The Atlantis Scrolls

Chapter 17

Purdue stoked the fire, while Sam cooked lunch under the stern supervision of Miss Maisy. In actual fact he was only assisting, but she made him believe that he was the chef. Purdue sauntered into the kitchen with a boyish grin, beholding the chaos Sam brought to the preparation of what would have been a feast.

“Giving you a hard time, is he?” Purdue asked Maisy.

“No more than me husband, sir,” she winked, and cleaned up where Sam had spilled the flour, trying to make dumplings.

“Sam,” Purdue said, and motioned with his head for Sam to join him in by the fire.

“Miss Maisy, I’m afraid I have to excuse myself from kitchen duty,” Sam announced.

“No worries, Mr. Cleave,” she smiled. “Thank God,” they heard her utter as he exited the kitchen.

“Have you had word yet about the document?” Purdue asked.

“Nothing. I imagine they all think I’m daft for pursuing a story about a myth, but on the one hand that is a good thing. The fewer people who know about this, the better. Just in case the journal is still intact somewhere,” Sam reported.

“Yes, I am very curious as to what this treasure is supposed to be,” Purdue said, as he poured them some Scotch.

“Of course you are,” Sam replied, half amused.

“It’s not about the money, Sam. God knows I have enough of that. I don’t have to chase after intrinsic relics for money,” Purdue told him. “I am truly invested in the past, what the world is holding in hidden places that people are too ignorant to care about. I mean, we live on soil that has seen the most amazing things, lived through the most fantastical eras. It is really special to find remnants of the Old World and to touch on things that know what we never will.”

“That’s way too deep for this time of day, man,” Sam confessed. He drank half a glass of his Scotch in one go.

“Easy there,” Purdue urged. “You want to be awake and aware when the two ladies return.”

“Not so sure about that, actually,” Sam admitted. Purdue only chuckled, because he felt much the same. Still, the two men decided not to discuss Nina or whatever she had with either of them. Oddly enough there was never any bad blood between Purdue and Sam, the two rivals for Nina’s heart, since both had had her body.

The front door opened with the two half-soaked women rushing in. It was not the rain that propelled them forward, but the news. After a quick lowdown of what happened at the graphologist’s office, they resisted the unbridled drive to analyze the poem and flattered Miss Maisy by first partaking in her delicious spread of excellent cooking. It would be unwise to discuss the new details in front of her, or anyone else for that matter, just as a matter of security.

After lunch all four of them sat around the table to assist on figuring out if there was anything of importance to the writings.

“David, this word? My high French is lacking, I suspect,” Agatha said impatiently.

He had a look at Rachel’s hideous handwriting, where she copied from the French part of the poem. “Oh, uh, that means ‘pagan’ and that one…”

“Don’t be daft, I know that one,” she sneered and pulled the page away from him. Nina snickered at Purdue’s chastisement. He smiled at her in a slightly sheepish way.

It appeared that Agatha was a hundred times more edgy while working than Nina and Sam ever would have guessed.

“Well, call me for the German section, if you need help, Agatha. I’m getting some tea,” Nina said casually, hoping that the eccentric librarian would not see it as a snide remark. But Agatha paid no attention to anyone while she completed her translation of the French section. Patiently the others waited, engaging in small talk while they all were bursting with curiosity. Suddenly Agatha cleared her throat, “All right,” she declared, “so this one says, ‘From pagan ports to the changing of crosses, came old scribes to keep the secret from God’s serpents. Serapis watched its entrails drag to the desert and hieroglyphs sank beneath Ahmed’s foot.’

She stopped. They waited. Agatha looked at them in disbelief, “So?”

“Is that it?” Sam asked, risking a grudge from the scary genius.

“Yes, Sam, that is it,” she snapped, as expected. “Why? Did you hope for an opera?”

“No, it was just… you know… I expected something longer, since you took so long…” he started, but Purdue turned his back on his sister to secretly discourage Sam from continuing that sentence.

“Do you speak French, Mr. Cleave?” she bitched. Purdue pinched his eyes shut, and Sam knew she took offense.

“No. No, I don’t. It would have taken me forever to figure out anything there,” Sam attempted a recovery.

“What the fuck is ‘Serapis’?” Nina came to his rescue. Her frown denoted a serious inquiry, not just an empty question to save Sam’s proverbial balls from the vice grip.

They all shook their heads.

“Look it up online,” Sam suggested and before his words were cold Nina had her laptop open.

“Got it,” she said, scanning the information to present a concise lecture. “Serapis was a pagan god, worshipped predominantly in Egypt.”

“Of course. We have papyrus, so we would naturally have Egypt somewhere,” Purdue joked.

“Anyway,” Nina continued, “in short… during somewhere in fourth-century Alexandria, Bishop Theophilus banned all observing of pagan deities and under an abandoned temple of Dionysus they apparently desecrated the contents of catacomb vault spaces… probably pagan relics,” she guessed, “and this pissed off the pagans in Alexandria something awful.”

“So they killed the bastard?” Sam rapped, amusing all but Nina, who delivered a steely glare, which sent him back to his corner.

“No, they did not kill the bastard, Sam,” she sighed, “but they did incite riots to retaliate in the streets. However, the Christians fought back and forced the pagan worshippers to take refuge in the Serapeum, the temple of Serapis, apparently an imposing structure. So they barricaded themselves in there, taking some Christians hostage for good measure.”

“Okay, so that explains the pagan ports. Alexandria was a very important port in the ancient world. Pagan ports turned Christian, right?” Purdue confirmed.

“That is correct, according to this,” Nina answered. “But the old scribes keeping the secret…”

“Old scribes,” Agatha observed, “must be the priests who kept records in Alexandria. The Library of Alexandria!”

“But the Library of Alexandria had already been burned down in Bumfuck, B.C., wasn’t it?” Sam asked. Purdue had to laugh at the journalist’s choice of words.

“It was reportedly burned down by Caesar when he set fire to his fleet of ships, as far as I know,” Purdue agreed.

“Okay, but even so, this document was apparently written on papyrus that the graphologist told us was ancient. Maybe not everything was destroyed. Maybe that is what it means that they kept it from God’s serpents — the Christian authorities!” Nina exclaimed.

“That’s all fair and well, Nina, but what does that have to do with a legionnaire from the 1800s? How does he fit in here?” Agatha wondered. “He wrote this, to what end?”

“The legend is that an old soldier told of the day when he saw invaluable treasures from the Old World with his own eyes, correct?” Sam interrupted. “We’re thinking gold and silver when we should be thinking books, information, and the hieroglyphs in the poem. The entrails of Serapis must be the innards of the temple, right?”

“Sam, you are a fucking genius!” Nina shrieked. “That’s it! Naturally, watching his entrails dragged across the desert and sank… buried… under Ahmed’s foot. The old soldier spoke of the farm owned by an Egyptian where he saw the treasure. This shit was buried under the Egyptian’s feet in Algeria!”

“Excellent! So the old French soldier told us what it was and where he saw it. It doesn’t tell us where his journal is,” Purdue reminded everyone. They had gotten so caught up in the riddle that they lost track of the actual document they were after.

“No worries. That is Nina’s part. The German written by the younger soldier he gave the journal to,” Agatha said, renewing their hope. “We needed to know what it was, this treasure — records from the Library of Alexandria. Now, we need to know how to find them, after we locate the journal for my client, of course.”

Nina took her time with the longer section of the French-German poem.

“This one is very tricky. Lots of code words. I suspect it will be more trouble to un-fuck than the first one,” she remarked as she underlined some words. “There are a lot of words missing here.”

“Yes, I saw that. Looks like this photograph got wet or damaged in the passing years, because a lot of the surface is grated away. Hopefully the original page has not suffered the same amount of injury. But just give us the words that are still there, dear,” Agatha prompted.

“Now just remember, this one was written long after the previous,” Nina said to herself to remind her of the context in which she was to translate it. “Roundabout the first years of the century, so… roundabout nineteen something. We need to call up those names of enlisted men, Agatha.”

When she finally had the German words translated, she sat back with a deep scowl haunting her brow.

“Let’s hear it,” Purdue said.

Nina read slowly, “It is very confusing. He clearly did not want anyone to find this during his lifetime. By the early 1900s the younger legionnaire must have been past his middle age, methinks. I have just dotted the parts where the words are missing.”

“The rest is a whole line missing,” Nina sighed, tossing her pen aside in defeat. “The last piece is a signature from a guy called ‘Wener,’ according to Rachel Clarke.”

Sam was chewing on a sweet roll. He lurched over Nina’s shoulder and with his full mouth he said, “Not ‘Wener.’ It’s ‘Werner,’ clear as day.”

Nina angled her face upward to narrow her eyes at his patronizing tone, but Sam only smiled as he did when he knew he was the smart beyond a fault, “And it’s ‘Klaus.’ Klaus Werner, 1935.”

Nina and Agatha stared at Sam in utter astonishment.

“See?” he said, pointing at the far bottom of the photograph. “1935. Did you ladies think it was a page number? ’Cause otherwise this man’s journal is thicker than the Bible and he must have had a very long and eventful life.”

Purdue could hold it no more. From his place at the hearth where he leaned against the frame with a glass of wine, he roared with laughter. Sam chuckled heartily with him, but made his way quickly away from Nina’s reach, just in case. Even Agatha smiled, “I’d be upturned by his arrogance too, had it not been for his saving us a lot of extra work, wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Gould?”

“Aye, for once he did not fuck it up,” Nina teased, and blessed Sam with a smile.