‘Secrets?’ I echoed.

‘This book is just the beginning. With your press, we can write things and make so many copies that the rich and the Church can not stop it. We will sweep them away in a torrent of fire and paper. Do you know why churchmen are slavering over your Bible. Because they think that if they control the art they will control the world.’

I almost wept with frustration. ‘That is what I wanted. Perfect unity.’

‘How could a man like you, of all people, want such a thing?’ He clenched his fist in fury. ‘Obedience to a Church which bleeds the poor while its bishops wear gold and fur? A Church which would rather collect fees than baptise souls? Which will sell you a receipt to expunge the same sins its priests commit tenfold? They do not deserve this invention, Johann. With the powers we can summon up, we will use it to destroy them.’

He took the book away from me. ‘I did not invent the beasts in this book. I drew them from life. I thought you of all men would see that.’

I buried my face in my hands. I heard a soft thud as he dropped the book on the bed beside me, then the creak of a floorboard. Perhaps I felt the soft touch of a kiss or a caress on my forehead; perhaps it was only a spasm. When I looked up, Kaspar was gone.

‘I can see why the Church wanted to keep this secret.’

Nick closed the book. His skin itched, as if the maggots had crawled out of the book and started to devour him. It had been a long time since he had felt so dirty.

Emily looked bruised by the encounter. Her face had gone so pale it was almost translucent. ‘It’s brutal. So much hatred in it. It’s hard to imagine it coming from the same man who printed the Gutenberg Bible.’

‘The typeface proves it.’

‘Do you think that’s why they hid it?’ said Nick. ‘To protect Gutenberg’s reputation?’

Gillian gave him a scornful look. ‘Did you even look at the book? It isn’t just satire. Look in the margins.’

Reluctantly, Nick opened the book again and peered at the decorated borders. The moment he saw the pictures, he knew he would never forget them. If anything, they were worse than the illustrations they framed, images he could barely describe.

‘It’s sick.’

‘Sicker than you think. It’s not just ornamentation. It’s an instruction manual.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The figure in the cloak? Why do you think he gets bigger in every picture? He’s getting closer. There’s a secret hidden in the pictures in this book, just like in the old alchemical texts. It’s a book of power.’

Nick stared at her. As always with Gillian, he couldn’t tell what she was really thinking.

‘You don’t really believe it works?’ But he could see in her face that she wanted to.

‘Somebody does,’ was all she said.

Nick didn’t know what to say. He looked at the picture and thought of the playful, witty beasts in the book they’d rescued from Brussels. ‘It’s so different from the other bestiary.’

Gillian stiffened. ‘The bestiary from Rambouillet? You found it? Can I see?’

Nick pulled it out of his bag and laid it beside its partner. They looked almost identical. He opened the back cover and looked at the inscription over the card.

Written by the hand of Libellus, and illuminated by Master Francis.

He also made another book of beasts using a new art of writing.

‘Which is hidden in the Sayings of the Kings of Israel.’ Emily supplied the invisible words.

Gillian frowned. ‘You know, I never figured out exactly what that meant. I suppose it must be something to do with this place – all the lost books.’

Nick looked up at the shelves towering over him. How many more secrets lurked among the old leather and rotting parchment? How many other terrible visions and diabolical rituals from men who had sought out the darkest powers of the earth?

A draught caught the back of his neck. The chill reminded him they couldn’t afford to linger.

‘How do we get it out of here?’

‘You don’t.’

Nick spun around. The double doors were open. For a moment, he almost believed that the incantations in the book had worked. A man with snow-white hair and eyes like coals stood watching them. His long coat flapped around his ankles in the breeze.

‘I think you have something for me.’

I lay on my bed and wept. I was betrayed. Fust and Kaspar between them had taken everything.

I fell into a sort of sleep, a dazed nightmare of ravenous beasts, crazed men and debauched women who came alive from the pages of Drach’s book. A diabolical mill swallowed men in its mouth and ground them to dust. A pope with cloven hooves sat on a throne and passed terrible judgement on me.

A vigorous pounding on the front door woke me. Was it over so soon? Had the court decided? I did not know how long I had been unconscious, and when I looked to the window all I saw was fog.

The front door crashed open. Footsteps pounded on the stairs, heavier than Günther’s. Too late, like a remorseful suicide in mid-air, the scales fell from my eyes and I felt the full, breathtaking scope of what I had lost. I wished I had not been so careless of it.

Two men burst through the door. They were not bailiffs, but armed soldiers in the archbishop’s livery. They shouted at me but I was too dazed to understand. They hauled me off my bed; one held me up while the other punched me in the face. I wondered if this was another nightmare, until I tasted blood in my mouth and decided it must be real.

They bound my hands and picked up my bestiary without looking at it. The other book, Drach’s abomination, had slipped behind the mattress where they could not see it. Then they tied a sack over my head and took me away.

LXXXIII

The old man was alone. Nick made to charge him, but Gillian grabbed his arms and held him back.

‘Don’t.’

As she spoke, another man came through the door, the Italian with the broken nose, the man Nick had fought in Strasbourg. He aimed his gun at Nick and grimaced.

The old man advanced into the room. The closer he came, the more Nick noticed his eyes. Pitted deep in his waxy face, they glinted as hard and pure as diamonds.

‘Father Nevado?’ he guessed.

‘Cardinal,’ the old man corrected him. ‘I have moved up in the world.

‘I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.’

A chilling smile. ‘We call it by another name now. But, broadly speaking, yes. You are very well informed.’

‘I spend a lot of time in libraries.’

It must be nerves, Nick thought, adrenalin stringing out his battered mind before he collapsed. How else to explain how he could stand there trading wisecracks with the man who would kill him.

At least I found Gillian. It was a comforting thought.

‘If this is the Devils’ Library, who does that make you?’

‘The angel who guards the pit where lost works are cast out.’

Emily looked around. ‘Are all these books lost? I’m sure I’ve seen some of them before.’

Nick looked at her in surprise. Did she care? Even at the end, was the scholar in her curious? Or was it just a basic human instinct to keep talking, to delay the inevitable as long as possible?

Nevado seemed happy to humour her. ‘Some of the books here do not exist outside this room, but many more are in the world. Some have even had influence. Contrary to ignorant supposition, this library is not merely a prison for condemned books. It was established by Pope Pius II as a school against error, where those who fought in the vanguard against sin and the devil could study their foes more closely.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Nick. ‘I looked in one of those books and all I saw was the Pope.’

‘The first book in this library was the Liber Bonasi in front of you. Not the oldest, but the first. It had personal significance to Pope Pius. He knew Johann Gutenberg; he championed him because he believed that the printing press would beget a more perfect faith. The Church had many wounds at that time. He thought the press would cleanse them. Instead, it proved more suited to spreading lies and error.’