Sayid looked dismayed.
“No good pulling a face, Sayid. I told you about it as well. How come you don’t remember?”
“Because I was probably doing your maths homework at the time.”
Max touched his finger onto each square.
“There’s always a pattern with numbers. They always mean something,” Sayid said.
“Obviously,” said Max, “Otherwise they wouldn’t be here, would they? Anyway, I can tell you one thing-all these numbers, up, down, across, and diagonally add up to sixty-five. They have to be these particular numbers in this particular order to do that.”
Sayid checked. Max was right. Each column and row totaled sixty-five.
“There’s hope for you yet.”
“Well, I’m not thick, y’know. I just struggle with maths a bit,” Max huffed.
Sayid fingered the scrap of paper. “I’ve seen something like this before. It’s called a magic square,” he said.
“Magic like in abracadabra?”
“Nah, the Arabs got it from the Indians when they invaded. Seventh century or something. Then a mathematician …” Sayid lifted his head for a moment, scratching around in his memory. “Al-Buni. That was him. He got into astrological stuff in about twelve hundred and used it for-”
Max interrupted him. “Sayid, we don’t have time for a history lesson. Just tell me what a magic square is, will you? Or at least this one. ‘Mars equals sixty-five’ means something. Zabala wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to hide something if it weren’t vital.”
“I don’t know what these numbers mean. But the sixty-five bit, at least that’s a start,” Sayid said, frowning with uncertainty.
“I suppose so,” Max said, “but a start in what direction we don’t know. Not yet, anyway. I reckon we’d better get back and study this at the comtesse’s.”
Sayid nodded, his mind also trying to make sense of the jumbled ideas entangled in his head. “Let me think about it some more,” he said, folding the paper neatly.
“OK. Numbers are what you’re good at. But we’ve got to check the observatory before we go. We won’t have another chance to come back,” Max said, tucking the drawing of the circle into his pocket and pushing the worn folder back into the shelves.
Sayid tidied the trestle table as Max carefully rethreaded the typewriter ribbon.
The observatory was on the same floor, and by the time they reached it, there was no sign of any disturbance in the library, nothing to draw suspicion of a search.
The observatory was an uncomplicated room. There was no decoration. Dark wooden floors gleamed with reflected light from two mullioned windows, one left, one right, which allowed an almost perfect rectangle of moonlight to stream in. The room was mostly bare, clearly used as a place for work, research and compilation of any findings done in the library. A Gothic arch was set in the middle of the room, flanked by old wooden bookcases displaying research-drab folders. In the arch’s alcove an old-fashioned telescope about two meters long was cantilevered on what looked like spoke wheels. It sat solidly, its barrel pointing up at about forty-five degrees. A small wooden seat on a slider was fixed to the floor beneath the whole apparatus.
“Stay away from the windows, Sayid. Just in case anyone is out there.”
Max stroked the telescope’s barrel. In the archway’s ceiling, louvered windows could be opened to access the sky.
“You lie down there,” Sayid said, pointing to the wooden seat, “then you slide under the telescope and watch the stars cross the meridian line.”
“How do you know that?”
Sayid smiled and pointed to a sign barely visible in the archway. “It says so. I’m going to have a go.” Sayid was already maneuvering himself onto the floor.
“Sayid, we don’t have time.”
“Course we do. C’mon, Max, you know all about the stars. Let’s have a look. It’s a clear night. Open those shutters up there.”
Sayid was already settling himself beneath the telescope’s eyepiece. Max jiggled with the rods that opened the arched ceiling. “The moon’s too bright, Sayid. You won’t see much.”
“Stop moaning, Max. Just do it.”
Max finally got the old louvers opened. He was afraid the whole system might collapse on them, but he stopped when he felt the opening rods getting stiff.
“That’s fine,” Sayid said, grinning. But then he grimaced as he struggled to focus the eyepiece.
Max gazed around the room. The folded paper was burning a hole in his pocket. He just wanted to get to a safe place and pore over it.
Irritation began to bite. “Sayid, give it up. C’mon, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Sayid’s eye was glued to the telescope; he shuffled himself a little forward, a little back, until he was as comfortable as he could be, waving an arm for Max to be quiet. A tinge of light moved to one side of the room. Max’s heart jumped. Something dark had shimmered. Imaginary monsters lived in these old walls. Gargoyles climbed down from their lofty perches, their claws scratching walls, their hunter’s eyes seeking prey. But it was a trick of the light, aided by Max’s imagination. Or was it? The wind, turning from the sea, snared itself across the battlements. The gargoyles’ open jaws cried out, desperate for life.
Sayid looked up.
“It’s just the wind,” Max said.
Sayid smiled halfheartedly and put his eye back to the telescope. Max decided to let him stay where he was for a few moments. The light that had shimmered came from the far side of the room.
An old burnished mirror, its copper surround a patina of dull green, barely reflected any light at all. It must have been one of the original mirrors in the house, and the glass was now a murky brown color. Max looked at his reflection. The boy who stared back at him had no eyes; the light from above cast deep shadow across his face, obliterating any reflection from his pupils, blackening the sockets. The thin red line of a scar still puckered the skin across his eyebrow, and his bunched jacket gave him the appearance of a hunched creature. He smiled, half expecting to see fangs instead of teeth. But then he gazed beyond his own image. Pulling down his cuff, he wiped away the dust on the mirror’s surface. It was clearer now.
Something in its reflection caught his eye.
Max turned and moved towards the opposite wall where an old wooden panel hung, its dingy paint seeming testimony of its age. It was about fifty centimeters long and half as wide. Small, tarnished brass eyelets, hooked on barely visible nails, held it to the wall. The painted image, faded and dull, hung in the darkest corner of the room and was out of place; the only picture in the whole room.
It had that kind of medieval look about it, where the figures didn’t seem quite real-flat and two-dimensional. There was a mountain range in the back of the picture; dirty, dust-covered peaks, any resemblance to snow long gone. But the image was easy to understand. A faded star, the yellow and white paint still recognizable, hovered above the peak. To the right of that another star, equidistant. And to the front of the mountains, lying in the foreground, was a monk. His head rested on a log or a boulder-Max couldn’t decide which-one hand held a telescope, crude, like the first ever made. The monk looked old, almost biblical; his ragged beard covered his chest, but his free hand’s index finger pointed towards himself.
Max scanned the tiny writing on the engraved metal square screwed to the frame’s base. It was in French and said that the chateau was dedicated to St. Anthony the Hermit. Max concentrated, looking at every brushstroke on the wooden panel. There was a scratch in the bottom left-hand corner. He tilted the panel and let the light pick up the picture’s texture. The mark was barely visible unless you were looking for it. It was a
This was no medieval painting, it wasn’t even done at the turn of the last century. Max lifted the panel down onto the floor, surprised at its weight. Why the hermit was looking through a telescope made no sense, but the two words in old-fashioned letters did. One lay to the left and below the old man, and the other was opposite:
