by Jude Watson
Jake’s laptop was secure, so at least they could now do research on the web. Through their father, Dr. Mark Rosenbloom, an archaeologist, they had access to online libraries that Amy and Dan could never have consulted. Since spending the winter in Rome, Jake’s Italian was close to fluent, and Atticus was a Latin scholar. They had translated in a few hours what would have taken her days.
“My question is this: Why was an Irish woman back then fluent in Italian?” Jake asked. “Highly unusual.”
“She was a scholar,” Amy said. “She mentions that her father taught her Latin.”
“Latin I understand, even though it’s unusual for her to learn it,” Jake said.
“She did come from a family of bards, Jake,” Atticus said.
“Beards?” Dan asked.
“Bards,” Atticus said with a snort of laughter. “Poets. The learned scholars of Ireland.”
“I bet they had beards, though,” Dan said, and Atticus laughed and threw an eraser at him.
“The Irish have an amazing scholarly history,” Jake said. “Bards were more than poets. They founded schools, usually had nobleman patrons. They were revered in Ireland. But —”
“They were all men,” Amy finished. “Typical.”
“It just doesn’t add up,” Jake said, frowning. “And this code in the back . . .”
“Is that unusual, too?” Dan asked.
“Yes and no,” Jake said. “Actually, cryptography was widely used in sixteenth-century Europe. Queen Elizabeth had a school for espionage. It was a little later, but still, I’m not surprised at the code. But why is she using it in a household accounts book? And it’s so odd looking . . . reminds me of something I can’t place.”
“You know what Dad says,” Atticus put in. “When you’re stumped, return to the source.” He turned to Amy. “Can I look at the secret room?”
“Sure. I’ll show you.”
They took the stairs up to the second floor. Amy pulled down the sconce, and the stairs rose.
“That is just amazing-cool,” Atticus said, bounding into the space. He peered at her, his eyes wide and curious behind his glasses. “Do you think Grace could have left you a clue? About the code in the book, I mean. Dan told me she left a clue about the alphabet lock.”
“If she did, I don’t know what it is.” Amy plopped tiredly in the white chair, her hands clasped. “She said the struggle never ends. That it’s only abandoned. She knew that even if we destroyed the serum we could never be free.”
“That’s what spooks Dan,” Atticus said, prowling around the room. “He keeps waiting to have a regular life. It never happens. He’s super scared it never will.”
She smiled weakly. “How come you know my brother better than I do?”
“Aw. With Dan you have to listen to his underneath, you know? Not so much what he says. Anyway, I know how he feels. Ever since my mom died, my dad thinks he’s Indiana Jones. I keep waiting for him to settle down, but instead Jake and I just get yanked around the world.”
“I’m sorry, Atticus,” Amy said. “I thought you liked living in Rome.”
He smiled. “I do. Now. I just had to let go of wanting something else, that’s all. And realize my life is pretty cool. And having a brother like Jake raise me is amazing-cool, too.”
“I always knew you were smart,” Amy said. “But I didn’t know you were so wise.”
“Not so smart if I can’t help you,” Atticus said, blushing furiously. “So is there anything else here that would give you a hint? Is there anything odd, anything in the room that just doesn’t seem like Grace?”
“It’s all Grace, really,” Amy said. “She loved white and blue. The table is old, the Windsor chair . . .” She looked across the room and saw herself reflected in the mirror, a girl without a clue. “Everything but that mirror, I guess. I mean, she didn’t like ornate things, and it’s gold . . . and if you sit in this chair, you look right at yourself. . . .”
Atticus looked at the mirror. He pushed his glasses up his nose in the characteristic gesture that meant he was thinking hard. Then he spun around and laughed. “My brain is exploding! Amy — it’s the easiest code in the world! It’s not just code, it’s mirror writing!”
“Mirror writing? Are you sure?”
“Elementary! Come on!”
They hurried downstairs, where Atticus excitedly told the others about his discovery.
“Of course!” Jake exclaimed. He hit himself lightly on the side of the head. “Sometimes things are too obvious.”
“This shouldn’t be so hard,” Atticus said. “Olivia is writing an instruction to Madeleine, right? ‘My Joy, my Song, you have my charge.’ If she made it too hard, Madeleine wouldn’t have been able to figure it out.”
“That’s why the references might have been things that they both knew,” Jake said, tapping his pencil against the desk. “A family vocab. Like the way Grace spoke to Amy and Dan. Using the familiar.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the teacher Olivia talks about in the poem?” Amy asked. “ ‘Mio maestro.’ ”
“It’s more than a teacher, actually,” Jake said. “ ‘. . . mio maestro di vita.’ Teacher of life. It implies someone who teaches more than facts — all the aspects of life, a way to live. . . . Like a mentor.”
Dan recited from memory. “ ‘. . . and take up battle not with arms but wisdom gained from ancient land / kept close and passed from hand to hand / to mio maestro di vita, thee of timeless woman, universal man.’ ”
Atticus sat up, his dreads flying. “What did Grace say in her letter?” he asked Amy with sudden urgency. “About the struggle?”
Amy picked up Grace’s journal. “ ‘I am sorry to say that our struggle is never finished, only abandoned.’ ” She looked up. The two brothers were rising from their chairs, their faces full of disbelief, discovery, revelation. . . .
She rose to her feet. “What?”
“ ‘Art is never finished, only abandoned’!” Atticus crowed. “It’s a quote. Quite famous, actually.”
“Not to us, dude,” Dan said.
“There’s an old game Jake and I used to play. You know how you memorize quotes from famous people in history?”
“Constantly,” Dan said.
“And the mirror,” Jake said. “And universal man, of course! Vitruvian Man!”
Amy frowned. “That famous drawing of the man with his arms out? But that’s by . . .”
“And timeless woman!” Atticus crowed. “The Mona Lisa!”
Amy felt the knowledge roar through her body. “Are you talking about Leonardo da Vinci?”
“Gosh,” Dan said. “Even I’ve heard of him.”
“Leonardo was Olivia’s teacher,” Atticus said. “That’s why she knew Italian.”
Jake excitedly returned to the book. “That’s what the coded pages are. An account of her travels, but in it there must be something Leonardo gave her. ‘Then he to me bequeathed it, and with instruction bid / and I, through his own methods, hid.’ Now that we know this, we can crack the code, I know we can.”
“This is so amazing,” Atticus breathed. He stared at Dan and Amy in wonder, as though they were suddenly priceless works of art. “The most famous man in the Renaissance, and he taught your great-great . . .”
“. . . great-great et cetera grandmother,” Dan finished.
“The antidote is in those coded pages,” Amy said. “I just know it.”
Which makes the book just as dangerous as the serum. Because if we possess it, someone else will want it.
Yes, Grace. The struggle never ends. You knew that.
Jake sat, writing notes on a piece of scrap paper. Atticus tapped his toothbrush on the table as he looked over Jake’s shoulder. He was kicking his long, skinny legs, and his feet in bright red socks looked too big for his body.
He was
just a kid.
And Jake . . . the way he made room for Atticus, the way he casually put his hand on the tapping toothbrush to stop it . . .
Jake was Atticus’s caretaker, his protector. They had a distant dad, a dead mother. The two of them would be lost without each other.
Here they were, alive in the moment, precious life coursing through them.
If she allowed them to help, they could die.
And she would be standing over another open grave.
So much emotion welled up in her chest that she was afraid she’d burst into sobs.
Amy cleared her throat. She looked at the two brothers.
“You’re going to have to leave,” she said.
Chapter 21
Ian had jumped on a bike and headed in the opposite direction from Meenalappa. It had taken him exactly three minutes to realize the place was a backwater. A pub, a grocery, a church, and a store selling rubber boots and tweed caps. No, thank you. He would head to the larger village of Ballycreel.
He pedaled hard, cooling his hot cheeks. For once he didn’t mind the mist. If it wasn’t raining in Ireland, it was about to or just did.
He probably should have been nicer to Jake. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the guy. It was just that when Jake and Atticus had showed up, he’d gotten, well . . .
Jealous.
Jealous of the way Amy suddenly had eyes for nobody but Jake and was trying so hard to hide it. How Dan lit up when he saw Atticus.
Nobody lit up for Ian.
He knew he wasn’t the nicest person. . . .
Natalie understood him. She had been equally as . . . not nice as he was.
But he was trying! He was learning! People didn’t get nice by accident, did they? They had parents who were nice. Nice to their kids, nice to others. His parents . . . well, they didn’t understand the concept of “nice.”
And they never, ever would have understood the concept of “lonely.”
That word had never been in the Kabra vocab, but it had been bouncing around Ian’s head lately. It was shocking how many times he found himself saying, “If only Natalie were here . . .”
He had fought with Natalie and been bored by Natalie and sometimes even felt he despised her, but she’d been his best friend. Maybe his only friend.
Losing his sister . . . well, it had turned out to be much harder than he expected. Sure, he no longer had to follow Natalie around Harrods, holding her purchases, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, exactly. When Nellie had called to say that Amy and Dan needed his help, he had sprung into action immediately. He’d packed a few things and taken off. He hadn’t even pressed his trousers.
Nobody likes you, nobody likes you, nobody likes you.
My sister is dead, my sister is dead. . . .
The bicycle wheels went round and round, slithering on the wet country road. The words in his head revolved.
And suddenly he realized he was far from the cottage, and lost.
The mist was now rain. Ian wanted to kick himself, but he’d probably fall off the bike.
He bumped off to the side to turn the bike around and took out his phone to consult GPS. Then he remembered that Pony had disabled it for safety reasons. The protective cover told him to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. He snorted at that. Did he really have a choice right now?
At that moment, a Range Rover barreled around the curve, sending him diving into the grass. The car smashed into his bike, which flew after him.
The Range Rover driver slammed on the brakes. With a squeal of tires, it backed up.
“You bloody fool!” Ian shouted.
A girl with red hair stuck her head out of the driver’s side window. “Well, that didn’t go well. What were you doing in the middle of the road?” she asked. He heard the lilt of a brogue in her voice. He couldn’t wait to get back to London, where people didn’t have music in their voices.
Ian popped to his feet. “I was not in the middle of the road! I was on the shoulder!”
“In case you haven’t noticed, this road doesn’t have a shoulder,” she answered. “It’s a country lane, not much wider than a path, actually. You have to watch yourself on our roads, you tourists.”
Ian bristled at being called a tourist. “Maybe you have to watch your driving!”
She smiled, and Ian suddenly noticed that the girl was ravishingly pretty. She had one dimple in her left cheek. What kind of a girl had only one dimple? Ian didn’t care for asymmetry, but somehow this particular one . . . worked.
“Sure, I suppose I do,” she said. “But it’s my da’s car, and so I like to give it a workout and bring it back muddy. By the way, are you all right?”
“Think so, thanks for the afterthought,” Ian said.
Her smile turned into a grin. She opened the door and jumped out. “Oh, dear, look at your bicycle. I’m afraid it’s rather smashed.”
Ian saw that the front wheel had bent. “This just tops off my day.”
“Don’t fret, I’ve got a nice big car and time on my hands.”
Before Ian could protest, she had lifted up the bike with surprising ease and deposited it in the trunk of the car. “Now. Where can I drop you?”
Normally, this would count as one stellar day. He’d gladly trade a smashed bicycle for a pretty girl in a very expensive car. But not today. He had to get back to Bhaile Anois. The argument with Jake had been petty and stupid.
“Don’t worry, I’m not a criminal. I’m just a girl in her daddy’s car who is willing to rescue you. I’m Maura, by the way.”
“Roger,” Ian said, because while this was an extremely pretty girl, he was still a Lucian, and a Kabra. Any personal information was on a need-to-know basis.
“Hey now, you dropped your phone.” She bent and picked it up and handed it to him. Their fingers touched, briefly, and Ian felt something, some kind of charge from just touching her skin.
He felt his face heat up. That never happened. To cover, he dropped the phone in his pocket. “You could give me a lift to Ballycreel.” The village was big enough that it would provide cover. And he could hike back to Bhaile Anois from there.
“Are you staying there, then? At the Arms, or the Pocket of Fish?”
“Pocket of Fish,” Ian said.
“Climb in,” she said. “I know a shortcut.”
Ian climbed in. Maura took off, driving way too fast. Ian tried not to clutch the door handle.
“We live in Dublin, but we have a house down in Doolin. A castle, more like. I prefer an Irish castle to a Scottish one, don’t you? A better sense of scale. The more modern, the better, if you ask me. Those sixteenth-century ones are drafty, no matter how much they pump up the central heating.”
Okay, not only was she pretty but she could compare the merits of castles. This was his type of girl.
“I don’t have that much experience with castles,” Ian said. Despite the fact that his father now lived in one.
She gave him a quick once-over. “Don’t be so modest. Your jacket is cashmere from Brioni’s last season. Your shoes are handmade from John Lobb. And don’t get me started on your haircut.”
“Actually, I prefer an estate,” Ian said. “Early nineteenth century, with central heating. You’re right. Castles are drafty.”
She grinned. “Here’s the shortcut.”
She jerked the wheel, and the Range Rover slammed onto a dirt track that was probably for sheep. Over the rattle of the car, Ian shouted, “Is this a road?”
“It is if I say it is!” Maura shouted. “I told you I liked to bring it back muddy! I only like my da when he’s fuming!”
She gave a peal of laughter that made Ian join in. He’d heard the term infectious laughter before, but he never quite understood it. He rarely laughed, and certainly wouldn’t do it just because someone else did.
But
as the Range Rover hit a ditch and his head bumped the ceiling, he didn’t care. He just kept on laughing.
She dropped him on the main street of Ballycreel. Ian hauled the bicycle out of the trunk.
“I’d offer to pay for it, but I know you can afford it,” she said.
A small spot of mud was on Maura’s (undimpled) cheek. Her face was flushed from their wild ride, and her green eyes danced.
It made his heart leap, somehow. Odd feeling.
“Thanks for the ride,” he said. “If you can call it that.”
“Call me sometime,” she said. She tucked a small card into his pocket.
With one last flirtatious look, she hopped back into the car and took off.
Ian stared down at the card. MAURA DEVON CARLISLE. There was a number below it. The card stock was smooth and heavy in his hand. The typeface discreet, yet bold. Exactly what he would have chosen.
As soon as the Range Rover was out of sight, he tore up the card and threw it away.
Better not to be tempted. Better to let it go.
Ian left the bicycle in an alley. He started the long walk back to Bhaile Anois, his footsteps on the asphalt road, his pace steady and sure in his expensive handmade shoes.
Lonely. Lonely. Lonely.
Chapter 22
Atticus stopped swinging his legs. Jake sat staring at Amy. Dan sat up on the couch. His sister’s green eyes were usually warm, but now they looked as hard as metal. What was she doing?
“What did you say?” Atticus asked.
Amy lifted her chin. “This is a Cahill matter. It’s our problem to solve.”
“Excuse me?” Jake asked. “Atticus just broke the mirror code. Do you realize what you have here in this book? It is an immeasurable gift to scholarship — who knows what it contains about Leonardo!”
“This isn’t a college seminar,” Amy said evenly. “This is a battle. And it’s not yours. We are grateful for your help. But you should head back to Rome first thing in the morning.”
“But —” Dan started, but Amy silenced him with her stay out of this look. Dan snapped his mouth shut, but he felt his blood beginning to boil.
