Matthew Skelton - Endymion Spring

"I will not lose the book," spat Diana, and pinned him against the stone railing. He could feel the sharp edge of a quatrefoil biting into his side. "What a pity it has to end this way."

"No!" he roared one last time, twisting and turning and biting and fighting with all his might.

Taken by surprise, Diana opened her hand and accidentally dropped the book. They both watched, horrified, as it fell through the open quatrefoil and into empty space.

Diana immediately released him from her grasp and groped at the air with her gloved fingertips, desperate to recapture the book as it tumbled over the side of the tower and plummeted down…down…down…into the waiting arms of Duck's yellow raincoat, which lay like a dead body a hundred feet below.

And then Blake slunk, senseless, to the ground.

I felt like I was flying.

Crowds reeled drunkenly around me, spinning on their heads, while houses, taverns and spires turned somersaults. Booths with canvas awnings swung at weird angles.

I could not tell where I was. The ground was thatched with mud and straw, and the sky stretched far above me like an impossibly blue ocean. My arms flailed uselessly to either side, the limbs of a dead man.

A stranger, I realized dimly, was transporting me through a market in the back of his cart. My head jolted painfully each time the wheels struck a loose stone, and twice I vomited.

A round, worried face peered down at me from the side of the cart. "Be not afraid," it said in the softest of voices — first in English, which I could not understand, and then in Latin, which I could. "You are safe with me, Endymion."

My brow furrowed. How did he know my name?

Then, sensing my confusion, the man smiled and added, "I am Theodoric. I am taking you to St. Jerome's."

A circle of unruly hair crowned his head like a halo and a long black robe cloaked his body. His hands were as smooth and white as vellum, but covered in inky scribbles — like my Master's.

For a moment I feared an angel had come to take me up to heaven and I struggled to be set free. I still had my task to complete. I could feel the book of dragon skin strapped to my back, cutting into my flesh. Yet try as I might, I could not move. I could not even sit up.

The world swayed sickeningly around me and my head lolled weakly in the straw.

"Faster, Methuselah," Theodoric urged the grizzled mule, which pulled the cart behind it and brayed objectionably at the extra load it was carrying.

Then everything plunged into darkness.

I dreamed a lion swallowed me. Its teeth were set in a silent roar, a shoulder's width apart, but luckily they had no bite. I passed through its stone mouth into a chamber full of books. The walls were pierced with light and the room divided into alcoves by a number of sloping desks and large chests. The air was quiet with the sound of quills and whispering parchment.

Bleary-eyed, I looked around me. Black-robed figures hunched over the desks, hard at work. Some were writing in a beautiful script that flowed from their quills in streams of ink, while others pressed thin sheets of gold to the capital letters they were adorning. Still more dipped their brushes in oyster shells of crushed crimson powder, which they applied to the flowers they were painting in the margins of a wonderful manuscript.

All of a sudden I understood the marks on Theodoric's hands. He was a scribe, an illuminator. He had taken me to one of Oxford's monastic colleges.

The book of dragon skin stirred again on my back and I squirmed, trying to get down; but Theodoric refused to let go. He carried me in his arms to the front of the room, where a small, white-haired man was seated on a large, thronelike chair. The Abbot was deep in prayer: His eyes closed, his fingers fumbling with beads of a rosary.

An ancient librarian with skin like melted wax sat close beside him, reading from a tiny book. His lips made a soft sound like a sputtering candle as he recited the words to himself and traced them in his Psalter. Suddenly, he stopped. One of his eyes was milky blue and rolled alarmingly in his head; the other, as clear as day, drifted towards me and fixed on my face.

Unnerved, I glanced away. Through the window, I could see a sapling in an enclosed garden, its pale green leaves shuddering in a breeze.

Luckily, the Abbot took one look at me, crossed himself and rushed to my aid. Despite his wild thistledown hair, he showed no signs of a prickly disposition. He clamped his hand to my forehead and checked for symptoms of disease. Then, ignoring the protests of Ignatius, the librarian beside me, he indicated the Theodoric should escort me to the infirmary.

Words were unnecessary. They communicated by means of a system of simple hand gestures.

Theodoric, however, stood his ground and slowly drew the Abbot's attention to the leather toolkit I normally wore beneath my belt. It had transformed itself into a sealed notebook ages ago. Somehow it had worked itself free.

I reached out to grab it, but Ignatius was too quick. He snatched the book before either I or the Abbot could lay our fingers on it.

I watched helplessly as the old man turned the notebook over in his hands and tried unsuccessfully to prize the covers apart. He studied the clasps more intently. No matter what he tried, he could not get the book to open. His brow creased in consternation and he shot me a suspicious look, as though the Devil lurked somewhere behind my eyes.

Theodoric, amused by the older man's struggles, calmly took back the book and showed it to the Abbot. Shifting my weight onto his shoulder, he underlined the name on the cover and gestured towards me. Endymion Spring . No wonder he had known my name.

The Abbot nodded thoughtfully and then, after gazing at the notebook for a while, made a curious writing motion with his hands. The message was clear: he wanted to know if I could read or write.

Theodoric shrugged.

I didn't have the strength to enlighten them. Despite the sunlight streaming in through the windows, I was shivering uncontrollably. My face was clammy and hot, and my body felt as though I had rolled in splintered glass. Every little noise boomed in my ears like thunder.

Theodoric looked at me worriedly and then, returning the book to my possession, cradled me in his arms and hurried me through the cloisters to the infirmary. My hands curled weakly round the book like an additional clasp.

We passed under another archway engraved with lion's teeth and dashed across an open area full of herb gardens and neatly cultivated flowerbeds. Wicker hives, daubed with clay, hummed in the distance. The air was sweet and honey-scented; but I barely noticed. Already, I was sinking into a deathly cold delirium.

By the time we reached the infirmary, a long low building close to the latrines, a fever had gripped me — and would not let go.

Fust waited for me in the darkness.

No matter how far I ran, no matter how hard I tried to escape, he always caught up with me the moment I closed my eyes. He swept into my dreams like a shadow, filling my heart with dread. Endlessly, he pursued me; endlessly, he hunted for the book…

From Mainz, I had fled not to Frankfurt, nor to Paris, as he had imagined, but to Eltville, a pretty little village on the banks of the River Rhine, where Herr Gutenberg had a niece. For a few days I sheltered among the fragrant grape-greeen hills; then, when Peter sent word that Fust had stormed off towards the Library of St. Victor, hoping to overtake me, I grudgingly began my route north to Oxford.