Chapter Fifteen #2
wooden doors had an elaborate door knocker, a ram, with curved horns and a worried look on its face that Clio thought appropriate
to her profession.
It turned out to be a pleasant and helpful visit. She spent a bittersweet half hour in their offices, marveling at the size
and strength of their operation, the value they put on cultural heritage. It was something to aspire to, though she knew it
would never happen in London.
Even better, her contact helpfully made a call to the force in Verona to let them know she’d be there.
She was given permission to interview Anya Brown without oversight but warned that if she got a sniff of any laws being broken, including those involving cultural heritage, she should let him, or the local force, know immediately, and she’d have the full force of their resources behind her.
On the train from Venice to Verona she made a call she’d been thinking about all morning, to the British Museum, requesting
CCTV footage from inside the museum on the morning she and Lillian had visited. It had been niggling at her that Lillian had
taken her there. If the situation had been so dangerous, why do something so brazen when she could have just shown Clio a
photograph of the embroidery or sent her a link to the Museum’s catalog entry for the piece, where there was a high-resolution
image?
The scenery from the train was a mix of industrial, beautiful—a clock tower in Padua, mountains, vineyards, a bridge over
a wide, milky-green river near Vicenza, terraced hills embracing Verona—and voyeuristic, where the tracks ran behind private
gardens and apartment buildings and she got glimpses into other people’s lives.
There were two parts of her job that Clio took very seriously: upholding justice and protecting people from crime. It was
why she was proud to call herself a police officer. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She couldn’t shake her unease that
she was breaking rules to be here now. Nor was it lost on her that she was starting to get a strong whiff of corruption, and
she had no one to turn to.
As the announcer told her, first in Italian, then in English, that they were arriving in Verona, she received a message from
her Italian contact: an address for where Anya Brown was staying.
Whatever else was going on, at least she could try to ensure this young woman remained safe.
Anya
“Ignore the message from Magnus,” Sid said.
“I think he knows I took the bestiary.”
“I agree, but please ignore it for now.”
“He’s powerful, Sid.”
“I don’t think he can possibly know you’re here, for one, but also, he needs you, which means you have some agency. Don’t forget that. You don’t need to respond immediately.”
I knew he was right, Magnus didn’t have all the power, but I felt the creep of paranoia. “You know that woman whose foot you
stepped on in the church? I saw her earlier, in the amphitheater.”
“Verona’s a small city. We’re bound to see the same people doing the same things. There’s a tourist circuit here.”
“I think we should go back to the apartment for a bit.” No matter what he said, I was suddenly nervous to be out on the street,
and I felt like I’d seen enough to know that we were right to come here. Now I needed to go back to the manuscript and look
at it with fresh eyes, to try to identify possible locations within the city where The Book of Wonder might be.
“Sure,” Sid said. He took my hand as we walked. “Tell me about the last paragraph of the Voynich. What have you managed to
figure out so far?”
I smiled. “It’s kind of charming, like Isotta’s letter. It talks about The Book of Wonder and explains that it’s been hidden, and why. Like the letter, it refers the reader to the rosette page, that big fold-out
page, and I think it says something along the lines of ‘You can find it there.’”
“Meaning the rosette page contains clues for finding The Book of Wonder?”
“I think it might and in relation to the location, it mentions a word that I’m not sure how to interpret: ‘tegumentum.’ It
means cover, or skin, sometimes clothing. It could refer to the book’s original binding, but that’s lost. The binding that’s
on the Voynich today was put on more recently. I’m also wondering if ‘tegumentum’ could mean something else. Sometimes old
manuscripts were stored in bags.”
“And this binding or cover could be the key to the location of The Book of Wonder?”
“It might be, but ‘tegumentum’ could also be a metaphor.”
“Right. What about the words on the rosette page? Can they give a clue?”
“They seem to be names, but I can’t make anything of that yet. ”
“It’ll come. Give it time.”
I wished I had his confidence in me. “But what if it doesn’t? What if I’m only as good as my memory?”
He squeezed my hand. “Don’t go there, Anya. Have faith.”
We’d been walking along the banks of the river, not paying attention to where we were going, and found ourselves back near
the Basilica of San Zeno, where we’d started out. I took a second look at the two ancient towers, one a typical pointed medieval
tower, similar in style to a drawing on the rosette page of the Voynich, the other with swallowtail merlons, another echo
of the manuscript. I looked up at the basilica’s facade, at the rose window, shaped like a spoked wheel.
Images from the morning and from the manuscript flipped through my mind.
“Sid!” I pointed. “Do you see that window? It looks just like one of the circles on the Voynich rosette page. And remember
the oval shape of the amphitheater? There’s a shape like that on the rosette page, too. What if each of the rosettes represents
a specific site in Verona?”
“Like a map?”
“Yes! Maybe!”
I needed to be off the streets, to write down my thoughts, draw connections, do more research on Verona’s churches and sites,
to be doubly certain which ones had existed in Isotta’s time. There were already theories that the rosette page was a map,
of the skies, the celestial bodies, or a geographic area, but as far as I knew, no one had suggested it was a map of a specific
city.
We hurried back to the apartment, propelled by a new sense of urgency, or was it hope? The most dangerous emotion.
When we turned the corner onto our street, I grabbed Sid’s arm. “Stop.”
Standing outside the entrance of the building was a woman, her back to us, looking up at our balcony.
Clio
Clio sensed eyes on the back of her neck and turned to see a young couple, holding hands, watching her. The street was busy
with people, passing through, shopping, chatting, laughing, but this pair stood still, staring, like deer in headlamps. She
recognized Anya Brown and gave what she hoped was a small, friendly wave. She made her way toward them. They stayed where
they were, though they looked ready to bolt, and Clio wondered why.
“Anya Brown?” she asked.
“Who’s asking?” the man shot back.
She pulled a badge from her bag. “My name is Detective Constable Clio Spicer. I’m from the Scotland Yard Art and Antiques
Squad. If you can spare me some time, I’d like to have a chat about Professor Diana Cornish.”
“It’s a long way to come for a chat,” he said.
“And you are?” Clio smiled, kept her tone friendly, trying to defang his defensiveness.
“Sid Hill.”
“Good to meet you, Sid. I’m here because it’s an important case.” True, even if she wasn’t being entirely honest with them.
“Do you have jurisdiction here?” he asked.
Anya hadn’t said a word yet. She was watching Clio intently.
“I don’t. But I don’t need it unless a crime has been committed. The local police know I’m here; you can check with them if
you want. It’s entirely up to you, Anya, as to whether you’re willing to chat to me or not. We’re just trying to get as rounded
a picture of Diana and her associates and activities as possible.”
“Sid, it’s fine,” Anya said, eventually. “Where do you want to do this?”
“Your place?”
They exchanged a glance, some hesitation passing between them. “Sure,” Anya said after a beat.
Sid let them into the building and ran up the stairs, entering the apartment first. As Clio followed Anya inside, he was coming
out of a bedroom. “Just clearing up,” he said, and she wondered what was so important that he’d had to rush ahead.
They sat in the kitchen. It was small, the table taking up most of the room, cabinets on either side, and, Clio noted, it
was overlooked by the building opposite.
“When did you last see Diana?” she asked.
Anya spoke about Diana introducing her to her father at his house in London, then taking her to a bookshop in London where
they debriefed. “I was upset with her for springing the meeting with my dad on me. After I left, I didn’t see her again,”
Anya said.
“Can anyone confirm?”
“My father and his wife. His driver. The bookseller.”
“Had you never met your father before?”
“No. He and Mum were estranged before I was born.”
“And he is the Magnus Beaufort?” Clio wanted to confirm. He was famous. Fame complicated everything.
“He is.”
“And did you agree to work with him?”
“I did.” Anya Brown spoke quietly, calmly. If she had big feelings, she kept them locked behind the eyes. “My father wants
me to be involved with the library he’s building in Cambridge. It’s a big legacy project for him, and apparently”—she raised
her eyebrows a little—“it’s always been a dream of his that I work with him on the collection. I don’t know my father well,
but he has a lot of grand ideas, and this is one of them.”
“I take it you don’t feel enthusiastic about the collaboration?”
“My feelings about him are complicated.” Anya’s gaze was as steady as her voice. Brave, Clio thought. Outwardly controlled.
“How did you spend the rest of that day?”
“I traveled to Cambridge to see some of the books in his collection. They were at his house. I also visited the site where
he’s building the library. When I got back to London that evening, I had a call from my mum’s carer saying she’d been taken
to hospital, so I took the train to Bristol to be with her.”
“Is she okay?” Clio asked.