under the lid and levering the knife handle upwards. At first the box resisted her attempts but then the wood splinted around the lock and the lid flew open on its hinges to reveal its contents – a small yellow stone lying upon a thick layer of woollen cloth.

  In her disappointment, the girl was about to throw the box and stone on the floor and kick both into a dark corner but, at the last moment, something made her change her mind. Instead, with finger and thumb she picked up the stone from its bed of cloth. It proved to be rather light in weight, roughly cylindrical in shape and with two peculiar depressions towards one end. As she held the object, her finger and thumb slipped along the length of the stone and fitted quite naturally into the two depressions near the top. It was then that Kati felt a strange momentary jolt within her, a strange feeling she had never experienced before; for a moment her head swam.

  ‘That’s funny,’ she thought, ‘I’ve never felt that before. I wonder what caused it? Maybe I’ve spent too much time in here. Maybe the air is too dusty.’

  Now that the stone was much closer to her eyes, Kati could see that it reflected multicoloured light in quite an attractive way; the light appeared to come from vertical lines etched along its length. The girl now looked at the stone with mounting interest.

  ‘You know, this would hang nicely on a fine gold chain,’ she mused; ‘a hole could be pierced through these depressions. What a good idea that is.’ Once again, Kati was very pleased with herself. No sooner had that thought entered her mind than she was looking around for the means to make a hole through the stone. ‘A large sharp nail would do it,’ she said impatiently, her eyes darting around the storeroom.

  ‘Aha!’ A cry of triumph as she spotted a small iron spike on the floor. Within seconds, the stone had been placed like a sacrifice on top of a stout chest, the sharp end of the spike had been thrust into one of the depressions on its surface and Kati was hammering upon the end of the spike with a heavy baulk of wood. This was obviously a very dangerous way of achieving her aim, since there was a significant chance that the small fragile stone would split apart under the assault of such brutal tools. Kati was aware of this danger but did not care: ‘If the stone breaks it just shows it has no quality and is worthless,’ she had thought.

  Concentrating on her task, Kati did not at first notice the sound that was building up around her; however, after several blows, the noise began to penetrate her consciousness: ‘What is that terrible noise? It’s like thousands of people screaming during a huge storm.’ Meanwhile, each blow sent the brutal spike more deeply into the stone, without any sign of cracking. Each blow also increased the sound until Kati thought she might have to stop and hold her hands over her ears. ‘I must find out who is making that terrible noise. And when I do, I’ll tell my father and he’ll deal with them severely.’

  Despite the violence of the attack, the stone did not break. After six strokes, the sharp point of the spike emerged into the facing depression and proceeded to dig an ugly hole in the wood of the chest below. At that instant, the noise stopped abruptly and there was absolute silence. Dropping, the tools on the floor with a loud clatter, Kati ran to the window to observe who or what had been making the noise. Looking down, she saw no-one outside and no activity to be seen anywhere else in her field of view. She looked in every direction but still could see nothing.

  ‘Oh well, I can’t be bothered with that now. I’ll try to find out later. I must finish my new pendant.’ Returning to the trunk, she retrieved the stone and took it to the window for examination.

  ‘Very good work,’ she congratulated herself. The hole was rather uneven and distinctly jagged but Kati was more than satisfied. Her mind had already leapt to the next stage. ‘Now I need to find a chain for my pendant.’ She returned the violated stone to its broken box and carried both from the storeroom thinking: ‘My stone sparkling on a gold chain around my neck would make me look even more beautiful.’ Kati was very vain and this thought delighted her.

  Suddenly she stopped and smiled widely: ‘I know – my mother’s jewellery box!’

  The jewellery box was kept in the Master and Mistress’s curtained sleeping area, a raised wooden platform near the large fireplace in the Great Hall of the Manor House. The box was always locked and the only key was hidden in a secret place, known only to the Master, the Mistress and the Mistress’s personal maidservant. However, many years before, Kati had made it her business to find out where the key was hidden. Creeping into the sleeping area, she soon obtained the key and proceeded to search for a gold chain in her mother’s jewellery box.

  Her search quickly revealed the perfect solution – a slim elegant chain of pure gold. Kati knew this chain had been in the family for many years. Her mother had shown it to her when she was very small. There was a large, thin medallion on the chain with unusual geometrical patterns engraved on each face. The girl lifted the item from the jewellery box and noted that the medallion and chain were fastened together by a small gold ring. She tried to slide the ends of the chain through the small gold ring but the catches at each end were too large to pass through.

  Without pause, Kati lifted a small knife and inserted the tip into the delicate ring. A simple twist broke it apart and the large medallion fell from the chain and rolled away across the floor to fall through a rather wide crack in the floorboards towards the corner of the curtained area. Out of the corner of her eye, Kati saw the medallion disappear.

  ‘Well, who would have thought that would happen?’ However, Kati was unworried. ‘Fortunately it doesn’t matter. It’s only an old ugly medallion that Mother never wears. I’m sure she’ll never miss it.’ She gave the medallion no more thought as she threaded the chain through the hole in the stone and fastened her new pendant around her neck, joyfully admiring herself in her mother’s looking glass.

  Shortly after, Kati relocked the jewellery box and returned the key to its secret compartment. She made sure no-one saw her slipping out of her parent’s private area.

  Four members of the family came together for the evening meal in the Great Hall. Kati, her father, mother and younger brother all sat around the large table. Kati’s father was an important man in the area and the family were rich, living for many centuries in a fine stone house built in the middle of an estate with extensive park and forested land.

  It was a large house and, in addition to the Great Hall and the adjacent large kitchen, there were a number of smaller rooms on a second floor above that were used for various purposes, for instance, as bedchambers for the children. This was especially convenient when the children were young and there was a potential for considerable noise. Their parents did not wish to be disturbed by noisy children who were invariably in the care of their individual nursemaids or nannies.

  Like all wives of important men with large houses, Kati’s mother was in charge of the household organisation and dealt with the many servants who were employed to provide all the meals, to clean and maintain the house and look after the children. Additionally, there were other servants who wo
rked outside – the gardeners and gamekeepers who worked on the land and the stable hands who looked after the horses, carts and wagons in the nearby stable complex. This comprised a large walled stable yard built close to the substantial river which flowed through the estate and continued downstream to water the nearby town. The stable yard had a range of buildings within its walls; these housed all the animals and vehicles and included the living quarters for the outdoor workers.

  Kati was the only girl in the family. She had an elder brother who had been married for a number of years and now lived in the town nearby. She saw her brother and his wife only very occasionally – she had no liking for the wife and felt sure the feeling was reciprocated. The youngest member of the family was her “little” brother, a quiet, rather pathetic little boy of nine years old.

  While Kati’s father had been pleased enough to produce a son and heir on the family’s first occasion of family expansion many years ago, he had never had any particular affection for his eldest son. When the child was young, his father had virtually no contact with him and the boy grew up as a stranger to his father. Although Kati’s father did acknowledge the presence of his second son (advancing age often encourages the development of some degree of love and compassion), he spoke infrequently to the boy and his manner towards him tended to be formal and aloof. The little boy feared his father, was deeply respectful towards him and tried to keep out of his way!

  On the other hand, the man was surprisingly enchanted by his daughter and always pleased to be in her company. Over the years, he had denied her nothing and the girl had no hesitation in making full and frequent use of his indulgence towards her.

  ‘She becomes more beautiful every year but then, she has always been beautiful, right from the start,’ the man had often said. Down the years, Kati’s father had often remembered the very first time he had seen his daughter, not long after her birth. His wife had assumed that her husband would have no interest in the birth of a girl but, to him, this small wrinkled scrap of female life, already making her presence felt by the volume of her voice, was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. It is true that fathers and daughters often have a remarkably powerful bond. From an early age, Kati had always made sure that the bond was kept strong.

  As Kati approached the table in the Great Hall, her father looked up with a smile of welcome. However, as she came closer she noted that the smile faded from his face, although he was still looking directly at her.

  ‘That’s very strange,’ the girl thought, ‘he must be worried about something.’

  Unusually, the meal was eaten in silence; both her father and mother seemed to be preoccupied. Despite this, Kati could not resist boasting about her cleverness. When the food had been eaten and the plates cleared, she spoke across the table to her father.

  ‘Father, do you not think I look very attractive this evening?’ The man raised his head slowly and looked at her.

  ‘You always look attractive,’ he replied in a level tone. She was puzzled by this response.

  ‘Father, look here, I am wearing a new pendant. It’s a funny stone I found in one of the storerooms today. I wondered whether you would know anything about it. You always know everything, Father, don’t you?’ She finished with one of her best winning smiles.

  He did not reciprocate.

  She plunged on, disquieted: ‘I pierced a hole in it and hung it on this gold chain I also found. The stone was in this little box when I found it. Do you know anything about its history?’ So saying, she took the pendant from her neck, dropped it into the carved wooden box and passed it across the table to her father, who examined it gravely.

  ‘I see the box is broken, Kati.’

  ‘Yes Father, it was locked and there was no key so I had to break it to open it.’

  The man said nothing but looked sharply at her. In the dim light, she could not see his expression. His next words shocked her deeply. ‘It might have been a great deal better if you had left the box alone until you had found the key.’

  A rebuke! He never rebuked her!

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she said tearfully (tears always worked).

  Her father said nothing as he lifted the stone from the box to examine it closely. Finally he spoke in a negative and offhand voice: ‘I have never seen this box before but I remember my grandfather telling me a story about a strange and beautiful stone which had been in the family for many generations. He couldn’t tell me anything about it. It is possible this may be the stone. I do not know.’

  He passed the box to his wife.

  She looked disinterestedly at the stone without comment and was about to pass the box back to her daughter when she found herself looking more sharply at the gold chain: ‘Where did you find this chain? It’s very like the one on my great grandmother’s gold medallion that I keep in my jewellery box.’

  Despite herself, a slight shiver ran through Kati’s body. She replied vaguely: ‘Oh, that old chain was in the bottom of an old trunk. It was just lying there.’

  Her mother said nothing and passed the box to her younger brother: ‘Give this back to Kati, please.’

  ‘Hurry up, give it to me,’ his sister snapped, ‘don’t go into one of your silly dreams.’

  The little boy flushed and quickly passed the box to his sister. Unusually, however, he looked into her eyes as he did so and she was taken aback by his forthright gaze.

  Kati now withdrew to her bed chamber and placed the pendant on her dressing chest, leaving the lid of the box open so that she could see the stone sparkling in the flickering candlelight. She quickly attended to her ablutions and changed into her sleeping chemise. Then, extinguishing the candle, the girl snuggled down in her soft bed, ready to commence her normal routine of going over the day’s activities and congratulating herself once again on how clever she had been.

  ‘Finding my wonderful sparkling stone today was a real stroke of genius. And I was so clever at turning it into a beautiful new pendant for myself. I’m going to wear my new pendant every day from now on.’

  Kati then relived each part of her day, marvelling at the many demonstrations of her skill and resourcefulness as she transformed a worthless piece of old junk into a thing of absolute beauty. When she had finished wallowing luxuriously on the events of this day, she now returned to the events of the previous day, Friday.

  ‘I really must think about Friday again; it was the best day of my life! But I really need to start at last Wednesday, because that’s when the experiment started to take shape; that’s when the adventure began to be planned.’ Kati hugged her body in an ecstasy of joy, because what happened on these days had exceeded her expectations.

  It was on a fine Wednesday morning, while walking alone, that Kati had come across the nails lying in the mud on the riverbank. Probably a remnant of an old fence, long broken down and gone, the two large and rusty nails were driven through a small block of rotting wood. She had been drawn to pick it up and examine it. As soon as she did so, her fertile and inventive mind knew immediately where this unusual item could be employed in a wonderful experiment.

  ‘That would certainly be a bit of fun,’ she smiled dreamily, ‘a real experiment and it would be fascinating to see what the outcome would be.’ Undoubtedly, Kati had something of the experimental scientist in her. Opening her bag, she placed the item carefully within it, shielding the still sharp points of the nails with a handkerchief, so that the inside of her bag would not be damaged. ‘I must plan this adventure very carefully,’ she said to herself.

  Thursday had been a quiet day for Kati, as she meticulously worked out the detailed plans for her experiment. She adopted the attitude of a military strategist.

  ‘All details must be correct; I must adhere to the timings I have worked out, too. And, most important of all, no-one must ever find out the details of my unique experiment.’r />
  The end of the experiment would involve a very important event which she, Kati, must control with precision: ‘That will be the trickiest part. If I get that right, everything else should follow.’

  By the end of the day, Kati thought she had everything planned perfectly and now she looked forward to the greatest adventure of her life.

  Friday morning. Breakfast. Kati addressed her father: ‘I think I’ll take my horse out for a ride across the fields,’ she announced, with a feeling of mounting excitement.

  ‘Good idea,’ her father had replied affectionately, ‘today is a fine day and the fresh air will do you good.’

  ‘Just be careful and don’t gallop too fast,’ her mother said, looking slightly concerned in a rather absent-minded way. Her mother was always engaged in organising the household, a task which filled most of her time.

  The weather was notably fine, perfect for her adventure. Smartly attired for riding, Kati soon arrived at the stables. ‘Boy,’ she called in a loud and unfriendly voice.

  A young man and a stable boy ran quickly from the stable and the man addressed her deferentially: ‘Good morning, Miss Kati, we are at your service.’

  ‘I know that,’ she replied contemptuously, ‘get my horse, saddle it astride.’

  The man went to carry out her orders, leaving the stable boy outside with her. Kati ignored him totally and sat down on a box. After a few minutes, the boy suddenly spoke: ‘Miss Kati, you are looking very lovely today,’ he said softly with a smile of genuine admiration.

  She was flabbergasted. This stable boy had spoken to her without permission – and furthermore he had been insolent to her! She sprang to her feet, recognising him as the youngest of the stable boys, a lad of around fifteen, not much older than herself. ‘How dare you speak to me. You are insolent and I will see that you pay for this!’