Jason leaned over and began wrapping one of the pieces of clay pottery in bubble wrap. Kate stood next to him and picked up the last one off the shelf, turning it gently in her hands, lost in past memories. “He once told me, guess I was maybe ten or so at the time, probably just holding things for him while he worked.” Her voice had a far off quality. “He put his hands over mine as I was holding one of these and said, ‘Never look at this without seeing the hands that made it.’” She turned and handed the pot to Jason, her eyes shiny. “Must be the room,” Jason said, glancing around the nearly empty library. “I was just hearing the echo of his words myself.” He wrapped the pot carefully in bubble wrap and gently set it into the box. “Well, I guess we’re about done for tonight. Got most of the boxes finished. I left the stuff in his desk for you. Thought there might be some personal things in there that you and your grandmother might want to sort out.” “That was very thoughtful.” She moved over to the desk. “Maybe I’ll start going through it now.” He sealed the last box and stacked it with the others. He could hear her going through the papers. He wanted to pick up where they had left their heated discussion the previous night, but decided against it. “Think I’ll turn in,” he said. Kate looked up. Seeing the look in his eyes, she knew there was something she should say, could say, but nothing came to her. “Goodnight, Jason. And thank you again for all the help.” He crossed over to the desk and gave her a cool kiss on the cheek, then left the room. She recognized his detached manner, used to remind her of a pouty child, quiet on the surface with anger simmering just beneath. She never quite learned how to diffuse it without the rage erupting. She always felt responsible for it, but scared at the same time. She forced herself to return to the papers before her. Most of them were of no significance, letters from colleagues, correspondence with museums, all randomly stuffed into folders in no particular order. She sorted through each drawer carefully categorizing the professional papers the university might find valuable, tossing the rest into a box next to the desk to be thrown away. When she got to the large bottom drawer she found a carton containing a leather-bound manuscript. Pulling the strange-looking book out of the box, she placed it on top of the desk, her fingers tracing an emblem in light relief on the cover. The dim light made it difficult to see, so she reached over and drew the desk lamp closer. The emblem appeared to be a crescent shape, like a crescent moon, with a sword through it, and then a drop of something dripping from the tip of the moon. She ran her hand over the faded cover. Clearly this was a very old document, with signs of decay around the edges of the hard cover. Carefully she opened it. A nutty, almost musty smell reached her nose. The pages were like delicate tissue paper and seemed ready to crumble under her touch. Gently she turned the first page. Handsome lettering covered the paper, not quite script, yet more fluid than printing. She struggled to read it. Some of the words she understood but most were words she had never seen before. Must be some version of English but pretty old, she concluded. She recalled a similar frustration trying to analyze epic poems like Beowulf in English Lit class back in college. Slowly she struggled to gather the meaning of the opening lines: “My name is Amlos…something, something…to young King…some name and place. I write this to…” That was all she was able to get out of the first page. On it went, page after crumbly page. After a while, Kate sat back and rubbed her bleary eyes. The reading was slow and tiring, trying to make sense of the strange words, figuring the next word based on the context and other words she recognized. She got up and went to the kitchen to refill her wine glass. Returning to the desk she picked up the handwritten pages that accompanied the manuscript. These pages, written in the familiar script of her grandfather, contained what she concluded were a series of notes, some were questions, others observations, probably written as he had studied these same strange words. She read the first note: “Apparently this man served in some capacity to a young king. I’m aware of research suggesting the rise of a young king after both his father and older brother were killed in fierce battle around 450 AD. At that time the many small fiefdoms of what we know today as England were constantly warring with each other. According to what I’ve read this young king….Afulied was his name, a Saxon, was the first to successfully pull these warring neighbors together into something of a united kingdom.” Another note began: “Seems this period must have been toward the end of the Druid influence…” The word “Druid” caught her eye. Was he saying this guy Amlos might have been a Druid? “…which began in Gaul around 1000 BC and was mostly destroyed on the continent by the Romans before the Celtic priests and their practices fled to the British Isles as the last stronghold. The subsequent growth of the Christian church apparently finished it off around.…” On and on she read, lost in the words. Finally everything grew bleary and she succumbed to her tiredness. She squinted to see the old clock ticking on the mantle. Three hours had passed since she had first opened the drawer. Gently she closed the manuscript, tucked the handwritten pages underneath, turned out the lights and climbed the stairs in search of her pillow.
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