Chapter 1
Christmas time. Jemima loved it! Especially on a day like this with the sky so blue and the air so crisp.
A thick layer of snow underfoot muted her footsteps as Jemima carried an armful of mistletoe through the forest to the small cottage she shared with her father.
He’d be thrilled by the lovely abundance they’d use to decorate the cosy living room for this joyful time of the year.
He’d be even more thrilled when Jemima would tell him she’d decided against taking up Cousin Susan’s proposal to accompany her daughter Lucy to London for Lucy’s Come-Out the following April. Showy events and society balls were not to Jemima’s taste and although the Professor had endorsed Cousin Susan’s husband-hunting efforts on Jemima’s behalf, Jemima knew he’d be secretly pleased to have his daughter by his side. Always, as Jemima intended would be the case from now on.
“Ben!” she called, as she ran up the steps to the house, expecting the footman to emerge, ready to help her.
To her surprise, the door remained closed and the house seemed strangely silent. “Mrs. Dawkins!” None of the servants responded to her call, so, a little surprised, she let herself in.
The hallway was quite dark. Usually, the candles were lit by now, though she could see the glow of the Argand lamp from beneath the door of her papa’s library.
“Papa, look what I brought!”
She thrust open the library door, but remained on the threshold for the moment it took for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Across the Aubusson rug, she could see through the window the brightness of the snow. Usually, Mary their housemaid would have drawn closed the curtains and have made up the fire by now.
Jemima went to the hearth and dropped the mistletoe upon the polished marble as she looked about her.
Something wasn’t right. She glanced at the walls. Her father’s favourite pictures stared down at her: Hannibal Crossing the Alps on an Elephant, Capella’s Sermon of John the Baptist before Herod. A dozen glass eyes glowed from various positions about the room. They belonged to the many small, stuffed animals her father had studied in his earlier days, before he’d become wholly obsessed with discovering the transcription of his most important find. It was a project which had come to consume Jemima, too.
Nothing seemed out of place, and yet she sensed danger. An unaccountable prickling sensation at the back of her neck warned her to retreat, but instead she took a step farther into the room, calling again, more tentatively, “Papa?”
The faintest of groans drew her attention to the shadows near his desk and with a cry, Jemima threw herself onto her knees beside the professor’s prone form lying on the carpet. She put her hand to his forehead. “What’s happened!”
The old man moved awkwardly but was unable to raise himself. Thinking he must have had a seizure, Jemima snatched up his cold hand to chafe warmth into it, and felt the stickiness of blood.
“Papa, I’ll get help,” she cried, half rising and thinking he must have cut himself on the desk as he fell.
But he wouldn’t release her hand, and his eyes looked haunted as he mouthed words she couldn’t understand but which she tried to forestall. “Hush, Papa, you need your strength. I shall fetch someone. Where are the servants?”
“No, Jemima…” His grip was weak, his voice even weaker as he pushed out the words. “Danger. The clay tablet… You know where it is. Give it to them… Save yourself.”
She tried to draw in a breath while her heart hammered. The clay tablet? Her father was telling her to give some stranger the small clay tablet covered in hieroglyphics that she was in the process of interpreting? “What are you saying, Father? It’s your life’s work. Our life’s work!” And only one visit to the British Museum was needed to fully interpret the instructions that had stymied explorers for centuries. Fear and confusion made it difficult to swallow. She glanced up, relieved to see the object hidden beneath a mountain of papers on her father’s cluttered table as she leant over her father, her ears attuned for the sound of the servants. Where were they? She called out for Ben, then put her face close to her father’s ear. “Papa, you will be all right. Help is coming.”
“No, Jemima…you must run! Leave me. Leave…the tablet.”
Leave the tablet? She could never do that. Leave her father when he needed help? Her confusion ratcheted up a level. Reaching up to retrieve the innocuous looking disc of clay from the desk, while still on her knees, Jemima stared at it lovingly a moment before carefully dropping it into her apron pocket. The tablet had forged a special bond between her father and herself. Last night, she’d begged him to let her travel to Constantinople to be part of the expedition to find the chests of gold whose location would finally be revealed once Jemima finished interpreting the tablet’s precise instructions. Of course, her father would not claim the treasure for himself. His reward would be the satisfaction of discovering what had eluded scholars for centuries. As long as Professor Percy had enough to live on and could carry on with the work that so absorbed him, he was happy.
Disappointingly, though in his usual gentle manner, he’d said this was men’s work; that there was only one man to whom he’d trust the tablet—a scholar whose collection of antiquities was the finest in all England, but who’d been away for three years exploring the Holy Land. He’d told Jemima that when she’d transcribed every letter and word, they would invite this man to their cottage by the Norfolk coast and propose a joint venture to lay claim, in the name of the kingdom, to the hidden treasure, once thought to be mythical.
“I will never give the tablet away! Father, I must get help!”
His grip was stronger than before. It gave her hope until she realized it was powered by his need to make her listen. “Someone’s hiding. Run, Jemima!”
She realized she’d been foolish not to heed him the first time. Not to heed her instincts. Yes, something, someone, was in the room. Her fear took on a different dimension as she dropped his hand and rose to her feet. Her father would not speak lightly of such a thing.
Her senses seemed keener now. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? The smell of sweat; of an unwashed body in the shadows. Flooded with sudden dread, Jemima reached down for the fir bough, snow scattering upon the carpet as she brandished it like a club.
Last night, they’d invited in a group of wassai