The Book of the Lion (3 page)

Dominic Hallkyn sat in his car by the side of the road, watching the windshield wipers sweeping back and forth to clear the water away,
bock-bock, bock-bock
. While he hadn't been paying attention, the rain had picked up. The wipers' speed was now too slow, so every time the wipers passed, the rain gained back all the territory that had been cleared before the blades swept back.

Hallkyn realized that he hated the man with the book. He was arrogant, Hallkyn could tell, and he was enjoying holding the prize and making the world wait and drool like starving dogs—making Dominic Hallyn wait and drool like a starving dog, actually. He'd implied Hallkyn was the only one who knew so far, but there was no way to determine whether even that was true. It took Hallkyn five minutes of sitting in the car, letting every other vehicle speed through the puddle beside him and throw a big splash against the window beside his face, to get through the moment of hatred.

Hallkyn watched his mirrors and found an opening, then pulled out onto the road and drove to the university to his assigned parking space, number 364. He had chosen it himself as an Assistant Professor and waited years for it to become available. It was just a few feet from an arbor, so in the summer it was partially shaded, and in winter it gave him shelter from rain. He got out of his car, snatched his briefcase, ran to the arbor, walked with calm and dignity to the end of the covered sidewalk, then launched himself into a full sprint to the alcove where the door to Bacon Hall waited.

He went directly to his undergraduate lecture and performed brilliantly, acting out the lines his memory presented for recitation, varying tone and pitch to portray each character who spoke, his Middle English pronunciation natural and unhalting. Then he gave a concise and fascinating talk about what the works meant, leaving his listeners in a state far beyond the mere enthusiasm he generally aimed to arouse in them.

Hallkyn had achieved a small victory, and that helped. He had spent an hour resisting the temptation to cancel the class and go look at his email. The loathsome man who had sent the email would undoubtedly have a way of knowing when Dominic Hallkyn opened it. This way he would at least have spent an hour wondering if Hallkyn was even going to bother to look.

And then he was in his office. The room was a sanctuary and a workshop, and after thirty years of use, it felt like it belonged to him and not the university. The dark wood paneling and matching bookcases pre-dated his era by three generations, but all of the books were his. The collection of treasures— small fragments of illuminated manuscripts, a few pages from medieval church registers and government lists, were on loan from the university's collection. But by long tenure here they felt like his.

He closed the shade and locked the door. Then he turned on his computer and scanned the list of emails until he found one that said it was “B of L.” As he clicked on it he had an instant to hate the man again, and then he forgot about the man.

He could see a page on the screen and he enlarged the image of the first letter at the top left. It was an inhabited initial in the style that had originated with the St. Petersburg Bede of 746, with a picture of a lion in gold leaf inside the frame of the letter I. There were demivinet borders along the left margin like the ones beside the columns of calligraphy on the Ellesmere Chaucer. He enlarged the picture as much as he could, with a bit of both pages together. He could tell the difference between the first page, made of the inner side of the calfskin, which was slightly lighter and much smoother, and the other page, made of the outer side of the hide. It had pores and a couple of places where he could detect imperfections. He looked more closely at the script. It looked very much like the work of the scribe whom Chaucer referred to as “Adam Scriveyn,” identified by most scholars as Adam Pinkhurst. And then he looked again at the letter I, done not by the scribe but by a painter. “In,” the poem began.

In th'olde dayes of the King Richard,

Ther nas but hevinesse and much rue,

For the King, that was goode and Trewe

As fare as any man in Engelond

Was in the German Henry's honds.

And then he was lost. He had begun to read, and the parts that he could see drew him in. He read the two pages of text that he could enlarge enough to see clearly. He compared each letter to the style of the Ellesmere. He studied the specifications the man had supplied, the descriptions of the sections, the physical measurements and specifications.

When he looked up again, he saw that the narrow margins of light around his window shade had gone dark. He stood up and realized he was stiff in the hips and knees. His spine had been bent forward for hours. A headache announced itself, and he realized it had been building behind his eyes for some time.

Hallkyn saved what he had been reading for the eighth time, then emailed it to his laptop at home, to his second university email address, to Iron Mountain for safekeeping, and then to T.M. Spanner.

Next he dialed the telephone, and heard it ring five times before he heard Spanner say, “Hello, Dominic.”

“Spanner,” Hallkyn began.

“Glad to hear from you, Dom,” said Spanner. “Do you think this can keep for a little while? I'm entertaining a dear friend right now.”

Hallkyn heard a woman's laugh, a musical sound that made him feel several unrelated emotions. Of course Spanner, being the wellknown T.M. Spanner, would have a woman with a voice like that with him at this hour. He controlled his envy. Everything about T.M. Spanner's life was better than anybody else's. Spanner's good fortune was part of the order of the universe. But what was this hour? Nearly one a.m., damn it. This was humiliating.

“T.M., I'm so sorry. I've been working all this time, and I paid no attention to the clock until this second. I'll call you again tomorrow.”

“Just tell me this much now,” said Spanner. “Are we going to need the money?”

“Yes, I believe we are.”

“Great.”

Eight hours later Hallkyn's cell phone rang, and he said, “Hallkyn.”

“You sound as though you were waiting by the phone, Dom.”

“I was,” said Hallkyn.

“It's that big a deal to you?”

“It's that big a deal. Period.”

“Tell me what you've learned.”

“He sent me a teaser, a sample. There's a photograph of the first two pages of the manuscript, and a set of specifications. The book is six thousand, nine hundred and nineteen lines of verse.” His voice fell to just above a whisper. “It's exactly what we were hoping for, T.M. It's the actual
Book of the Lion
, the last major work that Chaucer wrote, begun just before, and finished just after,
The Canterbury Tales
.”

“What is it like? I mean the words, not the physical manuscript.”

“It's beautiful. I could only read two pages of actual lines in the photograph, just enough to be sure it's Chaucer. The frame tale is the story of Richard Coeur de Lion. It's about him and his awful brothers, primarily John, quarreling over the throne of England and the family possessions in France, and takes place during Richard's captivity by the German Emperor Henry VI. By then he was already Richard the Lionheart, having been in several wars, fought against Saladin in the crusade, and so on. While he's locked in a German dungeon, the ghost of Aesop comes and tells him the story of the Lion and the Mouse— how the weak can free the strong, as ordinary Englishmen eventually did by a tithe to pay his ransom—and then tells him about Androcles and the Lion, the recurring value of good deeds. Then Daniel appears and tells him his story of being thrown into the lions' den. You remember the lions left Daniel alone and ate the bad advisors of the king. It's a treatise on politics, alliances, wise government, rewards and punishments. What's the use? It's about everything.”

Spanner said, “What did happen to Richard I, anyway? I always had the impression he never did much governing.”

“That's right. He was killed by a crossbow bolt from a young boy during a siege in 1199. That's the tragedy in the work, the grim twist of fortune. His brother, John Lackland, the bad guy in the Robin Hood story, lost wars, faced a revolt of his nobles, and was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. People in the 1390s still thought Richard would have been a great king and made everything better for everyone forever. This book is in that vein. Richard is being taught how to be a good king, first by a classical, then by a Biblical, teacher. He'd had a taste of greatness, and now he was brought low, sitting in a dungeon. But they're preparing him for another rise, if he'll change his ways, stop warring and start governing. He didn't, and fortune's wheel brought him down for good. The wheel of fortune was a classical theme everybody knew, mostly from Boethius. Chaucer translated Boethius's
Consolation of Philosophy
, remember.”

“But is this thing real? Are we about to get our hands on the real lost masterpiece?”

“I think so.”

“When?”

“He said he'd call me again.”

“When he does, call me. I don't care what time it is, or where I am, call me.”

“He doesn't strike me as a person who will donate the manuscript to a library. He seems to enjoy holding it over everyone's head too much.”

“So we'll negotiate with him.”

“Should I make him an offer?”

“Only if he asks for one.”

“How much?”

“Say you have five million on hand, and can make the deal right away, no waiting or speculating.”

“And if he refuses the offer?”

“Then tell him you have to talk to your backers, and then call me.”

“All right.”

When the next call came he felt ready.

“Professor Hallkyn,” said the voice. Hallkyn once again thought that the speech was foreign, but he couldn't identify it with a region, or even a country. For the first time, he began to think it might be an idiosyncratic accent, which would be a very bad sign. The man might be mentally ill. “Have you examined what I sent you?”

“Yes.” There was no longer any point in pretending to be unimpressed or uncaring. “How did you come by it?”

“Are we really going to be reduced to that kind of discussion?” the man said. “I'm sure you could have guessed. Or did you guess and feel reluctant to take the risk of being wrong, and looking foolish?”

“I suspect it was in the library of some ancient noble family, probably in an area other than London. A family seat in the north of England, probably.”

“Why not London?”

“Too much change. There hasn't been much London real estate that has sat idle for six hundred years. And there was the blitz in World War II—lots of residences blown up, but this wasn't in any of them. The owner of this manuscript was undoubtedly very rich, and possibly even royal. That would lead me to think it was John of Gaunt. He was Chaucer's patron and close friend, and they were married to a pair of sisters. The manuscript could have been lost in one of John of Gaunt's estates. Maybe in Lancaster.”

“Bravo,” said the man. “And why do you suppose nobody knew it was there?”

“I don't know. John of Gaunt and Chaucer died in 1399 and 1400, very close to each other. The next generation of the Lancaster family were dispersed all over Europe when John of Gaunt died. One daughter was queen of Portugal, and one was queen of Castile. The son Henry was exiled for life, returned to fight for the throne, and then became King Henry IV. It's possible that when John died, some servant was tidying up and put the manuscript in a cubbyhole with a hundred others. John of Gaunt would have been horrified, but most common people were still illiterate, and wouldn't have known what it was.”

“I can see I selected the right expert,” said the man. “I had considered Bethune at Harvard, and a few others, of course. But you know medieval people as though you meet them on the street every day.”

“Thank you,” said Hallkyn. Maybe he had misjudged this man, based on a mistaken impression of his manner. “I assume you brought the manuscript to my attention because you'd like my advice, and I'd be happy to help. Are you planning to donate it to a library or a university?”

“No, I'm not,” the man said.

Hallkyn's heart sank. “What, then? Are you putting it up for sale?”

“Not quite,” said the man. “I'm holding it for ransom. If I don't get the right price, I'm going to kill it.”

“What?” said Hallkyn. “I don't understand.”

“Sure you do,” the man said. “There are rich men who want to own things—a Rembrandt, Da Vinci's sketches, Lincoln's letters. Ordinary, serious men such as you never expect to be the sole owner of an essential piece of our culture. All you care about or need is that it exists. For scholars like you, the manuscript of a great work is only of value because it bears the clear authoritative text. Once the text is reprinted, you can study the work, no matter who owns it. So regrettably, the people I'm threatening directly are those like you. If I don't get my price within a week,
The Book of the Lion
will go back to not existing. It will die.”

“But then you'll have nothing.”

“No, you'll have nothing. I've read it,” the man said. “I'll call you again soon.”

“How soon?”

But the man had hung up.

The next call came two days later, and this time Hallkyn had prepared and rehearsed. As soon as he knew whom he had on the line he said, “I've made some effort to come up with an alternative. I would like to buy the manuscript from you and donate it to Oxford or Cambridge—either one, if you have a preference.”

“No.”

“I've collected a fund for the purpose—five million dollars. You can have it in cash.”

The man laughed. “What does five million dollars in cash even look like? Do you know?”