by C T Cassana
“Mum, you’re going to be famous!” said Lisa.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” her mother replied. “Well, there are still a lot of loose ends and a lot of things to do.”
While he tried to guess whether Maggie was referring to the fact that they had to find a new house, prepare for another move or look for a new school, Charlie noticed that everybody else was looking at him expectantly: he was the only one who hadn’t congratulated his mother.
“Well, that’s great, Mum!” he said half-heartedly. “Just as well we haven’t opened all the boxes yet.”
Maggie looked at him as if she didn’t understand his remark; this was odd, because his mother always took a very practical approach to things. Perhaps he hadn’t been effusive enough and his disappointment had been too obvious. To make up for it, the boy got up and hugged his mother tightly, giving her a noisy kiss on the cheek.
“Congratulations, Mum,” he said.
For a moment Maggie felt as if her son were congratulating her on beating him at checkers, but she was too excited to nitpick.
“Thank you, darling,” she replied, kissing him back on the cheek.
. . .
Max Wellington entered the only hotel in Hill City. It was a rather modest, two-story establishment with just over twenty rooms. Normally, the ones on the first floor were enough to accommodate all the guests staying at the hotel, although this year the excavations had attracted numerous paleontologists and journalists and it had been necessary to open the second floor a couple of times. It was proving a good year for business, and there was even one man who had been staying there for ten nights in a row. A new record.
“Would you like a room?” asked the owner when Max arrived at the counter.
“I’m just here to visit a guest. His name is Mathias Lewis.”
“Whom shall I say is calling?” asked the man, lifting the telephone receiver.
“John Smith,” replied Max.
“Ahh, yes, he is waiting for you,” said the hotel owner, hanging up the phone again. “You can go right up. He is in Room 115. Would you like to leave your suitcase here?”
“Thank you, but it won’t be necessary.”
Max climbed the stairs and walked down the hall in search of Room 115. When he found it, he rapped on the door with his knuckles. Mathias Lewis opened it and sighed with relief when he saw him.
“Come in, Mr. Smith.”
Mathias looked over his visitor before beginning to speak. He had hardly changed at all since the last time they had seen one another, four years earlier. He looked just the same, with the same cold gaze as before, and the same polite yet direct manner. He was even dressed in the same way: Levi’s 501 blue jeans, cowboy boots and a checkered shirt. He was holding a brown leather bag that reminded him of the mysterious travelers in old Western films. Indeed, he looked as if he had just stepped right off a movie screen.
“In your letter you said you’d found something,” said Max. “May I see it?”
Mathias opened a drawer in the desk and took out a small, clear bag containing a little golden object. Max took it and looked it over carefully, without taking it out of its wrapping.
“Where was it?” he asked.
“The report has all the details,” explained Mathias. “They found it under vertebra number 53 of an Elasmosaurus.”
“Depth?”
“About fourteen feet.”
“Period?”
“Late Cretaceous, of course,” replied Mathias. “That would make it around 60 or 70 million years old, although that makes no sense at all.”
Mathias watched as his visitor put the object away, together with the report he had just given him, into one of the pockets of his bag. He didn’t dare ask him anything, although he had many questions. The Ophiura Foundation paid him a generous salary to do a very easy job. All he had to do was to keep his eyes open and report anything unusual that occurred at the excavation site; and this, of course, met that description. But he couldn’t tell anybody or ask any questions.
“When did they find it?” asked Max.
“I’ve included the date and time in the report as well: April 4th, 1962, at 10:17 a.m. That same day I came to town and sent the letter, and since then I’ve been staying in this filthy hotel waiting for your visit,” explained Mathias, in an effort to clarify that the fact that eleven days had passed since the finding was no fault of his. “I know that this is important and I would have notified you sooner if I’d been able to call a phone number or send a telegram somewhere, instead of having to send a letter to a post office box in Manhattan. Next time...”
“... You will again follow the protocol established by the Foundation,” said Max, bringing an end to the matter. “You have done a good job, Mathias. Go back to the dig site and send another letter to the same post office box if there is any other news.”
“Yes, Mr. Smith.”
The two men bid farewell and Max left the hotel quickly. He had to get back to Manhattan as soon as possible.
. . .
The next afternoon, Charlie was packing up some of his belongings in a few empty boxes that had been left from their move, when Lisa burst into their headquarters.
“I know where we’re going,” she said without further ado. “We’re going in search of Queen Nefertiti.”
“Who?” asked the boy.
“Who else? We have to help Mum with her research. I’ve found some things in the encyclopedia, but I think we need some first-hand information. Let’s go to the museum.”
Charlie accompanied his sister, walking behind her listlessly. He was not in a good mood, and he was bothered even more by the fact that Maggie’s excitement seemed to have spread to the rest of the family, and he couldn’t share his feelings with anybody since they would all think he was just being selfish and wasn’t happy for his mother.
“When are we going?” he asked flatly.
“As soon as possible.”
“Why the rush?” said Charlie, still exasperated by the thought of their impending move.
“Come on, Charlie, you heard Mum,” his sister replied. “We don’t have a minute to lose.”
When they reached the museum, they passed under a big banner that read: “Nefertiti: 18 April - 5 October 2014.” They made for the office wing and went directly to Miss Rotherwick’s office.
“Hello, children!” smiled the woman, who also seemed to be in an excellent mood.
Charlie imagined that perhaps she was happy that his mother was leaving, because Maggie was very clever and knew a lot of things, and this had a tendency to annoy most people who, curiously, considered such a quality a defect rather than a virtue. It was a simple matter of jealousy.
Indeed, the music that Miss Rotherwick was listening to that afternoon was cheerful and bright, suitable for a celebration.
“Hello, Miss Rotherwick,” said Lisa. “My mother told us the great news yesterday.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” responded the woman. “Your mother has achieved something quite extraordinary.”
“Oh, she told us that it had all been thanks to your help,” said Lisa.
“Not at all, my dear,” replied the woman modestly. “All the credit should go to Maggie.”
Charlie glared angrily at Miss Rotherwick. It was clear that she’d had something to do with the fact that his mother had been offered a job somewhere else. An old mummy like her must know a lot of people in other museums, but it was unbelievable that she had no qualms about admitting it so openly.
“It’s quite important, isn’t it?” asked Lisa.
“I would go further than that, my dear,” said Miss Rotherwick, so wrapped up in their mother’s news that she seemed to have forgotten about Professor Conwell that afternoon. “If the investigations bear fruit and our suspicions are confirmed, it could be the most important discovery since the finding of Tutankhamun’s tomb, back in 1922. A new milestone in archeological history that will give your mother her own place among the greats.”
“My mother said that they believe the papyrus found refers to Nefertiti, but it doesn’t mention her name so it can’t be proven that it’s talking about her,” Lisa went on.
“That’s right,” nodded Miss Rotherwick. “Several elements suggest that it is referring to her, but we cannot prove it. Fortunately, it appears to be the first of a pair of scrolls, because it is numbered on the back. So we believe that there has to be another one, which might be more specific.”
“And are they going to present this one in the exhibition?” asked Lisa.
“Well, my dear, that is rather a delicate matter. As you know, there is a great deal of controversy around Nefertiti at present; relations between the museums that hold pieces related to her are not at their best; and, as if that weren’t enough, there are different and often contradictory theories about her life and her significance. That is why we cannot present a hypothesis that we are unable to prove. We are the British Museum and we have a reputation to keep up.”
“But it’s a really important discovery,” retorted Lisa.
“Yes, but only if we can prove beyond any doubt that it is indeed referring to Nefertiti.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked the girl.
“We are looking for the missing scroll,” explained Miss Rotherwick. “If we’re lucky and we find it, we will be able to reconstruct the life of the mysterious Queen Nefertiti and possibly even determine the location of her tomb. And if we’re successful, it would be a great triumph for the British Museum; we would once again be the world leader in the field of archeology, standing out above all the other museums.”
For several minutes, Charlie had been listening carefully to everything Miss Rotherwick had been saying without drawing any conclusions about it, but at that moment he could detect a strong whiff of nostalgia in her words.
“But Miss Rotherwick,” he said, “the British Museum is already really important.”
“Indeed, my dear,” replied the woman, “it is one of the most important museums in the world, along with the Louvre, the Cairo Museum, or the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. But it has been decades since it was behind a great discovery, a truly significant one that marks a turning point in Egyptology. Opportunities like this come along only once every hundred years, and only if one is lucky; so we must take advantage of it.”
“And how do you plan to find the scroll?” asked Lisa.
“We’ve turned the museum’s whole collection upside down, but so far we haven’t found it. All our pieces related to ancient Egypt are being examined, and there’s more than 76,000 of them. And all the documents on the era too, in case we can find another clue.”
“On Nefertiti’s era?” asked Lisa.
“No, my dear, on the era when the papyrus was found. We are trying to reconstruct its history to work out where it appeared, and whether it really was one of a pair of scrolls as we believe. From what we’ve been able to discover so far, it was found by the group of scholars who accompanied Napoleon’s troops on his campaign in Egypt. After winning the Battle of the Nile in 1801, Hutchinson’s soldiers confiscated all the ancient Egyptian treasures that were in the hands of the French and they were brought to the British Museum.”
“That means that it’s been in the museum for more than two hundred years,” observed Lisa.
“Approximately,” nodded Miss Rotherwick. “But for some reason it had been left forgotten in our archives since then, and nobody had realized its importance until your mother saw it.”
“But how could that have happened?” asked Charlie.
“When all those objects arrived here, nothing was known about Queen Nefertiti or about the history of ancient Egypt that would have made its value clear. In those days, other pieces were considered far more valuable, like sculptures, bas-reliefs, stelae... And of course, the Rosetta Stone, which from the beginning captured all the attention, as they knew that it would be a key to deciphering hieroglyphics because it had...”
“... because it had the same text written in Greek, in Demotic and in hieroglyphs,” interrupted Charlie, showing off his knowledge. “But a papyrus scroll is still a papyrus scroll.”
“Of course,” agreed Miss Rotherwick. “And in this case, it could be a scroll of vital importance for reconstructing the last years of Nefertiti’s life. But just think that thanks to that oversight, your mother may well become famous, because by staying hidden, the papyrus was never studied by any Egyptologists before she came to work at the museum.”
Charlie nodded as if he had decided to forgive whomever it was that had been guilty of overlooking the papyrus all those years ago.
“And if the missing scroll isn’t here, where could it be?” asked Lisa.
“Only God can know that for sure,” replied the woman. “We have several theories. One is that a French scholar accompanying Napoleon’s troops might have hidden it. Luckily, in that case, it would be in the Louvre; perhaps they’ve also overlooked it and haven’t realized how important it really is. Or it might be in the hands of some private collector, or in a family of descendants of one of the members of Napoleon’s expedition, kept as a family heirloom that has passed from one generation to the next.”
“Yes, it seems a lot of people like leaving heirlooms to their descendants,” said Charlie in allusion to Professor Conwell’s cape.
“And if they don’t find it?” asked Lisa.
“Then I’m afraid that all our hopes will go no further than a mere dream, a desire that will never be fulfilled. The papyrus we have doesn’t mention the name of Nefertiti anywhere, because whoever wrote it seemed to want to protect her identity. We have deduced that it is about her based on the information it gives, and because it calls her ‘the beauty of beauties’, a name very similar to Nefertiti, which means ‘the beauty has come’. But we can’t prove it for sure. And all of this may go no further than conjecture, just one more hypothesis like so many others about her. And as I said, the museum cannot put forward any theory that it cannot prove.”
“I see,” said Lisa, as if she had suddenly been awoken from a lovely dream.
Just as she’d told her brother before coming to the museum, they had no time to lose. They had to leave at once to search for Queen Nefertiti or the person responsible for those scrolls. There was no way she was going to allow an opportunity like this to slip through her mother’s hands.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a book on the story of Nefertiti that you could lend me, would you, Miss Rotherwick?” she asked.
“Of course, my dear,” replied the woman kindly. “I have dozens, but take this one. It has a whole chapter on her. It’s very entertaining, and also quite thorough.”
Miss Rotherwick handed her a black hardcover book. On the front cover was a picture of the famous bust of Nefertiti, possibly the most beautiful and enigmatic of all the queens of ancient Egypt.
. . .
On the walk home, Charlie tried to put his thoughts in order. He was still amazed by everything he had just heard in Miss Rotherwick’s office; it seemed that they had found something really important, but he didn’t know exactly what it was all about or what it had to do with his mother’s new job and their moving plans. In other words, he hadn’t understood a thing; and worst of all, he seemed to be the only one in all of London who had no idea what was going on.
The boy walked in silence alongside his sister, trying to come up with the question he needed to ask that would get Lisa to explain everything without making himself look like a complete idiot. But they were only one block away from home and he didn’t have much time left to think.
“All that stuff that Miss Rotherwick said was pretty interesting, wasn’t it?” he began furtively.
“I think the word ‘amazing�
� would be more appropriate,” replied Lisa, without slowing her pace.
“I guess the plan to go see Nefertiti has something to do with what she told us,” continued Charlie.
“Well, of course it does!” responded his sister, as if it should have been obvious.
“What I don’t understand is how Mum is going to keep investigating this Nefertiti business when we leave.”
“But Mum won’t even know we’ve gone. The cape will always bring us back to the same moment we left at.”
“No, I mean that if we leave London she won’t be able to keep working on it,” the boy tried to explain.
“Charlie, Mum won’t be affected in the least by us doing a little time travel.”
At that moment the children turned onto the lane where they lived. When he saw their house at the end of the street, Charlie stopped short.
“What I’m trying to say is, if we’re all going to be moving somewhere else for Mum’s new job, she won’t be able to keep investigating this Nefertiti thing,” he said.
“New job? What are you talking about?”
“You know, the thing we were celebrating last night.”
Lisa stared at her brother incredulously. The night before, their mother had given them full details of the biggest archeological scoop of the year, and the little runt hadn’t understood a thing. The boy saw how his sister was staring at him and decided to confess.
“Alright, Lisa. I was a little distracted last night thinking about stuff, and I didn’t really listen to everything Mum said,” he admitted, sitting down on a sidewalk bench.
Lisa couldn’t believe it.
“You didn’t listen to everything or you didn’t listen to anything, Charlie?” she asked bluntly.
The boy responded with a gaze. He didn’t know anything about the big news, as if the night before he hadn’t even been there. This explained his strangely cold reaction, and the fact he wasn’t the least bit excited about what was happening.
“I thought Mum had been offered a new job and we were going to move somewhere else,” he explained. “And I got a bit mad, and started thinking about my stuff and the truth is I didn’t pay much attention.”