Countdown - Iris Johansen [46]
“Trevor thinks it is. He’s very possessive of her. He didn’t want to let me work in here but I told him that I needed inspiration.” Mario smiled mischievously. “It was a real victory for me. I don’t get many with Trevor.”
It was strange standing here staring at this face that had already twisted her life in a multitude of different ways. The dreams, the episode four years ago that had nearly taken her life, and now the circle was returning, closing, with Cira in the center. Strange and mesmerizing. She forced herself to look away. “And is it inspiring?”
“No, but I enjoyed looking up at her after working on her scroll. It was almost as if she were in the room talking to me.” He frowned. “But didn’t I read on the Internet that Ms. Duncan did a forensic sculpture of a skull that resembled the statue of Cira?”
“No, that was pure hype. She did do a reconstruction of a skull from that period, which Trevor borrowed from a museum in Naples. But it looked nothing like Cira.”
“My mistake. I suppose I was so absorbed in her scroll that I was working on that I didn’t pay enough attention.”
“Her scroll,” Jane repeated. “I didn’t know anything about those before Trevor told me when I was coming here. All he said was that there were scrolls about Cira.”
“These were in a separate chest enclosed in the wall at the back of the library. Trevor said he hadn’t seen them before and the cave-in might have toppled the wall. He believes she tried to hide them.”
“She probably did. I’m sure when she was Julius’s mistress she wasn’t encouraged to do anything with her mind. He was only interested in her body.”
He smiled. “That’s evident from the scrolls he had written about her. Would you like to read a few of them?”
“How many are there?”
“Twelve. But they’re pretty repetitive. He was besotted with Cira and he evidently had a fondness for porn.”
“And what about Cira’s?”
“They’re more interesting but much less titillating.”
“What a disappointment. Could I read the Cira scrolls?”
He nodded. “Trevor called me last night and gave me permission. He said those would be the ones that you’d be most interested in.” He nodded toward an easy chair in the corner of the room. “I’ll bring the translation of the first one to you. That corner has plenty of light.”
“I could take it to my room.”
He shook his head. “When I first started to work for Trevor, I promised him I wouldn’t let the scrolls or the translations out of my sight.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“He told me that they were very important and what I was doing was dangerous because a man named Grozak was after them.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all I wanted to know. Why should I be curious? I don’t care what Trevor and Grozak are fighting about. It’s only the scrolls that are important to me.”
She could see that. His dark eyes were glowing and his hand gently touching the scroll was almost caressing. “I suppose Trevor has a right to set up rules about the scrolls, but I believe I’d be a little more inquisitive than you seem to be.”
“But then, you’re not me. Our lives were probably very different. I grew up in a village at the foot of a monastery in Northern Italy. I worked in the garden when I was a little boy and later they let me work in the library. I’d scrub the tiles on my hands and knees until they bled. And at the end of the week the fathers would give me an hour to touch the books.” His lips curved reminiscently. “So old. The leather of the binding was smooth and rich. I’ll remember the smell of those pages all my life. And the script . . .” He shook his head. “It was fine, a thing of beauty and grace. It seemed magical to me that those priests who’d written them could have been so learned and wise. It just shows that time doesn’t really matter, doesn’t it? Yesterday or thousands of years ago, we go through life and some things change, some things stay the same.”
“How many years did you work for the monastery?”
“Until I was fifteen. At one time I wanted to become a priest. Then I discovered girls.” He shook his head ruefully. “I fell from