He laughed as they reached a rich mahogany door marked Rotunda.
Adele said, “It's similar to the Reading Room in your British Museum.”
“Ah.”
“Except…” She threw back the door and ushered him into the sun-splashed chamber, a vast circular room with countless rows of tables radiating from a high desk in the center. Dust sparkled in the beams of light streaming in from the sweeping glass dome overhead. On every spot where the eye rested were books. On every wall were books. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands of books.
Greyfriar stood mute. He could hardly look up; he seemed oppressed by the sheer volume, the great weight of books surrounding him. He reached out and seized a desk to steady himself.
“I had no idea,” he whispered. “I had no idea.”
“It is impressive.” Adele took his hand. “Humbling.”
“More than humbling. Humiliating.” He shook his head. “I just keep thinking of when I showed you my library in Edinburgh. Six books in a trunk. You must've thought I was so pathetic.”
“No.” Adele put an arm around his waist. “For you to have that library is more incredible and miraculous, even if this were ten times as large. We're humans. This is what we do. We preserve.”
He looked down at her in awe. “And you've read all these books?”
Adele laughed loudly, and it reverberated through the hall. “Of course not. No one has read all these books. I suspect there are many here no one has read except the person who wrote it.”
Greyfriar took the first book that came to hand. He opened it and stared. “Where is this?”
Adele joined him to see photographs of a busy city street full of carriages and wagons and people. “It looks like Bombay. In India.”
“Have you been there?”
“Yes. Many times.”
Greyfriar turned the page and studied a photo of a large palace with crowds of people surrounding it. “Where is this?”
“That is Khartoum. South of here.”
“Have you been there?”
“Yes.” Adele flipped to the book's cover—Gazetteer and Atlas of Equatoria. “You'll be hard-pressed to find a spot in this book I haven't been. I'm sure you could find something more interesting to look at.”
“What could be more interesting than places where you've been, but I've never seen?”
Adele smiled. “Wait here. I've an idea.” She wandered off, studying the shelf markers.
Greyfriar shouted from his spot. “What about Jerusalem? Have you been to Jerusalem?”
“Yes. I had my tenth birthday party there.”
“And Constantinople, have you been—”
“Yes!”
“Oh. So have I, actually.”
“Well, we have something in common, then. Perhaps we stayed in the same hotel.” Adele appeared with a small leather-bound book in her hand. “Probably not. Look what I found.”
“Is it a book?”
She stared at him. “No, it's a giraffe. Of course it's a book.” She handed it to him and he glanced at the title—Tramps About Europe and the British Isles. “It's a travel book published in 1867.”
Greyfriar was already deep in study, opening the brown pages carefully. He exhaled sharply in surprise. “It's London! Look, the British Museum!”
Adele shushed him habitually and slid close to his shoulder to look at the grainy photo of the rambling old pile she remembered from her British captivity. “Ah. Your home away from home.”
“Do you remember teaching me about Ramses there?”
“I do.” He had been so curious then about the artifacts strewn in disarray within the museum. Even though they had been enemies still at that time, she had felt compelled to answer his questions.
“Buckingham Palace.” He removed his shaded glasses to see better. “It looks exactly the same.”
“Well, the building anyway.” Adele could picture cruel Cesare behind one of the many black square windows, and she shuddered. She had seen horrific things inside that palace. “Go to the page I marked.”
Greyfriar noticed a slip of paper, and with the concentration of a surgeon, he worked the book open to that page and gave a cry of delight. “Edinburgh! Our castle!”
Adele laughed again at his excitement and squeezed his arm. She regarded the black-and-white picture of fog-shrouded Edinburgh Castle on its jagged stone pedestal looming majestically over the smokestacks of the old wood-and-brick city.
“Now,” she said, “that looks the same.”
“No.” He draped an arm over her shoulder and drew her close. “You aren't there.”
Adele leaned against his chest and began to caress one of the brass buttons on his tunic with her finger. “Show me more places you've been.”