by C T Cassana
Lisa said nothing more either, convinced that she had won the fight. Marcus and Maggie then turned the conversation onto work matters, and for once neither of their children showed any signs of wanting to interrupt them. Maggie explained the troubles they were having organizing the monographic exhibition dedicated to Nefertiti, one of the most popular queens of ancient Egypt, but also one of the least known. The event was vitally important to the museum, which had been working on the preparations for nearly four years.
Practically all the artifacts that had been found that bore some relation to Nefertiti were spread around museums all over the world, and a few museums were fighting over certain pieces. Of course, in archeology this was quite a common occurrence and nothing to be surprised about. In the last few weeks, however, things had taken a turn for the worse. A major television network had aired a report on the Egyptian queen that frankly exposed the rivalries between the different institutions, featuring directors from a few museums making some rather blunt statements on the matter. This sparked an open war in the museum world, and consequently some museums had hinted that they would no longer lend out their pieces, even for the exhibition at the British Museum. And if they didn’t, the exhibition would be a paltry display, and wouldn’t have the significance and international impact they had been aiming for.
In view of this situation, the museum’s board had commissioned Maggie with the task of going through the huge collection in the Egypt Section and picking out any piece, however insignificant, that bore any relation to the queen, so that it could be exhibited if no agreement with the other museums could be reached.
“Imagine, Marcus!” sighed Maggie. “There are more than 76,000 objects stored on ancient Egypt alone, and given the way they’re classified around 3,000 of them could be in some way related to Nefertiti and her era. And we have to go through them all, just in case we have to exhibit any of them!”
Charlie continued listening to his mother’s complaints about the massive task entailed in rooting out a few pieces that probably won’t be of much importance in an exhibition that seemed to be cursed in advance. Under normal circumstances, he would have asked his mother to tell the story of Queen Nefertiti, but his Latin translating work had left him exhausted and all he really felt like doing was going to bed.
Before he lay down, he set his alarm clock for 1 a.m., when he would go downstairs for the fattest Latin dictionary in his father’s library. He placed the clock carefully under his pillow, next to his flashlight, so that nobody else would hear the alarm. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
. . .
Charlie felt his mother shaking his shoulder gently.
“Come on, sleepy head!” she said. “Didn’t your alarm go off?”
The boy opened his eyes and bolted upright. He had slept through the night! He remembered hearing the alarm and wrestling with the clock and with his own exhaustion in an effort to get up. But clearly, sleep had won out in the end.
He improvised a new plan to get the dictionary that he needed. He jumped out of bed, grabbed the clothes that his mother had laid out for him on the chair and shut himself up in the bathroom before his sister could enter. When Lisa came out of her bedroom, she was surprised to find the bathroom door locked. The bathroom was always free at this time.
“Charlie?” she called out, trying to open the door. “Are you going to be much longer? God! Don’t tell me the little runt is going to become an early riser now.”
“Use Mum and Dad’s bathroom!” shouted Charlie from inside.
Lisa reluctantly took his suggestion, but a minute later she was back pounding at the door.
“Dad is taking a shower!” she complained. “Are you going to be much longer?”
“I’m finished,” said Charlie, humming as he opened the door.
Things couldn’t have worked out better. His sister had just entered the bathroom to get dressed and would be quite some time. He had always been amazed at how long Lisa took in the bathroom every morning, although since she had turned fourteen this troubling habit had become much worse.
As soon as she closed the door, Charlie went to check the whereabouts of the rest of the family. His father was still in the shower and Maggie was preparing breakfast downstairs. It was the perfect moment.
Charlie raced up to the attic and took out the dictionary he had hidden in the wardrobe the previous evening. He then slipped stealthily down the stairs so that his mother wouldn’t hear him, crept into the library, and put the book back on its shelf, before taking down the largest dictionary of all. Finally, he darted back upstairs to hide the dictionary in the attic. On his way past the bathroom he heard the sound of the toilet flushing: Lisa would be coming out at any moment. He leaped up the rest of the stairs to the attic and hid the dictionary in the wardrobe.
Mission accomplished. He’d done it!
The boy closed the door behind him and went back downstairs as quietly as he could. The bathroom was empty and his sister was just coming out of her bedroom.
When Charlie got down to the kitchen, his mother looked up with a smile.
“Good morning, darling! Are you all ready for school?” she asked while she served the cereal.
At that moment, Lisa and Marcus also entered the kitchen.
“Good heavens, Charlie!” said his father. “This is turning into a good habit.”
Charlie smiled, unable to conceal his satisfaction.
“Yes, it’s because I’m a machine!” he declared, while Lisa sat down beside him with an annoyed expression and began eating her cereal.
. . .
When Horatio opened the chest to see what it contained, he was utterly astonished. The object inside it was far too extravagant to belong to a group of monks who had taken a vow of poverty. But the most alarming discovery was the story contained in the little book he found there alongside the object.
The story was so extraordinary that it could only be the product of the ravings of a wildly demented or superstitious monk. However, as tremendously disturbing as it was, something told him that it was all true.
Whoever it was who had hidden the chest feared that the wrong person would make off with the object it contained, because it was not only incredibly powerful, but also indestructible. Aware that sooner or later it would be discovered, its mysterious owner had set a test for the one who found it, so that only someone truly noble, wise and persistent would be capable of putting together the pieces that would make it work. All these pieces had been carefully hidden in other Cistercian abbeys, which could only be found by deciphering the clues written down in the book.
Driven by the hope of finding all the pieces, Horatio worked in absolute secret for many months, studying the book in detail, unraveling the clues it contained, and visiting the ruins of the monasteries to search each one of them.
Upon finding each piece, he hid it away in the black chest. If what he had read in the book were true, what he was piecing together was the most powerful object that had ever existed.
An object so powerful that perhaps it should never even have been unearthed.
CHAPTER IV: Busted!
As soon as he got home, Charlie repeated his usual afternoon ritual to avoid raising suspicion. He washed his hands, put his house slippers on and had his afternoon snack. His father barely even had to hound him to do his chores, or even to clean up the kitchen table; but Marcus was a little distracted and didn’t seem to realize how smoothly things were going that afternoon. Meanwhile, Charlie took every precaution imaginable, making sure that the others were all going about their business before slipping up to the attic. From the door, he peeked into the library and saw Marcus working at his desk and his sister sitting on the old couch.
“Perfect!” he exclaimed as he turned to climb the stairs.
Once in the attic, he took the huge dictionary out of the wardrobe and sat down to get to work. He spread his sheet of paper with the translation and the Professor’s poem in Latin out on the desk. One by one
, he looked up the words that he hadn’t been able to find the previous afternoon.
“Lucem, lucem, H..., I..., L...” he muttered as he flipped through the pages of the book. “Longe, lentus...”
He was concentrating so hard that he didn’t notice that he was no longer alone in the room, that someone was sneaking toward him, watching his every move with a malicious smile.
“Busted!” she said suddenly.
Charlie looked up with a start and saw his sister smiling smugly at him.
“My, my,” she drawled sarcastically as she moved around behind him. “You’ve become awfully interested in Latin lately, haven’t you?”
Charlie moved his hand discreetly, trying to cover the professor’s letter and the translation he had written.
“You’d better start explaining to me what it is you’ve got there, runt,” she said in a threatening tone. “And what it is your plotting. You can’t fool me. I know you’re hiding something.”
The boy hesitated for a moment. If he shared his discoveries with his nosy sister, she would want to take over the investigation, giving him a lot of orders and ultimately ruining the whole thing for him.
“I’m not hiding anything,” he answered at last.
“Come on, Charlie. I’m not as naive as Mum and Dad. You’ve taken three Latin dictionaries out of the library, suddenly you’re walking around wearing a ring that you only just found despite the fact you’ve been poking around in the attic for months, your alarm is going off at midnight, and to top it all, you’re now the first one in the whole family who’s ready every morning. You’re up to something. I know it.”
Charlie didn’t say a word. His prying sister never missed a thing.
“Either you tell me what it is, or I’ll tell on you,” she threatened. “Mum and Dad will want you to tell them what’s going on, and your fun times in the attic will be over.”
Charlie listened in silence. He knew that his sister would keep on pressing him until she had found out everything; she was too nosy to give up.
“You’ll never be able to come up here and play again,” she added. “And, for your stubbornness, I’ll tell them about the chocolate bars you keep in the bottom of your wardrobe. And that it was you, and not the movers, who broke mum’s vase.”
Clearly, Lisa knew everything. Charlie stared at her for a moment, feeling like a mouse trapped in the claws of a merciless cat, and finally agreed to share his discoveries with his sister.
“Promise me first that you won’t say anything to Mum or Dad,” he said before he began explaining. “About what I’m going to tell you now, about any of the things you just said, or about anything else you know. You won’t tell them anything at all.”
“I promise,” replied Lisa, raising her hand solemnly.
“And that you won’t call me ‘runt’ anymore.”
“Agreed. But only if you tell me the whole story.”
“I found this letter hidden in a secret compartment in the desk.”
“What compartment?”
“This one here,” replied Charlie, showing it to her. “The letter is from Horatio Conwell, the old geezer in the painting in the library.”
“Yes, yes, I know who he is,” said Lisa, moving her head impatiently. “But what’s so important about it?”
The girl reached out her hand for the boy to give her the letter.
“Because it mentions a treasure,” answered Charlie.
Lisa read the letter in silence. Like her brother did, she had to read the paragraphs that mentioned the treasure a couple of times, and couldn’t help wondering whether it could really be true.
“And what does all this have to do with the Latin dictionaries?” she said when she’d finished.
Charlie then gave her the sheet of paper containing the poem.
“This came with the letter. I suspect this poem has clues to the location of the treasure,” he explained, unable to conceal a certain pride. “That’s why I took the dictionaries, to try and translate them.”
Lisa examined the letter and the poem.
“Charlie, either you’re very clever or you have the wildest imagination in the world,” she said. “And the ring?”
“It was inside the envelope, along with this key.”
“Let me see it,” ordered Lisa, holding out her hand.
“I can’t take it off,” said Charlie in a pitiful voice.
“Rubbish!” she exclaimed, and she began trying to pull the ring off her brother’s finger.
After several attempts, she gave up.
“I’ve tried everything, Lisa. Even with soap, like Mum does. But it won’t come off. It’s like it shrank on my finger when I put it on.”
The girl stared at him for a moment. She then began looking over the secret compartment, the letter, the poem, the key... The idea that there was a treasure in the house seemed to her more like something out of the stories their mother told them than real life, but it was all quite intriguing. And if Lisa Wilford had a weakness, it was her inability to keep her insatiable curiosity in check.
“And have you managed to translate the poem?”
“This is all I’ve managed,” answered Charlie, showing her the sheet of paper with his translation.
Lisa took it and read it to herself.
“This makes no sense at all!”
“I know,” replied Charlie glumly. “But now that I’ve told you everything, you can help me. Maybe you can work it out.”
“Me? Translate this? Are you mad? I hate Latin!”
Lisa took a blank sheet of paper and copied down the phrase on the envelope and the poem included with Horatio’s letter. When she’d finished, she folded the paper and stuck it in her trouser pocket, along with the translation that her brother had done.
“Put everything way,” she commanded. “And go get your coat. We’re off.”
“Where?”
“The important thing isn’t to have all the answers yourself, but to have reliable sources,” she reasoned as she made for the door. “If you’re right and it’s a secret code, we’ll crack it. Don’t be long. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
. . .
When he saw the chest on the table in his library and his friend’s serious expression, Sir Robert realized that this was an important matter. On their weekly meetings, neither he nor Horatio had mentioned anything about the chest or its contents again. Indeed, he had dismissed the matter from his mind entirely, having assumed that it contained nothing more than some old letters or documents that this friend had probably taken to studying.
However, Horatio’s face revealed that whatever it contained, it was something much more significant than he had at first assumed. Although Sir Robert did not know why his friend had not mentioned anything about the chest in such a long time, he had no doubt that he had his reasons.
Horatio waited for him to close the library door and come over to the chest. He then opened it solemnly, showing his friend its contents, which, he explained, he had found in the little abbey owned by Sir Robert and in several others that he had visited. He also showed him the little notebook he had found in the chest and he offered a brief summary of the extraordinary story it contained.
Sir Robert listened in silence, stroking his silver mane of hair and making no attempt to interrupt his friend. Horatio was certainly not naive and would never have taken a story to be true without verifying it first, particularly a story as incredible as this one.
“I have not tested its powers myself,” explained the professor. “If I had done so, it would have become mine forever. And this is yours; it belongs to you... But I am afraid that everything I’ve told you is true.”
Sir Robert stood staring in silence at his friend for a few moments.
“This doesn’t change things, Horatio,” he said at last. “You know that I only enjoy history when I can read it in a book, sitting comfortably in the armchair in my library. I told you that whatever was in the chest was yours, and I stand by my words; an
d the truth is, I can’t think of a better man than you to make use of such a power. I would only ask two things of you. First, from now on you must watch your back at all times. And second, you must never miss our Thursday dinner. I have always enjoyed our conversations, but I have a feeling that from now on your stories will be truly thrilling.”
. . .
Lisa told Marcus that she was going to the museum to see her mother. She went there quite often, but this would be the first time she would take Charlie with her.
Together they walked the two blocks from their house to the British Museum. Stationed at the entrance was a security guard as big as a wardrobe. Lisa greeted him with a familiarity that surprised Charlie.
“Good afternoon, Steve,” she said with a smile.
“Hi, Lisa,” the man replied. “Have you come to see your mother?”
“Yes. I’ve got my brother Charlie with me today. We want to surprise her.”
They walked through the halls of the building until they came to a wing of offices. Lisa greeted all of the museum staff as she passed them; she seemed to know everybody.
Suddenly, she stopped in front of an office from which emerged the strains of classical music. On the door was a sign that read: “Helen Rotherwick - Documentation Officer”. That name sounded familiar to Charlie, although he couldn’t recall where he had heard it before.
“Good afternoon, Miss Rotherwick,” said Lisa as she entered. “I’d like you to meet my brother, Charlie.”
“Good afternoon, Lisa,” replied the woman, turning down the volume on her stereo. “Have you come to see your mother?”
“Well, yes, we have come to see her, but the one I really wanted to see is you.”
“Oh! And why is that, my dear?” asked the woman, removing her glasses.
“You see, Miss Rotherwick,” said Lisa, walking over to her, “I was wondering whether you could help me with a poem in Latin. My father is very busy preparing a talk and my mother says that there’s nobody else in all of London who is more proficient in classical languages than you are.”