Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8 "AHHHHH!" Nellie screamed. "AHHHHH!" Dan screamed from his place beside her in the front seat of the car. "What is wrong with you two?" Amy asked from the backseat. She looked up from the pile of Shakespeare books she'd settled in with as soon as they'd pulled out of the rental-car lot toward Stratford. "I forgot I'd have to drive on the wrong side of the road again!" Nellie said. "I mean, it's the right side for them—er, the left side, that's where they drive— but—" "DO YOU SEE THAT CAR?" Dan screamed. It seemed to be in their lane. "Swerve right?" Nellie muttered. "No— left. Right? Left? AHHHH!" At the last minute, she jerked the steering wheel to the left. She pulled off into the grass and

第八章“啊啊啊！”内莉尖叫。 “啊! ! !”丹在她旁边的座位上尖叫起来。 “你们两个怎么了？”艾米在后座上问。 她从一堆莎士比亚的书中抬起头来，这些书是她刚从出租店开到斯特拉特福德的时候看的。 “我忘了我又得逆行了！”内莉说。 “我的意思是，这是他们的右边——嗯，左边，那是他们开车的地方——但是——”“你看到那辆车了吗？”丹尖叫。 它似乎在他们的车道上。 “转向对吧?”内莉喃喃低语。 “不——离开。对吧?离开了吗?啊!”在最后一刻，她猛地把方向盘转向左边。 她把车开进了草地

sat there, shaking, while cars whizzed by them. "I'm not sure I can do this," she said. "What?" Amy said in amazement. "Nellie—you already drove on the wrong side of the road before when we were in South Africa." "You were awesome there, zigzagging all over the place!" Dan said. "Nellie, you're the best driver." This was true only if you defined best as most dangerous. Which Dan probably did. "Yeah, usually I am," Nellie agreed. She wiped her hand across her forehead. Her fingertips came away sweaty. "But I don't know, it's weird. It's, like, this is all real now. Back in South Africa, I kind of felt like I was just driving in a video game. But now—now I know what the clue hunt is for, and how much it matters. It's like, whoa, responsibility." "If you'd crashed us into another car in South Africa— or anywhere else— you would have been responsible for killing us," Dan said. "Even when you didn't know what the clue hunt was about."

坐在那里，浑身发抖，汽车呼啸而过。 “我不确定我能不能做到，”她说。 “什么?”艾米惊奇地说。 “内莉——我们在南非的时候，你已经开错路了。” “你在那里太棒了，弯弯曲曲的！”丹说。 “内莉，你是最好的司机。” 只有当你把“最好”定义为“最危险”时，这才成立。 丹可能就是这么做的。“是的，我通常是这样的，”内莉同意道。 她用手在额头上擦了擦。 她的指尖出汗了。 “但我不知道，这很奇怪。 现在一切都是真的了。 在南非的时候，我感觉自己就像在电子游戏里开车。 但现在，我知道寻找线索是为了什么，也知道这有多重要。 这就像是，哇，责任。” “如果你在南非——或者其他任何地方——把我们撞到另一辆车上，你就要对我们的死负责。”丹说。 “即使你不知道线索搜寻是关于什么的时候。”

"Thanks. That makes me feel so much better," Nellie said sarcastically. She rubbed the snake nose ring she'd insisted on repairing before they left Jamaica. She made no move to pull back onto the road. Amy remembered how shaken Nellie had looked when they met up with her after sneaking out the back of the Globe. Does Nellie think this is all impossible now? Amy wondered. Is it just hitting her a day late? "We can't let Isabel win, remember?" Amy reminded her. "Not Isabel… or Eisenhower… or Cora… or Alistair…" It was no accident that Amy named people who'd been there the night her parents died. Nellie clutched the steering wheel. "You're right," she said, resolutely setting her jaw. "I have to do this. Just— don't watch, okay? It makes me nervous." "I'll be reading," Amy said quickly. "This is what long-life computer batteries are for," Dan said, opening his laptop.

“谢谢。这让我感觉好多了，”内莉讽刺地说。 她揉了揉离开牙买加前坚持要修的蛇鼻环。 她没有把车开回路上。 艾米还记得，当她们从环球剧院后面溜出来和内莉相遇时，她的表情是多么的震惊。 内莉现在觉得这一切都不可能了吗？ 艾米想知道。只是迟了一天打击她吗？ “我们不能让伊莎贝尔赢，记得吗？”艾米提醒她。 “不是伊莎贝尔……不是艾森豪威尔……不是科拉……也不是阿利斯泰尔……”艾米说出了她父母去世当晚在场的人的名字，这绝非偶然。 内莉紧紧抓住方向盘。 “你说得对，"她说，坚决地咬紧牙关。 “我必须这么做。别看了，好吗？ 这让我很紧张。”“我要看书，”艾米很快地说。 “这就是长寿命电脑电池的用途，”丹打开笔记本电脑说。

Amy even stacked books next to Saladin's cat carrier so he wouldn't watch, either. At first Amy was very aware of the car's motion. But then she lost herself reading about Shakespeare. She loved the man. In his writing he could be so funny, so wise, so… human. And it was so clear that he was a Madrigal. He hadn't been born rich and famous. The experts weren't even sure his parents knew how to read and write. His father had had money problems when William was a teenager, and so experts thought William had probably dropped out of school. He definitely hadn't been able to go to university. When he'd started out writing plays in London, some of the other writers had made fun of him for being uneducated. He was like Dan and me, Amy thought. An underdog. Then there'd been Shakespeare's Lost Years, the time when he'd seemed to vanish from the historical record. Obviously he was off doing Madrigal business, Amy thought. Searching for clues, maybe

艾米甚至把书堆在萨拉丁的猫笼旁边，这样他就不会看了。 起初，艾米对汽车的运动很敏感。 但后来她在阅读莎士比亚的作品时迷失了自我。 她爱这个男人。在他的作品中，他可以如此有趣，如此睿智，如此……人性化。 很明显，他是一首牧歌。 他并非生来就富有和出名。 专家们甚至不确定他的父母是否会读书写字。 在威廉十几岁的时候，他的父亲遇到了经济问题，所以专家认为威廉可能已经辍学了。 他肯定没能上大学。 当他刚开始在伦敦写剧本时，其他一些作家取笑他没受过教育。 他就像丹和我，艾米想。 一个失败者。然后是莎士比亚的《失落的岁月》，在那段时间里，他似乎从历史记录中消失了。 显然他去做牧歌生意了，艾美想。 也许是在寻找线索

negotiating with Lucians and Ekats, secretly keeping the balance of power between the branches. She and Dan had been in the Clue hunt for so long, it was like they barely had to glance at something to see the Cahill fingerprints all over history. "Oh, man!" Dan burst out from the front seat. "How could this dude be one of us? William Shakespeare— a Madrigal? No way!" Once again, Dan's mind was running in a totally different direction from Amy's. "Are you kidding?" Amy shrieked. The car swerved, then corrected itself. Amy looked sheepishly at Nellie. "Sorry, Nellie. Didn't mean to distract you." "S'okay," Nellie said, staring fixedly at the road before them. "You can talk now that I'm on the highway. It's much easier. No cars coming straight at me." Amy turned her attention back to Dan. "Let me guess," she said. "You think Shakespeare should have been a Janus because his

与卢西恩和埃卡特谈判，秘密保持各分支之间的权力平衡。 她和丹一直在寻找线索，就像他们几乎不需要看什么东西，就能看到卡希尔的指纹遍布历史。 “哦,男人!”丹从前排座位上冲了出来。 “这家伙怎么可能是我们中的一员？” 威廉·莎士比亚——牧歌？ 没门!”丹的思想又一次和艾米的完全不同。 “你在开玩笑吧？”艾米尖叫了起来。 汽车突然转向，然后自动纠正过来。 艾米不好意思地看着内利。 “对不起,内莉。我不是故意让你分心的。” “好吧，"耐莉说，眼睛死死地盯着他们面前的路。 “你现在可以说话了，我在高速公路上。 这样容易多了。没有车直接朝我开过来。” 艾米把注意力转回到丹身上。 “让我猜猜，”她说。“你认为莎士比亚应该是两面神，因为他的

writing was great art. Or— you're jealous that Madrigals don't have kung fu artists or mountain climbers or sword fighters as their famous 'dude,' like some of the other branches. Pretty much everybody says Shakespeare was the greatest writer ever. Isn't that enough for you?" "Oh, come on," Dan said. "He did all his work with a quill pen." Amy could feel her head getting ready to explode. "But," Dan went on, "I agree that Shakespeare was a great writer." Everything Amy had planned to yell at him fizzled. "You… you do?" she managed to say. "Oh, yeah," Dan said. "Didn't you see that list of Shakespeare insult stickers back at the Globe gift shop? That made me curious, so I've been checking out some things online. This dude really knew how to insult people. 'You muddy conger'? 'Thy tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile'? 'Thou art a boil, a plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle'? I'm so going to use these the next

写作是一门伟大的艺术。或者——你嫉妒牧歌没有功夫艺术家、登山者或剑士作为他们著名的“哥们儿”，就像其他一些分支一样。 几乎每个人都说莎士比亚是有史以来最伟大的作家。 这对你来说还不够吗？”“哦，别这样，”丹说。 “他所有的工作都是用羽毛笔完成的。” 艾米感到她的头快要爆炸了。 “但是，”丹接着说，“我同意莎士比亚是一位伟大的作家。” 艾米计划对他大喊大叫的一切都失败了。 “你……你知道？”她勉强说。 “哦，是的，”丹说。“你没看到环球礼品店里那张侮辱莎士比亚的贴纸吗？” 这让我很好奇，所以我在网上查了一些东西。 这家伙真会侮辱别人。 “你还在泥泞吗？”你的舌头能吐出尼罗河里所有的虫子？ “你是一个疖子，一个瘟疫疮，一块凸出的红玉”？ 我下次一定要用这个