Poetic Justice (11 page)

So much treasure in such disarray—it might have made John dizzy earlier in his career. But he'd seen monastic libraries in worse condition, including the Greek convent that hid the Jerusalem among piles of burlap sacks. Most of those libraries, however, were owned by impoverished and ignorant nuns and monks, who didn't realize what is was they possessed. This library was being neglected by a man who ought very well to know better.

John let his anger flare up and go out. He needed no further motivation, and so it would prove only distracting to curse Mr. Wiley's slovenliness and Parham's criminal laxity. But he felt a resolve build in the back of his mind: Now he intended to do what before he had only pretended to consider. He would help Miss Seton get control of this library. Young and inexperienced and feminine as she was, she could not help but do a better job than the men who had it now.

Besides, an inner voice said, she will have me as an advisor.

He looked back to see Jessica slipping away into the stacks of shelves. Clever girl, to take advantage of the diversion this way. He was tempted to follow her, for she was probably off to check on the St. Germaine trunk. But he had to play through his role of the Regent's consultant, erudite and enterprising, and always on the lookout for books. He even managed to keep from flinching at the state of the adjacent restoration room—the basin full of rags soaked in old mineral oil and paint, the broken books stacked haphazardly on the floor, a cup of tea abandoned on a shelf of vellum scrolls, a window open to London's sooty air. But he couldn't resist closing the Caxton edition of
Canterbury Tales
on the windowsill and spiriting it away to a shelf while Wiley's back was turned.

But the librarian showed no shame at the disorder around him, instead pointing to the set of cabinets that held his favorite pieces. Even hermits, John supposed, liked to show off their caves, and Wiley chattered like a debutante as he cleared a work table by pushing aside a dissembled copy of John Milton's pamphlet
Areopagita
. Then, reverently, he opened a cupboard, pulled out a page with a pair of tongs, and laid it on the table. His hands were unexpectedly graceful, delicate and quick as he blocked the sheet with a leather-covered steel frame. "Forgers have magician hands," Monsignor Alavieri once instructed John. "It's all sleight of hand."

Finally, his elaborate preparations concluded, Mr. Wiley stepped back to let John examine the braced page. It was a ledger sheet, lined and cross-lined—Bacon's annual household accounts for 1612.

Wiley's voice was hushed. "You can see that he was not a profligate man. Expenditure for candles, only £2 for an entire year. Yet that same year, he records spending £50 on books."

This seemed little enough to marvel over, but at least it provided John with an opening. "He had quite a library, I expect. It is evident from the breadth of his writing that he was a well-read man."

"Well-read?" Wiley's eyes were hazy behind his spectacles, but this brought out the fire in them. "Well-read? The man was the greatest thinker of his time! The soul of the age!"

That ringing phrase rippled across John's nerves, and with its echo faded any lingering notion that Jessica had imagined Wiley's hypothesis. Soul of the age! John didn't react immediately, first taking a cotton glove from his pocket and pulling it over his right hand. "May I?"

When Wiley nodded, John picked up the accounts page and tested the texture. It was the cheapest of paper, another example of Baconian thrift. Shakespeare, John thought with some defiance, would be as profligate with paper as he was with poetry. "Soul of the age, was he? No, no, I can't agree with that. That is how Ben Jonson eulogized Shakespeare."

Wiley chuckled. It was an unnerving sound, like the squeak of an old metal gate in the wind. "Precisely so. Precisely so. That man Shakespeare—have you ever come across a volume from his library?"

John shrugged and replaced the page on the table. "Books he owned? No. I've always been more interested in finding his manuscripts. I never have. Perhaps none exist."

Wiley showed no reaction to this last leading comment. Probably he didn't know about the lost play; then again, perhaps he knew enough to hide such knowledge. "You haven't found any of his library, because he had no library!"

"How do you know that?" So that he wouldn't appear more interested than he ought, John started to assemble the abused Milton pamphlet. He noticed the anomalous type on the third page, and with a bit of his mind realized that such an egregious mistake must indicate a pirated version—perhaps one using some stolen plates from the official printing in 1644. He made a mental note to check this sometime, and brought his awareness full back to Wiley's response.

"I went through Warwickshire years ago, looking for books with his name on it. It's scarce two centuries since his death, but there wasn't any trace, not in any library in the county!" As if he had just proved the world flat after all, Mr. Wiley slapped his hand on the table, making the Bacon list jump in alarm.

Carefully, John matched up the edges of the Milton pages, and resisted groaning at the inadequacy of Wiley's evidence. Instead, in a temperate tone, he said, "Well, perhaps he left his books to his daughter and son-in-law. It stands to reason. His son-in-law was an educated man, and they inherited most of the personal items, as I recall."

"But there are no books! Even had he given them away, we would find them still, volumes with his name on it."

John was so taken aback by the meagerness of this that he could hardly frame the obvious response. "Perhaps he didn't write his name in his books. I don't, when I buy a book. I just put my card in it, in case it might be mislaid."

"It was the custom of the day to sign the frontispiece of a book," Wiley replied austerely. He stooped and opened a cupboard, pulling out a red-bound volume. Carefully he laid it on the table. "Go ahead. Open it."

John set the Milton pamphlet down and with his gloved hand opened the cover of the book. It was an obscure scientific text, written in Latin.

"See?" Wiley pointed at the flowing signature on the frontispiece. "Francis Bacon. A fine hand, he had. And—" He closed the book and replaced it in the cupboard. "A large library. Books were possessions of considerable value, and when one lent them out, one wanted to ensure they were returned."

John focused his attention on the Milton pamphlet and reserved his comment that perhaps Shakespeare valued his books so highly that he didn't lend them out. And he balled up all the rest of his objections and hid them away in the back of his mind. He would get nowhere arguing with a man with an
idée fixe
. "That is true," he remarked when he'd gotten control of his voice. "So you found no volumes owned by the Bard? I suppose it made you wonder whether he kept a library at all."

"It did. It did make me question just how well-read this man from Stratford really was." Wiley lovingly replaced the household accounts list in its oilcloth cover and replaced it in the cupboard. "As I said," he added, "Bacon had one of the great libraries of the day. I wrote a monograph on it for the Royal Society's journal. Perhaps you read it?"

"I did indeed." John closed his eyes for a second and mentally sifted through several years' worth of tedious Society monographs. "You mentioned that he had a copy of Copernicus's
De revolutionibus.
"

"Yes, I have it here in the library." He made a sweeping gesture at a nearby shelf. "It was rather a comprehensive piece that I wrote, if I must say so myself. I am writing another, you know, but this is not nearly so tame."

John took a deep breath and moved back from the table until he felt a shelf against his back. He felt confined, suddenly, in this room with a madman. No, not a madman, just another obsessive collector. "Not so tame, is it? Well, anything likely to shake up the Royal Society of Antiquaries will gain my interest. What is its subject?"

Wiley laid a finger wisely along the side of his nose and nodded portentously. "Bacon, of course. And his heretofore unknown accomplishments. I daresay it will revolutionize Elizabethan-era scholarship forever! But," he added with a raspy chuckle, "you will have to wait to read about it. In a month or so, I expect to find just the evidence I need to complete my argument. For now, I think I must leave it at that."

"Indeed." It was all that John could trust himself to say until he had walked back into the reading room. Only then could he turn back to Wiley with some measure of equanimity. "I would like to tell my client that soon he might have a chance to view what you have here. Have you a catalogue of the Parham's holdings?"

"A catalogue?" Wiley asked, as if John had requested to be provided with an elephant. "Oh, I've started on one. Just the Bacon items so far. Let me find a copy for you." And he plunged back into the library, muttering to himself.

A list of Bacon papers would be of little help in furthering the quest. But when Wiley emerged with the little book, John accepted it with thanks, reminding himself that a few months ago he would have regarded this as a great boon. No other dealer had any idea what the mysterious Parham Collection contained, and here, on the first six pages, were copied out what Wiley, at least, considered the most valuable holdings. It was just that the little book felt too light in his hands, as he knew that it would not mention a play attributed to Dekker or Munday or any of the actor-playwrights who collaborated with Shakespeare.

Wiley, meanwhile, was poking his head back into the main room. "Miss Seton! Miss Seton! Where is that girl?" He turned and said confidentially to John. "She is quite bold, you know. She comes in here without invitation and thinks she has free run. She picks up books and wants to take them, quite as if she owns the library!"

"But she does, doesn't she? Or will soon? She is her father's heir, is she not?"

Wiley smiled. It was a pleasant smile, a gentle, sympathetic smile. "The collection is separate from the entailed property, and separate from her personal legacy. She hasn't yet fulfilled the conditions set forth in her father's will, and there is little chance that she will. So the collection cannot be said to be hers, in any way at all."

His mouth snapped shut just as Jessica entered through the door to the main part of the house. She came up beside John, every inch the debutante suddenly, smiling up at him as if they were social acquaintances. "Oh, you are finally done, Sir John? My aunt was wondering if you would stay for nuncheon."

It was clever of her, to sneak back out of the library and pretend that she had been elsewhere all along. Wiley appeared mollified, but then, he probably hadn't yet seen the telltale cobweb, silver against her golden hair. Unobtrusively, John brushed at the back of her head, and the cobweb disintegrated under his fingers, melting away into the silk of her hair. As his hand dropped, she looked up startled at him, then made a funny face as she raised her hand to where his had been and felt the stickiness.

To distract Mr. Wiley from this quick grooming, John thanked him and assured him that the Regent would hear of Bacon's household accounts. "And watch the Society journal for my monograph," Wiley reminded him in an urgent undertone as they passed through the door. "In a month or so, no more. Revolutionary, I promise you!"

Once back in the main hall, Jessica broke her uncharacteristic silence. "I didn't actually talk to my aunt, but I'm certain she would like to have you stay for a meal."

"We haven't time for that. We must talk, and privately. Can you go for a drive, just to the park?"

Her eyes widened, and too late he remembered that he wasn't the sort of driving companion a young lady should be seen with. But before he could withdraw his suggestion, she said only, "Let me get my bonnet—and comb the spiders out of my hair!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

The very instant that I saw you did

My heart fly to your service, there resides

To make me slave of it, and for your sake

Am I this patient logman.

The Tempest, III, i

Rendering herself spider-free took only a moment, but explaining to Aunt Martha that she was missing the noon meal to go driving in the park threatened to take much longer. Ruthlessly she pretended not to hear the questions about exactly who this Sir John was, beyond the Regent's art consultant. "I shan't be gone above an hour or two, Aunt!"

She waved gaily and escaped down the stairs before her aunt could protest. She tied her bonnet on with quick jerks, thinking how absurd it was that she was still answering to her aunt and uncle when she was almost twenty-three. If she had been allowed to marry, she would have her own household, and she might drive with anyone she pleased.

Sir John was waiting in the hall, reading the meager excuse for a catalogue as if it were Holy Writ. The sun through the stained glass window splayed colored light on the pages and across his tan hands, striking off his sapphire signet ring. When he saw her, he marked his place with a card and closed the book, putting it away into his pocket. As he smiled, his gray eyes became mirror-like, reflecting the sunlight. "Sometime you must go through this list with me, telling me which items your father acquired, and which your grandfather acquired. Each, I'm sure, added his own stamp to the Bacon holdings, but I haven't much of a sense of their preferences yet."

For just a moment, she had imagined that his smile was for her, for the new bonnet that tilted so rakishly over her eyes. She knew an instant's disappointment, then shook her head at her own foolishness. She'd known men's admiration before, often enough, and once or twice something far deeper than that. And it had not been enough. Now she was with a man who treated her not as an heiress to be captured, nor even an object to be adored, but as a colleague. She had best enjoy this unaccustomed equality while it lasted, for without a doubt she would not experience it with many other men.

And if it was her collection that most attracted him, well, that's why she had sought him out, after all. So, lightly, she told him, "I shall tell you all I know about my ancestors' acquisitions—under one condition."