Grantville Gazette-Volume XI

  What would happen if the twins tore this one up? If he fought back maybe they would just beat him up and forget about his book. He tensed, ready to roll over and grab for Shawn's foot when a loud shout echoed down the street.

  "Daniel! Shawn! Get away from Michael right now!" Mr. Reading, the elementary school principal was striding toward the boys. He looked furious. "How many times have you two been told to leave him alone? I'm going to have another talk with your parents." Mr. Reading grabbed both boys and shook them. He looked down and asked, "Are you okay, Mikey?" When Michael scrambled to his feet and nodded, Mr. Reading took the book from Danny's oversized paw and inspected it. "Obviously this belongs to Mikey, not you two louts. Here, son." When Mr. Reading turned away to hand the book to Michael the twins took off at a run. "I'll be calling your parents!" he yelled.

  "Umm, thanks, Mr. Reading." Michael said in a small voice. He peered around wildly. Bad enough that the twins had nearly ripped up his book and given him another beating, but this! The school principal rescuing him was almost too much. If he was lucky none of the other kids had seen.

  "Still interested in archeology, eh, Mikey" Mr. Reading asked.

  "Yessir. "

  "Good, good. It's an interesting career. Do you have any ideas on what you want to dig up?"

  "Yeah . . . See, there's this new tomb in the Valley of the Kings—that's what this book is about." Michael politely showed the book to Mr. Reading.

  "So you're reading up on the new discovery. That's good scholarship. Keep learning and you'll do well in college. Its good to have high goals, Mikey". Mr. Reading smiled and put his hand on Michael's shoulder. "You keep studying hard and you'll make it. Now, I'd like to hear more about this new tomb."

  "Yes sir. See, the pharaoh Ramesses, that's Ramesses the Second, had something like a hundred sons . . ." Michael's mind raced. If he gave a good enough answer maybe Mr. Reading would be satisfied and leave before anyone saw them together. ". . . and this tomb—they call it KV5—well, it's where all those sons got buried." Unfortunately Mr. Reading showed no signs of leaving. Instead he walked beside Michael, asking questions about archeology.

  Michael tucked his book under his arm and walked and talked automatically. Inside he wailed at the unfairness of it all. By tomorrow morning every kid in school was going to know Mr. Reading had walked him home. Like he was a kindergardner! When they came to his house, Michael's heart sank further. His father was home early. He could hear him yelling at his mother. With a quick "goodbye" flung at Mr. Reading, Michael fled inside and upstairs to hide his "weird" book.

  Spring 1632

  Michael leaned on the hoe and eyed the garden patch with satisfaction. Not even Nanna or Gramps would find anything to complain about. He'd turned over the soil, carefully mixing in just the right amount of mulch the way Gramps had shown him. He and Gramps had made a chicken wire mulching enclosure last fall and filled it with raked up old leaves and cut grass. Over the winter it had turned into nice black mulch; just like Nanna said it would. All his rows were straight and evenly spaced. Each had a neatly lettered sign telling what was growing there. Three stake and wire trellises were ready for training the peas and a couple of old tomato cages stood guard at the far end. Gramps had built the fence up high enough to keep deer out. Butch wandered over from his patch of shade and sniffed at the corn sign.

  "Leave it be, Butch. Don't you go digging in here or Gramps'll make a rug out of your mangy hide." Michael warned the dog while he scratched the mutt's ears. "Your job's keeping the raccoons and possums out of the garden." He had to lean over to pet the dog, a sign that he was growing taller. Last fall he didn't have to lean over to scratch Butch's back. "Hey, Butch, look at this!" Michael pushed up his sleeve and flexed his arm and eyed the resulting small bulge with glee. "I'm getting muscles!"

  Butch panted companionably and wandered back to his shade without voicing an opinion on either the "no digging" rule or Michael's new biceps.

  "Hey, Mike! We're going down to the fairgrounds. Want to come along?" Joe Matowski called out. Jon Sizemore and Willy Lutz stood beside him outside the garden gate. "They're having a team roping practice. Annette's dad is going to be there and she said they're looking for somebody to work the gates."

  "Yeah, yeah! Wait 'til I tell Mom I'm going with you." Michael grinned at his friends and raced for the backdoor. If Annette O'Reilly was going to be at the team roping, it was likely that her cousin Jo Ann Manning would be there, too. Jo Ann hadn't giggled when he gave his report on archaeology in class. The other kids whispered, giggled, and squirmed in their seats but Jo Ann sat still and listened. She had asked a couple of smart questions and smiled when he answered them.

  * * *

  The boys trudged back up the road, tired, dirty, and happy. The outing had been a success—they had gotten to move the steers in and out of the pens.

  "What are you going to do this summer, Mike?" Joe asked.

  "Don't know. I've got to keep the garden going and Gramps said he wants me to help out at the restaurant." Michael sighed and tossed a rock.

  "That doesn't sound too bad. My folks want me to start Latin class over the summer. Pop's got this idea that I should go to that university in Jena." It was Joe's turn to chuck a couple of rocks.

  "I've got a job at the Kudzu Werke. If it works out I might get apprenticed," Jon crowed, throwing a good-sized rock a long way down the road.

  "Cool! How about you, Willy?" Michael asked.

  "School und . . . and more school. English and Latin. I am to prepare for the university, also." A pair of rocks whipped out in quick succession from Willy's hands.

  "Bummer." Michael sent three rocks after Willy's.

  "Yeah, bummer." Joe also got three rocks off but dropped the fourth.

  Jon grinned and rapidly tossed four rocks after Joe's.

  August, 1632

  "Troy is right where Homer said it was." Michael pontificated. He knelt on the floor and reached under his bed. "Schliemann used the description in the Iliad to find it. But he got a surprise when he dug up Troy. There wasn't just one city. He found eleven cities, each built on top of the previous one." Michael pulled out a fat, dusty notebook. "It's all in here. Maps, articles, pictures, and all sorts of stuff. You can copy what you need."

  "Wow! Thanks, Mike! This should make our report a lot better than any of the others. Right, Willy?" Joe Matowski grinned at the other boy.

  "Ja, ja. But we must change the picture titles to Latin," Willy pointed out, flipping through the notebook. He stopped suddenly, his eyes big. "Ist . . . is this gold?"

  Michael scooted over and peered over Willy's shoulder. "Yeah, oh, yeah. That's 'Priam's Treasure.' Schliemann found it. The woman wearing it in this picture is his wife, Sophia. She was a Greek he met while looking for Troy."

  "Gee, I thought you said archaeologist weren't treasure hunters," Joe complained. "You said archaeologists were interested in old pots and things."

  "Well, Schliemann wasn't really an archaeologist. He was a rich guy trying to prove that Troy really did exist. Because he didn't know how to do archaeology, he dug great big trenches completely through Troy. The real archaeologists who came latter hated him for doing that."

  "But he found this gold?" Joe thumped the picture. "What did he do with it?"

  "Yeah, he found it." Michael replied. "I think he gave it to some museum in Berlin 'cause it was supposed to have been destroyed during World War II."

  "Supposed to?" Joe asked, his voice showing his interest. Willy also stared at Michael in fascination.

  "Everybody thought so until a couple of years ago—ah, about 1996 or so." Michael flipped to the back of the notebook and showed them a newspaper clipping. "Turns out that the Russians stole it and hid it."

  "Cool. This is great, Willy." Joe grinned at his friends. "We get all these neat pictures and a treasure, too!" Joe read a bit of the clipping then said, "Says here that Schliemann found Troy in 1871. Does that mean that the treasure is still there now?" r />
  "Guess so . . . yeah, it would be." Michael nodded and slowly smiled. The thought of an undisturbed Troy appealed to him.

  "So maybe we ought to go dig it up."

  Michael thought for a minute, then shook his head. "No, what I want to do is get there first and do a real archaeological dig. Just digging for the treasure would mean destroying Troy again. The Treasure of Priam was buried really deep. We'd be digging for years. Besides, there are other treasures, bigger treasures that aren't buried under an entire hill."

  "Come on! What treasures?"

  Michael dove back under his bed and pulled out two more notebooks. "The first is the Atocha. It's a real big Spanish treasure galleon that sank in shallow water off Florida. It had tons of gold, silver, emeralds, everything."

  "Wow! Way cool!" Joe flipped rapidly through the second notebook. Willy reached over and stopped him at one picture showing a bare-chested man with many gold chains draped over his neck and shoulders.

  "So much gold. Where is Florida?" asked Willy.

  Joe sat back suddenly and shut the notebook. "It's in America," he said, his voice flat and defeated. "Half way around the world from here. It's also under water and we don't have any scuba gear."

  Michael nodded. "Yeah, and even if we had dive gear we don't know how to use it. Well, Troy's on land but its not very close, either."

  "What's in the other notebook?" Joe eyed the third notebook, the fattest of all. "Another underwater treasure?"

  "Nope. This one's King Tut's Tomb. It's on land, but it's in Egypt." Michael sighed and opened the notebook. There on the first page, in rich color, was the golden sarcophagus of the boy pharaoh, Tutankhamun.

  October, 1632

  "Wilhelm, come in, come in. See who is here!" Willy's mother called excitedly. "Your Uncle Johannes has come, all the way from Hamburg!"

  Willy carefully kept his face expressionless and looked at his father. Uncle Johannes' visits were exciting—filled with tales of the far off places he'd gone and the strange sights he'd seen. But Willy knew how much his father detested Uncle Johannes. Hermann Lutz sat glowering across the table from his brother-in-law. Inwardly Willy groaned. Uncle Johannes's visits meant trouble.

  * * *

  "What a little scholar you've become!" Johannes Fraze smiled warmly at his nephew. "You'll be a professor the next time I see you. A big, important professor with a solemn stare and clusters of students clamoring for your favor. You will be much too important and much too busy to see you poor old uncle."

  Willy shook his head. He could feel his ears getting warm and knew he was blushing at his uncle's teasing. "No, Uncle Johannes, I'll never be too important to see you. I'm not really much of a scholar so I'll never be a professor."

  "Come now, boy! I seem to always find you reading some textbook or another."

  Willy looked up, startled. "This isn't a textbook, Uncle Johannes. I borrowed it from another boy in school to practice reading English."

  "There you are! You've learned to speak and read English like one of these Americans. And you're learning Latin, which is the language of scholars. These are not minor accomplishments, my boy. If you don't wish to be a professor, then you can be a merchant. Merchants need to know languages, too."

  "How many languages do you know, Uncle Johannes?" His uncle sometimes claimed to be a merchant but Willy's father never believed his claims. Smuggler, thief, or cheat Uncle Johannes might be, but not a merchant. Willy's mother always defended her brother vigorously attributing Johannes's lack of money to robbers and dishonest merchants who didn't pay him for his goods.

  "Oh, several—my Polish is very good, so is my Spanish. I can make my way through France without trouble and I've enough Italian to get by on. But English I've never learned. Here, tell me what it says under this picture."

  "It says," Willy did a quick translation in his head, "that it is a picture of Herr Howard Carter in front of the tomb of Tutankhamun."

  "Amazing! You say these pictures are called photographs?"

  Willy nodded.

  "All these up-time things are very interesting. Do you know if any of the up-timers are teaching the making of photographs?"

  "No, but the teachers at the high school would know."

  "Ah! I think I must ask them about this and other things. There are opportunities here for a merchant." Uncle Johannes stroked his chin. "You say that they have classes to teach English? Classes that anyone can attend?"

  "Yes, they have them at the high school. Some are in the evenings so people can work and still go to them."

  "I think this might be an excellent time for me to learn English. There are good profits to be made in English goods . . ." Uncle Johannes's face was solemn but his eyes held a glitter and kept darting to the pictures in Michael Tyler's notebook.

  February, 1634

  Johannes Fraze hummed cheerfully and carefully but quickly packed his belongings. All the other members of the household were away and he wanted to be gone before any of them returned. He neatly wrapped the all-important notebook in a piece of up-time plastic and slipped it into an oiled leather sack and closed it. The resulting package he placed in the bottom of an up-time rucksack he had bought from one of the neighbors. On top of the book went a heavy purse that clinked. Johannes grinned. His year in Grantville had been rewarding in many ways. Several months ago he had slipped one of the color pictures out of the notebook. With that in hand he had made the rounds of down-timers—gullible down-timers.

  He chuckled over how easy it had been.

  "Herr Arndt, I come to you because I know I can trust you. I have found an opportunity for great wealth. In the library while reading to practice my English I stumbled across records of a statue. It has not yet been found and dug out of its Italian hillside. Such a statue! Solid gold! Here, look at this photograph." One look and the mark was hooked. Arndt had been so eager he hadn't even allowed Johannes to finish his pitch.

  "If only I had more money. How much did you say it weighed? Oh, all that gold! Just think of it! We'll all be rich!" Reichard Arndt gibbered. The man's eyes never left the picture while Johannes explained how many shares his money had bought.

  Johannes firmly pried the photograph of King Tutankhamun's golden mask out of the man's reluctant hands. When he had Arndt's attention, he explained, "I must insist that you keep this a complete secret. You cannot tell anyone, not your wife, or your sons, or your best friends."

  "But why not? Klaus Lumpe and Heinrich Neumann are good men. They deserve to be rich, too!"

  Johannes hid a grin. "Ah, so. Let me think about them. The secret must be kept lest other, less honorable men, find the statue first. Should I deem your friends trustworthy enough, you still must swear not to talk about it even between yourselves. It will take time to get all the necessary equipment together. More time will be needed to travel to Italy and locate the hill where the statue is buried. No one else can know what we plan until then or they might beat us to the statue."

  And so it had gone time and time again with the carefully selected marks. The quick pitch, their names scribbled on a notepad with other names, and their cash in hand and each sworn to secrecy. Or at least until the previous night at the Gardens.

  "Going to look for King Tut's tomb?" an amused voice asked. Johannes quickly turned the photograph over and slid it into his pocket before he replied.

  "King Tut? Is that whose statue it is? A true work of art. Do you know who the artist was who made such a beautiful piece?" Johannes kept his face straight and any nervousness out of his voice. Up-timers were tricky to deal with. Some appeared to know little; others had more information rattling around in their heads than a gaggle of university professors.

  "Some Egyptian, I guess," said the up-timer. "That coffin was made a long time ago. Well before Jesus' time. It sure is pretty. Strange folks, those Egyptians. All that gold wasted on a coffin."

  "Remember the exhibit that came around?" a second up-timer stood beside the first. "My granny took us kids up t
o Pittsburgh to see it. We stood in line for a couple of hours, but it was worth it. Man, they had some pretty stuff! Set me to thinking about heading to Egypt to find me another king's tomb. I remember how disappointed I was when I found out that a lot of the gold stuff was actually carved wood covered in gold leaf."

  "Yeah, that's right." The first up-timer laughed. " We studied the pharaohs in school. A lot of us dreamed of treasure hunting. If you're interested in knowing more about that coffin, you should check up at the school. There's bound to be a book on it. Come on, Ol' I'll Pay You Back Tuesday, this is Tuesday and I want some beer." The first up-timer grabbed his companion's arm and both headed off toward the bar.