The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession

by Charlie Lovett

  “Been walking,” she said, almost inaudibly, as if these two mumbled words would explain not only the mud on her boots but everything about her, from her choice of wardrobe to her defensive stance, arms clasped across her insubstantial breasts.

  “Is the sun still out?” asked Peter, who knew that in England, whenever a social situation left one at a loss for words, one could always bring up the weather. He used this rejoinder to pull himself up from the floor, but neither her stance nor her tone of voice invited him to move any closer.

  She stared at him for a long moment, then looked around the room, her eyes resting on the one shelf that had been empty before Peter set to work. Then, when Peter had nearly forgotten his query, she growled, “No.”

  “Pity,” said Peter, forcing a smile. In a conversation with a stranger, he was used to being the one who was socially inept. He found it unnerving that he should be better at making small talk than someone else.

  After another long pause, and still without moving, she said, “Brother show you the box?” Her eyes did not stray from her own feet as she muttered this enigmatic question.

  “No,” said Peter, unable to elaborate as he had no idea what she was talking about.

  The woman gave a small grunt of disgust, then shuffled across the room to the desk by the window. Not the gait, Peter thought, of someone who takes walks in the countryside. She opened a drawer, removed a small brass key, and shuffled back across the room where she inserted the key into the door of a cabinet. With a click she unlocked the door and then stooped and withdrew a hinged wooden box, its edges covered in brass straps faded to a dull grayish brown. A label pasted to the top of the box had nearly peeled away and the woman quickly ripped it off and crumpled it in her hand—but not before Peter could read the nineteenth-century script: NEVER TO BE SOLD.

  She set the box in the middle of the library table and opened the lid. “Save you the trouble of looking through all that muck,” she said, nodding toward the shelves where Peter stood. “Give you a week to make an offer, then I’ll get brother to call someone else.” And with this cryptic threat she turned and left the room.

  Peter opened the dusty lid of the box and soon felt that even being shot at this morning had been worthwhile if it brought him to this. The box was a gold mine. Despite his limited experience with documents, Peter suspected its contents might be worth more than all the bound items in the library combined. Just a quick perusal of the papers in the box revealed a commission signed by Charles I, a letter from Walter Raleigh, and a deed signed by Francis Bacon. There were church documents signed by archbishops of Canterbury and a stanza of manuscript poetry signed by Robert Greene. Of course they would all need careful study and authentication, but there was enough here to keep Peter busy for months.

  He took the documents from the box one by one, carefully stacking them on the library table, and just as he was about to return them, he saw there was something else in the bottom of the box. At first, Peter thought it was a book, but then he realized it was a custom-made folding case, much more elaborate than any he had seen on the shelves of the Devereaux collection. The work appeared nineteenth century—mid-Victorian, Peter guessed. It took him several minutes to open, and he was careful to memorize each step of unfolding so that he would be able to reassemble the case. Inside was a slim quarto volume in a simple leather binding.

  Peter gingerly lifted the front cover. When he read the title page, he stopped breathing. He knew he had found something that made the rest of the contents of the box pale in comparison. If the text was complete, it could be the sort of treasure he had always dreamed of finding. When he began to turn the pages, and his eyes suddenly comprehended the scribbled markings that filled the margins, the breath spurted from his lungs as suddenly as if he had been punched in the gut. Without his realizing it, that expelled breath voiced two words.

  “Holy Grail.”

  Westminster, London, 1612

  Thick clouds hung over London, and for them Bartholomew was grateful. The heavy oaken door of Robert Cotton’s house had presented no more problem than the stone lid of William of Wykeham’s sarcophagus that Bartholomew had prized open all those years ago. This bit of prizing he managed all on his own. Not until he was safely inside, with the door closed behind him, did he light his lantern.

  Bartholomew had been to Cotton’s house several times—first a few months ago, when he began to talk to the collector about Shakespeare, and most recently three days ago, when he delivered the Pandosto. Now he made his way quickly up the stairs and into the library. In the dim light of his lantern the busts of emperors glared down upon him, their uplit faces menacing as he began to scan the shelves in search of his quarry. It had been a stroke of great luck that Cotton had let slip he was going to Cambridge for a few days, but Bartholomew did not fool himself that the collection was unguarded. Surely some burly local to whom Cotton had paid a few shillings would be checking the outer door at any time; he needed to work quickly.

  In the Nero case he recognized the Winchester Psalter he had sold Cotton twenty years ago. He wondered if he ought to take it, too, and replace it in Wykeham’s tomb—as penance for his other misdeeds. But the Psalter was a large book, and surely Cotton would immediately notice its absence. Besides, Bartholomew reasoned, taking the Psalter from the tomb had not been a crime—he had saved a beautiful book for future generations. Better it be preserved in Cotton’s library than decay to dust in a stone box in Winchester.

  Bartholomew tried not to think of what he was doing as stealing. After all, he had not exactly sold the Pandosto to Cotton; rather, he had presented it as proof of his access to Shakespeare’s papers. That he had thus relieved Cotton of the fifty-pound down payment on papers that might not even exist Bartholomew thought of as an act of knavery rather than thievery. He hoped he might live up to the standard set for him by Shakespeare in the person of Autolycus—if a thief, a harmless thief; when a knave, a clever and amusing knave, likeable if not wholly moral.

  On the second shelf of the Augustus case, Bartholomew spotted Pandosto. He pulled it out, wrapped it carefully in a cloth, and had just turned to leave when he heard voices at the door below. In another second heavy boots were pounding up the stairs. There was a single window at the far end of the library, looking out toward the Thames a hundred feet away. Bartholomew did not have time to think, and as the door to the library flew open, he leapt from the window to the cobblestones below.

  He heard the crack of the bone an instant before the pain seared through his leg, and in that instant came a peace Bartholomew had never felt. There was no longer any question of whether his plan would succeed, whether he would escape and retire and live out his days comfortably in the country. Some people recovered from broken legs, some avoided the infection that so often poisoned the body, but Bartholomew knew with a fiery certainty that he would not. In that instant he knew that he had failed, that he would die, probably within a few days, but the peace that came with that finality surrounded him like a cocoon as he lay on the stones, his leg crumpled beneath him. Then the pain arrived.

  His boatman waited for him a few dozen yards away, and Bartholomew knew he must hurry to elude capture. It would take perhaps a minute for his pursuers to realize where he had gone and to run out the front of the house and along the lane that led to the river. Without a thought for his agony, and without a sound, he pulled himself up on the side of the house, and hopped toward the water. Each movement sent the pain to greater heights than he thought possible, but Bartholomew focused his entire being on silence, biting the inside of his mouth until he could feel warm blood flowing freely. Reaching the boat, he collapsed over the gunwale and murmured to the boatman to fly downstream. As the craft moved toward the center of the river and was enveloped by darkness, Bartholomew heard the clatter of boots on the stones and then knew no more.

  He awoke in his lodgings, the pain from his leg radiating through his body. His landlady held a damp cloth to his head and the boatman stood
nearby. Bartholomew knew he must accomplish one more task before he drifted back into darkness. He whispered his instructions to the boatman and gave him the cloth-wrapped book and the bag of gold he pulled from within his doublet, along with a note he had prepared for just such an eventuality.

  When the boatman had gone, Bartholomew fell back against the pillows and surrendered himself to the ministrations of his landlady, who tended him with the gentle attention of one who had fond memories of, on occasion, sharing his bed.

  Over what he only guessed were the next several days he drifted in and out of the world. He was agonizingly awake when the bonesetter came to see to the break. As his leg became more and more swollen and inflamed, the apothecary paid several visits—each time bathing Bartholomew’s leg in vinegar to fight the infection, each time shaking his head at the landlady as he left.

  It was morning when Bartholomew awoke, feeling clearheaded for the first time since the accident. The pain had subsided somewhat, but he felt the blackness beckoning him. It occurred to him that this might be a good time to repent of his sins, but before the thought had formed itself into any action, the rising darkness washed over him and he slipped into its embrace.

  Bartholomew’s grave in St. Paul’s churchyard was not marked with a stone. Though his landlady had been fond of him, she had kept the few shillings he had given her for such a purpose to settle part of his debt to her. She did, however, weep as he was lowered into the cold earth.

  —

  Matthew Harbottle had never known the origin of his surname. Before his mother had died, two years ago, she had always changed the subject whenever he asked about either his father or his name. His mother had only ever called herself Lil. She had died in childbirth in a room above the George and Dragon; the child had died, too. By then Matthew was sixteen and had been working for years as a stable boy at the tavern. His mother, he knew, conducted other business there, but he had always lived with this knowledge and it seemed neither shameful nor immoral to him. Shortly after her death, he had begun his new career among the players. A man from the Globe Theatre had come to the inn asking for Matthew, and though Matthew never learned why the man had come looking for a specific stable boy, he gladly accepted the job he was offered.

  Matthew was small, but years of work had made him strong and he was perfectly suited for his new career. Crouched in the atticlike space above the heavens of the Globe, Matthew rolled cannonballs when thunder was required and lowered actors who were playing fairies or gods to the stage. For other productions he would work below the stage, making the sound of approaching horses and pushing props up through trapdoors. When the company traveled, Matthew looked after props and costumes, stabled the horses, and did whatever else was needed.

  Matthew never saw a play, and he had never learned to read, so he could not comprehend the scripts he sometimes delivered to actors, but he did hear snatches of plays as he listened for his cues. To him plays were bits of dialogue that drifted into darkness and the undulating sound of the crowd—now a murmur, now a roar, now the unmistakable sound of three thousand people gasping in unison.

  Occasionally the players would invite Matthew to come along to the tavern for a drink. Then he felt like a king, stood to a mug of ale by the men who brought words to life in an inn where once he had been a stable boy and the son of the whore upstairs. He was wise enough to know, from the winks of the players and their nods toward the upper floors, that many of them had enjoyed his late mother, but whenever he asked one of the players about his father and his name, the response was always the same—a hearty laugh and an offer of another mug of ale. Thus it came as quite a surprise when early one morning, as he slept in a room filled with costumes and props, a stranger shook him awake and whispered, “Your father has sent these for you.”

  Matthew pressed the messenger, as best he could in his groggy state, for news of his father, but the man would only point to the folded paper he had delivered along with a cloth-wrapped package and a heavy cloth bag. “The letter explains everything,” he said. The messenger left before Matthew could ask him to read this mysterious letter from a father he had never known. To him, it was unintelligible scratches.

  He understood well enough, however, the meaning of the cloth bag. He counted the money three times. Fifty pounds, all in gold. More money than he had ever seen, or ever expected to see. He hid the money and the book with all the writing in the margins in his mattress. He could imagine no possible use for the latter, but it seemed wise to keep it hidden, at least for the time being.

  Later that day he asked one of the players to read him what was written on the piece of paper. He sat quietly on the edge of his bed as he listened to the almost incomprehensible words.

  My Dear Son,

  This shall be both the first time you hear from me and the last, for if I am compelled to send this letter, then know that death is near and will have overtaken me by the time this reaches you. Had things gone differently, I might perhaps have sent for you, but that is for neither of us to know. I send with this letter two treasures. The money I trust you will use to secure your future. That you will live comfortably in this world is comfort to me as I prepare for another. The other I advise you to keep as long as you can, and if you are ever forced to part with it, do not do so here in London. I wish you well.

  Your affectionate father,

  Bartholomew Harbottle

  P.S. Though we have not met, I have heard you at work. As recently as last week I attended a play at the Globe and knew you to be in the heavens. Would that I were bound there now.

  Thus did Matthew Harbottle become a silent, illiterate partner in the Red Bull Theatre in Clerkenwell with an investment of fifty pounds. The job he had done at the Globe he did at the Red Bull for Prince Charles’s Men for many years. As before, he accompanied the players on their provincial tours, and it was on one such tour, late in his life, that he found himself in Exeter and in greater debt at the end of a card game with a local nobleman than he would have liked. Recalling his father’s words about selling the strange book away from London, he offered the volume as settlement of the debt. The man accepted this offer, and even agreed to write Matthew’s name in the front of the book, beneath what he said was a list of others who had owned it. He thought his father would have liked this, for one name on the list, the man told him, was “Bartholomew Harbottle.” Matthew asked the man to write Matthew Harbottle, Red Bull Theatre, and then handed over the book without further thought. Early the next morning the company departed for Bath.

  Ridgefield, 1985

  Peter marked his progress through Ridgefield University not in courses or semesters but by his encounters with certain books—and he held a special place for the Kelmscott Chaucer.

  At the snack bar one night during final exams, Amanda had asked him if Special Collections had any works printed by William Morris.

  “Sure,” said Peter. “I couldn’t tell you all of them off the top of my head, but we’ve got a good collection of Kelmscott Press.” Kelmscott was the private press owned and operated by Morris, the Victorian author, artist, and designer. “I know we’ve got the Chaucer.”

  “The Kelmscott Chaucer?” said Amanda in awe. “With the Burne-Jones illustrations? An original, I mean, not the facsimile.”

  “Yeah,” said Peter, taking a bite of his hamburger. “Why do you ask?”

  Amanda had just finished writing a paper on Edward Burne-Jones for her art history class. She had used the facsimile edition of the Chaucer to look at the artist’s medieval-style illustrations. When Peter asked her if she would like to see the real thing, she ran her foot up his calf and whispered, “Yes, please.”

  The week of exams the library was open all night, but Special Collections still closed at five. Peter unlocked the door and disabled the alarm system before ushering Amanda into the narrow corridor that opened into the Devereaux Room, now lit only by the green glow of the EXIT sign. He turned on a reading lamp on the massive library table and pulle
d out a chair for Amanda. Then he disappeared for a moment into the dimness and returned with the oversized volume, bound in white leather with delicate blind stamping. From a box on the table he pulled two pairs of white cotton gloves, then he sat by Amanda and opened the book.

  It was hard to believe it had been printed less than a hundred years ago. The thick paper; the exquisite foliage design wrapping around the text; the illustrations, so reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts; even the ancient typeface all spoke of a fifteenth-century volume, and of course that was exactly what Morris had intended. The pages were heavy between Peter’s fingers as he gently turned them. Even through the cotton tips of his gloves he could feel the texture of the hand-set type and the wood-block illustrations. He adored the feel of a hand-printed book. The love and care positively radiated off the pages. He turned to a page spread that included two of Burne-Jones’s illustrations and leaned back, letting Amanda soak in the beauty of the artistry and craftsmanship. She gave a short, soft sigh as she ran a cotton-gloved fingertip slowly across the page.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she whispered reverently, and Peter looked from the page to Amanda’s face.

  “So are you,” he mouthed silently, for though he had always found her face lovely, she had taken on a special glow as she pored over the book. She was enchanted, Peter thought, and he was thrilled that he had helped her feel that way. He wondered how it had never occurred to him to bring Amanda to the Devereaux Room before. Suddenly his mind was crowded with images of books from the collection that would delight her—works of the Victorians and of the medieval artists who had inspired them. In no volume, however, could the intersection of his passion for fine books and her passion for Victorian art more perfectly intersect than in this most famous example of nineteenth-century printing.