I had hoped that Peter would accompany me — he had traveled far and wide and could protect me from cutthroats and thieves — but I had underestimated his love for Christina. She had proved the greatest temptation of all. Peter was indebted to her father... at least until he achieved his independence and claimed her hand in marriage. He promised to take care of Herr Gutenberg and defend him, should the need arise.
I grabbed my short wooden staff — half walking stick, half weapon — and followed Peter towards the hearth.
We had rehearsed this moment several times since returning from Frankfurt four days ago, but that didn't make it any easier now that the time had finally come. We approached the open chest with a shared sense of misgiving.
As if aware of the monumental journey ahead, the loose sheets of dragon skin had undergone a magnificent transformation — withdrawing from the snakes' fangs and binding themselves into a wondrous book that looked impossibly heavy to carry, yet weighed surprisingly little. It was guarded by new talon clasps and armored with jagged silver-green scales. Fust was fascinated by the alteration, but unable to account for its sudden metamorphosis. He had no idea of my imminent departure. Nor could he read yet from its pages: stories began, but ended in mid-sentence; potions appeared, but lacked one or two vital ingredients to achieve their full potency; and all doorways to the future remained sealed... at least until he discovered I held the missing sheets in my toolkit. And that was only a matter of time.
Peter stared into the chest, while noises from the crowd outside lapped beneath the open windows.
"I wish there were another way," he sighed as he took the fabulous book make of dragon skin and fitted it into a makeshift harness, which he had secured to my back, making me look even more hunched over than ever. The toolkit, which even Peter did not know about, was safely concealed beneath my girdle.
He refused to meet my gaze, but worked steadily and methodically, tightening the straps of cloth around my body and then covering the whole again with my rough yellow cloak. He kept his thoughts to himself, as though words would be a sign of weakness.
I tried to imagine Fust's face when next he peered inside the chest and found the dragon skin missing. Surely his wrath would be insurmountable! I quivered at the thought. Would he pursue me to the ends of the earth, searching for it? Would I ever be able to return to Mainz?
My knees buckled beneath me, but Peter put out a hand to support me.
"Are you ready?" he asked, giving me a sad smile — his most brotherly gesture yet. Before I could react, he raised the hood of my cloak, so that I could not see to either side: only straight ahead. That way, he thought, I could not detect the tears in his eyes.
But I could.
A
Christina surprised us by bounding down the street to meet us. Her flyaway hair showed her distress.
"My father knows!" she called out over the din of the jubilant voices. "I tried to hide it from him, but he knows! He's coming for you now!"
She shoved and battled her way through the throng of dancers. Peter had entrusted her with the job of keeping Fust preoccupied while we prepared for my departure; but the man, ever wary, had wrested the truth from her. There was no end to his jealousy or suspicion. Even now, he was visible at the far end of the street, fighting through the crowd. By sheer force of will, Christina had beaten him to us.
My heart bolted inside me. I looked frantically to right and left, desperately seeking a means of escape, but my legs had turned to water. Bodies boxed us in. Cries of "Thief! Thief!" rose in the distance, Fust's voice unmistakable above the roar of the crowd.
"Hurry! There's no time!" shrieked Christina. "You've got to go!" Like a frantic hen, she started shooing people away from her with lifted skirts — which only made them rowdier.
Luckily, Peter had a plan. He grabbed me by the arm and propelled me through a knot of merrymakers.
"Quick! Act as if you're dancing!" he shouted to me as kings, queens, knights and jesters whirled round us in a blur of masks. I did a poor imitation of a leap and caper behind him, unable to match the fervor of his steps, and pretended to smile — but inwardly, I was stiff with terror. I grinned like a death's-head.
Fust was rapidly closing in, his jeweled hands pulling people aside.
Our diversion finally started to take effect. Recognizing the principal characters, Adam and Eve, dancing towards them, most of the revelers stopped to point and stare.
"Why are you waiting here?" cried Peter, giving the nearest onlookers the order to start the formal procession towards the grave. "Let's go!"
The words seemed to release the citizens of Mainz from a spell. With a mighty cheer, the crowd surged after us, dancing in our wake, all heading in the same direction: the graveyard at the edge of the city. Ahead of us, strangers jumped aside to let us pass and then clapped their hands and leaped in our trail, joining the carnival atmosphere. The street was sheer pandemonium .
"Stop!" I heard Fust cry as more and more people blocked his way. "Let me pass, you fools! They've stolen my book!"
I glanced behind me. Fust, in his vanity, had dressed as the Pope, one of the foremost members of the procession. While some taunted him with jibes and jests, others bowed before him and allowed his Holiness to advance unimpeded. If anything, the stream of bodies was pulling him closer.
Feeling me waver, Christina tightened her grip on my other hand and together we charged through the streets and alleys, picking up more stragglers. Breathless and dizzy, I clung to my rescuers as they pulled me under the shadow of the large rose-colored cathedral and up the cobbled lane towards the North Gate.
Suddenly, like an assault of brass angels, a triumphal fanfare greeted us from the heights of the city wall. Musicians scurried along the parapets, dancing and playing their instruments. The flames of the apocalypse were upon us! Horns and trumpets sparked in the sunlight and red and gold pennants, fixed to the gate, rippled like silken fire. Already, a great crowd had assembled by the tall, turreted tower, close to the graveyard. Voices burst into song the moment we appeared.
Fust pursued us, showing no sign of letting up. His cries hounded us like a baying dog.
Desperately I searched for a sign of Herr Gutenberg, but couldn't see him anywhere in the confusion of faces. We tore through the crowd.
Ahead of us loomed the large wooden gate and, beyond that, the entrance to the graveyard. If we were not careful we would soon be sucked into its embrace and trapped for good. Fust would surely have us then.
Peter and Christina seemed to have reached the same conclusion. Without warning, they flung me ruthlessly aside, into a multitude of waiting arms. I bobbed and bounced from person to person, until I landed, winded and bruised, near the giant stone ramparts, on the city-side of the wall. Bent double with exhaustion, I struggled to regain my breath. The book felt suddenly too heavy for my back; my body ached. By the time I looked up, Peter and Christina had gone, swallowed by the graveyard.
For a moment, I stood where I was. People yelled and applauded and danced all around me, but I neither heard their songs nor felt their joy. I was numb with shock. I had not expected Peter to fling me aside so roughly, so impersonally, without even a word of farewell. I knew why he had done so — to give me time to escape — but still I felt betrayed. I didn't want it to end this way. Slowly, shouldering my burden, I began to pick my way through the crowd. Tears blinded my path.
As if sensing my mood, the revelers suddenly fell quiet. A hush shifted through the crowd like a snake. The musicians' frantic playing faded.
Fust had arrived.
He stood barely a stone's throw away, prowling through a mass of spectators, hunting me down. I crouched by the wall, trying to make myself invisible. He had not been fooled by Peter's ploy. He must have seen me escape. He was coming for the book...
I held my breath.
The crowd opened before him in a quivering circle, surprised by the vehemence of his actions, which were no longer those of an innocent bystander
. His eyes had narrowed to dark slits and his nostrils flared, like a wild animal sniffing me out.
Fortunately, a brave horn-player broke the silence with an untimely belch and a nervous ripple of laughter passed through the crowd. Fust paused to glare at the ring of offending faces.
"Fools," he spat. "You laugh now, but you have no idean what will come!"
The few titters stopped. Peter, dressed as Adam, strode into the arena. Bare-chested and brave, he faced his Master. To a chorus of approval, Christina the walked up behind him and, like Eve, coiled her arm seductively around his waist.
Fust, as the Pope, pointed at them accusingly.
"You!" he hissed, barely able to contain his fury. "You two are to blame for all this! It's all your fault!"
A couple of spectators, thinking this was part of the performance, chuckled.
Fust, livid with rage, turned on them with his heavy ring-clad fingers. "Fools!" he cursed again, his jewels catching fire in the light. "You're all damned fools!"
This only served to increase the general sense of hilarity. People broke into a chorus of laughter and insults, taunting the Pope.
Immediately, Peter and Christina raised their hands to silence the commotion. Gently, with voices tinged with sorrow, they began to sing:
"King or Queen, Pope or Knight,
Each lies equal in God's Sight;
Earth to Earth and Dust to Dust,
We claim your Soul: Johann Fust..."
Fust looked at them in disgust and then, as the full comprehension of his situation dawned on him, his mouth curled into a sneer.
"No! I won't go! You can't make me!"
Peter and Christina — as Adam and Eve — repeated the verse, emphasizing Fust's role as Pope, a preeminent member of the procession and the first to be led to the grave. While they sang, a host of skeletons emerged from hiding and moved stealthily towards him, about to claim their first victim. Once summoned to the grave, Fust would have to wait in quiet compliance — death — until all the citizens of Mainz lay beside him, from the noblest knight to the poorest beggar. Finally, at the end of the symbolic dance, God would descend and raise them all from their slumber... by which time I would be gone.
One by one the skeletons approached Fust and bowed before him, inviting him to participate in the Dance of Death.
Fust became hysterical. "No! I won't go! Never! You can't take me!"
He ran from one side of the crowd to the other, appealing to people to let him pass, scrabbling at them, but the spectators, now a wall of bodies, blocked his way.
Peter and Christina walked steadily closer.
Fust attempted once more to run away, but a mischievous devil, sensing trouble, rushed up behind him and kicked him in the backside, causing him to fall down. On his hands and knees, he scrambled away from his daughter and chosen son-in-law, crawling like an infant.
Even now, the skeletons barred his way.
Impassive, Peter and Christina looked on as Fust, reduced to no more than a child, was dragged away by his arms and legs, struggling furiously against the ignominy of death. The crowd gave an enormous roar of approval — like the earth opening up — and the musicians on top of the wallstruck up their instruments. The last I saw he was pinned to the ground by an army of devils and demons in the realm of the dead and forced to remain still by an open grave. He was writhing desperately beneath their hoofs and claws, trying to pursue me and regain the book.
Peter and Christina shook their heads and scanned the faces of the crowd for the next person to join the Dance of Death. I longed for them to pick me out of the mass of heads, but I forced my steps away.
Blindly, I stumbled through the excited throng of people — an unnoticed beggar, hapered by a burden on his back — working my way towards the protective shadow of the great cathedral. I glanced back just once, when I heard Peter's voice soaring above the crowd like an angel's chorus:
"Naked we're born, Naked we'll go,
See how the Vain are soon brought low.
Godspeed the poor Boy on his Way.
Fear not, we'll meet some other Day..."
I turned and made my solitary way through the suddenly cheerless city, waling towards my future.
Oxford
19
Blake felt uneasy. A wind had picked up and leaves were blowing against the sides of the locked-up colleges, which towered above him like massive shadows. Gargoyles gripped the ledges of the buildings with chiseled claws and angels peered down at him from the roofs. He was making his way through the dark city streets towards All Souls College.
Duck trotted behind him. "Did you bring Endymion Spring? " she asked excitedly.
"Of course I did," he answered, "but you're not to mention it, OK? We can't let anyone know we've got it until we figure out who's the Person in Shadow."
"And then what?"
It was such a simple question, but it made him stop in his tracks. He wasn't sure.
"I don't know," he said uncertainly.
Beside them an enormous drum-shaped building with blackened windows and a silver dome — the Radcliffe Camera — grew out of an islanded garden in the middle of a cobbled square. Just behind them was the Bodleian Library, a vast stone crown with windows lit up like jewels. Somewhere in the Upper Reading Room, beneath the rows of glowing lamps, their mother was working into the evening.
Until now, Blake had expected someone — either Jolyon or Psalmanazar or even Duck — to tell him what to do, but he no longer felt he could trust anyone. It was up to him to solve the mystery on his own.
Even Endymion Spring, it seemed, had abandoned him. All day long the book had taunted him with its silence. The black page was still there, warning him of the Person in Shadow, but there was no sign of the original riddle he had seen, nor any clues about the future.
To his left he could see the imposing walls of All Souls College, its thistle-like minaret and distinctive towers steeped in shadow. Inside its gates was yet another library, a chapel-like building with row upon row of leather books, reached by curving wooden staircases. The entire city, it seemed, was built of books. Stacked on top of each other, slotted side by side, they fitted together like bricks to form a tremendous fortification of reading, a labyrinth of words. There were even miles of books beneath him now, in tunnels below the ground. The university was an immense walk-in library. The Last Book could be hidden anywhere.
Endymion Spring squirmed suddenly in Blake's knapsack, thumping him in the small of the back.
"Hold on," he said. "I need to take a look." He grabbed Duck's elbow and steered her towards a large, old-fashioned lantern hanging from a sconce on the wall, opposite the Church of St. Mary the Virgin.
The wind was gathering strength and the pages of the blank book whipped back and forth like a thing possessed, flickering past his eyes so quickly he couldn't tell whether they contained any new information. Once or twice, he thought he glimpsed streaks of words, but they could have been smudges, shadows, anything. The lamp threw restless shapes against the stone buildings like autumn leaves.
Suddenly, a gust of wind tunneled through a nearby alley and seized the book from his hands. It almost flew away from him, rising towards the church, but he managed to cage it against his chest like a frightened bird before it broke free. Heart racing, he stuffed the volume back inside his bag. It wasn't safe to take any chances — not here, not now, not with the members of the Ex Libris Society so close.
"What's happening?" cried Duck, her voice grabbed by a fist of wind and hurled down the street.
"I don't know! The book seems to be afraid for some reason."
"Blake, I don't like it," she whimpered. "I'm scared."
"I know. I am too."
"Maybe this is all a mistake," she said. "Maybe we shouldn't have brought the book with us."
"But we had to," he insisted. "It's not safe to leave it behind either. I'm not letting it out of my sight ever again."
He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but
was rapidly losing his nerve. The quivering book alarmed him. The Person in Shadow might be waiting for them just around the corner. Endymion Spring might be telling them to turn the other way.
"Don't worry," he said again. "It'll be all right, you'll see. Everything will work out fine in the end." The wind forced the words back down his throat.
He noticed the long golden hands of the clock on the church tower overhead passing eight o'clock. The meeting would soon begin. They had to hurry.
Taking Duck's hand, he guided her towards the High Street, where the main entrance was located. Buses pounded past, sending tremors through the pavement. He glanced up at the sky once more for reassurance, but the night seemed to glower back — like the black page in his book. A few ragged clouds scudded across the moon.
A
The college was guarded by a slender door set into a fancy wooden gate. The arched door was slightly ajar, but an iron chain barred their way in. All Souls College was clearly closed to visitors.
Blake looked around for a bell to ring, but all he could see were three dim statues glaring down at him from above. One wielded an orb and a scepter, another a crosier, while the third seemed to be perched above the others like God, sitting in judgment over everyone who passed by.
A voice suddenly growled at them from the other side of the door. "What do you want?" A face like a gargoyle peered at them through a crevice between the door and the frame.
"We're here to attend a meeting," said Blake nervously, swallowing a lump of fear in his throat. "The Ex Libris Society."
"You are, are you?"
"We're members," lied Duck.
"You're members," repeated the old man mirthlessly. "You expect me to believe that? You're a bit young."
Duck was about to give him a piece of her mind, but Blake nudged her to keep quiet. A bus rattled by. As soon as the vibrations subsided, he added more reasonably, "We've been invited."
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