A Rather Charming Invitation (45 page)

Rollo grinned, handed Jeremy a snifter, then said affably, “Care for a drop, Penny dear?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling suddenly weak-kneed. I sat down and sighed in relief. But every time a twig snapped outside or an owl hooted, I jumped. I actually shivered when I said, “I can’t believe the thuggy way Drake delivered it.”

“Never mind,” Jeremy said. “We’ve got to move fast now. Let’s examine every stitch of this tapestry.”

First, I checked on its condition. Mercifully, it did not appear damaged by the theft, although it was a little dustier. I was hugely relieved, as if a long- lost friend had been rescued from ransom. This mysterious gift had taken me on quite a bumpy ride, as if Jeremy and I had endured some mythological “trial” to test our love. We must have come through it somehow, for now, gazing at its images, I experienced a strong, authentic kinship.

“Come on, fellas,” I said briskly, emerging from the spell. “Let’s find out what this tapestry wants us to know.” I shuffled through my notes.

I’d always been bothered by the fact that the groom was marching ahead, without so much as a backward glance to his bride. It reminded me of myths of doom and superstition that I didn’t want to have on my wedding tapestry, so I had averted my eyes without even realizing it. Now I gave it all a good, hard look.

“
Drink deep from the well of life
,” I murmured, looking at the lower cartouche. I handed Rollo the translation of the Latin that Jeremy had made, so that Rollo could keep up with us, as I studied it anew.

“Strange,” I said. “While that Latin proverb on the bottom certainly seems like advice to the groom, he actually isn’t on the same horizontal layer as the water-well. The well is in the line above him, so maybe he’s on his way there.”

“
And treasure a faithful wife
,” Rollo read aloud.

“Treasure,” I repeated. “Dowry, from a faithful wife.”

“Well, one thing we
do
know is that the Lunaire gold isn’t in the well,” Jeremy noted wryly. “So why did Armand even bother to mention the well in the Latin proverb?” He was gazing at our notes and pictures from the Bridal Car in the restaurant, with the design of the original top border of the tapestry. “What’s my translation of the Latin in the top cartouche, Rollo?” he asked.

“
Follow the man that you have wed,
” Rollo continued reading aloud.

I stared at the young groom, and I followed the gesture of his outstretched arm. He was scattering some sort of petals on the ground, as if to perfume and soften the path that his bride would follow. This was something new to me, because I had not been able to see these delicate petals in my photos. With all the other insets and images on the tapestry to distract the eye, the scattered petals looked no more significant than fallen leaves.

But now, gazing at the fine detailing in the actual tapestry, I noticed that these flower petals were violet, with green leaves, all flecked with gold and silver thread, resembling the petals of the violet-and-green moonwort in the borders.

Even more interesting, the petals were not simply scattered in the same straight line as the groom’s horizontal row of the procession. Instead, as I traced the petals, I realized that they fell on a diagonal line that cut across all the other horizontal rows stacked beneath. Starting from the lower right corner of the tapestry—where the newlyweds’ house was—the petals traced a path climbing upward diagonally to the left, crossing into the bride’s layer, at her feet, continuing upward to the groom’s layer above her, where he was slightly to the left, scattering them. If you extended the diagonal line beyond the petals, it led you to the well, where the groom was presumably heading. But why?

“Petals,” I said, pointing. “On the ground. See? It’s moonwort. Going on a diagonal line from the lower right to the upper left.” Jeremy peered at it.

“
Your home behind, your path ahead
,” Rollo continued.

“Aha!” Jeremy exclaimed.

“What—what?” I cried.

“
Your home behind
—didn’t you say the gazebo is now standing where the newlyweds’ house once was?” he demanded.

“Yes,” I answered.

“It’s directions,” Jeremy said triumphantly. “There’s the
home
—the house—and it’s below, therefore
behind
them, they’ve passed it. The tapestry-maker is giving his daughter the
path
to follow.”

“But if all it does is lead to the well, it’s a dead end, right?” I asked.

“Wrong,” Jeremy said excitedly, “because ‘
drink deep from the well of life’
—only tells you which
direction
to strike out in. It’s not the final destination. Don’t you see, he’s saying, if you stand with your back to the house, and you aim yourself in the direction of the well, and go
ahead
of it—because of ‘the
path
ahead’—that’s where they will find the
treasure
! If you extend the diagonal line beyond the well, look where it lands.” He traced it with his finger—and stopped at the “J.L.” circlet of the Lunaire gold.

“Ohmigosh!” I cried. I had goose-bumps now.

“But how far ahead of the well?” Rollo asked pragmatically. “We need feet or yards, man!”

“True,” Jeremy admitted. “It’s a big field. And there are absolutely no numbers on this thing.”

Yes, there was still something crucial that we were missing, we all knew this. But what? It had to be right under our eyes, a number, a direction, something . . . I could feel it. Like the game we played when we were kids, searching for hidden treasure; the person who’d hidden it would only say, “You’re warm” if you were near, or, “You’re cold” if you were too far away. We were burning hot, I just knew it.

Then, at that moment, away in the drawing room, Guy’s clock began to chime the hours, beautifully, softly but resonantly, like a far-off bell from the past. Midnight. When I was a teenager, my father used to call it “the hour of charm”, a paternal caveat, which meant that if I wasn’t home before the clock struck twelve, the charm of the evening would wear off—my coach might become a pumpkin, my escort might be too drunk to drive, and other creatures of the night would become more aggressive and dangerous.

Ten, eleven, twelve . . .
The lovely, silken sound echoed sonorously in the silent house, weaving its way into my thoughts, counting the passing hours . . . and telling me something more. I suddenly raised my head alertly. I was experiencing one of those Proustian moments . . . only, in audio. I remembered how, that night in his shop, Guy had explained to me the way the clock mechanism worked, and I’d asked him about the year that the clock had been made . . . and he’d tried to show me how he could tell the exact year. But there had been a distraction that night—Jeremy knocked something over. Then, later, just before Margery came to inspect the villa, Guy had been telling Erik about it, too . . . the day the tapestry was stolen.

I picked up the telephone and started dialing. “Who are you calling?” Jeremy asked. “It’s late.”

“Your mum. I have to speak to Guy Ansley,” I said. “It’s only eleven o’clock in London.”

Aunt Sheila did not sound sleepy, and I heard music in the background. I apologized for calling late, explaining that I didn’t have Guy’s home number.

“No bother. We were just finishing a late supper. He’s right here,” she said.

He came to the phone, jovial as ever. I said, “Guy, please tell me how you were able to figure out the exact date that the clock was made? Did it have something to do with the Latin inscription?”

“Ah, yes, it’s a chronogram,” he said easily.

“A chronogram?” I repeated. “What’s that?”

He told me, very patiently and carefully. “It’s like a riddle, a game. You see, certain letters in the Latin alphabet also represent numbers. Roman numerals, that is. The letter
I
equals the number one; the letter
V
equals five, and
X
is ten, and
L
is fifty, while
C
is a hundred,
D
is five hundred, and
M
is a thousand. Anyway, you pull out only the letters that represent numbers. It was easy to do in your clock, because the Latin proverb was inscribed in gold—
except
for the number-letters, which were in silver. That’s how I was able to pull them out so quickly. And when I added them all up, it came out to 1725.”

“Letters! Latin! Look!!” I spluttered to Jeremy and Rollo, who appeared utterly baffled. I hastily babbled into the phone, “Thanks a lot, Guy! You’ve been more help than you know. Talk to you soon,” and I rang off. Then I quickly explained the concept to Jeremy and Rollo.

“Ah, I see,” Rollo exclaimed, going to examine the actual Latin on the tapestry and photos:

But then Rollo’s brow furrowed. “There are an awful lot of
D
’s and
M
’s among those letters that represent numbers,” he commented. “If we added them all up, we’d have a number totalling in the thousands. I can’t imagine what that would mean.”

“Wait a minute,” Jeremy said, staring at the tapestry and the photos. “Only a few of these number-letters have the moonwort twining around them. See?”

I stared, and saw that indeed, only certain letters were decorated with moonwort, and were set off with gold and silver thread. Now that I was aware of it, they gleamed and practically popped out at me.

“Quick, let’s add them up!” I cried.

“Okay,” said Jeremy. He called out the letters:

V + I + I + V + X + V + I + X = ?

Then we converted them into Arabic numbers, and added them up:

5 + 1 + 1 + 5 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 10 = 38

“Total of thirty-eight,” I said. There was a silence.

“Great,” Jeremy commented. “Thirty-eight whats? Feet, hectares, horse heads?”

“Paces,” I said firmly. “‘Your
path
ahead’, right? It’s footsteps.”

“That’s as good a theory as any,” Rollo agreed.

Jeremy muttered, “So, let’s get this straight: Armand is telling his daughter that she must stand with her back to the house—leave it behind—and go in the direction of the well—that is, follow the husband’s path of the moonwort—and
then
, maintaining that direction, you must march thirty-eight paces beyond the well . . .” He raised his head. “Well, we might as well try it. Sooner than later.”

“I say, old man,” Rollo said mildly. “It’s past midnight. And it’s dark out there. Could be wolves.”

“There’s a full moon,” I reminded them. “That should help light our way.”

“Time is of the essence,” Jeremy proclaimed, “because Parker Drake might just find out that the coins he’s got are fakes.”

“We’d have to convince David to rip up those fields again,” I reminded. “He already thinks we’re crazy. So this time, we’d better be right.”

“Wake up the whole bloody house if you have to,” Jeremy said. “Tell them that at the very least, we’ve already recovered their tapestry. And we may find much, much more. So I should think they can humor us, one last time.”

W
ell, we did. Wake up the whole house, I mean. By the time we arrived at the château, every light was on, and the house itself looked fairly alarmed, its windows ablaze, like eyes flung open wide in shock. We must have looked fairly comical, trundling in, carrying that heavy rolled tapestry, with me on the front end, and Jeremy in the middle doing most of the heavy lifting, and Rollo bringing up the rear.

When we got inside, my French relatives, overjoyed to get their tapestry back, helped us set it down and unroll it, and they squealed with delight at the sight of it again. We all agreed that it would remain here with them until the wedding.

“What a great detective
chère
Penn-ee is, to recover the tapestry!” Leonora cried. I was just glad I was her “dear” Penny again, after being Little Miss Trouble-Maker for so long.

“Never mind the tapestry!” Honorine exclaimed. “We’re going digging for buried treasure!”

She was already dressed for a hike, with fancy boots and jeans and jacket. Charles was with her, too, wearing his hunting clothes, appearing ready to shoot a moose. David looked as if, against his better judgment, he was prepared to follow the firm instructions to cooperate that he’d gotten from Philippe, who stood by watching us, silently smoking his pipe. Philippe and Leonora remained at the château. Honorine jumped on the back of Charles’ Vespa, while the rest of us piled into cars with electric lanterns, spades and shovels, setting out for the flower fields in Grasse. From the back seat, Rollo kept a sharp lookout, reporting that nobody was following us, so far.

When we arrived, it was very spooky, crossing the fields at night. There was that bright, full moon, which made the terrain appear eerily alight, even whitened, looking almost as if the fields were covered with snow. Far off, I heard weird animal or bird cries, I couldn’t tell which. So, you can bet that I had no problem taking the advice from the tapestry, about letting the groom go first.

As we reached the gazebo, Jeremy explained our idea of how to proceed, and everybody participated. Honorine and Charles aligned themselves with their backs to the gazebo, where once the honeymooners’ house had stood. David and Rollo went out and parked themselves where the old well was, beaming their flashlights back at us, so that Honorine and Charles could aim in that direction and then march toward the well. Jeremy and I tracked them from the sides, to make sure they were aiming correctly. When Honorine and Charles reached the well, still pointed in the proper direction, Jeremy took over, to pace out the thirty-eight steps beyond the well.

“But, how do we know how big Armand’s stride was?” I wondered. “Or, his daughter’s.”

“Fine, you march on a parallel track to me, but do your own counting,” Jeremy said. “Your thirty-eight paces will be shorter than mine. We’ll get a wider area to dig, but we’ll cover all bases.”