The Book of Blood and Shadow

by Robin Wasserman

  I hate him. Words I never thought I would say I now long to scream into the night. I hate our Father. I hate him for devising it, as I hate the Emperor for stealing him away, as I hate the Lumen Dei for stealing everything else. Forgive me, brother! My words are true as they are evil, and yet they are incomplete. For I hate no one more than myself.

  The deed is done, the world is broken, and I see no way forward. I cannot, must not, reunite the pages with the book from which they were torn asunder. The mind of God should remain forever beyond the reach of man. Of this, if nothing else, I am now certain. And yet the Lumen Dei calls to me. The machine is a promise, a devil’s pact to divine ends, and I fear my strength is not equal to the temptation.

  This is all that remains of our Father: the machine his genius devised, and the words with which he guided my hands from beyond the grave. I study them often, thinking of him splayed on the floor of his cell, quill flying as he translated the words of God. The angels gave him their names, and he gave them to me, this one meaning water, that one air, this danger, that transgression. Do you ever envy him, dearest brother, and wish that you could hear the angels with such clarity? Envy is weakness, our Father taught us, and yet I know he envied Bacon, though he would never admit it. Our Father spoke to angels, but Bacon spoke to God.

  Even in our Father’s absence, those pages seem still to belong to him. All but one. That one details the task assigned to Thomas, and for a time, he carried it with him wherever he went. It still holds the familiar scent of his laboratory, acrid smoke, burnt metals, bitter vapors. This page, Thomas’s page, is mine. It is all that remains of a lost future, and will make its home with Petrarch, the one who taught me to know love resting forever with the one who taught me to speak it.

  Time grows short, and I have a decision to make. I urge you, as I so often do, not to worry for me, but this time I point not to my strength or my courage but to the mere fact that one can have no cares when one has nothing left to lose. It seems all I have left is you, my loving brother, and so you must save your worries for yourself.

  27 April 1599 Prague.

  None of it made much sense. There was the reference to “the gift of the Greeks,” which I recognized, from years of translating, as the Trojan Horse. The Lumen Dei, whatever it was, whatever untold riches had apparently been promised, had brought the opposite. Chaos and disaster, a world in ruins.

  I couldn’t begin to imagine the nature of a machine that promised “sacred answers” and “ultimate truth”—or rather, when I tried, I couldn’t help picturing one of those Guess Your Fortune carnival machines—but I understood all too well what had been left in its wake: grief. That delectable combo of confusion, guilt, self-doubt, what-ifs, regrets about the unchangeable past and paralysis in the face of an unpromising future. She had lost, badly—and in losing, had lost her father all over again. I knew how that worked, too. It was simple physics: Loss attracted loss.

  Enough, I told myself, sounding like her. The letter wasn’t a distress call across the ages from a sixteenth-century maiden in search of a twenty-first-century shrink. It was a clue.

  I pulled the Petrarch collection out of the pouch that the archives were stored in, and rifled gently through the yellowed pages. The text was faint, nearly illegible. There were a few poems underlined or circled, with no notes in the margin to indicate why they might have mattered. I didn’t speak Italian so couldn’t even begin to guess.

  Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato

  et aperta la via per gli occhi al core,

  che di lagrime son fatti uscio et varco.

  Maybe less a clue than a dead end. Feeling vaguely stupid, I closed the book again. As I did, I felt something. The leather binding was incredibly soft, rubbed smooth by age. But my thumb had bumped over a rough spot on the inside front cover. No, not a spot, I realized, taking a closer look. A seam. A slightly discolored square patch of light tan stood out against the dark, with a thin seam running along the edges, an impressive but imperfect repair job, as if to disguise a hole in the binding. Or something else.

  There was a bottle opener on my key chain, and on the bottle opener, a sharp enough edge to rip a fraying sixteenth-century stitch. The Hoff was still snoring; Chris and Max were still absorbed in their battle of wits and pedantry. No one was watching.

  Not that I would think of defacing a four-hundred-year-old book. That would be insane. Probably not the kind of thing they could arrest you for, but I had no doubt the Hoff would try his best. Obviously the smart thing would be to bring him the book, show him the stitches in the binding and the slightly raised area beneath them, as if something had been slipped inside. But:

  This page, Thomas’s page, is mine.

  The stitches split neatly and swiftly, and the thin leather patch dropped away. I nearly gasped. A tightly folded piece of paper was nestled into the binding. I nudged it gently with one finger, half afraid it would turn to dust if I moved it, much less tried to unfold it. Elizabeth had folded this up and sewn it into a beloved book, where it had rested unseen and untouched for four centuries. She was the last person to hold this, I thought, and now her secret was mine.

  Carefully, so carefully, I unfolded the page. It turned out to be two pages, one nested inside the other—and then I really did gasp as I realized what I was looking at. One sheet was crammed with dense Latin, terms I’d never seen before, acqua fortis, sal ammoniac, names that sounded like chemicals alongside measurements, some kind of elaborate formula. Beside it was a rough sketch of an odd-looking plant, six pointed leaves framing a seventh rounded one, with a spiraling stalk. But it wasn’t the formula or the drawing that caught my eye. It was the other page, which wasn’t Latin at all, or any language. It was a page of symbols, incomprehensible but familiar, because hadn’t I been staring at those symbols every time I passed the massive facsimile of a Voynich manuscript page hanging over the Hoff’s desk?

  The grouping of the text was the same on both pages, as was the strange drawing. “You guys?” I swallowed hard, trying to knock the frog out of my voice. “I think I may have found something.”

  17

  The Voynich manuscript surfaced in 1912 and has since foiled a century’s worth of historians, linguists, and cryptographers, driving at least one of them insane. Its 240 pages are filled with a language of twenty to thirty distinct glyphs, seemingly a random ordering of meaningless ink marks designed to befuddle and humiliate readers, but linguistic analysis strongly suggests that the symbols form a language—possibly one that’s yet to be discovered.

  Some believe the Voynich manuscript to be a hoax, cooked up in the twentieth century, though carbon dating pushes its origin to the 1400s. The Hoff suspected it was even older than that. He was a traditionalist, as Voynich speculators went, adhering to a theory most had given up for dead. He believed that the demented alchemist Edward Kelley had owned the book but that Roger Bacon, a thirteenth-century friar, philosopher, scholar, and mystic, had written it. The letters were beginning to vindicate him. Kelley referred to a book, written by Bacon in the language of God, and Elizabeth seemed to suggest that—whether thanks to the intercession of his angelic overseers or an epileptic seizure or simply a genius for defrauding gullible acolytes—he had cracked the code and transcribed its holy secrets.

  Now we had proof.

  18

  For a few moments we thought the Hoff might actually pop a coronary, but gradually the red leached out of his face and he stopped ranting about how he would show them all and get out of this hellhole and die at Harvard, where he belonged. When he finally acknowledged our presence, it was only to order us into indentured servitude; naptime was over. “If we work morning, noon, and night, we just might be ready with a full translation by the next American Historical Association conference,” he told Chris and Max. When they stammered something about classes and homework and, not incidentally, having a life, he made a noise like a deflating tire. “We’re talking about the pursuit of knowledge,” he told them. “This could
change the world. This could be your legacy. And you’re worried about some multiplication tables?”

  Chris cleared his throat. “Actually, it’s multivariable calculus with—”

  “It’s useless.” The Hoff snorted. “Young man, no one else is going to tell you the truth, so allow me. Your education is a joke. Your classes lack quality and depth, and even if you were learning from the Athenian masters themselves, do you really think the world needs yet another term paper on the themes of protofeminist rage in Macbeth or the structural causes of World War I? It’s busywork, son. It’s a scam to trade your tuition money for a piece of paper that will let you go work at a bank or some company for the rest of your life, pretending that because you once read Plato, you can call yourself an educated man.” He grazed his fingers along Elizabeth’s secret pages, then pointed to the door. “That, out there, is a facsimile of knowledge. This is real. The choice is yours, of course. I assume you’re not the only student capable of translation work, though in this godforsaken place, one can never be sure.”

  Chris looked helplessly at Max, who only had eyes for the Hoff. “We’ll do what we can,” he said, steady.

  The Hoff nodded. “And you,” he said.

  Me.

  “You have school, of course, and I suspect I don’t need to lecture you about what a waste that sand trap of bureaucracy and busywork will turn out to be, but your obligations are your obligations, nonetheless. However, I expect that while you’re here—”

  “Actually,” I said, my voice smaller than I would have liked, “I was thinking that maybe I could stick with the Elizabeth letters. For a while. If that’s all right.”

  His bushy eyebrows nearly receded to his distant hairline. I couldn’t blame him. Here was my chance to do something that actually mattered, and I was going to pass it up for some wannabe poet’s cryptic teen angst?

  I was.

  The Hoff was nodding. “Yes. Yes, yes. Who knows what else may be hidden in those letters? You follow your instincts, Nora. You’re the miracle worker.”

  I hadn’t even been sure he knew my first name.

  “You have changed history,” he said. “Better, you’ve revealed history. Your Elizabeth translations will no doubt be worthy of publication, perhaps even a small volume of their own. So yes, keep at it.”

  And then, in awkward slow motion, he opened his arms and lurched toward me. Before I had a chance to back away, he had folded himself around me, his sandpaper skin pressed to my cheek. I held myself stiff, enduring.

  “Gratias tibi ago,” he said. Thank you. “Everything will be different now.”

  “You’re welcome,” I mumbled, and waited for it to be over.

  19

  “Okay, I’m here.” Adriane flounced into the church with two pizza boxes and a bottle of vodka. “Now who wants to tell me why? Because giant crosses and creepy statues of the Virgin Mary do not a celebration make.”

  “They do when it’s the scene of our triumph.” Chris swung her off her feet and twirled her around, pizza, vodka, and all. “Ever dreamed of kissing a world-famous historian? Pucker up.”

  Adriane twisted out of his grasp. “As far as world-famous goes, I’ve got my hopes set on rock star. Or maybe astronaut.” She set the celebratory provisions down in an empty pew. “Explanation? Anyone?”

  “We made a brilliant discovery,” Chris said.

  “Nora made a discovery,” Max said.

  Adriane arched an eyebrow. “Dead-girl porn? I knew it!”

  “Ignore her,” I said quickly, catching the look on Max’s face. “She can’t help herself. It’s a disease.”

  “Gutterminditis,” Adriane said. “If you want to use the technical Latin term. As I know you do.”

  The sanctuary, which had seemed foreboding in the pitch black, glowed in the soft light of the overhead candelabras, bright enough to illuminate sculpted stone angels swirling around the pillars and golden candles ringing the altar, dim enough to disguise peeling paint, splintered wood, rust and corrosion and decay. It wasn’t the most appropriate spot for a victory party, but when Chris had one of what he termed his brain monsoons, he was nearly impossible to resist. The Hoff was long gone, off to dream of academic glory or librarian torture or whatever enlivened his fantasies—he’d left us to celebrate our triumph with “an exuberance commensurate with your youth.”

  We scavenged the pizza, downed the vodka—or at least Chris, Adriane, and Max did, while I weathered their mockery and stuck to water, arguing that, as resident “miracle worker,” it was probably part of my job description to stay pure—and speculated wildly about the shining futures we might have just ensured for ourselves. Chris foresaw a glowing recommendation for law school three years hence, paving the yellow-brick road all the way to the Supreme Court; I just wanted to make sure I got out of Chapman and into college, useless facsimile of knowledge or not; Adriane, unpersuaded that any of this was a deal big enough for ten-dollar pizza, much less a night of drunken blue-skying, was nonetheless set to write, produce, and costume our inevitable television appearance (albeit presumably on PBS); Max was silent.

  “Now can we get out of here and celebrate for real?” Adriane asked once the food and drink were gone.

  Chris leapt off his pew and grabbed her hand. “Not until I have my way with you, fair lady.”

  “Your way isn’t exactly churchly,” Adriane pointed out. But she held on as he danced her around the nave in a left-footed waltz, whirling with clownish grace.

  Max and I watched.

  “ ‘I found that ivory image there, dancing with her chosen youth,’ ” Max said. Then, realizing that I was staring at him, he blushed. “It’s a poem. Yeats.”

  “I know.”

  He looked surprised. “Really?”

  Of course not really—the only poetry I knew by heart was the first and last stanzas of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and that only because we’d been forced to memorize them for sophomore English—but I didn’t like that shocked expression, as if it were so out of the question I’d know a random Yeats line off the top of my head. I wondered if he’d been trying to impress me, then dismissed the idea. Max didn’t strike me as the type to make the effort.

  Then again, neither was I.

  “ ‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea. By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown,’ ” I quoted, though it bore no relevance to anything, even in the loosest of poetically metaphorical terms. “Eliot.”

  “ ‘Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’ ” It was the next line.

  “Are we competing now?” I asked. “Over who knows more poetry by heart? Because if so, this is officially the geekiest conversation of my life.”

  He tensed, and another red flush crept across his face.

  “Joking,” I assured him. “Remember, I’m the funny one?”

  We fell silent again and watched them dance. Chris lurched about with the best of intentions and a congenital lack of rhythm, but Adriane—physically incapable of an awkward move—twirled and dipped like a Disney princess at the ball, absent only shimmering gown and diamond tiara. “She’s beautiful. Don’t you think?”

  Max shrugged.

  “She inspired you to poetry,” I pointed out.

  “So do spotted toads. And the occasional well-barbecued steak. Beauty’s not really a necessary criterion.”

  “Spotted toads? You recite poetry to toads?”

  Max stood abruptly and reached out his hand. “Let’s take a walk.”

  I glanced at Chris and Adriane, who had dispensed with the ballroom theatrics and were swaying slowly back and forth, closing in on the very unchurchly inevitable.

  “Let’s.” I grabbed his hand. Wheelbarrow or not, sometimes three was an ugly number.

  Without discussion, Max led me up the narrow spiral staircase that rose to the church quire. It was a shallow balcony overlooking the nave, complete with choir risers and a dying pipe organ. “I’ve never been up here,” I said, lea
ning against the balcony and watching Chris and Adriane sway and spin beneath us. The wooden rail creaked with my weight, sign enough to step back and forget the rituals of seduction playing out below.

  “I come a lot,” Max said. “I like the way things look from up here. Small.”

  There was a sudden draft, and I shivered in the blast of frigid air.

  “Cold?” Max inched closer, hand on the lapel of his blazer, as if he wanted to offer it but couldn’t quite muster the nerve. He almost always wore a blazer, khaki in the early fall, corduroy now in the encroaching cold. It wasn’t an unusual uniform amid the New England tweediness of the Chapman quad, but I liked the way Max pulled it off, pairing his jackets with faded vintage T-shirts that looked—as opposed to the crisply colored ironic tees paraded by the occasional out-of-place hipster—genuinely bedraggled, as if they had been plucked from the pile of dirty laundry in his childhood bedroom.

  “I like this,” I said, pinching the thin cotton of his faded Simpsons T-shirt and tugging it toward me. Then, though I’d never thought of doing anything like it before and didn’t technically think of it at all, not in any way that constituted conscious thought as opposed to reflexive, unmotivated, utterly irrational action, I kissed him.

  He let me. For a few seconds—then he pulled back and adjusted his glasses, looking at me like I was a puppy who’d just performed a particularly complicated dance step, then peed on his leg.

  I wanted to die.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  Because I’d wanted to kiss someone. Because my two best friends were best friends with each other, a seamless unit who probably spent the majority of their time together waiting for me to go away. Because his eyes were brown in one light and green in another, magnetic in both. Because I’d worked a miracle—or maybe because I’d done so only by imagining I was someone else, someone intrepid and intense and long dead, and I wasn’t quite ready to go back to being me. “I don’t know.”