Disappearing Act Read online

  It was time to bring down the curtain. Mattheus did a tour of the stage once more and, as he passed the table at the side of the stage, slipped in yet another illusion. With a toss of his hand a swarm of butterflies suddenly danced above his head, until, in their frenzy, they scattered in every direction. Mattheus flicked out his cape to be sure none of the butterflies had lodged in a fold of black or blue and, on the floor in front of the stage once again, he drew the cape over the empty cushion.

  ‘For you, Your Highness, for all in Montilagus, I bring back the most precious object we know,’ Mattheus said, and in the grandest movement of his whole performance he pulled the cape back from the table so that all would see the jewelled sceptre on its cushion.

  But the sceptre wasn’t there.

  Mattheus Coperneau stared at the cushion where the Royal Sceptre should have lain snugly in its bejewelled glory. He had done everything the trick required and cleverly too, for no one would have the least idea how he had managed it. Not even the magicians watching from the back row would guess. Yet something had gone wrong.

  The Prince could not see, of course, but like a lot of blind people he had learned to guess what was in front of him from the sound and movement of others. The first sign of impatience appeared on his face.

  Mattheus hastily draped his cape over the table a second time. He repeated the unseen movements that he had practised in his room at home until the trick worked perfectly. This time it would be there.

  He flung back the cape. Nothing.

  ‘Enough!’ cried the Prince’s son. ‘It is time for the grand parade. Make the sceptre appear so my father can lead the way.’

  ‘I can’t, Your Highness. Something has gone wrong.’

  The entire audience gasped. Fear sent some towards the many doors, but no one was going anywhere. In each doorway, a guard stood firmly in the way.

  The blond-haired Volmer hurried to Mattheus’s side. ‘For God’s sake, man, you’ve had your moment of drama. Stop your games now and bring back the sceptre.’

  On his other side, Mattheus sensed the brooding presence of the guard who had warned him only minutes before: Back on the cushion, quick smart.

  ‘You don’t understand, it’s beyond my control,’ he tried to explain.

  ‘This has gone too far,’ said Prince Edvord and he nodded at the guard. Instantly Mattheus felt the man’s steely grip on his arms. ‘Quickly now, tell us what you’ve done with the sceptre, or this man will haul you down to the cells.’

  What could Mattheus do? He wasn’t lying. Something, or someone, had interfered with his trick, but to blather that now would do him no good.

  ‘I need to check what went wrong,’ he said. ‘Let me go and I will find the sceptre, I promise you.’

  ‘Do you think we’re fools?’ cried the Prince. ‘You’ll use your wiles to escape. No, keep a grip on him, guard. This is some scheme he has planned to make himself rich.’

  When a search of the Great Hall failed to find the sceptre, Mattheus was dragged down staircase after staircase, each one less ornate and smoothly built than the last, until his feet tripped and stumbled over rough stone. It might have been the middle of the twentieth century, but the cell he was thrown into had not changed since men fought with swords and arrows.

  That was just the beginning. The Prince, his ministers and servants, the guards, everyone inside the Palace and out, were sure that Mattheus Coperneau had stolen the Royal Sceptre. When he wouldn’t reveal where he had hidden it, he was left without food for days in the airless damp of the dungeon. Worst of all, those who came to interrogate him had the same terrible message: ‘Tell us where the sceptre is or you will never see your wife and child again. You will stayed locked up for the rest of your days.’

  Mattheus had no use for the sceptre and he certainly didn’t want to spend his life in prison. He broke the magician’s code and told them how he had made the sceptre disappear. They went off to try it themselves. They even asked Walter Borrodi to repeat the trick according to Mattheus’s instructions, but Borrodi said it couldn’t be done. Mattheus must be lying to cover up how he had stolen the sceptre.

  A rumour spread that Mattheus’s act in the Great Hall was more than illusion, that he had used real witchcraft to spirit the sceptre to members of the Practicum who would use it to cast spells over the royal family. As crazy as this rumour was, it began to take hold, because no sooner had the sceptre disappeared than the trouble began.

  First, Prince Edvord died within weeks; a broken man, people said. Without the sceptre, the Mahlings’ right to rule Montilagus came into question. People began to ask why the Prince should make all the decisions when other countries had done away with royalty long ago.

  Mattheus was moved to a proper prison, first for a month, then a year, with no sign of release. As long as the Royal Sceptre remained missing, so Mattheus Coperneau would remain in prison. True to the threats from the police and the royal family, he was not allowed to see his wife or his little son. Carrida was shamed and people threw stones at her in the street.

  One night her father came to her. ‘The new Prince is threatening terrible things against you to make Mattheus confess. You must leave.’

  That very night he hurried her from the apartment.

  ‘Wait,’ cried Carrida, when he was about to lock the door. Rushing inside, she grabbed Mattheus’s notebook. ‘It is all I have of him,’ she wept. There in the moonlight she read again the inscription across the first page. In the weeks that followed, as she fled to a faraway land she had never heard of, those words would be Carrida’s only comfort.

  It was difficult for her to make a new life for herself without the husband she loved. She wrote to him so that he would know she still loved him, but Mattheus wasn’t allowed to read even one of her letters. They arrived at the prison without difficulty, and even made it to the door of his cell, but there the guards took out the letters and gave him the envelope instead. At least poor Mattheus managed to find strength in this cruelty, because as long as the empty envelopes continued to be slipped under his door it meant Carrida was waiting for him.

  Then the letters stopped. Fifteen years had passed by this time. Perhaps Carrida had found happiness with another man, the guards taunted him, but he put his hands over his ears to block them out. All the same, it was difficult to keep hope alive. Without it, Mattheus knew he would die.

  One other consequence came out of that tumultuous day in 1946. Without the Royal Sceptre, the Mahling family sat uneasily on the throne of their principality. Since the new Prince blamed a magician for this calamity, he declared all magic tricks illegal, even though they were an entertainment especially loved by children. Mattheus’s many colleagues either left Montilagus or found another way to earn a living. For a long time, magicians all around the world were treated with suspicion thanks to Mattheus Coperneau. His name was known to them all, just as he had hoped, but for a very different reason.

  To this day, all magic remains banned in Montilagus.

  4

  Notebooks and Sadness

  Sydney, 2011

  ‘Why did we have to come into the city to see this movie?’ asked Hayden. ‘It’s on at the Multiplex. My mum would’ve dropped us there and we might have run into some people from school.’

  He and Matt had just emerged from a movie theatre in George Street to be greeted by the honking of car horns and the diesel growl of buses as they edged forward in the traffic.

  ‘The city’s something different,’ said Matt. ‘I’m tired of doing the same old things.’ He was on edge because the moment he’d been putting off had finally come. ‘Listen, Hayden, would you mind if you went home without me? There’s something I want to do here in town.’

  ‘Will it take long? I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Well, that’s just it. I’ve got to do this on my own,’ said Matt.

  Hayden was no fool. ‘This whole movie-in-the-city thing was just an excuse, wasn’t it?’

  Matt didn’t tr
y to deny it. ‘You’re my cover. I don’t want Mum to find out what I’m really here for.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  Hayden made a face – half-anger, half-intrigue. ‘It’s not dangerous or … you know … illegal, is it?’

  Matt shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you straight off, but it’s important.’ He dropped his voice to a more appealing tone. ‘I’d do the same thing for you.’

  Hayden shrugged. ‘What’ll I tell your mum when they fish your body out of the harbour?’

  ‘Tell her I was a spy and the bad guys caught up with me.’

  Hayden rolled his eyes and walked off towards Central Station. Matt watched him for a few moments, then headed the other way, towards Martin Place, with the notebook in a daypack slung over his shoulder.

  All the way along George Street, Matt worried that the old man wouldn’t be there, and at the same time worried that he would. What was he going to do when he saw him? He wasn’t afraid, just unsure of what to say to the guy when it would be so obvious he’d come back on purpose.

  Martin Place opened up on his right and his legs somehow carried him across the open expanse of paving stones until he saw the man standing in the same spot as last time, as though he was waiting for him.

  Matt watched him for a while, a long while, staying well back so that he wouldn’t be noticed. The old guy wasn’t offering passers-by a piece of chalk today. Instead, he held something in his hands that Matt was too far away to make out. He was just standing there, waiting – waiting for a particular young man, even though he’d seen him only once and didn’t know his name.

  I’m going home, Matt told himself, and he even took a step back the way he’d come before he stopped, angry at himself. It was cowardly to run away when the old man was too frail to hurt him. Hadn’t he been looking for something exciting when he found the notebook among his grandfather’s junk? Besides, if he didn’t ask about those words written on the pavement, he would spend the rest of his life wondering what they meant. He set off across the square.

  By the time the man saw him coming, Matt had the answer to two questions that had intrigued him while he’d stood watching. First, he saw that the original four words were written on the ground, just as they had been last time; and second, the object in the old man’s hands was a battered biscuit tin.

  Matt came to a halt three metres from the old man. They stared at each other without a word while the ancient face filled with relief, hope, gratitude and a dozen other feelings Matt couldn’t work out. They all became a nervous shiver that took hold of the man’s entire body. One thing was certain: this bloke wasn’t going to hurt him. There was something very different going on here and Matt felt himself relax. He took a step closer to the writing that lay between him and the old man.

  At last the man spoke. ‘I hoped you would come back. I am here again, as I always am, because there is nothing else left for me to do.’

  ‘What does the writing mean?’ asked Matt.

  The old man stared down at the chalked words. ‘These four say Only the heart knows.’

  Matt dropped to his knees and with a piece of chalk the man gave him wrote the rest. ‘And those three?’ he asked as he stood up again.

  ‘Magic is real.’

  Matt didn’t get it. Only the heart knows magic is real. Why all this mystery over something that didn’t make much sense? Magic wasn’t real – everyone knew that. Of course, there were books and movies that pretended it was, but that was for fun. No one took them seriously.

  ‘How did you know to write these words?’ the man asked.

  ‘I’ll show you, but first you must tell me your name,’ said Matt.

  ‘You do not know it then? My name is …’ The man’s accent made the name strange to Matt’s Australian ears. It sounded like Mat-ay-oos Co-per-no.’ After he had announced his name, the man asked, ‘Does that name mean anything to you?’

  Matt shook his head. Since the guy had kept his half of the bargain, he opened his little backpack and took out the notebook.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ the man gasped as soon as he saw it. If Matt hadn’t stepped forward to give the man his arm, he would have collapsed onto the hard ground. Matt helped him to a bench close by, feeling how frail he was, like a bird. He smelled of chalk dust and unwashed clothes.

  ‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’ said Matt, who had somehow managed to keep hold of the notebook through the drama. ‘You wrote everything in it.’

  The old man nodded, then startled Matt with what he said as he took the book into his own hands. ‘I have not seen it for over sixty years.’

  So long? Matt couldn’t imagine such a gap inside one lifetime.

  ‘Tell me, please,’ said the old man. ‘What is your name?’

  Matt told him, and for a second time the man seemed overcome. Tears welled in his eyes.

  ‘I knew you were in this country,’ he said. ‘I just had to keep searching, hoping. Now it has happened, just as I dreamed.’

  What was so special about the name Matt Cooper? It was so ordinary that Matt sometimes worried he was doomed to lead an ordinary life to match it.

  He peppered the old man with questions, and through the answers he pieced together the story of a young magician and a country called Montilagus. Weird as it seemed, the poor guy had spent years in gaol just because a magic trick had gone wrong.

  ‘But you’re not in gaol now,’ Matt said. ‘You’re in Sydney.’

  The old guy had stared out across the square while he told his sad story. Now he turned to Matt beside him. ‘Yes, they let me go. A pardon, they said. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Then a man came to visit me in the draughty boarding house where I’d found a room. It was Hannus Zimmer, a friend from my days as a magician. He told me a worrying story. My release was not an act of kindness at all, but a ploy – they hoped I would lead them to the sceptre.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘There was little I could do, but Hannus was good to me. Together we began to gather evidence about others who had been in the Palace that day, hoping to find the real thief. One man, in particular, made us suspicious. He had not been in Montilagus very long and he left only days after it went missing. There were others we suspected too, men from a secret society who had tricked Prince Edvord years before.’

  He looked down at the biscuit tin he clutched to his chest. ‘All the documents and photographs we collected are in here. Of course, once I came to Australia, I couldn’t find out any more.’

  He put the tin on the bench between them.

  ‘Why did you come to Australia?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Because Hannus told me some frightening news. Since I had not led the Prince’s men to the sceptre as they’d hoped, I was to be arrested again. He urged me to leave Montilagus and even helped me escape. Left alone, I began to wonder if my dear wife was still alive after all. There was only one clue to where I might find her. The envelopes I had been given in gaol all carried the same postmark: Sydney, Australia. So I came here.’

  ‘You didn’t find her though, did you?’

  ‘No. Since the Prince’s agents would be scouring the globe for me, I could hardly put an advertisement in the newspaper, and there was no one with my name in the telephone book. My wife must have changed her name and our son’s to remain hidden. After years of searching all over this country, I heard of a man from years before who had written on the footpath in chalk, always the same word. Everyone in the city saw the word at some time or other, even though he stayed out of the spotlight. I thought that perhaps I could do the same thing, using words of my own, and one day my Carrida would hear of them and guess it was me.’ He looked down at the notebook in his hands. ‘I decided to use the words I had written in this book, because they meant the same to her as they did to me, and she might have passed them on to our son and his children.’

  Matt tried to guess the man’s age. To be honest, he loo
ked a hundred. ‘How long have you been doing this?’

  ‘Twenty years,’ came the answer.

  Matt felt his heart cough inside his chest. ‘All that time and no one ever knew the words.’

  ‘Until now.’

  Matt reached across and took the notebook from the man’s gnarled hands. ‘I can’t work out how this ended up among our junk at home. Maybe Dad bought a whole lot of stuff at a garage sale. People do that, then they search through it hoping for little treasures.’

  Matt knew this because Hayden’s mum was famous for it. She threw away the worthless stuff or left it in boxes in their garage.

  The old man had a different answer though. He fished around awkwardly in the pocket of his coat and came up with a piece of chalk. Holding it out in the same way he had done for so many years, he said, ‘Write your name on the pavement and please spell out all of your first name.’

  Matt did as he was asked, making the letters large and clear. When he was finished, the old man took the chalk and lowered himself painfully onto hands and knees. Working slowly, he wrote his own name in the same sized letters underneath.

  Matt helped him back onto the bench before looking down at the names. When he did, his mouth fell open. Through all of the man’s stories, he hadn’t thought for a moment how his name would look written down. Now it lay there before his eyes, beneath his own.

  Matthew Cooper

  Mattheus Coperneau

  ‘They’re practically the same,’ said Matt.

  ‘Yes, and there is a reason why that is so. Tell me, Matthew, is your grandfather still alive?’

  ‘Yes. He lives not far from us.’

  ‘He would seem old to you, I suppose.’

  That was true, but Matt didn’t want to say so.

  ‘He would be in his sixties, not so old to someone who is ninety,’ said Mattheus. ‘And his name?’

  Matt always called him Grandad, but he did know his grandfather’s real name because it was the same as his own.