Book of Stolen Tales (15 page)

Another puzzle—what had Alessio, or Grimm as he'd latterly called himself, done with the first volume, and why did he want it so badly? I was almost certain the accusation of theft arose from a family quarrel but the issue of the book's “repellent history” still nagged at me.

I'd never experienced anything like the sensation of paralysis that had gripped me on two occasions now. I remember having felt very cold, too, a deep internal cold apart from the frosty drizzle that night. Had those brief sensations of paralysis been the first indication of a serious medical problem? As soon as the thought arose I dismissed it. I'd been poked and prodded and tested after the car accident last summer and the doctors found nothing wrong. If not from an underlying condition then, how had the old man subdued me? A skilled hypnotist might induce such a reaction in his victims; I could think of no other rational explanation.

Tye Norris had been helpful, but our conversation left me holding several threads with no idea how they wove together. In Charles Renwick's opinion, one particularly well-loved fairy tale contained a kernel of truth—of history—that promised to lead him to some revelation about an illness he contracted in the Middle East as a boy. What that was remained a mystery. With all of these queries, I was reaching for filaments, gossamer strands from a deadly web, lingering just out of my reach.

Amy told me Giambattista Basile was brilliant at devising anagrams. In fact, he'd put together an entire book consisting of the anagrammatized names of court ladies. Could the key Renwick sought be an anagram?

As my thoughts drifted, the face of the mysterious woman in Renwick's photo surfaced. Although too prosaic to call haunting, her image had floated into my mind a few times and left a strong impression on me. The more I thought about the tight-faced older man with his hand possessively clutching her shoulder, the more she seemed like a sparrow caught in his talons.

Something clicked and I realized what Renwick's scribble on the back of the photo might mean.
Talia, August 18/2000
. Initially I'd assumed it was a woman's name. Now I thought it might refer to Italia. Renwick's handwriting had been faint and difficult to read so I may just have missed seeing the extra
i
. If I was right, the note meant the photo was taken just over three years ago in Italy on August 18, 2000.

I got out the English translation of Basile's book that Norris lent me. Amy compared it to
The
Arabian Nights
and now I saw what she meant. The
Nights
tales were contained within a framing story about Scheherazade, who spun stories for the king to save her life, cleverly leaving him each night with a cliffhanger so she would live to see another day. The original thriller writer, I thought with a smile.

Basile, too, created a framing story for his anthology, a much more ribald account of a princess named Zoza who, finding she'd been cheated out of a princely husband by a slave girl, cast a spell to give the girl an insatiable desire for stories. Ten old crones were summoned to tell them. Each volume of Basile's anthology constituted a day in the telling of the tales. The entire anthology, all five volumes, comprised fifty tales in all.

Which one pointed to the origin of Renwick's childhood illness? None of Basile's titles was familiar except for “Cinderella Cat,” and Norris hadn't included it in Renwick's short list. I would have to read through all fifty of them to find the right one so I opened the English translation at the beginning and began to read.

The first two stories were completely unfamiliar and it occurred to me I might be taking the wrong approach. Starting instead with the well-known versions of the four stories Renwick mentioned might provide me with a link to their Italian precursors. All four of these tales were in the Grimm collection: “The Pied Piper,” “Sleeping Beauty” (called “Briar Rose”), “Little Snow White,” and “The Singing Springing Lark,” a version of “Beauty and the Beast.” None of them resembled any of Basile's titles.

Fairy tales were originally told sitting around the fireside at night, when the sense of magic was most pervasive. When plague and illness visited those hearths, stories arose as a way to explain the devastating events. I went back to the
Grimm's
to see if I could find anything along those lines.

The Grimm brothers' version of “The Pied Piper,” called “The Rat Catcher of Hamelin,” described a mystical figure hired by the village of Hamelin to rid the town of the rats. After the piper performed his service, the mayor refused to open the village coffers to pay him. In retribution, the piper lured the town's children away with music. They were never seen again. After rereading the story I looked up Hamelin on the Web and was surprised to see that the town actually existed in Lower Saxony. To this day, a local regulation outlaws music and song on the Bungelosen, a street near the Pied Piper's home. A great tourist ploy, if nothing else.

My late brother believed legends and myths were based on real events transformed over centuries of retellings. In the case of “The Pied Piper,” this seemed a reasonable possibility. Literacy was a privilege granted to only a few in those times and stories of victory and defeat, humor and horror would have been transmitted orally, changing over time. Some terrible calamity had fallen upon Hamelin's children, its true nature hidden by the repeated narrations over hundreds of years.

Had the village been attacked by an obscure plague that swept away its youngest and most vulnerable? A stained-glass window in a Hamelin church appeared to be an early, tragic record of the calamity. I read about it in a document called the Lueneburg manuscript, circa 1440.

The window featured a piper dressed in pied clothing, made up of vividly colored patches, playing a flute. A group of children climbed toward a mountain peak against a curious landscape dotted with villages, trees, and a river. Because of its association with rats, repellent carriers of the Black Death, “The Pied Piper” has been interpreted as a plague tale. But 1284 predated the time that the scourge first afflicted Germany, and as I discovered to my further surprise, the notion of the piper as rat catcher hadn't occurred until much later, in the 1500s. That cast doubt on the story's association with the disease that took one hundred million lives in the fourteenth century.

Some other type of pandemic then? Through the centuries, unfamiliar pathogens traveled to Europe along trade routes. Epidemics of unknown origin would sweep through a region or town and disappear again as quickly, like the plague that struck Athens in 430
B.C
. when the crowded city was under siege by the Spartans. That disease accomplished what the Spartans could not. A third of the population died. I found an account of it by Thucydides, who described their symptoms:

If plague caused the disappearance and demise of the children of Hamelin, perhaps it was spread by an itinerant musician.

As I read on, I discovered a link between the long-ago event in Lower Saxony and Kutná Hora, a Czech town. In the Middle Ages, charming rogues traveled throughout Germany luring young people to work in Kutná Hora's silver mines. Was it possible “The Pied Piper” described one of those early charlatans who stole children away to labor in the mines?

Perhaps both versions held some truth. It would be strange indeed for parents to voluntarily see their children exiled to some foreign land. But if a plague swept through Hamelin killing offmany adults, the orphans left behind might have been enticed to places like Kutná Hora, never to return again to their homeland, working in the mines their only hope for survival.

Night fell on the piazza. I gave up reading and headed for my hotel. As I walked back along the seaside promenade, I saw the diminishing outline of Vesuvius gradually swallowed up in darkness.

Fourteen

November 20, 2003

Naples, Italy

N
ext morning a short hike through cobbled streets brought me to the Royal Palace, a sternly functional structure built by a Bourbon king. Giant marble statues of Naples' former rulers—French, Spanish, and Italian—stood in niches within the colonnade forming the ground-floor facade. All who passed by felt intimidated and small in comparison to the pale sculptures draped in their finery. I guessed that was the idea.

The
biblioteca nazionale
, housed in the eastern wing of the palace, was named after one of Italy's last kings, Vittorio Emanuele III. I admired the oversized architectural elements in the building—twelve-foot-high double wooden doors and soaring ceilings. The central arch opened onto a large rectangular courtyard flanked by more colonnades. It was empty and mostly in shade. My footsteps echoed on the flags. This led into another courtyard, also vacant, save for a few parked cars. A perfect place to stage an assassination. Doubtless, in past times it had—a sudden strike from an enemy hiding in the deep recesses of the colonnade.

I had to retrace my steps in order to find the library entrance. A grand marble staircase led to a small high-ceilinged room where glass display cases held beautifully illustrated manuscripts and early books. In the next room several library staff sat behind a glass and wood partition that reminded me of an old railway station ticket counter.

A pleasant-looking woman with a sweep of smooth gray hair and glasses spotted me. “
Prego
?” she said.

I explained I'd come to see Ewan Fraser. She glanced at her watch and said he wasn't expected for another hour. I inquired whether the library had an early copy of Giambattista Basile's anthology. She replied proudly that it did.

After I filled out a couple of forms, another staff member escorted me through the Grand Salon di Letteri. The collection looked fit for a king. Books filled two stories of cases fashioned from carved, burnished wood. Curved wrought-iron stairs in the corners ascended to the upper gallery of shelves. Above this, gorgeous hand-painted scenes adorned the upper walls. This upper level soared to wooden buttresses and a magnificent ceiling fresco. Bright Neapolitan sun shone like a floodlight through the tall windows.

As I stood, caught up in the vision, a junior librarian brought the book out and escorted me to a secure room with a long worktable. At first glance the book appeared almost identical to the volume I'd held in the drab London hotel room. It had the same stiff, browned pages, crowded text, graceful drop caps starting each story, and frontispiece with Basile's pseudonym, Gian Alessio Abbattutis. But it included none of de Ribera's arresting, disturbing illustrations. The librarian agreed to let me snap pictures provided I didn't use a flash. When I finished, I checked the frontispiece again and swore under my breath. In my eagerness to view the book, I'd overlooked the publication date—1637. This must be a second edition, printed one year after the last volume of the original anthology.

A heavyset man who looked to be in his late forties strode into the room. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and sported a full curly blond beard. His longish blond hair was flecked with gray.

I rose and held out my hand to greet him. “My name's John Madison. Are you Ewan Fraser by any chance?”

“Indeed I am, lad.” He grasped my hand, nearly crushing it in his firm grip. “Welcome to our library,” he said with obvious pride.

“It's magnificent. Had a devil of a time trying to find it though.” “Aye, that's on purpose. Keeps the riffraff out.” He chuckled and instantly put me at ease. “I hope you're enjoying Naples.”