Scroll
Page 1
The Scroll
Anne Perry
A MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media Ebook
Contents
The Scroll
Copyright
The early winter evening was drawing in. In the antiquarian bookshop well away from the High Street in Cambridge, Monty Danforth sat in his room at the back, working on unpacking and cataloguing the books and papers from the last crate of the Greville Estate. Most of it was exactly what he would have expected: the entire works of Dickens and Thackeray, Walter Scott and Jane Austin, all in leather-bound editions; many of the Russian novelists, similarly bound; Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People. There were also the usual reference books and encyclopaedias, and some rather more interesting and unusual memoirs and books on travel, especially around the Mediterranean. He did not think much of it would re-sell easily, and it would take rather a lot of space to store it.
The owner of the shop, Roger Williams, was not well and staying at his house further north east, towards the wide, flat fen country. He might decide to auction the whole shipment off in one job lot.
Monty peered into the bottom of the crate to make sure he had everything out of it. There was something rather like an old biscuit drum on one side. He reached in and picked it up. It was too heavy to be empty. He pried the lid off and looked inside. There was definitely something there, but it was hard to make it out.
He took it over to the light and flicked on the switch. A yellow glow filled the room, leaving the corners even more shadowed. There was what looked like an old scroll inside the tin. He teased it out gently and put it on the table right under the light bulb. He unrolled it an inch or two at a time, and stared. There was writing on it, patchy, faded, in several places illegible. He tried to make out words, but it was very definitely not English, even of the very oldest sort. The letters were more like the little he had seen of Hebrew.
He touched the texture of it experimentally with his finger tips. It was soft, smooth and had not the dry fragile feeling of paper, more like vellum. There were several blanks on it, and other places where the words were half-obscured by smudges, or erased altogether.
According to what he had been told, the Greville family had travelled extensively in the Middle East in the nineteenth century and early twentieth. They could have found this scroll anywhere: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Jordan, or what was now Israel.
Just in case it really did have some value, he should photocopy it. That could be useful to get a translation, without sending the original.
He stood up and took it over to the machine. He pressed the switch and it came to life. Very carefully he unrolled the first half of the scroll and laid it on the glass, then closed the lid. He pressed it for one copy. The paper rolled out onto the tray.
He picked it up to check it for clarity. It was blank, apart from a couple of smudges.
That was silly. He tried again, with the same result. He checked the ink, the paper, the settings, and tried a third time. Still nothing.
He took the scroll out and tried it with an old letter from a customer.
Perfect, every detail beautifully clear. It was not the machine. Just as well that, as always, he had his mobile phone with him; the camera in it was really rather good. Digital, of course, and you could check immediately on the result, and print it off on the computer later, if you wished.
He took a photograph of a customer’s letter, then looked at it on the screen. It was perfect. Taking two books to hold down the ends and keep the scroll flat, he took the photograph. In the viewfinder it was perfect also, every line and smudge was there. He clicked the exposure once, twice, three times, taking the whole length. Then he looked at it. The first exposure was blank, so was the second, and the third. The vellum was clear, even to the shadows it cast on the table where the edges were torn or curled, but there was no writing on it whatsoever.
Monty blinked and rubbed his eyes. How was it possible? What had he done wrong?
He was still staring at it when he heard the shop’s bell ring. It startled him, although he thought the moment after that it was not extraordinary for a lover of rare books or prints to call after hours. Sometimes it was convenient for someone who could not leave their work during the day. Quite often it was the desire to examine in privacy whatever it was that interested them. But they made appointments. Was there someone coming whom he had forgotten?
The bell rang again. He put the scroll back in the tin out of sight, then he went to the door and looked out through the glass. On the step was an old man, stooped, grey-haired, his face lined by time and from the look of him, perhaps also grief. Beside him was a child of perhaps eight years old. Her face was fair-skinned, blemishless, her hair soft and with the lamplight on it, its gold looked almost like a halo. She was staring straight back at Monty through the glass.
He opened the door. “Good evening. May I help you?” he asked.
The child gave him a shy smile and moved closer to the old man, presumably her grandfather.
“Good evening, sir,” the old man replied. “My name is Judson Garrett. I am a collector of rare books and manuscripts. I believe you have just come into possession of the books from the Greville estate? Am I in the right place?”
“Yes, indeed,” Monty answered. “But we’ve only just got it. It’s not catalogued yet and so we can’t put a price on it. The books are in very good condition. In fact, honestly, I’d say a good many of them haven’t even been read.”
Garrett smiled and his dark eyes were full of sadness. “It is the case with too many books, I fear. Old leather, fine paper are all very well, but it is the words that matter. They are the wealth of the mind and the heart.”
Monty stepped back, holding the door open. “Come in, and we can discuss the possibilities.”
“Thank you,” Garrett accepted, stepping in, closely followed by the child.
Monty closed the door behind them and led the way to Roger Williams’ office where matters of business were discussed. He turned the light on, making the bookshelves and the easy chairs leap to a warmth and inviting comfort.
“Please sit down, Mr. Garrett. If you give me your particulars, I’ll pass them on to Mr. Williams, the owner, and as soon as we know exactly what we have, we can discuss prices.”
The old man did not sit. He remained just inside the door, his face still cast in shadows, the little girl at his side, her hand holding his. There was a weariness in his face as if he had travelled too far and found no rest.
“There is only one item I’m interested in,” he said quietly. “The rest does not concern me and you may do with it as you wish.”
“Really?” Monty was surprised. He had seen nothing of more than slight worth. “What is the item?”
The old man’s eyes seemed to look far away, as if he could see an infinite distance, into another realm, perhaps into a past beyond Monty’s imagination. “A scroll,” he replied. “Very old. It may be wrapped in some kind of protection. It is written in Aramaic.”
Monty felt a chill run through him as if he had been physically touched by something ice-cold. The child was staring at him. She had clear, sky-blue eyes and she seemed hardly to blink.
Monty’s first instinct was to deny having found the scroll, but he knew that the old man was already aware of it. It would be ridiculous to lie, perhaps even dangerous. He drew in a deep breath.
“I don’t have the authority to sell the scroll, Mr. Garrett, but I will pass on your interest to Mr. Williams as soon as he comes back. If you leave a contact number or address with me, perhaps an email?”
“I shall return, Mr. Danforth,” the old man replied. “Please do not consider selling it to anyone else before you give me a
n opportunity to bid.” His eyes on Monty’s were steady and so dark as to be almost black. His expression was unreadable.
The child tugged on his hand and her small fingers seemed to tighten on his even further.
“The scroll is of great value,” the old man continued. “I hope you appreciate that?”
“No one else is aware of it yet,” Monty assured him. “It isn’t actually listed in the papers, and I only discovered it … maybe half an hour ago. May I ask how you heard it was there?”
The very faintest of smiles flickered on the old man’s face, and vanished again before Monty was sure whether it was amusement or something more like regret. “Many people know it is here,” he said very quietly. “They will come and offer you many things for it … money, but other things as well. Be very careful what you do with it, Mr. Danforth … very careful indeed. There is power in it you would be wise to leave.”
Again Monty felt the coldness brush by him again, touching him to the bone.
“What is it?” he said huskily.
The old man drew in his breath as if to answer him. The child tugged at his hand again, and he sighed and changed his mind. He looked steadily at Monty, and there was long experience and a knowledge of evil and of pain in his eyes.
“Be careful, Mr. Danforth. It is a dangerous responsibility you are about to take upon yourself. Perhaps you have no other honourable choice. That I understand. But it is a heavy weight. There is destruction and delusion in what you are about to pick up. Do nothing without great thought.”
Monty found himself gulping, swallowing as if there were something in his throat. “How do I contact you, Mr. Garrett?”
“You do not need to. I shall come back.” He shook the child’s hand off him impatiently and turned towards the door, pushing it open.
Monty followed him to the street entrance. He opened it and the old man walked through, the child on his heels. The street beyond was shadowed, the nearest lamp was apparently broken. When Monty looked again there was no one there.
Monty locked the door this time, not just the latch but the deadbolt as well, and went back to his room. He opened the tin again and took out the scroll. The vellum was soft to his fingers, almost warm. Was it as ancient as the old man had said? Aramaic? Perhaps from the time of Christ?
If that were so, then it could be any of a number of things, real or imagined. How did it come to be in the Greville estate? In their travels could they have found something like the Dead Sea Scrolls?
It was far more likely that they had been sold a fake. How difficult was it to make something of that nature? Or even to find an old scroll which might have been nothing more interesting than instructions to build a house, or lists of a cargo shipped from one port to another? Business writings abounded, just as domestic pottery far outweighed vases for ornament or the worship of gods.
He unrolled it on the table and weighed down both ends, putting it directly under the light. It was not very long, perhaps a thousand words or a little more. That was a lot for a cargo list, and there were no drawings or diagrams on it, so any kind of a plan seemed unlikely.
He peered at it, looking for patterns, repetitions, anything that would give him a clue as to what it was. It was the Hebrew alphabet, which he was vaguely familiar with, but Garrett had said it was Aramaic.
He really had very little idea of what he was doing, and no chance at all of actually reading it, yet he found it almost impossible to look away. Was this some passionate cry of the soul from the tumultuous times of Christ? An account of power and sacrifice, of agony and resurrection?
Or was it simply somebody’s laundry list which had chanced to survive, principally because nobody cared enough to steal it?
Monty’s imagination created pictures in his mind, men in long robes, sandals, dusty roads, whispers in the dark, blood and pain.
The light flickered and the shadows in the corners of the room moved, wavering and then righting themselves again. He half-expected someone to materialize out of the air, the darkness to come together, intensify and take form. Who could it be? Mephistopheles—to tempt an all too fragile Faust? With what? Forbidden knowledge?
“Don’t be so damn silly!” he said aloud. “It’s a power brown out! All you need to do is make sure your computer’s backed up!” He had always had a weird imagination, a sensitivity to the presence of evil. He told the most excellent ghost stories to the great entertainment of his friends. He was known for it, even loved. People liked to be given a frisson of fear, just enough to get the adrenalin going.
His best friend, Hank Savage, a pragmatic scientist, teased him about it, although even he conceded that evil was real, just not supernatural. No angels, no devils, just human beings, some with rather too much excitability and a tendency to blame others for their own faults. Who easier to blame than the devil?
Monty picked up the scroll and rolled it tight, the vellum soft under his fingertips. Perhaps it was not all that old after all. It certainly wasn’t dried up or likely to crack. He put it back in the tin, and then placed the whole thing in the safe, just as a precaution.
It was time he went home and had some supper, and a nice, prosaic cup of tea, or two, strong and with sugar.
The following morning was Saturday and his presence was not necessary at the bookshop. The rest of the Greville estate could wait until Monday. Monty really needed to see Hank Savage and ask his opinion. It would be perfectly sane and logical. There would be no emotional silliness in it, no heightened imagination.
He found Hank pottering in his studio at the back of his lodgings. It was a large attic room with excellent light where Hank enjoyed his hobby of cleaning up and framing old drawings and prints which he bought, often as job lots at auctions. He made a certain amount of money at it, which he gave away. His purpose was the relaxation he gained, and the triumph now and then of finding something really lovely.
He put down the blade with which he was cutting matt for a drawing and regarding Monty with wry affection.
“You look like hell, Monty. What’s happened?” he asked cheerfully. Clearly Monty looked worse than his restless night justified.
“Came across an old scroll,” Monty answered, sitting sideways on the edge of a pair of steps piled with papers. Hank was a scientist and his mind was exquisitely ordered. His rooms were correspondingly chaotic.
“How old?” Hank was irritatingly literal. He was tall, rather too thin, with dark hair and mild blue eyes. Monty had brown eyes, and to put it in his own words, not tall enough for his weight.
“I don’t know. It’s in Aramaic, I think, and I can’t read it.” Monty was highly satisfied with the sharp interest in Hank’s face. “It’s on vellum,” he added for good measure. “I found it in a biscuit tube at the bottom of the last crate of books from the Greville estate.”
“What is it listed as?” Hank asked, abandoning the framing altogether and giving Monty his entire attention.
“It isn’t listed at all. I tried to photocopy it. Nothing came out.”
“Maybe your printer’s broken? I don’t suppose it would be a very good idea to take it anywhere else, if it really is as old as you think. Photograph it, until you get someone in to fix the copier,” Hank replied.
“I tried to photograph it. It didn’t come out.” Monty remembered the strange chill he had felt at the time. “And before you suggest it, there’s nothing wrong with my camera. Or with the copier either, actually. They both work fine on anything else.”
Hank frowned. “So what’s your explanation? Other than gremlins.”
“I don’t have one. But within half an hour or so of my finding the thing, the oddest old man turned up, with his granddaughter aged about eight, and offered to buy it.”
“How much?” Hank asked dubiously. “You didn’t sell it, I trust?”
“No, of course I didn’t!” Monty said tartly. “I hid it before I even let them in. But you didn’t ask the obvious question!”
“Who was he?”
“Didn’t Roger know?” Hank was now both puzzled and very curious.
“Roger wasn’t there. He’s away sick. Has been for several days.”
“Well what did this old man say?”
“His name is Judson Garrett, and he wouldn’t leave any address or contact. He just said not to sell it to anyone else, and that it could be very dangerous.”
Hank’s eyebrows rose. “A threat?”
“Actually it sounded rather more like a warning,” Monty admitted, remembering the old man’s face and the power of darkness and pain in it.
“Did he say why he wanted it?” Hank was still turning it over in his mind.
“No. But he said others would come after it, but he didn’t give any idea who they would be.”
“Did you look at this scroll, Monty?”
“Of course I did!” He took a breath. “Do you want to see it?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind, I really do.” There was no hesitation in Hank’s voice, no fear, none of the apprehension that Monty felt. There were times when Hank’s total sanity irritated him intensely, but now it was comforting, even a kind of safety from the shadows in his own mind.
At the bookshop Monty opened the safe and took out the biscuit drum. The scroll was exactly as he had placed it. It felt the same to the touch as he pulled it out, dry and slightly warm. He unrolled it on the table for Hank to examine.
Hank looked at it for a long time before finally speaking.
“I think it’s Aramaic, alright, and from the few words I can recognize here and there, it seems to be during the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. It could be the time of Christ. I see quite a lot of first person grammar, so it might be someone’s own account of what they did, or saw … a kind of diary. But I don’t know enough to be certain. You need an expert on this, Monty, not only to translate it but to date it and authenticate it. But before you do any of that, you must call Roger and tell him what you have. Have you tried again to get a copy?”