Plot

Bill Capeshaw never brought up Boggie. Maggie had been working with Bill since her first year at the University, eight years ago. Nobody ever mentioned Boggie's shop for this matter, and she only found it by chance.

She had poured that day through a 15th-century tome or rather through the pictures a monk in a monastery in Greece had sent a week before. Her software had rejected its automated inclusion into the corpus, and she discovered a story sprinkled among the chants.

On her way home, she almost missed the white-haired man of average stature, soaked to the bone and holding a stack of papers dripping of bluish water. He looked crestfallen as an uncaring driver sped up through the pools a previous bout of rain left.

Despite the tight deadlines, warm weather, and her better judgment, she offered him a ride home. He confessed the papers contained a never before published Byzantine chant. He looked so miserable that she had to offer to recover the information on them. The smudges on papers were beyond human ability to read. However, her program had a fair chance.

Helping him would mean one more coffee that week.

Boggie must have heard her sigh since he handed her an invitation.

"Bogdan's shoppe invites you, on September 21st to our biggest Byzantine chant event. We will present never before seen copies of long lost manuscripts. Come and enjoy medieval fare including Dracula's ale, made from a recipe said to belong to the ill-fated prince himself."

Maggie gasped then she noticed the fine print.
"For entertainment only, we make no representation on the authenticity of the sold items."

"Oh dear, a new age shop." she chastised herself silently. However, with the help of much more coffee than she first estimated she recovered Boggie's chant.

Honestly, the extra coffee was not Boggie's fault. The 15th-century tome from Greece had an added challenge. Perhaps the monk who wrote it enjoyed an extra glass of wine. Or pitcher, since here and there slurred words mingled with exquisite calligraphy. It took her two additional nights on top of everything else to add an error correction module to make up for monk's habit. Her program calculates frequencies by default, and comparing the drunk and sober frequencies, as she named them with frustration, led to another boondoggle.

The whole cheesy story about the damsel in distress and her rescuing knight was a cover for a hidden message through steganography. It turned out the monk was not drunk, but well in command of his wits when he wrote the manuscript.

Boggie's stack of papers, though, to her surprise, was a clear 15th-century match. She had a few questions for Boggie, so she was now en route to his Byzantine chant event.

Maggie arrived just in time to hear Boggie's story. It was something about a young woman who could foretell the future, who ended up burned as a witch and the knight who literally walked through the flames to save her.

"Radu's childhood friend, who joined the solitary monks on the Mount Athos, wrote their story. Folks say he hid it well since the codex disappeared. Even if it surfaced one day, it would be hard to decipher its hidden meaning."

One voice behind Maggie inquired. "What was the hidden meaning?"

"The monk later discovered something that could have saved their lives, and he was ashamed and miserable. To make sure nobody ever knew of his shame he mangled the message within the letters of the story."

Maggie felt a chill creeping down her spine. The abbot in Greece assured Bill Capeshaw nobody had seen the manuscript before. He went as far to say that he only unearthed it a few months ago.

"A precursor to steganography then?" a fedora wearing young man asked smugly.

Boggie seemed taken aback. However, he recovered fast and answered with a smile full of mystery.

"One could say so. You'd certainly say the monk was drunk while writing the tome."

Maggie gasped. She'd discuss it with Bill and email the abbot tomorrow.

Boggie motioned for silence.

"There is more. The monk was an erudite scholar, and he couldn't risk his reputation. So he did one more thing. He ripped four pages out of the tome. Nobody knows what became of them."

The audience grew silent, eager to find out more. Maggie leaned against a table and breathed deeply. This story must be just a coincidence. Even if it was, now she had her explanation. She could decode only half of the message. The other half remained garbled. Of course it did! It was missing an important piece. Whether it was four pages or a sentence, she could not know. She would not know until the missing part would surface.

"We have for sale notebooks bound in leather. It is how the Psalmodikon in which the monk hid his message might have looked. Today only, the notebooks are on sale for half price," Boggie's deep voice broke the silence. He gestured to a table full of book size leather notebooks wrapped in transparent plastic.

The throng pushed her towards the table then her curiosity took the best of her. She went around the table when her heart almost stopped. There it was, a notebook with a dragon embossed on its cover. It blended among the kitsch of medieval symbols. She knew it was not; this notebook had an uncanny likeness, down to the smallest detail, with the one in the pictures she received from the abbot.

She snatched the notebook and rushed to check out. She handed her credit card to the cashier together with her id card when he asked for it.

"This would not be necessary. " she heard Boggie's voice. "Great choice, Musetea." He correctly pronounced her name as he handed back her ID.

Maggie seized her credit card and rushed home. She frantically typed an email to Bill Capeshaw then grabbed a bottle of wine.

She sipped for a while, and when her heart slowed down a bit, she slowly opened the notebook.

Maggie admired the beautiful leatherwork and flipped it's pages like a deck of cards. A black flash caught her eyes. She turned the pages to find a page written in Greek script.

"No!"

Maggie jerked in surprise; or rather in fear.

In the middle of her notebook, four pages of Greek script mixed with chant notation taunted her with their steady flow.