The Devil's Library

by Tom Pugh

  Longstaff shook his head in irritation.

  “You disagree?”

  “Thirty years ago, maybe. Those days are past.”

  Durant smiled, as if pleased to have persuaded Longstaff to break his silence. “Imagine what it must have been like – Luther’s message of a universal priesthood spreading through the countryside like wildfire. Ordinary men and women inspired, throwing down their tools, banding together to demand freedom from unfair taxes and indentured service to their lords.”

  “For all the good it did.”

  Durant burst out laughing: “They fell some way short of their aims.”

  Longstaff scowled: “They were hunted down and killed like dogs,” he said. “Mutilated bodies set up in trees as examples to the rest.”

  “It’s the survivors I was speaking of,” Durant inclined his head, as if Longstaff had proved his point. “Driven to fanaticism by the massacres.”

  “A few dozen men at most, half-starved, arguing over doctrine in the depths of the forest.”

  “Simple men,” continued Durant, as they made their own impromptu camp. “They thought they were giving up the plough and needle for a place in Christ’s army. Now they live like beasts, robbing and pillaging in the name of faith. Translate the Bible, said Luther. Preach the true word and Christianity’s wounds will miraculously heal. Luther couldn’t even make himself clear to his own followers. He spent his life railing against the Catholic cult of saints; now his old home is a place of pilgrimage. People hang his picture in their homes as protection against fire!”

  Martin Luther. Longstaff closed his eyes as Sparrow curled up alongside him, but sleep was slow in coming – the monk’s name stirred painful memories of his father.

  The small town of Gernsheim made a good living from its position on the River Rhine. It was market day when Longstaff and Durant arrived, the common a forest of stalls. Crowds bunched and shifted around mountebanks and preachers perched on high wooden boxes.

  “By appointment to the Duke. Teigmann’s Teeth Whitening Powder. Results guaranteed.”

  Others were selling universal antidotes, tinctures for everything from scurvy to sore eyes. Longstaff and Durant stopped in front of a wild-eyed preacher. “The Day of Judgement nears. The ranks of the Elect have been filled. The door to salvation is closed. Do not weep. Repent now and survive the coming of the Last Days.”

  Durant kicked the preacher’s box. The doomsayer reached out to steady himself on his assistant’s shoulder. The boy dropped his pamphlets amid a swirl of feet. Separated from her mother, a child began to wail. Longstaff looked for the Frenchman, but instead saw a young penitent in a grey smock, face and hair smeared with ashes. In his wake came a crowd of women and children, their voices raised in tuneless song, words loud in Longstaff’s ears.

  First Luther tells us that we all

  Inherit sin from Adam’s fall,

  In evil lust and foul intent

  And avid pride our lives are spent;

  Our hearts are black and unrefined,

  Our wills to horrid sins inclined,

  And God, who judges soul and mind

  Has cursed and damned all human kind.

  Longstaff fought his way through the crowd, drawing a skittish Martlesham in his wake. He found quieter streets, sloping down to the docks on the banks of the river. It didn’t take him long to find a captain willing to make room for them on his flat-bottomed boat.

  “I shove off on the evening tide,” he said, “with or without your companion.”

  Durant rode on-board just as the captain’s patience expired. Rivermen dragged the gangplank onto the boat and the swift tide pulled them out into the middle of the Rhine.

  Durant led his horse forward to the wide bow, where Longstaff had tethered the grey. He stumbled as the boat fishtailed round a buoy. “Where are our berths?”

  “You’re looking at them.”

  “With the horses?”

  “There’s plenty of space.” Longstaff lay down on the hard deck as the sun disappeared into a bed of vineyards and wheat fields. He had the soldier’s knack of being able to sleep whenever opportunity presented, but the Frenchman grumbled ceaselessly, lying flat on his back, then curling up like a baby, hands clasped beneath his head, before flipping onto his front. Every night, the same endless performance.

  “Lie on your back and wait for sleep,” Longstaff snapped. “Use your saddle as a pillow. Shouldn’t be a problem, given how much you talk out of your arse. Close your damned eyes.”

  The day rolled by to the beat of the river. The rivermen worked their boat around the reefs, putting in at each town they passed to pay the tolls. Church spires sliced upwards between solid houses; glowering castles commanded the heights. Longstaff wouldn’t have been a trader in the Holy Roman Empire for all the money in the Emperor’s treasury. He was an adventurer – some would call him a thief – never more than a wrinkle’s distance from the hangman’s noose, but a saint compared to the princelings in those castles.

  The horses stood calmly at the rail. Longstaff sat nearby, scratching Sparrow between the ears. With the lowering sun warm on his shoulders, he dangled his feet over the boat’s edge and watched the traders on the dock run expert hands over barrels, sacks and bales of goods.

  Durant joined him and silently offered a wineskin. Longstaff drank; the German wine was sweet and strong. The traders finished their negotiations and rivermen began loading and unloading. A group of about twenty children played quoits on the dock, trying to land woven rings over long stakes. Longstaff watched as they grew bored of the game. A gap-toothed boy, blond hair in his eyes, grabbed one of the sticks and held it between his legs like a horse. Two more boys joined him, and a dark, dirty-kneed girl.

  The four riders herded the remaining children into a group. The blond boy announced he was War. The girl was Pestilence. Longstaff took another long draft of wine and watched as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse organized their playmates into a line, wheeling the stick horses, trotting to the front. As the cavalcade passed, the younger children collapsed amid groans and screams.

  War moved among the motionless children, poking them with his stick.

  “Here,” shouted Death. “David moved his hand.”

  “Did not.”

  “You’ll go to Hell if you don’t admit it.”

  David climbed to his feet and stalked away. “Stupid game, anyway,” he called over his shoulder. “When the Last Days come, see if it matters whether you move or not. It’s what’s in here that counts.” He thumped his chest.

  “And when the lamb opened the seal,” quoted Durant softly, “I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, ‘Come and See’. I looked, and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed close behind. They were given power over one fourth of the Earth to kill by sword, famine, plague. And by the wild beasts of the Earth.” He took a long drink. “Do you think that means us?”

  The rivermen poled them away from the dock. The river was calm ahead, and they planned to float with the tide through the long night. Longstaff and Durant continued to pass the wineskin back and forth.

  “Poor children,” said Longstaff. “Dark images to form young minds.”

  “Barbaric,” agreed Durant. “It’s a sin to speculate on the End of the World.”

  “According to the Roman church.”

  “According to Saint Augustine. Do you disagree with him?”

  “No,” Longstaff shook his head, offering Durant the wineskin.

  “We’ll be in Italy soon,” said the Frenchman. “People are like iron, Longstaff. Supple when they’re warm, able to hold a range of contradictory opinions, as a civilized man should. Northerners are strong in pursuit of simple goals, but brittle when it comes to thinking. They lack a sense of theatre, insist on treating everything as a matter of life and death.” He paused. “I make an exception for the English, of course.”

  “Good of you.”

  “I remember
your King Henry celebrated one of his weddings – I forget which – by burning three Romans and three Reformers the same day.”

  The wine had loosened Longstaff’s tongue. “My father was executed by Henry’s command,” his hard, blue eyes bored into Durant’s. “He was a merchant. Trade took him to Europe, and into contact with Luther’s doctrine. He thought the monk pointed the way to a better future, so much so he began printing pamphlets. The King took exception.”

  “I am sorry,” Durant spoke quietly. “I should not have spoken flippantly.”

  Chains splashed in the water and the riverboat came to a gentle stop. A man rowed out to collect the toll.

  The land climbed steeply here, to another castle perched on the heights. Longstaff could see torches carried by watchmen on the ramparts. The boat moved on, leaving the stars masters of the sky. Longstaff was drunk; maybe that was no bad thing if he kept the sense of well-being.

  “Belief’s a strange beast,” declared Durant. Longstaff heard the wine in his voice. “I had a patient once, an educated man. One day, he found he could no longer perform his conjugal duty. Went to the local whorehouse – same result. There was nothing wrong with him physically, so he knew he must have been cursed.” Durant laughed. “I gave him a coin engraved with celestial figures. Told him to perform rituals before attempting intercourse; laying the coin on his kidneys, tying it around his waist, propping it up in the crack of his arse. It worked.” He wiped away tears of laughter. “Most of my patients were too stupid to save.”

  “Is that why you stopped?” asked Longstaff, laughing now.

  Durant took another draft. “Ever been married?”

  Longstaff thought of Marie, the girl he’d deserted at seventeen. He might have settled down with her in Lübeck, worked for Herr Lammermeier and forgotten about England. He shook his head.

  “Sensible man,” said Durant. “Wives die. Children disappear. There’s no more beautiful a life than that of a carefree man.”

  “It’s getting better, though,” urged Longstaff. “Said so yourself.”

  “What?” asked Durant.

  “The world. Growing. Look at the printing presses. People are learning to read and write, lifting themselves out of ignorance.”

  “Think of those children and their games,” countered Durant. “That preacher and his End of the World. There are new diseases abroad in the land. Crops fail, peasants talk of two-headed snakes, monstrous births. Christianity is at war with itself and attacked by the Ottomans. What you call progress, most people call the Devil’s work.”

  Longstaff shook his head. “Most? A handful shout louder than the rest, trying to drown out the discoveries of men like Copernicus.” He paused to wet his throat. “Think of those books we’ve taken, the secrets being rediscovered. Thousands of years ago it was common knowledge that the Earth was round; the centre hollow, like the drive wheel of a crane.” He frowned. “I’ve heard pygmies run there endlessly. To spin the Earth, you understand. Make sure each region receives its share of the Sun’s warmth. Well, I’m not sure about that.”

  “To Hell with pygmies. When the time comes, the joke’s on us. We’ll be no more able to defend ourselves than newborn babes.” Durant held up the wineskin and shook the dregs into his mouth. “We’re drunk, Matthew. Time for sleep.”

  It was the first time Longstaff had heard the Frenchman say his name. It sounded like he was sneezing: Mattchew. Longstaff lay on the deck, looking up at the stars, listening to the slap of the Rhine against the blunt nose of the riverboat. The last thing he saw, before falling asleep, was Durant lying flat on his back, using the saddle for a pillow.

  CHAPTER 13

  Aurélie was dressed as a serving girl, an artful smear of flour down one cheek. Her long blond hair – a rarity on the streets of Florence – was neatly bound, hidden beneath a coif. She was playing a role, puffing out her cheeks and gormlessly moving her jaw from side to side.

  She walked along Via dell’Agnolo, past stalls and dyers' workshops. The street was crowded with people returning from a hanging outside the Porta alla Croce, but Aurélie wasn’t going so far. She strode past the open gate of a hostelry and made a pantomime of having forgotten her errand. No one appeared to notice. She walked back and ducked inside, lingering a moment in the shadows.

  A baby cried nearby, the sound drifting through an open window and Aurélie heard a woman’s calming lullaby. The tune was hauntingly familiar, transporting Aurélie back to her father’s house, thirteen years old, lying awake with tears streaming down her cheeks. Her sister had attempted to sooth her with the same soft melody.

  The words eluded her, but other memories returned with powerful clarity. Running away from her father’s house, certain she’d rather die than marry the man he had chosen for her. A mad dash through the city to Giacomo Vescosi’s home.

  Vescosi had tried to send her back. He’d taught her to read and she used her learning against him, anticipating his arguments and countering with quotes from Pliny and Cicero, until he was forced to concede defeat.

  The woman hushed her baby. A potboy sat in one corner of the inn’s courtyard, grinding a length of hellebore into fine sneezing powder. Aurélie approached him quietly, watching the slow, methodical movements. She cleared her throat and the boy jumped, scattering his careful work. Aurélie stifled a laugh.

  “I’m sent to find someone. Do you have a Strasbourg merchant here by the name of Michaelis?”

  The lad looked confused. Aurélie had spoken too well, her accent a poor match for her modest appearance.

  “Come with me, signora.”

  The ground floor taproom was full of merchants, adventurers and whores. Aurélie kept her eyes on the floor as she followed the boy’s mazy path between tables. He stopped at the foot of a flight of stairs.

  “Stay here. I’ll see if he wants you.”

  She saw the grin on his face before he turned and dashed up the stairs, happy he’d found a way to pay her back for her own piece of mischief.

  Aurélie stood in the taproom, determined not to make eye contact with the women or their clients. She checked a feeling of compassionate superiority, reminding herself she was no better than them, just luckier. She stole a glance round the room; it was just the kind of place she might run into her father. As a child, Aurélie had pestered him with endless questions, the torrent slowing to a trickle as she saw him repeatedly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, then blame his luck on God or the turn of a card.

  Aurélie felt eyes on her body – a man in a faded green lucco was staring at her. He had fine features, but his hair was thin, bound at the neck with a scrap of cloth. A whore approached, he brushed her aside without looking up. Aurélie tried to warn him off with a look, feeling relieved when the boy beckoned to her from the top of the stairs.

  She paused in the doorway while her eyes adjusted to the dim light. The young merchant sat behind a desk, in a small parlour busy with over-stuffed furniture. An ugly dog lay on the floor beside him, asleep on a thick blanket.

  “Who do you come from, girl?”

  Aurélie curtseyed, more for the potboy’s benefit than this merchant. “Signor Bartolli, but perhaps I have made a mistake.”

  Aurélie caught the flash of surprise on his face. “To err is human,” he said.

  She smiled. “To forgive divine,” she completed the password.

  Michaelis grunted, in command of himself once more. “I hope Signor Bartolli doesn’t think I’m going to feed you,” he waved the potboy away. “Come in, young lady. What can I do for you?”

  Aurélie waited for the door to close behind her. Michaelis was dressed in silk, a fur-lined cape drawn casually around his shoulders. Dark eyes danced with intelligence beneath a full head of glossy brown hair.

  “Giacomo sends his greetings.”

  “You can tell him from me: it’s a coward’s trick to send a woman.”

  Aurélie took a deep breath. Giacomo had told her what to expect, warned her that offering explanatio
ns would only make it worse.

  “A coward’s trick,” she wondered aloud, “or inspired misdirection?” She smiled and turned her back on the merchant, hitching up her long skirt to remove a thin book and packet of letters.

  “De Re Anatomica by Mateo Colombo,” she kept her voice low. Possession of the book was enough to get them both killed. “Banned last year, condemned to the Indices Librorum Prohibitorum.” She held up the letters. “For our friends in Strasbourg. Giacomo has written a text for their printing press, denouncing the Pope’s recent decision to compel booksellers to keep records of their customers.”

  Michaelis walked to a heavy travelling chest, tilted it back, releasing a hidden spring. He removed a packet of papers and passed them to Aurélie. “There’s a letter from Bacon. I was in England before Christmas. The rest I collected from the printer in Strasbourg. He doesn’t like being used as the Otiosi’s postmaster.”

  Aurélie flicked through the letters and frowned. “Nothing from Lübeck?”

  “Not this time.”

  “And your journey, Signor Michaelis? Nothing out of the ordinary as you travelled south?”

  “Usual irritations. Bribes and paperwork, permits, bills of lading. Nothing out of the ordinary, until you.”

  Aurélie ignored him. “I hope that trade has been good.”

  He laughed. “I have several hundredweight of wool at the port, and the best offer I’ve had won’t even cover my expenses.”

  “I am sorry to hear that.”

  He waved a hand. “All part of the game. Trade is fine, thank you for asking. Or it would be if I could find someone who wanted two dozen wheel-lock muskets.”

  Aurélie blinked.

  “I purchased them for Duke Cosimo. Lugged them all the way from Suhl, and now the pompous fool says he won’t buy anything made north of the Alps,” he shook his head. “The first Cosimo will be turning in his grave.”

  “I’m sorry for your trouble,” Aurélie bent to hide the packet of Strasbourg letters. “A gentleman should turn his back.”