Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

“What about Stephen?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“Jeanne’s evidence might save him.”

“And put the noose around my neck?”

“Maybe.”

Sasha turned away, biting her lip. She liked Stephen. She’d only met him twice, but both times he’d gone out of his way to be friendly toward her, asking her about her work on the manuscripts, and she had appreciated his efforts at the time, realising the pressure he must have been under, seeing his father again after so long. But did that oblige her to try and save him? Did it mean that she had to give up the codex when she had worked so hard, had given up so much to find it? Leave it to Silas, who had no use for it? No, surely not. Providing the alibi might save Silas, but it wouldn’t condemn Stephen. His guilt was for the jury to decide. With a visible effort Sasha beat her conscience into submission. She had to have the book because that was the way to the cross, which was worth paying almost any price to obtain.

“So what were we doing in my room or yours?” she asked, making no effort to hide the contempt in her voice.

“Having an affair. And we made false statements because we didn’t want your Catholic mother to know about us.”

“How do you know I’ve got a Catholic mother?” asked Sasha, surprised.

“Because she came here once to visit you, don’t you remember? She arrived unexpectedly, and you weren’t happy about it. Took her straight off into Oxford. But I was the one who opened the door to her. She was complaining about her journey, and I got her some of my mother’s smelling salts that never got thrown out. Your mother said they smelt like something in her church. Her Catholic church.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing. I wouldn’t want my mother to know. Or anyone else either,” said Sasha.

Silas looked exasperated. “Oh God, does it matter?” he said. “It’s not like I’m asking to have an affair with you, can’t you see that? I just want you to say we did have one and to explain why you lied about it before. That’s all.”

“And for this I get what?”

“The book. But only after you’ve given evidence. Until then you’ll have to trust me.”

“No.” Sasha turned away and began gathering her papers together. She calculated that Silas needed her at this moment more than she needed him. And she was right. It didn’t take him long to give in.

“All right,” he said. “You can have it once you’ve made a statement to the police. At least you’ll be committed then.”

“Show it to me first,” she countered. “Then the statement.” It was the first time in his life Silas could ever recall Sasha’s smiling at him like she was now. He knew the reason, of course. He wasn’t stupid. It was the first and probably the last time that he had ever had anything she wanted. But still he wished he could stop the ornate clock that ticked away so loudly and relentlessly above the entrance to the library. He wondered for a moment if she would let him kiss her to seal their agreement, but then he realised that he would never have the courage to ask. Women frightened him, and Sasha most of all.

“It’s in the study,” he said.

“Well, at least I knew that much,” said Sasha, going past him. She was unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. She’d forgotten Stephen now that the codex was about to fall into her hands, just when she’d been on the point of giving up on it for good. She wondered as she went downstairs if all this was meant to be, but then laughed at herself softly. She’d studied religious history long enough to know that there was no such thing as Divine Providence.

In the study she turned to face Silas. One of the tall green leather armchairs was between them, and she stood with her hands lightly touching the brass studs in its back, watching him in the doorway.

“So show me,” she said. Her face was flushed and her lower lip trembled slightly.

“That’s the chair in which he died, you know,” said Silas, ignoring her demand. “Where he was most comfortable. I’ve got photographs of him sitting there. In life and in death. Before and after. I look at them sometimes up there in my room, wondering what it all means. Do you do that, Sasha?”

“What?”

“Think about him. I do. All the time. This whole house rotated round him like a clock, and now it’s stopped. I spent my whole life trying to make him notice me, and I don’t think he ever really did. Not even once.”

“You were adopted,” said Sasha brutally. Silas wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad time growing up.

“Yes. But that wasn’t it,” he said. “No one really existed for him. Except maybe my mother.”

“I never knew her.”

“And she wasn’t really my mother.”

Silas smiled, but Sasha stamped her foot, unable to contain her impatience any longer. Perhaps Silas was bluffing her about the codex. She had to know one way or the other.

“Where is it, Silas?” she said. “It was a deal, remember?”

“You’re looking at it,” he said. “You’ve been looking at it all the time.”

Sasha looked down at the low table between the chairs, but all she could see were several old magazines and the professor’s chessboard with the old ivory pieces set out in battle formation, ready to play.

“Don’t play games with me, Silas,” she said. “I’ve no time for them.”

“Which is probably why you never found your precious book,” he said, as he bent down over the table and began to remove the chess pieces from the board. “My father was brilliant at this game, you know. He’d have done well as a Soviet grand master, although perhaps he didn’t have the imagination to be the best. I wonder if that’s why he never played competitively,” Silas added musingly, as he held the now-empty board up to the light. His earlier agitation had disappeared, now that Sasha had agreed to give him what he wanted.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “So simple and yet so clever. Of all my father’s possessions it’s the one I like the most. Even more than the Rolls-Royce, I think, sometimes.”

“It’s a chessboard,” said Sasha, looking bemused.

“Yes, but it’s more than that. Much more. It’s also a hiding place.” Silas held the board just above the top of the table and began to press down on two of the diagonally opposing corner squares with his thumbs.

“I saw him doing this through my telephoto lens,” he said. “He was in a hurry for some reason and forgot to close the curtains. It was unlike him.”

Slowly, the base of the board divided down an invisible central seam, and the two sides opened. But the book stayed inside, kept in place by two small clips, until Silas turned the board upside down and lifted it out.

“I think he had it specially made, although I don’t know where,” he said. “And I don’t understand why he chose the two queens’ rooks for the squares to press. Perhaps there’s no significance.”

Sasha wasn’t listening. She’d seized the codex from Silas’s hands almost as soon as he had it out of the box, and now she found it hard to turn the pages with her shaking hands. But it didn’t take her long to know that it was the real thing. The tooled leather binding was an eighteenth-century addition, there to protect the ancient vellum on which the old French monk had inscribed the gospel of St. Luke. It was not long. Not many pages. But the painting was magnificent. Red and black and gold. The colours were richer than any that Sasha had ever seen.

But would it tell her the secret of the cross, or was that just an old wives’ tale in which John of Rome had too-credulously believed? Cade must have spent years trying to find the answer, but there was nothing of his inside that she could see, except a small sheet of notepaper between the last two pages with a series of numbers written in columns that made no immediate sense to her. Was it a code? Sasha thought of trying to remove it from the book, but there was no time as Silas pulled the codex back out of her hands.