"Book of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooper Glenn)

1344 LONDON

Baron Cantwell of Wroxall woke up scratching and thinking about boots. He inspected his arms and abdomen and found small raised bumps, the telltale signs he had shared his mattress with bedbugs. Really! It was a privilege, to be sure, to be at Court, a guest at the Palace at Westminster, but surely the king would not wish his nobles to be eaten alive while they slept. He would have a stern word with the steward.

His room was small but otherwise comfortable. A bed, a chair, a chest, a commode, candles, and a rug to take the chill off the floor. It was lacking a hearth, so he would not have wanted to spend a midwinter night there, but in the pleasant blush of spring, it was satisfactory. In his youth, before he had curried royal favor, when Charles would visit London, he would stay at inns, where even at the more salubrious ones, he would have to share a bed with a stranger. Still, in those days, he would rarely retire in a state more conscious than blind drunk, so it hardly mattered. He was older now, with higher rank, and he assiduously favored his creature comforts.

He relieved himself in the chamber pot and inspected his member for sores, a precaution he always took after a night of whoring. Relieved, he had a long look out of one of the leaded windows. Through the greenish panes, he could see to the north the magnificent sweep of the River Thames. A high-sided cogge was passing by, setting its sails and making way for the estuary, heavy with goods. Beneath the royal apartments, at water’s edge, a marsh harrier swooped for mice, and upstream, a rag and bones man was tipping a rubbish cart into the river, impudently close to Westminster Hall, where the Royal Council would meet in a day. Momentarily distracted by the sights of the great city, his thoughts drifted back to his feet, which looked particularly coarse and raw. Today he would get his new boots.

He smoothed out his pointy beard, flowing moustache, and shoulder-length hair with his tortoiseshell comb, then dressed quickly, slipping on breeches and linen shirt and selecting his best green woolen hose, which he stretched to his thighs and tied to his breech belt. His jacket was a gift from a French cousin, a style they called a cotehardie, tight-fitting, tufted, and blue, with ivory buttons. Despite being over forty years old, his body was still fit and manly, and he did not hesitate to accentuate it. Because he was at Court, he completed his outfitting with a particularly nice kirtle, a rakishly thigh-length cloak made of a fine brocade. Then, with disdain, he pulled on his old boots wincing at their shabbiness and lack of shape.

Charles had attained his station through a combination of good breeding and good sense. The Cantwells could reliably trace their bloodlines back to the time of King John, and they had played a minor role in negotiations with the Crown on the Magna Carta. However, the family languished as marginal nobility until fortune smiled on them with the ascension of Edward III.

Charles’s father, Edmund, had fought besides Edward II in the English king’s ill-conceived campaign against Robert the Bruce in Scotland and was wounded in the disastrous battle at Bannockburn. Had the battle gone better for the English, the Cantwells might have prospered in the years that followed, but Edmund had certainly not discredited the family in the eyes of the Crown.

Edward II was, by no means, a popular monarch, and his subjects, for all intents and purposes, permitted him to be deposed by Edward’s French wife and her traitorous consort, Roger Mortimer. The king’s son, Edward, was only fourteen at the time of the coup. Though crowned Edward III, he became a puppet of the Regent, Mortimer, who wanted the old king to be more than imprisoned-he wanted him dead. Edward’s murder at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire was a foul affair. He was accosted in his bed by Mortimer’s assassins, who pressed a heavy mattress against him to hold him down, then shoved a copper tube up his rectum and thrust a red-hot iron poker through it to burn his intestines without leaving a mark. Thus, murder could not be proven, and the death would be ascribed to natural causes. But more slyly, Mortimer was delivering fitting punishment since the king was said to be a buggerer.

As Edward approached his eighteenth birthday, cognizant of his father’s ghastly demise, he plotted a son’s revenge. The word was spread by his father’s loyalists that the young king was in need of conspirators. Charles Cantwell was contacted by agents and readily agreed to an intrigue because he was a Royalist, but also because, as an adventurer plagued by unsuccessful business dealings, he had few good prospects. In October of 1330, he joined a small brave party who audaciously snuck through a secret entrance into Mortimer’s own fortress at Nottingham Castle, arrested the toad in his bedchamber, and in the name of the king, spirited him away to the Tower of London to meet his own grim fate.

Edward III, in gratitude, made Charles a baron and granted him a fat royal stipend and further tracts of land at Wroxall, where Charles immediately began improving his estate by building a fine timber house grand enough for the name, Cantwell Hall.

The stable master had Charles’s horse ready and saddled. He set off at a trot, following the northern bank of the river, enjoying the fair breezes as long as he could before he had to turn his horse and plunge into the fetid, narrow lanes of the industrial city. In half an hour or so, he was on Thames Street, a comparatively broad and open thoroughfare, hard by the river, to the west of St. Paul’s, where he easily maneuvered his beast through a gaggle of pushcarts, horse-and-riders, and pedestrians.

At the foot of Garrick Hill, he spurred the horse’s belly to coax it north, into a snaking, claustrophobic lane, whereupon he promptly felt the need to press his nose into a cloth. Open sewer ditches ran along both sides of Cordwainers Street, but the human effluent was not the greatest offense to Charles’s senses. Unlike the cobblers who made cheap shoes from used leather and eked out a living doing repairs, their more esteemed brethren, the cordwainers, needed fresh leather for new boots. So these city environs were also home to slaughterhouses and tanneries, the enterprises causing the greatest stench with their rank, boiling pots of leather, wool, and sheepskin.

All the good cheer of the morning had drained from him by the time he dismounted at his destination, a small shop marked with a hanging sign of black iron in the shape of a boot. He tied his horse to a post and sloshed his way through a mud puddle at the front of the two-story workshop, which was crammed cheek by jowl against other similar structures forming a long row of guild buildings.

Immediately, he suspected a problem. While the cobblers and other cordwainers on both sides of the street had their doors and windows open amidst signs of thriving commerce, this shop was shuttered tight. He muttered under his breath and banged upon the door with the heel of his hand. When there was no response, he banged again, even louder and was about to kick the bloody thing when the door slowly opened, and a woman stuck out her kerchiefed head.

“Why are you shut?” Charles demanded.

The woman was thin as a child but haggard and elderly. Charles had seen her at the shop before, and though aged, he had thought she must have been a great beauty in her youth. That impression was faded now, washed away by strong measures of worry and toil.

“My husband is ill, sir.”

“’Tis a pity, I am sure, madam, but I am here to collect my new boots.”

She looked at him blankly and said nothing.

“Did you not hear me, woman. I’m here for my boots!”

“There are no boots, sir.”

“Whatever do you mean! Do you know who I am?”

Her lip was trembling. “You are the Baron Wroxall, sir.”

“Fine. Then you know I was here six weeks ago. Your husband, Luke the Cordwainer, made wooden lasts of my feet. I made half payment, woman!”

“He has been ill.”

“Let me inside!” Charles pushed his way through the front door and looked around the small room. It served as a workshop, a kitchen, and a living space. On one side, a cooking hearth with utensils, a table, and chairs, the other side a craftsman’s bench, laden with tools and a paltry collection of cured sheepskins. A rack above the bench had dozens of wooden molds. Charles fixed his gaze on a mold that was inscribed “Wroxal” and exclaimed: “Those are my feet! Now where are my boots!”

From the higher floor a weak voice called out, “Elizabeth? Who is there?”

“He never began them, sir,” she insisted. “He became ill.”

“He’s upstairs?” Charles asked, alarmed. “There’s no plague in this house, is there madam?”

“Oh no, sir. He has the consumption.”

“Then I will go and speak to the man.”

“Please, no, sir. He is too frail. It might kill him.”

In recent years, Charles had become wholly unused to not getting his way. Barons were treated like-barons, and serfs and gentry alike acceded to their every whim. He stood there with his fists thrust truculently into his waist, his jaw jutting. “No boots,” he finally said.

“No, sir.” She was trying not to cry.

“I paid you a Half Noble in advance,” he said icily. “Give me my money back. With interest. I will take four shillings.”

Now the tears flowed. “We have no money, sir. He has not been able to work. I have begun trading his leather stock to other guild members for food.”

“So, you have no boots, and you have no money! What would you have me do, woman?”

“I do not know, sir.”

“It seems that your husband will be spending his last days in prison at his majesty’s pleasure, and you too will see the inside of a debtor’s cell. When you see me next, I will have the sheriff.”

Elizabeth fell to her knees and wrapped herself around his stockinged calves. “Please, no, sir. There must be another way,” she sobbed. “Take his tools as payment, take what you like.”

“Elizabeth?” Luke weakly called out again.

“Everything is fine, husband,” she shouted back.

While seeing these thieves to prison would give him satisfaction, he knew he would rather spend the rest of his morning at a new cordwainer than tramping around the foul city looking for the sheriff. Without answering, he went to the worktable and began to inspect the array of pincers, awls, needles, mallets, and knives. He snorted at them. What use to him, he wondered? He picked up a semicircular bladed instrument, and asked, “What is this?”

She was still on her knees. “It’s a trenket, a shoemaker’s knife.”

“What would I do with this in my belt,” he said derisively. “Cut off someone’s nose?” He poked around the table some more, and concluded, “This is rubbish to me. Have you anything of value in here?”

“We are poor, sir. Please, take the tools and leave in peace.”

He began to pace back and forth, looking around the small room for something that would satisfy him enough to abandon his threat to have them arrested. Their possessions were indeed meager, the kinds of goods his servants had in their peasant houses.

His eyes fell on a chest near the hearth. Without asking permission, he opened it. There were winter cloaks, dresses, and the like. He stuck his hands in and felt underneath and touched something hard and flat. When he parted the clothes, he saw the cover of a book.

“Do you have a Bible?” he exclaimed. Books were rare commodities, and valuable. He had never seen a peasant or tradesman possessing one.

Elizabeth quickly crossed herself and seemed to say a silent prayer. “No, sir. It is not a Bible.”

He lifted the heavy book from the chest and inspected it. He puzzled at the date on the spine, “1527” and opened it. A sheaf of loose parchments fell onto the floor. He picked them up, glancing quickly at the Latin. He saw the name Felix on the top page and put the sheets aside. Then he inspected the pages of the book and cast his eyes on the seemingly endless lists of names and dates. “What is this book, madam?”

The fear dried Elizabeth’s tears. “It is from a monastery, sir. The abbot gave it to my husband. I know not what it is.”

In truth, Luke had never spoken to her about the book. When he returned to London from Vectis years earlier, he had wordlessly placed it in the chest, and there it had remained. He knew better than to remind her of Vectis. Indeed, the very name was never uttered in their house. She had a sense, however, that the book was wicked, and she crossed herself every time she had to use the chest.

Charles turned page after page, each one awash in the year 1527. “Is this some kind of witchcraft?” Charles demanded.

“No, sir!” She struggled to sound like she believed her next words. “It is a holy book from the good monks of Vectis Abbey. It was a gift to my husband, who knew the abbot in his youth.”

Charles shrugged. The book was bound to be worth something, possibly more than four shillings. His brother, who was more skilled with a pen than a sword, would know the value better. When he returned to Cantwell Hall, he would seek his views. “I will take the book as payment, but I am most displeased by this venture, madam. I wanted my boots for the Royal Council. All I have is my disappointment.”

She said nothing and watched the baron put the loose parchments back into the book and stride out of the shop and onto the street. He dropped the book into his saddlebag and rode off in search of another bootmaker.

Elizabeth climbed the stairs and entered the cubby, where Luke lay in a feverish, wasted state. Her hale, strapping man, the savior of her life, was gone, replaced by this old, shriveled shell. He was slipping away. The tiny room smelled like death. The front of his shirt was smeared with old brown blood and sputum and a few fresh streaks, bright red. She lifted his head and gave him a sip of ale.

“Who was here?” he asked.

“The Baron Wroxall.”

His watery eyes widened. “I never made his boots.” He was seized by a paroxysm of coughs, and she had to wait for his chest to quiet.

“He has left. All is well.”

“How did you satisfy him? He gave me payment.”

“All is well.”

“My tools?” he asked sadly.

“No. Something else.”

“What then?”

She took his limp hand in hers and tenderly looked him in the eyes. For a moment, they were young again, two innocents, on their own up against the large, cruel forces of a world gone mad. Those many years past, he had rushed in and saved her, as chivalrous as a knight, plucking her from that stinking crypt and a horrible fate. She had tried her whole life to repay him and had woefully failed to produce a child. Perhaps, in a small way, she had saved him today by tossing a bone to the wolf at the door. Her beloved Luke would be able to die in his own bed.

“The book,” she said. “I gave him the book.”

He blinked in disbelief, then slowly turned his head to the wall and began to sob.

THE INSTANT WILL AWOKE, he recognized the old unhappy syndrome, his head filled with lead weights, his mouth sponged dry, his body wracked by flulike myalgias.

He had a whopper of a hangover.

He cursed at his failings, and when he saw the quarter-full bottle next to him on the bed, lying there like a streetwalker, he angrily asked it, “What the hell are you doing here?” He had an urge to spill the contents down the sink, but it wasn’t his property, was it? He covered it with a pillow so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

He remembered everything, of course-he couldn’t use the pathetic excuse he’d blacked out. He’d cheated on ex-wives, he’d cheated on girlfriends, he’d cheated on women he was cheating with, but he’d never cheated on Nancy. He was glad he felt like crap: he deserved it.

Nancy’s text message was still there, unanswered on his cell phone. After he got out of the bathroom, full of minty toothpaste to mask his hangover mouth, he used the one available bar to call her. It was early there, but he knew she’d be up, feeding Phillip, getting ready for work.

“Hi,” she answered. “You’re calling me.”

“You sound surprised.”

“You didn’t text me back. Out of sight, out of mind, I figured.”

“Hardly. How’re you doing?”

“We’re okay. Philly’s got an appetite.”

“That’s good.”

His voice sounded off beam. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

She didn’t sound convinced. “How’re you getting on?”

“I’m in a big old country house. Feels like I’m in an Agatha Christie book. But the people here are being-very nice, very helpful. It’s been worth it. There’s been a breakthrough, but you probably don’t want to hear about it.”

She was quiet, then said, “I wasn’t happy, but I’m over it. I realized something.”

“What?”

“All this domestication. It’s hard on you. You’re too penned up. An adventure comes along, of course you’re going to jump at it.”

His eyes began to sting. “I’m listening.”

“And there’s something else. Let’s look to move sooner rather than later. You need to get out of the city. I’ll start talking to HR about possible transfers.”

He felt unspeakably guilty. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. Tell me about your breakthrough.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t over the phone.”

Concern crept back into her voice. “I thought you said you were safe.”

“I’m sure I am, but old habits…I’ll tell you in person soon.”

“When are you coming home?”

“I’m not finished yet, maybe a day or two. As fast as I can. We found the first clue. Three to go.”

“Prometheus’s flame.”

“Quite the puzzler, that Mr. Shakespeare. Big old candlestick.”

“Ha! Flemish wind next?”

“Yep.”

“Any ideas?”

“Nope. You?”

“I’ll think about it. Come home soon.”

It was the middle of the night in Las Vegas, and Malcolm Frazier was sleeping beside his wife when his mobile phone vibrated and chimed him awake. One of his men was calling from the Ops Center at Area 51, offering a perfunctory apology for disturbing him.

“What’ve you got?” Frazier asked, swinging his feet onto the floor.

“We just intercepted cell-phone traffic between Piper and his wife.”

“Play it for me,” Frazier demanded. He shuffled out of the master bedroom, past his children’s rooms, and he landed on the family room sofa as the file started playing.

He listened to the audio then asked to be patched through to DeCorso.

“Chief! What are you doing up at 2:00 A.M.?”

“My job. Where are you?”

He was sitting in his rental car, by the side of the road within sight of the lane to Cantwell Hall. Nobody was coming or going without his noticing. He had just peeled the cellophane off a chicken sandwich and wound up greasing his cell phone with mayonnaise. “Doing my job too.”

“Any sight of him?”

“Other than screwing the granddaughter last night, no.”

“Moral turpitude,” Frazier mumbled.

“Say again?”

Frazier ignored him. He wasn’t a dictionary. “Funnily enough he just called his wife. Not to confess. He told her there’d been a ‘breakthrough’ and that he wasn’t finished yet, another three clues to find, he said. Sounds like he’s on a fucking scavenger hunt. Now you know.”

“The food here sucks, but I’ll survive.”

Frazier had personal knowledge. “I know you will.” Then he added, “Keep your head down. The CIA promised the SIS they’d find out what happened to Cottle, and our CIA liaison guys are asking us some halfhearted questions. Everyone on our side wants it to blow over. It’s the other side I’m worried about.”

Frazier had trouble getting back to sleep. He replayed the strategy in his head, trying not to second-guess himself to the point of madness. He had decided to let Spence run free for the time being to give Piper the rope he needed to do whatever the hell he was doing in England. So far, so good. It looked like Piper was onto something. Let him do the work, Frazier thought. Then we’ll reel him in and reap the benefits. They could always pick up Spence and the book. He wouldn’t be hard to find. Frazier had his house in Vegas under surveillance, and guessed he’d surface well before his DOD. Spence was a dead man walking. Time was not on his side.

When the housekeeper put a plate of fried bread on the table, Will looked at it suspiciously. Isabelle laughed and urged him to keep an open mind. He crunched down, then said, “I don’t get it. Why would you ruin a good piece of toast?”

Fried eggs, mushrooms, and streaky bacon were served up in short order, and out of politeness, Will forced himself to eat. His hangover was making everything arduous, even breathing.

Isabelle was fresh and chatty, like nothing had happened. That was fine with him. He’d go along with the game or delusion or whatever it was. For all he knew, maybe this was how kids hooked up these days. If it felt good, do it, then forget about it-no big deal. It seemed like a reasonable way to handle things. Maybe he’d been born a generation too early.

They were alone. Lord Cantwell hadn’t surfaced yet.

“This morning I researched Flemish windmills,” she said.

“That was industrious of you.”

“Well, as you were going to sleep half the day, someone had to start in,” she said saucily.

“So where’s the next clue?”

“Haven’t got one.”

“One what?”

“A clue! Your brain’s not up yet, Mr. Piper!”

“I had a rough night.”

“Did you?”

He didn’t want to go there. “Windmills?” he asked.

She had some pages printed off an Internet site. “Did you know that the first windmill was built in Flanders in the thirteenth century? And that at peak, in the eighteenth century there might well have been thousands of them? And that there are currently fewer than two hundred in all of Belgium and only sixty-five in Flanders? And that the last working Flemish windmill ceased operation in 1914?” She looked up and smiled sweetly at him.

“None of that’s helpful,” he said, gulping more coffee.

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed, “but it’s gotten my mind cranking. We need to have a thorough look around for any objet d’art, image, painting, anything whatsoever with a windmill motif. We know there aren’t any books of interest.”

“Good. You’re going full throttle. I’m glad one of us is.”

She was enthused, a young filly straining at her bit for a morning run. “Yesterday was one of the most stimulating days I’ve ever had, Will. It was incredible.”

He looked at her through his bilious haze.

“Mentally stimulating!” she said, exasperated, but then at a whisper, under the washing-up noises of the housekeeper added, “And physically stimulating too.”

“Remember,” he said with as much gravitas as he could muster, “you can’t disclose any of this. They’re some very serious people who will shut you down if you do.”

“Don’t you think the rest of the world should know? Isn’t it a universal right to know?” She curled her mouth into a bright smile, “And, parenthetically, it would launch my academic career in a spectacular way.”

“For your sake and mine, I’m begging you not to go there. If you don’t promise me, I’ll leave this morning and I’ll take the poem with me and this’ll be unfinished.” He wasn’t smiling.

“All right,” she pouted. “What shall I tell Granddad?”

“Tell him the letter was interesting but didn’t shed any light on the book. Make something up. I’ve got a feeling you’ve got a good imagination.”

They began the day with a walk through the house, looking for anything remotely interesting. Will brought along another cup of coffee for the road, which Isabelle thought was very American of him.

The ground floor of Cantwell Hall was fairly complicated. The kitchen wing in the rear of the house had a series of pantries and disused servants’ quarters. The dining room, a well-proportioned front-facing room, was located between the kitchen area and the entrance hall. Will had spent all his time the previous day in the Great Hall and the library and this morning he was shown another large, formal room facing the rear garden, the drawing room, which they also called the French room, holding a starchy collection of eighteenth-century French furniture and decorative pieces, which looked unlived-in and unvisited. Will also discovered that the reason the Great Hall was windowless was because its front-facing wall was no longer the outer wall of the house. A long gallery had been constructed in the seventeenth century, connecting the house and a stables area which had long ago been converted to a banqueting hall.

The gallery originated through an unnoticed entryway in the hall. It was a high-ceilinged, darkly paneled corridor lined with paintings and the odd piece of stone or bronze statuary. At its other end, it emptied into a vast, cold hall that hadn’t hosted a banquet or a ball in a good half century. Will’s heart sank when he entered. It was filled with packing crates and piles of furniture and bric-a-brac covered in sheets. “Granddad calls this his bank account,” Isabelle told him. “These are things he’s decided to part with to pay the bills for the next few years.”

“Could any of this stuff date back to the fifteen hundreds?”

“Possibly.”

Will shook his throbbing head and swore.

The banqueting hall was connected via a short corridor to the chapel, a small stone sanctuary, the Cantwells’ private house of worship, five rows of pews and a small limestone altar. It was simple and quiet, Christ crucified looking down on empty pews splashed by morning sunlight that filtered through stained glass. “Not used much,” Isabelle said, “though Granddad wants the family to do a private mass for him here when his time comes.”

He pointed over his head. “Is this the spire I can see from my bedroom?” Will asked.

“Yes, come and look.”

She led him outside. The grass was thick and wet, the sun made everything glisten. They stepped into the garden, just far enough to get a glimpse at the stone chapel, and the sight of it almost made him laugh. It was a curious little building, a novelty with a distinctive Gothic architecture, two rectangular towers at the front facade and at its center over a rectangular nave and transept, a steep pointy spire that looked like a lance thrust into the air.

“Recognize it?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“It’s a miniature version of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Edgar Cantwell had it built in the sixteenth century. I think the real thing made an impression.”

“You’ve got an interesting family,” Will said. “My guess is the Pipers probably cleaned the shit off of the Cantwells’ shoes.”

To Will, the only good thing about the long hours that followed was that his hangover slowly resolved. They spent the morning rummaging through the banqueting hall, focused on Flanders and the wind, but cognizant of the remaining clues as well-a prophet’s name, a son who sinned-as vague as they were. By lunchtime he had a fair appetite.

The old man was up and about and joined them for sandwiches. His memory wasn’t all there, so it was easy for Isabelle to deflect him from the Vectis letter. However, he did remain fixed on the purported Shakespeare poem because it seemed that financial worries were foremost on his mind.

He inquired again about Will’s intentions and was reassured that if the research went well, the letter would be his. He encouraged his granddaughter to be as helpful as possible, then rambled on about auction houses and how he’d have to let Pierce amp; Whyte take a crack at the business owing to their success with the last auction, but that Sotheby’s or Christie’s made more sense for something of this importance. Then he excused himself to do his correspondence.

Before returning to the banqueting hall, they took advantage of Lord Cantwell puttering around the ground floor to sneak upstairs and have a poke through his bedroom. Isabelle couldn’t recall whether there was anything of interest up there as she hadn’t entered in years. But it was among the oldest rooms in the house so it couldn’t be ignored. The bed was not yet made and smelled strongly of an old man’s incontinence, which neither of them commented on. The few paintings were portraits, and the vases, clocks, and small tapestries were devoid of windmill motifs. They beat a hasty retreat back to the banqueting hall, where they toiled for the remainder of the early afternoon, prying open crates and examining dozens of paintings and decorative items.

By late afternoon, they had gone through the dining room and the French room and were sweeping back through the library and the Great Hall, becoming increasingly discouraged.

Finally, Isabelle begged to stop for tea. The housekeeper was off doing shopping so Isabelle decamped to the kitchen, leaving Will in charge of starting a fire. The task got him into Boy Scout mode, and he diligently started rearranging fireplace bricks and building a platform of kindling that would optimize airflow and prevent smoke kickback. When he was done, he carefully placed the logs, lit his structure with a wooden match, sat back, and admired his work.

The fire caught quickly and began to send flames high into the vault. Fewer wisps escaped. Will’s old scoutmaster in Panama City would have been proud of him, prouder than his frozen-hearted father, who had verbally beat him up about most of his early accomplishments or lack thereof.

A melancholy was descending. He was tired, he was disappointed that he was getting his old cravings back. The bottle of scotch was still up in his room. As his mind wandered, so did his eyes. One of the blue-and-white Delft tiles lining the fireplace caught his eye. It was a charming scene of a mother walking through a field with a bundle of twigs under one arm and her toddler son on the other. She looked perfectly happy. She probably wasn’t married to a bastard like him, he thought.

Then his gaze drifted to the tile below it. He froze for a second, then sprang up, and when Isabelle came back in with a platter of tea, she found him standing by the fireplace, staring.

“Look,” he said.

She put the platter down and drew closer. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “Right in front of our eyes. I tapped on it yesterday.”

On the bank of a meandering country river was a small windmill, delicately painted in blue and white. The tile artist was skillful enough to make one imagine that the mill blades were about to be turned by a breeze rushing down the river valley, for in the distance, birds were dipping their wings in an unseen gust.

The tea went cold.

After Isabelle made sure her grandfather was upstairs napping, she fetched the toolbox from the hall closet and let Will choose his implements. “Please don’t break it,” she pleaded.

He promised to be careful but gave no guarantees. He selected the smallest, thinnest flat-edged screwdriver and a light hammer. Then, holding his breath, he began gently tapping the chiseled end into the smooth, hard grout.

It was slow, painstaking work, but the grout was softer than the tile, so it gradually yielded to the steel. When a vertical line was cleared, he started on the top horizontal one. In half an hour, both horizontal rows were grout-free. Because he was working so closely to his exuberant fire, he was slathered in sweat, and his shirt was damp. He thought he might be able to tap under the tile and pry it loose without removing the last row of grout. She was almost pressing against his back, watching every move. She gave nervous approval.

It took only three light, oblique taps of the screwdriver to make the tile lift from the fascia a satisfying eighth of an inch. Blessedly, it was in one piece. Will put the tools down and used his hands, raising and lowering the tile fractionally, then wiggling it laterally.

It came free in his hands, intact.

Immediately, they saw a round plug of wood in the center of the exposed square.

“That’s why it sounded the same as the others when I tapped on it yesterday,” she said.

Will used the edge of the screwdriver to lever out the plug. It was covering a one-inch hole bored deeply into the wood.

“I need a flashlight,” Will said urgently.

There was a penlight in the toolbox. He shined it in the hole and grabbed a pair of needle-nosed pliers.

“What do you see?” she pressed.

He closed the pliers on something, then pulled them out. “This.”

There was a single sheet of parchment, rolled into a cylinder.

“Let me see!” she almost screamed.

He let her unroll it and stood over her as she dropped to a chair. “It’s in French,” she said.

“Are we screwed?”

“Of course not,” she sniffed. “I read French quite well, thank you.”

“Like I said, I’m glad you’re here.”

“It’s a bit hard to make out, atrocious penmanship. It’s addressed to Edgar Cantwell. It’s dated 1530! Good Lord, Will, look who’s written it! It’s signed, Jean Cauvin.”

“Who’s that?”

“John Calvin! The father of Calvinism, predestination and all that. Only the greatest ecclesiastical mind of the sixteenth century!” She scanned the page with wild eyes. “And Will, he’s writing about our book!”