The Scroll

6 - Library

Kohelet put the fig back in the bowl. "Are you sure it's not just market gossip?"

Benjamin shook his head. "No, Master. The party at the palace today was the official announcement of their engagement."

"Perhaps she wanted to invite me to her wedding." The statement was meant in jest, but Benjamin wasn't the best at picking up on sarcasm.

"Oh no. She would never want you there. You would be an embarrassment to her."

Kohelet frowned. Benjamin was also not the best at subtlety. He meant no harm, but he was almost too honest at times.

Benjamin stood quickly. "Tomorrow I will go to the palace and find out more." He spread out his empty hands. "And I am sorry, Master. I was so caught up in seeking information and worrying about our future that I did not get us food."

"It is all right. Eli gave me some figs. Here. There are two left for you. You should get some rest."

Benjamin lay on the bed and devoured the two figs. In minutes he was snoring loudly.

Kohelet also got into bed, but sleep eluded him as his mind sifted through all the memories of his relationship with Mariah. He had known her a long time, for she was the daughter of Melek, the Egyptian man who had worked for Kohelet in the library prior to Benjamin. Melek had married a woman who served in the women's court of the palace, and Mariah was their only child.

She was a curious girl who made the library her second home, spending most of her waking hours helping her father arrange the scrolls in the archives. Secretly Melek was teaching her to read, and Kohelet turned a blind eye to this disregard of cultural norms, for he liked to hear her lilting voice echo in the archives.

Mariah explored every bit of the old library, right down to the deepest levels, and often appeared out of nowhere, a scroll in one hand and a torch in the other. After a while she didn't even need the torch to find her way through the labyrinth of storage chambers cut from the bedrock below the palace.

But Mariah and her mother disappeared from the palace right after Melek's unfortunate death in the library archives. The man had been sent to retrieve their oldest copy of the Genesis scroll, and when it could not be found, he became extremely agitated. Kohelet joined him in the search and assured him that it must have become misfiled. A scroll had gone missing more than a few times over the years. It was a large library, and Melek was not the best at organization. The scroll must still be in the archives as the penalty for theft from the king's library was death, and the only door into the library was carefully guarded night and day. Only Mariah seemed to be able to slip past the guards unnoticed.

A day-long search was futile, and Melek's agitation turned to desperation, for the king himself had requested the ancient scroll so he could show it off to visiting dignitaries at the end of the week. Melek promised he would not leave the library that evening and would spend the night looking for the lost Genesis scroll. But he was found dead the next morning, slumped over a table deep in the archives. His heart had given out under the strain.

As it turned out, the king asked for a different scroll, and the issue of the missing scroll was never reported to the king. Kohelet also searched, but it simply could not be found. Regretfully, he enlisted Daniel's help in searching for the scroll, a decision that would come back to haunt him. Kohelet was certain now that Daniel had found the scroll and had removed it from the library with plans to discredit Kohelet and take over his position.

Mariah and her mother had disappeared on the same day Melek died. Rumor said that they had gone to live with Melek's relatives in Egypt. Melek's position was given to Benjamin, the days passed by, and life at the library went on.