Chapter Twenty
Quinn threw one last glance over her shoulder as they climbed the front steps of their hotel.
“Still worried the librarian goon squad is following us?” James asked.
“A little.”
“If they caught you with a poached manuscript, what manner of punishment would they exact? Forty lashes with an eyeglasses chain?”
She chuckled and squeezed the hand that held hers. “Much worse. I’d be locked in a windowless room and forced to catalog hand puppets, inflatable globes, ukuleles, and animal skeletons.”
“Sounds terrible.” He pulled open the front door. “Glad you’re in the clear. You ready to examine our find instead?”
“I am so ready,” she said as they strode across the lobby toward the staircase. “I can hardly wait to get upstairs.”
She caught the desk clerk’s sly smile as they passed. It was clear her out of context comment had him concluding their afternoon activities would involve something other than scrutinizing a filched illuminated manuscript.
Once in their room, James hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle and shut the door. “I don’t want someone walking in on us with what appears to be a valuable manuscript. Plus, I don’t want to disappoint the desk clerk.”
Quinn’s gaze followed him as he walked across the room. “You saw his smirk, too, huh? At least we know we’re doing a bang-up job selling our cover as a happily married couple.”
“Very happily married,” he replied with a crooked smile as he joined her on the bed.
They both sat cross-legged and stared at the book atop the bedspread. Quinn’s mood swung from lighthearted to foreboding. “We were wrong. Ben didn’t take the manuscript with him when he disappeared.” Quinn noticed James’s frown when she glanced at him. “That’s not a good sign, is it?”
“No, probably not.”
“Let’s not lose hope,” she said. “Maybe our finding the manuscript was all part of Ben’s master plan.” She took his hand and laced her fingers with his. “You know what I think? I think he’s probably stretched out on a lounge chair on a beach somewhere sipping a drink with an umbrella stuck in it, laughing his ass off that he got us to do all his legwork for him.”
“If you’re right, once we find him, I’m gonna kick his ass.”
“I don’t blame you. But first we need to get to the bottom of this mystery and the only way to start is to see what the deal is with that,” she said, indicating the book with a tip of her head. “Shall we?”
When he nodded, she released his hand, carefully undid the straps, and opened the cover. “Leather straps with pins or metal clasps were used to keep books closed tight so the parchment wouldn’t buckle,” she said. She tapped the wood board the leather was stretched over with a fingernail and studied the cords that bound the folio pages together.
At the center of the first page was a wide column of text written in carefully rendered medieval calligraphy. There was so little space between words, it was difficult to tell where one word ended and another began.
“How’s your Latin?” she asked.
“E plurbis unum. Carpe diem. Caveat emptor. How’s yours?”
“Semper fidelis. Illegitimi non carborundum.”
He frowned and furrowed his brow.
“‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’”
“Words to live by,” he said with a nod. “That’s all the Latin you know? I thought you librarian types knew everything.”
She lightly smacked his leg with the back of her hand. “We don’t know everything. We just know how to find the answers.” The second she heard her words, the penny dropped. Quinn sat ramrod straight. “I bet that’s what some of Ben’s entries on his spreadsheet are about. Maybe he doesn’t speak Latin, or at least not well enough to decipher this, so he contacted—or was going to contact—someone who could help him.”
“Dudley from Oxford. He was doing what a librarian does. Finding the answers.”
Happy to have hopefully solved a small mystery, Quinn squinted at the elaborately decorated initial on the first page of the manuscript. It was a large golden Q with tiny gold leaves surrounding it. “I approve of the first letter.”
“Of course you do.”
James carefully turned the next few pages. Borders of colorful geometric designs were repeated, along with more odd creatures, and some recognizable ones, including a porcupine, an ox, and a snail.
“I’m sure there’s a good story behind why a snail battling a knight would be painted on a manuscript, but I can’t figure out what it would be,” James said.
When he turned the page again, Quinn said, “Meanwhile, this poor dude is halfway down the gullet of a dragon. That can’t feel good.” She pointed at the peach-colored structure painted in the margin and said, “There’s a tall, skinny castle turret.”
James tilted his head to the left and then to the right. “And over here’s an ice-cream cone without the ice cream.”
“Maybe the illuminator had a geometry test the next day.”
He chuckled and turned the page. Surprisingly, it wasn’t text, but instead a diagram of seven concentric circles surrounding a yellow orb at the center. Smaller red, blue, and green spheres were painted on the rings. Two of the spheres had C’s at their centers, four contained X’s, and one had an I.
“Planets, maybe?” she asked. “The solar system? Or at least what they thought it looked like at the time?”
“Looks that way.” James turned page after page, each similarly decorated. A man drove several oxen with a train of two covered caravan wagons behind them. Men wielded swords and spears in battle scenes. Portraits of assorted people were painted inside decorated initials. Several miniatures featured what looked to be the same man, an armor-clad knight, in various poses: in supplication before a regally dressed man, astride a horse, alone in a room, and interacting with various men. The manuscript also included a number of crude maps with rivers, mountains, and castles sprinkled throughout. Unfortunately, none of the features on the maps were labeled.
James closed the book. “If Ben saw something important in that, I sure didn’t,” he said and expelled a loud breath.
“Me either.” Quinn scratched her head and stared down at the book.
“Look, Quinn, I have every confidence that you could decipher this text, and I know how much you’d like to dive into it, but—”
She held up a hand. “But we don’t have the time. I completely agree with you. We need help.”
“We do. I think right now, your magic librarian skills would be best put to use by tracking down Dudley the Latin scholar.”
“On it.” She swung her legs off the bed, retrieved her laptop from the room’s safe, and jumped back onto the bed in fifteen seconds flat. She flipped open the laptop and rubbed her hands together.
“Here we go,” she said, and opened a browser. Starting with the clues from Ben’s spreadsheet, she went to WorldCat and searched author Dudley and subject Latin.
“And the winner is . . . Gemma Dudley. She’s written a couple of books and some journal articles on Latin, including medieval Latin.” After another quick search, she said, “She has a D.Phil from Oxford University and is a member of the Classics Faculty there, specifically Merton College. Here’s her phone number. Do you want to call her or should I?” She glanced over at James, who looked like he’d been zapped by a Taser. “What?”
“How did you . . . ?” He pointed toward the bathroom. “I was going to . . . I didn’t even get off the bed and you . . .” He smiled and slowly shook his head. “You’re amazing.”
“I’m nothing special. Lots of people can do what I just did.”
“That might be true.” His smile softened and when his eyes gazed into hers, she stopped breathing. “But you are very special.”
The room went still, neither of them moved. Quinn found herself staring trancelike at his lips. She forced her eyes to look back into his. Breathing again, albeit shallowly, she swallowed at the lump knotted in her throat. “So are you,” she managed in a whisper.
After what seemed like an eternity to her, he cleared his throat before saying, “You should call her.”
Quinn blinked sluggishly a couple of times.
“You should call her,” he repeated and licked his lips. “The Latin professor at Oxford.”
She ran her fingers through her hair and said, “Right. Um, why me?”
“You have a better grasp on all of this manuscript stuff than I do.”
“I’m not sure about that, but okay.” She took her phone from her pocket, staring through it as she gathered her thoughts. With considerable effort, she pushed aside the almost kiss and scripted her greeting to Professor Dudley in her mind. She took a deep breath, blew it out in a gust, and dialed the number.
After one ring, she heard a woman’s voice say, “This is Gemma Dudley.”
“Good afternoon, Professor Dudley. My name is Quinn Riordan. I hope I haven’t called at a bad time.”
“No, it’s fine.” Quinn heard caution in the professor’s voice. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve recently run across what appears to be a medieval manuscript. I was hoping you could help me by looking it over and telling me what it says.”
“I assume, then, the text is Latin.”
“Yes, and my Latin skills are lacking. To be honest, they’re nonexistent.”
“I might be able to help you. What makes you think it’s medieval?”
“I’m a librarian who enjoys a good mystery and have done some research on it. From the script and illuminations, including a miniature of a knight on horseback, marginalia with some pretty wild grotesques and animals straight from a bestiary, I’m pretty sure it’s medieval. At this point, though, the Latin has me stymied.”
“Not an uncommon problem.” The tightness in the other woman’s voice lessened. Apparently, Quinn’s liberal use of the manuscript terminology she’d learned earlier in the day had convinced the professor she wasn’t a crank.
“With a little more research I discovered you’re one of the premier medieval Latin scholars in England. I figured, why not start at the top?”
Professor Dudley chuckled and Quinn heard the woman relax further. “Why not indeed? And, yes, I would be happy to help you. I’m pleased to have an excuse to put off marking this pile of end-of-term exams stacked on my desk. Are you calling from the States?”
“No, I’m here in London. My grandmother died recently.” Completely winging it, Quinn widened her eyes and made a face at James. “My husband and I were cleaning out her attic when we found this leather-bound book in a box. Would it be possible for us to come to Oxford and meet with you sometime soon? We’ll only be here for a few more days.”
“I understand. Let me see.” At the professor’s pause, Quinn assumed she was reviewing her calendar. “Would dinner this evening be too soon? My husband has a meeting tonight and I find the prospect of eating alone rather dreary.”
“Oh,” Quinn said, sitting up and looking straight at James. “Dinner tonight”—she paused for a split second, and when James nodded emphatically, said—“would be great. Thank you.”
“Wonderful. Shall we meet at a pub called the Eagle and Child?”
Quinn gripped the bedspread to keep from tumbling sideways off the bed. “Did . . . did you say the Eagle and Child?”
“From your reverent tone, I’m given to believe you’re familiar with it,” Professor Dudley said, clearly amused. “Are you a Tolkien or Lewis fan?”
“Yes. Both. All of the above.”
“The Bird and Baby it is. Seven o’clock?”
Quinn mouthed the proposed time to James. He nodded after glancing at his watch. “We’ll be there,” she said.
“I’ll be the woman with the curly, ginger hair.”
“I’ll be the awestruck blonde and my husband will be the handsome guy trying to stop me from embarrassing myself.”
“Brilliant! I look forward to meeting you both,” she replied, her smile evident in her voice. “Cheers.”
“You too. Good-bye.” Quinn tapped the screen and dropped the phone on the bed. “We’re having dinner at seven in Oxford with Professor Dudley at a pub called the Eagle and Child.”
“This is why it was better for you to make the call,” James said. “You were fantastic.”
“Thanks,” she said and bounced off the bed. She could barely contain her eagerness when she said, “Get a move on, Mr. Riordan. We’ve got a train to catch.”