Ross King - Ex Libris

But tonight, as the guns blazed outside, there was no sign even of Otakar. She wove her way between the naked shelves until she reached the tiny room where Vilém worked. Though the door was closed, she could see a crack of light underneath, but the room was empty except for an oil-lamp and Otakar's two exhausted wine bottles. Vilém's desk stood in its usual place before the fireplace, and the oil-lamp, trimmed low, sat beside it, almost empty of fuel. She was about to withdraw when she noticed the faintly astringent scent in the air and then saw a clutter of objects on the desk: ink bottles and goose quills, along with a book-a parchment-bound in leather. She remembered none of these things from two nights earlier. Was this Otakar's handiwork? Or had Vilém returned? Perhaps the book belonged to him. Perhaps it was one of the works of philosophy-something by Plato or Aristotle-with which he had been trying to wean her from her diet of poetry and romance.

She tiptoed to the desk to examine the litter. There was also, she saw, a pumice-stone and a piece of chalk, as if the desk were that of a scrivener. She knew all about such things, about scribes and their parchments, which were rubbed with pumice-stones and then chalked to absorb the animal fats and keep the ink from running. Two weeks ago Vilém had shown her, besides the telescopes and astrolabes, a number of ancient manuscripts, ones copied, he said, by the scribes of Constantinople. The manuscripts were the most valuable documents in the whole of the Spanish Rooms, and the monks, he told her, the most exquisite artists the world had known. He had angled one of the documents into the lamplight to show her how not even the passage of a thousand years had faded the lettering-the reds made from ground-up cinnabar, the yellows from dirt excavated on the slopes of volcanoes. And some of the most beautiful and valuable parchments of all-the so-called 'golden books' made for the collections of the Byzantine emperors themselves-had been dyed purple and then inscribed with ink made from powdered gold. When Emilia closed their boards, which were as thick as the planks of a ship, her palms and fingers glittered as if she had been running them through a treasure chest.

But now the beautiful parchments from Constantinople had disappeared along with the rest of the books. Only the one on the desk remained. She moved aside the clutch of quills and studied it more carefully. The binding was exquisite. The front cover had been elaborately tooled, its leather stamped with symmetrical patterns of whorls, scrolls and interlacing leaves-intricate designs she recognised as those decorating some of the books from Constantinople. Yet when she opened the cover she saw how, far from being dyed purple or inscribed in gold, the pages were in a poor condition, stiff and wrinkled as if they had been submerged in water. The black ink was badly faded and smudged, though the words looked to be in Latin, a language she was unable to read.

Slowly she thumbed the pages, listening to the mortars echo and grumble outside the walls. One of the cannon-balls must have struck the battlements, because the floor seemed to tremble underfoot and the window-panes rattled in their fittings. A soft diffusion of light, the fire from the Summer Palace, lay lambent on the far wall. ' Fit deorum ab hominibus dolenda secessio ,' she saw at the top of one of the pages, ' soli nocentes angeli remanent… '

Another piece of mortar struck the battlements, this time much loser, and a section of the wall collapsed into the moat with a crash. She looked up from the parchment, startled by the blast, and saw the tall figure and its black, sprawling shadow. It took a few seconds for her to absorb the sight of him-the beard, the sword, the pair of bowed legs that made him look like a bear standing upright. Later she would decide that he looked like Amadís of Gaul or Don Belianís, or even the Knight of Phoebus-one of the heroes from her tales of chivalry. How long he had been there, watching her from across the room, she had no idea.

'I'm sorry,' she stammered, dropping the book to the desk. 'I was only-'

Then another piece of mortar struck the wall and the window exploded in flames.

I was awakened by the sound of hammering. For a moment, staring at the ceiling, at the ribs of oak laths and timber joists exposed beneath broken plaster, I could not recall where I was. I pushed myself on to my elbows, and a strip of sunlight fell like a bandolier across my chest. I was surprised to find myself on the right side of the pallet-on what, in another life, would have been Arabella's half. In my first year as a widower I had slept on her side of the bed, but then slowly-month by month, inch by inch-I had crept back to my own half, where I remained. Now I had the disturbing impression that I had dreamt of my wife for the first time in almost a year.

I rose from the bed and, pushing my spectacles on to my nose, trudged to the casement window, eager to take my first view of Pontifex Hall by daylight. Underfoot the bare boards were cool. Pushing open the casement and looking down, I saw that I was in one of the south-facing rooms. The window gave on to the parterre and, beyond it, an obelisk that corresponded to a ruined one I had seen the night before on the north side of the hall. Beyond the obelisk was another fountain and another ornamental pond, now stagnant and shrunken, each the twin of those on the north side. Or was I facing the north side? The entire grounds of the park seemed to have been composed symmetrically, as if Pontifex Hall, even in ruin, were a mirror of itself.

No, the sun was to the left, above a wall-barely visible through the branches and leaves-that marked the perimeter of the park. So, yes, I was facing south after all. Peering down through the open casement at the sorry remains of the parterre, I realised I must be directly above the library.

I stayed at the window for a minute; the air smelled fresh and green, a pleasant change from Nonsuch House, where the stench of the river at low tide is sometimes not to be borne. The hammers ceased their tattoos and were replaced, seconds later, by a sharp knock on my door. Phineas entered with a basin of steaming water.

'Breakfast served downstairs, sir.' He began clearing a space on the table with his right hand as the water slurped at the rim of the basin clutched in his wizened claw. 'In the breakfast parlour.'

'Thank you.'

'Whenever you are ready, sir.'

'Thank you, Phineas.' He had turned to go, but I stopped him. 'That knocking, what was it?'

'The plasterers, sir. Restoring the ceiling of the Great Room.' There was something unctuous and faintly unpleasant about his manner. He exposed a row of teeth that were sharp and gapped like a thatcher's rake. 'I do hope you were not disturbed, sir?'

'No, no. Not at all. Thank you, Phineas.'

I performed my ablutions quickly, scrubbing vigorously at my beard, and then began to dress, wondering about the 'interests' and 'enemies' Alethea had spoken of. Last night I had not been frightened by these revelations, as she assumed-merely puzzled. Now, in the light of day, with the fresh breeze stirring in the sunlit chamber, the idea seemed ridiculous. Possibly the townspeople were right. Poor Alethea, I thought as I struggled with my braces. Perhaps she was stricken with lunacy after all. Possibly the deaths of her father and husband-by murder or not-had unhinged her mind. This business of restoring the hall to its former condition was without doubt an eccentric pursuit.

At last I was ready to go downstairs. Closing behind me the door to the Velvet Bedchamber, I started along the corridor. There were two doors on either side, both closed; then a third, also closed, directly ahead of me. I passed through this and into an antechamber, then into a length of corridor. Two closed doors stood on either side of the corridor, which eventually intersected with a second, also lined with closed doors.