It happened so easily that Marina only realized she’d been dozing because she awoke.
Someone was in the room.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, but immediately she recognized the stooped figure of the old man.
She watched in the darkness. Ready but waiting.
He approached her where she lay on the sofa, and she had to focus all of her attention and willpower to not react. Her senses, her sharp instincts, weren’t screaming “danger” … and she trusted them. But if he made one unexpected, quick move, she’d shoot off that sofa like a bullet.
But no, he didn’t. He stood and stared down at her for a long time as she fought to keep her breathing steady and slow.
When he reached out toward her, she stiffened and caught her breath, but did not move. He wasn’t threatening.
His smooth, trembling fingers touched her cheek, pressing oh so gently against her skin, then drew away.
“You are awake,” he said at last. In English.
“Who are you?” Marina asked, still unmoving.
“I am your grandfather. My name is Lev.”
“Grandfather?”
“If you come with me, I would like to show you something. Your heritage. Will you come?”
She nodded against the pillow scrunched into the corner of the sofa, and slowly moved to sit up. She felt as though she were in a dream.
Perhaps she was.
Perhaps her food had been drugged.
But nevertheless, she dropped her feet to the floor and stood. She was of a height with Lev, her grandfather.
He grasped her arm; as much to keep her with him, she supposed, as to support himself. The door opened in front of them as if by magic, silent and smooth. She would have slept through it opening and closing if she hadn’t felt his presence in the chamber with her.
Lev’s fingers were strong, thin vises around her upper arm; not uncomfortable, but firm. Marina realized she could twist away from his frail strength and make a run for it; but she checked the urge to do so. She wouldn’t get far; he’d likely alert the guards or whoever it was Roman had helping him; and she wouldn’t have the time to search for Gabe … plus, she was a historian. She wanted to know what he was going to show her.
He moved quickly for his age, and Marina tried to keep track of their route, but she feared that her exhausted mind wouldn’t remember all of the twists and turns. She wondered briefly why he’d chosen to visit her at night.
At last, after walking through a sliding door that required a tab moistened with Lev’s saliva, they approached an entrance that was different from every other one she’d seen. This one had a door made not of white-painted metal, but of an iron-colored steel. Heavy, with riveted beams across it; it looked rather like the portcullis of a medieval castle — but solid.
She watched as Lev opened a small door next to it and pulled a lever.
The heavy door rolled up, into the ceiling that Marina suddenly noticed was higher than the others.
Lev drew her in and the door lowered closed behind them.
She looked around and gaped.
Cabinets; really, they were display tables with heavy glass tops, lined the room. Made from heavy wood, with strong, foot-wide legs, the table-cabinets rose as high as Marina’s waist. Low lights along the seams of ceiling and wall, and wall and floor illuminated the chamber, bathing it in a delicate gold glow. She stepped in and looked down at one of the tables. It was like being in the National Archives.
Ancient scrolls, books, papers, maps ….everything one could imagine that was of the written variety was organized inside these cabinets. Protected and displayed. The writings were faded, but legible, and as Marina peered down into one of the display boxes, she saw the thick, neat font of an ancient language.
“Greek? Latin? Sumerian?” She looked up at Lev, who’d remained near the entrance, watching her. “What is it?”
“It is all of them.” Love shown in his face; love for the secrets and the manuscripts protected in this room.
“Where did they come from?” Marina stared down at the book in front of her, walked a few paces, and found herself gaping at a cracked-edge scroll that lay half-unrolled. “My God ….this is incredible. Why isn’t this in a museum?” But she knew the answer. Because then it wouldn’t be here, at the whim of the Skaladeskas.
This room made the Lam Pao Archive look like a tattered first edition of Sense and Sensibility.
“Come, sit.” Lev gestured to two large chairs. The massive antlers or horns of some animal created the frame, including armrests; and the back and seat of each chair was upholstered with a thick, comfortable looking cloth that reminded Marina of alpaca. “I will tell you the story. You should know your family heritage.”
She wanted to look at all of the manuscripts and scrolls; but she accepted the invitation. The historian in her could not fathom the value, the importance of this collection, so she had to hear the story.
“When Princess Sophia Palaeologa of Byzantium married Ivan the First of Russia, her father dowered her with, among other things, this library of ancient manuscripts. They were ancient at that time, in fact — in the fifteenth century.
“She brought the books and manuscripts with her — there are nearly eight hundred of them; most of which have never been translated or catalogued. In fact, throughout the ages, no one has really been sure what is included in this selection. Sophia brought them to Russia and they were kept in a special chamber beneath the Kremlin. Moscow at that time was prone to fires, and no one wanted them destroyed, so a protective room was built especially for the library.
“Not many in Ivan’s court knew about the library; Sophia herself was not an academic; she saw little value in so many old books. But her father wished her to take them, and so she did. Ivan did not spend much time studying them either, and they languished, forgotten for decades, under the Kremlin.” He took a sip from a cup nestled in a hollow in his chair’s arm.
“Then, in 1560, Ivan the Fourth, who you would know as Ivan the Terrible, became the heir at age three. He lived in the castle but was fairly left to himself. In fact, he was neglected for the most part — left to his own devices and dressed in rags, barely given enough food to eat.
“The courtiers subjected him to extreme and rampant violence; forcing or allowing him to watch them torture, punish, and execute political enemies. If there was a state affair, the men who acted for his mother, the regent, would dress him up in rich clothing and jewels and show him off like a puppet … and then afterward, banish him to roaming the halls, hungry and cold.
“Yes ….the poor boy was left to his own devices; but despite that, he developed a great love of learning and reading. He found the lost library in its special chamber, and, fascinated by the books and appreciative of the solitude the library afforded him, spent as much time there as he could as he grew older.
“Of course, he could not read many — or perhaps any — of the books; as I mentioned, they were written in Greek — ancient Greek, Roman, Sumerian, Atlantean, and numerous others—“
Marina jerked upright, pulled out of the story. “Antlantean? As in, Atlantis?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, that, and even other languages that have yet to be identified.”
She stared at him. Unbelievable. This had to be a dream. Or else the elderly man was demented. “Go on.” She had to find out how the dream ended.
“When Ivan became tsar at age seventeen — Russia’s first tsar, as you likely are aware — he immediately had a huge number of eligible women brought to him from which he intended to select a wife; and he did. He selected a woman named Anastasia Romanovna. Despite the way she was chosen — as one of many paraded in front of the tsar — it was a love match. Ivan almost immediately fell in love with her, and she with him, and they were happy together.