Hadrian's Wall (24 page)

The woman
with Charity
was dressed
simply, yet elegantly. She turned her friendly eyes toward me and
suddenly froze.
She looked at me like
someone seeing an ogre
. In the awkward
moment that followed, while she averted her eyes to fix them on my
left hand, I had to resist the impulse to hide it behind my back,
like a child caught in the act. The truth was that I was feeling
like Shrek when he was having dinner with Fiona’s parents for the
first time—in other words, I was feeling dislocated and
inappropriate.

While I tried to understand
what was wrong, the woman managed to recover with amazing speed.
She smiled and extended her hand to greet me as if that awkward
moment never happened. I averted my eyes to Charity, but she gave
no indication that she’d seen what happened when she introduced
us.

“Marjory Newton, Melissa
Baker, my guest. Melissa, Marjory is the Museum Director in
Hadrian’s Wall.

As I shook the hand of the woman, I noticed
that she also wore a cord with a pendant similar to the one worn by
the front desk girl. Who knows, maybe this is part of the uniform,
I wondered, with a touch of hysteria.

“Nice to meet you,
Melissa! You came here to learn a little about our history? Let me
accompany you.” She made an expansive gesture with her arm.
Now I felt doubly ogress
.

* * *

We strolled down the
corridor with Charity and the receptionist trailing behind us. Soon
we were in front the same screen that I had been admiring a few
minutes ago. When Marjory pressed her index finger on one area of
the screen, the images and texts changed.
Wow!

“31 October 1814,” she began to explain.
That was the date our town was founded. I mean, when Cahill and his
loyal associates pioneered the lands of this county.

On Halloween? Are you serious?

She pointed to the photos by pressing her
finger to a point on the screen to make them appear. The scenes
ranged from old buildings to ancient men. They wore frock coats and
funny hats, and they had mustaches. Oh...and posed with very
serious faces.

“The man on the right is
the
town
’s
founder, Adrian Cahill.

My jaw dropped.
How it is possible?
I
looked closely at the picture and noticed the striking resemblance.
Of course this guy only could be Adrian’s ancestor. There was no
denying...
and there was another
explanation, of course!
Although his name
was the same and both looked almost identical...only his clothes
denounced the change of time. The boy in front of my eyes, so
imposing as the actual Adrian that I’d met, wore trimmed sideburns.
He was holding a watch—probably gold—strapped to his hip pocket
with a chain.

In the photo, he was not a
cutaway like other men. He wore a white shirt, with sleeves rolled
up, under a fair waistcoat. He posed with his foot resting on a log
crossed before them. His posture, his look, and his physique were
the same as his current
descendant
.
Awesome!
I had to blink a few times
to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

“That’s a family
tradition.” She answered my unspoken question, as if she had the
text memorized. “Every firstborn son was named Adrian in honor of
the clan founder. Legend has it that the first Adrian was a prince,
son of a Celtic queen with a powerful and mysterious warrior who
had come from distant lands. That warrior would have been a
comrade-in-arms
of the
emperor Hadrian.

“The same Roman emperor,
famous for
devising
the wall that separated the Roman conquests from the lands
belonging to the unconquerable Caledonians. You must be wondering
how an ally of the Caledonians, who vowed to defend their
territory, could become friend of the enemy that they were supposed
to fight against?”

In fact, I wasn’t wondering
about anything. But since she had brought it up, it really was a
contradictory situation...

“We don’t know for sure,
but it seemed to involve a debt of honor. For some years, a pact of
peaceful coexistence lasted between the Romans and the Caledonians
until betrayal from both sides unleashed the war. We only know that
since that time, all the firstborn of the clan would receive the
name of the emperor. What originally was intended to repay a debt
has become a tradition.”

“Doesn’t it cause a mess?”
I dared to ask.

Charity giggled.

“It absolutely does!”

The receptionist laughed
too, but in Marjory’s presence, she disguised it as a
cough.

“This is why I call Adrian
‘AC’,” Charity explained to me, “so as to not confuse him with his
father.”

Before I could vent my curiosity, Marjory
made new photos emerge on the surface of the projection screen.
“People standing on the deck of a merchant ship (slide one). They
point to the continent in front of them—the Statue of Liberty
(slide two). Close up of the elder Adrian with mutton-chop
whiskers, sporting a pipe (slide three). Several people posed for
the traditional family photo, wearing their best clothes. I thought
I saw a girl who looked much like Charity among them (slide four).
Men building houses and buildings (slide five). Couples dressed in
Victorian style stroll the ancient streets (slide six). Men on
carts loaded with groceries and other trinkets crossing muddy roads
(slide seven).

I felt an inexplicable desire to have seen
it all, live and in color. It was like I had lost something that
people definitely had shared—a history.

“As you can see, this is
an ancient family,”
Marjory
said
. “The first Adrian to step on
American soil was one very successful man in the field of
navigation and a lot...eccentric. He was accompanied by some other
clans—all relatives, employees, and friends. Other families
gradually settled here, starting with the workers who participated
in the construction of
Panthers
House
.”

I looked at her without
understanding. I felt goose bumps all over just by the mention of
the word “panther.” The stir came over me again, as if I were very
close to unraveling some scabrous mystery.

“I mean, the
Cliff House
...” The woman
corrected quickly herself. “Panther’s Cliff or
Panther’s House
is the nickname that
people gave to the place of permanent abode of the Cahill
family.”

“Why ‘Panther’s Cliff’?”
My voice sounded unstable.
I really want
to know the answer?
Instinctively, I
looked back and couldn’t see Charity anywhere. Marjory also looked
around. She seemed nervous, as if she had committed a
faux pas
. She excused
herself and left me standing there, feeling flustered, but the girl
from the reception desk... What was her name? Ah, yes...Rita. She
answered my question:

“The oldest Adrian Cahill,
the founder, was an eccentric man. He brought his... his
pets—
animals that he’d
captured in his adventures and travels around the world.

“Panthers?” I whispered, realizing what she
was telling me.

She nodded.

“Three huge, scary panthers
who were watching the hills like guard dogs. More dangerous than
dogs, obviously...but so devoted to their master as ‘the best
friend of man.’ Those who ventured onto the property to steal
something or who just felt moved by an imprudent curiosity didn’t
come out alive from there.” She clicked on the screen and a new
image appeared.

The huge statue of a black cat was being
carried on rolling logs surrounded by very thick ropes. Seeing the
picture, I could almost feel the strength required to move the
massive cat forward. A pulley system supported by a wooden
structure attached to the stones appeared on the unfinished walls.
It must have served to quadruple the force of traction. The ropes
tied to the statue passed through pulleys and appeared distended on
the other side, pulled by four pairs of oxen partially visible in
the photo. It was an impressive scene.

“The elders said that in dawns of
winter...when the sky was starry and there was no wind, you could
hear the roars of the beasts from many miles away. Whenever this
happened, it was because they were...hunting.

My eyes must have been bulging at that
point.

“Hunting? Hunting what?”

Stupid question.
What could a panther hunt which was not
prey?

“Who knows?” she said,
pursed her lips. “Rabbits, lambs, deer...
imprudent men
, I guess.”

“
But these are just stories.
”
Reappearing suddenly, Charity interrupted us. “Unsubstantiated
legends that are part of local folklore.”

Marjory joined our little group. They both
glared at Rita reproachfully. She immediately apologized and
practically ran back to the reception desk. The poor girl looked
down at her papers, not daring to lift her eyes again.

Apparently, Charity didn’t
want me to know about local legends. Why?

They both gathered around
me with Marjory in front guiding us back to the exhibition. In
fact, I felt
escorted
by they both.

On the next screen have
emerged photographs showing the arrival of materials to build of
the mansion. Stones, earth mounds, and working men—none these
interested me because the images didn’t show what was being
erected
behind
the massive wall.

However, the pictures that
most impressed me were related to the constituted town map for a
three-dimensional program, which accelerated forward and backward,
showing the urban changes in matter of seconds. According to
Marjory, the idea is provide to the museum visitor a scale of the
town’s evolution over the decades until the present day.

Again,
I thought:
That’s what is cutting
edge technology
. It was very different
than I expected from a museum. When thinking about museums, I think
about cobwebs, old bones, wax dolls...whatever.

“There are no photos of
the
“Cliff House”
?

Marjory looked at me with veiled expression
and shook her head.

“Why? I questioned, incredulously.

“People outside the family
circle never had permission to enter the property—only a few
selected friends.”

“Are you saying that nobody even
photographed the place?”

She nodded.

I stared Charity, who shrugged.

“Precautions of old men,
rich and bored as usual,” she trivialized the situation. Our family
has always been fanatical about security.”

“Oh!”
What else could I say?

Marjory gently guided me to a large area
lined with green screens. It looked like a big open box. This
environment contrasted with the others. Marjory pointed down and
explained that we were stepping on sensors that would activate
multiple holographic images around us. After pressing the buttons
on a panel mounted on the wall, beams of light popped and the
images began to form around the two of us. In the beginning, it
trembled a little until it became uniform and stable.

Suddenly I found myself in
the heart of Hadrian’s Wall, in the nineteenth century. People
walked quietly down the sidewalk, passing by us, waving and
smiling. Unbelievable!
A virtual time
machine
.

I darted out of the path of a chariot, but
in that moment I remembered that these images were only illusory
things. I let out a laugh, but it died in my throat the instant I
saw him. He was casually standing at the curb with his back against
a lamppost.

Adrian Cahill looked directly at me.

Behind him was a large
house surrounded by a small garden. The sign said, “McPherson
Hostel.”

He was wearing a frock coat and topper on
his head. For a moment I was transported to the first day when I
woke up in the Caledonia Hospital and saw him beside my bed.

Eager and enraptured, my
eyes analyzed his ancestor in the smallest detail. That Adrian
Cahill was the first to disembark in the U.S.—the town’s founder.
He was the same height. He had the same piercing eyes—equally
protected by glasses, although the lenses were different. Despite
the mutton chops that followed the line of his jaw, he seemed as
alive as his current descendant.

Suddenly, he stopped
leaning his back against the lamppost and began walking toward me
without diverting his eyes from mine.
Oh,
God!
My stomach stayed
tightened.

“Hundreds of small photos
and footage shot by ancient cinematographers were uploaded into a
computer program that wove together, in anticipation of
kinesthesia, to fill the gaps caused by the deterioration of old
films.”
Marjory tried to explain to
me
.
Jeez! Is that
Mandarin or Greek?

“The person responsible for
this project was the fabulous Dr. Christian Wade. He succeeded in
creating the illusion of movement in a three-dimensional plot. In
turn, the footage was re-mastered, which helped to recompose the
holographic setting viewed at all angles. Impressive, isn’t
it?”