The Strange Round Bird: Or the Poet, the King, and the Mysterious Men in Black

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  Noah nodded. “Let’s go to the laboratory. We can show you what we have found. We have learned much from the books and from what Sir Edward read to me, ‘Fit magna terribilis’ was in the poem of Muhabi. Sir Edward let me see the papers.” Without waiting for the others, Noah left the room.

  Everyone clambered to keep up with him. Faye thought about the papers of Sir Edward. Then she remembered the paper from Sir Edward. Faye suddenly felt in her pocket. It was the note from Sir Edward. She had forgotten about it and that Sir Edward had tried to get it to Noah. She ran to Noah as they reached the laboratory.

  “Noah,” she said, out of breath. “I’m sorry, I forgot. Sir Edward wanted you to have this.” She pulled out the paper.

  “Now?” Noah asked Faye. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t want to keep forgetting,” she said, handing him the note.

  Noah unfolded the paper. It said only this: The poet and the king are one and the same.

  Noah’s mind went racing. What did this mean?

  Suddenly, things seemed to fall into place.

  “Wait!” called Noah. “We need to ask Mr. Bell.” In the laboratory, Wallace was taking out their notes and Jasper was bringing out the drawings from the butterfly project. They stopped, confused, but waited for Noah, who handed the paper to Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell read it and nodded.

  “What does this mean?” Noah asked.

  “It is the truth, Master Canto-Sagas,” said Mr. Bell. “Muhabi, The Poet King. Suleiman, The Sultan Poet. They are, of course, one and the same. Suleiman was many things—a brilliant man, a lover of science and invention, and a poet.”

  Wallace nearly dropped his microscope. Faye’s mouth fell open. Attention was on Mr. Bell. The Poet King? The children had been searching for Muhabi and Suleiman but never once considered the possibility that they were the same person. Everything began to quickly make sense—the death of his wife, the sorrow, the secret.

  “So the sad story about his wife and the strange poems…that was all Suleiman, the king?” Noah was trying to fit that information into his brain. “And Il Magna?”

  Faye had been running the name over and over in her head. “In Latin,” she said, “magna means ‘great.’”

  “Very good, Miss Vigyanveta,” said Mr. Bell. “However, the language we are speaking when we say ‘Il Magna’ is not Latin. In the language of Malta, ‘Il magna’ means ‘the engine.’”

  There was a long silence. Finally, Lucy broke it. “Is it a big engine or a little engine?”

  Faye was about to scold the little girl for such a silly question when she realized it was not silly after all. “What kind of an engine would be so much trouble?”

  “And what engines were around in the 1500s?” Noah asked.

  “You must broaden your perspective of what an engine is, boy,” said Nikola Tesla.

  “It is not merely an engine, as you are thinking,” said Gwendolyn Vigyanveta. “It is…um…darling Raj?” She looked nervously at her husband in hopes of getting support.

  “You must consider what an engine does,” said Rajesh Vigyanveta, holding his wife’s hand. “An engine drives a thing. It is the soul of the thing, the life. Without the engine, the thing is inert, unmoving, dead. It is the engine that is the power behind anything.”

  “Dr. Vigyanveta speaks the truth,” said Mr. Bell, “and Miss Astraea Brett is justified in her demands that we share.”

  “I apologize,” Miss Brett said, blushing. “I did not mean to demand. I only—”

  Mr. Bell’s raised hand stopped her. “You are just, my dear. And we shall set things right.”

  Dr. Tobias Modest stood up. “Mr. Bell, are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

  Jasper looked at his father. “Do you not trust us, Father?”

  Dr. Tobias Modest looked as if someone had slapped him in the face. It was as if he had never considered the question, never considered that his children were to be trusted or not to be trusted, that they were independent people, fellow scientists, who deserved to know what madness had descended upon their lives and put them in constant danger.

  Dr. Modest reached out to his son. It was as if he was looking at Jasper, the person, for the first time. “Of course I trust you, my son. I…I’ve been so busy trying to protect you because you are so precious to me that I did not take into account that you were your own man. You are my son, my pride and joy, but I failed to see you as a person who I can trust and who does deserve to know. I am sorry.”

  Jasper looked deeply into his father’s eyes. He allowed a few moments to pass before he offered a smile. “Thank you, Father. I understand you. Thank you for understanding me, too.”

  Dr. Modest nodded in appreciation.

  “I want to be seven,” said Lucy.

  “You are seven,” said Faye.

  “I want to be seven people,” said Lucy, “or twelve.” She looked around expecting the others to appreciate her generosity. No one seemed to understand her—again. “Isn’t Mr. Bell going to let us all be the seventh person?”

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Bell, the only one unflustered by Lucy-speak. He understood that she was referring to the warning from the first scroll he had read about the dangers of learning too much, the introduction to the mystery. “Indeed you shall be seven. However, it will take time to tell. We shall begin now.” He gestured for everyone to take chairs.

  Jasper offered, “We know Suleiman and Muhabi, the king and the poet, are one. We know that there was some great tragedy, the loss of his wife, Roxalene or Hürrem Sultan or whatever she was called. We know that there was a betrayer, Kor, whom we suspect is part of something else. And we know that everything circled around Il Magna, even though the evil went back farther than this treasured engine.”

  “You figured all these things out yourselves?” asked Dr. Banneker, in surprise.

  “You are cleverer than we were. We never even thought to …” Dr. Isobel Modest shook her head, not finishing her thought out loud.

  “You are truly remarkable, you children,” said Dr. Rajesh Vigyanveta. “We, as children, simply allowed so much to happen to us.”

  “Except Ariana,” said Nikola Tesla. “While I may have had moments of introspection, I must concede that we, as a group, just accepted things that Ariana found unacceptable. She made demands. She investigated. She was not made to withstand such mystery…and loss.”

  Noah looked at Nikola Tesla, then at Mr. Bell.

  “I don’t understand,” Noah looked again from one to the other. “What has my mother got to do with this? We have been trying to figure out what you are doing that has brought us all into danger.”

  Mr. Bell nodded at Noah. “It is true, Master Canto-Sagas. You have already begun to unfold the strange and ancient story.”

  “But we only know bits and bobs and it’s all in pieces,” Lucy whined slightly. “Please, Mr. Bell, please tell the story from the beginning.”

  “Then I shall turn back the pages to the beginning,” said Mr. Bell. “Or, at least, I shall begin before the Young Inventors Guild came to be.”

  “You know about us?” asked Lucy.

  “I know all about you, Miss Modest,” said Mr. Bell, “and I have had the honor of knowing many of your confrères, your members, past and present. But let us first step back to the man who set so much in motion, a man who meant to bring only beauty, poetry, peace, and power to his kingdom—Suleiman, the Magnificent or, as some of us know him, Muhabi, the poet.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE POET WHO WOULD BE KING

  OR

  THE SOPRANO’S

  BIG BANG THEORY

  Mr. Bell folded his hands and began: “The sixteenth century was a time of renaissance and invention throughout Europe. From creation and imagination came new fields of study. From great minds came machines, devices, and inventions that changed the very world around them. Europe was considered the birthplace of this new era of Enlightenment. The Ottoman Empire, however, was consider
ed savage—powerful, but not an intellectual force in the eyes of the world. But this was not true for everyone.

  “Suleiman I, son of Sultan Selim the Grim, was a gentle, bright, and beautiful boy. He showed signs of great intelligence from an early age. At seven, he was sent to Istanbul to be educated in science and the arts. At thirteen, without the consent of his father, Suleiman went to Europe to study with some of the great masters. His tutors were the great men of science, philosophy, and literature who would one day leave their mark. Young Suleiman learned of wondrous discoveries, of great authors, historians, and poets.

  “It was in Europe that he came to understand his two very distinct talents. Among his fellow students, he was famous for his poetry. His teachers raved about his fluid tongue and his ability to weave words into song. But he was also, at heart, a man of invention. He was a smith in every sense of the word—a wordsmith, a goldsmith, a blacksmith, a builder of all sorts.

  “While he gained fame as a poet, Suleiman became an excellent goldsmith creating delicate works of art and becoming a great artisan of the gold leaf. As he worked with gold, he marveled at the strange and unusual qualities of the leaf. He was fascinated by the way the leafing, thin and fine, could be moved without touching.

  “Creating energy from what seemed like the air, he found, was enough to pick up the tissue-thin gold. He wondered about that odd quality and how such a thing was possible. He felt there was magic and energy contained in gold and he believed that, beyond gold, there was energy in nature that should be better understood.”

  “Was he away from his daddy very long?” asked Lucy, worried young Suleiman must have felt homesick. She curled up next to Faye and put her head in Faye’s lap.

  “Yes, Miss Modest,” said Mr. Bell. “Suleiman traveled very far. He saw the stars above deserts and the snow on mountain peaks. He found rivers that turned into oceans and caves that glowed.

  “In his travels, he wrote about love and beauty. He became famous for his words. Then in 1520, with the death of Selim I, the young Suleiman inherited the throne. He became sultan of the empire at the age of twenty-four. Suleiman, who had been admired as a prince, was quickly embraced as a ruler. In his kingdom, Kanuni Sultan Süleyman was known for his fairness and compassion and for his strength and precision. He was called Kanuni (lawgiver) at home and Suleiman the Magnificent in Europe. As a poet, he was called Muhabi.

  “Almost immediately upon taking the throne, he successfully proved himself to be a smart military leader. Still a poet at heart, he used his strength to communicate his passion for his people, and won the intense loyalty of all.

  “Even those he conquered found him fair and became loyal subjects. The Empire grew in his hands and, on his watch, it reached a level of power and respect that the world had never seen. With this power, Suleiman felt he could embrace his science and his art, his alchemy and his poetry.”

  “What a fellow,” said Noah, who stifled a rebellious yawn.

  “Indeed, Master Canto-Sagas,” agreed Mr. Bell, looking at the worn faces of his tired audience. Lucy was snoring and Wallace’s glasses hung down from the tip of his nose.

  “No, please,” begged Jasper. “We want to know.” His arm slipped from his chin and his head almost his the floor. He had been sitting on the rug but had slipped into a recline.

  “Perhaps you should go to bed,” suggested Dr. Tobias Modest.

  But Jasper shook his head, even as his eyes began to close. “We want to know.”

  “And you shall, once you have rested. Let us end this part of the story,” said Mr. Bell standing, “with Suleiman, the man who would set in motion a force to power a hundred worlds.”

  A loud noise woke Faye. She sat up with a start. She tried to stand, forgetting that she was presently serving as someone’s bed. But Lucy, still sleeping, slipped easily from her lap to the chair.

  Disoriented, Faye looked for the salon clock and realized they were still in the laboratory. She remembered Mr. Bell had started the tale of Suleiman, and then Lucy fell asleep and started snoring. Everyone was sleepy, but they wanted to stay together. Faye had fallen asleep sitting in the armchair. Lucy promptly fell asleep on Faye. Jasper was still lying on the rug. Someone had brought blankets. Jasper was curled up next to his.

  Wallace was slumped over his worktable with his cheek pressed against the microscope and a blanket trailing from the chair where he must have fallen asleep. He must have gotten up in the night. Something had jolted Faye awake, and it wasn’t her dream. She thought she heard it again. It sounded like…but it couldn’t be. And then, she recognized the source of the noise. It was the photographic printer.

  It couldn’t be. Faye rubbed her eyes. The butterflies must have stopped sending photos hours ago. The batteries lost power, even as they recharged. By now, every butterfly would be still. Faye approached the printer. Suddenly, she was wide awake.

  “Wake up!” she cried, holding a photograph in disbelief.

  Dr. Banneker had to hold up the photograph so everyone could see. The parents and children, Nikola Tesla, Mr. Bell, as well as a few brothers in black, were all trying to look at the photograph at once. Faye and the other members of the Young Inventors Guild had run through the halls like Paul Revere, waking anyone and everyone they could. The parents hurried out and Nikola Tesla, who was wearing a nightcap and cotton gloves, joined in the race to the laboratory to see the photograph.

  “It’s amazing,” Faye insisted. “All the images were returned but this one…how could it happen? And the glowing message …”

  “Clearly, Ariana recalibrated the homing system and reversed the signal from the camera,” said Nikola Tesla. “Fabulous woman, Ariana. She was always quite deft at mechanical, electrical, and chemical sciences.”

  “My mother? You must be talking in your sleep,” said Noah. “Mother is an artist, not a—”

  “Your mother is a remarkable woman, Noah,” said Nikola Tesla. “There are many things you will learn about—”

  “You’re talking about my mother,” said Noah.

  Tesla huffed. “Ariana is perhaps more brilliant than most everyone who dare call themselves scientists.”

  Looking carefully at the photograph, everyone gawked in amazement. It was nearly dark, except for a message written in glowing letters. It read, “I am here.” Below that were coordinates etched on the lens.

  “She must have been able to see the etched glass,” said Dr. Banneker. “She has vision like a hawk.”

  “How did she get the letters to glow?” asked Wallace in amazement.

  “We can ask her when she’s home,” said Noah, cracking his crooked smile for the first time in more days than Faye cared to count. “We have to tell Father.”

  There was a sudden scramble for action, and total chaos. They had made contact with Ariana and everyone felt like celebrating. The cheer, however, made everyone a bit clumsy. A brother in black whispered something to Mr. Bell. Noah slid by on the stone floor, almost upending a table in the corridor, as he ran to the infirmary to tell his father.

  “She’s somehow sent a message,” Noah explained. “We are going to bring her home.”

  Noah looked at his father, who seemed too frail and weak.

  “We believe the fever has come down some,” said Miss Brett. “It seemed to break in the night. It returned this morning, but not as high.”

  “Father,” Noah spoke right into his father’s ear. “I am going to get Mother.”

  It was faint, but Noah felt it. His father squeezed the fingers of his left hand.

  “Go on,” said Miss Brett. “Let me make him comfortable and I’ll be in soon to join you.”

  Noah nodded and ran back to the laboratory.

  Jasper began to explain the part of the plan that he and Noah agreed would be essential.

  “You have created an entire set of radio-operated chess men?” Even Nikola Tesla was impressed.

  Within an hour, the plan was set. It sounded crazy. But it was no crazier than anyth
ing else in their crazy lives. They went over each detail to be sure it was clear to everyone. They met in Mr. Bell’s office before heading out.

  “As Master Banneker requested, we shall go over things once again,” said Mr. Bell. “Four carriages and three single riders shall set out.”

  Noah raised the sack of chessmen, minus the pawns. “I have our army of foot soldiers here.”

  “Good, Master Canto-Sagas,” said Mr. Bell. “They will act as a signal to Master Canto-Sagas, Isobel, and Gwendolyn. Masters Modest and Banneker and Miss Vigyanveta, you shall be on watch.”

  “I shall be the black knight,” said Noah. He would be holding the knight in his pocket. The levers would be used to signal him if the beacon pieces picked up any danger.

  Mr. Bell nodded. “And Isobel, you and Gwendolyn will hold the white queen. Masters Modest and Banneker and Miss Vigyanveta shall be able to hear, from the beacons, if there are guards and where the guards are. Ariana was able to send this note.

  “We must assume she has been left there, more or less, as her captors believe her unable to successfully escape. From the map, we can see it is far from almost anything. If someone is there, our soldiers will pick up the sound. Placing the chessmen soldiers at even intervals will create a broad area of radio reception. You will hear if the enemy is near. You will be able to signal the black knight and the white queen.”

  “We must leave the carriages far afield,” said Dr. Banneker, looking at the map.

  “Yes, we must go the final mile on foot,” agreed Dr. Tobias Modest. “We cannot attract attention.”

  “I shall go directly to the hut where she is kept,” said Noah, “and have the women meet her at the nearby minaret.”

  “You have a team behind you,” said Faye, reassuringly, “and we all plan to do this together.”

  “I only wish my father was well,” said Noah, “Before we go, I need to let him know again that we are going to save Mother.”