by C T Cassana
. . .
Lisa struggled to crawl out of bed. Her whole body ached, her stomach was churning and her head felt like it was about to explode.
“This must be what a hangover feels like,” she muttered. “I don’t think I’ll ever drink alcohol in my life.”
When she entered the kitchen, she found her parents in their pajamas, sitting at the table in front of the remains of a plentiful breakfast, enjoying a relaxing Saturday morning. Marcus was reading the newspaper and Maggie was looking over some papers that bore the British Museum letterhead.
“Good morning, darling. Aren’t you feeling well either?” asked her mother when she saw the dark rings under her eyes.
“What?” said Lisa, not knowing how to answer.
“Your brother is in bed. He said he has a very bad headache,” explained Maggie. “I just took his breakfast up to him because he said he didn’t have the strength to get up.”
“Really? As a matter of fact, I’ve got a bit of a headache myself,” answered Lisa, as she sat down to eat.
“What a shame!” said Marcus. “We were going to suggest taking the bikes over to Hyde Park for a ride.”
“Maybe this afternoon, Dad. I’m going to check on Charlie.”
She climbed the stairs and entered her brother’s bedroom. Charlie was polishing off some scrambled eggs and toast.
“So you’re sick, are you?” she said, sitting down on his bed. “What a faker!”
“Bah! I’m a resourceful guy.”
Lisa watched her lanky, freckle-faced brother in silence for a while. Although to her he was mostly a nuisance, she had to admit that the little runt was indeed resourceful and self-confident. He had a knack for making people like him without doing anything special to win them over. He always seemed to say the right thing at the right moment, which always drove her crazy. He was quite ordinary to look at, but when he smiled his face was transformed, giving it a pleasant and attractive quality. And Charlie had an extraordinary knack for smiling.
“Look what I found in the book,” he said while he chewed on a piece of toast. “Another letter, and what looks like a bracelet. For a man, this guy sure was into jewelry.”
“I wouldn’t call this jewelry. And what does the letter say?”
“I haven’t opened it yet. I was waiting for you. We’re supposed to be a team now.”
Lisa was touched by her brother’s words, although she couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt as well. If she had been in his place, she wouldn’t have waited for him.
“Alright, well, I’m here now,” she said. “Come on, read it.”
Charlie wiped his fingers on the bed sheet and picked up the letter. It had a wax seal with an hourglass, just like the one on the letter he’d found in his desk.
“Here, open it with the knife,” suggested Lisa.
Charlie broke the seal and opened the envelope. Once again, inside there was a letter and a poem in Latin. He lay the poem to one side and read the letter aloud.
“If you are reading these words it is because you have passed the first test. It gladdens me that you have risen to the challenge and have proven yourself worthy of the name of Cromwell.”
Charlie looked up, interrupting his reading.
“This means two things,” he said. “One: that we’ve got more tests to pass, which I hope are a little harder than the first one, because it was dead easy. And two: that the old guy was really full of himself about being a Conwell, probably because he’d never heard of the Wilfords.”
Lisa smiled at her brother’s appraisal. The discovery of the cape had made him cocky, although she had to admit that the little runt had passed the test with flying colors.
“Go on, keep reading, Mr. Wilford,” she said.
“You have found the greatest and most mysterious of treasures. Fools value gold alone, but the wise know that there is nothing more precious than time.”
“Lisa, he’s calling us fools,” he interjected, “because I can assure you that I would have been happier if that chest had been full of gold coins.”
And he went on.
“Time will now be at your command. You will be able to visit the past, and to see the peoples and places of bygone eras with your own eyes. Your time in this world will still be finite, but you will be able to live a thousand lives in one.”
“Wait a minute. Is he saying that with the cape we can travel in time?” interjected Lisa this time, with a mixture of amazement and incredulity. “Is that what you think he’s saying too?”
“I think so, although the old guy might just be joking,” replied Charlie with a shrug.
“Well, he seems to have gone to a lot of trouble for a joke. And in the portrait the professor doesn’t look like a person with much of a sense of humor.”
She sat in thoughtful silence for a moment and then stood up.
“Wait here a moment,” she said, and then rushed out of the room.
A few minutes later she came back with the translation of the Latin poem in her hand.
“Listen: ‘What but just before was a dream has now become a highway,’” she read. “The dream of every archeologist or historian to be able to see everything they’ve studied. Not just the remains of the civilizations, but the civilizations themselves, in all their splendor. Remember how Miss Rotherwick said that in this line somebody had changed ‘pathway’ to ‘dream’? And then this thing about sailing up the river. The river is the passage of time... The irreversible passage of time, it said in the book. By sailing upstream, you go to where the river begins. In other words, you’re traveling into the past.”
To Charlie this all seemed like sound reasoning, so he decided to accept it right then and there. It was that moment when he realized what it really was that they had found.
“Time travel!” he exclaimed with eyes wide open. “We’ll be able to see cars and cities of the future, and travel to Mars! Or go to see other galaxies!”
“Hmm,” replied Lisa, shaking her head. “I think it only refers to traveling to the past... But my God, Charlie! Just imagine meeting Cleopatra, Joan of Arc or Madame Curie. Being able to see Imperial Rome, or the Colossus of Rhodes, or to find out how and who made the statues on Easter Island...”
“Or to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or the Vikings, or the Trojan horse,” her brother chimed in. “Or to meet King Leonidas, or Admiral Nelson...”
The two children recalled the stories that her mother had told them over the years, all the epic adventures and the characters who had taken part in them. Now all those stories would be within their reach; they would be able to see them first-hand.
“Finish reading the letter. Let’s see what it says,” said Lisa.
“You must understand that you hold in your hands an extraordinary power, which you must use responsibly and wisely, with the sole purpose of expanding your knowledge and experience. History is filled with unjust and unfortunate events, and on many occasions you will be tempted to change them in the conviction that it is the right thing to do. However, you must take into account that any change you make to the past will affect the lives of past, present and future generations, and you may even endanger your very existence. Take care, then, not to interfere with the course of history.
“From this moment on you must be alert, for there will be others who will seek to snatch a power so great from your hands. Your only defense will be the absolute discretion you exercise to protect yourself from such people. Never reveal to anyone what you possess, for this is the only way to keep yourselves safe.
“I know that the boatman’s visit is very near. I am ready for my departure from this world, but the one thing that worries me is that something so powerful might fall into the wrong hands. For some time now I have felt that I am being watched, which is why I have hidden the four annuli, the little ring-shaped devices that fit onto the bracelet and make it work, together with the instructions for their use, in places that are very dear to me. These four are the only ones I have managed to find in
my life, although I know that there are others, and that there are other capes like this one.
“Seek out the annuli with the help of the clues you shall find alongside them. Each annulus shall lead you to the next. Find them all before you travel in time, for only with all four will you be able to enjoy your voyages fully, to immerse yourselves completely in the places and ages you shall visit and, most importantly of all, to avoid danger and mischance. Remember that although your longing may be great, you must not embark on a voyage without being assured of your return or without meticulously preparing each of your journeys through time.
“Please follow all of my instructions as precisely and honestly as you can.
“Good luck, and may you enjoy your travels.
Horatio Conwell.”
The last few paragraphs hardly even worried the children. All they could think of were the great adventures they would have, and obviously an adventure would not be an adventure without a few risks. But neither of them wanted to stop to think what the specific dangers and hazards that the professor warned them of might be. They didn’t even assign the slightest importance to the fact that there were other capes like the one they had found.
Lisa examined the poem in Latin and the book they had found with the cape. When she opened it, she saw that it contained a single booklet made up of a few pages stitched together, all fastened to a rod. There were some empty rods too, and she imagined that these were intended for the instructions to the annuli that they still had to find. She recalled having seen this rather rudimentary binding system in some binders made for old coin collections that their Grandfather Henry had.
“Let’s start by translating the poem that came with the letter. It must have the clues that will lead us to the first annulus,” said Lisa. “We’ll also read the book, in case we find something that might help us.”
“Well, I’m sorry to say that although it has some parts written in English, most of it is in Latin.”
Lisa thumbed through the pages of the book.
“For now we’ll focus on translating the poem that contains the clues,” she said. “So far we’ve done pretty well. We’ll sort out the book later; maybe the English and the illustrations it has will be enough, and we won’t need to translate the Latin parts as well.”
“In spite of everything, I think we make a good team,” said Charlie, raising his hand.
Lisa slapped her palm against her brother’s.
“Even better than Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon,” she replied.
CHAPTER VI: But Where on Earth Is the Annulus?
Reading the book turned out to be rather more tiresome than expected, because although it contained only a few pages, it included whole paragraphs in Latin. Fortunately, there were also explanations in English and numerous drawings that helped give the children a basic idea of what it was they should be looking for.
On Monday afternoon, to compare notes, Charlie and Lisa decided to identify the basic points of their investigation at a meeting in the attic, which was no longer Charlie’s private study but the headquarters of the Wilford Siblings.
“Number one,” began Lisa, taking notes down on a piece of paper, “we know that what we’ve found can be used for time travel.”
“Two,” Charlie added, “to use it, we need the cape, the ring and the bracelet. All together. The Book of Time seems to be some kind of instruction manual that tells you how to travel.”
“Three: the bracelet is a chain, possibly made of silver, into which we need to insert a series of little ring-shaped devices called annuli. We know that the professor hid four, but we don’t know why so many are needed or what they do.”
“Four: the old guy thought that his descendants would be really clever, which is why he didn’t leave any of the annuli here. Only a few clues, in Latin of course, to help them find the first one. This is irrefutable proof that there is no annulus for traveling into the future, because the professor never knew that his only descendant wouldn’t be very smart and that now the cape is in the hands of the Wilfords.”
“Good observation,” laughed Lisa.
“Five,” Charlie continued, “supposedly, along with each annulus we’ll find clues that will lead to the next one, although we have plenty of reason to fear that they’ll be in Latin too.”
“Six and last,” said Lisa, “if we don’t find the first annulus, we won’t be able to find the others. And our time-traveling days will be over before they began. Charlie, I think we have no choice but to translate the clues in Latin.”
“We make Champollion look like an amateur,” remarked the boy with a sigh. “Deciphering hieroglyphics was a piece of cake compared to this.”
“Right,” said Lisa, putting everything away into the secret compartment in the desk. “We’ll get started tomorrow.”
. . .
As a member of the order of the Knights of Time, Max Wellington worked hard to recover capes that had fallen into the hands of people outside the secret society. Although he was not the only hunter of illicit time travelers, Max’s achievements had made him one of the society’s most esteemed and envied members.
Any of the capes would allow its owner to travel into the past, but not all of them were created equal. When he designed them, Prince Olwelin took his inspiration from his own army, giving specific powers to each cape in accordance with its rank. Those with a higher status were more powerful and fewer in number than the capes of lower ranks. Another distinctive sign of its status was the velvet color of the garment itself. And there were some extremely rare capes with highly unique powers that made them especially valuable despite the fact that their rank was not so high.
The position held by the knights within the Order was determined by the number of capes they possessed and by their highest-ranking cape. This made recovering time capes vitally important for any ambitious knight, because if the cape that his ancestors had received was not important enough, he could always move up within the organization by recovering other lost capes of a higher rank.
According to the rules of the Order, when a knight recovered a cape, he could keep it provided he used it honorably and in strict accordance with the code. He also had to inform the society of his new possession and to submit it to the ultimate control of the Grand Master. This ensured that the knights of the society would make every effort to recover any capes that had gone missing, and that once they were found those capes would remain in the power of the order’s rulers.
Thanks to his great skill, Max possessed numerous time capes, although unfortunately his rivals had many others, some of a higher status and therefore with greater powers than those that Max had acquired.
Although the rules of the Order made it very clear that all recovered capes must be declared without exception, this rule was not always observed and the whereabouts of some capes were kept secret. This was one of the most serious breaches of the code that a knight could commit; nevertheless, the temptation to possess a secret cape was often too great to resist, as it gave its new owner the chance to use it freely, with no rules or limitations other than his own desires and ambitions. On his time travels, Max had heard stories of diabolical knights appearing suddenly, committing horrific acts and then vanishing like maleficent phantoms. Rather than dismissing these stories as superstitions or legends, Max suspected these mysterious demons were in fact members of the Order who traveled to other eras using one of the secret capes to make themselves rich or to satisfy their darkest desires.
Many of these secret capes had even passed on from father to son for generations and were in the hands of certain family clans that formed part of the Order. Their guilt had never been proven, but Max and other loyal members suspected certain families, more powerful and better positioned within the organization, who were competing with one another to take Emanuel Gentile’s place.
This was why Max’s sole mission in this life was to become the next Great Master, so that he could unmask and destroy these traitors once and for all. And
when he did, he would purge the Order and restore its original principles so that it would be as it had been in the times of Prince Olwelin. It was an ambitious endeavor, but he was prepared for it... or at least so he thought.
. . .
The following afternoon, Lisa and Charlie went up to their headquarters with the medium-sized Latin dictionary. The smallest one had clearly proven inadequate last time, and they thought it best not to take the biggest so as not to arouse suspicion in case Marcus needed to use it.
The children began the task with great enthusiasm, but their utter ignorance of Latin soon plunged them into the depths of despondency.
“Lisa, this is boring,” said Charlie. “There has to be a quicker way to do it...”
“There is. Knowing Latin. Do you remember how quickly Miss Rotherwick did it?”
“We could ask her to help us again, but we should take some kind of draft version, and I suppose she’ll tell us off again for our bad translation. And I can’t tell her again that I did it, because she’ll think that you’re lazy and that you’ve made me your personal slave or something, to do all your homework for you.”
“Yes, you’re right,” replied Lisa pensively.
Charlie stared at the paper with the few words they had managed to translate... and all the others they still had to find.
“What if we ask Dad for help?” he suggested.
“We could. But what do we tell him if he asks what it’s for?”
“We could tell him we found the paper with the poem in the attic. If we always ask the same person, they’ll get suspicious; but if one day we ask one person something and another day we ask another person something else, there’s less chance of anyone realizing.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right. The worst part isn’t having to translate this one, but knowing that there are still another three to do before we find all the annuli.”
“We have to take advantage of the fact that we’re surrounded by adults who know a lot and who are all pretty busy,” added Charlie. “If we ask them for help and give them the impression that it’s nothing important, they’ll do it. After all, who’s going to imagine that we’ve found a time-travel cape?”