Tom Harper: The Book of Secrets

‘I’m just going,’ Nick promised. ‘But if you could tell me anything at all about where Gillian might have gone… Anything you know.’

The prospect of seeing him off was obviously too much to resist. ‘I heard she applied for a job with Stevens Mathison.’ She looked to see if it meant anything to Nick. ‘The auction house. They have a showroom down on Fifteenth and Tenth. I’m sure Ms Lockhart was just what they needed.’

Nick wondered what she meant, but didn’t dare ask.

Mainz, 1420

‘When Sarah saw her son Isaac playing with Ishmael, she said to Abraham: “Cast out this woman with her son; for the son of this slave shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.”’

The lector’s voice drifted out of the refectory. Through the arched door, I saw him reading from an enormous Bible spread out on a lectern, while rows of monks sat on benches and ate up their lesson in silence. I could only hear him intermittently, for out in the cloister the judge was giving his summary.

‘The fundamental question in the case before this court, the division of the inheritance of Friedrich Gensfleisch, is the question of precedence.’

Weak April sunshine made pale shadows on the cloister. In the dim arcades, the business of the monastery went on as usual around us. Lay brothers hurried about their chores. Down a passage, I could hear the rumble of a barrel being rolled to the buttery. But in the middle of the courtyard, all attention was on the judge. He sat facing us behind a table stacked with books which he never consulted. One hand rested in his lap and played with a rosary; the other stroked the fur of his robe as if it were still alive.

‘On the one hand we have the claims of the deceased’s children by his wife Elsa.’ He gestured to the bench where I sat with my brother Friedrich, my sister and her husband Claus. ‘Nobody would doubt that the deceased loved his wife, the shopkeeper’s daughter. Nor does anyone dispute that in willing his considerable estate to these three children, he was following the dictates of his heart.’

My father had died in November, his death sudden but not especially tragic. He had lived out his three score years and ten, vigorous to the last. So vigorous, in fact, that he thought nothing of getting out his leather strap to punish the chambermaid who had left tarnish on the silver. Rumour had it she was so fearful she waited a full ten minutes after my father collapsed before turning around to see why he had paused the beating. I had been away, but those who were there said they had never seen such a look of peace as they found on his face.

‘But the head must rule the heart, as the husband rules the wife and as Christ rules the Church.’ The judge rolled his gaze across to the other bench, where my half-sister Patze sat with her uncle and her cousin. ‘And that is why we must also consider the claims of the other party in this case, the deceased’s daughter by his first wife.’

My brother shot Patze a murderous look. She bowed her head as if in prayer.

‘Nobody disputes that Friedrich’s widow Elsa is a virtuous woman who grieves her husband deeply. But a shop built of stone is still a shop.’

This was a laboured play on my mother’s maiden name, which translated as ‘from the stone-built shop’.

‘Whereas it would be remiss of this court to ignore the character of his first wife. Can anyone forget that she was the daughter of a magistrate and the niece of a chancellor? Truly an ancient family. And this court has learned that in the spirit of service and obedience that characterises that family, her daughter Patze now intends to take holy orders and join herself to Christ in the Convent of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’

In a strange way, it reminded me of the way I felt when I learned my father died. An exhalation, a sense of something that I had never quite possessed being taken away from me. My brother was faster to react: he balled his fists so hard his nails almost drew blood.

‘In recent times much has been spoken of a changing order in Mainz. That the ancient families who have always administered this city’s liberties should share their burden with new men, craftsmen and shopkeepers.’ His face hardened in contempt. ‘In this city, we have always recognised and supported God’s order. But equally, we protect the humble and the lowly, as was ordained by Christ. For this reason, the court awards the house Zum Gutenberg, its furnishings and as much as may be necessary for a comfortable life, to the widow Elsa for the rest of her days. To Friedrich’s three children by her, out of respect for his affection for them, we award the sum of twenty gulden apiece. The rest of the inheritance we award, according to the laws of precedence, to his first-born, best-loved and most virtuous daughter Patze.’

He tapped his staff on the table, hammering the nail of his verdict.

I did not feel angry – not yet. I was twenty years old, and my future had been taken away from me. I had a lifetime to let my resentment bloom.

My brother Friele, thirteen years older and his future already more than half spent, felt it more urgently.

‘Bastard thieves. Whore-mongering, gold-grasping boyfucking Jews.’

In an alcove in the cloister, a brightly painted St Martin leaned off his wooden horse to offer a beggar his cloak. I said nothing. Friele had moved out of the house a year after I was born. In our case, the bond of brotherhood was a bar that fixed us at a set distance, no closer.

‘They’ve waited thirty years to get their revenge on Father for marrying a shopkeeper’s daughter. Now they have it.’

Since I had been old enough to understand why my mother spent so many days in the house, why our neighbours found other errands to run whenever she encountered them in the street, I had wondered why my father married her. In a lifetime calculated for his own profit, it was the one act that brought him no gain.

Friele’s face burned with baffled fury. I thought he might pull St Martin off his horse and smash him to pieces on the cloister floor.

‘Mother will live comfortably enough, and Elsa’s husband will look after her. I at least have made a small name for myself in commercial circles, where a man’s ability is valued more than his inheritance. But you.’ He looked at me with half-sincere concern, seeing, I suppose, a proxy for the war he was waging in his mind. ‘You have no wealth, no craft and no standing. What will you do?’

I was my father’s son – one thing at least I had inherited from him. I knew what I loved best.

‘I will become a goldsmith.’

New York City

The A train rattled through the tunnel somewhere under Harlem. Electricity flashed off the walls, tossing up images of dusty cables and rusting pipes. Nick tipped his head back against the scratched glass and closed his eyes.

Gillian was the only person he’d ever met on a train – probably the only person he could have. Mid-afternoon on the Metro-North coming back from New Haven, no one around except a few private-school kids and a family heading into the city for the theatre. She’d got on at Greenwich, and with a whole empty carriage to choose from had parked herself in the seat opposite him. He’d avoided her eye, a true New Yorker, concentrating extra hard on the laptop balanced on his knees. But Gillian didn’t let you escape that easily.

‘Did you know that “commute” comes from the Latin word commutare? It means “to change completely”?’

Straight in. Nick shook his head and stared at the screen. ‘Kind of ironic, don’t you think?’

Nick gave a non-committal grunt. It didn’t deter her.

‘Nothing ever changes if you’re a commuter. You take the same train at the same time, sit opposite the same people going to the same job. Then you come home to the same house, same wife and kids, same mortgage and retirement plan.’ She looked out the window, at the strip-suburbs sliding by. ‘I mean these places – Rye, New Rochelle, Harrison – do they even exist? Did you ever meet one person who’s been there?’