by C T Cassana
Then he pressed the “send” button.
One of the common weaknesses of time travelers was their habit of visiting tourist sites or places they’d heard about all their lives to see what they used to be like in bygone eras. If the traveler was not a cautious person, as appeared to be the case, he would tend to get caught up in unpleasant situations, appearing suddenly in some inappropriate location or in front of other people. And all too often things would end up getting complicated, so that the traveler would have to disappear just as suddenly, leaving a crowd of confused witnesses behind him.
In fact, careless time travelers constituted the biggest cause of supposed encounters with ghosts and other paranormal phenomena in history. And the one Max was looking for was so careless that he had probably already been responsible for more than one ghost sighting.
. . .
Miss Rotherwick gave Lisa the language annulus and the notebook, and then picked up an orange-colored folder she had left on the desk.
“Right, try doing a test right before your next journey to see what the language annulus can do,” she said to the children. “Now, let’s talk about the mission.”
Charlie and Lisa nodded in unison.
“When do we go?” asked the girl. “We only have five weeks before the exhibition opens; that doesn’t leave us with much time.”
Charlie counted it out in his head and then turned to his sister.
“That’s more than a month,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Yes, but Mum has to find the papyrus scroll first,” said Lisa.
“And it would be wonderful if it could be presented with its translation, to present a whole new point of view on Queen Nefertiti,” added Miss Rotherwick. “Lisa is right. We don’t have much time.”
“And where do we start the search? What do we have to do?” asked Lisa.
“I think it would be best if you traveled back to Cairo on the earliest date possible: the 30th of September in the year 1800, exactly nine years after our visit to the opera in Vienna,” replied Miss Rotherwick. “The coordinates and the date you need are here in these papers. Choose clothing on the middle-class setting, so as not to attract too much attention.”
“Yes, because in Vienna everybody was looking at us,” said Charlie. “You really looked great, Helen.”
Miss Rotherwick smiled and then continued.
“The exact place you will go to is the Institut d’Égypte, founded by Napoleon as a place where the group of scholars who had gone with him to Egypt could pursue their work. This is a floor plan of the building. I’ve marked a cross on the room where the pieces being studied were stored, and that’s where the papyrus scroll should be. In this square here I have written down the coordinates I’ve calculated for the storage room and for the street where the Institute is. I’ve also included some other important details you might need.”
“Wow, Helen! You’ve organized everything! This will make it easy,” commented Charlie as he looked over the details she had written down. “They look like the notes that Lisa makes when she’s studying for an exam.”
The woman nodded her head to thank him for his compliment and went on with her explanations.
“When she was in the Louvre, your mother consulted the diary of Louis Costaz, the secretary of the Institute. According to Costaz, the papyrus scrolls were purchased together with three statues by Vivant Denon, who deposited them with the Institute to be studied. I can only show you pictures of two of the statues, as we haven’t been able to find the third one.”
“But aren’t we looking for the papyrus? You don’t want us to find everything...” said Charlie, a little confused by the barrage of pictures and information.
“Patience, my dear,” replied Miss Rotherwick gently. “You know that you have to familiarize yourself fully with the place and time you are going to visit. Once you’re there you won’t be able to find out anything that you didn’t know beforehand. If you know the circumstances in which the papyrus scrolls were found, you may be able to find them more easily.”
“If we see the statues, it would be logical to assume that the papyrus scrolls are there too,” said Lisa.
“Exactly,” agreed Miss Rotherwick. “They may be stored separately, or they be kept together because they all came from the same place. Remember, according to Denon, they all came from the tomb of a priest.”
“Recognizing the statues will be easy. What worries me is how we’re going to identify the papyrus scroll we’re looking for,” remarked Lisa. “I hope your suspicions turn out wrong and the language annulus works for understanding other types of writing.”
Miss Rotherwick nodded; the girl’s worry was well-founded.
“As you know, we think the papyrus scroll we have in the museum is one of a pair. It would therefore be logical to assume that the two scrolls would be kept together,” she replied.
“But how will we recognize them?” asked Lisa. “All papyrus scrolls look alike.”
Miss Rotherwick flipped through the documents in the folder and showed them another picture, on which she had highlighted some symbols with a phosphorescent marker.
“Look closely. This is a picture of the papyrus scroll that we have,” she explained. “Now, there are two features that will help you to recognize it. The first is this series of symbols: a cross next to a woman, this symbol shaped like a river, three more crosses and a woman again. This means ‘beauty of beauties’ and it’s the name used to refer to the woman described in the scroll.”
“Nefertiti!” exclaimed Charlie.
“Exactly. We believe they used a name similar to hers, but not the exact name, possibly to protect her identity,” replied the woman. “But we’re almost certain that this name will appear on both scrolls, because in their writings the ancient Egyptians tended to repeat the names of people over and over. Furthermore, it’s too unique a name to appear on other scrolls, so there is no chance of making a mistake.”
“And what’s the other clue that will help us recognize them?” asked Charlie.
“The one we have has ‘VD 1/2’ written on the back, so the second one should have ‘VD 2/2’. However, it would be best also to check for the symbols I just explained to you, because the scholars may have numbered other scrolls in the same way.”
“And when we find it, we bring it back?” asked Lisa.
“Take the camera and get a picture of it. Then try to hide it inside one of these pieces,” replied Miss Rotherwick, showing them some pictures of various other objects.
The children stared at her, bewildered by her answer.
“All these pieces have survived up to the present day,” explained the woman. “Some are in the British Museum, and others are in the Louvre. You have various options so you can hide it in the first one you find and then tell me which one it is.”
“But wouldn’t it be easier to bring it back with us?” asked Charlie.
Miss Rotherwick fell silent for a moment.
“Yes, but I don’t know whether we should,” she replied at last. “I mean, I have my doubts about the degree to which we should be changing things simply because it suits us.”
“But if we hide them, we’ll be changing things anyway. I don’t understand,” said the boy.
“It’s hard to know where to set the limits, my dear. But I believe that this is the most appropriate way of doing it.”
Charlie shrugged. Lisa said nothing. She didn’t understand or agree with Miss Rotherwick’s overly cautious approach, and once they were in Cairo she would do what seemed to make most sense to her, which was simply to bring the papyrus scroll back with them.
“How about if we go tomorrow?” suggested the girl. “We’ll go to Cairo as soon as we get back from school, and seeing as how we’ll get back at the same time we left, we’ll still have time to come and tell you how it went.”
“That sounds excellent,” replied Miss Rotherwick. “I’ll expect you tomorrow at the same time. And I’ll bring a special tr
eat to celebrate.”
. . .
The next day, on the way back to her office at lunchtime, Miss Rotherwick passed by a pastry shop to buy the treat she had promised the children. The Old Bakery was one of her favorite places, a shop decked out in a traditional English style, replete with charm and good taste. They had everything there that a child or adult with a weakness for sweets could dream of; entering the shop was like stepping inside the story of “Hansel and Gretel”... without the threat of being eaten by a wicked witch. There was a wide selection of chocolate houses, cakes decorated with pretty figures made out of sugar, candies that looked so beautiful that it almost seemed a shame to eat them, and, of course, delicious pies and pastries.
Miss Rotherwick strolled around the display cabinets, more to admire the products than to check what they had before making her choice. She had already decided that she would buy some brownies and a box of handmade chocolates; the children loved anything with chocolate and these were the best in the whole city.
While the shop assistant prepared her order, Miss Rotherwick had to take a seat at one of the little tables in one corner. It was the third time that day she had felt ill.
She asked for a glass of water, which the shop assistant served her on a small silver tray with a tea biscuit and a piece of chocolate. She also placed a paper bag with her order on the table, and a little plate with the bill.
Miss Rotherwick took a sip of water and a bite of the chocolate, although her wandering thoughts kept her from really enjoying it. She knew that she couldn’t keep putting it off; she couldn’t go on ignoring the warning signs any longer. She finished off the water quickly, and then made a quick call to Dr. Harris’ office. When she was done she paid the bill, said goodbye to the shop assistant, and left the bakery.
. . .
Charlie and Lisa appeared in an enormous hall filled with objects of Egyptian art set out on different shelves along the walls and in the middle of the room. The coordinates provided by Miss Rotherwick had been as precise as the rest of her information, and the children were right in the middle of the storage hall at the Institut d’Égypte.
In spite of the limited space available for all the pieces stored there, it was obvious that they had been arranged with an almost reverential care that could have left any visitor awestruck. The fierce afternoon sun fought its way through a huge curtain that covered an enormous window. A few rays of light slipped through the cracks and gaps in the cloth, illuminating little specks of dust that floated in the air in a slow and erratic dance, and finally bounced against the stone floor to be scattered all around the room. The Wilford siblings looked around them in wonder, captivated by the magical and charm-filled atmosphere, so very different from the distant coldness of modern museums.
Hanging from nearly all the objects was a cord with a little sign on which was written what seemed to be an identification number. When she saw them, Lisa realized that the first thing they needed to do was to find the logbook, which would contain a brief description of each piece and the number that identified it. In this way, they would be able to find what they were looking for quickly.
The girl scanned a few shelves stacked with books and documents, trying to find the logbook among them. They had to hurry, because it was still daytime and they might be discovered if someone entered the room.
“Look, it’s here,” said Charlie, pulling away a piece of yellowed cloth covering a large black rock. “The Rosetta Stone. I don’t know why, but it looks cooler to me here than when I’ve seen it at the museum.”
Lisa approached it to touch its surface with her hand, something she would never be able to do in her era.
“I don’t understand a thing it says, in any of the three languages. Do you?” she asked.
“No, not a thing,” replied her brother. “So Helen was right. The annulus doesn’t work with writing.”
“Cover it up and get out the pictures of the statues,” said Lisa, pointing to the cloth bag that Charlie’s backpack had been changed into.
The clothing annulus had transformed the children’s clothes into the attire that would be worn by an Arabic boy and girl of their ages. Charlie’s bright orange backpack was now a cloth bag with an equally colorful handcrafted design, but none of the objects inside it had been changed by the annulus. Charlie opened the bag, took out the folder that Miss Rotherwick had given them and searched through the papers until he found the pictures of the statues. With these in hand he began looking all around the room, while Lisa checked the historical information that their director had written down on the floor plan of the building.
“Denon brought the statues and the papyrus scrolls here in August 1799,” she said, while walking toward a shelf containing several books.
Lisa looked them over, trying to find some indication that would tell her whether one of them might be the logbook. The dates written on the spine of one gave her a clue.
“1798, 1799... it must be here,” she said, pulling it out and opening it up on a table a few feet to the right.
She began flipping hurriedly through the pages, leaping briskly from one date to another, from January to March, March to June, July, August... She was feeling increasingly nervous because of the noises coming from outside which, although far off, indicated that there was activity in the building.
Charlie walked around comparing the statues on the shelves with the ones in the photographs, oblivious to his sister’s anxiety.
“What language are we speaking?” he asked. “What do you think? Would it be French, English, or Arabic?”
Lisa heard him but didn’t give his question any thought. Her brain was focused on listening for any suspicious noise and on making sense of the meaning of the dates entered in the logbook. Not only were they written in French, a language she knew but of course was far from fluent in, but they were also handwritten in a calligraphy that seemed almost as unintelligible to her as Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“Here they are,” she said suddenly, her pulse racing. “‘Date of deposit: 10 August 1799. Pieces 99-203 to 99-207. Objects from the collection of M. Vivant Denon. Two papyrus scrolls and three small sculptures from an ancient tomb in the city of Thebes, Upper Egypt’.”
“Say the numbers again,” said Charlie.
But Lisa didn’t respond; or rather, she responded with a silence so eloquent that it alarmed him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, moving toward her.
“There’s more,” replied his sister, in a tone of voice that did not bode well. “‘Date of withdrawal: 17 August 1799. Pieces 99-204 and 99-207. Withdrawn by Monsieur Vivant Denon’.”
“We’ve come to 30 September 1800, so they were taken away more than a year ago,” said Charlie.
“I don’t understand,” said Lisa ruminatively. “Why did he deposit the pieces here if he was going to take them away again only seven days later?”
“I don’t know,” said Charlie with a shrug. “This Denon guy must have thought this was a bank instead of an institute.”
“Well, according to this, three of the five pieces he brought are still here. Maybe we’ll be lucky and the second papyrus scroll will be one of them. You look for the pieces numbered 99-203, 99-205 and 99-206, while I take some pictures and write everything down.”
Charlie did as he was told and went back to the shelves where the ancient artifacts were kept.
“They’re here,” he said a few minutes later. “But there are only two statues; the same ones in the photos that Helen gave us.”
“Those are the ones in the Louvre,” said Lisa, coming over to take pictures of them. “In a year’s time, the French scholars will hide them so they can take them to France.”
She wrote down the log number of each piece on the pictures that Miss Rotherwick had given them.
“Let’s look for the scrolls,” she said.
“If my math skills are any good, I’m afraid we’re only going to find one of them,” said Charlie. “Denon brought in five pieces and too
k away two; and these statues are supposed to be two of the three pieces he left here.”
“I know, but we have to make sure. Hurry,” replied his sister, whose anxiety was growing quickly.
She went back to the shelf where she had found the logbook, and on checking its contents she found two large binders tied shut with ribbons.
“They must be here. You check that one and I’ll check this one,” ordered Lisa, handing one of the binders to Charlie.
With some difficulty, the boy lowered the weighty tome onto the table and opened it up.
“There’s nothing but drawings in here,” he said, closing it up again.
Lisa put hers on the table and began looking through it.
“This is the one with the scrolls,” she said, turning them over with the utmost care.
Between one papyrus scroll and the next was a sheet of paper with the date and log number of each one. Lisa stopped at one of the sheets and read aloud:
“‘10 August 1799. 99-203 (papyrus numbered VD 1/2) and 99-204 (idem. VD 2/2). Withdrawn by Monsieur Denon on 17 August 1799.’ He took it too!”
She took a deep breath, turned the page with the notes and braced herself to confront the raw evidence. The scroll she had before her was the same one her mother would find 215 years later in the collection at the British Museum. It was identical to the photograph that Miss Rotherwick had given them, and had the symbols representing the nickname given to Queen Nefertiti. But the second scroll was gone; Monsieur Denon had taken it away a few days after depositing it there, without any logical explanation that the children could find for doing so.
Lisa looked at the paper with the notes for a moment longer, fighting to control her profound feeling of disappointment rather than allowing it to control her. The last time she had failed to do so, in Nefertiti’s empty tomb, she had ended up paying for it with a fight with her brother.
Keeping her cool, she took photographs of everything with the rigor of a professional researcher.