Chapter 11
By the end of the week, Jules was feeling much better at last, with just slightly wobbly legs and a woolly brain to remind
her how ill she had been.
“Thanks for the hot toddy stuff,” she said to Freya as she collected the bread—she and Flo treated themselves to a small sourdough
loaf a couple of times a week, and Finn’s stuff from the deli was the best.
“What hot toddy stuff?” replied Freya with a quizzical frown.
Jules explained. “It was Hollytree Farm honey,” she added. “I just assumed...”
“You’ve got a secret admirer,” Freya teased as Jules headed for the door.
“Yeah, that’s what Aunt Flo said, but sadly you’re my only two fans in the whole world.”
“Who said I’m a fan?” joked Freya as Jules closed the door with a wave.
Well, that was weird, she thought as she crossed back over the road.
Jules picked the post up from the mat as she came through the shop.
She was flicking through the distributor catalogs and half listening, with a smile, to Aunt Flo playing twenty questions with a middle-aged lady in navy: “The main character is called Ella,” the lady was saying.
“Or it might be Emma. Anyhow, it reminded me of that thing on the television where we think the secret narrator’s the old woman but it’s actually the young girl with the ringlets. ..”
“ Bridgerton ?” suggested Flo, giving Jules the side-eye and threatening to make her laugh. Flo was superb at finding books with nothing
but the most tenuous clues.
“Not Bridgerton , the other one,” the woman was saying.
“ Sanditon ?”
“Yes! Like that, but not that... And I’ve actually seen the book—the cover has a picture of a woman in a pink dress...”
Jules pretended to be totally absorbed in a catalog from Gardners, the book wholesalers, but was stifling a grin, thinking
Aunt Flo might have met her match at last, when they all heard a shout from Charlie on the floor above.
“I’ll go,” Jules told Flo, thundering up the stairs seeing apparitions of Charlie having fallen off one of the library ladders,
breaking bones or worse.
Instead, she found Charlie crouched at the foot of the wonkiest, dustiest set of shelves they had up there. Someone in the
very distant past had constructed shelves from rough-sawn oak planks—probably floorboards originally. Charlie was staring
transfixed at a spot between the back of the lowest shelf and the floor, where there was a gap just big enough to insert a
hand.
“Is it a massive spider?” called Jules, coming over to him gingerly. “I absolutely hate them. We might be able to persuade
Merlin to hunt it down. That’s what I do when I’m desperate.”
“Not a spider,” said Charlie, “although I can feel webs in the crevice—gross. I don’t suppose you can remember when these
shelves were last empty?”
“A million years ago probably,” admitted Jules. “There are definitely some books on that shelf that predate me and, chances are, Aunt Flo as well.”
Charlie nodded grimly, now more or less lying on the floor with his arm outstretched, fingers exploring the dusty gap between
the skirting and the no-longer-whitewashed plaster.
“I’m just...” he panted. “Aha!” And with that, Charlie carefully withdrew his hand, clutching a wad of what looked, at
first sight, like folded parchment.
“What is it?” asked Jules. Now she could see, as Charlie brought it over to the light, he was holding a book, perhaps A5 sized,
with a dark, possibly leather cover.
“Let’s see,” said Charlie, laying it gently on the table under the window. He reached into his pocket and produced a pair
of white cotton gloves, all the while not taking his eyes off their curious discovery.
“White gloves?” Jules smiled. “So, you’re a magician in your other life?”
“Mime artist, actually,” he shot back with a grin.
The book was about the heft of a Jilly Cooper bonkbuster, but with thick yellow pages and what Jules could now see was a dull,
dark, embossed leather cover, cracked with age.
Charlie was clearly enthralled. Jules watched as he gently folded back the cover and looked intently at the first page. It
was heavily foxed and stained, particularly at the margins, and was inscribed with an elaborate handwritten script, the ink
faded so much it was a reddish brown barely darker than the outer edges of the paper.
Jules leaned over to try to decipher it. “The first word is ‘A’ I think—that’s simple enough—and then, what? B, O, O, K, E...
oh, that’s just ‘Book,’ presumably.”
“‘Of,’” contributed Charlie excitedly.
They both huddled, shoulder to shoulder, trying to make out the next word.
“It looks like F, P, E, L, L, F,” said Jules, confused. “‘Fpellf’? What’s that, for heaven’s sake? Dutch?”
“Double Dutch,” said Charlie. “No. Remember in older manuscripts they tend to write their S’s like F’s.”
“Of course, so it’s ‘Spells,’” Jules quickly surmised. “What? It can’t be a book of spells... can it?”
“Amazeballs,” said Charlie, his eyes flashing in excitement.
“Worth anything?” said Jules, quickly cutting to the chase. Even a small cash input to the business would be very useful.
Charlie shook his head. “I wouldn’t get excited. Although it’s def got some age about it...”
“A book of spells, though! It’s got to have belonged to a witch. What do you reckon? ‘Eye of newt and toe of frog’?”
“Let’s just take a step back,” said Charlie. “I need to handle it as little as possible, but...”
Together they examined it, in the light from the little latticed window, as Charlie delicately turned the pages with his gloved
fingertips. Some pages were more faded than others, but all were tough to decipher.
“What are you two up to?” called Flo as she limped up the stairs, customer satisfied at last.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed, after Charlie explained. “How extraordinary...”
“‘Reumatickes,’” read Jules aloud, peering at the faint text on the page. “Something about ‘muftard’—oh, ‘mustard’... some
sort of mustard poultice—rather them than me. Not very witchy,” she added, disappointed. “It’s more like a recipe book than
magic spells.”
“Or a medicine textbook,” suggested Flo.
“You know, that was probably considered magic a few hundred years ago. And weren’t women often the ones providing health care, such as it was?
Basic remedies and probably midwifery too—most people wouldn’t have been able to afford doctors.
How old do you think it might be, o antiquarian book expert?
” she asked of Charlie, bowing obsequiously in his direction.
“Not an expert yet,” Charlie replied, smiling, “but I really don’t know... maybe sixteenth century? Or seventeenth maybe,
looking at the paper? It’s vellum, I’m pretty sure—that’s calfskin, pounded very thin. And it would have been a precious resource,
fairly expensive. How old is this building?”
“Oh, ancient,” said Flo. “Don’t be fooled by the Victorian facades. Most of the buildings on this side of the street date
back to the seventeenth century—sixteenth even, some of them.”
“Well, it looks as if it’s been jammed into that crevice for a pretty long time,” suggested Charlie. “Ooh, and I’ve just remembered—the
name for a book of spells is a ‘grimoire.’ This is a grimoire!” he declared.
“How fabulously Harry Potter,” said Flo. “I wonder if the writer was an ancestor of ours. I’d like to think so, given where
it was found.”
“It was definitely someone educated,” observed Jules, “although I don’t think much to their spelling.”
“Shakespeare had a very relaxed attitude toward spelling,” Charlie reminded her. “He couldn’t even decide how to spell his
own name.”
“True. And it looks like a personal notebook, so I suppose they can spell stuff however they like.”
“Exactly. After all, literacy is impressive in itself—not many people could read and write that long ago. There’s maybe a clue in here somewhere—who wrote it and when.
I think I’m going to try and do a complete transcript,” Charlie declared, gently closing the book for now and peeling off his gloves.
“Is it worth your time?” asked Jules, acutely aware Charlie was only receiving income from his commission on the books being
sold.
“Totally,” said Charlie. “Also, I really want to, it’s fascinating.”
“Value?” asked Flo shrewdly.
“You and Jules both!” said Charlie, making Jules feel embarrassingly venal. “Hmm, probably not very,” he went on. “But kinda
cool, though, don’t you think?”
Jules took a sip of the perfect flat white she had collected from Finn’s—an integral part of her new and delightful morning
routine, especially when she could avoid Roman—and allowed herself to feel a tiny bit smug.
She was sitting in the office with bright, late-spring sunshine slanting through the window as she compiled her daily Insta
post. Merlin was purring in her lap, Aunt Flo was minding the shop, and Charlie, she knew, was upstairs ostensibly uploading
stock onto BookFinder.com, although Jules suspected he was probably poring over the grimoire, which was his new favorite obsession.
The schedule of events and promotions she had been compiling to celebrate the centenary was filling up nicely now with mostly
low-cost activities that would give Capelthorne’s a boost. This was their working pattern now, Jules behind the scenes and
Aunt Flo up front where the action was. It suited both of their personalities. Having Charlie there felt great too. He fit
right into the little team, although Flo and Jules agreed they both felt bad not paying him a salary for the work. It wasn’t
just the grimoire either—they didn’t have high hopes for it—but the trickle of income from the used books upstairs was growing
steadily and gratifyingly.