The Crusader ("The Crusader" Prequel to "Kingdom Come") (3 page)

Peck
didn't reply, refusing to delve into the familiar argument. Having worked and
lived with Rory Osgrove twenty-four hours a day for the past fourteen months,
he was coming to feel as if he had married her and, like any married couple,
they had their share of spats. But nothing could dampen the fact that there was
a good deal of professional respect between the, not even the fact that David
himself believed their dig to be nothing more than an ancient trash dump, even
if Rory believed it to be the site of a ruined mosque.

So he
bit his tongue, unwilling to detract from the reality that they had actually
come upon something substantial this day. The more Rory and Bud worked,
clearing away the loose debris, the more David began to realize that, perhaps,
she really was on to something. Keeping the videotape rolling, he stood back to
record the unfolding of events.

High
above, the sky began to take on hues of golds and pinks, signaling the approach
of a Middle Eastern sunset. The usual quitting time came and went, but the
workers refused to leave; even among the laborers there was a palpable sense of
discovery and they, too, were eager to see the results of their back-breaking
labor.

When the
sun finally dipped below the western horizon, the foreman cranked up the
gasoline generator and the mercury vapor lamps hummed steadily beneath the
brilliant night sky. Deep in the hole, Bud and Rory wallowed in sublevels of
earth several centuries old, brushing carefully, picking, and then brushing
again. Slow, steady work as the entire camp hovered expectantly, waiting for
the miraculous discovery to reveal itself.

A
miraculous discovery that was hardly valuable to the untrained eye, but to the
archaeologists it was increasingly significant. By ten o'clock, several feet of
flooring had been cleared, uneven and worn, and the activity continued steadily
until Bud neared a particularly hard-packed section of earth. Suddenly, his
careful efforts came to a halt.

"Whoa,"
he muttered, dropping his brush and collecting a bulb syringe. Blowing
cautiously at an odd-shaped mound of mud, he set the syringe down and grasped a
dental scaler. Rory, covered with dirt and sweat, watched him curiously as he
picked at the chalky-white lump.

"What's
wrong, Bud?" she asked softly.

Bud's
brow furrowed slightly, his ice-blue eyes intense as he picked away at chunks
of dirt. "I'm not sure," he replied, retrieving his brush once again.
"This doesn't seem to be... hell, I don't know what this is."

Rory set
her brush down, peering over Bud's shoulder. He felt her presence, inevitably
distracted from his work. She had always affected him that way, from the first
instant he'd beheld her hazel-eyed, chestnut-haired beauty almost two years
ago. The very moment the head of the Archaeology and Anthropology Department of
the University of California San Marcos had informed him of his new Middle East
assignment and the driving force behind it.

Dr. Rory
Osgrove was a new Ph. D. that had managed to convince the university's board of
regents that a substantially valuable find was located in the heart of the
Turkish city of Nahariya. Enthusiastic and intelligent but lacking the
experience of a seasoned archaeologist, the board had been adequately convinced
to pursue her petition by assigning two of the university's premier field
professors to aid her efforts.

Drs.
Dietrich and Peck had been called in from a minor dig in Cyprus to assist the
new Dr. Osgrove at her Nahariya site. Bud had been reluctant at first,
considering the very goal of her excavations was outlandish at best. But the
moment he gazed at Rory's eager, beautiful face, he began to think that
committing himself to a dig in the coastal town of Nahariya wasn't such a bad
idea after all. And David had agreed, although far more hesitantly; where Bud
went, he went, no matter how foolish the venture.

Which
was why the dusty, milky mound of earth Bud continued to pick away at disturbed
him so. He knew it wasn't what they had spent over a year searching for; it
didn't belong in the middle of an ancient mosque, considering the holy temples
of long ago were devoid of furnishings but for the few things the holy men
could carry. No altars, no pews, and nothing that could be considered of any
value.

Rory
continued to hover over his shoulder, her gentle breath on his ear. Twice, Bud
had nearly stabbed himself with his dental pick as he struggled to keep his
mind on his work.

"What
do you think it is?"

Her
voice was breathy, soft, and an erotic chill ran down his spine. Swallowing
hard, he realized his mouth had gone dry. "I really don't know," he
responded steadily, rather pleased that he hadn't come across like a giddy
teenager. Setting the pick down, he collected the bulb syringe once again and
blew hard. "It almost seems as if the mud is caked to something. Some sort
of..."

Abruptly,
a large chunk of earth fell away, landing on Bud's hand and immediately drawing
blood. Rory gasped, clutching at his injured fingers even as Bud himself moved
to examine the wound. Their flesh touched in the hurried reaction to study his
scraped knuckles and Bud suddenly realized he was inches from Rory's flushed
face.

She was
staring at his lacerated skin, her lips pursed with concern. "Are you all
right?" she demanded softly. Before he could reply, she was turning to the
nearest worker, politely but urgently asking the man to retrieve the first-aid
kit. Returning to Bud's fingers, her tender touch was enough to make him forget
the stinging cut.

"I'm
fine," he managed to whisper, his heart thumping madly against his ribs.
Not to be too obvious that he was enjoying her attention, however, he smiled
wryly when her green eyes focused on his face. "You worry like my
mother."

She
frowned. "Fine, then. Bleed to death all over the dirt and see if I
care."

He
laughed softly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he was pleased when she
didn't release his fingers. "I'm not ungrateful for the concern, mom - I
mean, Dr. Osgrove. Really."

As Rory
and Bud traded weak insults over the top of Bud's bloodied knuckles, David
handed the camcorder over to the foreman and picked up a fine-bristled brush.
Brown eyes narrowed in concentration behind the thin-rimmed glasses, he began
to chip away at the cavity left by the crumbling mud. 

Beside
him, Rory and Bud were still bickering over Bud's lack of graciousness toward Rory's
concern. David knew it was a bluff on Bud's part, considering he was in love
with the woman. And had he not been so concerned with what was coming to light
within the caked mud of a dozen centuries, Dr. Peck would have been happy to
cast Bud a series of disbelieving glances. But he couldn't spare the attention.

"Hey
Bud," he called softly, blowing gently at the ancient earth. "You'd
better take a look at this."

Bud tore
his gaze away from Rory's face, his features morphing from soft to serious in
an instant. Peering closely at the muddled impression exposed for the first
time in over a millenia, he forgot all about his injured hand. Snatching the
brush from David, he continued to sweep the dirt away from the underlying
relief.

"Christ,"
Bud hissed, watching as another hunk of mud broke loose and tumbled to the
ground.

"What?"
Rory was poised over Bud's left shoulder, squinting in the dim light of the
vapor lamps. After a moment, her expression slackened. "It looks like...
like a..."

"A
Greco relief," Dr Peck finished for her. As Bud continued to gently loosen
the dirt, David pointed to the faint outline emerging into the heated night.
"Look... definitely a Greek etching. Note the rounded cheeks, the cherub
influence. And these wavy lines; hell, Bud, they look like vines, don't
they?"

Rory
ceased to breathe as she listened to Peck reason out what was emerging from the
foundation of her Muslim mosque. Certainly nothing of Greek influence should be
here, a paganistic religion invading Allah's sanctuary. Her heart began to sink
as Bud finished chipping away at a small panel of dried earth. When it crumbled
away completely, he set his brush to the ground and blew lightly at the
surface.

No one
dared to move as Bud studied the ancient veneer. The senior archaeologist on
the dig with more than eighteen years experience, he clearly knew his field.
After a lengthy pause, he sighed heavily.

 "It's
Bacchus," he said quietly, pointing at the vines encompassing the rounded
face. "These are grape vines, indicative of the wine god's mantle. He
always appears the same in mythology relief."

David
lowered himself to sit beside Bud, studying the dirty surface. "There's no
way Grecian marble would find its way into a Muslim mosque," he muttered,
neglecting the fact that all of Rory's hopes were being shattered by his analytical
words. "The Muslims considered the Greeks and Romans to be pagans, their
ancient temples unclean. In fact, they buried their sinful dead and trash in
what they considered to be unconsecrated ground."

"The
grounds of an ancient Greek temple," Bud concurred.

"A
trash dump," Rory's voice was quiet. As Bud and David looked to her,
varied degrees of regret in their eyes, she forced herself to stand tall and
brush the dirt off her hands. No matter if her heart was breaking with the
reality of the find, as undeniable as it was, she would not let on. 

She
would have liked nothing better than to argue the point. Fourteen months of
labor and devotion demanded as much, but she realized as she gazed at the worn
marble face that she could not, in good conscience, contradict Bud or David's
reasoning.

She
should have prepared herself for the moment of failure. But she had been so
sure of herself that she realized, somewhat dazedly, that she was unprepared to
accept defeat in the least. In lieu of falling apart completely, she squared
her shoulders with as much courage as she could muster.

"I
guess you were right, Dave. This must have been an ancient trash dump,"
before Peck could reply, Rory was making her way from the trench. "I
suppose I should have listened to you. When we found shards of pottery and
marble, I called them Muslim artifacts and you called them ancient trash. When
I indicated that fourteenth century Byzantine manuscripts pinpointed this
location, you told me they were open to interpretation. I should have...
listened."

She was
out of the hole, moving through the cluster of workers surrounding the trench.
As she marched toward the distant camp, David leapt to his feet with the
intention of apologizing for her failure and his correct assumption. But Bud stopped
him before he could follow her.

"No,"
his ice-blue eyes were riveted to the khaki-shorts fading in the distance.
"Let her go. We'll talk about this later."

David
was genuinely remorseful, removing his gaze from the distant figure to focus on
his friend and colleague. "I never meant... well, you know, to hurt her
feelings. I would have been very happy to have been proven wrong about this
whole dig. But what she was saying, Bud... it just never made sense to me. All
of this hunting for the crown of thorns that Jesus Christ wore at Mount
Calvary. Just what in the hell would a Christian relic be doing in a Muslim
mosque?"

Bud
shrugged faintly, his heart aching for the lovely young lady he was so fond of.
"I don't know, Dave," he said quietly, glancing once more at the bias
relief as if it contained some sort of curse. The longer he gazed at it, the
more he wished he had never found it.

"The
university is going to pull the funding for sure now," Peck's voice was
quiet in his ear. "Rory will be lucky if she isn't given a desk somewhere
in a stuffy office for wasting such a tremendous amount of money and effort.
With this disaster, they'll never trust her again."

Bud's
square jaw ticked. "But they trust me, and she'll go where I go. I'll
resign my fellowship if they put her behind a desk somewhere, cataloguing
trivial items that a monkey could take care of."

Peck
sighed, his gaze finding hazy white marble covered with filth. Sensing their
employers' disappointment in what had apparently been uncovered, the crowd
surrounding the site began to disband as David knelt beside the faded relief.

"What
made her think we'd find a Biblical relic in Nahariya, of all places?" he
muttered softly, more to himself than to Bud. "I saw her data and although
I admit it was powerful, it just wasn't convincing enough. Certainly not
convincing enough to warrant university funds for a complete dig."

Bud
glanced down at his associate, his mind a jumble of thoughts as he pondered the
immediate future. When the university was informed of their failure and the
site was dissolved. "She's a biblical archaeologist, Dave. She delves into
areas that most classical archaeologists scoff at," brushing off his
hands, he leaned wearily against the side of the ditch. "I don't have to tell
you that the university has powerful backing from both the Lutheran and
Presbyterian leagues. Not to mention the fact that three ordained ministers sit
on the board of regents. It was never surprising to me that she obtained
approval for this dig. Besides, she can be really convincing."

Still
staring at the impression of Bacchus, Peck slowly shook his head before rising
to his feet. Even if he had never truly believed in the purpose of the dig,
still, it was disappointing that he had been proven right and Rory had been
proven wrong. One year and two months of sweat and effort down the drain.