The Book of Secrets

by Tom Harper

  ‘Of course. But I must have absolute control.’

  Dritzehn went to a chest by the wall. He fetched paper, a writing box and a heavy bag that clinked when he set it on the table. I tried not to stare.

  He uncorked the bottle of ink and dipped in the pen. In the firelight, the ink dripped off the nib like drops of gold.

  The fire had burned low and the servants were asleep. Dritzehn ushered us downstairs to the door himself.

  ‘Be careful on your way home,’ he warned me. ‘It is not safe carrying bags of gold through the streets.’

  ‘Nothing will happen to it.’

  We crossed the road and walked around the corner. At that hour the streets were almost empty – but not quite. Two men stood in the shadows under a baker’s sign. They stepped out to block our path as we approached. One was tall and stocky and leaned on a thick staff; the other short and thin.

  ‘Did he agree?’ Stoltz asked.

  I handed over the bag Dritzehn had given me. Stoltz hefted it in his hands, then passed it to Karl. The one-armed man struggled to hold it and the staff at the same time.

  ‘It’s all there,’ I said.

  ‘If it isn’t, you will soon know.’

  The two men disappeared down an alley. We watched them until they were out of sight.

  ‘Is that for the good of the enterprise?’ Drach asked.

  My conscience was clear. ‘If it keeps me from having my legs broken, it is certainly for the good of the enterprise.’

  Stoltz had been wrong about money. It was not like a plough or a pair of bellows, to be hired out and returned. It was water driving the mill of endeavour. It did not matter where it came from or where it went. So long as it kept flowing.

  XLIX

  France

  They abandoned the car in a car park. Nick left the windows open and the keys on the front seat. Hopefully someone would steal it before the authorities found it. Then they went to the rail station.

  Nick slept most of the way to Strasbourg, clutching his hand across his chest where he had the book tucked under his coat. When he woke, he saw the day had got darker. Flakes of snow whirled past the windows, while the sky promised more to come. On the opposite seat he saw Emily watching him.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Almost noon.’

  A hunger pang ripped through his stomach. ‘I’m starving.’

  Emily reached in her purse and pulled out a paper bag. ‘I got you a croissant.’

  Nick ripped off the end and stuffed it in his mouth. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in a week. ‘You’re a godsend. I don’t suppose you’ve got a cup of coffee in there as well?’

  Emily slid a paper cup across the table between them, together with a pile of sweeteners and creams. He emptied three of each into the cup and swirled it with a plastic spoon while he devoured the rest of the croissant.

  ‘Did you sleep at all?’

  ‘A little. I couldn’t stop thinking.’ She stared out the window. ‘Gillian must have known something we don’t.’

  Nick waited for her to go on.

  ‘She found the bestiary, and the card inside it – either of which would be a major discovery. But she didn’t tell anyone, not even Atheldene.’

  ‘So he says,’ Nick interrupted.

  She acknowledged the point. ‘Then she locked the card in a bank vault and the book in the deep freeze, and disappeared. I assume to look for the “other” bestiary. Why?’

  Nick sipped his coffee and let Emily continue.

  ‘She knew something. Something that made the other book even more valuable than the one she had.’

  ‘What?’

  Emily screwed up her face. ‘I don’t know. But she must have found it quickly. She was only in Paris for a day after she saw the book.’

  ‘The day she went out to see Vandevelde.’ Nick thought back to the physicist, his evasions, his eagerness to prove he had nothing to hide. He wanted to pull out the card again, to see what Gillian might have seen on it. In the train carriage, even half empty, he didn’t dare.

  ‘Whatever it is, someone’s excited about it,’ he said. ‘It’s unreal. The speed they turned up at the book warehouse – and before that at the library. But if they know all about the book, why are they chasing after us to find it?’

  Emily looked out the window, where the snow flurries were gathering force. ‘Maybe they don’t want to find it at all. Maybe they want to make sure it stays hidden.’

  Near Liège, Belgium

  Brother Jerome pored over the desk and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Seeing Emily again had left him with a splitting headache. He reached for the plastic jar that was never far from his desk and popped two pills. As a younger man he’d prided himself on keeping his body pure. A temple, a fortress of God. Now the temple lay in ruins: flooded with caffeine to keep him alert, sedatives so he could sleep, codeine for the headaches and some pills his doctor had given him for his heart. And some stronger drugs, powders that couldn’t be prescribed, for the memories.

  He looked over the notes he’d written.

  bestiary

  nova forma scribendi

  Armand, Comte de Lorraine (Strasbourg??)

  A new form of writing. Emily had always had a brilliant mind, a sort of academic cunning that knew when to look deeper. But there were some things she didn’t know. That was what she’d recognised in him: a depth of experience without equal. It had been an intoxicating mix.

  Why did you come here? Jerome asked for the hundredth time. He was pleased he had managed to stay so outwardly calm – a lifetime of religious self-discipline still had some hold – but it had been an immense effort. The feelings she still aroused, anger and longing.

  Forget her. He tried to focus his thoughts on the book again. Another bestiary in a new form of writing, illustrated by the Master of the Playing Cards. It was incredible. The discredited theories and baseless speculations would turn out to be correct. And maybe other, deeper secrets that prudent men only whispered.

  A tentative knock sounded from the front of the house; his heart leaped. It was shameful, but he didn’t care. She’d come back. He jumped to his feet and ran to the door, gathering the dressing gown around his thin waist. Without even bothering with the peephole, he unlatched the door and pulled it open.

  Two men stood on the doorstep. Both wore heavy black coats with the hoods raised against the cold. They pushed inside before he could react. Jerome stumbled back and fell against the wall. The shorter of the two men unzipped his jacket and rested his hand inside the lapel; the other man pulled back his hood to reveal a craggy face with a patrician crest of white hair, and coal-black eyes that seemed to bore into Jerome’s soul.

  Jerome stared. ‘You.’

  He had only met him once, thirty years ago: a Spanish priest from an obscure office of the Vatican, visiting a promising young researcher who had just begun to make a name for himself. Even then, menace surrounded him. He had spent half an hour asking about Jerome’s work – always stiffly formal, but lethal, poised like a fencer probing his opponent’s guard. At the end he had said, ‘There are many undiscovered books in this world. Some are treasures undeservedly lost; others vanished for a reason and should remain forgotten. If you ever find one of these latter books, you must tell me at once.’

  In the years afterwards, Jerome had occasionally seen photographs of the priest – at first only in Church bulletins, then in newspapers and finally even on television. In the whispered gossip of his order he heard rumours about the methods the priest had used in his rise to power, and believed them.

  And now he was standing in Jerome’s living room, beside a squat thug with a broken nose and a livid scar across his chin. A cardinal’s jewelled ring gleamed on his finger. He looked around the dishevelled room, at the half-empty coffee mugs clustered around the chair.

  ‘You have had visitors today?’

  ‘Only memories.’

  Behind Nevado, the thug pulled his arm out of his coat. A black
pistol had appeared in his hand. He squinted down the barrel as he pulled back the slide and snapped it home. The sound made Jerome wince.

  ‘Sometimes memories come to life.’ Nevado moved forward; Jerome cringed, pressing his bony shoulders against the wall. ‘You, Brother, have good reason to fear them.’

  Jerome looked into those pitiless eyes. He didn’t even try to hold their gaze. His spirit had been broken long ago. He couldn’t resist: they would find out everything.

  ‘She came here,’ said Nevado. ‘Emily Sutherland – your little Héloïse. Did she bring you a book?’

  ‘No one came here.’

  Jerome’s head snapped against the wall as Nevado struck him, a stinging blow. Blood dribbled from his lip where the cardinal’s ring had cut him.

  ‘Liar. She was here. Did she bring her new boyfriend to flaunt him? To taunt you? Did she offer you her body again if you would help them?’

  Jerome’s dressing gown sagged open. His naked body seemed to shrivel under Nevado’s glare. He imagined Nevado’s hands on Emily’s throat, that cold smile never wavering.

  There was only one way to protect her. Jerome launched himself forward, pushing off the wall as he lunged past Nevado for the pistol. He knew he wouldn’t make it. The gun came up and fired three times into Jerome’s chest. The first bullet went straight through his heart. He collapsed on the floor, his blood pumping into the carpet.

  ‘Idiot,’ hissed Nevado. ‘We needed him to talk.’ He gazed around the room. So many books, so much chaos. It would take hours to search the house. He had an audience in Rome in three hours: people would talk if he missed it. Gossip didn’t matter to him, but if anyone looked into where he’d been there might be trouble. He couldn’t risk being discovered here.

  But Nevado had built his career on seeing what other men could not. He stood very still in the centre of the room and slowly scanned it, dismantling it with his eyes. Ugo, the guard, waited behind him.

  He looked through an open door to the study beyond. He saw a desk whose jumble of books and papers had been pushed back to clear an open space. A magnifier, a UV penlight, a foam cushion and a pair of white gloves filled the space.

  In an instant, Nevado had crossed into the study and was examining the desk. Ugo came up behind him, surprised by how quickly the old man moved.

  It didn’t take Nevado long to find everything he needed. Crumbs of worn leather littered the cushion, and a book beside it was weighted open to a page showing the queen of wild men. The notepad beside it displayed the list Jerome had made just before he died.

  Nevado read over it.

  Armand, Comte de Lorraine (Strasbourg??)

  A shiver ran down his spine. They’d found it. His life’s work, now almost complete.

  He turned to Ugo.

  ‘You go to Strasbourg. I will meet you there as soon as I can. Find the American and his friend, and find the book they have. That is all that matters.’

  He reached in his coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

  ‘If you find the book, tell me at once if the first page is the same as this. You understand?’

  Ugo nodded. He took the paper – but Nevado had not let go. The black eyes locked on his.

  ‘If anything happens, if you are arrested or compromised, you destroy this paper immediately. No one can be allowed to see it. If you fail me in this, your wife, your children and all your family will suffer torments even you cannot imagine.’

  His gloved fingers released the paper. Ugo stumbled back a step.

  Almost to himself, Nevado murmured, ‘They have no idea what they have found.’

  Strasbourg, France

  Nick had never seen Strasbourg before. If he’d had an idea of how it would look, it probably involved great blocks of European concrete filled with parliaments, courts and commissions. Instead, he felt he’d stepped back a thousand years. The centre of the town was built on an island, the river a natural moat. Half-timbered houses hung over the narrow streets and alleys, funnelling the freezing wind so that it whipped snow in their faces. Many houses had fanciful creatures carved into their beams: grotesque faces sticking their tongues out at him in mockery.

  A tram whistled past. Nick stuck out an arm to hold back Emily, who had been about to step out into the street.

  ‘Thanks.’ She gave him a sheepish smile. ‘I should have slept more on the train. I’m a wreck.’

  Nick looked at her. She had piled her hair under her beret and turned up the collar on her coat. Her cheeks had flushed pink, and her eyes were bright in the cold. ‘You look pretty good for a wreck.’

  Again, Emily seemed to flinch from the compliment. This time the smile was purely defensive. ‘I’ll feel better once I’ve had a shower and a hot meal.’

  ‘After we’ve been to the archives.’

  They reached the cathedral, which dominated the heart of the city. Even with his mind on Gillian, Nick had to admire it. The facade was a vertiginous tangle of Gothic tracery: spires and pinnacles, a rose window, peaked arches and statues. A single tower stretched high above it, the pink sandstone spun to a lacy thinness that seemed incapable of supporting such a height.

  Emily followed Nick’s gaze up the tower. ‘It’s almost exactly the same age as the playing cards. If the Master ever came here, he’d have seen it just the same way as we do.’

  ‘I’m more interested in if Gillian saw it three weeks ago.’

  They carried on around the square, past rows of shops offering ice creams and souvenirs. Nick imagined that in summer tourists would swarm like wasps around their sticky offerings, but on a wintry day in January there was nobody. Half-empty wire racks of postcards sat forlornly on the pavement where they had been pushed out by hopeful shopkeepers, draped in polythene shrouds to keep off the snow. The plastic whipped and crackled in the wind, scaring the pigeons who scavenged on the cobbles.

  The archives were housed in a gloomy stone building at the back of the square. They entered by a gate in a stone wall, and walked up a gravel path to the main door, past beds of rose bushes that had long since ceased to flower. Only the thorns remained.

  Nick turned a heavy iron ring on the door and was admitted to the reception area. Nothing in the exterior had prepared him for it: instead of oak floors and ancient furniture, he found himself in a corridor with a linoleum floor and strip-lighting. A woman in a severe black skirt-suit sat behind a desk, underneath a poster in a plastic clip-frame.

  ‘Bonjour,’ said Nick. He turned to Emily. ‘Do you want to explain?’

  ‘I speak English,’ the archivist announced without looking up. She kept writing. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘We’re interested in the library of the Count of Lorraine,’ Emily said. ‘We were told that it became part of your archive.’

  A look of surprise broke the archivist’s scowl. She put down her pen. ‘You are the second person in a month to ask me about the Comte de Lorraine. Etrange.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Nick demanded. The archivist gave him a blank look. ‘Was it a woman, tall and thin with red hair?’ He pulled out his wallet and fumbled among the cards for the battered, passport-size photograph that he’d never got round to removing. Just in case. Next to him, he caught a sideways glance from Emily.

  ‘Was this her?’

  The archivist pursed her lips in confusion. ‘Oui. C’est elle. But blonde.’

  ‘Do you remember when she came? The date?’

  The archivist watched him through narrowed eyes. ‘Do you have her name?’

  ‘Gillian Lockhart.’

  She flipped through a ledger that lay open on the desk, a register of names and dates and scribbled signatures. There hadn’t been many. Two pages back, Nick spotted it. The familiar shape, the bold G and the brisk lines that followed. A very masculine signature, he’d always thought.

  He read the date in the left-hand column beside her name: ‘December 16 ’. She must have come here almost straight from Paris. Nick’s heart raced with more hope than he’d fe
lt in a week.

  ‘And did she find it? The book she was looking for?’

  A sigh. ‘I tell you the same as I have told her. The books of the Comte de Lorraine came here in the century of the eighteen hundreds. You know the history of Strasbourg?’

  Nick shook his head.

  ‘In 1871, we are attacked by the army of Prussia. They surround the city and they bombard it. Much of the city burns – including the great library. Some books survive – but of the Comte de Lorraine, there is not.’

  L

  Strassburg

  Often the fates drag us down like ocean waves and all our toils count for nothing. But sometimes, rarely, they rush us aloft on currents so quick even angels would struggle to keep pace. Such was my experience in those golden months in Strassburg. With Dritzehn’s money, I paid off my old loans and restored my credit. That allowed me to take out new loans, on better terms, to buy metals for our project – which in turn stood as collateral for another round of loans. Those bought more metals, which funded more loans – and so again, a virtuous circle. Of course there was little income in those months to repay the loans, but I had allowed for that. I had agreed that the interest would be added to the principal and none of it fall due until October of the following year, once the mirrors were sold in Aachen. Then, armed with the profits, I could turn my efforts back to the indulgences.

  Some nights I dreamed that I sat atop a giant tower of mirrors stacked halfway to the sky, swaying and bending like a rope end in the breeze. The height made me dizzy; I knew that a single gust of wind might topple the whole tower and shatter it in ruin. But it never did.

  Manufacturing the mirrors required two separate processes. The latticework frames had to be cast from the alloy, and the steel mirrors polished to a high reflective sheen. Eventually, the one would be attached to the other by means of clips, but we agreed this should be done as late as possible. When spring came we would hire a barge to carry our cargo down the Rhine to Aachen, and we did not want the mirrors scratched in transit. None of us knew how that might affect their holy properties. So we cast the frames at St Argobast, where I had the forge, and used Dritzehn’s house for the mirrors.