Raiders

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Ashmolean was an impressive building that had dominated Oxford’s Beaumont Street for nearly two hundred years. The collection inside its impressive walls was even older, housed before its move to the current location in another building on Broad Street. The construction of the original museum had commenced back in 1678 when the famous English antiquary Elias Ashmole had donated an impressive cabinet of curiosities to the University of Oxford.

Also known as Wonder Rooms, cabinets of curiosities were vast collections of items which the Renaissance era had not yet categorized. For this reason, geological artefacts like rocks were in the same collection as works of art or natural history specimens.

These encyclopaedic collections often comprised of various objects from the worlds of archaeology, geology and antiquities, but also relics and other religious artefacts. Ashmole’s collection included the mantle which had belonged to the father of Pocahontas, the lantern used by Guy Fawkes and Europe’s last ever dodo, stuffed and mounted for all to see.

The collection was moved to its present location in the 1840s. Mason and the others had learned this as Virgil briefed them on the museum on the drive down into the city from the airport just outside Kidlington. They had cruised south through Summertown along the Banbury Road and were now leaving Park Town and approaching their destination.

Virgil interrupted himself to give Caleb directions. “Turn right at the Martyrs Memorial, Cal.”

“That’s this statue thing up ahead, right?”

He indicated an impressive stone monument a hundred meters or so in front of them which marked where Magdalen Street, St Giles and Beaumont street came together. Completed in 1843, the monument commemorated the Oxford Martyrs — Bishop Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, all of whom were executed for their protestant beliefs during the reign of Queen Mary I.

“Executed huh?” Caleb said.

“Burned at the stake.”

“Ouch,” said Zara. “That’s gotta hurt.”

“And that happened here?” Milo asked.

Virgil shook his head. “No, just around the corner in Broad Street. There’s a little cross in the street to mark the location of the execution. It was outside the city walls at the time.”

“You’re a quick study,” Eva said.

“Not really,” Virgil replied nonchalantly. “I did my PhD here. I wrote it in six months so I had to find something to do with my time. Local history filled that void.”

Zara sighed and shook her head. “How many bars are there in this place, Virgil?”

“At least a hundred.”

“And you filled the void with local history. Weirdo.”

As they climbed out the car and walked up the stone steps at the front of the museum, Milo broke the banter. “You think Kiya and her thugs have already got to old Lloyd?”

“Not as of five minutes ago,” Eva said. “He just emailed me to say he’s in the lobby.”

“No cops, right?” Caleb said. “We don’t want any cops.”

“Hey, I was a cop!” Zara said.

“You know what I mean, Z.”

Eva stepped ahead and shook hands with the professor. Ambrose Lloyd turned out to be younger than they had pictured; no older than late forties, he obviously kept himself fit and had the easy-going smile and confidence of a man who was happy with his lot in life.

Mason was relieved to see that he had respected their request about the police, and the only other person was Nigel Sim, the Director of the museum, plus two security guards, neither of whom was armed, as was normal for the United Kingdom.

After a brief round of introductions, Ambrose and Nigel led the team into the museum and through a large room full of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures.

“Where are we going?” Ella asked.

“My office is just through here,” Nigel said.

They passed through several smaller rooms dedicated to ancient Egypt and the Amarna Revolution before finally reaching the director’s private office. “Here we are,” Nigel said. He ushered everyone inside and closed the door. “Now, you say Ambrose’s life is in danger, is that right?”

“We believe so,” Mason said. “Not imminently, but there’s a faction of people — more of a cult, really — and they want something we have very badly. If they get it, then the next thing they’re going to want is Dr Lloyd here, because they’ll need him to translate something.”

Ambrose’s eyes lit up like emeralds. “Ah yes,” he said. “The note you say you found in Nectanebo’s sarcophagus. You said you think it’s going to lead you to the Nectanebo Codex.”

“The what?” Nigel said, visibly shaken. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Unlike Oxford’s traffic management, this is no joke, Prof,” Zara said.

Nigel was still too stunned to respond to Zara’s barbed comment. “Archaeologists have been searching for the Nectanebo Codex since the dawn of the science of archaeology itself. What’s this note you’re talking about?”

Eva pulled the tiny copper tube from her pocket and held it up in the light. “Right here, inside this tube.”

Nigel ran a hand over his bald head. “Good God!”

Eva unscrewed the tube and handed Ambrose the small handwritten note. “If anyone can interpret this code, then it’s you.”

The professor took the note with a trembling hand and stared down at the words scrawled by Napoleon so many years in the past. “Bugger me,” he said quietly. “This is the find of the century!”

“What does it say?” Caleb asked.

“I need more time to translate everything,” Ambrose said, his words hushed and uncertain. “But from what I’ve already looked at, I think you’ve struck gold.”