“What’s that say?”
“Erm … it’s Latin….”
Sayid groaned. He knew Max’s ability on the subject.
Max hesitated. “I think it says ‘Life is but smoke.’” The phrase immediately reminded him of his African Bushman friend, whose people believed that life was a dream and one day we would all wake up in the real world.
“Do you think it might be a clue? Life is smoke. I mean, we’ve got Latin sayings, Arab verses, it could be any of these things,” Sayid said.
“Like that, you mean?” Max pointed at the backs of the dining-room chairs surrounding the marquetry inlaid table. They were covered in green velvet, but on each one was an Arabic letter. Max stood back, walked around the table. “What do they mean?” he asked Sayid.
“I’m not sure, Max.”
“What? Suddenly you can’t spell?”
“It’s Amharic. Ethiopian.”
The German spoke in English. He was in the doorway, smiling as Max spun round, instincts suddenly wary. When he had left the tourist couple at the chapel, it would have been natural for them to carry on their tour on that side of the chateau. And Max believed he would have heard even the softest of footfalls across the hall and down the passageway.
Why so silent? Perhaps Max had been distracted by Sayid and all the different languages on display.
“I thought you were English, though your German accent is good,” the rotund man said, smiling at Max. He gestured with the tour pamphlet for the chateau. “If you get the letters on the chairs in order, they spell out a warning: ‘May traitors never be seated at this table.’” He gave Max and Sayid another smile and handed Max the pamphlet. “We have another one. Enjoy the tour, boys,” he said, ushering his wife into the corridor.
Sayid slumped onto one of the dining-room chairs and rubbed his aching leg. “Well, traitors not being welcomed to nosh might be something.”
Max shook his head. “This is all window dressing. None of it concerns us. If Zabala worked here for all those years, he would have been involved in the science bit. There’s a library and observatory upstairs.”
He checked the corridor. The Germans were just going into one of the other rooms, so he and Sayid turned into the main hallway, where the carved, wooden-banistered stairs began.
“Come on,” Max said. “Piggyback time.”
As he pumped his legs up the stairs, the extra weight stretched his tendons and muscles, but it was effortless; the knowledge that he was getting closer to where Zabala had spent his working life boosted his strength.
On the upper landing there were huge paintings of tribal chiefs from Ethiopia dressed in white robes, with spear-carrying warriors protecting them, the whole tableau set against a deep blue sky. The vibrancy of the chateau’s decoration seemed so out of place when compared to the rough simplicity of how Zabala had lived on the mountain. Max reminded himself that Zabala became a monk after he stopped working here, because of his failure to convince everyone that something terrible was going to happen. The Academy of Sciences ran the chateau after Antoine d’Abbadie’s death, so Zabala would have had the full weight of the French scientific community against him when he failed to prove that Lucifer-whoever that was-would cause some kind of mass destruction. A Basque outsider, a man consumed by his failure, but eventually murdered because his prediction must finally have some validity. Who would benefit from stopping Zabala’s theory becoming known?
Distorted shadows lengthened across the walls. The dark wood sucked in what natural light was left to the day. Arabian shields and swords, once held by warriors, adorned the walls. Antelope trophy heads stared in dumb fear, gazing sightless over the flamboyant neo-Gothic castle they would never have seen in their natural lives.
Max suddenly found all the paintings and decorations overpowering. The weight of color on the walls and ceilings oppressive, like a clown’s face overladen with makeup, concealing misery beneath a false smile. They turned a corner into another room.
“Wow!” Sayid said in amazement.
Bare floorboards; a long, solid-looking table sat square in the middle of the room, bearing a few relics of scientific machinery and an old manual typewriter. Charts, files and folders were neatly stacked in custom-built bookshelves from floor to ceiling. An explorer-scientist’s lifetime’s work. The darkness, from the almost black timber of the ceiling, swallowed the very top shelves of books. This was getting close to where a scientist or researcher could stay in splendid isolation and concentrate on the complexities of his or her project. No overkill on decoration here. It was as if Max and Sayid had stepped behind a facade and found the true heart of the chateau. Was this where Zabala’s secret lay?
Curved, cast-iron supports bore the weight of the gallery that went round the whole room halfway up the wall. The ceiling must have been about six meters high and not a space was to be seen between the soldier-rigid volumes. Dulled gold on black lettering spread across the top of the far wall. It was in Basque; Max had no idea what it meant.
Max knew his dad could spend years in this room, examining every paper written by d’Abbadie. He ran his fingers along book spines. A gentle hum drew his eyes to a humidifier in the corner. Yes, that made sense. They were barely a kilometer from the page-rotting dampness of the Basque coast. These books could be either packed away and held in some philistine of a building in a city, or allowed to remain here where they belonged. A tribute to the achievements of one man and his desire to explore the world and its people, the stars and planets, and his dream of living in a pretend castle.
From what Max could see, the lower shelves were mostly astronomical publications. The folders were protected by strong, thick brown paper. He touched his finger along their edges, pulled one from the shelf and placed it on the table.
“Sayid, grab another one of these. From about twenty years ago, just before Zabala left here.”
The folder was heavy, the big pages cumbersome. Max’s hand hovered over the intricate data. A star chart. Lines bisected each other, stars had numbers, some had letters. Magnifications, magnitudes, it was a meaningless panorama of the galaxy as far as Max could tell. He flipped the pages quickly. There was nothing that could even resemble the name Zabala.
“They’re missing,” Sayid said.
“What?” Max moved to where his friend shuffled along the wide shelves, the only places big enough to hold the star charts.
“The folders go way back. Look”-he pointed one out-“1904, all the way up, 1927, and so on. How long would Zabala have worked here?”
“I don’t know,” Max said.
“Well, if he was here for, say, ten or fifteen years, up to twenty years ago there’s a whole batch missing.”
It made sense. If Zabala had tried to prove something and failed, gone public and brought embarrassment and derision on his scientific colleagues, they would have taken anything he had researched and archived it somewhere, or at worst destroyed it.
“See if there’s a book or something that would list any of the scientists that worked here,” Max told Sayid. “I’ve got to check on something.”
Max automatically looked at his wrist, but of course his father’s watch was missing. A twinge of regret, which he pushed aside. “Time, Sayid?”
“Nearly half-four. They close at five.”
Max nodded and walked quickly to the stair landing.
Looking out of the window, he saw that the Germans’ car had gone. He ran to another window, which looked out onto the fields towards the coast. The Frenchman was locking a small garden-type gate that closed off a footpath towards the cliffs.