by Tom Pugh
Longstaff shrugged. He looked at the Coat of Seven Colours. “Does it work?”
“Keep me safe from plague, you mean?” Durant smiled. “I don’t believe in magic, Matthew. It’s a uniform.” He pointed at a dozen pink lozenges, wrapped in fine cheesecloth. “Do you know what these are?”
Longstaff shook his head.
“You will certainly have heard of the man who made them: Michel de Nostradamus?”
“Of course,” said Longstaff, looking more closely “are these...”
“His famous rose pills?” finished Durant. He placed one in the palm of Longstaff’s hand. “An ounce of sawdust from a fresh, green Cypress tree; six ounces of Iris of Florence; three ounces of cloves; three drams of tiger lily; six of lignaloes. The ingredients are ground into a powder, then mixed with the petals of three hundred roses, but mind they must be picked before dawn,” Durant seemed to quote from memory. “Shape the paste into lozenges no bigger than a thumbnail, dry thoroughly and store in a sealed place. In case of plague, keep one on the tongue at all times.”
“Do they work?” asked Longstaff eagerly.
Durant raised both eyebrows.
CHAPTER 17
Never in his wildest dreams had Mathern Schoff imagined that Spina would treat him as a messenger from God. The lawyer had ridden post to Bruges. Tired and dirty, he’d gone straight to the Dominican Monastery there and demanded to see the Abbot. He mentioned the name of his secret master, and the whole machinery of the Order was placed at his disposal. Schoff had travelled through Catholic France by coach – an arduous journey over ill-made roads – then wasted two days in Marseille, pacing back and forth in a monk’s cell while the brothers arranged his passage to Florence.
He was tired and hungry when he finally arrived at the huge Dominican monastery of Santa Maria Novella. A monk received him at the gates.
“Where is Gregorio Spina. Is he here or in Rome?”
The monk grinned. Simple minded, realised Schoff, biting back a curse. More unnecessary delay. How far behind were the two book-thieves? A second monk appeared, older than the first, with the first flecks of grey at his temples. “What can we do for you?”
“I have information for the Master of the Sacred Palace. It’s vital I reach him as soon as possible.”
The man sent the fool away with a gentle pat on the shoulder, then turned and gestured for Schoff to follow. The stone corridors of the monastery were silent. The monk opened a heavy oak door and ushered the lawyer into an austere antechamber. “Wait.”
“Is Spina here?”
The question fell on deaf ears. The monk closed the door and disappeared. Distantly, Schoff could hear the brothers eating in the refectory and his stomach growled enviously. An hour passed before the same man returned to lead him through cloisters and up winding stairs. They were climbing one of the towers; the stairwell narrowed and still they pressed on, finally stopping in front of a low door. The monk knocked before turning the handle and motioning for Schoff to enter.
A circular chamber, lit by narrow windows at each point of the compass. A writing table beneath one, piled high with books and scrolls. A dark lectern dominated the centre of the room; bearing a single, slim volume, bound in gold-tooled leather. Two cat-tail whips hung from a hook on the wall, above a shallow basin of water. And there Gregorio Spina stood, drying his hands with a piece of cloth.
For a moment, Schoff just stared; the strong features and spotless robe were exactly as he remembered. The Master’s eyes shone with a brilliant light.
“Only one thing could have prompted your journey here.”
Schoff’s weariness fell away. “The Devil’s Library,” he whispered urgently. “Two men approach. Gaetan Durant and Matthew Longstaff. They have a palimpsest; the Frenchman is convinced it reveals the location of the library.” A torrent of words tumbled from the lawyer. “I told them where to find Giacomo Vescosi. I couldn’t send them directly to you; they would have been suspicious. Durant refused to give me the palimpsest. It was the best I could do in the circumstances. He insisted he wouldn’t part with it, except to put it in the hands of the Otiosi leader.”
Gregorio Spina turned to the north-facing window and placed his palms on the ledge. Schoff studied the robed back, desperate for any sign of approval. He hardly saw the green hills beyond until Spina began describing them. He spoke softly, talking of the rich black earth, scattered with the remains of a fallen empire.
“I grew up near here. All children have their favourite hiding places; mine was an ancient maze in the grounds of my family home.” He paused. “This land has been a battleground for so long that farmers raise their crops in blood. My father refused to take sides. He said they were all as bad as each other. A noble stand, lost on the mercenaries who came one night, cut off his lips and ears, and watched him bleed to death. They found my older brother hiding in the chimney place. In return for his life, my pregnant mother offered to lie with them willingly,” Spina’s voice thickened. “She kept them entertained until help arrived and my father’s murderers were burned on green wood. Mother lit the pyre, cursed their souls to damnation and took a vow of silence. She entered a convent as soon as my brother reached his majority. I have never seen her since,” he shook his head. “Strange to think we’ve finally reached the end of history.”
Spina turned. Schoff searched his face. “Durant and Longstaff will be here soon. I did everything I could to slow them – we have time – but you have to put a watch on Vescosi.”
“We’ve been watching the Vescosis for more than a hundred years,” Spina smiled, revealing small, even teeth. “You’ve done well, Mathern Schoff of Lübeck.”
Schoff dropped to his knees with relief. “Don’t send me back. My place is here now, with you.”
Spina shook his head. “You grew to manhood among heretics. Men who follow me must know without understanding and understand without being told.”
It felt like drowning. “Let me try,” begged Schoff. “I would rather die in the attempt than return to Lübeck.” He remembered Spina’s words from their first meeting in Rome and quoted them desperately. “Among the filth, like a diamond at the centre of the Devil’s black heart, God has placed a treasure, a weapon to defeat the Antichrist and pitch his hordes back into Hell.”
Colour rose in Schoff’s cheeks. He staggered beneath the force of Spina’s stare, felt it penetrate his soul. The Master of the Sacred Palace stood at the lectern and reverently placed his hands on the book there.
“The only copy in existence, written in secret by St. Benedict of Nursia. When he died, he left it to Pope Vigilius. Three years later, in 546, with the hordes of the barbarian king Totila at the gates of Rome, the book was smuggled away to Constantinople for safe-keeping. It lay forgotten for centuries, gathering dust, until it was discovered by a young scholar named Gemistus Plethon.”
Spina opened the cover, fingertips resting on a page of finest uterine vellum. “Do I have your oath, Schoff?”
“You have my life.”
“Only your soul has value here,” Spina appeared to consider. “God chose you to carry tidings of the Library, just as he chose St. Benedict, a young man born into a family of pagans and stargazers, obsessed with the movements of the planets. Church historians claim he spent three years living as a hermit in the Simbruini Mountains.” Spina shook his head. “Benedict spent those years being initiated into his family’s secret faith. The men who taught him prayed to an ancient book written in a language only the high priests could understand. No one expected that a humble novice would be able to decipher the text but, with God’s help, Benedict succeeded, learning to see through this world of illusion to the seeds of things beyond; conscious, indivisible, infinite in number and eternal. He could see them, taste them. In time, he learned to rearrange them, altering reality at will. Benedict grew terrified; the book was a way back to paradise, a way to destroy this world of illusion and bring about the Day of Judgement.”
Spina closed the book wi
th a snap. “That night, Benedict had a dream. The time was not yet right. There was still hope. Jesus commanded him to give up everything – wealth, family, position – and devote his life to caring for the faithful.”
“And the book… ?”
Spina nodded. “Still in the Devil’s Library, where Christ told him to leave it, against the day of Mankind’s greatest need. Gemistus Plethon and Cosimo de Medici spent decades searching, without success. It’s waiting for us, Schoff.” Spina laid his palms on the slim volume. “More power than you can dream of, enough to lead the faithful into the Last Days and scour God’s enemies from this earth!”
*
The sun was different this far south: a huge globe, which lounged on the horizon, bathing the green hills in warmth. Longstaff and Durant entered Tuscany down a narrow path, following a stream across a wooded valley and making camp beside a wide pool.
“Matthew?”
Longstaff stared at the cooking fire. They were nearing the end of their journey; if all went well he would be en route for England in a matter of days. He looked at Durant. “What?”
“May I see Il Medeghino’s book?”
As Longstaff removed it from his saddle-bag, he caught a glimpse of the small volume he’d recovered from Moscow. Together with Durant’s palimpsest, it was everything the lawyer had asked for: three texts that would secure his passage home.
“Here.”
Durant ran his fingers lightly over the ivory plate. The fine vellum pages had swelled over the years and it took him a moment to open the metal clasps. “Thank you.” He settled by the fire and began to read.
Longstaff gutted two fish he’d caught that afternoon and set them to cook.
Durant stretched; the joints snapping in his long, narrow back. “It seems to be a family journal,” he reached for his portion of food. “Successive generations have noted births and deaths. It’s a fine book, of course… ”
“But?”
“I fail to see how it has a bearing on the location of the lost works of Epicurus.”
“You don’t know everything, Durant.”
“You’re right. I must be missing something,” the Frenchman tapped his bottom lip. “We’ll find out soon enough. What will you do then?”
Longstaff spat in the fire. “I was nine when King Henry’s men ripped me from my home. There’s a small parlour at Martlesham where my father used to sit in the evenings. Sometimes I can see myself there, beside the fire with a glass of wine in one hand,” he frowned. “And sometimes I can’t.”
Durant nodded. “My father said the future was a plant grown in the soil of the past.”
Longstaff tried to compose an image of the parlour, a wife beside him and children asleep upstairs. He remembered Marie, the girl he’d loved in Lübeck. There had been others since then. Agnes – so proud of her fine hands – who had loved him for his strength; Beatrice, who’d loved his wealth and growing fame; and the dancer, Gerda, who had loved him for what he might become.
Sometimes the connection had lasted a year or more, but he’d always kept a distance. Afraid to love, afraid to compromise his dream. “And you?”
Durant closed the heavy book.
“My father was cursed with ambition; he spent a fortune educating me, hoping I’d become a soldier and raise the family into the ranks of the nobility. I would have done as he wanted, if I hadn’t fallen in love. Jeanne and I married in secret. My father was furious, but he’d a weakness for beautiful women. We set up home with him and my mother on the estate. I was a happy man, Matthew, until plague took them one by one in ’49, sparing me and our young daughter.”
He shrugged. “I was young and arrogant. I thought that if I devoted myself to medicine I might be able to prevent similar tragedies from striking others,” Durant’s eyes were lost in shadow. “My daughter never settled in Montpellier. She was angry. She never stopped being the most important thing in my life, and yet somehow I lost sight of her. Whole weeks went by without a word passing between us.”
“What happened?”
“I came home one day and she was gone. Nothing missing, no note, no sign of a struggle. None of her friends could tell me anything and I’ve been searching ever since. I thought, with all their connections, the Otiosi might be able to help… ”
He spoke with terrible weariness. Had he given up?
“She was already beautiful, even at twelve,” Durant sighed. “She’d be eighteen now.”
Longstaff felt relieved that he and the Frenchman were not friends, with all the obligations that carried. He thought of the neat line of stitches in his side.
“Do you never think of returning to medicine?”
“Like myself better as a freebooter,” Durant forced a laugh. “Do you still have the pill I gave you?”
Longstaff nodded. It was safely tucked in his jerkin. Durant smiled.
“I know the recipe because I used to help Michel make them. I studied beneath him in Montpellier,” he looked at Longstaff across the dying fire. “Do you want to know what really works against the plague, Matthew? Drink running water, rather than water from a well. Remain out of doors as much as possible and avoid being bled, if you value your life.”
“I’ve never heard the like.”
“No,” said Durant, “but it was by these simple measures that Nostradamus rescued Bordeaux from plague. He sat for his Doctorate not long afterward; the university wouldn’t award him his cap until he renounced unorthodox techniques. I think it was that compromise, made so many years ago, which lies at the root of his ridiculous career as a fortune teller.”
Longstaff spat fishbones into the fire. “It seems we were both unfortunate in our mentors.”
A dozen miles from Florence, they fell in with a group of penitents. Durant hailed them cheerfully and the men and women waved back, still scourging themselves with lengths of knotted rope.
“Heading for Rome?” asked Durant pleasantly.
“For our sins,” cried one, and the others laughed. They were professionals, Longstaff realized, paid to undertake this journey by wealthy individuals whose busy lives forced them to practise piety by proxy. He thought of the haggard penitent in Gernsheim, and remembered something Durant had told him on the riverboat: southerners are supple, able to hold a range of contradictory opinions, as a civilized man should.
The Frenchman stood in his stirrups. “Look there.”
Longstaff followed the line of his arm, seeing the walls of Florence in the distance, Brunelleschi’s shining dome and the tower of the Signoria, rising like a finger from the rooftops.
The penitents did not enter through the gates of Florence; their meagre fees insufficient for a night in the Medici capital. They peeled off to the left, following a well-worn track around the walls of the city, while Longstaff and Durant rode through the Porta San Gallo. The guards – in dark hose, red and yellow striped doublets and stout leather jerkins – watched the two horsemen, but made no move to delay them, preferring to remain in the shade of the customs house, lounging against their long pikes. The newsmongers were more energetic, pressing for tidings of the north. Durant threw out a few morsels – some true, others the product of his imagination – in return for directions to the Piazza della Signoria.
They rode down Via della Stufa, the long street hazy with incense and the clamour of bells, finally emerging in front of the cathedral. Longstaff paused to stare, half blinded by the glare of white marble.
Durant clicked his fingers. “We haven’t come for the sights.”
The Piazza della Signoria was crowded, hundreds of people going about their business beneath a towering statue of David. Longstaff and Durant dismounted, walking the horses past merchants in silk lucco and wide-eyed beauties reclining on litters, past stocks where thieves stared at their feet. Longstaff touched the wooden stock of his musket, glancing back at the women who were reputed to spot their eyes with drops made from the belladonna plant, to enlarge the pupils at the cost of their sight.
In a side street, Durant rapped knuckles against a wooden gate, tall and wide enough to admit carriage and horses. They had to wait for several minutes before a face appeared. Durant gave their names and the gate swung open.
The servant was tall, with thin hair bound into a tail. He led the horses to a water trough, before turning, hunched forward over clasped hands. “Please, follow me.”
He showed Longstaff and Durant up a flight of stairs, into a large reception room. “Please, wait here. The master will be with you soon.”
A beautiful writing desk and two wide couches stood beneath the windows. Fragments of marble – busts and torsos, feet and hands – topped a dozen plinths. A collection of ancient glassware gathered dust on the wide sideboard.
Longstaff dropped his saddle-bag on a couch. At the window, he moved the silk curtain aside and looked down at the horses. Sparrow turned and padded out of the reception room. A moment later, she reappeared in the courtyard, nudging her way between the two horses, making space for herself at the trough.
“Do you think he plans to keep us waiting long?” asked Durant.
The Frenchman looked nervous, thought Longstaff, and tired, his doublet torn and filthy.
“The place seems almost deserted.”
The door swung open and a man strode into the reception room, wearing a dark robe and skull cap. Black hair brushed the tops of his ears.
“Gentlemen. You’ve made better time than I dared hope.” He opened his palms in welcome. “I trust your journey was pleasant. Or, if not pleasant, then at least pleasantly uneventful.” He laughed at his joke, but the eyes were flat and hard. “My name is Giacomo Vescosi. You have something for me, I believe?”
Durant removed Il Medeghino’s book from Longstaff’s bag. “I took the liberty of reading it. Your factotum in Lübeck said it would help make sense of Lucretius’ letter. I assume you’ve heard from him already?”