Episode 4: More Than You Know, Chapter 5
Jacob Stone followed Cassandra into her parent's library and closed the door. When he turned, he took in the items displayed there and his eyes lit up. Books stood shoulder to shoulder behind the glass doors of two opposing walls of floor to ceiling mahogany bookcases. Around the midpoint of each bookcase, four tiers of long, narrow drawers displayed their burnished handles invitingly. At the quarter-points of the walls, tall shelves displayed ancient urns, collections of coins, jade and jet carved figurines, gold-handled daggers, in their ostentatiously bejewelled sheaths, and all manner of other curia and archaeological finds. In the centre stood a large lectern and desk. At each corner of the room, a complete suit of armour, each from a different era and culture, stood to attention. A Roman legionnaire in one corner, a mediaeval British knight in another, a detailed replica of Alexander the Great's armour in another, and finally the one piece they had been looking for. The armour of Poiyaumbe, hero of Kotan Utannai.
"Are we sure that armour is the only thing we're interested in here?" Stone wondered aloud, inspecting the copy of the Macedonian armour. "This is really good. Do you think we should tell him it's not the original?"
"And how would you explain how you know that, exactly," enquired Cassandra, her arms folding while an amused smile played across her features. "We can't exactly tell him we know where the original actually is, and I wouldn't bet on him not being able to spot carmine or other non-timely pigments."
"Oh, I'm sure I'd come up with something," he grinned.
"I'm sorry my mother was such a..."
"Don't apologise for her," he interrupted her, frowning. "She is who she is and that ain't on you."
"I know, but..." Cassandra paused as Stone's gaze focussed on something behind her. He gave a short laugh and it was her turn to frown. "What?"
He walked past her and pointed to a book on a shelf. Though behind glass also, this one was of a much more modern ilk than those he had first noticed. Cassandra stepped over to the bookcase and read the title and author. They meant nothing to her. She looked round at Jacob and shrugged, shaking her head in incomprehension. He raised both eyebrows and smiled. She looked back at the book. She looked at his smug grin. She formed an hypothesis and tested it.
"This is you, isn't it," said Cassandra, indicating the book. "That's your fake name!"
Stone assented with a brief nod of his head.
"You know you can't tell them," she reminded him. "You'll blow our cover."
"Not necessarily," he shrugged. "And if it gets them to trust me more..."
"It's not worth the risk," cut in Cassandra decidedly. "Not unless we really have to. I mean: what proof have you that you wrote that? An acclaimed scholar writing under a fake name? It would make him more suspicious of you, not less!"
With a shrug and raised hands, Stone consented to let the matter rest, at least for now, and be shown the original manuscripts resting in the drawers, away from harsh light.
"Can you read it?" Cassie asked, peering down at the carefully stored sheet of papyrus over his shoulder.
"I'm good, I ain't that good!" Jacob laughed softly. "I can translate the hieroglyphs into ancient Egyptian, then the Egyptian into English, but it takes a minute."
A soft knock at the door brought their attention away from the drawer and it's contents.
"Lunch is ready, if you'd care to join us in the dining room," announced John Cillian from the doorway. "I trust you found some items of interest to you?"
"I'd say everything's of interest to me, sir," replied Stone with a charming smile. "The books, the manuscripts. Although I do find your collection of armour especially so. Is that genuine Macedonian?"
"According to its elevated provenance," Doctor Cillian nodded, with barely the slightest inclination of his head. "Alexander the Great's very own, if its history is to be believed."
"And the next corner," Stone pointed out the armour of the hero of Kotan Utunnai, "that's Japanese surely. Fifteenth century, if I'm not mistaken?"
"I believe so," nodded Doctor Cillian. "One of my more recent acquisitions. I have had it authenticated by two different experts. They both agree."
"I thought you were studying Chinese history at present?"
"I am, but a study of Japanese history preceded it," explained Cassandra's father. "I found the one rather led to a natural progression into the other. Shall we go?"
Stone offered his arm to Cassandra, which she took. "Of course," he said. "Lead the way. But I'd love a closer look at that armour sometime, if you don't mind. Some good photographs would be of immense value to the exhibition I'm working on."
Lunch turned out to be French onion soup, followed by a quinoa, pomegranate and spinach salad. If Stone thought the restraint of Cassandra's father would make conversations difficult, he had not even begun to consider the bloodless indifference of her mother. Conversation was impossible. Perhaps this was why the soft, dull thud of feet on the floor above caught his attention. He glanced at Cassandra across the table. She had heard it too, and had paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. She lowered the fork, still listening. "Mother, is there anyone else in the house?"
Professor Cillian looked up. "Do you not think they would have joined us here if there were?"
"I heard footsteps upstairs, above us," Cassandra informed her.
"Nonsense, child, your tumour is making you hear things again," her mother replied. "The security on this house is the best there is."
"I heard it too," pointed out Stone. "What room is directly above this one?"
"The library," sighed Doctor Cillian. "I had better check. If you hear an SOS, call the police."
"I'll go with you," said Stone, rising.
"Me too," added Cassandra.
"Don't be ridiculous, Cassandra," said her mother. "If there is any trouble, you will only start hallucinating and get in the way."
"Actually..." Cassandra began.
"Actually, why don't you stay here and make sure your mom's okay, Cassie," cut in Stone, holding his girlfriend's gaze. "Just in case there's anyone on this floor."
Cassandra read something in his features and nodded.
"Why are you really marrying him?" Professor Cillian asked once the men were out of earshot. "It cannot be 'love', surely."
Cassandra's head snapped round. "What does that mean?"
"Your father and I raised you in the full knowledge of what this ridiculous sentimental notion of 'love' truly is," replied her mother, looking at her in genuine puzzlement. "Nothing more than a Pavlovian hormonal response to archaic evolutionary tendencies. Females seek a mate that can support and protect them and their offspring, passing on the fittest alleles of the male population to those male offspring to enable them to do the same. Males seek a mate capable of producing many offspring, passing on those fittest alleles of the female population to any female offspring to do likewise. Natural selection. If you need reminding, I believe we have a first edition of Darwin's magnum opus in the library."
"I'm sure you do," Cassandra smiled back acidly. "Is there anything more important than knowledge, after all?"
"Do not take that tone with me, girl," said her mother sharply. "You will remember whose house you are in!"
"And you'll remember whose house I left as soon as I had the courage!" Cassandra shot back. "I'm not a girl anymore, mother, I'm a full grown woman. I may not know much about emotions and love and what it really means to be married, and heaven knows I never saw much of any of those here, but I have learned what it means to be me. To be my own person. Not your property. Not your little experiment that went wrong. Not your daughter. And I know, now, what it feels like to have people who actually care about me. Who love me! Not my STEM fair trophies. Not my photographic memory. Not my IQ. Me! And there is nobody on this Earth who loves me more than Jacob Stone does, and I am damn sure there is nobody on this Earth who loves him more than me!"
"With an attitude like that one wonders why you bothered coming back here at all," the professor replied. "But then you always did show dangerous signs of sentimentality."
"Yeah, like wanting to have friends!"
"Those imbecilic infants were not friends they were walking sources of disease and distraction!"
"I was five!"
"You were already reading Hawking!"
"I didn't understand it!"
"They couldn't even read the title!"
"I didn't care!"
"I did!" Professor Cillian snapped. "You were perfect. The perfect combination of ability and enterprise. You inherited your father's insatiable curiosity and my determination and focus, and a combination of both our IQ's. You would have been unstoppable."
"Last time I checked the only thing that stopped me doing anything..."
A sudden crash thudded through the ceiling above, followed by an irregular drumming. Cassandra focussed inward and let her synaesthesia take over. There were two sources of drumming. One above her and to the left. The other above her and to the right. She focussed in on each individually. The one on the left drummed out three short gaps, three long ones, then three short. SOS. The other simultaneously sounded out one short, one long, two short. L for Librarians. Cassandra's eyes widened.
"Mother, call the police," she said, her face paling. "I have to go."
Cassandra dashed out of the dining room and into the hall, pulling out her phone as soon as the door swung shut behind her.
"Mr Jenkins! Emergency! Cavalry!" Cassandra gasped as she ascended the stairs two at a time.
"Miss Cillian, what is the matter?" Jenkins calm, yet mildly perturbed voice asked through the cell phone. "Do you need a door?"
"I don't know what I need yet," she cried, hurtling round the corner of the stairs and up the next flight. "I think we were attacked. Jacob and Dad went to see. I got an SOS and an L from the ceiling. Just get us a door and get everyone on standby. Won't hurt to see if there's any of that healing oil left too."
She reached the library door and left the phone line open. The door was closed. Tentatively, she touched the handle, unhooking the catch and letting the door swing softly inwards. Jacob was over by her father, helping him sit up and checking a cut on his head. The library was in its usual state of quiet somnolence with one major exception. The desk and lectern in the centre had been blown apart. Not simply moved to opposite sides of the room, but completely destroyed, as if by an explosion. The glass panes in the doors of the bookcases were fractured in patterns of lines that did nothing to dispel the notion in Cassandra's unique mind. Worst of all: the armour was gone.
All of it.
Jacob walked over to her, leaving her father sitting on the floor with his back to a bookcase and a handkerchief pressed to his head. "Are you seein' this?"
"What happened?" Cassie murmured, answering his question with a nod, her eyes wide.
"They were almost gone when we got here," replied her partner in crime. "We opened the door just as the last of them was heading through theirs."
"Their what?" Cassie blinked, looking at him directly.
"Their door," he replied. "Cassie, they had a door. They walked right through that display cabinet between the windows. Didn't break a thing. Till they turned and fired on us, that is! Blew that desk to smithereens, knocked your father and I for six and caught him a nasty cut on the back of his head. By the time we got up they were gone and the display cabinet door only led through to the display cabinet."
"Did you recognise any of them?" Cassie asked, searching his own head for damage.
"Oh yeah, I recognised them alright," Jacob replied. "One mediaeval knight, one Roman legionnaire, one Japanese warrior and Alexander the Great!"
