23
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.
MAX SHERBROOKE, STANDING straight and tall, his shoulders back, said firmly, “Girls do not speak Latin.”
“This girl does,” Mary Rose said easily.
“Even if a girl were able to repeat the words, she would have no comprehension of what she was saying.”
Mary Rose raised an eyebrow at that pompous pronouncement from a boy who had blue eyes—Sherbrooke blue eyes—just like his father’s and Sinjun’s and Leo’s and Meggie’s, and a very stubborn chin. The boy would break hearts when he grew into manhood. She stroked her fingers over her chin. “Hmmm. Do I perhaps hear the antiquated Mr. Harbottle speaking?”
“Certainly not,” Max said, frowning just a bit, “ although he does not hesitate, even on good days, to point out the weakness of the female sex.”
“Why do you have such a low opinion of the female brain, Max?”
“Yes,” Tysen said pleasantly, coming into the very dark drawing room with its soon-to-be burned draperies, “tell us where you got this asinine notion.”
“You said—” Max, pinned by his father’s stare, managed to squirm just a bit. “Well, perhaps it isn’t precisely what you said, sir, but I’ve never believed that you thought any girl, with the exception of Meggie, of course—”
“Of course.”
“Well, that any girl could do much of anything except have babies and—”
“Yes, you’re quite right, Max. I’ve never said anything so absurd, or believed such a thing either. Now, you’d best just stop right where you are. If you were to continue, I fear that your new mother would shoot you.”
Max was staring hard at his father. “Leo said something about how you were different, but I thought he’d just been standing on his head too long. I don’t know, Papa, but—” Max stopped talking, stared at that smile on his father’s face.
Max continued to stare at his father. Mary Rose knew she wasn’t their mother, and she wished Tysen wouldn’t call her that, particularly now, particularly when they looked at her and wished her back in Scotland. But she managed to laugh, fanning her hands in front of her. “Max, please, none of this is important. Here we are arguing about Latin and which sex can or cannot speak it—a very dead language that is excessively common, after all, and a language that is very likely not nearly as interesting as the Egyptian hieroglyphics, don’t you think?”
“Don’t tell me you can speak hieroglyphics,” Max said, raising an eyebrow identical to his father’s.
“Er, no. Not really. Actually, you don’t speak them, you read them, but no one can just yet. I’ve been reading about the studies done on the Rosetta stone. That perhaps it holds the key to translating the hieroglyphs. A Mr. Young is currently working on deciphering them.”
Max moved a step closer to her, a heartening sign. “I have heard that the symbols are simply pictures, that there is no alphabet. Mr. Harbottle believes it is all heathen in any case, and therefore who cares?”
Tysen decided at that moment that Mr. Ellias Harbottle would not ever again open his mouth around Max. To think he was paying the man for lessons. Why hadn’t he ever realized before that Harbottle was indoctrinating his son with such rubbish? Actually, maybe he should turn Meggie loose on Mr. Harbottle.
“No one is certain yet,” Mary Rose said mildly. “Not about them being heathen, but about the hieroglyphs being an alphabet and an actual language or just pictures. Since your father knows most of the scholars at Oxford, however, when something definitive is discovered, he will find out about it very quickly. Then he will tell us.”
“Yes,” Max said slowly, staring at his father. “You will know, won’t you, sir? It’s a serious sort of thing, very scholarly. Perhaps there are even some religious aspects to it, so it should be of interest to you.”
“Do you possibly believe it could be more interesting than you are, Max?” Tysen said, and his son blinked at him.
“I’m not at all sure, Papa,” Max said, giving his father a confused look. Then he did a little skip, his Sherbrooke blue eyes alight with excitement. “Just imagine looking at all those symbols and drawings and actually reading them! I believe I will go to see Mr. Harbottle and tell him it’s important that we know about everything, heathen or not.”
And Max left the room, humming softly, a sign, Tysen knew, that he was deep in thought. He had to find another tutor for his son, but able scholars were scarce.
Tysen said to Mary Rose, “You at least deflected him, Mary Rose. Well done. I don’t think Mr. Harbottle is a particularly positive influence on my sons. I hadn’t realized.” He frowned a moment, then replaced it with a smile, cocking his head to the side.
“Oh, goodness, Meggie does it just the same way,” Mary Rose said, charmed.
“What?”
“The way you just tilted your head.”
“Yes, but now I have something important to say. I had never realized that your name sounds all soft and spongy. Isn’t that what Leo said? Not that you were eavesdropping, of course.”