Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus

CHAPTER NINE All Roads Lead to ... Chaldea

"ARE YOU DONE YET?" Henry asked for the third time even though we'd been in the reading room less than ten minutes.

"No, Henry. I'm not done. I'm just getting started." The truth was, I hadn't even cracked open a book yet, just managed to pull them from the shelves. Honestly. Did he think I could absorb the words through my hands? "This will take a while, so you might as well get comfortable."

He sighed, then trudged over to an open space on the floor, sat down, and pulled some marbles from his pocket. Satisfied that he would entertain himself for at least five minutes, I returned to my books.

Since Stilton had said the tablet was revered by those who studied alchemy and the occult, the best place to begin my research was with the grimoires, the ancient books alchemists and magicians of old had used to record their experiments and working knowledge of magic. One in particular, written by Silvus Moribundus, seemed like a good place to start. Much of his information came from Nectanebo II's head priest and magician. The problem was, the book was written in Latin in an old-fashioned script and there were a number of handwritten notes scribbled in the margins, all of which made it painfully slow to translate. Research is not for the easily discouraged.

I thumbed through the old, worn pages looking for the words Tabula Smaragdina and felt victorious when I actually found them.

Moribundus wrote that the tablet had been handed down from Hermes Trismegistus, who was thought to be a combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. Many considered the two gods to be one and the same, and hence the book was credited with being the source of all Western occult knowledge and lore.

Perhaps Stilton was correct and the tablet was simply a record of the failed recipes for turning lead into gold.

"Now are you done?" Henry's voice at my shoulder made me jump.

"No," I said, rather more crossly than I intended.

"All right, already, you don't have to bite my head off."

I took a deep breath and tried to hold on to my patience. "I'm sorry, Henry, but being startled makes me a bit grumpy." He looked so bored and miserable that I took pity on him. "I have an idea. Why don't you go spy on Fagenbush? See what he's up to this morning. find out if he tries to go down into the catacombs again, that sort of thing."

Henry's face brightened. "Truly? You'd let me do that?" Then his face fell. "This isn't like the pinching thing, is it, where you're setting me up to take the punishment?"

I felt my cheeks pinken slightly at this reminder of my unfair behavior. "No, Henry. It's nothing like that. I truly think it's a good idea to know what one's adversaries are up to. I don't know how angry people will be if you get caught, so just be good enough at it that you don't get caught."

"Prime!" he said, then headed for the door. "When should I report back?"

I checked my watch. "After luncheon, perhaps? That way if Fagenbush meets anyone for lunch, you'll be there to see it." Henry looked positively thrilled at this possibility and hurried out. I settled back into my grimoire, determined to make some headway.

Moribundus called the tabula the bible of all alchemical knowledge. It had formed the basis for generations of alchemical experiments and magical theories, which confirmed that Stilton did indeed know what he was talking about. Moribundus also claimed that the tablet had been inscribed by the god Thoth himself. If that were the case, then the tablet could be much more valuable—and dangerous—than Stilton, or Moribundus, knew. It would have been much easier to believe this claim if the symbols on the tablet had been Egyptian hieroglyphs, but they weren't. They were distinctly different.

Frustrated by that puzzle, I continued reading. Moribundus went on to say that the tablet, along with the Book of Thoth, a thirty-six-volume work that contained the entire Egyptian philosophy and magical doctrines, had been stored in the Alexandria Library and destroyed in the great fire. I sighed in disappointment. It's hard to describe just how much ancient knowledge was lost in that wretched fire.

But wait a moment! If the Emerald Tablet had been lost in the fire, then it couldn't be hidden in our basement! Hoping for more clues, I turned the page. There was yet another handwritten note in the margin, this one in a different hand. It is rumored that some of these books survived the fire and were secreted away in the nearby desert, where they are carefully hidden and only initiates of the wedjadeen can know their location.

Most interesting. Unfortunately, I was a bit unsure as to what a wedjadeen was, so I had no hope of learning the location. There was a sound at the door. "Henry," I said, without looking up. "It's not even lunchtime yet."

"Actually," said Stilton, clearing his throat. "It's not Henry, and it is, in fact, lunchtime."

"Oh, sorry, Stilton. I lost track of time."

"You always do, Miss Theodosia, when you're researching something. Find anything on the Emerald Tablet?"

I winced as he said the name out loud. "Shh! No, not yet. But I don't want everyone to know that I've found it, either."

"Of course!"

"What can I do for you, Stilton?"

His left hand twitched convulsively as he came fully into the room. "Actually, miss, I was wondering if you could tell me what all the excitement was about this morning. I'm afraid I missed it."

I leaned back in my chair, glad of the break. "A vagrant broke into the museum and spent the night in the broom closet," I explained.

"But what was that I heard about him being Egyptian? Quite a coincidence, that."

"True," I said, not sure how much I should tell him. He did work for Trawley, after all.

A rapid tic began in Stilton's left cheek and continued until he finally bit down to get it to stop. "Was that the Egyptian fellow you were outside talking to this morning?"

"Who told you that?" I asked sharply.

"N-no one, Miss Theo. I happened to arrive just then and saw you."

"Oh. Yes, well. He was one and the same."

"Odd, that you and he would have something to talk about."

I narrowed my eyes. Why was Stilton pumping me for information? "Not so odd," I said. "It turns out he used to work for the Antiquities Service in Cairo. Mum invited him back to visit tomorrow. I was merely curious as to his duties there."

Stilton leaned forward, practically quivering in anticipation. "And that's all you talked about?"

"Why, yes, Stilton. What else would we talk about?"

"N-nothing. I was just curious."

Tired of his crypticness, I rubbed my eyes and changed the subject. "Stilton, you seem to know quite a lot about this Emerald Tablet. How do you think people are aware of it if it's been hidden inside a false stele all these years?"

"It was housed in the Alexandria Library for some time and was one of the most copied documents of its day."

"But how was it deciphered? I didn't recognize the glyphs on it, did you?"

"Ah!" Stilton's face lit up. "That's because they're Chaldean cuneiform, miss, not Egyptian."

"Chaldean?"

"From Chaldea, what the Greeks called Babylonia. More specifically, from the eleventh dynasty of Babylonia, during the sixth century B.C."

"But if the tablet was fashioned by Thoth, or even Hermes Trismegistus, why would they use Chaldean script rather than Egyptian?"

"That's an excellent question, Miss Theo. Our current translations of the tablet were all taken from medieval Latin or Arabic copies of the original."

"Does anyone even know how to read Chaldean?" I asked.

"A handful of scholars," Stilton said. "But they only managed to decipher the cuneiform a few decades ago, so no one who is actually able to read the cuneiform has ever seen the original inscription on the tablet."

"Which would make it quite valuable from a scholarly standpoint," I said thoughtfully.

"There are many who feel the reason the formula never worked was that there was an incorrect translation. Who knows what a true, accurate translation would produce?" His eyes gleamed, as if he were imagining piles of gold.

"Stilton," I began, then stopped when Henry called out, "Theo!"

Stilton bade me a quick goodbye as Henry appeared. Honestly. There were as many comings and goings here as there were at Charing Cross Station! When Stilton was gone, Henry began hopping about as if he were going to burst.

"What? What is it, Henry?"

"You're right, Theo! Fagenbush is definitely up to something."

"Really?" What luck to have finally caught him at it. "What exactly did you observe?"

"Well, he was restless and nervous. Kept jumping out of his chair then standing and pacing for a while."

"Oh." My excitement left me. Those actions were more in keeping with sand in the knickers rather than with traitorous activity. However, I told Henry he'd done a good job so as not to discourage him early on. I glanced at the clock ticking on the wall. "Goodness! It's nearly time to meet Will."

"We're meeting Will?" Henry perked up considerably at this announcement.

"Yes, we arranged to meet in the park today." Of course, we'd arranged that before Wigmere's rebuke. Even so, I couldn't leave him hanging. I needed to explain what had happened.

Henry hurried over to the area where he'd been waiting for me to finish up my research and began hunting around on the floor.

"What are you doing? We need to go."

"I want to take my marbles to the park with me, but they're not here. Where'd you put them?"

"Me? I didn't put them anywhere. I never touched them."

"But I left them here," he insisted.

"Maybe you just thought you did." Then, before he could continue to argue, I said, "I'm leaving right this minute. Are you coming or not?"

He stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and kicked at the floor. "I'm coming."