Tom Harper - The Book of Secrets

‘There is a story there,’ he said. ‘Someday I will force it out of you.’

I could not think of anyone I would more happily tell it to. We came to an inn called L’Homme Sauvage, the Wild Man. On the sign, a man whose skin peeled off his body like foliage strummed a lute and looked over his shoulder. It was as if I had entered a different world; everywhere I looked, the cards seemed to come alive. Drach saw my gaze and nodded.

‘I am always welcome here. They will give us a meal and a bed for the night.’

He said ‘us’ so casually I could not tell if he meant anything by it. To me it was like a button fallen unnoticed off his coat, to be picked up and cherished long after he had forgotten it.

We crossed the stableyard and entered the inn. The candles burned bright after the darkness outside, while the fire in the hearth dispelled the spring chill. Though the village was too close to Strassburg to detain many travellers, there was no shortage of custom. Three men-at-arms in fine cloaks sat in the middle of the room and bragged of their deeds. In a corner, two merchants from Vienna haggled and gossiped.

A girl with flaxen hair braided into pigtails brought wine. Drach drained his almost immediately and called her back for more. I waited for her to leave, trembling with the idea I had been nursing in all the months of my slow journey across France.

At last she left us.

‘I have a proposal for you,’ I said. I had meant to wait, to tease him in with hints and subtlety. But I could not contain myself: the words spilled out of me. ‘You learned how to make perfect copies of your pictures. Did you ever think what else you could copy?’

He cocked an eyebrow, inviting me to go on. I drew a breath. ‘Words.’

He took a moment to understand what I meant. When he did, he laughed. ‘Words? How much will men pay for them? I have illuminated manuscripts and seen how well the scribes were paid for words.’

‘Some words are worth more.’

In my mind, I looked back to my father’s mint, the stream of identical coins flowing into the scales. The principle of perfection had not turned lead into gold in Paris. I was convinced in Strassburg it would hold more sway with paper.

‘The word of God, for example.’

Drach snorted so hard wine blew out of his nose. He gave me a keen look, wondering if he had misjudged me. ‘Bibles?’

‘Indulgences.’

That surprised him. He sat back in his chair and considered it. Even turned inwards in thought his face was more alive than most men’s ever are.

‘Indulgences are receipts,’ he said at last. ‘Chits the Church sells you to prove you have bought remission of your sins. There is no beauty in that.’

‘No beauty in one,’ I agreed. ‘But in a thousand, all exactly the same…’

‘A thousand,’ he repeated, savouring the size of the number.

‘Using your art.’

‘It would be a single page.’

‘A standard text.’

‘We’d leave space for the names and the date.’

‘And the price.’ I was flushed with excitement; I felt like a key that had found its lock. I had never felt such a rush of understanding.

‘God knows we’ll never want for customers.’

‘Though by God’s grace, He will perfect us all some day.’

It was a reflexive comment, inescapable, but it broke the spell and drew another appraising stare from Drach.

‘A perfect world would be a feeble place. And far less profitable.’

‘Of course,’ I stammered. All I wanted was to bring back the light of his countenance. ‘I only meant-’

He cut me off with a gesture to the far corner of the room, where a woman was leaning over to pour a drink, displaying herself to the traders and field hands at the table. Her breasts sagged close to her waist, the neck of her dress almost as far. Thick red powder gave her cheeks the texture of a badly plastered wall.

‘As long as there are women like her – and men like those – we will be rich.’

Still watching the prostitute, I shuddered in revulsion. The contrast with Drach – smooth, quick, aloof – was absolute. I realised he had been watching me, like a priest in confession. I composed my expression and tried to think of a remark that would cover me. Drach shook his head, as if he knew what I was going to say and wanted to keep me from embarrassing myself. He reached across the table and laid his hand over mine.

‘Your secret is safe.’

He laughed at the confusion brimming in my eyes.

‘Your proposal. It is a plan of genius.’

‘The cards-’ I demurred

‘Were only a beginning. I sold them to rich gamblers with taste. They are a limited market. With these indulgences, all mankind is our market, and they will come back for more so long as men sin.’

Our knees brushed under the table. I knew then that as long as Kaspar Drach and I were together, there would be no lack of sin in the world.

Paris

The Institut Georges Sagnac occupied a low concrete campus in a western suburb of Paris. Plastic blinds covered most of the windows; the few rooms with lights on shone like television screens. A group of teenagers skateboarded on one of the access ramps, but otherwise there was no one to be seen.

Nick and Emily stopped in front of one of the buildings and rang the bell marked VANDEVELDE. The plastic housing on the intercom was cracked, the speaker muffled by a collage of faded stickers advertising underground bands, radical politics, bleeding-edge art or simply proclaiming anarchy.

‘Oui?’

Emily leaned closer to the wall. ‘Professor Vandevelde? It’s Dr Sutherland.’

A noise like a buzz saw ripped through the speaker. The door clicked open.

‘Venez.’

The elevator was out of order; they took the stairs. Professor Vandevelde’s office was on the fourth floor at the end of a long linoleum corridor that probably hadn’t been refurbished since 1968. They knocked, and a brisk voice summoned them in.

It was a large office. To the left, a broad window offered bleak views of the tower blocks which barred the horizon. There was a wood-veneer desk littered with papers, a whiteboard scribbled with half-erased equations and two low chairs. Yellow foam poked out of holes in the seats. The only decoration was a poster taped to the wall, a page from an illuminated manuscript advertising a long-gone exhibition at the Louvre.

Professor Vandevelde stood and came around the desk to shake hands. He was a tall heavyset man, dressed in cord trousers and a blue sweater, his shirtsleeves rolled up over the arms. Apart from the silver-rimmed spectacles he wore, Nick thought he looked more like a fisherman than a physicist.

‘Emily Sutherland,’ said Emily. ‘This is my assistant, Nick.’ Vandevelde flipped on a kettle balanced on top of a grey filing cabinet. He motioned them to sit.

Emily perched on a chair and crossed her legs. ‘Thank you for seeing us at such short notice, and on a Saturday afternoon. I’m so sorry my email never arrived.’

Vandevelde wiped a spoon on his sweater and opened a jar of Nescafé. ‘ça ne fait rien. I am here anyway. And you have come all the way from the Metropolitan Museum in New York.’

‘I’ve read so many of your papers.’ Pulled off the Internet in a smoky café and skimmed in the time it took to finish an espresso. ‘But my colleague struggled to understand the process.’

Nick smiled apologetically as if to say he didn’t blame Vandevelde.

‘I wondered if you could explain for him.’

‘Of course.’ The professor stood and ushered them through a side door into a plain windowless room.

‘This is where we have the proton milliprobe.’

The machine looked like something out of a dentist’s surgery: white metal pipes sticking out of the wall and the ceiling, ending in a nozzle that pointed at a steel lectern. A bundle of thick cables snaked away from it to a computer on a desk against the wall.