The Book of Secrets

by Tom Harper

  Nick was feeling faint. He looked up to try to clear his head, but the towers of books looming into the darkness only made it worse.

  ‘Why do you even bother?’ said Emily. ‘Gutenberg, the Master of the Playing Cards, whoever made that book: they won. Any worthwhile technology can be used the wrong way. However many copies of the bestiary came off that press, you’ve still printed more Bibles. Isn’t that a better trade-off?’

  For the first time, Nevado looked angry. His ageless face suddenly became old. ‘This is an ancient war between good and evil. You cannot compromise with Satan. Pope Pius was wrong. The Church was never stronger than when books were rare and costly, written individually in a language only a learned fraternity could understand. To keep these books here was nursing a serpent in our breast. They should have been destroyed.’

  ‘I never knew the Church was so squeamish about burning books.’

  The anger ebbed. The blood-red lips twisted into a cruel smirk. ‘Everything in its time. Why do you think I suffered you to come here?’

  The adrenalin was running out. Nick could feel the crash coming. ‘We broke in.’

  ‘Why do you think you found the hidden map, the ladder leading you into the tower? Did you think we are so trapped in the Middle Ages that we do not even know how to lock a door?’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ Nick muttered.

  ‘This moment, with Pope Pius’s charge at last complete, is a fitting time to end his folly. The library will burn, and you will burn with it. They will find your bones in the ashes and you will be held responsible.’

  ‘Why not just do it yourself?’

  Nevado held up his hands. His skin was parchment thin, veins like rivers just below the surface, but they were steady as ice. ‘You think I am old and feeble? I have achieved much, but I have not finished my journey. I still have ambitions.’

  ‘Will letting a priceless collection of books burn help you become pope?’

  ‘Few cardinals in the conclave will ever know of it. Those who do, most of them will be glad it has happened. They will hear that a gang of international art thieves broke into the library to steal the manuscripts, overpowered the monks and the guards and could not be stopped. In their greed they grew careless. They dropped a cigarette; papers caught light; the library was lost. They were caught in the fire and burned almost beyond recognition.’

  ‘And we’re supposed to be a gang of international art thieves?’

  ‘Why not? A man wanted for murder in New York: a computer expert who could disable our security systems. A medieval scholar with a known animus against the Church. And a disgraced auctioneer who stole from the properties she was supposed to be valuing. You came here of your own will, following your own trail of evidence.’

  ‘For someone who wanted us to come here you spent a lot of time trying to kill us.’

  ‘I was over-hasty. You would have been killed in New York if my associates had managed it, or Paris or Brussels or Strasbourg. Always, you escaped. I wondered how you could prevail against forces so much greater than your own; I prayed God to deliver you into my power. Finally I understood. He has brought you here to bring me the book and fulfil my purpose. His purpose. Truly, He moves in mysterious ways.’

  He took a cigarette out of his coat and lit it. A nostalgic smile spread across his face as he took a drag. ‘I quit fifteen years ago. As my doctor said: they will kill you.’

  ‘There’s only one problem,’ said Emily. ‘You’ve got the wrong book.’

  ‘Where are the rest of these books?’

  Always the same voice. Always the same questions. I longed to answer but I could not. A crushing weight bore down on me. It milled my wretched body, choking my lungs, bending my bones until they snapped.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I did not know anything. Where I was. How long I had been there. Who held me captive, and how they had come by the book. All I knew inside my sackcloth hood was the rattle of chains, the smell of wet stone and burning pitch, the ceaseless questions I could not answer.

  I was naked – I knew that – tied to a frame like parchment being stretched to dry. A flat board rested on my stomach, held down by a great and increasing number of stones. It was an exquisitely apt punishment – that I who had devoted myself to pressing ink, lead and paper should now go under the press myself. I wondered if Fust had told them.

  ‘Men speak of the new art you have discovered. Was this what you intended? A tool for heretics?’

  ‘I wanted to perfect the world.’ It had seemed so vital to me, a burning purpose. Now it sounded feeble.

  ‘Did you seek to destroy the Church?’

  ‘To strengthen it.’

  ‘To summon the powers of darkness?’

  ‘To spread truth.’

  The inquisitor leaned over me. I knew, because I could smell the onions on his breath. Air fanned my neck as he waved something – the book? – in front of me.

  ‘Is this what you call truth? The most diabolical lies and filthy slanders that the devil ever planted? Even to look on this book would be mortal sin.’

  My chest burned. ‘I did not make the book,’ I gurgled.

  He ignored me; he always did. The pain of torture might break a man’s body, but it was the futility that destroyed his soul. The questions never changed; the answers were never believed.

  ‘How many did you write?’

  ‘Thirty.’ I spoke eagerly, almost grateful for the chance to answer his question. ‘He said there were thirty.’

  ‘One was sent with an obscene note to the archbishop. Another was found on the step of St Quintin’s church – a perfect copy. Is that the devil’s work?’

  ‘My art,’ I gasped.

  ‘So you confess?’

  Panic gripped me. Had I confessed? I tried to explain; I heaved against the board to get air in my lungs, but all I managed was a strangled groan. Then I realised how ridiculous it was and lay back. I could not condemn myself any more than they already had. I would die there.

  I heard a grim laugh. ‘You will not die here.’

  I must have spoken aloud.

  ‘When we have learned what we need, we will burn you in Mainz as a heretic.’

  A small sigh escaped my body, perhaps the last breath in me. It was the end I had always known would come, the lesson my father had tried to beat into me that day in Frankfurt. I would die a heretic, a forger who had debased his currency.

  Despite everything, I found myself laughing: the mad cackle of my rotten soul fleeing. I had lived half my life haunted by fear of burning for the mortal sins I had committed against body and nature. Now I would burn for a book I had not made. I suppose it was a sort of justice.

  My laughter enraged the inquisitor. He shouted to his assistants. I heard the grate of stone, and two ribs cracking as the weight bore down.

  ‘Where are the rest of these books?’

  The pain consumed me, pressing me into oblivion.

  For a second, Nevado was absolutely still. Then he pushed past them and strode to the shelves at the back of the room. The gunman by the door edged closer.

  Nevado picked up the bestiary. ‘This was the book you brought?’

  Nick didn’t answer. He had a terrible feeling nothing he could say now would save them. The overpowering smells of gasoline and tobacco made him sick.

  Nevado opened the cover. One glance was enough.

  ‘This is the wrong book. A simple bestiary.’ He swept the book aside and turned to Gillian, his waxy face flushed with rage. ‘You told me they would bring the Liber Bonasi.’

  ‘There’s a colophon,’ Gillian stammered. ‘It mentions the other bestiary. That’s how we knew. It led us here.’

  ‘This is worthless.’ Nevado leaned on the shelf, seemingly oblivious to the cigarette dangling inches from the packed books. Nick barely noticed. Something the cardinal had said echoed in his mind like a gunshot. You told me. He turned to Gillian.

  ‘You told him we were coming?’
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  ‘Of course not.’ She reached to her shoulder and began twisting a lock of hair around her finger. ‘I told him the book I found in Paris was the one he wanted. I had to. He must’ve thought you’d bring it if he lured you here.’

  She looked him straight in the eye, begging him to believe her. Nick wanted to; he almost had when Emily said quietly, ‘How about the note? Your set of instructions on how to break in.’

  ‘I don’t know. He found them when he captured me. Planted them where you’d find them.’ She saw Nick’s expression. ‘What?’

  ‘Do you know where he hid them?’

  Gillian stared at him. He recognised the look: he’d seen it before. In trouble with someone, searching for the answer they wanted to hear. She began to speak, then checked herself.

  ‘He hid them in the toilet roll,’ said Nick. ‘Did you tell him about that?’

  She crumbled. He’d seen that before too. ‘I had to, Nick. He’d have killed me if I didn’t go along with it.’

  ‘And what did you think he’d do to us when he caught us and found it wasn’t the right book? Tell us it was all a misunderstanding and let us go?’ His head pounded; his eyes hurt just to look at her. He felt as if he’d turned to stone.

  ‘Enough.’ Nevado turned, his face hazed in the smoke of the half-smoked cigarette. He shouted something in Italian to the guard at the door. ‘I have decided-’

  Without warning, Gillian flew at him. Before the guard could react she had snatched the cigarette from Nevado’s mouth, pivoted away and hurled it into the bookshelf. The oil-soaked papers took the flame eagerly, as if they had waited five hundred years for the consummation.

  ‘No!’

  Too late, Nevado seemed to change his mind. He ran to the shelf and pulled the burning papers to the floor, frantically stamping on them. A gust of wind from the door picked up the loose leaves and blew them against the shelves, starting new fires higher up, out of reach. The hem of Nevado’s coat caught fire.

  Then the whole wall exploded in flame.

  LXXXIV

  Through the gathering smoke, Nick saw Nevado run for the door. He tried to follow, but a rattle of bullets answered him almost immediately. He dived for cover, pulling Emily down with him and covering her with his body. When he looked up, he was just in time to see the door slam shut.

  Where was Gillian? He looked around through the black smoke pouring off the books and couldn’t see her. Had Nevado taken her with him? Was that part of the deal?

  Then he saw her. She was lying on the floor near the shelves, propped up on her arms trying to crawl away. Hot ash and embers rained down on her, curling like petals on her back, but she didn’t move any faster. She couldn’t: when she tugged her leg forward a dark river of blood smeared behind her. Nevado’s parting gift.

  Nick ran over, hooked his arms under hers and dragged her to the middle of the room. Emily tore a sleeve off her sweater and tied it around Gillian’s thigh to staunch the bleeding. Her face was white with shock.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m so sorry, Nick.’

  There wasn’t time. The flames were already beginning to spread from the back around to the sides of the hall. Smoke was filling the chamber. Nick pulled his gloves out of his pocket and handed one to Emily.

  ‘Hold this in front of your face.’

  Breathing through the soggy wool Nick raced to the door. The surface was smooth and featureless, with neither lock nor handle visible.

  Did you think we are so trapped in the Middle Ages that we do not even know how to lock a door?

  He gave it a kick, but it didn’t so much as creak. He only hurt his foot. He pressed it with his hands and felt the grainless strength of metal. They would burn long before it did.

  He ran back to Emily and Gillian. ‘Bad news.’

  Without taking the glove from her face, Emily pointed up. Thick clouds of smoke swirled among the rafters. She snatched the glove away just long enough to say, ‘The smoke. Going out.’ She took another breath. ‘Must be an opening. In the roof.’

  Was there? Nick had his doubts. But there wasn’t any other way out. He stared up at the shelves, like a giant stair scaling the high wall. Ladders and galleries connected them, though some were already dangerously close to the encroaching flames. Even if they made it to the top, they’d probably just find themselves trapped.

  Got to keep trying, he told himself. He put his arm around Gillian’s shoulders, lifted her up and headed for the nearest ladder.

  The cold air in the courtyard was a mercy. Nevado dropped to his knees in the snow to extinguish the last embers smouldering in the hem of his coat, and to cool the burns that scalded his legs. Ugo watched him uncertainly.

  ‘Should we put out the fire?’ he asked.

  Nevado looked back. From the outside, the inferno inside the keep was all but invisible. The windows in the tower had long since been blocked up. Only the smell of smoke, almost comforting on this snowy night, gave any clue. The plume pouring from the roof was lost in the darkness.

  ‘Are you OK, Monsignóre?’

  Nevado realised he was trembling. He had not meant it to end like this – rushed and sloppy, out of his control, Pope Pius’s commission still incomplete. And the sight of all those books burning – evil though they were – had shaken him more than he had expected.

  But the Lord moved in mysterious ways. Perhaps it was a gentle correction, he thought, a warning to his pride that only God was perfect. His plan would still work.

  He turned to Ugo. ‘Give me your weapon.’

  Ugo looked surprised, but handed him the pistol without complaint. Nevado felt the weight of it. It was so much smaller than the guns he’d used in his youth, protecting himself against the republican gangs who lurked in the forests around his father’s church in Andalusia. But the mechanism was the same. He checked the clip and the safety.

  ‘Bless you.’

  He fired two shots into Ugo’s chest. The Italian collapsed without a sound, his blood seeping into the snow like ink.

  They overpowered the guards and could not be stopped. It was regrettable but necessary. No one could blame him for inadequate precautions.

  Nevado gave him one more bullet, just to be sure, then threw the gun into the snow by the keep. Whoever came to investigate could draw their own conclusions. Then he hurried to the stables where his car was parked.

  The back wall of the tower was awash with flame, like a stained-glass window leaded black where the shelves had not yet collapsed. It sucked in air and turned the whole chamber into a vast oven. At the far end of the room, Nick had stripped to his T-shirt and was still soaked through with sweat. His shirt was tied around Gillian’s leg, strapping on a makeshift splint made from two lengths of bookshelf. She clung to the shelves as she hobbled along the gallery.

  The walkway was metal, a cast-iron lattice so that when you looked down, you could see how far you had to drop. It wouldn’t burn, but it might fry them. Nick could already feel it getting hot through the soles of his shoes. So far, the stone pillars had stopped the flames from spreading to their part of the library, but it couldn’t be long. A blizzard of burning paper scraps swirled in the hall on currents of smoke and scalding air.

  Whoever had designed the library hadn’t made it easy: the ladders were placed at alternating ends of each gallery, so that you had to zigzag your way across each level to reach the next. It reminded Nick of a primitive video game, working your way to the top while a gorilla threw bananas and fireballs at you. Only now, the fireballs were all too real.

  The ladders were the hardest part. Emily went first, then lay on her stomach and reached back down while Nick supported Gillian, holding her hips to steady her. She tried to help by pulling herself up the rungs, but smoke and pain and loss of blood made her giddy.

  Once she slipped, lost her grip and almost plunged backwards over the edge. Nick held on grimly and hauled her back.

  ‘Leave me.’ She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek. ‘
Save yourself.’

  If there’d been any prospect of actually saving himself, perhaps he would have been tempted. Instead, he hoisted her onto his shoulders and climbed the ladder. She didn’t resist.

  Emily yelled something to Nick, but the roar of the fire drowned her voice. Instead of trying again, she simply pointed down. The fire had leaped around the pillars: eager flames raced up the shelves below them.

  Now they were in a deadly race. They took Gillian between them and dragged her, stumbling, to the next ladder. Smoke rose all around them, sieving through the holes in the iron-work like poison gas. Nick’s lungs ached; his skin sizzled with raw heat.

  At last they came out on the top balcony. When Nick looked down he had the impression he was standing atop a column of flame. Smoke made it a dull, bloody red: it was so thick up here that he could hardly see.

  But Emily had been right: the smoke was moving upwards. Squinting through his tears, Nick saw a dark opening in the ceiling. It was too high to reach, and too far from the wall for the shelves to be any use.

  ‘Wait here.’

  Nick dropped to the floor and crawled along the gantry on hands and knees. The hot metal scalded his hands; he grabbed two books and used them like oven mitts to protect himself. At the end of the row of shelves, tucked in behind a column, an old wooden school desk sat gathering dust – perhaps so that anyone who came up this far didn’t have to carry his book all the way down. Nick grabbed the desk and dragged it back along the gantry, closing his eyes against the smoke. Books fell unheeded from the shelves; once the desk skewed around and jammed against the handrail. A desperate heave brought it free.

  He didn’t even realise he’d reached Emily until he felt her hand on his back. She understood at once. She scrambled onto the desk, raised her arms and reached for the skylight. Still she couldn’t quite reach. Nick wrapped his arms around her legs, squeezed and lifted.