The very thought still pained her.
Stepping out into the wide, travertine plaza, she saw only one other person, a security guard whom she knew. She waved to him and he waved back. Her own staff card allowed her to enter the building where her office was located. The carpeted halls, never noisy, were now completely silent; no phones were ringing, no copying machines were humming. It was all that she could have wished for.
Until she approached her own office. Lights were on, and spilling into the hall. And she could hear the clatter of computer keys, at a dizzying rate of speed. A rate that she knew only one person in the world would be capable of—her assistant.
When she stopped and looked inside, Elvis, his back to her, was staring at his computer monitor while his fingers flew across the keyboard and his head bopped to the jangling tune accompanying the program on his screen.
“Elvis,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
From the way he whirled around, it was clear that he was more than startled; he looked guilty. Beth’s eyes strayed to the computer—was he downloading porn?—but what she saw there looked a lot more like some super-high-tech version of “Dungeons and Dragons.” A wizard with a white beard was traveling up a winding road, toward a castle with several gates, while numbers flashed in the lower left corner of the screen and words scrolled across the top.
“Did I know you were coming in today?” he asked.
“No,” she said with a laugh, “because I didn’t know it myself.”
There was a creaking sound from the computer—one of the castle gates was lowering its drawbridge—and Elvis said, “Shit—can you give me a second?” He whipped around in his chair, glanced at the screen, tapped in a barrage of keystrokes, which were greeted with the sound of a heavy bell tolling ominously, and then the screen went blue.
“If you’re just playing some video game, why would you need to come here?”
“Because, well, it’s more complicated than that.” His skinny white arms poked out of his short-sleeved shirt. “It’s a network kind of thing—players from all over the planet—and the setup here is a lot faster and a lot more powerful than the crap I’ve got at home.”
“But didn’t it occur to you that it’s a beautiful day? The Fourth of July? You could be outside.” She realized that she had just channeled her mother.
And Elvis must have realized it, too. “Thanks, Mom,” he said with a smile. “But if you don’t mind my saying so, look who’s talking.”
Beth had the manila folder with the printout of the scribe’s letter in her hand, and clearly she wasn’t out on the beach, either.
“Welcome to Geek Central,” Elvis said. “I brought Doritos and Dr Pepper,” he added, gesturing at the junk food on his desk. “You want some?”
“No, thanks.” Shaking her head, Beth went around her assistant’s desk and on into her own office. “I’m going to log on myself.”
A few seconds later, she heard from Elvis’s desk the faint blast of a trumpet and the creaking of the drawbridge lowering again. “Could you turn that down?” she called out, and Elvis replied, “No problem—I’ll put it on the phones.”
Beth had really hoped to be alone, and wondered how she had wound up with the one assistant in all of Los Angeles who would rather be in the office on a national holiday than out smacking a volleyball somewhere. But she lowered her blinds—the afternoon sun was blinding—and then spread her papers out on the desk. She called up the graphemical database on the computer, then split the screen (as Elvis had taught her to do) and started scanning and transferring the remaining passages of the Latin text. She still felt lazy and vaguely unprofessional for relying on a computer to translate the Latin writing for her, but between the difficulties presented by the cramped handwriting and of course the archaic language, she knew that this was the safer and more expeditious route. And she could—and did—routinely check the work over afterward and smooth out the many rough edges.
And there were only a couple dozen lines left in the scribe’s hidden missive.
While she waited, she thought about giving Carter a quick call. She didn’t like what she was feeling around the house lately—a feeling that there were things in the air between them, things unspoken, and she wondered if Carter felt it, too. She’d never kept anything major from Carter—the way she was keeping her decision to hold on to the scribe’s letter from him now—and she suspected that the tension might stem from that. Or maybe she was imagining the whole thing—Carter had always been one to burrow deep into whatever intellectual puzzle he was trying to solve, and maybe he was just being true to form. And given that she, too, was sitting in her office on a hot, sunny Fourth of July—as Elvis had just pointed out—who was she to throw stones?
Her thoughts went back to that very morning, when Carter had been in the kitchen, feeding Champ several strips of raw bacon.
“Since when did he graduate from kibble?” Beth had asked, as she carried Joey to his high chair.
“From now on, this dog gets whatever he wants,” Carter said, though he didn’t explain why Champ had suddenly earned such privileges. And when Beth had asked about his late-night trip to the museum, Carter simply said, “I think I was able to put something to rest.” But again, he didn’t elaborate.
Even if Beth had been in a mood to confess her own transgression, Carter’s taciturnity would have turned her off.
Still, she thought, it was ridiculous to deal with a communication problem by not communicating. She picked up the phone and called Carter’s cell. He picked up after several rings and said, “Everything okay?” His voice was faint and muffled.
“Where are you?” Beth said. “It sounds like you’re in a bunker.”
“You’re close,” he said, “I’m in the closet.”
“That’s not how it sounds!” she heard another man’s voice call out.
“Del’s there, too?” she said. “Why?”
“We’re working on the La Brea Man, in a location undisclosed to the NAGPRA protestors. A storage closet.” He did not tell her why they had had to resort to such measures. “What’s up?”
She could tell he wanted to get back to work. “I was just checking in. Do you have any interest in going to that party later?” They’d been invited by the Critchleys, the elderly Getty donors, to a Fourth of July dinner at their Brentwood estate; Mrs. Critchley’s forebears had come over on the ship that landed right after the Mayflower.
“Do you?” Carter asked, sounding dubious. “I mean, if you think it’s important to put in an appearance . . .”
He left the question, a legitimate one, hanging. On the one hand, Beth thought it wasn’t a bad idea, politically speaking, to show up. On the other hand, it wasn’t the most enticing invitation. She heard a mumbled question from Del, and Carter saying, “Maybe the solvent needs more time . . .”
“Why don’t I call you later?” Beth said, and Carter said, “Huh? What was that?”
The bar on her computer screen was showing that the graphemical analysis was nearly done. “I’ll call you from home. We can decide then.”
“Okay,” he replied.
She could tell his attention was focused elsewhere. “Bye.”
She hung up, wondering if she had just bridged, or widened, any communication gap. It was like that a lot over the last week or so.
A soft chiming sound went off on her computer, signaling that the job was complete and she could now print out the results. She hit “Print,” then quickly got up from her desk. In another few minutes, she’d have the answer—or as much of one as she’d ever be likely to get—about the fate of the mysterious scribe and illuminator. Elvis had his head down as she passed through his outer office—on his screen she could see an open field, with a dragon at one end—and in the room where the printers and copiers were kept, even the lights were off. The moment she entered, a sensor flicked them on again, and she was able to retrieve the printouts from the bin.
On the way back, she was already readin
g them.
The guards have entered the courtyard below, it said. Salima will delay them so that I may offer a last prayer for the success of my plan.
A plan? Beth thought. Had he actually hoped somehow to escape?
The secrets of ink making, he wrote, and for a moment Beth thought the database must have gone haywire—why else would he be digressing into such a subject now?—are the secrets, too, of the poisoner.
Ah. But was he planning to poison the guards somehow once they’d come to transport him to the monster’s maze?
From the sap of the acacia tree and sal martis [no equivalent found], the printout read, but Beth knew that the latter term referred to green vitriol, or copperas, a common ingredient of iron-gall ink, bound with gum arabic and sundry other ingredients, may be made a deadly brew. This I have decanted within the holy vessel long worn about my neck, a vessel that even the sultan will not now deny me. The silver body of our Savior is a hollow shell, yet indeed shall it hold my salvation.
Beth thought she could discern his intent.
At the moment of surrender, I shall obtain my release, and so, too, have my revenge. May the manticore, in his haste to drink my hot blood, drink the coursing poison, too.
She felt, suddenly, as if she were reading a speech from some bloody Jacobean tragedy.
And may my curse, the curse of Ambrosius of Bury St. Edmunds, descend upon the Sultan Kilij al-Kalli, upon all of his descendants, and upon all the unholy beasts whom the Lord designed [alt: intended] to drown in the Flood. Now and forever, world without end, amen. And with that, the letter ended, the printout simply recording a row of asterisks followed by Document complete.
Beth sat stock-still in her chair, wondering if she could possibly have read all that she just had. It wasn’t just the revelation of the scribe’s final scheme; that was ingenious enough, even though its outcome would never be known. No, what had shocked her even more were two things: the fact that he had inscribed his name—at last she knew who this unparalleled scribe and illuminator was!—and the curse that he had entered as a kind of colophon at the end.
It was so very similar to the curses laid by the mysterious scribe whom she believed had created all the manuscripts currently on display in the Getty exhibition hall.
The scribe that she had been trying to identify for so many years.
How could she have been so blind? How could she not have realized that she was dealing with the work of the same master? She went over it all in her head, all the things that would have kept her from even imagining it to be the same man. First there was the Middle Eastern origins of The Beasts of Eden. It had never occurred to her, until discovering the secret letter, that the author of the book could be anyone but a subject of the sultan, or at least an artist of regional repute. And then there was the sheer fortuitous-ness of it all: what were the chances that an Iraqi plutocrat would show up at the Getty and bestow upon her—of all people—the masterpiece, the capstone, in the career of the itinerant illuminator whose identity she had labored so long to determine? All those countless hours of research, in dusty archives and hushed libraries from London to New York, Oxford to Boston, and it was here, in Los Angeles, on a hot sunny day, that the answers should fall, as if from the sky, into her very lap.
It was almost too much to accept.
And to believe it truly, she would need to confirm it with her own eyes. She would need to compare the original letter with the handwritten text in the manuscripts she had assembled for display. She scooped up the printouts, along with the ancient letter itself, and hurried out of her office.
“Where are you off to?” Elvis said as she shot past.
“The manuscripts exhibit.”
“You haven’t seen it?” he said, mockingly. “You put it together.”
In the plaza outside, the leaves of the London plane trees were rustling in the dry wind that swept the Getty’s hilltop site, but there was no one, not even a security patrol, anywhere around. The sound of Beth’s heels echoed across the stone courtyard as she marched to the North Pavilion, where a red and gold banner above the entrance proclaimed THE GENIUS OF THE CLOISTER: ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. At the access panel, she entered first her own security code, and then the code to unlock the doors. She heard a faint buzzing, and quickly entered the hall. The heavy glass door slowly closed, and clicked shut, behind her. The motion sensors responded by turning on the overhead lights.
But they did not provide much in the way of illumination. The manuscripts were so precious, and so prone to fading, that the ambient light was kept to a bare minimum. Instead, each manuscript was gently cradled in its own display case—two dozen or so, ranged around the three rooms of the exhibition hall—and indirectly lighted by small tungsten halogen lamps inside the glass. The effect was to make the manuscripts shine like beacons, their burnished gold glittering like autumn leaves, the lapis lazuli gleaming like the Mediterranean, the red and blue and purple gemstones in their covers and bindings sparkling like a kaleidoscope. The first time Beth had seen the exhibition completely installed, she had stepped back, breathless at its beauty.
But now she went straight to the nearest display case, one that held a sacramentary, illuminated for the Cathedral Priory of Christ Church, Canterbury. The book was open to its frontispiece, depicting the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles at Pentecost. But now she looked at it with fresh eyes. Now she looked at it not as the work of an anonymous, though brilliant, traveling artist, but as an example of the work of a man who went by Ambrosius of Bury St. Edmunds. Could she see in it the same techniques, the same flair, that she had been studying for weeks in The Beasts of Eden? There was indeed a fluidity to the motion of the Apostles, their hands raised toward heaven, that suggested the work of the master, but it did not equal the artistry of his last great work for the Sultan Kilij al-Kalli.
She moved past it, to the first display case in the next room. And here she found an herbal, a treatise on plants and their medicinal uses, created for the English abbey of St. Augustine’s. A flowered stem, its crimson leaves now faded to russet, extended itself all the way across the page, while the text—drawn, as was the custom, from the ancient Greeks rather than practical observation—flowed all around it. The imagination of the design was striking—Beth couldn’t help but think of the splashy layouts in glossy fashion magazines—and the text, she could see now, bore the same unmistakable slant of the writing in the al-Kalli bestiary. Yes, she thought, it was all coming together!
But she would not be satisfied until she had seen another colophon, that final salutation by the scribe, and she knew exactly where to find one. A good example was on display in the last room, in a copy of the Apocalypse from East Anglia. At its end, she knew, there came a curse.
As she stepped into the room, the light sensors automatically responded, but this was still the gloomiest and most remote part of the exhibition. The display cases here were more widely spaced, and the shadows deeper and wider. And even though Beth had become accustomed over the years to working alone in empty museum halls, sometimes even late into the night, she wasn’t always impervious to the spooky aspects of the job. She reminded herself now that it was only late afternoon outside, that the sun was shining, that Elvis was sitting up in their office, playing some idiotic computer game. And that she would be done very soon—she would study the colophons, one against the other, and lay to rest any doubt whatsoever. And then her quest would be at an end, her discovery complete.
Still, she went quickly to the last case in the room, where the Apocalypse—better known in the Protestant tradition as the Book of Revelation—was on display. The illustration was of a seven-headed dragon, writhing in an ocean of fire. And she knew, from her work on the exhibition, that the final words of the biblical text were a warning to anyone who dared to alter or subtract anything from the Apocalypse; to do so, the book declared, would be to write yourself out of the book of life, for all eternity. Below that, separated by a miniature o
f a child being raised to heaven, came the colophon—in the form of a curse that echoed the final lines of the Apocalypse itself. In elegant Latin, it said that anyone daring to injure or deface the book before them would be stricken from the book of life, too.
Although she hardly needed to, Beth took the last page of Ambrosius’s letter from the folder under her arm, placed the rest of the papers on the floor, and then held the page up to the pale light emanating from the display case. The curses, in their very nature, not to mention the rhythm of the prose, were strikingly similar; the ornate character of the lettering was virtually identical, and the handwriting itself, tight and slanted to the left, was unmistakable. Ambrosius of Bury St. Edmunds—artist and soldier, scoundrel and Crusader, an unknown genius whose bizarre journey had taken him from the cloisters of Canterbury to his terrible end in a sultan’s maze—was the author of both, and the Michelangelo of his age.
And only Beth knew who he was.
She had hardly had time to savor her victory before she heard, in low tones from the shadows at the rear of the gallery, “Don’t be afraid.”
And suddenly she was as afraid as she had ever been in her life.
It was as if the shadows were coalescing, taking shape . . . the shape of a man—tall and elegant, with perfectly chiseled features, in a suit that seemed made of the darkness itself—who now took a silent step forward. His white-blond hair, which swept away from his forehead, glinted in the overhead lights. His eyes were concealed behind small round glasses with amber lenses.
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