As he continued to sift through the documents, he realized that the scholar who wrote them had predicted eclipses of the moon for many years in advance. Then he found a book, obviously old, with charts that seemed to provide geometric corrections for the distortion caused by the atmosphere when sighting stars near the horizon, something that always had been troublesome for navigators.
He also found other writings. New. Some appeared to be verses, and others, tables of names and numbers. Sums of
money were written next to some of the names. But none of it meant anything without the Persian, which he could not read. And Shirin had never returned to the observatory, at least not when he was there.
Until two days ago.
At the observatory that morning the sky had been a perfect ice blue, the garden and orchard still, the air dry and exhilarating. No workmen were splashing in the moat beyond the wall that day. Only the buzz of gnats intruded on the silence. He had brought a bottle of dry Persian wine to make the work go faster, finding he was growing accustomed to its taste. And he had brought his lute, as always, in hope Shirin would come again.
He was in the stone hut, cleaning and sorting pages of manuscript, when she appeared silently in the doorway. He looked up and felt a sudden rush in his chest.
"Have you uncovered all of Jamshid Beg's secrets?" Her voice was lilting, but with a trace of unease. "I've found out that was our famous astronomer's name. He was originally from Samarkand."
"I think I'm beginning to understand some of the tables." Hawksworth kept his tone matter-of-fact. "He should have been a navigator. He could have been a fellow at Trinity House."
"What is that?"
"It's a guild in England. Where navigators are trained."