The Fortune Teller(8)

“Do you see how each has a different name?” he pointed out.

“I can’t read them,” I reminded him, no longer trying to mask my disappointment.

“Well, I can tell you what they say,” he offered. “That’s simple enough.”

“Can you translate the scroll?” I asked, trying not to grow too excited. His eyebrows rose at my daring. So I teased him, repeating what he had said to me. “Curiosity is the scholar’s bread.”

His eyes glinted with amusement and he took the scroll. “The papyrus is frayed and the writing is barely legible. Plus it’s an ancient form of hieroglyph. Translating would take time.”

“Still,” I pressed, putting my hand on his arm, “you could do it.”

“For you, I could,” he surprised me by saying. “Meet me at the door every other morning, and I’ll transcribe a section to translate.”

“And I can study the images and try to recreate them.”

“Excellent.” He seemed pleased with himself. “That should take us a while.”

We looked at each other and smiled. My eyes gravitated toward his lips, taking in their sensual curve. If he tried to kiss me now, I would let him. The prospect of clandestine meetings with Ariston filled me with anticipation. What we were about to do was reckless, forbidden—and also the most important task I would undertake in my young life.

Looking back, I never could have attempted to read the scroll without him. Ariston risked disgracing his family’s good name to help me. Hindsight offers many treasures, clarity being one. Only later, after Ariston finished translating the scroll, would I understand that finding the key and stone box had not been an accident at all.





Ace of Pentacles

Semele squinted at the ancient Greek letters, unsure if she was getting the translation right.…

Was it had not been an accident?

Or fated?

Or maybe marked by the gods?

She took off her magnifying glasses and rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. Her translation abilities were rusty, which had made reading a slow process. She needed all three of her dictionaries to decipher every other line.

But if she had gotten the translation right so far—and she believed the story’s narrator—then this memoir was written during the time of Cleopatra, who was born in 69 B.C.

Semele studied Ionna’s handwriting, taking in every brushstroke.

Paleography, dating an artifact through its writing, was her expertise. Oftentimes handwriting and the style of script were more precise measures of when a work was written than carbon dating. The shade, ornamentation, and capitalization of letters, the style of parchment, and the ink were all clues, and Semele was a master at time-stamping anything from the classical world.

Based on the handwriting alone, Marcel’s mysterious manuscript looked to be from between 50 and 45 B.C. If Ionna was truly the memoirist, then Semele’s estimate was not off the mark. She would be surprised if she was wrong—still, she wanted to test the manuscript when she returned to New York; she had never seen a two-thousand-year-old text so well preserved. The announcement of this discovery would send ripples through the whole industry. She had to be sure.

She turned off the examining light and leaned back in her chair, barely able to contain the thoughts running through her head.

For now she would say nothing to her client. She didn’t want to create any false expectations in case she was wrong and this manuscript was simply a tale penned by a writer in the Middle Ages. It wouldn’t be the first time a clergyman with an overactive imagination had written an “ancient chronicle.”

Semele looked at Marcel’s cryptic note again, still unnerved by his warning, and fingered the stationery in her hand. It was an engraved four-ply-cotton card, heavy stock, and clearly quite expensive.

The door opened, startling her, and a maid entered.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” the young woman said with a charming French accent.

Semele tucked the paper into her pocket and forced a smile. “Of course not.”

If the maid noticed Semele’s suspicious gesture, she hid it and went about dusting the glass cases. To Semele the chore seemed quite pointless—every surface in the room was already gleaming. She watched the girl make a circle of the gallery, wishing the maid would go away so she could lock up and head to the kitchen for a coffee. She was going to need serious amounts of caffeine in order to make sense of this note.

Why had Marcel written to her? And how had he known her name?

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Semele turned around with a start.

Theo stood in the doorway with an incensed look on his face.

She got up from her seat, at first thinking he was talking to her, but he pulled the maid aside and began reprimanding her in rapid-fire French. The maid murmured a quick apology and scurried out of the room.

Theo must have seen the horrified look on Semele’s face. He shook his head, trying to calm down. “Forgive me. This room is off-limits to the house staff.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Semele said, although she didn’t quite understand what had happened. Did he just fire the maid for dusting?

“Everything going well?” he asked, forcibly changing the subject.

Semele followed his lead and fixed a smile on her face. “Just wrapping up. I’ll e-mail you the list this afternoon.”