The Scroll of Alexandria Read online

  To Ben & Jake Jolly.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Glossary

  Brain Teaser

  Did You Know?

  Crack the Code

  Chapter One

  London, 1928

  “Lottie!”

  The cry echoed around the great halls of the British Museum. Lottie turned to look for the source and gulped. She darted into the next hall, past a group of tourists and into the library, where she bumped into her Great Uncle Bert.

  “Woah there! Slow down,” he said.

  “Sir Trevelyan may have found our science experiment,” she blurted out quickly.

  “Oh dear,” said Uncle Bert, his moustache drooping in worry. “Quick, hide in here. I’ll see if I can calm him down.”

  Lottie quickly hid herself in a nook between some nearby bookcases. The Great Library was one of her favourite places in the British Museum. She had lived in the museum ever since her parents had died in an accident during an archaeological dig in Egypt. Her Great Uncle, Professor Bertram West, had sworn to take care of her and had returned to England from Egypt to take a job at the British Museum. They lived in a small, untidy flat on the grounds of the museum and Lottie loved it. She didn’t go to school – instead she was taught by her Uncle Bert and could look at any of the books in the library.

  “I don’t understand what all these books are doing in a museum,” laughed a loud American man to his wife. “Surely they should be in a big library?”

  Lottie poked her head out from her nook and smiled.

  “Ahem,” she coughed politely. “I can help there.” Lottie hopped out of her hiding place. “These books are here by Royal Appointment,” she said. “They were left to the museum by King George III after he died. They’ve been here since 1828, exactly one hundred years.”

  The couple looked impressed. Other tourists began to gather around.

  “Well, aren’t you the little bookworm,” said the man. “What else can you tell us?” The tourists all looked expectantly at Lottie, who gave them her most welcoming smile.

  “The books were collected by King George over his lifetime but when his son came to the throne, he passed them on to the British Museum. There are over 65,000 books and maps here, some of which are one-of-a-kind.”

  Lottie didn’t have time to hide again when Sir Trevelyan Taylor, the Head Curator of the Museum, came crashing through the doors. He did not look happy.

  “Lottie Lipton!” he bellowed. “How many times do I have to tell you? This is a museum. Not your own private playground!”

  “Ah, hello Sir Trev,” said Lottie, trying to smile sweetly. The tourists moved into the next room, thanking Lottie as they went. “You found my experiment then? I was just trying to see what rooms in the museum were best for growing fungus.”

  Sir Trevelyan looked confused.

  “Hmm? No, I meant that you shouldn’t leave your toys lying about.” He produced Lottie’s battered old rag doll, Cleopatra. “This...thing was found in the arms of one of the mummies in the Egyptian section.”

  Lottie grabbed Cleopatra and held her tightly.

  “So that’s where I left her!” she said. She placed Cleopatra in her cardigan pocket and patted her gently, smiling to herself. Sir Trevelyan humphed and moved over to the bookshelves. He took a tape measure out of his pocket and proceeded to hold it up against the shelves at various angles.

  “What are you doing? Ooh, are we getting more books?” enquired Lottie, just as Uncle Bert came huffing and puffing around the corner into the library.

  “Sorry Lottie! He was too fast for me! You’d better – ooh, are we getting more books?” he said, spying the tape measure. Sir Trevelyan didn’t even turn around.

  “Absolutely not,” he scoffed. “We’re getting rid of all these useless ones.”

  Lottie and Uncle Bert’s mouths dropped open in shock.

  “No! You can’t,” cried Lottie. “They belong here!”

  Sir Trevelyan turned slowly, his mouth forming an evil sneer.

  “I think you’re forgetting who runs this museum. I can do whatever I please.”

  The sound of whistling filled the room, followed by the clank of a mop and bucket. Reg, the kindly old caretaker, poked his head around the corner of a bookcase.

  “Wotcha! What’s with the long faces?” he said. “Ooh, are we getting more books?”

  Uncle Bert managed to speak up finally.

  “Now look here, Sir Trevelyan! These books are here by Royal Appointment. You can’t just pack them away into storage.”

  Sir Trevelyan laughed to himself.

  “Oh, I’m not. I’m going to sell them to the highest bidder.”

  “That’s outrageous!” said Lottie, a little louder than she meant to. “They’re a collection! They belong together, and they belong here!”

  Sir Trevelyan finished his measurements and turned to walk out of the room.

  “Books, my dear, belong in a library. If you can prove to me that they belong in this museum, then I’ll eat my hat,” he said with a chuckle. “Reg, close this room. I’ve got an antique book expert coming just before the museum closes to give me a price for this little lot.”

  With a slam of the door, Sir Trevelyan was gone. Lottie, Uncle Bert and Reg all stood in silence, amazed at what they had just heard.

  “Uncle Bert, we have to do something,” said Lottie, clutching her rag doll for comfort. “We can’t let the books leave the museum.”

  “You’re right as always, Miss Lottie,” said Reg. “But what can we do?”

  The pair turned to look at Uncle Bert, but he was gone. They looked up to find him climbing a ladder to get at the highest bookshelves.

  “There’s a legend,” he called down. “It says that King George collected the rarest books, including the rarest of them all; a scroll from the library of Alexandria. I’ve always meant to try and find it but I never seem to find the time.”

  “What’s so rare about it?” asked Reg.

  “The library burnt down in the year 30 BC. There are stories however that brave men and women ran into the burning building to save some of the scrolls. Only one survived through history. King George found the scroll and then hid it away as it was too valuable to risk someone stealing or damaging it.” Uncle Bert reached for a large, dusty book on the highest shelf and climbed down the ladder. “This book is meant to tell us where it could be hidden.”

  Lottie was getting excited as she began to see Uncle Bert’s plan.

  “Ooh, I see! So if we can find the scroll then Sir Trevelyan would have to keep the books. A priceless historical scroll would definitely belong in the museum and not in a library. So by order of King George, Sir Trev wouldn’t be allowed to split up the collection,” she said. “Excellent thinking Uncle Bert! What does the book say?”

  “Ah,” said Uncle Bert. “That’s the tricky bit.”

  He opened the book and showed Lottie. In small handwriting was a riddle:

  Find the God the Romans called Cupid,

  He flies up high, but don’t be stupid!

  Knock three times and you will see,

  Some books are not what they claim to be.

  – G.R.

  “Written by King George himself!” gasped Lottie. “What does the ‘R’ stand for?”

  “‘Rex’. It means ‘King’ in Latin,” said Uncle Bert. “You know what this means?”

  “Yep,” said Lottie. “Another adventure! Come on you two!”

  “I don’t like riddles. They make my brain hurt,” said Reg, scratching his head. Lottie closed her eyes to concentrate.
r />   “Think, Lottie, think,” she mumbled to herself. She had heard the name Cupid somewhere before. But where? She paced up and down the row of shelves trying to remember where she’d seen the name.

  “Of course!” she said, making Uncle Bert and Reg jump. “Cupid was the God of Love in ancient Rome. I’ve seen it on Valentine’s Day cards.”

  “Also known as Eros to the Greeks,” said Uncle Bert. “He was... Lottie, what on Earth are you doing?”

  Lottie had grabbed hold of the stepladder and was climbing up it to get to the very top shelf of the library. She reached the top and looked down. She felt dizzy and looked straight back up again.

  “It has to be a book,” she called down. She scanned the shelves, searching for the most likely title. She had read most of the books there, except the hard-to-reach ones. She reached out and found a large looking tome called Gods in Ancient Greece.

  ‘Knock three times’, the riddle had said, so Lottie rapped on the spine.

  Knock!

  Nothing.

  Knock!

  Still nothing.

  Knock!

  Suddenly there was a click from behind the book and below her a slow creeeeak sounded. She whizzed down the ladder excitedly and joined Reg and Uncle Bert, who were staring open-mouthed at a large hidden door that had just opened in the centre of the bookshelves.

  Chapter Two

  “Crikey,” said Reg.

  Lottie was the first to walk towards the open door, followed nervously by Uncle Bert and Reg, who held his mop out like a weapon in front of him. They walked into the gloom of the doorway and Lottie reached up to the wall to check for a light switch.

  “Come on, there must be one somewhere...” she muttered. Suddenly her fingers found the switch and pow! The whole room was lit up. “Wow!” she cried.

  “Goodness gracious,” said Uncle Bert.

  “A hidden room,” said Reg. “You know what this means?”

  “What?” asked Lottie.

  “A whole new room to clean!” he said, shaking his mop with glee. “More floors to mop, more walls to dust! Oh joy!”

  Lottie shook her head. She could not believe that Reg would actually look forward to cleaning more rooms. Looking around in the gloom she could see the room was small. In the middle of it was a little bookcase. The shelves only held five or six books, which Uncle Bert was already looking at.

  “These are rare...very rare indeed. And worth a pretty penny.”

  “Sir Trevelyan couldn’t get rid of them, could he?” said Lottie, crossing her fingers.

  “Hmm...I’m afraid he might very well try to. It would earn a lot of money,” said Uncle Bert. He stood up and looked around at the small dusty room. “I fear that we may have more clues to go before we find the scroll,” he sighed and turned back to the books.

  “So what’s so important about this scroll, then?” asked Reg. He had already pulled a rag from his pocket and had begun polishing the wooden-panelled walls around the room, clearing off years of dust and cobwebs. Lottie looked to her Uncle Bert to answer Reg’s question, but he was too interested in the books he had found.

  “The scroll, whatever it contains, is one of the last surviving pieces of the Library of Alexandria. It’s a hugely important piece of history.”

  Lottie looked around the room. It was true that the books Uncle Bert was carefully handling were fascinating but it seemed like they were a distraction to stop treasure hunters from looking further for the scroll. And they were working! Lottie couldn’t let herself get distracted too. There has to be another clue here somewhere, she thought to herself.

  “Whoever built this room certainly liked ancient Egypt,” said Reg, shaking out his dusty rag. “Look at all these hieroglyphics.”

  Lottie and Uncle Bert turned to look at the walls, which were covered in strange symbols.

  “They’re not hieroglyphics, old chap,” said Uncle Bert. “I don’t know what they are.”

  Lottie grinned.

  “I do!”

  She rummaged in her pocket and pulled out her trusty detective’s notebook. She always kept it close by in case she ended up on an adventure. It held all of her best facts and secrets. She flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for.

  “It’s pigpen,” she said. “A type of code. You use this key to help decipher it.”

  Uncle Bert stared at the notebook for a minute or more.

  “Nope,” he announced finally. “I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.”

  Lottie sighed. “The shapes on the wall can be replaced by a letter from the grid. Look, the first shape looks like the third box in the grid, so it’s the letter C,” she said, holding her notebook up against the shapes on the wall for them all to see. Uncle Bert nodded and whipped out a pencil to start working out the code on Lottie’s notebook.

  “Here! Look at this,” called Reg. He had carried on wiping away the cobwebs from the walls and had discovered two doors set into the wood.

  “Looks like our next move,” said Lottie. “But which one should we choose?”

  The dusty room was awfully silent while Uncle Bert puzzled out the code. “So the first letter is C, and the next is H,” he mumbled to himself. “The next two are the same shape, so must be the same letter. Hmm, looks like an O...” Lottie took Cleopatra out of her pocket and nervously held her close. “Ah ha!” cried Uncle Bert with glee. “Cracked it! Clever stuff, this pigpen code. The message says –”

  “Choose the left door,” said Reg, interrupting. Lottie and Uncle Bert looked up at Reg, amazed.

  “How on Earth did you figure that out so quickly?” said Lottie.

  Reg shrugged.

  “Just a natural code breaking genius, I am,” he said. Then he broke out in a grin. “Not really. The handle on the left hand door is tarnished, like it has been used lots of times. The other one is shiny, never been used.”

  Lottie and Uncle Bert laughed.

  “Clever clogs,” said Uncle Bert. With a curious look on his face he reached for the handle on the right hand door. “I wonder why nobody has never opened this door?”

  No sooner had the words left Uncle Bert’s mouth than Lottie realised why nobody had ever opened it. She leapt forward and pulled Uncle Bert back by the collar of his jacket, just as he opened the door. He was a big man but luckily didn’t have a great sense of balance. He tipped backwards, landing on his bottom…

  Pfffft! Pfffft! Pfffft!

  …just as six sharp darts shot out of the doorway, landing with a thwang! in the wooden wall opposite.

  “Maybe because it’s a booby trap?” said Lottie.

  Uncle Bert had gone white with shock.

  “Well, King George wouldn’t want people to find the scroll easily, now would he?” she reasoned.

  “So it seems,” said Uncle Bert. “Let’s take the left door this time, shall we?”

  Chapter Three

  Lottie was the first to step forward through the door and found herself in a large tunnel. The walls were made of red bricks, which crumbled when she touched them. The ceiling was only a little higher than her head, which meant that she could stand up straight. Poor Reg had to bend double to get in as he followed behind her.

  “This tunnel must have been here for hundreds of years,” she said. She looked around in wonder. Before Uncle Bert could even duck down to enter the tunnel, she had walked off in the direction of a small speck of light at the end.

  “I say, be careful,” called Uncle Bert. “You never know what surprises lie around the corner!”

  But Lottie was in her own little world, curious and amazed. She often read mystery stories where the detective uncovers a secret passage in an old castle or grand home, but she never imagined that she would find her own secret passage running through her very own museum.

  “If I’ve measured this correctly,” began Uncle Bert in a whisper, “then about now we should be passing the main entrance to the museum and the office of –”

  “Ha! The
ir faces were a picture,” said a voice from nowhere.

  Uncle Bert and Reg looked around them in confusion for the source of the mysterious voice.

  “Sir Trevelyan!” hissed Lottie, quietly, walking back towards Uncle Bert and Reg. She looked around in a panic but could not see him anywhere.

  “The book expert is coming in an hour,” came Sir Trevelyan’s voice again. As Lottie scanned the walls of the tunnel she found where the noise was coming from. She waved silently at Uncle Bert and Reg and pointed to the wall next to them. In the bricks were a few holes, which were just large enough to look through. Uncle Bert and Reg pressed their eyes up to the holes and Lottie copied them.

  “Wow,” exclaimed Lottie under her breath. Peering through the hole, she could see the whole of Sir Trevelyan’s office. She had been there many times, usually because she had got into trouble and had been marched there by one of the security guards. She was looking at the other side of the desk for a change where Sir Trevelyan sat, talking to a friend of his on the telephone.

  Somebody wanted to keep an eye on the Head Curator when they built this tunnel, Lottie thought. She saw that Uncle Bert was about to say something and she quickly pressed her finger to her lips, shushing him.

  “Honestly, if we can get rid of those books then we can turn the library into a second office for me. I’d make far better use of it,” he laughed. “What’s that? Professor West?”

  Uncle Bert jumped at the sound of his name. Sir Trevelyan continued.

  “Yes, no doubt he and his nuisance of a niece are trying to brew up a way to stop me,” he said. Lottie frowned at the insult. “I’d like to see them try. Soon the whole library will be just up Professor West’s street – ancient history!”