Chapter Three
Anya
That evening, I waited alone outside the hotel for Diana to pick me up. It was dark already. Sid had gone out to meet Paul
and Giulia at the pub. They’d promised him some good whiskey.
I was riddled with nerves, partly in case the manuscripts were disappointing—the Bodleian Library was a hard act to live up
to, as was the promise of the Beinecke—but also in case the benefactor didn’t like me. Neither Diana Cornish nor her colleagues
had given anything away about this mysterious person, and I didn’t know what to imagine, but I had a feeling they might be
the one to make a final decision on whether or not I received a formal offer from the Institute.
At seven on the dot, a smart town car with tinted windows pulled up outside the hotel. I watched as a female driver got out
and opened a back door. She said, “Ms. Brown?”
“For me?” I asked. She nodded. Feeling self-conscious, I slid into the back to find Diana there already.
She greeted me with a mischievous smile, as if we were complicit in an adventure. I was running on adrenaline. She pulled
some paperwork from her bag. “I’m sorry to be boring, but would you mind signing this? It’s an NDA.”
I skimmed it. It forbade me from discussing anything about this evening, including who I met, and where, what was said, and anything I saw.
I signed and handed it back to her. It made me hopeful about the quality of what I was going to see.
In my prior experience of manuscript collectors, secrecy levels had a direct relationship to the value of the collection.
A few turns out of town the streetlights gave way to pitch darkness, and I lost my sense of direction. The headlamps illuminated
fragments of the countryside as we drove: a stone bridge, dense forest on either side of the road, its understory wadded with
thickets of bracken and bramble. After about half an hour, a well-kept wall, maybe eight or nine feet high. We drove alongside
it for long enough to suggest that we were adjacent to a large private estate and pulled up in front of a grand pair of gates.
The glassy eye of a camera swiveled and trained itself on the driver. Seconds later, the gates swung open smoothly. They were
topped with razor wire. The car rolled down a long driveway, and a building loomed into view. It wasn’t so much a house as
a small castle, its exterior spotlit dramatically. It looked very old and was hemmed in closely by pitch dark forest.
We mounted the steps beneath a sky clotted with stars, as the town car cruised around the side of the building to park out
of sight. Diana pulled a thick cord, and a bell chimed inside. We were let in by a housekeeper who asked us to follow her.
I didn’t expect to recognize the person who rose from one of the red couches as we entered a large sitting room wrapped in
wooden paneling.
She was casually dressed, wore glasses with tortoiseshell frames, and had long, straight hair, honey tinted, framing a beautiful,
heart-shaped face. She was startlingly familiar, but I couldn’t place her. She saw my confusion and looked amused.
“Hello, I’m Tracy,” she said, and I realized with a shock that I was in the presence of a woman who’d mysteriously disappeared
from public life at the peak of her fame just a couple of years before.
Tracy Lock was a British actress who’d had Hollywood in thrall before making herself invisible without explanation.
There had been some rumored sightings here and there, but nothing confirmed.
The media occasionally erupted with speculation over whether she’d suffered a terrible accident, or had a drug problem, or bad plastic surgery, yet here she was, looking perfectly sober and extremely beautiful, her face unaltered so far as I could tell.
“I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you,” she said, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. “Are you ready
to see the manuscripts?”
I glanced at Diana, as if I needed her permission. She was smiling.
“Yes, please.” I must have sounded as eager as a child, because they both laughed.
“Follow me,” Tracy said.
I wished Sid were there. I would tell him all about it later, I thought, before remembering that the NDA forbade it.
We followed Tracy as she led us away from the reception area of the castle and down a stone-floored corridor also paneled
from floor to ceiling. Guns and ornate, historic swords were hung along its length. A suit of armor was mounted at the far
end.
“Excuse the Game of Thrones décor,” Tracy said.
At the end of the corridor, we seemed to be entering a more private wing of the castle where the rooms were smaller and felt
more lived in. She stopped outside a heavy metal door. It was modern; it looked like the entrance to a vault.
“Would you mind leaving your phone and bag out here?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. I put my phone on a small table and my bag on the floor beneath it.
“Ready?” she asked.
I nodded. My heart was thudding. I followed her into a small, circular space, more like a chamber than a room.
I figured there must be a tower at the back of the castle, and we were on its ground floor.
To one side, a spiral staircase led up. There was a single window, glazed with glass stained in shades of amber that reminded me of apothecary jars.
A plain wooden desk was positioned beneath the window. On its surface, a lamp and two wooden book stands. Each one held a
manuscript, which was closed, just the edges of the pages visible, the promise of what they might contain tantalizing.
“Tell us what you see,” Tracy said.
I approached them with my heart in my mouth and was drawn to the one on the left, the plainer of the two. An important manuscript
will often declare itself with an ornate cover, perhaps embossed leatherwork, or fine embroidery on sumptuous velvet—some
are studded with jewels—but not this one. It didn’t mean there was nothing remarkable inside, though.
Before touching it, I examined it visually first, as I’d been trained to do. I spoke aloud as I did. “Manuscript is approximately
twenty-five by fifteen centimeters. Plain binding, probably in either goat or calfskin. Unadorned. In excellent condition.
Can I open it?”
“Of course,” Tracy said. She took a step closer. I felt her proximity viscerally. Diana stayed back. I got a strong sense
that they’d performed this bit of theater before and they knew their parts well, and it made me wonder who might have done
this before me.
“What’s the provenance?” I asked. It’s the first question you want an answer to in the art and antiquities world. Where and
when an object or work of art was made or discovered, and who has owned it over the years, can help you to tell the difference
between a fake and something authentic, though I was pretty sure I knew what I was dealing with here. You get a feeling in
your gut when something is real.
Tracy waved a finger, chiding me. “Tell us what you think first.”
I turned some pages. The parchment crinkled between my fingers. “It’s pharmacological and has exceptionally fine and detailed
illustrations. Based on the handwriting, I’d date it to the sixteenth century. The style of the illustrations supports this
because—”
Tracy leaned across me and shut the book with a snap. I flinched.
“Very good,” she said.
I was taken aback. It was like the weather had suddenly changed. Were there pages she didn’t want me to see or remember? Or
was she just being proprietorial? I glanced at Diana. She smiled damply, as if Tracy’s behavior was to be expected and must
be tolerated. Perhaps that little display of knowledge was all she’d needed from me.
I knew from experience that collectors will go to extremes to pursue certain objects and are extremely protective of their
treasures, sometimes to the point of obsession. I’d heard stories of other academics glimpsing exceptional manuscripts that
they never saw again because of a collector’s whim.
Tracy Lock was an extraordinary person. If she could vanish when there was global interest in her, then she could make these
manuscripts disappear from my life in a heartbeat. Don’t let her rattle you, I told myself. This is a test.
I said, “Thank you for showing me. It’s exquisite.” And it was probably worth a couple of million. She looked at me until
I felt uncomfortable.
“What about the other one?” she asked.
More nervous than ever, I stuttered a little on my visual description of the second manuscript. It was bound in red leather,
with metal clasps, and my hands trembled as I opened it.
“It’s an alchemical text,” I said as I leafed through the first few pages. I saw images of apparatuses and emblems, of magical
and mystical processes. “Not a copy of any books from the known canon. It seems to be unique.” I wanted to ask where it was
from, but she’d said no questions about provenance, and I wasn’t about to upset her again.
This time, Tracy closed the book carefully. She had a small smile on her lips, and I hoped it meant that I’d pleased her.
Diana seemed to pick up on some invisible cue, and as quickly as it had begun, our meeting was over. When we stepped out of
the castle the silence was broken only by an owl hooting and the moon had risen above the trees.
Diana and I didn’t talk in the car. Drivers have ears, I thought, conscious of the NDA. Through the car window I could see the moon, hovering behind clouds shaped like torn strips of paper.
At the hotel, Diana got out of the car when I did, and we stood under the rich red awning outside the entrance. Inside, a
party of well-heeled men was joking around in the lobby.
The doorman opened the door, but she gestured for him to shut it again, so we were alone.
“How big is the collection?” I asked.
“Nearly two hundred volumes. The books you saw are representative of the quality of the rest.”
“Why are they suddenly available for study? And why me?”