The Boudicca Parchments (2 page)

But still he wanted it open. He had to
know
.

Prizing it out was not an option, because he didn’t have long nails. Then he remembered reading somewhere that sustained force operates cumulatively. If you try to open a tightly-closed jar by starting and stopping, you get nowhere. But if you apply constant pressure it eventually gives, even if nothing appears to be happening. However, that applied chiefly to a modern type jar with a thread.

In this case, the problem was that it was very hard to get any proper grip on the cork because it was not just wide and shallow, but also damp. He wondered just how damp. He knew that Great Britain was slowly tilting – the north and west rising, the south east sinking. So when this jar was buried – if it was buried rather than merely discarded – it was above the water table. Even when he found it, there had been no groundwater present at that depth. But the water table varies with the spring and neap tides and that – combined with the geological sinking – might have put this jar beneath the water table, at least part of the time. Even if not, the descent of rain might account for the dampness. If this jar had been an iron object it would surely have rusted badly. As it was, he wondered if water had permeated the cork or the clay itself.

Unable to get any sort of sustained manual purchase on the cork lid, he resorted to the expedient of twisting it in short bursts, first one way and then the other. It didn’t appear to be moving, but he reasoned that firm pressure, applied repeatedly, might eventually take its toll.

And finally it did.

With growing excitement, he felt the cork giving way and loosening slightly and finally turning. Then, with a final effort, he turned it, prised carefully and lifted. The cork came off in his hand to reveal the open jar. But with little more than moonlight to guide him, he could barely see the contents. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small “flashlight” as he sometimes called it.

Torch
, his mind corrected.
I’ve been hanging out with Americans too long!

And then he saw something that amazed him. Inside the jar was what looked like some sort of jute fabric. Realizing that he needed a solid surface to work on, he sprinted with the jar to the hut that served as the office or the dig. It was locked with a heavy padlock, but the metal plates screwed to the wooden wall and door were so flimsy that the door yielded to his foot.

Inside the hut, he carefully removed the jute fabric, by pulling it very gently. It became clear to him that this was a bag, or at least the disintegrating remnants of one. But what was of more interest was what was inside that. It appeared to be some more fabric, but this time leather. And this was somewhat better preserved. He placed it on the desk and switched on the desk lamp. Then he carefully and gingerly unrolled the leather, using two pairs of tweezers to minimize his direct contact with it. And at
that point he got a surprise
.

For what seemed to be rolled up with it, was a piece of old thick paper.

Is that it? Some old rolled up pieces of paper from modern times?

They certainly didn’t have paper in the days of Roman Britain!

But why would something modern be at that depth? And in a clearly antiquated jar? Rolled with leather and inside a decaying jute bag?

There was only one way to find out. Very carefully, he leaned closer to get a better look at the paper. Except that it
wasn’t
paper.

Papyrus?

It certainly didn’t look like papyrus. He tilted the angle of the torch, to shine at it from different angles. No, it definitely didn’t look like papyrus either. And then suddenly he realized what it was.

Parchment!

But parchment didn’t usually last this long, especially in the cold humid conditions of Britain. But then again, this was a very thick, heavy parchment, and it had been protected from humidity both by the jute and by the leather, as well as the sealed jar. He shone the torch into the jar and saw moist salt at the bottom. Had it been put there deliberately or left there by accident. Either way, the sale had also helped to absorb the humidity.

He realized what it was now that he had on this desk. He had found an old Roman manuscript. It
must
have been Roman because the iron age Celts didn’t write, except the educated ones who wrote Latin. But they didn’t have a writing system of their own. They did,
at some point
, develop writing systems – Runes in Germany and Ogham in Ireland – but the earliest inscriptions in these languages were dated to well-after the first century. When the more educated among them
did
write in the first century, it was in Latin, using the Roman alphabet. Accordingly, this manuscript might have been written by a Celt, but it would still be in Latin.

But as Costa tried to read the manuscript, what he saw shocked him. This was not Latin. It was not even the Roman alphabet. Nor, on the other hand, was it the Runic alphabet or Ogham. He starred at it for a long time trying to recall why this strange alphabet looked so familiar. And then suddenly it struck him.

But that’s impossible!

Using a couple of heavy objects on the table to hold the scroll open, he pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and took a picture. Then he selected a number and was just about to send the picture when he heard a noise. He looked up just in time to see the door fly open.

Chapter 2

“Okay… now get ready… one… two…
three
!”

Daniel Klein whipped away the scarf to reveal…
nothing
. The twins stared wide-eyed first at the empty coffee table and then at Daniel.

“Where did it go?” asked eight-year-old May.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied with an innocent shrug.

The glass that seconds earlier had been on the table under the scarf had vanished.

“How did you
do
it, Uncle Danny?” asked Shir, May’s twin, giving Daniel a hug in the hope of bribing the answer out of him.

“I don’t know,” he said in that tone of wonderment that they loved almost as much as the tricks themselves. “It must be magic.”

Daniel Klein was in California for a conference. He had been staying at a hotel in Berkeley, but he had flown down to the basin this weekend to visit his sister and brother-in-law and nieces. They lived in London, in the affluent Jewish area of Golders Green. But this summer holiday they were here in Anaheim, visiting Disneyland and their paternal grandparents. The twins had “invited” Uncle Danny down to see them. He had actually tried to get out of it, explaining that the Bay area was a long way away from where they were staying, even if it was also in California. But try explaining California distances to a pair of enthusiastic eight-year-olds from London!

So now, here he was, entertaining his nieces with some of the magic tricks he had learned as a teenager more years ago than he cared to remember. It was a skill that he had acquired in another phase of his life, and it seemed almost a world away now. But he still had the old sleight-of-hand to draw upon when he needed it.

“Do it again! Do it again!” said Romy, excitedly. Romy was the little one, the five year old who had to compete with her older siblings to get the attention she craved.

“Ah no, a magician never repeats a trick in the same show.”

Daniel had started developing an interest in magic thirty two years ago, shortly after his tenth birthday. At the time, he had not yet put on his adolescent growth spurt and was not the tallish, blue-eyed, dark haired, smooth-looking, confident young man that he was to become in his student years. In primary school, he had been a spotty, nerdy boy and although not exactly the one to get picked on, he was the boy most likely to be ignored. Neither fat nor awkward, he was nevertheless not particularly good at sport, at least not until he discovered a talent for cross-country running. Neither for that matter was he tremendously academically gifted. That too came later. He was intelligent, but a chronic underachiever.

But he was good at chess: good enough to get into his school’s first team. And it was around that time that he had also developed an interest in magic after watching another boy, a few years older than himself, amaze a group of his peers with a series of card tricks, exhibiting feats of legerdemain that astounded him.

For a while, Daniel wanted to be a professional magician when he grew up. So he borrowed books about magic from the library and spent long hours practicing and developing his sleight-of-hand skills. At some point he got to be good enough to have the confidence to show off his skill to his peers and not just his parents. And sure enough, they were impressed.

For the first time in his life, it gave him a sense of power. He could actually hold others in his thrall. He had never really got that from chess. True, he could win about ninety percent of his games, but it never gave him quite the same sense of satisfaction. When he scored a victory at the chessboard, he was beating other people like himself and there was no particular joy in that.

But when he impressed his classmates with sleight-of-hand, using anything from cards to coins to pencils, he felt a sense of victory over the indifference of others that had made him such a loner.

Daniel’s trip down memory lane was brought to an abrupt and unceremonious end by the childish, innocent nagging of his nieces.

“Show us another trick,” said Shir. “Do the one with the coin!”

“What, you mean this one,” said Daniel, pulling a coin out of Shir’s ear.

“What about me?”

“Oh, you also want a coin?” he said, duplicating the trick with May, before she could catch a glance of the concealed coin in his left hand.

Both girls giggled. Little Romy just smiled and whispered in Danny’s ear.

“I saw how you did it.”

Wise beyond her years
, thought Daniel.

“Come on now girls,” said Julia, their mother. “The cake is ready.”

“
Cake!
” all three girls screamed in unison and ran off to the table where orange juice and chocolate cream cake were waiting.

Daniel and his sister exchanged a smile. It was her quiet way of thanking him for keeping the little ones entertained, while she had a chat with her American father-in-law.

They were about to exchange a few words, when Daniel’s mobile phone alerted him to an incoming message. He noticed that the number displayed was unrecognisable. It appeared to be from abroad. But he saw that it was a picture not a text message. He tried to open it, but it was so large that he could only see part of it on the screen unless he shrunk it. When he did so, he noticed that it looked like some kind of a manuscript. He enlarged it again and scrolled around it, but saw that even though the image was large, it was not really in focus.

But the thing that was most puzzling was the fact that there was no covering message – no explanatory text. It was as if the sender had expected him to understand it, without offering him any explanation or summary. The problem was that he didn’t. Because the blurred image – though obviously containing some form of writing – was unreadable.

Perhaps the sender doesn’t know that the image is out of focus.

That was the other problem. He didn’t know who the sender was. The sender’s number had shown up on his system but it wasn’t some one in his address book – at least not with this number – because no name showed up with it.

He pressed the key to return the call. It went straight to voice mail.

“Hallo, I am unable to take your call at the moment. Please leave a message and I will get back to you.”

But Daniel decided not to leave a message, for two reasons. First of all, he was responding to something that had been sent to him. It was for the sender to explain his reasons and tell him what this was all about. He didn’t have to leap through hoops for the anonymous sender. Secondly, the sender was no longer anonymous. It had taken him a few seconds, but as the voice mail announcement played out, he recognized a voice from the past.

It was some one whom he had no particular desire to talk to.

Chapter 3

In the hut at the edge of the dig site, the man was standing over the body and agonizing with indecision. The mobile phone showed that the message had gone through. Whether the recipient had seen it was another matter. He looked at the image and saw that it was blurred.

Will he be able to read it?

The man realized that even if the recipient couldn’t read the text, it was clear enough to arouse his curiosity. And that meant that he would follow it up. So the question was, what to do next?

Right now he found himself with a body and this presented him with both a problem and an opportunity.

From his pocket, he removed another phone and selected a name from an address book. He pressed the button and his phone called a number in Israel.

“Hallo?” said an old man at the other end of the line.

“It’s Morgan… Sam Morgan.”

“I know. Why are you calling me at this time?”

Irascible as ever
. That was the only adjective to describe the man. And “foreign” of course. Even from the few words that he had spoken, the thick accent stood out.

“We’ve got a problem. I’m at the dig site. One of the digging team found a scroll.”

“Why did you wait till this unearthly hour to call me?”

“Because he only just found it.”

“What,
now
? What time is it there?”

“Nearly midnight. He was digging after hours. I think he wasn’t part of the official team. But I know him. He’s a sleazy little man called Martin Costa.”

“And where is he now?”

“I’ve dealt with him.”

“How?”

“Permanently.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“Because he took a picture of it with his mobile phone and sent it to some one else?”

“Do we know who?”

Morgan hesitated for a moment. This was it – the crossing of the Rubicon moment.