The Catacombs of Chaos A Lottie Lipton Adventure

by Dan Metcalf

  “Well, now look what you’ve done!” shouted Uncle Bert. “We’re stuck here for good!”

  “What I’ve done? You were holding the door, you great walrus!” retorted Reg. Lottie rolled her eyes at the bickering duo. She stepped in between them.

  “Hush, you two!” she called. “Reg, you still have your crowbar. Can you open the door?”

  Reg looked down to his belt, where he had casually stashed his crowbar. He handed Lottie his lamp and grumpily grabbed his crowbar as he pushed past Uncle Bert to get to the door. As he attacked it with the metal tool, Uncle Bert paced uneasily a little further down the tunnel.

  Rumble.

  “Honestly Uncle Bert, you can’t be hungry already. You’ve only just had breakfast,” said Lottie.

  Uncle Bert looked around to her.

  “That... that wasn’t my tummy, Lottie,” he said with a look of fear. Lottie gulped.

  RUMBLE!

  “Then what –”

  “Cave in!” called Reg as he zoomed past them, grabbing Uncle Bert and Lottie’s hands as he went. He ran so fast that Lottie thought he was going to pull her arm off. As he dragged them away from the door, Lottie saw the ceiling collapse and tons of earth and rubble come crashing down, filling the tunnel and blocking the door. Reg dived for cover, taking his friends with him. They landed in a heap on the ground, safe from the fallen mud.

  “Alright,” Reg puffed as he sat up, brushing the dust off his shirt. “I’ll admit that this tunnel isn’t completely safe.”

  With no choice but to press on forwards and hope that the path took them above ground at some point, Lottie and the two old men walked on. Lottie was glad to be heading towards the hoard of gold, but would have been lying if she said that she wasn’t a little bit nervous. A collapsing tunnel wasn’t her idea of fun.

  After walking for what seemed like a very long time the group came to what looked like a dead end. The tunnel simply stopped directly in front of them and they were left starting at a wall.

  “Now what?” said Uncle Bert, taking the lamp from Lottie and holding it up against the solid looking wall. He was covered from head to toe in muck and puffing hard from walking so far. “We’re stuck!”

  “Hmm, not quite,” said Reg. He looked down and cleared a pile of earth away with his foot, revealing a hole in the bottom of the wall, two small metal tracks and a length of rope. “We used to do this in the mines. If we hit a wall of rock that was too tricky to get through, we’d clear a small tunnel and run a trolley through it.”

  Lottie bent down and pulled on the rope. A small wooden platform with wheels came whizzing towards her. They would have to lie flat on the wooden platform and pull the rope by the side of them to get them through the tunnel.

  “Pull ourselves through tons of rock? Not a chance!” said Uncle Bert.

  “It’ll be perfectly safe, I’ve done it loads of times...” Reg began to say. Lottie could feel their conversation was about to head into another argument. She looked down at the trolley. She really didn’t fancy the trip either, but if their other choice was sitting in a tunnel and hoping to be rescued, then she knew what she had to do.

  Without waiting for the two men to talk her out of it, she quickly lay on the trolley and pushed herself off through the narrow hole!

  “Wheeeeeee!” she screamed as the trolley picked up speed. She didn’t need to pull herself through with the rope as the track took her slightly downhill. She whizzed through the tunnel, past hundreds of tons of rock and the entire city of London above her.

  “Ooof!” She came to an abrupt stop in a large cavern. It seemed to be formed from a natural cave and she rolled onto the stone floor, breathless with excitement.

  “It’s alright! It’s safe! And quite fun!” she called up the small hole she had just come through. A tug on the rope sent the trolley back through the hole and she was soon joined by a petrified looking Uncle Bert and shortly after, Reg.

  “Don’t you ever do that again!” warned Uncle Bert, squeezing all of the air out of Lottie as he hugged her close to him. “Have you found a way out?”

  “I’ve done better than that,” said Lottie, pulling herself out of her Uncle Bert’s grasp. She took the lamp from Uncle Bert and held it up, nodding to the wall in front of her. “I’ve found six.”

  The wall held six archways. Each was identical and too dark to see where they led. There were carved symbols above each archway and something written in a strange language, chiselled into the stone above them:

  “So which archway do we choose?” asked Reg.

  “I don’t know,” said Uncle Bert. “But I can imagine that five of them are filled with booby traps. We had better choose wisely. Any ideas, Lottie?”

  But Lottie had no idea...

  Lottie stared at the archways for a long time. The key had to be the language above the door. It looked familiar...

  “Well it certainly isn’t English,” said Uncle Bert. “Or Egyptian or Greek. If we’re looking for Boudicca’s hoard then I would have thought it would be in the language of the Romans, but it definitely isn’t Latin.”

  Lottie looked over to Uncle Bert and smiled.

  “That’s it! Oh, Uncle Bert I could kiss you!” she shrieked. “I knew I recognised that language!” She hurriedly reached for her trusty detective’s notebook, where she kept all sorts of useful information. “It’s not Latin, it’s Pig Latin! A made-up language. All you do is take the first letter or two of the word and put it at the end, followed by ‘ay’.”

  Uncle Bert and Reg stared at her like she had lost her mind. Lottie ignored them and started scribbling down the translation in her notebook.

  “‘Ooklay’ becomes ‘Look’. And ‘Oserclay’ becomes... ‘Closer’! ‘Look closer!” Lottie said, starting to have fun! Within a minute she had written down the whole thing:

  Lottie leapt up and marched through the archway with the sun above it.

  “Lottie! Come back! It could be dangerous!” called Uncle Bert.

  “It’s fine!” said Lottie. “I’m just – aaaggghhhhhh!”

  Chapter Four

  For the second time that day, Lottie sank down a deep, dark hole and slid through a tunnel of smooth clay mud. If it hadn’t been such a shock she might have found it fun, but instead she screamed until her throat was sore.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Frantic thoughts whirred through her head. Did I read the clue wrong? Maybe it was ‘snake’ not ‘sun’? Where am I going to end up?

  Eventually she fell with a PLOP onto a muddy bank. She was still underground, but light was coming from high above. She was in a large cavern with a high ceiling and the sound of water rushing close by.

  “Lottie!” came a call from the tunnel above her. “Are you okay?” It was Uncle Bert. Lottie stood and rubbed her bottom where she had plopped out onto the bank.

  “I’m fine!” she called back up. “Come on down! It’s quite safe, but a bit painful at the end.”

  She walked away from the tunnel and up to a small cliff in the cavern. Down below her she could see a river, the water flowing fast. It was lucky she hadn’t fallen in there, or she would have been swept downstream in seconds.

  “Waaaaaaah!” came a scream, followed by another. Uncle Bert and Reg plopped out onto the bank. They stood and brushed themselves down. They were both plastered from head to foot in mud.

  “I’m getting too old for this,” they both said in unison.

  “Look, a river!” said Lottie. Uncle Bert joined her on the small cliff, which jutted out over the rushing water.

  “Hmm. Must be the Walbrook. London has lots of underground rivers, which once flowed above ground but were covered over as the city grew larger. The Walbrook was an important river in Roman times, but has gradually been forgotten about.”

  “Roman times? Then the hoard could be here!” said Lottie. She began to hunt around for a pile of glittering gold. Reg joined them and relit his mining lamp for Lottie. Shining it across
the water, Lottie spotted what they had travelled so far to claim.

  “Boudicca’s hoard!” she squealed gleefully. “It really exists!”

  Across the river on a piece of rock suspended above the fast-flowing river was a wooden chest. Directly opposite the chest, on Lottie’s side of the water, was another piece of rock. She ran quickly over to the rock on her side. She could just walk out and grab the chest – it was that easy! She was about to step onto the ledge when a hand pulled her back.

  “Now listen to me, Lottie Lipton,” said Uncle Bert sternly. “I’ve said all along that this expedition was unsafe, and this definitely is not safe! Look!”

  Looking closely, Lottie saw that her Uncle was right. The chest wasn’t on a ledge at all, but balanced on a flat rock, which was balancing over the river. Weighing down the flat rock on the bank opposite them were a few rocks of different shapes. The hoard had been sat there for thousands of years, with just a few lumps of stone to keep it from falling into the river.

  Lottie then saw that the ledge she had been about to stand on was simply a flat rock, balanced carefully on the lip of the river bank. Just one little step on the rock and she would have sunk down into the river and been washed away underground into the River Thames. If she didn’t drown first of course...

  “I hate to admit it, but your Great Uncle is right. We know where the hoard is now, so let’s get out of here and come back later. I reckon I could reach that gap in the ceiling where the light is coming from. It probably leads to a drain somewhere,” Reg said. The two men were about to turn back when Lottie spoke.

  “We can’t! If we don’t get the hoard now, we won’t have a home to go back to!”

  She explained about overhearing Sir Trevelyan’s conversation and how he needed a huge donation to keep the museum open. If they could get the hoard to him by the time the museum closed, they wouldn’t lose the place they called home. Uncle Bert and Reg took a few moments to think about it, then turned to each other and nodded.

  “Let’s get some treasure then...”

  There were a lot of rocks lying around. Most were square in shape, while others were round. The square ones seemed to weigh twice as much as the round ones.

  “We need to put some rocks on the end of this large stone to stop me falling in,” said Lottie, pointing at the stone balancing on the lip of the river bank.

  They worked on finding the right balance by putting a round rock on one end and getting Lottie to lightly step on the other. If it teetered slightly, they put on another rock.

  Eventually they worked out that Lottie weighed three round rocks. The treasure chest on the other side of the river was weighed down with two round rocks and one square rock.

  “We’ve only got the heavier square rocks left,” said Reg. “When you grab that chest, it’ll weigh you down and you’ll drop into the river.”

  Lottie gulped. She hadn’t thought of that.

  “If we put the rocks on now, the ledge will tilt upwards and you won’t be able to reach the chest,” said Uncle Bert.

  Lottie took out her detective’s notebook and began to sketch out what they needed to do to get across the water safely:

  “So we need to work out how many square rocks to put on this end of the stone at the exact same time that you grab the chest. Got it?”

  Lottie wasn’t sure she did ‘get it’. She looked at the rushing river below them and hastily attempted to work out the right amount of square rocks. Time was ticking away and she knew that they needed to return to the museum soon.

  “Ooh, help!” she said in a tiny desperate voice.

  Lottie wasn’t used to working with rocks and stones, but she was pretty good with numbers.

  Just use numbers instead, she told herself. If a round rock is worth one, then the square rocks are worth two. That means that I weigh three, and the chest weighs... four!

  She scribbled down another sketch to help her picture it:

  So when I pick up the chest, the combined weight of the chest and me will be seven. That means we need to add two square rocks onto the end of my stone to keep me from sinking into the water! Two plus two plus three equals seven! Yes!

  “Two! It’s two square rocks! I’m certain!” said Lottie, excited again. She showed Reg and Uncle Bert her notebook and they nodded. With a deep breath, Lottie stepped onto the flat stone, which was already weighed down on the end resting on the river bank with three round rocks. It tipped a little, but Lottie stayed still, letting it settle. Slowly she edged to the end of the stone, towards the river.

  And there it was. Boudicca’s hoard, balanced delicately on the end of its ledge. When Lottie reached out to grab it, she would be the first person in nearly two thousand years to touch it. She would also tip into the river if Reg and Uncle Bert didn’t put the square rock on at the right moment.

  “Ready?” she called.

  “Ready!” said the two men together. They each held a heavy stone, waiting to place it on the end of the tipping stone.

  “Now!” Lottie yelled as she bent down, picking up the surprisingly heavy chest. Reg and Uncle Bert grunted, dropping the rocks down. Lottie let out a yelp as the stone teetered, threatening to send her into the cold water below. It quickly levelled off, and Lottie stepped quickly but carefully over to safety.

  “We did it!” she screamed with delight. They all hugged each other and looked up to the shaft of light above them. Lottie sighed, tired and relieved. “Gentlemen? Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter Five

  Sir Trevelyan sat at the end of a long table.

  He looked tiny in the large boardroom, perched on his chair like a pixie. At the other end five men in suits and ties, each with a pair of half-moon glasses balanced on the ends of their noses, peered down the table. Lord Hart, the chairman of the board of directors, cleared his throat.

  “Ahem! Now, Trevor –”

  “Trevelyan,” the curator corrected.

  “Hmm? Ah, yes... This is not an easy decision, but as you know, donations to the museum have been rather thin on the ground of late. Have you managed to collect any more?” Lord Hart asked.

  Sir Trevelyan swallowed. He tried to speak, but he was so nervous that it came out as a whisper. “No, I haven’t,” he said quietly.

  Lord Hart put his hand to his ear. “Pardon? Can you say that again?”

  The door flung open behind Sir Trevelyan and in walked Lottie, Reg and Uncle Bert, dripping with mud and out of breath.

  “He said yes!” Lottie shouted. “Sir Trevelyan has managed to find a legendary historical artefact. And it’s worth thousands!”

  Sir Trevelyan looked horrified at the mud monsters behind him.

  “I... I have?” he stuttered. Uncle Bert dropped the treasure chest on the table with a THUNK, and Reg gave the lock a hefty THWACK with his crowbar. The lid sprang open to reveal hundreds of golden coins which spilled out onto the table. “I have!” he exclaimed.

  Lottie gave him a wink.

  “Goodness gracious!” Lord Hart called. He rose from his seat and went to inspect the hoard. “How on Earth did you manage to lay your hands on this so quickly?” Sir Trevelyan was speechless for a moment. He looked back at the two men and the little girl who had saved his bacon and nodded to them. Lottie knew this meant ‘thank you’. It was the kindest thing he had ever said to her.

  “I had my best people on it,” he said finally. Lottie smiled and Reg went to shake his hand. “My best people, who really should go and take a bath.”

  After a quick spray down with Reg’s hosepipe, Lottie was back in some fresh, mud-free clothes. She sat in her and Uncle Bert’s untidy flat on the top floor of the museum. Uncle Bert arrived with two steaming hot cups of tea.

  “There we are, my dear. Quite a day, hmm?” he said, sitting down next to her on the sofa and handing her some tea. “But there’s one thing I can’t figure out. Why did you say Sir Trevelyan had found the hoard?”

  Lottie thought about it as she sipped her tea.
/>   “Because even though he is sometimes beastly to us, rude, and he tries to evict us at every opportunity, he loves the museum. It’s his life, and I couldn’t face taking that away from him. If Lord Hart knew he hadn’t raised the money himself, he would have fired him. I didn’t want that.”

  Uncle Bert smiled and kissed Lottie on the head.

  “You, my dear, are an angel!”

  Lottie smiled and hugged her Great Uncle.

  “I know!” she laughed. She turned and kicked her feet over the back of the sofa so her head hung upside-down, touching the floor. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a crossword to finish...”

  Glossary

  ArchaeologyStudying history by looking at old objects and ruins.

  AureusA gold Roman coin.

  CatacombsUnderground tunnels used as a cemetery.

  ExcavationDigging a hole to look at the objects or old ruins that have been buried over time.

  HoardA store of treasure.

  LatinThe language spoken by the ancient Romans.

  RebellionWhen people come together to fight power.

  Did You Know?

  •The Great Fire of London began in a bakery in Pudding Lane in 1666. It destroyed a large part of the city, including 86 churches and St Paul’s Cathedral.

  •The ancient Romans built Londinium where London stands today. Parts of the old city walls can still be seen.

  •A statue of Boudicca, the Queen of the Iceni tribe who led an army against the Romans, can be found in London near the Palace of Westminster.

  •Romans believed different gods and goddesses were in charge of different things. Neptune was the god of the sea, while Venus was the goddess of love.