Chapter Twelve
Anya
Over breakfast, Sid told me he was going to spend the day at the computer science department. He sounded stilted, and so did
I when I replied to say I hoped he had a nice day. It was impossible to remember what I would normally say, or how I normally
behaved.
Sarabeth called me early. “I have some very difficult news to tell you. There’s no easy way to say this, but Diana died yesterday.
She was mugged in London, and it seems to have gone wrong. She was found in a park in East London with a head injury and died
in hospital without regaining consciousness. If it’s any consolation, the doctor said it would have been quick. I’m so sorry,
Anya. Please take the day off if you want.”
She sounded terribly upset. I told her how sorry I was, too. The shock was intense. I wasn’t sure how I got the words out.
It was hardly credible that Diana had died, especially as I’d been with her only a few days earlier. I felt as if this was
something I could hardly process on top of everything else. My mind was stretched to breaking.
The car arrived to pick me up. Nobody had canceled it, and even though my brain was sludge, I decided to work.
It felt better to be on autopilot doing what Magnus wanted me to do, doing what I knew, than staying at the cottage, feeling watched or heard, feeling as if another cluster bomb had gone off in my head and not
knowing how to reassemble the pieces. Sid stepped outside with me when I was leaving and told me to call him if I needed him,
to come home if everything got too much.
I thought about Diana on the journey to the castle. How much I’d liked her at first, how charismatic she was, how the last
time I’d made this trip was with her. It seemed impossible that she was gone. I watched the back of the driver’s head, too,
and wondered who they really worked for. I was becoming as paranoid as Sid.
Rain fell in shards and the wipers were working overtime. As we drove up the long drive the castle looked gloomy and spectral
ahead, here one moment, obliterated by the wipers the next. They scraped the windscreen, and the sound cut right through me.
Tracy’s housekeeper greeted me at the door and showed me in. The castle was busier than before, the atmosphere more alive.
Florists were positioning an exuberant display on a table in the middle of the entrance hall, and there were staff working
in the formal dining room, laying the table for what looked as if it would be a sumptuous dinner. Polished cutlery and elaborate
candelabra gleamed. The room’s tall ceiling was intricately painted with medieval designs. Vast tapestries hung from the walls
and chandeliers fashioned from deer antlers were suspended on long chains secured to the dark beams crisscrossing the ceiling.
I could hear chatter and the sounds of work coming from the kitchen and the aromas drifting out smelled delicious.
The housekeeper led me away from the bustle and into the more private wing of the castle, where the tower was. She asked me
to leave my bag and devices on a table outside the door like I had before. I did it but kept my burner phone on me, hidden
in a pocket. Tracy was waiting in the room at the base of the tower, where I’d seen the manuscripts on my first visit.
She must have to hide when they had people in the castle, I thought, and I wondered who the dinner was for. Perhaps there was a select group of people, like my father, who knew where she lived and could be trusted to keep it a secret.
I had no time to dwell, though. Focusing on the collection was what mattered and the sooner I started, the sooner I could
deliver on my side of the deal I’d made with Magnus and guarantee the best treatment for Mum.
Tracy looked stressed and I wondered how close she’d been to Diana and whether grief was the reason, but I didn’t know whether
to mention it to her. I wasn’t sure if she knew yet.
“Ready to get started?” she asked, and I told her I couldn’t wait. “Let’s go,” she said. I followed her up the spiral stairs;
the room above was empty, a circular stone void, harboring echoes, its windows glazed arrow slits, with narrow views over
the forest below and the hills beyond.
Tracy opened a wooden door that, curiously, led from the tower back into the main body of the castle, as if the tower had
been constructed as an elaborate entranceway. The door was so thick and dark and worn that it had to be ancient. Tracy hit
the lights and we entered a small, square chamber paneled from floor to ceiling. The paneling was inlaid with intricate patterns
and pictures, trompe l’oeils, made with such skill that images seemed to leap out from the wall in 3D. I turned a full circle
to take it all in. It was incredible. There were musical instruments, books, a dagger, a pipe, and more, all attributes of
an educated gentleman from medieval Italy, all arranged in trompe l’oeil cabinets or displayed on trompe l’oeil shelves. I’d
seen it before.
“Is this a copy of the study in the Ducal Palace in Gubbio, Italy?” I asked.
“Yes. The laird who built this place made a trip to Italy and fell so much in love with what he saw that he had his own version
made here.”
This place was full of surprises. Using a key fob, Tracy unlocked yet another door, which I hadn’t noticed because it was hidden within the paneling. “This is where we keep your father’s manuscripts.”
She looked at me as if curious to witness my reaction to her mention of my father. You knew everything all along, I thought,
but I wasn’t intimidated by her anymore. I figured she was Magnus’s pawn, just like everyone else.
“You’re good at keeping secrets,” I said.
She pushed the door open, and flicked another switch. “I’m an actress. It’s my job to be whoever other people want me to be.
In the case of your father, it’s been my pleasure to act as custodian for these books. They’re really no trouble at all. In
fact, it’s been a great deal easier to hide them than it has been to hide myself.”
I barely listened to what she was saying. I had eyes only for the manuscripts, which were arranged on shelves around three
walls of a plain, windowless room. She said, “They’re all yours. Do your thing. That laptop is for you to make notes on. It
doesn’t leave this room.” They’d provided a brand-new MacBook. I flipped it open. It was already set up for me and, no surprise,
it had no internet access.
Tracy gave me a fob of my own, which she said would let me into the tower and the manuscript room, then left me there, shutting
the door firmly yet quietly behind her, and I took stock.
The only entrance and exit was the door we’d come through. Artificial lighting had been designed to show off the books and
was dimmed to conservation levels. In the middle of the space there was a large desk, where the laptop lay alongside a book
stand and a lamp for examining the manuscripts.
The books waited silently on the shelves; they had a quiet, confident presence.
I made a conscious effort to empty my brain of distractions, so that when I opened the first book, my memory would be primed to preserve copies of every page I looked at.
Confiscating my iPhone might stop me from photographing the manuscripts and sharing them, but it couldn’t stop me from recalling every detail.
And I needed to. My burner phone was too basic to have a camera.
It was only good for making and receiving calls.
I ran my fingers gently along the spines of the books and thought of all the people who’d handled them before me, the scribes,
illustrators, bookbinders, booksellers, and owners. My father and grandfather. My mother, too. I supposed I could count her,
since she’d spent one afternoon with them. And now me. It was hard to think of any other objects in my life that had been
handled by my mother, father, and me.
I decided to make an inventory first, a list of the books with a description of each. Then I could organize them by type,
for serious study.
As I contemplated them—there were so many—a surge of doubt rose like nausea, doubt that I couldn’t deliver the standard of
scholarship Magnus wanted. My heart thumped, but I had to start somewhere. I picked out a book at random and laid it on the
cushion beneath the light, and I heard Mum’s voice, the same way I always did when I handled a precious manuscript.
Books connect us to the past and teach us how to map our future.
I hoped so. So long as I had what it took, these books could save her life.
I worked on the collection for hours without stopping. Compiling my list was slow going because I kept getting distracted.
Every book I took from the shelf was breathtaking in its beauty and rarity. Time flew, until I suddenly realized I needed
food, and fresh air. I went downstairs, collecting my phone on the way.
Once I’d left the dead quiet of the manuscript room and the tower, I wasn’t sure where I was allowed to go. Instinctually
I kept away from the busier areas of the castle, which wasn’t hard, since the place was so big. I found a side door and slipped
outside to find myself in an area of the grounds that was out of sight of the castle’s main rooms. It was a perfect, private
place to call Mum from.
I tried her phone and when she didn’t pick up I called the ward again.
The nurse was upbeat: “Rose is doing much better today. I’ll transfer you to her bed.”
“Mum!” I said when she answered. “It’s me!”
“Hello, darling.”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“Viv took it downstairs to pay for some drinks. I’m so bored with this place. Tell me what you’re up to. I want to know everything.”
“I already started work on the manuscripts.” One of the books I’d looked at that morning had an especially gorgeous binding.
I knew she’d love to hear about it. She missed her work. I weighed telling her about it, and figured it was fine because she’d
only seen those books once, many years ago, and like everyone else, she thought they’d burned.