The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession

by Charlie Lovett

  “What do you think he meant by ‘flaw’?” said Peter.

  “Something that’s not right textually, I suppose,” said Liz. “Some reference to something Shakespeare couldn’t have known, or an anachronism. You know, Hermione wearing a digital watch. That sort of thing.” Peter looked over Liz’s shoulder as she turned the page and ran her finger slowly down the scrawled script in the margins. Though it seemed less possible every minute, a part of him still wanted to believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon had written those notes. He had relished the thought of the day he would show the Pandosto to Francis Leland—the apprentice presenting the Holy Grail to his master. It was a fantasy he wasn’t quite ready to give up.

  “What year did Shakespeare die?” asked Liz, her fingertip pausing near the bottom of a page.

  “Sixteen sixteen,” said Peter. “Why?”

  “Bloody hell! Listen to this. ‘Death of Garinter unjust as in execution of Raleigh.’”

  “We don’t know what Shakespeare thought of Raleigh’s execution,” said Peter. “He might have felt it was unjust.”

  “You’re wrong, Peter. We know exactly what Shakespeare thought of Raleigh’s execution.”

  “Liz, trust me, I’ve read the literature, and . . .”

  “Peter, we know what Shakespeare thought. He thought nothing. Because Shakespeare had been dead for two years when Raleigh was executed.”

  “Raleigh was beheaded in sixteen eighteen,” said Peter, suddenly remembering the date from his English history class. “How could I have missed that?”

  “It’s subtle,” said Liz, “and you weren’t looking for it.”

  Peter watched the Holy Grail dissolve into a fascinating example of nineteenth-century forgery. Judging from the presence of a printing press in Gardner’s lair, Peter guessed that not even the text was authentic, though it had probably been copied from a genuine first edition of Pandosto. It might fetch as much as a few thousand pounds at auction, so it couldn’t be said to be worthless, but it was far from extraordinary. His burning question of the past week answered, he was suddenly struck by the harsh reality of his situation. He was trapped underground in a remote country chapel. He was the prime suspect in a brutal murder, with a raft of evidence implicating him. And he was now the caretaker of a book that would make the tiniest ripple in Shakespeare studies, and pass completely unnoticed in the broader world.

  “I’ll bet Mayhew commissioned Gardner to make the Pandosto forgery,” said Liz, who still seemed excited about unraveling the book’s mystery. “He told Gardner to leave a textual clue just like he had in his other forgeries. He must have planned for it to surface and be revealed as a fake. That would have been an embarrassment to the Stratfordians.”

  “And it would make his friend William H. Smith look good at the same time.”

  “What was all that about ‘nefarious access’ to the Aldersons and secretly putting books into their library?” said Liz, picking up Gardner’s deathbed confession.

  “‘I hope that whatever ancestor made the secret of this crypt did so to provide nefarious access to the Aldersons, not friendly commerce,’” read Peter.

  “You don’t think . . .”

  “There must be a passage,” said Peter. “A passage that leads from here to Evenlode Manor.”

  “But why?” said Liz.

  “Who knows why,” said Peter, grabbing the flashlight from her and shining it into the back of an alcove. “Even Phillip Gardner didn’t know why. Maybe it was some sort of Romeo and Juliet thing.” Peter found nothing but a solid wall and hurriedly moved to the next alcove. “Or maybe the feud between the families was just for show—at first, I mean. This chapel has to be at least four hundred years old, judging from the tombs. Here, help me move these boards.”

  He had come to the alcove that contained nothing more than a pile of old lumber leaning up against the back wall. It took him and Liz several minutes to clear the boards away, during which the quiet of the crypt gave way to the banging of wood on stone as they hurled the lumber from the wall. When the last plank had been cast to the floor, the quiet returned, though dust still swirled in the air and stuck to Peter’s sweaty face. He picked up the flashlight and trained it into the alcove where it shone on the back wall. There, in the center of the arch, was a narrow door made of rough planks. Peter pulled the handle and the door swung open, revealing a flight of stone steps leading down into darkness.

  Kingham, 1879

  Every great artist, thought Phillip Gardner, has his masterpiece, and the forgery of the Pandosto, which took him nearly a year to complete, was his. True, there was a certain frustration that this masterpiece must go unheralded, but knowing that it would ultimately bring embarrassment to the Alderson family was reward enough.

  Phillip had started by covering the endpapers of the book with new paper—concealing all evidence to the casual observer that the scribblings in the margins were those of William Shakespeare, for the proper forgery of the Pandosto would require outside assistance, and he had no wish to raise suspicions. Next he had the text of each page photographed. He was careful to choose a photographer who had no higher education and no connections to the book trade. A studio in Manchester fit his needs perfectly.

  In the meantime, he began, with help from Benjamin Mayhew, to collect the paper on which the Pandosto would be printed. The book was a quarto, so by neatly slicing blank pages out of the backs of folio volumes from the same time period, Phillip was able to collect sheets on which four pages of the new Pandosto could be printed. He could then fold these sheets in half for binding.

  The next step was to convert the photographs into zinc plates from which the text could be printed. After masking out the marginalia on the photographs, he told the owner of the workshop in Birmingham where he ordered the plates that he was making a facsimile of an obscure old book for scholarly purposes. Three weeks later he collected the photographs and the zinc plates. The former he tossed into the drawing room fire; the latter he used to print Pandosto’s text on the paper that he and Mayhew had collected. He had mixed a large batch of ink from one of Collier’s recipes for this purpose, and Mayhew had helped him find and purchase a hand printing press, which he had spent some months learning to master.

  Zincographic printing does not leave as deep an impression on the paper as hand-set type, so once the printing was complete, Phillip embarked on the most tedious part of his work. Taking a tiny, smoothed piece of bone, he traced each letter, pressing just hard enough to imitate the impression made by sixteenth-century movable type. He had practiced this technique for weeks on scrap paper before he learned to apply just the right amount of pressure—his early attempts had left the paper riddled with holes and tears.

  When he had completed the forging of the text, Phillip set about the fun part—meticulously copying the marginalia using a quill, a batch of sixteenth-century ink, and his expert eye and steady hand. All his practice in document forging now came to bear, as he copied each smudge and smear to perfection. He made only a single change, adding the line that would be the undoing of both the Pandosto and Reginald Alderson: “Death of Garinter unjust as in execution of Raleigh.”

  In the course of his work on the forgery, Phillip had become interested in all aspects of the book arts, and while he was far from an expert binder, he had collected some binding tools and equipment and had some modest success rebinding several of his own books. To bind his Pandosto, however, he merely bought a book of similar size in an old leather binding and sewed the newly printed text block into the old cover. At the same time, he removed the false endpapers from the original Pandosto, revealing once again the list of owners.r />
  “It’s a beautiful job,” said Benjamin Mayhew, paging through the forged Pandosto.

  “It’s not quite done,” said Phillip. “I still need to scuff the edges of the pages. I almost hate to give it up to Alderson. It’s become . . . well, I’ve become close to that particular bit of forgery.”

  “We shouldn’t become too close to our books,” said Mayhew. “They are only objects, after all.”

  “Ah, but you are a bookseller, not a book collector. Besides, this one is my own creation.”

  “That should bring you all the more satisfaction when Alderson is made a fool.”

  “What is your plan exactly?” said Phillip.

  “I’ve made all the arrangements,” said Mayhew. “A colleague of mine will offer your Pandosto to Alderson for an irresistible price. This colleague will pretend not to know what he has. When Alderson makes the book public, my friend William Smith will reveal it as a forgery, thanks to your little clue. Smith will be happy because the Stratfordians will be embarrassed; you will be happy because Alderson will be embarrassed; and I shall be happy because my two best customers are happy. Now, I’ve a little something to make Pandosto look even better to Alderson.”

  Mayhew showed Phillip a beautiful leather-backed case from which he withdrew an elaborate folder. Into this he laid Phillip’s masterpiece, carefully refolding the flaps and then slipping it back into the case.

  “Properly imposing,” said Phillip, taking the sumptuous case from Benjamin. “But what did you do with the original?”

  “I shall see to it,” said Benjamin.

  “It seems a shame to destroy it.”

  “No choice, my good man, no choice. Your forgery preserves all the real marginalia for future generations. Some enterprising scholar will ferret out that you couldn’t possibly have made all that up.”

  “I wonder,” said Phillip, “if you might provide me with a bill of sale. Just so I can know that I owned it, however briefly.”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Benjamin. “And as for the rest, leave it all to me.”

  —

  Phillip wanted to feel triumphant as he mounted the steps of Evenlode House on his return from London and his meeting with Benjamin Mayhew. He had created a masterpiece, fulfilled his first commission as an artist, and ensured the eventual public embarrassment of Reginald Alderson. However, he had also been complicit in the destruction of a great literary treasure. He was one of only two men alive who knew with absolute certainty the true identity of that greatest of English authors, and he had agreed to take that secret to his grave.

  He was just turning the handle when the front door jerked open. Standing before him, a letter clasped in her hand and a look of fury on her face, was a woman he had not seen in some days.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Gardner,” he said.

  “Mr. Gardner, when we married I demanded only one thing from you in exchange for my substantial financial support of both you and your estate—fidelity. Perhaps it seems an odd thing to desire from a man whom I neither love nor respect, but call it my little eccentricity.”

  “Yes, I had a lovely trip to London,” said Phillip, striding into the entrance hall past his wife. “Thank you for asking.”

  “Was it as lovely as the trips you took to London to see Isabel?” said Mrs. Gardner.

  Ridgefield, 1994

  Peter remembered with photographic accuracy the moment when Amanda told him she had a headache. It hadn’t seemed important at the time so Peter didn’t know why he remembered that moment so well, but he did. They had just returned from their final visit to London to find news of another delay in the renovations of their cottage in Kingham, and Amanda, who usually brushed off such delays with a laugh and a comment about contractors being the same the world over, had slammed her fist on the telephone table in frustration.

  “I’m starting to think I’m never going to see this project done,” she said.

  She stood by the window, the afternoon sun glowing in a few stray wisps of hair, her brow knitted in consternation, her lips pursed. Perhaps Peter remembered the moment because he had so rarely seen Amanda angry.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” said Amanda, and the tension seemed to flow out of her in a second. “I just have a headache, that’s all.” After a nap and a cup of tea, Amanda felt better, and neither of them thought anything more of it. That she had another headache on the flight home the next week was hardly unusual—Peter had one, too. Could anyone in that business-class cabin with that crying baby not have a headache? Peter thought perhaps he would let Amanda pay for first-class tickets the next time.

  —

  Sarah and Charlie Ridgefield threw a sixth anniversary party for Peter and Amanda a week after they returned home. “You were off buying books on your fifth,” said Sarah, “so we’ll just do it this year instead.” Amanda hadn’t felt well that morning, another headache and an upset stomach, and Peter had insisted she go back to bed, not daring to give voice to the secret fantasy he was now harboring—that she had, by some miracle, become pregnant. As Amanda dozed on the living room sofa with the curtains drawn that afternoon, he recalled the expression on her face when he had ordered Coke instead of tea at the Tate Gallery café two weeks earlier—how could her amused, loving, protective face have been anything but maternal? How was it possible that Amanda would not one day bear a child? Peter thought perhaps, if her latest symptoms were not indicative of a miracle, the time might be right to bring up adoption. He needed something to father besides his book business, he thought; Amanda needed something to mother besides her English cottage.

  She had felt better by the time of the party, though Peter hadn’t seen her much that evening. Cynthia, who was now writing for a newspaper in Virginia, was back in Ridgefield for the weekend. Amanda and Cynthia hadn’t seen each other in nearly a year, and, despite weekly hour-long phone conversations, they were desperate to catch up and spent most of the evening huddled together in a far corner of the patio. As for Peter, after that unpleasant period of awkward reintroductions to family friends that he had not seen since his wedding, he settled down at a table with Charlie Ridgefield. His father-in-law had not mentioned the subject of money since the night before Peter’s wedding. Tonight the two talked about European travel and Ridgefield’s upcoming football season.

  All evening Peter watched Amanda out of the corner of his eye and wondered what secrets she was sharing with Cynthia and whether they included a piece of joyful news that she would share with him when they got home. But when the party was over, Amanda was exhausted and she asked Peter if they had to drive home. “Couldn’t we just crash in the guest room?” she said, and Peter said yes. She was sound asleep before he had finished brushing his teeth.

  —

  There are days when, without prior notice, your life changes in some fundamental way. When Peter awoke bathed in the morning sun on May 14, 1994, he suspected that today might be one of those days. He was convinced that Amanda had shared some earth-shaking news with Cynthia the night before and that today she would tell him. By now the slim hope that she might be pregnant had solidified into a near certainty. When he got up, letting his wife sleep, he spent ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror practicing expressions of surprise.

  Peter, Sarah, and Charlie had eaten breakfast, and Charlie was just saying that he might go into the office for a couple of hours even though it was a Saturday, when a scream erupted from upstairs. Peter knew at once it was not a scream of fear or anger, but a cry of pain. He was first by Amanda’s bedside, where she sat holding her head and rocking back and forth, moaning loudly, but Charlie Ridgefield shoved him aside and scooped his daughter into his arms.

  Amanda screamed again as Charlie took the stairs two at a time, trailing Peter and Sarah in his wake. “Get to the car,” was all Sarah could manage to say. Peter looked to see tears streaming down her cheeks and sprinted for Charlie’s BMW parked in the front drive. Charlie was slippin
g into the backseat with Amanda, who was still crying in apparent agony, and before Peter could decide where he should go, Sarah jerked open the driver’s door and jumped in. Peter barely had time to get into the passenger seat before Sarah sped off, spewing gravel behind them.

  In the backseat Charlie cradled Amanda, who was quieter now—Peter could hear the words “My head” every so often, but other than that her cries had been reduced to low moans. Sarah skidded onto the main road, tires squealing as she accelerated in the direction of Ridgefield Hospital. Peter felt utterly helpless—no more than a spectator in someone else’s family drama.

  Sitting in the passenger seat of Charlie Ridgefield’s new car, Peter Byerly, who had started his morning with such hope two hours earlier, had a creeping dread that his life was over.

  Kingham, Tuesday, February 21, 1995

  “Look,” said Liz, “I got locked in this chapel with you and I came down into the bloody dungeon, but this is mad. I’m not going down those stairs into God knows what.”

  “We’re not going out the way we came in,” said Peter, shoving the contents of Gardner’s tomb into his satchel. “So we might as well try this.” Staring at the black hole before him, Peter immediately thought of Alice blithely following the White Rabbit down its hole. The claustrophobic picture of Alice from the manuscript in the British Museum flashed before him, but for now at least, curiosity and adrenaline seemed to be winning the battle with panic and claustrophobia, as he started tentatively down the damp stone steps, running the fingers of one hand against the rough wall while his other hand grasped the flashlight and the handle of his satchel ever more firmly.

  “Peter,” called Liz from above, “there’s something else in the bottom of the box. Don’t you want to read it?”

  “We’ll read it when we get to wherever this leads,” said Peter, taking another step down.