Spartan Gold

“stride,” “battle,” “rivals,” “trio,” “point,” “way.”

From these they generated a list of dozens of words. Those they wrote on the board’s opposite side in a spiderweb-like chart, branch leading to thread leading to question marks.

Next they turned their attention to words they felt had clear links to history—“amber,” “Tassilo,” “Baia,” “Hajj,” “Genius,” “Ionia,” “Quoins”—which they also placed on the board, in their own separate columns and lists. Once done they divided up the words and began scouring the Internet for historical references, which they plugged into briefs of each word.

Five of the words—“amber,” “Tassilo,” “Baia,” “Hajj,” “Ionia”—had links to well-known places, peoples, or things. Amber was a fossil resin used for jewelry; Tassilo was the given name of a long line of Bavarian kings; Hajj was the name of the yearly Islamic pilgrimage to the holy site of Mecca; Baia, which meant “mine,” was the name of a commune in Romania on the Moldova River; and Ionia was a Greek island in the North Aegean Sea.

Unfortunately, like their list of synonyms, each of these historical references was in itself a web of facts and double meanings and cross connections.

Breaking only to eat and drink and refresh themselves in the study’s attached bathroom, Sam and Remi kept at it through the morning into late afternoon until finally they decided on a different tack: to focus their attention on a single line of the riddle, hoping its solution would start a domino effect. They decided to try the second line.

“ ‘Tassilo and Pepere Gibbous Baia keep safe the place of Hajj,’ ” Remi recited, absently tapping her temple with a pencil. “Pepere is easy. It’s a French nickname for ‘grandfather.’”

“Right. And unless we’re missing some other significant reference to Tassilo, we can assume it’s a reference to Bavaria—its history, its landmarks, its culture. Something Bavarian.”

“Agreed. How about ‘Gibbous Baia’?”

They’d already devoted two fruitless hours to Romanian history in hopes of stumbling across an epiphany about the Baia area.

“ ‘Gibbous’ means a moon that’s between half and completely full.”

“Are we sure about that part?”

“Yes, a gibbous moon is—”

“No, I’m asking if that’s the only meaning.”

Sam thought for a moment, then frowned. “I’d assumed so. Maybe I shouldn’t have.” He picked up and shoved books around the desk until he found the dictionary. He found the correct page, scanned the entry, then clicked his tongue. “Dumb, Sam. . . .”

“What?”

“ ‘Gibbous’ also means ‘humpbacked.’ So Gibbous and Baia . . .”

Remi was already typing on the laptop. Though much of their in-depth references had come from library sites, their default starting point was good old Google. “Here . . . got something,” she said after a few minutes of reading. “Put the two together and you get this: Baia is part of a phrase—‘men of Baia.’ It’s a rough translation for the word ‘Bavaria.’ ”

“So, the Humpback of Bavaria?” Sam asked.

“No, no . . .” Remi tapped the keyboard again and scanned the search results. “Gotcha! Okay, Tassilo III, the king of Bavaria from 748 to 787, was installed on the throne by Pepin the Short, father of Charlemagne and grandfather of Pepin the Hunchback.”

“Now we’re talking,” Sam replied. “So Tassilo and the hunchback’s grandfather, Pepin the Short, ‘keep safe the place of Hajj.’ ”

“Problem is I can’t find any connection between either of them, or Bavaria, to Mecca.”

“It has to be a metaphor or a synonym,” Sam replied.

“Yes, or maybe an Islamic artifact somewhere in Bavaria.”

Sam, now on his own laptop, did a quick search. “Nope, nothing jumps out. Let’s keep going. Try another line.”

“We’ll go back to the beginning: ‘Anguished House Fellows in amber trapped.’ We’ve already got the etymology and synonyms for ‘anguished,’ ‘House,’ ‘Fellows,’ ‘amber,’ and ‘trapped.’ So how do they all intersect?”

Sam plopped down in a chair and leaned his head back, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. “I don’t know. . . . Something about the line is familiar, though.”

“Which part?”

“I don’t know. It’s right there. I can almost see it.”

They sat in silence for nearly a half hour, each wrapped in thought, their minds swirling with connections and possible connections.

Finally Remi looked at her watch. “It’s almost midnight. Let’s get some sleep and come back to it fresh in the morning.”

“Okay. It’s frustrating. I know I’m missing something, I just can’t put my finger on it.”

Four hours later as they lay asleep in Yvette’s guest suite Sam bolted upright in bed and muttered, “There you are!” Remi, a light sleeper, was instantly awake: “What? What’s wrong, Sam?”

“Nothing. I think I’ve got it.”

In their pajamas they returned to the study, turned on the lights, and powered up their laptops. For twenty minutes Sam sat at the keyboard, typing and following links as Remi watched from the corner chair. At last Sam turned around and smiled.

“It’s from a book I read in college—The Days of the Upright by a guy named . . . Roche. He talks about the origin of the word ‘Huguenot.’ ”

“French Calvinists, right?” Remi asked. “Protestants.”

“Right. Pretty big group from the sixteenth to eighteenth century. Anyway, there are a lot of explanations for where the word ‘Huguenot’ comes from. Some think it’s a hybrid—from the German word Eidgenosse, meaning ‘confederate,’ and the name Besan con Hugues, who was involved in early Calvinist history.

“The etymology most historians subscribe to comes from the Flemish word huisgenooten, which was what some Bible students in Flemish France were nicknamed. Huisgenooten would gather secretly in one another’s homes to study scripture. The name translates as ‘House Fellows.’

Remi stared at him for ten seconds before murmuring, “Sam, that’s brilliant.”

“What would have been brilliant is if I’d come up with it eighteen hours ago.”

“Better late than never. Okay, so we’re talking about Huguenots.”

“Anguished Huguenots,” Sam corrected.

Remi stood up and went to their whiteboard and used the dry-erase marker to circle their list of synonyms for ‘anguished.’ There were dozens. No obvious connection between them and Huguenots jumped out at them.

“So, let’s talk about amber,” Sam said, turning to the second part of the line. “ ‘In amber trapped.’ How do you get trapped in amber?”

They brainstormed this for a few minutes before Remi said, “Let’s try this: What happens when something gets trapped in amber?”

“You die,” Sam offered.

“Before that . . . Immobilized.”

“Frozen in place.”

“R ight . . .” Head down, eyes closed, she paced back and forth. “Frozen in place . . . Like a snapshot.”

Sam, his head resting against the chair’s headrest, leaned forward. “Like a painting.”

“Yes!”

He spun around in his chair and started typing on the laptop. “Painting . . . Huguenots . . .” He scanned the search results.

“Anything?”

“Massacre,” he muttered.

“What?”