Douglas Preston - The Obsidian Chamber

She passed out of the bedroom and into the small private library. A set of dishes from last night’s dinner — her first since retreating to the sub-basement some days before — sat on one corner of the writing table. It appeared that Mrs. Trask had just returned from her sister’s hospital stay, because dinner had been left in the elevator. Previously, Mrs. Trask’s meals had almost always been simple and fresh. But the dinner she’d left in the elevator for Constance the night of her return had been anything but: saddle of veal with chanterelles, on a bed of roasted white asparagus with truffle coulis. The dessert had been a luscious slice of clafoutis aux cerises . While Mrs. Trask could be an excellent cook when the situation required it, Constance was surprised by the richness of the meal. It was not in keeping with the reasons she had taken up a solitary life underground — painful, private… and ascetic. Surely Mrs. Trask understood that. Such a gourmet meal, bordering on the decadent, seemed inappropriate. Perhaps it was just the housekeeper’s way of affectionately announcing her return. It put Constance off — but at the same time, she had enjoyed the meal despite herself.

Gathering up the dishes and picking up a torch, Constance made her way out of her private chambers, down the narrow passage, through the secret doorway, and out into the sub-basement proper. She moved gracefully and surely through the succession of rooms, knowing every inch of the collections and needing very little light.

More slowly now, she made her way through the last set of chambers to the staircase that spiraled up to the basement level. Reaching the top of the stairs, she walked through the dim corridors to the private elevator. She would open it, put in the dishes from last night’s repast, and take back to her rooms the meal that she knew Mrs. Trask would have waiting there for her.

She pulled back the brass gate, opened the door, put yesterday’s dishes inside, and turned to the fresh dinner arrayed on a silver tray, with a crisp linen tablecloth and elegant silver setting. The entrée was hidden beneath a silver dish cover. This was not surprising: Mrs. Trask’s way of helping keep the meal warm. What was surprising was the bottle of wine that stood on the tray beside it, along with an elegant crystal wineglass.

As Constance regarded the bottle — it was a Pauillac, she saw, a Château Lynch-Bages 2006—she remembered the last time she had tasted a bottle of wine. It had been in Pendergast’s room at the Captain Hull Inn, back in Exmouth. The memory caused her to flush deeply. Had Mrs. Trask somehow learned about that unfortunate and awkward event…?

But that was impossible. Still, on the heels of last night’s epicurean offering, this expensive wine was puzzling. It was out of character for Mrs. Trask, who never took it upon herself to choose wines from Pendergast’s extensive cellar, and who was far more likely to serve dinner accompanied by a bottle of mineral water and a pot of rose hip tea. Was this the housekeeper’s way of trying to coax her back upstairs?

Constance was not ready for that — at least, not yet. Mrs. Trask was welcome to show her concern, but this was going a bit overboard, and if it continued she might have to write the housekeeper a note.

Picking up the silver tray, she made her way back downstairs and along the listening galleries to her set of rooms.

Entering her small library, she set down the wine and the glass and removed the cover from the dish. She stared. This evening’s meal was simpler than the previous night’s fare, but nevertheless far more extravagant: foie gras, pan-seared rare, with white truffles arranged over the buttery liver in papery, fragrant shavings. The dish was flanked by two minuscule carrots with their tops, dusted with fresh parsley — a droll culinary flourish that was a far cry from Mrs. Trask’s usual hearty helping of vegetables.

Constance stared at the plate in puzzlement for a long time. Then she picked up the bottle of wine and looked at it intently.

As she replaced the bottle on the table, she realized something else was not right. Earlier in the day, before withdrawing to her bedroom for a nap, she had been writing in her journal — a habit she had developed years ago and from which she never deviated. Now, however, she saw that another volume had been placed atop the distinctive orange cover of her Rhodia notebook.

This was clearly a deliberate, calculated action. It couldn’t have fallen from a nearby shelf and, indeed, the volume wasn’t even one from her small private library, which had been lovingly hand-picked.

She turned it over in her hands. Stamped gilt lettering on the slender spine told her it was a copy of the poems of Catullus, in the original Latin.

Then she noticed something else. Slipped between two of the pages, like a place marker, lay a feather. She opened the book to the marked page and removed the feather, staring closely at it. This was not just any feather — but one of great peculiarity and distinction. Unless she was much mistaken, this was a feather from a Norfolk kaka: a large parrot, now extinct, last seen in the wild in the early nineteenth century. Its habitat had been limited to the trees and rocks of Norfolk and Phillip Islands, two tiny external territories of Australia, lost in the vast Pacific. The breathtakingly iridescent, almost cinnamon-colored throat feather she now held in her hand was unique to the Norfolk Island variety of the species.

She immediately knew where the feather came from. Stuffed specimens of the Norfolk kaka could be found in only a dozen places, including Amsterdam’s Zoölogisch Museum and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. But there was also a specimen in Enoch Leng’s cabinet of curiosities in that very basement, a male of unusual scarlet brilliance. The stuffed bird had been knocked over and damaged in the conflict that had taken place in the sub-basement two years before. She’d repaired it as best she could, but several of the feathers had remained missing.

Once again taking up the electric torch, she left her set of rooms and — gaining the central corridor — began walking in the opposite direction, until she reached a chamber devoted to stuffed animals. She quickly located the Norfolk kaka, set on a stand behind a rippled-glass case of mahogany.

The feather fit perfectly into a bare spot on the throat.

Back in her library, Constance glanced at the open book. The feather had been marking Poem 50.

She mentally translated the lines.

Yesterday, Licinius, a day of leisure,

We played many games in my little notebooks…

Then she noticed that — at the very bottom of the page — a small notation had been made with an elegant hand, in violet ink. The ink looked remarkably fresh:

Beloved one, I offer this poem for you.

She recognized it as a loose translation of the poem’s line 16: hoc, iucunde, tibi poema feci.

She turned the book over in her hands, amazed and perturbed. Where could this have come from? Could Proctor have brought it to her? But no — he would never presume to do any such thing, even if he thought it would ease her suffering. Besides, she was sure Proctor had never read a word of poetry in his life, Latin or otherwise. And in any case, he did not know of these secret rooms in which she’d taken residence.

With Pendergast dead, nobody knew of them.

She shook her head. Somebody had left her this book. Or was she starting to lose her mind? Maybe that was it; at times her grief was proving overpowering.

She opened the bottle of wine, poured out a glass, took a sip. Even to her, hardly a connoisseur, it was remarkably complex and interesting. She took another sip and sat down to her meal. But before commencing, she turned once again to the poem. She had read it before, of course, but not for years, and now — as she again translated the lines in her head — the poem seemed far more beautiful, more provocative, than she had remembered… and despite all, she read it through from beginning to end, slowly, with absorption and pleasure.