by Tom Harper
She swayed; for an awful moment he thought she’d topple and take both of them over the edge. Then she steadied as her hands gripped the side of the open skylight. Her weight rose away. When she was up, Nick manhandled Gillian through, then followed himself. His head popped out through the hatch and felt cool air. He drew a deep breath, and immediately choked on a lungful of the smoke pouring out around him. He looked around.
They’d arrived in a thaw. The fire was melting the snow from the roof and sending it pouring onto the stone walkway where they stood. He scooped some up to wash his eyes and realised it was warm. The puddles began to steam.
Nick left Gillian with Emily and ran around the tower, wading through slush, peering over the wall for any sign of a ladder or a fire escape, even protruding bricks they could cling on to. There was no way down.
The water on the roof was bubbling now. In horror, he realised it wasn’t just water. The lead itself was beginning to melt, blistering off the roof and running down into the overloaded gutters. It wouldn’t be long before the whole thing went. He rolled Gillian over to the balustrade, trying to keep her from the river of molten metal. He hugged Emily to him but didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say.
He heard a throbbing in his ears, a pounding that swelled until the roar of the burning library was entirely drowned out. A blinding white light appeared in the sky above, sweeping over him like the eye of judgement.
I was close to death. The weight on me was so immense I thought it would split open my skin and burst my heart. My head felt as though all the blood in my body had been squeezed into it, inflated like a bladder. I hung in a balance, as finely calibrated as any goldsmith’s scales. In one pan, the stones; in the other, my life. Even the addition of a single coin would be enough to crush me into oblivion.
‘What is the meaning of the other bestiary we found in your house?’
The questions never stopped. The weight on my chest had long since left me speechless. Yet I had to groan, to gasp and babble wordless nonsense, to convince them I was trying. If I stayed silent they would only add more stones.
‘Who else helped you?’
I said nothing. In all my torment I had never answered that question.
My silence displeased the inquisitor. I heard the familiar, dread command. ‘Alium – another.’ The obedient slap of footsteps. The rasp of stone.
And then a bang; muffled shouts that grew suddenly louder; a rush of air. The clatter of a stone being dropped. Had the board that flattened me broken and spilled its load. It did not feel that way. Had I died?
I tried to hear what was being said. After the inquisitor, any new voice was like a cold stream in the desert.
‘You must stop this at once,’ someone was saying. ‘Remove those stones.’
‘This is the archbishop’s castle.’ You have no authority here, Bishop.’
‘Cardinal,’ the new-but-familiar voice corrected him. ‘I am moving up in the world. And you will be dropping like one of your stones down a very deep well if you do not free my friend this instant.’
‘This man is a heretic.’
‘He is a truer servant of God than you will ever be.’
There followed a pause, filled with a hope more excruciating than any torment I had endured. Then – praise God! – the sound of a stone being taken off me. I tried to breathe and found my chest lifted a hair’s breadth further than before.
‘Faster,’ the cardinal insisted. ‘If he dies now, you will take his place.’
The trickle of rocks became a cascade, crashing onto the floor like a tower being torn down to its foundations. Stone splinters ricocheted against my cheek but I barely felt them.
The board lifted off me like a door opening. Fingers fretted at the cords around my neck, prising loose the knots.
A dazzling light blinded me, like morning sun on the Rhine. It made a halo around the face that peered into mine. Even in that cruel room he managed an impression of his usual smile, though it was heavy with care.
‘Truly, you are a most extraordinary man.’
The car fishtailed as Nevado swerved into another corner. He knew he was driving too fast. The road switched and twisted through the forest, steep hairpin bends dropping suddenly into icy straights tucked among the trees. In the headlights, the world became a corrugated tunnel of trees and snow. He kept his eyes fixed ahead.
The road straightened and he began to relax. The highway to Mainz was shut, but his boat was moored in Oberwinter. He could be in Frankfurt by dawn, then a fast train to Basle and a friend who would swear he hadn’t left Switzerland in two days. The police would call, and he would reluctantly telephone the Vatican with the terrible news.
He realised his attention was wandering and snapped it back to the road. He was approaching a bend where a landslide had carried away the trees to offer an open view back across the gorge. He pressed the brake – gently – and felt the car shudder to a standstill. He stared across the valley. A vast plume of smoke choked out the stars; flames glowed red through the skylights he had left open to fan the fire. He smiled, trying to steady his breathing. Everything had worked.
A brilliant white light passed over him like an angel. The whole car shook with the vibrations of the aircraft passing overhead. Whose could it be? Had they seen him? Suddenly his whole plan was in doubt.
Gripped by panic, he hit the accelerator. Too hard – the wheels spun, whining in protest as they sprayed snow behind him. He pushed harder, stamping the pedal and rattling the gearstick. The wheels howled, then bit the frozen earth. The car lurched forward. Still dazed from the searchlight, he didn’t see the bend ahead until it was too late. He tried to turn; he slammed on what he thought was the brake, not realising it was the accelerator still locked to the floor.
There were no crash barriers, no trees to catch him. The car flew over the cliff and plunged head first into the gorge. The last thing Nevado saw was his headlights reflected in the snow, twin points of light rushing towards him, the eyes of a vengeful God. He screamed.
A small puff of fire erupted in the trees on the southern slope of the gorge. It burned like a ball of paper for a little while, then died, leaving a black blot on the virgin snow.
*
Nick shielded his face against the spotlight and peered into the sky. Through the whipped-up snow he could see helicopter blades spinning like giant scissors, the glint of a glass canopy and a square of light where a door had opened. Someone was standing in the opening, looking at them. He waved frantically, screaming for help. The rotors drowned his cries and flung them into the darkness.
But someone must have seen him. A cable snaked down. A moment later he saw a man attached to it, descending like a spider. He touched down on the roof and waddled over to Nick. He wore a green jumpsuit that looked vaguely military, though his face was hidden under an enormous helmet.
Nick pointed to Gillian, lying behind the balustrade. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage and clouded in the puddles around her. The man in the jumpsuit gave a thumbs-up. Together, he and Nick lifted Gillian upright and wriggled her into a harness.
Emily cupped her hands over his ear. ‘Who are they?’
Nick shrugged. With the spotlight shining in his eyes he couldn’t make out any markings on the helicopter. It crossed his mind that perhaps these were Nevado’s men; that they might take Gillian away and leave him to burn on the rooftop. But a minute later – it felt like an eternity – he saw the spider-man coming down his thread again. This time he’d brought two harnesses, and ear protectors. Nick and Emily clipped in and were hoisted up, while below them gouts of flame erupted from the collapsing roof. It was like flying over a volcano.
The noise of the rotor hammered with a new intensity as they reached the helicopter. The air itself seemed to be against him, a great weight battering his shoulders, trying to hold him down. The cable swayed – but strong hands were waiting. They hauled him in.
At the back of the cabin, Gillian lay strapped t
o a stretcher. A medic inserted a drip into her arm and slipped on an oxygen mask. Her face was blue with shock, but when the mask went over her mouth he saw it fog up. She was breathing.
He felt a hand tap his shoulder and turned. Sitting on a bench opposite, one looking anxious and slightly ill, the other with a grim smile on his face, were two of the last men he’d expected to see.
LXXXV
I lay on a bed at an inn – I do not know where. The hard bed offered little straw to ease my limbs, but after the agonies I had suffered it was like a sack of feathers. Aeneas held a cup of water to my lips. I could barely drink; half of it splashed down the front of my tunic.
‘Are you really a cardinal?’
He put a finger to his lips, though there was no chance of being overheard. ‘I will be soon. Until then, these fools have no way of knowing.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You saved my life once. Now the debt is repaid.’
He picked up the book he had taken from the inquisitor and read in silence for a moment. The gleam in his eyes turned grey.
‘How did they find it?’ I asked. I knew from my interrogation that they had not discovered the copy that had slipped behind my bed. If they had, I would probably be dead.
‘It was left on the cathedral steps for the archbishop. He had seen pages from your Bible – he recognised your art. He guessed at once you must have made it.’ Aeneas gave me a look that seemed to penetrate my soul. ‘Did you?’
‘It was made in my house, with my tools.’
‘But not by you?’
I shook my head. ‘Do not ask me to say who.’
It was an unreasonable request, and Aeneas bridled at it. But a second later the anger passed, replaced with weary resignation.
‘If you held your tongue under that ordeal, I will not use friendship as a lever to prise it out of you. We will find out.’
I thought of Drach, of his ever-changing character and quicksilver affections. If ever there was a man who could make himself disappear, it was he.
‘You will never find him.’
‘We had better. Many in the Church will think he is the most dangerous heretic since Hus. Worse, perhaps. At least Hus could only write his sedition one copy at a time.’
He laid the book aside. ‘Remember what I told you in Frankfurt? Your art is a way to speak into the hearts of men. This book is a contagion. By the power of your art, it could carry the plague of heresy further and deeper than ever before. It could tear Christendom apart.’
‘Or bind it together.’ I pushed myself up and gripped his arm. ‘What I have discovered cannot be unlearned. You will not stamp out heresy by being rid of my art. It is a tool. Perhaps I would have been more careful if I had imagined how powerful it might be, but it is still only a tool. Words are pressed onto the page but men compose them. Better to fight their ideas than the tools they use.’
My feeble voice faded as I saw he was nodding with me.
‘That is why we must protect it.’ He slipped the book into a leather bag and knotted it shut. ‘We will root out this evil and destroy it utterly. We will find the man who did it and erase his name from the pages of history. I will do my best to protect you – as you see, I have some influence – and you will never speak of it to anyone.’
It was the only time I ever heard him sound so serious – a glimpse of the inner strength that had carried him so high.
‘As for you, I think you deserve better than you have had from your friends. I will see what I can do.’ He reached onto a side table and pressed a book in my hands. For a second I thought it was Kaspar’s; I shuddered to touch it. Then I realised it was my bestiary, still with the card pasted into the back. The two books were easily confused.
‘The inquisitor had it. I return it to you. Presently, I will try to restore more of your fortunes.’
He gave a thin smile. ‘Though you will find the Church is not your only enemy.’
Nick looked into the faces opposite him: two of the last men he’d ever expected to be rescued by. Atheldene, incongruous in a wool coat; beside him, in a blue parka and an NYPD baseball cap, a face Nick thought he’d left behind for good in New York.
‘Detective Royce?’
He might as well have been miming: the noise in the cabin meant he could barely hear himself. One of the crew passed him a headset.
‘Have you come to arrest me?’
Royce shook his head and pointed to the back of the cabin. ‘Your girlfriend.’
‘Gillian? She-’
‘She’s a thief.’
Nick couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re going to prosecute her for taking the card from Paris? After all this?’
‘It’s not the card. Simon here’s been tracking her for months.’
Nick glanced at Atheldene. He didn’t look the part. ‘You’re a cop?’
‘I’m an auctioneer. But I’ve got friends in the Art Squad at Scotland Yard. Sometimes I do them the odd favour. A few months ago they asked me to keep an eye on Gillian. Things had been going missing from the Cloisters in New York and turning up for sale in London, but the museum could never prove anything. In the end they wrote her a first-class reference and packed her off to Stevens Mathison. Soon afterwards it started happening to us.’
Nick jerked his thumb at Royce. ‘Was he involved?’
‘Only when you showed up in Paris.’ Royce flashed him a grin: it looked less unpleasant than it had in the interrogation room. ‘Simon called London, who of course had the heads-up on you from Interpol. They called me. I got that special feeling I get sometimes. Instead of booking you for murder and obstruction of justice, I figured we might get something interesting by following you.’
‘And Atheldene? Almost getting killed in Brussels? Was that part of the plan?’
Atheldene played with the button on his coat. ‘That was genuine. I was terrified. I usually get called in to tell the Art Squad when someone’s selling something they’re not supposed to own, or to see if the object in an insurance claim is genuine. I’m not used to this sort of thing.’
The helicopter banked around the mountain. The clouds had parted and a cold moon appeared.
‘What’s that?’ Atheldene pointed to the hillside below. A fire burned among the trees, a golden bead in the silver forest.
The pilot’s voice, German accented, came over the headsets. ‘Maybe a car crash? I call Oberwinter to send the police.’
‘Can they send a fire engine too?’ Atheldene craned around so that he could see the castle. The roof must have collapsed: the flames now rose unhindered out of the shell of the tower.
‘On that road, it is not possible. Maybe in the morning.’
‘The Devils’ Library,’ Atheldene murmured. ‘Imagine even half an hour in that place.’
‘I’d have swapped with you,’ Nick muttered. ‘You wouldn’t have liked the librarian.’
‘Point taken. But it is a shame about all those books.’
Emily reached inside her shirt and pulled out a battered brown-leather-bound book.
‘Not all of them.’
Atheldene almost lunged for it across the cabin, then remembered his manners. ‘Is that the one…?’
‘No. It was chained to the wall – I couldn’t. But I managed to grab this. Anyway, I prefer it.’ She passed it to Nick. ‘It’s for you.’
Nick shook his head. In the back, he could see Gillian breathing fitfully as she slept under a blanket.
‘I got what I came for.’
COLOPHON
What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.
It was strange to be back in the Humbrechthof. The clatter of the presses; types clicking together in their sticks; the shouts and banter of the apprentices calling across the yard for more paper, more ink, more beer. But it was no longer mine. The purpose that animated the house had changed: practical, routine, no longer charged with the excitement of discovery. Kaspar and I, Götz and Keffer
and the others, we had charted a new country. Now a second generation had arrived to lay down roads and barns, drain marshes, plant crops, tame the wilderness. Many of the faces I saw were new: they glanced at me as I passed, but only idly. A few recognised me, and looked away or shook my hand as their consciences allowed. Peter Schoeffer was not among them.
‘He went to Frankfurt,’ said Fust, when he received me in his room. ‘He has some business there with a bookseller. He should have returned by now. He will be sorry to have missed you. No doubt some woman delayed him.’
I let the lie stand, and wondered if Fust knew that Schoeffer was sleeping with his daughter. Fust misread my expression.
‘He thought the world of you. As an artist, as an inventor. Nothing pained him more than having to choose between us. He is my heir, but yours also.’
He picked up a small block of engraved metal from his desk and gave it to me. It came apart in my hands: I began to apologise, then realised it was meant to. One part, the smaller, was a bulbous letter B, intricately carved so that within the strokes of the letter itself flowers grew, branches blossomed and a hound chased a duck over a meadow. It fitted into a slot in the second piece of metal, engraved with a lush border of foliage, to make a seamless whole.
‘Peter’s invention. You ink the inner part red and the outer blue, then drop it in among the black-inked forms and print the initials. We are using it on a psalter for the cathedral.’ He showed it to me imprinted on a piece of paper, sharper than any illuminator or rubricator could produce.
‘Beautiful,’ I admitted. Perhaps I had been wrong. Perhaps there were still discoveries to be made in this house.
‘It is still too slow. Peter is like you that way, obsessed with quality and no thought to cost.’
An awkward silence hung between us. Fust escaped it by shuffling papers on his desk until he found the one he sought.
