Book of Souls by Glenn Cooper (26 page)

“Ayyyy!”

His scream echoed in his ears as he lost his grip and fell hard to the floor, landing in a pile of brittle human skeletons. His feet landed on leg bones and slid out from under him, which saved him from breaking his own legs. His right hip crashed down on a skull, which crumbled under his weight.

He lay on the stone floor, gasping in pain and shock, eye to eye with empty eye sockets.

“God save me!” he cried.

He swung his head around and saw yellow bones everywhere: on the floor and stacked high in stone shelves in the walls. He was in a crypt, of that there could be no doubt. A second wave of panic hit when he realized that if he were badly injured, he would be unable to climb back to the surface. He might wind up lying there for eternity, one more pile of bones. He pushed himself to a sitting position and took stock of his limbs.

His arms and legs could move well enough, but there was sharp pain in his right hip. The only way he could gauge the extent of the injury was to try to bear weight on it so he rocked himself to his knees then straightened himself to a standing position. He gradually put pressure on his right leg and mercifully it held and he was relieved to conclude that it was bruised but not fractured. He took a step forward and heard the sickening sound of cracking bones under his boots, but he successfully limped to the torch and picked it up.

John painfully shuffled through the crypt, stepping around bones, inuring himself to the presence of so much death. There were hundreds of corpses, thousands, perhaps, some bare skeletons, some desiccated and mummified with remnants of reddish hair and adherent brown cloth. He tried to remain focused on the prize. Did Felix’s Library still exist? He had no idea whether he was heading deeper into the cryptorium or in a more productive direction, but he committed to a path and slowly made his way by the light of the torch.

The arc of light found an archway, and, wincing at his painful hip, John quickened his pace almost as if he were fleeing the skeletons. He moved through the archway and found himself in altogether different environs.

He was in a large room, the edges indistinct to his eyes. A few feet away was the edge of a wooden table. He approached it and saw that it was a long table with a low bench on one side of it. He followed it along, touching its cool smooth surface with wonder. There were objects on the table, and he handled the first one he encountered. It was an earthenware inkpot! He lifted the torch over his head to cast its light farther. There were other tables, in rows!

It was then he noticed the stone floor, stained in blotches everywhere. Rust brown. Ancient blood. There had been buckets of blood.

It is true, he thought with a rush of exhilaration. The Felix letter spoke the truth, and, more importantly, the monks’ Scriptorium had survived the conflagration! If it survived, the Library might have survived too!

He followed the row of tables, touching each one as he passed. There were fifteen. Behind the last one, he was momentarily disappointed to see only a wall, but his heart sped again when he saw a wooden door with heavy iron fittings. He pulled the enormously heavy door open with all his might and shined his torch in.

He immediately fell to his knees and began to weep with joy.

The Library! It existed! It survived!

To his left was a great wooden case, filled with enormous leather-bound volumes. To his right was an identical stack and in between the two was a corridor just wide enough for him to pass.

He regained his feet and limped, awestruck, down the central corridor. On both sides were high bookcases that seemed to go on into the darkness forever.

He paused and pulled out one of the books. It was identical in every way to the Cantwell volume, though this one was dated 1043. He put it back and kept moving forward. How far did the chamber go?

He kept walking for what seemed an amazingly long while. Besides the great abbeys and palaces of London, he had never been in such an enormous structure. Finally, he saw another wall. There was another archway through it, and he kept on his straight path. As he crossed the threshold, he thought he heard a small rustling.

Rats?

He was in a second vault, seemingly identical to the first. Vast bookcases lined the corridor, plunging into the blackness. He checked the spines in the nearest case—1457. His mind raced. Now that he had found the Library, how would he reap its harvest? He needed to find the books for 1581 and beyond. That was where the profit lay. He would have to figure out how he might haul the precious booty out of the hole. He was completely unprepared for success, but he had confidence in his cleverness and was certain he would be able to fashion a plan once his heart stopped beating in his throat.

At each successive case he stopped to check dates. When he spied a book dated 1573, he turned to his right and headed deeply into the stacks.

There—1575, 1577, 1580, and, finally, 1581. The present! There were a dozen or more books engraved with the current year. He stood before them, shaking like a cornered rabbit.

Before him was the ultimate power in the world, the power to see the future. No one on the earth but John Cantwell had the power to say who would be born and who would die. His chest puffed out in pride. His father was wrong. He had, indeed, made something of himself. He reached slowly and deliberately for one of the books.

He never saw the blow coming, never felt pain, never felt anything again.

The rock caved in his skull and his brain filled instantly with a killing tide of blood. He crumpled on the spot like a child’s rag-filled doll.

Brother Michael called to his companion a few paces behind in the dark. “It is done. He is dead.”

“God forgive us,” Brother Emmanuel said, standing over the body and picking up the torch before it could ignite the books on the lowest shelf. They both dropped to their knees and prayed.

The young monks had spied the diggers passing their quarters and had followed them through the night and watched from afar as they worked the earth. When the local men fled, they had stayed to follow the activities of the remaining gentleman. When he climbed down a rope into the earth, they crossed themselves and quiet as snakes, slithering through the grass, followed him down.

Brother Michael was angry that the monastery had been invaded and angrier still that he had been compelled to take a life. “What is this place?” he spat.

His companion was a few years older, less of a physical sort, more cerebral. “Surely an ancient, sacred library, created by the brothers who lie peacefully in the crypt. It was sealed for a purpose, what, I cannot fathom. It is not meant for us. It was most assuredly not meant for this vile intruder. Taking a life is a great sin, but God will forgive us.”

“Let us take our leave,” Michael said. “I say we seal the hole, fill in the ditch, and say nothing of this to the others. Will you keep the secret with me, Brother?”

“In the name of our Lord, I will.”

They left John Cantwell’s corpse to lie where it fell and used his torch to find their way back to the rope. The body began its long, slow desiccation, and it would not be seen again by human eyes for 366 years.

A month passed, then another and another. Every morning Edgar Cantwell asked whether anyone in the household had heard anything of his son, John.

The autumn turned to winter, the winter to spring, and the old man incrementally came to accept that his oldest son had disappeared from the face of the earth. No one knew his destination when he left Cantwell Hall in secrecy, no one knew what might have happened.

One day, Edgar prayed in his chapel for guidance, and in his frail and increasingly confused state, he thought he heard the Lord whisper to him to reveal the family secret to his younger son, Richard, as he would need to be the bearer of the knowledge of the Vectis book. After chapel, he had the servants take him to the library. They sat him on a chair and he commanded them to climb the ladder to retrieve a wooden box hidden on the top shelf.

His manservant climbed up and passed some books to another pair of hands then announced he had found the box. He carried it over to his master and placed it on his lap.

The old man had not held the box in his hands for a long time. He was looking forward to spending a few moments with these papers, these old friends which bore so many memories—the Felix letter, which had made him spellbound as a young man, the enigmatic page with a date long in the future, the Calvin letter, which he treasured above all others for the memory of his esteemed friend, the Nostradamus letter for the memory of the man who had saved him from certain death.

He slowly opened the lid.

The box was empty.

Edgar gasped and was about to order the servant up the ladder again when he felt his chest explode with the pain of a thousand blows.

He was as good as dead when his withered body fell off the chair and hit the floor, and his servants could do nothing but frantically call for his children. His son, young Richard, was first on the scene, forever unaware that the secret of Vectis had just died with his father.

WILL AND ISABELLE sat in the library, the Nostradamus letter before them on a table. The enormity of their discoveries of the past two days had left them spent. Each seemed more momentous. They felt like they were two souls floating within the eye of a hurricane—everything around them peaceful and routine, but they knew they were dangerously close to a swirling, violent storm.

“Our book,” Isabelle muttered. “It’s had a profound effect on great men. When this is finished, I’m going to rush out to buy a copy of Nostradamus and read it with a newly found seriousness.”

“Maybe it was your book that made Calvin and Nostradamus great,” Will said, sipping his coffee. “Without it, they might have been historical also-rans.”

“Perhaps it will make us great too.”

“There you go again.” Will laughed. “I know it’s getting harder and harder for you to think about keeping this a secret but I’d rather you lived a long anonymous life than a short famous one.”

She ignored him. “We must find the last clue though I can’t imagine how it could top the first three. I mean, my God, the things we’ve found!”

He had an urge to call Nancy to thank her for her contribution. She’d be at work. “It’s all about the son who sinned,” he said.

Isabelle frowned. “I don’t know where to start on that one.” She heard her name being called from the Great Hall. “Granddad!” she shouted loudly. “We’re in the library.”

Lord Cantwell came in, clutching the newspaper under his arm. “Didn’t know where you were this morning. Hello, Mr. Piper. Still here?”

“Yes, sir. I’m hoping today’s my last full day.”

“Is my granddaughter not being an adequate hostess?”

“No, sir. She’s been terrific. I just need to get back home.”

“Granddad,” Isabelle asked suddenly, “do you consider any of the Cantwells as great sinners?”

“Other than me?”

“Yes, other than yourself,” she replied playfully.

“Well, my great-grandfather lost quite a bit of the family fortune in a speculative arrangement with a shipbuilder. If it’s a sin to be a fool, then he’s one, I suppose.”

“I was thinking earlier—sixteenth century thereabouts.”

“Well, as I mentioned, old Edgar Cantwell was always considered a bit of a black sheep. The man flip-flopped from Catholic to Protestant with whippetlike speed. Rather expedient, I should think, but he avoided the Tower and kept his head.”

“Any blacker marks than that?” she asked.

“Well…” By his expression, Isabelle thought he had come up with something.

“Yes?”

“There was Edgar Cantwell’s brother, William, I suppose. There’s a small portrait of him as a boy hanging somewhere or other. In the early fifteen hundreds he accidentally killed his father, Thomas Cantwell. He’s the largish picture in the Great Hall on the south wall. The one on horseback.”

“I know the one,” Isabelle said with growing intrigue. “What happened to William?”

Lord Cantwell made a throat-cutting gesture. “Did himself in, supposedly. Don’t know if any of that is true.”

“When was that? What year?” she asked.

“Damned if I can tell you. Best way would be to check the date on his headstone.”

Will and Isabelle looked at each other and sprang up. “You think he’s in the family plot?” she exclaimed.

“Don’t think so,” Lord Cantwell sniffed. “Know so.”

“Tell me there’s a family burial ground here!” Will said loudly enough to make the old man grimace.

“Follow me,” Isabelle cried, running out the door.

Lord Cantwell shook his head, sat himself down in one of the vacated chairs, and began to read the paper.

The Cantwell cemetery was in a wooded glade at the far end of the estate, not an oft-visited corner as it distressed the lord to visit his wife’s plot and the vacant patch that awaited his remains. Isabelle came by occasionally but usually on a bright, summer morning, when the cheerfulness of the day counteracted the heavy gloom of the place. It had not been attended for several weeks, and the grasses were high. The weeds were wilting from the lateness of the season, and they drooped lazily against the stones.

There were eighty or more stones in the plot, small for a village cemetery, large for a private family ground. Not all the Cantwells had made it in. Over the years, many had fallen in battle in one war or another and were buried on English battlefields or in foreign lands. As they entered the glade, Isabelle explained how difficult it had been to get the local Council to give her grandfather a permit to bury his wife there. “Health and Safety regulations,” she huffed indignantly. “What about traditions?”

“I like the idea of a family plot,” Will said gently.

“I’ve got a bit chosen for me. Under that lovely old lime tree.”

“It’s a nice spot,” Will said, “but don’t be in a hurry.”

“Out of my hands, isn’t it? All predestined, remember? Okay, then, where’s our sinner?”

William Cantwell’s headstone was one of the smallest in the graveyard, almost completely overgrown, so it required a methodical search through the centuries to find his marker near the middle of the plot. It simply had his name and the date, 1527.