Read Online Unnatural Selection by Aaron Elkins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Aaron Elkins
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time, as opposed to last time?’ That’s a question.”
“I guess it was. My mistake.”
“Anyway, now you know.”
“So I do,” he sighed, taking her hand again as they turned from the parapet to go back inside. “Now If only I could figure out a way to un-know.”
FIVE
Vasily Kozlov had a well-deserved reputation as a glutton for work, and the schedule he had devised for the week confirmed it. The consortium would meet at nine every morning for a working breakfast, take a one-hour lunch break at one, then reconvene until 3:45, when tea would be served on the ramparts, weather permitting, or in the dungeon if not, and conclude with another working session from 4:15 to 6:00. Evening sessions would be held as needed. And Kozlov himself intended to chair every minute of them. The first day, Monday, would consist of a review of current issues and a fine-tuning of the agenda; presentation of participants’ papers and discussion of them would follow for the next five days; and there would be a free-wheeling wrap-up on Sunday.
Although Kozlov again charmingly urged Gideon to attend the breakfast session, Gideon had learned his lesson the day before. (He had learned another lesson later on that night, losing twelve and a half pounds at the poker table, mostly to the crafty Kozlov himself.) Thus, as the old clock in the castle’s entryway was striking nine, Gideon, having breakfasted on ham-and-egg-and-potato pasties and a double cappuccino at the bright little Kavorna Coffee House in town, was forking over his two pounds to enter the Isles of Scilly Museum on Church Street, the first visitor of the day. Madeleine Goodfellow, he was told by the volunteer behind the counter, would not be in until ten, which gave him a welcome hour to wander the halls.
It was, as Julie had said, his kind of museum. Well-done, but not too big, or ambitious, or flashy. Two floors of local archaeology and natural history, maritime life, shipwrecks, artifacts going back to the sixteenth century, and photographic displays of life on the island a hundred years ago. No high-tech gadgetry, not a single button to push, no ‘hands-on interactive learning experiences’; just well-mounted, down-to-earth exhibits with lucid explanatory plates. It even smelled like his kind of museum: floor polish, stone dust, and old things.
Naturally enough, one glass-encased wall exhibit in particular held his interest.
Puritan (Roundhead) uniform, circa 1648. These remarkably well-preserved objects, from the days when St. Mary’s was the last redoubt of Cavalier resistance to Parliamentarian forces, were discovered in a dry eighteenth-century well in 1946, clothing the remains of a Cromwellian footsoldier.
“Remarkably well-preserved” was stretching things a bit, but there was enough to give some idea of how the clothed, living man might have appeared: a few faded, darkened shreds of gray-and-white striped trousers, some sad fragments of once-bright-yellow ribbon that had probably been a jaunty waist-sash, and a few leather items-a sword holder and several unidentifiable straps-that were now a tarry black. There was no sign at all of the thigh-high boots he’d probably worn, which suggested that they’d been appropriated when he died. No one had needed his armor, however. There was a near-complete set, lovingly restored and buffed: separate back- and breastplates, a gorget to shield the throat, one of the two tarrets that would have protected the thighs, and a “lobster pot” helmet with a deep, round dent on the left side, a little back from the front. Everything had been tacked to an outline of a man that showed where they would have gone in life.
Gideon stepped back to take it in. Judging from the outline, this soldier of the soon-to-be Lord Protector of England would have been quite short by modern standards, but probably about average for the time. And that deep, round dent in the helmet… that was interesting. It looked as if it had
“I guess it was. My mistake.”
“Anyway, now you know.”
“So I do,” he sighed, taking her hand again as they turned from the parapet to go back inside. “Now If only I could figure out a way to un-know.”
FIVE
Vasily Kozlov had a well-deserved reputation as a glutton for work, and the schedule he had devised for the week confirmed it. The consortium would meet at nine every morning for a working breakfast, take a one-hour lunch break at one, then reconvene until 3:45, when tea would be served on the ramparts, weather permitting, or in the dungeon if not, and conclude with another working session from 4:15 to 6:00. Evening sessions would be held as needed. And Kozlov himself intended to chair every minute of them. The first day, Monday, would consist of a review of current issues and a fine-tuning of the agenda; presentation of participants’ papers and discussion of them would follow for the next five days; and there would be a free-wheeling wrap-up on Sunday.
Although Kozlov again charmingly urged Gideon to attend the breakfast session, Gideon had learned his lesson the day before. (He had learned another lesson later on that night, losing twelve and a half pounds at the poker table, mostly to the crafty Kozlov himself.) Thus, as the old clock in the castle’s entryway was striking nine, Gideon, having breakfasted on ham-and-egg-and-potato pasties and a double cappuccino at the bright little Kavorna Coffee House in town, was forking over his two pounds to enter the Isles of Scilly Museum on Church Street, the first visitor of the day. Madeleine Goodfellow, he was told by the volunteer behind the counter, would not be in until ten, which gave him a welcome hour to wander the halls.
It was, as Julie had said, his kind of museum. Well-done, but not too big, or ambitious, or flashy. Two floors of local archaeology and natural history, maritime life, shipwrecks, artifacts going back to the sixteenth century, and photographic displays of life on the island a hundred years ago. No high-tech gadgetry, not a single button to push, no ‘hands-on interactive learning experiences’; just well-mounted, down-to-earth exhibits with lucid explanatory plates. It even smelled like his kind of museum: floor polish, stone dust, and old things.
Naturally enough, one glass-encased wall exhibit in particular held his interest.
Puritan (Roundhead) uniform, circa 1648. These remarkably well-preserved objects, from the days when St. Mary’s was the last redoubt of Cavalier resistance to Parliamentarian forces, were discovered in a dry eighteenth-century well in 1946, clothing the remains of a Cromwellian footsoldier.
“Remarkably well-preserved” was stretching things a bit, but there was enough to give some idea of how the clothed, living man might have appeared: a few faded, darkened shreds of gray-and-white striped trousers, some sad fragments of once-bright-yellow ribbon that had probably been a jaunty waist-sash, and a few leather items-a sword holder and several unidentifiable straps-that were now a tarry black. There was no sign at all of the thigh-high boots he’d probably worn, which suggested that they’d been appropriated when he died. No one had needed his armor, however. There was a near-complete set, lovingly restored and buffed: separate back- and breastplates, a gorget to shield the throat, one of the two tarrets that would have protected the thighs, and a “lobster pot” helmet with a deep, round dent on the left side, a little back from the front. Everything had been tacked to an outline of a man that showed where they would have gone in life.
Gideon stepped back to take it in. Judging from the outline, this soldier of the soon-to-be Lord Protector of England would have been quite short by modern standards, but probably about average for the time. And that deep, round dent in the helmet… that was interesting. It looked as if it had
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