“Nicholas, there you are,” said Debbie Duke, appearing in the doorway. “We have to leave now, or the shipping office will close.”
He glanced up at her. “What?”
“You promised you’d help me bring that crate over to the shipping office in Revere. It’s going to London and I need to deal with the customs forms. I’d do it myself but it weighs over fifty pounds.”
“Detective Frost hasn’t come for Josephine yet. I hate to leave.”
“Simon and Mrs. Willebrandt are here and all the doors are locked.”
He looked at Josephine. “You said he’s coming to get you at six? That’s not for another hour.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Josephine.
“Come on, Nick,” said Debbie. “This thunderstorm’s going to slow down traffic. We need to leave now.”
He stood and followed Debbie out of the office. As their descending footsteps echoed in the stairwell, Josephine sat at her desk, still startled by what had just happened.
Did Nicholas Robinson just try to ask me out on a date?
Thunder rocked the building and the lights briefly dimmed, as if the heavens had just answered her question. Yes, he did.
She gave an amazed shake of her head and looked down at the stack of old accession ledgers. They contained the handwritten lists of antiquities that the museum had acquired through the decades, and she had been slowly making her way down that list, locating each item and assessing its condition. Once again, she tried to focus on the task, but her mind drifted back to Nicholas.
Do you like movies?
She smiled. Yes. And I like you, too. I always have.
She opened a book from decades before and recognized Dr. William Scott-Kerr’s microscopic handwriting. These ledgers were a lasting record of each curator’s tenure, and she’d noted the changing handwriting as old curators left and new ones arrived. Some, like Dr. Scott-Kerr, had been with the museum for decades, and she imagined them growing old along with the collection, walking the creaky floors past specimens that over time would have seemed as familiar as old friends. Here was the record of Scott-Kerr’s reign, recorded in his sometimes cryptic notations.
– Megaladon tooth, details of collection unk. Donated by Mr. Gerald DeWitt.
– Clay jar handles, stamped with winged sun disks. Iron Age. Collected at Nebi Samwil by Dr. C. Andrews.
– Silver coin, probably 3rd CBC, stamped with Parthenope and man-headed bull on reverse. Naples. Purchased from private collection Dr. M. Elgar.
The silver coin was currently on display in the first-floor gallery, but she had no idea where the clay jar handles were located. She made a note to herself to hunt them down, and turned the page, to find the next three items listed as a group.
– Various bones, some human, some equine.
– Metallic fragments, possibly remnants of pack animal harness.
– Fragment of dagger blade, possibly Persian. 3rd C.BC, Collected by S. Crispin near Siwa Oasis, Egypt.
She looked at the date and froze at her desk. Though thunder crackled outside, she was more aware of the thudding of her own heart. Siwa Oasis. Simon was in the western desert, she thought. The same year my mother was there.
She reached for her crutches and started up the hall to Simon’s office.
His door was open, but he had turned off the lights. Peering into the gloom, she saw him sitting near the window. The weather had taken a violent turn, and he was gazing out at the lightning. Fierce gusts rattled the window and sheets of rain splattered the glass as though tossed by angry gods.
“Simon?” she said.
He turned. “Ah, Josephine. Come and watch. Mother Nature is providing us with quite a spectacle today.”
“May I ask you something? It’s about an entry in this ledger.”
“Let me see it.”
She thumped across the room on her crutches and handed the book to him. Squinting in the gray light, he murmured: “Various bones. Fragment of a dagger.” He looked up. “What was your question?”
“Your name is listed as the collector. Do you remember bringing home these items?”
“Yes, but I haven’t taken a look at them in years.”
“Simon, these were collected from the western desert. The blade’s described as possibly Persian, third centuryBC.”
“Ah, of course. You want to examine it for yourself.” He grabbed his cane and pushed himself to his feet. “Well then, let’s take a look and see if you agree with my assessment.”
“You know where these items are stored?”
“I know where they should be. Unless someone’s moved them elsewhere since I last saw them.”
She followed him up the hall, toward the ancient elevator. She had never trusted the contraption and usually avoided taking it, but now that she was on crutches she had no choice but to step in. As Simon closed the black grille cage, she felt as if the jaws of a trap had suddenly snapped shut. The elevator gave an alarming shudder and slowly creaked down to the basement level, where she was relieved to step out safely.
He unlocked the storage area. “If I recall correctly,” he said, “these items were quite compact, so they’d be stored on the back shelves.” He led her into the maze of crates. The Boston police had completed their survey, and the floor was still littered with wood shavings and stray Styrofoam peanuts. She followed Simon down a narrow passage into the older section of the storage area, past crates stamped with the names of enticingly exotic locales.JAVA. MANCHURIA. INDIA. At last they arrived at a towering set of shelves, on which dozens of boxes were stored.
“Oh, good,” said Simon, pointing to a modest-sized box with the matching date and accession number. “It’s right within reach.” He pulled it off the shelf and set it on a nearby crate. “It feels a bit like Christmas, doesn’t it? Peeking at something that no one’s looked at in a quarter century. Ah, look what we have!”
He reached inside and pulled out a container of bones.
Most were merely fragments, but she recognized a few dense nuggets that had endured intact while other parts of the skeleton had cracked and worn away over the centuries. She picked up one of the nuggets and felt a whisper of a chill on her neck.
“Wrist bones,” she murmured. Human.
“My guess is, these are all from a single individual. Yes, this does bring back the memories. The heat and the dust. The thrill of being right in the thick of it, when you think that at any instant, your trowel might collide with history. Before these old joints gave out. Before I somehow became old, something I never expected to be. I used to think I was immortal.” He gave a sad laugh, a sound of bewilderment that the decades could have fled by so quickly, leaving him trapped in a broken-down body. He looked down at the container of bones and said, “This unfortunate man no doubt thought that he, too, was immortal. Until he watched his comrades go insane with thirst. Until his army crumbled around him. I’m sure he never imagined that this would be their end. This is what the passage of centuries does to even the most glorious of empires. Wears them down to mere sand.”
Josephine gently set the wrist bone back in the container. It was nothing more than a deposit of calcium and phosphate. Bones served their purpose, and their owners died and abandoned them, much as one abandoned a walking stick. These fragments were all that remained of a Persian soldier doomed to perish in a foreign desert.
“He’s part of the lost army,” she said.
“I’m almost certain of it. One of the doomed soldiers of Cambyses.”
She looked at him. “You were there with Kimball Rose.”
“Oh, it was his excavation, and he paid a pretty penny for it. You should have seen the team he assembled! Dozens of archaeologists. Hundreds of diggers. We were there to find one of the holy grails of archaeology, as elusive as the lost Ark of the Covenant or the tomb of Alexander. Fifty thousand Persian soldiers simply vanished in the desert, and I wanted to be there when they were uncovered.”