“I more than believe in it. I live it everyday.”
Flora shook her head. “No, no, miss! Magic is the devil’s work!”
Alita sighed, adding, “Though I often wish I might lead a normal existence.”
“And where is this magic you speak of?” Lord Ravendale’s silver-blue eyes were chilling, even in the heat. His thick eyebrows formed a small “V” over his eyes, accentuating his gaze.
“Reality is as fantastic as one will allow.”
“Can you illuminate, Miss Stanton?” She found it astonishing that he actually listened to her. He never understood her, but he did listen.
“With openness to the universe, and to truth, one begins to manifest magic,” she said.
“My experience has been far different. I have yet to meet anyone—civilian, government, or politician—who is interested in the truth.”
“I am interested, Lord Ravensdale,” she said softly.
“That would be a fresh turn of events,” he replied abruptly. “All my life I have spoken and lived the truth, and my family subsequently cast me out, a person who had shown them nothing but love and loyalty. The last thing they wanted was the truth, and they would have sacrificed any innocent to squelch it.”
“But you have done well in the Queen’s service. You have respect there.”
“In the army I spoke out against imperialism.”
“I don’t suppose that was well received.” Something in Captain Lord Ravensdale’s words struck a chord with her. She felt a stab of pain as she relived her social ambush at the Queen’s Ball. To learn how to be genuine—and yet to belong—was the greatest challenge of her life. “I said to be in the truth, I did not necessarily say to speak everything you know, my lord.”
“Ah. That was my mistake.”
“I have the same tendency myself.”
“And what is that, Miss Stanton?”
“To say that which people do not wish to hear.” She looked down at her hands. “And you are no exception, my lord. You do not wish to hear what I have come to tell you.”
He moved closer to her and his voice deepened. “I am listening.”
She felt some alarm at his proximity. “Indeed you are.”
“We were speaking of not being heard,” he said in a low voice.
“And yet, it is somehow different for you.”
“It is possible for me to be heard but not for you, eh, Miss Stanton?”
“Indeed. It is a world run by men, after all.” She sighed. “You have a commanding presence, my lord, which affords you a certain liberty I cannot hope for. I believe you are one of those rare individuals for whom both acceptability and authenticity are possible.”
“My life has not born this out.”
“Not yet. But you could use these talents to further the awareness of different societies and cultures.”
“Perhaps, but that would require someone were listening, my dear.” He turned towards a drawing in stone.
“Don’t you see, Lord Ravensdale?” There were other tourists at the opposite end of the room, so she moved closer to him, lowering her voice. Flora remained seated in the center, appearing more frightened than interested by the sight before her.
“Don’t I see…what?” Amusement was written across his face.
“Don’t you see how you functioned as an officer in your army? I can see you there so clearly.”
Val stiffened noticeably, his sudden frown causing her to take a step back. The other party stared at them disapprovingly before moving into the next room. “I thought I made it clear that we won’t speak of that again, Miss Stanton.”
The pyramid might have shook in response to Val’s tone of voice and crumbled with the fire in his eyes, qualities allowing him to command a platoon of men, but Alita forced herself to continue. She had already seen his worst, after all. “Only consider, Lord Ravensdale. You were an officer, but you never looked to your own glory. You were not intimidated by greatness in others, by extreme competence and capability, because it only enhanced every individual’s chance of survival.”
“Obviously,” he said stiffly.
“The world is run by greed and ego. But an army which operated that way would quickly fall.”
“From my experience, this is how the world operates, Miss Stanton.” He pointed to the drawings of the pharaoh being carried into heaven, having heretofore pointed out what the symbols meant. “Evil has more power than Good because, by its very nature, Evil is going out of its way to exercise power, and Good is not, minding its own business. Good wants to live and allow others to live. Love, joy, creation, and so on, as I understand it. So, while Good is minding its own business, or even wishing good things for Evil, Evil is plotting how to destroy Good.”
“I perceive your point, Lord Ravensdale.” Alita grew thoughtful, looking straight ahead at a drawing of a woman with wings kneeling before another woman on a throne. “But you forget that love is hundreds of times more powerful than hate.”
“That is precisely the point which I am disputing.”
She shook her head in resolute disagreement. “With love, oft times one can entice others to do voluntarily that which one wishes. A small child can wrap someone around his or her finger with love. Hate requires force, enormous outlays of energy, and constant surveillance. Love and freedom always prevail in the end.”
“After Evil—or, at the very least, ignorance—has inflicted vast amounts of suffering and filled the graveyards with innocents.” He shook his head. “So we are back to immortality, Miss Alita.”
“You could make Gelos cry, my lord.”
“The god of laughter?” He chuckled in spite of himself. “We all plod along doing the best we can with the cards stacked against us.”
“You don’t know your own power, Lord Ravensdale.”
“And apparently neither do you, Miss Stanton.” His eyes pierced hers and she felt her hands tremble.
“You have everything at your fingertips to promote peace and enlightenment.”
“But not laughter?”
“Definitely not laughter.”
“I am sorry to inform you, Miss Stanton, that the general view is to kill them before they get us and to fabricate some lie about why it makes us morally superior to do so. They are barbarians, so we must kill them.”
Clearly feeling the weight of his disgust, Val took a firmer grasp on her elbow and appeared determined to proceed with the tour. “Let us continue down this path, Miss Alita.”
They walked up steps to move into the next room. Entering yet another chamber, her attention was immediately drawn to hieroglyphics on the wall. Alita turned to Flora, who was stumbling up the stairs, clinging to the wall while ignoring the pictures. She looked back toward the opening as if moving farther and farther inside made her nervous.
“Flora, are you quite all right?” asked Alita.
“Ummm…it feels very enclosed, don’t you think, Miss?” she replied. “Almost as if it was a tomb.”
“It is a tomb, Flora.”
“Aeeeeee!”
“Flora, calm yourself. No one has been buried here for thousands of years.”
“I thought you said it was the pyramids!”
“Flora, you are frightening yourself for no reason. Really, it is so interesting.”
“Yes, m’am.” The poor girl appeared so white she almost glowed.
“You may wait in the preceding room if you don’t like the stairs, Flora. I can’t bear to see you this frightened.”
“Yes, Miss.” She nodded, backing down the stairs even as she looked overhead.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Miss Stanton,” Val remarked, his delivery stiff. “If someone who knows you should see you without your maid—”
“There is not much chance of that, Lord Ravensdale. It is more likely she should fall and hurt herself—or faint. And, besides, you are well known here as a guide and an officer.”
Now in the lower chamber, Alita returned her eyes to the hiero
glyphics. “Oh, my,” exclaimed Alita. “How beautiful.”
“Hieroglyphics were both an art form and a method of communication.”
“Look at this.” She pointed towards a symbol of interest to her. “It is an owl sign with a scepter. What does it mean?”
“I must say you ask more questions than any other young lady I have brought here.”
“I don’t see how anyone could not be enthralled.”
“When I first met you, Miss Stanton, I believed your interest to be entirely contrived with other goals in mind.” A devilish smile crossed his expression. “Now I wonder.”
“Sadly, you don’t know the first thing about me, Lord Ravensdale.”
“That has been evident almost from the start. You hold the singular distinction that the more time I spend with you, the less I know.”
His smile had begun to contain a degree of affection, and it disarmed her.
He continued. “Hieroglyphics were a mystery for so many years because it is a hybrid system. Some of the pictures represent concepts, and other pictures represent phonetic sounds as parts of words.”
“I see. The pictures mean one thing sometimes and another thing at other times.”
“Yes. Sometimes the symbol is a letter and other times it is an entire concept—a sentence, so to speak.”
“It must make deciphering the code very difficult.”
“To the first linguists attempting translation without the key, decoding hieroglyphics was an impossible task. That’s why it was not done for over two thousand years. Despite enormous effort, there were no accurate translations.”
“Because one did not know whether the symbol represented a concept or a letter of the alphabet.”
“Added to that complication is the vast number of pictures—more than twenty-four hundred hieroglyphs have been found. Can you imagine if there were twenty-four hundred letters in the English alphabet? Translation is therefore extremely difficult under the best of circumstances.”
She pointed to the drawing of the owl again. “So what does it mean?”
“In this case, the owl was used with a scepter to form a word meaning ‘power.’” “Here.” He took her gloved hand, and suddenly heat ran through her body as he gently lead her. “Do you see the owl here?”
“Y–yes,” She nodded, swallowing hard.
“This owl means the letter ‘M’ in a word ‘Mar,’ which means ‘happy.’”
“Good heavens! How would you know which is which?” Alita felt overwhelmed with the magnitude of the puzzle before her as well as the proximity of the man. Reluctantly she pulled her hand away. “It’s rather complex for an ancient language.”
“Yes, the ancient Egyptians were an advanced race,” Val studied the drawing, clearly at home with the intricate paintings.
“It is so elaborately sophisticated I don’t perceive how it was deciphered.”
“It is unlikely translation would have ever been possible except for the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.”
Alita swung around and stared at him. In spite of her intimate visions of him, she felt that she had never truly seen Valerius Huntington before.
Suddenly another layer had been revealed. With the enormity of the realization, she felt the room suddenly sway about her.
“Miss Alita, what is it?” Val demanded, grasping her shoulders firmly as he steadied her.
“The stone you mentioned…” She studied his eyes, silvery and intense. “What…is it?”
“The Rosetta Stone furnished the key to decoding ancient Egyptian writing.”
“How did it accomplish this?” she asked anxiously.
“The Stone provided three versions of the same text. It dates from 196 B.C. but was not discovered until 1799.”
“So, were it not for the Rosetta Stone,” Alita stated, her voice wavering, “none of this would be translatable. Hundreds of years would be lost forever.”
“Not hundreds, thousands. Hieroglyphs were written from 3200 B.C. to 400 A.D.—for almost four thousand years. That was lost to time before the discovery of the Rosetta stone.”
“Astonishing,” Alita murmured breathlessly. “So the stone is a bridge between both cultures and time, a single work of translation by a person who spoke three languages?”
“Correct,” stated Val, surprise and appreciation crossing his face. “Elegantly put, Miss Alita.”
“Don’t you see, my lord? Don’t you see even yet?” Alita stared at him in stupefaction, moving toward him.
“Don’t I see what?” He asked with dubious interest.
How could he not understand the importance of this moment? She touched his hands lightly with hers. Her voice was shaky but held conviction.
“Captain Ravensdale, I see it so clearly. You are the Rosetta Stone.”
24
The Poor Relations
“You are…” she continued, “A magical talisman, a bridge between cultures, the key. The importance of your contribution is significant and irreplaceable. The Rosetta Stone.”
“I’m practically a wizard, it would seem.” He found himself momentarily amused before bitterness set in. “But I seemed to have misplaced my magic wand. I thank you for your confidence, Miss Stanton. But I must inform you I have no serious contributions to make. Not now. Not ever.” He motioned to the hieroglyphics, to everything that was dear to him. “No one is interested. It’s a damn waste of time. Very few perceive value in the knowledge I possess. My impact is so small it is almost undetectable.”
“You have a significant contribution to make, my lord.”
“Spare me, Miss Stanton, let us not revisit my grand purpose and my exceptional talent again.” Val turned away, repelled by her ridiculous fairytale at the same time his ego yearned to cast himself as the knight in shining armor.
Flattery is precisely the tool a woman who wants something utilizes, Val reminded himself. His longing to cast himself as the hero disgusted him; It was for this reason he had learned to kill.
Miss Stanton grew silent, which put Val in some anticipation of her next incomprehensible utterance, but she surprised him—which was the order of the day—by renewing her study of the hieroglyphics painted on the walls of the chamber.
I have never before observed a young lady express this degree of interest or intelligence. He began to wonder if he had misjudged Miss Stanton. She was a very strange girl—of that there could be no doubt—but she was far more than met the eye.
Or is her curiosity part of her repertoire in stroking the male ego? Alita Stanton was the master of her art, that was certain. Listening was entirely seductive.
“Something strikes me…” Alita reflected. “These look somehow different from the pictures I saw at the Museum of Cairo.”
“Another excellent observation. The hieroglyphic texts which you saw at the museum were found at Philae and date from the fourth century A.D. The first hieroglyphics date back to 3200 B.C. Unfolding before your very eyes is the four thousand-year battle between those who wished to revise the code, adapting it to Egypt’s changing society, and those who insisted that the writing remain unchanged from its original creation.”
“Even in ancient times, some of the fourth century Egyptians wanted to return to the nostalgic times four thousand years prior.” Alita giggled. “Such good times they were.”
“The best. You have the right of it, Miss Alita.”
Val shook his head, absolutely dumfounded by this woman. On the one hand, she was unusually bright and perceptive. At other times she seemed as if she might have been dropped on her head as a baby.
“The pictures…” Alita appeared pensive again. “Even in this light they do not look Arabian.”
“Very true.” Val was shocked at her perceptivity when he didn’t think he could be more surprised. Certainly no one else on his tours had ever noticed this. “Egyptians were Africans. Later, in 641 A.D., Egypt was conquered by invading forces from Arabia. Arab-Egyptians have ruled for many years, but the majority of Egyptian
s are Eastern Hamites, dark-skinned Africans.”
Suddenly she swooned once again, quickly recapturing her balance on her own.
“What is wrong, Miss Stanton?” Fear creeped into his being as he realized he cared for her well-being. When had this happened?
“I am fine, my lord.” Alita opened her eyes. “Please do not distress yourself. I was thinking of Africa as a whole.”
“How do you mean, Miss Stanton?”
“There is much trouble ahead for Africa.”
“Never fear. We shall only address the suffering of others if it affects us,” he stated bitterly.
“The suffering of others always affects us.” Alita’s lip quivered. “How do we deal with the poorest and most unfortunate among us? The answer to this question defines us.”
“I take your point, Miss Alita.” He considered her words momentarily. “However, I perceive the situation more as ignoring one’s poor relations.”
“Relations?” she murmured, as if she were contemplating a new idea. He wished she would stop doing that, it only led to confusion. His confusion.
Suddenly, a look of intense surprise crossed her features, her eyes opening wide. “Why, I believe that to be quite true, Lord Ravensdale.”
“Oh? I am gratified to discover a point upon which we can agree without reservation, Miss Stanton.” Her eyes glistened like jewels in the candlelight of this dark tomb. “This outing can now be deemed successful. And what is the basis for our commonality?”
“We’re all from Africa,” she answered gracefully. “It is the Mother Country. Everyone, in one way or another, can be traced back to Africa.”
25
Only You
Val stared at her for a long while. He should be accustomed to outrageously incomprehensible remarks from Alita Stanton by now.
But each utterance is increasingly alarming.
He couldn’t take his eyes off those full lips the color of peaches set against ivory, translucent skin. Her emerald-green eyes looked directly at him, open and alert, without hesitation or apology.
Damn, she is beautiful.
The Destiny Code: The Soldier and the Mystic (Daughters of the Empire Book 1) Page 23
