by C T Cassana
Charlie nodded, and Miss Rotherwick went on with the other rules.
“Six: Each annulus has a specific function,” she said. “One is for time travel, another for choosing the place to travel to... But there are annuli that have a basic function and others that complement them, enhancing and expanding on the functions of the basic annuli. The book doesn’t explain how to find more annuli, but perhaps we’ll find out later.
“Seven: The annuli can operate together or on their own. That is why you can travel in space without traveling in time, or keep your own clothes without using the clothing annulus. However, the annuli will only work if they are inserted into the bracelet.
“Eight: If you travel with someone else, your companion will have all the same advantages as you, but only if they are embracing you when the annuli on the bracelet are activated. Lisa, that means that you will travel to the same places and times as your brother, and you’ll be dressed the same way, as long as you embrace him every time the bracelet setting is changed.
“Nine: The owner of the cape is also its guardian. This is especially important, my dear. Cape, bracelet and annulus must be in your care. This does not mean that they have to be with you at all times, but they are under your responsibility. You must not lose any of them, and if that should happen, you will have only seventy-two hours to find them. Otherwise, the cape will never obey you again, even though you will continue to be its owner for the rest of your life.”
“Gosh, Helen. Lucky thing I got the cape back right away when you took it off me,” said the boy. “Otherwise, we would have ruined it.”
Miss Rotherwick smiled wryly and continued reading.
“Ten: There are other capes. It doesn’t say how many, but it does say there are different types, with different abilities. Which also means that there are other time travelers.”
“And eleven: You should use the cape only if you are in good health and have a strong heart. Your body will quickly become accustomed to the effects of using it, and soon you will no longer feel them at all. But only if you are healthy; otherwise, the cape will be harmful to you and aggravate your condition.”
When he heard this last point, Charlie understood why he no longer felt ill when he traveled. He also understood why it seemed to affect Miss Rotherwick so much, far more than it affected him or his sister when they had begun using the cape. Until then, the woman’s illness had been nothing more than a bargaining chip to get her to help them, a vague and inconsequential matter that now seemed to him to be more serious than he had originally thought. And whatever it was she had, the journeys she had taken with him had made it worse. The boy looked into her eyes, silently apologizing for what he’d done, but Miss Rotherwick smiled sweetly at him.
“You have an amazing device in your power, young man,” she said. “And I am honored that you have shared it with me. I will never be able to thank you enough for taking me to see the premiere of The Magic Flute. I shall never forget seeing Mozart conducting the orchestra.”
Lisa shifted in her seat when she heard this. Clearly, her brother and Miss Rotherwick had been using the cape again without her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I took Helen to see a concert of Mozart’s,” answered Charlie, smiling gratefully at Miss Rotherwick for what she had just said.
“And when was that?” demanded Lisa, visibly annoyed.
“The last night I spent at her place,” replied her brother.
“I mean what date did you travel to, you dummy!” snapped the girl.
“The 30th of September 1791,” replied Miss Rotherwick.
“Which means that the earliest date we can go back to in search of the papyrus scroll is the 30th of September 1800,” said Lisa, in an obvious tone of rebuke. “That’s great!”
. . .
Jeff Carter, the investigator hired by Max Wellington to find the anonymous victim of bubonic plague, opened the email he had just received with the details of the case. Although the initial information was limited and rather vague, Jeff smiled with satisfaction.
He loved these kinds of jobs. They were well paid, and their level of difficulty was very high. To be able to solve them it was necessary to break into the computer systems of major public and private agencies which, in theory, were protected by the best specialists in the world. Jeff would study them tirelessly until he found a crack, a weak point that he could attack. When he finally managed to break in, he felt like a knight charging victoriously into the enemy castle after a siege.
Such silent victories were a precious gift to his fragile self-esteem. It was not just security systems that surrendered before his superior intelligence and cunning, but the whole of society; when he broke into the personal details of millions of individuals, Jeff felt that he had them completely at his mercy.
Merely reading the email that Max had sent him gave him an immediate rush of adrenaline. His agile brain was already on the job.
He reached out for a spiral notebook with graph paper and a red pen with nibble marks on the end. In large and swift handwriting he noted down the few details he had to help him work out his strategy.
“United Kingdom
Hospitals
Intensive extermination and disinfection”
After staring at the sheet of paper for a few moments, he traced a large circle around the last point and got straight to work.
. . .
Miss Rotherwick tried to calm Lisa down.
“It’s not as terrible as it seems, my dear,” she said. “In fact, it’s not important at all.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” replied the girl, still clearly outraged.
“You see, your mother found out that Vivant Denon, one of the French scholars, bought the two papyrus scrolls along with three statuettes from a merchant from Thebes, no doubt a tomb raider. We believe that they are from the tomb of a high priest of Amun, based on the description the man gave of the tomb and because the statuettes depict a priest and the god Amun himself.”
The woman showed some photographs of the figures to the children so they could see what she was referring to.
“These are only two of them. These are in the Louvre, but we know that Denon deposited all three statues and both papyrus scrolls with the Institut d’Égypte in Cairo in August 1799,” she explained.
Lisa relaxed a little when she heard the date, but her anger was still evident on her face.
“That’s one year before the date we can go back to,” she pointed out.
“I know, my dear. But the British troops didn’t confiscate the pieces from the French until September 1801. And that gives us a margin of two years for you to go look for them at the Institute.”
“In that case, we’re in luck,” grumbled Lisa. “But these random time trips have got to stop.”
“I promise you they have,” said Miss Rotherwick.
Charlie looked back and forth between the two as if he were watching a tennis match whose outcome didn’t matter to him in the least. Some time ago he had gotten lost in a maze of dates and details that had only succeeded in exasperating him.
“Can we get to the point?” he suggested. “I mean, what is it we’re going to do?”
“Charlie, my dear. As I said before, you absolutely must study your history,” replied the woman. “You’re going to travel to the past, and so you’ll need to know everything you can about the time and place you’re visiting. Failing to do so would be like taking a trip to a new city without even having a map to guide you.”
Charlie and Lisa both listened in silence; they knew that Miss Rotherwick was right. They had hardly prepared any of the journeys so far, and that had always resulted in mistakes on their part and some far-from-pleasant surprises.
“Well, I still think that before we take another trip we need to find the last annulus,” said Charlie with conviction. “That’s what the professor said we should do, and it keeps getting clearer that he was right.”
Miss Rotherwick l
eaned her chin on her hand, weighing up the boy’s suggestion for a few moments. Lisa, on the other hand, merely snorted noisily to express her disapproval.
“That would only make us lose more time,” she objected.
“Or gain it,” argued her brother. “If Helen is going to tell Mum about the cape, I’d rather collect all the annuli first, in case I can’t do it afterwards.”
Miss Rotherwick looked at both of them and held her tongue for a moment. If they went looking for the annulus and then went to the Institut d’Égypte in Cairo, they would have to make at least two more trips, which was something she hadn’t considered. But Charlie’s argument made sense, especially given the fact that he was going to be tied to the cape for life.
“It’s getting late, and I think you had better be going home,” said the woman at last. “Tonight I’ll think about the best course of action, and tomorrow I’ll give you my decision. I’ll expect you here at the same time. And by the way, Lisa, now that our association is established, I think you can call me by my first name.”
. . .
In the seven hours he had been glued to his computer, Jeff Carter had eaten two family-size pizzas and half a tub of ice cream and had drunk nearly half a gallon of Coca-Cola. During this time, he had also made some significant progress, which he had noted down in his spiral notebook with graph paper.
Specifically, he had found out that the company Absolute Pest Eradication had received a top-priority special commission from the British health authorities for an urgent extermination and disinfection procedure of a wide area in the vicinity of the British Museum, right in the heart of London.
. . .
After dinner, Miss Rotherwick examined the note in Latin in which the professor had placed the clues to find the last annulus. She read it through once and smiled with satisfaction. Then she sat down at her desk and wrote out her translation of the poem into English to present to the children at their next meeting.
“Though you may meet the requirements
you may only enter
if you take the oath.
All words published
find their dwelling place there
and shall never leave it.
And my own words too,
containing not only my knowledge
but also the last piece
of my precious secret.”
When she was done, she opened her computer and wrote a short email to Maggie.
“A personal matter has come up that I must deal with urgently. I will not be at the museum tomorrow morning. I will see you after lunch.
Best regards,
Helen”
. . .
The following afternoon, Charlie and Lisa arrived punctually for the meeting.
“Good afternoon, Helen,” said Lisa, as she closed the door and took a seat.
“Hello, my dear,” replied Miss Rotherwick with a broad smile.
She offered them a little hot chocolate and some cookies laid out neatly on a tray.
“Under the circumstances, I have decided that I agree with Charlie that it would be best to have all the annuli,” she said. “The truth is I don’t know how your parents will react to the news of the cape. And as you, Charlie, are to be tied to it for life, I think it best that you have all the annuli before I tell them about it.”
Lisa accepted Miss Rotherwick’s explanation, aware that it was the most logical decision, and Charlie assumed the little victory discreetly.
“The professor hid the fourth annulus in the Bodleian Library at Oxford,” announced the woman, “in a copy of the book he wrote that is in the library’s collection.”
“How do you know?” asked Charlie in surprise.
“Last night I translated the poem,” she replied, handing them the paper on which she had written her translation so that they could read it. “You see, the Bodleian is one of the five libraries that hold a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom.”
“That’s why it says here that it’s the dwelling place of all words published,” interrupted Charlie as he read the translation.
“Indeed, my dear,” nodded Miss Rotherwick.
“And how do you know that it’s that library and not one of the other four?” asked Lisa.
“Because only at the Bodleian is it compulsory for all new readers to take an oath to look after the books, and because the books can only be read in the library; they can never be checked out. Nobody, not even King Charles the First was allowed to borrow a book.”
“Wow, they really take that rule seriously,” remarked Charlie.
“And if I’ve understood correctly, the professor wrote a book that is in that library,” said Lisa. “And supposedly he hid the annulus in that book.”
“That is it exactly,” replied Miss Rotherwick. “You are excellent detectives, children. Now I understand why you were able to find the cape and the annuli on your own.”
“Yes, but in this case I don’t know how we’re going to find a book in a library where there must be thousands of books,” remarked Lisa with a troubled expression.
“Millions, my dear,” corrected Miss Rotherwick, while she opened a drawer in her desk.
“Considering it’s the last annulus, he might have given us an easier hiding spot,” said Charlie, alluding to the professor.
“Helen, I think we’re going to need your help to find out what shelf the book is on,” said Lisa. “And exactly where that shelf is... this library must be huge.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” replied the woman as she placed something on the desktop right in front of them. It was a creased envelope bearing the unmistakable wax seal with the hourglass.
The two siblings gaped at her in astonishment.
“This morning I went to the Bodleian and asked to see the professor’s book,” explained Miss Rotherwick with a beaming expression. “The envelope was hidden in the spine, in a kind of secret compartment.”
“Wow! That sure was easy for you!” said Charlie.
“Well, being the Documentation Officer at the British Museum has to be good for something,” responded the woman with a wink.
. . .
Jeff Carter had searched in vain for the report on the disinfection process to see whether it contained any additional details of interest, such as the name of the operators who had completed it or whether any private residences were included in the procedure. But it simply wasn’t in the system; everything had been erased or left out.
Jeff knew that there was another way to find this information, although it would be rather slow and tedious and would require him to deal with real people, when he preferred dealing with computers.
But it was clear that he needed to follow a different lead in the investigation to find what he was looking for. Somewhat disgruntled, he cast an eye over his first notes on the case.
“United Kingdom
Hospitals
Intensive extermination and disinfection”
Jeff nibbled on the end of his pen for a few moments. Then, with a swift movement of the wrist, he crossed out the first and last line. The next step would be to search the hospitals of London; but first, he would inform his client that this was the city where the events had occurred.
. . .
Lisa opened the envelope that Miss Rotherwick had placed on the desk, and pulled out an annulus and a notebook.
“‘Anulus lingua,’” she read. “Does that mean it’s the language annulus?”
“That’s right, my dear,” replied Miss Rotherwick.
“Then Charlie was right!” exclaimed Lisa. “We’ll be able to use it to talk to people in the era we visit!”
The boy responded with a smug expression.
“Maybe you’ll have a little more faith in me from now on,” he said.
“As usual, everything is in Latin,” remarked the girl, handing the notebook to Miss Rotherwick.
The woman flicked through the pages.
“This annulus will enable you
to understand and speak any language you hear,” she explained. “It really is incredible!”
“That means that the Latin problem is solved. Now I don’t need to learn it; all I have to do is put the bracelet on,” suggested Charlie.
Miss Rotherwick smiled at the boy’s quick thinking.
“Or even French! I won’t have to learn it either, or make cheat sheets for tests,” added the boy, thinking about his French classes at school.
“Are you really going to show up at your exams wearing the cape?” asked his sister with an ironic tone.
The joy on Charlie’s face wilted suddenly.
“Well, at least I could use it to do my homework,” he said.
Miss Rotherwick listened to the children’s conversation with amusement while she thumbed through the pages of the notebook, as if she were trying to find something.
“What isn’t clear to me is whether it can only be used to speak and understand the languages you hear,” she remarked.
“But that’s good enough, isn’t it?” said Charlie confidently. “I wish I’d had it when I was with Anki.”
“I mean that it doesn’t say anything about understanding written languages,” she explained.
“But, Helen, we already know how to read,” replied the boy, clarifying what seemed to him an obvious point.
“Yes, my dear, but you only know the Latin alphabet. You’ll only understand languages written using that alphabet, and only if you read them out loud and pronounce the words correctly.”
Charlie fell silent for a moment; it seemed that everybody was determined to rain on his parade that afternoon.
. . .
Max Wellington read the email that Jeff Carter had just sent him. So far it wasn’t much, but he was sure that there would be more soon. In any case, the detail was enough to allow him to narrow the net a little.
Max signed on to his news agency intranet and wrote a message addressed to the informants who worked for him.
“Please give priority to any news occurring in the Greater London metropolitan area. Of special interest are items related to paranormal events of any kind occurring in historical or tourist locations, both in the present and in past eras.”