by Tom Harper
A body lay sprawled on the floor, arms outstretched in a pool of blood.
In that instant, all Nick’s nightmares, all the fears he’d stifled, struck him in a single, shattering blow. He sank to his knees and puked. Everything was wasted.
But even in his despair, he knew something wasn’t right. He pulled himself up and forced himself to take another look, peering through the bars into the murky cell.
Fear had played him false. It wasn’t Gillian.
The body was wearing a long white gown, which explained part of his mistake – he’d thought it was a dress. Blood covered half the face, which had also misled him. But there was no way it was Gillian. It was a man, a monk in a cassock belted at the waist with a twist of rope. Nick could see the brow of a tonsure just above the single bullet hole that pierced his forehead.
Relief flooded through him so fast he almost puked again. He forced himself to think. The blood looked wet – the puddle was still spreading at the edges. Whoever had done it couldn’t have gone far.
In the corner of his eye, he saw Emily coming up behind to take a look. He pushed her back.
‘Don’t.’
Emily shot him a searching glance, but stayed back.
He moved on to the other doors, steeling himself for more horrors. Thankfully, there were no more corpses. One room was stacked with oil drums, which struck Nick as dangerous in a castle housing a medieval library. He could smell the vapour leaking out through the grille. A second room was lined with steel bookshelves. The next room was empty, though dark stains splashed the wall. How old were they?
Nick approached the last door. His wet trousers clung to his legs, trying to hold him back; the adrenalin was draining out of him. A voice in his head screamed at him to retreat. He looked through the grille.
A young woman sat on the floor, her head pressed against her knees. Her hair hung over her face, and her bare arms were mottled black with bruises. She must have sensed the motion by the door. She looked up.
‘Nick?’
LXXX
Mainz, 1455
‘You cannot come in.’
Fust’s eye stared at me through the window in the door, pressed so close that his knotted skin seemed cut from the same timber.
I didn’t understand. ‘Is this a joke?’
‘You have broken the terms of our contract. I am calling in my loan.’
I still could not comprehend it. Like a chicken strutting around the farmyard spouting blood from its gizzard, I carried on as if it were a reasonable discussion.
‘How much do you say I owe you?’
‘Two thousand gulden.’
I laughed wildly; I did not know what else to do. ‘You know I cannot pay. Every penny I have is tied up in the Bibles. Every scrap I own is mortgaged against them.’
The eye surveyed me dispassionately. ‘If you cannot pay, then you forfeit everything. I will take over the works and finish the Bibles myself.’
‘How can you?’ A thousand questions distilled into one. Fust chose to answer its narrowest, pragmatic meaning.
‘The men know who pays their wages. They will see the work through. I will meet you tomorrow to discuss it.’
He snapped the window shut.
Ten years of hope died in an instant. I slammed my fist against the gate so long I almost unhinged it. I denounced Fust to all the powers of sin and the devil, while passers-by gathered in knots and stared. No one took mercy; no one came out of the Humbrechthof, though every man inside must have heard me.
When I had spent every drop of my rage, I crept home.
We met in the vineyard on the hill near St Stephan’s church. The last time I had been there it was a muddy building site. Now a stone wall enclosed it, and neat formations of vines grew waist high. Next spring, they would fruit for the first time; a year from now they would pour forth wine. I wanted to rip them out and burn them.
At Fust’s suggestion, we each brought a witness. I almost chose Kaspar, but at the last moment thought better of it and invited Keffer the press master instead. Fust brought Peter Schoeffer. He and Keffer stood by the wall and watched, while Fust and I walked among the leafless vines.
‘I am sorry it has come to this,’ he said.
His gaze was unyielding: the carelessness of a man sure in his victory, already thinking of the next battle. On that hilltop there was nothing behind him except empty grey sky.
‘Was this your plan all along? To lure me down this road and then set about me like a brigand when we finally sight our destination?’
He looked disappointed. ‘I thought better of you, Gutenberg. I thought we could have done something extraordinary together. I did not expect you to be stealing from me every night while I slept.’
I stared at him.
‘While you were away in Frankfurt, I made an audit of the Humbrechthof. Everything relating to our common project. Do you know how much you stole? Two hundred sheets of vellum. A dozen jars of ink. Fifty gulden unaccounted for. Did you think no one would notice?’
‘I never stole a thing.’
‘Borrowed, then. No doubt you will say you intended to replace everything in due time.’
‘I took nothing. Everything we used at the Gutenberghof was separate from what we used on the Bibles.’
‘What about those indulgences?’
‘That was a mistake I made two years ago. I never repeated it.’
‘ “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” ’ He waved his stick at me. ‘I have made enquiries about you. For such a long and unusual life you have left few marks on the world – but not all your footprints have vanished. The burgomaster of Strassburg had a few tales he was eager to tell.’
Now I was bewildered. ‘The burgomaster of Strassburg? Who is he?’
‘A man named Jörg Dritzehn. He told me how you snared his brother in a venture he did not understand, bled him dry and then stole his portion for yourself when he died.’
‘Everything I did with his brother was faithful to our contract.’
‘And everything I have done is faithful to ours. You swore that the money I loaned you would be put towards our common profit. Not skimmed off to line your pocket while I carried all the risk of the Bibles.’
‘I swear I did not.’ A vision came into my head: my beautiful Bibles, my life’s perfection, locked away from me inside the Humbrechthof. ‘Even if I did, why insist on it now? In a few months there will be profit enough for both of us. Whatever you think I owe you, whatever will make it right between us, I will pay with interest when the Bibles are sold.’
A grim smirk was my reply. I saw he had taken it as a confession; more, that this was what he always intended. By bringing the suit now he had caught me without a chance to pay. The incomplete Bibles would be valued not for what they would be worth when finished, but what they had cost in materials. If the court awarded even half his claim, Fust could take them – together with the presses, the types and paper stocks – for a pittance. When he sold them, all the profits would be his.
I looked to the boundary wall where Peter Schoeffer waited.
‘I suppose he will oversee the completion of the Bibles.’
Fust nodded. ‘You have taught him well.’
Another coil of anger tightened around me. ‘You will have to find new premises. I am the leaseholder of the Humbrechthof.’
‘No longer.’ Fust handed me a sealed sheet of paper. ‘From your cousin Salman. He has cancelled your arrangement and transferred the property to me.’
‘Why should he do that?’
‘I promised to use my influence with the guild council to see that no harm came to his property. And I offered to pay double the rent.’
I wanted the earth to swallow me up, to knot me in vine roots until they crushed me. I leaned on a fence post.
‘Please,’ I begged him. ‘There is no need-’
‘The trial date has been set.’ He cut me off and turned away. ‘The sixth day of November, an hour
before noon, in the convent of the barefoot friars. Whatever defence you have to offer, you can say it there.’
LXXXI
Oberwinter
Nick slid back the bolts. They might be old, but they were well oiled. The hinges squeaked, but only for a moment. Then the door was open.
‘You came.’
Gillian flew across the room and flung herself against him. She kissed him on the lips and he let her. He’d wanted this moment for so long – way before he had ever heard of the eight of beasts, the Master of the Playing Cards or any of it. So many nights he’d lain awake, wishing for her, until dawn came up over New York. It had been worth it – as sweet as he’d ever imagined.
But he couldn’t capture it. All too quickly, it began to fade, even as he held her. He found himself thinking about the danger, about how they would get out, about all the things he wished Gillian hadn’t done, about Emily. Still hugging Gillian, he opened his eyes. He saw Emily watching, coolly sympathetic, and gave her an embarrassed smile.
He held on until he felt Gillian’s grip loosen, then eased away. There were a thousand questions to ask, a lot of answers he probably didn’t want to hear. But that was for later.
‘We need to get out.’
Gillian stepped back. Her face was drawn and haggard, her cheeks raw from the cold. The overhead light bulb made the shadows around her eyes even darker. She seemed to be wearing pyjamas.
‘Are you OK?’ Nick said.
‘I’ve been better.’ She straightened. ‘No, I am better. Thank God you came.’ For the first time, she noticed Emily. ‘And you – I don’t even know you.’
Emily gave a polite smile, as if they were meeting at a cocktail party. ‘I work at the Cloisters. If I still have a job to go back to.’
‘I don’t remember you.’
‘I started after you left.’
‘Leaving would be good.’ Nick looked at Gillian’s bare feet. ‘There’s about two feet of snow outside and it’s a long walk back to town. Do you have any shoes?’
‘We can’t go yet.’ Gillian slipped a rubber band off her wrist and pulled her hair into a ponytail. Nick and Emily stared at her. ‘The castle’s empty. I haven’t heard anyone since yesterday morning.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Nick. ‘There’s a dead man at the end of this corridor and he’s still bleeding. The guy who shot him can’t be far.’
‘Come on, Nick. Don’t you want to see what this was all about?’
‘It was about you.’
Gillian flashed him her pixie grin. Once it would have made him glow with happiness; now it seemed contrived.
‘I’ve spent almost two weeks in this cell – and a month before that tracking these bastards down. They’ve done things…’ She let her gaze slide towards Emily. ‘If you two want to go ahead, go ahead. I’m not leaving without what I came for.’
‘Of course not.’ He was shocked to find he was actually tempted. He’d assumed it would be different, that gratitude would overwhelm everything. Instead, he found himself as confused as he’d ever been, the familiar feeling of always being two steps behind and looking the wrong way.
She’s been kidnapped, locked up and God knows what else. Did you think she’d melt in your arms?
He glanced at Emily, who gave the slightest shrug in reply.
‘It’ll only take five minutes.’
Gillian seemed to know the way. She led them through a door at the end of the corridor, up a spiral stair and out onto a broad rampart. Nick flinched as the cold night hit him. To his right, he could see a small courtyard covered in snow, two pointed towers flanking a gatehouse and a square keep rising into the darkness. On the other side, far below, the snow-bound forest stretched down to the river. A foghorn sounded in the distance.
‘Keep low,’ Gillian whispered.
‘I thought you said this place was empty.’
‘No point taking risks.’
They crawled along the wall, keeping below the rim of battlements, until another flight of stairs brought them down to the courtyard. They skirted its edge, keeping in the shadows around the storehouses and sheds, under a trellis of withered vines and past a stone well. Tyre treads and footprints gouged the snow; Nick wondered how fresh the marks were.
He was so busy looking ahead for danger that he didn’t watch his footing. He kicked against something, tripped and fell forward. He pushed himself up on his hands.
A three-eyed monster, like some horror from the bestiary, stared at him out of the snow. Its skin was stippled blue and black, its lips locked in a silent scream. Nick opened his mouth, but no sound came out of his frozen lungs. He scrambled back, caught his knee on something else and rolled over. Face to face with another monster.
They were monks. Two more of them, each with a single bullet hole drilled in his forehead. There was less blood this time: the cold and snow must have frozen it almost instantly.
Nick got up. ‘We really need to get out of here.’
Even Gillian looked frightened now. But she’d always thrived on proving she could do what others were afraid of. Before Nick could stop her she’d run along the foot of the wall to a doorway into the keep, turned an iron ring and opened the door. Nick cursed and followed.
‘Don’t they lock anything around here?’
‘The only way into the castle – the only way they know about – is across a drawbridge over a hundred-foot gorge. It’s worked for five hundred years.’
As she said it, she led them across a corridor and flung open a pair of double doors. Nick and Emily stared.
It was like a cathedral built of books. Gothic pillars eight feet thick rose to a dimly raftered ceiling high above. All the space between was filled with shelves, and every shelf was jammed tight with books. Every storey or so wooden galleries emerged, snaking around the pillars and in front of the shelves like the canopy of a forest. The floor mirrored the image back: interlocking swirls of many woods, inlay on a giant scale, twisted in scrolls like foliage.
‘The Bibliotheca Diabolorum. The Devils’ Library.’
As they advanced into the room, Nick saw that the books weren’t free on their shelves, but locked behind a lattice of thin wire bars. Some looked impossibly ancient, with varicose cords running through their spines; others had the split cloth and frayed edges of old school books. The whole room was suffused with the musty smell of old paper – and something more acrid. Gasoline?
Emily peered through the bars and examined the names on the spines. She shuddered. ‘No wonder they call this the Devils’ Library. Pretty much every book ever written about the black arts is here. And some I’ve never heard of.’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ said Gillian over her shoulder.
She walked quickly to the back of the room. The smell of gasoline was stronger here and some of the books looked damp. Before Nick could wonder why, Gillian was reaching for a small leather book, almost invisible between the massive volumes around it. To Nick’s inexpert eye the books here looked older than in the rest of the room: he was surprised there was no grille protecting them. A second later he saw why. The book rattled as Gillian withdrew it. When it came free, Nick saw a heavy chain anchoring it to the wall. Most of the links were black with age, though one gleamed steely fresh.
‘Bolt cutters,’ said Nick, remembering her list.
‘I don’t suppose you brought any. They took mine away.’
Nick’s brain ached from trying to keep up. He didn’t know who he’d thought he’d come to rescue, but it wasn’t this incarnation of Gillian, who strode around forbidden castles as if she owned them. He’d have taken more care in a video game.
‘Who are they anyway?’
‘The Church? The mob?’ Gillian shrugged. ‘The Italians have only managed to organise two things since the Roman empire: the Catholic Church and the Mafia. I guess it’s not surprising they work together.’
‘But why-’
Gillian rested the book on the shelf and slid it across.
&n
bsp; ‘Take a look.’
LXXXII
Mainz, 6 November 1455
Fog came down in the night. When day dawned, the city had disappeared. From my bedroom window I could not even see the house opposite, except for the tip of its roof looming from the mist like a ship’s prow. I pulled on my fur-trimmed coat and remembered the youth who had dressed in this same room thirty-five years earlier, waiting for a court to tell him he was insufficiently well born to inherit his father’s estate.
The house was empty. I had told the others, those who stayed with me, not to come to work today. Even the servants were gone. I had not asked Kaspar to leave, but when I looked in his room he was not there. Part of me was disappointed, another part relieved. I drifted around the lonely house, too dispirited even to rouse a fire. I should have been working on some sort of defence for my trial, but each time I thought of it a great dread crushed my soul.
I went into the workshop and looked at the press. It stood in the middle of the room like a gallows, the platen raised, the ink tables dry, blank piles of paper stacked beside it. I ran my hand over the rugged frame. I pressed my fingers against the type in its bed and looked at the red indentations it left in my skin. I felt as I had that morning in Paris – void. I had stared into the flames and conjured the rainbow. Now all that remained was ash.
But I also remembered that day in Paris was when I first encountered Kaspar’s art. I went to my bedroom and took down his bestiary from its shelf. I leafed through the well-thumbed pages, marvelling again at his skill. Many of the beasts looked almost human: the shy deer with its chin tucked against its breast; the lovelorn unicorn who stared at the virgin maid and did not see the hunter’s net behind him; the bonasus who roasted his pursuers with fiery dung and mischievous glee.
I turned to the last page to look at the card, the four bears and four lions who had led me so far.