Ross King - Ex Libris

'So that is Arundel House.'

Turning to look at the palace sliding past on their starboard side she saw a wintry-looking garden filled not with people, as she first thought, but dozens of statues. A cluster of robed figures was standing erect beneath the trees, frozen as if at a stroke, gesturing arms immobile, sightless marble eyes gazing across the river to Lambeth Marsh. Others wrestled together, while still others lay supine in the grass like corpses on a battlefield, staring at the clouds, their arms and torsos fractured in the middle of heroic postures. She could see yet more ruins under the wings of the house, a promiscuous heap of rubble, what looked from this distance like the fragmentary remains of urns and pediments whose shards had been bleached bone-white by ancient suns. Above them, on the keystone of the arch, the inscription: 'ARVNDELIVS'.

The name was familiar. She craned her neck as the garden slowly receded in their unfurling wake, trying to remember what Vilém had said a few hours earlier about Arundel and the Howards, about their rivalry with Buckingham.

'From Constantinople,' Vilém was now saying, almost in a whisper. 'The finest collection in all of England, if not the whole world. Arundel has an agent at the Sublime Porte who ships them to London by the crate-load. He suborns the imams. He convinces them that the statues are idolatrous so they can be removed from the palaces and triumphal arches. Most of the other statues are from Rome, where Arundel has good connections with the papal authorities.'

'And good connections with Cardinal Baronius?'

Vilém nodded grimly. 'Arundel and his agents have been working for Baronius, spreading their sticky web, trying to catch whatever they can of the treasures from the Spanish Rooms and the Bibliotheca Palatina. Reports from Rome say a deal has been struck. In return for Arundel delivering the Hermetic manuscript, the Pope will sanction the export of a number of statues on which the Earl has set his heart. Included among them is an obelisk from Egypt that now lies on the site of the Circus of Maxentius. Also a few ornaments from the Palazzo Pighini. Arundel plans to erect them in his garden, I fancy. A fine sight they would make. Monuments to Rome in the heart of London.'

Now, pushing aside draping willow branches, ducking among the aspens, Emilia hurried to catch Vilém, who was three steps ahead, the cabinet clutched awkwardly in his arms as he crept round the knot garden of York House. There was a side entrance beside a basket of bricks, under the scaffold, cast in shadow. When Vilém knocked hesitantly on the door, a cacophony of yelps and snarls arose from within. Both of them shrank backwards, Vilém fumbling with the cabinet. Claws scrabbled angrily against the inside of the door.

'Quiet, quiet! No, no! Achille! No!'

But the muffled voice from behind the door did little to silence the beasts. A few seconds later came the rasp of a judas, and Emilia caught the wink of an imperious eye.

'Who knocks?'

Vilém, apparently thinking better of announcing himself, made no reply, only hoisted the cabinet high enough for the eye to see. Then came more howling and the sound of crossbars sliding in their wooden grooves. Seconds later the door squealed open a crack to reveal four snouts, clamorous and slobbering. A pack of buckhounds. Emilia stumbled backwards, her heels slipping in the frost.

'Achille! Anton! No!'

The hounds spilled outside, leaping over one another's lithe backs like a troupe of acrobats. Emilia recoiled another step but tripped over the basket, then one of the tumultuous hounds. Its tail struck the hollow of her knee and she collapsed with a cry to the grass. Seconds later she felt on her throat and hands the hot breath of the pack, then their noses and tongues.

'Salt,' explained a calm voice from somewhere high above. 'They adore the taste of salt. Obviously, my dear, you've been perspiring.' Hands clapped loudly. She looked up through a chaos of ears and tails to see a liveried figure tickling the jowls of one of the capering hounds. 'Here, lads. Here, my boys! Auguste! Achille! Anton! Good boys!'

'We have come on important business,' Vilém was saying from where he cowered beside the door, holding aloft the cabinet as two more of the hounds, lean and spotted, stood on their hind legs and pawed at his belly and chest like children patting his pockets for sweets. 'We would speak to Mr. Monboddo!'

'Do come in, please,' said the footman, sniggering. 'Mind the carpet, though, won't you? That's it. The Earl is most particular where his carpets are concerned. Oriental, as you can see. Very fine, this one. Hand-knotted. All the way from Turkey.' He was ushering the hounds inside. 'A gift from the Grand Vizier!'

The walls of the corridor were lined with busts and marble figures like the ones in the garden of Arundel House, their ancient noses and lips obliterated like those of syphilitics. Some were still inside wooden crates packed with straw, where they looked like poets and emperors reposing in their coffins. Marbles snatched from Arundel, Emilia supposed. Further on, portraits in their heavy frames leaned towards them from hooks on the wall; others still in paper wrapping bound by twine sat upright on the floor.

Emilia barely registered any of them as she passed. The baying of the canine pack, its numbers now enlarged, was deafening in the close quarters. Excited tails thumped the walls and thwacked the canvases. Pink tongues drooled glittering necklaces across the Vizier's carpet, which seemed to stretch endlessly in front of them.

'Good boys,' the servant in his mallard-green tunic was shouting above the din. 'Stout lads! Hearty fellows!'

They were led through a succession of rooms, each one in poorer repair than the last. The interior of the house, like the exterior, seemed to be in a state of either destruction or reconstruction, it was difficult to tell which. They followed the footman up a flight of stairs, along another corridor, and finally into a large room bursting with more busts and fragmentary urns, more wooden crates, more portraits propped against a half-finished oak wainscot.

'If you will wait here, please.'

The servant disappeared with the hounds flinging themselves about him in frantic orbits, their claws clicking like dice on a gameboard. The sash had been raised and the room was freezing-cold. Emilia's heart sank. She turned round to reach for Vilém's hand, but he had already crossed the room and was squatting beside a half-finished line of shelves. The shelves were lined with books, some of which had been packed into three crates, also stuffed with straw, that stood in the corner furthest from the window. Vilém was lifting a volume from the shelf when a warped floorboard creaked. Emilia turned round to catch sight of a white ruff, a black cloak and a wink of gold earring.

'From Hungary,' boomed the voice. 'The Bibliotheca Corvina.' The tone was deep and golden, like that of an orator or politician, though the speaker, from what Emilia could see of him in the poor light, was short, almost squat. 'Or I should say from Constantinople, where it was taken by the Vizier Ibrahim after the Turks invaded Ofen and pillaged the Corvina in 1541.'

Vilém, startled, had almost dropped the book on the floor. Now he was rising to his feet, awkwardly. From down the stairs came the echoic yelp of a dog, then the bang of a door.

'Corvinus's ex-libris is found on the inside,' the basso profundo was continuing. 'The purchase was negotiated by your friend Sir Ambrose. I believe he discovered it among the incunabula in the Seraglio.' The dark head turned to appraise the room: Emilia only very briefly, the jewelled chest in the middle of the floor more keenly. 'Is Sir Ambrose not with you this morning?'