‘Leave me alone,’ I hissed. ‘It is done.’
With a last, bewildered glance at Kaspar, Günther hurried from the room. I heard his footsteps recede down the stairs, the bang of the door as he left the house.
Through tear-stained eyes, I looked up at Kaspar. I felt the vellum of his hateful book, smooth as a lamb.
‘All the things that Fust accuses me of: the missing parchment and ink, the types that reappeared in the wrong place. That was you.’
‘Some – not all. The priest Günther has had a profitable sideline of supplying the scriveners of Mainz with paper for the last year. And often at night when I crept down to use the press, I found Peter Schoeffer practising his craft. Perhaps he knew this day would come.’ He laughed at me. ‘You were always a poor judge of character, Johann.’
I gazed at him, trying to hold together the shattered pieces of my heart. ‘Why did you do this to me?’
‘I did it for you. To show you the potential of what you have created. In the same way as it took the serpent to free Adam from the garden of perfection where God held him captive, I wanted to make you see what could be done.’
He pointed to the bestiary he had given me in Strassburg. ‘Do you know how much that cost the man who commissioned it? Fifty gulden. And what is it but a mirror to flatter his vanities? I gave him what he paid for. But with your press, Johann, we can change the order of things.’
He touched the scars on his face. ‘You know how I got these. Because a king, an emperor and a pope – Christians all – raped their lands in the name of God. But in my torments, the Armagnaken taught me there are other powers that hold sway over this earth. I learned things from them – secrets that even the Church fears.’
‘Secrets?’ I echoed.
‘This book is just the beginning. With your press, we can write things and make so many copies that the rich and the Church can not stop it. We will sweep them away in a torrent of fire and paper. Do you know why churchmen are slavering over your Bible. Because they think that if they control the art they will control the world.’
I almost wept with frustration. ‘That is what I wanted. Perfect unity.’
‘How could a man like you, of all people, want such a thing?’ He clenched his fist in fury. ‘Obedience to a Church which bleeds the poor while its bishops wear gold and fur? A Church which would rather collect fees than baptise souls? Which will sell you a receipt to expunge the same sins its priests commit tenfold? They do not deserve this invention, Johann. With the powers we can summon up, we will use it to destroy them.’
He took the book away from me. ‘I did not invent the beasts in this book. I drew them from life. I thought you of all men would see that.’
I buried my face in my hands. I heard a soft thud as he dropped the book on the bed beside me, then the creak of a floorboard. Perhaps I felt the soft touch of a kiss or a caress on my forehead; perhaps it was only a spasm. When I looked up, Kaspar was gone.
‘I can see why the Church wanted to keep this secret.’
Nick closed the book. His skin itched, as if the maggots had crawled out of the book and started to devour him. It had been a long time since he had felt so dirty.
Emily looked bruised by the encounter. Her face had gone so pale it was almost translucent. ‘It’s brutal. So much hatred in it. It’s hard to imagine it coming from the same man who printed the Gutenberg Bible.’
‘The typeface proves it.’
‘Do you think that’s why they hid it?’ said Nick. ‘To protect Gutenberg’s reputation?’
Gillian gave him a scornful look. ‘Did you even look at the book? It isn’t just satire. Look in the margins.’
Reluctantly, Nick opened the book again and peered at the decorated borders. The moment he saw the pictures, he knew he would never forget them. If anything, they were worse than the illustrations they framed, images he could barely describe.
‘It’s sick.’
‘Sicker than you think. It’s not just ornamentation. It’s an instruction manual.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The figure in the cloak? Why do you think he gets bigger in every picture? He’s getting closer. There’s a secret hidden in the pictures in this book, just like in the old alchemical texts. It’s a book of power.’
Nick stared at her. As always with Gillian, he couldn’t tell what she was really thinking.
‘You don’t really believe it works?’ But he could see in her face that she wanted to.
‘Somebody does,’ was all she said.
Nick didn’t know what to say. He looked at the picture and thought of the playful, witty beasts in the book they’d rescued from Brussels. ‘It’s so different from the other bestiary.’
Gillian stiffened. ‘The bestiary from Rambouillet? You found it? Can I see?’
Nick pulled it out of his bag and laid it beside its partner. They looked almost identical. He opened the back cover and looked at the inscription over the card.
Written by the hand of Libellus, and illuminated by Master Francis.
He also made another book of beasts using a new art of writing.
‘Which is hidden in the Sayings of the Kings of Israel.’ Emily supplied the invisible words.
Gillian frowned. ‘You know, I never figured out exactly what that meant. I suppose it must be something to do with this place – all the lost books.’
Nick looked up at the shelves towering over him. How many more secrets lurked among the old leather and rotting parchment? How many other terrible visions and diabolical rituals from men who had sought out the darkest powers of the earth?
A draught caught the back of his neck. The chill reminded him they couldn’t afford to linger.
‘How do we get it out of here?’
‘You don’t.’
Nick spun around. The double doors were open. For a moment, he almost believed that the incantations in the book had worked. A man with snow-white hair and eyes like coals stood watching them. His long coat flapped around his ankles in the breeze.
‘I think you have something for me.’
I lay on my bed and wept. I was betrayed. Fust and Kaspar between them had taken everything.
I fell into a sort of sleep, a dazed nightmare of ravenous beasts, crazed men and debauched women who came alive from the pages of Drach’s book. A diabolical mill swallowed men in its mouth and ground them to dust. A pope with cloven hooves sat on a throne and passed terrible judgement on me.
A vigorous pounding on the front door woke me. Was it over so soon? Had the court decided? I did not know how long I had been unconscious, and when I looked to the window all I saw was fog.
The front door crashed open. Footsteps pounded on the stairs, heavier than Günther’s. Too late, like a remorseful suicide in mid-air, the scales fell from my eyes and I felt the full, breathtaking scope of what I had lost. I wished I had not been so careless of it.
Two men burst through the door. They were not bailiffs, but armed soldiers in the archbishop’s livery. They shouted at me but I was too dazed to understand. They hauled me off my bed; one held me up while the other punched me in the face. I wondered if this was another nightmare, until I tasted blood in my mouth and decided it must be real.
They bound my hands and picked up my bestiary without looking at it. The other book, Drach’s abomination, had slipped behind the mattress where they could not see it. Then they tied a sack over my head and took me away.
LXXXIII
The old man was alone. Nick made to charge him, but Gillian grabbed his arms and held him back.
‘Don’t.’
As she spoke, another man came through the door, the Italian with the broken nose, the man Nick had fought in Strasbourg. He aimed his gun at Nick and grimaced.