Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper (12 page)

“This was my magic place when I was a child,” Isabelle told him as she drifted through the room, lightly touching book spines with her fingertips. “I love this room.” She had a slow, dreaminess, a languid contrast to the reference set in his mind of flighty college kids. “I played in here for hours at a time. It’s where I spend most of my time now.” She pointed at a long table crowded with notebooks and pens, a laptop computer, and stacks of old books with slips of paper sticking out, marking passages of interest. “If your poem’s authentic, I might have to start from scratch!”

“Sorry. You’re not going to be able to use it. I’ll explain later.”

“You’re joking! It would launch my career.”

“What is it you want to do?”

“Teach, write. I want to be a proper academic historian, a stuffy old professor. This library’s probably responsible for that odd ambition.”

“I don’t think it’s odd. My daughter’s a writer.” He didn’t know why, but he added, “She’s not much older than you,” which made her giggle nervously. He headed off the politely inevitable questions about Laura by abruptly saying, “Show me where the book was kept?”

She pointed at a gap in one of the eye-level shelves in the middle of the long wall.

“Was it always there?”

“As long as I remember.”

“And the books next to it? Was there a lot of rearranging?”

“Not in my lifetime. We can ask Granddad, but I don’t recall any shifting about. Books stayed in their place.”

He inspected the books on either side of the gap. An eighteenth-century botany book and a seventeenth-century volume on monuments of the Holy Land.

“No, they’re not contemporaneous,” she observed. “I doubt there’s an association.”

“Let’s start with the first clue,” Will said, retrieving the poem from his case. “The first one bears Prometheus’s flame.”

“Right,” she said. “Prometheus. Stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals. That’s my sum total.”

Will gestured around the room, “Anything come to mind?”

“Well, it’s rather broad, isn’t it? Books on Greek mythology? Hearths? Torches? The barbecue pit!”

He gave her a “very funny” look. “Let’s start with the books. Is there a catalogue?”

“Needs to be one, but there isn’t. Another problem, of course, is that Granddad has been rather vigorous in his selling.”

“Nothing we can do about that,” Will said. “Let’s be systematic. I’ll start on this end. Why don’t you start over there?”

While they focused on the first clue, for the sake of efficiency, they kept the others in mind to prevent redoing the exercise if possible. They kept a lookout for any Flemish or Dutch-themed books and any text that seemed to refer to a prophet of any sort. They had no inkling how to tackle the “son who sinned” reference.

The process was laborious, and an hour into it, Will was growing discouraged by its needle-in-a-haystack quality. And often, it wasn’t as easy as pulling a book out, opening the title page, and shoving it back. He needed Isabelle’s help with every book in Latin or French. She would come over, give a quick peek, and hand it back with a light, “Nope!”

The afternoon light, as muted as it was, faded completely, and Isabelle responded by turning on every fixture and taking a match to the fireplace kindling. “Behold, I give you fire!” she said as the flames licked the logs.

By early evening, they were done. Despite a not-very-old volume of
Bullfinch’s Mythology,
there wasn’t a single book that sparked a modicum of interest. “Either the poem’s not referring to a book, or it’s not here anymore. Let’s move on,” Will said.

“All right,” she said agreeably. “We’ll have a look at all the old fireplaces. Hidden panels, false mantels, loose stones. I’m having fun! You?”

He checked his phone again for a text messages from Nancy. There were none. “Having a blast,” he answered.

By Isabelle’s reckoning, there were six fireplaces that predated 1581. Three were on the ground level, the library, the Great Hall and the dining room, and three were on the first floor—in her grandfather’s bedroom above the Great Hall and in a second and third bedroom.

They began their inspection in the library, standing before the roaring fire and wondering what to do. “Why don’t I just knock on the panels for hollow bits?” she suggested. It sounded like a perfectly good idea to him.

The ancient walnut mantel sounded solid to her knuckles. They checked the bevels of the mantelpiece for hidden latches or hinges, but it appeared to be one immovable carpentered board. The stones of the hearth floor were solid and level, and all of the mortar looked similar. The fire was still going, so they wouldn’t be checking the brickwork in the firebox for a while, but nothing stood out to cursory inspection.

The fire in the Great Hall had long died out. Lord Cantwell was half-reading, half-dozing in his chair, and he seemed nonplussed over their investigative work as they tapped and felt their way around the massive fireplace. “Really!” he snorted.

The surround was beautifully fluted and shiny with age, and the mantelpiece was a massive beveled slab, hewn from one huge timber. Isabelle hopefully tapped on the blue-and-white square tiles, which were inlaid on the surround, each one bearing a little decorative country scene, but they all had the same timbre. Will volunteered to hunch over and crab-walk into the huge firebox, where he tapped at the bricks with a poker. But for his efforts he was rewarded only with patches of soot on his shirt and trousers. Isabelle pointed the smudges out and watched in amusement as he tried to brush them away with his palm.

The three other fireplaces got the same treatment. If something were hidden in one of them, they’d need a wrecking crew to find it.

It had gotten dark. The rain had stopped, and a cold front was racing through the heart of the country, bringing frigid, howling winds. Cantwell Hall lacked central heating, and the drafty rooms were getting chilly. Louise loudly announced she would serve tea in the Great Hall. She had restarted the fire and switched on the electric heater by Lord Cantwell’s chair, then made clear she was anxious to be off for home.

Will joined Isabelle and her grandfather in a light assortment of meat-and-pickle sandwiches, shortbread biscuits, and tea. Louise scurried around, doing some last-minute chores, then inquired if they intended to stay in the Great Hall for the evening. “For a while longer,” Isabelle answered.

“I’ll light the candles then,” she offered, “as long as you’re careful to blow them out before you turn in.”

As they munched, Louise used a disposable plastic lighter to light a dozen candles throughout the room. With the wind whistling outside, the fireplace hissing, and the ancient room in its windowless gloom, the candles seemed reassuring points of light. Will and Isabelle watched Louise as she ignited the last candlestick and retreated from the room.

Suddenly, they looked at each other, and simultaneously exclaimed, “Candlesticks!”

Lord Cantwell asked if they’d gone mad, but Isabelle answered him with an urgent question. “Which of our candlesticks are sixteenth-century or earlier?”

He scratched at his fringe of hair and pointed toward the center of the room, “The pair of silver-gilt ones on the table, I should think. Believe they’re Venetian, fourteenth-century. Tell your father that if I pop off, they’re worth a few quid.”

They rushed to the candlesticks, blew them out, and removed the thick, waxy candles, placing them on a silver tray. They were pricket style, with big spikes on bowls spearing enormous five-inch-diameter candles. Each candlestick had an elaborately tooled, six-petaled base of gold-coated silver. From each base rose a central column that progressively widened out into a Romanesque tower resembling the peak-windowed spire of a church, each of the six windows rendered in blue enamel. Above each spire, the column extended into the cup and pricket of the candleholder.

“They’re light enough, they could be hollow,” Will said, “but the bases are solid.”

He closely inspected the joined segments of the complicated column. She urged him on, “Go ahead, give it a twist,” she whispered. “Turn your back to Granddad. I don’t want to give him a heart attack.”

Will wrapped his left hand around the windowed spire and tried to turn the base with his right hand, gently at first, then with more force, until his face reddened. He shook his head and put it down. “No joy.” Then he tried hers with the same maneuver. It held firm as if it were forged from a single piece of metal. He relaxed his shoulder and arm muscles when a spasm of frustration made him try one more furious twist.

The column turned.

Half a rotation, but it turned.

She whispered, “Go on!”

He kept up the pressure until the column was spinning freely and the nongilded sleeve of a tube within a tube became visible. Finally, the base gave way completely. He had one half of a candlestick in each hand.

“What are you two up to?” Cantwell called out. “Can’t hear a thing.”

“Just a minute, Granddad!” Isabelle shouted. “Hang on!”

Will put the base down and peered into the hollow-tubed spire. “I need a light.” He followed her over to one of the standing lamps, stuck his index finger inside the tube, and felt a firm, circular edge. “There’s something in there!” He pulled his finger out and tried to have a look, but the incandescent bulb didn’t help. “My finger’s too big to get it. You try.”

Hers was thin, and she slid in all the way and closed her eyes to heighten the tactile impressions. “It’s something rolled, like paper or parchment. I’m in the middle of it. There! I’ve got it turning.”

She slowly twisted the candlestick around her finger, applying firm, gentle pressure with the pulp of her fingertip.

A yellowed scroll began to emerge.

It was cylindrical, about eight inches long, multiple sheets of parchment tightly rolled. In shocked excitement, she started to hand it to him, but he said, “No, you.”

She slowly unrolled the cylinder. The parchment was dry but not brittle, and it unspooled easily enough. She flattened the sheets with both hands and Will tilted the lamp shade for more light. “It’s in Latin,” she said.

“That makes me especially glad you’re here.”

She read the heading on the first page and translated it aloud: An Epistle from Felix, Abbot of Vectis Abbey, written in the year of our Lord, 1334.

He felt light-headed. “Jesus.”

“What is it, Will?”

“Vectis.”

“You know the place?”

“Yeah, I know it. I think we hit the mother lode.”

IN THE STILLNESS of the night, an hour after Lauds and two hours before Prime, Felix, Abbot of Vectis Abbey, awoke with one of his terrible headaches. There was cricket song outside his window and the faint pulse of waves from the Solent cresting against the nearby shore. The sounds were soothing but gave him only a moment’s pleasure before a spasm of nausea made him sit bolt upright. He fumbled in the dark for the chamber pot and dry-heaved.

He was sixty-nine years old and fiercely doubted he would see his next decade.

There was little food in his stomach. His last meal was beef broth prepared specially by the sisters, greasy with marrow and flecked with carrots. He had left the bowl half-uneaten on his writing table.

He threw off his covers, pushed himself from his straw mattress, and managed to stand with some swaying. The rhythmic pounding in his head felt like a blacksmith striking repeated blows on an anvil, each one threatening to upend him, but he was steady enough to retrieve his heavy fur-lined robe, draped over a high-backed chair. He slipped it on over his night smock and immediately felt its comforting warmth. Then he shakily lit a thick yellow candle and slumped on the chair to massage his temples. The candlelight played against the uneven polished stones of his bedchamber floor and reflected off the gaily colored glass of the courtyard windows.

The richness of the abbot house had always disquieted him. When he entered Vectis as a novice, so very long ago, his head lowered in humility, his coarse habit bound with cord, his feet cold and bare, he felt close to God, and thus, close to bliss. His predecessor, Baldwin, a flinty cleric who took as much pleasure poring over granary accounts as conducting mass, had commissioned a fine timbered house to rival those he had seen at abbeys in London and Dorchester. Adjoining the bedchamber was a magnificent great room with an ornate fireplace, carved settle, horsehair chairs, and stained glass. On the walls were cloth hangings, finely woven tapestries of hunts and acts of the Apostles, from Flanders and Bruges. Above the hearth was an artisan-tooled silver cross, the length of a man’s arm.

Upon Baldwin’s death many years earlier, the Bishop of Dorchester had chosen Felix, the abbey’s prior to ascend to be Abbot of Vectis. Felix prayed hard for guidance. Perhaps he should eschew the finery of the position and opt for a modest reign, sleep in a monk’s cell with the brothers, continue to wear his simple habit, take his meals communally. But would that not besmirch the memory of his mentor, his confessor? Would it not brand Baldwin a profligate? He bowed to the power of Baldwin’s memory, the way he had bowed to the power of the man during his life. Ever the faithful servant, he never failed to do Baldwin’s bidding, even when he had misgivings. What would have happened if he had questioned Baldwin’s decision to abolish the Order of the Names? Would things be different today had he not, with his own hand, lit the hay that consumed the Library almost forty years ago?

He felt too ill to kneel, so he lowered his throbbing head and softly prayed out loud, his Breton accent as coarse and pebbly as when he was a boy. The choice of prayer, from Psalm 42, came to him with spontaneity, almost taking him by surprise:

Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meatum.
I will go to the altar of God. To God, the joy of my youth.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen