The Book Of Secrets Part 50

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 pa.s.sed 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 Gunther'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.

Lx.x.xIII.

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.

The old man advanced into the room. The closer he came, the more Nick noticed his eyes. Pitted deep in his waxy face, they glinted as hard and pure as diamonds.

'Father Nevado?' he guessed.

'Cardinal,' the old man corrected him. 'I have moved up in the world.

'I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition.'

A chilling smile. 'We call it by another name now. But, broadly speaking, yes. You are very well informed.'

'I spend a lot of time in libraries.'

It must be nerves, Nick thought, adrenalin stringing out his battered mind before he collapsed. How else to explain how he could stand there trading wisecracks with the man who would kill him.

At least I found Gillian. It was a comforting thought.

'If this is the Devils' Library, who does that make you?'

'The angel who guards the pit where lost works are cast out.'

Emily looked around. 'Are all these books lost? I'm sure I've seen some of them before.'

Nick looked at her in surprise. Did she care? Even at the end, was the scholar in her curious? Or was it just a basic human instinct to keep talking, to delay the inevitable as long as possible?

Nevado seemed happy to humour her. 'Some of the books here do not exist outside this room, but many more are in the world. Some have even had influence. Contrary to ignorant supposition, this library is not merely a prison for condemned books. It was established by Pope Pius II as a school against error, where those who fought in the vanguard against sin and the devil could study their foes more closely.'

'That's funny,' said Nick. 'I looked in one of those books and all I saw was the Pope.'

'The first book in this library was the Liber Bonasi in front of you. Not the oldest, but the first. It had personal significance to Pope Pius. He knew Johann Gutenberg; he championed him because he believed that the printing press would beget a more perfect faith. The Church had many wounds at that time. He thought the press would cleanse them. Instead, it proved more suited to spreading lies and error.'

'Malware,' said Nick. 'The book's a virus. The press spreads it quickly much faster than before. People read it and get infected. Eventually you end up with a whole network of infected people who you can use to launch attacks.'

'The Reformation,' said Emily.

'I doubt that Pope Pius would have thought of it so but yes. Truly, there is nothing in the world the Church has not seen before. Pius knew that if Gutenberg's monstrosity became known, the printing press would have been condemned as an agency of the devil. He suppressed all trace of the Liber Bonasi and left a decree that every copy should be wiped from the earth. Thirty copies were made. One remains here as an exemplar. Twenty-eight more have been hunted down over the centuries, dug out of the libraries and collections where they lay buried, and destroyed. Only one remains outstanding. And now you have brought it to me.'

Nick was feeling faint. He looked up to try to clear his head, but the towers of books looming into the darkness only made it worse.

'Why do you even bother?' said Emily. 'Gutenberg, the Master of the Playing Cards, whoever made that book: they won. Any worthwhile technology can be used the wrong way. However many copies of the bestiary came off that press, you've still printed more Bibles. Isn't that a better trade-off?'

For the first time, Nevado looked angry. His ageless face suddenly became old. 'This is an ancient war between good and evil. You cannot compromise with Satan. Pope Pius was wrong. The Church was never stronger than when books were rare and costly, written individually in a language only a learned fraternity could understand. To keep these books here was nursing a serpent in our breast. They should have been destroyed.'

'I never knew the Church was so squeamish about burning books.'

The anger ebbed. The blood-red lips twisted into a cruel smirk. 'Everything in its time. Why do you think I suffered you to come here?'

The adrenalin was running out. Nick could feel the crash coming. 'We broke in.'

'Why do you think you found the hidden map, the ladder leading you into the tower? Did you think we are so trapped in the Middle Ages that we do not even know how to lock a door?'

'Wouldn't surprise me,' Nick muttered.

'This moment, with Pope Pius's charge at last complete, is a fitting time to end his folly. The library will burn, and you will burn with it. They will find your bones in the ashes and you will be held responsible.'

'Why not just do it yourself?'

Nevado held up his hands. His skin was parchment thin, veins like rivers just below the surface, but they were steady as ice. 'You think I am old and feeble? I have achieved much, but I have not finished my journey. I still have ambitions.'

'Will letting a priceless collection of books burn help you become pope?'

'Few cardinals in the conclave will ever know of it. Those who do, most of them will be glad it has happened. They will hear that a gang of international art thieves broke into the library to steal the ma.n.u.scripts, overpowered the monks and the guards and could not be stopped. In their greed they grew careless. They dropped a cigarette; papers caught light; the library was lost. They were caught in the fire and burned almost beyond recognition.'

'And we're supposed to be a gang of international art thieves?'

'Why not? A man wanted for murder in New York: a computer expert who could disable our security systems. A medieval scholar with a known animus against the Church. And a disgraced auctioneer who stole from the properties she was supposed to be valuing. You came here of your own will, following your own trail of evidence.'

'For someone who wanted us to come here you spent a lot of time trying to kill us.'

'I was over-hasty. You would have been killed in New York if my a.s.sociates had managed it, or Paris or Brussels or Strasbourg. Always, you escaped. I wondered how you could prevail against forces so much greater than your own; I prayed G.o.d to deliver you into my power. Finally I understood. He has brought you here to bring me the book and fulfil my purpose. His purpose. Truly, He moves in mysterious ways.'

He took a cigarette out of his coat and lit it. A nostalgic smile spread across his face as he took a drag. 'I quit fifteen years ago. As my doctor said: they will kill you.'

'There's only one problem,' said Emily. 'You've got the wrong book.'

'Where are the rest of these books?'

Always the same voice. Always the same questions. I longed to answer but I could not. A crus.h.i.+ng weight bore down on me. It milled my wretched body, choking my lungs, bending my bones until they snapped.

'I don't know.'

I did not know anything. Where I was. How long I had been there. Who held me captive, and how they had come by the book. All I knew inside my sackcloth hood was the rattle of chains, the smell of wet stone and burning pitch, the ceaseless questions I could not answer.

I was naked I knew that tied to a frame like parchment being stretched to dry. A flat board rested on my stomach, held down by a great and increasing number of stones. It was an exquisitely apt punishment that I who had devoted myself to pressing ink, lead and paper should now go under the press myself. I wondered if Fust had told them.

'Men speak of the new art you have discovered. Was this what you intended? A tool for heretics?'

'I wanted to perfect the world.' It had seemed so vital to me, a burning purpose. Now it sounded feeble.

'Did you seek to destroy the Church?'

'To strengthen it.'

'To summon the powers of darkness?'

'To spread truth.'

The inquisitor leaned over me. I knew, because I could smell the onions on his breath. Air fanned my neck as he waved something the book? in front of me.

'Is this what you call truth? The most diabolical lies and filthy slanders that the devil ever planted? Even to look on this book would be mortal sin.'

My chest burned. 'I did not make the book,' I gurgled.

He ignored me; he always did. The pain of torture might break a man's body, but it was the futility that destroyed his soul. The questions never changed; the answers were never believed.

'How many did you write?'

'Thirty.' I spoke eagerly, almost grateful for the chance to answer his question. 'He said there were thirty.'

'One was sent with an obscene note to the archbishop. Another was found on the step of St Quintin's church a perfect copy. Is that the devil's work?'

'My art,' I gasped.

'So you confess?'

Panic gripped me. Had I confessed? I tried to explain; I heaved against the board to get air in my lungs, but all I managed was a strangled groan. Then I realised how ridiculous it was and lay back. I could not condemn myself any more than they already had. I would die there.

I heard a grim laugh. 'You will not die here.'

I must have spoken aloud.

'When we have learned what we need, we will burn you in Mainz as a heretic.'

A small sigh escaped my body, perhaps the last breath in me. It was the end I had always known would come, the lesson my father had tried to beat into me that day in Frankfurt. I would die a heretic, a forger who had debased his currency.

Despite everything, I found myself laughing: the mad cackle of my rotten soul fleeing. I had lived half my life haunted by fear of burning for the mortal sins I had committed against body and nature. Now I would burn for a book I had not made. I suppose it was a sort of justice.

My laughter enraged the inquisitor. He shouted to his a.s.sistants. I heard the grate of stone, and two ribs cracking as the weight bore down.

'Where are the rest of these books?'

The pain consumed me, pressing me into oblivion.

For a second, Nevado was absolutely still. Then he pushed past them and strode to the shelves at the back of the room. The gunman by the door edged closer.

Nevado picked up the bestiary. 'This was the book you brought?'

Nick didn't answer. He had a terrible feeling nothing he could say now would save them. The overpowering smells of gasoline and tobacco made him sick.

Nevado opened the cover. One glance was enough.

'This is the wrong book. A simple bestiary.' He swept the book aside and turned to Gillian, his waxy face flushed with rage. 'You told me they would bring the Liber Bonasi.'

'There's a colophon,' Gillian stammered. 'It mentions the other bestiary. That's how we knew. It led us here.'

'This is worthless.' Nevado leaned on the shelf, seemingly oblivious to the cigarette dangling inches from the packed books. Nick barely noticed. Something the cardinal had said echoed in his mind like a gunshot. You told me. He turned to Gillian.

'You told him we were coming?'

'Of course not.' She reached to her shoulder and began twisting a lock of hair around her finger. 'I told him the book I found in Paris was the one he wanted. I had to. He must've thought you'd bring it if he lured you here.'

She looked him straight in the eye, begging him to believe her. Nick wanted to; he almost had when Emily said quietly, 'How about the note? Your set of instructions on how to break in.'

'I don't know. He found them when he captured me. Planted them where you'd find them.' She saw Nick's expression. 'What?'

'Do you know where he hid them?'

Gillian stared at him. He recognised the look: he'd seen it before. In trouble with someone, searching for the answer they wanted to hear. She began to speak, then checked herself.

'He hid them in the toilet roll,' said Nick. 'Did you tell him about that?'

She crumbled. He'd seen that before too. 'I had to, Nick. He'd have killed me if I didn't go along with it.'

'And what did you think he'd do to us when he caught us and found it wasn't the right book? Tell us it was all a misunderstanding and let us go?' His head pounded; his eyes hurt just to look at her. He felt as if he'd turned to stone.

'Enough.' Nevado turned, his face hazed in the smoke of the half-smoked cigarette. He shouted something in Italian to the guard at the door. 'I have decided-'

Without warning, Gillian flew at him. Before the guard could react she had s.n.a.t.c.hed the cigarette from Nevado's mouth, pivoted away and hurled it into the bookshelf. The oil-soaked papers took the flame eagerly, as if they had waited five hundred years for the consummation.

'No!'

Too late, Nevado seemed to change his mind. He ran to the shelf and pulled the burning papers to the floor, frantically stamping on them. A gust of wind from the door picked up the loose leaves and blew them against the shelves, starting new fires higher up, out of reach. The hem of Nevado's coat caught fire.

Then the whole wall exploded in flame.

Lx.x.xIV.