I stood in the doorway. ‘Where did all this come from?’

‘Goats,’ said Kaspar. He was wearing the silk smock he used for painting. ‘And rags. You should have knocked.’

He scrambled off his stool and knelt on the floor, gathering the papers to his chest and piling them on the straw mattress in the corner. I stepped around him and crossed to the desk to see what he was working on.

It was a quire from a Bible. For a second my eyes tricked me, convincing me it must be one of mine. Before I could embarrass myself, sense returned. It was enormous – a quarter larger than mine at least, so big that even when folded it overflowed Kaspar’s desk and relegated his paints to the floor. The gall-brown letters were neat enough but – after months of staring at the pressed Bible – crooked as an old man’s teeth. Strange to relate, I looked at it and felt a stir of something like loathing.

‘Not yours,’ said Kaspar. ‘It was commissioned by a curate at the cathedral.’

I admired the illumination. The page was framed by a riotous border of twisting columbines, in whose tendrils lurked the usual creatures who inhabited Kaspar’s world. An affronted stag recoiling as a wild man brandished a forked spear at him; two old lions squatting on a flower stem with mournful expressions, beneath a rose that concealed a demon’s face. A bear crouched in the corner and tried to dig up the roots of the plant.

‘You have surpassed yourself.’

Kaspar stroked the vellum page, supple and soft. ‘If you have your way, there will be no more like it. You know Reissman, the scribe who lives above the Three Crowns? It took him a year and three months to write this. In almost the same time, you can make a hundred times as many, and double again. How will he survive?’

‘Your cards have existed for twenty years now. There is no shortage of artists.’ I shrugged. ‘What difference can one man make in the world?’

I turned away from the desk and scanned the other papers around the room. Most lay bundled under a blanket on Kaspar’s bed, but a few had escaped his sweep. One I noticed showed sketches of an ox with curved back horns; another a serpent with a face like a man.

‘Have you taken any other commissions? Another bestiary, perhaps?’

He didn’t respond.

‘We found a curious fragment of type in the composing room this morning. It looked like words from a bestiary.’ I tried to look in his eyes, but his gaze was slippery as an eel.

‘It must have been the press devil.’ A sly look. ‘Or perhaps Peter Schoeffer. He is an ambitious young man. He does not want to spend his life pressing Bibles. I overheard him the other day in the type foundry: he thinks you should use the second press to begin a new work.’

‘One of the men said he had seen you snooping around the Humbrechthof yesterday,’ I persisted.

Kaspar turned back to the giant Bible on his desk. He picked up a brush. ‘He must have confused me with Herr Fust. How is he, by the way?’

‘He’d be happier if paper didn’t go missing from our stores.’ I stared hard at the piles of paper on the bed. Kaspar, as ever, ignored me.

‘And his daughter Christina?’

I stared at him in astonishment. ‘How should I know? I have only ever met her twice, when Fust had me to dine at his house. She cannot be more than fifteen.’

‘Old enough to marry.’

I laughed: an old man’s laugh awash with bile.

‘Are you still trying to arrange me a marriage? Thank God, I already have Fust’s money. I do not need his daughter’s dowry.’

Kaspar dipped the brush in an oyster shell brimming with pink paint. ‘It was just a thought. Perhaps you should make certain…’

‘I have his money,’ I repeated.

‘… that no one else can get it.’

His brush flicked the page like a serpent’s tongue, filling in the colour on the wild man’s body. Seeing I would get no more sense out of him, I turned to go.

A glint of silver on the wall caught my eye, one of our Aachen mirrors: I had not seen it there before. I peered at my distorted reflection, and wished its holy rays could heal the gulf between us.

LXXVII

Oberwinter

A creak sounded from the stair. Nick and Emily froze. Outside, the wind blew snow off the rooftop and rattled the windows in their frames. They waited for the creak to come again, to grow into the tread of mounting footsteps.

Nothing came.

‘Let’s get out of here.’ Nick put the toilet roll back and headed out. He locked the door behind him and didn’t look back. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened in there.

They tiptoed down the stairs as quickly as they dared. On the first-floor landing, Nick heard the murmur of a voice from below.

‘We can’t stay here,’ he whispered. ‘They didn’t rip that room apart without the owner noticing.’

‘Agreed. But where can we go?’

‘Anywhere.’

The owner was in the lobby, leaning on the counter and muttering into the phone. He flapped his hand to wave them down, but between the cigarette in his mouth and the receiver in front of it he couldn’t manage more than a grunt.

Nick dropped the key on the counter and breezed through the front door.

‘We’re just going out to get some dinner. We’ll be back in about an hour.’

They found a weinstube in a house off the main square, overlooking the river and the railroad tracks. It was a cosy place, with bookshelves on the walls and old wine bottles on the windowsills. The waiter tried to sit them by the front window, but Nick insisted on a table at the back, tucked behind an antique wine press. He wasn’t sure who he thought he was hiding from. It was probably the only place in Oberwinter that was open.

He hadn’t planned to stay long, but the moment he saw the menu he realised he was starving. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. They ordered beef stew and spätzle noodles. When the waiter disappeared into the kitchen, Nick pulled the pieces of paper out of his pocket and smoothed them on the tablecloth.

‘Is that Gillian’s writing?’

Nick nodded. His tired mind tried to take in what was written on the creased sheets of notepaper. It was like a replay of his own recent past. Names that would have meant nothing a week ago leaped out at him, jarring memories that had barely had time to form. ‘Vandevelde – B42 ink??? Other MPC images in G. Bible? 08.32 Paris arr. Strasbourg 14.29. Call Simon. Is bear key? ’

The notes covered three sides of the paper, scrawled at various times and in different-coloured inks, crossed out and circled, connected by arrows that branched out into new questions. A palimpsest of the last three weeks of Gillian’s life.

On the fourth side they found something different. There was little writing; instead, a sketch that looked like the plan of a building. It was roughly pentagonal, with irregular sides and angular projections. A dotted line led to one of the corners, a red X inked heavily where it met the building. Gillian had written ‘Kloster Mariannenbad ’ in the margin beside it, and a brief list below:

rope

shovel

head lamp

bolt cutters

gun?

‘Kloster means monastery,’ said Nick.

‘That would fit with the picture Atheldene sent us.’

The waiter came out of the kitchen and laid two steaming plates of food on the table. Nick covered the paper with his sleeve.

‘Can I get you anything else?’

Emily tried a smile. Her face was drawn, her mouth tight with exhaustion. ‘We were just talking – we wondered if you knew – have you heard of a place called Kloster Marianenbad near here?’

‘In Oberwinter?’

‘A monastery.’

An apologetic shake of his head. ‘I do not know this place.’

‘What about castles?’

He laughed. ‘This is the romantic Rhine. We have here castles every five hundred metres.’

‘Any nearby? Any that aren’t on the tourist trail?’