by C T Cassana
For her part, Lisa had cooked up the story on the spot when Dr. Price had kept asking her whether she had been in contact with any rodent or wild animal in recent days. Although she couldn’t say so, she was quite sure that she had picked up the infection in the prison cells at the headquarters of the Pharaoh’s Guard. She never saw any rats, but the whole time she was in there she had the sensation that something was crawling around near her in the dark.
“Well, that’s good news,” she said, relieved to see that her brother had corroborated her alibi.
“And it’s not the only good news,” added Charlie jubilantly. “We found the Indumentum anulus, the clothing annulus.”
Lisa felt her heart skip a beat. The night before, in spite of her fever and how sick she felt, she had lied to her father and the doctor in order to conceal everything they had done so that nobody would know about their time traveling, the existence of the cape or anything else related to it. And now here was her brother talking about annuli right in front of Miss Rotherwick as naturally as if he were chatting about the weather.
“You what?” she asked furiously, already intuiting what her brother had done the one night she had left him alone.
“We found it, Lisa. Helen and me. It was in Professor Conwell’s club. In the library, of course,” explained Charlie, lowering his voice on the last sentence, as if he were sharing a secret.
“Helen and you!” said Lisa, not failing to notice that her brother was referring to Miss Rotherwick by her given name.
It was clear that whatever had happened was even worse than she could have imagined.
“What the heck have you done, Charlie?” she asked in a rage.
Miss Rotherwick knew that the moment had come for her to step in.
“He hasn’t done anything, Lisa. Actually...”
“Actually, Helen found out because you told everything to Mum,” interrupted Charlie in a clearly remonstrative tone. “And of course, Mum told her...”
“I didn’t tell Mum anything,” said Lisa, pausing briefly between each word to leave no doubt. “Absolutely nothing. I don’t know how she found out, but I assure you it was not from me.”
Charlie’s defiant expression gave way to a look of utter bewilderment, and he turned his gaze back to Miss Rotherwick in search of an explanation. For the first time in his life, it seemed, he had been rendered speechless.
“My God!” said Lisa, shaking her head in disapproval. “One night. I left you for one night.”
“But she knew! She had the map of Amarna with the coordinates, and she told me that Mum had told her about our investigations into Nefertiti and that she was proud of us,” said Charlie. “Tell her, Helen.”
Lisa looked to Miss Rotherwick, in the hopes of some kind of explanation.
“Your mother mentioned that you were investigating Nefertiti when she gave me back the book I had lent you, but she was referring to reading about her and things like that. I found the map inside the book and had planned to give it back to your mother so that she could give it to you. But when Charlie came to my place, I showed it to him. And we talked about it, each of us understanding something different, and one thing led to another, until...”
“Until you both ended up visiting the professor’s club to look for the annulus,” snapped Lisa.
“Yes, something like that,” said Miss Rotherwick, who had begun to feel like a wayward teenager whose mother had just caught her coming home from a wild night out.
Silence reigned in the room for a moment.
“Well, that’s cleared up then!” announced Charlie, in an effort to cut the tension.
“No, it isn’t,” retorted Lisa, glaring at Miss Rotherwick.
She could sense that the woman would not be keeping their secret.
“You must understand, Lisa. They have to know,” confessed Miss Rotherwick. “In view of what you’ve just been through, and what I saw when Charlie took me to the Athenaeum Club, and what I read in the book Charlie gave me last night... This is too much power for a pair of children... and I can’t keep it a secret.”
“What I’ve just been through has nothing to do with the cape,” lied Lisa. “It was a stray cat.”
“Come now, Lisa. It is suspected that there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in Amarna that caused the death of nearly all the members of the royal family in the space of a few years. And all three of us know that you two went there, no doubt to that very point in time.”
“I told you it was the cat,” replied Lisa firmly. “Dr. Price himself told me there are places where the plague is still active; reservoirs, he called them. The cat was in a central tourist area, a part of town where people come from all over the world, and who might have brought a flea...”
“Be that as it may, I cannot accept the risk, my dear.”
“But I told you that in Amarna we only saw the princess, and I can assure you that when we were with her she didn’t scratch even once,” said Charlie, trying to back up his sister’s story. “There’s no way she had fleas, or even lice. Then we went to the tomb, but it was totally empty and there were no rats. And I told the doctor about the cat myself when he asked me this morning.”
“I don’t think it was quite like that, my dear,” replied Miss Rotherwick, trying to avoid further debate.
This was proving much harder than she had imagined.
“Miss Rotherwick, we only want to help my mother find the queen’s tomb. That’s all,” said Lisa solemnly, in a desperate effort to convince her. “If you tell her, she won’t let us keep investigating because she’ll think it would be like cheating. She might even drop the project when she finds out. But you yourself told us that the discovery of the tomb would be a major finding, that it wouldn’t just be a triumph for our mother, but for the whole British Museum. You said that it would be so important that it would return the museum to its former splendor, that it would put it back at the top in the archeology world. I thought the museum mattered to you, that you would do anything in your power to raise its prestige; and now that we need your help, you’re turning your back on us.”
Miss Rotherwick listened anxiously to Lisa’s words. The girl had found her weak spot and was working on it as eloquently as she could.
“You know that I can’t...” she tried to explain.
Despite her words, her face showed clearly that Lisa’s speech had made an impression, so Charlie decided to take up the cause as well.
“Please, Helen, just this once... Just let us try, for Queen Nefertiti, for the museum, for poor Ankhesenpaaten.”
“What you are asking of me is impossible,” said the woman in a voice that lacked conviction.
“Define ‘impossible’,” retorted Charlie with a mischievous smile, believing they had it in the bag.
As she looked at his expression, Miss Rotherwick realized that she was on the point of giving in and, feeling cornered, she decided to make a break for it before it was too late.
“I’m going to get a soft drink. Would either of you like me to bring you something?”
She then picked up her bag and left the room in a hurry.
. . .
After taking a shower, Marcus collapsed on the bed and began pondering how he would tell Maggie about what had happened and how angry she would be that he hadn’t told her sooner. His wife had barely been gone for a day before their daughter was admitted to the hospital.
Marcus closed his eyes for a moment, imagining how he would break the news, but then suddenly sleep overcame him. He still had his cell phone in his hand when he felt it vibrate and heard it ringing.
“Hello?” he answered sleepily.
“Hello, darling!” came Maggie’s voice.
Marcus looked at the clock on his bedside table. It was barely 12:30 p.m., rather early to be receiving a call from his wife.
“You’re calling early. Is everything alright?”
“Yes and no. I have good news and bad news.”
“What happened?”
“We’ve reviewed the diary of Louis Costaz, one of the secretaries of the Institut d’Égypte that Napoleon founded in Cairo,” said Maggie, knowing her husband’s extensive knowledge of history made further explanations unnecessary. “There’s a part in it where he goes into great detail about the presentation that Vivant Denon made to the members of the institute after his eight months traveling around Upper Egypt with the troops of General Desaix.”
“And is there something important there?”
“More than that. It mentions that Denon came back with various objects, including three statuettes and two papyrus scrolls, which he bought from a local merchant in Thebes. According to what Denon told them, the seller insisted that they were objects stolen from a tomb in the old Theban necropolis.”
“He bought them from a tomb thief?”
“So it seems. And here comes the best part: it says that one statue depicted a man with a shaved head, wearing several golden armbands and dressed in a leopard skin.”
“A high priest!” replied Marcus, who knew that these were the only people who could wear such attire.
“The other two were of a bearded man wearing a headdress with two long feathers and a circle at its base.”
“Statues of the god Amun!” said Marcus. “And they were all in the same tomb?”
“According to the merchant, yes. And that wasn’t all. He also told Denon that on the walls there were paintings depicting the man in the leopard skin making offerings to the man in the headdress. Unfortunately, Denon wasn’t able to go see the tomb because General Desaix ordered the French army to leave the city in a hurry.”
“Good God! Then it could only be the tomb of a high priest of Amun in Thebes,” added Marcus. “And does it say anything about the papyrus scrolls?”
“The diary mentions that Denon numbered them in pencil on the back with the marks ‘VD 1/2’ and ‘VD 2/2’. But there’s no other description, at least nothing we’ve found. That’s part of the bad news.”
“Bad? I wouldn’t say that! You have a document that explains the origins of the papyrus scrolls, that connects them to a tomb of a high priest of Thebes, and that even describes the markings on the papyrus scroll that you found.”
Maggie listened to her husband, trying to find comfort in his reasoning.
“Is there any drawing of the statues or any information on what became of them?” asked Marcus.
“We believe that two of them, the ones of the priests, are in the Louvre. It seems they were brought by the scholars when they convinced the British troops to let them keep their documents and a few objects they didn’t consider especially valuable. We’re checking the diary against the records of the period to confirm whether they’re the same statues.”
“Come on, Maggie. Don’t you realize what this means? If you can prove that these statues are connected to the papyrus scrolls and date them to the era of Nefertiti, you’ll be able to support your theory.”
“Yes, the statues were part of the good news. But as you just said, they would serve to support my theory, not to prove it. I can’t prove beyond all doubt that the papyrus scrolls are talking about Queen Nefertiti, or even that the one in the British Museum is one of the two scrolls Costaz mentions in his diary.”
Marcus didn’t know what to say. Maggie was right. With what she had so far she could develop a theory that would give a new perspective on Queen Nefertiti, a theory that was quite sound and certainly unprecedented, but that could never be proven.
“You said that in the Louvre there are two statues, but that Denon bought three,” he said, trying to find a line of investigation that his wife could follow up on. “Is there any clue about the other one?”
“We’re searching the records for a mention of it and of the second papyrus scroll, in case they managed to bring them to Paris. But they don’t appear to be here. It seems the archeologists were only able to get two statues out; the other one stayed in Cairo at the Institut d’Égypte, along with the two papyrus scrolls on Nefertiti.”
“But if that’s true,” continued Marcus, “Hutchinson’s troops must have confiscated them and brought them to London. The statue of Amun and the two papyrus scrolls must be in the British Museum, but you’ve only actually found the first one.”
“I know, and that’s the last part of my bad news. Because we didn’t know about the existence of the statues yet, we focused on looking for the second papyrus scroll. But I can assure you that we turned all the collections at the British Museum upside down and it’s not there,” said Maggie glumly. “Our only hope now is that a miracle might happen and we’ll find it in the Louvre, or at least some document that says something of its whereabouts.”
“Maybe somebody made a copy of the scroll, like someone did with the Rosetta Stone. Perhaps it will be in the diary... or somewhere else...” offered Marcus, trying to cheer her up. “Don’t be so pessimistic. You have a lot of clues to follow up on. One of them will lead you somewhere, you’ll see.”
“Darling, I might find the information today, or it might take me a few days...”
“Don’t worry, stay for as long as you need to,” replied Marcus. He now felt completely unable to tell his wife what had happened to Lisa. After all, their daughter was fine and everything had worked out.
“Are you all managing without me?” asked Maggie, whose feelings of guilt over not returning home as planned were easy to detect.
“Perfectly! We don’t need you here,” replied Marcus in a teasing tone. “You’re getting closer, honey. You’re a great researcher.”
“Thanks, darling,” replied Maggie, feeling more cheerful. “I’m going to call Helen to tell her everything. I assured her that she would be the first to know of any discovery, but I needed to tell you first.”
“I’m glad you did. Leave out the part about the bad news. Everything you’ve told me is marvelous and I’m sure that you’re going to find something more.”
As soon as he hung up the phone, Marcus wrote a text message as quickly as he could.
“Maggie is going to call with some news. Please don’t tell her anything.” He pressed the send button, praying that Helen Rotherwick would receive it before his wife made the call.
. . .
Miss Rotherwick had just come back into Lisa’s room when she received Maggie’s call.
“Maggie, my dear!” she said, making signs for the children to keep quiet. “How is everything going there?”
Charlie and Lisa could hear their mother’s voice as a tiny murmur emerging from Miss Rotherwick’s phone. She was talking quickly and seemed to have a lot to tell.
“Good heavens, my dear!” exclaimed Miss Rotherwick, breaking into a smile that did not bode well for the children’s hopes of continuing their investigations.
Maggie went on with her explanations.
“You don’t say! The high priest!” said Miss Rotherwick, who looked happier every moment.
And as they listened to the little murmur of their mother’s voice recounting the details of her inquiries, Charlie and Lisa felt increasingly uneasy.
“You’ll see, something will turn up, my dear. It all has to have been documented, and fortunately we’ve sent our best researcher to find the missing piece,” said Miss Rotherwick, encouraging her.
It sounded like their mother had made some progress, but not enough. There might still be a chance for them.
“Oh, yes, of course. Call me any time, whenever you like. I’ll wait eagerly to hear from you.”
When she hung up the phone, Charlie and Lisa were looking at her, waiting for her decision like two convicts on death row.
“Your mother has found a clue that might lead her to the papyrus scroll,” she explained, “which means I don’t think your help will be necessary.”
Charlie and Lisa swallowed hard in unison.
“For the moment I won’t tell your father anything. The poor man has enough troubles right now. But as soon as Maggie gets back I’ll tell them everything, and then they will
decide what they think is best for you.”
. . .
Charlie left the hospital feeling an overwhelming sense of defeat. He and Lisa had been on the point of convincing Miss Rotherwick, and would surely have succeeded if they had persevered a little longer instead of talking more than they should have. But now if she told their parents about the cape, they could forget all about time traveling.
They made the trip back together in total silence, so Miss Rotherwick put a little music on to relax while she drove.
“Mozart?” asked Charlie, who by now was becoming familiar with the musical tastes of his host.
“It’s The Magic Flute,” she replied. “The last opera that Mozart composed.”
“It’s not bad.”
“It’s fantastic,” asserted the woman vehemently. “It premiered just two months before he died and was a huge success right from the beginning.”
“And that was a long time ago, huh?”
“Quite long ago, yes. The opera premiered on the 30th of September 1791, at the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna.”
Charlie made an effort to engrave those details on his memory. He and Lisa had not lost the war yet; there was still a battle to be waged, a battle that would decide everything. And thanks to that music, he had just hit on the strategy that would make them invincible.
CHAPTER XV: The Magic Flute
Charlie locked himself away in the bathroom with the Book of Time. Miss Rotherwick had left it on her desk the night before, along with the cape, which she had hung over the back of the chair. When she had come back home that evening she had begun preparing dinner and hadn’t taken the precaution of putting them away, apparently trusting that her orders would simply be obeyed or that there was no risk in leaving them out in full view. An oversight typical of someone who doesn’t live with children, thought Charlie, while he quietly slipped the book under his arm. Neither of his parents would ever have committed such an obvious mistake.
Once in the bathroom, the boy sat down on a small chair next to the radiator and looked through the notebook for the clothing annulus.