Cursed (Codex of Enchantment Book 1)

by Briana Snow

  “Of course, sir-Director-sir!” Penelope said, as the Director and her new employer swept out of the Upper Storeroom 1 as if he had never been there at all. Penelope Harp pushed aside her shoulder-length, reddish-brown hair and readjusted her spectacles, feeling slightly faint for a moment. This was it. This was the job that she had been waiting for, all of her life. She smoothed her blouse, picked up her lanyard and documents, and left the Upper Storeroom 1—unknowingly to her, never to see it again.

  The Special Manuscripts Archive was located in the lower basement floors of the New York Public Library. As Penelope descended the small staff lift it felt to her as if she were moving ever further away from her old life, her old self—even her old world. The New York Library of down here could hardly be more different from the New York Library of upstairs. Gone, are the polished mahogany desks and green-tinted reading lamps. There are no signs of marble inlays on the floor or walls, no great works of statuary standing at the door entrances and exits. Whereas the building upstairs was a tourist attraction and cultural treasure in its own right—and that wasn’t even counting the books it contained—the floors below looked more like a modern scientific institute with its steel doors, concrete walls and strip lights.

  The further down that Penelope went, the increasingly precious and rarefied the atmosphere became. She stopped seeing the occasional worker walking through the halls, and had to swipe her new identity card on electronic door gates to be allowed access. The final double-steel doors she met, with its white-on-black lettered sign of ‘Special Manuscripts’ had steel doors that were sealed with rubber, and beside the card-machine, an intercom.

  Bzzz!

  “Penelope Harp here, uh, I’m… new,” she said a little hesitantly.

  “Morning, Harp, yes, I have your name down here. You’re not carrying in any organic materials, are you?” said a static sort of voice at the other end of the intercom.

  “Uhm… no?” Penelope wondered if her pack of breath mints in her bag counted.

  “And to the best of your knowledge, no recent contact with any infected books?”

  Penelope wasn’t entirely sure that a book could get an infection. It wasn’t exactly like a book could start sneezing all of its own, she thought. “No?”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought so, still. Best to be careful on your first day. Please swipe your card and then take a step back, Miss Harp,” the intercom said, and Penelope did so.

  Bzzz! The light above the door switched from red to green, and there was a hiss of escaping air as the rubber seal broke, and the metal doors swung outwards on automatic pistons. On the other side, there was a rubber mat, and a glass-lined cubicle to one side of the door, within which sat the man whom she had presumably been talking to. He was a portly sort of man with a balding head, but had a beard that the American Fathers would have been proud of—a bare chin flanked by side-burns that flared right up to his ears. The bearded man gave her a small wave, and she returned it, feeling a little self-conscious.

  “Come on, come in,” the Special Archivist and door guard, from whose own lanyard identity card Penelope could read, ‘Matthew Hopkins’. He waved her in as he emerged from the cubicle with a box of blue latex gloves. “The doors don’t stay open forever,” he explained, as Penelope heard the pistons starting to whir the door closed once more behind them, and with a hiss the black rubber seals met and closed.

  “Wow, that is uh… pretty impressive,” Penelope said a little awkwardly.

  “Yeah? I guess so. It’s not as great a system as Princeton, but it’ll do I suppose.” Hopkins shook the box at her. “You have to wear these I’m afraid, before you do anything else down here.” Penelope took a pair from the box, seeing that Matthew’s own hands were similarly synthetically clad in neon blue. It made her feel faintly nauseous, as if she had walked into an infectious diseases unit instead of a rare manuscript catalog.

  “And sign,” he held out a clipboard of names and times. “Sign in and out every time, so we have a record. The management say it’s for fire security, but personally I think it’s for the insurance.” Matthew waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially, and Penelope realized that she had no idea what he was referring to at all. This fact didn’t stop Hopkins however, as he indicated that she would have to show her side bag to him, and, with a torch, he was to look for contraband material.

  This is as bad as a prison! Penelope thought, although she didn’t really know just what being on the inside of a prison could be like at all.

  “You’re good,” Hopkins nodded. “Not many people bring in contraband, but if you had a whole lot of scissors and paper glue, I’d be suspicious!” he said with a laugh, and Penelope echoed it more out of politeness than hilarity.

  “So, that being that,” the man said, leading the newest employee down the rest of the corridor, past glass-walled rooms, on the other side of which there sat studious workers, some in laboratory white coats, and everyone wearing their medical blue latex gloves. “Welcome to the Paper Chasers… that’s, that’s what we call ourselves, don’t you know,” he quipped. “We deal with manuscripts dating right back to the birth of the medieval era, and the late classical. We’ve got scrolls on loan from some of the big universities that we do analysis work for, and you, Miss Harp, already have a job on your desk.” He nodded to the last room in the corridor, this one without a glass wall, and whose door was made of simple wood rather than the steel and glass of the others.

  Penelope felt a thrill of excitement. “A job already? What is it?”

  Matthew Hopkins made a flourish as he opened the door to reveal a darkened room, lined with what looked like metal filing cabinets. There was not a book in sight. “Cataloging!” he announced.

  “Cataloging,” Penelope said, with considerably less enthusiasm than she had shown before. She had dreams in her mind of carefully using tweezers to separate tissue thin pages, and taking infra-red photographs of illuminated manuscripts, or using special solutions to determine age of the paints, the lacquers, the inks used…

  But no… Penelope Harp tried not to look too disappointed. It seems that even down here, in the Ivy League of librarianship, you still had to start at the bottom. “Where do I begin?”

  Matthew Hopkins indicated a computer printout hanging from a clipboard on the wall. “There you go, Miss Harp. The contents of every cabinet need checking off the list. Any in the wrong location need re-inserting into the new ones.” He gave her a cheery smile, not out of cruelty or malice, and to Penelope it seemed as though the eccentric Special Archivist-come-Warden of the Special Manuscripts Division was actually genuinely cheerful about what he had asked her to do.

  “Us Paper Chasers normally stop for a little something around eleven. Do you want me to come get you?” he offered.

  “Sure, yeah, sure.” Penelope gave him a uninspired smile, as the door to the what was really just another storeroom closed behind him, leaving her in the brightly lit and perfectly quiet room with a list that had unrolled almost all the way to her feet. For some reason, Penelope figured that it didn’t so much feel like she had just moved up her career ladder, more sort of moved sideways.

  With a sigh, Penelope rolled up her blouse’s sleeves, took out the ballpoint pen that lived near permanently around her ear, and got to work.

  Chapter II

  Verity Vorja was formidable. Although, the flame-haired, tall and statuesque pipe-cleaner of a woman had only been called that by men, as in her view, the woman she generally met during her day had no time to describe each other as ‘formidable’ or ‘exciting’ or ‘challenging’.

  Right now, she was aware that she was having a distantly similar effect on the poor man in front of her; an under-secretary she thought he said, for the big cheese: Lord Malmebury of Oxford. The under-secretary was slightly aggressive, a little rude, and clearly distracted by the fact that the nearly six-and-a-half-foot tall Verity in his office would not be swayed by the offer of a cup of tea and a cream bourbon.

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p; “No, Mr Whoever-you-are, I really do not know how busy the Lord Malmebury could be, seeing as I haven’t actually seen him to ask him yet!” Verity announced, her accent vaguely Eastern European. She inspected her long, manicured nails which were glossed so bright as to look like glass. “But I did see his BMW out there in the carport, so I imagine he must be in. Go and tell him that Verity Vorja has some news for him.”

  The under-secretary was about to inform her that she had no appointment or interview arranged, but realized that such a tactic would be useless against a woman of her tenacity. The harried-looking man sighed, blushed, felt strangely like he was a child all over again before standing up to go knock on the elaborately wood-paneled doors to the British Lord’s private study.

  “Rogers!? Didn’t I tell you that I wanted to be left alone this afternoon?” came a corpulent voice from the other side.

  Rogers coughed, opened the door a fraction and whispered to the occupant on the other side.

  “What? Well for heaven’s sake, let her in then!” the Lord replied angrily, and to which the much-harassed under-secretary Rogers complied.

  The Lord Malmebury of Oxford was a man of effulgent tastes. His study was large enough to be any other person’s entire apartment, with the walls lined with bookshelves and display cabinets, writing desks and works of art. The statuesque woman took one look around the room and nodded to herself, as if confirming something.

  “Lord Malmebury, this really is of the utmost urgency,” Verity began. “I am sure that you understand.”

  “Of course, of course. Lemon tea, Miss Vorja?” the Lord said. Unlike his room, the current Lord of Malmebury was actually a thin man, handsome in a vaguely Pierce Brosnan sort of way, with hair slicked back and his attire immaculately tailored. To the book hunter he looked exactly like every other rich and entitled playboy born into old money. Word had it that he went to Goodwood or Monaco on the weekends, just to show off his collection of custom built formula one racing cars.

  It was no surprise to Verity that he was interested in the sort of trade that she offered. Really, she only dealt with the obscenely wealthy or the obscenely desperate. Furtive professors squirreling away departmental budgets to fund their bookaholic obsessions, or aging casino owners looking to divest some of the wealth into something ‘cultural’.

  “No thank you, tea is an English disease, sir—if you beg my pardon,” she said, not with any hint of remorse. The Lord Malmebury wondered if he could detect a little Soviet Winter behind her accent, and the contempt for everything that he represented. As long as she brings me what I want, he reasoned, pouring himself one from the silver tea set sitting on his desk.

  “I will cut to the chase, Lord Malmebury,” Verity said as she wandered around the bookshelves, her eyes perusing the books up and down.

  “Oh, do call me Oliver.” The Lord leaned back in his chair over his steaming cup, eying her like one of his paintings.

  “No. I see that you have a very fine collection already, Lord Malmebury—some early Shakespearian reprints, a Lutheran Bible. Are you absolutely certain that you would like to continue on this search for the Luminaire Clavem?” Verity’s tone was neutral, almost encouraging. Despite the fact that she was technically arguing herself out of a job, Verity Vorja considered it her duty to try and educate her clients as to the perils of her profession.

  Books are like people, in many ways, she thought, as she looked through the Lord’s already impressive collection. They move around the world, they accrue followers and acolytes, they become important or reviled, they become valuable or commonplace. In her time, she had seen people literally on the brink of tears for the right book, as well as incandescent with fury over whether they can or cannot have a certain volume.

  People believe that books show us ourselves. They are the mirror through which we see our faults and our victories. They are like the closest friend who can tell us exactly what we are most afraid to hear.

  Or maybe it was because books were like secrets, Verity considered. Secrets, when kept absolutely hidden were meaningless in her opinion. They only become valuable when someone else knows that you have them, and when you have the power to tell them to a chosen few. Books held things. Information that no other person knew, perhaps, and that made them powerful to the right collector.

  But Verity also knew that books, just like secrets, and just like people, could kill. Or, well, if that was a bit melodramatic then they could at least break people. Some secrets truly weren’t worth knowing, just as some people inspire bad deeds in others.

  The Luminaire Minus Clavem was that sort of book. Not that well known, but already with a string of notable failures to its providence, it had regained a certain underground notoriety on the international book market.

  “Of course I want the Clavem!” Oliver Malmebury said, almost spluttering his tea over his Edwardian desk. “Do you not think that I can afford it? Do you not think that I have enough money?” He gestured to all that sat around them. “See? These are just baubles to the Malmebury title. We’ve been patronized by the kings of Britain right back to when a Tudor was on the throne!” He laughed, and Verity felt a pang of pure, Siberian hatred for the man. She controlled it well however, as her face never looked less than stern anyway.

  “I see. Well, seeing as you are certain, I will tell you what I have uncovered in my searches. The last mention of the Luminaire Minus Clavem was delivered to the holy monastery of St. Antony, Florence, in the year 1718, and there it was tasked to one Chief Archivist Lazzaro, a Florentine monk who was fairly well known in the Italian ecclesiastical circles at the time.”

  “Excellent!” the British peer said. “Then, well, is it still there? Can you get a hold of the priest or Friar Tuck or whatever it is they have down there? I’m sure that a healthy donation to the glory of God, or a new chapel or something would make him more amenable to our cause.”

  “Abbot, Lord Malmebury. They have Abbots, and no—any sort of donation would not, in fact, make him amenable to your cause, because the monastery of St. Antony was destroyed by Nazi and fascist forces in 1944, on their retreat from the Allied liberation of Italy. The monastery, and all of its contents were either destroyed or looted by the Nazis.”

  Oliver frowned at her, as if she was admitting to him that she had taken his car out for a spin without asking. “What do you mean, Miss Vorja?”

  “Quite simply, Lord Malmebury—that the Luminaire Minus Clavem is probably either no more than ash right about now, or it is sitting very happily in a Swiss vault or Austrian manor house, a forgotten heirloom of some German soldier who has no idea what it is they own. It is untraceable, at least, until any current owner approaches a book expert such as myself for a valuation or study.” Vorja inspected her lacquered nails. “Which, I assure you—might happen today, tomorrow, or three generations from now. All that a collector can do in this position is to wait.”

  “I see.” The British peer was now scowling deeply. He tapped his fingers against each other, one after the other in silence, before reaching for the teapot once more. “In that case, your services are no longer required,” Oliver said, with a curt nod. “Talk to my secretary, and they will sort out all of the relevant paperwork and remaining fees.”

  “As you wish, sir.” Verity Vorja turned on her heel and left the elegant study with a half-smile on her face. She had won. This man would never get hold of the Luminaire Clavem—despite all his wealth and connections—for he was no true booklover, like her.

  After Verity Vorja had received her multiple-digit fee from the secretary, and was once again in her rented small car outside of the mansion, she paused before starting the engine, opening her briefcase to make sure that the document was still inside. It was an acquisitions notice, one that had been filed by the New York Public Library.

  “Received (write in capitals): LUMINAIRE MINUS CLAVEM

  Date: 1/10/1946

  Publication Date: UNKNOWN (PRESUMED ANCIENT MSS)

  Publisher: UNKNO
WN

  Providence: GIFTED TO LIBRARY IN THE ESTATE OF CPT. HENRY WATTINGER, NEW YORK, BELIEVED TO BE OBTAINED AT SOME POINT DURING HIS WAR SERVICE. EXACT SERVICE DETAILS CLASSIFIED, SO NO RETURN CAN BE MADE. IT IS ALSO ADVISED THAT, GIVEN THE STATE OF EUROPEAN ACADEMIC AND GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS, THAT THE MANUSCRIPT IS BETTER CONSERVED HERE.

  Notes: WITHOUT DIRECT PROVIDENCE, WE CANNOT DISPLAY MANUSCRIPT. REFERRED TO SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DEPT, NEW YORK LIBRARY.”

  Chapter III

  The filing box 270b was heavy for Penelope to pull out, and for all of its weight, it only contained one book. The book in question was the closest thing to what Penelope would have called a grimoire—if such things ever really existed.

  “This thing looks straight out of Harry Potter,” Penelope said to herself, looking at the oddly cream-colored object in her blue-gloved hands. It was about as big as an artist’s square sketch pad, with a heavy leather or hide stretched cover, pulled taught and stitched into a board made probably of wood. Its spine was a series of pulled ridges, under which the cord binding would presumably be found, and at its outer edge there was a curious metal clasp, like a serpent eating its own tail.

  The faint smell of vanilla and old books wafted up to meet her as soon as she opened the filing box, and with it the hint of something else… Jasmine? Rose? The woman frowned. She knew that sometimes these rare volumes were brushed with sandalwood or precious oils to preserve them, but a document which had that sort of treatment would automatically qualify for special archival scrutiny, and not be left here in a barely controlled filing box.

  The cover had some sort of embossing where a title would normally be, but whatever precious metal or gold leaf had been used, it was long since flaked or prized off. Still however, Penelope could make out the indentations of the words.

  “Luti… Lumi?” she quizzed. “Definitely Latin, which puts you into the church manuscript archive, and probably a few hundred years old at least!” She shook her head. “Well, I guess this is precisely why I am here,” she murmured, looking for the corresponding entry for filing box 270b, and finding that it should contain an early edition of To Kill A Mockingbird—and definitely not a possibly renaissance manuscript.