What are you standing around for?
He moved to the desk.
The box was a work of art.Relief carvings ornamented every inch of its surface, shimmering with inlaid details in mother-of-pearl.
Neil opened it.Inside lay a stack of almond-hued pages covered in age-browned script.
Bark paper, he automatically cataloged.It wouldn’t be an uncommon material for sixteenth-century works from this region.
He peeked up at the door to the library, wondering whether he ought to snatch the bark pages out of the box and make a run for the stairs.
The constable from outside stepped into view beyond the threshold.He leaned against the rail of the stairwell in a manner that indicated he intended to stay there, rifle slung casually over his shoulder.
Neil chanced another look at Constance.She mouthed a word at him with barely concealed irritation.
Stall.
Pulse pounding, Neil sat down in the chair and lifted the manuscript from the box.
The bark panels were held together with a ribbon, its color paled with time.Neil loosened it with a delicate tug and began to flip through the pages, moving with painstaking care.
The bulk of the manuscript was written in Devanagari, the most common writing system on the Indian subcontinent.The script was used for a range of Indian languages, which meant the text could be anything from Sanskrit to Bhojpuri.
Nerves taut, Neil chanced a look at Borthwick.
The colonel was still gazing out the window.
Fingers shaking at the risk, he flipped to the final page.
He could immediately see that the script was not Devanagari.The lines of the characters were straight rather than rounded, each glyph set off distinctly.It reminded him a bit of how Middle Egyptian differed from Demotic.
Brahmi, he thought with a shivering sense of interest.
He turned back another page and saw more Devanagari.Only the final bark panel had been inscribed in the once-forgotten script of ancient India.
Neil couldn’t possibly hope to make sense of it.He knew that Brahmi had been deciphered decades before, but it wasn’t a subject he’d ever directly studied.
If he was going to buy them more time for whatever Constance might be planning, he needed to look busy—but how could he do that when he was actually hopelessly lost?
The obvious answer popped into his mind—Neil had, after all, been a student for most of his life.
“Is it all right if I take a few notes?”he asked.
“Be my guest,” Borthwick replied.
Neil took a pen from his pocket with shaking fingers and pulled a sheet of blank paper from the pile on the desk.
“What do you make of India so far?”Borthwick asked.
Neil stiffened in the chair, but the colonel was still staring out the window at the still, humid night.
“It… seems very lovely,” Neil replied lamely.
Constance rolled her eyes at his pathetic response.
“I assume you’re speaking about the geography,” Borthwick replied evenly.
Neil latched on to the excuse.“That’s all I’ve really had a chance to see so far.”
