The Book of Secrets

XL

Strassburg

What had I done?

I stumbled out of the house in a daze. Across the street, two porters used staves to manhandle a hogshead of wine into an open cellar. I wanted to throw myself in after it and break my neck, or drown head first in the barrel. To my right, the river flowed swiftly past the wharf at the end of the alley. That would serve. It would sweep me down to the Rhine; past Mainz, where my brother or my sister might look up from their work and notice a small piece of flotsam in the stream; then on out into the great ocean.

Gold was my undoing. From the moment my child’s fist closed around the stolen coin, dreams of gold and perfection had possessed me as surely as the demon. They were inseparable. Gold was perfect. Perfection was expensive. I, with all my imperfections, had sold myself for two hundred gulden.

Madness held me like a fever. I wandered the streets of Strassburg not knowing where I went, not caring. Night fell; a filthy rage blossomed in my heart. The worm who possessed me swelled into a monstrous dragon; he took flight and scorched fire in my soul. For years I had held that desire in check; now I let it own me. I wanted flesh, to claw and scratch, to bite and squeeze. To dominate.

I knew there were places where such things could be had, as there are in every city. Ever since I came to Strassburg I had avoided them. Now I charged in. It was near the cathedral – for vice envies virtue and is never far away. Down a lane where tawdry women shouted offers of pleasures I did not want; along a backstreet where the propositions grew more outlandish; into an alley that was little more than an open sewer between the backs of houses.

I was surprised by how crowded it was. I had nursed the demon so close to me so long I thought it only existed in me. Here there was a whole congregation. Men dressed as women with red paint smeared on their stubbled cheeks; muscle-bound men with arms covered in scars; gaunt men with sharp faces who stared at me hungrily; scrawny boys in tunics that barely covered the soft skin of their thighs.

I suppose I might have felt a sense of kinship with them but I did not. I resented them: simply by their existence they diminished me. Jealousy fanned my anger and banished my doubts. I strode deeper into the lane. Hands pawed at me and tugged the sleeve of my borrowed coat; men whistled and shouted proposals, prices. I ignored them.

Near the end of the alley, where the shadows were deepest and the stench worst, I found what I wanted: a slight, olive-skinned man with a mop of black curls. He was not as beautiful as Kaspar – he had a slight hunch, and his face was twisted like old vines from years of sin – but he was like enough. He named a price and I paid it without argument. Ennelin’s dowry.

He turned away and beckoned me to follow. The fire in my soul was cooling. I did not know what to do; I was frightened. But I was determined to carry it through – if only to spite Drach, Ennelin, the world that had condemned me to misery and despair.

There was a kink in the wall, little wider than shoulder width. It was all the privacy we would get. My companion thrust me into it and spun me around; he squatted in front of me and parted the folds of my coat. I tried to relax, to enjoy it. I closed my eyes. All I could hear was the trickle of sewage down the alley.

And footsteps. I opened my eyes again. I thought that corner of the alley must be the blackest place on earth. Yet, impossibly, the darkness had deepened. A shadow blocked the entrance to our little niche. He pulled the prostitute off me and sent him sprawling into the gutter.

‘Johann?’

Drach’s voice.

‘Are you mad? If the watchmen catch you here they will burn you alive.’

Over his shoulder I watched the prostitute pick himself out of the gutter. Effluent dripped from him; in his hand I saw the dim grey of steel.

‘Kaspar,’ I gasped.

Drach turned. He moved so fast I could not see what he did, but next instant the prostitute was rolling down the alley howling with pain. Drach picked up the fallen knife and hurled it after him, towards the hole where the sewage dropped into the canal. He looked at me.

‘You’re shivering.’

I collapsed forward. He caught me in his arms.

There was no thought of taking me back to St Argobast. I was limp as a blade of grass. Drach half-carried, half-dragged me through the empty streets to his lodgings. Near St Peter’s church two watchmen challenged us. Nightmare visions of flame seized my eyes, but Drach mimed drinking and told them I had fallen into a cellar. They let us go.

Drach’s home was the attic of a house owned by Andreas Dritzehn. I had been angry when I first found out; I had wondered if Drach’s insistence that I should rent the cellar had somehow been a conspiracy with his landlord. Now I was grateful I did not have to go a step further.

He manhandled me up the stairs and laid me down on his straw mattress. Apart from a chest of tools, it was his only furniture. He sat on the floor beside me and stroked my brow.

‘What were you thinking?’

‘Ennelin,’ I mumbled. ‘I agreed to marry her.’

He unbuttoned my coat and slid it off me. ‘It was borrowed,’ I croaked. ‘I know.’ He held it up and examined it. ‘It could have been much worse. You were only ankle deep in shit.’

‘Thanks to you.’

He came around behind me and pulled my shirt over my head. Sweat drenched it.

‘Go to sleep.’

He pulled a blanket over me. I closed my eyes and let my body sink into the straw.

‘I love you,’ I whispered. But I could not tell if he had heard me, and I did not dare open my eyes to look.

I woke to the feel of something hard against my forehead. For a golden moment I imagined it was Drach’s face pressed against mine, our bodies together. I reached an arm forward and felt nothing but straw. Reluctantly, I let the illusion go and opened my eyes.

A package lay on the mattress beside me, wrapped in an old shirt. I propped myself on my elbow and looked around. Sunlight streamed through the gable windows, but Drach was nowhere to be seen.

I pulled apart the wrapping. It came away easily; inside lay a small bundle of paper, the unclothed body of a book. The pages had been gathered and sewn together, but not yet closed in covers. I opened the first leaf.

‘Leo fortissimus bestiarum ad nullius pavebit occursum…’ I read. The lion is the bravest of all beasts and fears nothing.

It was a bestiary – I had copied one in Paris. This was far grander: a sumptuous edition written in a fine hand on vellum. At the head of the first line stood a magnificently illuminated capital L, spreading into a thicket of branches and leaves, beneath whose foliage a lion sprang after a defenceless ox. The lion resembled one of the animals from the cards; the ox was unfamiliar, but clearly from the same menagerie.

I turned through the pages, ignoring the text and savouring the illuminations. I had only ever seen Kaspar’s pictures in black and white, or painted on signs where rain and sun had bleached their vitality. In the pages of this book they lived in a perfect state of nature. Lush foliage overflowed the margins like another Eden. Birds with brilliant plumage sang from the branches or swooped between columns of text. Fawns peered shyly from behind gilded initials. A hopeful bear clambered up the stem of a P to reach the honey cupped in its curve, while another squatted at the base and dug for grubs. The gold leaf shone like a new dawn; the colours as deep and pure as the ocean. It was the most beautiful object I had ever beheld.

I reached the last page with a pang of regret and read the colophon: ‘Written by the hand of Libellus, and illuminated by Master Francis.’

Drach’s head and shoulders popped up through the hole in the floor that led downstairs. He smiled to see the awe on my face.

‘Master Francis, I presume.’

Balanced on the ladder, he executed a small bow. ‘How did you come to have this? Surely it belongs in a king’s library.’

Kaspar bounded up the ladder and sat down on the end of the mattress. ‘A duke’s library. The plague took him before he could pay for his commission. His widow would not honour the contract so I kept it. Now it is for you.’

‘I cannot-’

He leaned towards me. ‘I want you to have it.’

I hugged the book to my chest. In that moment, I would have done anything for him. But his next words were like a knife against my throat.

‘Consider it your first wedding present.’