The Book of Secrets

by Tom Harper

  Ennelin was well schooled. She watched me modestly, without betraying the least doubt. Her mother was more direct.

  ‘Herr Gensfleisch, do you want to marry my daughter?’

  XXXIX

  Paris

  The Jaguar pulled away from the kerb and headed up the boulevard de Sebastopol towards the E19 highway and Belgium. Atheldene swung across two lanes of traffic and past the Gare du Nord, then gunned the throttle as the road opened in front of them. Nick sank back in the leather seat and wondered if Gillian had sat there, if she’d felt the same throb of the car’s powerful engine and been impressed by it.

  He glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was following. The road behind was empty. All he saw was Emily, curled up in the corner of the back seat staring out of the window.

  ‘What did you mean when you said the book was frozen?’ Her voice was soft, barely audible over the engine noise.

  ‘It’s the latest thing in conservation. After fire, water’s a book’s worst enemy. You need to get rid of it as quickly as possible. But drying out a book – a valuable one – is a bugger of a job. If you’ve got a whole library on your hands you can’t deal with the books individually. No time. So you flash-freeze them and keep them in a cold store until you’re ready to thaw them out and conserve them properly. That’s what this outfit in Belgium does.’

  ‘How long does it take to defrost?’

  ‘A few hours. They have all the kit there on site.’ Atheldene guided the car past a line of trucks. ‘Then we’ll see what we find. Maybe your mysterious playing card?’ He jammed on the brakes as a small Peugeot veered in front of them, then swung out to overtake. ‘Unless, of course, you’ve already found it?’

  Nick had expected the question, had debated at length with Emily what they’d do. He reached into the bag in the footwell and pulled the card out of its stiff-backed envelope. Atheldene’s eyes flicked towards it.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Gillian left it for me.’ Nick knew it sounded defensive. He glanced down at the card, then across at the badge on the steering wheel, a snarling jaguar’s head. Everywhere he looked he saw open jaws and sharp teeth.

  ‘I don’t suppose she left any clue where she’d disappeared to?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Pity.’ Atheldene fixed his gaze back on the road. The speedometer needle edged slightly higher.

  ‘Nick said you mentioned the Bedford Hours on the phone,’ said Emily from the back. ‘What’s the connection?’

  ‘As I’m sure you know, Emily, a book of hours is a prayer book that offered lay people a series of prayers to use through the different hours of the day. It’s based on the idea of the monastic schedule. The Bedford Hours is one of these books, commissioned for the marriage in 1423 of the Duke of Bedford. The Bedford Hours is an enormously elaborate and richly decorated book produced in Paris. We don’t know the name of the artist who commissioned it, so we call him the Master of the Bedford Hours.’

  ‘Like the Master of the Playing Cards,’ said Nick. ‘Don’t any of these guys have names?’

  ‘Almost none,’ said Atheldene. ‘Not until the end of the fifteenth century. Until then, the medieval ethos of anonymity prevails. Art wasn’t seen as a way to show off your own genius, but God’s. All inspiration came from God, so the thinking went, and the artist or craftsman was merely a channel. It was only with the Renaissance that art becomes egocentric again. You can draw a straight line from da Vinci right through to Picasso, the ghastly Mr Hirst and all the rest of that gang.’

  ‘It’s an attractive way of thinking,’ said Emily.

  ‘But not terribly helpful when it comes to determining the origins of a piece. All we can do is try to identify work on stylistic grounds. Which is where the Bedford Master comes in. So far as we can tell, he must have kept a studio in Paris and employed a number of journeymen and assistants to execute the work. Various people have studied the books attributed to the workshop; what they noticed is that several of the motifs from your playing cards also occur in these books. Birds and animals that look very similar, sometimes absolutely identical, to the ones on the cards. I suspect the point Gillian was trying to make, ever so obliquely, is that the pictures in the bestiary she found are closely related to the images on the cards.’

  Nick digested that. ‘So you think the playing card Master might be the same as the Bedford Master?’

  ‘Probably not.’ Atheldene reminded Nick of one of the professors he’d had at college, a pompous man who’d loved nothing more than displaying his learning like a peacock – especially when it came to pretty female undergraduates. Had Gillian been impressed by it?

  ‘He could have worked in the studio as an apprentice. He might just have seen the pictures and decided to copy them. Or there might have been a common model book.’

  ‘A model book?’

  Atheldene didn’t let Nick’s question divert him. ‘Europe in the fifteenth century is really in the twilight of the medieval and the pre-dawn of the modern age. Everything’s changing – and nowhere more so than in the diffusion of ideas. People are waking up to the fact that they need to communicate far more widely, but they don’t have the tools. Model books are one response to this. You make up a book with examples of a whole set of different pictures, and then anyone who gets hold of the book can create a more-or-less exact copy of the picture. Some of them come with step-by-step instructions of exactly how to draw the picture and colour it in. Painting by numbers. The Master of the Playing Cards takes this to its logical conclusion by inventing copper-engraved printing: mass production.’ He blew air through his nose. ‘And a few years later, of course, Gutenberg blows the whole thing open with the printing press.’

  The car roared on up the empty highway.

  Heloise Duvalier was a smoker. That made it easier. ‘Don’t call from the office,’ they’d warned her. ‘Use the payphone down the street.’ They’d even given her a phonecard so she wouldn’t need change.

  ‘If Monsieur Atheldene goes on a trip to Brussels, you must tell us at once,’ the priest had said. And two days later, Atheldene had come striding out of his office, pulling on his overcoat and shouting to his secretary that he was off to the warehouse in Brussels. Heloise had been polishing the glass partition on the next-door office at the time – she’d been giving it a lot of attention that week.

  How did the priest know Atheldene would go to Brussels?

  He was a priest: he knew the mysteries of the world. He had promised her five hundred euros if she told him. It was more than she made in a month cleaning the Stevens Mathison offices, where men would pay that much for a bottle of wine over lunch.

  She decided to wait fifteen minutes, just to be safe. After ten she decided it was enough. Delay might cost her. She had six sisters in Abidjan who relied on the money she sent back: with five hundred euros, she might even have a little left to spend on herself. She mimed a cigarette to her supervisor, who tapped his watch and held up three fingers. Three minutes. He was a real con about time. The security guard buzzed her out of the building.

  A girl in a short skirt and a pink coat with fake-fur trim was using the phone. Heloise waited in the cold, shivering, listening to the little princess complain to whoever was listening. Probably a boyfriend. One minute ticked by, then two. She tapped the side of the phone booth and got a dismissive glare. She’d have to go soon: she couldn’t afford to lose the job. Not even for five hundred euros.

  The girl hung up. Heloise pushed in past her even before she’d left the booth. She picked up the phone and dialled the number she’d been given. The priest answered on the first ring.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘He is en route.’

  XL

  Strassburg

  What had I done?

  I stumbled out of the house in a daze. Across the street, two porters used staves to manhandle a hogshead of wine into an open cellar. I wanted to throw myself in after it and break my neck, or drown head first in th
e barrel. To my right, the river flowed swiftly past the wharf at the end of the alley. That would serve. It would sweep me down to the Rhine; past Mainz, where my brother or my sister might look up from their work and notice a small piece of flotsam in the stream; then on out into the great ocean.

  Gold was my undoing. From the moment my child’s fist closed around the stolen coin, dreams of gold and perfection had possessed me as surely as the demon. They were inseparable. Gold was perfect. Perfection was expensive. I, with all my imperfections, had sold myself for two hundred gulden.

  Madness held me like a fever. I wandered the streets of Strassburg not knowing where I went, not caring. Night fell; a filthy rage blossomed in my heart. The worm who possessed me swelled into a monstrous dragon; he took flight and scorched fire in my soul. For years I had held that desire in check; now I let it own me. I wanted flesh, to claw and scratch, to bite and squeeze. To dominate.

  I knew there were places where such things could be had, as there are in every city. Ever since I came to Strassburg I had avoided them. Now I charged in. It was near the cathedral – for vice envies virtue and is never far away. Down a lane where tawdry women shouted offers of pleasures I did not want; along a backstreet where the propositions grew more outlandish; into an alley that was little more than an open sewer between the backs of houses.

  I was surprised by how crowded it was. I had nursed the demon so close to me so long I thought it only existed in me. Here there was a whole congregation. Men dressed as women with red paint smeared on their stubbled cheeks; muscle-bound men with arms covered in scars; gaunt men with sharp faces who stared at me hungrily; scrawny boys in tunics that barely covered the soft skin of their thighs.

  I suppose I might have felt a sense of kinship with them but I did not. I resented them: simply by their existence they diminished me. Jealousy fanned my anger and banished my doubts. I strode deeper into the lane. Hands pawed at me and tugged the sleeve of my borrowed coat; men whistled and shouted proposals, prices. I ignored them.

  Near the end of the alley, where the shadows were deepest and the stench worst, I found what I wanted: a slight, olive-skinned man with a mop of black curls. He was not as beautiful as Kaspar – he had a slight hunch, and his face was twisted like old vines from years of sin – but he was like enough. He named a price and I paid it without argument. Ennelin’s dowry.

  He turned away and beckoned me to follow. The fire in my soul was cooling. I did not know what to do; I was frightened. But I was determined to carry it through – if only to spite Drach, Ennelin, the world that had condemned me to misery and despair.

  There was a kink in the wall, little wider than shoulder width. It was all the privacy we would get. My companion thrust me into it and spun me around; he squatted in front of me and parted the folds of my coat. I tried to relax, to enjoy it. I closed my eyes. All I could hear was the trickle of sewage down the alley.

  And footsteps. I opened my eyes again. I thought that corner of the alley must be the blackest place on earth. Yet, impossibly, the darkness had deepened. A shadow blocked the entrance to our little niche. He pulled the prostitute off me and sent him sprawling into the gutter.

  ‘Johann?’

  Drach’s voice.

  ‘Are you mad? If the watchmen catch you here they will burn you alive.’

  Over his shoulder I watched the prostitute pick himself out of the gutter. Effluent dripped from him; in his hand I saw the dim grey of steel.

  ‘Kaspar,’ I gasped.

  Drach turned. He moved so fast I could not see what he did, but next instant the prostitute was rolling down the alley howling with pain. Drach picked up the fallen knife and hurled it after him, towards the hole where the sewage dropped into the canal. He looked at me.

  ‘You’re shivering.’

  I collapsed forward. He caught me in his arms.

  There was no thought of taking me back to St Argobast. I was limp as a blade of grass. Drach half-carried, half-dragged me through the empty streets to his lodgings. Near St Peter’s church two watchmen challenged us. Nightmare visions of flame seized my eyes, but Drach mimed drinking and told them I had fallen into a cellar. They let us go.

  Drach’s home was the attic of a house owned by Andreas Dritzehn. I had been angry when I first found out; I had wondered if Drach’s insistence that I should rent the cellar had somehow been a conspiracy with his landlord. Now I was grateful I did not have to go a step further.

  He manhandled me up the stairs and laid me down on his straw mattress. Apart from a chest of tools, it was his only furniture. He sat on the floor beside me and stroked my brow.

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘Ennelin,’ I mumbled. ‘I agreed to marry her.’

  He unbuttoned my coat and slid it off me. ‘It was borrowed,’ I croaked. ‘I know.’ He held it up and examined it. ‘It could have been much worse. You were only ankle deep in shit.’

  ‘Thanks to you.’

  He came around behind me and pulled my shirt over my head. Sweat drenched it.

  ‘Go to sleep.’

  He pulled a blanket over me. I closed my eyes and let my body sink into the straw.

  ‘I love you,’ I whispered. But I could not tell if he had heard me, and I did not dare open my eyes to look.

  I woke to the feel of something hard against my forehead. For a golden moment I imagined it was Drach’s face pressed against mine, our bodies together. I reached an arm forward and felt nothing but straw. Reluctantly, I let the illusion go and opened my eyes.

  A package lay on the mattress beside me, wrapped in an old shirt. I propped myself on my elbow and looked around. Sunlight streamed through the gable windows, but Drach was nowhere to be seen.

  I pulled apart the wrapping. It came away easily; inside lay a small bundle of paper, the unclothed body of a book. The pages had been gathered and sewn together, but not yet closed in covers. I opened the first leaf.

  ‘Leo fortissimus bestiarum ad nullius pavebit occursum…’ I read. The lion is the bravest of all beasts and fears nothing.

  It was a bestiary – I had copied one in Paris. This was far grander: a sumptuous edition written in a fine hand on vellum. At the head of the first line stood a magnificently illuminated capital L, spreading into a thicket of branches and leaves, beneath whose foliage a lion sprang after a defenceless ox. The lion resembled one of the animals from the cards; the ox was unfamiliar, but clearly from the same menagerie.

  I turned through the pages, ignoring the text and savouring the illuminations. I had only ever seen Kaspar’s pictures in black and white, or painted on signs where rain and sun had bleached their vitality. In the pages of this book they lived in a perfect state of nature. Lush foliage overflowed the margins like another Eden. Birds with brilliant plumage sang from the branches or swooped between columns of text. Fawns peered shyly from behind gilded initials. A hopeful bear clambered up the stem of a P to reach the honey cupped in its curve, while another squatted at the base and dug for grubs. The gold leaf shone like a new dawn; the colours as deep and pure as the ocean. It was the most beautiful object I had ever beheld.

  I reached the last page with a pang of regret and read the colophon: ‘Written by the hand of Libellus, and illuminated by Master Francis.’

  Drach’s head and shoulders popped up through the hole in the floor that led downstairs. He smiled to see the awe on my face.

  ‘Master Francis, I presume.’

  Balanced on the ladder, he executed a small bow. ‘How did you come to have this? Surely it belongs in a king’s library.’

  Kaspar bounded up the ladder and sat down on the end of the mattress. ‘A duke’s library. The plague took him before he could pay for his commission. His widow would not honour the contract so I kept it. Now it is for you.’

  ‘I cannot-’

  He leaned towards me. ‘I want you to have it.’

  I hugged the book to my chest. In that moment, I would have done anything for him. But his next words we
re like a knife against my throat.

  ‘Consider it your first wedding present.’

  XLI

  Near Brussels

  When Atheldene said Brussels, Nick had imagined cobbled streets, gabled roofs and baroque houses. Instead, he seemed to have brought them to Belgium’s version of New Jersey. The Jaguar left the highway and entered an asphalt maze of corrugated siding, chain-link fences and harsh floodlights. The only traffic they passed was trucks.

  They turned off the road and stopped at a barrier next to a hut. Freezing air whipped inside the car as Atheldene lowered the window to show a guard his pass. Nick heard Emily stir on the back seat. She’d been asleep since the border.

  He checked his watch: 1 a.m. ‘Will they let us in?’

  ‘They have clients all over the world,’ said Atheldene. ‘They’re on call twenty-four hours a day.’

  Sure enough, the guard handed back the card and the barrier swung up. Atheldene nosed the car through and stopped in front of an anonymous grey warehouse. He killed the engine. After three hours on the highway, the sudden silence was a relief.

  They got out of the car. Nick winced as the cold hit him full blast and wondered if it would affect the playing card. He didn’t dare leave it in Atheldene’s car.

  ‘I guess they don’t need a warehouse to keep the books frozen,’ said Nick. Nobody answered. They followed Atheldene up a short flight of concrete steps, their breath misting in the air, and through a door he opened with a keypad. It brought them into a bare room of unpainted breeze blocks. A guard in a brown uniform lounged behind a window in the wall reading a dirty magazine. It didn’t look like much protection – until you saw how thick the glass was. When he buzzed the next door open, Nick saw it was four inches of steel.

  ‘Are they expecting trouble?’ he asked, as they stepped into an elevator.

  ‘The books and manuscripts inside this place are worth millions,’ Atheldene answered crisply. ‘A little paranoia is very much in order.’