The next morning, Ty was eating breakfast when Ashi entered the kitchen, wearing sandals, cropped jeans and a tank top. Her hair was flowing with wide tousled curls. Her eyes were outlined subtly in dark gray and her lips shimmered.
“I look like an American girl?” she asked.
“Exactly,” Ty replied. In fact, looking at her, nobody would ever suspect she had been a revered leader in a remote monastery. “You sound just like one too.”
“Awesome,” she said with a smile, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.
Ty packed a camera and Ashi raised her eyebrows.
“It’s what I do, Ashi. I record things.”
Ty drove them to school and he felt every set of eyes on them as they walked through the parking lot and into the lobby of the school. Are they looking at me because of what happened to my dad or are they looking at her, curious about who she is. He watched her walk with her head held high, poised above a long neck. He decided they were staring at Ashi because of her intense beauty.
Throughout the morning, everywhere they went, Ty felt as though the crowds parted, making a path for them, with every face, students and teachers alike, turning to look at them. Before each class Ty introduced her to people he knew. Some boys were falling over themselves to meet her and talk to her. Others sat at their desks, turned around, quietly staring. The girls were equally enamored of her, vying for a chance to meet her. Ashi met everybody with equal aplomb, chatting easily with her new acquaintances.
Throughout the classes, Ashi listened attentively, took notes and did not seem to notice the furtive glances the students were sneaking to observe her.
In the cafeteria at lunchtime Ashi got a tray of food and negotiated the tables and chairs, making her way to Ty, Jenna, Eduardo, Kerry, their friend Christy and a few others who regularly sat together. A couple of girls waylaid her and steered her toward their table.
Ty looked on in amusement. “She’s leaving us.”
“Yes, she’s leaving us,” Eduardo repeated, his face reflecting abject disappointment.
“We pushed the chick out of the nest,” Jenna commented.
Ty felt a bit of disappointment too, even though he had spent all morning by Ashi’s side. “She has some sort of thing going on that makes people want to be near her.”
Jenna tilted her head and paused. “Yes she radiates something. I wonder what it is.”
“Peace, love, joy,” Kerry said, sitting next to Eduardo. “I don’t know which.” She looked expectantly at Eduardo, as if she hoped he’d validate what she said.
“You do feel good when you’re with her,” he said, ignoring Kerry, his eyes never leaving Ashi.
Jenna’s lips formed a thin straight line as she watched Ashi. “She’s just the new thing. It’ll wear off.”
Ty ate and watched her. It looked as if she were holding court. She was telling a story and each face at her table was turned to her, rapturously, smiling and laughing in unison. He shook his head. “And we were worried she wouldn’t fit in.”
Ty walked up to a drink machine and Eduardo followed him.
“You are one lucky dude. You’re living with one of the hottest girls I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s not like that,” Ty said, shaking his head.
“There’s nothing between you?” Eduardo asked, searching Ty’s eyes.
“She’s a…well, she’s unusual, and she’s…yes, she’s beautiful…”
Ty gave up trying to describe his feelings for Ashi. She was the most intelligent and accomplished person he ever met; the things she was able to do astounded him to the point of paralysis. He adored her and wanted to protect her and though she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, he didn’t want his thoughts to ever travel in that direction. She seemed too ethereal, too pure, way above that boyfriend-girlfriend stuff.
“Jenna’s my girlfriend,” He said simply.
“Good! I didn’t want to get in between if something was going on with you two. You are living with her alone.” Eduardo shook his head in disbelief. “Anyway, there’s something about her that I like.”
“What about Kerry?”
“What about her? I like her and we hang out together but we haven’t said anything about not seeing other people.”
Ty felt a twinge of annoyance. He was sure Kerry thought they were exclusive even if they hadn’t discussed it. He pulled his drink from the slot at the bottom of the machine and they rejoined their table. Ashi made her way back to them just before the bell rang to signal the lunch period ended.
“Oh, here comes Miss Popularity,” Ty said. “Are you sure you want to sit with us?”
Ashi smiled and held her nose in the air, feigning self-admiration. “I really cannot help that I am so popular.” She laughed and sat down.
“What were you telling them that was so entertaining?” Jenna asked. “They were laughing so loudly at your table.”
“Just stories about Bhutan. I was telling them about a beautiful procession on a holy day and yak poop. Everybody likes a good poop story.” She turned to Ty. “What will we do this afternoon?”
“We have homework already, but can we try to contact our knight?”
“Sure.”
“Jenna? Eduardo?” Ty asked.
“Sure.”
“I’ll come over and do homework…and try to contact a knight, whatever that means,” Eduardo said.
Kerry looked at him, hoping for an invitation, but again, he was looking at Ashi and didn’t notice her.
****
After homework and dinner, Ty, Eduardo and Ashi gathered in the family room. Ashi sat cross-legged on the floor, every so often reaching for her mug of tea on the coffee table. When Jenna, Cheryl and Therese arrived, the group arranged themselves on the large sectional sofa and overstuffed chairs in the comfortable room, Jenna placing herself arm to arm with Ty. He noted with a bit of surprise that again, he felt nothing with having Jenna so close.
Ashi announced, “We’re going to do a group meditation,”
Cheryl announced she wasn’t one for this “mediation crap,” but would give it a try.
Therese giggled, saying if she could get radiant skin like Ashi’s by meditating, she was all for it.
Ashi dimmed the lights and lit a few candles on the coffee table. The conversation also dimmed and the room took on a peaceful glow in the flickering light. She began the meditation by taking them all through a guided visualization for relaxation, each one of them picturing themselves sinking into a cloud, starting with their feet and ending with their heads. Ty felt as he usually did when he meditated, so relaxed that he could not move a single part of his body...mind awake, body asleep.
Then they were all instructed to follow their breath in and out; any thoughts that came up, they were to observe, place in a bubble, and watch float away. Ty could not reckon time at all in this relaxed state but he estimated that after about fifteen minutes the thoughts stopped arising. His last thought that floated in the bubble was amusement when he heard low snoring coming from Eduardo.
Ashi’s soft voice broke in, telling them they were asking Phillipe de Charney to meet them. “In your minds, link hands and rise above your bodies, up above the trees, up above the clouds, up above the earth,” she said quietly. “Turn your faces upward into space as we locate the time and the place where we will meet Phillipe.”
In his mind, Ty felt himself link with the others on his right and left and move through space until he arrived at an open-air movie theater. A movie began on the screen. At first it was blurry but the picture sharpened as Ty reminded himself to relax and not try so hard to see it.
The first scene was of a huge house, nearly a fortress, with thick walls and small, narrow windows. In the main hall there was a fireplace that was big enough to walk into, that held crackling and smoldering logs. He expected the hall to be deserted but found Phillipe and several men sitting around a huge roughly-hewn table, eating. Women, garbed in medieval dresses were serving them or passing through the hall. He had a sense that an older man was Phillipe’s father and a young man was his brother. Ty saw a happy smile on Phillipe’s face when his wife entered, carrying a toddler. She smiled back at him and the toddler reached his arms out for him.
The scene morphed into Phillipe, along with other knights, on the wooden deck of a small ship. They wore the white frontispiece with the red cross, signifying they were Templar Knights. He felt they were escaping the Friday the Thirteenth arrest. They looked out over the green sea, dotted with whitecaps from the swells and spotted a gray shape in the distance. It was land. After the alarm was sounded, they all rushed to the ship’s rail and pointed, excitedly shouting, “La Merica.” They disembarked into a rowboat and pulled at the oars as they cut through the swells. The rowboat rose and fell perilously as they crossed the waves near the shore. They jumped out when it was ankle deep and pulled the rowboat the rest of the way onto a white, sandy beach.
The scene changed to the knights, building a round, stone building near the shore of “La Merica.” The ground level of the structure consisted of stone arches. The upper floor formed a tower. Ty could only guess that the tower was a defensive structure; if it was attacked by the natives, the knights could situate themselves on the top floor and shoot down on them from any direction. Phillipe spoke to the others and Ty knew, rather than understood the language, that he was going home to report to his father about this place. He conveyed to the other knights that this was a suitable place for all to escape to and bring their most valuable possession. The scene became murky again and Ty waited for it to clear but it faded until it was black and Ty was in his family room again.
Still relaxed, he didn’t move until he heard the others stir. He opened his eyes and looked around. Eduardo woke with a start.
“Nice meditating,” Ty whispered.
“Hey, I was tired.”
“Shhh, keep your thoughts in your mind. It is easy to forget what you saw,” Ashi cautioned in a soft voice.
Ty tried to remember every detail. When they started talking about what they saw, Ty was surprised to find they all saw basically the same thing.
Therese described a stone building with a movie screen in it and Cheryl had seen a big screen TV, but the general ideas were the same.
Jenna shook her head and furrowed her brow. “How can this be? How could we have all imagined the same thing?”
“Were we not all linked together?” Ashi asked.
“Yes, but that was in our imaginations,” Cheryl said.
“There is one sort of imagining that is called fantasy…making something that is not there,” Ashi explained. “We were not making a fantasy.”
Eduardo shook his head with such a look of disdain. “No way,” he said simply.
Cheryl, formerly the non-believer of the group, said emphatically, “You didn’t see what we saw.”
The skeptical look on his face didn’t change.
“If you are not a body--if you are really a spirit, can’t your spirit travel to places your body’s eyes are not able to see? Can it not go to other places and because it is not bound by the laws of earth, as your body is, can it not go to other times?”
It was clear from Eduardo’s expression that it was the first time this idea ever entered his mind.
“It can go anywhere then, any place, any time.”
When they resumed their conversation about what they saw, Eduardo, Jenna, Therese, and Cheryl spoke to Ashi reverently, as if they just realized she was not another Jersey girl from the suburbs.
Therese pulled out a notebook and the team listed what they had just learned.
“They said something when they saw land. I couldn’t understand what it was,” Cheryl said.
“La Merica,” Ty supplied.
“Yes that’s what I heard too,” Jenna said.
Therese wrote it down. “So they sailed a ship to La Merica. Maybe that’s in the Middle East…maybe Egypt. We know he was there.”
Ty went into Vincent’s study and returned with his laptop. “We’ll search it.”
“That was a weird building,” Jenna said.
Ty, not taking his eyes off the screen as he typed, said, “Templars built round buildings.”
“Wow, this is interesting,” Ty said, scanning the computer screen. “La Merica” was the name of a star to the east. According to the Templars, it was a place where the winds were warm and fields were rich…in short, a Garden of Eden. Wait one second. Here’s another web site. It says the Knights Templar had a legend about La Merica based on the beliefs of the early Christian church in Jerusalem. The first Christians believed in La Merica.”
“That is interesting. Does it say if they ever found it?” Therese asked.
Ty continued to scan and click on different web sites. “This website is saying is that America is not named after Amerigo Vespucci like we were taught in school. “America” is really “La Merica.” The Templars found the New World and named it after the eastern star.”
“La Merica...America,” Cheryl mused. “It does make more sense.”
“Do we know if Templars ever came to America?” Ashi asked.
Ty’s face lit up. “Hang on a minute.” He dashed into the study and returned holding an open book. “I’ve read something about this. This book says there were a few expeditions that made it to America. Wow, one was undertaken by Charles de Charney…who…is…Phillipe’s….father!” Ty jumped up. “Now do you believe we really saw something, Eduardo? Phillipe said he was going back to tell his father about La Merica.”
The excitement in the room rose exponentially and they all began talking at once.
“We have to find out where they landed in America. That’s the key,” Cheryl said, jumping to her feet.
“Yes, yes, does the book say anything about where they settled in America?” Jenna asked.
“Let me look. Let me look in the index,” Ty said, as he flipped through the pages.
Ashi picked up the laptop lying on the sofa. “I’ll google it.”
“Hey, listen to this,” Ty said. He was standing, holding the book open and pointing with his finger. “It says here that the Knights Templar certainly made at least two voyages to the New World. They landed once in Nova Scotia, traveling south on that trip and another time they landed in the area of Massachusetts. Anything Ashi?”
She scanned the computer intently. “Nothing yet.”
“Let me try another place.” Ty retrieved another book from Vincent’s study.
“What does this all mean? Charles de Charney sent his son on an expedition and they found La Merica, which was really America,” Eduardo asked and answered.
“Cool. But, where in America?” Jenna wondered.
“Here’s something about a Westford knight,” Ashi said. Eduardo moved next to her. She positioned the screen so he could read it too. Therese stood behind the sofa and bent over to peer over Ashi’s shoulder.
“I think we hit nail’s head,” Ashi said, her voice tinged with excitement. “Here they find knight in Westford…Massachusetts…where is that?”
“Close,” Jenna said.
“It say that they find rock with picture of knight on it. Like gravestone.”
They all stared at Ashi as her accent emerged.
“She talk funny when she excited,” Ty explained, teasingly.
Ashi gave a sheepish smile and pushed the laptop over to Eduardo.
“There’s a stone on the ground and there is an outline of a knight, complete with sword and shield,” Eduardo read. “Here’s a picture of it.” Everyone gathered around to look.
“It’s very faint. The only thing I can make out is the hilt of a sword,” Cheryl said.
“Here’s the sword.” Ty pointed. “It’s broken.”
“It says here that it is controversial. It could be just natural markings. Whoa, hold on. It identifies him as a particular knight who was lost on an expedition, led by Charles de Charney.”
“Bingos! Bullseyes!” Ashi said.
Ty suppressed a smile.
“You know, the whole Templar fleet disappeared,” Ashi ventured.
“Huh?” Eduardo asked.
“The night before all the Templars were to be arrested, Thursday the twelfth, their whole fleet disappeared from Rochelle, France,” Ashi explained. “And probably took their treasure with them.”
“I think they were tipped off,” Ty said.
“Maybe they were looking for a safe place,” Ashi said.
“A safe place to live and safe to hide their treasure,” Therese said.
“Maybe so. Maybe that’s why they were exploring, but now what?” Jenna asked.
“Let’s keep looking. We have about a million hits we can look at,” Ty said.
They kept searching through masses of irrelevant information until Eduardo yelled, “Bingos!”
“The Newport Tower,” Ashi said, reading over his shoulder. “It’s in Rhode Island, near the water.”
Cheryl’s eyes widened. “That looks like what I saw.”
“And sort of like what I saw,” Therese said. “I’m impressed. We really did see something.” She looked at Ashi with awe and even greater respect.
“Yes, some people think it was here before Columbus, as part of Charles de Charney’s expedition.”
“Hmm, well we know it was Phillipe de Charney who built it from our meditation,” Ty said.
The team looked at everything they could find about the Newport Tower.
Tired, Jenna shook her head. “We keep reading the same thing over and over. It’s clear nobody knows very much about the Newport Tower.”
“It can’t be a meaningless piece of information,” Therese insisted. “All of us saw it.” She glanced pointedly at Eduardo. “Almost all of us saw it. It has to be a key to what we’re looking for.”
“Maybe we were just shown an important point in Phillipe’s life, a juncture,” Ty suggested.
“I think it is important to our quest,” Ashi said quietly, and the others fell silent, as if it were decided.
Jenna sighed. “I can’t look at this anymore. Maybe in the morning something fresh will occur to us.”
The rest of the team murmured a concurrence and within a few minutes they were saying good night and leaving. Jenna was the last one and Ashi discreetly took the laptop into the sunroom, far from where Ty and Jenna were sitting.
“We can’t get one minute alone,” Jenna said, looking over Ty’s shoulder where Ashi had just been.
“We’re alone now.”
Jenna shook her head vigorously. “Not really. Ever since Ashi moved in…not a minute.”
Ty was silent.
“I have to leave, but Ty, aren’t you afraid to be in this house?”
Ty grinned. “I feel perfectly safe. How about you?” he asked casually. “You scared to be here?”
Fear flickered over her face for a second.
Ty’s tone turned serious. “Don’t worry, Jenna. This house is like a fort. Nobody’s going to get us.”
“Ty, the other night…someone got close to getting in.”
“But they didn’t. I feel safe and you are too.” Ty realized he did nothing to reassure Jenna. He reflected that his sense of safety came from Ashi. If she were not here he would feel like a little mouse, waiting for a bird of prey to swoop down.
“I feel like I’m exposed in this house.” She glanced at the windows. The curtains were open to the darkness beyond. “Someone could be watching us right now.” She rubbed her arms. “I have goosebumps. It's creepy and I don’t like your being here by yourself.”
Ty didn’t want point out that he was not there alone and anger Jenna again. He looked away from her and shrugged. “This is the best security money can buy. The alternative is to go back into hiding. Do you want that?”
Jenna stared at him with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what the best thing is. I just know this house is not safe.”
“It’ll be okay.” Ty circled his arms around her. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”
She sniffed and pulled away. “No, I drove my mom’s car over. Besides, I wouldn’t want you out at night.” She looked around. “I can’t get over the feeling as if someone is watching.”
Ty walked her out to her car and said good night. He waved at the security guys parked in front and went back in, careful to lock the door and reset the alarm. He searched for Ashi and found her sitting in the sunroom, on a large, comfy sofa, surrounded by a curved bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. None of them was covered. The first few feet of the patio outside were brightly lit, but it merged into an impenetrable blackness beyond.
Ashi’s feet were propped up on the ottoman and she was peering at the laptop.
“Aren’t you afraid in here by yourself?” Ty looked at the windows.
Ashi didn’t even look up. “No fear, Ty,” she reminded him.
“Okay.” He sat beside her. “Whatcha looking at?”
“Just trying to find out some more information.”
Ashi continued to click away at the laptop.
Ty looked over her shoulder. “Here.” He pointed. “Verrazano was an explorer. They named the entrance to New York Harbor after him. It says when he visited Rhode Island, Newport to be specific, the tower was already there. He marked it on a map he made.”
“Huh! And that was in 1524.”
“How about Grand Master? Let's contact him,” Ty said. “Maybe he knows something about La Merica and the Newport Tower.”
“Excellent idea.”
They e-mailed him, mentioning the tower and turned their attention away from the computer.
“So what do you think?” Ashi asked.
Ty clasped his hands around the back of his head and leaned back. “I don’t know. I’m fried.”
“Like a chicken? Like an egg? What does this mean?”
He laughed. “It means I’m too tired to think. Maybe in the morning we can come up with something…unless you have any ideas.”
“No, I’m fried.” Ashi said. Still, she looked intently at the computer screen. She typed again. “I just want to check…he replied already.”
“That was quick.” Ty leaned over and read the e-mail. “Grand Master thinks we should check it out. Road trip.”
“We need to see it for ourselves.”
“Who is this guy, anyway? How does he know so much. Every time we figure something out, he already knows about it.”
“And then he gives us more information,” Ashi added.
“Kind of like he’s sitting and waiting for us to find pieces of the puzzle.”
“So let’s go,” Ashi said.
“Huh?”
“It is not far, right?”
“Oh, to see the tower and the knight. It would take hours to get there.”
“Oh. Tomorrow then?”
“The second day of school? You know we can’t just skip school when we feel like it. The principal is watching. If we aren’t responsible, people will question if we should be living on our own.” He smiled. “Let’s go this weekend.”