The Boudicca Parchments

Chapter 12

The first thing that he noticed was sound. His auditory sense was responding. There were people around, talking. There was movement… human activity.

He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling. It was just a plain, bland ceiling in a pale colour. But the room was too bright. He closed his eyes again and almost drifted back to sleep. Something stopped him… pain… not localized pain, but pain all over his body. It was more intense in his stomach than elsewhere. But then he realized that it wasn’t his stomach: it was his lungs. It hurt him to breathe.

He tried to remember who he was and where he was. He remembered a fire… being trapped… escaping. He remembered an SMS… a picture… his irritation towards the man who had sent it… Martin Costa.

Was that what it had been? A trap? Martin Costa that conman and thief and out-and-out scoundrel had lured him into a trap. But why? To kill him? It made no sense. He had clashed with Costa a few times before, but never in way so extreme or severe that Costa would have any reason to kill him.

Through the haze of confusion he remembered what Costa had sent him: a picture of a manuscript in post-Biblical Hebraic script. But it wasn’t in Hebraic script. That is, when he recalled the image, it didn’t look like the Hebrew alphabet. It didn’t look like anything. It was all too blurred and unclear.

Why then did he think that it was in Hebrew, or at least Hebraic script?

Because of Costa’s words.

“Why would a Romano-British site have a Hebrew manuscript?”

Why indeed?

It was those words that made him think it was in Hebrew — nothing in the text itself. And as he remembered it now, he had speculated that it might be Aramaic or some old less known Semitic dialect.

He opened his eyes again and forced them to stay open, despite the light.

Where am I?

He looked around in one direction and realized that he was in a hospital. But there was no one else about. He was in a private room. He wanted to curl up in the foetal position against the stomach cramps that he was feeling. But when he tried to turn onto his right side, he couldn’t. Something was holding his left arm by the wrist, restricting his movement.

He rolled onto his left side instead and saw what was restricting his movement. His left wrist was handcuffed to the bed.

But why?

He wrenched at the handcuff, but to no avail.

What the hell was going on?

He needed to talk to some one… a doctor… a nurse…

“Nurse! Some one!”

The door opened and two men walked in. But they were neither doctors nor nurses. The tall one, in a dark blue uniform, was aged about thirty. The other, slightly shorter and in plainclothes, looked in his mid to late forties, a few years older than Daniel. But there was no mistaking the fact that they were both policemen.

“What’s going on here?” asked Daniel.

It wasn’t the presence of police officers that he was asking about. His recollection of the fire and the protruding feet, made that all too reasonable and something to be expected. It was the handcuff on his left wrist.

The man in plain clothes flashed his warrant card at Daniel.

“Chief Inspector Vincent.”

“Sergeant Connor,” said the other, relying on his uniform for identification. “And you, Mister Klein, have some explaining to do.”