The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [34]
“Yes, and what it is doing here. Hidden in a wall in the back of an old cave in a cliff beside the sea.”
“Do you smell the olives?”
She nodded, “When I carried the cask out of the cave and gently set it on a rock, I looked at it for the longest time before I could bring myself to open it. I don’t know if I expected some sort of genie to float out. When I did open it, the smell of olives nearly overwhelmed me it was so strong. It has grown weaker over time, allowing the other smells to come out.”
“The smell of age.”
“Yes. I felt too as though I were in the presence of something ancient and powerful, yet very strange, very different from me. The smell or the feeling of this thing hasn’t changed. Don’t you think that odd?”
He slowly nodded. He had no words. Slowly, with infinite care, Helen gently lifted out the scroll of leather. “You can see how very fragile it is.”
She unrolled it while he held down one side. It covered a third of the desk. There were four paperweights, each set carefully upon a corner, to hold it down. “Did you measure it?”
She nodded. “It’s twelve inches by nine and a half inches.”
He lightly touched his fingertips to the old leather as a blind man would. “There was probably something tying it closed?”
“Yes, but it disintegrated long ago. It must have been tied for a very long time, because when I found it, the scroll was still tightly rolled.”
Only then did he allow himself to look down upon the old leather. It was the color of dried blood. The writing was black. The person had pressed the inked tip hard into the leather. It wouldn’t have mattered if the leather had turned completely black over the years. The deep grooves and shapes were still perfectly clear.
Reading what was written, however, was a different matter.
“Do you have a magnifying glass?”
“Yes, right here.”
The silence grew long and thick. Helen walked away from him to the French doors of the small estate room, which gave onto a private walled garden.
She looked back at him, leaning over her desk, staring down intently at the leather scroll. He was frowning.
“What is it, Lord Beecham?”
“I believe,” he said at last, turning to look at her, “that it is time you called me by my given name. It’s Spenser.”
“All right. You may call me Helen.”
“Helen is a good name. This scroll—it is not Latin or old French or anything like that.”
“What is it?”
“It is something along the line of ancient Persian.” He straightened. “Does your father have any texts about languages?”
“Yes, but Persian? I doubt it.”
Lord Prith had nothing at all ever written east of Germany.
“It’s time we went to see Vicar Gilliam,” Helen said. “It will take us about an hour to ride there.”
Lord Beecham looked back at the leather scroll atop the desk. “I’m thinking that we should oil the leather, make it more pliable and more resistant to cracking and splitting, particularly when you and I touch it.” He paused a moment, then said, “You know, Helen, the chances are that this says nothing at all about the lamp. In fact I would say the odds are very much against it.”
She was shaking her head even as she said, “No, I don’t believe that. I believe that King Edward hid the lamp near Aldeburgh and that is where the cask was buried. The lamp is nearby, I know it is. What is the purpose of the leather scroll if not to explain the lamp? That must be it, don’t you see?”
“Then why would the scroll be written in ancient Persian and not in French, if it is indeed some sort of explanation about the lamp?”
“Robert Burnell, the king’s secretary, was vastly learned. He must have done it. He must have wanted the lamp to be difficult to find.”
Lord Beecham didn’t think that was the case, but he said nothing.
They used the almond oil that Helen poured into her bath. “I thought the scent was somewhat familiar,” he said over his shoulder as he gently rubbed his thumb in the oil and lightly touched it to the leather. He lifted his thumb to his nose. “It smells like you.”