The Book of Lamps and Banners

by Elizabeth Hand

  He that doth professe such dessire as to see the Devvill must seek Him yre and no further

  “Good heavens,” Harold murmured, still scrutinizing the bird scratchings on the other side. “These are runic.”

  I shook my head. “Runic?”

  “I think so. It looks like an early form of the writing used by some ancient Germanic tribes. Which is remarkable, because the rest of this is an Arabic book. Except for the tipped-in pages, it’s made of conjugate bifolia—five folded sheets that, when cut, would result in twenty pages. Arabic books were usually made from groups of conjugate bifolia bound together. But sometimes a leaf comes loose, and I think that’s what’s happened here. Most of the time, the missing page is lost.”

  He turned back to the volume on the table, his brow furrowing. “Yes. The other pages in this section are all illuminated. Which means that this one has detached from bifolia bound elsewhere in the volume.”

  “Do you know what it says?” I asked.

  “I can make out a bit. I sold a fragment of a ninth-century Bible once, from Iceland. One of the only examples we have of a biblical text transcribed in runes.” He squinted at the leaf. “‘Angar’s work, beware, this is power…’ I think the rest is some kind of formula, perhaps for metalworking.

  “Or maybe not,” he added, and touched one of the runes with a gloved finger. “This doesn’t look like ink, but blood. So, a spell? Spectrographic analysis will sort that out. God knows, they might even be able to run DNA tests on it.”

  He sank back onto the couch, looking faintly shell-shocked. “Do you know what this means? It establishes a link between the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean and the far north, centuries before anyone thought that existed. It’s unbelievable.”

  He turned to Gryffin. “This is it,” he said, and reverently set the loose leaf back where he’d found it. “The Book of Lamps and Banners. I would stake my life on it.”

  Gryffin looked back at him. For the first time since the volume had changed hands, he smiled.

  Chapter 7

  For the next few minutes, Gryffin and I sat and watched as Harold paged through The Book of Lamps and Banners. As with Gryffin earlier, it seemed less a formal inspection than the kind of anguished scrutiny that anticipates a wrenching farewell. I got a fleeting glimpse of lapidary images that reminded me of when I’d smoked opium: faces with more than two eyes, trees giving birth to legless creatures, maps of unrecognizable constellations. Handwritten notes in Greek vied with the pictures and Arabic text for attention.

  There was more, too. The volume had been heavily grangerized—additional pages, drawings, notes, and annotations had been stuck in throughout. Some were papyrus, others parchment or paper, the latter covered with Latin words or the eccentric English spelling I associated with facsimile editions of Shakespeare. Later additions looked Victorian, the pages filled with neat, cramped penmanship. The notes looked like recipes—or, more likely, alchemical formulas or spells.

  Watching Harold leaf through them was like watching a scrambled time-lapse film of the history of magic, unfolding in a language at once dreamlike and naggingly familiar. The remnants of speed and alcohol in my brain gave the symbols a strange metallic sheen. The handwritten letters seemed to shift on the page. I found myself squinting, as though I might actually understand what they spelled out.

  “Aristotle.” I pointed at a line of Greek underneath several arcane symbols. A swastika, horned circles, an eye bisected by an arrow. “You think that’s actually his handwriting?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Harold. “And I don’t know how they could begin to figure it out. I don’t care. This is what I love—”

  He tapped the page with a gloved finger. “The possibility that it could be. That something this extraordinary could have survived for over two thousand years, that we’re part of the chain that has kept it intact—that’s more than enough.”

  That and a million pounds, I thought.

  Harold looked at Gryffin. “You haven’t scanned any of this, have you?”

  “No. I should have, no matter what she said. If something were to happen to it…”

  I watched to see if Harold caught him in the lie, but he only shook his head. “Nothing will happen to it,” he said. “Though I wish you’d scanned it, too. But I always try to observe the buyer’s terms—mine is not to reason why. I’m trying to convince her to make it available to the British Library at some point. So far she’s recalcitrant. I’ll see what I can do.”

  When he at last closed the volume and set down the magnifying lens, he looked slightly heartbroken.

  “Well.” He continued to stare at the book on the table in front of us. I felt a powerful urge to touch it, to feel its textured pages beneath my fingertips and breathe in the ancient dust it exhaled. As though he sensed my desire, Harold turned to me.

  “Would you like to look at it? Go ahead.” Like a magician pulling a scarf from the air, he produced another pair of white cotton gloves and handed them to me. “Just take care turning the pages.”

  I put on the gloves and picked up the book. As I touched it I felt a slight shock, as though I’d touched something metal while wearing wool.

  “Be careful,” Harold murmured again.

  The volume’s binding felt no different from one made of ordinary leather—slightly softer, maybe, though it was hard to tell through the gloves. I opened to a random page. It showed a stylized, leafless tree, the base of its trunk encircled by a creature like a legless dragon. Each of the tree’s limbs ended in a cluster of slender branches like cupped hands. Tree and serpent had been drawn in delicate, swooping black lines, then painted in subdued shades of green and brown: everything except the serpent’s eyes, which were flecks of gold leaf. At the very top of the tree a black bird perched in profile: a raven. Its single eye was gold, and stared out as though challenging me to look away.

  I tore my gaze from the raven to examine the rest of the page. Three strands of letters wove above and below the tree. Arabic and Greek; the third was unrecognizable. As I examined it more closely, the raven’s wing appeared to move. I heard a rustle that became the sound of my own name, whispered in a dark alley in downtown New York.

  Cass, Cass…

  “Cass!”

  I jerked upright as Gryffin yelled at me. Quickly Harold slid the book from my hands as I sank back into the sofa.

  “What the hell was that?” demanded Gryffin. I stared at him blankly. “You looked like you were about to pass out.”

  I glanced at Harold and remembered how he’d warned me earlier when I first touched the book. I said, “What was that? You tell me.”

  He only gathered the volume, folded it back in its cloth wrapping, and stood. “I must let Tindra know her treasure has been unearthed.”

  He crossed to his desk, opened a drawer, pulled out a black morocco slipcase, and placed the wrapped book inside it. Gilt lettering on the slipcase’s cover read The Book of Lamps and Banners. For a long time Harold remained at his desk, staring at it.

  At last he stood and embraced Gryffin. They spoke for a moment, too low for me to hear. Payment arrangements, I assumed. At last Gryffin nodded. Harold laid a hand on his shoulder. His other hand gestured at me, then the door into the hall.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, “but would you both mind waiting in the dining room? I have to deal with a few formalities. This shouldn’t take too long. Then we can see about dinner.”

  He closed the door, and Gryffin and I stood in the hall.

  “Congrats,” I said, peeling off my cotton gloves. “I hope you have a good accountant. And a good lawyer.”

  He flushed. “There’s nothing illegal about this.”

  “Who said there was? Who even suggested there might be something illegal about taking advantage of some poor Iraqi bookseller during wartime, and then taking advantage of the guy who smuggled the book into the U.S. and gave it to you, without having a clue as to how much it was worth? Not to mention selli
ng it to some Silicon Valley geek rather than a museum, so a bunch of scholars can argue about whether or not Aristotle was playing footsie with Alexander the Great. Who could even imagine such a thing?”

  I leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Not me.”

  “Stop it,” Gryffin snapped. He tore off his gloves and stuffed them into a pocket. “I knew this was a mistake. You’re a mistake.”

  “Yeah, and you fucking love it.”

  He gave me a disgusted look. “What the hell happened back there? When you looked at the book?”

  “I don’t know. It was like I was having some kind of flashback.”

  “You know what your problem is? You seriously need to sober up. Go to AA. Or rehab. If they’ll even take you.” He slung the messenger bag over his shoulder and headed for the kitchen. “I thought maybe you’d gotten your shit together.”

  “What, because I got a haircut?”

  Gryffin knew his way around the kitchen. After dropping his bag on the counter, he opened the door to a pantry retrofitted as a liquor cabinet. I stepped in with him, watching as he looked over the shelves and selected a bottle of Lagavulin. The fact that this guy had good taste in Islay single malts seemed further proof of…something. I reached for the door, and softly pulled it closed behind us.

  “Hey, I can’t see,” complained Gryffin.

  “That’s the point.” My hand found his unshaven cheek, and I pulled his face toward me.

  “Stop,” he whispered. “Cass, don’t.”

  I kissed him, his tongue tasting of champagne and Armagnac, his skin warm as I slid my hand beneath his shirt and tugged it from his jeans. I pulled him to the floor, unbuttoning his shirt. He didn’t put up a fight but held me tightly, his mouth covering mine as he turned onto his side and pulled me close. He was bigger than Quinn, taller, his hands pinning me easily to the floor; gentler than Quinn. When he came, I could feel his heart pounding in time with my own. After he drew away from me I thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he spoke softly.

  “Why did you do that?”

  I traced the corner of his eye, imagining the tiny emerald flame the sun would spark there. Because I could, I thought.

  “I wanted to know you in the dark,” I said. “Don’t overthink it.”

  He sat up and quickly began to dress. “What about your boyfriend?”

  I looked away and thought of Quinn, that subcutaneous sense of him within me always, his poison-green eyes and scarred face, the saline taste of his skin and his harsh laugh.

  “‘You can’t put your arms around a memory,’” I said, and pulled on my shirt.

  Gryffin stood and opened the door. “Did you just make that up?”

  “Johnny Thunders.”

  “Who’s that?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t believe I just fucked you.”

  Gryffin peered out into the kitchen before stepping cautiously from the pantry. I grabbed the bottle of Lagavulin from the shelf and stuck it behind the waistband of my jeans, tugging down my shirt to cover it, and joined Gryffin.

  He stood staring at his reflection in a darkened window, smoothing down his unruly hair. The door to the library was still closed. As Gryffin started toward it, I made a quick detour to the hall closet, where I shoved the bottle of whiskey into my bag and cursorily checked the pockets of Gryffin’s overcoat. They held nothing but wadded Kleenex, credit card receipts, and business cards. One of the latter was matte black, superimposed with the image of an eye. Silvery sans serif letters burned through the black:

  Tindra Bergstrand

  CREATOR, LUDUS MENTIS

  I pocketed the card and slipped back into the hall. After two steps I heard a strangled cry. Gryffin stood framed in the open doorway of the library, shaking his head.

  “No, no, no…”

  I ran to his side, gazing into the room. Even then, I couldn’t look away.

  Chapter 8

  Harold’s chair was half turned toward the rear of the room. He sat in it, head thrown back as if in surprise. His left eye was intact, but seemed to have been replaced by a crimson marble. I stepped behind the chair to get a look at the back of his skull but saw no exit wound. I shot a glance at the French doors. Closed. One toile curtain was awry.

  “Cut the light,” I called to Gryffin, still standing in the doorway. He did, though the desk lamp remained on.

  I crossed to the French doors. Had someone jimmied the lock? Was it possible Harold didn’t bother to lock them? I fumbled the cotton gloves from my pocket and pulled them back on, turned, and held up my hands so Gryffin could see them. Quickly he did the same.

  I turned back to the doors, gingerly touched one’s handle. It was open. I tugged the curtain back into place, and again stepped over to Harold’s chair.

  All I know about forensics comes from watching cop shows. But I can calculate shutter speed, distance, and time, and working in a darkroom taught me how certain chemicals, metals, and gases interact with one another, and with human physiology. You don’t want to be inhaling mercury or spilling silver nitrate on your skin.

  The gases and trace elements of heavy metals discharged by firing a bullet interact with certain media—like human flesh or blood—not unlike the way that old-fashioned photo chemicals interact with sensitized paper. At very close range, the combination of gases, smoke, and metallic residue can cause flesh to blacken. They also alter the chemistry of blood—the color changes from dark crimson to that cherry-candy red you see in Hammer horror flicks.

  This wasn’t a contact wound. And it wasn’t a bullet wound. There was no telltale blackening of lacerated skin where the projectile had entered his eye socket. Which ruled out suicide. Plus, why would a guy who’d just made the sale of his life off himself?

  I peered more closely at the eye. Other than the crimson orb itself, I saw no trace of blood, no torn flesh. The pupil of the other eye had contracted to a black speck. Otherwise, it appeared undamaged.

  What could have done this? A high-velocity weapon? That would suggest someone outside in the overgrown garden; someone with very good aim. I looked around for damage to furniture or a wall or the floor. Nothing. I groped for the camera that was no longer around my neck, then turned to Gryffin.

  “Your phone,” I whispered. He slipped across the room and gave it to me.

  I’d never handled a mobile’s camera before. I found it insultingly easy to use. I crouched to shoot Harold head-on, getting as close as I could to focus on that swollen eye. As I withdrew, I noticed something on his forehead. I tentatively moved aside a lock of hair and saw a symbol drawn on the skin in blood: three interlocking triangles. Just above it, blood seeped from a small, deep gash—soon the symbol would be unrecognizable. I took a quick photo of it, shoved the mobile into my pocket, and stood to survey the room one last time.

  A piece of paper had slipped under Harold’s desk, the color of strong tea and splashed with indigo and scarlet—a loose page from The Book of Lamps and Banners, maybe the same one Harold had examined earlier.

  I hesitated, feeling a superstitious unease. Finally I picked it up. I darted into the hall, retrieved my bag from the closet, and returned to the library. I grabbed the copy of the Times Literary Supplement from the coffee table, slipped the page inside, and once more looked around.

  Absolutely nothing seemed to have been disturbed. On one side of Harold’s desk, stacks of papers were lined up neatly beside his laptop. On the other side sat the black morocco slipcase containing The Book of Lamps and Banners. Whoever killed Harold had neglected to take the most valuable thing here. I grabbed the slipcase, slid it and the TLS into my bag, then nudged Gryffin into the hall, shutting the door behind us.

  We ran to the closet. Gryffin halted to stare at me, glassy-eyed. “Is Harold—he looked dead.”

  “He looked dead because he is dead.” I tossed Gryffin his overcoat. He made no move to catch it, and it fell to the floor at his feet. I snatched it up and shoved it at him, along with his mobile, then grabbed my leather ja
cket.

  “Listen to me.” I pulled him close. “Put on your coat and walk slowly out that door with me, now.”

  “What are you even saying?” Gryffin’s panicked voice echoed through the empty hall. “We have to call the police—”

  “No, we don’t. Let’s go.”

  I started for the door, but he remained frozen. I took a deep breath.

  “Gryffin—listen to me. Your friend’s dead. I don’t know what kind of arrangement the two of you had, but I bet it doesn’t have much to do with the IRS or Inland Revenue. If you call the cops, you’re fucked.”

  He blinked, and I could see the lights go back on inside his skull. “The book—where’s the book?”

  “I have it,” I said, and he finally pulled on his coat. “Is there CCTV inside the house?”

  “No.”

  “What about outside?”

  “Not here. Other places, probably.”

  “Well, keep your head down and stay with me. Look like we’re a couple.”

  I linked my arm through his and we slipped outside. “Gloves,” I said, yanking off mine as we headed into the shadows.

  The narrow street was empty. A cold wind rustled the branches of a holly tree. On a neighboring doorstep, a tortoiseshell cat regarded us, unblinking. Mellow lights shone in nearby houses. There was no sign of any disturbance, no sirens or raised voices or alarms.

  “Get us out of here. Not the way we came.” I tightened my hold on his arm, inclining my head toward the darkness that was the Heath. “There.”

  He nodded, and we followed the road through the Vale of Health, past all those fairy-tale buildings with their blue plaques and hybrid vehicles, the muffled sounds of conversation and television from behind curtained windows, a glimpse of a teenage girl hunched over a tablet. I felt dazed, no longer drunk but dreaming. Was this still the real world? If it was, what did that mean for me?