by Ross King
But then… something familiar. An old smell was permeating the room, I realised: one I knew better, and loved more, than any perfume. I turned round again and, looking up, saw rows of book-lined shelves covering what seemed to be every inch of the walls, which were girdled halfway up by a railed gallery, above which more books pressed upwards to an invisible ceiling.
A library. So, I thought, face upturned: Greenleaf had been right about one thing at least-Lady Marchamont possessed plenty of books. What light there was cast itself across hundreds of shelved volumes of every shape, size and thickness. Some of the volumes I could see were massive, like quarried slabs, and were attached to the shelves by long chains that hung down like necklaces from their wooden bindings, while others, tiny sextodecimos, were no larger than snuff-boxes, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, their pasteboard covers tied with faded ribbons or locked with tiny clasps. But that was not all. The overspill from the shelves-two hundred volumes or more-had been stacked on the floor or was colonising adjacent corridors and rooms; an overflow that began in soldierly ranks only to scatter, after a few paces, into wild disorder.
I looked about in amazement before stepping over one of the advancing columns and kneeling carefully beside it. Here the smell-of damp and rot, like that of mulch-was not so pleasant. My nostrils were offended, as were my professional instincts. The soft throb and glow roused in my breast by the gilt letters of four or five different languages winking at me from scores of handsomely tooled bindings-the sight of so much knowledge so beautifully presented-swiftly flamed out. It seemed that, like everything else about Pontifex Hall, these books were doomed. This wasn't a library so much as a charnel-house. My sense of outrage mounted.
But so, too, did my curiosity. I picked one of the books at random from its collapsing rank and opened the battered cover. The engraved title-page was barely legible. I turned another crackling page. No better. The rag-paper had cockled so badly because of water damage that, viewed side-on, the pages resembled the gills on the underside of a mushroom. The volume disgraced its owner. I flipped through the stiffened leaves, most of which had been bored through by worms; entire paragraphs were now unintelligible, turned to fluff and powder. I replaced the book in disgust and took up another, then another, both of which were likewise of use to no one but the rag-and-bone man. The next looked as though it had been burned, while a fifth had been faded and jaundiced by the rays of some long-ago sun. I sighed and replaced them, hoping that Lady Marchamont had no expectations of restoring the fortunes of Pontifex Hall by means of a sale of scraps like these.
But not all of the books were in such a sorry state. As I moved towards the shelves I could see that many of the volumes-or their bindings at least-were of considerable value. Here were fine morocco leathers of every colour, some gold-tooled or embroidered, others decorated with jewels and precious metals. A number of the vellums had buckled, it was true, and the morocco had lost a little of its lustre, but there were no defects that a little cedarwood oil and lanolin couldn't mend. And the jewels alone-what looked to my inexpert eye like rubies, moonstones and lapis lazuli-must have been worth a small fortune.
The shelves along the south wall, nearest the window, had been devoted to Greek and Roman authors, with an entire two shelves weighed down by various collections and editions of Plato. The library's owner must have possessed both a scholar's eye and a deep purse, because the best editions and translations had obviously been hunted down. Not only was there the five-volume second edition of Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation of Plato-the great Platonis opera omni printed in Venice and including Ficino's corrections to the first edition commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici-but also the more authoritative translation published in Geneva by Henri Etienne. Aristotle, meanwhile, was represented not only by the two-volume Basel edition of 1539, but by the 1550 edition with its emendations by Victorius and Flacius, and finally by the Aristotelis opera edited by the great Isaac Casaubon and published in Geneva. All were in reasonable condition, give or take the odd nick or scrape, and would fetch a fair price.
The other classical authors were done equal justice. Standing on tiptoe or squatting on my haunches, I removed volume after volume from the shelf and inspected each one before carefully replacing it. Here was Plamerius's edition of Pliny's Naturalis historia, bound in red calfskin, and the Aldine edition of Livy, along with the Historiarum of Tacitus, edited by Vindelinus and wrapped in a delicate chemise. There was also the Basel edition of Cicero's De natura deorum, bound in olive morocco with a pretty repoussé design… Dionysus Lambinus's edition of De rerum natura… and, most amazing of all, a copy of the Confessiones of St. Augustine in the blind-tooled brown calfskin I recognised as that of the Caxton binder. There were, besides, dozens of thinner volumes, commentaries and expositions such as Porphyry on Horace, Ficino on Plotinus, Donatus on Virgil, Proclus on Plato's Republic…
I was walking and gazing now, my errant hostess completely forgotten. Not only was the wisdom of the ancients represented, but so were the advancements in learning made earlier in our century. There were books on navigation, agriculture, architecture, medicine, horticulture, theology, education, natural philosophy, astronomy, astrology, mathematics, geometry and steganography or 'secret writing'. There were even quite a number of volumes containing poetry, plays and nouvelles. English, French, Italian, German, Bohemian, Persian, it didn't seem to matter. The authors and titles scrolled past, a roll-call of fame. I stopped and ran my fingers across a shelf of quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays; nineteen of them in all, bound in buckram. But there was not, I noticed, a collection of the folio edition of his plays that, as any bookseller knew, William Jaggard had printed in 1623. This struck me as out of keeping with the exhaustive urge for assimilation, for completeness, elsewhere so evident. Nor did there appear to be anything else printed after 1620. In the large collection of herbals, for example, there were copies of De historia plantarum by Theophrastos, Agricola's Medicinae herbaria, and Gerard's Generall Historie of Plants, but not any of the more recent works such as Culpeper's Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, Langham's Garden of Health, or even Thomas Johnson's enlarged and far superior 1633 edition of Gerard. What did this mean? That the collector had died before 1620, his ambitious dreams unfulfilled? That for forty years or more the magnificent collection had lain undisturbed, unsupplemented, unread?
By now I was standing before the north wall, and here the collection grew even more remarkable. I reached up to touch a few of the wobbly bindings. The light from the window was fading quickly. A large section on the left appeared to be devoted to the art of metallurgy. At first there were the sort of works I would have expected to see, such as Biringuccio's Pirotechnia and Ercker's Beschreibung allerfürnemisten Mineralischen Ertzt, bound in pigskin and featuring beautiful woodcuts. A little out-of-date, but respectable books none the less. But what was I to make of many of the others interspersed among them-Jakob Böhme's Metallurgia, Isaac of Holland's Mineralia opera, a translation of Denis Zachaire's True Natural Philosophy of Metals-books that were almost manuals of devilry, the products of inferior and superstitious minds?
Other inferior and superstitious minds were found further along the shelf. The wisdom and good taste governing the selection now deteriorated into an indiscriminate and omnivorous consumption of authors of scurrilous reputation, men who placed their faith too readily-and somewhat impiously-in the occult operations of nature. The faded ribbon-pulls protruded from the gilt backs like impudent pink tongues. Squinting in the poor light, I pulled down a French translation of the works of Artephius. Next to it was Alain de Lisle's commentary on the prophecies of Merlin. Soon matters grew even worse. Roger Bacon's Mirror of Alchymy, George Ripley's Compound of Alchymy, Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia, Paul Skalich's Occulta occultum occulta… All of these volumes were the work of jugglers, charlatans and mystery-men who had nothing to do, as far as I could see, with the pursuit of true knowledge. On the shelves below were dozens of books on vario
us forms of divination. Piromancy. Chiromancy. Astromancy. Sciomancy.
Sciomancy? I propped my thorn-stick against a shelf and reached for the book. Ah, 'divination by shadows'. I clapped it shut. Such nonsense seemed wholly out of place in a library otherwise dedicated to more noble subjects of learning. I replaced the book and, without looking at it, drew down another by its ribbon-pull. Too bad the worms hadn't feasted themselves on these pages, I thought as I opened it. But before I could read the title-page, a voice from behind suddenly interrupted me.
'Lefèvre's edition of Ficino's translation of the Pimander. An excellent edition, Mr. Inchbold. No doubt you own a copy yourself?'
I started and, looking up, saw two dark shapes in the doorway to the library. I had the uneasy impression, all of a sudden, that I had been watched for some time. One of the shapes, that of a lady, had advanced a few steps and now, turning round, lit the wick of a fish-oil lamp perched on one of the shelves. Her shadow feinted towards me.
'Allow me to apologise.' I was hastily restoring the book to its place. 'I should not have presumed-'
'Lefèvre's edition,' she continued as she turned round and blew out the taper-stick, 'marks the first time the Corpus hermeticum was gathered together between two covers since it was collected in Constantinople by Michael Psellos. It even contains the Asclepius, of which Ficino possessed no manuscript copy so was unable to include it in the edition prepared for Cosimo de' Medici.' She paused for only the briefest of moments. 'Will you take some wine, Mr. Inchbold?'
'No-I mean, yes,' I replied, making an awkward bow. 'I mean… wine would be-'
'And some food? Phineas tells me you've not eaten tonight. Bridget?' She turned to the other figure, a serving-maid still hovering in the doorway.
'Yes, Lady Marchamont?'
'Fetch the goblets, will you.'
'Yes, m'lady.'
'The Hungarian wine, I think. And tell Mary to prepare a meal for Mr. Inchbold.'
'Yes, m'lady.'
'Quickly now, Bridget. Mr. Inchbold has made a long journey.'
'Yes, m'lady,' murmured the girl before scurrying away.
'Bridget is new to Pontifex Hall,' Lady Marchamont explained in an oddly confidential tone, slowly crossing the library with the lantern squeaking on its hinges and turning her eye-sockets to dark hollows. She seemed disinclined to perform introductions, as if she had known me for ages and considered it perfectly ordinary to discover me crouched in the darkness like a housebreaker, thumbing greedily through these shelves of books. Was this, too, the way of aristocrats? 'One of the servants,' she added, 'from the family of my late husband.'
I fumbled for a reply, failed, and instead watched in stupefied silence as she approached in her muted flourish of lamplight, the thin drift of taper smoke rising ceilingward behind her. Oh, how precisely I remember this moment! For this is how, and where, everything began… and where it would end such a short time later. Through the broken panes of window had come the sounds of a watch of nightingales in the overgrown garden and the scratching of a dead branch at one of the mullions. The library itself was silent but for her slow footfalls-she was wearing a pair of leather buskins-and then a loud slap as one of the books piled on the floor toppled from its rank, knocked sideways by her skirts.
'Tell me, Mr. Inchbold, how was your journey?' She had drawn to a stop at last, her half-visible expression apparently vague and vexed. 'No, no. We must not begin our acquaintance with a lie. It was terrible, was it not? Yes, I know it was, and I do apologise. Phineas is dependable enough as a driver,' she said with a sigh, 'but, yes, a dreadful companion. Poor fellow hasn't read a book in his entire life.'
'The journey was pleasant,' I murmured weakly. Yes: our association was a series of lies, despite what she said. Lies from beginning to end.
'I regret I cannot offer you a place to sit,' she was continuing, gesturing at the library with a sweep of her arm. 'Oliver Cromwell's soldiers burned all of my furniture to cook their dinners and warm their feet.'
I blinked in surprise. 'A regiment was quartered here?'
'Fourteen or fifteen years ago. The estate was forfeited for acts of treason against Parliament. The soldiers even burned my best bed. Twelve feet high, Mr. Inchbold. Four beech-framed posts, with yards and yards of hanging taffeta.' She paused to offer me a wry smile. 'I should think that must have kept them warm for a time, don't you?'
She was standing before me, or nearly so, and I could see her more clearly in the sallow lamp glow. I was to meet her on only three short occasions, and my first impression-it now surprises me to recall-was not especially favourable. She must have been roughly my own age, and though she was pleasing enough, even noble, in appearance, with a flawless brow, a sharp aquiline nose, and a pair of dark eyes that suggested a strong determination of will, these advantages had been eroded by negligence or poverty. Her dark hair was thick and, unlike mine, had not yet begun to grey, but it was worn loose and rose upwards from her crown in an unruly and unbecoming nimbus. Her gown had been made from a good-enough material, but the nap had long since worn off, and it was of an obsolete cut and, even worse, stained like an old sail. She was wearing some sort of calash or hooded mantle, which might have been silk, though it was not one of those pretty bird's-eye hoods such as one sees on the heads of fashionable ladies promenading through St. James's Park, for it was black as jet-stone, like her dress, and in poor repair. She looked, from its lugubrious colour, and from the pair of black gloves that stretched halfway up her forearms, to be in mourning. All of which together served to lend her the same air of distressed splendour, I decided, as Pontifex Hall itself.
'The Puritans burned all of your furnishings?'
'Not all,' she replied. 'No. I presume some of them, the more valuable items, were sold.'
'I'm so sorry.' Suddenly the image of Cromwell's ragtag band of soldiers did not seem quite so amusing after all.
A half smile had appeared on her face. 'Please, Mr. Inchbold. No need to apologise on their behalf. Beds can be replaced, unlike other things.'
'Your husband,' I murmured sympathetically.
'Even husbands can be replaced,' she said. 'Even a man like Lord Marchamont. You knew of him?' I shook my head. 'He was an Irishman,' she said simply. 'He died two years ago in France.'
'He was of the Royal party?'
'Of course.'
She had turned from me and now strode slowly round the room, examining the books and shelves like a steward examining a prize herd or a particularly satisfactory crop of corn. I was already wondering if they belonged to her. It seemed unlikely. Books were not, in my experience, a woman's business. But how, in that case, had she known about Ficino and Lefèvre d'Étaples and Michael Psellos? I felt a wary excitement shudder softly and cautiously engage.
'These are all I have left,' she said as if to herself. She had begun running her gloved fingertips across the spines, much as I had done a few minutes earlier. 'Everything I own. These and the house itself. Though I may not own Pontifex Hall for so very much longer.'
'Was it Lord Marchamont's?'
'No, his estate was in Ireland, and there's also a house in Hertfordshire. Dreadful places. Pontifex Hall was my father's, but after our marriage Lord Marchamont was named heir presumptive. We had no children, and it was entailed upon me in his will. There…' She was pointing to the window, from which the light had all but drained. The parterre outside was lost in shadow and our two reflections. 'Four leather-covered chairs sat there, next to a table and the beautiful old walnut scriptor where my father used to write his letters. And a hand-knotted turkey carpet on the floor, with monkeys and peacocks and all sorts of oriental designs woven into it.' Slowly her gaze returned to me. 'Now I wonder what could possibly have become of that? Sold as booty, I shouldn't wonder.'
I cleared my throat and voiced the thought that had occurred to me a moment earlier. 'Quite a miracle your books have survived.'
'Oh, but they did not survive,' came her swift reply. 'Not all of them. A nu
mber were missing when I returned. Others, as you can see, have been badly damaged. But, yes, quite a miracle. The soldiers would have burned the lot of them, and not only because of the cold winters. Some would have been considered popish, or diabolical, or both.' She nodded at the shelf behind me. 'Ficino's translation of the Pimander, for example. Fortunately they were hidden away.'
'What do you mean?'
'By my father. A long story, Mr. Inchbold. All in due time. You see, each one of these books has its own history. Many of them survived a shipwreck.'
'A shipwreck?'
'And others,' she continued, 'are refugees. Do you see these chains?' She was pointing to a group of volumes tethered by their bindings to the shelves. The loops of chain reflected dully in the gloom. I nodded. 'These books were already rescued once before, that time from the colleges in Oxford. From the chain libraries,' she explained, sliding one of them, a folio, from the shelf. She ran a gloved hand over its vellum cover-a loving gesture. The chain rattled thinly in protest. 'That was during the last century.'
'They were rescued from Edward VI?'
'From his commissioners. They were smuggled out of the college libraries and escaped the bonfires.' She had opened the enormous volume and began riffling idly through the pages. 'Quite amazing how determined kings and emperors have been to destroy books. But civilisation is built on such desecration, is it not? Justinian the Great burned all of the Greek scrolls in Constantinople after he codified the Roman law and drove the Ostrogoths from Italy. And Shih Huang Ti, the first Emperor of China, the man who unified the five kingdoms and built the Great Wall, decreed that every book written before he was born should be destroyed.' She clapped the volume shut and replaced it with a firm push. 'These books,' she said, 'my father acquired much later.'
'Ah,' I said, hoping we were at last reaching the heart of the matter. 'So all of these are his books? And you wish to sell them.'
