A Rather Charming Invitation

by C. A. Belmond

Then, at that moment, away in the drawing room, Guy’s clock began to chime the hours, beautifully, softly but resonantly, like a far-off bell from the past. Midnight. When I was a teenager, my father used to call it “the hour of charm”, a paternal caveat, which meant that if I wasn’t home before the clock struck twelve, the charm of the evening would wear off—my coach might become a pumpkin, my escort might be too drunk to drive, and other creatures of the night would become more aggressive and dangerous.

  Ten, eleven, twelve . . . The lovely, silken sound echoed sonorously in the silent house, weaving its way into my thoughts, counting the passing hours . . . and telling me something more. I suddenly raised my head alertly. I was experiencing one of those Proustian moments . . . only, in audio. I remembered how, that night in his shop, Guy had explained to me the way the clock mechanism worked, and I’d asked him about the year that the clock had been made . . . and he’d tried to show me how he could tell the exact year. But there had been a distraction that night—Jeremy knocked something over. Then, later, just before Margery came to inspect the villa, Guy had been telling Erik about it, too . . . the day the tapestry was stolen.

  I picked up the telephone and started dialing. “Who are you calling?” Jeremy asked. “It’s late.”

  “Your mum. I have to speak to Guy Ansley,” I said. “It’s only eleven o’clock in London.”

  Aunt Sheila did not sound sleepy, and I heard music in the background. I apologized for calling late, explaining that I didn’t have Guy’s home number.

  “No bother. We were just finishing a late supper. He’s right here,” she said.

  He came to the phone, jovial as ever. I said, “Guy, please tell me how you were able to figure out the exact date that the clock was made? Did it have something to do with the Latin inscription?”

  “Ah, yes, it’s a chronogram,” he said easily.

  “A chronogram?” I repeated. “What’s that?”

  He told me, very patiently and carefully. “It’s like a riddle, a game. You see, certain letters in the Latin alphabet also represent numbers. Roman numerals, that is. The letter I equals the number one; the letter V equals five, and X is ten, and L is fifty, while C is a hundred, D is five hundred, and M is a thousand. Anyway, you pull out only the letters that represent numbers. It was easy to do in your clock, because the Latin proverb was inscribed in gold—except for the number-letters, which were in silver. That’s how I was able to pull them out so quickly. And when I added them all up, it came out to 1725.”

  “Letters! Latin! Look!!” I spluttered to Jeremy and Rollo, who appeared utterly baffled. I hastily babbled into the phone, “Thanks a lot, Guy! You’ve been more help than you know. Talk to you soon,” and I rang off. Then I quickly explained the concept to Jeremy and Rollo.

  “Ah, I see,” Rollo exclaimed, going to examine the actual Latin on the tapestry and photos:

  SEQUERE VIRUM QUEM IN MATRIMONIUM LOCAVISTI,

  DOMUS POST TE, VIA PRO TE.

  BIBE PROFUNDE EX CISTERNA VITAE,

  COLE CONJUGALEM UXOREM.

  But then Rollo’s brow furrowed. “There are an awful lot of D’s and M’s among those letters that represent numbers,” he commented. “If we added them all up, we’d have a number totalling in the thousands. I can’t imagine what that would mean.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jeremy said, staring at the tapestry and the photos. “Only a few of these number-letters have the moonwort twining around them. See?”

  I stared, and saw that indeed, only certain letters were decorated with moonwort, and were set off with gold and silver thread. Now that I was aware of it, they gleamed and practically popped out at me.

  “Quick, let’s add them up!” I cried.

  “Okay,” said Jeremy. He called out the letters:

  V + I + I + V + X + V + I + X = ?

  Then we converted them into Arabic numbers, and added them up:

  5 + 1 + 1 + 5 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 10 = 38

  “Total of thirty-eight,” I said. There was a silence.

  “Great,” Jeremy commented. “Thirty-eight whats? Feet, hectares, horse heads?”

  “Paces,” I said firmly. “‘Your path ahead’, right? It’s footsteps.”

  “That’s as good a theory as any,” Rollo agreed.

  Jeremy muttered, “So, let’s get this straight: Armand is telling his daughter that she must stand with her back to the house—leave it behind—and go in the direction of the well—that is, follow the husband’s path of the moonwort—and then, maintaining that direction, you must march thirty-eight paces beyond the well . . .” He raised his head. “Well, we might as well try it. Sooner than later.”

  “I say, old man,” Rollo said mildly. “It’s past midnight. And it’s dark out there. Could be wolves.”

  “There’s a full moon,” I reminded them. “That should help light our way.”

  “Time is of the essence,” Jeremy proclaimed, “because Parker Drake might just find out that the coins he’s got are fakes.”

  “We’d have to convince David to rip up those fields again,” I reminded. “He already thinks we’re crazy. So this time, we’d better be right.”

  “Wake up the whole bloody house if you have to,” Jeremy said. “Tell them that at the very least, we’ve already recovered their tapestry. And we may find much, much more. So I should think they can humor us, one last time.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Well, we did. Wake up the whole house, I mean. By the time we arrived at the château, every light was on, and the house itself looked fairly alarmed, its windows ablaze, like eyes flung open wide in shock. We must have looked fairly comical, trundling in, carrying that heavy rolled tapestry, with me on the front end, and Jeremy in the middle doing most of the heavy lifting, and Rollo bringing up the rear.

  When we got inside, my French relatives, overjoyed to get their tapestry back, helped us set it down and unroll it, and they squealed with delight at the sight of it again. We all agreed that it would remain here with them until the wedding.

  “What a great detective chère Penn-ee is, to recover the tapestry!” Leonora cried. I was just glad I was her “dear” Penny again, after being Little Miss Trouble-Maker for so long.

  “Never mind the tapestry!” Honorine exclaimed. “We’re going digging for buried treasure!”

  She was already dressed for a hike, with fancy boots and jeans and jacket. Charles was with her, too, wearing his hunting clothes, appearing ready to shoot a moose. David looked as if, against his better judgment, he was prepared to follow the firm instructions to cooperate that he’d gotten from Philippe, who stood by watching us, silently smoking his pipe. Philippe and Leonora remained at the château. Honorine jumped on the back of Charles’ Vespa, while the rest of us piled into cars with electric lanterns, spades and shovels, setting out for the flower fields in Grasse. From the back seat, Rollo kept a sharp lookout, reporting that nobody was following us, so far.

  When we arrived, it was very spooky, crossing the fields at night. There was that bright, full moon, which made the terrain appear eerily alight, even whitened, looking almost as if the fields were covered with snow. Far off, I heard weird animal or bird cries, I couldn’t tell which. So, you can bet that I had no problem taking the advice from the tapestry, about letting the groom go first.

  As we reached the gazebo, Jeremy explained our idea of how to proceed, and everybody participated. Honorine and Charles aligned themselves with their backs to the gazebo, where once the honeymooners’ house had stood. David and Rollo went out and parked themselves where the old well was, beaming their flashlights back at us, so that Honorine and Charles could aim in that direction and then march toward the well. Jeremy and I tracked them from the sides, to make sure they were aiming correctly. When Honorine and Charles reached the well, still pointed in the proper direction, Jeremy took over, to pace out the thirty-eight steps beyond the well.

  “But, how do we know how big Armand’s stride was?” I wondered. “Or, his daughter’s.
”

  “Fine, you march on a parallel track to me, but do your own counting,” Jeremy said. “Your thirty-eight paces will be shorter than mine. We’ll get a wider area to dig, but we’ll cover all bases.”

  And away we went, marching alongside each other, with Jeremy slightly ahead, on account of his big feet. We counted and paced. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight . . . Then we came to a dead halt.

  “Here,” Jeremy said finally.

  “I’m here,” I said, a few feet back.

  “I say,” Rollo observed, huffing and puffing alongside us excitedly, “if this field were the tapestry, surely we are now right where the ‘J.L.’ crest was.”

  “Good. So we should dig out a square area between Penny’s spot and mine,” Jeremy said.

  “All of it?” David demanded. “Are you quite sure this time?”

  “Be quiet and start digging!” Honorine cried.

  So Rollo, Jeremy, Charles and David began the Big Dig. Honorine and I kept watch, and told them when they were getting too far afield. The clank of spades and the Sift-sift of earth was a tantalizing sound, until we heard a Thunk! whenever one of them hit something. This happened a couple of times, and all the digging immediately ceased. But each time, it was only rocks.

  “I should think it wouldn’t be buried terribly deep,” Rollo observed.

  “Bear in mind, that the ground shifts over time,” Jeremy reminded them. “So it may have sunk lower than its original position.”

  On they went. Shump, shump, shump. They kept digging. Then Jeremy hit something so hard, it sounded like pay- dirt to all of us. The men dropped their shovels and ran over to him. Honorine and I leaped forward, shining our flashlights into the hole they’d dug.

  Jeremy was brushing the loose earth off it, to get a better look. We all peered in, and Honorine and David bumped heads. “There’s something shiny there!” Honorine exclaimed.

  “It looks like a box,” David reported. This awakened my research mode.

  “Don’t drag it up!” I cried. “If it was made of wood, it might be disintegrating. Dig all around it, loosen the earth, until you can get something flat under it, and lift it like a pancake.”

  David looked at Honorine in confusion. “Qu’est-ce que c’est ‘pancake’?” he inquired.

  “Une crêpe,” she said briefly. The men carefully cleared away the ground at all four sides. Then they slid one of the flatter shovels under it, and heave’d and ho’d until they managed to loosen the whole box from the ground beneath it. Finally, they were able to lift the box up, up, up—just like a pastry chef with a wooden paddle hoisting a loaf of bread out of the oven—and deposited the earth-smeared item on a big white cloth that Leonora had thoughtfully provided us.

  “Whuf! It’s heavy!” Rollo exclaimed. Everyone turned and looked at me expectantly.

  The box was about nine inches by twelve, and eight inches high. Very gingerly, I brushed off the dirt with a soft cloth. As I did, it began to gleam more brightly, and I saw that it was a cedar-and-brass chest with gold-tooled leather. Its outer walls had been painted, and were faded now, but I thought I could make out the gold, silver, violet and green colors of moonwort.

  “Oh!” I said with a gasp. “It’s a good, solid box, see, the gilt brass fittings? I bet it has . . .”

  I explored it gingerly with my fingers, searching for a special trick lock, which such antique coffers often had. I felt along until I reached a moveable panel at the back of the lock, that, when touched, might release the hidden mechanism.

  “Here it is,” I breathed. I tried it, but it wouldn’t give. I peered closer, and realized that dirt had accumulated underneath the latch, preventing it from releasing. David handed me a small screwdriver, which I used to carefully scrape out the dirt. When I tried it again, this time, at my touch, the lock sprung open. Everyone aimed their flashlights at it now, as I lifted the lid. We all peered inside.

  Moonlight made the contents gleam and glint and practically wink at us. A heap of golden coins. I reached in carefully, and picked up one, then another, and another. I handed a few of them around, and we all examined the dazzling coins in the palms of our grubby little earth-covered hands. They were heavier and thicker than I’d expected, with a weight that felt serious and good in my fingers.

  “There’s Lunaire’s initials and moon crest on the obverse side,” I breathed, pointing. Then I turned it over, so I could see the reverse. The coin curator was right; it was an image of the sun. But it didn’t look exactly like his sketches. It was more dramatic, with fierce eyes; and the fiery rays were not spiky, they were more like curling waves of flames. That face, yes, that was different, too. It was more of a Zeus-like face, just like the sun in the pie-shaped window on Armand’s tapestry. It didn’t resemble Louis XIV, the Sun King. Perhaps this had annoyed the proud king.

  The men were busy doing what men instinctively do . . . counting them.

  “Twenty-one, twenty-two . . .” they were chanting.

  “Hey, guys!” I cried. “Dontcha think we should get this baby to the château and count ’em up there at our leisure? Anything can happen out here in the middle of this field!”

  “She is right,” David said briskly. “Close it and bring it home.”

  I thought I heard a rooster crow, by the time we got back to the château. The sky had gone from charcoal-colored, to milky white, to a violet-blue-grey with streaks of lemonade-pink. Leonora watched in astonishment as the men hurried inside, carrying the chest of gold into the library. They flung back the lid, and began arranging the coins in stacks on the big table, counting as they went.

  I stood back, watching my French relatives lay out the Lunaire gold in neat, orderly rows, stopping now and then to exclaim and examine a coin or two closely, as if they could not believe their own eyes. I was suddenly exhausted, and I sat down gratefully in a nice, comfy leather chair.

  I realized that I was still clutching one of the coins. Lying there in the palm of my hand, the Lunaire gold seemed to be a repository of its own history, giving off a palpable vibe of mingled valor, risk, vanity, and playfulness. I gazed at the haughty expression on the face on that aristocratic moon, wondering about Jean Lunaire, who had ascended high, higher, higher on the ladder of success, only to have it all go up in sparks and flames . . . and, even worse, invoking the wrath of a king who envied him for having too much ambition—and, perhaps most unforgiveable of all—superior good taste.

  Then my thoughts turned to the hardworking Armand, who made such beautiful tapestries, for idle rich people who felt entitled to—well, have their cake and eat it, too—until one day their carelessness brought on the revolution that proved their historic undoing.

  But most of all, I found myself contemplating the life of Armand’s daughter, Eleanore. I guess I felt a special kinship with a long-ago bride. She had been waiting for a dowry—and a father—that never arrived. She must have been so baffled and distraught by the strange fate that had befallen her father; and afterwards, she’d spent the rest of her life unknowingly close to the treasure he’d meant her to have.

  Oncle Philippe came over now, to sit in the chair beside me. Occasionally he chuckled at the sight of his family happily counting their good luck. Here, at last, was the secret dowry of their ancestor’s . . . only a mere handful of centuries later. I felt that somehow, it had always been destined for Honorine, so I found a rather satisfying symmetry in all this.

  “Looks like the circle’s been completed,” I commented. Oncle Philippe’s eyes twinkled. Then I asked, “What became of Eleanore, after she got married?”

  He smiled. “I am told that Eleanore was especially bright—she was very good with numbers, and could add up long, three-digit columns in her head, without aid of paper or pen. By all accounts she was an excellent businesswoman, having had the experience, in her girlhood, of working with her father. So, she worked with her husband to build up their company. They had many children, and both Edouard and Eleanore lived to a ripe, old age.�
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  I gazed at Honorine, her face alight with excitement as she watched the treasure being arranged in stacks, before her very eyes. David now announced the final number of coins. “Five hundred twenty coins,” he proclaimed.

  I called out, “I have one more here!” and I rose to go and add it to the stacks, but Oncle Philippe stopped me. He opened his palm, where he was holding four pieces of Lunaire gold that he’d picked up to examine; but, instead of adding them to the final tally, he insisted, over my protests, on adding them to the one that I’d been holding in my hand. Then he pushed my hand closed over them.

  “Alors,” he said. “Now the circle is complete.”

  Part Eleven

  Chapter Forty-five

  “Far be it from me to tell you what to do with your life,” I said to Jeremy. “But I’d just like to point out that if it weren’t for Aunt Sheila’s horologist, we never would have found the Lunaire gold.”

  It had been two weeks since we dug up those gold coins, and now our wedding was only a week away. We’d spent the day sorting out final wedding preparations, and packing up for our honeymoon. In the late afternoon, we managed to steal a little quiet time for just the two of us, drinking glasses of iced tea while sitting on the wrought-iron chairs on the patio, overlooking the sparkling swimming pool.

  “True,” Jeremy allowed. “I admit that it can, at times, be useful to have a clock-man about the place. You never know when you’re going to need another chronogram decoded.”

  “He’s a nice guy, and you were a pain in the ass,” I reminded. Jeremy smiled ruefully.

  “Well?” I said.

  “What?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “Don’t you think it’s high time that you extended a personal wedding invitation to Guy Ansley?” I demanded. “I sent him an official one, but your mom told me that the poor fellow actually volunteered to stay away from the wedding if his presence would cause a rift between you and your grandmother.”