The Fortune Teller(4)
But the car had started to pull up the drive and she’d saved the message, promising herself she would listen to the rest later. With a pang of guilt, she realized she hadn’t finished it yet, or the two others he’d left her.
Even when she wasn’t traveling he liked to leave her poems, from classical to contemporary to his own creations. Bren was an English professor at CUNY, a published poet, and unapologetically sentimental. They had been together for almost two years—her longest relationship to date—and she had never thought twice about another man, until now.
She began to count down the days until she left Montreux. It would be a relief to put an ocean between her and Theo. During her last week, she would wake up and sit outside on her hotel balcony, feeling the future looming across the lake, imminent and inescapable. Something was going to happen here. She could feel it. And she had no idea if she was ready.
*
When the last day of her assignment finally arrived, anticipation tightened inside her like a coil ready to snap. She awoke early that morning, unable to sleep, and arrived at the chateau two hours before her usual start time, to finish preparing all the shipments and review the letters of export.
A deep sense of melancholy hit her as she sealed the crates. Marcel had devoted his whole life to preserving these antiquities, and now they would never reside under his roof again. Disbanding a collection sometimes felt like lowering the curtain on closing night; it had to be the hardest part of her job. She only hoped that Marcel would approve of her decisions if he were still alive.
For a moment she gave in to the sadness and sat down, staring at all the crates. The longer she sat there, the more uneasy she began to feel that she’d missed something.
She got up and double-checked the official collection registry against her shipping schedules. Then she looked in all the display cases to make sure nothing had been left behind. Every item was accounted for and ready for transport. Still, anxiety consumed her.
Somehow she knew she had made a mistake.
She told herself the feeling was normal, nothing more than the stress of having to ship priceless manuscripts halfway around the world. But as hard as she tried to calm her nerves, she wouldn’t rest easy until she had checked all the rosters again. Luckily, it was still morning; she had plenty of time. She would review the shipments after she had a quick coffee in the kitchen. Perhaps the chef had even made some of his fresh-baked bürli and marmalade. She hadn’t eaten anything yet today.
When she went to set the security alarm in the gallery, her eyes landed on the wooden cabinet underneath the examination table.
Her hand stilled on the keypad.
She had never looked inside, assuming the cabinet held supplies, but it had been catching her eye all week.
She knelt down and opened the door to find an industrial safe bolted to the ground. The cabinet was just a decorative cover. It was steel-gauge with two electronic keypad locks. She tried using the gallery security codes, not sure if they would work.
To her surprise, they did, and her excitement skyrocketed. She opened the door to find only one object inside, a thick leather-bound book wrapped in linen. Goose bumps ran down her arms.
She brought the heavy book to the examining table and unwrapped the fabric to unveil a glorious codex.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. The hairs on her arms rose and the silence in the room magnified. Even the air turned electric. The years this artifact had weathered seemed to radiate from it, hovering like a band of energy.
In her years of appraising she had come to understand that, sometimes, collectors kept secrets. She had just found Marcel’s.
She hurried to the bathroom to wash her hands so she could touch the parchment without damaging the pages. She returned, now completely in the zone, and opened the cover with hands like a surgeon’s.
When she saw the writing, her body had a visceral reaction. The penmanship was exquisite, a treasure in and of itself. The carbon-black ink remained rich and unfaded, and the script stood out from the parchment with a strength untarnished by the years.
Engraved on the first parchment leaf were four words in flowing ancient Greek script. She began to translate:
My Chronicles Through Time
The symbols resembled works of art. What was this exquisite work, and why wasn’t it in the collection’s registry?
Semele turned over the first leaf and gasped.
A piece of stationery was wedged between the leaves. Slowly, she removed the paper, wondering who on earth could have been so careless.
Her heart stopped when she read the note:
Semele,
Tell no one what you find written in these pages.
Translate the words and you will understand.
You can trust no one now.
Marcel
Semele felt as if she’d been touched by a ghost. She reread the note over and over in disbelief. Marcel Bossard had written to her—which was impossible. The man had died before his estate ever contacted her firm.
How had he known her name?
To my reader: I can see what time you live in, and I feel your eyes upon me. We are from different eras, you and I, and by the time you are reading these words, my ancient world will have long been buried. I am one you call a seer—someone who can divine the future and divine it well.
The power of intuition will have ebbed in your time, so you may not believe this story, or worse, think it a fable. But I assure you, my tale is true. I will begin by telling you about my life before, when I was a girl in Alexandria, Egypt.