The Book of the Seven Delights

Cover

Copyright

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Epilogue

Book of the Seven Delights

Betina Krahn

COPYRIGHT

ISBN-10: 0515139726

ISBN-13: 978-0515139723
  

Jove mass-market edition / July 2005
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author.
JOVE®
Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The "J" design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Michael Christian Lord Krahn

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.

"To the
right
are the Grenville Library and the manuscript department," the assistant to the director and principal librarian of the British Museum, Jonas Pratt, declared with a wave before turning emphatically to the
left
.

Abigail Merchant paused for a moment in that juncture of the marble-clad exhibition halls, scowling at the archway they weren't headed for. Gripping her letters of reference more tightly, she quickly caught up with her guide.

"These, of course, are our famous galleries," he continued briskly. "The Roman… and through that doorway is the Greco-Roman… with the Priene Marbles, including the Venus from Ostia, the Discobolos, Giustiniani Apollo, Clytie, and so forth. And through here are the Assyrian Galleries." He led her quickly into another long hall with soaring ceilings. "Steles from Ninevah… the great winged bull from the palace of Sargon II and the great winged lion from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud. And of course, the Assyrian cuneiform tablets, which are—"

"Unparalleled. A whole library unto themselves," Abigail said, staring into the glass case and feeling her heart begin to pound. All around her, captured in stone, bronze, and clay, were glimpses and whispers of the history of humankind. It was little wonder that there was a reverent hush all through the galleries; entering them was like being admitted to the memories of God Himself.

She shook her head and attempted to steer him back to the topic of her suitability for employment.

"My letters of reference will show that I am, by training and experience, a fully qualified librarian. I spent two years preserving and cataloging the archives of the State of New York. If you would just look at my credentials…"

Pratt looked at her around the side of his wire-rimmed spectacles.

"That won't be necessary. We know your qualification. This way please."

Qualification: singular. There was only one thing he could mean: She was the daughter of renowned classical scholar Sir Henry Merchant. Before leaving Boston she had written to her estranged father, asking for a letter of introduction to the librarian of the British Museum. Apparently he had provided it.

The starchy little assistant led her through the remaining galleries and straight past the priceless Rosetta Stone… to the rear of the museum and down a set of narrow metal stairs that descended into Stygian gloom.

"Pardon me, Mr. Pratt, but"—she halted on the second step—"this seems most irregular for an employment interview."

There, at the bottom of the darkened steps, he declared: "You are not being interviewed, Miss Merchant. It is my task to inform you that you have been hired… at a salary of one hundred twenty pounds per annum."

Before she could make sense of the fact that he was delivering that longed-for pronouncement while standing in what appeared to be a darkened basement, he flipped the switch of an electrical light to reveal a cavernous underground chamber stacked floor to ceiling with crates, barrels, and cartons.

"This will be your workplace," he said, gesturing to the stacks. "Every publisher in the kingdom is required to submit a copy of each book, journal, pamphlet, and paper they have published to the museum. It will be your task to open, process, and catalog these 'copyright acquisitions.'"

She nearly slid off the step.

"There must be some mistake. My expertise is in authentication and preservation of manuscripts, not acquisitions or cataloging." She hurried down the stairs. "If you will just take a moment to review my references—"

Again he waved off the documents.

"
All
assistants at the museum begin in acquisitions, Miss Merchant." His ferret-dark eyes glinted with condescension. "Of course, some assistants find the work here too demanding and prefer to seek employment elsewhere." His gaze flickered down her sensibly clad frame and back up to her face.

"Handling heavy crates and boxes and lifting bundles of books is taxing for even a robust
man
."

That look. That scarcely cloaked disdain. Here was the root cause of his objection to her. It wasn't whatever influence might have been exerted on her behalf that caused his resentment, nor even the fact that she had spent most of her life in Boston… though the way he winced when she spoke left no doubt that he found her American accent appalling. What truly galled him was the fact that such influence had been exerted on behalf of a
woman
.

She should have anticipated such an attitude, she thought irritably. Her beloved mother had spoken of it often enough. Women might be the backbone of the burgeoning library movement in America, but in Britain they were still considered inferior scholars who did not belong in libraries… much less in the crowning collection of the British Empire, the British Museum.

The Social History of Idiots… the 300's… Social Sciences.

She gave the peplum of her fitted woolen jacket a determined jerk.

"I am hale and hardy, Mr. Pratt. I am not put off by honest work."

"How gratifying," he said from between clenched teeth. "Then I suggest you make a start." He waved to the endless stacks of crates and turned to go.

"Mr. Pratt." She just managed to contain the anger in her voice. "I shall need access to the museum's catalog, as well as supplies for the work."

"The catalog, as everyone knows, is in the Reading Room." He paused on the bottom step without looking back. "You shall have to make an application to the superintendent for admission."

"Application? I must
apply
to use the Reading Room and catalog?"

He turned enough to give her a condescending look.

"The superintendent is charged with maintaining the
standards
of the Reading Room. It is always his decision whether or not to grant admission."

"Fine." She raised her chin. "If you will just direct me to the female employees' retiring room—"

"We have no such facilities for
female staff
." He stiffened as if the very mention of "women" and "staff"

in the same breath was an affront to British manhood. "You will have to use the facilities for female
guests
of the museum." He exited up the stairs and the sound of the door closing wafted down to her.

She stood for a moment staring at the space he had vacated.

Never mind. It didn't matter that the assistant principal librarian was an arrogant, narrow-minded ass.

Never mind that she had to apply for permission to enter the sacred precincts of the Reading Room.

Never mind that there were no facilities for female staff… and very likely no other female staff with whom to commiserate that lack. She was now gainfully employed by the British Museum at a salary of 120

pounds per annum. She was where she had planned and worked for years to be. She was here and she intended to show them the mettle of a graduate of the New York State Library School.

A
woman
graduate.

See if she didn't.

A month later she sat in a dim circle of electrical light in the cavelike basement, staring at a copy of
The
Philosophical Lepidopterist's Wanderings in Sussex
and trying to decide whether it belonged in the 100's, Philosophy; the 500's, Natural Science; or the 900's, Geography and History. Stuck in that gloomy hole, day after day, without access to the museum's precious catalog, she had to work in the dark in more than one respect.

Proving her mettle? Striking a blow for womanhood? Right now she would settle for proving just her existence. Every few days she would hear the door at the top of the steps open and when she went to see who was there, she would find a number of muttonchop-clad faces peering down at her in dismay.

"You see?" one of them would say to the clearly horrified others. "I told you… there
is
a female down there."

She had come more than three thousand miles to become a blessed ghost in the basement. Hardly the bold and glorious adventure she had expected when setting out from Boston to make a name and a life for herself in the world of British scholarship. She had expected to have to earn a place of responsibility and respect…

… but not by sorting through moldering copies of
An Aesthete's Guide to the Mosses of Western
Cornwall, Principles of Ancient Roman Sanitary Engineering
, and
A Spinster's Tour in France
.

She glanced at the stack of books at her feet. Who on earth would want to read such stuff?

Someone
, she heard her old instructor's voice declare in her head. It was a librarian's calling to organize and preserve and make available to readers all products of human inquiry without passing judgment.

It was a sad truth that one age's ignorance was often remedied by the next using discoveries that lay unheeded in the first's annals. To make absolute judgments might be to disrupt the flow of knowledge and discovery. There were terrible examples in history, like the descent into ignorance called the Dark Ages that came after the destruction of the classical civilizations. So much learning was lost in the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria, for example, that it had taken humankind a whole millennium to overcome it.

Having wrestled her disappointment to a standstill, she forced herself to looked around her ill-lit workplace with a more hopeful perspective. Somewhere in those crates might be a work that would change lives, even society itself, for the better. She should think of herself as an explorer facing the unknown… an archaeologist of the printed word.

A few days later she was bashing the crates of an unexplored row with the carpet beater she had brought from home—giving whatever vermin might reside there time to evacuate—when she was startled by a scratching noise and lurched back into a stack of crates and cartons, sending them toppling.

When she recovered enough to investigate, she realized the container that had just missed cracking her on the head was not the usual pasteboard carton or wooden crate, it was a piece of luggage: long and square with a leather handle on top, a steamer trunk, with a key tied to the top handle.

On the side of the battered chest was a shipping label that read: From: The estate of Professor T.

Thaddeus Chilton, Ph.D. To: Library of the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London.

Professor T. Thaddeus Chilton? He must not have been one of the leading lights of his field, else the museum wouldn't have abandoned his final bequest to the rats in the basement. The shabbiness of the museum's treatment of his gift made her feel a furious kinship with the old boy.

She tipped the trunk up onto its end, untied the key, and inserted it into the lock. An avalanche of books and documents threatened to tumble out and she closed the trunk hastily and wrestled it onto a trolley to take it back to her worktable.