Paper 17

The widower, Antonius, takes a whore … (missing word) with money and promise of land.

Paper 18

Commissions flow like communion wine into … (missing word) the coffers of Bosch, the dupe of Brotherhood.

Paper 19

Inside himself, working the Devil out. The Church asks Satan to deliver them in paint.

Confused, Philip re-read the last piece. The Church asks Satan to deliver them in paint. But if that were supposed to imply that Bosch was hired to save the congregation’s souls, why was he placed in the guise of Satan? Philip looked at his watch, careful of the time, not wanting to miss his flight but reluctant to stop reading. What he was looking at was incendiary.

Paper 20

Forgeries passed without question, entries to … (missing word) record of the Brotherhood tell the fate of a ghost.

Paper 21

1479 – the whore is taken as the spectre’s bride. They sleep in winding sheets.

Paper 22

Antonius died this year 1480. His placing in … (missing word) Brotherhood passed down to son. Secret buried under the Catholic stone.

Philip frowned, unable to make sense of what he was reading. He realised that the Church was being criticised, but didn’t understand why. The pieces were little more than riddles.

A knock on the door interrupted him. He opened it half an inch and looked out to see a bellboy standing in the corridor outside.

‘Excuse me, sir, I’m just reminding you that you have to leave the room in the next half an hour.’ He tried to peer round the door but Philip blocked his view. ‘And a message came for you.’

‘The phone didn’t ring.’

‘It was a hand-delivered message to Reception, Mr Preston,’ the bellboy replied, passing a note through the gap in the door.

Snatching it, Philip opened the folded paper. It was blank.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’

‘What?’

‘It’s blank. There’s nothing on it.’

‘What?’ the bellboy said again, confused.

‘There’s nothing on the note!’ Philip snapped, passing it back to the bellboy and closing the door.

Irritated, he picked up the mobile phone again. But seconds later there was another knock on the door. Philip opened it and glowered at the bellboy.

‘Now what?’

‘The manager told me to tell you that he was sorry about the mix-up, but there had been a message left for you. I know you said the paper was blank, but the manager said there was a verbal message, sir.’

Philip sighed. ‘Which was?’

‘Just one word. Bosch.’ The bellboy looked embarrassed. ‘I think that’s how it was pronounced—’

‘Who gave you the message?’

‘The gentleman spoke to the manager over the phone.’

‘Did they leave a name?’

‘No, sir, and no contact number,’ the bellboy replied. ‘The manager told me to tell you that they said they would be in touch.’

Philip nodded abruptly and closed the door again. Now he knew he was being watched. He thought of Carel Honthorst and began to sweat, then turned back to the phone, his hands shaking.

Paper 23

Hieronymus Bosch is famous to the world … (missing word) such fortune do his paintings bring to Church and family alike.

Paper 24

The Brotherhood will brook no argument. Bosch is the tool to buckle sinners. His works show Hell and Heaven as must be seen. They say God would forgive.

God would forgive … what? Philip wondered. What had Bosch done to need forgiveness? And secrecy.

Paper 25

Goossen, the brother, grows older, rearing against … (missing word) the name not his. Threatened by clergy, he mourns the man who was. The one he seeks to emulate.

Paper 26

Family and riches, church and choir, The lie that corrupts the Catholic spire.

Paper 27

Hieronymus the recluse, keeps … (missing word) his rooms. Unseen amongst gargoyles and the dead men. Rich in his winding sheet, under the maggot church.

And then the last piece of writing.

Paper 28

In this place or abroad, none know Hieronymus Bosch is but a dead man. Died in the year of our Lord and his mother, Our Lady. 1473

Philip gripped the phone.

Then he re-read the entry.

1473. Hieronymus Bosch died in 1473!

It wasn’t possible. What little anyone knew of the artist for certain was his death date – 1516. But now he was reading evidence that Bosch had died in 1473 and that his family and the Catholic Church had kept his death a secret.

Philip took in a long, slow breath. No wonder everyone was so keen to get hold of the chain, so eager to be the possessor of such devastating information. There had been a conspiracy, a cover-up, dating back to the Middle Ages. The Bosch family and the Church had banded together, pretending that Hieronymus was still alive. The reason was obvious – money.

‘Christ,’ Philip said out loud. He could imagine how the art world would take the news, how the prices of Bosch’s works might plummet if it was discovered others had faked him, passing off their works as those of the dead Master. It would be a catastrophe. Philip paused, his thoughts leap frogging. How much would someone pay for such news? How much would they pay for the chain? The papers? Jesus, if he got his hands on them he was made.

He had to admire the plot. Of course the Bosch family could have pulled it off. All of them were painters: the grandfather, the father and the brothers. When Antonius died, the writings stated clearly that his son took over. One? Or all of them? How easy to perpetuate the fraud with the collusion of the Catholic Church. The Church, which was rich and powerful. The Church, which wanted to keep its congregation under control.

Bosch’s visions of Heaven and Hell had done just that. Goodness rewarded in The Garden of Earthly Delights, evil punished by the obscenities of Hell. When the papers were written the world was still in the grip of the Middle Ages; it was to be a while before civilisation saw the light of reason. The rich and oppressive Catholic Church wielded absolute power, the means to control the people secured by the imagination of Brabant’s visionary, Hieronymus Bosch. It had been his images of Hell and damnation, his painted tortures and distortions, which had frightened the congregation into pious submission. In a time when superstition was rife, when the world was still believed to be flat, when dragons and chimeras haunted the minds of men, there was a terrible power in paint.

For the wicked, Bosch promised a torment of legless creatures swallowing the damned whole, of tortoises with Death’s heads and winged demons with tiger’s claws. He painted ships on fire, the naked and the doomed screaming as devils dragged them into the darkness and the lost chasms of Hell. He created men seduced by pigs; bodies impaled, halved and devoured by alligators; men with arrows in their anuses; women ridden by demons. Bodies distorted, abused, bleeding, violated – and the message was there for everyone to see. Even if the congregation could not read or write the paintings told them – this is the result of sin. This is the reward for the wicked.

For the virtuous, Bosch painted a Heaven of plenty and beauty. But only for the good.

It was a message the Catholic Church had preached for centuries, and it found its perfect expression in Hieronymus Bosch. Paint and panel managed to do what popes and soldiers could not – they forced obedience by the use of fear.