Silver (28 page)

“Nicholas is a good man,” the Monsignor said, defending the dead man even though he hadn’t been asked to. It was obvious he suspected Simmonds was accused of something. What other reason could Noah have for digging into his background? “He has a good heart. He has been with us for almost two years now, I think. He is quiet, keeps to himself, but then that is rather a bookish trait, is it not?” Noah nodded where he was expected to. “Obviously young Nicholas shares our passion for the preservation of literature. I find it hard to imagine he could have done anything wrong.”

“Well, with all due respect, Gianni, didn’t you also just say you found it hard to believe people could poison the same water children drank? Sometimes ours is not to reason why.”

“Indeed,” Abandonato said through tight lips. He gestured to one of the side passageways. “We have been going through something of an upheaval here. The Biblioteca Apostolica has been closed to the public for the best part of three years now. It is undergoing some significant restorative work. Nicholas has been helping us with that. Not the restorative work, obviously,ght="0">

“
Incunabula
means ‘cradle,’ as in a baby’s cot, or beginning. Think of it as the first traces of anything, that spark of life where it all began. In this case we are talking about the first printed books, even single-sheet manuscripts, anything that wasn’t handwritten. You would be surprised how many—or perhaps how few—of these first printings have survived. In the library we preserve extant copies of the very first books manufactured by your countryman, Caxton, for instance. Some of our texts are utterly unique, but in many cases several copies have survived. Take the Gutenberg Bible, perhaps the most famous of all ‘first books.’ There are almost fifty copies of this known to exist still—forty-eight or forty-nine depending upon who you believe—making it a fairly common book, but of course quite valuable. We have the original hand-written cantos of Dante’s
Purgatorio
and
Paradisio
as well as
La Vita Nuova
. Then we have
Codex Vaticana
, the oldest extant Bible, and
Libri Carolini
, King Charles’ response to the Second Council of Nicaea. It is more commonly known as “King Charles against the Synod,” which probably tells you all you need to know about its contents. The library contains the single most important collection of books in the world. Believe me when I say it really is quite some collection.”

“If books are your thing,” Noah said with a shrug. He managed to keep a straight face. “I’m more of a movie guy myself.”

“And even if they are not,” Abandonato said, “it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of everything
within these halls, as you will soon see. We need to employ over eighty staff here just to oversee the protection and preservation of these works of art. Eighty people!”

The narrow passage led into what must have been a part of the library itself. There were no bookcases, but at various intervals across the floor there were simple straight-legged wooden tables with glass cases displaying various irreplaceable books. These were perhaps the least ostentatious of the long room’s furnishings. Every other table was over-wrought with gold and bore expensive vases, themselves almost certainly every bit as irreplaceable as the books. The room was a headache of colors, reds and oranges and rich blues with a black-and-white checkerboard floor.

Noah didn’t know what he had expected, but considering Abandonato’s boast, it seemed odd that he couldn’t actually see any bookshelves, just lots of paintings of robed people holding books open. 

“And it isn’t just books,” Abandonato continued. “We are responsible for over one hundred thousand prints, drawings, engravings and maps, as well as three hundred thousand papal coins, medals and so forth.”

Gianni Abandonato led him through two more corridors, these opening into a final room that finally looked like it ought to be part of the world’s most extensive library. Banks of card index files went back into the distance. Each one probably catalogued twenty-five thousand items. The banks went back as far as the eye could see. Two tiers of shelving and a gantry filled one wall, each tier packed floor to ceiling with abstracts and indices and other leather-bound texts bearing surprisingly uniform binding. No doubt they were books about the books the library housed. There were reading lecterns arranged conveniently along the gantry and booths set aside for scholarly study. There was an unerring uniformity to everything in the room.

“I had heard,” Noah began, looking around to see if anyone was in listening distance, “that the Vatican library had the largest collection of, ah—okay, this is going to sound stupid no matter how I say it—I had heard that you had the largest collection of erotica in the world?”

Abandonato burst out laughing. He had a deep, rich, laugh. It reached all the way down into his belly and came out of his mouth, filled with proper mirth. The sound swelled to fill the entire chamber, echoing off each of the walls. He looked immediately contrite and seemed to shrink about three inches in height. When he continued, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Someone has been pulling your leg, I am afraid, Noah. Unless you are willing to consider the odd Renaissance nude as pornography? Our tastes are far more prosaic.

“Now, Nicholas, Nicholas. What can I tell you about his work here? Nothing particularly glamorous, I am afraid. Nicholas is one of nine volunteers we have working in the archives at the moment. With the renovations we have been forced to transfer many of the Lateran and Pre-Lateran texts down to the subterranean archives. Moving this many books, many of which are so fragile they can be damaged by the merest touch, is a monumental undertaking.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Ah, we divide our texts up into five historical periods for ease: Pre-Lateran, marking the earliest days of the Church; Lateran, wh lasted up to the reign of Boniface the Eighth in the 13th century; then there are the Avignon texts—there was a time from 1370 onwards when the Popes were in residence in France; Pre-Vatican, and Vatican, when, in 1488, the library moved here. From then until now the collection remains unbroken. But of course you didn’t come here to listen to me wax lyrical about old books. It is difficult. I could talk for hours about this place and what happens here. Nicholas has been helping with the preservation and storage of some of the oldest Hebrew codices.”

“Like the Dead Sea Scrolls?”

“Like the Nag Hammadi codices, yes, though obviously not those particular texts. The scrolls are housed at the Coptic Museum in Cairo, after all.”

“Ah, show’s what I know,” Noah admitted. “I thought they were locked away down in the deepest vaults because they proved the bloodline of Jesus?” Noah offered Gianni Abandonato another lopsided grin.

“I’m not quite sure what you believe we’re hiding down here, but it isn’t all the
Da Vinci Code
, I’m afraid. We aren’t keeping earth-shattering secrets from the world.”

That the archivist had a passing familiarity with the popular novel only made Noah like him all the more. “Not that you would tell me if you were,” Noah said, tapping the side of his nose with his finger. “They’re secrets, after all.”

“Quite. The library houses several—more than several—of what we would call heretical texts. These are what I am assuming you are talking about. They aren’t all grimoires bound in human skin, though. You won’t find incantations for summoning the Devil or whatever else you might have heard, despite the persistence of such rumors. In the early days of the Church vast amounts of materials were gathered to be destroyed because they preached what were considered heresies. Of course, it should come as no surprise to hear that a great many of these texts were never destroyed, but were in fact brought to the library. The library existed even then to preserve knowledge, not destroy it. The surviving documents are almost entirely stored in the Pre-Lateran and Lateran archives.”

“Which is where Nick Simmonds was working?” Noah said, following the conversation right back to where it began.

“Yes.”

“So what you’re saying is Simmonds was working with these heretical texts?” Noah licked his lips, thinking. “Could he have been looking for someng directly? There’s a lot of stuff here. Could he have come in looking for something in particular?”

“I am sorry, I don’t follow.”

“I’m trying to put several pieces together at once,” he said, and then an idea came to him. He had no reason to think it might be true, but he asked it anyway. “Would any of these works be from Israel, around the time of the Sicarii?”

“No doubt there are copies of Josephus, who, as I am sure you know, was the preeminent historian of the time. As to anything else, I am afraid I couldn’t even begin to guess. No doubt there are testimonies and such, but you have to remember that very little from that time was written down. I haven’t read close to a hundredth of all the ancient texts. I doubt anyone has. Many of these texts have not even been looked upon in decades. It is not like picking up a book to read down on the beach. In translation each word, and how it sits beside the next, can lead to varying interpretations of the precise meaning of every sentence. Miracles can happen rather unintentionally if someone decides the preposition is
on
instead of
beside
, for instance, which would make the miracle of Bethsaida slightly less miraculous.”

Noah didn’t really follow, but nodded because it seemed like Abandonato expected him to. “How about Simmonds? Was he comfortable enough to read something like that and understand the significance of the linguistics?”

“I couldn’t possibly say. Sorry.” The Monsignor shrugged.
“We did not work that closely. As I said, we are all very solitary people down here. We work our own specialisms and keep to ourselves.”

Which translated in Noah’s head to:
of course he could, and he could have walked out with any text he wanted, because this whole place functioned around trust.
“Do you know what books, precisely, he was working with?”

“As I said, Pre-Lateran and Lateran Hebrew codices.”

“Right, and you have a list of these books?”

“Yes, of course, but as I said, the library is undergoing a massive refurbishment. It would be almost impossible to ascertain one way or another if an individual text were missing; and it would take weeks to be sure. AsI am sure you can understand; nothing is where it is supposed to be right now.”

“Great,” Noah said, barely keeping his frustration from bubbling over. Simmonds’ working with Hebrew texts couldn’t be a coincidence. Nothing else he had learned in the last four days had been, so why should this be? He needed to think of everything as though it was all connected, not strings of random events. It was pointless asking if any books had gone missing recently; the Monsignor had already said it would be nigh impossible to tell. And there was nothing to say the book was a recent find. Simmonds had been working in the library for the best part of two years. He could have found it at any time.

Noah pursed his lips, wondering how best to proceed. There was only one thing left to say and he knew it. He blew out a sharp breath. “Nick Simmonds committed suicide four days ago. You might have heard about it. He set fire to himself in the main square outside.”

“Goodness.”

“Unfortunately there’s very little of that out there anymore, Monsignor.”

“And you think his work here had something to do with his killing himself?”

“It’s a distinct possibility,” Noah said. “Would he have recorded somewhere what books he had already prepared for the move?”

The archivist nodded. “Another of the volunteers has developed a computerized ledger system for the move. Every book, as it is prepared, is entered into the system.”

“So everything he laid his hands on ought to be registered in the system?”

Abandonato nodded.

“Halle-bloody-lujah.”

Noah sat with
Abandonato in a small walled garden in the heart of the Vatican. The Monsignor had offered to show him the Sistine Chapel and other treasures to help pass the wait, but Noah didn’t feel like feigning interest louds that had been painted in to preserve the modesty of the angels by men far more prudish in nature than those who had commissioned the work of art in the first place. But wasn’t that the truth of all occasions? It seemed indicative of the modern world that any amount of violence was fine so long as it was cartoonish in nature, like the Road Runner dropping that anvil on Wile E. Coyote’s unsuspecting head from a great height, but a flash of genitalia needed to be covered to protect the fragile innocence of the young, lest they become sexual delinquents. He could
almost
understand the reasoning of the Muslim men who wanted to hide women behind burqas to avoid temptations of the flesh.
Almost
. Next to painting over angelic dangly bits to preserve the piety of the chapel, it seemed positively reasonable.