by Lev Grossman
Edward closed his burning eyes and shook his head. Snap out of it, he thought. No point in making connections where there weren’t any. As Margaret would say, not everything means something. He pushed the pages away from him.
Margaret lay on her side on the bed, her eyes closed. He thought she’d fallen asleep, but somehow she sensed he was done and raised her head.
“Did you see it?” she asked.
“I saw it.”
“But did you see?” She sat up all the way. “Do you see what this means? My God. Gervase of Langford fathered the Duchess of Bowmry’s child and left it to be raised as the Duke’s. He must have been in love with her after all.”
“I saw.”
“But it’s so perfect. It makes so much sense!” Her hands were pale fists on her bare knees, and her eyes burned with scholarly zeal. “There’s so much longing in the Viage, such a sense of loss! Why? Because it was written by a man who’d lost his child and his lover, but who still had them in front of his eyes every day, and could never touch them! His life was an emotional wasteland. That’s where Cimmeria came from. Maybe this was for his son—Gervase must have thought he might find it one day.”
“Right.” Edward rubbed his sandy eyes. He checked the windows, but it was still dark out. It felt like a week had passed in the last twelve hours.
“This could be it—don’t you get it? The missing piece of the puzzle! No wonder his reputation was ruined in London, it must have been all over the city. My God, this changes everything. Instead of writing pious little fables, or press releases in verse for his patrons, or love poetry, he was writing this—this glorious, godless, escapist romance about knights and monsters. No wonder he was passed over! Gervase was the first educated man in England to discover reading for pleasure. The Duchess must have known, too.” He could see the gears of her mind gripping and turning, picking up speed, gathering mental torque. “Maybe that’s how he won her—like Paolo and Francesca, remember? The couple who were seduced by a book?”
“That’s a big leap to make from a bunch of cartoons, don’t you think?” Edward said. He should have been elated, but instead his mind was muzzy and irritable. He found himself perversely wanting to deflate her, to poke holes in her theory.
“Maybe.” Margaret flopped down on the bed and stared up at the blank white ceiling. “It’s right, though, I know it is. It’s too perfect. What do you think the Duchess will do with it?”
“I don’t know,” he lied. “I’m not sure.”
Of course he knew what she would do with it. It would become a weapon, or a hostage, in her little internecine war with the Duke. If the Duchess had borne Gervase’s child, then the Duke’s precious lineage was compromised, tainted by bastardy and infidelity, and she had the means to prove it. God knows when or if Margaret would ever get her chance at the codex. Edward sat at her desk and rested his chin on his folded hands. He had decisions to make, but he lacked the will to make them. He gazed dumbly at the ancient leaves. He could sense her rewriting her dissertation in her head. She probably wanted him to leave so she could get to work right then and there.
“It’s an amazing discovery,” he said, playing along. “If it’s true. It’ll absolutely make you famous.”
She nodded, but he could tell she wasn’t listening. Outside in the night a distant siren wailed. Somebody or something knocked the lid off a trash can and sent it rolling noisily for an improbable length of time, on and on, until it finally came to rest with a grand tympanic crash. It was after five now, and the sun would be up soon. A crushing wave of fatigue rose up and broke over him, obliterating all further thought. He stood up, switched off the light, and collapsed back into bed.
Margaret lay facing away from him. Her ponytail poked him gently in the face, and he tenderly disentangled the pink rubber band that held it together and launched it away into the darkness with his thumb and forefinger.
“You can’t stay here,” she whispered after a while.
“Why not?”
He kept on stroking her hair.
“I have people coming tomorrow morning.”
“What kind of people?”
“Just people. Visitors.”
She wriggled a little under the covers, getting more comfortable.
“That’s okay,” said Edward. “People like me. I’m a people person.”
There was a long pause. He was almost asleep.
“Just a couple of hours,” he whispered. “Then I’ll go. I promise I’ll go.”
She didn’t answer, but he heard her setting the alarm clock she kept by her bed.
21
“EDWARD. WHAT’S HAPPENING?”
Edward didn’t even sit up in bed. He just turned over on his back and put the phone in the general vicinity of his ear and left it at that. He was back in his own apartment: Margaret had kicked him out at dawn, as promised, and after searching for a cab for what felt like hours up and down shuttered, deserted, trash-strewn stretches of Flatbush Avenue he’d finally given up and taken the subway home. He’d been asleep for half an hour, a delicious, cloud-strewn, rainbow-tinted half-hour of unconsciousness, when the phone rang.
“Edward?” the Duchess repeated, less patiently. “Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“You sound strange. Is something wrong?”
Edward thought about that for a while, weighing both sides of the question equally and taking into account the full scope and complexity of the circumstances before he answered.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You left a message on the machine.” She was in her imperious mode, her voice hard and urgent, brushed steel. “What’s happening? Do you have another lead?”
He was still at the disadvantage of an asleep person talking to an awake person, but he cleared his throat.
“Blanche, I have it,” he managed. “We have the codex. We found it last night.”
“Oh, thank God!” she whispered.
The Duchess disappeared, and there was the clunk of the phone hitting something hard. In the background he heard a big, theatrical sigh of relief, then a hysterical laugh which sounded scarily close to a sob. Edward sat up in bed. He thought he could hear her breathing heavily. It took another half minute for the Duchess to pick up the phone again.
“Thank God, I thought we’d never find it!” she said cheerily, as if nothing had happened, as if he’d just told her that he’d found his lost contact lens. “Not that I was much help, was I? Where are you?”
“I’m in my apartment.” He lay back down. “You called me here.”
“You’re right. My God, I’m losing my grip. Is your girlfriend there?”
“Is who here?”
“‘Is who here?’” She mimicked him and laughed again, not quite as pleasantly. “I meant Margaret. Is she there with you?”
“She’s not—” He sighed. Never mind, whatever. “No. I’m here alone.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.” It came out sounding more plaintive than he meant it to, but it was true. So much had happened yesterday that he hadn’t even thought it through yet. “You tell me. Should I come to England?”
After what sounded like a moment of mental calculation, she replied:
“Yes. Why not.”
“But isn’t that what you wanted?”
He was guessing now, taking stabs in the dark.
“Of course it is,” she said soothingly. “How soon can you come?”
“I already have a flight booked, in a couple of days—E & H is flying me over. Hang on a second and I’ll get the flight times.”
“A couple of days? I need it sooner than that.”
“Well, I suppose I could try to find an earlier flight.”
“Never mind,” she said brusquely, “I’ll take care of it.”
The playful, girlish tone was gone again, replaced by a firm, wintry tone of command, the voice of someone accustomed to using money to compress time and distance to
her own specifications. He could imagine her ordering around legions of maids with that voice.
“Stay where you are until you hear from me, and don’t talk to anyone. How does that sound? Can you manage that?”
She hung up without waiting for an answer.
“Roger,” he said into the dead telephone. He turned off the ringer and fell back asleep.
SOMEBODY WAS pounding on the door of his apartment.
“All right, all right!” he yelled without opening his eyes. He lay there for another few seconds, angrily savoring the last moments of sleep, then levered himself upright.
Edward walked to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and wrapped himself in a fluffy white bathrobe. His eyes felt like they were full of dried rubber cement. Five messages on the answering machine. For a few seconds he didn’t even remember what had happened the night before, then it all came rushing back to him. There was no time to think about it. He peered through the peephole.
The person at the door was Laura Crowlyk. Her long, freckled face was wide awake and flushed with excitement. He opened the door.
“Edward!” she cried. She reached up to put both her hands on his shoulders and kissed him long and resoundingly on the mouth. “You found it!”
Flustered, he took a step backward, and she bustled past him into his apartment.
“The Duchess called me.” She stopped and hugged him again, as if they were having a long-awaited reunion. “I knew you were the one!” she said into his terry-cloth shoulder. “I always knew it was you.”
“You did?”
“I can only stay a minute.” She pushed him away. “We have a great deal to do.”
Laura was utterly transformed, her haughtiness gone and replaced by manic good humor. Her serious features weren’t suited to such an extreme state of glee. She plunked her buff-leather Coach bag down on his kitchen table.
“I’m going to get dressed,” Edward said.
He gathered up some clean clothes and retreated backward into the bathroom, holding them protectively in front of him in a defensive posture. When he came out, wearing a T-shirt and jeans and feeling marginally more human, she’d put the coffee on. He leaned against the counter, feeling dizzy from lack of sleep.
“So what can I do for you?”
She took a cream-colored envelope out of her bag and handed it to him.
“Plane ticket,” she said.
He opened the envelope. It was to London, one-way, business class. This must be what the Duchess meant when she said she’d take care of it.
“Jesus. This flight leaves in five hours.”
“It was the first one we could get you on.”
“Look, you don’t have to do this,” Edward explained patiently. “The firm is already paying my moving expenses to London. I have a flight leaving on Tuesday.”
“It can’t wait till Tuesday,” she said primly. “It can’t wait another minute. Everything is starting now, Edward. If you can’t go, we’ll send someone else.”
“No, I’ll go,” Edward said, stung.
“Good. A limo will pick you up here at noon to take you to the airport. We’ll have a car waiting at Heathrow.”
She handed him a second envelope, this one considerably thicker.
“A thousand dollars and a thousand pounds,” she explained. “For any expenses.”
Edward didn’t open it. He didn’t have to. He wasn’t an idiot: He knew it would all be there. He glanced down at the two envelopes, the money in one hand, the ticket in the other, then up at Laura’s flushed, expectant face. A rarefied, intoxicating gas was filling his lungs and carbonating his bloodstream: happiness. It was finally happening. He was passing through the doorway, crossing over into her world, the world of the Duchess. He squared off the envelopes with a businesslike crispness and set them aside before he could do anything stupid, like hold them up to the light or sniff them for their new-money smell.
He sat down at the kitchen table, gripping the most familiar object within reach—his coffee-hot souvenir Enron mug—with both hands as if it were the only solid fulcrum in an otherwise swiftly tilting universe. The last twenty-four hours had been so rushed and dreamlike that they hadn’t really sunk in, like a barrage of unread e-mail, but now they were hitting him all at once. The money was nothing, of course. Grossly more than the circumstances called for but infinitely less than a snipped fingernail to the Wents. It was what it stood for, the ease with which it was dispensed, evoking by synecdoche the unimaginable sums that stood behind it. He thought back to the first and only time he’d actually seen the Duchess in the flesh. The dark locks beneath the brim of her sun hat, her pale upturned face, that wide, heartbreaking mouth. She was waiting for him. Not just waiting, she was impatient.
He stared down at his coffee, feeling his pulse start to race. Things were moving too quickly, blurring at the edges, getting away from him. He knew he had to take a giant step backward and get some perspective on the situation. He needed to go in with a plan. He would meet with the Duchess at Weymarshe, formally. He would present her with the codex—or should he leave it in London in a safe-deposit box, show up empty-handed? Which was the stronger position? They’d have to discuss terms, remuneration, a place for him in her organization. He’d need to see some paperwork. He would want to talk to a lawyer.
And then, if all went well, back to London to resign his position at E & H. And then—what? He grimaced. There were too many variables here and too few constants. He was out of his depth. Nick was right: The Duchess hadn’t made any promises, or none she couldn’t break. Your instincts are better than this, he told himself. He’d gone through a lot of trouble and expense to acquire first-class instincts, weapons-grade instincts, and they were telling him to cut his losses here and now. Even Margaret knew better: Never do anything that you can’t reverse.
And yet. Something was still pulling him forward, something he couldn’t name or describe, a motivation from way out in deep space, way beyond the familiar constellation of desires—hunger, lust, greed, ambition. It was telling him to throw his career away, and he was doing it. He was going through with it. He would never, ever forgive himself if he turned back now. He pictured himself in a bedroom at Weymarshe, sipping coffee by himself in the early morning, in the silence of the deep countryside. Cool stone floors. A large white bed like a white marble tomb, rich linens tastefully disarrayed, white light flooding in through tall windows, green allées receding into the undulating distance.
There would be problems, he knew that. He wasn’t delusional. But they’d be new problems, better problems than he had now. He rubbed his chin. He needed to shave. And his stuff—he’d never finished packing. Edward looked around at his chaotic apartment with dismay. There were half-filled boxes everywhere, stacks of books and CDs spilling onto the floor. A crippled coffee table stood with two legs on and two legs off, where he and Zeph had abandoned it.
“I’ll never be ready by noon,” he said.
“Not to worry!” said Laura, trilling like Mary Poppins. She covered his hand with hers. “We’ll send your things on after you. Or you can stay at the castle, why not? You have a passport?”
Edward nodded dumbly. He felt the apparatus of the Duchess’s money swooping down, safely enfolding him in its protective wings. He’d spent his whole career playing with obscene amounts of wealth, counting it, manipulating it, pouring it from account to account, then parking it neatly like a valet and surrendering it to its rightful owner. This must be how it felt from the inside.
“Well, then,” she said. “I think you’re all set.”
She stood up to go. Edward stood up with her, taking a deep breath. He felt drunk.
“Ms. Crowlyk—”
“For God’s sake, call me Laura.” She beamed at him fiercely as she shouldered her bag. “You’re a part of the family now.”
“Laura,” he said, as seriously as he could with his head swimming, “what exactly is going to happen now? Once the Duchess has the codex? I me
an, what’s she going to do with it?”
She paused, looking at him appraisingly.
“I don’t think that’s really any of your business,” she said carefully. “Or mine, for that matter. We’ve done our jobs. We’ve done what we had to do. Now the Duchess will do what she has to do.”
“But why? What’s going to happen to the Duke?”
“Only what he’s got coming to him. Only what he deserves. He’d do as much to her if he could, and worse.”
“So—it’s all okay?” he said helplessly.
“Of course it is!” She touched his arm, and her face took on an air of maternal concern. “Of course it is! As long as you have the codex. You do have it, don’t you?”
Edward nodded weakly, his mind racing again.
He went to let her out, but at the threshold she stopped and turned to face him. For a moment she seemed much older, almost haggard. The points of her collarbone showed above the neckline of her dress, and the skin above it bore a flushed red patch the shape of Australia. She took a step toward him, her eyes glowing with mysterious expectation, and for a second Edward thought she was going to kiss him again.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
Edward blinked. “See what?”
“The codex, foolish boy. Can I see it?”
“It’s not here.”
“It’s not?” A flicker of doubt crossed her gleeful eyes. “Well, where is it?”
“Margaret has it. It’s at her apartment.”
“Margaret—?”
“Margaret Napier. The woman from Columbia.”
Her head reared back. She looked like she wanted to spit in his face.
“You complete bloody fucking bloody idiot. When can you get it back?”
“Whenever I need it,” said Edward.
“Well.” Laura’s face was contorted, almost frightening. She was literally shaking with disgust. “Go on and go get it!”