by Ross King
Chapter Five
If the journey to the Elbe was arduous, then over the next few days, as the coaches and wagons left Bohemia behind, it grew much worse. Snow began falling from the sullen skies, at first a few aimless and circumspect flakes, then more heavily. The winds gathered in the east and blew across the crescent of the Carpathians, along the Moravian Highlands and into the Giant Mountains, howling among the boulders and snowdrifts through which the caravan fought its way. The few towns it passed through dwindled to villages whose dozen-odd houses clung like swallows' nests to the sides of steep hills. Then the villages shrank to only a few houses and soon disappeared altogether. The road, too, threatened to disappear. In some places it had been made almost impassable by rockslides, in others by snow. To travel in this season, the servants muttered among themselves, was uncivilised. After all, even wars-even Ferdinand, whose Walloons and Irish had stopped in Prague to begin their looting-waited for the spring. Yet each morning, no matter how foul the weather, no matter how steep the roads, no matter how many passengers had fallen ill with fever or how many horses were lamed by wind-galls or split hoofs, the sad journey continued. Soon there were no signs of life in the snowscape except for the wolves that appeared as the roads ascended in dog-legs through the forest. The wolves arrived singly at first, later in packs of ten or twelve, half-hidden among the scarps of granite, following the wagons at a distance. Then they grew bolder, creeping close enough for Emilia to see their yellow eyes and the sharp outlines of their muzzles. Skinny and ill-fed as beggars, they scattered at the muffled report of a harquebus. The sound of the weapon also startled the passengers, for rumours had begun spreading up and down the caravan that the Emperor's mercenaries were in swift pursuit, though it was impossible to imagine how anyone, even the Cossacks, could have sped along roads as treacherous as these.
The first leg of the journey finally reached its end at nightfall on the ninth day. The caravan toiled past a monastery and, after crawling downhill, stopped not at one of the usual inns but before a castle whose lighted arrowslits shone unevenly in the invading darkness. Emilia, huddled in the chariot, her toes frostbitten, fancied she could hear the grumble of a river. Leaning forward, she peered through a crack in the window-curtains and saw a group of men in long coats and wide-brimmed hats hurrying across a courtyard, whose perimeter was rimmed with dozens of coaches of all sizes. The portcullis ground and scraped, then a pair of heavy doors boomed shut behind them. Breslau, someone said. They had reached Silesia.
The exiled court stayed for less than a week in the ancient Piast castle. This was not to be their final destination, merely one more staging-post for the fugitive court. Emilia found herself housed with three other ladies-in-waiting in a chamber that, though it had no windows, was prey to mysterious draughts and dustings of snow. The Queen slept in a chamber somewhere nearby. She had been taken dangerously ill almost as soon as the caravan arrived in Breslau, and so Emilia saw nothing of her. Only the physicians attended her, shuffling in and out of the royal apartments with their faces long and grim. After a day or two, rumours were bruited about the castle that she had died. Then a day later it was her unborn babe who had died-for another rumour, a more reliable one, claimed she was with child. Finally, the pair of them, mother and child, were said to have expired together. Truth became as scarce as firewood and fodder. More snow fell. The Oder froze. Then, on Emilia's fourth day in the castle, Sir Ambrose Plessington paid her a visit.
She was in her chamber at the time, alone, reading a book. When the knock came at her door she didn't rise from the cramped bed because she, like the Queen, was now indisposed. She had felt unwell for the second day in a row. Her monthly pains had arrived a few days earlier, but no monthly flow. Her head ached, as did her teeth, and she was sleeping poorly. Even reading had become a chore. For want of her own books she was reduced to reading ones from the Queen's collection. For the past day she had been reading Sir Walter Raleigh's Discoverie of the large, rich, and beautifull Empire of Guiana, with its blissful descriptions of warm climes and sepulchres filled with treasure. She had been lulled to sleep-her first in more than a day-when the knock on the door startled her awake.
She was surprised to see Sir Ambrose, of course. He had not spoken a word to her for an entire fortnight; indeed, he had not appeared to notice her at all. She, on the other hand, had watched his every move. From the quarter-lights of her chariot or the windows of inns she would watch him supervising the loading or unloading of the crates or riding alongside the Queen's carriage with the scimitar bouncing at his hip. Other times he galloped out of sight, travelling far ahead of the convoy, finding passages through the mountains or scouting for Polish troops, a band of whom he was reputed to have killed and left to the wolves. Three of his mounts were lamed by these antics and had to be destroyed, yet Sir Ambrose himself looked none the worse for wear.
'I do not disturb you, I hope?'
He had stepped nimbly into her chamber, which he, in his swollen boots and beaver hat, almost seemed to fill. Forced to duck his head under the lintel, he looked like a man entering a tent on a battlefield. When he straightened to his full height his appearance was no less martial, for the scimitar hung from one hip, the pistol from the other. But he was also bearing a lantern and, under his arm, a book. After making a bow, he paused, his bustling motions for once arrested. His head was cocked to one side like that of a painter critically examining his subject.
'You were asleep?'
'No, no,' she blurted, finding her voice. She had pushed herself upright on the bed and was holding Raleigh's Discoverie to her breast like a shield. 'No, sir. I was reading, that is all.'
He took another step forward, straw rustling under his boots and his dark gaze giving her a careful appraisal. The plume in his hat grazed the hammer-beams. 'You are unwell, Mistress Molyneux?'
'No, no,' she stammered again. She had no wish to tell anyone of her illnesses, least of all Sir Ambrose. 'I am perfectly well, thank you, sir. My habit is to read in bed,' she explained, raising the book and then feeling herself flush.
'Ah,' he was nodding his enormous hat, 'quite so. I am told you are a dedicated reader. Yes, a veritable Donna Quixote.' He smiled briefly to himself, then scratched at his beard with a forefinger. 'And in fact this charming habit of yours, Miss Molyneux, is what brings me to you.' He bent forward with a creak of boot leather and placed the volume on the table beside the door. 'The Queen wishes you to have another book for your pleasure. Along with her good wishes.' He bowed and turned to go.
'Please…' She had swung her legs over the edge of the bed. 'What news is there? Is the Queen unwell, sir?'
'No, no, the Queen is quite well. You must not believe everything you hear.' Pausing on the threshold, he winked. 'Nor should you believe all that you read.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Sir Walter Raleigh.' His wind-burnt features had broadened into another smile as he nodded the brim of his hat at her book. 'Guiana is not the paradise that Sir Walter describes. I bid you a good day, Miss Molyneux.'
Then he was gone, disappearing down the corridor before she could ask about Vilém or indeed about anything else. But all at once she felt hopeful. He must have learned of her reading habits from Vilém. Or was it from the Queen instead? No, most probably Vilém, she decided. How else would Sir Ambrose have known of her liking for tales of chivalry? She had been careful not to tell the Queen of this passion, for the Queen detested all things Spanish.
A minute later the other ladies-in-waiting had returned to the room. There was to be a church service that night to give thanks for the Queen's recovery, followed by a banquet. For the next twenty minutes the ladies chattered happily together, dressing themselves as of old in their flowing conches, in scarlets and purples, in laces and ribbons, as if Prague or Heidelberg lay outside; as if the past few days had been no more than a night terror from which they had been mercifully roused. Only when they departed did Emilia finally open the book left by Sir Ambrose. It wa
s another tale of chivalry-Francisco de Moraes's Prince Palmerín of England. And only when she opened the cover did she discover the note between the pages, one inscribed in a familiar hand.
***
She met Vilém that night in the cellars, to which the note had summoned her. By this time the rest of the court was in the midst of an ecstatic and deafening intercourse. The feast had begun. Musicians conscripted from a local tavern were blowing krummhorns, battering tabors and singing lustily in Polish as dancers whirled about the floor of the crumbling hall with reckless fury-a tumult of spinning farthingales and flying elbows. The castle gates must have been flung wide to admit the good people of Breslau, burghers and beggars alike, because Emilia, dodging between them, failed to recognise a single face. She had no idea, either, where the food could have come from. Platters of beef and venison, pheasants and chickens, a roasted boar, dozens of quail, even a peacock still wearing its feathers, together with bowls filled with oysters, cheeses, boiled eggs, sweetmeats, nuts, plums, persimmons, Seville oranges, ices melting under the heat of a dozen blazing torches and even more candles-all were being served up to a band of exiles who only a few days earlier had been freezing to death in the wilderness, eating weevilled bread and frozen chunks of salted goose. But Vilém was nowhere among them. After an hour she managed to slip away and descend the stairs to the vaults, where she found him in an old wine cellar, stooped over a crate of books.
She was shocked by the sight of him. He had arrived in Breslau more than a fortnight earlier, before the snows, but he appeared to be the worse for the journey. He looked thinner and more ragged than ever. His breeches and doublet hung in tattered folds about his shoulders and hips like those of a scarecrow. Perhaps he too had been ill? He had a weak constitution, she knew-several evenings in Golden Lane had been spent nursing him through one complaint or another. A booming cough suddenly bent him double.
'Vilém…?'
Their reunion was not what she expected. So busy was he checking the crates for damage, opening them one at a time, inspecting the oilskin-wrapped volumes, fussing and ducking over them before replacing dunnage, that he failed to notice her arrival. She moved quickly through the cellar towards him, weaving her way between empty wine racks and the dozens of crates. Most of the lids had been raised and tiny gilded characters glimmered in the torchlight as she passed. Later it would occur to her that the books had been crated in alphabetical order. Abulafia; Agricola; Agrippa; Artephius; Augurello. Then Bacon; Biringuccio; Böhmen; Borbonius; Bruno. The names meant little to her, as did the titles. De occulta philosophia. De arte cabalistica. Impious pursuits suggested themselves. The Mirror of Alchymy. Occulta occultum occulta. What would the Queen, a sworn enemy of popery and superstition, make of such works? FICINUM, she read on the spine of one of the thickest volumes, PIMANDER MERCURII TRISMEGISTI.
'Vilém!'
He showed no more surprise or delight when finally he saw her than when he discovered certain cherished volumes at the bottoms of the crates through which he kept searching for another twenty minutes. Indeed, over the next few days he would appear more concerned for the welfare of the books than for her. Like Otakar, he had become obsessed with the idea of the collection falling into what he called the wrong hands-being looted, burned or disappearing into the archives of Ferdinand or the cardinals in the Holy Office. Later he would tell her that he had assisted with the transport of the 'first consignment', some fifty crates of books. The second consignment was shipped from Prague by Sir Ambrose himself, for which reason Vilém would not find it odd that the Englishman was alone inside the library. Only when she described that episode-they were sitting on a pair of wine casks at this point-did he show any interest in her plight. Or, rather, he was interested in the leather-bound volume she had seen on his desk. Two times he forced her to describe the events of that evening but then, puzzled, claimed not to recognise her accounts of either the book or the horsemen. But he was especially interested in the elaborate binding. He sprang from the cask, squatted on the floor and rummaged through one of the crates for a minute, muttering to himself and grunting.
'You say it was bound,' he called over his shoulder, 'like one of these.' He swung round, clasping a fat volume to his chest. 'Is that so?'
In the torchlight she could make out the intricate swirls stamped on to the book's leather cover-a series of whorls and curlicues that reminded her, suddenly, of the fanciful lines of Prague Castle's maze garden seen from the upper windows of the Královsky Palace. From its coloured fore-edges the volume looked like one of the Golden Books he had shown her a month earlier. She nodded.
'Exactly like that, yes. The same pattern, I would say.'
'Odd… very odd.' He was twisting a lock of his unkempt beard in his fingers as he studied the tooled leather. 'But you say the pages had not been dyed?' She shook her head. 'Mm,' he said into his stained ruff, frowning, 'how very odd indeed.'
'Did it come from Constantinople, do you think?'
'Oh, it's possible.' His head was bobbing. The idea seemed to excite him. 'Yes, it might have done. One doesn't judge a book by its binding, of course. But what you describe is a Muhammadan decoration known as rebesque or arabesque, which was used by the bookbinders of Istamboul. There were a dozen such books in the library, but this one that you describe, hmmm…'
He had opened the book and was thumbing slowly through its purple leaves, through pages that she remembered him saying had been made from the skins of unborn calves, sometimes as many as fifty per volume. Vellum, it was called. The calves were stunned and carefully bled, then flayed of their delicate hides. A lost art, he had claimed.
'But what could it be?' She was watching his face, wondering if he was telling her everything he knew. 'Was it something of value, do you think?'
He shrugged his narrow shoulders and laid the volume carefully aside. 'Oh, it could be anything-anything at all. And, yes, I should think it was of value. Perhaps of considerable value. Especially if it came from Constantinople. Its libraries and monasteries, you understand, were the world's greatest repositories of ancient wisdom.'
He was at his most pontifical now, plucking at his beard and staring glassily into the middle distance. The thumpings of the dancers in the hall were making themselves known through the groined ceiling, but he seemed not to notice.
'In the past few centuries, more Greek and Roman authors have been discovered in Constantinople than anywhere else. Priceless discoveries, mind! The eleven plays of Aristophanes… the seven of Aeschylus… the poems of Nicander and Musaeus… Hesiod's Works and Days… the writings of Marcus Aurelius… why, even Euclid's Elements, for heaven's sake! Not one of these works would survive today had it not been for the scribes of Constantinople. Every last one of them would have sunk without trace. And how much poorer would the world be for their loss!'
She nodded soberly, faintly amused, however, at his eager recitation, which she had heard before. He felt a strong kinship, she knew, with those humble men whose task it had been to collect and preserve documents that came to them from the burning or besieged libraries of Alexandria or Athens or Rome. A task that he no doubt saw himself re-enacting.
'But the Turks-'
'Oh, yes, yes,' he interrupted, 'the Turks. Quite so. A great disaster! How many other priceless manuscripts were lost when the Sultan invaded in 1453? Or, rather,' he added, 'how many priceless manuscripts have not yet been rediscovered?'
She nodded again, feeling the first twinges of a cramp begin to take hold of her stomach. The vault seemed suddenly airless and confined; she could barely breathe. Caulked with tow and oakum, the crates smelled of pitch-an acrid stink that, like so much else these days, made her nauseous on top of everything else. She was reminded of the hold of a ship, of her voyage from Margate to Holland on the Prince Royal seven years ago. She had been seasick then. Now her head ached and swam in exactly the same way. It seemed to revolve in one direction, her stomach in the other, as if she were indeed aboard a stinking, storm-tossed
ship.
But she took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on what he was saying. She knew the story well, of course-he must have told it a half-dozen times. When the Sultan Mehmet captured Constantinople in 1453 his men had plundered hundreds of precious manuscripts from the churches and monasteries, even from the Imperial Palace itself. Only a few of these works had ever been recovered, by intrepid agents such as Jacopo da Scarperia, Ghiselin de Busbecq and Sir Ambrose himself. Vilém was both tantalised and appalled by the story of their discoveries-of ancient manuscripts rescued scant days before the merchants who owned them planned to rub out the lettering and sell the parchment for reinscription. What other treasures of ancient learning might be so poised on the knife-edge between destruction and discovery, like the lone parchment of the works of Catullus that had been found-so Vilém had claimed-bunging up a wine barrel in a tavern in Verona?
'… the books of Chaeremon. His treatise on the Egyptian hieroglyphs was mentioned by both Michael Psellos and John Tzetzes, but it has not been seen since-not since the sack of Constantinople. And many other books and scrolls might be found too. We know that Aeschylus wrote more than ninety plays, yet only seven survive, while less than half of the Historiae and Annales of Tacitus still exist, only fifteen books out of an original thirty-and half of those are fragments! Or Callimachus-he wrote eight hundred volumes, of which barely a few scraps are known. Possibly there are even other works of Aristotle himself awaiting discovery in Istamboul. His fame among the ancients rested on certain dialogues-the so-called exoteric and hypomnematic writings-but not one of these texts has been seen or read for centuries.' He paused for a second as his gaze slowly returned to her face. 'And so it was books such as these, you understand, that Sir Ambrose hoped to find in Istamboul.'