The Book of Secrets

by Tom Harper

  ‘Hard point,’ said Emily. ‘You press the words into the parchment with a blunt nib, a pen with no ink. It only shows up if you look at it in the right light, and know where to look. It’s simple but very effective. Did you ever read a mystery story where the detective looks on a pad of paper for the impression of what was written on the sheet above?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘This is the same thing, only deliberate. Medieval scribes often used hard point to rule their lines. Some of them adapted the technique to write hidden messages.’

  ‘So what does it say?’

  Emily read the words slowly, tracing them out with the light. Jerome watched her with a look somewhere between fury and grudging respect.

  ‘“Occultum in sermonibus regum Israel.” ’ She looked up. ‘It means, “Which is hidden in the sayings of the kings of Israel.”’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘It’s a continuation of the previous line. He – Master Francis, the illuminator – also made another book of beasts using this new form of writing, which is hidden in the sayings of the kings of Israel.’

  Nick’s head throbbed. ‘Great. You know, I’m surprised they bothered to hide it. It makes absolutely no sense. There’s no way Gillian could have found it.’

  ‘I think she did.’ In her tiredness, Emily spoke so quietly that Nick struggled to hear her. She said it again. ‘I think she found it. The Sayings of the Kings of Israel is a lost book of the Bible.’

  She watched their reactions. Nick confused; Brother Jerome with his strange, ill-concealed irritation. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  Jerome played with the hem of his dressing gown and said nothing.

  ‘I saw it in that book in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Lost Books of the Bible.’ She pointed to the bestiary splayed open on the desk. ‘Gillian got it out the day after she found this. I’d be pretty sure she saw the inscription. But where that gets us… ’

  ‘What do you mean by a lost book of the Bible?’ said Nick. ‘Do you mean a lost book as in a missing copy, or as in a piece of text like the Gospel according to Mary Magdalen or whatever?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Emily slumped back against the wall. ‘I didn’t read that carefully. I suppose it’s more likely to be a book as in text, like the Book of Revelation or the Book of Job. Though how that’s supposed to get us closer to Gillian…’

  ‘Gillian must have been searching for something when she left Paris,’ said Nick. ‘It wasn’t the card, and it wasn’t this book – she had both of those already. There must have been something else.’

  Emily turned back to the book on the table and stared at the illuminations. ‘This book alone is priceless. A bestiary that we can attribute with near certainty to the Master of the Playing Cards – practically signed by him. Just discovering it would have made Gillian’s professional reputation for life. What would make her abandon this to go chasing after something else?’

  They wrapped the book in newspaper, made their excuses and left. For all his hostility, Jerome seemed reluctant to see them go. He followed them to the car, standing on the pavement in his bathrobe until they were out of sight. Nick wished they hadn’t spoken so freely in front of him. Only when they’d left him well behind did he voice the obvious question.

  ‘Where now?’

  ‘Strasbourg,’ said Emily confidently.

  They were still driving through the suburbs: grey, foursquare houses built in four-square grids. The heating was losing its battle against the cold air blowing through the glassless window, but even that was barely keeping Nick awake any more. He felt numb, his eyes like concrete.

  ‘Because that’s where the bestiary came from?’

  ‘And therefore where Gillian’s most likely to have gone.’

  ‘You don’t know that. She was probably way ahead of us. If she figured out what the Sayings of the Kings of Israel meant, she could have gone anywhere.’

  ‘True. But the only place we know she could have gone is Strasbourg. And before that, I suggest we find alternative transportation. Driving around in a car we’ve stolen from a gang of murderous thugs seems a sure way of guaranteeing a short trip.’

  ‘We can’t just walk into Avis,’ said Nick sourly. ‘The police know all about me already – and now they’ve got that bloodbath in the warehouse to pin on us as well. Atheldene’s probably told them everything. Pretty soon, we’re going to be the hottest property in Europe. We-’

  ‘For God’s sake look out!’

  Emily grabbed Nick’s arm. His eyes jerked open – he hadn’t even felt them close. Adrenalin ripped through him as he saw he’d drifted halfway across the street – straight into the path of an oncoming Volkswagen. Nick jerked the wheel and tried to hit the brakes. Instead, he slammed his foot on the accelerator. The big car leaped forward and right, just missing the swerving Volkswagen. Nick turned the wheel back. The car straightened abruptly – but kept going round as the tyres lost all grip on the frozen road. Emily screamed. Nick spun the wheel and jammed on the brakes; the car shuddered as the ABS kicked in but didn’t stop.

  It was all over in an instant. The car spun across the road, round 180 degrees, and banged into the kerb. They both sat there in stunned silence. From an adjacent garden, a little girl in a woollen hat looked over the fence in astonishment.

  ‘I think we’ll take the train,’ said Emily.

  XLVIII

  Strassburg

  Andreas Dritzehn wanted me to like him. He had spread his table with venison, capons, jellies and sweetmeats. He flattered my new coat, which was second hand, and laughed if he even suspected a joke. He pressed me with wine, which he served himself, though there were many servants on hand to pour. I was quite willing to oblige him. He wanted to give me a great deal of money.

  I made him wait. I refilled my plate and my glass often. I discoursed energetically on the weather, the harvest, progress on the cathedral, Paris. I was a delightful guest. Kaspar, across the table, said little. His spirits burned like a candle: they could be snuffed out in an instant. If my attention was deflected even a degree away from him, he became sullen and withdrawn.

  At last the plates were cleared, the servants dismissed, the women dispatched to their chambers. Dritzehn threw another log on the fire and leaned closer.

  ‘Tell my about your mirrors.’

  *

  Like many ideas, it had been born of necessity. In this case, necessity took the guise of two men who one afternoon visited my house in St Argobast. Working in the forge, I did not see them arrive, or notice anything until one announced himself by rapping his cudgel on my shoulder. It was not a friendly tap, but a heavy blow that left my arm numb. I dropped the ladle with a howl. Boiling metal slopped into the fire, setting off a noxious steam that stung my eyes. I almost tipped the entire crucible over my legs. Weeping and choking, I turned around to meet my visitors.

  One was the man who had hit me. If ever a man’s face bespoke his character this was it. His right eye, left earlobe and left arm were missing – though to judge by the knock he had given me, enough strength remained in his right arm for two. His nose had been broken so many times it looked like a sack of rocks; his lips, bared in a sneer, looked permanently bruised.

  The other man stepped out from his considerable shadow. It was Stoltz, the moneylender.

  ‘We were supposed to meet yesterday to discuss your debts. You did not come.’

  ‘I forgot.’

  The one-armed man made another movement. Still blinking back tears from the pain and fumes, I did not see it clearly. All I felt was another explosion of agony, this time in my knee. I dropped to the floor.

  Stoltz stood over me. ‘You would be astonished, in my line of work, how forgetful men become. It is as if lending a man gold instantly addles his wits. Fortunately, my memory does not suffer this defect.’

  He reached into the bag on his belt and pulled out a small notebook. I remembered the clerk in the Mainz mint with his enormous ledger, the all-kno
wing book from which my theft could not be hidden. I trembled.

  ‘Three months ago I loaned you fifty gulden.’

  This was worth another blow, this time to my arm. I rolled over on my side. Stoltz stood over me.

  ‘Some men find money a strange abstraction. It flows from man to man and from country to country and knows no boundaries. In a single day it can go from the hands of a king to the hands of a beggar and back again. But in truth, money is very simple. It is a tool, just as a pair of bellows or a plough are tools. And within that tool lies an inherent utility. This we call value.’

  A kick in the ribs. I covered my face with my hands. Nothing destroys a man’s credit so quickly as a mask of bruises on his face.

  ‘If I lend you a plough, its value is that it can improve your field to make it more fruitful. For that, you pay me. Likewise if I lend you fifty gulden, you pay me for the use of it. For the use of this money, you were to pay me five shillings a month.’

  Two swats from the cudgel contorted my back in agony.

  ‘You have already failed to deliver the last month’s payment. Now I hear that the surety you gave me for the loan – the dowry of the girl Ennelin – turns out to be worthless. You have broken off your engagement to her.’

  ‘Her mother tricked me,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Then more fool you. I will not be left with the bill. By breaking the engagement you have forfeited your collateral. Under the terms of our agreement, I am entitled to claim back the entire loan immediately.’

  ‘I cannot pay.’ The money had barely touched my hands as it passed through them – some to Dunne and various suppliers, but most to pay off other loans that had fallen due.

  ‘Then I shall ruin you.’ Stoltz nodded to his henchman, who swung the cudgel underarm against the sole of my foot. I screamed. ‘When Karl has finished with you I will set the courts on you.’

  ‘Please. Please God.’ I scrabbled to get away from the brute. He let me, like a bear handler letting out the leash. I could not go far.

  Desperation loosened my tongue. ‘I have invested it in a great labour. One that, God willing, will make me rich. If you ruin me now you will get nothing, pennies for gulden. If you wait I can repay you everything.’

  Stoltz said nothing – but there was no movement from Karl. I took this as an invitation to continue.

  ‘I am devising a new art, one that will make me rich.

  ‘What is it?

  ‘You spoke of ploughs and fields. Imagine this is a plough which could make fields give up ten times as much wheat.’

  ‘Explain.’ Stoltz had no time for riddles. Karl stepped closer and stroked my ribs with the tip of his cudgel.

  But I could not say it. Even then – bleeding, bruised and with the promise of worse to come – I could not. It was my secret, incomplete though it was. If every man knew it, there would be no advantage. I had to cling on.

  I stared up at the thin, bloodless face looming over me. A wink of light behind him caught my eye: a pilgrim’s mirror that Aeneas had given me by the Rhine. I gazed at it, praying for salvation.

  Stoltz swept a glass jar off the table. It shattered on the floor, jolting me back to him. ‘Pay attention.’

  He glared down. Karl tapped the club against the side of his leg and licked his puffy lips. And that was when it flashed into my mind.

  ‘The mirrors,’ I croaked.

  ‘What?’

  I pointed. He stepped back, fearing a trick, and eyed the mirror on the wall. A ring of light played over his face where the mirror reflected it onto him.

  ‘That will not save you.

  ‘Not in the way you think. But perhaps…’ I stood. Karl lifted the club to knock me down again, but Stoltz raised a hand to still him. I pulled the mirror off its nail and examined it. My mind raced.

  ‘This has been cast from an alloy of lead and tin. I have worked with this alloy: it shrinks as it cools and tightens around the mould.’ I ran my finger around the interlocking circles. ‘For a design so intricate, the only way to free it is to shatter the mould. Every mirror requires a new mould to be carved. It is slow and expensive.’

  I did not know absolutely that this was true, but just as some physicians can diagnose a man’s sickness by looking at his face, I could read it in the shape and flow of the metal.

  I pointed to the figures sculpted on the medallions inside the rings. ‘You see how flat and featureless these faces are? You cannot achieve the quality of detail from casting in this way. I can make them better than that – and cheaper.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘A new alloy. One that does not shrink as it cools. I can use the moulds again and again, and each time produce a truer copy than this.’

  I pressed the mirror into his hand. He took it, scraping a fingernail over the rough carvings.

  ‘How many would you make?’

  ‘A thousand. At twelve shillings each, that would be five hundred gulden. I could repay your loan with double the interest.’

  ‘Lending money at interest is a venal sin,’ Stoltz admonished me. Karl glanced at him to see if this merited another blow. Thankfully, it did not. ‘You pay me for the use of the money.’

  ‘Then I would pay you double. For it would be twice as useful.’ I did not know where this extravagance sprang from, or how I would ever honour it; I did not care. My mind glowed hot with the sudden promise of this new idea. All I wanted was to begin it.

  Andreas Dritzehn laid the mirror I had given him on the table. ‘And these are to be sold to pilgrims in Aachen?’

  ‘Do you know the Aachen relics?’

  ‘I have heard of them.’

  ‘They are the holiest relics in the empire. The blue dress of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The bands that swaddled Christ in the manger, and the cloth that covered his modesty on the cross. Also a piece of fabric which is said to have wrapped the head of John the Baptist after Herod cut it off.’

  ‘A complete wardrobe,’ said Kaspar.

  ‘Once every seven years, they are taken out of their chests and displayed. So great is the number of pilgrims that the whole city can barely contain them. The priests mount a scaffold between the cathedral towers: every street, every square, every rooftop and window becomes an observatory.’

  Andreas frowned. ‘It must be hard to see anything.’

  ‘Exactly.’ I leaned forward, brimming with excitement. ‘The pilgrims carry mirrors – like this – to capture the light of heaven which radiates from the relics.’

  ‘Is it visible?’

  ‘Only to God,’ said Kaspar piously.

  ‘But the holy mirrors capture it. The pilgrims wrap the mirrors in cloths and take them home. Then, when they are in need, they can unveil the mirrors and let the holy light cure their afflictions.’

  ‘How many do you intend to make?’

  The idea had settled since I blurted out the first number that entered my head to Stoltz. I had done some research, ascertained the facts and established a more realistic basis for my estimate.

  ‘Thirty-two thousand.’

  Dritzehn almost dropped the mirror on the floor.

  ‘There must be over a hundred thousand pilgrims in Aachen when the relics are shown. All of them need mirrors, or the pilgrimage is in vain. Ours will be better quality than our rivals’, and cheaper. As I said, this happens only every seven years. The next pilgrimage will take place in some twenty months. Time enough for our work.’

  ‘But what of the Aachen goldsmiths? Surely their guild will not allow you to flood their market with your wares, at their expense?’

  ‘The Aachen goldsmiths forfeited their rights long ago. They cannot make enough of the mirrors to meet the demand. Some years ago there were riots: pilgrims who could not obtain mirrors fought in the streets with those who had. Several died. Since then, the privileges of the Aachen guilds have been suspended for six months each year that the relics are shown.’

  Dritzehn clasped the mirror to his chest and murmured something indistinct. I
waited for him to repeat it.

  ‘How can I be part of this enterprise?’

  ‘The housing and the mirrors will be manufactured separately. We need someone to polish the mirrors.’

  ‘I can do that.’ He furrowed his face. ‘But not as a servant. If I am to be part of this, it must be for a share of the profits.’

  ‘The profits will be very great,’ I agreed, almost as if it were cause for concern. ‘For that reason, this endeavour must be a close secret. If knowledge of our art spreads, there will be no advantage.’

  ‘I can keep the secret.’

  I glanced at Drach, who played his part and looked doubtful.

  ‘I am sure of it,’ I said. ‘But we must keep the circle small – no more than half a dozen men. Half the profits will accrue to me and Kaspar, as the inventors of this art. It follows that any man who invests must buy at least a quarter share of the remainder.’

  ‘How much is that?’

  ‘Eighty gulden.’

  Dritzehn was a merchant: he could do his sums. ‘Thirty-two thousand mirrors – you will sell for how much?’

  ‘Half a gulden.’

  ‘Sixteen thousand gulden. Half to you, eight thousand. A quarter of the remainder to me: two thousand.’

  He whispered the number like a man who has beheld God. I knew how he felt. Even now, the magnitude of the project awed me.

  ‘Can this be true?

  ‘We have the art and – you behold – the ambition. All we want is capital.’

  ‘Nothing can go wrong,’ Drach assured him.

  ‘Is this what you have been concocting in my basement all these months?’

  ‘A part of it.’ I changed the subject. ‘But you must decide quickly. There are many others who would happily take your place.’

  Dritzehn wiped his brow and stared into the fire. Kaspar looked as though he was about to say something, but I tapped him under the table to stay quiet.

  ‘I will take the share you offer.’

  ‘It cannot be yours until we have the money,’ Kaspar warned.

  ‘You can have fifty gulden tonight. The rest I will fetch tomorrow.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You will sign a contract that this is to be used only for the good of the enterprise?’