Chapter Thirteen #3
It wasn’t Anya. He almost vomited with relief, but as he got closer, he realized it was Paul, and he did retch then, painfully
and as silently as he could, before backing away into the darkness so he wouldn’t be seen.
It was enough. Enough people dying, disappearing. He needed to find Anya now.
At the gate, more people had gathered, rubbernecking. Sid avoided it. He climbed the wall to get out and tried to call Anya
as he walked the few hundred yards home. She didn’t answer. His nerves were stretched so taut he felt like he might snap,
but as he got closer to home, he saw her getting out of a car at the end of Gregory Lane and the relief almost brought him
to tears.
He waited in the shadows until the car had pulled away before he stepped out, then he put his arm around her as if he was
hugging her and whispered in her ear that they had to leave. Now. He wasn’t going to risk them staying another moment in that
place.
In the filmy darkness he could see the whites of her eyes. Beneath his arm he could feel her tension. She nodded and tilted her head to whisper back.
“We grab only what we need. We’re not coming back.”
He stiffened. It was like she already knew they had to go. He dreaded to think why, but there was no time to ask.
Inside, he picked up their passports, his laptop, and the car keys and couldn’t think of anything else that mattered. All
he needed was Anya.
His car was parked down the street. He glanced back at the cottage as they were getting in. A pair of young women stood outside
their front door. He recognized them. Before he could warn Anya, she slammed the car door shut, and their heads turned toward
the sound in unison.
Sid jumped in, got the car started. In the rearview mirror he saw the women running toward the car. They were fast. He pulled
away, foot down. The last Sid saw of them as he braced himself to take a corner as fast as he dared was a pair of dusky silhouettes
in the middle of the road and a flash as one of them photographed the car’s license plate.
Anya
We wanted to get as far away from St. Andrews as possible but were worried Sid’s car could be traced. We drove to Edinburgh
and left the car on a residential street in the suburbs and walked until we found a hotel.
The journey was grim as we exchanged news of Paul’s death, and of what Mum had told me and what I had done. Once we’d checked
into our room, I tried to call Mum even though she’d told me not to. I wanted to tell her I had the bestiary. She didn’t answer.
“Viv should have given her phone back by now,” I said.
Sid shook his head. “I don’t trust her.”
I phoned the ward number and it rang and rang. Sid said, “It’s probably shift changeover time, maybe try again in a bit,” but I held on, gripping the handset so hard my knuckles whitened, until eventually they answered. “Your mum’s fine. She’s asleep,” the nurse told me.
“Can you tell her I called?” I asked, and she promised she would.
The hotel room was small and basic. Sid double-locked the door and closed the curtains. I laid the bestiary on the bed.
“Holy shit,” he said.
The book was bound using two boards, front and back. Embossed leather was glued onto the outside of each cover, and plain
parchment on the inside. I used my fingernail to separate the parchment from the front cover.
Carefully, I eased out four small sheets of vellum covered in writing. I did the same for the back cover and extracted another
four sheets.
It was just as Mum had said. It was unbelievable.
My hand shook as I put the pages together. I was holding a glossary, a list of words translated from Voynichese into Latin
in closely written text. I checked the binding again. As Mum had said, there was one more thing hidden there: a letter, written
in Latin.
It felt like a miracle that they’d survived. At first glance there were enough words listed in the glossary that I should
be able to translate the entire Voynich manuscript. It would take time, but I felt confident that it could be done.
“This is huge,” I said.
“What does this say?” Sid was looking at the letter.
I took it from him. It was written in Renaissance Latin. I could read parts of it easily, but others would take some work.
“It talks about a manuscript, which must be the Voynich, although this refers to it as the Liber mulierum, which means the Book of Women.”
“So where does the name ‘Voynich’ come from?”
“From a guy who bought the manuscript off the Jesuits in the early twentieth century and spent the rest of his life trying
to hawk it for maximum profit because he was convinced there was something special about it. But he failed; there were no
takers. It was still in his possession when he died, and it was eventually gifted to Yale. Liber mulierum is a really interesting name for it, because there are pages of pictures of naked women in the Voynich and nobody knows what
they’re supposed to represent. That title reminds me of another famous medieval text called Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum, which means The Book of the Conditions of Women. It’s basically an OB-GYN book for medieval midwives. My father actually has a copy of it in his collection. But this is
fascinating because it could suggest that the Voynich was written specifically for women.”
“How old do you think the gloss and the letter are?”
I pointed to the last line of the letter. Sid read it out.
It was the author’s sign-off, in brown ink dark enough that I thought it must be made from oak galls, just like the ink in
the Voynich.
Vale. 5 Iunius 1461.
“June 5, 1461,” I said.
“Vale?” he asked. “Is that who wrote it?”
“It’s pronounced ‘vah-lay,’” I said. “It’s a Latin sign-off. It means ‘goodbye.’ I can’t see the author’s name, but perhaps
when I translate it, I’ll find it.” I had butterflies in my stomach. This was historical treasure.
“How long will that take?”
“A few hours for a rough translation.”
“Do it.”
Sid emptied the minibar of snacks and sodas to keep us going, and I got to work. As the night ran into the small hours the character of the letter writer emerged and made itself known with unexpected strength. She was a woman, unnamed, and was in turns witty, learned, and bitter.
By the time I finished Sid was dozing beside me, and I nudged him awake.
“Have you done it?” he asked.
I was buzzing. “It’s just like Mum said, I think this writer is implying that the Voynich is the key to something else, and
it might be another book.”