by D J Mcintosh
The catalog details were sparse and their presentation decidedly understated. The entry referred only to a book in good condition printed in the mid-seventeenth century. For that, I was pleased. With fewer bidders I’d have an easier time. I wondered, though, what additional information my client possessed to be willing to pay a high price for such a book.
The more popular items were scheduled to be auctioned at the end of the night to ensure a good audience throughout the evening, so there was still a sizable crowd when my item went on the block. Thanks to my friend Amy, who worked at Sherrods, I’d identified my competitors. A man with a mop of shocking red hair, wearing a navy pinstripe suit, lingered in front of the little wooden box for just a second more than I would have liked. Amy told me auctions were his preferred form of entertainment. Some people took in the opera, others liked the bar scene. He attended auctions. He was notorious for bidding an object up and pulling out before laying any money on the line. Amy smiled at me suggestively when she told me that last detail.
Another agent, Marlee Scott, who often represented rare book dealers in the U.S. and on the continent, was also chasing the book. She would be my major adversary. I caught a glimpse of her in pearls and classic black Dior.
The auctioneer announced ticket number 164 in a posh, clipped accent and the reserve price of eighty thousand pounds. Marlee Scott threw a glance my way, so I knew someone had tipped her off about me too. I smiled and nodded. She picked up the bid at eighty-five thousand and avoided my eye. The auctioneer raised it by a couple of thousand pounds and looked in my direction. I stood pat but Copperhead entered the fray for ninety thousand. I could feel the adrenalin pumping.
I entered a bid at one hundred ten thousand pounds and the auctioneer pushed it up by another couple of thousand. Scott nodded when he looked at her. I snapped up the next bid and out of the corner of my eye watched Copperhead take it after me. He was in a feisty mood tonight. When the auctioneer deliberately slowed the call Copperhead darted a nervous glance over to me, but I decided to have a little fun and feigned indifference. He squirmed in his seat, afraid he’d taken his game too far. Scott finally raised her paddle, stepping up just in time to rescue him. That was enough for our red-haired friend. He was out.
I took the next bid and noted a wrinkle of worry on Scott’s face. She was close to her max. She whipped out her cellphone, stabbed a key with her red lacquered nail, and talked rapidly. She pushed it to one hundred twenty. I upped it by four thousand and held my breath. “One hundred twenty-four thousand. Do I hear one hundred twenty-five?” Silence reigned. I looked over at Marlee Scott. “Fair warning,” the auctioneer chimed and scanned the room. “Last chance!” No one stepped up. He waited a few more seconds before giving me a curt nod and announcing, “Sold! To number seventy-eight.” I silently cheered.
The book was mine.
Scott raised her delicate eyebrows and gave me a thumbs-up to show there were no hard feelings. I smiled back, appreciating her grace. The book had gone higher than I’d hoped but was still under the maximum. My unnamed client would be pleased.
I closed the heavy hotel drapes and clicked on a small desk lamp before turning back to the book. The written warning not to open it served only to entice me. The antique cedar box inside my case bore no maker’s mark except for a coat of arms stamped in its lid—a fat white cross on a red shield. From my research on Peter Vanderlin’s European collection, I knew this was the coat of arms of the House of Savoy, the royal house of Italy. That meant the box could date back hundreds of years. Its fitted lid was firmly secured by four small brass screws. As I began to extract them with my penknife I noticed a few tiny scratch marks on the head of one of the screws. Someone had opened the box, and recently too, I guessed. I removed the screws and laid them carefully on the table; then I lifted the lid.
The box was partitioned into two compartments. The larger one held the book; the other was empty. I wondered what it had once contained.
I carefully lifted the book out to examine it. A beautiful object with covers of hammered gold overlaid with black enamel, it was decorated with Arabic-inspired arabesques on both sides and on the front were entwined the initials T and M. Two clasps held the golden covers shut. The spine was made of silver and delicately banded with gold.
It was in near-perfect condition. The silver was barely tarnished; the metallic finish was free from the dents and splits you’d expect to see from hundreds of years of handling. No dust or moisture had been permitted to mar its perfection. And yet it felt old.
The clasps didn’t appear to be locked nor would they budge, suggesting that, unlike the box, the book hadn’t been opened for some time. Not willing to risk scratching the metal with my penknife, I spent over half an hour fiddling with the clasps before I succeeded in disengaging them.
The actual volume turned out to be quite slim. Far too small for the size of the covers. I’d seen elaborate metallic covers before on literary Judaica, but nothing nearly so ornate for a book of this size. It measured about five by three inches.
I groaned in disappointment when I saw the first page. It was entirely in Italian. Although I understood a smattering of modern Italian—enough to carry on a limited conversation, or order a decent meal and a bottle of wine—deciphering a complex text was beyond my abilities. Whatever secrets the book contained would remain hidden from me for now.
The book’s leaves, further protected with pasteboard, were bound to the metal covers with thin leather ties. Not only were the metallic covers overlarge, they were designed to protect a much thicker volume.
I slapped on latex gloves to protect the old pages from the oils of my skin. The leaves were hand bound and quite stiff. The papers displayed a lot of color variation, ranging from toasty brown to vanilla—not a surprise since older papers often browned owing to their high acid content. I could see, deep in the crease of the spine, they’d once been a beautiful bone white and therefore were of high quality.
The typeface, archaic and elegant, filled the pages almost margin to margin. Centuries ago, books were so costly to manufacture, all the possible space was used. One folio had been cut so closely that part of the text had been severed with it.
I carefully held up the page to the light and spotted a Fabriano watermark—a sign of high value. Fabriano was a prestigious paper manufacturer in the Apennines, in business as far back as the Middle Ages. At one time, anyone who revealed the company’s paper-making secrets was sent into exile.
Using my phone I snapped photos of the covers and pages and sent the folder to my email address. It was only wise to keep a record of any item under my care, especially when it had so aroused the curiosity and ardor of others.
I returned to the book and studied the illustrations accompanying the Italian text. They were superb black-and-white engravings. The first few images seemed familiar, reminding me of a popular childhood fairy tale. From there they depicted increasingly dark and horrifying scenes. The second to last showed a woman of middle age dressed in a flowing gown, being forced by two men into a large hearth burning brightly with fire. The woman’s flailing movements and the look of sheer terror on her face were rendered so convincingly, they seemed copied from real life. Under this image, the caption read Gracie a Lo Spagnoletto. My Italian was sufficient here: Thank you to the little Spaniard.
The hair rose on the back of my neck. Lo Spagnoletto was the Italian nickname for José de Ribera, premier printmaker and painter of seventeenth-century Naples. Ribera was one of the Tenebrosi, the shadow painters, who, inspired by Caravaggio, employed heavy contrast between dark and light in their work. A great artist but also a sinister figure in those times, Ribera led the cabal of Naples, a small group of painters who harassed and threatened other artists to beat them out of lucrative commissions. If the prints could be authenticated, the book was worth far more than its auction value.
I flipped back to the frontispiece and checked the title again: Lo Cunto de li Cunti. I looked up the words, which t
ranslated as The Tale of Tales. And then I saw the author’s name. I could hardly believe my eyes, but there it was, in clear black type: Gian Alessio Abbattutis … 1634.
Two
The strange man outside claimed to be the author of a 370-year-old book. How could this be? Had he been named in honor of a favorite author? Was he actually related to the original Abbattutis? Perhaps it was a family tradition to name a son after a famous relative. Not impossible. Even probable. But unsettling all the same.
Absorbed in these thoughts, I failed to register the steady pace of footsteps along the hallway or the plonk of a cane striking the worn hall carpet. A hard rap at the door broke through my reverie.
I rushed over to the window and looked down. Th rough the sheets of rain I could see the man was no longer at his post across the street.
“What do you want?” I called across the darkened room.
He didn’t answer. Instead, a moment later he pushed something under the gap below the door. A gold coin—the one he’d shown me earlier—slid across the floor. I walked quietly over, stooped down to pick it up, and took it over to the lamp. There was a reason it seemed familiar. It belonged to me. One of the seven gold coins my brother gave me when I was a child.
Just as I pocketed the coin, his voice boomed through the door. “I have the others just like that one. Don’t you want them back?”
I’d entrusted my coins to Evelyn, our old housekeeper. She was like a mother to me and I knew she’d never give them up willingly. I grabbed my phone and punched in her New York number. No response. Flames of fear licked at the back of my mind. I put the book out of sight in the coffee table drawer and yanked the hotel room door open in a fury.
He’d anticipated my anger. He stood in the middle of the hall and held up one gloved hand. “I simply wish to speak with you,” he said.
I ripped into him. “If you’ve done anything to hurt Evelyn, you’ll pay for it.”
“The lady is fine,” the old man interrupted. “I’ll warrant she doesn’t even know the coins are missing. And I’ll give you another one if you let me come in to explain.”
I stood aside to let him in. “Prove you’re telling the truth—now.”
He gave a slight bow, the kind of courtly gesture people made a couple of centuries ago, odd to see in a budget hotel in modern London. “You’ll simply have to take a gentleman’s word for it.”
I hit redial on my phone. Evelyn still wasn’t answering. “What happened to the other six coins?” I asked with the phone to my ear.
He strode into the sitting room and sat in an armchair. Again I was struck by the vitality he seemed to possess for someone of his age. And something else bothered me. He had no limp, none of the slow, measured movements of the elderly or infirm who have problems with balance. Why then did he need the cane?
“Lost them I’m afraid. One will have to do.”
“Then compensate me for the rest.”
With a slight lift of his shoulders—an elegant shrug—he smiled. “Ah. You seek financial returns and here I thought they had sentimental value. We will see. I’d wager, though, you have no real idea of their worth.”
True. I’d tried a couple of times to have them appraised. New York has some of the best numismatists in the world but the coins stumped them. They couldn’t tell me anything about their origin and, without that, were unable assign an accurate value.
He tapped the floor with the tip of his cane. “They’re worth a fortune and I’ve given one back to you. I didn’t have to. Surely that indicates I mean no harm.”
“You rob me and you’re looking for thanks?” I said incredulously. I ran my hand over my close-cut beard and took his measure. The gargantuan nerve of the man floored me.
His long black coat glistened with raindrops. He removed his hat, shook it to get some of the moisture off, and set it carefully on the floor without answering me. He was short, almost petite, with a thin face and large, dark, alert eyes. I would have called them soulful but his manner was too abrasive for that. His skin, of a reddish cast and puckered like crepe paper, did show his age. I surmised that the color of his hair, cavalier mustache, and goatee, so uniformly pitch black, came out of a bottle. He seemed to give off a kind of repellent dimness, as if his very presence stole the light from the air.
“Again. What makes you an expert on old coins?”
“Let’s just say I have an appreciation for history so deep that at times I almost feel as though I’m living it.”
From the moment he’d come through the door I’d felt a kind of sluggishness, as if my blood had suddenly turned to lead. Now my heart beat much harder, laboring strenuously to push the blood through my veins. Although the sensation unnerved me, I shrugged it off and moved away from him to the mantel above the electric fire. I leaned against it to brace myself.
His smile lacked friendliness. “What is the oldest currency in the world?”
“The Lydian stater. Handmade from electrum. Stamped with an image of a lion’s head.”
“Quite right. Staters are very old but not scarce, so they don’t command a high price. Your coins came from a remote corner at the intersection of Turkey and Persia, predating staters by at least two hundred years. Your coins may be the only examples left in the world. Very rare and probably priceless.”
For some reason he was trying to ingratiate himself with me, to what end, I had no idea. Nothing would be gained by debating currency. “Evelyn would never have let you take them. I’m asking you again. Have you harmed her?”
My remark was greeted with strange, shuddering laughter. “The coins were removed when she was out. I imagine she doesn’t even know they are gone. Do not forget. You have stolen my book from me. So we are equal, are we not?”
Once again the bizarre sensation overwhelmed me, strongly enough this time to affect my speech. I gave myself a shake and that seemed to dispel it. “I won the book at an auction legitimately. If you have an issue about ownership it’s a problem for Sherrods, not me.”
“No, it is a problem for you,” he said in a menacing tone.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He crossed his legs and rested his right hand on top of his cane. “Your brother, Samuel, is dead, I am told. And now the only family you have is the lady you mentioned, your old housekeeper Evelyn, who raised you—is that not so? She is in a wheelchair most of the time. Quite fragile, I understand, suffering greatly from soreness of the joints.”
I went to grab the lapels of his coat and shake the truth out of him but felt the sudden assault of another bout of weakness. My actions had no impact and he pushed me away easily. He appeared to be on some kind of mission, determined to have his say. He was well spoken enough although a pedantic quality affected his speech, as if he’d memorized the lines beforehand. “If you care for this lady you will hear me out.”
“Go ahead,” I said, still trying to get my breath back. “You’re not getting out of here.”
He scowled at me. “I know her days are spent in predictable ways. She arises early. Goes in her wheelchair across the street to the café. Only she doesn’t like coffee; it keeps her awake at night. So she takes her special mint tea with her and they give her hot water for it. She could make it at home but she is stuck in her little apartment too much as it is. She buys a muffin or a roll to go with it. She likes to get out, talk to people. At around four in the afternoon she visits her neighbor, an immigrant like herself, who lives a few floors down. They drink tea together and play poker. They bet only pennies because neither has much money. Friendly games, not serious. Her hands hurt so much she can’t shuffle the cards anymore. But she trusts her companion to do it.”
I listened with lurching panic. He knew every detail about her life and the implications were obvious. He’d hurt her if I didn’t hand over the book. I tried to reach for my phone but found my hand had frozen. A shadow around the man appeared to darken—or was it my own vision blurring? Something was terribly wrong with me. I could utte
r only incomprehensible sounds.
As if completely unaware of the physical crisis overtaking me, he pulled a round timepiece from his pocket, checked it, swept his hat off the floor and placed it on his head. Then he advanced toward me, locking his penetrating gaze on me as if he could direct the full force of his will through his eyes.
I summoned every ounce of my own energy and failed to move even my baby finger.
He raised his cane and pressed the tip into my neck. He was a slight man but it felt as though the weight of a bull bore down upon me. I felt my skin split and the wooden stock puncture my throat as easily as a stiletto spearing jello.
Then, in one swift motion he flipped the cane back and spun on his heel. He pulled out the coffee table drawer and removed the book in its golden covers. He paused before the door and said accusingly, “You’ve opened the book. That was a grave error. Have nothing more to do with it. Go back to your homeland or suffer the consequences.”
The minute the door clicked shut my breathing and heart rate slowed and my sight cleared. The awful paralysis subsided. I clamped my hand to my neck but could feel no injury. I swallowed, incredulous, expecting my throat to be sticky with blood. My hand was clear. I scrambled to my feet and chased after him.
The lobby door swung shut just as I made it down the back stairs. I pushed it open a crack. The night was misty and gray although the rain had lessened. Directly across from me a short, stocky man hurried down the street, dwarfed by an umbrella so large it hid his head and much of his torso. He looked like an umbrella with legs. The fog was so low I could barely make out the phone box at the next intersection.
I spotted Alessio walking quickly down the sidewalk, one arm holding the golden covers tightly, the other swinging his cane. I stuck as close as possible to the buildings and followed him. As I gained on him, my view of his figure was partially blocked by the angle of the red phone box.
