The Book of Air and Shadows

by Michael Gruber

  A short flight on a tiny powerful Learjet, the pilot uncommunicative, efficient, moving his craft through angles eschewed by mild commercial aviators. Midflight, Rolly got through to her children, or so Crosetti imagined: she did not share but sat damp-eyed, staring out at bright whiteness. But she let him take her hand.

  Landing at some Midlands airport whose name Crosetti never caught, they were met by Mr. Brown of Osborne, dressed in yellow coveralls and work boots. Mr. Brown conducted them to a white Land Rover painted with the insignia of the Severn Trent Water Board. On the motorway he explained the plan: go right in, bold as brass, find the thing, if it were there to find, drive off. Another plane waited near London to take them back to New York. Crosetti asked him if he knew what they were after.

  “Not me,” said Brown, “no need to know, I’m just the help. There’s a rental van behind us with all the equipment and a couple of lads to run it, ground-penetrating radar, resistivity gear, the lot. If there’s a well there they’ll find it. We’ll all do the digging, I expect.”

  “This is pretty expensive, all this,” Crosetti observed.

  “Oh, yes. Money no object.”

  “And you’re not curious?”

  “If I was the curious type, sir, I’d be long dead,” said Brown. “That’ll be Warwick up ahead. We’ll be able to see the castle in a bit.”

  It rose white above a line of trees, hung there for a while, and then vanished when the road dipped, like a vision in a fairy story. After some driving through anonymous suburbs it appeared again on their left, huge, looming over the river.

  “Not like Disneyland, is it?”

  “No, that’s the real thing,” said Brown, “although Tussaud’s have tarted it up like mad. Still, there’s real blood soaked into the stones. A horrible time, of course, when that was the last word in military technology, but still…”

  “You would’ve liked to live back then?”

  “On occasion. A simpler time: someone got on your nerves, say, you put on your tin suit and chopped away at ’em. Half a sec, I think we’re just on our mark.” He pulled over to the side of the narrow road they were on and consulted a large-scale ordinance survey map, then folded it and turned the Land Rover into the ditch on the right and down a track through a grove of oak and beech.

  “There’s gear for you in the van,” he said as he got out. “It’s important to look authentic and official.”

  Crosetti and Rolly went to the rear door of the van, which opened to reveal an interior that included a steel table, tool racks, long steel pipes, ladders, rigging gear, electronic equipment, and two men, who introduced themselves as Nigel and Rob, Nigel owlish and bespectacled, Rob broad-shouldered and gap-toothed with a tan buzz cut. They handed out yellow coveralls and boots and yellow hard hats with lamps in them. Crosetti was not surprised to find that the boots and the coveralls fit him perfectly. Carolyn reported that hers did too.

  “Osborne seems like a very efficient outfit. Does it make you nervous to learn that they have both our shoe sizes?”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore,” she said. “What are they doing?”

  “I have no idea,” said Crosetti.

  They watched the two men roll a four-wheeled cart made of steel pipe out of the van, and Crosetti was conscripted into off-loading various pieces of heavy electronics and car batteries from the van and lifting them onto the cart.

  “By the way, what is all this?” he asked Rob.

  “It’s a ground-penetrating radar set, absolutely top drawer. It produces a picture of the subsurface from a few feet to a hundred feet down, depending on the soil. We should get good penetration here. It’s Triassic sandstone.”

  Nigel said, “Unless there’s a clay intrusion.”

  “What if there’s a clay intrusion?” asked Crosetti.

  “Then we’re fucked, mate,” Rob answered. “We’ll have to go to resistivity, and we’ll be all week.”

  “You both work for Osborne?”

  “Not us,” said Nigel. “University of Hull geology. We’ve been corrupted by corporate gold, haven’t we, Robbie?”

  “Utterly. What’re you lot after anyway? A Viking hoard?”

  “Something like that,” said Crosetti. “We’ll have to kill you if we find it though.” They both laughed, but nervously, and both looked around for Brown, who seemed to have wandered off.

  Rolly was poking at the ground some distance away and Crosetti walked over to see what she was doing.

  “You don’t have to claw at the earth with your fingers,” he said. “We have all this high-tech equipment.”

  “Look what I found,” she said and held out her hand. In it was a flat, roughly triangular white stone upon which had been incised a perfectly straight double line and below it what appeared to be the petal of a rose.

  “It’s the priory,” she said. “This is the place. I’m getting chills.”

  “So am I. You look terrific in coveralls and a hard hat. Would you whistle at me as I walk by?”

  One of her stern looks followed this sally, and then Nigel and Rob called him over to help draw the cart. They heaved the thing through the wood, over ruts and roots, with Nigel leading the way, staring at a Global Positioning Receiver and Rolly trailing behind carrying several picks and spades across her shoulders.

  “Let’s stop here and light up the radar, people. If that satellite view we had from you is correct, Mr. GPR says this is the place.” They were in a shallow dip of land thickly littered with golden beech leaves between three old gray trees, whose reaching limbs crisscrossed against the milky sky above. Nigel made some adjustments and switched on his set. It hummed, and a broad paper tape emerged from a slit in one of the metal boxes. Nigel shoved his glasses back up his nose and studied the colors printed on the paper. He hooted and cried out, “Well, I’ll be blowed. Got it in one. There’s the void and it’s full of what looks like chunks of cut stone. Clear as a bell. Take a look, Robbie.”

  Rob did and confirmed the find. They cleared away the leaves and surface soil and began to dig, and before too long had uncovered the remains of what looked like the coping stones of a well, in the center of which was a mass of irregular pale stones.

  “It’s dry,” said Crosetti.

  “Well, yes,” said Rob, “the hydrology’s changed a good deal in the last four hundred years, what with digging canals and ornamental ponds for the gentry and public water schemes. Still, bit of a job, here,” he said, frowning down at the opening. “Some bastards have stuffed the thing with rocks. How deep did you need to go?”

  Crosetti said, “Something like eight meters.”

  “Oh fuck,” cried Rob. “We’ll be all fucking day.”

  It was nasty, heavy work of the type that all their ancestors had done every day of their lives in the not too distant past, the movement by human hands of massy bits of the planet’s fabric from one place to another. Only one person could fit down in the hole at a time, and this man had either to lift a rock onto a canvas sling attached to chains that led to the steel pipe tripod and pulley that the two geologists had rigged above, or else, if the stone were too heavy to lift, he had to drill a hole, anchor an eyebolt into it, and secure it to a hook. An hour into the work it started to rain, a steady chilling drench from the greasy low clouds, just enough to cause slips and frequent painful injuries and the dull stupidity that comes from cold. Crosetti’s mind went dim as he worked. He forget Shakespeare and his fucking play. The world shrank to the problem of the next stone. Each of the three men worked half an hour and then clambered up an aluminum ladder to collapse exhausted on the bed of the van. Rolly had found a Primus stove and kept the kettle going and fed them all pints of thick, sweet tea. When she wasn’t doing that she stood at the head of the well with a steel tape measure and dropped it down after each layer of stone had been raised and called out the depth: five meters, twenty: six and eighteen; and made jokes and encouraging cheerful noises and laughed at the snarls and curses she got in return.

&nb
sp; At half past noon they broke for lunch. Ever-efficient Mr. Brown had packed the Land Rover with plenty of groceries and Rolly had made soup and sandwiches and more tea, this time with rum in it. They ate in the van to be out of the rain and from this vantage could see Mr. Brown out in the distance, by the road, talking with a man in a Barbour jacket and tweed cap. The man was gesturing with a stick and seemed upset. After a few minutes he returned to his own Land Rover and drove off. Brown walked back across the squelching field to the van.

  “That was the National Trust man,” said Brown. “He is much vexed. This field is a registered site and we are absolutely forbidden to disturb it. He’s gone off to fetch the authorities, who will call the water board and find out we are not who we say we are. How close are we?”

  “Six point eighty-two,” said Rolly.

  “Then we’re going to have to move a little over a meter and get the Item, if it’s there, and clear out in something like half an hour. Break’s over, gentlemen.”

  They returned to the well and delved like demons for ten minutes, and here they finally caught a break, because the next layer of rubble consisted of small regular stones the size of cobbles that could be readily flung into the sling. Crosetti was at the bottom when the tape descended past his face and struck the rubble and Rolly called out, “Eight point sixteen.”

  He crouched and directed his miner’s lamp at the east wall. At first he saw nothing, only the roughly rectangular stonework of the well shaft. He grabbed a short wrecking bar and pounded on each stone in turn, and on the fifth try one of the stones seemed to move. He forced the straight blade of the bar between that stone and its sister and heaved and the stone slid a little farther out of alignment. In two minutes of violent exertion he had pried it from its place and was looking into a void from which issued an odor of ancient damp earth. His lamp shone on a round shape, about the size of a number ten can.

  Hardly breathing now, Crosetti inserted the curved end of the wrecking bar into the hole as far as it would go and wiggled it around until he felt it catch, and slowly pulled out what appeared to be a lead pipe a little over a foot in length and a hand span in diameter, closed at both ends by soldered sheets of lead. Crosetti carried it up the ladder, cradling it tenderly, like a rescued infant.

  “That’s it?” asked Rob.

  “It shows how much you know, Rob,” said Nigel. “That’s King Arthur’s willie, preserved in brandy. Now England can be great again.”

  Crosetti ignored them and went into the van, with Carolyn following close behind. Rob was about to follow but Brown put a hand on his arm. “Time to go, gents,” he said in a tone that did not encourage objection. “I suggest you take down your gear and drive off before the police arrive.”

  “We’re not going to get a look?” asked Rob.

  “Afraid not. Best you don’t know.” Brown extracted a thick envelope from the inside pocket of his anorak. “A pleasure doing business,” he said, handing it to Nigel. The two geologists went meekly off to gather their equipment.

  Inside the van, Crosetti found a heavy clamp, a hammer, and a cold chisel. He fixed the cylinder to the steel table and cut through the lead at one end. Inside he found a roll of heavy paper tied with a dark ribbon. The paper was nearly white and seemed almost fresh, not brown and crumbly as he had imagined four-hundred-year-old paper would be. He realized with something of a shock that the last person to have touched this paper was Richard Bracegirdle and before that, William Shakespeare. He voiced this thought to Carolyn.

  “Yes, now you’re one with the great. Open the ribbon, for Christ’s sake!” He untied the knot and spread the sheets on the table. The ink was black, barely oxidized, he saw, and not in Bracegirdle’s hand. The pages were all neatly ruled and written on in three vertical columns, for character name, dialogue, and stage directions: the thrifty Swan of Avon had used both sides of each sheet. Automatically he counted them: twenty-one folio sheets in all. Across the top of the first sheet in letters large enough for even his trifling familiarity with Jacobean secretary hand to read was written The Tragedie of Mary Quene of Scotland.

  His hand was shaking as he held the page. What had Fanny called it? The most valuable portable object on the planet. He rolled the pages up again and placed them back in the cylinder with the ribbon, and stuck the lead seal in his slicker pocket. Then he grabbed Rolly in a mighty hug and swung her around and yelled like a maniac and ended by planting a kiss on her mouth.

  On the road again in the Land Rover, Brown said, “I assume all was satisfactory? That noise you made was the crow of victory and not the sob of defeat?”

  “Yeah, all our dreams are fulfilled. I assume you’re going to ditch this car.”

  “Yes, just up ahead,” said Brown. “We have a few more vehicles as escort just in case security has been breached.”

  They pulled into a lane, and there was the familiar Mercedes, or one just like it, and an anonymous black Ford van with two men in the front seat. Security had apparently not been breached because they drove to Biggin Hill without incident. It was cozy in the van and Crosetti, in the shotgun seat, kept drifting off. He had the lead cylinder on his lap. Brown hadn’t asked about it, or asked to see what was in it, but simply placed them both in the hands of a sweet-faced motherly woman in a blue uniform, Ms. Parr, their handling agent, and departed into his efficient anonymity.

  Ms. Parr directed them to the passenger lounge, and after looking Crosetti over, asked if he would like an opportunity to freshen up, to which he responded that he would like a shower and a change of clothes if it could be arranged, and it needless to say could be arranged, as what could not be arranged for the fliers in private jets? And how about two large padded envelopes and some packing tape? These appeared, and Crosetti went into the men’s room with them and his carry-on bag and the most valuable portable object on the planet in its lead casing. Alone in the blue-tiled room, he removed the play and sealed it in one of the envelopes and taped this under the lining of the back of his corduroy sports jacket. This he hung on one of the shower hooks, outside the plastic curtain, then stripped and took a shower, and was amazed at the almost Mississippian quantities of silt that flowed off his body and down the drain. While he showered he considered why he didn’t just leave the damned thing with Carolyn and why he was, in effect, concealing it from her.

  Because you don’t trust her, came the answer from Rational Albert. But I love her and she loves me, replied Amorous Al. She said so. But Crosetti realized that part of the woman’s appeal was her utter weirdness, the proven fact that she might do anything. Even at this moment he had no guarantee that when he emerged from this bathroom she might not be gone and that he might never see her again. This thought prompted an acceleration in his toilette. Five minutes later, still damp but neatly dressed in the jacket, black jeans, and a flannel shirt, he emerged into the lounge, holding his carry-on (containing Bracegirdle’s lead pipe) and a padded envelope, which he had stuffed with flyers for tourist spots and sealed with tape. Carolyn was seated in the lounge. She had taken a shower and changed her clothes too, and her damp hair seemed darker than it had been.

  He sat down next to her. “One more flight,” he said, “and this adventure is over.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “I hate adventure. I want to be in a place where I can get up in the morning and see the same people and do pretty much the same thing every day.”

  “Bookbinding.”

  “Yes. I know you think it’s boring. I know you think that making movies is serious art and making books is like…I don’t know, knitting afghans. I don’t care. That’s going to be my life. I’m going to get my children and go to Germany, where I can study bookbinding, and I’m going to do nothing else but study bookbinding, and make books. That’ll be my life.”

  “And what, I’ll come visit in the summer?”

  She turned her head and made that pushing gesture with her hands. “Not now, Crosetti. I can’t hold any more stuff in me. Could we just, like, be tog
ether for the next couple of hours without devising contractual long-range plans?”

  “Sure, Carolyn. Whatever you say,” he said, and thought, That’s what’d be printed on the outside of the package if our relationship was a product, like contents poisonous or highly inflammable. Whatever you say.

  He walked a little distance away and called Mishkin in New York. Mishkin took the news in and said congratulations and that he’d have a car meet them at the airport.

  Their plane was a Citation X this time, smaller and sleeker even than the Gulfstream, configured for six, with a closed-off partition in the rear where there were two bedlike lounges. Seeing these, Crosetti was about to suggest that here was an unusually comfortable way for the two of them to join the Eight Mile High Club but did not. The vibrations were wrong, as they so often were around Carolyn Rolly. He sighed, belted himself in, drank his champagne. The aircraft screamed, slammed him back in his seat, shot into the air at an aggressive angle. He felt the Most Valuable Portable Object crinkle against his spine. The envelope with the decoy ms. was lying on the seat next to him. He read a magazine for a while and then pulled his blanket around him and over his head. It was not the skimpy towel the commercial airlines gave you but a thick, full-size thing as used by the best hotels. He adjusted his seat to near horizontal and fell into exhausted sleep.