The Eagle of Rome A Lottie Lipton Adventure Read online

  For Samuel and Hollie Watson

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Glossary

  Puzzle

  Did You Know?

  Conundrum

  Chapter One

  London, 1928

  FLASH!

  The camera bulbs popped and fizzled, leaving a stench of soot in the air. Reporters from every major newspaper in the country gathered around the grand entrance to the British Museum, all shouting at once to be heard.

  “Over here!”

  “Lady Viola!”

  “Just one question!”

  In front of the crowd of journalists stood a tall woman in her early thirties with short, black, bobbed hair. She wore a set of khaki coloured shorts and shirt, the kind that would not be out of place on an explorer in a dark jungle. It certainly looked exotic in central London. Peeking out from the front doors behind her, Lottie Lipton stared at the woman, fascinated by her every move.

  “Uncle Bert!” called Lottie. “It’s so exciting! Imagine, Lady Viola Kirton in our museum!”

  “Honestly Lottie dear, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Who exactly is this woman?” Uncle Bert harrumphed. He tore open a package that had just arrived for him, to find some ancient Roman belt buckles. “Oh, goody! They’ve finally come!” Uncle Bert, who was the Curator of Egyptology at the British Museum, had been looking after the Ancient Roman department ever since Cedric, the usual Curator of Roman Artefacts, had gone on an archaeological dig.

  “What?” said Lottie, turning to face her great Uncle. “You’ve never heard of Lady Viola? The famous treasure hunter? The woman who unearthed the Jewelled Skull of Marrakesh? She’s in all the newspapers!”

  “Ah, I see. I haven’t read a paper since 1918, so I must have missed it,” said Uncle Bert, still admiring the belt buckles. “However, if she’s a trained archaeologist, I very much look forward to meeting her.”

  Lottie raised her eyebrows and turned back to Lady Viola and the reporters. She still couldn’t believe that Uncle Bert had never heard of Lady Viola! She was one of Lottie’s heroes. She was the daughter of a Lord and went on daring expeditions to recover lost treasures. Her adventures were always in the papers and Lottie had cuttings of every single story she could find about her. She crept forward to hear what Lady Viola was saying.

  “Gentlemen, calm down!” Lady Viola smiled. “I have returned home to my beloved London as I am on the trail of one of the most elusive items in history. I hope the British Museum’s unique library may contain clues to the whereabouts of – ” she paused for dramatic effect – “The Eagle of the Ninth Legion!”

  Lottie gasped. She didn’t need Uncle Bert to explain what that was! The Eagle was the standard, a statue used as a symbol, of the legendary lost Ninth Legion – a Roman battalion of ten thousand men who mysteriously went missing when a mist descended on them on the battlefield.

  “But that’s just a myth!” shouted one of the reporters.

  “So was the Crystal Crown of Casablanca before I tracked it down!” said Lady Viola with a wink. The reporters laughed. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have research to do.”

  Lottie marvelled at the way she elegantly turned and walked away from the crowd. So composed! So charming! she thought.

  “Out of my way, pipsqueak!” said Lady Viola as Lottie rushed to hold the door open for her.

  So rude!

  Uncle Bert held out his hand to shake Lady Viola’s, but she walked past him without even looking.

  “Old man, where are the books in this dump?” she said with a snarl. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  Lottie looked crushed. Who was this awful woman? How had she changed from being so polite and charming in front of the reporters to being rude and arrogant?

  “I thought this was your ‘beloved London?’” said Lottie. Lady Viola let out a laugh.

  “Dear me, no! That stuff is just for the papers. They seem to like their heroines plain and polite. London is where I was born, but I don’t see why I should be in grey old England when I could be sunning myself in the Mediterranean,” said Lady Viola. “Now, books?”

  Uncle Bert nodded to Lottie, who reluctantly took the rude lady through the museum to the library. Lottie knew the museum inside out, having lived there since she was four. She and Uncle Bert shared an apartment in the museum. The only other person to live on the grounds of the museum was Reg, the old caretaker, who Lottie found in the library dusting the bookshelves.

  “Ah, this must be Lady Viola!” said Reg, smiling a toothless grin. Lottie tried to stop herself laughing as he performed a curtsey.

  “No time!” said Lady Viola, pushing past him. She marched straight up to the books on ancient Rome and pulled out a heavy tome. “This is the one! I’d prefer not to be here at all, but this is the only copy of this book in existence.” She slammed the dusty old book onto the reading table, pulled in her chair and held up her hand for silence as she leafed through it. Eventually, she found the page she was looking for. “Ah ha!”

  “What are you going to do with the Eagle when you find it?” asked Lottie. “Maybe we could exhibit it here at the museum?”

  “Not a chance!” said Lady Viola without looking up. “It’s going to be sold to the highest bidder. These holidays don’t pay for themselves, you know.”

  Lottie stamped her foot down.

  “B-but you can’t!” she shouted. “It’s an important piece of history! It belongs in a museum!”

  Lady Viola quickly copied down something from the book she had been reading. Then she pushed back her chair, stood up, and leaned down over Lottie so that they were eye to eye, their faces just inches apart.

  “Listen, runt,” she said. “If you find the treasure, you can do whatever you want with it. I’m going to collect the cash.”

  The rude adventurer flounced out of the library, leaving Lottie and Reg gobsmacked.

  “What a little madam!” said Reg. “She should learn some manners!”

  Uncle Bert joined them and Lottie explained what they had just heard.

  “Well I never!” said Uncle Bert, his moustache quivering with rage. “I’ve half a mind to try and beat her at her own game and find the Eagle ourselves.”

  Lottie grinned.

  “Then let’s do it! She left the book open at the page she was looking for. Let’s see what clue she’s following.”

  Uncle Bert pulled up a chair and sat down to read the old book, which was handwritten in an ornate style. He made several ‘Hmm’s’ and ‘Ahh’s’, and then finally:

  “Well, well, well! It seems this book thinks the Eagle of the Ninth Legion is buried somewhere in London. The bad news is, the only clue it gives is this strange little grid:”

  “So...” Lottie began to say, leaning over her Uncle’s shoulder to look at the book and trying to work out the puzzle. “If we put the words into the numbered boxes so that the word goes clockwise in its square, then we should make a new word in the middle four boxes. Thankfully someone has done the first one for us!” Lottie scratched her head, a habit she had picked up from Reg, who was doing the same. She took a deep breath and took out her trusty detective’s notebook, which she had filled with useful information and cuttings from newspapers. “Alright then. Let’s get cracking!”

  Ten minutes and several screwed up pieces of notepaper later, Lottie announced she had completed the puzzle with a loud, “Ah-ha!”

  “See? The centre squares spell out ‘LION’!” smiled Lottie. “Now what does that mean?”

&
nbsp; “The lions in London Zoo?” suggested Reg. Uncle Bert stroked his moustache in thought.

  “That’s the obvious answer, and probably the one Lady Viola chose,” he said. “But what if it was somewhere else... somewhere close by...”

  Lottie pondered until her brain hurt. Just then a pigeon fluttered down outside a nearby window. The sight of the pigeon stirred a memory of when Uncle Bert had taken her to feed the birds in –

  “Trafalgar Square!” she blurted out. “There are four giant bronze statues of lions at the base of Nelson’s Column!”

  Reg and Uncle Bert exchanged looks and a shrug.

  “It’s as good a start as any!” said Reg. “I’ll start the car up.”

  Lottie felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck with excitement. She rubbed her hands with glee.

  “Lady Viola, we’re coming after you!”

  Chapter Two

  Lottie and Uncle Bert climbed out of the back of Reg’s rusty old car after a hair-raising ride.

  “Thanks for the lift Reg,” said Lottie, her face white with fear. “I didn’t know your car could get up to that speed.”

  “Me neither!” said Reg, patting the car’s steaming bonnet affectionately.

  They stood at the corner of Trafalgar Square, the grand open area in the centre of London. Pigeons fluttered and cooed around them, hoping for a crumb of bread, but Lottie had already eaten her sandwiches. One landed on Reg’s shoulder and he treated it to a small bit of fruit cake which he kept in his pocket for hunger emergencies. In the centre of the square stood a giant stone column, climbing fifty-two metres into the air. On top of the column was a statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson.

  “Good morning, Admiral!” said Uncle Bert. He was in a jolly mood and saluted the stone sailor. At the base of the column, guarding each corner of the square, were four huge bronze lions.

  “Yikes!” said Reg. “That’s a big cat!”

  “They’re magnificent!” said Lottie, gazing up at the statues. She had always had a soft spot for them. “They were made out of cannons from French ships that were captured by Nelson’s fleet. There’s an old legend that says the lions will come alive if Big Ben strikes thirteen.”

  As if she had planned it, she heard a loud sound from down the road.

  BONG!

  Uncle Bert checked his pocket watch and gulped.

  “Twelve o’clock. I hope Big Ben gets its chimes correct!”

  Lottie stared down Whitehall to the large clock tower. She counted the number of bells carefully. She knew that the legend was silly, but stranger things had happened...

  Two... Three... Four... Five...

  Lottie counted on her fingers and looked up at the giant claws of the statues.

  Six... Seven... Eight... Nine...

  Reg leant casually against the wall directly under a huge paw of one of the lions, shaking his head at Lottie and Uncle Bert, who were nearly shaking with nerves.

  Ten… Eleven... Twelve...

  ... And… Nothing. Silence followed. Lottie breathed easy and laughed.

  “I’d say you two were as daft as brushes, but that would be an insult to brushes!” said Reg. “These cats can’t come alive!”

  “Strange things seem to happen to us, so I didn’t want to take it for granted,” said Uncle Bert, putting away his pocket watch, red-faced with embarrassment. Lottie started to walk around the monument.

  “Lady Viola doesn’t seem to be here,” she said.

  “One of the security guards said she hailed a taxi and sped off towards London Zoo!” said Reg with a grin. “So we might be ahead of her.”

  That cheered Lottie up a little, but she still had to find the next clue that would lead them to the Eagle.

  “So, what exactly was the Eagle?” pondered Reg as they all began searching for clues.

  “Each legion of Roman soldiers had a standard, a kind of small statue on a pole, that they would hold in front of them in battle. It was their symbol and the Ninth Legion’s was a bronze eagle. But it went missing when the legion was curiously lost in a strange mist during a battle,” said Uncle Bert.

  “So it’s not a real eagle then? I wondered why we weren’t searching the skies,” said Reg. “Why would it be in London?”

  Lottie knew this one. “It could be anywhere, but the battle it was lost in was in Scotland, nearly two thousand years ago. Traders and treasure hunters would probably have moved it down to London looking for a buyer.”

  They continued to search the square and finally Reg found the next clue. He was standing in front of the lion that faced the National Gallery.

  “Is this it?” he called, bringing Uncle Bert and Lottie running over. “I don’t know what it means, but it looks kind of clue-like to me.”

  There were numbers carved into the corners of the paving slabs on the ground directly beneath the lion. It made a large square grid. But the centre of the square was missing one paving slab.

  Close by there were some more paving slabs, with more numbers in the corners but also with letters in the centre.

  On the plinth on which the lion was sitting was carved another message:

  ? = Sum 10

  “Sums!” said Reg. “Why did it have to be sums?”

  Lottie scanned the numbers on the ground to see what she had to do.

  “It’s okay Reg, I think all we have to do is put a paving slab in the centre that makes each of the four numbers in the corners add up to ten.”

  “That’s all very well, but I’ll make you a deal – I’ll do the lifting if you do the maths!”

  Lottie tried to block out the sounds of the city around her and concentrate on adding up.

  Lottie bit her lip in concentration as she tried to work out the puzzle. She had worked out that the top left corner of the paving slab she needed to pick should have a two on it, but it didn’t help as lots of the spare paving slabs around the puzzle had twos in the top left corner!

  “Come on Lottie!” said Uncle Bert. “It’s only a matter of time before Lady Viola realises her mistake and works her way back here.”

  “I’m trying!” said Lottie. Eventually she settled on the tile marked with a C, which she thought was correct. Reg pulled out a small crowbar which he kept in his overalls for just such an emergency. He was amazingly strong for his age and lifted the paving slab in one go while Uncle Bert kept watch. They didn’t want any policemen to come and ask why they were pulling up the pavements in the centre of London!

  “Here we go then!” Reg grunted as he shifted the slab into place.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then:

  ROOOAAAAAR!

  They jumped back as the lion in front of them let out a cry. Its metal mouth opened to reveal a deep, dark hole inside. Lottie smiled as she realised that the lion wasn’t alive – it was mechanical! Its jaw was designed to open wide enough for a person to crawl into and the roar that she had heard was simply the grinding of metal.

  “Crikey!” cried Reg.

  “I think my heart just skipped a beat!”

  Lottie rolled up her sleeves and started to climb up the plinth to reach the lion’s mouth.

  “What on Earth are you doing?” asked Uncle Bert, mopping his sweating brow with a handkerchief.

  “The Eagle is close by, I can feel it!” said Lottie as she reached the lion’s fangs. “And I’m not going to let Lady Viola sell it off like a simple trinket. Come on!”

  Chapter Three

  Inside the lion was dark and dusty. Lottie, being only nine years old, fitted through the lion’s mouth easily. She slid down a short tunnel which took her underneath the base of Nelson’s Column. For Reg and Uncle Bert however, it was a bit of a squeeze.

  “Push!” called Uncle Bert. Outside, Reg was pushing Uncle Bert’s large bottom into the mouth of the lion and getting a few strange looks from passing Londoners.

  “I’m trying!” shouted Reg. “That’s it! No more cakes for you!” He took a few steps back and then ran up to the Pro
fessor’s behind and gave one last large shove. It did the trick and Uncle Bert yelped as he whizzed through the short passage.

  He ended up on his back looking up at Lottie.

  “Tell me again why we’re putting ourselves through this?” he muttered, picking himself up and brushing the dust off his suit.

  “For the sake of history and archaeology,” said Lottie. She turned to look around and found that they were underneath the column itself, but instead of tons of rock and brick, she found that the space was open, like a giant cavern propped up with sturdy brick beams. The ground they were standing on was made up of large stone tombs.

  “Goodness Gracious!” gasped Uncle Bert. “A Roman burial ground! The builders of Nelson’s Column must have preserved it when they dug out the foundations! Oof!”

  Reg slid down the tunnel, bashed into Uncle Bert and they both ended up back on the floor. Lottie left them to bicker as she walked through the ancient cemetery. Light came from tiny chinks in the roof above, where the stones didn’t join together. The midday sun peeking through meant that Lottie was able to make out quite a few of the inscriptions on the tombs.

  “I can’t read this one,” she said aloud. Uncle Bert stopped his bickering, pulled himself off the ground and came over to inspect the carved stone.

  “It’s in Latin. I’ll have to get you familiarised with the basic verbs and grammar when we get back to the museum,” said Uncle Bert. Lottie groaned; more homework! “These must have been here for two thousand years, ever since the Romans called the settlement Londinium.”