The Lethal Target(6)

‘You could have told me once you were back in England,’ said Jake. ‘We could have travelled up here together.’

Lauren shook her head.

‘There were two reasons for that,’ she said. ‘One, I had this idea it might be easier to fly in from somewhere other than New Zealand. I hoped they’d be less vigilant about watching for me than if I went straight to London. So, I flew to Ireland first, and then from Ireland to Glasgow. The second was what the Russians are up to.’

‘The Russians?’ queried Jake.

‘A party of them are here, on Mull! They’re looking for one of the hidden books! And they’ve got a good idea where it is.’

Jake frowned, puzzled.

‘Mull’s a bit of a trek from Glastonbury, especially in medieval times,’ he commented.

‘Ah, that’s because this book isn’t from the secret library at Glastonbury!’ said Lauren. ‘There was another branch of the Order of Malichea set up on Iona!’

‘That’s the small island to the west of Mull.’ Jake nodded.

‘It was set up at the same time as the Order on Lindisfarne, in the eighth century.’

‘I’m guessing this other branch of the Order of Malichea on Iona had a library as well?’ asked Jake.

‘Yes. The same as at Lindisfarne — scientific texts. In the case of the monastery on Iona, most of the writings came from Ireland, and the Celtic countries. But in addition there were texts from the Americas! Sciences from Native Americans, both north and south. Mayan. Aztec. Inca.’

Jake stared at her, stunned.

‘But . . . how did they get them?’ he asked. ‘I can see travellers coming from the Continent, even the Mediterranean. But across the Atlantic?’

‘Don’t you know about the early sailors? The Brendan boat crossing the Atlantic?’

‘No,’ admitted Jake.

‘I’ll tell you about that later,’ said Lauren. ‘The main thing is, the science books were on Iona. And, just the same as the monks did at Lindisfarne, when they realised the Vikings were on their way to attack their monastery, they made sure their books were protected. But unlike at Lindisfarne, where they moved the library to another abbey for safe keeping, the monks on Iona hid their books at different places around the Highlands and islands. Travel from Iona wasn’t as easy as it was from Lindisfarne and the north-east of England in those days.’

‘It still isn’t,’ said Jake. ‘Once you get past Glasgow, it still takes for ever!’

He sat there, letting all this sink in. The Order of Malichea was an ancient order, set up in the seventh century, devoted to building a library of scientific discoveries. In England the Order had run into trouble because the scientific texts they collected included topics such as invisibility, astronomy, time travel, as well as proposed cures for different diseases. Many of the theories in the texts were seen by the kings and the Church at the time as heretical, and so the library from the Order of Malichea based first at Lindisfarne, then at Glastonbury, had been hidden to protect them. To make sure that no one found the individual books, they had been hidden by the monks of the Order at sites said to be sacred, cursed or haunted, so they wouldn’t be disturbed accidentally. That had been in 1497.

The abbey on Iona hadn’t had the chance to build up a library to match the one at Glastonbury. The Vikings had attacked and destroyed Lindisfarne in 793. They swept into southern Scotland a year later, continuing their path of destruction. So the scientific texts from the abbey at Iona must have been buried 700 years before those from Glastonbury.

‘We are talking about really old books,’ said Jake.

‘Not even books, at that time,’ said Lauren. ‘Not as we know them. Scrolls. Parchment.’ She gave Jake a small smile of triumph. ‘And what’s more, I know which particular text the Russians are looking for.’

Jake stared at her.

‘How?’ he asked.

‘Chatter on the web,’ said Lauren.

‘How could you follow all this on the web without MI5 closing down your computer?’ asked Jake.

‘Cybercafés, you idiot,’ said Lauren. ‘And using Helen’s computer. Anyway, the book they’re after is De Materia Medica Continuum by Dioscorides. It was written in AD 53, and is about spontaneous human combustion.’ She shrugged. ‘Why it went to Iona and not to Lindisfarne, no one seems to know. Maybe the person who brought it had a personal connection with someone at the monastery on Iona. But the fact is that this is the book they’re looking for. They’re using the cover of pretending to dig for Neolithic remains at the site.’ She gave a snort. ‘Very clever.’