The Book of Secrets by Tom Harper

Author:Tom Harper [Tom Harper]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Group Limited
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XLVI

Strassburg

‘Written by the hand of Libellus, and illuminated by Master Francis.’

I sat on the floor, resting against a timber post, and read the inscription for the hundredth time. I held the book like a chalice, a talisman. I could have sold it and paid off half my debts at once, but I would never do that.

Kaspar, fiddling with the press, glanced over. I knew he liked to watch me reading his book. I angled it down.

‘What is that?’

His eyes were sharp as ever. I turned the book around and raised it so he could see what I had done. The blank space underneath the explicit was now filled by the card I had pasted in: the eight of beasts, the map that led me to Kaspar.

He smiled. ‘You are a collector.’

‘A devotee.’

‘You’re right to hang on to the card. There will not be any others.’

A confused look.

‘The plate is gone. I melted it down and sold it.’

I was aghast that something so beautiful should have been lost for ever. ‘All of them? The whole deck?’

‘About half.’ He laughed at the expression on my face, though I did not find it funny.

‘Johann, you saw what happened to our own plate. Even in a few dozen pressings it decayed. The same would have happened to the cards. Nothing endures.’

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ I insisted.

He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Some survive in Dunne’s workshop. Speaking of whom, I must go. He has some work for me.’

I wrapped the bestiary in its cloth and followed Kaspar out. My joy in the book had gone. Nothing endures. Except failure, I thought – and my engagement to Ennelin.

I made my way through Strassburg to an apothecary’s shop where my credit was still tolerated. The lead cast I had made of Dunne’s plate barely survived my experiment: the metal was so soft it blurred the moment it touched the paper. But, like the first print I ever saw from Konrad Schmidt’s ring in Cologne, I had recognised something in it. I knew I could make it stronger. Already, by alloying it with tin and antimony I found I could make a good clean cast. The hope was just enough to hold off the full weight of my dread whenever I thought of Ennelin.

She was still lurking in my thoughts when I passed the Rathaus, the city hall. I almost missed her. The court was in session, and crowds thronged the street outside waiting for verdicts. I glimpsed her coming down the steps and almost dismissed it as a manifestation of my imagination. But it was enough to make me look again, just in time to confirm it was indeed her. Her mother was behind her. They stepped into the crowd and vanished before I could reach them.

I found someone who knew her, a member of the wine merchant’s guild, and asked why they had been in court.

‘They have just heard the suit regarding her late husband’s estate. He had a son by his first wife who challenged her inheritance.

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