by Ross King
'For safekeeping,' he told her, rising unsteadily to his feet and sloppily refilling his cup from a second bottle, which had also been purloined from the royal wine cellar. 'Lock, stock and barrel. The King is worried that his treasures will fall into the soldiers' hands or, even worse, into those of the Emperor Ferdinand.'
'What do you mean? Where have they been sent?'
The two of them had been standing beside Vilém's desk, which for once had been cleared of its huge stack of uncatalogued books. The shelves, to her astonishment, had also been cleared of most of their books. Otakar's voice echoed against the bare walls as he spoke. He had no idea where the crates had been sent but was full of gloomy prophecies that the wine prompted him to impart. He appeared to regard the invasion of Bohemia as a personal affront, its purpose nothing other than the desecration of the library. Did she know, he asked, that in the year 1600, when Ferdinand was Archduke of Styria, he had burned all of the Protestant books in his domains, including more than 10,000 volumes in the city of Graz alone? And so now that he was Emperor he would make it his business to incinerate all of the books in Prague as well. Because every ruler celebrated his conquests by setting torch to the nearest library. Did not Julius Caesar incinerate the scrolls in the great library at Alexandria during his campaign against the republicans in Africa? Or General Stilicho, leader of the Vandals, order the burning of the Sibylline prophecies in Rome? His slurred syllables had reverberated in the empty room. Emilia had made to go, but a clumsy hand grasping at her forearm stayed her. There was nothing so dangerous to a king or an emperor, he went on, as a book. Yes, a great library-a library as magnificent as this one-was a dangerous arsenal, one that kings and emperors feared more than the greatest army or magazine. Not a single volume from the Spanish Rooms would survive, he swore, sniffling into his cup. No, no, not a single scrap would escape the holocaust!
But tonight, as the guns blazed outside, there was no sign even of Otakar. She wove her way between the naked shelves until she reached the tiny room where Vilém worked. Though the door was closed, she could see a crack of light underneath, but the room was empty except for an oil-lamp and Otakar's two exhausted wine bottles. Vilém's desk stood in its usual place before the fireplace, and the oil-lamp, trimmed low, sat beside it, almost empty of fuel. She was about to withdraw when she noticed the faintly astringent scent in the air and then saw a clutter of objects on the desk: ink bottles and goose quills, along with a book-a parchment-bound in leather. She remembered none of these things from two nights earlier. Was this Otakar's handiwork? Or had Vilém returned? Perhaps the book belonged to him. Perhaps it was one of the works of philosophy-something by Plato or Aristotle-with which he had been trying to wean her from her diet of poetry and romance.
She tiptoed to the desk to examine the litter. There was also, she saw, a pumice-stone and a piece of chalk, as if the desk were that of a scrivener. She knew all about such things, about scribes and their parchments, which were rubbed with pumice-stones and then chalked to absorb the animal fats and keep the ink from running. Two weeks ago Vilém had shown her, besides the telescopes and astrolabes, a number of ancient manuscripts, ones copied, he said, by the scribes of Constantinople. The manuscripts were the most valuable documents in the whole of the Spanish Rooms, and the monks, he told her, the most exquisite artists the world had known. He had angled one of the documents into the lamplight to show her how not even the passage of a thousand years had faded the lettering-the reds made from ground-up cinnabar, the yellows from dirt excavated on the slopes of volcanoes. And some of the most beautiful and valuable parchments of all-the so-called 'golden books' made for the collections of the Byzantine emperors themselves-had been dyed purple and then inscribed with ink made from powdered gold. When Emilia closed their boards, which were as thick as the planks of a ship, her palms and fingers glittered as if she had been running them through a treasure chest.
But now the beautiful parchments from Constantinople had disappeared along with the rest of the books. Only the one on the desk remained. She moved aside the clutch of quills and studied it more carefully. The binding was exquisite. The front cover had been elaborately tooled, its leather stamped with symmetrical patterns of whorls, scrolls and interlacing leaves-intricate designs she recognised as those decorating some of the books from Constantinople. Yet when she opened the cover she saw how, far from being dyed purple or inscribed in gold, the pages were in a poor condition, stiff and wrinkled as if they had been submerged in water. The black ink was badly faded and smudged, though the words looked to be in Latin, a language she was unable to read.
Slowly she thumbed the pages, listening to the mortars echo and grumble outside the walls. One of the cannon-balls must have struck the battlements, because the floor seemed to tremble underfoot and the window-panes rattled in their fittings. A soft diffusion of light, the fire from the Summer Palace, lay lambent on the far wall. 'Fit deorum ab hominibus dolenda secessio,' she saw at the top of one of the pages, 'soli nocentes angeli remanent…'
Another piece of mortar struck the battlements, this time much loser, and a section of the wall collapsed into the moat with a crash. She looked up from the parchment, startled by the blast, and saw the tall figure and its black, sprawling shadow. It took a few seconds for her to absorb the sight of him-the beard, the sword, the pair of bowed legs that made him look like a bear standing upright. Later she would decide that he looked like Amadís of Gaul or Don Belianís, or even the Knight of Phoebus-one of the heroes from her tales of chivalry. How long he had been there, watching her from across the room, she had no idea.
'I'm sorry,' she stammered, dropping the book to the desk. 'I was only-'
Then another piece of mortar struck the wall and the window exploded in flames.
Chapter Six
I was awakened by the sound of hammering. For a moment, staring at the ceiling, at the ribs of oak laths and timber joists exposed beneath broken plaster, I could not recall where I was. I pushed myself on to my elbows, and a strip of sunlight fell like a bandolier across my chest. I was surprised to find myself on the right side of the pallet-on what, in another life, would have been Arabella's half. In my first year as a widower I had slept on her side of the bed, but then slowly-month by month, inch by inch-I had crept back to my own half, where I remained. Now I had the disturbing impression that I had dreamt of my wife for the first time in almost a year.
I rose from the bed and, pushing my spectacles on to my nose, trudged to the casement window, eager to take my first view of Pontifex Hall by daylight. Underfoot the bare boards were cool. Pushing open the casement and looking down, I saw that I was in one of the south-facing rooms. The window gave on to the parterre and, beyond it, an obelisk that corresponded to a ruined one I had seen the night before on the north side of the hall. Beyond the obelisk was another fountain and another ornamental pond, now stagnant and shrunken, each the twin of those on the north side. Or was I facing the north side? The entire grounds of the park seemed to have been composed symmetrically, as if Pontifex Hall, even in ruin, were a mirror of itself.
No, the sun was to the left, above a wall-barely visible through the branches and leaves-that marked the perimeter of the park. So, yes, I was facing south after all. Peering down through the open casement at the sorry remains of the parterre, I realised I must be directly above the library.
I stayed at the window for a minute; the air smelled fresh and green, a pleasant change from Nonsuch House, where the stench of the river at low tide is sometimes not to be borne. The hammers ceased their tattoos and were replaced, seconds later, by a sharp knock on my door. Phineas entered with a basin of steaming water.
'Breakfast served downstairs, sir.' He began clearing a space on the table with his right hand as the water slurped at the rim of the basin clutched in his wizened claw. 'In the breakfast parlour.'
'Thank you.'
'Whenever you are ready, sir.'
'Thank you, Phineas.' He had turned to go, but I stoppe
d him. 'That knocking, what was it?'
'The plasterers, sir. Restoring the ceiling of the Great Room.' There was something unctuous and faintly unpleasant about his manner. He exposed a row of teeth that were sharp and gapped like a thatcher's rake. 'I do hope you were not disturbed, sir?'
'No, no. Not at all. Thank you, Phineas.'
I performed my ablutions quickly, scrubbing vigorously at my beard, and then began to dress, wondering about the 'interests' and 'enemies' Alethea had spoken of. Last night I had not been frightened by these revelations, as she assumed-merely puzzled. Now, in the light of day, with the fresh breeze stirring in the sunlit chamber, the idea seemed ridiculous. Possibly the townspeople were right. Poor Alethea, I thought as I struggled with my braces. Perhaps she was stricken with lunacy after all. Possibly the deaths of her father and husband-by murder or not-had unhinged her mind. This business of restoring the hall to its former condition was without doubt an eccentric pursuit.
At last I was ready to go downstairs. Closing behind me the door to the Velvet Bedchamber, I started along the corridor. There were two doors on either side, both closed; then a third, also closed, directly ahead of me. I passed through this and into an antechamber, then into a length of corridor. Two closed doors stood on either side of the corridor, which eventually intersected with a second, also lined with closed doors.
I was confused for a second. Which turn to take? I thought I could hear the creak of a banister and Phineas's footfalls rising up as if from the bottom of a well. I considered calling out to him, but something in his manner-his banked-down insolence, his carnivorous smile-warned against it. Phineas was not my friend. So I kept to a straight line, following the corridor, club foot noisily clumping. Should I turn back, I wondered, and try one of the other doors? But I kept walking. A short distance beyond the intersection the corridor terminated at a locked door.
I turned round and retraced my steps. By now Phineas's footfalls had disappeared and all was silent but for my own hesitant steps and the occasional squeal of a naked floorboard. I realised with dismay that the doors and passageways must repeat the maze on the ground floor. The symmetry operated on a vertical as well as a horizontal axis.
I stood for a moment at the intersection before choosing the new corridor. I turned left into it and, after a dozen paces, left again. I remembered having read somewhere that one conquered labyrinths by turning always to the left. This policy seemed to be rewarded, for after a few more steps the corridor widened perceptibly and I found myself in a long gallery. On the walls I could make out dark rectangles, like shadows-the after-images of framed portraits that I supposed had been smashed or stolen by the Puritans. But there was no sign of the staircase.
I continued along the gallery, tapping my thorn-stick like a blind beggar. Soon the passage narrowed and the doors and niches disappeared. This corridor now seemed as perplexing and treacherous as the other. Should I backtrack, I wondered, and return to the Velvet Bedchamber? But could I find even that now? I was completely disoriented. But then the corridor took another left turn and at last, twenty paces ahead, came to an abrupt halt before two doors, one on either side. Both stood invitingly ajar, their brass knobs winking conspiratorially in the gloom. I paused for only a second before nudging open the one on the right and stepping inside.
I was struck immediately by the pungent smell. The acrid air tickled my nose like the stink in an apothecary's, the worst-smelling shop in London. And as my eyes adapted to the gloom I saw to my surprise that the room actually looked like that of an apothecary: every inch of its work-table and shelves was laden with alembics, blowpipes, funnels, burners, several pestles and mortars, as well as dozens of bottles and flasks filled with chemicals and powders of every colour. I had stumbled upon some sort of laboratory. Except these were not the potions of an apothecary, it appeared, but those of an alchemist. Remembering a few of the books on the library's shelves-the twaddle by charlatans such as Roger Bacon and George Ripley-I decided that Alethea must dabble in alchemy, that eccentric art supposedly invented by Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian priest and magician whose works, translated by Ficino, were also to be found on her shelves.
I felt a slight tweak of regret as I crept forward to the table. Was Lady Marchamont one of those seekers after the so-called elixir vitae, the miraculous potion that was supposed to grant eternal life? Or perhaps she hoped to discover the elusive philosopher's stone that would turn lumps of coal or clay into nuggets of gold. I had a sudden image of her bent over bubbling flasks and alembics, muttering spells in dog Latin as the bat-wings of her black cape drooped about her shoulders. Little wonder that the good people of Crampton Magna thought her a witch.
It must have been another few seconds before I saw the telescope on the window-sill. A handsome instrument, two feet in length, with vellum casing and brass ferrules, it was perched on a wooden tripod at a 45-degree angle to the floor, like a long finger pointed at the heavens. I leaned forward and tried to squint through the convex eye-lens, wondering if Alethea was an astrologer as well as an alchemist. I thought once again of the volumes of superstitious nonsense, along with the half-dozen star-atlases I had also spotted on the shelves. Or had the telescope and chemicals belonged to her father and was he the necromancer and stargazer? Perhaps Alethea was restoring his laboratory, like all else, to its original condition, one more side-chapel in the great shrine to Sir Ambrose Plessington.
But the room was not merely a shrine. The telescope was new-I could still smell its vellum-and someone had recently mixed the chemicals, for there was a powdery residue in one of the mortars and spillage on the table. A number of the vials, including one marked 'potassium cyanide', were half-empty.
Cyanide? I set the vial, filled with crystals, back on its shelf, feeling as though I had blundered across some forbidden secret. Was Alethea concocting some deadly sort of poison to deal with her mysterious adversaries? The thought was not so outlandish as it sounds. After all, in those days our newssheets teemed with alarming reports of how beautiful Parisiennes kept their poison bottles on their dressing-tables next to their perfume and powder. And in Rome priests were reporting to the Pope that young ladies had described in the confessional how they murdered their wealthy husbands with arsenic and cantharides bought from an ancient fortune-teller named Hieronyma Spara. So did Lord Marchamont meet his end in this hideous fashion-by poison? By his own wife's hand? Or was Alethea involved in some other activity, something slightly more innocent? Because from what little I understood of alchemy I knew that cyanide, a poison found in laurel leaves and the stones of cherries and peaches, was used in the extraction of gold and silver.
A wave of gooseflesh rose on my forearms. The chamber seemed chilly all of a sudden. From somewhere beyond the open window came the whinny of a horse and, below it, a clicking sound, sharp and silvery, like the clash of falchions. I turned round slowly, telling myself that my task, whatever it was, had nothing to do with this dreadful little room. The library and not the laboratory was my domain. But then I noticed something else amid the clutter.
The two volumes were almost hidden among the dozens of flasks and instruments. I reached for the one on top, expecting to see yet another alchemical treatise. But the volume turned out to be an atlas of the world, the Theatrum orbis terrarum by Abraham Ortelius. This edition had been printed in Prague in the year 1600, a few years after Ortelius's death, if I recalled. The pages were badly water-damaged but had been expertly rebound in buckram. Franked on the pastedown was an elaborate ex-libris with the motto Littera Scripta Manet.
For a moment I flipped through the tackled pages, through dozens of beautifully engraved maps. I was familiar enough with the atlas, though this particular edition was unknown to me. This was not so unusual, however, because the work had gone through dozens of editions since its first publication in 1570. I wondered how it had migrated from the library. Perhaps the great Ortelius, once the Royal Cosmographer to Philip II of Spain, had been reduced to a doorstop or a st
ep-stool?
I set the atlas back on the table and picked up the second volume, which was newer and in considerably better condition. It was, I found, an equally distinguished work. Thomas Salusbury's translation of Galileo's Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo. Entitled The Systeme of the World: in Four Dialogues, it had been printed in London only a month or two earlier. I had ordered two dozen copies from the printer, all of which were sold in a matter of hours. Now I had scores of other orders from all over the country-and from Holland, France and Germany as well. The whole of Europe, it seemed, was clamouring to read this philosophical masterpiece, which was by far the most important and controversial book of its time, one the Jesuit priests in the Collegio Romano claimed would do more harm to Rome than Luther and Calvin combined.
I had only just finished reading the book myself. It contains a series of dialogues that pit a supporter of the Ptolemaic system, named Simplicius, against a more astute supporter of Copernicus. What happened to Galileo following its publication in 1632 is known well enough. Despite diplomatic support for Ptolemy and an enthusiastic reception across Europe, the book ran foul of the Church authorities. Pope Urban VIII, a friend of Galileo, ordered a prosecution, and so the old astronomer was summoned to Rome to stand trial before the Inquisition, charged with propagating Copernicanism, the theory holding that, contrary to the Holy Writ, the sun rather than the earth is the centre of the universe. In 1633 he was found guilty as charged, marched into the dungeons of the Inquisition to be shown the instruments of torture at the disposal of the Pope, then marched to church and made to recant his views. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life, while the Dialogo was placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum, the Vatican's list of forbidden books.
