almost hopping from foot to foot. The last layer of binding strips was unwound and there, on the table before them, lay a pair of wooden plaques tied with a cord of braided hemp that had been died red. The plaques were olive wood, raw and unvarnished, but covered with columns of black writing—not hieroglyphics, nor any language Kit had ever seen before.
He licked his lips. “Do you recognise the script?”
The doctor raised his glasses and bent down to scrutinise the writing, so close his nose almost touched the ancient wood. “I cannot say that I have ever encountered it.” He clucked his tongue. “Alas, I don’t know what it might be.”
The cord was tied with a simple knot, and the doctor reached for it, then hesitated. “I think,” he said, pushing the bound wooden plaques towards Kit once more, “that you should have this honour.”
Kit, his mouth dry, tugged at the woven cord, which parted as the ancient fibres shredded beneath his fingers. He brushed aside the disintegrating fragments and, holding his breath, lifted the top wooden plate. There, covered with a thin square of gossamer-fine linen, pressed like a rare leaf between the preserving sheets of a scrapbook, lay an irregular scrap of parchment almost translucent with age. The fine-grained leather, thin as gossamer and brittle as a scarab shell, was covered with a wild scattering of the most superbly etched symbols in dark blue.
Like a shadow shrivelled by the noonday sun, doubt vanished at the sight, and Kit knew that he had found the Skin Map.
PART FOUR
The Language of Angels
CHAPTER 21
In Which the Scholarly Inquiry Bears Strange Fruit
Douglas Flinders-Petrie stood beneath the dripping eaves marvelling at the pageant. There were maids with pails of milk on yokes across their shoulders, ferrying their wares to the college inns; ironmongers selling skewers and sconces; bakers with trays of fresh bread on their heads hurrying across the square; vendors in ramshackle booths selling candles, ribbon, cloth, cheese, and spices. A butcher working from the back of an open wagon, carving up the carcass as required by his customers; a pie seller with a handcart, shouting for business; a farmer with braces of trussed and squawking chickens strolling through the milling throng; and on and on, like a live action study for a Brueghel painting.
How any of the students could concentrate on their professor, who was holding forth a few dozen paces away, Douglas could not fathom. But the lecturer, tall and gaunt upon his wooden crate, lifted his voice above the general din and declaimed in precise Latin on the subject of the day while the students, dressed in scholars’ robes of green and blue, faces earnest beneath the level brims of their square hats, sat or lounged on bales of straw that had been dragged together to form a loose semicircle around him. Not a few of the townsfolk stood listening as well, sometimes calling out facetious answers to the rhetorical questions posed by the renowned teacher.
It was the professor Douglas had come to see, the sole reason he had so painstakingly polished his Latin and assembled the wardrobe, studied the history, manners, and customs in order to make this trip to the mid-1200s. Therefore, Douglas studied him intently. A trim, solemn-faced fellow of middle years with a strong nose and high-domed head, Roger Bacon—doctor, professor, scientist, and theologian—had established himself as a prime moving force in the fields of academia that were his domain: anatomy, medicine, science, alchemy, philosophy, and theology. He wore his dark hair short and tonsured like any other priest of his stripe, and his simple brown Franciscan robe, though threadbare and frayed at hem and sleeve, was clean, his belt of braided cord neatly tied.
At one point in the lecture, some local youths muscled their way to the fore and began talking loudly and making rude imitations of the professor standing on his wooden box. From this Douglas grasped another fact of his research: the petty jealousy of some of the townsfolk of what was increasingly considered the educational elite in their midst. Some, like the crude yokels Douglas observed, felt themselves hard done by a system that seemed to favour those they considered transient interlopers and effete snobs. Indeed, owing to his propensity for unorthodox notions and the inexplicable behaviour that often accompanied his various experiments, the esteemed man of science was steadily establishing himself as a leading eccentric, if not a cap-and-bell fool, in the court of public opinion.