by C T Cassana
“Listen to this,” Lisa interrupted him. “According to their symbolic meaning, all the objects mentioned in the poem and that appear in the painting as well can be classified into three groups. The first group is objects associated with wisdom and knowledge, which are the owl, the key and the mirror. The second group are symbols of time, like the hourglass and the river. The third group are objects that have no relationship with each other, like the primrose, which means that the person holding it will find a hidden treasure, and the boat and the other flower, which I don’t know the meaning of.”
“The flower reminds me of the patch of irises that Mr. Simon had in the garden in Cambridge.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed the girl, unable to repress her excitement. “I’ll look it up!”
Lisa thumbed through the pages of the book quickly. From the living room came the sound of the passionate cheers of the audience at the end of a tango.
“Iris: from Latin ‘iris’, in honor of the Greek goddess Iris, who would transport the souls of women to the underworld and would place this flower on their tombs to adorn them. In the 12th century, Louis VII of France included the iris in his emblem for the Crusades, which is why it came to be known as the ‘Fleur-de-Louis’, and later ‘Fleur-de-lis’, becoming a habitual symbol of the monarchy since that time. Its three leaves represent truth, wisdom and courage. It has also been used as a symbol of the Holy Trinity.”
“Didn’t the poem say something about wisdom and truth?” asked Charlie.
“Yes, right at the beginning. And in the professor’s letter too, when he said that courage and a dedication to the truth and the search for knowledge were qualities of his family.”
“What I don’t understand is why the boat appears in the painting, but not in the poem,” remarked Charlie.
“That’s true. And the mirror too. The boat might be related to the river, which according to the book symbolizes the irreversible passage of time. And the reference to the reflection and the flash could have something to do with the mirror, which is associated with wisdom.”
Once again they heard a torrent of applause and cheers coming from the living room. It seemed that Mrs. Davis was really enjoying her show that night.
The children continued with their ruminations, trying to unravel the mystery. They both felt extremely excited, as if they were the protagonists of one of the many adventures that their mother had told them.
“That leaves the hourglass. I don’t know what connection it could have with the poem,” observed Charlie. “Unless it’s the sand where they planted the flowers.”
At that very moment, Mrs. Davis burst into the library with an expression of profound disappointment on her face. It was clear that Jenny Bridges had been eliminated.
“Are you still up, children?” she said.
It wasn’t a question, or even an affirmation. It was a full-scale scolding.
“You see, Mrs. Davis...” Lisa tried to explain.
“Off to bed!!” bellowed the woman.
Lisa put away all the papers, returned the books to the bookcase and ran up the stairs along with Charlie. Behind them they heard the heavy footfalls of Mrs. Davis, who followed them to ensure that this time the children were doing as they’d been told.
Before entering her room, Lisa looked back for a moment.
“Psssst!” she whispered loudly.
Charlie turned around to face her, just in time to see his sister give him a wink and a big smile.
. . .
As if he knew that his time had come, on the afternoon of September 9, 1969, Horatio Conwell felt the sudden need to take the ring off his finger. He was not ill, nor did he feel his health was failing, but for some time he had been feeling alone and tired of living. And when he found that the ring slipped smoothly down to the tip of his ring finger, he felt neither worry nor sorrow; only a certain sense of urgency to leave all his affairs in order, because at most he had nine hours left to live.
He had known that this moment would come, and he had prepared for it. He possessed an indestructible and tremendously powerful object which, if it fell into the wrong hands, could wreak terrible harm on the world. He therefore had the responsibility to ensure that such a disaster would never happen.
Some time back, the professor had considered returning everything he had found to the Cistercian abbeys where the monk, its previous owner, had hidden it all. But the world had changed a great deal, and all those abbeys had now turned into tourist attractions. And the idea that everything might end up in the hands of some ignorant tourist was a prospect he found utterly terrifying.
Another option he had considered was to bequeath the extraordinary power to a person in whom he trusted completely; but sadly, such a person did not exist. All the men that Horatio had admired were dead, and his only relatives were his son Solomon and his young grandson Maurizio.
Solomon was a good man, but his character was too weak and sullen to be able to bear such a burden for the rest of his life. Perhaps his grandson Maurizio would grow to be a great man and a worthy bearer of the Conwell name. And if not, it would be another of his descendants, for Horatio Conwell was proud of his lineage and his family name, and he trusted that sooner or later a successor would appear who would be able to assume the burden of the bequest. Only time would tell who would be worthy to possess such a wondrous power; his one duty was to ensure that it would be a Conwell and not some random stranger. This seemed to be the best option... and the only one he had.
However, just as the monk had done, Horatio determined to put whoever discovered the powerful secret to the test, and thus would he ensure that only someone truly noble, wise and persistent would attain it.
The house – his house – would not be the only hiding place, although it would be the starting point where the first pieces of the puzzle would be found. In his will, he had stated his desire that the house remain always in the hands of the Conwell family, and he knew that Solomon would follow his instructions without question. He had no cause for worry. The secret, as wondrous as it was dangerous, would never leave his family.
When everything was ready, he went over his notes one last time and then tossed them into the flames of the fireplace. For a few moments he stood motionless, watching the papers burn. Then he took the poker, broke up the charred remains into pieces and mixed them with the rest of the ashes until there was no sign left of them. Finally, he put away the letter he had written, after placing the ring he had worn on his left hand for nearly four decades inside the envelope.
“An exceptional secret for an exceptional man,” he said to himself, trying to imagine the Conwell who would end up discovering it.
When he had finished, he sat down on the couch in the library with a glass of fine cognac in one hand and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in the other.
And in silence, in the peace of the night, he waited for death to come.
. . .
Lisa was sleeping peacefully when she sensed someone breathing beside her. She opened her eyes and jumped when she saw Charlie standing next to her bed.
“What are you doing standing there?” she asked. “How long have you been here?”
“A while. I was kind of afraid to wake you up.”
“And so, why are you in here?”
At this question, Charlie sat down on the bed and practically fell on top of his sister.
“What if we’re being too clever?” he said. “What if some of the things aren’t clues? What if they’re not the meanings you said?”
“Symbols, they’re called symbols,” corrected Lisa. “And speak quietly or you’ll wake up Mum.”
“Symbols, then,” Charlie continued in a whisper. “Some things might be symbols, but others might not.”
At that moment, Charlie seized his sister by the wrist and pulled her out of bed. He turned on a flashlight and marched out of the bedroom with Lisa in tow.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “What time is it?”
“
And what if the key in the painting isn’t a symbol, but the same key that was in the envelope? And what if we need to search for a lock to open something where the treasure is hidden, or where there are other clues?”
Charlie was speaking as fast as a machine gun and Lisa listened, still too sleepy to follow his reasoning. The boy entered the library, pulling his sister by the arm, and stopped right under the portrait of the professor.
“Help me,” he said.
“To what?”
“To look behind it,” answered Charlie as he lifted the painting.
“Wait! At least let me turn a light on.”
Lisa switched on the lamp on Marcus’ desk, which gave off a slender circular light that was barely strong enough to illuminate half of the painting, leaving the rest of the room shrouded in shadow.
“I’ll hold it and you look for the lock,” she said, bringing a chair over to the portrait. “And hurry! This thing weighs a ton.”
Charlie jumped up onto the chair and slithered behind the picture like a lizard. From the other side Lisa could see him wriggling, moving the flashlight from one side to the other.
“Come on, Charlie,” she urged him. “I can’t hold it any longer.”
“There’s nothing here,” said her brother, slipping out from behind the portrait.
“So where do we look?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s around here somewhere.”
The boy shone the flashlight around the room, lighting up the furnishings and objects that had been cloaked in darkness. Lisa followed the point of light with her eyes, as if the room had become an improvised stage on which a play was to be performed.
Books, books, and more books. Pictures of the Wilfords that Maggie had placed on one of the shelves, an old hourglass, a small, tarnished globe of the world, more and more books, a little wooden frame with an engraved owl on the top of the bookcase, an old Chinese marble statuette...
“Do that again!” exclaimed Lisa, with a start.
“What?”
“Shine the torch around the room again!”
Charlie started over.
“Higher,” his sister instructed. “Shine the light on exactly the same spots as you did before.”
The boy obeyed, trying to follow the same path, while his heart beat faster and he felt increasingly excited.
“There’s an hourglass,” said Lisa. “Keep going, move the light.”
Charlie understood at once. The objects in the painting and the poem also seemed to be distributed around the room. He jumped up and ran to turn on the main light.
“And there’s the owl,” he said, pointing it out.
Lisa took the sheet of paper and Charlie moved next to her to read it.
“On that wall is the mirror,” he said. “And I have the key and the ring.”
Lisa looked over the translation and marked off the objects they had located like she was marking off items on a shopping list. She was also anxious and tremendously impatient to discover where all these clues would lead them.
“We’ve still got the flowers, a river and the boat,” she said.
Charlie began turning around in circles, searching the whole room.
“The stained glass in the window,” he said, pointing with his finger. “There’s a coat of arms with two flowers and a book with more words in Latin.”
“They were on the family’s coat of arms!” exclaimed Lisa. “But I can’t see the boat, or anything related to a river.”
“Perhaps it’s in the garden, on the outside,” said Charlie with great excitement, as he opened the glass door that led out to the yard.
The cold night air flooded the room. Charlie walked outside, shivering, and swept his flashlight over the facade of the house.
Nothing. Nothing at all. Disappointed, he shone the light on the wall again and moved it from one side to the other, as if expecting something to jump out of the darkness. As he did so, a powerful shaft of light shone through the glass and into the room.
Inside the library, Lisa felt her heart jump.
“The path of the light.”
And then she knew not only that the treasure was real, but that they had it within their grasp.
. . .
Lisa turned off the lights and went out into the garden with the poem in her hand. It was extremely cold and Charlie’s teeth were chattering noisily.
“Charlie, you really should put a coat on,” she said without looking at him, her mind clearly occupied with more important matters.
The boy entered the house and came back out to the garden a few minutes later. He had his coat on now and was holding his sister’s in his hand. He found her in front of the glass doors, engrossed in her analysis of the poem, which she read out loud in a soft voice over and over.
Trying not to distract her, Charlie put her coat over her shoulders. Lisa lifted her huge green eyes and fixed them on the coat of arms on the glass. She didn’t blink, and almost looked like she was in a trance. She knew that they had all the pieces of the puzzle in front of them; all they had to do was figure out how they all fit together.
Charlie held his breath, sensing that his sister was on the point of cracking the mystery.
“On the coat of arms there are two flowers intertwined, as if they were sisters,” said Lisa, reasoning aloud with the utmost concentration. “One of them represents courage, wisdom and truth; the three qualities of the Conwell family mentioned in the professor’s letter. The other one symbolizes that whoever has that flower possesses a treasure. That confirms what we already know: there’s a treasure in the family that you can only find if you’re a worthy member of the family.”
Charlie listened in silence, leaving his sister to continue with her deductions.
“It also says that first you have to find the flowers, so the coat of arms has to be the starting point,” she went on. “After that it says that they will lead you to a place where you won’t see your reflection, but a flash, so it must have something to do with the mirror.”
Lisa took a step forward and brought the flashlight up to the coat of arms on the glass, pointing directly at the mirror hanging on the wall. Suddenly, a ray of light bounced off the mirror toward the carving of the owl, illuminating two small mirrors that served as the owl’s eyes.
Charlie stifled a shout of amazement and ran into the library to see what was happening more clearly. Two thin rays of light shone from the owl’s eyes right across the room, converging right above a circular frame that adorned one of the wooden panels covering the walls of the room. The boy rushed over to it and pushed it to one side to reveal a small lock.
“Bingo!” he exclaimed happily.
He then raced back out to the garden to announce to his sister that they had found the treasure.
. . .
Charlie stuck his hand in the pocket of his pajamas and took out the key to insert it into the lock. He was still shivering from the cold and was so nervous that his hand trembled uncontrollably.
“Let me do it!” said Lisa, snatching the key from him.
She was nervous too; she could hardly believe what was happening. They had found a treasure, or at least were about to.
She took a deep breath and inserted the key into the lock. She turned it gently but firmly, because it was a little stiff. One turn, two turns... and the wooden panel opened outwards. The children pulled the little door back slowly, holding their breath.
“The torch, turn on the torch,” said Lisa.
Charlie switched on his flashlight and slipped inside the compartment, while his sister opened the small door completely to see better. What they had discovered was a small cubicle, around five feet high by five feet wide and of approximately the same depth. The space was so small that Charlie only just fit inside, with enough room to spare for Lisa, who didn’t want to miss a thing, to stick her head in.
Inside the compartment, Charlie saw a black metal chest with an hourglass engraved on the top. Like the hourglass of the wax seal on the
letter and in the portrait of the professor, the sand appeared to be falling upwards instead of downwards.
Charlie took a deep breath and reached out to open the chest while his heart beat frantically. He imagined he was about to find a huge treasure of gold, precious stones and other riches.
“Mum said that everything in the house is ours now, didn’t she?” he asked, stopping suddenly. “She said that we’re the legitimate owners now, right?”
“For God’s sake!” exclaimed Lisa. “Just open it, will you?”
“But it’s ours, right?” he asked again, wanting to be sure. “We’re the owners, aren’t we?”
“Yes, Charlie! Now open it, for God’s sake!”
Charlie lifted the lid and shone the flashlight inside the chest.
But he didn’t say a word.
“What’s inside?” asked Lisa. “Come on! Say something or you’ll give me a heart attack!”
Still with his back to her, the boy raised a hand to show her a piece of black velvet cloth, and then in the other hand he held up a leather-bound notebook.
“This is what’s inside,” he replied, his disappointment palpable.
Lisa took the cloth and stretched it out between her hands.
“A cape and a book??” she exclaimed, incredulous and disheartened. “What kind of treasure is that?!”
“Yeah,” said Charlie, who by now had untied the leather cords that held closed the covers of the book. “And guess what? It’s got the little hourglass engraved here too. And there are whole pages written in Latin here. This is too much for me, Lisa. I’m going to bed.”
“Me too. Here, put the cape and the book back.”
Charlie put the cloth in the chest, but not the notebook.
“I’m going to keep it to have a look at it. Maybe there’ll be something in English in here,” he explained. “At this rate, either we’ll have to learn Latin or start working with the Documentation Officer.”
“Miss Rotherwick,” clarified Lisa.
They turned off the light and went silently back upstairs to their bedrooms. Outside, the first rays of dawn were filling the garden.