Trey and Greta awoke to the sound of a rattling percolator;
the smell of frying bacon. G stepped out of her room in pink PJ’s with tiny
green flowers that were losing their color. She knocked on her brother’s door.
“Hey,” she half-whispered. “You awake?” She opened the door
and climbed into his bed. “Mom’s makin’ bacon,” she stated.
“Smells good,” he answered, stretching.
“You want to show me the fort after breakfast?” she asked.
“You bet!” he smiled. “You’re gonna love it. I’m gonna put
up a couple turrets on the sides, like a castle, and I’m gonna have a lookout
post in one of the trees. It’ll be so neato!”
“Bacon first,” she assured, jumping out of the bed. Trey
followed her down the short hallway to the kitchen, all the while singing a
song about bacon.
“One or two?” Jan asked, draining the grease into a steel
can.
“Two!!” the twins urge.
“Why do I even bother asking?” she sighs, smiling. “How’d
you sleep?” Jan places plates of bacon and scrambled eggs on the bar where the
kids at in tall stools.
“Good,” they answer. Jan pours some OJ, passing the small
glasses to the kids.
“I’m gonna take G to the fort after breakfast,” Trey
confirms.
“Enjoy your freedom while you have it,” Jan warns, “because
it’s back to school on Monday.”
“Don’t remind me,” Megan says, entering. “Bacon?”
“Morning, Sunshine,” Jan sasses. “It won’t be as bad as you
might think.” She passes the platter to Megan, who grabs three slices and crams
one of them into her mouth. Meg takes a seat at the end of the bar and pours a
cup of coffee.
“It’s only my senior year, and I have to start all over
with a whole group of total strangers,” Meg pouts. “How bad can that be?”
“Princess, don’t get all huffy about it, you haven’t even
been there, yet,” her mother responds calmly. “Besides, there’s only about
fifty kids in the whole school.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Megan fires back, annoyed. “At T-High,
I had maybe thirty classmates in each
class. Now, I’ll have less than half of that in my whole
graduating class.” She bit into another piece of bacon in defiance.
“Well, that’s fewer names that you’ll have to learn,” Jan
offered, swinging out to the dining room to grab some apples. On her way, she
noticed the strange books Dale was talking about lying beside his chair. She
wandered over to the chair and picked them up, balancing the apples on top as
she brought the bundle into the kitchen.
“Apples,” she stated, more of a demand than a suggestion.
Each child obediently grabbed one and started munching. The books she sat down
on the kitchen counter on the opposite side of the room beside the sink. The
note from John Stull dropped out of one of the books and she gave it a read.
Wow. No need to get the kids involved in this, she thought. The kids continued
bantering at the table about school as Jan peeked into each book in curiosity.
The one that started with those strange words “Novus Ordo Seclurum” looked like
a series of Latin translations into English, the first titled Secretum:
mostly, a dialogue between Petrarch and St. Augustine. There were a couple of
other Latin-to-English translations in this volume, too, but at a first glance,
she couldn’t tell where one ended and the others began. The English parts
looked like something she might want to pass on to her Bible study circle in
Topeka, she thought. Interesting.
The second book looked like it was some kind of registry:
one column of titles, another of codes, a third of strange symbols, and a
fourth of numbers. Every now and then the columns would end in the middle of a
page and start a new sequence on the next. It looked like some kind of
historical record of some kind, she supposed, though to what, she could not
even guess. The titles were all over the place, too. Some she recognized as
authors, some artists, some were just items. She noticed that the language of
the text would change from English to Italian to Latin and back again,
seemingly at random; it was all over the place. Pretty meaningless, she
thought, without a point of reference.
The third book was written pretty much entirely in English,
though the spelling was awful, and appeared to be the personal journal of
someone who called himself Custos Arcanorum. The name sounded strange enough,
but what surprised Jan even more was the date listed: 1180 November 10? No way,
she thought. If these dates were right, then this thing was certainly strange,
if not also very valuable.
“‘No way,’ what, Mom?” Megan replied.
Jan caught herself. Did she say that aloud? “Oh,” she shook
her head, “it’s nothing.”
“Is that what Dad was looking at last night?” her daughter
asked, intrigued.
“Yeah, it’s just old boring books,” her mother noted.
“Nothing you’d be interested in.” She closed the journal and put the books to
the side, sliding the note into a hanging apron.
“Secrets don’t make friends,” Meg suggested, smiling. “Come
on, lemme see.”
Jan hesitated, then grabbed the journal and brought it
over. “Okay,” she accepts. “Look, but don’t touch.” The children gather around
the ancient pages. “This journal, here, says it was written in 1180.”
Megan laughed derisively. “No way, let me see.” After
checking, she started to put her fingers on the corners of the pages before her
mother gingerly slapped them away.
“Don’t,” her mother insisted, “touch!” The twins backed
away nervously.
Meg thought for a moment. Her eyes moved furtively around
the page, noting a few things, before she decided her verdict. “It’s gotta be
fake,” she declared.
“What makes you say that?” her mother posed, a bit
relieved.
“Because it’s written in English,” explained her daughter.
“English didn’t even really exist as a written language until the 1400’s.” She
was pretty sure of herself. “It’s the spelling,” she pointed.
“The spelling is O-F-A-L,” Jan
remarked jovially.
“But it’s still recognizable as
English. There’s no way that the spelling of these words could be like this in
1180. You remember my history project on Gutenburg? First, he didn’t ‘invent’
the printing press at all, really, he invented movable type, and that wasn’t until
1450. Second, William Caxton didn’t bring movable type to England until 1476.”
“So what does movable type have to with the spelling?” Jan
asked.
“That’s why I got an A,” beamed Meg. “Movable type
standardized your spelling, your grammar, punctuation,” she went on. “Because
the press was located in London and the south midlands dialect was used in
London, the spelling of all documents, including the Bible, the world’s first
dictionaries, newspapers, and things like that got all standardized using the
south midlands dialect. Given this spelling, the formation of the letters, the
grammar the punctuation, all of it, it’s impossible that this was written in
1180. I mean, the guy would have had to use a crystal ball or a time machine to
look into the future in order to know how to spell these words this way.”
The twins had checked out. Trey saw the opportunity to
seize the moment. “Can we go outside?” he sighed.
“Sure, go on,” Jan agreed, impressed with Megan’s retention
of information. “It’s cold out there, though, so heavy jeans, jackets, and
scarves, please.” The twins hopped out of their stools and ran back to their
rooms. “And a hat!” she called after them. By the time they came out bundled
up, Megan had certainly covered the bases disproving the book’s authenticity,
but Jan still had some questions. “But if this is hand-written, which it
appears to be, then could it be possible that this was just written by a very
eloquent hand?” she suggested.
“Mom,” Megan spelled out, “what is more likely: that the
dates and text are accurate, disproving countless records of the history of the
English language, or that they were forged by someone trying to make something
look cooler and older than it really is?” Megan rested her case, biting into
the last piece of bacon. The twins hopped through the kitchen and jetted out
the back door towards the woods.
“I love you,” called out Jan.
“Love you, Mom!” the twins chimed in time.
“Be careful out there,” she reminded them. The door slammed
shut. She sighed. “I don’t know that it proves anything,” her mother stated.
“It might point to one direction as far as likelihood, but I don’t know what it
proves.” She opened the book again, examining the pages closely.
“What about those other ones?” Meg pressed. She crossed the
room to give them a look.
“Please be careful,” urged Jan. “If they are as old as they
say they are, they’re probably worth a lot of money.” Jan cleared away the
plates from breakfast and wiped off the counter with a clean cloth. Megan
brought the remaining volumes to the counter and set them side by side, looking
at the covers.
“No titles on the spines,” she noted. She opened the first
one and read the spooky poem aloud. “Now comes the final era of the Sybil’s
Song. What’s the Sybil’s song?” she asked.
“Don’t know, Sweety. The fact is, I don’t know much about
any of these.” Jan pointed at the third book. “I remember something about St.
Augustine in this one,” she offered, “and that’s a name that I heard before in
my Bible study circles.” She switched books to identify the passage. “This one
looks like it’s a conversation between St. Augustine and this guy Petrarch.”
“What’s it about?”
“Here’s the first bit,” she read aloud:
Often have I
wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will
follow our departure. When I was ruminating lately on this matter, not in any
dream as one in sickness and slumber, but wide awake and with all my wits about
me, I was greatly astonished to behold a very beautiful Lady, shining with an
indescribable light about her.
Then it
goes on with a conversation between the author and this lady,” she continues,
flipping through a page or two. “Here, take a look.” She handed the book to her
daughter.
Megan thought carefully for a
moment, then stood the book up on its spine to where it would fall open. It
immediately flipped to a passage that appeared to have been read and studied,
even dog-eared.
“Please be careful,” she warned.
“I’m just looking,” she said. Megan read aloud.
“St. Augustine. What have you
to say, O man of little strength? Of what are you dreaming? For what are you
looking? Remember you not you are mortal?
Petrarch. Yes, I remember it
right well, and a shudder comes upon me every time that remembrance rises in my
breast.
St. Augustine. May you,
indeed, remember as you say, and take heed for yourself. You will spare me much
trouble by so doing. For there can be no doubt that to recollect one's misery
and to practice frequent meditation on death is the surest aid in scorning the
Seductions of this world, and in ordering the soul amid its stoles and
tempests, if only such meditation be not superficial, but sink into the bones
and marrow of the heart.
Sounds old and boring to me,” Megan offered. “I wonder what
Lancelot would say about it.”
Jan scoffed. “That kid has more knowledge than he knows
what to do with.” Lance Flott had been one of Megan’s more educated
bookworm-type friends in Topeka. He was a couple of years older and worked at
the public library, which made Jan all the more nervous. In Jan’s eyes, Lance was the only reason
Megan even got her hands on all that trashy romance fiction in the first place.
“Maybe I could ask him,” suggested Meg. “I mean,” she
added, recognizing the cross look on her mother’s face, “I know you don’t
particularly care for the guy, but I’m sure he would know more about this stuff
than we do.”
“I don’t dislike Lance,” her mother wavered, “but he did
kind of steer you down a different path.”
“I do my own steering, thank you very much,” she scoffed.
“He didn’t do anything except answer my questions honestly.” Her mother looked
back at her, mildly offended. “Tell me he didn’t cross your mind, reading all
this.”
Jan couldn’t be mad at her. She was doing the same thing
that she, herself, did to Dale. Megan knew she was right, and, unfortunately,
so did Jan.
