"Okay," she said. "I'll go in now."
She crawled back toward the gaping hole at the arch. She looked up at Marek, unhooked the flashlight. "I don't know if you can do this, Andre. The dirt may not support your weight."
"Very funny. You don't do this alone, Kate."
"Well, at least let me get in there first."
She flicked on her light, turned on her radio, pulled down her headset so she was breathing through filters, and crawled through the hole, into the blackness beyond.
The air was surprisingly cool. The yellow beam of her flashlight played on bare stone walls, a stone floor. Chang was right: this was open space beneath the monastery. And it seemed to continue for some distance, before dirt and collapsed rubble blocked the far passage. Somehow this chamber had not been filled with dirt like the others. She shone her light up at the roof, trying to see its condition. She couldn't really tell. Not great.
She crept forward on hands and knees, then began to descend, sliding a little, down the dirt toward the ground. Moments later, she was standing inside the catacombs.
"I'm here."
It was dark around her, and the air felt wet. There was a dank odor that was unpleasant, even through the filters. The filters took out bacteria and viruses. At most excavation sites, no one bothered with masks, but they were required here, because plague had come several times in the fourteenth century, killing a third of the population. Although one form of the epidemic was originally transmitted by infected rats, another form was transmitted through the air, through coughs and sneezes, and so anybody who went into an old, sealed space had to worry about -
She heard a clattering behind her. She saw Marek coming through the hole above. He began to slide, so he jumped to the ground. In the silence afterward, they heard the soft sounds of pebbles and earth, trickling down the mound.
"You realize," she said, "we could be buried alive in here."
"Always look on the bright side," Marek said. He moved forward, holding a big fluorescent light with reflectors. It illuminated a whole section of the room. Now that they could see clearly, the room appeared disappointingly bare. To the left was the stone sarcophagus of a knight; he was carved in relief on the lid, which had been removed. When they looked inside the sarcophagus, it was empty. Then there was a rough wooden table leaning against a wall. It was bare. An open corridor going down to their left, ending in a stone staircase, which led upward until it disappeared in a mound of dirt. More mounds of earth in this chamber, over to the right, blocking another passageway, another arch.
Marek sighed. "All this excitement . . . for nothing."
But Kate was still worried about the earth breaking free and coming into the room. It made her look closely at the earth mounds to the right.
And that was why she saw it.
"Andre," she said. "Come here."
It was an earth-colored protrusion, brown against the brown of the mound, but the surface had a faint sheen. She brushed it with her hand. It was oilcloth. She exposed a sharp corner. Oilcloth, wrapping something.
Marek looked over her shoulder. "Very good, very good."
"Did they have oilcloth then?"
"Oh yes. Oilcloth is a Viking invention, perhaps ninth century. Quite common in Europe by our period. Although I don't think we have found anything else in the monastery that's wrapped in oilcloth."
He helped her dig. They proceeded cautiously, not wanting the mound to come down on them, but soon they had it exposed. It was a rectangle roughly two feet square, wrapped with oil-soaked string.
"I am guessing it's documents," Marek said. His fingers were twitching in the fluorescent light, he wanted to open it so badly, but he restrained himself. "We'll take it back with us."
He slipped it under his arm and headed back toward the entrance. She gave one last look at the earth mound, wondering if she had missed something. But she hadn't. She swung her light away and -
Chapter 4
She stopped.
Out of the corner of her eye, she'd caught a glimpse of something shiny. She turned, looked again. For a moment, she couldn't find it, but then she did.
It was a small piece of glass, protruding from the earth.
"Andre?" she said. "I think there's more."
The glass was thin, and perfectly clear. The edge was curved and smooth, almost modern in its quality. She brushed the dirt away with her fingertips and exposed one lens of an eyeglass.
It was a bifocal lens.
"What is it?" Andre said, coming back to her.
"You tell me."
He squinted at it, shone his light very near. His face was so close to the glass, his nose almost touched it. "Where did you find this?" He sounded concerned.
"Right here."
"Lying in the open, just like now?" His voice was tense, almost accusing.
"No, only the edge was exposed. I cleaned it off."
"How?"
"With my finger."
"So: you are telling me it was partly buried?" He sounded like he didn't believe her.
"Hey, what is this?"
"Just answer, please."
"No, Andre. It was mostly buried. Everything but that left edge was buried."
"I wish you had not touched it."
"I do, too, if I'd known you were going to act like - "
"This must be explained," he said. "Turn around."
"What?"
"Turn around." He took her by the shoulder, turned her roughly, so she was facing away from him.
"Jesus." She glanced over her shoulder to see what he was doing. He held his light very close to her backpack and moved over the surface slowly, examining it minutely, then down to her shorts. "Uh, are you going to tell me - "