Chapter Thirteen #2
the breadth of God’s creation, and it was a suitably luxurious book. I leafed through it, transfixed by the illuminations.
Here was a whale, an elephant, a griffin, a unicorn, and here: a black panther. Its body was drawn in profile, but its head
faced outward, yellow eyes staring into mine, a large rodent hanging limply from its mouth.
A black cat with lantern eyes. This had to be what Mum meant. There was no symbolism. She’d given me a literal description
of an illustration. My stomach dropped.
I closed the book and examined the binding.
It wasn’t original. I guessed that the bestiary had been written and illustrated in the fourteenth century, and the binding had been applied a few centuries later.
Maybe in the seventeenth century. It was common practice to keep bindings like this on old books, even if they were later additions.
But a lot of them needed restoration, which is where Mum must have come in.
She’d done a superb job, and if I was right, there was a glossary hidden inside it.
It was a decent-size manuscript, and would be difficult to sneak out of the castle. I would have to open the binding and remove
the glossary. But how?
A loud noise made me jump. A door slamming. Then I heard a soft knock on the door of the manuscript room before it opened
slightly. Tracy’s housekeeper peered in. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We need everyone except essential staff off site because
some of our guests are arriving sooner than we were led to believe. We need to take you home now.”
“Right now?”
“Our guests are people who prefer anonymity. Just like Tracy. So, if you wouldn’t mind?” It was a polite question, but her
tone said that “right now” was exactly what they needed.
“I’ll pack up,” I said as normally as I could, but my heart was thumping. There was no way I could get the bestiary out now.
I would have to come back.
She waited in the tower, leaving the doors between us open. She turned away from me as she looked toward the window. I swallowed.
My mouth was dry with nerves. I was still holding the bestiary. If she turns back, I thought, I’ll reshelve it, but she didn’t.
I draped my coat over my arm, so it covered the manuscript. I would take my chances, I thought, and try to walk out with it.
It was reckless but I didn’t have any better ideas.
I left the manuscript room, shut the door behind me, and heard the lock click. “Ready,” I said, praying she couldn’t hear
the fear in my voice.
As I followed her downstairs, I felt the camera’s eye on me.
I knew it was possible that what I’d done had been seen already if someone was watching the security footage live, and I could feel a hand on my shoulder in the next few moments.
Even if they reviewed it later, it was surely only a matter of time before they would come after me.
Terrified of letting the coat slip from my arm, I picked up my phone and laptop awkwardly, but the housekeeper didn’t seem to notice.
She was ahead of me, preoccupied with getting me out of there as quickly as possible.
The castle felt bigger than ever, the route to the main exit never-ending. There was no one in the dining room and the florist
had gone. Outside, all the vehicles had been cleared from the drive. I stood on the steps. It was freezing, but sweat beaded
on my hairline and under my arms.
The housekeeper said, “If you wait here, the car will come round in a minute.”
It felt like I waited for an eternity. It was dusky out there, the moon visible, rising above the trees just like it had on
my first visit here. Floodlights snapped on, bringing the building to life as darkness swaddled it. Eventually the car came,
and the driver hustled me in quickly. I didn’t know her, but she seemed harassed. I sat in the back and hugged the manuscript
to my chest, trying to look calm, to quiet my breathing. The car took off down the drive, much faster than usual. I heard
the crackle of a voice from the driver’s earpiece, and she braked hard.
Lights and noise filled the sky as a chopper appeared suddenly from behind the trees and then banked sharply and landed on
the field beside the driveway, coming down right in front of us, its blades bowing the grass, severing leaves from nearby
trees. As soon as the blades stopped turning, the driver hit the gas and my head snapped back. The gates opened automatically
as we approached at speed. I looked back as we slowed momentarily to turn onto the lane.
Magnus was getting out of the helicopter. I was sure it was him, even in the semidark. And as he did, Tracy emerged from the
castle to meet him. When he reached her, they kissed like lovers.
I was shocked but not surprised. It confirmed what he’d hinted at and it intensified my disgust for him. When I turned back to face the front the driver was watching me in the rearview mirror. I had the feeling I wasn’t supposed to have seen any of that, but they hadn’t got me out of there in time.
As we drove through the countryside, I hugged the manuscript tighter. Surely I wasn’t going to get away with taking it. What
if Magnus wanted to look at his books while he was here?
I’d seen a similar manuscript sell at auction. Whether Mum was right about the glossary and the Voynich or not, I’d just made
off with roughly three million pounds’ worth of my father’s property.
Sid
Alone in the cottage for the first time in a few days, Sid felt claustrophobic and afraid. The shocking news about Diana’s
death didn’t help.
It weighed on him that he hadn’t told Anya what he’d read online about Folio 9, but he told himself he’d done the right thing.
A single comment on a message board wasn’t proof that Folio 9 was forged, of course, but if he mentioned it, it could get
under her skin and fuel her insecurities, which was the last thing she needed. He still felt it was best to see what more
he could find out before saying anything. He was very much hoping to discover that it wasn’t true. If it was, Anya would be
deeply embarrassed at best, and, more likely, devastated.
But first, he wanted to talk to Mel, the private investigator, again. He wanted to tell her what Paul had said about Zofia,
because he didn’t think she knew that another young woman had gone missing. On his way to the lab he knocked on her door.
She didn’t answer, and when he peered through the window the cottage looked empty. He’d call or message her later, he decided,
if she wasn’t back when he got home.
Moving on, he found himself glancing over his shoulder as he walked and scanning faces in every group of students he passed
or stood among as he waited to cross the road.
When he reached the lab he found a quiet cubicle and tried to revisit the dark web chat about Folio 9, but it had been deleted.
Every nerve in his body jangled. He tried more searches, desperate to learn anything useful about Folio 9 or about Zofia,
but couldn’t find anything. It was getting dark as he walked back to the cottage. He called next door again but Mel wasn’t
back. Anya wasn’t home, either, and he hadn’t heard from her.
He searched for Mel’s card but he’d mislaid it. While he waited for her and for Anya, he went to his office and attempted
to work on Lucis, but all he could think about was the possibility that the walls had eyes. Their little paradise was a panopticon.
The waiting got so painful that he took a walk. Students were in the shops, buying dinner, or gathering in pubs and bars.
He wandered the center for a while, but the crowds were too much, and he found himself drawn to the quieter streets, then
heading in the direction of Paul and Giulia’s home. He thought he might try to talk to Paul again. He needed more clarity.
At the very least it would be helpful to have Zofia’s surname.
There were lights on in their house. As Sid approached, Giulia appeared at the window, looking out, and Sid froze. He was
partially hidden by parked vehicles, and the birch in her yard had just enough leaves on it to obscure her view of him. He
watched her as she stared up the street toward the ruins. It was a shock to see her in person now that he knew she wasn’t
who she said she was. It had been one thing to learn it, but it felt more real, more of a deception now that she was in front
of him. She looked put together, as usual, though her expression was peculiarly blank and hard, and he wondered how Diana’s
death had affected her. She didn’t seem to see him, but Sid stayed stock-still until she’d lowered the blinds, then backed
away so as not to have to walk past the house and took the long route back to the cottage.
The windows in Mel’s cottage were dark and Anya still wasn’t home. He waited awhile, nerves building, and sent Anya a message
to which she didn’t reply. His anxiety escalated.
He was searching again for Mel’s card, when blue light filled the cottage suddenly, bright and eerie, pulsating, startling him. It came from the back lane. His stomach lurched even though he knew it probably had nothing to do with him. He ran out of the back gate and toward the commotion.
An ambulance and police car were parked in front of the cathedral complex, lights revolving. The chain securing the gates
had been severed and two police officers were on site, walking toward the ruins with flashlights. A dog walker watched from
the pavement, his face pale with shock. “I saw someone on top of the ruins,” he said. “Walking toward the tower. And—” He
was visibly shaken up.
“Jesus,” Sid said. He entered the site. Nobody told him not to. The police raked the ruins with the beams of their flashlights.
Sid followed, his heart in his mouth. The flashlight beams converged to illuminate the stump of a column. A body lay broken
over it, limbs abnormally crooked, neck bent back unnaturally over the edge of the stone, eyes open but seeing nothing.