by C T Cassana
. . .
Although Max Wellington had nerves of steel, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of terror when he saw Franz Schneider’s lifeless body stretched out next to him. Clearly, something had gone wrong. He tried to get up, but his head was aching terribly and he felt stunned. With some difficulty he managed to sit up and, in spite of the risk he was running, he took a few moments to size up the situation.
The sun’s rays were streaming in through the large window of the adjacent bedroom. Max looked at his wristwatch and was shocked to discover that it was 10:30 a.m. He had been lying there for more than 11 hours.
His eyes panned over the body of Franz Schneider and the room they were in. The ring that his unfortunate victim had been wearing was gone and, what was worse, the safe was empty.
Clearly, someone had followed him. The idea that both he and the person who had struck him on the head had come upon Franz Schneider at the same time and that their paths had crossed in that dressing room by pure coincidence was quite implausible.
Although the booty had been taken, the fact that Max was still alive made one thing clear: his attacker was one of his brethren, one of the members of the Order of the Knights of Time. A far from honorable member, who was prepared to get what he wanted by playing dirty, but not crazy enough to take the risk of killing one of his own.
Max had not managed to see him, and thus he had no idea who it might have been; sadly, however, there were several knights who he believed were worthy of suspicion. Working out who it had been would be quite a complicated task, as his attacker would keep what he had stolen a secret.
The sound of the doorbell to the luxurious apartment interrupted his thoughts. It appeared that Mr. Schneider had a visitor. By this point, not only would people be missing his victim, but very shortly they would also begin wondering where he was. In a few hours, Max was supposed to chair the board meeting for Aurum, his business group, in Manhattan, thousands of miles away.
Still slightly stunned, he rummaged through the small briefcase he had brought with him. Luckily, his adversary hadn’t taken it, perhaps imagining that it belonged to the unfortunate Mr. Schneider. Max opened the case and took out the sophisticated cleaning device that he kept inside it. In no time at all it would erase any trace of his presence in Mr. Schneider’s apartment over the past night.
. . .
After a while watching his parents talking frantically on their cell phones with the former owner of the house and with the real estate agent and begging the movers to wait a little until the situation was cleared up, Charlie assumed that the grownups were working out an agreement on how to resolve the problem, whatever that agreement might be. So he slipped inside the house with the innocent intention of seeing for himself whether things were as terrible as they seemed. His mother had told him to wait in the car, but boredom got the better of him, and anyway he could always use the excuse that he needed to go to the bathroom.
The boy wandered around the house with a mixture of curiosity, excitement and suspicion, like an explorer on his first journey through a wild jungle. Just as Marcus had assured him, the house was huge, although inside it also looked rather old and dingy. The air was thick and damp, with a stale, musty odor that the strong smell of mothballs failed to mask. On the first floor was the living room, the library, the kitchen and a washroom; on the second were three bedrooms and two bathrooms; and on the third was a huge and quite promising attic, which Charlie barely had time to explore. All the rooms had walls with maroon, mustard or olive-green wallpaper with large relief designs and old damp stains. Every room was crammed with dark wood furniture and objects which, although they looked good and might even have been antiques, gave the impression of something out of a Sherlock Holmes movie, and were certainly quite out of keeping with his mother’s tastes. It was clear that Maggie had not thought much of the decor. She preferred pretty and elegant places, well-lit and sparsely furnished, always with bright or white colors. That was no doubt why she was so angry.
Before anyone could miss him, Charlie sneaked back out to the street to check how things were going. He was starting to feel hungry, and although he wouldn’t have minded ending up at McDonald’s, he seemed to be the only one who realized that it was almost lunchtime.
“What’s happening, Dad?” he asked Marcus as he approached him. His father was still pacing up and down the sidewalk, talking frantically into his cell phone.
“Wait a moment,” replied his father, covering the microphone with his hand.
The moving truck was gone, but nobody seemed to have noticed. Lisa was sitting in the back seat of the car, listening to music with her headphones on. She greeted Charlie with an angry look when he approached her and gently pulled one of her headphones out of her ear.
“Where’s the truck?” he asked.
“It’s gone,” she replied blandly. “It’ll come back this afternoon, if we end up staying in this house. Of course, I have no idea where they’re going to put our things if the whole place is already packed with furniture. With all this trouble they’ll probably just buy the house across the road and give back this one.”
Charlie sat down next to his sister and put the headphone in his ear. The music was pretty good, and he got so comfortable that before he knew it he’d fallen into a deep sleep.
. . .
When Charlie woke up, he found himself lying on his side on a dark brown leather couch in the library, breathing in that peculiar smell of stale air and mothballs. He felt dazed, a little confused and somewhat overheated. He pushed off the overcoat that his father had covered him with and sat up slowly, peeling his sweaty cheek off the leather.
He cast his gaze around the room while he shook off his lethargy. On every wall there were shelves crammed with books from the floor up to the ceiling. If the moving truck didn’t come back, he thought, at least his father would have reading material to console himself with.
The couch was on one side of the room, facing one of the bookcases. It had buttons sewn all over the back making little dimples in the surface, and it was so old that the leather was wrinkled and scratched all over. He was sure that if he jumped up and down on this couch, nobody would scold him for it.
On the left side of the room, a large glass door with a curious coat of arms in the middle opened out onto the garden. Right opposite the window was a rather large desk filled with little drawers that would be perfect for storing some of his belongings.
This room wasn’t bad, except for the portraits of two old men who gazed at him from the wall with stern and sour expressions. As Charlie took a moment to look them over, first one and then the other, he couldn’t repress a shiver that ran from the nape of his neck all the way down his spine. Although they were only two ordinary paintings, their gazes were so piercing that the two faces looked like they were made of flesh and blood.
He read the names “Horatio Conwell” and “Solomon Conwell” inscribed on little plaques attached to the bottom of each painting, while he tried to decide which of the two looked more unpleasant. “Jeez,” he said, “it’s not like it’s my fault they left you hanging here.”
He jumped up from the couch and chuckled to himself as it occurred to him that these two old grouches really had been left hanging, waiting for their family to come back for them. His mother wouldn’t like these pictures at all, and would no doubt get rid of them pretty promptly.
He opened the heavy wooden door and went out in search of food, still feeling the glares of those two nasty old codgers burning into the nape of his neck.
. . .
Quite a lot had happened during his nap. The movers had returned and were working hard to fit the contents of the truck in the different rooms of the house. It looked like the only fashionable houses Lisa was likely to enjoy would be those of their new neighbors, and only if she managed to get any of them to invite her over some time.
“Hi, Dad,” said Charlie when he found Marcus. “Are we staying?”
“Yes, Charlie. W
e’re keeping everything. The house, the library, and the furniture. A real bargain!”
“Mum isn’t cross anymore?” Charlie asked, wanting to make sure before going in search of her.
“A little. It’s going to be a bit of a mess until we get the house organized, but she’ll get over it, you’ll see.”
Clearly, his mother’s anger had not abated. It would be best to leave her alone until the danger had passed.
“Dad, I’m hungry. Can I have something to eat?” the boy asked.
“There are some soft drinks and sandwiches for you in the kitchen. Take whatever you like.”
Charlie made himself comfortable at the kitchen table and began wolfing down the snacks that his parents had left for him, while he watched the three workers from the moving company bring all the family’s furniture and boxes into their new home.
. . .
After the Aurum board meeting, Max was supposed to attend another important meeting that day. A secret meeting of the utmost importance, known to only a few men on Earth: the monthly meeting of the Order of the Knights of Time.
Max prepared himself in strict accordance with the etiquette that marked the occasion. He then rushed off to the headquarters of the Order, the home of Emanuel Gentile, its Grand Master: an old, quiet villa located on the outskirts of Rome.
He arrived early enough to speak privately with Mr. Gentile and inform him of the events of the previous twenty-four hours. Max also wanted to be present for when the other knights arrived, so that he could study their reactions when they saw him and try to detect which one of them might have attacked him the night before.
“It’s good to see you,” Emanuel said to him. He embraced him warmly, a gesture that would only be permitted when they were alone together.
Max smiled with a solemn expression, and while they took a long walk through the garden he told his host about what had happened. The Grand Master listened without uttering a single word. When Max finished his story, Emanuel remained silent for a few minutes longer, as they walked along side by side.
“This is terrible news,” he said at last.
Max nodded gently.
“I’m afraid we don’t have much time left,” the old man went on. “Very soon I must appoint a successor and my decision must be ratified by the Grand Council. These are tumultuous times, and I am finding it harder and harder to impose my decisions without facing fierce opposition.”
Max said nothing. He knew that Mr. Gentile’s position had been weakened considerably of late. The rival families that sought to succeed him had been gaining supporters in the Order and the Grand Council by buying favors and corrupting some of its members. But Max made no mention of these things. His friend and mentor didn’t need to hear that his weakness was becoming increasingly obvious to the others.
“There is only a handful of men that I can even trust, and you are the only one I would want to designate as my successor. But I know that if I propose you, I will face some strong resistance, so strong that I may not be able to overcome it. That is why we need to postpone the process of choosing a successor for as long as possible.”
“I understand,” replied Max. “And I thank you for your trust in me.”
“In the meantime, you need to make yourself the best candidate of all, someone that nobody could compete against, a knight who stands out above all the rest. You possess all the qualities that a grand master needs: intelligence, virtue, temperance, courage, diplomacy, discretion... But other knights have a higher standing than you. And it is essential that you improve your position.”
Max knew that his friend did not intend to reproach him for what had happened; nevertheless, he couldn’t help but feel ashamed.
“And you need to hurry, my son. My strength is beginning to fail me. I am tired, and I wouldn’t want to leave this world without knowing that I am leaving the fate of humankind in good hands.”
. . .
When night fell, the Wilfords took a break to sit down to dinner together. Maggie improvised a delicious spaghetti dish with a tomato sauce, and even managed to find the boxes containing their dishes and cutlery so that she could serve dinner on them.
“I have no intention of eating with some stranger’s crockery and cutlery,” Charlie heard her grumble. “I feel like a squatter in my own home.”
It seemed a strange reaction to Charlie, considering that everything in the house that they were using belonged to those same strangers. But a mother’s reactions are nearly always unfathomable.
“Mum,” he dared to ask, “what are we going to do with all these things now? Are we going to throw them out?”
“Certainly not, darling!” Maggie replied with a surprised expression. “A lot of the things here are real treasures, and I think we’re really quite lucky to be able to keep them. But the man who sold us the house should have taken them. That’s what we agreed.”
“And what are we going to do with our things?” asked Lisa. “I like them more than all this old stuff.”
“We’re waiting for a document to arrive tomorrow that will confirm that the old owner has given up ownership of all these things and that everything in the house now belongs to us,” explained their mother. “Then we’ll be the legal owners of everything here and we’ll be able to decide whether we keep everything, or whether there’s anything we want to sell or throw out.”
“Do you mean that we get to keep everything for the same price?” asked Charlie.
“Yes, Charlie,” replied Marcus. “All for the same price.”
“What a steal!” exclaimed the boy. “There are things so old here that they could even be antiques. That guy is really dumb.”
“That ‘guy’ is a rotter,” retorted Maggie. “He should have left the house empty, painted and clean; and thanks to him it will take us a lot longer to settle in here. And he’s also quite heartless. He has left behind everything that belonged to his father and his grandfather, the great Horatio Conwell, without caring in the slightest that they would end up in the hands of strangers. It’s clear that the only thing he’s concerned about is money. He didn’t even want to spend a single penny to preserve his family’s memory!”
Charlie gathered from this that his mother admired this Horatio fellow. Maybe she wouldn’t want to get rid of the two old curmudgeons on the wall in the library after all.
. . .
In spite of all the lives he had cut short, Max Wellington never suffered pangs of conscience. He didn’t think of himself as a ruthless killer or a despicable criminal; he was a distinguished member of the Order of the Knights of Time, a direct descendant of one of the men chosen by Prince Olwelin himself, and a promising candidate for the next Grand Master.
As his ancestors had done before him, Max was totally loyal to the Order and its sacred mission to guard and protect the magic objects created by the prince. The knights’ duty was to protect humankind from itself, from its weak and selfish nature, and the magic objects possessed a power so great that it could only unleash the most perverse desires and the most contemptible vices of any man, even the most upstanding. This was why these objects had to remain in the hands of individuals specially trained in the sacred task of guarding them, following the strict code of the Order and subject to the vow of total obedience to their Grand Master and to the Grand Council that governed them.
The fulfillment of this noble task was the life’s purpose of every knight, regardless of the price he had to pay or whether he had to break the law or commit apparently heinous acts. His mission was more important than his family, his personal interests and even his own life.
It had been that way for centuries, and it had to continue that way forever.
CHAPTER III: Horatio Conwell
Within a few weeks, Charlie saw the dark and sinister appearance of the house begin to soften. The Wilfords hired some painters who stripped the wallpaper off the walls and painted them in bright and clear colors. Some furnishings were moved to the attic until they could decide what
to do with them, and their place was filled by more modern and functional furniture.
Maggie turned out to be an aficionado of rarities and antiques, and she decided to keep a lot more of the former owner’s furniture than Charlie would have liked. At any rate, he had to admit that his mother had a special talent for making their house a nice and cheerful place to live.
Marcus settled effortlessly into the library, whose original appearance he unfortunately left unchanged, except for increasing the concentration of books per square yard. Unbelievably, the portraits of the two old grumps were left in the same spot, as if their parents had decided to pay them some kind of absurd homage. Every time that Charlie entered the room, he couldn’t keep but dart furtive glances at them and feel the same shivers he had felt on the first day, especially when he passed in front of the portrait of Horatio Conwell. From the wall, the two curmudgeons smiled at him triumphantly, smug in the knowledge that they had not been banished to the attic, watching Charlie’s every movement as if they were ready to tell him off at any moment. Those two grouches must have been such a pain in the neck that the former owner of the house hadn’t wanted to take anything with him that might remind him of them.
Luckily, the attic was exactly as his father had described it the night before the move, and it didn’t take long for it to become Charlie’s personal refuge. At first, he was forbidden from entering the attic until they had decided what they would do with all the furniture and knick-knacks stored there. But as time passed, the huge task of classifying everything and working out what to do with it turned into a less pressing obligation for which they never seemed to find the right moment.
So Charlie’s parents ended up letting him make himself at home up there without much objection, other than one of those vague parental warnings to be careful that do more to reassure the parent than to admonish the child.
The forgotten realm of the attic had everything that an 11-year-old boy could dream of: old furniture filled with rare objects from bygone eras, a huge wardrobe filled with shabby old clothes, books stuffed into wooden boxes, trinkets, letters, old maps and even a globe of the world with borders and countries that had long ceased to exist.
