‘You go to Strasbourg. I will meet you there as soon as I can. Find the American and his friend, and find the book they have. That is all that matters.’
He reached in his coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
‘If you find the book, tell me at once if the first page is the same as this. You understand?’
Ugo nodded. He took the paper – but Nevado had not let go. The black eyes locked on his.
‘If anything happens, if you are arrested or compromised, you destroy this paper immediately. No one can be allowed to see it. If you fail me in this, your wife, your children and all your family will suffer torments even you cannot imagine.’
His gloved fingers released the paper. Ugo stumbled back a step.
Almost to himself, Nevado murmured, ‘They have no idea what they have found.’
Strasbourg, France
Nick had never seen Strasbourg before. If he’d had an idea of how it would look, it probably involved great blocks of European concrete filled with parliaments, courts and commissions. Instead, he felt he’d stepped back a thousand years. The centre of the town was built on an island, the river a natural moat. Half-timbered houses hung over the narrow streets and alleys, funnelling the freezing wind so that it whipped snow in their faces. Many houses had fanciful creatures carved into their beams: grotesque faces sticking their tongues out at him in mockery.
A tram whistled past. Nick stuck out an arm to hold back Emily, who had been about to step out into the street.
‘Thanks.’ She gave him a sheepish smile. ‘I should have slept more on the train. I’m a wreck.’
Nick looked at her. She had piled her hair under her beret and turned up the collar on her coat. Her cheeks had flushed pink, and her eyes were bright in the cold. ‘You look pretty good for a wreck.’
Again, Emily seemed to flinch from the compliment. This time the smile was purely defensive. ‘I’ll feel better once I’ve had a shower and a hot meal.’
‘After we’ve been to the archives.’
They reached the cathedral, which dominated the heart of the city. Even with his mind on Gillian, Nick had to admire it. The facade was a vertiginous tangle of Gothic tracery: spires and pinnacles, a rose window, peaked arches and statues. A single tower stretched high above it, the pink sandstone spun to a lacy thinness that seemed incapable of supporting such a height.
Emily followed Nick’s gaze up the tower. ‘It’s almost exactly the same age as the playing cards. If the Master ever came here, he’d have seen it just the same way as we do.’
‘I’m more interested in if Gillian saw it three weeks ago.’
They carried on around the square, past rows of shops offering ice creams and souvenirs. Nick imagined that in summer tourists would swarm like wasps around their sticky offerings, but on a wintry day in January there was nobody. Half-empty wire racks of postcards sat forlornly on the pavement where they had been pushed out by hopeful shopkeepers, draped in polythene shrouds to keep off the snow. The plastic whipped and crackled in the wind, scaring the pigeons who scavenged on the cobbles.
The archives were housed in a gloomy stone building at the back of the square. They entered by a gate in a stone wall, and walked up a gravel path to the main door, past beds of rose bushes that had long since ceased to flower. Only the thorns remained.
Nick turned a heavy iron ring on the door and was admitted to the reception area. Nothing in the exterior had prepared him for it: instead of oak floors and ancient furniture, he found himself in a corridor with a linoleum floor and strip-lighting. A woman in a severe black skirt-suit sat behind a desk, underneath a poster in a plastic clip-frame.
‘Bonjour,’ said Nick. He turned to Emily. ‘Do you want to explain?’
‘I speak English,’ the archivist announced without looking up. She kept writing. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We’re interested in the library of the Count of Lorraine,’ Emily said. ‘We were told that it became part of your archive.’
A look of surprise broke the archivist’s scowl. She put down her pen. ‘You are the second person in a month to ask me about the Comte de Lorraine. Etrange.’
‘Who was it?’ Nick demanded. The archivist gave him a blank look. ‘Was it a woman, tall and thin with red hair?’ He pulled out his wallet and fumbled among the cards for the battered, passport-size photograph that he’d never got round to removing. Just in case. Next to him, he caught a sideways glance from Emily.
‘Was this her?’
The archivist pursed her lips in confusion. ‘Oui. C’est elle. But blonde.’
‘Do you remember when she came? The date?’
The archivist watched him through narrowed eyes. ‘Do you have her name?’
‘Gillian Lockhart.’
She flipped through a ledger that lay open on the desk, a register of names and dates and scribbled signatures. There hadn’t been many. Two pages back, Nick spotted it. The familiar shape, the bold G and the brisk lines that followed. A very masculine signature, he’d always thought.
He read the date in the left-hand column beside her name: ‘December 16 ’. She must have come here almost straight from Paris. Nick’s heart raced with more hope than he’d felt in a week.
‘And did she find it? The book she was looking for?’
A sigh. ‘I tell you the same as I have told her. The books of the Comte de Lorraine came here in the century of the eighteen hundreds. You know the history of Strasbourg?’
Nick shook his head.
‘In 1871, we are attacked by the army of Prussia. They surround the city and they bombard it. Much of the city burns – including the great library. Some books survive – but of the Comte de Lorraine, there is not.’
L
Strassburg
Often the fates drag us down like ocean waves and all our toils count for nothing. But sometimes, rarely, they rush us aloft on currents so quick even angels would struggle to keep pace. Such was my experience in those golden months in Strassburg. With Dritzehn’s money, I paid off my old loans and restored my credit. That allowed me to take out new loans, on better terms, to buy metals for our project – which in turn stood as collateral for another round of loans. Those bought more metals, which funded more loans – and so again, a virtuous circle. Of course there was little income in those months to repay the loans, but I had allowed for that. I had agreed that the interest would be added to the principal and none of it fall due until October of the following year, once the mirrors were sold in Aachen. Then, armed with the profits, I could turn my efforts back to the indulgences.
Some nights I dreamed that I sat atop a giant tower of mirrors stacked halfway to the sky, swaying and bending like a rope end in the breeze. The height made me dizzy; I knew that a single gust of wind might topple the whole tower and shatter it in ruin. But it never did.
Manufacturing the mirrors required two separate processes. The latticework frames had to be cast from the alloy, and the steel mirrors polished to a high reflective sheen. Eventually, the one would be attached to the other by means of clips, but we agreed this should be done as late as possible. When spring came we would hire a barge to carry our cargo down the Rhine to Aachen, and we did not want the mirrors scratched in transit. None of us knew how that might affect their holy properties. So we cast the frames at St Argobast, where I had the forge, and used Dritzehn’s house for the mirrors.
Late that September, the fates moved again. I had spent the day in Strassburg, arranging delivery of the next batch of metals and assuring my creditors that all was proceeding apace. The sun was edging towards the horizon, but I did not have to hurry. I made the journey between my house and the city so often in those months that I had acquired a horse, a docile mare I named Mercury. So I decided to visit Dritzehn.