The Book of the Seven Delights (26 page)

Before she could respond, he was down the steps and closing the distance between them. "Wait—you can't—"

"Oh, but I can." He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her against him. "Because you're going to let me."

A wave of heat from his kiss, liquid and rising, engulfed her objections and made it impossible to put an end to this demonstration of pure unadulterated lust.
Hers
. If she raised her hands to push him away, they would probably just curl around the smooth, hard skin of his sides instead. So she stood not resisting and not responding, hoping to conceal the turmoil his kiss was stirring in her.

When he raised his head, his eyes were dark and he was breathing heavily.

"Are you sure it's me you're fighting?"

She fell back a step when he released her and stood feeling utterly dismantled… fault by fault, fear by fear.

She watched him stomp back up the steps, blow out the lamp, and throw himself onto the bed. He was challenging her to prove she wasn't afraid. Of herself.

"
What are you waiting for Abigail
?" Her mother's voice rose in her head. "
Take a lover. Make a
child. Do something wild and wonderful! What are you afraid of? "

In the dim light coming from the other room she stomped up the steps to the other side of the bed and flopped down on it with a spiteful flourish. As her heart rate slowly returned to normal, she could feel him waiting… listening… so she gave him back the bit of insight he'd just handed her.

"You know what I really hate about you?" She hoped the answer would be as annoying to him as he was to her. "You're just like my mother."

The first scriptorium, Idera said the next morning as she unlocked the heavy cedar door and led them inside, was also the largest of the three main library chambers. The torches around the walls were quickly lighted and revealed several long tables in the center of the chamber and rows of shelves stacked with scrolls of parchment and papyrus along the walls. On the table were pots of ink and quills of various kinds… under a significant layer of dust. Cobwebs drooped from the ceiling and shelves, and the oil lamps and candle stands on the tables were covered with soot and dust.

Abigail glanced at Smith, who frowned at her, then forced her thoughts from their argument last night to the discoveries at hand. Clearly no one had been in this chamber for a very long time.

"You don't tend the manuscripts?" Abigail couldn't hide her concern.

Idera sighed and looked to Hathor and Calla, who sagged visibly.

"For centuries we recopied scrolls that were damaged or deteriorated," Hathor declared. "Some were copied several times… always faithfully, always with great love and care. Women, our forebears discovered, were better at the fine copy work, and so the men applied themselves to keeping the community safe and healthy. They oversaw our protection and the trading and the growing of crops." She smiled at their disbelief. "In those days, we were not yet taken over by the desert. We were able to cultivate crops in the two large oases connected to our settlement."

"How did you manage that?" Smith asked.

"Passages like the one you fell into form a maze in the rock beneath the sands," Calla continued. "At the oases, some of our community farmed and traded from a permanent settlement, blending in with the nomads. But then the desert sands began to advance, and we were forced to abandon our fields and buy more of the food and supplies we needed."

"Now our eyes dim and our hands are no longer steady enough for the copy work. Our days here are numbered," Idera concluded. "We are proud to have executed our duty. But we are relieved to place it now in your hands."

Abigail looked around at the scrolls and realized the magnitude of the task being handed to her. It would take a lifetime of work to examine, evaluate, authenticate, and conserve these priceless relics. She gently removed a scroll from one of the shelves and carried it to a table. Calla and Idera wiped away the dust with their robes and pulled out a stool for her to use.

Unrolling the parchment, she found the ink still dark enough to read and the script quite legible. But, the skin was brittle and cracked as she opened it.

"What is it?" Smith said, reading over her shoulder. "Greek?"

"Hebrew." She looked up with tears in her eyes. "The writings of a great rabbi and thinker of ancient times, Gamaleal… once the teacher of Saint Paul."

She went on to find copies of Plato's dialogues, Callimachus's writings on the Great Library, Pliny's natural philosophy, the
History
of Herodotus, the Babylonian Tiglath-pileser's codex of laws. Each discovery seemed more wonderful than the last. It would be difficult to choose just a few to carry back with her to the museum.

An hour later, her eyes burned from the dust and her back ached from the weight of the hidden breastplate combined with sitting bent over manuscripts. When Idera suggested she see the next scriptorium before continuing, she reluctantly pulled herself away and accompanied the chief priestess to another great cedar door guarded by a stout iron lock.

Inside, the air was moist and fetid, and when the torches had been lit they saw why. Moisture had seeped through the walls and collected on the chiseled stone to migrate into some of the scrolls. Most susceptible was the ancient papyrus, rolled in mats of reed and kept in wooden boxes that had absorbed moisture. Idera called for the other priestesses and they began to carry many of the works to a common hall, just off the plaza, where they could be assessed and repaired. Smith and Haffe, who had followed with surprising interest, were also pressed into service and soon the chamber was cleared of everything salvageable.

As they carried the last load from the scriptorium, Smith spotted another massive door and asked if there were more scrolls in that chamber. His eyes lighted when Idera said casually, "No, no, Engle-lander. Not scrolls. Gold."

Suddenly there was a low rumbling sound from afar, and the earth itself vibrated for a moment. They dove toward the walls as dirt sifted down through the cracks in the passage roof. But the ceiling held and the trembling stopped.

"What was that?" Smith demanded, straightening and brushing sand and dust from his newly cleaned shirt.

"Probably another tunnel collapsing." Idera shrugged, looking grieved. She looked to Abigail and brushed some dust from her cheek. "We have lost a number of tunnels in the last few years… including the one you fell through."

"About this gold…" Smith said, eyeing the door.

"Oh. Yes." Idera merely leaned a bony shoulder against the heavy, iron-bound door and it creaked open.

They hurried into the chamber, holding a lantern aloft, and found… nothing. The stone floor and benches were empty except for a couple of bent and discarded cups whose veneer of gilt had mostly worn away.

"This is it?" Smith picked up the cups and studied them.

"There are a few other pieces in the temple, but the rest is gone," Idera said, turning to Abigail. "As I said, you came just in time."

But not in time, they soon learned, to save the holdings in the third scriptorium. When they opened the door, there was water a foot deep over the entire chamber. Chunks of stone and masonry had fallen from the weeping rock that formed the chamber, allowing water to trickle in rivulets down the walls.

Some of the shelves had floated and toppled and they could feel rotting manuscripts underfoot as they waded through the water to check other scrolls.

Mold and rot were everywhere. The entire collection was a loss. They led Idera and old Hathor from the chamber in tears.

When they sat the old women down in the common hall and got them wine to steady their nerves, Hathor told them: "Idera and I… we have known for some time the walls were weakening. Our dome, our passages, our temple… the desert is reclaiming what we once took from it. We have held the news from the other sisters, hoping we could continue on a while longer."

"We must act quickly to get the manuscripts out of the city," Idera said, gripping Abigail's hands.

Abigail nodded and looked up at Smith, who scowled.

The camp was deserted, that much was clear. Gaston sat On his horse, watching his men tear through Smith's supplies and ransack the woman's belongings… dragging out a silk petticoat and holding it up to themselves, doing a dirty little parody of "feminine" and laughing. His mouth curled into a half smirk. Four days of searching had finally paid off.

"Spread out!" he roared as he swung down from his horse. "They can't have gone far. Their animals are still here!"

As his men reluctantly abandoned their spree to begin searching the nearby dunes, he walked through the camp, ripping back part of the tent and kicking several of the leather bound books his men had dislodged from a carpetbag. "Books," he snarled. That was what he hated most about Apollo Smith.

"Always flaunting his highborn kin and fancy education. Acting like he knows everything. Getting all the breaks." One of his men located a bottle of Irish whiskey and he confiscated it, taking a deep pull of the liquor as he waited for reports. Damned fine whiskey. He almost spit it out. "Nothing but the best, eh, English? Enjoy your whore and your treasure while you can. When I get my hands on you, you'll wish you'd never been born."

"Here!" One of his men came racing back over a nearby) dune, waving his arms, beckoning wildly. "We found something!"

Gaston dropped the bottle, ripped his gun from its holster, and went running to see what they'd found.

His disappointment turned venomous when he stood looking down at a large, conical depression in the sand.

"This?" He lashed out with his gun barrel to strike the soldier on the side of the head. "You called me out here for
this
?"

"It's a hole, Sergeant," the tall, gaunt Schuller declared, stepping in front of his comrade. "And there is a faint trail… movement… running this way."

"A hole, eh?" Gaston considered the unusual nature of such a thing in the desert. "Get a rope," he ordered the lanky Legionnaire. "Climb down there and see what it is."

A short time later, Schuller disappeared down the rope in a shower of sand, but moments later reappeared, his dusty head popping through the sand at the bottom of the depression.

"A tunnel!" he called out. "There's a tunnel down here, partly caved in."

With a grim new sense of urgency, Abigail, Smith, Haffe, and Idera hurried back to the main plaza where the volume of manuscripts had outgrown the nearby chamber and the old priestesses were now unrolling manuscripts on the steps of the plaza itself. Abigail and Idera brought up the need for transport, and Haffe volunteered to take a ladder back up the passage they had fallen through… to climb out and retrieve their equipment and horses.

Sensing their time was shortening, Abigail began to survey and select the manuscripts from known thinkers. Her throat tightened as she went from scroll to scroll, knowing that in choosing some to take with her, she might be rejecting others that were more important… ones that might not be here when she returned with a full expedition.

Smith watched her with the books: the way she chewed her lower lip, the anguish in her gaze each time she laid a manuscript back and moved on, the way she paused periodically to square her shoulders—as if adjusting the burden the old priestesses had thrust upon them.

Making such choices grieved her. As he watched her fingers lingering on the rejected scrolls, wanting them, regretting leaving them, he recognized in her actions the poignancy of first love. She had fallen in love with books early on, and had devoted her life to them. In that brief moment he glimpsed the workings of her heart and began to plumb unexplored depths of his own.

His chest felt tight and his stomach seemed to be sinking lower. It struck him that not only did he understand the longing and desperation she was feeling, he was feeling it, too. Her feelings had somehow migrated into his chest and his stomach and his… What was happening to him? He was soaking her up feelings like a damned sponge!

It was those kisses. And the touches. And talking. Arguing. Battling. Every encounter had infected him a little more. She was under his skin in a big way and giving him a helluva fever. In his head. In his heart.

Good God.

Dizzy suddenly, he staggered backward and plopped down on the plaza steps. He was in love with Abigail Merchant. The knowledge spread through him like a good whiskey's fire, starting in his core and spreading outward, warming and claiming as it went. He was in love with a woman who made him randy, furious, and crazy… all at the same time!

He shoved to his feet, determined to walk it off or at the very least to put some distance between himself and this appalling revelation. Then she looked up with a scroll in her hands and caught him in her sights.

He froze like a rabbit before a hunter, feeling his gaze drawn into hers.

Dove-gray eyes, shimmering with fulfillment and sadness. Suddenly he was feeling the same thing. That peculiar pleasure tinged with pain. And he couldn't walk away. He couldn't just leave her there; he might never be able to leave her. He strode over to her and pulled the scroll she was holding from her hands.

"Come on, Boston, you need a break." He dragged her to her feet and led her along the loggia to the common hall, where he made her sit down and thrust a cup of wine into her hands.

"It's all so much," she said looking up at him with turbulence in her eyes. "I never imagined I'd have to make such decisions—not by myself."

"There's no one better equipped to do this than you." He sank onto the dining bench beside her and realized that his hands were trembling.

"But if I choose wrongly—if I don't realize the significance of a scroll—"

"Look, the world has gotten along without these books for nearly two thousand years. If you miss a few… we'll survive." He reached for her hand and the feel of her skin against his sent a ripple of intense pleasure up his arm.

She glanced down at his hand covering hers and raised a soft smile.

A sharp
crack
of a sound lashed through the open door. Something about it sent a frisson of alarm through him. He straightened, listening, and soon there was another, then another. He looked at Abigail and explained his fear and his bolt for the door with one word: "Gunfire!"