Brigid of Kildare Read Free Page B

and measured each instrument against the seven-inch standard.
    Please God, please God, please God, don’t let them take my instruments, Alex chanted to herself. She knew it was risky—not to say foolhardy—to insist on bringing equipment on her trips. But she’d used these tools for all her appraisals since finishing her doctorate, andshe’d experienced an unusual amount of success with them. She was too self-confident to attribute her success wholly to her instruments, but she was just superstitious enough to refuse to leave them behind.
    The agent returned. Although he had broad authority to seize any object he deemed suspicious—and her instruments were certainly more suspect than the average nail scissors—he slapped a fluorescent pink label on her bag instead. “You can keep the tools in your possession until you get on board. Then you have to turn them over to the staff to keep in a locked closet until you land,” he said, as he typed her particulars into a computer.
    Alex didn’t really exhale until she reached the gate for her Aer Lingus flight. She settled into an isolated seat near the windows, and, still clutching her worn bag like a life preserver, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
    She opened them to a jam-packed tarmac. A veritable United Nations of airplanes—emblazoned with the white-on-red cross of Swiss-air, El Al’s Star of David, and the bright green shamrock of Aer Lingus, among them—jockeyed for positions. By now, Alex had seen similar sights hundreds of times as she jetted off for her work, but it never failed to infuse her with anticipation over the possibility of fresh discoveries.
    After a moment of indulging in the view, Alex reimmersed herself in her work. Always work. She unzipped her bag and slid out photographs from a hand-labeled manila envelope. She’d reviewed them in the office, of course, but she wanted one last look in the natural light.
    The amateur pictures, with grainy color and poor lighting, showed three liturgical vessels of obvious antiquity: a chalice; a paten, or communion plate; and a rectangular reliquary box. Even the amateur photography couldn’t mask the beauty and rare craftsmanship, not to mention the intrinsic value of the gold, silver, and inlaid gems. The owner of the items—a small convent in the countryside near Dublin—believed the relics to be very old, from the sixth century perhaps, but solving the riddle of the pieces’ exact age and value was her task. Her privilege, she always told her clients.
    The boarding announcement sounded, and Alex gathered up herthings. As she shuffled the photos back into a pile, a close-up of the reliquary box caught her attention. She brought it near the window to better capture the dimming daylight and drew her magnifying glass close. The reliquary box, designed to hold the physical relics of a saint, had a sumptuous gold overlay of a cross bearing the symbols of the authors of the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—in the corners and the Virgin Mary at the center. Alex sensed some discordant element in its design, though she couldn’t quite place a finger on it.
    The second call for boarding crackled over the speaker. Reluctantly, Alex slipped the pictures back into the envelope, zipped up her bag, and slung it over her shoulder. Leaving New York behind her, she boarded the plane.

iv
DUBLIN AND KILDARE, IRELAND
PRESENT DAY
    The plane took a sudden dip in altitude, jolting Alex awake from a surprisingly deep sleep. She slid open the window shade and gazed out. The plane hovered at the cloud line, a nether place between sky and earth. Until it took another dive.
    They plunged through the cloud layer and entered a world of blackened skies. Alex stared down at the dark chop of the Irish Sea and waited for the first sight of the coast. One more cloud strata, and she saw it. Huge jetties darted out from the craggy shore, braving the rough force of the sea. An incongruous blend of tidy white housing