The High Priestess
Semele’s instincts told her she needed to make a copy of the manuscript right away. Usually flagging an item for digitization meant involving a preservation manager, a collections manager, and a photographer. They would all discuss handling issues, customize the cradle to hold the manuscript, and come up with contingencies to avoid any undue stress on the parchment. That was the ideal scenario. But occasionally when working in the field, she needed to digitize a work before transporting it back to New York—like today.
She set up her tripod, which had a pan-tilting head so she could shoot the image flat on the table. Then she mounted her camera, along with a special scanning camera, and positioned her portable high-intensity discharge lamps to provide a continuous light source.
She kept waiting for Theo to barge in and question what the hell she was doing, just like he had to the maid. Her hands became unsteady and she could feel the frown locked on her face. The quality of several leaves looked tenuous. Two thousand years were weighing on this parchment like invisible stones; it was a heavy burden to carry.
When the last page had been digitized, a wave of dizziness hit her and she closed her eyes until it passed.
She had been working with unwavering focus for several hours. Now she was completely drained. But when she opened the file on her laptop to double-check her work, what she saw made her whistle. The quality of her scan was a hundred times better than any image from a commercial digital camera. Every blot of ink and speck of dust had been captured in the minutest detail: it looked like an exact replica.
She dismantled all the equipment and then carefully packed the manuscript in the last remaining crate, her mind still reeling from her eleventh-hour discovery. What if she hadn’t looked in the cabinet?
The thought that she might have left Switzerland without finding this jewel horrified her. She still couldn’t believe there was no mention of the manuscript in the official registry.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck four and she glanced at her watch in surprise. The day had vanished. The courier would be here soon, but there was one more thing she had to do before leaving the chateau. She needed to make sure Marcel was really the one who had written her the message.
She pulled Marcel’s note from her pocket and studied it again. The writing had a distinctive right-slanted scrawl with wide spacing, connected letters, and restricted loops. Her mind automatically began to list the defining traits: he was larger than life, generous but cautious, and signs of tension marked his penmanship. She needed only to see a small sample to be sure.
Hurrying across the gallery, she ducked into Marcel’s personal study. She usually passed through the room to access the kitchen, but today she stopped and closed the door. The chances of one of the staff coming in were slim, but she couldn’t risk anyone seeing what she was about to do.
She rushed to the sixteenth-century mahogany writing desk and opened all the drawers, where she found ledgers, letters, even an old appointment book—more evidence than she needed.
Within seconds she had her answer. All the handwriting was identical to the note. Marcel had written to her. Now the question that remained was why.
But there was nothing more she could do here. She needed to discuss the situation with Mikhail when she got home. He would know how to handle the dilemma.
She was about to leave when her eyes settled on the family photographs hanging above the fireplace. They ranged from daguerreotypes taken in the 1800s to pictures that looked quite recent. She didn’t know who all the people were but she could feel the love, the sense of friendship that emanated from them.
In a grand house such as this, her favorite room would be this one, and she was certain it had been Marcel’s too. She felt as if she had gotten to know him through the weeks she’d spent here.
She studied a picture of a much younger Marcel with his wife. Theo stood wedged between their legs, only five or six years old. An older woman, most likely his grandmother, hovered to the side. Semele looked at the other photos of Theo. There was one with his mother that appeared to be the most recent. She knew that Mrs. Bossard had passed away three years ago from breast cancer. In the picture Theo had his arms around her and was laughing. He didn’t look like his current self at all.
Semele couldn’t stop staring at the picture. Something about it made her wistful.
The desire struck her to go visit a few of the other rooms one last time before she left. Her only opportunity to explore the chateau had been on that first day. There was a small reading library upstairs, where she’d spied several jaw-dropping first editions perched on a bookshelf, including an Orbis Sensualium Pictus, the earliest picture book for children, first published in 1658. She had to know if it was an original.
It would just take a minute. Surely no one would mind—Theo was gone and the housekeeper had already said her good-byes. The only person left was the chef, who was probably in the kitchen drinking wine and watching his favorite Swiss cooking show. But as she ventured up the sweeping staircase, she began to second-guess her nerve—Orbis or no Orbis, she felt like an intruder. Halfway down the hall, she was ready to turn around when she saw that the bedroom door directly across from her was open. What she saw inside made her freeze.
Theo was sitting on a king-size bed in the middle of a room that looked like it had been plucked straight out of a Tudor manor. He was wearing only sweatpants and sitting cross-legged, meditating with his eyes closed and an open hand on each knee.
He looked like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man come to life and reclining in repose. The air around him felt charged.
Semele stood watching him until a glimmer of awareness finally returned to her and she realized how this must look. She was a professional, one of the best in her field, and here she was hovering at her client’s bedroom door like a Peeping Tom.
Tiptoeing backward, she fled through the hall and ran down the stairs, jumping the last two. She dashed back to the gallery and closed the door. “Jesus!” That had been completely ridiculous.
Mortified, she put her hands to her face, still in a panic. If she had been discovered … She tried to calm down but spent two solid minutes pacing the room.
Needing a distraction, she grabbed her laptop and made her way to the kitchen for a visit with the chef and a cappuccino. When he offered her a glass of Petite Arvine from the local vineyard, Semele changed her mind.
The debacle upstairs called for wine.