The Book of Secrets

by Tom Harper

  Late that September, the fates moved again. I had spent the day in Strassburg, arranging delivery of the next batch of metals and assuring my creditors that all was proceeding apace. The sun was edging towards the horizon, but I did not have to hurry. I made the journey between my house and the city so often in those months that I had acquired a horse, a docile mare I named Mercury. So I decided to visit Dritzehn.

  I was just approaching the house, picking my way around two dogs squabbling over a piece of offal that had fallen from a butcher’s cart, when I heard a loud voice behind me.

  ‘Johann?’

  It was not uncommon to be hailed on the streets. I had been in Strassburg almost four years and my name was well known, if only because I owed so many of its citizens money. What struck me was the surprise in the voice, the force of long-lost recognition. I had no long-lost friends I wanted to see again.

  I turned, dreading who might be there. At first I did not recognise him. The last time I saw him he had been young and fit, overflowing with energy. Now his face was lined, his hair greyed far more than mine. He walked with a cane, dragging one leg behind him. Yet whatever misfortunes had blighted his life, they had not dimmed the essential fire that animated him.

  ‘Aeneas?’

  He beamed. ‘It is you. I was certain of it. You look as if the years have treated you well. Unlike me.’

  I glanced at his withered leg.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I went to Scotland.’ He grimaced. ‘A barbarous place. I almost died. Then my ship sank and I had to walk home.’

  It must have been terrible, but he said it with such relish that I had to laugh. ‘You almost died the day I met you,’ I reminded him. ‘You should take more care of yourself. But why are you in Strassburg?’

  ‘I am supposed to be meeting some priests from Heidelberg. I think they want me to spy on the Pope.’ He winked. ‘But I am Italian; they will expect me to be late. The last time I saw you we agreed to meet in a tavern. I did not think it would take six years to get there, but I am happy I have found you at last. Will you share a drink with me?’

  I had been wrong. There were faces from my past I was happy to see.

  I led him to a wine cellar near the river, one I had never visited before. I wanted to avoid any place that Drach might see us together, Somehow, he and Aeneas belonged to separate parts of my life. I did not want them to meet.

  Aeneas raised his glass and toasted me. ‘You are an extra-ordinary man, Johann. You emerged from that river mud fully formed, and vanished like a ghost. Now here you are, by your attire apparently a prosperous merchant. “Varium et mutabile semper,” as the poet says. Always changeable and surprising.’

  He fixed me with his familiar gaze, eternally hopeful and inquisitive.

  ‘I’m sorry I abandoned you so suddenly,’ I said. ‘I had to go.’

  Aeneas waited for more. When he saw he would get none, he nodded. ‘I suppose even men who emerge from the mud have pasts. Perhaps some day you will tell me how you came to be there.’

  I changed the subject. ‘And Nicholas? How is he?’

  Aeneas looked sad. ‘We do not speak so much now. You know that the Pope has just dissolved the council of Basle?’

  I did not, though I knew that it had continued until recently. Every few months I heard some news of it in church or in the marketplace, and was astonished that the council I had briefly participated in six years earlier still ground on.

  ‘The council was finally beginning to achieve something. There is so much rotten with the Church, and it all starts at the top. The council had taken some sensible measures to reform the worst abuses. Naturally, this involved curtailing the Pope’s power. We – the council – needed to assert that the Pope is a servant of the community of the Church, not its master.’

  He spoke animatedly, rocking on his stool as he talked and catching my eye often to be sure I agreed. I tried to look noncommittal; that only stoked his enthusiasm.

  ‘The Pope, jealous of his position, dissolved the council in Basle and ordered it to reconvene in Italy. By having it closer to Rome, he hoped to bring it to heel. Many members obeyed: but those of us who see how the Church must be reformed refused. We stayed in Basle and voted to suspend the Pope, who has at last shown his true colours.’

  ‘Nicholas went to Italy,’ I guessed.

  ‘He has his reasons. I cannot agree with them. He wants the Church unified; I want it perfected.’ Aeneas stared at the table dejectedly. Then, suddenly, a smile flashed across his face. ‘More to the point, it is the men in Basle who pay my wages.’

  I do not know what ever happened to the priests from Heidelberg who hoped to meet him. We sat in the tavern some hours, emptying cups of wine and plates of food. As always, Aeneas talked most, but I was happy to listen. He was easy company. Conversation with Kaspar was a field of swords: no statement went unargued, no compromise or trivial hypocrisy unwithered by his sarcasm. I never knew when the idlest comment might be hurled back at me – or wound him so unexpectedly that he would spend the entire evening sulking. It was exhilarating, but also exhausting.

  Aeneas, by contrast, prided himself on neither giving nor taking offence. In this he was only intermittently successful: his love of speech was so great that words often outpaced tact. But he always recognised his mistakes, with such sincere contrition that it was impossible not to forgive him.

  ‘It is good to see you looking so well,’ he told me. I believed it: he always took genuine pleasure from those around him. ‘Are you married?’

  Some memory of the disaster with Ennelin must have shown on my face. Even before I could demur he hurried on. ‘For myself, I am lately in love. Smitten. There is a woman at the inn where I am staying – Agnes is her name – from Biscarosse. The most sublime creature.’

  Despite myself, I was drawn into his story. ‘Is she travelling alone?’

  ‘Her husband is a merchant. He leaves her there while he travels up and down the river to contract his business. I saw him at breakfast two days ago. He is a fool. He does not deserve her.’

  ‘Is this how you plan to reform the Church? By seducing other men’s wives?’

  Aeneas gazed on me with a soulful look. ‘I could never take the vows of a priest. She ravished my heart with a single glimpse. Do you see these bags under my eyes? I cannot sleep because of her. Every night I go to her door and plead with her, but she is cool and steadfast as marble. She does not admit me – yet she gives me reason to hope. Perhaps tonight I shall finally conquer. I must, for tomorrow I return to Basle.’

  He dropped his head like a dog. ‘I know this love is ruinous. But I would rather this agony than a lifetime of numb comfort. Can you understand that?’

  ‘I understand,’ I murmured, and the longing in my voice must have penetrated Aeneas’ self-pity. It drew a swift glance.

  ‘I will not ask,’ he said. ‘You never tell me anyway. But I hope we both win our hearts’ desires.’

  I raised my glass to that.

  ‘And now I must go.’ He stood abruptly. In another man it would have been discourteous; with Aeneas, it signified only that his busy mind had leaped forward again. ‘I must sleep now if I am to woo my Agnes tonight.’

  I was sad to part. He had reminded me of a simpler age in my life, a humble time when all that mattered was faithfully copying what Nicholas said. Also how wretched I had been before he rescued me. All I had repaid him with were sudden disappearances and evasions. I owed him more; I wanted him to know my gratitude.

  ‘I am sorry about Basle.’ I pulled the mirror out of the pouch on my belt. It had become a talisman for me in those golden months, proof of our good fortune. I carried it everywhere. ‘I never forgot your generosity.’

  His face lit up with delight. He embraced me. ‘I am glad I found you. I hope you do not disappear again.’ He took the mirror from my hand and examined it, smiling. ‘My Aachen mirror. I had almost forgotten it. I do not know that it ever brought me good fortune, but pe
rhaps it averted some great misfortune that would otherwise have befallen me. Perhaps I stood too far away to feel the full effects of the rays.’

  He handed the mirror back. ‘I have just returned from Aachen, actually, on an errand for the council.’

  ‘Is all well there?’ I asked, feigning carelessness. I had not told him the secret of the mirrors. ‘Is all in hand for next year’s pilgrimage?’

  ‘It is a disaster.’ Aeneas began to turn away, eager to be back to his inn. ‘Has the news not reached here yet? An outbreak of the plague has swept the north. No one knows when it will end or how many souls it will claim. The authorities in Aachen have had no choice but to postpone the pilgrimage for a full year.’

  He peered at me through the deepening gloom. ‘What is wrong, Johann? You look as though you are about to disappear again.’

  LI

  Strasbourg

  They checked into a hotel near the cathedral. Nick felt deflated, utterly empty. Once again he had caught a glimpse of Gillian; once again she had vanished.

  ‘I’m going to look around the town,’ Emily announced. ‘Would you like to come?’

  ‘I’m not interested in sightseeing,’ Nick growled. But when he threw himself down on the hotel bed, he found he couldn’t sleep. After two minutes he hurried downstairs and caught Emily in the lobby, just about to leave.

  ‘Changed my mind.’

  They stepped out. Although it was early afternoon, the sky was dark. The yellow lights in the hotel windows glowed warm behind them. A thin layer of snow already dusted the street, and looking at the pregnant clouds Nick guessed there was more to come. When he looked back at their footprints they seemed small and lonely, like two children lost in the woods.

  He pulled his coat around him. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The cathedral,’ said Emily. ‘There’s something I want to see.’

  They walked up between black and white rows of half-timbered houses and passed through the cathedral’s west door. It was so dark inside that Nick thought for a moment it must be closed – darker even than the day outside. All he could see was glass, spectral-coloured images floating above him, dizzyingly high. For a moment, he shared the awe the medieval congregation must have felt as they entered the sanctuary, the sense of a half-glimpsed heaven above.

  The darkness disoriented him. He reached out in the gloom and touched Emily’s arm to reassure himself she was still there. She moved closer, as if glad of a human connection in the face of the medieval God’s icy grandeur.

  Nick pointed up to the north wall, where a line of larger-than-life men stood proudly in the glass. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The Holy Roman emperors. It’s one of the most famous compositions in medieval glass.’ She made a little harrumphing sound. Nick couldn’t see her, but he knew the frown of concentration that went with it.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘The kings of Israel.’ Nick wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or the darkness.

  ‘I thought you said they were the Holy Roman emperors.’

  ‘The kings of Israel were another popular motif in medieval art. The facade of Notre-Dame in Paris was decorated with twenty-four statues of them. There’s also the Dom in Cologne, which has forty-eight kings in the stained glass of the choir, I think. They’re assumed to be the twenty-four kings of Israel and the twenty-four kings from the Book of Revelation.’

  ‘Thought to be?’ Nick echoed. ‘Doesn’t anyone know?’

  ‘Medieval cathedral builders didn’t necessarily spell out what they meant by their decoration. There are clues in the symbolism, but it’s in the nature of symbols that they’re ambiguous. The kings on the front of Notre-Dame, for example: they’re an unimpeachable biblical theme. But it’s no coincidence that they were put on a building which the kings of France wanted to use as a symbol of their own power. The medieval mind was much more sophisticated than we give it credit for. Semiotics, symbology, whatever you want to call it: they were profoundly alive to the overlapping meanings of the world. If you were a layman walking past Notre-Dame in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, you’d see the statues as the kings of Israel, but you’d also see them as the kings of France. One king becomes another, depending on how you look at it.’

  ‘It sounds like Gillian you’re describing.’ Nick was surprised he’d said it. ‘The same person, but so different in different contexts.’

  ‘Everyone’s like that, a bit.’ It could have sounded dismissive, but she said it so gently it sounded like agreement. ‘You mustn’t give up hope.’

  Nick wondered if she was thinking of the picture in his wallet. ‘I just want to find her.’

  ‘Rescue the damsel in distress.’ Again, it might have sounded snide but didn’t. To Nick, it felt almost wistful. He smiled in the darkness.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’ His mind wandered back to all the late nights in Gothic Lair killing monsters and storming castles; and before that, Friday nights in high school, sitting around with his friends rolling dice in the basement, totting up the numbers that would decide whether their fellowship lived or died. Perilous quests had been so safe then, something to look forward to through the dreary week at school. A far cry from the lonely, terrifying reality.

  ‘What was it you wanted here?’ he asked, changing the subject. ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘Oh – it was the kings. They reminded me of the kings of Israel, that’s all. I thought perhaps it might trigger some sort of insight.’ She shook her had. ‘But – nothing.’

  They finished their tour of the cathedral, Emily pointing out different features as they walked up and down the dark aisles. The way the architecture became more elaborate as you moved from east to west, the shift in style from Romanesque to Gothic which had happened over the centuries of its construction recorded in stone. She showed him the pillar where angels blew the trumpets of the Resurrection, and numerous stone carvings tucked away on buttresses and bosses. At first Nick paid attention out of politeness, but gradually he found himself becoming drawn into the intricacy of the art. By the time he emerged from the darkness into the gloomy day, he had a whole new vocabulary.

  ‘I’m going to go and buy some new clothes before the shops shut,’ said Emily. Snow was still falling, frosting the ridges of the cathedral. ‘I’ll see you back at the hotel.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Nick warned.

  LII

  Strassburg

  Twenty-seven kings stared down from their glass thrones: proud and solemn, elevated above the cares of the world. Beneath their vitrified gazes, the world they had left moved apace. The cathedral echoed with the ring of hammers, the shouts of masons, the creak of pulleys and the squall of infants. Somewhere in all the din, the choir was trying to sing a litany. And at the back of the church, two men stood in an alcove whispering furiously.

  ‘You promised me nothing could go wrong.’ Andreas Dritzehn was neither proud nor solemn. His cheeks were flushed with anger, his fists balled tight as if poised to strike someone. Probably me. That was why I had insisted on meeting in the cathedral.

  ‘Do you think you are the only one who has put money into this venture?’ I felt sick just thinking of it, though I did not expect Dritzehn to sympathise.

  ‘We must melt down the mirrors we have made and sell the metal.’

  ‘No. What we bought was lead and tin and antimony. What we have now is alloy. We cannot unmix it, any more than we could melt those windows to make sand and lime.’

  ‘Then sell the alloy.’

  ‘That metal is the key to our enterprise – and our fortunes. If we sell it, other men will realise its power and teach themselves to copy it. If one of them happens to be an Aachen goldsmith, then he will cast the mirrors and take all the profits of our labours.’

  ‘Let him.’ Dritzhen’s face puffed with anger. ‘I need my money back.’

  ‘The pilgrimage has been postponed, not cancelled. All we need is to hold our nerve and sit out one extra year.
Then we will be as rich as we ever dreamed.’

  ‘I cannot sit out an extra year! ’ He bellowed it like a gelded colt. I looked to see if anyone had heard, but the sawing of carpenters hid it.

  ‘I should have listened to my brother Jörg,’ he moaned. ‘He told me you were a vagabond, a conjurer. That you would be the ruin of my family.’

  It was then I realised, perhaps for the first time in my life, that I was responsible. I was too old to run. I owed too many men too much to be able to disappear. One-armed Karl would find me, or someone like him, and my crushed body would be dragged off one of the canal weirs, snagged among the scum and branches.

  I had to free myself. And like a drunk who finds release in one more draught, I reached for the only cure I knew.

  ‘There is another art I know. Less advanced than the mirrors, though with rewards that might dwarf them. All it needs is patience.’

  He shook his head. ‘I have had enough of your secret arts.’

  ‘Did you never wonder what Kaspar and I were doing in your basement? The mirrors were never more than a sideshow, sowing the seeds for our greater work.’

  Even in his despair I could see he was interested. ‘You never spoke of this.’

  ‘Of course not. The mirrors are already secret enough. But this new art is ten times greater. Only four men know of its existence.’

  ‘Can it be carried off before next year?’

  ‘Difficult to say. As I told you, its progress is less advanced than the mirrors. But once it is ready there will be no delay. No waiting for pilgrimages, no shipping it down the river. Even the plague could not stop it. All it will require is a little investment.’

  He grabbed my coat and thrust me against the cathedral wall. ‘Are you deaf? Have you listened to a word I say? I have no more money. How can I spend my way out of bankruptcy?’