Codex

by Lev Grossman

  For a long moment he thought he’d lost them in the crowd, but then they reappeared in the line at Passport Control. He tried to catch Margaret’s eye, but the angle was bad, and she was wearing sunglasses, which he’d never seen her do before. They looked terrible on her—they made her look blind more than anything else. She said something to the Duke, and he searched his pockets solicitously and handed her a fresh handkerchief. Edward could hardly look at her—her outline shimmered, she was an incandescent sunspot of pain. She didn’t understand. He needed to warn her.

  “Margaret.” he said. Then he shouted, “Margaret!”

  Ten thousand people turned around to stare at him. Margaret glanced in his direction and looked away hurriedly. A uniformed agent approached the Duke, they spoke, and he and Margaret stepped out of the line. They disappeared through a separate doorway, bypassing the crowd completely. He watched them go, one hand raised like a man frozen in the act of hailing a cab. There was a sudden commotion at one of the customs windows as a child—no, an unusually small man—tried to force his way through the line and was vigorously restrained by two uniformed customs officials who had no trouble overpowering him. They escorted him away.

  Suddenly Edward’s bags felt very heavy. He found a bench and sat down. Some urgent action was still required, some input on his part; an inner alarm was ringing more and more insistently with every passing second, but he didn’t know what to do or how to shut it off. It seemed incredible to him that time was still rolling forward at all, that this new development hadn’t brought it to a shuddering halt, with a grinding noise and a smell of burning insulation. His brain mechanically catalogued meaningless details in the comfortingly dull airport corridor: ads for Lucky Strikes and Campari, patterns of speckles in the linoleum floor. His nose itched. Outside on the runway, workmen were doing something to an exposed truck engine under the glare of a spotlight. He stared at it till it hurt, deliberately making afterimages on his retina. They looked like balls of blue fire.

  A meaningless echoing racket in the background gradually resolved itself into the sound of a man’s voice speaking over the PA system. He forced himself to understand it.

  It was calling his name.

  ASTOUNDINGLY, DESPITE everything, the crude mechanisms of real life were still functioning at maximum efficiency, turning and slicing, shunting and processing. A series of painted arrows, courteous officials, and gratifyingly rapid lines whirled him through customs and out into the receiving area. A chauffeur with the usual crudely lettered sign was there to meet him at the baggage claim. It was his old friend the driver with the weak chin, wearing a stylish leather jacket over a ludicrously inappropriate cable-knit turtleneck sweater. Another man, a debonair footman who looked uncannily like Clark Gable, took his bags. They didn’t speak to him, or to each other for that matter, just led him down to an underground garage full of heady gasoline fumes. A midnight-blue limousine waited there, a feline Daimler-Benz crouching on gleaming spokework paws. He was ushered decorously into the back seat, while they sat together in the front. The car started with a genteel cough.

  They drove him north out of the city, through darkened suburbs with half-familiar names—Windsor, Watford, Hempstead, Luton—into the countryside north of London. Edward felt like he’d been sitting down for days, and his ass was starting to hurt. He did his best to keep his mind studiously blank. At that moment there were no possible avenues of thought he was even remotely interested in exploring. He wondered what lie the Duke had told Margaret about what he’d do with the codex, how he wanted to preserve it, would let her write about it, would treat it as the national treasure it was. How could she be so brilliant and so naive at the same time? The Duke would shred it as soon as he could, of course, just as he told Fabrikant he would.

  They drove for hours. The stars were startlingly bright this far from the city, but he didn’t bother to admire them. He didn’t get out when they stopped for a cigarette or for gas, or petrol, or whatever it was. He didn’t register the heavenly smell of leather and sweet tobacco in the back seat of the car. Instead he just stared straight ahead at the seat back in front of him, or closed his eyes and tried to doze. In his now-rumpled black suit and his good white shirt, half untucked and open at the collar, he looked like a disheveled guest on his way home from a long and utterly disastrous party.

  In spite of his best efforts, Edward’s thoughts wandered ahead to his imminent arrival at Weymarshe, and the inevitable practical difficulties. Would she even let him in without the book? He tried to picture it. The Duchess would look up from where she sat curled on a Sun King sofa with a blank, annoyed expression on her face as the butler announced his name. How dare he show his face at Weymarshe now? Or maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, he thought, as the Daimler-Benz whisked him ever closer. He was on the losing team, but so was the Duchess. They were in it together. She still had her money, and that counted for something, right? And she was in nominal possession of Weymarshe, while the Duke was still in London. It was a setback, but not a disaster, not a deal breaker. It was time for the Duchess to retrench, rally her forces, reconsider her options, and he could help with that. She needed a sympathetic ear and a fresh set of eyes, now more than ever. He forced himself to take a deep breath, and some of the tightness in his chest eased up. Maybe it would all be all right after all.

  He played the scene of his arrival again in his mind, but this time she answered the door herself (the servants having already gone to bed) in an evening gown, with cocktails in both hands, the light glowing through them from behind. The codex had only been a passing fancy, she confessed, just an aristocratic whim, that’s all, nothing more. She was horrified at his distress. Think nothing of it. She would dismiss it with her musical laugh, with a playful kiss on the cheek. Never speak of it again. Drink up. Cheers.

  An ambulance howled past going the other way with its dismal, dopplered, off-key European siren. It made him uncomfortable. Suddenly it felt like the car was crawling along, like they were moving backward or driving on an endless treadmill, past a revolving set of cardboard hills and plywood houses and the same hedges over and over again.

  After an eternity the car finally slowed down, then drew up at a gate. White gravel popped and crackled under the tires. It was the moment before dawn, the moon had set and the sky was glowing blue. A spasm of doubt and self-preservation gripped him. What was he getting himself into? He couldn’t face her yet. It was too soon, he wasn’t ready. Before they could go through the gate Edward grabbed the door handle, jerked open the car door, and jumped out.

  It took him a couple of stutter-steps to find his feet. The air outside was unexpectedly cold and brisk, and the shock revived him a little. It was the first fresh air he’d breathed since he got on the plane in New York twelve hours ago, and just inhaling it made him feel calmer. The gleaming car immediately scraped to a stop beside him.

  Edward straightened up and looked around almost calmly, getting his bearings. A high, dense hedge surrounded the property, looking like it could have turned back a German tank, with the top of a crumbling brick crenellation visible just above it. What was he doing? Should he call for help? Just walk away? A whispered conference was taking place in the front seat of the Daimler-Benz. The chauffeur rolled down his window halfway.

  “Shall I wait, sir?” he inquired politely.

  The other man—Clark Gable—got out on the passenger’s side, his jacket still unfairly neat and crisp after the long drive. He looked at Edward across the car’s smooth, glossy roof with an expression of mild concern.

  “Shall we run you ‘round to the front of the house, sir?” he asked. “It’s a fair ways. Take you half an hour at least on foot.”

  Edward took another look around. The man had a point. The nearest house had to be ten miles back. Well, he was going to have to see this through sooner or later. What’s the worst that could happen? Don’t answer that. He climbed back into the car and closed the door.

  The footman wasn’t exaggeratin
g: It took them at least half an hour to reach the house by car, let alone on foot, even though the chauffeur attacked the winding, intermittently paved road like it was the Autobahn. It was almost five in the morning, and sunrise was bearing down on them fast, and here and there along the way he could already distinguish artfully decayed tableaux through the twilight: a struggling orchard, a field full of neat hay-rolls, an Edward Gorey garden full of amorphous, poorly tended topiary. Edward sat up straight now, shoulders squared. The last thing he wanted was to be caught gaping at the scenery. Whatever happened, he was going to salvage as much of his dignity out of this as he could.

  At one point the car screeched to a halt so abruptly that Edward almost banged his forehead against the seat in front of him. A stag was standing foursquare in the middle of the road, as if it had been waiting for them. The car’s high beams bounced off its proud, furry white chest. The deer was huge, and Edward found it strangely unnerving—it must have wandered out of the Wents’ famous deer park, he supposed, but it could have stepped directly out of the pages of the Viage. The driver honked at it vainly, but the animal took its time getting out of their way, not at all intimidated by its mechanical adversary. It cocked its head away, as if it were receiving inaudible transmissions on its dark, spreading antlers, then turned back to stare at them. Its eyes seemed to seek out Edward alone with a message of lordly contempt.

  Then they were moving again, and the road divided and became a wide, circular, white gravel driveway, embraced by a pair of open colonnades on either side. In the center of the circle stood a modest fountain, travertine nymphs and satyrs enacting some unreadable mythological allegory, with a tall, obtrusively masculine water god presiding sternly over the proceedings. At the head of it all stood the house itself. This time Edward waited for the car to stop for well and good before he got out. He let the footman open the door for him.

  After all that, he thought, Weymarshe was nothing like his dog-eared mental snapshot of it. He was a little disappointed: It was a looming gray juggernaut of a house, more massive than grand, all bulk and no poise. He had a blurred impression of many columns, many windows, urns, ornaments—the house had acquired a neoclassical facade at some point in its history—and a wide, shallow stone staircase below a large pair of double doors. It looked more like a university library than a mansion. Edward had half expected it to jibe with something in MOMUS, but no, he realized, the Artiste had never gotten this far. He’d never seen Weymarshe firsthand. Edward was in new territory.

  A door opened. He thought she would come out through the big central doors—that’s how he would have staged it—but instead the Duchess emerged through a smaller one to the side; he supposed there must be some architectural term for it. She must have waited up for him, or gotten up early. She looked magnificent silhouetted against the warm light from inside the house.

  He’d imagined her in evening wear, something royal and sweeping, but instead she wore a decidedly practical outfit: a long dark skirt, gloves, and a light overcoat against the chill. Her earrings were sensible studs.

  In fact, he thought, she was dressed to travel.

  “Edward.” She stopped and smiled a silly, chilly little smile, with the corners of her mouth only. “Well, well. You’re the last person I expected to see here.”

  He thought she was joking, but after a beat he saw that she was just telling the truth. She really was surprised to see him. He mounted the steps toward her. She was smaller than he remembered, her shoulders narrower, though the extra step she stood on made up for it. She was older, too, he thought ungallantly, then added quickly: but no less beautiful.

  “Didn’t Laura tell you?” he began. “She gave me the ticket you sent. My flight got in a few hours ago. We drove straight here.”

  “Oh, Laura!” She waved her hand dismissively, effectively canceling the idea of Laura from the universe. “I heard what happened at the airport. I didn’t think you’d really come after that fiasco. I mean, really. Poor strategy, poor tactics.” She shook her head sadly. “Poor taste!”

  The Duchess took a step forward but stumbled over the first step and put a gloved hand against his shirt front for balance. He smelled her breath, and he realized in a cold flash that she was truly and profoundly drunk.

  “Well,” he said, with forced breeziness, “now that I’m here, maybe you could show me around.”

  He offered her his arm. The cold air was trying to steal his voice. He couldn’t catch his breath.

  “I don’t think we’ll have time for that. Dennis?” Apparently she meant the chinless driver, because he turned around. “Is everything ready?”

  “Ready Freddy,” came the jaunty reply. “Your Grace.”

  Belatedly the Duchess took his arm, but her attention was clearly elsewhere. She looked past him to where the footmen were now fussing over her multifarious green leather luggage, which stood in heaps along the top step in the luminous pre-dawn light. A bird cheeped. Weymarshe was built on a slight natural rise, affording Edward a sweeping view of the grounds, and they looked out at them together, standing side by side for all the world like the lord and lady of the manor. The sky was now a lush, luminous blue, the bluest blue he had ever seen, and the lawn and the driveway and the marble fountain seemed to be washed in pure indigo ink.

  “The truth is, Edward, I was just on my way out,” she said. “I’ll have to leave you all on your lonesome, as you charming Americans say.”

  For that one phrase, “on your lonesome,” she hazarded a Texan accent.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going away, Edward.” The Duchess cut her eyes toward the waiting chauffeurs. “Far away. Truth to tell, it’s high time I took a vacation. God, I need some time away from here.”

  She looked around at Weymarshe, her lip practically curling with disgust.

  “You’re really going?” Edward said. He tried to force her to meet his eyes. “But what about the codex? What are we going to do about the Duke?”

  The blow arrived out of nowhere. It was a serious slap, not just for show, a quick hard right with some shoulder in it, and it left his ear ringing.

  “How could you come here? How?” Her face was suddenly close to his, and her breath was thick with gin and expensive cigarette smoke and contempt. “He’ll kill me, do you know that? And Laura, too. If he can catch us. You’ve ruined us both!”

  She drew herself up, her nostrils white and flaring. She was shaking, but her voice was steady as ever.

  “It’s over. Don’t you see that? I suppose it’s not the American style, but where I’m from we know how to make a decent exit. Nothing worse than a loser who won’t admit it.”

  And as suddenly as it came the storm was past. She was herself again. Mercurial as ever, the Duchess quirked her eyebrows at him.

  The Duchess quirked her eyebrows at him.

  “What is it?” she asked. “You want to come along, is that it?”

  Edward shook his head.

  “I think I’ve had enough time off for now.”

  She leaned toward him, evidently meaning to give him a kiss on the cheek, but he stopped her with a firm, assertive forearm. There would be none of that. He was a slow learner by any standards, but if he’d learned nothing else from all this, he’d learned that much.

  “It’s just as well,” the Duchess said, straightening up. “Where we’re going I don’t suppose they’d let you in anyway.”

  She turned away abruptly and tripped—almost literally—the rest of the way down the steps to the waiting limousine. The chinless chauffeur opened the door for her. She paused on the threshold and—did he imagine it?—rested her hand for a moment on the chauffeur’s ill-shaven cheek before she half stepped, half fell into the darkness inside, and it swallowed her up.

  Edward watched the car go. He jogged a few steps to one side so he could see past the fountain in the middle of the driveway, following the ruby taillights as they receded along the road down which he had just come, two pale ruts w
ith a crest of green between them, exquisitely groomed and straight as a ruler. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and fingered his good silk tie. Now he wished he’d remembered to put it on before he saw her, but it was too late. The Duchess was running away, he thought, and he wondered if she would ever be able to stop running now. He doubted it, but the truth was, he would probably never know. The endgame of this match would be played without him.

  He sat down on the cold stone steps. He still had the bag with the case for the codex in it, and he set it on his knees. Was it really empty? Tiny brave crickets chirped deafeningly in the grass. Had Margaret found that copy of Lydgate she was looking for after all? Maybe that would be his consolation prize. He flipped the latch and was faced once again with the gnarled black cover.

  The hollow inside wasn’t empty. It was full of paper, but it wasn’t the codex, or Lydgate, or any book at all. It was full of bills, a hundred dollars each, in stacks of—he thumbed one and took a well-educated guess—a hundred each, fifty stacks in all. Five hundred thousand dollars, give or take a few hundred either way. It must have been Margaret’s price. Well, she always had been a good negotiator, and knowing her it was the full amount. She’d said it wasn’t about the money, and he supposed she must have been telling the truth. He thought about making some kind of grand gesture with it—tearing it up, maybe, or scattering the bills across the lawn like leaves, or burning them on the steps of Weymarshe—but instead he tucked them safely back in the box and put it away. Edward felt a newly pragmatic mood coming over him.

  He looked up at the tops of the trees and the sky arching up over him. He felt like he was waking up from a dream. The air smelled like autumn, and the sky was now a rosy-gray color like the inside of a seashell. He hugged his arms across his chest. It was cold, but it would get warmer as the sun rose. He would have to start carrying a flask of Scotch with him for occasions like this, Edward decided. To his surprise he felt almost pleasantly numb inside. He looked over his shoulder: Behind him invisible hands had closed the door through which the Duchess had come, and the stone facade of Weymarshe was as lightless and dead as an Easter Island head. The blankness of Edward’s mind was like the blankness of the endpapers at the end of a long, long book. He wondered idly if anything interesting would ever happen to him again.