He kept sliding his feet, slowly putting distance between him and the snake. Linley warned him to keep still, but he could not listen. There was nothing worse than a snake, especially one as big around as his forearm. Patrick went to lift his foot over a thick vine, but the heel of his boot slipped against it, and he fell.
Grabbing blindly at the wall, Patrick came down hard on his side, and then slid off the edge. He clung to the inner ledge of the courtyard wall by the tips of his fingers. The toes of his boots scratched against the weatherworn stones as he tried to pull himself back up.
“Patrick?” Linley called. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine…I think.”
“Where are you?”
He dared not look, so he clenched his eyes shut. “On the other side. But I’m in a bit of a jam,” he told her. “There is a very big snake up here, and I’m afraid he is very, very close to my hand.”
“For God’s sake, don’t move!”
Patrick nodded, his face brushing against the wall. He was in no position to argue.
The snake slipped through the vines, meandering its way along the top of the wall. Clearly, it was master of this temple and had little reason to hurry. Patrick counted the seconds, waiting for the snake’s fangs to sink into the flesh of his fingers. He could feel its tongue darting in and out of its mouth, tasting the air, sensing the heat Patrick no doubt emitted.
He held his breath.
Waiting.
Expecting.
Patrick felt the smooth scales as the snake brushed against his fingertips. It must have been right on top of him.
He went still. As still as a man could be in his position.
The snake moved along his fingers, playing against his knuckles. It slid, as soft as satin, across Patrick’s skin, and, despite his best efforts, he felt his hands trembling. The waiting was agony. He almost wished the snake would get it over with. Bite him. Send him to his death and relieve his misery. Just end the interminable waiting.
But the end never came. The snake, unconcerned with the throbbing fingers and tense, white knuckles beneath him, slithered on. Patrick felt his arms give away. He dropped into the courtyard, the broad, leafy ferns breaking his fall. He lay sprawled on his back, exhausted.
On the wall above, two hands emerged from the vines, then two elbows, and finally two slender arms. Linley’s head poked over the ledge, a machete gripped between her teeth. Seeing Patrick spread out on the wet ground, she pulled the knife from her mouth.
“I came to rescue you,” she said, grinning down at him.
Patrick threw up his arms, huffed out a shaky breath, and dropped his head back against the ferns.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Golly,” Linley said, surveying the temple courtyard from within. “Just look at this place. What do you think happened to it, Papa? Was it abandoned?” she asked. “Or simply forgotten?”
Sir Bedford bent down to pull the vines of a young strangler fig away from a headless statue. “My guess is whoever originally lived here either fled or were forced out sometime during the thirteen century.”
Across the courtyard, Patrick sat on the crumbling steps of the central structure. While the others were busy exploring the temple and studying the ruins, he needed a few moments to catch his breath. He had experienced quite a scare—and quite a fall. Although he felt certain his body would recover, he wasn’t so sure his pride would. At least not any time soon.
Thankfully, he’d been forgotten as the team rushed about the temple. Even Linley failed to notice that he slunk away from the group.
Patrick had to admit that the temple held some strange, calming properties. As if the world beyond the courtyard was a dangerous, hostile place, but within these walls no harm would come to him.
To any of them.
But that wasn’t the case. If what Bedford said was true, even the peaceful Buddhists were not safe.
“Why were they forced from this place?” he asked.
Sir Bedford turned to him. “Persecution. Illness. Who knows?”
“Who would persecute Buddhists? Don’t they stand for peace and enlightenment?”
The old man walked slowly across the courtyard, making little notes in his notebook as he passed by something of interest, stooping here and there to quickly sketch what he saw. “Think of all the peoples of this earth who do not stand for peace—Christians, Muslims, the Mongols. It would not be hard for them to conquer where they faced little resistance.”
“If the Buddhists were driven from this place,” Reginald called from within a partially collapsed collonade that ran along a distant wall, “where did they go?”
“Some went along the Silk road,” Sir Bedford said. “Others fled to the north.”
“It’s safe to say your scrolls aren’t here,” Reginald said. “Do you think they took them Northward when they left?”
“That is my sincere hope.”
It seemed to Patrick they were on a hopeless quest. Thousand-year-old scrolls could not have survived this long whether they were housed in the jungle or the mountains. They rarely even survived in a library, where they were handled with the utmost care.
“They could have been lost,” Patrick argued. “Or they could have been destroyed.”