Ex Libris

by Ross King

  At last I reached it, midway through the roll and midway along the corridor. I caught my breath as it unfurled, even though the fifty-eighth deed on Chancery Roll DCCLXXVIII was utterly indistinguishable, at first glance, from the others: a piece of parchment, perhaps eighteen inches in length, with a seal suspended on a tag at the foot, which had been slit and then stitched to the head of the previous document. Well? What had I been expecting to see? I propped the lantern on the floor and seated myself cross-legged beside it with the parchment spread across my lap.

  I had thought as I unrolled the documents that within seconds of reaching the deed I would know the culprit's name. But as I studied it front and back, it must have been a full minute before the import of the document finally struck me. The first thing I noticed were the signatures on the dorse, both illegible. Those of the witnesses, I supposed: law clerks, very likely. I turned the roll over, holding my breath. Still there was no revelation, though immediately I noticed the jagged line at the top of the page. As I ran my forefinger over the crude serration-the parchment was obviously an indenture, cut in two-a memory shot briefly to life, then abruptly faded. I had seen a similar document, an indenture very like this one. But I could not, in that brief second, remember where or when.

  Sciant presentes et futuri quod ego Isabella Monboddo…

  The first line, inscribed in black ink, leapt from the page. The lettering had been executed by a scrivener whose talents, I decided, fell short of my father's, though it was done in the elegant curves and dagger-sharp strokes of chancery script. So mesmerised was I by the script that it was another few seconds before I realised what exactly I was reading.

  Sciant presentes et futuri quod ego Isabella Monboddo quondam uxor Henry Monboddo in mea viduitate dedi concessi et hac presenti carta mea confirmavi Alethea Greatorex…

  But then, as the words unravelled from the page, I understood. Yet I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Squinting in the poor light of the cramped corridor I held the document so close to the lantern that its edge touched the casing. My eyes swept across the dense thicket of figures, returning to the top of the page to read it through again:

  Let men present and future know that I, Isabella Monboddo, sometime wife of Henry Monboddo, have in my widowhood given, granted, and by this my present charter confirmed, to Alethea Greatorex, Lady Marchamont of Pontifex Hall, Dorsetshire, relict of Henry Greatorex, Baron Marchamont, all lands and tenements, meadows, grazing lands and pasture, with their hedges, banks and ditches, and with all their profits and appurtenances, which I have in Wembish Park, Huntingdonshire…

  But I could read no more. The document dropped from my fingers and I slumped against a shelf, numb with shock, still not quite daring to comprehend what I had read. My foot must have struck the roll, for the last thing I remembered was the sight of it tumbling a few feet along the slight decline of the corridor before beginning its long unravelling, gathering its own momentum as one by one the documents unfurled and snaked into the darkness of the next corridor.

  Chapter Five

  York House stood less than a mile upriver from Billingsgate, where the storehouses and manufactories overhanging the embankment gave way to mansions that pushed themselves like palisades from the Thames. One after another they drifted past, each with an arched gateway framing a riverfront garden and a barge moored below. York House was found at the westernmost edge of the row, near the New Exchange, at the point where the river bent south towards the dingy clutter of Whitehall Palace. The eddies of current heaved and flexed about its stone steps that led to an arched watergate, on either side of which a stone wall encrusted with limpets held back the high tides. Tarred wooden bollards beside the steps made fast a multi-oared barge whose lacquered hull, in the morning sunshine, gave back a warped riverscape. Beyond the gate sprawled the garden: drooping willows, pollarded aspens, a forlorn pomegranate, all throwing spindly shadows across a knot garden filled with the shrivelled husks of last summer's flowers. Sparrows hopped about the box hedge, pecking for seeds and leaving hieroglyphics in frost that the low sun had not yet melted.

  As she breasted the stairs, Emilia was surprised to see how the mansion-one of the largest on the river, late home of the Lord High Chancellor-appeared to be in ruins. Empty window sockets and a gap-toothed balustrade looked down on piles of stone blocks littered before the west wing. Baskets of bricks and roof slates stood against the wall of the east wing, halfway up whose crumbling surface a wooden scaffold jutted. Pulleyed ropes hung downward from the platforms like nooses, wagging in the breeze. From inside the house came the sound of hammers.

  It was now eight o'clock. The post horn of one of Lord Stanhope's departing mail-coaches was sounding in Charing Cross as Emilia followed Vilém across the garden to the tradesmen's entrance. Her left knee and ribs were aching from her brush with the gunwales of the fishing smack an hour earlier. At the last second Vilém had grasped her arm and pulled her aboard the smack as it knifed past on the current. When it docked at Billingsgate the two of them had disembarked and, limping and dripping, made their way through the fish market to the other side of London Bridge. A scull was waiting. The Cardinal's men seemed to have disappeared into the thicket of masts and sails.

  Progress to York House had been a slow one on account of the tide, which had turned by the time the watermen pushed off from the stairs beside the Old Swan Tavern. Vilém had chosen the two burliest specimens and a sleek-looking pair-of-oars, but the journey upriver still took almost an hour. To make matters worse, the watermen had trouble finding the house. Essex Stairs… the Strand Bridge… Somerset Stairs-all had looked exactly the same as the boat slipped past. One of Emilia's hands gripped the wet fustian of Vilém's coat. He had been oblivious, perched in the bows with his head raised as if sniffing the breeze. But at one point, halfway along the row, he nodded at one of the mansions.

  'So that is Arundel House.'

  Turning to look at the palace sliding past on their starboard side she saw a wintry-looking garden filled not with people, as she first thought, but dozens of statues. A cluster of robed figures was standing erect beneath the trees, frozen as if at a stroke, gesturing arms immobile, sightless marble eyes gazing across the river to Lambeth Marsh. Others wrestled together, while still others lay supine in the grass like corpses on a battlefield, staring at the clouds, their arms and torsos fractured in the middle of heroic postures. She could see yet more ruins under the wings of the house, a promiscuous heap of rubble, what looked from this distance like the fragmentary remains of urns and pediments whose shards had been bleached bone-white by ancient suns. Above them, on the keystone of the arch, the inscription: 'ARVNDELIVS'.

  The name was familiar. She craned her neck as the garden slowly receded in their unfurling wake, trying to remember what Vilém had said a few hours earlier about Arundel and the Howards, about their rivalry with Buckingham.

  'From Constantinople,' Vilém was now saying, almost in a whisper. 'The finest collection in all of England, if not the whole world. Arundel has an agent at the Sublime Porte who ships them to London by the crate-load. He suborns the imams. He convinces them that the statues are idolatrous so they can be removed from the palaces and triumphal arches. Most of the other statues are from Rome, where Arundel has good connections with the papal authorities.'

  'And good connections with Cardinal Baronius?'

  Vilém nodded grimly. 'Arundel and his agents have been working for Baronius, spreading their sticky web, trying to catch whatever they can of the treasures from the Spanish Rooms and the Bibliotheca Palatina. Reports from Rome say a deal has been struck. In return for Arundel delivering the Hermetic manuscript, the Pope will sanction the export of a number of statues on which the Earl has set his heart. Included among them is an obelisk from Egypt that now lies on the site of the Circus of Maxentius. Also a few ornaments from the Palazzo Pighini. Arundel plans to erect them in his garden, I fancy. A fine sight they would make. Monuments to Rome in the heart of London.'

&n
bsp; Now, pushing aside draping willow branches, ducking among the aspens, Emilia hurried to catch Vilém, who was three steps ahead, the cabinet clutched awkwardly in his arms as he crept round the knot garden of York House. There was a side entrance beside a basket of bricks, under the scaffold, cast in shadow. When Vilém knocked hesitantly on the door, a cacophony of yelps and snarls arose from within. Both of them shrank backwards, Vilém fumbling with the cabinet. Claws scrabbled angrily against the inside of the door.

  'Quiet, quiet! No, no! Achille! No!'

  But the muffled voice from behind the door did little to silence the beasts. A few seconds later came the rasp of a judas, and Emilia caught the wink of an imperious eye.

  'Who knocks?'

  Vilém, apparently thinking better of announcing himself, made no reply, only hoisted the cabinet high enough for the eye to see. Then came more howling and the sound of crossbars sliding in their wooden grooves. Seconds later the door squealed open a crack to reveal four snouts, clamorous and slobbering. A pack of buckhounds. Emilia stumbled backwards, her heels slipping in the frost.

  'Achille! Anton! No!'

  The hounds spilled outside, leaping over one another's lithe backs like a troupe of acrobats. Emilia recoiled another step but tripped over the basket, then one of the tumultuous hounds. Its tail struck the hollow of her knee and she collapsed with a cry to the grass. Seconds later she felt on her throat and hands the hot breath of the pack, then their noses and tongues.

  'Salt,' explained a calm voice from somewhere high above. 'They adore the taste of salt. Obviously, my dear, you've been perspiring.' Hands clapped loudly. She looked up through a chaos of ears and tails to see a liveried figure tickling the jowls of one of the capering hounds. 'Here, lads. Here, my boys! Auguste! Achille! Anton! Good boys!'

  'We have come on important business,' Vilém was saying from where he cowered beside the door, holding aloft the cabinet as two more of the hounds, lean and spotted, stood on their hind legs and pawed at his belly and chest like children patting his pockets for sweets. 'We would speak to Mr. Monboddo!'

  'Do come in, please,' said the footman, sniggering. 'Mind the carpet, though, won't you? That's it. The Earl is most particular where his carpets are concerned. Oriental, as you can see. Very fine, this one. Hand-knotted. All the way from Turkey.' He was ushering the hounds inside. 'A gift from the Grand Vizier!'

  ***

  The walls of the corridor were lined with busts and marble figures like the ones in the garden of Arundel House, their ancient noses and lips obliterated like those of syphilitics. Some were still inside wooden crates packed with straw, where they looked like poets and emperors reposing in their coffins. Marbles snatched from Arundel, Emilia supposed. Further on, portraits in their heavy frames leaned towards them from hooks on the wall; others still in paper wrapping bound by twine sat upright on the floor.

  Emilia barely registered any of them as she passed. The baying of the canine pack, its numbers now enlarged, was deafening in the close quarters. Excited tails thumped the walls and thwacked the canvases. Pink tongues drooled glittering necklaces across the Vizier's carpet, which seemed to stretch endlessly in front of them.

  'Good boys,' the servant in his mallard-green tunic was shouting above the din. 'Stout lads! Hearty fellows!'

  They were led through a succession of rooms, each one in poorer repair than the last. The interior of the house, like the exterior, seemed to be in a state of either destruction or reconstruction, it was difficult to tell which. They followed the footman up a flight of stairs, along another corridor, and finally into a large room bursting with more busts and fragmentary urns, more wooden crates, more portraits propped against a half-finished oak wainscot.

  'If you will wait here, please.'

  The servant disappeared with the hounds flinging themselves about him in frantic orbits, their claws clicking like dice on a gameboard. The sash had been raised and the room was freezing-cold. Emilia's heart sank. She turned round to reach for Vilém's hand, but he had already crossed the room and was squatting beside a half-finished line of shelves. The shelves were lined with books, some of which had been packed into three crates, also stuffed with straw, that stood in the corner furthest from the window. Vilém was lifting a volume from the shelf when a warped floorboard creaked. Emilia turned round to catch sight of a white ruff, a black cloak and a wink of gold earring.

  'From Hungary,' boomed the voice. 'The Bibliotheca Corvina.' The tone was deep and golden, like that of an orator or politician, though the speaker, from what Emilia could see of him in the poor light, was short, almost squat. 'Or I should say from Constantinople, where it was taken by the Vizier Ibrahim after the Turks invaded Ofen and pillaged the Corvina in 1541.'

  Vilém, startled, had almost dropped the book on the floor. Now he was rising to his feet, awkwardly. From down the stairs came the echoic yelp of a dog, then the bang of a door.

  'Corvinus's ex-libris is found on the inside,' the basso profundo was continuing. 'The purchase was negotiated by your friend Sir Ambrose. I believe he discovered it among the incunabula in the Seraglio.' The dark head turned to appraise the room: Emilia only very briefly, the jewelled chest in the middle of the floor more keenly. 'Is Sir Ambrose not with you this morning?'

  Vilém shook his head, still clutching the book. 'No. There's been some difficulty. He-'

  'Neither is the Earl, I regret to say. Pressing business at the Navy Office. A pity, Herr Jirásek. I believe Steenie very much wished to show you round the library himself. Though perhaps I might be of service instead?' The warped board gave another angry squawk as he stepped forward and made a polished bow. 'Henry Monboddo is my name.'

  Only when Monboddo straightened and stepped another pace forward on the warped board and into the glow of the sash-window-an actor striding centre stage, Emilia thought-did the ruff, cloak and earring finally resolve into a complete person. He was scarcely taller than Vilém but still gave off an air of unmistakable imperium, one enhanced not only by his voice-a heavy millstone grinding bolts of velvet-but also an aquiline nose, a neatly cropped beard and a head of black hair as thick and glossily oiled as the highly prized pelt of some aquatic animal. There was also, Emilia thought, a raffish gleam in his dark eyes, as if he had glimpsed in some corner of the room, over Vilém's shoulder perhaps, some ridiculous but titillating object or scene that only he could appreciate.

  'I must apologise on behalf of the Earl,' he was continuing, 'for the condition of the house. But improvements must be made if it is ever to do justice to his collections of marbles, paintings and, of course, his books.'

  'It's a… a most impressive collection,' stammered Vilém.

  'Yes, well… dare I say, mein Herr, that you have brought your hogs to a fair market?' He chuckled softly at that, a phlegmatic rumble that seemed to rise from the bottom of his blacked boots. But a moment later he looked altogether more serious. 'Not quite so impressive a collection, I fear, as Arundel's. But of course everything will be more favourably disposed once the shelves and cabinets'-he gestured with a broad sweep at the rickety shelving-'have been completed. You see, this entire house will be devoted to them, every last closet and chamber. Steenie purchased the lease from Sir Francis Bacon. At present he is in the process of negotiating the purchase of another property, Wallingford House, also very convenient for Whitehall Palace. Viscount Wallingford is selling it at a most favourable price.' Laughter welled up again, thick and rich as molasses. 'A deal has been struck, you understand. Wallingford is selling it for just £3,000 in exchange for the life of his sister-in-law, Lady Frances Howard.'

  At this point the raffish eyes seemed to glimpse in the gloomy peripheries of the chamber a scene more preposterously endearing than ever. His broad features flirted with a mocking grin that gave him the look, Emilia suddenly thought, of a schoolboy contemplating some glorious prank. She looked quickly away, unnerved, and saw through the window Buckingham's lacquered barge casting off from the landing-stairs, then slipping
into the middle of the current, bows pointed downstream. Two figures sat inside, clad in green livery.

  'Perhaps you have heard of Lady Frances? No? The Earl of Arundel's cousin,' he explained, clasping his hands over his velvet, fob-chained belly as if stifling another rich chortle. 'Now she sits in the Tower, all forlorn, waiting for the axeman to come tapping at her door. Possibly news of this dreadful little scandal has reached Prague? The poisoning of poor old Sir Thomas Overbury? The disgrace of Somerset? No, no, no,' he was waving a ruffed hand through the air, looking more serious now, 'of course it has not. And why should it? You Bohemians have more important matters to consider than our petty squabblings here in London. But come…' He gestured with a flourish. 'May I have the honour of showing you something of Steenie's treasures?'

  For the next thirty minutes Monboddo swaggered through chamber after chamber with the pair of them in tow, listening to his burly voice booming off crumbling plasterwork and warped wainscot. The treasures made an impressive sight even if York House itself did not. Monboddo would unswaddle each, then lift it to the light, his swart face beaming with pride. He seemed to know, intimately, the provenance of each, whether it had come from a library in Naples after Charles VIII's Italian campaign of 1495, or from a church in Rome following its sack by von Frundsberg in 1527, when the Landsknechts invaded the Sancta Sanctorum and pillaged the tomb of St. Peter itself-or from any one of a dozen other battles, lootings and assorted atrocities. He recounted all of these stories of bloodshed, theft, betrayal and destruction with hearty relish. To Emilia, lagging behind, gazing at canvases sliced from their frames and marbles prised from their plinths, it seemed that beauty and horror had been fused together in Buckingham's precious objets, as if behind every glint of gilt or gemstone lay a story of violence and suffering. She was unnerved by the sight of Monboddo's hands as he fondled each item; of each thick knuckle with its floccus of black hair. They seemed not so much the hands of a collector or a connoisseur-hands trained to touch vases or violins-as the brutal paws of a lecher or a strangler.