"Ex Libris" - читать интересную книгу автора (King Ross)

Chapter Four

So it was that my first confrontation with Sir Ambrose Plessington took place in a vault or crypt beneath Pontifex Hall.

After leaving the dining-room, we went back down the wide staircase, then took a number of left turns through an interconnecting series of corridors, antechambers and deserted rooms before descending another, much narrower set of steps. Lady Marchamont was holding the fish-oil lamp aloft like a constable of the watch as I flumped along behind her. The inadequate light fell on to a scarred wall across which our shadows loomed in fantastic, threatening postures. Our feet scuffed the steps that proceeded downwards into what looked like some sort of undercroft. Cobwebs tickled my scalp and lips. I brushed them aside and then hastily placed my handkerchief to my mouth and nose. With every step the stink of decay seemed to increase twofold. Lady Marchamont, however, appeared as oblivious of the stench as of the cold and darkness.

'The pantry, the buttery,' she was saying, 'all were down here, along with the footmen's chambers. We had three footmen, I remember. Phineas is the last of them. He was in my father's service more than forty years ago. It was a godsend that I was able to find him again. Or, rather, that he found me after my return. He is, you understand, very devoted to me…'

As we descended I had been expecting to enter a maze of passageways and chambers reflecting the one above the stairs. But on reaching the bottom at last we found ourselves in a low-ceilinged corridor that ran ahead in a straight line for as far as the lamp's shrunken halo of light extended. We proceeded slowly along it, picking our way over fragments of furniture, the staves of broken casks, and other less identifiable obstructions. The floor didn't seem quite level; we were descending still, proceeding down a gentle slope. Down here the walls dripped, and faint sounds of running water came to us, followed by an acrid smell. The floor seemed to be covered in grit. There was still no end to the passage. Perhaps we were in a labyrinth after all, I thought: some sort of mundus cereris like those the Romans built beneath their cities-all dark vaults and twisting tunnels-in order to converse with the inhabitants of the lower world.

Suddenly Lady Marchamont tapped one of the walls with her gloved knuckles. It reverberated like a kettledrum. 'Copper,' she explained. 'Cromwell's men stored their powder down here, so the walls and door were sheathed with copper. Not exactly the driest place in the house, I shouldn't have thought.'

'Gunpowder?'

At once I knew the identity of the acrid smell and the grit beneath my feet. I began to fret about the lamp, which Lady Marchamont was swinging to and fro with little regard. Its light now illuminated a number of sealed doors and smaller recesses on either side. I shuddered again in the cool dankness, wondering if behind these doors the skulls and shinbones of a hundred Plessingtons were heaped promiscuously together in crumbling ossuaries. We hurried along the corridor, whose terminus-if there was one-was lost in blackness.

At last we reached our destination. Lady Marchamont stopped before one of the doors and, after struggling with a set of keys, forced it open. A pair of rusted hinges creaked portentously.

'Please,' she said, turning to me with a smile, 'do step through, Mr. Inchbold. Inside you will find the mortal remains of Sir Ambrose Plessington.'

'Remains…?' I made to retreat, but it was too late for resistance. Lady Marchamont had my wrist and was tugging me across the threshold.

'There…'

She was pointing to a corner of the tiny room, where a battered oak coffin sat on a low trestle-table. I recoiled, trying to free my arm, but then saw to my relief that her father's 'remains' were textual, not corporeal; for the coffin, whose lid had been propped open, was filled not with bones but rather with piles of documents, great sheaves of which threatened to spill over.

'Everything is here.' Her tone was reverential as she picked her way carefully forward. 'Everything about my father. About Pontifex Hall. Rather, very nearly everything…'

She had hung the lamp on a wall sconce and now knelt before the coffin on a bed of rushes that had been strewn across the dirt before the trestle-table. The coffin, I now saw, was caked with dirt. She began withdrawing the documents one by one, riffling through and then replacing them. The mantle hung over her shoulders like a pair of folded wings. Some sort of archive, I supposed, hanging back in the doorway until she beckoned me forward.

'The estate papers,' she explained. 'The inventories, the indentures, the conveyances.' She might have been delving her gloved hands in a trunk filled with moonstones and amethysts instead of these heaps of yellowed documents. 'It was for these that Standfast Osborne purchased the estate, you see.' Her voice echoed harshly against the bare walls. 'For its muniments. He cared nothing for the house, as you can see all too plainly. But the coffin was hidden safely away. Lord Marchamont saw to that.'

The room was airless and cramped, its walls encrusted with what I took to be deposits of saltpetre. The flame, glowing feebly now, lit generations of cobwebs, all of them thick with dirt. I have been troubled all my life with asthma-the upshot of having my lungs kippered by the coal smoke of London. Now, standing in the doorway to this strange vault, I felt a familiar gurgle beneath my breastbone.

'They were kept here, in this room,' I managed to ask, leaning on my thorn-stick, 'for all those years?'

'Of course not.' Her winged back was still turned to me. 'They would have been found in an hour. No, they were buried in a plot in the churchyard at Crampton Magna. In this coffin. Ingenious, no? Beneath a headstone inscribed with the name of one of the footmen. Here…' She turned, extending a single sheet in her gloved hand. 'This is the order that sealed our fate.'

The paper was of heavy linen, its edges curling and faintly seared. I took it and, tipping it into the light of the lamp and bringing it to within two inches of my nose, saw the impression of a Parliamentary seal and, below, the inscription, slightly faded, in a thick chancery hand:

Be it therefore enacted, That all the Manors, Lands, Tenements and Hereditaments, with every of their Appurtenances whatsoever, of he the said Henry Greatorex, Baron Marchamont, were seized or possessed of, in Possession, Reversion or Remainder, on the 20^th day of May, in the year of our Lord 1651, and all rights of entry into the said Manors, Lands, Tenements or Hereditaments…

'The order for the seizure of the estate,' she explained. She handed me another paper, or, rather, a small sheaf. This gathering, tied with a faded and fraying ribbon, was less obviously official and inscribed in a formal secretary hand which, though I didn't know it at the time, was that of Sir Ambrose Plessington himself, who first appeared to me, therefore, between the lines of a lengthy text, a list of his accoutrements: 'An Inventorie taken of all the Cattelse and Chatteles moveable and unmoveable of Ambrose Plessington, Knt, of Pontifex Hall, in the Parish of St. Peter's, valued and prized in the presence of four Bailies…'

I set my stick aside and untied the ribbon. The remainder, six pages in all, inscribed on both sides, consisted of a formidably long list of Sir Ambrose's possessions, of his furniture, paintings, draperies, silver and plate, along with more esoteric items such as telescopes, quadrants, calipers, compasses and several cabinets whose contents-preserved animals, shells and corals, coins, arrowheads, fragments of urns, objets d'art of all kinds, and even two automata-had been enumerated individually. One of the most valuable of all was a 'Kunstschrank' whose surface was inlaid with diamonds and emeralds, though what might have been inside this glittering ark-valued at an astonishing £10,000-the inventory declined to report. The entire contents of the house were valued on the last page at £155,000; an incredible sum that was enormous enough in 1660, and one that in June of 1622, the date of the inventory, must have been well and truly boggling. Not even the treasures of the late King Charles, that great connoisseur, had fetched so high a price when Cromwell stripped them from the royal palaces and then sold them to the ravening princes of Europe.

Lady Marchamont had caught my astonished gaze. 'Of all of these items,' she said in a quiet voice, 'you can see that almost nothing now remains. All were taken from us or were destroyed by the troops. Only this trunk and these papers bear witness to what Pontifex Hall used to be. To everything my father built.'

'But the library…' I had returned to the front of the list and was now scrolling slowly through it for a second time. 'I see no mention of your father's books.'

'No.' She took the paper from me and, after tying the ribbon, replaced it in the coffin. 'This particular inventory does not include the contents of the library. A separate one was compiled for that.' She turned round and, after further riffling, disinterred a larger sheaf. 'Extremely detailed, as you can see. It contains the price paid for every book, along with the bookseller or agent from whom each was purchased. An interesting record, but there's no time to study it now. For the moment…' She set it aside and delved carefully into the coffin, turning over heavy sediments of paper. 'For the moment, Mr. Inchbold, you must read something else. During his lifetime my father received letters patent in a number of countries, from several kings and emperors. But these ones may be of particular importance.'

Importance to what? What had my presence at Pontifex Hall to do with this foul subterranean vault and its scraps of old paper? With kings and emperors? Lady Marchamont had already turned round and handed me three or four documents. The first was a parchment and at its foot bore in cracked red wax the impression of an enormous seal whose circumference read, in characters that were barely perceptible,

Romanum Imperatores Rudolphus II

Caesarum Maximus Imp: Rex

SALVTI PUBLICAE

I held the paper closer to the light. Above the seal, inscribed in heavy gothic script, were several paragraphs in German, what my limited knowledge of that language told me amounted to a commission to search for books and manuscripts in the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Glatz. It was dated 1610. For a few seconds I rubbed the cockled edge of the document between my finger and thumb, enjoying the furry texture of the membrane, as soft and smooth as a lady's cheek. Then I turned it over, carefully, with a quiet, satisfying crackle, and jabbed with a thumb at the nose-piece of my spectacles.

The next document, dated a year later and impressed with the same seal, was of similar import but extended the commission beyond the Czech lands to include Austria, Styria, Mainz and both the Upper and the Lower Palatinate, as well as-most remarkable of all-the lands of the Ottoman Sultan. The final three pages granted, respectively, a patent of Imperial nobility, a pension of 500 thalers per annum, and a doctorate in philosophy from the Carolinum. This last document was inscribed in Latin and embossed with a coat of arms. I looked up to see Lady Marchamont's eyebrows knit together as if in close attentiveness to my reaction. The light from the lamp spluttered and, to my alarm, nearly extinguished itself.

'It's in Prague.'

'Prague?' My questioning gaze had returned to the skins, which my hands were shuffling nervously.

'The Carolinum,' she said in a clipped tone, as though repeating a simple lesson to an obtuse child. 'It's in Prague. Bohemia. My father spent a number of years there.'

'In the Carolinum?'

'No. In Bohemia. After Rudolf moved the Imperial Court from Vienna to Prague.'

I was still studying the parchments. 'Sir Ambrose was in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor?'

She nodded, apparently pleased at the note of awe inflecting my voice. 'At first, yes. As one of the agents hired to procure books for the Imperial Library. Afterwards he was in the service of the Elector Palatine, furnishing the Bibliotheca Palatina in Heidelberg.'

She stooped and once more began to sift through the papers in the coffin. For the next ten minutes I was obliged to wheeze over and fumble through a dozen-odd other documents, all of them patents for various monopolies and inventions-new methods of essaying gold or rigging ships-together with the title-deeds for freehold properties scattered across England, Ireland and Virginia. More dog-eared pages of Sir Ambrose's busy life. I was barely paying attention as Lady Marchamont thrust each one into my hands with the zeal of a street-corner Quaker. But soon I found myself squinting at a document of a different sort, another letter patent with the Great Seal of England embossed at its foot, but one whose designs were grander than the others:

This Indenture, made the 30^th day of August, in Anno Domini 1616, the Fourteenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord James, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, between our said Sovereign Lord of one Party, and Ambrose Plessington, Knight of the Garter, of the other Party, to build, rig, provision, and otherwise fit, and thereafter to captain and sail, the Ship known as the Philip Sidney, from the Port of London, to the Cittie of Manoa, in the Empire of Guiana…

I blinked, rubbed at my eyes with a knuckle, then continued reading. The document was a commission of £3,000 for Sir Ambrose to make a voyage in search not of books and manuscripts-as in the days of the Emperor Rudolf-but rather the headwaters of the Orinoco River and a gold mine near a city called Manoa in the Empire of Guiana. I knew something of the expedition, if it was the same one, for I was well aware of how Sir Walter Raleigh went to the scaffold one year after his disastrous expedition set off for Guiana in 1617. So had the Philip Sidney ascended the Orinoco with Raleigh's doomed fleet? And, if so, what became of the ship and her captain?

I could read no more. The letters of the patent were swimming before my tired eyes, and now my chest felt even tighter. I removed my spectacles and rubbed at my eyes with the balls of my fingers. I coughed, trying to clear my lungs of the stale air and motes of dust. Again I could hear the gentle rush of water, which now seemed to originate behind the wall of the tiny archive. I replaced my spectacles, but the letters on the page still feinted and shrank before my smarting gaze.

'I'm sorry but I…'

'Yes, of course.'

Lady Marchamont took the papers from me and returned them to the coffin. But before she slammed shut its lid I caught a glimpse of what looked like a newer document, another indenture of some sort. The top edge of the parchment was jagged, while the bottom had been folded over and fixed with a seal suspended on a parchment tag. Did she grant me on purpose, I would later wonder, this briefest of visions, this most subtle of clues? The signature beside the seal was illegible, but I was able to make out a few words inscribed at the top: 'Sciant presentes et futuri quod ego…'

But then the lid was banged shut forcefully and a second later I started at the light touch of the gloved hand on my forearm. When I turned my head she was giving me the most curious and unsettling smile.

'Shall we return upstairs, Mr. Inchbold? The air in these vaults is poor. Enough for two people to breathe for no more than thirty minutes at a time.'

I nodded gratefully and fumbled for my thorn-stick. The air suddenly seemed denser than ever, and for the first time I realised that she too was breathing heavily. Removing the lamp from its sconce she turned towards the door.

'My father ventilated the vaults with an atmospheric pump,' she continued, 'but of course the pump was stolen along with everything else.'

The hinges squealed again as she shut the door and there was a jangle of keys and silver chatelaine as she locked it. I followed the black gown along the corridor.

Sciant presentes et futuri…

I sculled through the darkness on my stick, brow drawn in puzzled concentration. Let all men present and future know what? As we climbed the stairs I found myself thinking not so much about the dozens of documents that had been thrust under my nose, but instead about the mysteriously new parchment half hidden among the other papers in the coffin, the indenture with its serried edge waiting to fit like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle into its counterpart, the twin parchment from which it had been carefully severed. Did I guess then that it might fit into a larger puzzle whose other pieces were as yet unknown and undiscovered? Or is it only now, in retrospect, that I remember it so clearly?

My chest was whistling like a tea-kettle as we climbed, my crippled foot noisily scuffing and thumping. I winced with shame, glad of the darkness. But Lady Marchamont, two steps ahead, her face half-turned towards me, appeared to notice none of these commotions. As we made our way upwards she described some of her father's services for Rudolf II, the great 'Wizard Emperor' whose palace in Prague was filled with astrologers, alchemists, bizarre inventions and, above all, tens of thousands of books. A good many of the Emperor's possessions came courtesy of Sir Ambrose, she claimed. For whenever a nobleman or scholar of means died anywhere within the borders of the Empire-from Tuscany in the south, to Cleves in the west, to Lusatia or Silesia in the east-her father had been despatched across the fraying quilt of principalities and fiefdoms to secure for the Emperor the most important and impressive items from the legacy: paintings, marbles, clocks, precious stones, new inventions of any sort, and of course the library, especially if its collection held volumes on alchemy and other occult arts, which had been Rudolf's particular favourites. In these missions, she boasted, her father had rarely disappointed.

'In one year alone he negotiated the acquisition of the libraries of Benedikt of Richnov and the Austrian nobleman Anton Schwarz von Steiner.' She paused for breath and turned to face me. 'You must have heard of these collections?'

I shook my head. We had reached the top of the steps. The tiled floor seemed to sway beneath my feet like the deck of a foundering ship. She pushed open the door for me, and I stumbled through after my shadow. Benedikt of Richnov? Anton Schwarz? There was much, apparently, that I didn't know.

'Each library contained more than ten thousand volumes,' came her voice from the darkness behind me. 'Among other treasures they included Rupescissa's work on alchemy and Finé's edition of Roger Bacon. Even manuscripts on astrology by Albamazar and Sacrobosco. Most were sent to the Imperial Library in Vienna to be catalogued by Hugo Blotius, the Hofbibliothekar, but some were taken to Prague for inspection by His Excellency. No simple task. They were transported across mountains and through the Böhmerwald in special mule-carts and wagons with sprung wheels, a new invention in those days. The wooden boxes in which they were packed had been caulked at the seams with oakum and pitch, like the hull of a warship. These in turn were wrapped in two layers of tanned canvas. It must have been an amazing sight. From front to rear the convoys were almost a mile long, with all of the books still in alphabetical order.'

Her voice echoed against the bare, unmarked walls. The words seemed rehearsed, as if she had told the story many times before. I remembered the copious shelves of occult works in her father's library and wondered if these books had some connection with either Benedikt of Richnov or Anton Schwarz, or possibly even with the 'Wizard Emperor' himself.

We were walking abreast now, quickly, winding our way back in the direction-so far as I could tell-of the library. It was impossible to determine if we had passed this same way earlier. The servants, even Phineas, seemed to have vanished. It occurred to me that two people, even a half-dozen, could easily go about their business in Pontifex Hall for days on end without so much as setting eyes on one another.

Abruptly the narration ended. 'My dear Mr. Inchbold…'

I had been hurrying to keep pace, wheezing and blowing like a grampus. Now I almost collided with her as she halted in the middle of the corridor.

'My dear Mr. Inchbold, I have imposed too long on your good nature. You must wonder why I have told you all of these things. Why I have shown you the library, the inventory, the patents…'

I straightened and found I couldn't meet her eyes. 'Well, Lady Marchamont, I must confess-'

'Oh, please.' She interrupted me with a raised hand. 'Alethea. We have no need of formalities, I hope.'

A command rather than a request. I acquiesced: she was my superior in rank, after all, whether or not her title was used. A name-a word-changes nothing.

'Alethea.' I pronounced the strange name with caution, like a man sampling an exotic new dish.

She resumed walking, though more slowly now, the thick soles of her buskins scuffing the tiles. We turned left into another, longer corridor.

'The fact is that I wished you to see something of what Pontifex Hall used to be. Can you imagine it yet? The frescos, the tapestries…' Her free hand gestured like a conjuror's at the bare walls, at the expanse of vacant corridor before us. I blinked stupidly into the darkness, able to imagine none of it. 'But even more,' she resumed in a lower voice, 'I wanted you to know what manner of man my father was.'

We had reached the library, whose darkness was now complete. I was startled once more by the touch of her hand. Turning, I saw two tiny flames, reflections from the lamp, dancing in the pupils of her close-set eyes. I looked nervously away. Sir Ambrose was, at this point, even more unimaginable than his plundered possessions.

'I have no husband, no children, no living relations.' Her voice had dropped to a whisper. 'Very little now remains for me. But I am left with one thing, one ambition. You see, Mr. Inchbold, I wish to restore Pontifex Hall to its former condition. To render it exactly the same in every last detail.' She released my arm to gesture again at the empty darkness. 'Every last detail,' she repeated with a peculiar emphasis. 'The furniture, the paintings, the gardens, the orangery…'

'And the library,' I finished, thinking of the books eroding to rags and dust on the floor.

'Yes. The library as well.' She had taken my forearm again. The lamp swung in short arcs. Our shadows wavered to and fro like dancers. Here in the vacant house with its bare walls and falling plaster her ambition seemed outlandish and impossible. 'All precisely as my father left them. And I shall do it, too. Though I expect no easy time of it.'

'No,' I replied, hoping to sound sympathetic. I was thinking of the quartered troops, of the house's devastated façade, of the great branch of ivy insinuating itself through a second-door window… of the whole dreadful picture of ruin I had seen through the archway. No easy time of it indeed.

'I shall be frank.' She had raised the lamp as if to illuminate our faces. It was burning more brightly now, but the flame served only to deepen the shadows. 'Difficulties with the hall's restoration will arise not simply because of the desecration, and not simply because, yes, if you must know, I am, shall we say, embarrassed for funds. They will arise also because certain other stakes are involved.' Her voice was casual but her eyes, grown obsidian in the dark with their expanded pupils, maintained their intense, searching gaze. 'Certain other interests. You see, Mr. Inchbold, I, like my father, have accumulated more than my share of enemies.' The pressure on my arm grew almost painful. 'You've seen from the inventory that Sir Ambrose was a man of enormous wealth.'

I nodded obediently. For a second I could see the bailies passing along this corridor and through the rest of the house, through chambers as rich as Aladdin's cave; the four of them touching vases, clocks, tapestries, secretaries, jewels of unimaginable price; their eyes growing wide; item after fabulous item added to the incredible inventory. All now vanished.

'Wealth attracts its enemies,' she said, then added in the same casual tone: 'Sir Ambrose was murdered. As was Lord Marchamont.'

'Murdered?' The word possessed its due resonance against the bare walls of the corridor. 'But by whom? Cromwell's men?'

She shook her head. 'That I cannot say for certain. But I have my doubts. The fact is that I do not know. I had hoped the muniments would offer some clue. Lord Marchamont thought he might have discovered something, but…' She shook her head again and lowered her eyes. Raising them a second later, she must have seen what she interpreted as an alarmed look on my face, for she added quickly: 'Oh, but there's no need to worry. There's nothing to fear, Mr. Inchbold. Do let me reassure you of that. Please understand. You will be quite safe. I promise you that.'

This reassurance opened a small crevice of doubt. Why should I not be safe? But I had no time to contemplate the question, for now she released my forearm and plucked up a bell. Its sound was harsh and plaintive, like an alarm.

'Never fear,' she said, turning back to me as the echoes died away. 'Your task will be a simple one. One that will bring you into no danger at all.'

Ah, I thought. At last. 'My task?'

'Yes.' Phineas had appeared at the end of the corridor. Lady Marchamont turned to face him. 'But I have talked too much already. Do forgive me. All of this must wait for tomorrow. You should rest now, Mr. Inchbold. You have come such a long way. Phineas?' The footman's lugubrious face hove into the yellow track of the fish-oil lamp. 'Please show Mr. Inchbold to his chamber.'

Yes, I thought, as I followed Phineas up the staircase: I had come a long way. Further, perhaps, than I knew.

I was accommodated for the night in a bedchamber at the top of the stairs, along a broad corridor lined at regular intervals with closed doors. The quarters were large but, as I expected, inadequately furnished. There was a straw pallet, a three-legged stool, an empty fireplace festooned with skeins of dirty cobwebs, and a small table, on which sat a quill, a book, a few other items. I was too exhausted to look at any of them.

For a moment I was also too exhausted to move. I stood in the centre of the room and gazed dully at its emptiness. I reflected that the peasant cottages through which I had passed on the road to Crampton Magna were probably better appointed. I thought for a second of the inventory locked in the tiny room two floors below; of its endless catalogue of carpets, tapestries, long-case clocks, wainscot chairs. In another lifetime this room-the 'Velvet Bedchamber', Alethea had called it-must have been spectacularly furnished; perhaps it was that of Sir Ambrose himself. Even now traces of its former life betrayed themselves, such as the chipped, peeling overmantel or the triangular patch of crimson flock paper high on the wall. Scraps of the glory that once was Pontifex Hall. For half-starved Puritan soldiers in their black homespun it must have made an obscene spectacle. And for someone else, apparently, a motive for murder.

I undressed slowly. Phineas, or someone, had carried my trunk into the room and placed it beside the pallet. I pawed through it for my nightshirt, which I slipped over my head. Then, using my moistened forefinger and thumb, I snuffed the tallow candle that Phineas had placed on the table, and an instant later the bedchamber was flooded through its cracked casement with deep billows of night. I closed my eyes, and sleep, with its heavy die, pressed its seal across their lids.