The abbey, p.4
The Abbey, page 4
Chapter 4: In the Stacks
"That's quite a story," Lasha said, "if it's true."
Barb was pleased. Cynicism was good in an archaeologist, in any scientist really. Too many of her students were eager to be told what to think and believe, but Lasha made her own path, which was good. It would serve her well in the future.
"Yeah, how do you know all this?" Matt asked.
Barb reached into her desk and pulled out an ancient book. She thought of it as a tome. It was thick, crammed with pages that were loosely shoved into the book's binding. The cover was non-descript and made from brown leather, faded with age. The pages were yellowed and well-worn. She slid the tome across her desk, and the students rifled through its pages.
"What is this language?" Lasha asked.
Barb leaned over Lasha's shoulder, brushing her arm with her own. "It's a combination of ancient Gaelic, mixed with Old Norse and Scottish Gaelic. Obviously, the person who wrote it lived during a time of great culture contact. Inverness would be one such place."
"Where did the book come from?" Matt asked.
Barb smiled and told her version of the truth. "It's been around for years, passing from scholar to scholar. It's a fantastic portrait of abbey life. It's worth its weight in gold simply for the amount of information it provides about 10th century Scotland and abbey life. Of course, the author, Keir Strudwick, was completely mad."
"Mad?" Lasha prompted.
"Yes. He was quite insane. The last half of the book is basically the paranoid ramblings of a monk that was trapped in his head, haunted by the past."
Lasha turned the pages to the second half. Where the first pages had been prim and artful, the second half of the book looked like some sort of prop from a movie about a serial killer. Half of the book seemed to have been devoted to pictures of butterflies, the other half to scrawlings that looked hectic and unfocused.
"What's in the second half of the book?" Matt asked.
Barb looked down wistfully at the book. "It makes little sense. He seems to have become obsessed with the idea of the afterlife and resurrection."
Lasha studied an ornate drawing of a butterfly. "What about all of the butterflies?"
"It's typical religious symbolism. The butterfly represents resurrection."
"Can I study this?" Lasha asked.
"Be my guest. I've already mined the damn thing for every bit of information that I need. You know a lot about ancient Gaelic?"
"I can figure it out," Lasha replied.
"I know you can," Barb said.
Matt stood up as Lasha opened her bag and placed the tome gently inside. "What's the next step?" Matt asked.
"Get your passports in order, kids. We're going to Scotland."
****
Matt walked next to Lasha, silence on their lips. Lasha hugged her satchel to her chest, as if she were carrying the world's greatest treasure. Matt couldn't help but feel the same way, but only because he was walking next to Lasha.
"So do you believe we're really going to do this?" Matt asked.
Lasha looked at him from the corner of her eye as they trudged up the hill that led from the University's campus to the dorms. "I don't really have a lot of choice."
"There's always choice," Matt said.
Lasha rolled her eyes at Matt. "Maybe for you there's always choice."
Matt stopped in his steps as Lasha continued up the hill. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.
Lasha turned around to look at Matt. He could see annoyance on her face, brought about by Matt's suddenly tender emotions. "I didn't mean anything by it, Matt. It's just that..." Lasha trailed off, unable to find the right words to say.
"I get it. I'm the rich kid and you're the hard-working girl from the wrong side of the tracks." The words were bitter. He didn't want to them to be, but he couldn't help it.
Lasha smiled at him. "It's not like that, Matt. All I meant was that I'm doing the best with a shitty situation. I don't have anyone to fall back on. There's no one I can run to if my textbooks are too expensive."
"What are you saying?" Matt asked.
Lasha bit her lip before speaking. "I'm saying, I don't think you should go to Scotland with us."
Matt could think of no way to respond, so Lasha continued. "Time crime is no laughing matter. We could be kicked out of the University if we're caught. We're essentially grave-robbing. You don't have to do this."
"No, you're wrong. I have to do this," Matt said.
Lasha turned her back on Matt and continued her trek up the hill, alone.
Matt stood near the bottom of the hill watching Lasha walk away. He knew he was set for life. Even if he flunked out of college, his father's hotel business would always be there for him. But what about Lasha? She was operating without a safety net, and he desperately wanted to be there for her. But she was so damn independent. Of course, that's why he was attracted to her. Lasha was the last person that would ever ask for help, and most of the time, she didn't need it. However, this was a different situation. Archaeological crime was not something that governments took lightly, especially when foreigners were involved. Along with six-digit fines, there was the very serious possibility of jail time.
When Barb had first proposed that they go to Scotland and scope out the abbey, Matt had thought nothing of it. Using the GPR was essentially the same as walking around with a metal detector. People did it all the time. If you got caught, the only thing that happened is that you would be told to leave the premises. But they weren't talking about scanning; they were talking about raiding a potentially important archaeological site and selling their findings to Barb's mysterious benefactor, whoever that was.
He should have backed out. He should have said no. But he couldn't. The only treasure he was interested in was Lasha. Matt turned around, scheming and plotting to win Lasha's affections, the way that smitten youth did. Perhaps they would find love under Inchorgrath Abbey... or perhaps they would find themselves discredited and thrown in Scottish prison. He hoped it was the former.
****
Lasha threw the door open to her room. As a graduate student, she was afforded the luxury of living by herself. She remembered the first few years of college and the annoyance of roommates who wanted nothing more than to get blitzed and chase boys. Meanwhile, Lasha would be sitting at her desk, her headphones on her ears blasting away, while her roommate took for granted everything she had, from a paid for education to an ever-growing wardrobe. Now Lasha lived by herself in the cheapest place she could find. The walls were white, the furniture was sparse, and the kitchenette dominated the space. Though the place had been advertised as an apartment, it was just a room with a kitchen, and a bathroom. It was hers though, for the time being, and that's all that really mattered.
She flopped down on the futon, and rested her bag on the table. The secrets inside were calling to her, but her jetlag had finally caught up to her. She closed her eyes and dreamed in mysteries.
She dreamed of her parents, their faces distinct and easy to recall, though she had not seen them for 20 years. She dreamed of twisted metal, of the dust in their yard, of the brown people on her reservation. She dreamed of a home that had never really meant anything to her because it had all been taken away before she could learn to appreciate it. But mostly, she dreamed of her parents, of their kind faces and their unconditional love.
When she awoke, the day was gone, drifted away and replaced by the darkness of a rainy Seattle night. The sound of rain drummed the small balcony of her third-floor apartment, the wind blowing it sideways and turning the cement a darker-shade of gray wherever it landed.
She rose from her futon and walked into the kitchen to grab a cup of water. She gulped it down, and then set it on the counter as her mind came awake. Matt... what was she to do about Matt? Lasha was aware of his feelings for her. She would have to be blind to not notice the way that he looked at her. No matter how cold she was or how many times she rejected his niceties, he didn't give up. It was a trait that was both admirable and infinitely annoying. She had no interest in Matt as anything other than a friend.
Their worlds were simply too different. She was Native American; he was as white as white could be, as white as the boys in the movies she had watched on her grandmother's TV. He was rich. Lasha had nothing. In fact, she had less than nothing due to all of the debt she had accumulated in the process of trying to be an archaeologist. She was alone; he had an extended family of friends and relatives all over the world. Most of all, they were just so different personality-wise. Where Matt was always cynical and cautious, Lasha was adventurous, almost reckless in her pursuit of knowledge. The last thing she wanted was to be saddled with a boyfriend who was always watching over her, telling her what to do and how to do it.
She flipped open the book in front of her. She felt drawn to it. The age of it... it made her feel something inside. It made her feel like she was a time traveler. All thoughts of Matt fled from her mind as she paged through the book. Even the pages of the book fascinated her. They weren't paper, as paper had yet to make its way from Asia to Europe by the time Keir Strudwick was writing his book. They were vellum, stretched and processed animal hides, scraped to the thinnest width possible. Somewhere a thousand years ago, an animal had died. Its skin had been flayed and soaked in a bath of alcohol and lime to remove the fur. Then, after a week, possibly two if it were in the winter, the skin had been stretched on a rack, and scraped liberally by a tanner until it was dried. It was a painstaking process and not cheap.
How Strudwick had obtained enough vellum to make the book was a mystery. His life as a monk would necessitate a vow of poverty. It was yet another mystery in the life of Keir Strudwick. Perhaps Lasha could find the answers in the book.
She turned her eyes to the words on the page. At first glance, the letters made no sense to her. As she studied the writing, she was able to make sense of them. They were actually not far off from Roman lettering, though a distant cousin to the letters that Lasha used. Their swoops and swirls were hard to distinguish, and there were random dots and accents that kept her from determining the correct phonemes associated with each letter.
After an hour of staring at the book, she cursed and placed it on the table. Translating the book would require her to hit up the University's library. She glanced at the clock that hung on the wall. It was eleven o'clock already. Not too late.
****
Lasha trudged through the night, her umbrella in her hand, as the rain came down in cold sheets. She had left the book in her apartment. Parchment had a way of turning back into rawhide if exposed to too much moisture, which brought up the uncomfortable question, "From where had Barb gotten the book?"
She had been keenly aware of Barb skirting the question of the book's origins. It certainly hadn't been moldering in Inchorgrath Abbey for any amount of time, or else it would have been completely destroyed in Skryger Island's marine climate. The fact that Barb had lent the book to her so readily made it unlikely that she had purchased it or borrowed it from anywhere.
Lasha sighed. As with most things regarding Barb, it was an utter mystery and one that most likely could lead to some trouble with the law. Lasha still remembered those first days with Barb, sitting in her class and listening to her spin tales of archaeological adventures about digging in the ground, fleeing from international conflicts, and unearthing the past.
She longed for the adventure, but Lasha knew that Barb was a dead end. Her path could lead to nothing good. The money... the money would help her get out from underneath Barb's dark wing. The law would catch up to Barb eventually, and that meant it would catch up to Lasha as well if she didn't escape. Lasha pondered her exit strategy as she flashed her student I.D. to the library employee behind the circulation desk.
The scruffy man smiled at her, a flash of pearly whites in a pudgy face ringed by a dark red beard. She knew attraction when she saw it. She knew desire as well. She snatched her I.D. card from the man, not giving him an inkling of interest. She felt, more than saw, his face droop, as she hiked her satchel up on her shoulder and continued on to the university's computers.
She flopped into a creaky office chair sitting in front of an outdated computer. With an optical mouse in her hand, she navigated the library's menus, combing through research articles and book listings. She found what she was looking for quickly; she was an expert at that. If the Scotland thing didn't work out, maybe she could get a job in the library. It wouldn't be so bad, walking among the stacks, shelving books, and helping others find what they were looking for. Isn't that what an archaeologist was anyway? Someone that found things that others didn't even know they were looking for? With the dull stub of a yellow golf pencil, she wrote down the call numbers of the books she needed and rose from the chair, rolling her eyes at the silence-shattering squeak as it settled back into its unoccupied elevation.
The library was empty for the most part. It was Thursday, 11:30 at night. The only people in the library were sweaty undergrads doing last minute research to finish off an assignment or knowledge addicts lost in the glory of reading and learning for fun and their own elucidation. She didn't belong here. She was not married to knowledge. She was married to life.
Of course, it was her lust for life that had driven her to become an archaeologist in the first place. Her tribe, the Apache, burned by the government time after time, had only one hope of ever protecting their lands... turning them into historical sites. Claims of "sacred" land had worked for a while, but now the government, rife with greed and corruption, had seen fit to ignore these outcries, slipping backdoor business deals into bills that essentially had to pass. The last such bill had siphoned off 2,500 acres of Apache land that had served as their traditional hunting grounds. It had been slipped into a defense bill... despite the fact that the land had nothing to do with the government's defense.
It was a cash-grab. It was plain to see, and no one gave two shits about what her tribe considered sacred. Until white people began to clamor for what was right, Lasha and her people were just second-class citizens sitting in hovels built on red dirt, whining about some land being taken away. Senator John McCain claimed that the new provision in the bill would create 1,400 jobs and billions of dollars in income for the state. Of course, he was full of shit, just another in a long line of greedy white politicians looking to line their pockets at the expense of the country's first people. All it would create would be polluted land, unfit for living on. The company that McCain had contracted the land to wasn't even an American mining company, not that it would have mattered to the Apache. Invaders were invaders.
If only the tribe had thought to explore and excavate the land instead of sit on it and admire it, the land might have been saved. That was her goal, not just for her own tribe, but for every tribe. She wanted to search and identify sacred land, to save it from being distributed like rations to foreign investors. McCain probably had a fat stash of dirty money sitting in a vault in his posh mansion in Phoenix.
Lasha's blood boiled as she walked through the claustrophobic stacks of dusty books, many of which hadn't been touched in years. Yet, they were still important, they were still waiting to be used by the one person in the future that might need the information contained within. In that way, the books weren't that different from the ancient land of her ancestors. They might not be living on that land. They might not be hunting on it, but it was still important for the future, for the Apache children that would grow into adults and wonder, "Where did we come from?"
Lasha pulled the first book off the shelf. It was dusty, unused. Bound with a green cover, the book was thirty years old. In gold foil, the title "Old Gaelic for Beginners" was emblazoned across the front. She continued down the aisles, searching for the next book, a primer on Old Norse, the forerunner of contemporary Norwegian and English languages.
As Lasha reached for the book, she sensed a presence behind her, as if someone were watching her. Perhaps it was a change in air pressure, the subtle sound of cloth rustling on cloth, but she knew someone was there.
Lasha grabbed the book and opened her satchel, placing it inside for safekeeping. She turned her back to where the sound had come from and walked in the opposite direction, reaching in her purse for a small round cylinder. She clutched it in her brown fist, walking with purpose, but not fear. Lasha was not afraid. She didn't know the meaning of the word. The world had given her worse things to deal with than some creep in a library. Let him come. She would be prepared. In the meantime, she had one more book to grab.
Rows of books slid past her eyes, a mundane kaleidoscope of books and knowledge lying dormant, as she walked sideways, eyeing the numbers on the sides of the shelves, looking for the right section. She was familiar with the stacks and had spent much of her time combing through the libraries, studying subjects that could help her in her life after college. At the same time, she listened for her stalker, straining her ears to hear a rustling of cloth, a hitched breath, the squeak of rubber shoe on the polished linoleum of the library.
She spotted the aisle she needed, section 941, the history of the British Isles. She walked down the middle of the aisle, eyeing the numbers on the spines until she found the book she was looking for. She pulled it from the shelf and opened it wide, examining its contents to see if it was worth her time. She held the book flat in front of her, the cylinder hidden in the fist that supported the weight of the book, while her free hand turned the pages.
Lasha turned to her right, and then she heard the rush of cloth, breath, and air from behind her. She dropped the book to the ground and turned, bringing the cylinder up to the man's face. She sprayed without thinking, no need for hesitancy for someone of his ilk. The man rushed through the spray and collided with her, sending them both to the ground, his eyes pinched shut, his body racked with coughing. Lasha brought her knee up between the man's legs, and he rolled off to the side of her.
