“That’s it?” asked Rob.
“It shows how much you know, Rob,” said Nigel. “That’s King Arthur’s willie, preserved in brandy. Now England can be great again.”
Crosetti ignored them and went into the van, with Carolyn following close behind. Rob was about to follow but Brown put a hand on his arm. “Time to go, gents,” he said in a tone that did not encourage objection. “I suggest you take down your gear and drive off before the police arrive.”
“We’re not going to get a look?” asked Rob.
“Afraid not. Best you don’t know.” Brown extracted a thick envelope from the inside pocket of his anorak. “A pleasure doing business,” he said, handing it to Nigel. The two geologists went meekly off to gather their equipment.
Inside the van, Crosetti found a heavy clamp, a hammer, and a cold chisel. He fixed the cylinder to the steel table and cut through the lead at one end. Inside he found a roll of heavy paper tied with a dark ribbon. The paper was nearly white and seemed almost fresh, not brown and crumbly as he had imagined four-hundred-year-old paper would be. He realized with something of a shock that the last person to have touched this paper was Richard Bracegirdle and before that, William Shakespeare. He voiced this thought to Carolyn.
“Yes, now you’re one with the great. Open the ribbon, for Christ’s sake!” He untied the knot and spread the sheets on the table. The ink was black, barely oxidized, he saw, and not in Bracegirdle’s hand. The pages were all neatly ruled and written on in three vertical columns, for character name, dialogue, and stage directions: the thrifty Swan of Avon had used both sides of each sheet. Automatically he counted them: twenty-one folio sheets in all. Across the top of the first sheet in letters large enough for even his trifling familiarity with Jacobean secretary hand to read was written The Tragedie of Mary Quene of Scotland.
His hand was shaking as he held the page. What had Fanny called it? The most valuable portable object on the planet. He rolled the pages up again and placed them back in the cylinder with the ribbon, and stuck the lead seal in his slicker pocket. Then he grabbed Rolly in a mighty hug and swung her around and yelled like a maniac and ended by planting a kiss on her mouth.
On the road again in the Land Rover, Brown said, “I assume all was satisfactory? That noise you made was the crow of victory and not the sob of defeat?”
“Yeah, all our dreams are fulfilled. I assume you’re going to ditch this car.”
“Yes, just up ahead,” said Brown. “We have a few more vehicles as escort just in case security has been breached.”
They pulled into a lane, and there was the familiar Mercedes, or one just like it, and an anonymous black Ford van with two men in the front seat. Security had apparently not been breached because they drove to Biggin Hill without incident. It was cozy in the van and Crosetti, in the shotgun seat, kept drifting off. He had the lead cylinder on his lap. Brown hadn’t asked about it, or asked to see what was in it, but simply placed them both in the hands of a sweet-faced motherly woman in a blue uniform, Ms. Parr, their handling agent, and departed into his efficient anonymity.
Ms. Parr directed them to the passenger lounge, and after looking Crosetti over, asked if he would like an opportunity to freshen up, to which he responded that he would like a shower and a change of clothes if it could be arranged, and it needless to say could be arranged, as what could not be arranged for the fliers in private jets? And how about two large padded envelopes and some packing tape? These appeared, and Crosetti went into the men’s room with them and his carry-on bag and the most valuable portable object on the planet in its lead casing. Alone in the blue-tiled room, he removed the play and sealed it in one of the envelopes and taped this under the lining of the back of his corduroy sports jacket. This he hung on one of the shower hooks, outside the plastic curtain, then stripped and took a shower, and was amazed at the almost Mississippian quantities of silt that flowed off his body and down the drain. While he showered he considered why he didn’t just leave the damned thing with Carolyn and why he was, in effect, concealing it from her.
Because you don’t trust her, came the answer from Rational Albert. But I love her and she loves me, replied Amorous Al. She said so. But Crosetti realized that part of the woman’s appeal was her utter weirdness, the proven fact that she might do anything. Even at this moment he had no guarantee that when he emerged from this bathroom she might not be gone and that he might never see her again. This thought prompted an acceleration in his toilette. Five minutes later, still damp but neatly dressed in the jacket, black jeans, and a flannel shirt, he emerged into the lounge, holding his carry-on (containing Bracegirdle’s lead pipe) and a padded envelope, which he had stuffed with flyers for tourist spots and sealed with tape. Carolyn was seated in the lounge. She had taken a shower and changed her clothes too, and her damp hair seemed darker than it had been.
He sat down next to her. “One more flight,” he said, “and this adventure is over.”
“I hope so,” she said. “I hate adventure. I want to be in a place where I can get up in the morning and see the same people and do pretty much the same thing every day.”
“Bookbinding.”
“Yes. I know you think it’s boring. I know you think that making movies is serious art and making books is like…I don’t know, knitting afghans. I don’t care. That’s going to be my life. I’m going to get my children and go to Germany, where I can study bookbinding, and I’m going to do nothing else but study bookbinding, and make books. That’ll be my life.”
“And what, I’ll come visit in the summer?”
She turned her head and made that pushing gesture with her hands. “Not now, Crosetti. I can’t hold any more stuff in me. Could we just, like, be together for the next couple of hours without devising contractual long-range plans?”
“Sure, Carolyn. Whatever you say,” he said, and thought, That’s what’d be printed on the outside of the package if our relationship was a product, like contents poisonous or highly inflammable. Whatever you say.
He walked a little distance away and called Mishkin in New York. Mishkin took the news in and said congratulations and that he’d have a car meet them at the airport.
Their plane was a Citation X this time, smaller and sleeker even than the Gulfstream, configured for six, with a closed-off partition in the rear where there were two bedlike lounges. Seeing these, Crosetti was about to suggest that here was an unusually comfortable way for the two of them to join the Eight Mile High Club but did not. The vibrations were wrong, as they so often were around Carolyn Rolly. He sighed, belted himself in, drank his champagne. The aircraft screamed, slammed him back in his seat, shot into the air at an aggressive angle. He felt the Most Valuable Portable Object crinkle against his spine. The envelope with the decoy ms. was lying on the seat next to him. He read a magazine for a while and then pulled his blanket around him and over his head. It was not the skimpy towel the commercial airlines gave you but a thick, full-size thing as used by the best hotels. He adjusted his seat to near horizontal and fell into exhausted sleep.
And awoke to the sound of clinking dinnerware and a delightful odor of cookery. The flight attendant was about to serve a meal. Crosetti sat up, adjusted his seat, and looked across the aisle. Carolyn was in the lavatory. He examined the padded envelope he had left on the seat. The tape was untouched, but careful inspection showed that one of the bottom corners of the envelope had been carefully pried apart and skillfully resealed by someone for whom neither paper nor glue held any secrets. He sniffed the edge and detected a faint acetone pong. She’d used nail-polish remover to relax the glue and then resealed it after, obviously, finding that the envelope was a decoy. He wondered what she would have done with the real thing, and what she thought when she discovered that he had created a decoy and left it out in plain view. Who could he have been trying to decoy but her? Oh, Carolyn!