‘That’s it.’
A new picture filled the screen: a strange beast with muscular flanks, curled horns and cloven hoofs. Three knights were pursuing it with spears, but had been thrown back by a forked blast that shot out from the beast’s rear end like lightning.
Nick read the caption. ‘Bonnacon, also known as Bonasus. A fabulous beast with a horse’s mane, a bull’s body and horns that curve back and so are useless for fighting. When attacked, it runs away, while emitting a trail of dung that can cover two miles. Contact with the dung burns its attackers like fire.’
Half-listening, Emily pulled the reassembled printout from the bag and laid it next to the computer. Nick looked between them: screen to paper, paper to screen.
The animals were the same. Not identical, but clearly the same fantastical species. What Nick had taken for a bushy tail was actually a cloud of fiery excrement spraying behind it.
‘Napalm shit,’ said Nick. ‘Glad I never walked behind one.’
‘Liber Bonasi means the Book of Bonasus. It could be a pseudonym, like Libellus or Master Francis.’
Nick moved around the cluttered table to look at the catalogue again. ‘So does it mention the Devils’ Library there?’
‘No.’ Emily pointed to the entry. The title had been ruled through, struck out, but unlike the other books there was no date or description of where it had gone. The margin was empty.
‘Olaf said Gillian found the reference here.’
‘If you were going to send a dangerous book to a secret library, you probably wouldn’t record it in the catalogue.’
‘Not so people could see.’ Nick pulled out his cellphone and turned it on – the first time he’d touched it since he left Paris. Blue-white light glowed from the screen.
‘It’s not ultraviolet, but it might give us an idea.’
He laid the phone flat against the medieval catalogue. Light spilled across the page. With tiny movements, he angled the phone back and forth, trying to catch any sign of hard-point writing.
‘What’s that?’
He just caught it: a faint scar in the paper, almost invisible in the weak light. He turned up the brightness on the screen, tracing the indentations like an archaeologist sifting through sand. He had to spell it out letter by letter; several times he realised he’d got one wrong and had to go back.
Bib Diab. Portus Gelidus.
Footsteps rang on the steel stairs. Nick jumped, but it was only the archivist. Emily swept up the catalogue and put it back in the box.
The archivist tapped her watch. ‘Time you must go.’
They followed her back up. On the stairs Nick asked, ‘Does the name Portus Gelidus mean anything to you?’
The archivist frowned, surprised.
‘Portus Gelidus is the name in historical times for Oberwinter. It is a village on the Rhine, in the mountains.’ She pushed through the door into the lobby and pointed through the front windows. Across the busy road, limp flags hung over a gangway on the pier. ‘You can go by the ferry.’
Nevado checked the street – still empty. His hat would have hidden his face from anyone watching from the windows above, and any CCTV cameras. He doubted the police would even bother to check: it was plain enough what had happened. An old man had lost control of his wheelchair on the ice, skidded and died. A tragedy. He walked briskly away until he found a street down the hill where the pavements had been shovelled clear. In the distance, he could hear sirens.
A vibration in his coat pocket reminded him his work wasn’t finished yet. He snapped open the phone and listened for a moment.
‘Do nothing. Wait for me.’
Once, Mainz had been protected by stone; now its walls were ramparts of snow, ploughed to the sides of the two-lane highway that divided the riverfront from the rest of the city. Traffic was at a standstill, the cars pulled over so that an ambulance could nose its way through. Someone must have skidded – easy enough, in this weather. Nick looked for the accident but couldn’t see anything.
They weaved between the stationary cars and came out on a wide concrete promenade over the Rhine. A biting wind hit them; out on the river it whipped the water into serrated white-capped teeth. By the flagpoles, a sailor in a blue boiler suit unwound a rope from the gangway. They hurried over.
‘Does this boat go to Oberwinter?’ Nick asked.
A roar drowned whatever answer he got as the ferry revved its engines to depart. Clouds of diesel smoke filled the air. The sailor pulled two tickets off a ring and shoved them in Nick’s hand.
‘You pay on board. Maybe we get you there.’ He looked at the sky. ‘Maybe not.’
They tottered down the gangplank and went inside out of the cold. They didn’t look back, so they didn’t see a man run across the road, dodging between the cars that had finally started moving, and examine the ferry timetable posted on a noticeboard on the pier. Nor did they see the man in the dark overcoat and low-brimmed hat who strode up a minute later.
Ugo heard Nevado coming and turned. ‘The first stop is Rüdesheim – not far. Maybe with the car we can beat it.’
The cardinal shook his head. Out in the river, the ferry was passing between two huge coal barges.
‘We know where they are going.’
LXXII
Mainz
The ferry pulled away from the pier, navigating carefully between two barges loaded with timber from the forests upriver. It had been a wet August: a powerful current struck the small craft side on as it emerged from the lee of the larger ships. A brown wave slopped over the side; the water man paddled furiously, while the passengers gripped each other and crossed themselves. I watched their huddled faces from the safety of the riverbank. I had sat on that ferry once, a whey-faced youth setting out into the world. How far I had come.
Fust came out from a warehouse, passed behind a group of travelling players who had just disembarked, and approached. He greeted me as he always did.
‘How many pages?’
‘Nine.’
‘Where should we be?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘So far behind already.’ He frowned. ‘Why?’
‘In a project of this magnitude, certain problems only emerge with time. The types wear out faster than we had anticipated. We are using more ink than we allowed for – I do not know why. And we still cannot get the initials to align properly.’
‘The second press?’
‘Saspach promises it will be ready in two weeks.’
‘He said that two weeks ago.’
‘One of the posts wasn’t seasoned properly. He insisted we pull it apart and start again.’
Fust rolled his eyes. ‘Perfectionist.’
‘That is not what is delaying us. It is taking the compositors longer to compose the text than it takes the printers to print it. I have set them to work in two teams on different parts of the Bible, but Günther still finds too many errors. He sent one page back fifteen times yesterday before it was ready. Even then, mistakes slip through. We had pressed nine copies of one page yesterday before we noticed that two lines were the wrong way round.’
‘Paper or vellum?’
‘Vellum.’
‘You should press the paper copies first,’ he rebuked me. ‘It will make our mistakes cheaper. And you should be more relaxed about trivial errors. If we redo every page for each spelling mistake, we will still be pressing at doomsday.’
My face prickled. Any thought of a flaw in the book was like sores under my skin.
Fust turned away. ‘Walk with me.’
I hurried after him, skirting the puddles that soaked the waterfront. I glanced at the overcast sky; there would be more puddles by nightfall. I would have to check the roof on the paper store before bed.
‘The work you are doing is extraordinary, Johann.’
I kept silent. I did not trust it when he called me by name. Overhead, a crane squeaked as it winched sacks of quicklime off a barge. Some of the powder seeped through a tear in the sackcloth, hissing and boiling as it landed in the water.