‘A little. I couldn’t stop thinking.’ She stared out the window. ‘Gillian must have known something we don’t.’
Nick waited for her to go on.
‘She found the bestiary, and the card inside it – either of which would be a major discovery. But she didn’t tell anyone, not even Atheldene.’
‘So he says,’ Nick interrupted.
She acknowledged the point. ‘Then she locked the card in a bank vault and the book in the deep freeze, and disappeared. I assume to look for the “other” bestiary. Why?’
Nick sipped his coffee and let Emily continue.
‘She knew something. Something that made the other book even more valuable than the one she had.’
‘What?’
Emily screwed up her face. ‘I don’t know. But she must have found it quickly. She was only in Paris for a day after she saw the book.’
‘The day she went out to see Vandevelde.’ Nick thought back to the physicist, his evasions, his eagerness to prove he had nothing to hide. He wanted to pull out the card again, to see what Gillian might have seen on it. In the train carriage, even half empty, he didn’t dare.
‘Whatever it is, someone’s excited about it,’ he said. ‘It’s unreal. The speed they turned up at the book warehouse – and before that at the library. But if they know all about the book, why are they chasing after us to find it?’
Emily looked out the window, where the snow flurries were gathering force. ‘Maybe they don’t want to find it at all. Maybe they want to make sure it stays hidden.’
Near Liège, Belgium
Brother Jerome pored over the desk and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Seeing Emily again had left him with a splitting headache. He reached for the plastic jar that was never far from his desk and popped two pills. As a younger man he’d prided himself on keeping his body pure. A temple, a fortress of God. Now the temple lay in ruins: flooded with caffeine to keep him alert, sedatives so he could sleep, codeine for the headaches and some pills his doctor had given him for his heart. And some stronger drugs, powders that couldn’t be prescribed, for the memories.
He looked over the notes he’d written.
bestiary
nova forma scribendi
Armand, Comte de Lorraine (Strasbourg??)
A new form of writing. Emily had always had a brilliant mind, a sort of academic cunning that knew when to look deeper. But there were some things she didn’t know. That was what she’d recognised in him: a depth of experience without equal. It had been an intoxicating mix.
Why did you come here? Jerome asked for the hundredth time. He was pleased he had managed to stay so outwardly calm – a lifetime of religious self-discipline still had some hold – but it had been an immense effort. The feelings she still aroused, anger and longing.
Forget her. He tried to focus his thoughts on the book again. Another bestiary in a new form of writing, illustrated by the Master of the Playing Cards. It was incredible. The discredited theories and baseless speculations would turn out to be correct. And maybe other, deeper secrets that prudent men only whispered.
A tentative knock sounded from the front of the house; his heart leaped. It was shameful, but he didn’t care. She’d come back. He jumped to his feet and ran to the door, gathering the dressing gown around his thin waist. Without even bothering with the peephole, he unlatched the door and pulled it open.
Two men stood on the doorstep. Both wore heavy black coats with the hoods raised against the cold. They pushed inside before he could react. Jerome stumbled back and fell against the wall. The shorter of the two men unzipped his jacket and rested his hand inside the lapel; the other man pulled back his hood to reveal a craggy face with a patrician crest of white hair, and coal-black eyes that seemed to bore into Jerome’s soul.
Jerome stared. ‘You.’
He had only met him once, thirty years ago: a Spanish priest from an obscure office of the Vatican, visiting a promising young researcher who had just begun to make a name for himself. Even then, menace surrounded him. He had spent half an hour asking about Jerome’s work – always stiffly formal, but lethal, poised like a fencer probing his opponent’s guard. At the end he had said, ‘There are many undiscovered books in this world. Some are treasures undeservedly lost; others vanished for a reason and should remain forgotten. If you ever find one of these latter books, you must tell me at once.’
In the years afterwards, Jerome had occasionally seen photographs of the priest – at first only in Church bulletins, then in newspapers and finally even on television. In the whispered gossip of his order he heard rumours about the methods the priest had used in his rise to power, and believed them.
And now he was standing in Jerome’s living room, beside a squat thug with a broken nose and a livid scar across his chin. A cardinal’s jewelled ring gleamed on his finger. He looked around the dishevelled room, at the half-empty coffee mugs clustered around the chair.
‘You have had visitors today?’
‘Only memories.’
Behind Nevado, the thug pulled his arm out of his coat. A black pistol had appeared in his hand. He squinted down the barrel as he pulled back the slide and snapped it home. The sound made Jerome wince.
‘Sometimes memories come to life.’ Nevado moved forward; Jerome cringed, pressing his bony shoulders against the wall. ‘You, Brother, have good reason to fear them.’
Jerome looked into those pitiless eyes. He didn’t even try to hold their gaze. His spirit had been broken long ago. He couldn’t resist: they would find out everything.
‘She came here,’ said Nevado. ‘Emily Sutherland – your little Héloïse. Did she bring you a book?’
‘No one came here.’
Jerome’s head snapped against the wall as Nevado struck him, a stinging blow. Blood dribbled from his lip where the cardinal’s ring had cut him.
‘Liar. She was here. Did she bring her new boyfriend to flaunt him? To taunt you? Did she offer you her body again if you would help them?’
Jerome’s dressing gown sagged open. His naked body seemed to shrivel under Nevado’s glare. He imagined Nevado’s hands on Emily’s throat, that cold smile never wavering.
There was only one way to protect her. Jerome launched himself forward, pushing off the wall as he lunged past Nevado for the pistol. He knew he wouldn’t make it. The gun came up and fired three times into Jerome’s chest. The first bullet went straight through his heart. He collapsed on the floor, his blood pumping into the carpet.
‘Idiot,’ hissed Nevado. ‘We needed him to talk.’ He gazed around the room. So many books, so much chaos. It would take hours to search the house. He had an audience in Rome in three hours: people would talk if he missed it. Gossip didn’t matter to him, but if anyone looked into where he’d been there might be trouble. He couldn’t risk being discovered here.
But Nevado had built his career on seeing what other men could not. He stood very still in the centre of the room and slowly scanned it, dismantling it with his eyes. Ugo, the guard, waited behind him.
He looked through an open door to the study beyond. He saw a desk whose jumble of books and papers had been pushed back to clear an open space. A magnifier, a UV penlight, a foam cushion and a pair of white gloves filled the space.
In an instant, Nevado had crossed into the study and was examining the desk. Ugo came up behind him, surprised by how quickly the old man moved.
It didn’t take Nevado long to find everything he needed. Crumbs of worn leather littered the cushion, and a book beside it was weighted open to a page showing the queen of wild men. The notepad beside it displayed the list Jerome had made just before he died.
Nevado read over it.
Armand, Comte de Lorraine (Strasbourg??)
A shiver ran down his spine. They’d found it. His life’s work, now almost complete.
He turned to Ugo.