'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.