by Lynn Austin
There were congratulations all around, and Mr. Farouk helped carry the food and one of the refectory tables out to the garden. Petersen held Kate’s hand in his large, sweaty one as the sheik and his men came forward to greet them. Miss Rebecca and Mr. Farouk stood nearby to translate. “Please tell the sheikh that I’m sorry things didn’t work out for him, and that I know he must be disappointed,” Petersen said.
“And tell him that we’ll pray to our God for him, and ask that He gives him the son he wishes for,” Miss Flora added.
“That was a nice touch,” Miss Rebecca whispered as Mr. Farouk translated. Kate hoped this would be the last of the sheikh but he began talking loudly and waving his rifle all around. “Uh-oh,” Miss Rebecca said. “It seems he wants us to come and pray for his wife right now.”
“Well, I don’t mind doing that,” Miss Flora said. “Kate, you should come with Becky and me to show the sheikh that you don’t hold any ill will toward him.”
“I don’t like this,” Kate mumbled as she followed the sheikh and his entourage out of the garden to the Bedouin camp. The sheikh halted in front of a tent and gestured for the three women to go inside. They all bent down and crawled forward into the darkness with Miss Flora leading the way.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Miss Flora said after she halted in front of the sheikh’s wife. Kate saw why when her eyes adjusted to the dim light. The woman reclined on a rug in the middle of the tent, propped on a pile of pillows while four other women fanned her to keep her cool. Judging by the enormous bulge in the front of her black robe, the woman was very, very pregnant. “Oh, dear,” Miss Flora repeated. “I thought we would be praying for a son to be born in the distant future when we would all be back home in Chicago—not for a child who might be born any minute!”
“Now what?” Kate whispered.
“See where all this lying gets us?” Miss Flora said, turning to her sister. “This all began with one tiny, white lie and now our situation is getting worse and worse. Let that be a lesson to all of us.”
“You’re right,” Miss Rebecca said, “but I’m not sure we could have done anything differently under the circumstances. We’ve been at the sheikh’s mercy—and God’s mercy—ever since we landed in the Sinai.”
“If we pack up and leave for home right away,” Kate asked, “do you think we can get out of here before she gives birth to another girl?”
“Possibly,” Miss Rebecca said, “but I can’t leave yet. I haven’t finished what I came here to do in the library.”
“Then let’s start praying,” Miss Flora said. “Down on our knees, everyone.”
“How can God answer our prayer?” Miss Rebecca asked as she sank down to pray. “The child could be born any day, and it’s already whatever sex it’s going to be.”
“I believe in a God of miracles,” Miss Flora said. “If He can give Abraham and Sarah a child in their old age, He can certainly give the sheikh a son. Besides, I’m not just going to pray for our own sakes, so we get out of this mess, but because I want the sheikh and his family to see that our God is a personal God, who cares about us and answers our prayers. I want this to bring glory to Him.”
Kate thought both sisters were crazy, but she followed their example as they knelt and closed their eyes and laid their hands on the pregnant woman’s shoulders. Miss Flora begged God to forgive them for lying when they should have trusted Him to protect them. She asked Him to have mercy on them and miraculously answer their prayer for a son for the sheikh—or at least keep his wife from going into labor until they were safely back in Cairo. She went on and on for several minutes, ending with what Kate recognized from church as The Lord’s Prayer. Kate joined in with the sisters, afraid that if she didn’t ask God for help, she would end up dressed all in black and living in this stifling tent with these wild-eyed women and their gun-waving husband for the rest of her life. It was bad enough that she had to live with her pretend-husband for the next few weeks.
They all returned to the monastery garden afterward, and the sheikh and his men seemed to enjoy the wedding feast. But they showed no signs of leaving, even after all the food was gone. Kate was tired of sitting beside Petersen on a camp stool, and was about to get up and do something else when Miss Rebecca came over to speak to them. “I have some upsetting news for you,” she said. “I’ve been listening to the Bedouin conversation and it seems that it’s their tradition to stay until the bride and groom go inside their marriage tent. They want to serenade you with songs while you . . . you know . . .”
Kate longed for for a place to run and hide, but of course there wasn’t one. “You said we didn’t have to . . . you know.”
“You don’t. Just hold Petersen’s hand and go inside the tent. Soren can stick his head out and wave in an hour or so.”
Kate was angry enough to start punching somebody, but it wouldn’t do any good. She let Petersen take her hand and lead her into the tent while the Bedouin shouted and cheered.
The tent still held the heat from the afternoon sun, and sweat beaded on Kate’s face as she found a place to sit as far away from Petersen as possible. “I have a knife,” she told him. “I stole it from the cook. You try anything, and I’ll stick it between your scrawny ribs.”
“Not a chance!” he said, holding up both hands. “I’d sooner live with a nest of sand vipers than with you.” They glared at each other in the growing twilight while the noise outside continued.
“Why’d you agree to do this?” Kate asked him.
“I already told you—for Miss Flora and Miss Rebecca’s sakes. They’ve been good to me. I promised Mr. Edmund I’d take care of them, and if that means sharing a tent with you in order to keep my promise, then I’ll do it.”
“Ha! You want out of this desert as much as I do. You’re doing it to save your own skin.”
“Of course I want to go home. I have promises to keep and people who are counting on me to come back. But if anything happens to the sisters, well, I suppose I’d fight to the death for them because they fought for me.” He paused for a moment, then said, “They’ve been good to you, too.”
Kate looked away so he wouldn’t see the tears glistening in her eyes. They had been good to her, and kinder than anyone in her entire life had been. She was growing fond of them and knew in her heart that she was doing this for their sakes, as well. She still wasn’t exactly sure what Miss Rebecca hoped to find in the library but Kate was determined to help her find it so she could marry the funny professor she loved so much.
Kate got tired of sitting after a while, and when the tent grew so dark she could barely see Petersen, she wrapped up in one of the blankets and lay down on the camp cot. “The noise outside is giving me a headache,” she mumbled. Petersen crawled across the floor to lift the flap and poke his head out. An enormous cheer went up and the sheikh’s rifle boomed. Kate wished she could see if Petersen’s face was turning red. She let out a sigh when he came back inside and the noise died away. “Maybe we can get some sleep now.”
She heard shuffling sounds on the other side of the tent as Petersen lay down and got comfortable. She was still staring up at the canvas ceiling when she heard him whisper, “Good night, Kate.”
The Bedouin camp remained quiet for the next week, and Kate dared to hope that the sheikh had believed their ruse. She spent her days in the library with Miss Rebecca, and as they began working on the very last shelf of manuscripts, Kate could see her growing disappointment. “We’ve found some exciting documents,” she told Kate, “and I know the scholars will be pleased, but still no Bible.”
“Maybe the monks have more stuff stored away, somewhere. Want me to look in these closets?” Kate asked. Miss Rebecca looked doubtful. The two tiny doors Kate pointed to, tucked beneath the eaves, looked more like trap doors to a miniature dungeon than real closets. Everything in the monastery was so ancient and creepy that Kate found herself hoping Miss Rebecca would say no. The monks had taken the sisters on a tour beneath the sanctuary, where the
y saw skulls from the hundreds of monks who had lived here over the years. Kate would faint dead away if she opened one of the little doors and a skeleton fell out.
“Well, maybe we could just peek inside and see what’s there,” Miss Rebecca finally said. Kate got down on her hands and knees, steeling herself as she prepared to open the little door. It was stuck at first, and she pulled so hard on it that when it did open with a loud creak it sent her flying backward onto her bottom. She wiped the dust from her eyes and saw a wooden crate that looked a million years old. She slid it out of the closet and into the light.
“That looks like a treasure chest, doesn’t it?” Miss Rebecca asked. She hurried over and sat down on the floor beside Kate to open it. The wooden lid was on hinges and swung open with another rusty creak. “Oh my,” Miss Rebecca said as she peered inside.
“What are those things?” Kate asked. The box held six moldy-looking, book-sized blocks of pages. Kate could see writing on them.
“They’re codices, I think—ancient books that were handwritten and bound between two covers. Take them out carefully, Katie dear. I’m so excited my hands are shaking.”
Kate rose to her knees and lifted them out one by one, gently laying them on the floor. They were filthy and looked as though they had been in the closet since Jesus was a boy. Miss Rebecca grabbed her spectacles and magnifying glass to peer at the decrepit writing on each one. “I don’t think any of them is a Bible,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Would you mind carefully opening this one so I can look at the first pages?” Kate inserted the thin-bladed knife she had learned to use these past weeks and gingerly turned the page, aware that it might easily crumble into dust. Miss Rebecca studied it for several minutes before straightening up again. “It’s a volume about the life of a woman saint. No wonder the monks stashed it away.”
Kate used the knife to carefully turn the second page. She peered at the strange writing and grimy vellum and said, “I don’t know how you can even read this. It looks like somebody scribbled all over the pages.”
“Let me see.” This time Miss Rebecca studied the page for several minutes, and when she finally looked up at Kate she appeared shaken, as if they’d found a skeleton behind the little door after all. “Katie! This is a palimpsest!”
“A what?”
“I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve been told that in earlier times, the monks reused old vellum pages to create a new book by scraping off the ink and writing on top of it.”
“Well, they didn’t do a very good job of scraping because I can still see the old writing.”
“I know. Isn’t that wonderful? Open another page for me, Katie, then go find Flora and tell her to come right away.” Kate did as she was told, running through the monastery grounds and out to the garden where she found Miss Flora and Petersen taking stock of their dwindling food supplies while the cook and Mr. Farouk tried to capture one of their few remaining chickens. The birds had obviously figured out what their fate soon would be and were on the run.
“Miss Rebecca wants you to come right away,” Kate said, gasping for breath. “I think she might have found something important.” Petersen came, too, as they hurried back to the library.
“Flora, I found a palimpsest,” Miss Rebecca said as the newcomers arrived and took turns sneezing. “Or rather, Kate found it for me. The writing on top tells about the life of a woman saint, but see the faint writing beneath it? The page heading on this one says of Matthew, and this next page, which was reused upside-down, says of Luke. It’s a Bible, Flora! We found pages from an ancient Bible!” The sisters hugged each other as they did a little dance, then Miss Flora hugged Petersen, while Miss Rebecca surprised Kate by hugging her tightly. Kate couldn’t recall the last time she had been embraced this way and the warmth of Miss Rebecca’s arms along with her contagious joy brought tears to Kate’s eyes. “We did it! We did it!” Miss Rebecca said. “I’m so proud of you, Kate, for discovering this!”
“This is wonderful news!” Miss Flora said before letting loose another hearty sneeze.
“Here’s the best part,” Miss Rebecca said. “I already figured out how old this Bible is! While Kate was fetching you, I found the date and signature of the scribe who copied the book on top. See? It says ‘1009 years Alexander,’ meaning Alexander the Great. That makes it somewhere around AD 700 by our modern calendar. And that’s just the date of the book on top!”
Oh my!” Miss Flora breathed. “So the pages from the Bible must be even older?”
“Yes! I figure it has to be at least 200 years older for it to be over-written this way. If I’m right, we’re looking at around 500 AD—making it one of the earliest known Syriac Gospels that has ever been found!”
Miss Flora sat down, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer. “Oh my! Oh my! I wish we had some champagne so we could celebrate.”
“We don’t have time to celebrate,” Miss Rebecca said. “We need to show this to the prior and to Father Galakteon right away. We have a lot of work to do if we hope to photograph the entire codex before our time here at the monastery is up. The world needs to see this!”
The sisters hurried off to see the prior and soon returned with him and Father Galakteon and a dozen other curious monks. Kate could tell they were excited about this gummed-up block of pages even if she couldn’t understand what they were saying. The librarian and several of the others offered to stay and help, and they set to work right away. Kate had the most difficult job of all, carefully separating the pages that the centuries had stuck together. The vellum was as dry and brittle as fall leaves, and it crumbled and flaked into bits if she wasn’t careful. She passed each page to Miss Flora and the monks, who gently scraped away the top layer of ink so the underwriting would become visible. Petersen had set up the tripod and camera, and he took photographs of the pages, then removed the used negatives and carefully stored them away before replacing them with fresh ones. Miss Rebecca sat with a pen and paper and her magnifying glass, working to decipher the words of the text.
Kate keenly felt the importance of her work. She and Miss Rebecca weren’t just recovering this ancient Bible for the professor’s sake, but so the entire world could see it. How had it happened, Kate wondered, that she had gone from living on the streets and in a brothel, to making a discovery of such importance? She bent to loosen another leaf, scarcely daring to breathe.
“I’m so proud of you,” Miss Rebecca had told her. It was the first time in her life that Kate Rafferty had ever heard those words.
Chapter 31
I can’t believe we actually finished on time,” Kate said as she gazed around the library for the last time. She was ready to return home. Petersen had photographed the last page of the codex, and after Miss Rebecca had gathered the loose pages into a book again, Miss Flora had placed it inside a silk pouch she had sewn from one of her scarves. The monastery’s prior now kept the ancient codex in a place of honor in his office. Kate and Miss Rebecca had searched both of the library’s tiny closets but hadn’t found anything as important as the palimpsest.
“Are you ready to get on a camel again tomorrow, Kate, and head back across the desert?” Miss Rebecca asked as they walked through the monastery grounds to their camp in the garden.
“I can’t say I’ll enjoy the camel ride, but it’ll be nice to see maple trees and green grass again—and even snow,” she replied. She saw Miss Flora talking to Petersen in front of the so-called “bridal tent,” and they both turned as Kate and Miss Rebecca approached.
“We have a problem,” Miss Flora said. “Mr. Farouk informed the sheikh that we’re ready to leave tomorrow morning and told him to get his caravan ready, but he refuses to budge. He said we must all wait here until his son is born.” Panic twisted through Kate’s stomach at the news. She felt trapped, just as she’d been when Joe had locked her inside the brothel. This time, there was no window she could climb out of.
“What if the baby is a girl?” Kate asked.
“
The sheikh is under the impression that we promised him a boy,” Miss Flora replied. “Who knows what will happen if it isn’t.”
Miss Rebecca removed her hat and wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve. “Does he know we barely have enough food left to make it back to the gulf? Or that we have steamship tickets to America waiting for us?”
“He doesn’t seem to care. He’s going to hold us hostage until his wife has a son.”
“I’ll go tell the cook not to make any dinner for me,” Miss Rebecca said. “I just lost my appetite.”
Kate didn’t have much of an appetite, either, nervous as she was about the sheikh’s newest demand. Their food was running out. The dates that she’d grown to love were nearly gone, and the cook was down to his very last chicken, whose life had been spared so it could provide them with fresh eggs. Before going to bed that night, Miss Flora asked Kate and Petersen to hold hands with her and Miss Rebecca so they could all pray together. The sisters did all the praying while Kate looked up at the brilliant full moon and numberless stars and wondered who she was more afraid of: Joe and his men or the sheikh and his. They all haunted her nightmares. After they finished praying, she spotted one of the white-robed camel drivers standing by the garden gate as he did every night to make certain that she and Petersen really slept in the same tent. She quickly went inside to undress and climb beneath the covers.
Petersen came inside a few minutes later and pulled off the long, white robe Mr. Farouk had given him when they’d started on this trip. True to his word, he had stayed on his side of the tent these past weeks, and Kate had finally returned the kitchen knife to the cook. She glanced over at him in the moonlight, stretched out on his back with his hands folded behind his head. He was too tall for the cot and his feet hung over the end by several inches.