He had found it when Catherine, then the dutiful wife, was sorting out the muniments room to restore some order in it after the neglect of her husband. Mainly legal documents, the memorial stories of long-dead members of the domain, records of crop yields and so on, dusty unrewarding work that had taken weeks to complete with a handful of assistants. The manuscripts were in a lead box, inside a wooden, iron-clad chest.
‘Do you wish to take them?’ Catherine had asked.
He had shaken his head. ‘Not yet. Not until I know what they are.’
‘How can you know, if you can’t read them?’
‘Work, my Lady,’ he said with a smile. ‘The sweat of my brow, the labour of the years. Persistence and effort. If I can’t read it, no one else can. So I’m hardly depriving the scholarship of anything.’
‘Arrogant man!’ she said. ‘Even if you are truthful. Tell me why it is so important.’
He had done so, and she had listened with fascination. ‘Where did we come from? Who are we? Who were the giants? I doubt this will provide an answer, but it may offer clues.’
‘This will tell you?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘How should I know? All I’ve unpicked so far is a few short sentences. It speaks of a young boy who has a vision on a hilltop. His name is Jay. The longest passage reads, “It smiled once more, a radiant, celestial smile that brought the warmth back to his body. It raised its hands in what Jay took to be a gesture of peace, then took a step back and was gone.”’
‘What do you think is the meaning of it?’
‘It makes no sense to me. It is obviously of a deep religious significance; the balancing of the celestial with warmth in the sentence suggests linkages between heaven and comfort. Note the words “what Jay took”, which imply doubt and hidden threat. But it is only a passage from a larger text, which remains hidden to me. Then there is another, longer one which I cannot read.’
There the matter had rested until one day, some months later, Henary had gone on a Visitation and had been interrupted by a questioning child. When he had interrogated the family about the boy, he had got the shock of his life.
‘Please forgive him, please. He’s not been himself. He had a shock today, on the hillside...’
‘... says he saw a girl. Don’t we all...?’
‘... makes things up. Sees a fairy. Then the fairy vanishes before anyone else can see it. Of course it does.’
But the name was wrong. Until he questioned the boy himself — ‘everyone calls me Jay.’
Henary had not slept that night. How could it be? What did it mean? How could a child have relived so precisely a sentence of such antiquity?
He had to know the truth but Jay knew nothing. So Henary had taken the boy and begun his education. He had responded well; indeed he was a very able student who had bolstered Henary’s reputation. This Henary carefully hid from his pupil. Jay knew, certainly, that he was quite clever, but Henary did not wish him to become proud, for ‘pride dulls the mind, and blunts the spirit.’ All the while he waited, and whenever he went to Willdon he took out the manuscript and worked on it some more. The girl and the boy would meet again, the words told him eventually.
Henary was annoyed by this, and the temptation it represented. He was trying to unravel the document as a light into the past, and here it was, offering the very different temptations of prophecy.
He had spent his entire career attacking such stuff. All the mystical nonsense babbled by his feeble-minded colleagues he would dismiss, and methodically pick apart their musings, subjecting them and the texts to the cold light of reason. The Story was the truth, but it was not always direct in communicating it. It certainly contained no magic and no prophecies. It concerned what was, not what will be.
But in his last months even Etheran had begun to wonder whether there was something in the utterances of hermits and the interpretations of mystics. Now here was this manuscript, which had foretold Jay and his encounter on the hillside, presenting a new, unrivalled opportunity to test the power of such things. Jay would, one day, trespass in the forest and the girl would appear once more, near the Shrine of the Leader. That was the prediction.
Much was uncertain, there were so many passages and words he could not understand or decipher, but the outline was clear. So he would bring Jay to Willdon and see what happened. He would prove to his satisfaction that this manuscript was not, in fact, magical. It was not prophetic. He would present his case at Ossenfud in a blast against all those who took such things seriously.
‘Why do you pursue this?’ Catherine asked him.
‘Because I need to know. This is undoubtedly a manuscript of high importance. I do not want it diminished by becoming the plaything of soothsayers. It may contain great wisdom. I do not want that lost because it gets tangled up in superstitious babbling.’
‘You really think an apparition will show up in the Shrine?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And if one did?’
‘That would be awkward.’
‘Does your student know any of this?’
‘Not a word.’
There was no guide in the manuscript about when, or how. If the girl did not appear, then sceptics would argue that it was because the manuscript was a fraud, and mystics would respond that he should have brought Jay to the outskirts of Willdon the year before, or six months later. He had worried for long months, checked and rechecked. Then he had decided. Not doing anything would certainly produce no result. He took Jay to Willdon, left him outside and told him not to dare set foot inside the domain. Then he had gone to wait.
‘Is everything ready, Lady Catherine?’
‘I believe so. Your directions are so very poor I have had to use almost every man I have at my disposal. But if your boy enters my land, he will be seen and followed.’
‘You won’t frighten him? I feel as though I am deceiving him, and don’t want him to suffer for my foolishness.’
‘Not a hair on his head will be so much as ruffled.’
Henary was sitting opposite her at a table. He closed his eyes and put his fingers to his lips, uttering a silent prayer, then looked up at her. Truly, she was a remarkable woman.
‘Do not think, by the way, that I am unaware of the gravity of what we are doing,’ she said. ‘I know full well that if this goes wrong and it becomes public then my reputation will be damaged. Gontal would be delighted to have evidence that I believe in summoning spirits and such nonsense.’
‘Then why are you helping me? Goading me on, indeed?’
‘Because you have fascinated me. Also, if the great Henary is about to make a complete fool of himself, I want to watch. Don’t worry, though; the realisation will be my private pleasure. There is some knowledge which is best kept secret.’
She leaned back in her seat — higher than his; she liked these little demonstrations of her authority. ‘Are you sure this manuscript is as old as you say?’
‘I have no idea how old it is, but it is certainly ancient. I could prove it if you wanted, by showing you how the passage I am working on employs certain symbols, certain grammatical forms, uses words that are otherwise unknown. This manuscript, in other words, may tell us about the age of giants. If it does, then the Story itself may become simply part of a much greater story, perhaps not even the major part of it. If there is any power in it, then that is where it lies.’
‘Yet Jay saw a fairy.’
‘Coincidence, I’m sure. If it happened again, of course...’