Elisha’s Bones (20 page)

“You’re right. He is dangerous.” I put my hand on her shoulder and lean in closer, locking eyes. “But he’s not here for you. Or Brown. So go back and do your job and be careful. You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she says. “It’s you I’m worried about. When Hardy heard that you’re here, he didn’t seem happy about it. And he does carry a gun.”

“Thanks for the warning, Sarah,” I say. “I’ll be careful, too.”

She nods, and then a smile touches her eyes. “Just so you know, Brown is bothered enough about your being here that it might be him, and not Hardy, that you need to watch out for.”

That prompts a laugh. I give her shoulder a squeeze and then, with as charming a smile as I can muster, ask, “Since we’re being forthcoming, can you tell me why Miles is here?”

“Nice try, Dr. Hawthorne,” she says with a chuckle. There’s something in her expression that is new—that I would not have seen had this conversation taken place five years ago. It’s open competition, a fierce desire, a need to win. It’s unfortunate we’re no longer working together, because I like this version a lot more.

“You can’t blame me for trying.”

“It’ll be more fun if you earn it,” she says. Suddenly she turns serious, looks down at her feet, then back up, and her eyes are glistening. “I never told you how sorry I was about Will.”

She leans in and leaves a kiss on my cheek, and then she’s gone.

I’m not sure how long I stand there, how many ticks pass before I can think a coherent thought. When I finally reengage, I find that Espy is watching me, and there is nothing there but muted grief, something we didn’t get the chance to bear together.

Oddly enough, I don’t feel like sprinting away; a brisk walk will do. I think that might be progress. It’s as I’m searching for something to say that will extract me from the present moment that suddenly Esperanza slaps herself in the head.

“I’m an idiot,” she says with a vehemence usually reserved for pointing out
my
failings.

At my questioning look she says, “Alem’nesh said to look for the dragon, right?”

“Right.”

“I don’t think we’re looking for a dragon so much as we’re looking for a saint.” At my blank expression she continues, “See, that’s why you should have been raised Catholic. At least then you’d know your saints.”

“And I would have had real wine at church. I still don’t follow.”

“Alex, I’ll take saints who are popular in Ethiopia and who have also killed a dragon, for two hundred dollars.”

She’s enjoying this and, once again, her amusement comes at my expense. I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge of saintly lore is thin. I shrug my shoulders in surrender.

“There’s even a church named after him,” she says. When she takes my hand to lead me out of the tunnel, I’m beyond exasperated. The glint I see in her eye tells me that she’s well aware of this, even as it tells me there’s not a thing I can do about it.

If it had been any more obvious, the flame from the dragon’s mouth would have singed my hair. Espy and I are standing in the nave of Bete Giyorgis, the Church of St. George. It’s the newest of the churches, and the most finely executed. Looking down on it from above, one can see the church was fashioned in the shape of a Greek cross. Its interior is less ornate than those of its older cousins, but the structure itself possesses a stateliness absent from the others.

Espy has filled me in on the particulars, and what she has told me does not jog anything in my memory. I’m reasonably certain that my knowledge of the lives and times of Christian saints is so sparse that I have never heard the story of how St. George killed the dragon. Espy, on the other hand, knows all the details, down to the name of the lance—Ascalon—that George used to slay the beast. She learned her catechism as a child and it has come back to serve us well.

There are more people around than were here when we began, but Espy and I still have a measure of privacy. Few visitors linger for more than a minute or two; there are so many churches to see before the flies become unbearable. The church stands as a testament to the saint, for his image is pervasive in the minimalist decoration.

We are still faced with the question of where to start but, buoyed by Espy’s revelation, we have our investigative second wind. What adds to my enjoyment is that Brown, Sarah, and Miles are on the wrong side of the compound. What I try to avoid considering is the possibility that Esperanza is wrong and that the other team is working with hard evidence rather than conjecture. My thoughts go, again, to Miles Lincoln. How does his specialty fit here?

St. George’s has its share of artwork—which is the province of Miles—including a lovely relief over the doorway, and some carvings. What I’m most drawn to, however, are the murals that bring color and character to the walls. There are several, of varying sizes and subject matters, though most of them feature St. George in one fashion or another. There is one, in a prominent spot on the wall, that stands out from the others; I noticed it when I walked in, and I stare at it for a full minute, trying to convince myself that it can’t be as obvious as this. It’s a representation of the saint slaying the dragon, jabbing his lance into the neck of a beast that does not seem as formidable as the dragons I remember from childhood stories. This animal is no larger than the horse on which George sits.

“Esperanza.”

She follows my line of sight and gives a perfunctory nod once her eyes play over the mural. Both of us move closer to the painting, neither of us sure what we’re looking for.

It’s two minutes, perhaps three, before I come to realize that we’re out of our depth. I could attempt an interpretation of the symbolism, but I don’t have the background to make that worthwhile. There are things in the mural that could be representative of ideas or events. The man in the white robes in the bottom left corner, right next to the skull, could be a reference to the resurrection story in Second Kings. An image in one of the left panels appears to show someone secreting something. It’s subjective, unless you know what you’re looking at, and how the symbols were understood when painted. Processual symbolic analysis is not among my areas of expertise.

“I guess this is why Brown needs Miles,” I say.

No response from Espy. When I look at her, it is to see that she’s focused on the mural. Her eyes are not moving.

“What’s that?” she asks after a time.

Without waiting for an answer, she closes the distance to the mural and sets a finger on what appears to me to be a squiggle or smudge over the shoulder of an angel. It looks like part of the background—a tree root, a bush. Espy traces a line that I can’t see, her finger picking a path amid the painting’s white noise. She mutters something to herself and takes a half step away from the wall, leaving her hand on whatever it is that’s caught her attention. I watch as she studies this section of the picture with an intensity I’ve never seen her display, even when we were trying to translate the symbols in the temple. I remain still, fearful of breaking her concentration. Another few minutes pass before I see her lock on to something and, when she does, she breathes a triumphant sigh.

“It’s Teutonic,” she says. Her hand moves across the mural, two fingers coming to rest on another squiggle. She looks back, glowing. “These are Teutonic letters. Jack, they’re hiding in plain sight.”

I’ve always trusted Esperanza, and I have no reason to doubt her now. On the contrary, I’m near giddy at her discovery. Except I wonder how it could be that of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have passed through here over the centuries—noted scholars among them—not one has discovered this. I must look more skeptical than I imagine because Espy’s glow turns to a frown.

“Whoever painted this made the letters part of the background; they’re almost indistinguishable from the rest of the painting.” She shakes her head. “We don’t need Miles. They need a linguist.”

I move to her side. While I’m familiar with several languages, each of them has gone part and parcel with my work. If I haven’t worked a dig in some country, or if a particular language is not in common use in archaeological parlance, it’s doubtful I could even offer a simple greeting in the tongue. Espy, though, devours languages with a voracious appetite. She’s the expert here.

“All right,” I say, “we have Teutonic letters. What now?”

Esperanza steps away from the wall and, hands on hips, takes in the whole of the painting. “They can’t be randomly placed. There has to be a legend somewhere.”

“But who’s to say that a legend wouldn’t exist separate from the mural?”

“Be quiet.”

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t think with you talking.”

I know when I’m licked, so I do what will move us forward: I remain silent.

Espy studies the mural for a long while, walking around to change perspective. I’m doing my own analysis, looking for something to help us locate and organize Espy’s Teutonic letters, when she steps in front of me. We’re both at the part of the picture where St. George is delivering the deathblow to the dragon, driving Ascalon through its neck. I lean over Espy’s shoulder, drawn by the lance itself. To me it looks more like a staff, a walking stick, because of the irregular notches.

It seems the thought comes to both of us at the same time.

“I need a straightedge,” Espy says, and I think it takes every fiber of her being to keep from shouting.

I understand and start hunting through the church for something that will work, but everything I see is nailed down or bolted to something. Then I remember the monk.

“I’ll be right back,” I call as I run out the door. Outside, it takes some convincing before the monk decides it’s all right for me to borrow his prayer staff. When I get back inside, there’s a tour group studying the murals, and so we have to wait until they leave before we can test our theory.

I find the first of the Teutonic letters and guesstimate the corresponding notch on the lance. When I line up the prayer staff and it runs through the letter, a rush of exultation threatens to take my knees out from under me. I have to make certain, so I perform the experiment with the second letter, with an identical result.

Success breeds urgency. We’ve done what should have been impossible within our narrow time frame, and it would anger me to have the other team walk in while we’re transposing letters. I stand ready with the staff as Esperanza pulls a notepad and pen from her jacket pocket.

I start at the top, careful to line the staff true with each notch. We spot a few letters right away; others take more time and often we’re forced to stop the work as people file through. I grow more uneasy the longer it takes, but Espy works with calm efficiency. The process takes less than half an hour. When finished, we have a series of twenty-five or so letters written down on the notepad.

There is mutual agreement between us to get out of here and go somewhere halfway private before we begin the work of decoding. We’re both breathing heavy as we leave, and it has little to do with exertion. I return the prayer staff to its rightful owner as Espy finds our shoes.

We’re now sitting in a small café in the busiest part of Lalibela, our bags near our feet. I’ve chosen a table in the shadows, which allows me to keep an eye on the traffic passing by the open door. Prudence dictated a discreet checkout from the hotel, followed by the rush to find a place where we could give the painting’s Teutonic letters a serious look.

Espy has her pencil in hand, ready to form the characters into different groupings and orders—a lengthy, medieval anagram. Except that the pencil hovers over the page as a frown creases her forehead. She looks up to make sure I’m watching and then, with careful deliberation, draws a vertical line between two characters, then a second line farther to the right. That done, she slides the notepad across the table.

“Couldn’t you at least make it look difficult?” I ask.

“Do you remember the first patronymic in Reese’s research?”

“Chevrier.”

“And we wondered how Reese got the bones from the cemetery to there?”

“You wondered. I just nodded and hoped you wouldn’t hit me again.”

She taps the notepad, indicating the group of characters on the left. “Chevrier.”

“What about the others?”

“This one on the right,” she says, pointing on the page. “It doesn’t translate as well but it’s also a name. Vuk Stefanovíc.”

“Son of Stephen.” I shake my head. It can get tricky trying to trace names earlier than the thirteenth century.

“This is going backward, Jack. Vuk Stefanovíc transferred the bones to Chevrier. That’s where Reese’s record picks up. And if we keep following it backward, it will become nearly impossible to track them. Relying on patronymics makes it sketchy enough as it is.”

I can feel the frustration building up inside me, yet I refuse to believe the clue we fought so hard to attain is simply a name to add to the list—and one going in the wrong direction. Then I see Espy’s smile, which makes me realize she’s not experiencing the same irritation as me. When I follow her eyes down, her finger has moved to rest on the group of characters connecting the two she’s rendered.

“The best translation is
broker
,” she says.

“Broker? As in
to trade
?” It makes sense, and it’s further evidence that a transfer of something valuable took place between these two families. Still, I’m not sure how helpful it is to have the action defined for us.

“It’s a noun.”

Those three words are the aural equivalent of a lightning strike. I hear them, and understand their individual meanings, but don’t discern their thunder until seconds later. When I tear my eyes away from the page and back to Espy, she wears an expression that’s unadulterated satisfaction.

“Here’s your organization,” she says, leaning in. “Arranging the transfer.”

Her body language is all earnestness but, while I’m near dizzy at the possibility, I need time to think. It’s as I’m fumbling for the right words to express both excitement and caution that I see Brown walk past the café door.

“Put it away,” I say to Espy. After a brief, puzzled hesitation, she flips the notepad closed and hides it in her jacket pocket, then fights the urge to turn around to see what has my attention. I continue watching the entrance but do not see my former protégé backtrack. Still, if he’s looking for us, it means Hardy can’t be far away. I motion for Espy to grab her bag just as Brown comes into view. I see him glance into the café, but the only light in the place comes from the open doorway and a single window. From his spot in the afternoon sun, I wonder if he can see anything at all in here. As if to validate that thought, he looks away, seeming ready to start off again, when, perhaps in some act of submission to his subconscious, he changes direction and takes a single step through the doorway. When he sees us, I lock eyes with him for several seconds until, with an expression I can’t read, he disappears back onto the street.