Rewrite subdirectory url to file - php

Question

I have a subdirectory called test, http://www.mywebsite.com/test/. Inside of the directory is an index.php file.
I want to put an .htaccess file inside of the test subdirectory that will rewrite the URLs so that http://www.mywesbite.com/test/paul will become http://www.mywebsite.com/test?author=paul, and so that urls like http://www.mywebsite.ocom/test/sam/3 will become http://www.mywebsite.com/test?author=sam&test=3
This is what I have so far:
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/test/)
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/?$ /test/index.php?author=$1&page=$2 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/test/)
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/?$ /test/index.php?author=$1 [L]
Unfortunately, I get a 404 Not Found error. Am I missing something? Any thoughts are much appreciated!
EDIT: I checked phpinfo() and mod_rewrite does seem to be showing as a loaded module.
This is what my virtual host file looks like too. It looks like AllowOverride is set as well.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName mywebsite.com
ServerAlias www.mywebsite.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mywebsite.com/httpdocs
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/mywebsite.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/mywebsite.com-access_log combined
HostnameLookups Off
UseCanonicalName Off
ServerSignature On
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/html/mywebsite.com/httpdocs/"
<Directory "/var/www/html/mywebsite.com/httpdocs/">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
<IfModule mod_userdir.c>
UserDir public_html
Include /etc/apache2/mod_userdir.conf
</IfModule>
</VirtualHost>
EDIT 2: I also wanted to mention, I put some junk text in the .htaccess file to try and break it, and instead of a 404 error I got an internal server error, so it does seem like the .htaccess file is being read.

Answer 1

I tested Panama Jack's solution and it seems like the RewriteRules are not accounting for this already being in /test/.htaccess... so this would not work for the first example (/test/paul). Proposing an alternate solution that should work for both examples:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /test/
RewriteRule ^(.+)/(.+)/?$ index.php?author=$1&page=$2 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index\.php$
RewriteRule ^(.+)/?$ index.php?author=$1 [L]