by Tom Harper
Strange though it seems now, Drach made me respectable again. For that, I forgave him a lot of what came afterwards. St Thomas Aquinas says that all creatures are born to a destiny in the world; fulfilment comes from achieving that purpose. I had always known my purpose, but for twenty years I had blundered about it like a blind bull. With Drach, I began at last to discern my path. Opportunity brought ambition; ambition begat hope; hope began to bring me back to the life I had fled ever since my father died.
I had assumed that that life had been obliterated long ago. Instead I found it had only been sleeping, like a bear waiting for spring. I wrote to my brother Friele at my father’s house in Mainz, and received a guarded reply that welcomed me – cautiously – back into the family. Through Friele, I made several discoveries. First, that he still held certain annuities in my name which paid out a sum of gold every quarter. Being an honest man with a clerk’s sensibilities, Friele could account for every penny that had accrued since my departure. He regretted to tell me that much of it had gone to Konrad Schmidt in Cologne, who had sued for the full value of my broken apprenticeship, but the rest he would transfer to Strassburg.
My brother made no mention of the reason I left Schmidt. From this I deduced a second fact: that Schmidt had preferred to protect his son’s reputation rather than blacken mine, and had kept the scandal of my departure to himself. It was a secret he had now taken to his grave, for my brother reported he had died some years back. I never learned what became of little Pieter.
Friele’s remittance provided me with a small amount of capital and an income to look forward to. By the strange alchemy of credit, whereby those who least need money attract it most, I was able to transmute this modest sum into a larger one by borrowing. It had quickly become obvious that I would be the one to fund our adventures. Drach, for all his genius, was spectacularly careless of money. When he told me how little he had sold the cards for I was appalled; when he admitted he could not make any new copies because he had sold the press to pay a debt, I wondered what nature of man I had yoked my fortunes to.
‘Look at St Francis,’ was all he said when I tried to discuss it. ‘There is nothing more glorious than a life of poverty.’
‘And humility,’ I reminded him. That made him laugh, for vanity ran through his bones and he knew it. He tousled my hair and called me a disputatious old woman. After that, I rarely brought up the subject.
I took a house in St Argobast, the village by the crossroads where I first met Drach. It was a pleasant house: a low cottage with three rooms and a barn, and a stone outbuilding across the yard. A grove of poplars shielded it from the road, while across the water meadow I could watch the river Ill meander towards the city, some three miles distant. There were no neighbours to observe the irregular hours that Drach came and went, to notice the strange smells that often poured out of the stone shed late at night, or to complain of the noise when Drach accidentally set fire to a hen one evening. It was the first house I had ever been master of, and I loved the sensation of freedom it brought. I was thirty-five.
In short, with Drach’s help, in a very brief space of time I hauled myself out of the pit I had inhabited and regained my place in the world.
I pulled back the copper lid, angling it so that the liquid did not boil over into the fire. Drach and I both had rags tied over our faces against the foul vapour that billowed out. He dipped the onion into the bubbling broth. The moment it touched the surface a brown scum erupted from the oil, frothing around the onion and racing up the sides of the cauldron.
‘Don’t let it over the rim!’
Drach pulled the onion away and I clamped the lid back down. ‘Too hot,’ he declared.
With a poker and tongs, I spread the coals beneath the trivet to burn cooler. When the boiling oil seemed less vigorous, we attempted the experiment with the onion again. This time the scum rose more slowly, blistering the skin of the vegetable but not threatening to spill over.
‘Perfect,’ Drach declared. While I held the lid open, he took a bowl of resin dust and sprinkled it over the surface of the oil with a ladle. Each time the dust touched the oil it provoked another belch of scum and foam, which needed rapid stirring to keep it from bubbling over into the fire and setting the whole cauldron ablaze. This was the most precarious part of the operation: not just because of the danger (which was considerable) but because of the way Drach wilfully courted it. Each ladleful of resin he added was more than the one before, prompting the foam to climb ever closer to the rim and me to stir with ever more desperation. Drach seemed to enjoy this hugely, like a child baiting a dog with a stick; I hated it. The fumes and exertion and fear all cloyed together to make me feel ill.
Gradually, the mixture thickened. When it was the consistency of soup and the colour of piss, we ladled it out of the cauldron into glass jars. While we waited for it to cool, we damped the fire and went down to the river.
I stripped off my trousers and dived in, kicking back so that I could watch Kaspar undress on the bank. The oil that had coated me drifted away in a foul-smelling slick; my anger went with it. I felt foolish for having allowed myself to become so irritated by his game.
Kaspar waded in and squatted in the shallows. For all his carelessness with fire, he had a strange fear of water. It was the one arena where I could outpace him, and I spent some minutes splashing about in the current, diving down and holding my breath to make him anxious. When I opened my eyes underwater, the sunlight shining through the reeds reminded me of days dredging gold out of the Rhine. I could not believe that had been my life.
I broke the surface and swam back to the bank. Kaspar had waded out so that the water almost reached his hips; he wore a petulant look that made me laugh with delight. Coquette that I was, I delighted in provoking his envy.
I swam round behind him and stood in the mud, sluicing water over his back and scrubbing away the soot and oil. His skin was taut, his shoulders beautifully firm from long hours of work. When he turned around, I sank beneath the water so he would not see my arousal.
We dressed and went back up to the house. We took the oil into the barn, where a pair of wooden tables had replaced the byres and straw, and spooned it out onto a stone slab. By now, the mixture had cooled to a greasy paste. An oyster shell beside it held a small mound of lamp soot, which we gradually stirred in. I watched the black swirl through the varnish, then dissolve into it.
Drach dipped a fingertip in and wiped it on a scrap of paper beside the slab. A black smear appeared on the paper, though as I watched the ink dry it faded to a duller grey. Despite all the effort we had lavished on it, I felt a grain of disappointment.
‘It should be darker. Stronger. Like real ink.’ I thought back to all my weeks in Tristan’s tower in Paris, chasing every hue of the rainbow. ‘Copper powder burns black if the flame is hot enough. If we mixed that with the lampblack, it might be more vivid. Perhaps red massicot too, to add depth.’
Drach looked peeved. He touched a finger to my lips to silence me. ‘This will do. After all, we do not have a press yet.’
XXXI
Paris
‘Why did he lie?’
The train rattled back towards Paris. Night cloaked the suburbs around them: when Nick looked out the window, all he saw was his own watery reflection and Emily opposite, ghosts in the darkness.
He rephrased his question. ‘Why would he lie? Why pretend he never saw Gillian or the card?’
Emily shivered and pulled her coat closer around her. ‘He was so eager to put the card through his machine. He knew he wouldn’t get a match.’
‘Because he’d already analysed it with Gillian.’
‘But if he didn’t find anything…’
‘… why did he lie?’
The train shook as it crossed a set of points. A station flashed by.
‘I wonder why Gillian took it there.’
Nick looked at her, confused. ‘To analyse the ink.’
‘All Vandevelde’s work has been on
printed type – books. But the first book wasn’t printed until about 1455. As far as we know, the cards date from about twenty years before. The cards are printed intaglio – the ink sits inside the grooves cut into a plate and is pressed into the paper. Type is printed in relief, with the ink on the raised surface of the letter. I don’t know for sure, but I’d think they’d use very different kinds of ink.’
‘So she went to a man who couldn’t help her and didn’t find anything – and that’s so secret he has to lie about it?’ The jetlag headache throbbed in his temples.
‘There must have been someone else,’ said Emily quietly. ‘Somebody was after Gillian – maybe they got to Vandevelde. Maybe that’s why he was so frightened.’
They got off at the next station. Nick found a payphone on the empty platform and dialled the second number from Gillian’s phone. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely get the coins in the slot. He told himself it was because of the cold.
The phone answered after three rings. ‘Atheldene.’
Was it a person? A company? A hotel? ‘Is Simon there?’
A guarded pause. ‘This is Simon Atheldene.’
It was a British voice, foreign yet unexpectedly familiar. Nick took a leap in the dark. ‘Do you work for Stevens Mathison? The auction house?’
‘I do.’
‘My name is Nick Ash. I’m a friend of Gillian Lockhart. I think I spoke to you a few days ago.’
Another pause. ‘Are you here in Paris?’
The payphone number must have displayed on Atheldene’s phone. ‘Yes.’
‘Then we should meet.’
*
Nick and Emily arrived at eight. For Nick, who had never been to Paris, the Auberge Nicolas Flamel was everything he might have imagined from a French restaurant. Stone pillars supported fat oak beams; more stonework framed the leaded windows, and a bull’s head looked down on the room from above a vast fireplace. Most of the tables were full, and a warm hubbub filled the room. Nick was suddenly ravenously hungry.
Simon Atheldene wasn’t hard to find: he was the only man in the restaurant wearing a double-breasted suit. He was sitting on his own at the back of the room, with a bottle of wine open in front of him. He stood as he saw them approaching and shook hands.
‘Nice place,’ said Nick.
Atheldene poured them each a glass of wine. ‘It’s the oldest house in Paris. Built in 1407 by Nicolas Flamel, the renowned alchemist.’
‘I thought he was a fictional character,’ Nick blurted out, then wished he hadn’t.
To his relief, Atheldene laughed. ‘Harry Potter has a lot to answer for.’ He saw Nick’s surprise and gave a modest smile. ‘I have two daughters – when their mother lets me see them. They make sure I’m not completely stranded in the Middle Ages.’
Emily arranged her napkin on her lap. ‘Flamel really existed. His tombstone’s preserved in the Museum of Medieval Art here.’
‘He was the first alchemist to turn base metal into gold. Taught himself from seven ancient allegorical pictures, which he then had copied onto the arch of St Innocent’s churchyard. Allegedly.’
‘The pictures were real,’ said Emily. ‘They’re well attested.’
‘Are they still there?’ Nick asked.
‘The cemetery of St Innocent was destroyed in the eighteenth century. All we have left of the pictures are copies.’
‘Though I’ve never heard of anyone using them successfully to transmute lead into gold,’ said Atheldene.
Nick looked around. ‘He certainly could afford a nice house.’
A waiter approached and asked something in French. Atheldene waved him away with a smiled apology.
‘Order whatever you like,’ said Atheldene. ‘My shout – or, rather, Stevens Mathison’s.’
They studied the menus in silence. The social overtures had played out; even Atheldene looked unsure of what to say next. It was a relief when the waiter came back to break the deadlock.
Nick ordered, not certain which meal his jet-lagged body was expecting. Everything on the menu seemed to involve fish, cream or pâté – sometimes all three. When the waiter had taken the menus away, Atheldene got serious.
‘I suppose you want to know about Gill.’
Nick had never heard anyone call her that before. He didn’t like it.
Atheldene swirled the wine in his glass and contemplated it. ‘Gill joined us about four months ago from New York. She’d come from the Met, as you know. Very quick, and an excellent eye. She knew what was valuable, and she also knew what would sell. You’d be surprised how many people in our trade can’t manage both. She and I worked together on a number of sales. I found her impressive.
‘A month ago, about a fortnight before Christmas, we were called in for a new assignment. Big estate job out near Rambouillet.’ He pronounced it the English way, to rhyme with gooey. ‘Extraordinary place. Great big crumbling chateau in the forest, probably hadn’t been touched since the Revolution. Walls plastered with tapestries, a painting that looked suspiciously like an inferior Van Eyck, furniture so old it was probably made by Jesus. Even an honest-to-goodness suit of armour in the hall. None of which was our business – we had experts to tidy that up. Gill and I were there for the library.’
‘What date was that?’ Emily prompted.
‘December the twelfth. It’s my younger daughter’s birthday and I was worried about getting home in time to phone her.’
Atheldene paused while the starters arrived. He spread a fat slice of foie gras on his toast and heaped onion marmalade over it.
‘We drove out there together not knowing what to expect. We were dealing with the deceased chap’s daughter who lives in Martinique. She just said there was a library and she thought a few of the books might be worth something. Not unusual – you’d be amazed how many children don’t know what their parents own. Most of the time all they mean is that there are a few hardbacks on the shelves, or some good-looking freebie the old man got when he signed up for the book club. It’s usually the ones who say there’s nothing there who are sitting on the gold mine.
‘Anyway, Gill and I picked our way through this ruin to the library. Pushed open the doors – which, by the way, were bronze and ten feet tall, probably recovered from a Renaissance church. Pulled open a few cupboards and couldn’t believe what we found. Manuscripts. Folios. Incunabula.’
‘What’s an incunabula?’ said Nick. He’d spoken to Emily, but Atheldene answered.
‘Literally translated, incunabulus means “cradle book”. It’s a term we use for very early printed works, anything before 1500. As you’d expect, they don’t exactly grow on trees. On the rare occasions that they come up for sale they can go for hundreds of thousands, if not millions. On our initial survey, we counted thirty of them in the collection. Plus at least as many illuminated manuscripts. Gill and I felt like Carter and Carnarvon in King Tut’s tomb.’
He bit into his toast. ‘We’d done our homework before we went out there, sales lists and auction records and so forth, to see if we could identify anything the old man had definitely owned. None of what we found had ever come up for sale.’
He looked around the table to impress the point. ‘None of it. Which means they’d been sitting there for at least fifty years. Maybe centuries. Lost to the world. Never mind the financial implications, just in terms of scholarship this was pure gold.
‘And then we looked up. Standard-issue Italian ceiling, blue sky filled with cherubs. Except there was rain falling from this cloudless sky. The roof had gone. The old man had been dying for months. Never left his bed. The daughter lives abroad, as I said, and the housekeeper wasn’t allowed in the library. So no one noticed. You remember what a dreadful wet autumn we had? All that rain went straight through the chateau’s roof and poured into the library.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Dialled the emergency services. An outfit that specialises in conservation and repair carted the books away. Two days later, Gill vanishe
d. Never to be heard of again – until she emailed you.’
Atheldene slid his knife and fork together on the plate. He folded his hands and looked straight at Nick, who sipped his last few mouthfuls of soup in silence. The moment he put his spoon down the waiter appeared and started clearing the dishes. Had he been listening to them? He topped up their wine glasses, though Nick had barely touched his.
‘Did any of the books go missing with her?’
Atheldene gave a good-natured sigh. ‘I’m afraid that was our first thought too. Honi soit qui mal y pense – but the company gets very jumpy at the least whiff of scandal. Bad for business. The old man might have been gaga towards the end, but he was no fool. Had the entire collection catalogued. We went through the collection with a toothcomb. Everything was there.’
‘So you called the police?’
‘You know what Gill was like.’ Atheldene leaned back so that the waiter could serve his main course. A leg of lamb thrust its bone into the air like a tower, surrounded by a moat of gravy and ravelins of boiled potatoes. ‘One of life’s free spirits. At first we assumed she’d turn up with some picaresque story of running away with Gypsies, or a forty-eight-hour bender on the Left Bank with a song of anarchists. But of course I worried. When she still hadn’t turned up after three days I called the police. Who told me it was probably a love affair. I told them that was unlikely, but they just looked at me in that knowing French way.’
‘Did you manage to search her apartment, her office?’
‘Nothing there,’ said Atheldene quickly. He dabbed a spot of gravy from his chin, then looked up. ‘Gill was living at my place. Only until she found somewhere of her own. She was sent here at very short notice, and it’s a bastard finding a flat in Paris.’
There was something defensive in his tone. Nick picked at the fish on his plate. His head felt swollen, as if he’d been injected with novocaine.
‘I went back through the catalogue after you rang. Looked for anything to do with the Master of the Playing Cards. Nothing turned up.’
