The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone

  “Of course,” he whispered. “All the planets in our solar system revolve counterclockwise. Copernicus again.” He turned the dagger one complete revolution. A second. A third revolution started a soft pinging sound that lasted about ten seconds before there was a deep thunk, then silence.

  “Whoa,” said Darrell.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Becca added.

  Wade knew he had a dumb grin on his face, but it was only partly because the dagger worked. He realized all at once in a strange, exhilarating rush that they had solved several codes, retrieved an ancient dagger from a crypt, eluded an army of killers, crossed half of Europe, found an old door to an old school, and were now unlocking it.

  And this was just the beginning.

  If Becca was right, there was more after this, and more and more—

  “Are we ever going in, Smiley?” Darrell asked.

  “Sorry, yeah.” He removed the dagger and pushed the door inward. As heavy as the old door was, it slid open soundlessly and with ease, like the door of the Kupfermann tomb. The air inside the building was cool. It smelled of old stone. They tiptoed into a long high-ceilinged hallway of arches and columns and stood silently, looking ahead into the dim empty distance, when a bright silver sword flashed down in front of them and a voice hissed from the shadows.

  “Don’t move a centimeter!”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Who invades our sacred precincts? Tell me instantly or die!”

  The words had been said—in a kind of lilting English that somehow made Lily think of blue water and warm sand—by a young man in a tight-fitting white tunic and leggings. His face was chiseled and angular, and his brown hair, as wavy as the dagger’s blade, cascaded to his shoulders.

  “Uh . . .” Darrell mumbled. “We’re . . . tourists?”

  “This is an extremely private private school,” the young man said, not dropping his sword or his Rs. “And very securely locked.”

  Lily felt Becca’s eyes on her. Why? Why is she looking at me when this guy’s face is standing in front of us? Then she realized that her mouth was hanging open. She closed it quietly, but not before she found herself saying, “Your accent . . .”

  The young man seemed about to speak when he glanced down at Wade’s hand. That old dagger was still out. The young man immediately dropped his sword to his side and bent slightly at the waist. “My deepest apologies,” he said. “That is . . . a rare dagger. Very rare.” His brow furrowed. “You found it in . . . Berlin?”

  They shared a look. “How did you know that?” Becca asked.

  The young man looked at her for a second, then back at the dagger. “There were very few ever made, nearly all of them accounted for. Early sixteenth century. But you no doubt know this already.” He bowed again. “My sincere apologies. I was expecting . . . not you. May I examine it?”

  “Yes,” Lily replied, as if he was speaking directly to her.

  Wade held out the dagger and the young man took it carefully. “Yes. This is one of Achille’s blades. Excuse me, Achille Marozzo, the sword master who started our school. He founded it in this very building and had many illustrious students. But, again, you must already know this, or you would not be here. Like others who have found their way to us from time to time, you have come to visit our library, the earliest room of our school, yes?”

  Books? Really? Are the relics just books?

  Without waiting for them to respond, the man said “Yes, of course you have.” His expression changed as he handed the dagger back. “You were not directly followed?”

  “Followed?” said Becca, her first word for some time. “How did you . . . I mean, why did you think that?”

  The young man narrowed his eyes. “Your visit . . . but there will be time later. Come. Quickly. As you might guess, we are in lockdown.”

  Why would we guess that? Who does he think we are?

  He spun on his heels—quite elegantly, Lily thought—and pressed a button on the wall next to the door.

  There followed the sound of bolts shifting and moving that ended with a sharp echo. “Secure once more.” Then he stared at their faces as if taking notes for a portrait and swung his sword in a wide arc in front of him.

  “My name is Carlo Nuovenuto. I shall escort you to the library myself. Follow me. Hurry.”

  And hurriedly they went, as Carlo led them down the corridor, their footsteps reverberating against the bare stone.

  “Why is the school in lockdown?” asked Wade.

  “I’ll explain later.” Without another word, he turned left into a high-walled room whose ceiling was painted with fat naked babies and clouds. From there they passed through a vaulted archway into a long red-windowed hallway. One room after another, passage by passage, Carlo Nuovenuto led them deeper and deeper to what appeared to be the very rear of the old building.

  “Carlo,” said Lily, smiling. “You must be Italian, right?”

  “Sì. Half,” he said. “The other half . . . many things.”

  Darrell made a barely audible sound in his throat. She turned to see him share a look with Wade, who rolled his eyes.

  Uh-huh. You wish you looked like this guy, she thought. She was sure Darrell and Wade wondered whether Carlo could even be trusted and were hanging back, ready to leap into action if he tried anything. Guys, she wanted to say, Carlo sword fights for a living!

  “By the way,” he said as he paused at a small closet stuffed with fencing stuff. He reached into it. “Here’s a carrier for the dagger . . . eh . . . your names?”

  “Oh, right,” said Wade. “I’m Wade Kaplan. This is my stepbrother, Darrell, our friend, Becca, and—”

  “Lily!” she said.

  Carlo nodded to each of them. “You’ll want to protect the edges of the dagger, Wade. You may need it later. This sheath is made of a synthetic material that will keep the blade sharp, and, not incidentally, hide it from scanners and other detection equipment.”

  “Really?” said Darrell. “You mean at airports and stuff?”

  “Just so. The sheath’s strap hangs over the shoulder and conceals the weapon under your shirt.”

  Wade took the lightweight scabbard. “Thanks.”

  “This way.” Carlo led them into a room that was completely unfurnished. There was a single narrow door in one wall. He approached the door. There was a sudden humming, and he stopped, producing a phone from his tunic pocket.

  “Sì?” he answered. A voice chirped excitedly on the other end. “Sì. Pronto.” He closed the phone. “You must excuse me. You will be safe in the library.”

  “Safe?” said Becca. “It’s a library . . .”

  Carlo turned his eyes on Wade. “Hold tightly on to that,” he said, pointing to the dagger. With a twirl of his heels and hair, he was gone.

  “He’s telling us we’ll be safe?” whispered Darrell. “Lockdown? Did those creeps track us here? How did they find the fencing school so fast? How are they doing that?”

  “I don’t know, but we’d better hurry,” said Lily. “The door looks similar to the one on the front of the building. Dagger time.”

  Wade inserted the blade as before, turned it counterclockwise three times, and the door opened. In semidarkness beyond the door stood a narrow corridor barely two feet wide from wall to wall. It looked ancient, but the air was dry, and there was a faint hum coming from somewhere high in the ceiling.

  Air-conditioning? Lily wondered. A security camera was positioned at the end of the corridor by the other door. The red light pulsing next to the lens told them it was filming.

  “Someone’s watching us,” Darrell whispered.

  “Carlo, probably, but he seems okay,” said Lily, though okay wasn’t the word in her head. “And it sounds like he knows what he’s doing. Anyway, it’s too late to turn back now.”

  Wade slowed in the passage. “All right, but look. Carlo knows the dagger is valuable. And it’s like a sign that we’re good. We can be trusted. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, just bro
ught us here, so he must know what we’re looking for. Why the library? Maybe the relics are books.”

  “Please keep moving,” said Becca. “I really can’t stand the dark.”

  By the end of the passage, they were in almost total darkness. Lily vainly tried to remember the sequence of rooms and how far from the street entrance they might be, when Wade unlocked a third door with the dagger. They descended a set of stairs into a chamber more opulent than any she had ever seen. Gold threaded tapestries of mythological scenes hung heavily from three walls. On its ceiling was a painting of the sun in brilliant yellow and crimson, with gold rays splaying out from the center to each corner.

  Antique bladed weapons were arranged elaborately on the fourth wall. None were identical to their dagger, though some looked pretty close. Others were even more fanciful, including some swords that looked like desert weapons, with long curved blades and a vaguely Arabic feel to them. Lily was going to say they looked like movie props when she realized that the props were likely made to look like them.

  “So Achille Marozzo made all these things?” she asked.

  The room was airy despite its being underground, and there was something vaguely futuristic about it, as if the past and the future came together there.

  “Probably,” said Darrell. “Man, I wish we could borrow some of them. We should all have weapons. Swords would be so cool.”

  “And impossible to hide,” said Becca. “A dagger is dangerous enough to be carrying around.”

  “There’s only one book in the ‘library’?” said Wade.

  In the center of the room was a long, wide table made from a single, thick slab of oak. It was surrounded by a half dozen oak chairs.

  There were two antique oil lamps at the head of the table and between them a small stand on which sat a compact, leather-bound book. It was deep red with faded brass guards to protect each corner and a pair of similarly faded clasps to keep it closed.

  The brass guards were engraved with daggers like the one Wade set on the table in front of him.

  Imprinted in gold across a flat panel on the cover was a title in what Lily knew now were Gothic German letters similar to those on the Kupfermann tomb. She watched Becca’s face as she read the title. She seemed to stop breathing.

  “Bec, are you okay—”

  “What is it? What does it say?” asked Wade.

  Becca slumped into the nearest chair, ran her fingers lightly over the gold letters, then translated them aloud.

  † † †

  THE DAY BOOK OF

  NICOLAUS COPERNICUS

  HIS SECRET VOYAGES IN EARTH AND HEAVEN

  FAITHFULLY RECORDED

  BY HIS ASSISTANT

  HANS NOVAK

  BEGUN A.D. 1514

  †††

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “The Day Book of Nicolaus Copernicus?” Darrell said. “His diary? Do you think it’s real? How did it end up here . . . ?”

  As Becca stared at the leather cover imprinted with gold, the sound of Darrell’s voice faded until the chamber became so hushed that she heard nothing save her own excited breathing.

  Finally Lily tapped her on the shoulder. “Becca, can you read it? I think this is why Carlo brought us here.”

  Light from the lamps flickered across the gold print on the cover, as if the words themselves were on fire. “Yes, I think so.” Adjusting herself in the chair, Becca shifted the lamps on either side of the book so there was no glare, and slowly, carefully, as if she were handling something alive, she loosened the clasps and lifted the cover.

  Though obviously centuries old, and solidly bound in boards and leather, its front hinge opened easily, and the cover lay flat against the surface of the raised stand.

  “Um . . . everybody sit,” she said. “This probably won’t be fast.”

  Wade turned his face up to the door, listening. “It’s quiet up there. I guess we’re okay.”

  The thing Becca noticed right away when she opened to the first page was the handwriting. It was plain and legible. Copernicus’s assistant, Hans Novak, whoever he was, had good penmanship.

  Darrell peeked over her shoulder. “Most pen and ink manuscripts fade after a while,” he said. “This is in really good condition. It’s been taken care of for the last five hundred years. The air in the room is cooled to the right temperature. The light is veiled. They know what they’re doing. Mom shows me lots of this kind of stuff.”

  For a moment, the four shared a look as if they were all thinking the same thing. Sara Kaplan. Roald Kaplan. Both were far away from them. People were missing. Some were dead. And here they were, moments away from discovering why it was all happening.

  The Copernicus Legacy. The twelve relics.

  Is the secret hidden in these pages?

  Becca turned one page, then another and another. “It looks to be mostly in German, but I see some Italian and Latin in here, too, so it may be a hodgepodge of different languages. I’m not as good in some as in others.”

  “Better than the rest of us,” said Darrell, and Lily nodded.

  “And there are pictures,” she said, finding pencil sketches of tiny devices, motors, and mechanisms, then a series of abstract diagrams, boxes, and triangles, as well as what could only be described as great airy masses, clouds maybe, or oceans, mostly done in pencil, some in black or brown ink and washed with color.

  Then a word popped out at her. A single word. Stern. German for star and one of the words that started this whole adventure. From then on, she couldn’t draw her mind away from the text. Turning back to the first page, she began to translate, haltingly at first, then with more vigor as she grew accustomed to the old script.

  †

  I, Hans Novak, aged thirteen years, four months, eight days, here set down these words as Magister Nicolaus Copernicus has told them to me and as I myself have lived them.

  The words swept over her, drawing her back to a time and place far away from their own.

  To begin, I must record what happened before my humble appearance in the Magister’s story.

  Nicolaus Copernicus was born in 1473 in the town of Toru ´n, Poland, under stars that proclaimed him a visionary and a rebel.

  How true were those stars!

  †

  At the age of eighteen, already on the path that would later crown him with glory, Nicolaus attended the great University in Krakow.

  He studied hard. I know that, of course, as everyone must have, from his brilliance. He became a canon in law at Bologna. There he met the sword master, Achille Marozzo. At Via Cà Selvatica, he learned the art of the blade—

  “I knew it!” Darrell slapped his hand on the table. “He was right here! In this place. Man. Go on, Becca. Sorry.”

  Before he returned home to Poland, Nicolaus was given a gift from Achille. He related it to me thus:

  “What is this?” Nicolaus said.

  Achille laughed. “A master sword for a master swordsman! It is unlike any that I have forged so far. First you must name it.”

  Nicolaus drew out a magnificent broadsword. “Himmelklinge,” he said. “Sky Blade.”

  Achille approved, handing him a second gift. “To go with it, a dueling dagger, a prototype of my own design.”

  “Its blade undulates like the Baltic Sea,” Nicolaus said.

  Achille smiled. “May they both serve you well and protect you.”

  “He’s talking about this dagger,” said Wade, holding it under the lamplight. “This actually belonged to Copernicus. Keep going.”

  “Uh . . .” she flipped a page. “There are several pages in, I don’t know, maybe Polish? I’ll have to skip them for now. Here.”

  I enter the story in Frauenberg, called Frombork, on the shores of the Baltic. It is the thirteenth night of the second month of the year 1514. Because I can wield a pen, I am sent by the Bishop to assist the Magister with his work.

  I arrive after dusk.

  The night is cold, clear. The moon is a silver sphe
re rising aloft over the fir trees. The sky is sapphire black.

  “And I’m totally there,” Lily whispered, closing her eyes.

  “Do you love the stars?” the Magister asks as we stand atop his tower.

  “I do,” I tell him. “Though I know so little about them.”

  Copernicus shakes his head. “I look to the heavens, Hans, I work its numbers incessantly, but the teachings are . . . incorrect. The sun and stars, the planets, do not move as we were taught. I must know more!”

  Becca paused. Were there noises from the fencing school? Faint sounds? She listened. No, she thought. It’s nothing. Keep going.

  †

  Then comes the fateful day when a knock comes on the door. Nicolaus leaps down the stairs. “It has arrived!”

  It is a ratty old scroll, said to be the secret writing of the great second-century astronomer Ptolemy, author of the infamous Almagest.

  “I know about him,” Wade said. “Ptolemy was the first to catalog the constellations in any kind of reasonable order. He found forty-eight of them. Dad taught them to me. They’re on my star map.”

  “Ptolemy,” Nicolaus says, “was as clever as you and I put together, Hans. This scroll describes astounding astronomical events visible only from the south. Hans, we must go!”

  And so, under cover of night and deception, we lock up the Frombork tower and ride the high road south.

  Becca paused to breathe slowly. “A journey south from Poland. But for what?”

  “Keep reading,” said Lily. “Please.”

  March 17, 1514. Following Ptolemy’s scroll, Nicolaus and I undertake a nearly fatal voyage to . . .

  “It gets all garbled here with some kind of code we haven’t seen yet,” Becca said. “It’ll take work to figure it out. I’ll skip it for now.”