Indy paid for the taxi when Milford walked off, then hurried after the old professor as he climbed the steps of the library. "Can you give me a hint?"
"You're always better off finding your own answers rather than having them handed to you," the older man said as he climbed the steps.
"That's what Dad always said, too," Indy replied glumly.
Milford stopped at the top of the steps and set his bags down. His gaze met Indy's. "He was always a bit harsh on you," he said gently. "I'll give you your hint. Look up the writings of Hecataeus." He picked up his bags again as Indy opened the door for him. "But keep in mind that nothing he wrote has survived."
Indy frowned, and watched Milford hobble into the foyer. "Then how can I look anything up?"
Milford looked over his shoulder. "Think, my boy, think. We know about Hecataeus's writings because others have quoted him. So he becomes the subject rather than the author."
A lesson in using a library catalog. Indy forced a smile. "Okay, I'll take a look."
"Where are you going to be?" Indy asked as he followed Milford into a huge bowl-shaped room with aisles like spokes leading away from the center.
Milford frowned, placed a finger to his lips, then turned away.
Indy shook his head, and moved off to begin his search in the vast warehouse of knowledge. Maybe Milford was just babbling, and threw out a name. Maybe it wasn't the right name.
What did he know about Hecataeus? He'd memorized the name as part of his studies by associating it with Hecate, a goddess of the earth, the moon, and the underworld, who was associated with sorcery. Hecataeus had written about the ancient Greeks and their relationship with a mysterious people known as the Hyperboreans, a term from Greek mythology relating to a "northerly people." Some scholars thought it was a reference to the people of Atlantis. But that was about all he could remember.
The general catalog was located at the base of the bowl-shaped room. The catalog listed everything in the library, and took up dozens of volumes, each five hundred pages long. But finally he found the name in the subject category, and was directed to a book called, ironically, Historical Library, by Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian who lived much of his life in Rome and was a contemporary of Caesar and Augustus. Historical Library took Diodorus thirty years to write and consisted of forty volumes. Fortunately, since Indy had looked up Hecataeus, he was referred to the appropriate volume number and pages.
He moved to a reference desk nearby, and was directed to another room. There, a second librarian found the ancient book for him. The man frowned at Indy, and warned him that the book was ancient and valuable and that he was to handle it with extreme care.
As he read the writings of Hecataeus, paraphrased from his now nonexistent book, Circuit of the Earth, Indy realized that his description of the Hyperborean island was more specific than he'd imagined. It was a country larger than Sicily, lying opposite Gaul. It sounded like Britain, but feasibly it could be any of the Scandinavian islands. Then he read that on the island was a vast temple in a circular form, and he changed his mind. The temple sounded too much like Stonehenge. He decided that "Hyperboreans" must be an ancient name for the inhabitants of the British Isles.
Hecataeus also told of the goodwill between the Hyperboreans and Greeks, and explained that certain Greeks visited the Hyperborean island and left votives bearing Greek inscriptions. And there was more. The Hyperborean island was supposedly the birthplace of Leto, the daughter of giants, and she became the mother of Apollo. For that reason, the Hyperboreans worshipped Apollo, and their circular temple was consecrated to him. He was said to visit the temple every nineteen years, in a grand festival in which he danced among his worshippers and played a harp. His appearance also coincided with a nineteen-year cycle in which the stars returned to their point of origin in the heavens.
Apollo was the connection, Indy thought. As he closed the book, he recalled Joanna Campbell's words: "I'm sure you know. It's part of your background." The myth of Apollo, particularly its association with Delphi, was indeed that. He just hadn't connected the Hyperborean island with the British Isles. But it made sense. Apollo was known as an interloper on the Greek Olympus, and was said to spend part of each year "beyond the north wind." Now that he'd puzzled through her question, he wondered if Dr. Campbell was just testing his knowledge, or if she had some particular reason in mind.
He rubbed his face. He should go home, and take a nap. He was about to get up from the table when he spotted a pair of eyes watching him through a bookcase. He tried to act as if he didn't know he was being watched. He leafed through the book again, stretched his arms. The eyes were still there.
Maybe it was a librarian, watching to see that he didn't damage the book. But something was familiar about the close-set eyes. They were like those of the man he thought had been following him.
Suddenly, like a sprinter at the sound of the gun, he bolted out of his chair and rushed to the end of the bookcase. As he rounded it, he saw a tall man hurrying down an aisle, and moving between another row of bookcases. Narrow Eyes was definitely trying to evade him, and Indy followed his winding trail through the maze of shelves.
He moved stealthily along, peering between bookcases until he came upon another aisle. He looked in either direction, and turned right. Then he saw him just as the man slipped out a door and into the hallway. Indy loped across the room, and spotted him again as he ducked into the huge, bowl-shaped reading room.
From the doorway of the room, Indy could see the entire room, but Narrow Eyes was nowhere in sight. Indy was puzzling over where the man might have gone, when he heard a noise, someone trying to suppress a cough. He jerked his head to the right, and there he was, pressed against the wall just ten feet from the door.
As soon as Indy spotted him, Narrow Eyes rushed at him, driving him down one of the aisles. They fell to the floor, tumbling over and over. Halfway down the aisle, Narrow Eyes decided he'd had enough. He wriggled out of Indy's grasp, scrambled to his feet, and dashed back up the aisle. Now everyone in the room was following the silent chase.
Narrow Eyes had almost reached the door when Indy grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him to the floor. They tumbled over several times until they struck a desk. The man behind it bolted up from his chair, "Why this wretchedness of outlawry? Have I been wandering with madness and a madman?"
Indy let go of Narrow Eyes's shirt at the sound of the familiar voice. "Dr. Milford, I—I can't talk now." Narrow Eyes crawled under Milford's desk and into another aisle.
"Excuse me," Indy said, and vaulted the desk, but the man was nowhere in sight. Then he saw him crawling under desks toward a third aisle, Indy dropped to his knees and crawled after him. Someone kicked him in the side; people shouted, calling for help.
God, what had he started? He'd only meant to catch the man back in the bookshelves of the other room and demand to know why he was watching him. Indy cut off Narrow Eyes's escape route so the man raced down toward the central axis, dodging desks and librarians. Indy gave chase, and finally saw his chance. He dove belly-first across a desk and caught Narrow Eyes by the belt. "That's my desk you're lying on, sonny," an old woman said. She swatted him twice on the head with a rolled-up newspaper, and Narrow Eyes broke free.
Indy was up in an instant, and hurrying after Narrow Eyes. But the man was already more than halfway up the bowl, headed toward the door. Indy was about to give up the chase when a leg shot out, and Narrow Eyes sprawled on his face.
"Down ye on your filthy face, friendless foe," Milford shouted.
Indy piled on the prone figure, pinning him to the floor. Then grabbing him by the collar, he jerked back his fist. "Okay, who the hell are you? Why are you following me?"
The man snarled at him; his narrow-spaced, dark eyes were two black coals. They shifted, focusing on something beyond Indy. Just then Indy was struck on the head with a book. Narrow Eyes pushed him off, and raced away.
Indy turned to see the old woman whose desk he'd slid
across. "You don't understand, ma'am."
"You're damn right I don't, sonny," she said, and she gouged his eye with the eraser end of a pencil.
Indy yelled in pain and covered his face. Then he heard Narrow Eyes's voice for the first time. "Jones, listen to me."
Indy raised his head and with his good eye saw the man standing in the doorway. "I warn you. Stay away from Deirdre Campbell."
"That's right. You stay away from her," the old lady said, and she raised the book again.
Milford was suddenly at his side. "Stop hitting him. I'll handle this. He's with me."
Swell, Indy thought. Just swell. Beat up by an old lady. Saved by Dr. Milford. And all because of Deirdre, and a jealous boyfriend.
5
Tower of London
In class, a day later: "If we want to understand what kind of precision the ancients aimed at, our errors in examining their work must be so small as to be insignificant by the side of their errors," Indy said, reading from his notes. "If they went to the nearest hundredth of an inch, we must go to the nearest thousandth, in order to know what their ideas of accuracy were."
Indy stopped to take a sip of water. His left eye was swollen shut from the jab he'd taken in his tussle at the library, and he wore a black patch over it. He'd told the class that he'd had an accident and that a doctor had recommended he wear the patch for a few days.
His good eye roamed over the faces. Some peered earnestly ahead, awaiting his next word; others scribbled furiously in their notebooks. In the front row, Deirdre sat back in her chair, threading and unthreading her fingers. She wore a long dress today that reached to her ankles, which were pulled under the seat. It was as if the dress were a metaphor for the lies she was covering up. Her notebook was closed, and her lips were pursed in a pout. Before class, she'd asked what had happened and in a gruff voice he'd asked her to sit down. Maybe he'd treated her rudely, but he was only returning the favor. She must have said something to her boyfriend, or whoever Narrow Eyes was, to make him jealous. She was using him; probably using both of them for her own manipulative purposes. He wanted no part of her schemes.
"Don't credit me with that statement, by the way," Indy continued. "Those were the words of Sir Flinders Petrie, the renowned Egyptologist, who also studied some of the nine hundred stone circles in the British Isles, including Stonehenge. In his research conducted in 1877, he took extraordinarily accurate measurements of the monument and drew an exact plan, which was published on a one-to-two-hundred scale. Some of you who are writing your papers on Stonehenge may already be familiar with Petrie's book, Stonehenge: Plans, Description, and Theories."
Indy explained that Petrie remained one of the most respected investigators of Stonehenge because he had avoided wild speculation. That, he explained, was the trap of Stonehenge, and he was now going to address some of the outlandish theories put forth over the past few hundred years.
"Take a look at the work of the eighteenth-century investigator, John Smith. He was the first to notice that if you stood at the center of Stonehenge at dawn on the summer solstice, the sun rose directly above the heel stone located outside the inner ring of stones. Fine enough. But he also thought that Stonehenge had been built by druids.
"That belief, in fact, is probably the most widespread delusion about Stonehenge. Druids were Celts, and the Celtic culture did not rise until nearly two thousand years after the earliest phase of Stonehenge was built around 1900 B.C. Even the later phase, which includes the Sarsen Circle and the five freestanding archways or trilithons inside the circle, was finished about 1550 B.C. Still far too early for the druids."
Deirdre raised her hand for the first time. Indy glanced briefly at her, then looked down at his notes. "However, for a couple of centuries, antiquarians—as archaeologists used to be called—believed that—"
"Professor Jones?"
"Miss Campbell, I'll take questions at the end," he snapped. "If I stop every time you or someone else raises a hand, I won't get through my material today."
"Sorry." She sank down in her seat. Indy noticed some of the other students snickering as if they thought it was about time he told her to stop interrupting him.
"As I was saying, for centuries antiquarians believed that Stonehenge was built by the druids. But that's not really surprising. The fact is, the best-kept secret about archaeology is that we are almost always wrong. Look back a century, and virtually everything we thought was true is now baloney. The history of archaeology is one of misinformation compounded with romantic, far-fetched hypotheses, and nowhere is that more true than in the exploration of Stonehenge, this country's most famous monument of antiquity."
He hoped he sounded authoritative. He was actually repeating a statement of one of his French professors, an Egyptologist who had worked with Flinders Petrie. "What we know about Stonehenge is that it ranks with the Great Pyramid of Egypt as the single most spectacular undertaking that has survived from antiquity. It has been a subject of learned debate since the sixteenth century, and has been interpreted as a burial chamber, a memorial, and a temple associated with human sacrifice. Some said it was built by druids, others said the Romans, still others said the Vikings."
A student raised his hand. "Can I ask a question or should I wait?"
"You just did. Go ahead." Indy sighed.
"What about all these druids who gather at Stonehenge every now and then like they own the bloody place?"
Indy laughed. "They're misguided mystics. They claim the site as their own, and they're wrong."
As the class came to an end, Indy picked up his pocket watch, which he kept on the podium, and dropped it into his pocket. "Remember those papers are due on Monday."
He gathered his books and notes together as he prepared to leave. He'd promised to meet Milford at the Tower of London in an hour. In the aftermath of the incident in the library, he had accompanied the old professor to the club where he was staying, and the resident physician had examined his sore eye. Milford had been both appalled and amazed that Indy had gotten into a fight with a stranger, and in a library of all places. In spite of Indy's efforts to ease his friend's concern, Milford was convinced that Indy was suffering from emotional problems, and he was sure it must have something to do with the breach between father and son. Finally, the old professor had suggested they meet at the tower to continue their talk.
"Professor Jones?"
He looked up; Deirdre was standing in front of him. Her violet eyes sought an explanation. "How can I help you?" he said sharply. "I'm in a hurry."
"Why are you angry with me? I didn't ask a lot of questions today, and you were mad before class even started."
"It has nothing to do with your questions. It's your behavior outside of class."
She shook her head. "What're you talking about?" she stammered.
"Ask your boyfriend."
She was taken back. Her sawiness was gone. She looked innocent, frail. "I don't know what you're talking about, Professor Jones."
"What I mean is this: Some guy has been following me around, and yesterday after we got into a little spat he told me to stay away from you. Now why would he say that? I don't have any idea, do you?"
"I'm sorry. I really am. But I don't have a boyfriend." She abruptly turned, and hurried out of the room.
"Yeah, sure." Indy glanced at his pocket watch. "Late again."
Indy walked out of the Tower Hill underground station five minutes after he was to meet Milford. The Tower of London dated back to the eleventh century when William the Conqueror built it after the Battle of Hastings, and as Indy approached it, he felt as if he were walking back into time. Towers spiraled skyward; banners fluttered in the wind. An ancient moat now kept tourists, rather than enemies, from scaling the walls, and a drawbridge offered passage to the interior.
Milford was nowhere in sight, so Indy eavesdropped on a guide who was addressing a group of tourists. The White Tower, the man explained, was built not only to protect the city from attack,
but to keep a watch on the shipping traffic on the Thames and to hold its citizens in awe of William the Conqueror's power. The construction began in 1078 and was finished in 1100 by Rannulf Flambard, the Bishop of Durham, who ironically was the first prisoner incarcerated behind its walls.
Many more followed, and the list of prominent prisoners was an impressive one, the guide continued, ticking off the names of royalty: King David II of Scotland, King John the Good of France, King James I of Scotland, Charles, Duke of Orleans, and Princess Elizabeth, who later became Queen Elizabeth I. Among those executed or murdered in the tower were: Henry VI, Edward V and his brother the Duke of York, Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII's queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, Thomas Cromwell, and the Duke of Monmouth. As the notoriety of the tower grew, so did its size. Over the centuries additional towers were added until they numbered thirteen. They were later ringed by a wall with six more towers.
"I always come here when I'm in London," Milford said as he came up behind Indy. "It's a place of concrete history, where royalty met their demise, where dark deeds were plotted. Concrete history."
"Afternoon, Dr. Milford." Even though the temperature was moderate and the day relatively sunny, Milford was wearing his black overcoat.
"How is your eye today?" the professor asked, stroking his mustache as he assessed Indy. "You look like you're playing pirate."
"That was your doctor's idea. It'll be better in no time."
"That's the spirit," Milford said as they crossed the moat and passed one of the towers. "You seem to be rebounding well from this mental condition."
Indy knew there was no point in arguing about his mental stability. "Things just got out of hand at the library. But I'm fine."
"Hm, I hope so."
"What exactly did you mean by concrete history?" Indy asked, changing the topic as they reached the far side of the moat and approached the tour group, which was huddled around the guide below one of the towers.
Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants Page 4
