Until the Dawn (29 page)

“Mother-of-pearl,” he murmured as he admired the shell. “I’ve always found it odd how something so ugly on the outside can hide such great beauty. What happened to the oyster?”

Heat flushed her cheeks. “It was delicious.”

“You carnivore,” he said in mock indignation. “We find an abnormally long-lived oyster and you can’t stop yourself from swallowing it whole?”

She shrugged. “There are dozens just like it in the same spot we found that one.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to eat oysters during the summer months. Aren’t they more likely to make you sick?”

“They go bad faster if they sit around in a marketplace in the summer heat, but if you eat them straight out of the water, they are fine. Oyster-catchers tell people not to eat them during the summer because it’s when the oysters spawn, but we’ve never had a problem with the oyster population in this stretch of the river. If anything, we’ve got too many, rather than a scarcity.”

“In that case, I want some oysters for dinner.”

Sophie listened in fascination as Quentin told her about the first time he’d sampled an oyster. He was twelve years old and Nickolaas had taken him to a Greek island where all the fishermen pulled up their boats and hauled in huge nets bulging with oysters. Rumor had it they would feast on oysters and Kalamata olives under the stars, and Quentin wanted to join them. He desperately wanted to be accepted by the hearty, vigorous men who seemed to take such delight in cracking open the oyster shells. The sight of the pale, glistening blob inside the oyster shell was mildly terrifying, but it was a matter of pride. His grandfather had already swallowed half a dozen oysters, and Quentin had felt like his manhood rested on his ability to conquer his fear.

“I closed my eyes, tipped it into my mouth, and left childhood behind me forever,” he said. Sophie laughed at his enraptured expression, and he continued to wax poetic over his first experience with oysters. “It was the cool saltiness of it. It was like tasting the sea and the entire bounty of life it contained.”

“I wish I had known you were so passionate about oysters,” she said. “I’ll make a nice pot of oyster stew for you.”

The sound of thudding footsteps came from the ledge nearby, and Pieter came bounding into view. Quentin stood.

“Careful, lad!” he warned. There were no guardrails to
protect over-excited children, but nothing could dampen the excitement on Pieter’s face.

“Come quickly,” he panted. “The archaeologists have found something!”

A box had been unearthed from the trash pit inside the old smokehouse. It was encrusted with centuries of hard-packed mud, but Professor Winston held it as carefully as he would a newborn baby as he carried it to the work table outside the cabin and then began whisking away the mud with a soft-bristled brush. Everyone in the household gathered around to watch. The biologists left the river, the bodyguards clustered around, and Pieter wriggled through them to get a prime view across the table. And standing beside Professor Winston was Nickolaas Vandermark, watching every movement through guarded eyes.

Sophie glanced at Quentin, who seemed captivated as they all waited to see what the ornate box contained. It was about the size of a loaf of bread and made of dark wood, but silvery flashes indicated it was inlaid with some special material. Still holding the oyster shell in her palm, Sophie suspected it was mother-of-pearl, maybe even taken from the same oyster beds the biologists were studying.

Despite gentle prying, the lid refused to open. Professor Winston grabbed a magnifying glass, kneeling on the ground to be eye level with the box as he scrutinized the lid. Then he set the magnifying glass down and ran his finger across the side of the box.

“It’s nailed shut,” he said.

A murmur of confusion rippled through the crowd. Putting nails into a box of such beauty seemed a crime. They were crude, rough nails, deeply embedded in the wood.

“Open it,” Nickolaas ordered.

The archaeologists looked concerned, shifting their weight and glancing at one another. “We try to preserve the historical integrity of artifacts. Opening the box might destroy it.”

“It’s my box, found on my land,” Nickolaas said bluntly. “Open it.”

The nails were deeply embedded, and a fine pick was used to scrape the decaying wood from around each nail, creating a hollow where a pair of thin pliers could work in and pull the nails. When the last nail was removed, Professor Winston carefully lifted the lid.

“It’s a page of text,” the professor said. “I don’t want to touch it with muddy hands.”

He stepped aside, and an archaeologist with clean hands gently lifted the page from the box. “Just a single page,” he said. He turned it forward and backward, confusion on his face. “I’m not familiar with this language. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Other men lined up to examine the page, each of them baffled by the strange document. The collective knowledge of twelve college professors, speaking over a dozen ancient and modern languages from around the world, was flummoxed by the nonsensical words.

When Nickolaas stepped forward to scrutinize the page, his face went pale. For a moment, Sophie thought he was about to be sick, but he stepped back to allow Pieter to take his place and get a good look. She forgot Nickolaas’s strange reaction when Pieter’s eyes widened in delight.

“What does it mean?” Pieter asked, his voice brimming with wonder.

“I have no idea, but it certainly looks very old,” Professor Winston said. “The printing press dates to 1440, so it can’t be any older than that.”

Sophie couldn’t resist nudging her way through the men to get a peek at the page. It was on thick paper yellowed with age.
She ran her eyes along the first line of heavy black type, understanding why the scholars were so confused by the senseless text.

Neit mittumwossis nag ne in wunnegen mahtug meechinnáte, & wunnegen nah en moneaumunneate . . .

She couldn’t even begin to pronounce the words that looked like pure gibberish. A few of the sentences were underlined in a firm mark. As she scanned the dense page of bizarre text, her gaze snagged on the one word she recognized.

Genesis.

She caught her breath at the word then stood aside so others could get a look. Excitement rippled through the men as they gathered to examine the page, pointing to the only word that was familiar to them all.
Genesis.

“Could it be a page from the Bible?” one of them asked.

The format of the text seemed to mimic the chapters and verses of the Bible, and the word
Genesis
at the top made it hard to doubt that it could be anything but a Bible.

“I am fluent in Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Coptic,” one of the archaeologists said. “That text has no affinity or derivation from any of them.”

Sophie instinctively reached for Pieter’s hand, squeezing it. At times like this, she wanted someone to share her excitement.

“Burn it,” Nickolaas ordered.

Stunned silence settled over the group, but Nickolaas paced the ground beside the table, dragging an agitated hand through his hair. It seemed sacrilegious to burn anything that even
might
be a page from the Bible, but Nickolaas was resolute.

“Burn it,” he repeated. “It’s nothing but gibberish, and I won’t have anything to do with it.”

Sophie looked to Quentin, the only one here likely to countermand Nickolaas Vandermark.

“We are not savages who burn books,” Quentin said calmly.

“It’s not a book. It’s a single page found on my land,” Nickolaas said. “This is my land, my house, my estate, and every scrap of it belongs to me. I say burn it.”

Quentin limped forward, and the others parted as he drew closer to his grandfather. “You and I have a deal,” he said quietly. “We aren’t burning or destroying anything until we understand what is happening and why. The page will remain with Professor Winston for safekeeping.”

Relief trickled through Sophie as the scientists closed rank around Professor Winston. Even the biologists drifted over to stand in front of the professor, who clutched the wooden box with its strange piece of paper inside. Byron, the youngest and most audacious of the scientists, stood with his arms folded across his chest, daring Nickolaas to challenge them. Only the bodyguards remained to one side.

Nickolaas’s eyes turned flinty. “Ratface, go get that box,” he ordered.

Ratface shifted his weight, uncertainty on his thuggish face. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, sir.”

Beads of perspiration appeared on the old man’s face. His breath came rapidly, and his gaze darted among the other bodyguards. “Don’t just stand there,” he stammered. “Someone go get that box. This is an order.”

Sophie was relieved that none of the guards moved, and it seemed Nickolaas began to wilt in a strange combination of despair and agitation. He was wrong . . . deeply and profoundly wrong in his desire to destroy something he couldn’t understand, but her heart went out to him. He was a proud man being humiliated before all these people who refused to obey his commands.

She stepped forward. “The sun is very hot this afternoon,” she said gently. “I’ve got raspberry tea cooling in the kitchen. Let me help you inside.”

Nickolaas hesitated. If she pressured him too much, it would be condescending and destroy his dignity, so she turned to glance at Pieter. “Pieter, you’d better come, as well. You look overheated, too. None of us is used to this much sun.”

Pieter looked confused, but Quentin understood. “Run along, Pieter. It’s a hot day, and I could use some tea, as well.”

All of the archaeologists and scientists remained standing in a protective circle around Professor Winston, but as soon as Pieter scampered toward the house, Nickolaas turned and began to follow with slow, dragging steps.

Immediately after Sophie coaxed him inside, Nickolaas retreated to his bedroom, not even joining them for dinner and refusing a tray. Sophie could think of no reason for his virulent suspicion of the strange bit of text, but she intended to find out, and Quentin was her best way of unlocking the puzzle.

Quentin’s leg seemed to ache less when he was outside. Sitting on the front steps of the mansion, watching shadows lengthen across the meadow, it was so serene that it seemed to make the relentless pain ease a tiny bit. It wasn’t much, but it was a gift worth having.

He closed his eyes, listening to the rustle of the leaves in the soft evening breeze and the rumble of the men’s voices inside the house. Each evening after dinner, the professors gathered in the parlor to discuss the day’s findings, then moved on to discuss politics, theater, books, or whatever struck their fancy. Sometimes Quentin joined them, but he could take only so much before the lure of the outdoors beckoned him. The scent from the nearby copse perfumed the air, still warm from the haze of summer.

He had traveled all over the world, but this might be the prettiest spot he’d ever seen. Maybe there was something buried
deep in his nature that harkened back to the generations of Vandermarks who had once lived on this precise spot. Perhaps he was tapping into the collective memory that had been handed down through the centuries of his ancestors. It was the only logical explanation for why he felt this profound sense of tranquility here.

Or . . . perhaps there was something to Sophie’s belief in a divine being. On evenings like this, so soft and still, it was almost possible to believe the majesty of the world was not mere chance but had been created by a higher power. He scanned the sky, looking for the tiniest hint of God.

Are you out there? Or are we
really alone? Why don’t you send us a sign?

It would be nice to believe there was something more to the world than what he could see and touch. That they were more than a collection of carbon and hydrogen particles that would grow old, die, and then decay into nothingness.

The door opened behind him, and he immediately knew it was Sophie by the gentle way she closed the door and the swish of her skirts as she joined him on the steps.

“The men are saying you’ve given Professor Winston permission to take the page to Harvard for translation,” she said.