The Catacombs of Chaos A Lottie Lipton Adventure

by Dan Metcalf

  For Jim and Barbara Metcalf

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Glossary

  Did You Know?

  Codebreaker

  Escape the Catacombs!

  Chapter One

  London, 1928

  Lottie was hanging upside down reading the newspaper when she heard a yell from deep within the British Museum.

  “For once, that scream definitely had nothing to do with me,” she said to herself with a smug smile. Peculiar things tended to happen when Lottie was around. Objects came to life, treasures were discovered and Sir Trevelyan Taylor, the Head Curator of the British Museum, often yelled out and stomped his foot in frustration. Lottie unhooked her legs from the railing she was dangling from (she had been trying to find out if getting more blood to her brain made her any better at crosswords – it didn’t) and hopped down. “I’d better go and investigate!” she announced to no one in particular.

  Lottie grabbed her cardigan and her trusty detective’s notebook and set off to the source of the noise, which was bound to be coming from Sir Trevelyan Taylor’s office. She paced through the corridors of the British Museum, where she had lived since she was four. She passed ancient treasures, towering statues and objects from thousands of years of world history. She loved her home, especially living with her Great Uncle Bert in their messy flat on the grounds of the museum. She had a great time learning about history and the world from the library and practising her detective skills (when all those peculiar things seemed to happen), which were about to come in handy.

  “But it’s impossible!” shouted Sir Trevelyan from inside his office. He sounded angry, so Lottie wisely hung outside the door, jotting down what he said in her notebook. “I can’t get a donation that large! Especially by tonight!”

  Lottie continued scribbling until she heard the ‘click’ of Sir Trevelyan’s telephone receiver being placed back on its cradle. She quickly darted away from his office door, looking for a place to hide as she heard him stand and pace around his office.

  “You may as well come in,” called the Curator’s voice from the office. “I know you’re out there.”

  Lottie gulped and poked her head around the door.

  “H-how did you –”

  “There’s always a strange kind of silence when you’re eavesdropping, Lottie Lipton,” said Sir Trevelyan. “How much did you hear?”

  Lottie entered the office properly and looked back at her notes.

  “Um, something about a large donation?” she said. Sir Trevelyan sighed and stared out of his window.

  “That was the chairman of the board of directors. They say they need an impossible amount of money to keep the museum running or we’ll have to close the whole place down.”

  Lottie gasped. “Does that mean you’d lose your job? And Uncle Bert?”

  “Yes and that useless caretaker too,” sneered Sir Trevelyan. Lottie was going to protest about her friend Reg being called useless, but decided that now wasn’t the time. “And you’d be thrown out of your quarters here. The whole museum would be shut down until the money could be raised.”

  Lottie bit her lip in worry. Sir Trevelyan, for all his unpleasantness, was a fighter. He never backed down from an argument or a challenge, but as Lottie looked at him she realised that today he looked different. He looked... defeated.

  “I’ll go tell Uncle Bert,” she said, turning to leave. As she walked away from the Curator’s office, she realised that she would have to do the unthinkable.

  She had to help Sir Trevelyan Taylor.

  Lottie walked through the Ancient Rome department, where she found her Great Uncle Bert face down on the floor, his head pressed against the wooden floorboards.

  “Are you alright, Uncle Bert?” she said, dashing over to him. “Did you fall?”

  “No, no! Just, erm, resting...” he said, unconvincingly.

  Lottie gave him a look that clearly said, “I don’t believe you.”

  “Oh all right! I dropped a coin down the floorboards and I was trying to see if I could get it out.”

  Lottie laughed. Uncle Bert, the Curator of Egyptology at the British Museum, had been left in charge of the Roman section for a few weeks while Cedric, the usual Curator of Roman Artefacts, was on an archaeological dig. He had only been gone for three days so far.

  “Oh, Uncle! What did you drop? A penny? Tuppence?”

  “No it’s, eh, rather more valuable than that,” said Uncle Bert with a blush. “A golden Roman aureus. It was two thousand years old and part of the Roman coin exhibit.”

  Lottie sighed and went to get Reg, the tall caretaker who lived on the grounds of the museum with them. He came quickly, carrying a crowbar and hammer instead of his usual mop and bucket.

  “Reg to the rescue!” he announced. “Where did you drop it, butterfingers?”

  “Are you sure that a crowbar is the best way to go about this, Reg?” asked Lottie. “It seems a bit... drastic.”

  “Don’t worry Miss Lottie! I’m an expert in these kind of situations.”

  Lottie suddenly realised that she hadn’t yet told the two men about the important donation that Sir Trevelyan needed. But she just didn’t know how to tell them. She didn’t want to upset them, and she certainly didn’t want to disturb Reg while he had a heavy hammer and sharp piece of metal in his hand.

  After a minute or two of frantic hammering, Reg levered up the floorboards and Lottie reached in to retrieve the coin.

  “There it is!” she said, pulling out the shiny gold coin. Uncle Bert sighed with relief and reached out to take it. Lottie took a step back, out of Uncle Bert’s reach and said, “I think I should take care of this, don’t you Uncle Bert? I’ll keep it safe.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake! I’m not that clumsy! I’m perfectly capable of –”

  THUD!

  Uncle Bert fell to the floor as he accidentally stepped into the hole in the floorboards.

  “You were saying?” smiled Reg. He helped Uncle Bert up, pulling his foot out from the hole. As soon as Uncle Bert had moved out of the way, Lottie noticed something under the floorboards.

  She peered inside. “Reg, can you lift the rest of the floorboards up? I’m sure I can see something else down there.”

  After some more hammering, Reg had cleared a hole in the floorboards the size of a door.

  “Lottie, what’s the meaning of this, I –” Uncle Bert paused as he looked down to the see what Lottie had glimpsed. “Well, goodness me!”

  Under the wooden floorboards was a stone floor, with strange symbols carved on it.

  “Wow!” said Lottie. “It’s a message! It has to be!”

  “Do you think so?” said Uncle Bert. “Goodness me. What can it mean?”

  Lottie didn’t have a clue, but she wasn’t going to give up so easily. She stared at the markings, her brain working extra hard to figure out what the message could mean…

  “I’ve still absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to be looking at,” complained Reg, peering over their shoulders. Uncle Bert moved aside to point at the markings while Lottie puzzled over the message. She racked her brain until she turned away in frustration.

  “Oh... fiddlesticks!” shouted Lottie. She folded her arms and stared up to a high window in the room. It was tilted slightly, and a black cloud passed over the sun, allowing her to see a glimpse of a reflection. “Ooh! Oh!” she cried. “That’s it!”

  “Hmm? What’s ‘it’, my dear? I say, steady on...” Lottie had grabbed hold of Uncle Bert’s suit
jacket and was reaching into his inside pocket to get the small hand mirror he used when he groomed his moustache. She found it and held it up in the air, looking at the reflection of the markings in it.

  “It’s mirror writing!” she called. “I can just make it out if I can hold this in the right spot! It says: ‘Delve deep to find the hoard’”.

  Uncle Bert took the hand mirror, held it up so he could see the reflection and confirmed that Lottie was right.

  “‘Hoard’ means treasure, doesn’t it Uncle Bert?” said Lottie, getting excited. Maybe she wouldn’t have to tell them about the donation after all. “And ‘Delve deep’? That means it must be hidden under the ground! What are we waiting for? Let’s get cracking!”

  Chapter Two

  Reg used the crowbar to lever up one of the slabs of stone. He lifted it up like it weighed nothing at all, but it made a heavy bang when it landed on the floor next to Lottie. He’s stronger than he looks, she thought to herself. Underneath where the stone had been was a hole, leading down into a dark space. Suddenly, Lottie wasn’t so sure about her plan to go after the treasure. Uncle Bert noticed her hesitate.

  “We could always wait, my dear,” he said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. Lottie took a few deep breaths and shook her head.

  “No. There’s no time like the present,” she said, thinking of Sir Trevelyan’s warning. “Come on!”

  Before the others could stop her, Lottie had dropped to the floor and jumped down the dark hole, feet-first.

  “Lottie! Do you know how dangerous that is?” called Uncle Bert. He peered over the edge. “What’s it like down there?”

  There was a heart-stopping moment for Uncle Bert when Lottie didn’t reply. Then:

  “Dark!” came her voice. “Really dark. You may want to bring a lantern!”

  When Reg and Uncle Bert joined Lottie, they brought with them Reg’s old mining lamp that he had used in the trenches of the Great War.

  “I think the tunnel leads down here,” said Lottie, taking the lantern from Reg and pointing it out in front of her. They were in a brick tunnel, which seemed to go on for miles. Damp glistened on the walls around them. With only the small lantern for light, they set off down the tunnel.

  “What is this place?” muttered Reg.

  “Goodness knows,” said Uncle Bert. “London is littered with catacombs and subterranean spaces.” He paused when he noticed Reg looking at him with a confused frown. “That’s an underground passage. From the brickwork, I’d say this was built for one of the Victorian churches in the area.”

  “Fascinating,” said Lottie. “What for?”

  They walked along the passage a bit further, where Lottie found the answer to her question. On a ledge set into the wall lay an old wooden coffin.

  “Storing the dead,” said Uncle Bert. A shiver went down Lottie’s spine.

  “Ugh! How horrid,” she said with disgust. “I came for treasure, not skeletons!”

  Reg, who was bent double to fit his tall frame into the tunnel, walked along behind Lottie.

  “What sort of treasure are we looking for?” he asked. “Diamonds? Rubies? Emeralds?”

  “Gold,” said Uncle Bert confidently. “A hoard of gold coins, dating back to the year 60 AD.”

  “How on Earth do you know that?” asked Lottie.

  “Because I think we are looking for the hoard of Boudicca,” said Uncle Bert. “Legend has it that it is stored somewhere around – or under – London. Many have searched, but none have found it.”

  “Who’s that then?” asked Reg.

  Uncle Bert smiled. He always loved the chance to show off his knowledge of history.

  “Boudicca was the Queen of the Iceni, a tribe in the East of England. When her husband died, the Romans took over her lands. She led a rebellion against the Romans, and marched to London with her army. It was poorly defended and Boudicca and her army killed over seventy thousand people.”

  Lottie gulped.

  “And the hoard is the gold they looted from the Romans?” she deduced. Uncle Bert nodded and pressed onwards.

  “Hullo? This is a strange one,” he said as they came upon a heavy wooden door ahead of them. Uncle Bert tried the handle, but it was locked. He pressed his shoulder to the door and pushed with all his might, but even his bulky frame couldn’t shift it.

  “Ah well, we tried. Back to the museum for a cup of tea?” he said, attempting to push past Lottie. She stopped him with a glare.

  “Uncle Bert, I came for treasure and I’m not leaving without it!” She squeezed past him to get a closer look at the door. She held the lamp close to the door. On further inspection, she could see that the lock on the door was quite unusual. There was a picture of some dials next to it in an order she couldn’t quite understand:

  “Curiouser and curiouser...” Lottie muttered to herself. It was a saying from her favourite book, Alice in Wonderland, and it seemed to apply to her life more and more often lately.

  “Another blinkin’ code to crack,” sighed Reg. “I knew I should’ve stayed up top. Now me brain’s going to ache for the rest of the day!”

  Uncle Bert leaned in to get a closer look.

  “Come now, it can’t be that difficult,” he said. He looked closer and his smile faded. “We, um, must have to, er, put the thingies on the wotsits...”

  Lottie rolled her eyes. She pointed to two arms that lay next to the clock faces.

  “We have to put the arms on the faces, but pointing to the correct number.”

  “Yes, exactly! Just what I said!” laughed Uncle Bert. He frowned again and scratched at his ear, the way he always did when he was confused. “And, um, what are the correct numbers, my dear?”

  Lottie looked at the dials and panicked.

  “I... I... I don’t know!”

  Lottie’s head whirled with numbers. She couldn’t concentrate on the task, she was panicking too much! She handed the lamp to Reg and forced herself to close her eyes and hold her breath for five seconds. Then, breathing easily, she focussed on the dials.

  One and three – that makes four, doesn’t it? thought Lottie. So why is the last dial pointing to three? Oh! Maybe it means one multiplied by three. That makes three! Okay, so the next line is three and two. If I add them it makes five, but if I multiplied them, it makes... six! Which is the right answer! So, the next dials read –

  “Three and four. That makes twelve!” she said aloud. She picked up the small hand and clicked it in place, turning it around until it pointed directly upwards.

  “Are you sure, Miss Lottie?” said Reg. “I’m no mathematician but I thought three plus four made seven?”

  Lottie shook her head and carried on.

  “So the next is three and three,” she said.

  “Six!” said Uncle Bert with a cheery grin. Lottie ignored him and placed the hand on the face, pointing to nine. There was a whir and a click from inside the door mechanism and Lottie tried the handle. It turned easily, and Lottie stepped through...

  Chapter Three

  “Ugh!” called Lottie. “We should have brought wellies!”

  She stepped into the dark and felt the cold dampness rise through her shoes and socks as she sloshed through a puddle. Reg followed her with his lamp, illuminating the wet, muddy floor below them and the glistening dirt walls around them.

  “This is a bit different, innit?” he remarked. “Reminds me of the time I mined tin in Cornwall for a while.”

  “Reg, is there any job you haven’t done?” said Lottie. She moved forward to allow Uncle Bert through the wooden door.

  “Well bless my soul!” he said, looking around with wonder. The walls surrounding them had been carved out of clay-like mud with shovels and axes, and the whole narrow tunnel was supported by thick wooden beams. It was very different to the Victorian brick tunnel they had just come through.

  “It’s like we’ve stepped back in time!” said Lottie. Uncle Bert inched forward, wary of the damp-looking wooden ceiling.

>   “In a way, we have,” he said. “Around two hundred years. I’d bet my bow tie that this is part of the first ever archaeological excavation of Roman London. The city had never been properly studied you see, and the first chance they had to dig up the foundations of the buildings was when the whole lot burnt to a crisp in the Great Fire of London.”

  Lottie stared at the humble tunnel with a new sense of awe. She began to look more closely at her surroundings and spotted some burn marks on the wooden beams where the builders had re-used charred remains of a house from the surface.

  “That dates this place to 1666!” she exclaimed. “That’s even older than the museum.”

  “I’m not sure how safe these tunnels are,” said Uncle Bert with a furrowed brow. “We should head back and get some helmets.”

  Reg prodded the walls. A small section crumbled away.

  “Looks safe enough to me,” he said with a shrug. “I’m happy to carry on.”

  Lottie thought of the promise of treasure, and of Sir Trevelyan and his warning that they may very soon lose their home.

  “Me too,” she said. “Come on Uncle Bert, let’s go.”

  “No! I said it is unsafe, so we should go back!” said Uncle Bert, putting his foot down (quite literally too, into a rather large puddle).

  “Lighten up, Bertie!” said Reg. It turned out that this was exactly the wrong thing to say. If there was one thing Uncle Bert hated it was being called ‘Bertie’. His cheeks reddened as he stepped forward angrily towards Reg.

  “That’s Professor West to you, ‘Reggie’! And I’ll thank you to –”

  SLAM!

  A strange silence came over the tunnel as the three explorers looked back to the wooden door that they had come through moments ago. It had swung shut. As the group stared at the closed door they quickly realised that there was no handle on their side.