Chapter Fourteen
Anya
Sid and I abandoned the car and took the train to London very early the next morning. We’d had only a couple of hours’ rest.
It was still dark when we hurried on foot to the station beneath the glow of Edinburgh’s streetlamps, our footsteps overly
loud on the cobbles, street cleaners hosing the pavements slick, rain spitting.
We found seats and fell asleep. After a few hours I woke to find I had an email from an unknown address. The subject line
caught me.
To: Anya Brown
From: RB
Subject: READ CAREFULLY, ANYA
Date: September 23, 2024
My darling girl,
They told me you called last night. You’ll want to know how I am. I’m feeling much better today, so don’t worry.
I don’t have much time to write this, and I’m doing so on another borrowed phone. I don’t have mine back yet. The lovely young man who cleans my room helped me set up this email address and use his phone.
Everything I’m about to confess is true. Believe it. There’s no time for doubt. Delete this after reading it.
I should start by explaining how the glossary came to me.
A few years before I met your father, I attended a conference organized by the Society of Bookbinders. I was there because
I wanted to hear a woman called Josephine Dunne speak. She was very elderly by then, and a legend in our business because
she was a female pioneer in the industry. She was also well known to be very reclusive, so it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity.
At the conference Josephine ran a daylong seminar and workshop for women bookbinders. Attendance was selective, we had to
apply in writing and with examples of our work. I was delighted to be accepted, alongside just three others, and even more
delighted when she apparently took a shine to me, approaching me at the end of the session and asking me, and only me, to
come to tea with her. The others were jealous, but I didn’t care. She was my heroine.
She told me so many stories when we were alone together that afternoon and asked me so many questions. When we parted, she
gave me a gift: a red leather bookmark she’d made that day as part of a demonstration during our workshop. It was made from
the softest leather and tooled in gold with a beautiful design. She made a few that day, to demonstrate different techniques,
each with a different Shakespeare quote on it. “Coronet weeds,” this one said. Do you remember it? When you were a child,
I kept it in the little drawer in my workshop, the one you loved to rummage through.
About a month after Josephine’s funeral, and out of the blue, a courier arrived at my studio in Cambridge and handed over
a package. Then I understood that she’d been vetting me that day.
The package contained the glossary, an old letter written in Latin, and a note from Josephine explaining that, together, the glossary and the old letter were the key to decoding the Voynich manuscript.
I could hardly believe it. Suddenly to find yourself in possession of the key to unlock one of the most enigmatic manuscripts
in existence was quite astounding, but her note warned me that there was far more to it than that.
Josephine wrote that the glossary was important not just because it was the key to decoding the Voynich, but because the Voynich is the key to finding something else. Something far more valuable and important. She didn’t say what it was, but she wrote, “Lives have been ruined or lost searching
for this object and for that reason it’s best that it’s never found.”
She told me I should hide the glossary and the letter somewhere no one would find them and keep them hidden for as long as
I could. She’d chosen me to bear this responsibility, she said, because she had no daughter of her own or any other female
descendants and it was important both artifacts were in the care of someone who could understood their power and who knew
how to keep them safe.
I didn’t know about that. Nor did I know what to make of any of it or even whether to take it seriously. It sounded unreal.
But the woman I remembered wasn’t a fantasist, and her reputation as a pioneer and a craftswoman was stellar. I decided that
whatever I thought of her claims for the glossary, I would honor her wishes.
A solution presented itself. It so happened that the glossary and the letter appeared at my studio a few days before that short window of time when I had access to your father’s collection of manuscripts.
I knew that it wasn’t uncommon to find the remnants of old manuscripts in the bindings of newer ones—I’d made some discoveries like that myself—so I decided to do the same with the glossary and the letter, as you’ve hopefully found out by now.
I carefully took the glossary apart and hid the pieces, and the letter, within another book.
It was the most secret place I could think of, and the safest, because your grandfather had installed extraordinary measures to safeguard the collection.
Magnus never suspected a thing. Nor did anyone else.
I was hopeful that I’d done my bit and that I could leave the book there for years, decades, without having to think of it again.
My sense of security didn’t last long. Within weeks I found out I was pregnant with you and my relationship imploded. A few
months later strange things began to happen to me. There were hang-ups on my landline and a couple of nights when I was certain
someone followed me home from my studio. One morning I found the body of a mutilated owl on my doorstep, a beautiful creature.
I was terrified. I knew it wasn’t coincidence. It was a message. Josephine had run a tiny independent publishing house called
the Owl Press. Someone else wanted the glossary, and they’d found me.
Women are tigresses, never more so than when pregnant, and never more so than when the father of their child has told them
he wants nothing more to do with them. I was beside myself with worry. I thought they might hurt me and that I might lose
you.
I didn’t want the responsibility for the glossary or the letter any longer; I didn’t think I was the right person. I wanted
to give them to someone else, but I’d lost the ability to access them. Your father had rejected me so completely, I couldn’t
even think of a way to get myself inside the family home, let alone his library.
There was only one solution I could think of: destroy them. I didn’t care if I was destroying history, as long as that meant I could keep my child safe. I waited until nobody was home, and I burned your father’s library down.
It was the most terrifying and necessary thing I’ve ever done, but afterward I was able to sleep at night, knowing that you
and I were safer.
But imagine how I’ve felt over the past few days, knowing that the glossary and letter survived because the book I hid them
in had been moved before the library burned. Knowing that you have been recruited to work on it. Knowing that someone has
pieced some or all of this together and is using you.
Terror doesn’t describe it adequately.
I introduced you to my world because I hoped it would give you joy. I never dreamed it would put you in such danger. When
I disabled the fire protection system your grandfather installed, and I lit that flame, when I ran from it and felt its heat
on my back after it grew large, and hungry, when I knew the glossary would soon be ashes, I thought I’d saved myself and you.
Josephine told me that some objects hold tremendous power. Not because of what they are, but because of what they represent.
The glossary and the letter are two such objects. I don’t know why. I only know that the people who want them are very dangerous
and have powerful backing.
If you’ve managed to find them, you should put a match to them and finish what I started.
It’s the only solution to keep you out of danger.
Whatever you do, don’t come to me. They will know where I am. You should go into hiding for a while. You’re resourceful and brilliant. I know you can do it. It won’t be forever.
If all this sounds melodramatic, or crazy, it isn’t. I may be unwell, but I’m still sharp, and I’m the person who cares most
about you in the world. I love you so much.
One more thing. Don’t contact me, either. Not for a while. It’s too dangerous. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll know you’re
safe. Nothing else will persuade me you are. But I will be sending love, as always and forever.
Mum xxxx
Viv
Viv sat quietly beside Rose’s bed as the doctor examined her chart. He was a very good-looking man, very distinguished. She
sat up a little straighter, but he didn’t look at her. He was focused on Rose.
“How are we feeling today, Mrs. Brown?” he asked.
“It’s Ms. Brown, and not too good. I had a bad night,” Rose said.
Viv glanced at Rose, surprised. Viv hadn’t been at the hospital long this morning, but Rose looked much better than yesterday,
even if she was a little quiet. Viv had put that down to Rose being upset that Viv hadn’t brought her phone to the hospital.
“I’m so sorry,” Viv had told her when Rose asked for it. “I was rushing to tidy the house before I left, and I forgot to grab
it.” She hadn’t, of course. The phone was in her handbag, which was sitting at her feet, but Viv didn’t want Rose to have
it just now.
He stabbed a finger at her chart. “Judging from this, I should say you’re ready to go home today, aren’t you?” he asked. “Have
you had any new symptoms overnight?”
Rose hesitated. “No,” she said. Viv frowned at her reluctant tone.
Rose was normally desperate to get home from the hospital.
Viv didn’t like the way that Rose was looking at her, either.
It was like Rose was assessing her. Suspecting her?
Viv didn’t think she’d given Rose any reason to, but Rose was sharp.
“Just a bad night’s sleep then,” the doctor said, “in which case I’m happy to discharge you. I’ll write up some antibiotics
for you to take home with you. Do you live alone?”