The Book of Secrets

by Tom Harper

  A roar drowned whatever answer he got as the ferry revved its engines to depart. Clouds of diesel smoke filled the air. The sailor pulled two tickets off a ring and shoved them in Nick’s hand.

  ‘You pay on board. Maybe we get you there.’ He looked at the sky. ‘Maybe not.’

  They tottered down the gangplank and went inside out of the cold. They didn’t look back, so they didn’t see a man run across the road, dodging between the cars that had finally started moving, and examine the ferry timetable posted on a noticeboard on the pier. Nor did they see the man in the dark overcoat and low-brimmed hat who strode up a minute later.

  Ugo heard Nevado coming and turned. ‘The first stop is Rüdesheim – not far. Maybe with the car we can beat it.’

  The cardinal shook his head. Out in the river, the ferry was passing between two huge coal barges.

  ‘We know where they are going.’

  LXXII

  Mainz

  The ferry pulled away from the pier, navigating carefully between two barges loaded with timber from the forests upriver. It had been a wet August: a powerful current struck the small craft side on as it emerged from the lee of the larger ships. A brown wave slopped over the side; the water man paddled furiously, while the passengers gripped each other and crossed themselves. I watched their huddled faces from the safety of the riverbank. I had sat on that ferry once, a whey-faced youth setting out into the world. How far I had come.

  Fust came out from a warehouse, passed behind a group of travelling players who had just disembarked, and approached. He greeted me as he always did.

  ‘How many pages?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Where should we be?’

  ‘Twenty-one.’

  ‘So far behind already.’ He frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘In a project of this magnitude, certain problems only emerge with time. The types wear out faster than we had anticipated. We are using more ink than we allowed for – I do not know why. And we still cannot get the initials to align properly.’

  ‘The second press?’

  ‘Saspach promises it will be ready in two weeks.’

  ‘He said that two weeks ago.’

  ‘One of the posts wasn’t seasoned properly. He insisted we pull it apart and start again.’

  Fust rolled his eyes. ‘Perfectionist.’

  ‘That is not what is delaying us. It is taking the compositors longer to compose the text than it takes the printers to print it. I have set them to work in two teams on different parts of the Bible, but Günther still finds too many errors. He sent one page back fifteen times yesterday before it was ready. Even then, mistakes slip through. We had pressed nine copies of one page yesterday before we noticed that two lines were the wrong way round.’

  ‘Paper or vellum?’

  ‘Vellum.’

  ‘You should press the paper copies first,’ he rebuked me. ‘It will make our mistakes cheaper. And you should be more relaxed about trivial errors. If we redo every page for each spelling mistake, we will still be pressing at doomsday.’

  My face prickled. Any thought of a flaw in the book was like sores under my skin.

  Fust turned away. ‘Walk with me.’

  I hurried after him, skirting the puddles that soaked the waterfront. I glanced at the overcast sky; there would be more puddles by nightfall. I would have to check the roof on the paper store before bed.

  ‘The work you are doing is extraordinary, Johann.’

  I kept silent. I did not trust it when he called me by name. Overhead, a crane squeaked as it winched sacks of quicklime off a barge. Some of the powder seeped through a tear in the sackcloth, hissing and boiling as it landed in the water.

  ‘I know that with any new art there will be difficulties. Problems we did not anticipate. But we cannot be complacent. We must respond vigorously, or we store up troubles to come. And there are other considerations.’

  While he spoke, we had come to a warehouse set back a little from the quay. It was built like a castle, with slit windows and a crenellated rampart around its roof. He presented a clay tablet to the watchman, who waved us in. Inside, it smelled of sawdust and wine. Bales of cloth, jars of oils and, in one bay, a pile of boxes sealed with wax and painted with the symbol of a bunch of grapes.

  Fust took a clasp knife from the pouch on his belt and prised up the lid of the topmost box. He slit open the oilcloth which wrapped the contents. I knew what would be inside: I had opened a dozen myself in the store at the Humbrechthof. A bale of paper, brittle and shiny from the sizing glue.

  ‘I did not order any more paper,’ I said.

  ‘I did.’

  I counted nine more boxes. Each held two reams, almost a thousand sheets. A quarter as much again as we had already laid in.

  ‘How much has this cost? Even with the wastage, we have plenty for our needs.’

  ‘I have been speaking with my customers.’ A reassuring hand on my arm. ‘Discreetly. I have performed some calculations. You said yourself, the greater part of the labour is composing the page. That is a fixed cost – whether we press one copy or one thousand. Once that is done, putting it through the press is comparatively quick. So the more copies we press, the more we spread the costs of composition. The cost of the extra time, paper and ink almost pays for itself.’

  ‘How many more?’

  He pulled me away from the pile of boxes, back to the wharf outside. ‘Thirty copies. All on paper. By my reckoning it will add ninety gulden to our costs – I will pay it – and nine hundred gulden to our profit.’

  ‘If we sell them,’ I cautioned. ‘And it will put us even further behind our schedule.’

  ‘We cannot let our deadline slip. The money I have invested in the work of the books is borrowed at interest and it must be repaid in two years.’

  ‘Debts can be rearranged,’ I said easily. Perhaps too easily. He spun around and fixed me with a hard look.

  ‘The book will be finished on time. We must redouble our efforts. Perhaps some aspects of the process can be rethought.’

  ‘What aspects?’

  ‘The rubrication, for one. I have been in the press room – I have seen how much time we lose inking the form in two different colours. Sometimes I have seen black ink spill over into the red, and then the whole form must be removed, wiped off and inked again.’

  ‘It is time-consuming,’ I admitted. ‘But we will not be able to charge so much if we sell the books without rubrication.’ In truth, I hated the thought of another man’s hand in my book, marring the unity of the whole.

  ‘Nonsense. The customers will not know what they are missing. Any one who buys a Bible expects he will have to pay a rubricator, just as he expects to pay the binder and the illuminator.’

  ‘Not the illuminator. They will have Kaspar’s plates.’

  We stopped by the embankment. The river lapped against the wall below; a flock of swans pecked at the weed that trailed from the stones.

  ‘Those must go too.’

  Without looking, Fust must have known the expression on my face.

  ‘I know he is your dear friend. But we have invested too much in this to allow mere friendship to threaten it.’

  Mere friendship. ‘He is more than my friend. He was the root and stem of all that we have done. He had already pressed his cards while I was still copying schoolbooks in Paris.’

  ‘Then he will understand that a new art requires compromises.’

  I doubted that very much.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ I asked.

  ‘You should look at the composition of the pages. Peter thinks that you could fit two more lines on every page without changing its appearance. More lines on the page means fewer pages in the book. Less paper and time, more money. That alone would account for almost half the time we spend pressing the extra copies.’

  ‘I will consider it,’ I said stiffly. For all my age, I felt like a child denied the toy he was promised. I wanted to weep.

  Fust slipped
a rosary from his wrist. He flipped the beads around in short, precise movements, like counters on an abacus.

  ‘You cannot do everything, Johann. This book is already a miracle. In two years we will produce more books than one man could in two lifetimes. We must not overreach ourselves.’

  ‘This was my dream,’ I whispered. ‘God’s word as God intended it.’

  ‘The words do not change. It is only the ornament. For God’s sake let it go. We have invested too much to fail because of it.’

  ‘I am not doing this for profit.’

  ‘No? I saw your face when I told you how much we will earn from the extra copies. But even if you are not – I am. And you are working for me.’

  ‘A partnership.’

  ‘If you do not like the terms I am happy to dissolve it.’ He slapped the rosary into his palm and closed his fist around it. ‘I did not mean that. I know how much this means to you. But you, of all men, must be practical.’

  He watched me for a moment, then rattled the rosary back over his wrist. He sighed, made to leave, then remembered something.

  ‘I made an inventory of our vellum stocks yesterday. Three skins were missing.’ He peered at me closely. ‘I heard that you pressed a batch of grammar books in the Gutenberghof last week.’

  ‘The parchment we were going to use got wet. It would have crumbled like pastry when it dried. I had promised the books would be delivered on time, so I borrowed some from the store at the Humbrechthof. I will replace it as soon as I get a new batch.’

  His eyes blazed. ‘Do you remember what I told you? Everything that goes into our venture stays in it. You cannot borrow, like a labourer in the vineyard stuffing his face with his master’s grapes. I will allow it this time, but never let it happen again.’

  He left me on the quayside. Out in the stream, the wheels on the mill ships turned on. It suddenly occurred to me that my mother must have stood here, decades earlier, watching her youngest son embark on a barge to Cologne with little more than a clean shirt to his name. Did she weep? Did she feel her life torn away from her: first her husband, then her child? Did she think on what might have been?

  Fresh raindrops dashed against my face, mingling with the tears.

  LXXIII

  River Rhine

  Nick stood in the bow of the boat. Spray spattered his cheeks, but he would rather endure that than the suffocating, tobacco-laden fug inside. He felt as if he was sailing into a fairy tale. Not the modern sort, with wisecracking animals and songs written to sound good as ringtones; the old-fashioned kind, tangled tales woven out of the fabric of the land, dark forests and hard mountains. Here, the Rhine flowed through steep-sided valleys covered in snow, under great cliffs where sirens once lured sailors to their doom. Stark castles guarded every hilltop, watching the boat as it crept downriver. Some were tumble-down ruins; others looked as though they only wanted a trumpet call to rouse their defenders to battle.

  ‘It’s just as well we came by boat.’ Emily pointed a gloved hand to the shore. A single road wound along the riverbank, tucked into the slope. It was almost invisible under the snow. ‘No cars. They must have shut it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Nick. ‘Harder for anyone to follow us. Unless there’s another ferry?’

  ‘The bartender said this is the last boat today. He said there might not be any tomorrow either if the ice gets worse.’

  ‘Good.’ Nick repeated it, trying to convince himself. He was afraid. Not the sudden pulse of adrenalin that came with being chased – he’d had plenty of that in the last ten days. This was a deeper dread, cold fingers slowly choking him as he sank into a void. A feeling that there was no way back.

  Emily pulled out a rumpled paper tissue and began shredding it between gloved fingers, letting the fragments fall into the water. ‘Do you think we’ll find it?’

  ‘Do you mean her?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She watched a piece of tissue flutter down. The river soaked it up.

  Nick didn’t speak, but shuffled sideways so that he squeezed against her. She tipped her head so that it rested on his shoulder.

  ‘I wonder how the prayer of Manasses fits into this,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re following Gillian. But what was she following? If she went to Oberwinter, it was because of what she found in the Mainz archives. Nothing to do with the prayer of Manasses or the digging bear.’

  ‘Maybe we were on the wrong track with the pictures,’ said Nick. ‘The Sayings of the Kings of Israel is supposed to be a lost book of the Bible, right? Maybe that was the writer’s way of saying that his book’s gone to this place where lost books go. The Devils’ Library.’

  ‘But the bear. Do you think it’s a coincidence that the picture from the card was right there in the prayer of Manasses?’

  Bear is the key.

  ‘You said yourself that medieval artists copied each other all the time.’

  ‘It feels as if we’re following a trail that someone laid down for us five hundred years ago. The hard-point inscriptions, the hidden books, the recurring images… But I’m not sure it points to Oberwinter.’

  ‘Gillian was.’

  Nick pulled away slightly, but only so he could stick his hand in his pocket to warm it. His fingers touched the slim bar of his cellphone, tingling as the blood returned.

  No. It wasn’t his blood, he realised, but the phone vibrating. It was ringing as well, though with the engines throbbing through the boat and the hiss of the water he hadn’t heard it. He must have forgotten to turn it off when he’d used it to read the hard point.

  He pulled it out, staring at it like a relic of some alien civilisation. And then, because he was tired and it was a ringing telephone, he answered.

  ‘Nick? It’s Simon.’

  Nick almost dropped the phone. Emily looked at him and made an O with her mouth. Who?

  ‘Atheldene,’ Nick whispered. Then, into the phone, ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘You rang me from your phone in New York. I’ve been calling for the last twenty-four hours. Didn’t you get my messages?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Mainz. It’s on the Rhine, near Frankfurt.’

  Was there something too casual about the way he said it? Too confident, too knowing? Or was Nick just paranoid?

  ‘Is Mainz nice?’ he asked, trying to sound cool.

  ‘There’s a lovely Romanesque cathedral and a shop selling chocolate busts of Gutenberg.’ The sarcasm sounded right. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. I rang the office in Paris, found out a package arrived for me the day after we left. Postmarked Mainz. My secretary recognised Gill’s handwriting.’

  ‘What was in it?’

  ‘Something you should see. Can you get to Mainz?’

  ‘Not right now. Can you tell me what it says?’

  ‘It would be easier to show you.’

  Nick’s head began to throb. ‘For God’s sakes, Atheldene, we’re trying to find Gillian. This isn’t a time to be playing games.’

  ‘I quite agree. Why don’t you tell me where you are?’

  Nick hesitated. Atheldene gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Have you heard of the prisoners’ dilemma? Two men in a cell. If they trust each other, they go free. If they don’t, they both hang. That’s where we are.’

  Still Nick didn’t say anything. He was jammed, frozen by the uncertainties clogging his mind.

  ‘Gill was definitely in Mainz two weeks ago. I’ve been to the archives here: they remembered her. We’re near, Nick.’

  ‘What was in the parcel Gillian sent?’

  Atheldene paused. Then: ‘Fine. You want my quid pro quo? It was the first page of the bestiary you ran off with from Brussels. Somebody had cut it out – I suppose Gillian must have found it. I’ve taken a photo of it on my phone and I’m sending it to you now. Hold on.’

  Nick waited. Was this another trap? Every second he was on the line he felt his anxiety rising.

  A background chime ann
ounced that a message had arrived. Atheldene must have heard it on his end.

  ‘Now – where are you?’

  Perhaps it was because he was tired. Perhaps it was because Atheldene’s voice, however patronising and unhelpful, was a rare touch of something familiar. Perhaps it was the desperation in his plea. If we don’t trust each other, we both hang.

  ‘We’re heading to a place on the Rhine called Oberwinter. I’ll call you when we arrive and we’ll figure something out.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can get there. Travel’s pretty grim at the moment.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Look, I’m sorry we parted ways in Brussels. We should have stuck together. For Gill.’

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Wait. There’s…’

  Atheldene’s voice broke up, his words crushed into staccato blocks of static. A few seconds later he came back.

  ‘… what she is.’

  ‘What was that?’

  Nick looked around. They’d come round a bend between two mountains that trapped the river between them, blocking out the signal.

  ‘I’m losing you.’

  More static. Then nothing.

  Nick hung up. In his anxiety he almost switched off the phone at once, until a blinking icon on the screen reminded him of the picture Atheldene had sent.

  ‘I guess if there’s no signal there’s not much way of tracing the phone.’

  He opened the image and gave the handset to Emily. It was hard to see much on the small screen. She fumbled with the buttons to zoom in.

  ‘It’s the standard opening of the bestiary. “The lion is the bravest of all beasts and fears nothing…” There’s the picture.’ A lion with its back arched, roaring so loudly it seemed to send shivers through the adjoining words.

  Nick took the phone back and scrolled around the picture. His hands were so numb he almost dropped it in the water.

  ‘What’s that?’

  A mark in the margin near the bottom of the page, too faint to be part of the illumination.

  ‘Maybe a smudge?’

  Nick zoomed in. The pixels blurred, then sharpened themselves. It was a doodle – there was no other word for it – a crude sketch of a rectangular tower with three doors, and a large cross beside it.