are your usual crazies—all rah-rah and wearing garish school colors?”
“Oh, wait till you see their school colors,” Nick said knowingly. The totally tasteless Reunions getups that the returning alums donned for the traditional parade and class functions were legendary. Then he eyed his producer. “So tell me. You think this august Ivy League institution is really going to allow my unique commentary on the wild and wacky world of small town, Ivy League customs?”
Clyde, the sound guy, snickered.
“Hey, just because you grew up in London and went to Cambridge, doesn’t mean you can look down on Grantham,” Nick shot back. “I’ve seen the apartment you share with three other guys in Queens. No one in your shoes can even think about looking down their nose.” Speaking of shoes, he was becoming increasingly aware of just how cold he was. He also figured that once he got back to their excuse of a hotel his maimed body would be incapable of removing his own frozen shoes.
“Clyde’s just being Clyde, and as to the permissions? Don’t worry,” Georgie interjected. “I’ll have them in hand before you can say ‘bourbon on the rocks.’” He seemed so gleeful that he began to skip down the frozen road.
In Nick’s critical view, the producer seemed more like some demented munchkin stumbling along some nightmare version of the Yellow Brick Road. Georgie was not exactly svelte, and he barely topped five feet three.
“I love it. I love it,” Georgie said to no one in particular as he continued to lead the little group down the road. Then he stopped and turned to face them. “Just think. You’ll be able to answer the question that burns in the hearts of all college students.” He put his hand to his chest, and if Nick didn’t know better, looked truly earnest.
“What? ‘Will I get laid tonight?’” Nick responded sardonically. Then he shuffled around to stare at Larry since he couldn’t turn his neck. “Don’t you have a bottle of schnapps back at the hotel?”
Georgie cupped his chin in his Gore-Tex-gloved hand. “I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘Is it true that these are the happiest days of my life?’”
Thinking about that question suddenly made Nick feel very depressed, even worse than his usual morose state. “No, the black humor isn’t covering up a mirthful soul,” he once told a cub reporter for some newspaper in Peoria or Saskatchewan—or was it Lubbock? Whatever. “It’s merely the surface of a very angry guy,” he’d concluded before the reporter had quickly shut his notebook and hightailed it out of the hotel room.
“There’s less than a third left in the bottle,” Larry, the cameraman, whined, the tip of his nose having already gone from red to a worrisome ice-white.
“If you’re looking for sympathy, you’re looking at the wrong guy,” Nick retorted. “In fact, if you’re not careful, there’ll be no Christmas bonus in your stocking this year.”
“Hey, I’ve got a bottle of duty-free tequila and a hot-water bottle,” the soundman Clyde bragged in his very plummy accent.
“You British—always ready to sacrifice yourselves for queen and country, or your boss, in this case. But, hey, I’ll take whatever I can get.”
Georgie exhaled through his mouth as he waited for the others to follow. His breath formed clouds in the frigid air and partially obscured his bearded face. “Just think. It’ll be like old home week.”
“Or something like that,” Nick replied sullenly. He looked down absentmindedly, thinking of someone he could maybe call from his Grantham University days. Was it worth contacting an old college friend after more than fifteen years? he wondered. Then the ground came into focus. And for the first time after what seemed like hours of misery, Nick felt a smile cross his face.
Georgie, he noticed, was standing square in the steaming pile left by the horse.
CHAPTER TWO
May
Grantham, New Jersey
PENELOPE BIGELOW©HELD©the rare second-century manuscript of Galen’s medicinal writings between her white-cotton-gloved hands before placing it in the glass case for display. The Vatican Library had a Latin translation from the Arabic version of the ancient medicinal treatise dating from the eleventh century, but this manuscript in the original ancient Greek had been lost to the West after the fall of Rome, finally resurfacing centuries later. Only someone with a thorough knowledge of ancient and medieval history including Byzantine history, a background in multiple ancient languages, and the trained eye of a paleographer would appreciate the difference between the two versions.
Penelope had all that and more—a Ph.D in Classics and she had studied at the Vatican on a fellowship in Rome ten years ago. While there, she’d also gone through the Apostolic Library’s rigorous two-year course in paleography, the study of ancient handwriting.
Holding the so-called Grantham Galen manuscript in her hands, Penelope could practically feel the power of the ancient scholar and philosopher through the gloves. Galen had been a prolific author, and in his day he was known to have hired more than twenty scribes to take down his potent words. But as she stared at the confident blocklike script, she was almost positive that this manuscript was in Galen’s own handwriting. It was too swiftly written, as if it had been produced in a mad dash of insight.
She read the Greek as swiftly as if it were her mother tongue, though in her case, more her father’s tongue. Stanfield Bigelow was a professor of Classics at Grantham University, and he had made it a personal crusade to homeschool his precocious older child. And it had been he, in fact, who had recovered this lost manuscript and donated it to his alma mater.
The combination of forces—the knowledge that she was holding what might be the original manuscript by the work of an ancient genius and the role that her own father had played in preserving this crucial bit of antiquity—was almost overwhelming. Excited, Penelope felt her mouth start to water.
Don’t be foolish, she chided herself.
“As anyone with even a moderate IQ knows, the overproduction of saliva is attributed to specific physiological or medical conditions. And since I am not a teething infant, nor do I have a fever…” Just to make sure, she felt her forehead with the back of her wrist. “As I thought, normal. Therefore, I can eliminate mononucleosis or tonsillitis as other possible causalities,” she explained to no one in particular.
This type of self-directed conversation was something she tended to do. Her brother, Justin, called it “Penelope’s pontificating mode.” Her father said it was yet another indication of her superior intellect and geniuslike ability to retain facts. Her mother never commented. She was too busy chasing butterflies or spying delicate wildflowers.
Penelope had her own diagnosis, which she kept to herself. Still, it didn’t keep her from lecturing herself.
She lifted her chin and considered her current state further. “The only other causes of sudden drooling that I am aware of are certain medications, poisoning or a reaction to venom transmitted in a snakebite.” She paused. “I wonder if a particularly virulent insect bite could also have a similar effect?”
A young man in a white lab coat on the other side of the exhibition space stopped pushing a cart. “Penelope, did you need me for something?” he asked.
She shook her head and turned to Press. “No,
