The Book Of Secrets Part 51

Through the gathering smoke, Nick saw Nevado run for the door. He tried to follow, but a rattle of bullets answered him almost immediately. He dived for cover, pulling Emily down with him and covering her with his body. When he looked up, he was just in time to see the door slam shut.

Where was Gillian? He looked around through the black smoke pouring off the books and couldn't see her. Had Nevado taken her with him? Was that part of the deal?

Then he saw her. She was lying on the floor near the shelves, propped up on her arms trying to crawl away. Hot ash and embers rained down on her, curling like petals on her back, but she didn't move any faster. She couldn't: when she tugged her leg forward a dark river of blood smeared behind her. Nevado's parting gift.

Nick ran over, hooked his arms under hers and dragged her to the middle of the room. Emily tore a sleeve off her sweater and tied it around Gillian's thigh to staunch the bleeding. Her face was white with shock.

'I'm sorry,' she mumbled. 'I'm so sorry, Nick.'

There wasn't time. The flames were already beginning to spread from the back around to the sides of the hall. Smoke was filling the chamber. Nick pulled his gloves out of his pocket and handed one to Emily.

'Hold this in front of your face.'

Breathing through the soggy wool Nick raced to the door. The surface was smooth and featureless, with neither lock nor handle visible.

Did you think we are so trapped in the Middle Ages that we do not even know how to lock a door?

He gave it a kick, but it didn't so much as creak. He only hurt his foot. He pressed it with his hands and felt the grainless strength of metal. They would burn long before it did.

He ran back to Emily and Gillian. 'Bad news.'

Without taking the glove from her face, Emily pointed up. Thick clouds of smoke swirled among the rafters. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the glove away just long enough to say, 'The smoke. Going out.' She took another breath. 'Must be an opening. In the roof.'

Was there? Nick had his doubts. But there wasn't any other way out. He stared up at the shelves, like a giant stair scaling the high wall. Ladders and galleries connected them, though some were already dangerously close to the encroaching flames. Even if they made it to the top, they'd probably just find themselves trapped.

Got to keep trying, he told himself. He put his arm around Gillian's shoulders, lifted her up and headed for the nearest ladder.

The cold air in the courtyard was a mercy. Nevado dropped to his knees in the snow to extinguish the last embers smouldering in the hem of his coat, and to cool the burns that scalded his legs. Ugo watched him uncertainly.

'Should we put out the fire?' he asked.

Nevado looked back. From the outside, the inferno inside the keep was all but invisible. The windows in the tower had long since been blocked up. Only the smell of smoke, almost comforting on this snowy night, gave any clue. The plume pouring from the roof was lost in the darkness.

'Are you OK, Monsignore?'

Nevado realised he was trembling. He had not meant it to end like this rushed and sloppy, out of his control, Pope Pius's commission still incomplete. And the sight of all those books burning evil though they were had shaken him more than he had expected.

But the Lord moved in mysterious ways. Perhaps it was a gentle correction, he thought, a warning to his pride that only G.o.d was perfect. His plan would still work.

He turned to Ugo. 'Give me your weapon.'

Ugo looked surprised, but handed him the pistol without complaint. Nevado felt the weight of it. It was so much smaller than the guns he'd used in his youth, protecting himself against the republican gangs who lurked in the forests around his father's church in Andalusia. But the mechanism was the same. He checked the clip and the safety.

'Bless you.'

He fired two shots into Ugo's chest. The Italian collapsed without a sound, his blood seeping into the snow like ink.

They overpowered the guards and could not be stopped. It was regrettable but necessary. No one could blame him for inadequate precautions.

Nevado gave him one more bullet, just to be sure, then threw the gun into the snow by the keep. Whoever came to investigate could draw their own conclusions. Then he hurried to the stables where his car was parked.

The back wall of the tower was awash with flame, like a stained-gla.s.s window leaded black where the shelves had not yet collapsed. It sucked in air and turned the whole chamber into a vast oven. At the far end of the room, Nick had stripped to his T-shirt and was still soaked through with sweat. His shirt was tied around Gillian's leg, strapping on a makeshift splint made from two lengths of bookshelf. She clung to the shelves as she hobbled along the gallery.

The walkway was metal, a cast-iron lattice so that when you looked down, you could see how far you had to drop. It wouldn't burn, but it might fry them. Nick could already feel it getting hot through the soles of his shoes. So far, the stone pillars had stopped the flames from spreading to their part of the library, but it couldn't be long. A blizzard of burning paper sc.r.a.ps swirled in the hall on currents of smoke and scalding air.

Whoever had designed the library hadn't made it easy: the ladders were placed at alternating ends of each gallery, so that you had to zigzag your way across each level to reach the next. It reminded Nick of a primitive video game, working your way to the top while a gorilla threw bananas and fireb.a.l.l.s at you. Only now, the fireb.a.l.l.s were all too real.

The ladders were the hardest part. Emily went first, then lay on her stomach and reached back down while Nick supported Gillian, holding her hips to steady her. She tried to help by pulling herself up the rungs, but smoke and pain and loss of blood made her giddy.

Once she slipped, lost her grip and almost plunged backwards over the edge. Nick held on grimly and hauled her back.

'Leave me.' She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek. 'Save yourself.'

If there'd been any prospect of actually saving himself, perhaps he would have been tempted. Instead, he hoisted her onto his shoulders and climbed the ladder. She didn't resist.

Emily yelled something to Nick, but the roar of the fire drowned her voice. Instead of trying again, she simply pointed down. The fire had leaped around the pillars: eager flames raced up the shelves below them.

Now they were in a deadly race. They took Gillian between them and dragged her, stumbling, to the next ladder. Smoke rose all around them, sieving through the holes in the iron-work like poison gas. Nick's lungs ached; his skin sizzled with raw heat.

At last they came out on the top balcony. When Nick looked down he had the impression he was standing atop a column of flame. Smoke made it a dull, b.l.o.o.d.y red: it was so thick up here that he could hardly see.

But Emily had been right: the smoke was moving upwards. Squinting through his tears, Nick saw a dark opening in the ceiling. It was too high to reach, and too far from the wall for the shelves to be any use.

'Wait here.'

Nick dropped to the floor and crawled along the gantry on hands and knees. The hot metal scalded his hands; he grabbed two books and used them like oven mitts to protect himself. At the end of the row of shelves, tucked in behind a column, an old wooden school desk sat gathering dust perhaps so that anyone who came up this far didn't have to carry his book all the way down. Nick grabbed the desk and dragged it back along the gantry, closing his eyes against the smoke. Books fell unheeded from the shelves; once the desk skewed around and jammed against the handrail. A desperate heave brought it free.

He didn't even realise he'd reached Emily until he felt her hand on his back. She understood at once. She scrambled onto the desk, raised her arms and reached for the skylight. Still she couldn't quite reach. Nick wrapped his arms around her legs, squeezed and lifted.

She swayed; for an awful moment he thought she'd topple and take both of them over the edge. Then she steadied as her hands gripped the side of the open skylight. Her weight rose away. When she was up, Nick manhandled Gillian through, then followed himself. His head popped out through the hatch and felt cool air. He drew a deep breath, and immediately choked on a lungful of the smoke pouring out around him. He looked around.

They'd arrived in a thaw. The fire was melting the snow from the roof and sending it pouring onto the stone walkway where they stood. He scooped some up to wash his eyes and realised it was warm. The puddles began to steam.

Nick left Gillian with Emily and ran around the tower, wading through slush, peering over the wall for any sign of a ladder or a fire escape, even protruding bricks they could cling on to. There was no way down.

The water on the roof was bubbling now. In horror, he realised it wasn't just water. The lead itself was beginning to melt, blistering off the roof and running down into the overloaded gutters. It wouldn't be long before the whole thing went. He rolled Gillian over to the bal.u.s.trade, trying to keep her from the river of molten metal. He hugged Emily to him but didn't speak. There was nothing left to say.

He heard a throbbing in his ears, a pounding that swelled until the roar of the burning library was entirely drowned out. A blinding white light appeared in the sky above, sweeping over him like the eye of judgement.

I was close to death. The weight on me was so immense I thought it would split open my skin and burst my heart. My head felt as though all the blood in my body had been squeezed into it, inflated like a bladder. I hung in a balance, as finely calibrated as any goldsmith's scales. In one pan, the stones; in the other, my life. Even the addition of a single coin would be enough to crush me into oblivion.

'What is the meaning of the other bestiary we found in your house?'

The questions never stopped. The weight on my chest had long since left me speechless. Yet I had to groan, to gasp and babble wordless nonsense, to convince them I was trying. If I stayed silent they would only add more stones.

'Who else helped you?'

I said nothing. In all my torment I had never answered that question.

My silence displeased the inquisitor. I heard the familiar, dread command. 'Alium another.' The obedient slap of footsteps. The rasp of stone.

And then a bang; m.u.f.fled shouts that grew suddenly louder; a rush of air. The clatter of a stone being dropped. Had the board that flattened me broken and spilled its load. It did not feel that way. Had I died?

I tried to hear what was being said. After the inquisitor, any new voice was like a cold stream in the desert.

'You must stop this at once,' someone was saying. 'Remove those stones.'

'This is the archbishop's castle.' You have no authority here, Bishop.'

'Cardinal,' the new-but-familiar voice corrected him. 'I am moving up in the world. And you will be dropping like one of your stones down a very deep well if you do not free my friend this instant.'

'This man is a heretic.'

'He is a truer servant of G.o.d than you will ever be.'

There followed a pause, filled with a hope more excruciating than any torment I had endured. Then praise G.o.d! the sound of a stone being taken off me. I tried to breathe and found my chest lifted a hair's breadth further than before.

'Faster,' the cardinal insisted. 'If he dies now, you will take his place.'

The trickle of rocks became a cascade, crashing onto the floor like a tower being torn down to its foundations. Stone splinters ricocheted against my cheek but I barely felt them.

The board lifted off me like a door opening. Fingers fretted at the cords around my neck, prising loose the knots.

A dazzling light blinded me, like morning sun on the Rhine. It made a halo around the face that peered into mine. Even in that cruel room he managed an impression of his usual smile, though it was heavy with care.

'Truly, you are a most extraordinary man.'

The car fishtailed as Nevado swerved into another corner. He knew he was driving too fast. The road switched and twisted through the forest, steep hairpin bends dropping suddenly into icy straights tucked among the trees. In the headlights, the world became a corrugated tunnel of trees and snow. He kept his eyes fixed ahead.

The road straightened and he began to relax. The highway to Mainz was shut, but his boat was moored in Oberwinter. He could be in Frankfurt by dawn, then a fast train to Basle and a friend who would swear he hadn't left Switzerland in two days. The police would call, and he would reluctantly telephone the Vatican with the terrible news.

He realised his attention was wandering and snapped it back to the road. He was approaching a bend where a landslide had carried away the trees to offer an open view back across the gorge. He pressed the brake gently and felt the car shudder to a standstill. He stared across the valley. A vast plume of smoke choked out the stars; flames glowed red through the skylights he had left open to fan the fire. He smiled, trying to steady his breathing. Everything had worked.

A brilliant white light pa.s.sed over him like an angel. The whole car shook with the vibrations of the aircraft pa.s.sing overhead. Whose could it be? Had they seen him? Suddenly his whole plan was in doubt.

Gripped by panic, he hit the accelerator. Too hard the wheels spun, whining in protest as they sprayed snow behind him. He pushed harder, stamping the pedal and rattling the gearstick. The wheels howled, then bit the frozen earth. The car lurched forward. Still dazed from the searchlight, he didn't see the bend ahead until it was too late. He tried to turn; he slammed on what he thought was the brake, not realising it was the accelerator still locked to the floor.

There were no crash barriers, no trees to catch him. The car flew over the cliff and plunged head first into the gorge. The last thing Nevado saw was his headlights reflected in the snow, twin points of light rushing towards him, the eyes of a vengeful G.o.d. He screamed.

A small puff of fire erupted in the trees on the southern slope of the gorge. It burned like a ball of paper for a little while, then died, leaving a black blot on the virgin snow.

Nick shielded his face against the spotlight and peered into the sky. Through the whipped-up snow he could see helicopter blades spinning like giant scissors, the glint of a gla.s.s canopy and a square of light where a door had opened. Someone was standing in the opening, looking at them. He waved frantically, screaming for help. The rotors drowned his cries and flung them into the darkness.

But someone must have seen him. A cable snaked down. A moment later he saw a man attached to it, descending like a spider. He touched down on the roof and waddled over to Nick. He wore a green jumpsuit that looked vaguely military, though his face was hidden under an enormous helmet.

Nick pointed to Gillian, lying behind the bal.u.s.trade. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage and clouded in the puddles around her. The man in the jumpsuit gave a thumbs-up. Together, he and Nick lifted Gillian upright and wriggled her into a harness.

Emily cupped her hands over his ear. 'Who are they?'

Nick shrugged. With the spotlight shining in his eyes he couldn't make out any markings on the helicopter. It crossed his mind that perhaps these were Nevado's men; that they might take Gillian away and leave him to burn on the rooftop. But a minute later it felt like an eternity he saw the spider-man coming down his thread again. This time he'd brought two harnesses, and ear protectors. Nick and Emily clipped in and were hoisted up, while below them gouts of flame erupted from the collapsing roof. It was like flying over a volcano.

The noise of the rotor hammered with a new intensity as they reached the helicopter. The air itself seemed to be against him, a great weight battering his shoulders, trying to hold him down. The cable swayed but strong hands were waiting. They hauled him in.

At the back of the cabin, Gillian lay strapped to a stretcher. A medic inserted a drip into her arm and slipped on an oxygen mask. Her face was blue with shock, but when the mask went over her mouth he saw it fog up. She was breathing.

He felt a hand tap his shoulder and turned. Sitting on a bench opposite, one looking anxious and slightly ill, the other with a grim smile on his face, were two of the last men he'd expected to see.

Lx.x.xV.

I lay on a bed at an inn I do not know where. The hard bed offered little straw to ease my limbs, but after the agonies I had suffered it was like a sack of feathers. Aeneas held a cup of water to my lips. I could barely drink; half of it splashed down the front of my tunic.

'Are you really a cardinal?'

He put a finger to his lips, though there was no chance of being overheard. 'I will be soon. Until then, these fools have no way of knowing.'

'Thank you.'

'You saved my life once. Now the debt is repaid.'

He picked up the book he had taken from the inquisitor and read in silence for a moment. The gleam in his eyes turned grey.

'How did they find it?' I asked. I knew from my interrogation that they had not discovered the copy that had slipped behind my bed. If they had, I would probably be dead.

'It was left on the cathedral steps for the archbishop. He had seen pages from your Bible he recognised your art. He guessed at once you must have made it.' Aeneas gave me a look that seemed to penetrate my soul. 'Did you?'

'It was made in my house, with my tools.'

'But not by you?'

I shook my head. 'Do not ask me to say who.'

It was an unreasonable request, and Aeneas bridled at it. But a second later the anger pa.s.sed, replaced with weary resignation.

'If you held your tongue under that ordeal, I will not use friendship as a lever to prise it out of you. We will find out.'

I thought of Drach, of his ever-changing character and quicksilver affections. If ever there was a man who could make himself disappear, it was he.

'You will never find him.'

'We had better. Many in the Church will think he is the most dangerous heretic since Hus. Worse, perhaps. At least Hus could only write his sedition one copy at a time.'

He laid the book aside. 'Remember what I told you in Frankfurt? Your art is a way to speak into the hearts of men. This book is a contagion. By the power of your art, it could carry the plague of heresy further and deeper than ever before. It could tear Christendom apart.'

'Or bind it together.' I pushed myself up and gripped his arm. 'What I have discovered cannot be unlearned. You will not stamp out heresy by being rid of my art. It is a tool. Perhaps I would have been more careful if I had imagined how powerful it might be, but it is still only a tool. Words are pressed onto the page but men compose them. Better to fight their ideas than the tools they use.'

My feeble voice faded as I saw he was nodding with me.