Chapter 46 Magellan
Magellan
For the first time, Magellan dreamed of the song being played in its entirety.
When she woke up, she could still hear the notes echoing inside her.
Rhys had been with her in the dream. He had been onstage beside her as she led countless musicians.
He’d been there. The dream had been so powerful, like a clear vision of the future, and it filled her with hope.
Was it a sign he would return with her? That they would make it out of the labyrinth together?
She had to believe it, or she would lose all courage.
She clung to the fact she could feel the song inside her, propelling her to go on.
The whole symphony was a planetary puzzle.
The melody was purely Western classical in its mathematical harmonics and symmetry, but she could hear the formidable African drumbeats that would carry the notes and make them soar.
She could hear the spaces within the song being filled by an Eastern pentatonic scale.
Chinese used five notes instead of seven, and Indian music’s foundation was a seven note saptak scale put into ragas.
Gwynedd had been right when she said the whole world would play it.
Magellan still had no idea how she could make that happen, or how she could give birth to the symphony growing in her like an unborn child.
Now they were on their way to Austria with Godwin.
The resounding echoes of the carriage’s wheels and clattering of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones were deafening.
At times the carriage shook like tiny little earthquakes.
They were traveling in Godwin’s state-of-the-art travel carriage, pulled by six horses, with a smaller carriage following behind them.
They had quite the entourage. They had a coachman, two groomsmen for the horses, Godwin’s personal valet, and a maid, a sweet woman named Clara who was married to the coachman, to help Magellan.
Then there were all the trunks. The carriages were unmarked for safety, without the Liron crest, and they stopped only when necessary to rest and water the horses.
Still, the twelve-hour journey down to the coast felt endless.
During their time couped up together, Godwin asked so many questions about the future and what life was like.
Questions only a scientist would think to ask.
Questions about the evolution of industry and medicine, traveling to the stars, and mastering the chemistry of matter.
He was vindicated and delighted to know there was a periodic table of elements where the elements fit together like puzzle pieces.
Magellan didn’t know much about the periodic table except the basics she’d learned in high school chemistry, but she did her best to explain.
For Godwin the year 1800 was weeks away.
The grand turning to a new century, and with it would come changes and inventions beyond the imagination: electricity, the battery, steam engines, photography, movies, anesthesia, vaccines, trains, and automobiles.
A hundred years later at the beginnings of the 1900s, the Wright Brothers would learn to harness the air.
Then came the moon and space. And here she was stuck in a carriage after traveling dimensionally by sound, by a means that had once been used thousands of years ago—and her ticket expired on Winter Solstice along with the rest the world’s. She tried hard not to think about it.
Finally, they reached the port town of Dover, on the southern edge of England.
They stayed at an inn for the night and then got up early to take a ferry.
Godwin had secured a private yacht to make the twelve-hour boat ride across the channel to Calais.
He explained they needed a boat big enough to take his carriages and horses.
He refused to use any other carriage, believing it would not be reliable.
His was custom made and one he had designed himself.
Magellan had no idea the trip would be this involved, and the enormity of what she was attempting hit her.
She was journeying across Europe in a whole other century, and it was taking precious time.
What she wouldn’t give for a car or a plane.
In the carriage, they couldn’t be traveling more than fifteen miles an hour.
Sometimes it felt like she could jog to Austria faster.
With all the trip preparations and travel time, Winter Solstice was only a little over a week away. They were cutting it close, but they couldn’t get to Austria any quicker. Godwin had planned the trip down to the last minute.
Rhys and Godwin explained to her how now was not the time to be an Englishman traveling on the road.
France was currently at war with England, Austria, and Russia.
For safety, Godwin reserved their own private dining room whenever they stopped at inns to have a meal.
And when they arrived on the Continent, they only stayed at private estates.
He had called upon a whole network of alchemists to help them get from one city to the next.
When she asked Godwin how he knew them, he simply said, “We’re all Freemasons. ”
She didn’t know what that meant. She also didn’t know what to make of Godwin’s explanation to their hosts along the way as to why he was traveling to Vienna.
Whenever he was asked, Godwin would grin and announce he was “on a mission for the goddess Isis.” His alchemist friends would laugh, and the conversation would move on.
Ironically, at every estate they stopped there was always talk of Egypt at the dinner table.
All of Europe was currently enraptured. Magellan learned the details from Rhys.
Last year in a grand imperialistic move, Napoleon had embarked to Egypt with 400 ships and 30,000 men.
He brought with him 150 engineers, scholars, historians, and surveyors to study the land and bring back marvels from the ancient world.
Much of the looting was being consigned as “cultural exchange.”
Napoleon was determined to leave his stamp there as well.
He established the Institute of Egypt in Cairo with divisions in physics, math, political economy, literature, and the arts.
He commissioned artists to capture Egypt’s ancient temples and ruins on paper.
And one discovery made in July in the town of Rosetta was a granite stone inscribed with three languages, which would enable scholars to understand ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
“They are calling it the Rosetta Stone,” a man who they were dining with explained. “I hope it proves useful.”
Magellan caught Rhys’s rueful smile. Even thirty years later, Rhys knew the Rosetta Stone’s importance.
How she loved their shared looks and secret communications across the dinner tables.
They were both interlopers in a time where they did not belong.
She rarely spoke at any of their stops. In 1799 she was simply the adornment, the wife.
She really had no idea who they stayed with or if anyone was famous in history.
They were all scientists of some sort . .
. chemists, astronomers, or physicists. Although the term scientist wasn’t used yet, and science had yet to become an official profession.
Scientists were called philosophers, and the conversations between them always turned to invention and the latest discoveries being made.
She wondered what all these philosophers would think if they knew she was on a mission to save the world with a small group of female musicians.
1799, much like 1829, could not have been more confining.
The lack of opportunity and freedom for women was stifling.
Fortunately, every house had a piano to help her escape, since music was the amusement of the day, and Magellan was always able to play.
Only Rhys knew she would go stir-crazy if she didn’t.
He often mentioned to their hosts that his wife “played a little” and asked if they would mind her entertaining them.
Sometimes she couldn’t help but slip in something more modern, like a little Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, or Billie Holiday.
Rhys and Godwin always seemed to know when she did and would fight to hide their laughter.
When it was just the three of them traveling in the carriage, Godwin was full of questions about the song. How did she see all the parts coming together? What kind of instruments would she need?
How could she explain she would need every instrument? She would need all the strings and wind instruments ever made. She would need an army of drums, the heartbeat within the song. She would need human voices with incredible power like Wren’s. She would need whales.
Magellan gasped at her own revelation.
She would need whales!
She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.
The world was 70 percent water. Of course whales were part of the song.
On impulse she took Rhys’s hand and squeezed it.
For the first time, the song’s full dimensions were crystallizing in her mind.
She had three movements of the symphony.
Now she needed the fourth. The grand finale and rousing conclusion.
She didn’t know how much of the fourth movement Nannerl had, because Gwynedd had written that the final part would be delivered by Horus.
How that would happen or when Magellan didn’t know.
She would have to return to her own time to find out.
Would Garesh be there? Would he return to help her? He had been the one to prepare her for this journey from childhood and given her the ring on their last day together. Now she was on her way to get the last piece of the song, which felt like arriving at the labyrinth’s center.
Magellan looked out the window at the sun, feeling like they were chasing the light. They needed to make it to Nannerl before the Earth’s longest night or there would never be another day again.