by C T Cassana
“Well, now that you mention it, I do need your help,” he confessed, “because our investigation has hit a road block.”
“A road block?” repeated Miss Rotherwick curiously. It would be delightful to know how these two children played at being archeologists.
“Yes, we went into Nefertiti’s tomb, but it was empty.”
“Empty?” asked the woman, eager to hear the details of their game.
“Completely empty. There was absolutely nothing. The outside wall was knocked down and so were the inner walls; the entrance to the tomb and to the funeral chamber. But the weirdest thing of all was that there wasn’t a single painting or sculpture. Nothing. There was nothing. A little strange for the tomb of a queen, don’t you think?”
Miss Rotherwick was surprised, once again, by the extraordinary knowledge of this eleven-year-old boy, and the peculiar nature of the story that he and his sister had made up.
“That’s why I asked you about the paintings, because of course it seemed pretty strange to me,” continued Charlie. “But now I understand that it would have been silly to make a tomb with paintings and all that stuff if you’re just going to pack it all up and take it to Thebes. That’s probably what Anki was trying to tell us.”
“Anki?” asked Miss Rotherwick, assuming that the children must have had a friend involved in the game as well.
“I mean Ankhesenpaaten,” said the boy. “You know who that is, right?”
“Yes, of course,” replied the woman, marveling at the fact that Charlie also knew of her. “She was the third daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and Great Royal Wife to Tutankhamun, with whom she reigned for only a few years.”
“That’s the one,” replied Charlie matter-of-factly. “I call her Anki because it’s simpler, but of course when I met her she was still a princess and she wouldn’t have minded. We became good friends, you know?”
His host’s expression suggested to Charlie that perhaps she didn’t believe that he had really struck up a friendship with the princess, so in part to convince her and in part to show off, he took from his pocket the ribbon that the Egyptian girl had given him when they had said goodbye. Miss Rotherwick stared at it in astonishment; it looked a lot like others they had in the museum. Her first reaction was to wonder whether the children hadn’t taken their game a little too far, suspecting that perhaps they had stolen it from Maggie’s office on one of their visits. Then she noticed that the weave was in perfect condition and even looked new. The colors were vivid and bright, not dulled by the passage of time. Perhaps it was an imitation, although it would have taken a knowledge of weaving that was far too sophisticated for a simple children’s game.
While Miss Rotherwick pondered these things, Charlie went on recounting the details of his story without even taking a breath.
“Me and Ankhesenpaaten got along really well, and we had no trouble understanding each other even though we didn’t speak the same language. When we left, she gave me her ribbon and a kiss, and to Lisa she only said goodbye with a nod. We didn’t want to go into her mother’s tomb while she was there, so we agreed we’d go back later. Then we decided to go back a week earlier, but the bracelet got stuck and we could only go back as far as nine years later, to 1327 B.C. Weird, isn’t it? And when we got there, we found the tomb was empty, with no paintings or anything.”
As Miss Rotherwick went on listening to the story she began to sense, without knowing why, that what Charlie was describing was more than a mere children’s game of make-believe.
“Then Lisa blamed me, as if I could control what the ancient Egyptians were doing or make the bracelet work when I wanted it to,” said the boy with a shrug.
“The bracelet,” said the woman, in an attempt to clarify what he was talking about.
“Exactly, because we didn’t know half the things the book of instructions says because they’re in Latin, and we were going everywhere with only two annuli, instead of the four the professor said there were.”
Miss Rotherwick felt her heart skip a beat. She knew beyond any doubt that the boy was referring to Professor Conwell. At some point in the conversation, her words had made her guest believe that she knew something, something that she did not actually know but had suspected for many years. A secret that Horatio Conwell had always concealed and that Maggie’s children seemed to have uncovered now that they were living in his old house. Something related to the poem in Latin that she had translated for them before and which the boy was now about to reveal to her unwittingly.
That was when she realized that she had to tread cautiously and follow the conversation closely, quietly picking apart every detail, undoing every thread with the utmost care until she had at last unraveled the mystery. She held her tongue to avoid giving herself away. She had Charlie’s complete confidence, so she left it to him to lead the conversation. She only nodded and agreed with him.
“And that’s where I need your help, because me and Lisa are mad at each other.”
“Of course, my dear,” said the woman, measuring her words. “And what do you need?”
“I need you to translate the poem,” said Charlie, taking the sheet of paper out of his pocket and handing it to Miss Rotherwick.
She took it as naturally as she could, trying to keep her hands from trembling and to bring her heartbeat back to its normal rate, fearing that Charlie might hear it pounding. For a few seconds she sat in silence while she struggled to control her emotions, which ran wild when once again she saw the handwriting of her beloved Professor Conwell.
“Do you have something to write with?” asked Charlie, oblivious to what she was feeling. “It helps to have the translation on hand when you’re looking for the annulus.”
“Of course,” replied the woman, rising to get a paper and pen, which she gave to the boy.
Then she cleared her throat and dictated her translation slowly. Now and then she made a pause and repeated what she had said so that he could get it all down. It was essential that Charlie did not suspect a thing.
. . .
Marcus looked once again at the clock on the wall in the hospital waiting room. Under normal circumstances, his kids would have been in bed asleep for quite some time. He took out his cell phone and saw that he had three missed calls from Maggie. Before dialing her number, he cleared his throat and took a swig from a bottle of water he had just bought.
“Hello, darling,” he said when she answered the phone. “How are they treating you?”
“Marcus!” replied Maggie in a sleepy voice. “What’s going on? I called the home number over and over and nobody answered. And I called your mobile again and again too...”
“I’m sorry, I only just realized. I think the house phone isn’t working and I didn’t hear the mobile. The kids complained that you hadn’t called, but I thought you’d probably gone out to dinner with the people from the museum.”
“They invited me. They’re very good hosts. But I was too tired. So I had dinner here at the hotel and then went to bed.”
“I’m sorry for waking you. Any progress?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s still early days.”
“Anything new there? Are the kids alright?”
“Everything’s fine. Nothing exciting happening here,” lied Marcus. “I’ll call you tomorrow so you can talk to the kids. Get a good night’s sleep.”
“Alright, darling. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
. . .
As if trying to wipe it clean, Charlie ran his hand over the paper on which he had just written the translation of the poem and read it aloud:
“There were more than thirteen hundred
when forty thieves came in,
all of them illustrious, some of them exceptional.
Zeus’ daughter welcomed them
not so much for their wealth
as for their indispensable wisdom.
Fifteen steps and then ten more
will lead you to the rest
ing place
of the pure-hearted thief’s apprentice,
written by one of the forty
with absolute mastery.”
“Was the professor ever in jail?” he asked when he finished.
“Of course not, my dear!” answered Miss Rotherwick, rather taken aback by the question.
Charlie tried to explain.
“You see, every annulus has been in a library where the professor spent a lot of time. In some poems he said they were his favorite places.”
The woman nodded; the boy was right.
“So we have to find out which library he’s referring to, and as it says here that there are a whole bunch of thieves, well...” added Charlie to justify his question.
“I’m afraid he’s referring to his club, the social club he belonged to,” she replied. “The professor went there nearly every evening.”
“And there were thieves in his club?” asked Charlie, a little confused. “I thought there would be important people there, rich people.”
Miss Rotherwick let out a laugh.
“And you are quite right. Professor Conwell was a member of the Athenaeum Club, one of the most prestigious in all of London. It was created not so much for men of great wealth as for esteemed intellectuals, the most outstanding figures in the fields of the humanities, the sciences or the arts. Its name is taken from Athena, goddess of wisdom, the arts and learning, and Zeus’ daughter. You see, at a few points in its history the club suffered from some financial difficulties, and to resolve them it increased its member numbers. For the second expansion, when it had 1,360 members, it was found that this wasn’t enough and it was decided to admit forty more. This group came to be known as the ‘forty thieves’. But as the professor says in his poem, those thieves included some very illustrious people, like Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.”
“And there was a library in the club?” asked Charlie.
“Of course. The Athenaeum Club has one of the best private libraries in the whole city.”
“Great. And you wouldn’t happen to know the address and the hours of this club, would you?”
The woman walked over to her desktop computer and looked up the information online.
“107 Pall Mall. And it closes at 11 p.m.”
Miss Rotherwick checked her watch and was horrified to see how late it was. The time had flown by.
“My goodness! It’s five to eleven! If your parents find out that you were still up at this time...”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell them. Besides, this is the perfect moment to visit the Athenaeum.”
“You don’t understand, my dear. It is very late, you have school tomorrow, and...”
“Hey, Helen, you wouldn’t want to come with me, would you?” interrupted the boy. “I think I could do with a little help to find the annulus.”
Miss Rotherwick didn’t know what to say. On one hand, she knew that Charlie should be in bed, but on the other, she was dying to crack the mystery, to see with her own eyes what all this was about, and she might not get another chance to do it.
“I’ll be right back,” said Charlie, taking her silence for assent. “I’ll just go get a few things.”
The boy rushed into his room and pulled the cape out of his bag. He took Marcus’ GPS and entered the address of the Athenaeum in to obtain its coordinates. With the utmost care, he set them on the bracelet, correcting the position to ensure he would appear inside the building and not in the middle of the street, and then slipped it onto his wrist. Finally, he put on the cape, grabbed his flashlight and went back to the living room to find Miss Rotherwick.
. . .
Marcus was beginning to get desperate, with no book on hand to calm his nerves, when a tall man wearing a long white coat and an amiable smile burst into the waiting room.
“The Milfords?” he asked.
Marcus looked around him for a response that could not possibly materialize: he was the only one in the waiting room.
“The family of Elisabeth Milford?” said the man in the long white coat.
“It’s Wilford,” replied Marcus with relief. Finally there was some news about his daughter.
“I’m sorry,” said the man, scribbling the correct name on one of the sheets on his clipboard. “I’m Dr. Price.”
“How is Lisa?” asked Marcus, offering his hand to the doctor to introduce himself. “I’m Marcus Wilford, her father.”
The man nodded.
“She’s in a stable condition. She still has a fever and a headache. We’ve run a lot of tests, and fortunately we’ve been able to rule out various serious conditions, like meningitis.”
Marcus wasn’t entirely assuaged by this news; he could see that the doctor had more to tell him.
“But she’ll have to stay here,” continued the doctor, “until we have a clear diagnosis. We’re running more tests and perhaps tomorrow we’ll have a clearer picture.”
“Can I see her?” asked Marcus, visibly worried.
“You can stay the night here with her, if you wish. Her room is 1504.”
Marcus went to pick up his things when the doctor turned around to ask him one last question.
“Excuse me, but has your daughter or any member of your family traveled abroad recently?”
“No. Well, my wife has gone to Paris, but she hasn’t come back yet. Why do you ask?”
“Just a routine question,” replied the doctor, before turning to leave.
. . .
Robert Newman had only just begun the night shift and was already feeling drowsy. His co-worker Dennis had changed his shift on him, and as always he had done it at the last minute. It was incredible how Dennis was always messing up the schedules that had been posted weeks in advance without anybody telling him off for it.
Robert had been working for more than ten days straight, without a single day off, and he felt too exhausted to face another long night on guard in that gloomy old building. And meanwhile, the dissolute Dennis would be enjoying a night of revelry with one of his many girlfriends, all thanks to the excuse that he’d come down suddenly with a cold.
Sitting at the table set up to one side of the wide entrance hall, Robert tried to keep himself awake by reading the sports pages, but his eyes closed obstinately while he just barely kept his head propped up on one hand. Every now and then, sleep would overtake him and his head would bob down before lurching back up to its original position. He had been carrying on with this pitiful, neck-breaking dance for some time, until suddenly a noise brought him to his senses. He despised that old building and the way it creaked like the bones of an old woman; but this sound had been different from the others, sharper and more intense, and suggestive of a foreign presence. When he heard it, he opened his eyes and, without knowing why, turned his gaze toward the stairway.
Then he saw them there, on the first landing. An older woman with a boy embracing her. The woman was wearing a black overcoat; she had her eyes closed and looked a little stunned. The boy was wearing a cape that covered his whole body, and he looked at Robert with a half-smile that sent a terrible shiver right through him. Robert sprang up in his chair and rubbed his eyes before looking again to confirm the shocking sight before him. At that instant, the ghost of the boy gave him a smile that he would never be able to forget, and waved goodbye; he then put his arms back around the poor woman, who still had her eyes closed, and the two disappeared.
. . .
Charlie looked around the elegant hall and deduced with considerable satisfaction that they were inside the Athenaeum Club. He had practiced a lot with the bracelet and had become quite an expert with it. He could accurately calculate how much he should alter the coordinates in order to appear inside a building and, once there, how much he should turn the dials to move a few yards in one or another direction. He had also learned that to go up or down from one floor to another he had to appear on the ramps or stairways that connected them, just as he would if he were walking.
A few yards ahead
was a beautiful and stately marble staircase that led to the second floor, and a sign indicating that the library was upstairs. The only problem was that there was also a security guard sitting at a table, his head leaning on one hand. The building had a night watchman, which was something he hadn’t counted on.
Luckily, the man hadn’t seen him; indeed, he seemed to be asleep. Miss Rotherwick was still recovering from the dizzying effects of the cape and had her eyes shut tightly, completely unaware of the risk they were running of being found out.
Charlie decided not to lose his nerve and to keep going. He only needed to make a few quick appearances and disappearances on the stairway to reach the second floor. If he did it quickly and discreetly, neither the guard nor Miss Rotherwick would realize what was going on. And if things turned ugly, he could simply use the cape to get them back to her house and at worst have to face a mild reprimand. It was worth a try.
The boy adjusted the dials and appeared with Miss Rotherwick on the first landing of the staircase. The woman was still in a daze and had her eyes shut. Charlie looked over to the guard and saw that he was still asleep. So far, so good. He calculated the distance to the second flight of stairs leading up to the second floor, and adjusted the dials on his bracelet. But just as he made to turn the clasp, the security guard opened his eyes and stared straight at them. His bovine gaze turned into a look of terror and he went pale as if he had just seen a pair of ghosts. No doubt the poor man would have considered the possibility of thieves breaking into the building, but never that the intruders would be a boy and an elderly woman. That would only happen in nightmares... nightmares of ghosts.
Charlie froze for a moment. They’d been found out, and under these circumstances the logical thing to do would be to set the dials to go back to Miss Rotherwick’s living room. But then Miss Rotherwick, who hadn’t seen a thing, would want to know what had happened. And explaining it to her wouldn’t help at all, because then she might decide that using the cape was too dangerous. No, he needed to present only the cape’s positive side, leaving out the potential hazards its use entailed.
Besides, although he didn’t know why, the security guard didn’t look to him like much of a threat. His uniform couldn’t neutralize the dopey expression on his face, which, mixed as it was with fear, really looked quite comical. This thought emboldened Charlie a little more, and a sardonic smile broke out on his face. He then tried to make his expression as macabre as possible and raised his hand to wave to the stunned guard, before turning the clasp on the bracelet and transporting himself and Miss Rotherwick up to the second floor.