Novel: The Sword, The Book, And The Bone (Chapter 21)

      On Thursday I had a normal day of classes, fencing and study. I even went to bed early. Friday was a different story altogether. I awoke early and hit Bruegger’s for my usual. As I sipped my coffee, I opened up the Daily Tar Heel and almost choked.

      CHAPEL HILL - A rare book librarian at the Louis Round Wilson Library called campus police late yesterday afternoon to report that an ancient palimpsest and rare sword were missing. The items were recently featured in a Raleigh News & Observer article in which it was revealed they are possibly linked to the historical figure behind the legendary King Arthur, with supposed links also to Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar. Bequeathed quietly to the university by the late Middle Eastern affairs scholar Walter Bristow Shepard, Jr. after his March death, the items were not identified until English Professor Mylor Medraut discovered their possible origins and significance this past summer.

  Yesterday afternoon at 4:15pm the campus police were called by Dr. Phyllis Redden to the rare book room of Wilson library, where she said the two items had been removed from a locked closet in her office while she was away from her desk. There are no security cameras at the Wilson library, and the closet was kept locked with a simple deadbolt. According to a source familiar with the items, one of the two stolen objects was an ancient sword engraved with the word Leibertas, an archaic spelling of Libertas, Latin for Liberty. The News & Observer estimated it would fetch millions in the antiquities market if sold.

  The manuscript is a palimpsest, which uniquely has two versions of the same story one on top of the other. The original book was composed in the fifth century in Latin, which was translated and erased, and written over with the same story in Armenian in the tenth century. That book, according to sources familiar with the case, tells a story never before told about a sword and its travels through the centuries. The book is also valued in the millions of dollars.  

      I went nuts.

      I left my food and coffee and headed for the library. In eight minutes I was there and I went up the stairs and in. There were police in the rare book room office. But I tried to speak to Phyllis anyway and she signaled I could come in. I was hysterical.

      “What happened? They’re gone? They were in a locked closet?”

      She was embarrassed. She said, “I’m sorry Tripp, I know these were important to your grandfather. I am so sorry. But since so few people knew about them, I just thought they’d be perfectly safe behind the metal door of a deadbolted closet in my deadbolted office in a secure university building with limited hours of access, you know? Nobody knew they were there. Nobody knew they existed, practically?”

      That was true until the News & Observer piece came out. But I didn’t say anything to her.

      As I left, a policeman asked me my business there. He asked if he could ask some questions, and I said ‘Sure.’ When he was done, I got the distinct impression he didn’t trust me. He stared at me the whole time with a weird smile. When he said I was free to go, I casually looked back and saw him exchange glances with another detective as they looked at me and smiled.

    “Oh crap,” I thought. I didn’t know what to do. I freaked out and skipped class and went home. And it’s a good thing I did. Because when I got there, my front door was open, and Chick’s car was gone.

Continued Reading—The Sword, The Book, And The Bone—Chapter 22  (Tuesday 1/3/2012)