Read The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone Online

Authors: Tony Abbott

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Fantasy & Magic, #Historical, #Renaissance

The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone (19 page)

BOOK: The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone
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Chapter Thirty-Eight

T
he wispy-haired driver jammed the brake to the floor of the Maserati so suddenly that Wade’s forehead nearly split open across the dashboard.

“Benvenuto!”
she crowed, waving her hand at the view beyond the windshield.
“Ci siamo a Roma!”

They were barely fifty yards from the Colosseum, the monstrous old four-story arena of concrete and stone looming over them. Several wide streets splayed out from it in different directions.

“Which one is Via Rasagnole?” Becca asked from the backseat.

The driver, keeping her smile, took a wad of euros from a small pocket and held it in Darrell’s face. “
Da
Carlo,” she said. Then she reached over Wade and pulled the door handle, giving him a push.
“Arrivederci!”

He nearly tumbled into the street. “Wait, no—”

Summoning her entire English vocabulary for the first time on their 200-mile trek, she managed to say, “All—you—out!”

“You can’t just leave us here!” Lily shouted.

“Really, what about Via Rasagnole?” Darrell said, squeezing out from behind Wade’s seat. “We have to go to Five, Via Rasagnole.”

“Non ho mai sentito parlare della Via Rasagnole.”

Becca squirmed out. “What do you mean you never heard of it? It’s Via Rasagnole! Your boss told us to go there.”


Via Rasagnole! Via Rasagnole!
” the driver mimicked.
“Ciao!”

Gravel sprayed them like bullets as the Maserati fishtailed away and disappeared behind the Colosseum, which, no matter how cheerily it was lit up in the golden glow of spotlights, looked to Darrell like nothing but a great big monument of death.

“What just happened?” Wade said.

Becca growled. “We were dumped.”

“At least we have Carlo’s phone,” said Lily.

Darrell turned. “For emergencies only. Plus he has a last name.”

“Nuovenuto,” said Becca. “I remember it because I think it’s a short form of something like ‘newcomer.’”

“Guys, we need to focus,” Wade said, hitching his backpack over his shoulder. “I don’t know what that lady’s problem is, but what we need now is an old-fashioned street map.”

“Because without a computer, we’re in the stone age,” said Lily.

Darrell leafed through the bills the driver had given him. “The Colosseum is a tourist trap. Somebody’s got to be selling street maps.”

“Good thinking,” said Becca. “Let’s do it.”

As they pushed their way into the crowd, looking for vendors, Darrell also kept his eyes peeled for Teutonic Knights. No one really looked the part,
but that’s exactly what they want you to think!

Lily poked him with her elbow. “There.”

Next to a group of young men and women sitting on a low wall was a sign. “Tourist Maps.” No sooner had they started over than the whole group of them jumped up and trotted toward them, smiling animatedly. “You want a tour of old Roma, yes?” one guy said. “Nice American tourists. We show you Colosseum. Beautiful at night. Wild animals. Gladiators. All here. Fifteen American dollars each. Yes?”

“Sorry,” said Darrell. “We don’t have that—”

“Ten dollars each!”

“No, actually—”

“Seven. Final offer. Okay, five. My absolute lowest offer. Three?”

Lily drew in a breath. “No. Really. We just want a map to find . . . what’s the name of that street again—”


Five, Via Rasagnole!
” the others yelled.

The young people looked at one another. One unfolded a giant street map. They chattered to one another in some language Darrell couldn’t identify, but Becca whispered that it was probably Romany, the language of Gypsies.

Cool
, he thought.
Lost in Rome with a band of Gypsies.

Except that’s not true. We know where we are now, and a map will tell us where to go, plus I’m not sure “Gypsies” is politically correct, so never mind.

After a few minutes, one guy shook his head. He handed them the map. “Take it. Is free. But no
Via Rasagnole
. Look. Index. Look!”

They thanked the people and stepped away to search the map privately.

“They’re right,” Wade said, studying the streets and the index. “There’s no such street in Rome.”

“Which makes no sense,” said Darrell. “Why would the guy at the fencing school—”

“Carlo,” said Lily.

“—tell us to go there if there’s no there there?”

Wade snapped his fingers. “Hold on, hold on. I know it’s late and my brain really wants to shut off, but maybe the address isn’t real.”

“He wanted us to get lost?” said Lily. “Why would Carlo do a thing like that?”

“No, look. He made us memorize the address and even spelled it for us, remember? Why would he spell it, if he didn’t want us to know the exact letters? He even said the
Five
was a
V
. As if it’s a word clue. Becca, it’s what you said. Clues leading to clues. Maybe all the things we’re getting are clues. Rebuses, codes, stuff like that. And we have to be smart to figure them out.”

“Here we go again,” said Lily.

“Actually, it makes sense,” Darrell said. “That’s why the Guardians have been able to keep Copernicus’s secret all these years. The levels of clues go on and on, and you have to be willing to follow them.”

“Carlo told us they’ve been doing it for centuries,” Wade went on. “It’s how they kept the Order away until now.”

Becca nodded. “So,
V, Via Rasagnole
might be a word scramble?”

Drawing them farther away from the glaring lights of the Colosseum, Lily said, “You know, there are computer programs that work out codes and word scrambles. We can’t do it on the phone because it would take too long. But I bet if we can find a real computer, like a public computer that can’t be traced, we can find out what the address really means.”

“Smart, Lil, really smart,” said Becca. “A public computer that can’t be traced. Until then, we have to assume that the Knights of the Teutonic Order are still out there. And by ‘out there,’ I mean lurking around every single corner.”

Darrell checked his watch. It was after nine o’clock. After the day they’d had, he wanted to lie down on the nearest flat surface, but Becca was right. They shouldn’t stay anywhere too long. And they should keep their eyes open and their ears alert.

He located the Colosseum on the map. “We’re here,” he said. “Let’s walk until we find a public library or internet café. Then we go in or wait until morning when they open—”

“Oh!” Lily gasped, then held up the phone. “It’s vibrating. Someone’s calling me!” She tapped it. “Hello? I said Hello?”

She turned to Becca. “They’re all Italian and stuff . . .”

Becca took the phone.
“Pronto?”

Everyone hushed while Becca listened.
“Sì? Sul serio?”
She looked at Wade and Darrell, her eyes growing moist instantly.

“Oh no,” said Wade. “What is it?”

“Domani? Sì! Sì! Ciao!”
Even before ending the call, she wrapped her arms around both boys. “Your dad’s been released by the German authorities. He’s coming here tomorrow—”

“Yes!” Wade practically collapsed on Darrell, who could barely hold himself up. “Dad is back. I can’t believe it.”

“I knew he’d escape,” Darrell said. “He’s Dad!”

“How did he get free?” asked Lily. “And who was that?”

Becca hung up. “Carlo’s assistant. Carlo knows a lawyer who knows a lawyer, so they made the police release Dr. Kaplan—Roald—on a technicality. She said the Order will soon figure out we’re here. We need to be careful. But this is so great. Your dad will meet us at noon at a place called the Castel Sant’Angelo, near the river.”

Wade breathed in and out. “Holy cow, awesome, yes, yes!”

Darrell rubbed his eyes and scanned the map. “Okay, we just have to make sure we stay out of the wrong hands. Castel Sant’Angelo . . . I can’t read this thing. Who wants to lead. I’m too . . .”

“I got it,” Becca said, taking the map. “Everybody agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Lily. “Let’s do this.”

“Yeah, awesome!” said Wade.

Darrell floated after them. They’d see Dad by lunchtime. And Carlo got him out. The Guardians were helping them. It was like a shadow had lifted, not only from him but from all of them. They were bubbling.

Becca traced her fingers over the map. With the Colosseum at her back, she looked toward another bunch of ruins. “It’s a pretty straight shot from here through the Roman Forum to the Tiber River. Castel Sant’Angelo is on the far side of one of the bridges.
Segui la guida!

She locked arms with Lily, who held her phone light over the map, and they set off down a cobbled path. They strode away from the square that surrounded the Colosseum and into the outskirts of what she said was “once the center of Imperial Rome.”

“The key word being
once
,” Darrell said.

The shadows closed quickly around them the moment they passed under a giant arch. It was like the air had suddenly changed, he thought, like entering the deep dark past. The paths between the ruins were jammed with clusters of slow-moving tourists, but the Forum was free of motorized traffic, which, given the crazy drivers they’d seen so far, was a good thing. As Darrell expected, Becca began pointing things out.

“This big arch is called the Arch of Titus,” she read from the map. “It’s from the first century. Titus’s brother built it to honor him. Emperors did that kind of stuff back then.”

“I’d do that for you, bro,” said Wade with a pretend-serious face. “As long as it meant that I was the alive brother.”

“Ha, ha. Never mind building an arch. Just give me the cash.”

“What we’re walking on now is Via Sacra,” Lily added, reading the map under the phone light.

“The sacred road. I get it,” Darrell said.


Sacred
is an anagram for ‘scared,’” said Wade.

Darrell gave him a look. “I love history, I really do,” he said. “In fact, I love it so much I want to
make
it history. Let’s keep moving.”

The Forum may have been restored as a place for tourists, he thought, but there was still a ton of rubble and heaps of stone and single columns where giant temples to some god or goddess once stood.

He thought the place needed serious work.

On their right they passed what Becca told them was the Basilica of Constantine. To him, its thick black arches stared down at them like the eye sockets of a massive skull.

“This reminds me that we’re spending another night in another graveyard,” Darrell said, keeping to the path. “Are we sure this is the quickest way to the Castel Sant’Angelo?”

Becca nodded. “It is, but if we weren’t on the run for our lives, I could spend a few days here.”

“The key word being
days
,” Darrell said. “At night, this is serious ghost territory.”

This part of Rome was an old, dead city, a collection of crumbled stone, half columns, shattered statues, and earthen streets, leading to and away from buildings that weren’t there.

The hair on his neck rose as they passed the imposing bulk of the Temple of Romulus. A stubby tower of thick stone, with a cupola on top, it was dense and dark and forbidding. He didn’t want to think about what used to go on behind its massive bronze doors. Sacrifices probably. They took kids from other countries and . . . never mind.

“Darrell?”

He turned to Wade. “Yeah?”

“Look up there.”

Darrell looked beyond the temples and columns to the blue-black dome of the sky and all its silvery stars. “Yeah. You and Copernicus and stars.”

“Right,” said Wade. “He was a scientist, an astronomer like Dad. And let’s assume he figured out some modern physics. Fine. But then the question is,
what
is he talking about? And I think it comes down to the device in the sketch.”

“Yeah, the sketch. I love that. I’ve been thinking about it, too.”

They passed a grassy area with a flat stone in the middle that Darrell was certain was where ancient people sacrificed kids. A policeman wove his way past them, and he remembered that they were still hiding from the cops.

“Whatever the thing was, it had twelve parts,” Darrell murmured. “But then what? What was it supposed to do?”

“That I can’t tell you.”

They were now walking up to the Capitoline Hill, which, according to Becca and Lily, was one of the seven hills that Rome was built on. It was less a hill than a big mound, but that was just fine.

They were climbing out of the land of the dead.

Becca stopped to study the map, while Lily slung her bag to the ground and plopped next to it.

“I am so tired,” she said. “These hills may look like nothing, but my legs are screaming at me. I need to rest for two minutes. Five. Ten minutes, my final offer—”

Darrell laughed and sat next to her.

“I mean,” said Wade, standing with Becca, “I ask myself, what would be so incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands? A weapon? What could make people commit murder for five centuries—”

“Oh my!” Becca cried, rattling the map. “Oh! Oh!”

BOOK: The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone
13.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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