Once I’d obscured Sir Thomas’s sight, I began to pluck and tweak the threads that bound the statues to the rest of the library. The spell’s knots weren’t complicated—just thrice- and four-crossed bindings—but there were so many of them, all piled on top of one another like a severely overtaxed electrical panel. Finally I discovered the main knot through which all the other knots were threaded and carefully untied it. The uncanny feeling of being observed vanished.
“That’s better,” Linda murmured. “Now what?”
“I promised to call Matthew once we were inside,” I said, drawing out my phone. “Give me a minute.”
I pushed past the lattice barricade and walked down the silent, echoing main avenue of Duke Humfrey’s Library. Matthew picked up on the first ring.
“All right, mon coeur?” His voice thrummed with tension, and I briefly filled him in on our progress so far.
“How were Rebecca and Philip after I left?” I asked when my tale was told.
“Fidgety.”
“And you?” My voice softened.
“More fidgety.”
“Where are you?” I asked. Matthew had waited until after I left for England, then started driving north and east toward Central Europe.
“I just left Germany.” He wasn’t going to give me any more details in case I encountered an inquisitive witch.
“Be careful. Remember what the goddess said.” Her warning that I would have to give something up if I wanted to possess Ashmole 782 still haunted me.
“I will.” Matthew paused. “There’s something I want you to remember, too.”
“What?”
“Hearts cannot be broken, Diana. And only love makes us truly immortal. Don’t forget, ma lionne. No matter what happens.” He disconnected the line.
His words sent a shiver of fear up my spine, setting the goddess’s silver arrow rattling. I repeated the words of the charm I’d woven to keep him safe and felt the familiar tug of the chain that bound us together.
“All is well?” Fernando asked quietly.
“As expected.” I slipped the phone back into my pocket. “Let’s get started.”
We had agreed that the first thing we would try was simply to replicate the steps by which Ashmole 782 had come into my hands the first time. With Sarah, Linda, and Fernando looking on, I filled out the boxes on the call slip. I signed it, put my reader’s-card number in the appropriate blank, and carried it over to the spot in the Arts End where the pneumatic tube was located.
“The capsule is here,” I said, removing the hollow receptacle. “Maybe Andrew was wrong and the delivery system is still working.” When I opened it, the capsule was full of dust. I coughed.
“And maybe it doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Sarah said with a touch of impatience. “Load it up and let her rip.”
I put the call slip into the capsule, closed it securely, and placed it back in the compartment.
“What next?” Sarah said a few minutes later.
The capsule was right where I’d left it.
“Let’s give it a good whack.” Linda slapped the end of the compartment, causing the wooden supports it was attached to—and which held up the gallery above—to shake alarmingly. With an audible whoosh, the capsule disappeared.
“Nice work, Linda,” Sarah said with obvious admiration.
“Is that a witch’s trick?” Fernando asked, his lips twitching.
“No, but it always improves the Radio 4 signal on my stereo,” Linda said brightly.
Two hours later we were all still waiting by the conveyor belt for a manuscript that showed absolutely no sign of arriving.
Sarah sighed. “Plan B.”
Without a word Fernando unbuttoned his dark coat and slipped it from his shoulders. A pillowcase was sewn into the back lining. Inside, sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard, were the three pages that Edward Kelley had removed from the Book of Life.
“Here you are,” he said, handing over the priceless parcel.
“Where do you want to do it?” Sarah asked.
“The only place that’s large enough is there,” I said, pointing to the spot between the splendid stained-glass window and the guard’s station. “No—don’t touch that!” My voice came out in a whispered shriek.
“Why not?” Fernando asked, his hands wrapped around the wooden uprights of a rolling stepladder that blocked our way.
“It’s the world’s oldest stepladder. It’s nearly as ancient as the library.” I pressed the manuscript pages to my heart. “Nobody touches it. Ever.”
“Move the damn ladder, Fernando,” Sarah instructed. “I’m sure Ysabeau has a replacement for it if it gets damaged. Push that chair out of the way while you’re at it.”
A few nail-biting moments later, I was ripping into a box of salt that Linda had carried up in a Marks & Spencer shopping bag. I whispered prayers to the goddess, asking for her help finding this lost object while I outlined a triangle with the white crystals. When that was done, I doled out the pages from the Book of Life, and Sarah, Linda, and I each stood at one of the points of the triangle. We directed the illustrations into the center, and I repeated the spell I’d written earlier:
Missing pages
Lost then found, show
Me where the book is bound.
“I still think we need a mirror,” Sarah whispered after an hour of expectant silence had passed. “How’s the library going to show us anything if we don’t give her a place to project an apparition?”
“Should Diana have said ‘show us where the book is bound,’ not ‘show me’?” Linda looked to Sarah. “There are three of us.”
I stepped out of the triangle and put the illustration of the chemical wedding on the guard’s desk. “It’s not working. I don’t feel anything. Not the book, not any power, not magic. It’s like the whole library has gone dead.”
“Well, it’s not surprising the library is feeling poorly.” Linda clucked in sympathy. “Poor thing. All these people poking at its entrails all day.”
“There’s nothing for it, honey,” Sarah said. “On to Plan C.”
“Maybe I should try to revise the spell first.” Anything was better than Plan C. It violated the last remaining shreds of the library oath I’d taken when a student, and it posed a very real danger to the building, the books, and the nearby colleges.
But it was more than that. I was hesitating now for some of the same reasons I had hesitated when facing Benjamin in this very place. If I used my full powers here, in the Bodleian, the last remaining links to my life as a scholar would dissolve.