Bristol House (27 page)

“Say I grant your logic, where does it get us?”

He got up and started to pace, moving his hands as he talked. “Pretty far, I think. Try this. Weinraub tells you your brief is to find the source of the Jew of Holborn’s treasures, but that’s a red herring. He may be a bastard, but he’s a clever one. Does he really think you’re going to come over here for three months and discover a secret treasure room in London no one’s found in five hundred years? That’s pure Hollywood. Turteltaub, not Weinraub. Our boy’s dead serious. Emphasis on
dead
.”

“Sidney said pretty much the same thing,” she admitted.
Sounds like a movie, not a job, Annie my girl.

Geoff stopped walking and looked at her. “Sidney male or female?”

“Male.”

“And who is he?”

“A friend. At least he was until I broke the contract with the Davis School. Sidney had gone out on a limb to get them to hire me.”

“And does this Sidney know anything about Philip Weinraub?”

Annie shook her head. “Nothing. He was worried about all the bridges I was burning. Sidney’s a recovering alcoholic. Has been for twenty years. We met through AA. He was my go-to guy, the number I could always call.”

“How about now? Is he still your go-to guy?”

The great Geoff Harris was jealous. She wanted to whoop but managed to suppress even the hint of a grin. “Not the same way these days. I don’t need Sidney to stay sober.”

“Glad to hear it,” Geoff said. “Can we get back on track?” And when Annie nodded: “Suppose the whole ‘source of the treasure’ talk is a smoke screen. Suppose for the sake of argument that Weinraub’s really after something smaller and more ordinary than a secret room you’re never going to find. A particular mezuzah, for example. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

“Possibly.” Annie picked up her drawing, scrutinizing it from a series of angles. “But this isn’t anything real. It’s a composite, a mishmash of things I’ve seen and read about. I have no specialized knowledge of
mezuzot.
Why am I any more likely to find this than the secret treasure room?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s still about finding something that dates back to 1535, and—”

“Right, Weinraub said that too. Sort of.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“He was disappointed that the mural was of twentieth-century London. He kept asking if there were any scenes of an earlier time.”

“And are there?”

“I have no idea,” Annie admitted. “It’s such a jumble. I suppose there could be.”

“And if there were”—Geoff was growing visibly more excited as he spoke—“it could also be that those old scenes would identify the whereabouts of a particular mezuzah from 1535. Possibly decorated with an almond branch.”

Annie shook her head. “You’re really reaching. Though I admit that last part makes sense. According to Rabbi Cohen, almond branches are totemic in Judaism and are often used in sacred art. So where I’ve put a Star of David”—she tapped her drawing with the pencil still in her hand—“there could be an almond branch.”

Geoff slammed his fist into his palm. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think that’s what matters, and I don’t think this is all that much of a reach. I told you, Weinraub is as wily as they come. I’m betting he thinks there’s a clue in the mural—possibly something to do with an almond branch—that points to the whereabouts of a 1535 mezuzah. I think that’s what he sent you over here to find.”

20

Annie said she had to spend the night at Bristol House, so she could take advantage of the early-morning light and, as she put it, “spend some serious time looking for Waldo.”

“With a mezuzah tattooed on his forehead,” Geoff said.

“Or an almond branch.”

He walked her back to Bristol House well before midnight. “Sure you don’t want me to spend the night?”

“Not tonight.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I need a good night’s sleep in that narrow bed.” The real reason, she knew, was that she had spent four years proving she could stand up without a crutch, carve a space in which to be herself. And she was scared of how important to her he was becoming.

Geoff tweaked her nose. “Woman warrior,” he said. “I get it.” They were standing in front of the creaky old elevator, and he reached across her shoulder and pushed open the gate. Annie backed inside. Geoff rolled the gate shut. She punched the button, and the cage began slowly to ascend. The last thing she saw was his smiling face turned up toward her.

Dom Justin

From the Waiting Place

Though we usually ate alone in our cells, it was the custom of our order that on Sundays we took the midday meal together in the Frator. On the Sabbath that followed that most terrible of my transgressions—Rebecca causing me to break my vow of chastity—I trembled for fear that one of my brothers might smell upon me the foul odor of perfidy and guess it for the unique fragrance generated between a woman’s thighs; sweet at the moment of encounter and rancid forever after.

In the Frator we monks ate in silence, sitting across from one another, hooded heads bowed and our faces in deep shadow. Nonetheless I sensed attention fixed on me and prayed its cause to be only that though I was the most recently vowed and priested, the others had taken up my suggestion that Giacomo the Lombard be entrusted with the precious bones of the Venerable Father.

That thought led me to wonder how trust is generated. How does it come to rest on one rather than another, and when is it withdrawn? Four years earlier, when I came to the Charterhouse, Sir Thomas More had been lord chancellor, and none was more powerful save the king himself. Today Sir Thomas was in the Tower, and many said the king was of a mind to execute him, if only His Majesty could secure solid evidence of More’s treason. My master meanwhile, despite his secret adherence to the Protestant heresy that the king despised and that Thomas More had worked so vigorously to root out of England, had now been granted yet another honor. In addition to being chancellor of the exchequer and the king’s secretary, he was to become England’s second-highest judge, master of the rolls.

This waxing and waning of fortune was, I knew, no great rarity in the affairs of men. But of God? Could there be doubt even of who served the true Lord of Heaven and who had been lured into false worship of the Prince of Lies? Such thoughts would not previously have exercised my mind, but in the Charterhouse each monk was given books to study to which laymen had no access. Indeed, among us were those who transcribed ancient texts and guarded secret histories of popes and cardinals long dead. I had myself recently read that little more than a hundred years earlier a number of cardinals unhappy with the sitting pope had declared his election null and chosen another who called himself Clement VII, but whom still other cardinals claimed to be the Antichrist. Thus was brought about the Great Schism, during which there was one pope in Rome and another in Avignon. Which terrible condition lasted fifty years and was not healed until 1429.

I thought then of Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” and knew that we all, even when face-to-face with the King of Heaven and Earth, believe what we wish to believe.

At the very moment I was thinking such thoughts, I raised my head, and peering out from the shadows of my cowl, I saw the eyes of the saintly Dom Hilary upon me. For many seconds we looked at each other, and I was chilled by the certainty that the holy old man knew of the many times I had left the monastery, and that he waited only for one more excursion to denounce me. Then I would be driven from the Charterhouse with the curse of every Carthusian living and dead upon my head. As for my master, enraged at how I’d failed him, he would swiftly send me either to burn at Smithfield or to be butchered at Tyburn.

If, as an alternative, I took to ignoring the summons of the speckled egg and thus denied Hilary the final proof he needed, my master would know I had chosen the rule of the Carthusians over his commands. At which point he would equally quickly sign the order that sent me to an agonizing death.

And when the end finally came, I thought, what would follow? Not mercy, surely. Not for one who had committed such sins as were on my yet-unshriven soul. Be it after Smithfield or after Tyburn, I was sure I would burn forever in the fires of Hell.

•

Annie opened the door of number eight and reached for the remote. The BBC told her the pope had been released from the hospital, and despite rumors to the contrary, the Vatican insisted he was recovering. The voice moved on to a discussion of the London water supply.

She stood for a moment as she always did, hesitating, listening not to the radio but to the sound beyond it. The flat felt empty and normal, but particularly damp. It had stopped raining a couple of hours before. Maybe she’d left a window open. She did a quick spin through the rooms, putting on all the lights as she went. Every window was closed tight. When she got to the back bedroom, she paused and took a deep breath, then went in. Nothing was extraordinary or out of place, and neither window was open. The dampness, however, was palpable. “What do you want?” she whispered. “What are you trying to tell me?”

There was no hint of any reply, and she turned away, heading for the bathroom in the long hallway.

The steam poured out as soon as she opened the door. Annie gasped. No water was running, but it felt as if she—someone—had just stepped out of a bath or turned off the shower. She stood where she was, breathing hard. In moments the air cleared sufficiently that she could see a message on the mirror over the sink. The elaborate Tudor script was handwritten in the moisture on the glass and ran corner to corner:
Seek here the Speckled Egg.

Her heart was pounding. “How am I to do that?” she whispered. “Why? Tell me what you want.”

She waited but heard nothing, then dashed across the hall to the bedroom where she’d dropped her bag and began searching frantically for her phone. It wasn’t there. Moments later she found it in the pocket of the jacket she’d been wearing and ran back to the bathroom, praying the words on the mirror would still be visible. They were.
Seek here the Speckled Egg.

The phone was an Android, a cheaper version of the iPhone she’d really wanted, but the camera was decent. Annie snapped the mirror from a number of angles, not pausing to examine her results, just moving in and stepping back, snapping as quickly as she could, always afraid the mirror would dry and the lettering would disappear. After the fourth shot, that was exactly what happened. The bathroom felt perfectly dry, and the mirror was blank. She ran back to the dining room, deciding she’d upload the pictures to her laptop, then send them to Geoff. Probably to Maggie and Rabbi Cohen as well.

Except there were no pictures. Nothing showed on her phone. Nonetheless she stubbornly went through the uploading process. The laptop screen remained blank.

“I’ll come right now,” Geoff said, when she called and told him what had happened.

“No, don’t.”

“Why the hell not? How many times do I have to say it? I care about you.”

“I know. I’m . . . That matters. A lot. But the ghost doesn’t mean me any harm. He wants to tell me something. I’m sure of it.”

“Jesus, Annie.”

“It was a message meant for me,” she said. “It was written in Tudor script. I’m the only person remotely connected to this flat who could read it.”

“Okay, but I can be with—”

“No,” she said. “There’s no need. I’ll be fine. We’ll talk tomorrow. Good night.”

They hung up. Annie took a few minutes to sketch exactly what she’d seen, first with paleographic correctness, as by a Tudor hand, then a second time in modern lettering.

She went to bed feeling somehow peaceful. “We’ve got somewhere, haven’t we?” she whispered into the dark. “You and I are starting to understand each other. The speckled egg. You mean the quail eggs, don’t you? You’re saying I’m to look for something to do with the dead cardinals. And I think you know I have to find what Philip Weinraub wants. You must know, because that’s why I’m here in this flat, where you can tell me things. Geoff and I think it’s a special mezuzah. That probably doesn’t have anything to do with a Carthusian monk, and I don’t know what the vanishing point is, where Weinraub’s agenda and yours meet, but I think you do. If you want to tell me, I’m listening.” There was no reply. Nonetheless she had a greater feeling of peace than she’d had for weeks.

Still, she slept fitfully—conscious of the mural and its possible secrets in the room with her—and woke at first light.

Find Waldo. Or whatever it was that Weinraub had been looking for and was hoping she would find. And probably if she did, she’d know what the ghost wanted as well.

Annie began with high hopes, but it was a daunting task. The small scale of the individual drawings made it almost impossible to pick out a detail as tiny as a mezuzah, and the sheer number of scenes was overwhelming. The wall was fourteen feet in length and eleven feet high; an unbroken expanse completely covered in infinitely detailed black and white scenes, each occupying a space no more than eight or nine inches square.

The individual views bore no geographic relationship to one another. The familiar winged Cupid of Piccadilly Circus gave way to Buckingham Palace on the right, and what she thought might be the Smithfield meat market on the left. Above both was a cobbled alley of some sort. By the time she came to it, her eyes were watering. She switched from the naked eye to her jeweler’s loupe. It was an improvement, but the narrow spectrum of enlargement wasn’t ideal for the job, and squinting into it for long periods was a strain.

She went down the hall and through the drawing room—past the murmur of the radios, broadcasting in unison the Sunday-morning sermon of a preacher comparing the miracles of Jesus to winning Olympic gold—into Mrs. Walton’s office. There was a magnifying glass on a small table, but it was the heavy sort meant to be put on a document and slid over it. All her training rebelled at the thought of physically assaulting the old mural in that way. Neither could she make herself believe it acceptable to go through the drawers of her landlady’s desk.