A Burnable Book (22 page)

Chapter xxix

San Donato a Torre, near Florence

I
t’s remarkable, Sir John,” said Adam Scarlett. “And alarming.”

Hawkwood, fresh from his weekly bath, had thrown on a loose robe. He peered into the mottled glass, shaving his neck. “Perhaps it’s nothing,” he said.

That morning a servingwoman and her husband had been cleaning one of the smaller
villette
to make room for an envoy from Rome. Four of the chancellor’s clerks had vacated the week before, having made a mess of the outbuilding, and it needed a top-to-bottom scrubbing. Her husband had been shoveling old coals from the main hearth when he came across a half-burned quire behind the grate. The edges were badly charred, several pages rendered unreadable. Yet there were at least a dozen nearly full sheets with legible letters and mysterious signs scribbled across both sides. The man had promptly brought the quire to the
condottiero
.

“The hand matches Il Critto’s, I’ll be bound,” said Scarlett, paging through the quire and eager to examine it further. “This could only have been his work.”

Hawkwood toweled off. “So what did our friend leave behind?”

Scarlett shook his head. “Hard to tell, sire. Only one of these pages makes any sense to me. It’s in Italian, if it even deserves the name.” Scarlett read it aloud. A short set of awkward sentences conjugating the verb
nascondere
.
I nascondere, si nascondono, si nasconde . . .

I hide my knowledge beneath my words.

You hide your ignorance beneath your power.

He hides his treason beneath his loyalty.

The fumblings of a man still practicing a tongue not his own.

When Scarlett had finished reading through the grammatical exercise Hawkwood shrugged, reached for his hose. “So he was honing his Italian. What does this prove, Adam? We’ve never had reason to doubt his loyalty.”

“Nothing, Sir John. Merely that he used this quire for casual writing in addition to his ciphers. As for the rest . . .”

“Well?”

“It’s like reading pebbles on sand. None of it means anything to me, and I don’t have the quality of mind capable of sorting it out. Il Critto kept his ciphers to himself.”

“As I warned him he should, on peril of his life, and damn me for a fool!” He laughed gruffly, then considered the matter. “I suppose we need some help, then.”

Scarlett agreed. That afternoon he left for Siena, where he asked around at the
studium
. He was back two mornings later with the sharpest mind on the faculty. A purse, a polite request, a few vague threats: there had been little resistance. With Hawkwood there rarely was.

In the gallery the
condottiero
invited the dazed man to sit with him on the padded bench he used at his desk. The wide surface was taken up in large part with a marked-up map of Tuscany, Lombardy, Romagna, and the Veneto: troop movements and garrisons, debts owed to the company, the intricate web of Hawkwood’s empire. He liked to hold his strategic conversations here, where his power could be spread out before him for the benefit of his visitors.

“In what discipline is your training, Maestro Desilio?”

“Law, Ser Giovanni, at Bologna. Though logic is my greater strength.”

Hawkwood glanced at Scarlett. “Well good, then. We need a logician’s mind to crack these rocky nuts. Did my man Scarletto explain all this to you?”

“He did not, Ser Giovanni.”

So Hawkwood did. “What you see before you, sir, this mess of scorched parchments and half-burned papers? This is all that was left behind by one of my associates.”

“Associates, Ser Giovanni?”

“He left our service earlier this year. His mother dies, he’s the sole heir, he thinks of home—the details don’t particularly matter. Though his profession mattered a great deal to me, as it soon shall to you. You see, this man was my cryptographer, Master Desilio.”

“Your—your cryptographer?”

“Il Critto, we called him,” said Hawkwood. “The man responsible for taking my dispatches and letters and casting them into cipher for delivery abroad. To my garrisons, to my contacts in Rome, Paris, London. You are familiar with cryptography?”

Despite the peculiar situation the logician looked intrigued, provoked by the intellectual challenge. “I am, Ser Giovanni. At the
studium
we have several books on this craft. By Master Roger Bacon, by al-Kindi the Moor, the latter translated into Latin. I’ve not studied them carefully, but I know the rudiments, and I can certainly loan you these books.”

“Excellent,” Hawkwood said, nodding eagerly. “Though I have a different sort of loan in mind.”

Scarlett watched them for a while, the way Hawkwood had of warming up his visitors, making them feel comfortable in his presence, even when he was delivering unwelcome news. Yes, you will be my guest here at San Donato, at least for a time. No, you won’t be going back to Siena today, nor tomorrow. Better to write a letter, requesting that the books in question be sent back with my man. You will certainly be paid well, and the
studium
compensated for your absence, however extended it should prove.

“Do you have any further questions or concerns about this arrangement?” Hawkwood asked him.

The man paged through the quire, his mouth at a rueful slant. “Only that this task, Ser Giovanni . . .”

“Yes?”

“These sorts of ciphers do not lend themselves to expediency. Breaking them could take—it could take months.”

Hawkwood’s smile stiffened. “Months I don’t have. Weeks? Perhaps. Days? Even better.”

The logician, knowing better than to shake his head, took a heavy breath. “I will do my best, Ser Giovanni.”

Scarlett watched Hawkwood incline his head. “I know you will, Maestro Desilio.”

Chapter xxx

Paternoster Row

F
rom the northwest corner of St. Paul’s churchyard Edgar peered across the busy lane, his head filled with the muddle and din, his stomach rumbling with hunger. He’d hardly eaten in days, relying on the sparse alms of the parishes as he skulked around the city, trying to elude the constables and that hook-scarred man on Gropecunt Lane. Swyving was a hard business, yet it was nothing compared to the week he’d experienced as one of the city’s thousand beggars: sleeping in abandoned horsestalls, moldy bread plucked from gutters, the cold anonymity of London’s poorest souls, trying to stay invisible or feign lameness so they wouldn’t be put out at the gates. Yet now it was time.

He pushed himself off the booth and walked toward Paternoster Row, past several parchmenters’ shops. Halfway down the street a shop matron, hair tied back in a simple scarf, bargained with a neat-looking man over a bundle at her feet. A reeve or steward, Edgar guessed, commissioned to purchase parchment for his employer.

“That’s too high, Mistress Pinkley,” the man wheedled. “The brothers of the Charterhouse toil for the Lord, not for themselves.”

“The sum wasn’t too high for my late husband, nor too high for me. You should get a smell of what I charge the friary.” A harsh cackle. “But for this stack of lambskin? Four shillings a dozen is passing fair for the holy disciples of the Grand Chartreuse, and I’ll have not a penny less. The finest lambs of Sunbury-on-Thames in these skins, nor will you find a thinner lot on Paternoster Row.”

Edgar waited while the man paid and trudged off with the parchments. The parchmentress turned to him with a ready smile which faded somewhat when she saw this vagrant at her shop door.

“What is it?”

He looked down at his hands. “A book, mistress. A book to sell.”

“A book to sell, eh?” She took in the shoddy hose, the frayed cap. “Most come to Paternoster Row looking to purchase books, not sell them. And what’s a bairn like you doing with a book?”

“Came into my possession, willed me by my mother, bless her,” he lied. “I have no reading to speak of and don’t know the matter of it but I believe it’s a valuable thing.”

The parchmentress grinned. “A primer is it, a painted book of hours that’s been in your family? A Bible perhaps, or the blessed Psalter?”

Edgar held it out. The parchmentress looked down at the book and took it briskly. Untying the thong with an adept tug, she gave the embroidery an admiring glance, handed the cloth back to Edgar, then smoothed her hands over the volume’s covers.

“Thin little thing.” She flipped through the pages without, it seemed, reading a word, inspecting the thickness of the parchment, fingering several of the leaves with an expert feel for quality. “Heavy, the skins are. Could be scraped, I suppose, yield a clean book to write anew.” She closed the manuscript and slapped it against an open palm. “Six pence.”

Edgar felt his jaw slacken. Six pennies, for a book sought by half of London? He shook his head. “Not for this book, madam. Five—nay, six nobles, and I’ll have not a penny less.”

The parchmentress just stared, listening to her own words used against her, then burst into great peals of laughter, slapping her leg. “Six nobles, he says! Not a penny less! Why, aren’t you a gamey little fella! Tom! Get out here, friend!”

The neighboring shopkeeper appeared in his doorway. Edgar reached for the book. The parchmentress released it with a little shove, accompanied by a delighted recounting of Edgar’s demand for six nobles and he’ll have not a penny less, Tom, not a penny less. Edgar turned away and made for the corner.

So parchmenters, he’d learned, would find no interest in the book. Their interest in books was like men’s in maudlyns: of value for the outer aspect, the fineness of the skin. Not so much the words—and it was the words, Edgar suspected, that gave this book whatever value it had.

He was now on a smaller byway cutting down from Paternoster Row. Three-story houses with shops at the street level, a glaze of sulfur on the air. The tradesmen here seemed to specialize in painting pages with all the florid colors in God’s creation. Illuminators’ shops displayed fine samples of their work pegged onto smoothed boards hooked beside their doors. Several painters had pulled their stools and desks out on the lane that dry day, and the sun had reached a point in its arc that allowed their work to show to its best advantage. He paused behind a painter crafting an enormous page filled with black marks in square and oblong shapes. At the top left side of the page a cluster of singing monks stood inside a letter
P
—yes, a
P,
Edgar knew that much, and the
P
was colored in a shade of blue-green he imagined as the hue of the southern seas.

His shoulders sagged as he walked to the end of the lane. For these painters, books were things of beauty. This one had no beauty to it, that was for certain: no pictures aside from the hurried sketches at the edges of the pages, no great letters filled with holy men or dragons, no blue-green hues to ravish you with longing for the oceans of the earth.

He stepped onto a slightly wider lane. Here at least a dozen men sat at desks, in shops and out on the street, pointing ink onto surfaces of varying size. Like Master Strode’s clerks at the Guildhall, Edgar thought, putting letters to skin. A street of words.

Halfway up it he stopped to look over the shoulder of a younger man practicing his script on a large, rough sheet: a smooth line, a delicate curve, then he scratched it all out and started again, then again, until he noticed Edgar’s presence. He half-turned with a friendly smile. “Help you?”

“You’re—you’re a scriv—a scrivener, yes?” he stammered.

“This be the shop of Roger Ybott, master stationer of Creed Lane,” he said. “Tom Fish is my own name, sole apprentice to Master Ybott. Pleased to help you, whatever your wish.”

He considered his reply. “Is your craft in the words of books, then?”

He frowned. “The words of books?”

Edgar squinted at the writing desk. “These parts of London by St. Paul’s be filled with the bookish crafts, all different bits of it. Those that scrape the skin, ready it for writing—”

“Parchmenters on Paternoster Row, sure, sure,” said Tom Fish, head bobbing. “Though they don’t do their scraping in the city, just come here to sell out of their shops.”

“Then there be the painters, coloring the pages with every shade you ever—”

“The limners along Creed Lane.”

“And in this street there’s writing,” said Edgar. “Those who lime and scrape, those who paint, and here be those who write.”

“We do our share of the writing, sure,” said Fish, finally getting his meaning. “A commission from an abbot or an earl, we’ll put pen to vellum quicker than you can say your Ave Marie here on Ave Maria Lane.” He laughed at his own joke. “Stationer’s work’s important work, important as you’ll find in all London.”

Edgar pulled out the book. “Would you be so kind as to value this, Master Fish?”

Fish looked surprised, though also pleased to lend his expertise. “Let us see here,” he said, taking the book and handling it with a careful adeptness. “Mm . . . hmm . . . ahh, yes . . . ,” he murmured, showing off. Like the parchmentress, Tom Fish seemed to be examining the book at first only for its physical makeup, tugging at the pages, holding the spine against the sky. Then he started reading from the beginning, at first with a neutral curiosity, then with a slight frown, then, as he read on, with a widening of the eyes that made Edgar want to turn and flee. At one point he gasped softly. He flipped ahead to the final pages and scanned. He took a large step backwards, holding the book out in front of him as if it were a serpent about to bite.

He looked at Edgar, eyes wide with fright. An older man walked out of the shop. “What’s this then?” he demanded. The shop’s master stood only slightly taller than his apprentice, though his hewn face matched his craft, his eyes narrowed in a permanent squint, deep lines reaching for his ears. On his thinning hair he wore a round hat of blue silk, embroidered letters in black and white filling every inch.

Tom Fish turned to his master. “This young fellow here, Master Ybott, he—he wished to have this book examined, and so I’ve been about it for the last little while.”

“To sell, Master Ybott,” Edgar clarified. “I have no reading, so books be of no use to me excepting what price they might fetch.”

Ybott took the book from Tom, taking no notice of his apprentice’s state. He read selectively through the thin volume until he too went pale. He looked at Edgar, then at Fish. “Well now,” he said, his voice husky. “Not a book to bandy about, is it? And you’ve been carrying this on your person? Just walking along with it, not a care for your head?”

“Yes, sir—I mean no, sir,” said Edgar. “I know not the words nor the meaning of it. But it
must
be worth more than sixpence, yeah?”

“More than sixpence,” said Ybott, staring at him. Recovering himself, he cleared his throat, leaned toward Edgar, and rested a firm hand on his shoulder. “How came you by this book, young—what is your name, young man?”

“I am called Edgar, sir.”

“How came you by this book, Edgar?”

Edgar crossed his arms. “That be no man’s affair but my own, sir. The book be rightfully mine now, and I mean to sell it for what I’m able.”

Ybott gave him one of his deep squints. “You don’t know what pile you’ve stepped into, Edgar. You best come inside.” He held out his other hand, gesturing toward his shop.

Edgar stood his ground, recalling the encounter with Bickle, the beadle of Cheap Ward. He had no desire to enter yet another man’s shop, nor to be assayed further about this damned book. “I’d rather not, sir, if it be all the same to you.” He stuck out his jaw. “Now give me back my book.”

Ybott tilted his head, holding a tense smile. “As you wish. Be warned, though, this book is a dangerous thing to its owner, whether an illiterate vagrant, a Cambridge master”—he paused—“or a young woman taking on a man’s role.”

Edgar shrank away from him. Ybott had got it wrong, but not by much.

“We’re in the business of books,” the stationer said, pressing him. “We know what’s best when it comes to the worst, yes?” Sensing his hesitation, Ybott went on: “You appear hungry, or lost. There’s a desperate look about you. Come inside, please, and let me lend you whatever bookish wisdom I possess.”

Could Edgar trust him? Even as he supposed the man’s warmth to be motivated by something other than Edgar’s well-being, he felt his suspicions dissolving—foolishly, perhaps. Yet Ybott was not a constable, nor a beadle, nor, he trusted, a murderer. So he allowed himself to be guided into the stationer’s shop, the apprentice close behind. Once the three of them were inside, Tom Fish shut the door. At the sound of the latch Edgar shuddered, wondering what lay before him.