Behold the Whale

Howard looked across the shallow valley. He was sat with his back to an oak tree. It was very warm for early October, and dry. When he moved his legs stretched out in front of him in the dust, little wisps of chalk rose like smoke. His boots – usually wet at this time of year –were white and cracked with the dry weather.

By his arm was an open bag of acorns that he’d collected since early morning. He was tired. He’d brought too many clothes out with him. But the acorns were beautiful. He was fascinated by them. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, all perfect and new. The bigger part – the nut - was green and translucent with thin lines like veins running along just under the surface. They were like green lights, globes of green. The small cup was rough wood or bark, a yellowish colour, like harvested wheat. The cups always became separated from the nut almost immediately, which he thought was a shame. At first when he collected them, he would push them together - the cup and the nut - hoping they’d stick, but they never did. There was always a flotsam of detached cups at the bottom of the sack. Of course the pigs ate them. They ate everything.

He pulled his hat a bit lower over his forehead because he was looking into the sun. He felt his skin burning a little – in October! And he was thirsty. But he’d have to collect all day. One bag was not enough to feed pigs for long.

He stood up feeling how hot his dark trousers were and his feet inside his boots. Dust rose. Behind, the line of young oaks stretched away over the gentle ridge, their delicate leaves yellow against the dust blue sky. He had to lay the sheet around the base of each tree and then shake vigorously. It was a quick way to collect acorns, much better than looking in the grass at the base of trees – though he had to do that as well. He could only do the shaking with the young trees because the old, really big ones wouldn’t move when he tried to shake them. Only wind brought the acorns of the old trees down.

He was usually happy when the sun was so bright, and he wondered why collecting acorns seemed a chore. But he thought it was perhaps because of Mrs Van Dijk. She had been a little bit angry and upset in the morning and he wasn’t sure why. She was working on a translation for a lawyer in the city – a sort of legal document that seemed to bore her.

He slowly pulled the canvas sheet over the dry grass to a small oak, just a sapling. He laid the sheet flat and pulled out its edges.

He thought she liked interesting and new work - but sometimes she took things that were long and difficult, as if she felt some duty to someone. For this work, she didn’t need to go out into the fields to collect or to research, which was what she really liked. There was no mystery either in the translation, it seemed to consist of long lists – endless lists of names and descriptions in French - a catalogue of machines and equipment on a ship that needed to be insured.

He took the narrow sapling in his big hand. It was only the size of his thigh, perhaps only fifty years old, but already its venerable bark was rough and fissured, perhaps from long winters and hot days. He pulled and pushed and the whole stem bent. Acorns began to fall from a few feet above his head, a few banging against his hat. Thirty or forty fell, and glistened green in the thick dusty canvas.

Howard thought he would talk to Mrs Van Dijk and try to persuade her to leave the work for a few days, and come out with him, while the autumn sun still shone.

**********************************

But her mood was much better when he returned. He’d got two full sacks of acorns tied across his shoulders and he’d left two more out in the fields hidden under a big oak that was part of a hedge. He laid the sacks by the door.

She was by the fire stirring a big pot. It was quite hot in the room.

‘What are you making?’ said Howard suddenly pleased.

‘A stew with cabbage, ham, potatoes. And some bread’

‘Nice. Do you want some acorns?’

‘Can people eat acorns?’

‘I think so. They have to be soaked. I’ll ask. But they’re mainly for the pigs. Acorns make ham taste very nice. Acorn-fed pigs! Have you finished the translation?’ he asked.

She shook her head and sighed. ‘Howard I wanted to forget about it. I didn’t do anything on the stupid translation. I read something else’

She went to take the pot from the fire because it was boiling aggressively and gobs of stew were spitting out into the fire.

‘Look on the table’ she said.

There was a small book – with soft covers. It was faded to a yellow colour – the colour of the local stone. There were a few words in indecipherable writing in the centre and more underneath.

‘It’s not printed?’

‘No. It’s more of a notebook. What you see is handwriting. I think it’s terribly old’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No there are no dates. But then I haven’t worked out how to read it’

She moved the book carefully to the end of the table near the window not sliding it but lifting under its back cover. Howard noticed that the back was torn.

She laid out two bowls and the flat white bread that she had made. She put a huge apple by the bread.

He grinned at her.

‘It’s the biggest I’ve ever seen’. It was a joke between them that they ate too many apples – because they were so plentiful – this year particularly. ‘It’ll take half an hour to eat that one’

‘They’re good for you Howard’

‘Really?’ he looked with renewed interest at the apple. He turned to the stew which smelt nice. On its hot surface small drops of fat glistened.

‘The book is very interesting’ she said. ‘It was brought this morning by the librarian at Lincoln Cathedral – while you were out with your acorns. They’ve no idea what it is. It’s been on the shelves in the library for a century or more. No one can read it though someone said that they had seen some old Latin words. They knew about me and so the librarian brought the book here. He wants me to read it, translate it.’

The stew was very good. He blew at his spoon and looked at her through the steam. ‘Did you try to read it?’

‘Yes. Most of the day. But I couldn’t work anything out. It’s so strange. I know only that it’s by an Italian’

**********************************

After dinner Howard took out two handfuls of acorns and laid them on the table.

‘I like them’, he said absently. ‘They’re so perfect – the green part shiny and luminous – more oval in shape than round’

He pushed a few across the polished table for Mrs Van Dijk to look at. One of them still had the cup attached.

‘They are nice’ she said. She drank out of a cup of water, her unfinished apple on the table by her elbow. The fire crackled and spat with green wood.

‘When I was a boy, they said that the cups were used by fairies to drink water from. I remember hearing that the fairies went from grass stem to grass stem collecting big fat drops of dew until the cup was full. Then they would drink the pure water. The fairies were called Puck, Robin Goodfellow, the Green Knight. I could really imagine it – little people whose heads were just a bit bigger than the cup’

Mrs Van Dijk picked up the intact acorn and immediately the cup came off, soundlessly hitting the table. She took it between her thumb and forefinger.

‘It would be hard to drink out of. In Holland we call them hats – not cups’

‘The hats that go on your head?’

She nodded.

The fire crackled again and they heard the wind growl over the house. The weather was changing. Howard thought he could smell rain already. The air was moving around his feet because there was a gap below the front door that Howard had never fixed, even though Mrs Van Dijk had asked him many times.

He put his hand in the bag again and pulled out another intact acorn and held it in front of his nose.

‘How strange – in England it’s a cup, in Holland it’s a hat. Maybe it’s the way you hold it?’

‘But why should Dutch people hold it so that it looks like a hat while English people hold it the other way up so it’s a cup?

They smiled across the table at each other. The candle flickered in the new wind.

‘Why is the book so hard to read?’

She must have been thinking about it because she answered immediately.

‘It doesn’t make sense. Really! You can see individual words. There are several things. First it seems like vulgar Latin - sermo vulgaris - or something similar, but it’s old in style. Very old. I can recognise words. For example a word for river. But other words are difficult.  And then the handwriting is terrible too’

She looked into the fire.

‘And it just doesn’t make sense...’ she murmured. ‘Nothing follows on. Do you know what I mean?’

‘Are you bored with it?’

‘Oh no. I like it. It’s interesting. I can tell the book is terribly old. There is an old story in it somewhere - I know’

The wind roared again and the thatch above their heads seemed to physically move. When it was very windy, the air got in underneath the thatch and sometimes seemed to lift it up. They felt the air move, and the curtain stir.

It would rain later in the night and in the morning. Howard would have to collect the other bags of acorns in the rain.

**********************************

Howard lay listening to the rain in the morning. Just from the sounds he knew what it would be like outside, a boisterous wind sprinkled with rain. It sounded like sand being thrown at the window. The weather had changed so fast, and it wasn’t cold yet, but it seemed like a very abrupt end to the warm autumn.

He leaned forward into the window, looking out. From a certain angle you could see the escarpment and the tops of tall trees. The escarpment was obscure, and the trees were moving to-and-fro, so he knew the weather was very bad. The acorns he’d left out in the bags were in the open and they’d start to go damp and rot if he didn’t collect them, and he thought he ought to look at the oak woods in the south too – just to get an idea of what wood might be available for the winter. So he really had to go out.

He went to put a few bits of wood on the fire and start the water boiling for tea. He pulled his trousers on and his boots and sat at the table waiting for the hiss of the kettle. The grey light fell on the few acorns that he’d taken from the bag and the old book. He picked an acorn up and was surprised to see that it was already darkening to a honey-brown colour – and its surface was slightly wrinkled longitudinally. The cup that had held it was detached, lying on its side next to the nut, casting a perfect oval shadow. He fitted the two together and found that the nut had shrunk so much in a few hours that the cup was too big for it.

The kettle began to grumble. Just a few minutes for the water, he thought. He carefully took hold of the book in both his hands and looked at the front and back cover. The colour of the faded paper was less warm, less luminous, in the grey light, so that it just looked like a very old book. The writing on the front was brownish – perhaps originally black, very dense, incomprehensible. As he had seen the night before, the back cover was torn diagonally so that the last written page was visible. The writing was the same, but the words were very close together like dribbles of brown ink. But in the margin of the back page, written vertically, was a word in English. It was of a different style and in capital letters. The word looked like CRYPT and there was a letter after, maybe a capital A. CRYPT A.

He didn’t want to even open the book, because in his hands it felt so delicate – like a stack of dry leaves. The binding was a crude line of threads that looked newer than the book, but still old enough to break if he opened the pages.

He laid the book down and went to pour the tea. He felt slightly sad that the acorns were already losing their green freshness.

The wind wasn’t so bad in the lane and the rain seemed to have lessened a little, but as Howard left the village gate and started to cross more open country, the wind became quite strong, gusting in unpredictable pushes from left and right. There was residual rain in each push, perhaps the last water wrung out from the clouds very high up. The paths were in the early stages of turning to mud, their surface slippery and glossy bright with rain. Big yellow leaves were flat in the mud like illustrations on a page and the trees moved restlessly showering water down.

He walked along hedges on their lea side avoiding the wind and climbed the low hills that in the south of the Vale replaced the steep escarpment. The soil underneath his feet turned from clay to a yellowish limestone crumble as the slope steepened, and the wind came strong from the south straight into his face.

He didn’t mind the bad weather, and when he was wearing dry and warm clothes, he rather enjoyed a feeling of invulnerability, watching the rain dripping off his coat and sliding off his boots. The smell of the land was different in the rain, and sounds changed. He thought the big sounds were gone in the rain, the echoing, whistling sounds of birds - perhaps the birds didn’t fly then, or just didn’t call or sing. But there was the sound of falling rain, very quiet - almost like an absence of sound.

After a long while, though, he would start to get wet, usually his boots first and his trousers – and then he would get cold. So he generally tried not to stay out too long in the rain.

He thought if it continued as it was, he would return at lunchtime.

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk was curiously stimulated by the book and so she got up not long after Howard. She made some tea for herself, lit a candle and looked out at the squally rain hitting the window. She didn’t like this weather. It seemed to her - when it was like this - that their cottage was a small boat out at sea exposed to the sudden violence of wind and rain. It had never rained like this in Amsterdam. It would rain for long periods, or thunder, but it was more of a steady state, not like this gusty violent rain-wind.

She turned to look at the book. Maybe this is why she had liked it. Even its colour in the candle light seemed to suggest warmth and the gentle country of the south. Also the contents were interesting – she was convinced after looking the night before, that it was some kind of love story. Words like love – amore or sometimes amor - occurred a few times; she thought she recognised Latin words for forgiveness and happiness though they were spelt oddly.

She sat and looked at it again, opening the first page very carefully. She remembered the visit of yesterday – the gaunt unfriendly man from the Lincoln Cathedral Medieval library. He had only stayed for ten minutes then he’d gone, because he had had another appointment in Nottingham. She had tried to get what information she could about the book before he left. But he knew nothing, and seemed quite uninterested. The book had been found in a box on its own somewhere in the store rooms of the library. He’d said that he wasn’t sure whether to throw it away or not. He just didn’t know what to do with it. Mrs Van Dijk suspected that the Librarian had actually wanted to throw the book away but had been persuaded to bring it to the only Latin scholar in the Vale: herself.

She had two months to translate it, or at least work out what it was about.

**********************************

Howard walked briskly, his back to the rain and wind, the two acorn sacks over his shoulder. He followed a line of big oak trees on a track that was cut into the pale limestone. Up here the day before, he’d been too hot, and his boots had made clouds of dust in the stone when he walked. Now the trees were straining in the wind and the track was bright with puddles. He’d noticed fallen wood all along and was checking the last of the trees before taking a path back to Earls Court. He’d made notes in the mental map of the Vale that he held in his head. A map not of houses or roads but of woods and copses, lines of trees and single standing trees. Over the years, this had become his resource so that as a good woodsman he never needed to cut living wood, always preferring to take fallen wood.

The last of a line of oaks had a broken branch – two or three times the width of his torso. It lay partly on the hedge and might have fallen the night before. The huge bulk was big enough to make furniture, or even contain a core that would be good enough for a roof beam for a new cottage. But it would be hard to cut. He sat on its rough bark, the still-attached leaves fluttering around him and took a drink from his water bottle. There were more acorns on the smaller stems, that hadn’t fallen yet. They were bright green and the cup was firmly attached to the nut.

He rested and thought again about the way that the Dutch called it a hat and the English a cup. Why did everyone agree in the country? Maybe it was because children learned the word cup and then never could see it as a hat again. Perhaps, he thought, your mind is conditioned by the words. So the way you think is a prisoner of the words, of the language. He smiled to himself. He looked down feeling the faintest cold in his boots, and knew immediately that they were at last leaking water. It was time to go. It would be an hour to get back, and by the time he reached the cottage his feet would be wet. But this wood – what he was sitting on – could be very useful. In the next few days he would come up with tools and start to cut.

Mrs Van Dijk had made progress. There were a few more words that she recognised. There was river again, and stone, and clay, then a name that was so badly written that she had had to write it herself on a piece of paper. The name appeared on the cover and several times in the first page: it was Castell’Arquato. So something like a castle. Then on the inner side of the cover below some very faint marks there were the letters MCDLXXVII, which she took a few minutes to realise was a date, in fact 1477 anno domini.

This realisation had been early on, not long after Howard had gone out. After seeing MCDLXXVII, she’d been shocked. She had thought that the book was old but not more than three hundred years! The pages suddenly seemed even more fragile in her hands - their rounded corners from years of wear suddenly understandable. It had – once – been a popular and well-read book. She wondered how long it had been in a box in the library – how long in the dark? But then also knew that its years in the darkness might be why it was so well-preserved. She’d never seen a book more than a hundred years old, but this!

Now the book was in the centre of the table, while she prepared some lunch. She expected Howard back at lunchtime because the weather had remained wild. It would be worse on the tops too. He would arrive dripping, his hair flat on his head, his cheeks red, his boots squelching. So she was making soup to warm him up.

But she kept looking back at the book in its yellow circle of light by the candle. She had cleared the acorns away, and put them on the window sill where all of Howard’s ‘finds’ usually ended up. She was fascinated by the book. After lunch she would go back and look. She had cleared the table so that she could concentrate on the text. It was always easier when everything else was out of the way. With the soup ready in the pot she went back to sit at the table and opened the cover to look at the inside of the first page.

There was the date in the corner, very inconspicuous – and the facing page was covered in dense writing. But the inside cover was not empty. It just looked empty. She put the paper as close as she could to the candle flame and studied its texture. It was certainly old, primitive paper. You could see coarse fibres inside, flecks of dark material. But on its surface were the marks she’d seen before. The writing – the date and the facing page – was all in dark ink – perhaps black once but now brown. But these markings were faint grey. Could they be pencil? Pencil lines didn’t last as long as ink. She got her own pencil from the book shelf and thought about tracing what she could see on the page using her pencil, but then stopped herself. That was a terrible thing to do to an old book.

She found a clean sheet of her own paper, which was meant for her translation work for the lawyers, and tried to trace what she could see. When candlelight shone through the ancient page, it was easiest to see the marks: a few broad curves converging, a sinuous line between; to the left a few rectangles and irregular patches; a tall shape that looked like a tower, on a low hill.

She regarded her drawing, tipping her head onto one side looking to the book and back again. Was she sure that she’d drawn what was there – or what she wanted to see?

There was a valley running off into the distance, and a hill top town with a castle on top, and fields all around.

**********************************

Howard took his boots off slowly in front of the fire. As she had predicted he was wet through. He even went to change his trousers in the bedroom and came back wearing another pair with the wet ones over his arm. He put them on the chair facing the fire.

‘Do you think the reason for the ‘cup’ of the acorn being called a hat in Holland is because it has a small stalk sometimes? So it looks like a hat or a wool hat?’

She hadn’t expected such a question. He’d obviously been thinking about it all morning.

‘Perhaps’

‘It’s the only explanation I can think of’.

She smiled at the oddness of the question and they sat to eat the soup. There was so much water vapour in the room that the windows were slightly steamed up.

Howard reached over to touch her hand because she looked a little preoccupied.

‘Did you read more of the book? What did you find out?’

‘I’m not sure Howard’

She pushed the drawing across the table to him.

‘A castle’ he said, chewing some of the ham in the soup. ‘A river flowing away and a low valley. Is it in the book?’

‘I copied it. There’s a faint drawing on the inside front cover. I think the place is in Italy - called Castell’Arquato. A place with a Castle’

The rain continued to beat the windows and the thatch in the front began to drip onto the path and the thin grass strip in front of the cottage. Howard looked out at the trees still moving restlessly in the churchyard.

‘I can’t go out again, Lotte’

He sat by the fire on the low chair and Mrs Van Dijk sat opposite him. She turned the pages carefully. Howard thought it smelt of old rooms and perhaps even distantly of sweat – like an old bank note. He watched her eyes pass over the page looking at the printed words. They were so densely written. He thought she - with her cleverness with language – would be the only person in the Vale who could understand it.

‘It makes no sense’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Hold it so I can see it’ he said. The book did look interesting suddenly. Something about the pattern of writing.

She held it out. It was still too close to his eyes but he was sure there was something unusual.

‘Look how the writing – the consonants – all point to the left. It looks like mirror writing’

Mrs Van Dijk had heard of mirror writing. It was difficult to do. If you wrote it on a page and looked in a mirror then you’d be able to read it.

‘You think it’s mirror writing?’

‘When someone writes, usually the writing leans in the direction that they write – left to right. This points right to left and the lines finish unevenly on the left, not the right – see?’

He made invisible writing in the air to show what he meant.

‘He writes backwards. The order of words is from right to left – and he might be left handed’

She sat completely still, and he saw her eyes move again across the page. She nodded quickly.

‘Howard you’re right. It makes sense. Or some sense at least!’

**********************************

It wasn’t cold in the living room but Mrs Van Dijk insisted on keeping the fire going. It was something about the damp air. Here in the Vale – when it rained for a long time - the very air became humid and so the cottage sometimes felt a bit damp. Not in the bedroom – which was always light and airy, but in the living room. It was probably the cooking as well as the air – with all the steam that was generated. But sometimes her books felt a little damp, and even the furniture. So it was good in wet weather to keep the dry heat of the fire going. There was, after all, always plenty of wood.

‘I’ll try to translate some of the book. Will you listen?’ she said. ‘Can you light the candles?’

‘Do you think it’s a diary?’

‘No I don’t think so. There are some curious words in there that I don’t recognise. Some of it seems like a description’

She sat facing the fire and he took the chair opposite, stretching his legs out, feeling the warmth on his feet.

She opened the cover and looked at the first page. Howard watched the flames curl around a dry willow log and crackle as they engulfed a dry willow leaf that was still attached.

She was quiet. Howard wondered if he ought to make a cup of tea or start cooking something for the evening meal  but when he started to ask, Mrs Van Dijk shook her head and brought her hand up to the book following a line of writing with her finger.

Then she said: ‘It was very clever of you to realise that he or she writes from right to left. I can almost read it now. This page is explaining something about the place Castell’Arquato, and the journey there’

She read:

In this year I travelled five days from...[somewhere - I can’t read the name Howard]... to arrive in mid-week at the castle settlement of Castell’Arquato. The place is beautiful, set between mountains to the south and plains to the north. Good farm people are everywhere and the food and [can’t read this either] are good. The house of my [something like] Patron looked down on me as I entered the town, so that I cannot ever forget who protects me. I feel at once safe, but also in my way, a prisoner of my patron. How long I will have to stay here I do not know. I am free to walk in these fields, free to study and observe but I must be anonymous and not leave these fields. But love [he says amore or amor] burns inside me. That is my sorrow...

Mrs Van Dijk raised her head. Her finger was only half way down the page.

‘It’s difficult to read. But I can get the sense. I will get better at it’

‘Is there no name?’

‘Not that I can see’

‘He was kept captive. For his safety? Perhaps the family of his lover didn’t like him?’

‘How do you know he’s a man?

Howard smiled and nodded. She was right. Perhaps the writer was a woman.

**********************************

The castle is commanding – visible for miles across the plain; and its battlements are impregnable. My lodging is below, in the streets that climb from the river. At night the streets echo with laughter and talking. These rural people stay out until late talking, always talking. Dogs bark.

In the late hour of the night I am most lonely, not only for my amor, but also because of the darkness of this place – the dogs barking late at night, in the streets and far away in the farms. The nights are terrible – long and lonely. In the days I have work to do – and for this I am grateful to my patron, who has saved me. I am anonymous here; I walk about under a false name and only my patron knows who I truly am.

My work is different. Something I have not done before. Mainly to observe – to see – and to draw.

This evening food was brought to me, and wine. From my patron. And papers and ink to write with. I sat near the candle looking out of the tall window of my room, down the steep streets. I could see the river below, and the tiled roofs. Some of the houses are as simple as the one in which I was born – with rough walls, large cool echoing rooms. Places where animals could sometimes be kept in cold winter weather or when wolves roamed the Po valley.

I ate the food and looked west from where I had come, and felt such pain of loss, of missing my amor, that I could not stand it and resolved to throw myself from the window onto the stony path below. Or drown myself in the river. But the wine – which was very good – improved my mood and I remembered my old self. I resolved to....’

‘Resolved to what?’ said Howard.

‘I don’t know - it stops right there. The next page is something else. It begins ‘Cum Florentiae sis’ which means When in Florence’

She flicked between the pages. ‘How strange. Again this book doesn’t make sense. This part doesn’t follow on from this’

She laid the book on the stone tiles between their two chairs. The light of the fire reddened its pages and a black shadow spread behind the book.

She sighed and picked it up again. She advanced a few more pages.

‘The book must have been bound wrongly’

‘What do you mean Lotte?’

Howard got up. He was hungry and wanted to heat some soup and cut bread. He was looking for dry wood too - to load the fire in the evening.

‘I mean the pages seem to have been bound in the wrong order. The book will be impossible to understand’

She sighed again. She was disappointed. It had seemed so interesting. Why was the writer – she was sure now that it was a ‘he’ – using a false name? What had he done? Perhaps she’d never know.

**********************************

When in Firenze – when I am near you – I feel the world is brighter. I feel that the sky is wide, that the air is clearer. I remember the morning I saw you. The light was streaming through the studio window. Tuscan light, yellow and hazy, that made colours glow, that made the light on the paint glow. I came early to my work, to mix paint for the master. You were there. I remember the light on you, preparing the frame for the canvas. I had not seen you before. I dared not speak to you, knowing the anger that the master showed when the apprentices were not getting on with their work; but in the evening I thought about you. In the dark streets people were gathered, a big yellow moon hung over the rooftops. I thought of the light on your face. Now I see it again each night but I know that you are far away.

‘Do you think he was taken away because he loved a girl whose parents didn’t like him?’ asked Howard.

‘I don’t know’, she said, preoccupied, still turning the pages back and forth.

‘Now it carries on a page later’

Last night, in my small room here in the countryside, I looked down on the moonlit streets that rise up the hill to the castle. The moon was like the moon on the evening of the day I met you, huge and yellow, silent and motionless, a motionless observer. I looked at it over the roofs and then went back to my narrow bed, feeling the cold of the Apennines flowing down from the mountains. In the warmth of the covers I dreamed that you were in the fields by the river, planting. You were singing and I came out of the river all dripping wet and came to listen to you singing. But I didn’t want you to see me. When I woke the dream consoled me and I believed for a few minutes that you and I could communicate through dreams and that you knew that I was dreaming, and were dreaming yourself.

‘He’s in love’ said Howard, rather obviously. He took some bread and munched on it.

Mrs Van Dijk was still concentrating.

‘Ah I see! Bravo! It makes sense’

‘What does?’

‘The left hand page is something like a description, something like natural science; the right hand – the facing page – is always something about amor, love. Like parts of a very long love letter. It carries on - each facing page continues with the love letter – it goes on and on. The other side describes days of work, observation of natural things’

‘What work?’

‘He seems to be doing some kind of survey, observing and describing and writing down. A lot is about shells and bones... It’s a notebook’

‘Perhaps that’s why they don’t like it at the cathedral – because of the love story. Maybe there is something that they don’t like?’

‘I can’t see anything. It seems very innocent, even spiritual. But probably you’re right. Though when the librarian came here, I honestly thought that he had no idea what the book was about’

‘There’s something newer written in the book on the back page. Did you see it?’

‘No’. She turned the book over, peeling open the torn back cover.

Howard looked over her shoulder. The darker bit of writing in the margin, vertical rather than horizontal, really stood out. CRYPT A.

‘Ah’ said Mrs Van Dijk, nodding. ‘He told me about that. Crypt A is part of the library’

She looked at Howard. ‘…a room underneath the library – in fact underground – it contains books that they don’t know what to do with. It’s just that the book was discovered there recently. They want to know why it was put there, I suppose’

She yawned and put the book down. That was enough reading and translation.

**********************************

Howard left the house early, carrying his rucksack filled with tools. He’d left Mrs Van Dijk asleep. He’d decided to go early because he thought the rain would come again in the afternoon and at least if he got working early he’d be able to get things done.

It was dark though, the sky untidy with shreds of clouds, the brightness of the sun bulging under the horizon. The village gate was open and the path led to the south through the sparse trees and then along a lane by tall hedges. He aimed to get to the line of oaks soon after light and begin cutting the big fallen branch. He remembered its huge size and was already measuring it in his mind for what use it might be put. The central part would be almost wide enough for a table - a single large slab. There would be parts thick enough and strong enough for planks that could make a chest of drawers or a dresser for a kitchen. It was a very good find. He’d actually been thinking of it the evening before, while Mrs Van Dijk had read the strange book. He’d not been entranced by the parts that were about the love that the writer felt for his woman-friend. He generally found men’s protestations about love boring or silly. Why did the writer separate from his amor anyway? What had kept them apart? Mrs Van Dijk was very interested, though. He thought that as soon as he had gone, she would be looking at the book again. When she was interested by something she couldn’t stop until she’d worked it out. It would be fascinating to find out what she had read when he got back. He thought he’d not stay beyond lunchtime. Looking out at the low slope in front of him, the brow of the small escarpment bristling with cold autumn oaks, he saw clouds massing behind. He was certain it would rain before the afternoon.

The wind had brought down thousands of acorns and they crunched under his feet. Most now were a honey brown colour – like the colour of polished wood. Most were detached from their cups. The cups lay about, their little stems poking up.

He took out his big saw and a smaller one that he used to trim thinner branches, and laid them on the coarse bark of the broken stem. Its base – where it had split from the main trunk - was white and raw and splintered. He imagined the force that had broken it – and the noise it would have made, probably in the night when the wind had been at its highest. The branch must be five yards long and thickest close to the break. It would take an hour to saw through.

He sat and drank some water, his back to the living trunk. He was amongst the acorns. But there were other things too  - small feathers, fine wing feathers of russet brown and white, and one larger tail feather perhaps from a pheasant. He lifted the tail feather between forefinger and thumb and spun it, marvelling at its lightness and rigidity. In a bowl between two roots by his elbow he saw some very small bones – something like the remains of a jaw and a clavicle, perhaps from a rabbit that had been taken by a fox and eaten there.

It was odd - these remnants of living things – the acorns, the feathers, the bones. All structures made by living things that were no longer needed. Such neat structures too! The ground at this time of year was covered in this dry residue of life. The harder, more durable things of life. They were beautiful. He always associated them with autumn. It was a time - for him – of fruit, of big apples, but also of feathers, acorns, berries, small bones going white in the dry weather. He looked out at the Vale below him, fields and woods framed between his outstretched feet. Imagine all those acorns, feathers and bones!

But he was dreaming! He got up, brushing his back and took the big saw and bit its teeth into the bark of the branch drawing it across once to make a groove. Then he began his rhythmic cutting. It was easy at first but became more difficult as the blade was buried deeper. Sometimes he had to make two cuts angled to each other to get through a very large branch. This one might be the same. He could feel the dampness in the wood – there was still sap there because the branch had not been dead long. A pile of damp white flakes of cut wood snowed on his feet and piled up around the saw. He tried to think while he cut, but soon the fatigue in his arm was overpowering and he had to stop. Another cut would definitely be needed – a V shape. Then he would finish, cutting from the bottom of the V.

He stood and stretched, straightening his cutting arm. Why couldn’t he go from right arm to left? He always sawed with his right hand. It would be better to cut sometimes with the left – to share the effort! But it was like writing, he thought. You write with one hand only. He remembered the writer and his strange right-to-left writing style. Maybe he’d been left-handed? Perhaps it was easier to write from right to left if you were left handed?

In his philosophical mood he thought about the feathers, the bones. Why did there always seem to be more at this time of year –after the summer? Maybe it was because you could see them more clearly – because the fields were bare? Maybe it was because lots of young animals and birds, born in the spring didn’t live long. The young birds died as the cold weather came - leaving behind their bones and their feathers, almost unused.

He didn’t know.

He took the saw again and began sawing at an angle to the first cut. He was thinking now that the book had also been left behind by a man, like bones or feathers, but almost four hundred years before!

**********************************

Tonight I look out again across the rooftops. There is a big yellow moon, low in the dark brown sky. It’s hot and the heat is rising from the cobbled street below. This time of night is the least terrible. After I have eaten, taken some wine in the room below – where a serving woman brings me food – I am as close as I can be to contentment. I miss you but the tiredness that I feel – from working in the field – from walking along the long valley  - combined with my full stomach and the wine makes me feel content. Maybe it is just the local wine.

I feel when I look over the rooftops – looking at the yellow moon – that we are linked. I know you are far away and that we can never meet, but I feel that there is some consolation. It is when I am at my most creative – that I can create reconciliation – even after the way that we have been treated! My heart consoles me – or rather my mind, beguiled by drink, convinces me that you and I are together, perhaps not physically but spiritually.

Looking at the moon in the east hanging over the horizon I imagine that you could see it too. It is an object that we can both see. Our eyes are linked in that they can both regard its cold dispassionate light far above. Don’t you think, amor, that it links us? Perhaps physical union is a mere illusion. We have been physically together, but now our link is spiritual. The moon links us tonight. I imagine you like me – looking at its yellow face – perhaps writing in your diary, writing words similar to the ones I write now. Distance is an illusion.

But later, I lose this contentment - late at night, long before the dawn. It’s a time of complete darkness. Even my single pathetic window where I sit each night lets no light in. Starlight is weak and the moon goes so high that its beams don’t shine in. I’m left in darkness. I wake from equivocal dreams and my imagination – my great imagination - turns in on itself. The room becomes a cell, a prison – and my own mind tortures me. Why at this time of night – in the small hours, the shallow slope out of the night – is my mind so destructive, so full of dread?

Always the dogs are barking then. Dogs barking nearby in the village, down by the river. But dogs bark far away in the farms in the hills. I feel that I can hear dogs barking in the Apennines, over all of the Po valley. I hate the sound. The loneliest sound in the world - dogs barking in the darkness before dawn.

In those hours, all ideas of a spiritual bond are gone. I cannot see how the moon joined us. There is no plausibility in this idea. I simply know that you are gone, and I don’t know where you are. I will never see you again. I don’t know what you think of me. Where are you? All my belief has gone in the darkness; the sound of dogs barking has taken it away. Sadness whispers me to sleep until I wake.

Mrs Van Dijk straightened her back. It had been difficult to translate this part. It was written even more untidily than usual and the language was less like Latin or had fewer standard Latin words. She wondered if the words could be some kind of dialect of Latin or even old Italian – a dialect of Tuscany, of Firenze. The paper was dirtier too – stained and faded. She felt that she’d read something true though – perhaps it had been written in one of those long dark times before dawn when the dogs were barking? Perhaps it was written after he had drunk wine. Perhaps the stains in the paper were from wine? But to her it felt authentic, and that she had read something from a real person. Though he might have died four hundred years before, she recognised him as a human being. It had been moving to read it, sad even. He’d been so sure of his amor – of its ability to endure – of its spirituality. Then so full of doubt! And just a few hours later! Why had he been separated from her? Had she been a worker in the same painter’s studio in Firenze? Mrs Van Dijk wondered about reading a little ahead – looking at one of the right hand pages toward the end of the book - to read and find out. But no! She thought that understanding the story would need patience. Besides it was still very difficult to translate because it would change from Latin into dialect so suddenly. She needed to keep reading. The more she read, the more she understood.

She laid the book down between the two candles and looked outside. It was nearly lunchtime and the rain was spitting on the window. She expected Howard back. She went to the fire to put the kettle on for tea.

**********************************

‘More acorns!’

He’d put his hat upside down on the table and it was full of acorns. He’d collected even more!

‘I found them. It was strange, Lotte. I’d cut the big branch and I was lifting it up to move it away from the tree and then hundreds of acorns started to pour out – from a junction between two branches. I thought it was water pouring out at first. There were hundreds’

‘I’m glad you didn’t bring them all!’

She picked some out of the hat, and they were dark, almost black and hard and dry. They were like warm pebbles.

‘These are old – probably not this year’s’

‘Look also’

He delicately picked out a short black feather. It was so black that it looked blue-black.

‘Crow’, he said. ‘Or raven. There were a lot of black feathers mixed with the acorns.’

‘So it’s a cache, a horde?’

‘I think so. But I’ve never seen so many! There are smaller darker acorns too, and other berries and seeds.’

‘Take off your coat Howard – you’re wet.’ She looked past him at the window. The light was already gloomy and the air was cool by the door. ‘Shut the door properly too. It’s going to rain even more this afternoon. You came home at the right time’

He sat down heavily. ‘I’ll get the wood tomorrow. But I never expected to find such a big horde. It might have been added to for years. Maybe one bird, maybe others’

‘Did you see a crow?’

‘No Lotte. I don’t like them anyway. They always seem ugly and dark. Their ugly calls....’ He’d always disliked crows, and in English rural mythology crows were sometimes seen as a symbol of death -  a shambling untidy symbol. It was said that if a crow followed you then you would shortly die. The black shape in the sky was a symbol of oblivion. Maybe he was affected by that. But he didn’t like their horrible calls on cold mornings, whether they were a symbol of death or not.

He asked about the book: ‘Did you read anything good? I was thinking about it this morning’

She went to the stove and took out a pie and potatoes. She’d stopped reading because it had saddened her – the hopelessness of the writer. But also she was half reassured by his faith in love.

‘I wish I knew his name’ she said sighing. ‘Also the part I read this morning was sad. He’s really in love but seems to have been permanently separated from her. I found it sad’

‘You’ve only been reading the right hand pages? The love story?’

‘Yes’

‘Let’s read the other side, this afternoon. We can’t go anywhere today’

‘Howard’ she said in a tone that showed she was changing the subject, ‘this morning I received a letter about the book, in the post, from the Amsterdam publisher, Mr Huygens. I have a small royalty payment. Enough to buy paper, ink and pencils. They also say that there is another book that they would like me to write. I might have to travel to Amsterdam again. Will you come – if I have to go?’

‘Of course’

She nodded satisfied. ‘And tomorrow – will you come to Nottingham to buy paper? We’ll go in the morning’

She put food on the plates and steam billowed over the table.

After lunch Mrs Van Dijk read the first of the left hand pages:

My Patron Don Flavio Corbera came with me and the serving boy into the valley this morning. The serving boy, Tomasino, led a donkey with baskets on its back – two big baskets. I asked the Don what the baskets were for and he – in his strange obscure way – simply winked and would not say.

The path was easy to follow, leading from the bridge a little way north. At this time of year the river is shallow, running in some places, faintly brown, the colour of brandy - but in others still, standing in dark pools. There were stranded fish, terrapins and frogs. Birds called in the long grass.

The Don remained silent leading us through thick grass. He’s old with a heavy face with pendulous jowls. His teeth are large and yellow, but he smiles a lot. Though he teases me I know that he has my welfare at heart, and perhaps he even saved me from death. My name is Alfredo in this place – in this valley, in this village – but that is not my real name. Only the Don and I know my real name and I will never reveal it in this notebook.

The Don is not a religious man, but he lives in a religious part of the country, amongst the farms. Here he is a figurehead of religion who is required to show religious guidance. Though I have been here only a few days, I believe that he finds this a strain and that he is a free thinker, not bound by religious dogma. A man of imagination. Which is perhaps why he has brought me here. No  - it is not just to give me sanctuary. He wants me here for a reason! I felt as I followed the Patron into the valley, that I would shortly find out why.

**********************************

I watched Don Corbera descending through the long grass pushing aside bushes. He was like a boy playing! Gone were his responsibilities. Tomasino and I followed him, the servant leading the donkey. Then we couldn’t see the Don; only hear his delighted laughter and splashing. Was he swimming?

There was a steep bank in the rocky bed of the river - and below - the Patron was standing barefoot in a pool. He smiled up to see us, his jowly face lit by the water’s reflection. He moved his feet around, splashing water up onto his expensive robe. He chuckled to himself and looked down at his feet.

‘It’s good to play sometimes’ he called. The servant Tomasino looked at me, raising his eyebrows. He must have seen the master behave like this before. I didn’t know what to make of it.

‘Alfredo’ he called, using my alias. ‘Come down and wet your feet – and look at the wonders of nature!’

He splashed his feet again. Tomasino helped the donkey walk down the bank, the empty baskets on the beast’s back kept getting caught in the bushes. I followed and stood at the edge of the pond. The Don pointed around at the banks of the pool which were quite low, muddy and grey, speckled with white marks.

‘Pietre figurate’ shouted the Don. ‘See them! A wonder of nature! Bring the beast!’ he shouted at Tomasino who led the reluctant animal into the dark water.

The Don – who was shaking with excitement - took my arm and led me to the bank. The smell was all of grass and stagnant water. I could smell the muddy bank as well, a stony damp smell. The shells – he called them ‘pietre figurate’  - were everywhere - some large – like white pieces of Chinese porcelain pushing out of the mud. Some were opened out like fans, some smaller curved and compact like the fists of small children. Most were shells with two halves. I reached out to touch one and pull it from the mud and found it was bound into the mud so hard that it was immobile. I pulled at the cool white shell and felt its sharpness under my fingers but the mud would not yield the shell. Scraping with my nails I found that the mud was as hard as rock – as hard as the stone of the Apennines!

‘Look around young Alfredo. Forget your troubles and live the life of the mind! This is a greater puzzle than anything anyone has ever given you!’ said the Patron. He smiled wide and patted the rump of the donkey.

‘Did you bring the tools – the hammer? The spade? Tomasino?’

‘Yes Patron’ said the servant quietly. One of the baskets had two hammers inside and a hard chisel.

The Don took a hammer and looked lovingly at its shiny metal head. I had no idea what he wanted to do, but I turned my gaze on the shells again. There were many types, somehow embedded in the mud – in the stone. Thousands upon thousands of them. Of course I had seen shells like these before. But those were living animals, along the Adriatic coast and in Liguria, where I travelled as a boy. But these were like real living things. Living animals that had been swallowed by the stone. I thought at first that it was some monstrous trick of the Patron. To trick me! But it could not be. It was too elaborate. It was too much even for the mighty Don Corbera of Castell’Arquato!

I had not succeeded even in liberating one of the shells from the enveloping stone. Only after a few minutes of slow pulling on one of the smaller shells-  a sturdy thick one with a bulbous shape like a walnut – did I succeed in pulling it free. It sat, liberated, in the palm of my hand, dusted with mud and sand. I half expected it to roll away into the pond and continue its life in the brown waters of the river. But it was still – cold and hard as stone. Dead.

Looking down at the shell, my imagination was at last engaged and I began to think. Perhaps my travails of the night, the loneliness of the barking dogs would be less from now on?

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk put the slim book down. She puzzled over the phrase pietre figurate, which had appeared several times. It was something like ‘figured stones’. She had imagined that it meant stones that had pictures on them, but couldn’t understand this at all. The mood of the writing had changed from the poignant and melancholy passages that seemed to have been written late at night to the sound of the hated barking dogs.

It was still early and they were due to go to Nottingham but now she was intrigued. If she didn’t understand what this strange phrase meant, she thought that the whole book would be incomprehensible – especially because the Don - Don Corbera – was so excited by these stones in the river bank.

Howard was getting his boots and coat. She was loathe to leave the book now. She reluctantly pushed it to the centre of the table and stood up to go. Her eyes strayed to the window sill where Howard’s stones and acorns lay. In the centre was a small Gryphaea fossil – the ‘Devil’s toenail’ of the muddy fields of the Vale. Then she knew that pietre figurate meant fossils.

So perhaps the book was about fossils.

Howard and Mrs Van Dijk stepped into the muddy lane from the cottage. The rain was falling steadily from a grey sky that looked like it began just above the houses. Candles burned in a few of the cottages, and it was quite dark, but it was not early. There were puddles by the village gate.

‘I think it will stop raining later’, said Mrs Van Dijk looking up, narrowing her eyes. She felt the sprinkle of rain on her face. ‘Which way?’

‘Let’s go like you said – on the paths to the river. We can cross in the boat. It’s quieter. I don’t want to walk along the lane, or go in a coach. I know paths in the short grass so we won’t get our feet wet!’

Howard liked the countryside on mornings like this one. He thought that the land had a kind of glow that you didn’t see in brighter light, a glow that came from the plants themselves. When they’d come from the cottage, their eyes used to candle light, they could not see it. It would take a little while for their eyes to adjust to the softer light of the woods and the leaves. The hawthorn berries, the blackberries, seemed to him to shine on these mornings. The light from the woods was muted green.

They walked between a tall hedge and a fallow field of long untidy grass. There were three fields like this and then the long slope to the river began. On the crest of the slope, there would be a fine view of the wide river valley and the river curling away to the north and then turning up against the sandstone cliffs of Nottingham. Howard always looked forward to this view. On clear spring days you would be able to see far west, to hills.

They came to the crest after a little while, getting used to the steady patter of rain on their shoulders. But the view was clouded and grey; in the distance beyond the river a massive veil of cloud and rain had dropped down into the fields and woods, obscuring all the west.

‘Is it coming this way?’ said Mrs Van Dijk turning to him. Her face was lit by the grey of the west but there was a rosy glow from the cold.

He smiled despite the rain.

‘If we hurry we can get down to the river in ten minutes, and it will only be a little while longer to the town. So we might miss the worst of the rain. It’s much quicker than going on the main road’

**********************************

Today my amor, I went with my Patron and a servant down to the river to collect fossils. It was intriguing. My Patron calls me Alfredo and he is the only person in this remote place that knows my real name, and the circumstances of my life. He seems a kindly man, if gruff and direct. I feel that he is under some kind of strain, as I am. But his worry is not the same as mine. He tries to help me saying that if I involve my mind in the problem of the fossils (I have not seen a problem so far) - then I will stop missing my amor. He believes that in using my mind, my imagination, I’ll no longer miss you. I know that he is trying to help me, but the thoughtless things he says are almost callous. It seems that he’s saying that if I stay away from you, and if my mind is occupied, I will forget you, and that you will forget me. In saying this he reveals his cynicism – that love is temporary and fades quickly. He has no faith in love. Of course he is old and I am young. Perhaps I will feel the same when I am his age. But I don’t want to reach his age and accept that love is an illusion, I would rather be dead. I would rather throw myself from the window before me.

It is dark again, deep in the night. After I had got back carrying sacks of fossils, I sat here at the window for a while watching the sun go down over the roofs, lighting the northern high hills of the Apennines. I felt the contentment of tiredness, and looking over the roofs I could imagine that you were there, somewhere to the north, perhaps also seeing the sun set. All at once I heard some voices calling from the narrow lane below – calling ‘Alfredo’. I still have not got used to my alias and so I ignored the calls at first but then looked down to see a group of children. ‘Alfredo – come down and talk to us – show us the fossils you’ve collected!’ They looked up at me their brown eyes blinking. I wonder how they knew my name? Perhaps the Patron has told them that there is a visitor. They’ve seen me carrying paper and canvas up the steep streets, and paint brushes.

Tonight I prepared paper and canvas. My main job is to draw the fossils that I and the Patron find – to make a catalogue. But rather than start to draw the shells that I arranged on the wood floor by my bed I was suddenly taken by the idea of seeing you again. By drawing you! I have no picture but the bright image that stays in my mind – which is so vivid at night. And so rather than draw the dusty shells I drew you from my memory, with a rough piece of charcoal. It was a beautiful thing to do, for in recalling your face, your shoulders, I seemed to conjure your presence in my room. But I could not stop there. I drew for hours getting closer to what I feel is your essence, refining the picture. Around the eyes – your dark eyes – I smudged the charcoal with my finger as if I was drying your tears. But the smudged charcoal made a soft impression, like the skin under your eyes, like real life. Perhaps I will end up like Pygmalion making a woman for himself from marble, and then falling in love with cold marble. But of course you and I are different!

My amor – it has been easier tonight - but I know that the dark time is later in the night, in the darkest hour before the dawn, when the dogs bark across hillsides and the sounds echo on the hard stones of this castle. 

**********************************

Nottingham was busy, even in the rain. The big storm that Howard and Mrs Van Dijk had seen in the west had not held off but had quickly converged in the town just as they had arrived, so that the steep cobbled streets above the river ran with water and the open drains gushed and overflowed. Market traders began to pack away their tables and wares and stepped back to shelter under the awnings of the permanent shops. The streets and small squares suddenly emptied and farmers and agricultural workers who had come for the market went to find drink in the pubs. They’d come out to resume buying their supplies – candles, matches, knives, farm tools – when the rain stopped.

They climbed in the rain to one of the small squares where shops sold things for writing, and books. There were very few of these shops in England and only because Nottingham had law courts and a good number of lawyers did it have shops of this kind. The square was empty of people. One of the shops had a candle in the window. A bookshelf stood outside but it was empty, perhaps emptied by the shopkeeper when the rain had started.

‘Do you want to come in?’ she asked.

‘Yes. You’re buying paper?’

‘I need a lot’ she sighed, remembering the amount of work she had to do on her translation for the lawyers. She thought she would rather just read the strange book from Lincoln and walk the fields with Howard. She found the tyranny of working under headings and subheadings very claustrophobic. Endless lists of ships’ equipment.

‘Are there books in there?’ Howard said. He already felt a little self-conscious because of his agricultural appearance – his boots and dirty jacket – his wild hair. He thought he would take off his oilskin outside and hang it on the bookshelf. Usually lawyers went in these places – not farm workers.

‘Yes. Don’t worry Howard you look fine. I’ll spend so much in the shop that the shopkeeper won’t dare to say anything!’

The rain began to thunder down in the square bouncing off the cobbles and making explosions in the puddles, so they pushed through the rickety doorway and heard the bell ring deep inside the dark shop.

Howard found a strange book about anatomy which was meant for students studying to be doctors. It had beautiful drawings in dark sepia colour of the bones and muscles of the hand and foot. One page had a strange diagram that at first looked frightening – of an eyeball seeming to fly out from an empty eye socket. He looked closely and realised that it was a way of showing how the eye fitted into the socket, and what parts were connected between the eye and the brain.

He stood fascinated, wondering if he could afford to buy the book. Mrs Van Dijk was far at the back of the shop talking to the shop owner about the price of paper.

The book was five shillings. It had been published in London. On the inside front cover were the words ‘Diverse lessons in the anatomy of the human being’ by Roger Parfitt, Surgeon of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. He held it in his hands feeling its weight and turned to look at the back cover, the heavy leather. Perhaps he would buy it. He looked at the back pages which showed pictures of the lungs, and then a strange picture at the very back with a man with outstretched arms and legs inside a circle so that the tips of his fingers and his toes just touched the circle. It was very odd because the man seemed to have four arms and four legs. It was only when he looked closely that he realised that the drawing just showed a man with the different positions that he could hold his arms and legs in. It seemed to show how a man could move. Under the picture were the words: The Vitruvian Man.

He thought he would buy the book. Even if he couldn’t understand it all, the illustrations were beautiful. It would be nice to look through the book in the evening by the fire, while Mrs Van Dijk read her book about the fossils.

**********************************

We left early, this time without the Patron. Tomasino called to my window not long after dawn. I heard the donkey’s hoofs scraping on the cobbles. As we descended the lane to the square, Tomasino explained that Don Corbera had had to ride out to some part of his estate to settle a dispute. But we were to work even when he was away. He would not be back for two days or more.

This morning it was hot, much hotter than the previous days. The sound of crickets and grasshoppers made the air seem to whistle with heat, like water in a kettle. Down by the pools, the air was humid with the smell of mud. The frogs rested lazily on stones and fish darted when we put our feet in the water. The fossils were brighter than before because the mud of the banks was drying out. There were more to see – grey shells like oysters clustered together in masses. Some of the shells were iridescent and bright like mother of pearl. But Tomasino had been instructed to take me further down the river. We could not walk on the banks because they were choked with thick trees and bushes, and so we had to follow the river, walking over banks of white gravel and into one pool after another.

The servant boy spoke very little and I sometimes got the impression that he disapproved either of me or of the work that I’d been given to do. Could he know who I am? I don’t think so. Perhaps it is just the reaction of a country boy to an outsider.

The banks of the stream got higher and the pools longer and deeper so that at times we had to wade thigh-deep in water. The banks were harder, more stony – sometimes so stony that they appeared like stacks of cobbles, like the surface of the cobbled streets of Castell’Arquato, but vertical. It was cool between the cobbled banks, our legs in the muddy water.

Tomasino pulled the donkey to a dark bank at the foot of which was bright sand and a pile of drifted wood, perhaps stranded there after a storm. He pointed to the grey clay and said that I was to look here for special specimens. The Patron had ordered this. Tomasino gestured loosely toward the lower part at a root that appeared to issue forth from the base of the clay layer and then turn back in.

The servant boy tied the donkey to a branch and then sat in the sand, his back to the bank. It was clearly my job to excavate. When the Don was not present the boy was much less respectful, if not insolent. But I was too fascinated to care and went to my knees feeling the warm sand, to see the strange structure up close. Very quickly I saw what the Don had wanted me to see. He had been there before because part of the curved structure had been scraped to reveal a whitish surface that was hard to the touch. The object was partly dug out so that a large part of its curve was visible. There was a break in it close to where it plunged back into the hard mud and in the cut surface was a strange concentric structure, like the rings of a tree. But this was no tree. Its diameter was perhaps twice a man’s arm, and it was cold and hard to the touch. It was not wood – and the white colour? Its diameter seemed to dwindle quickly along its curve which was not like the trunk of a tree.

I sat back. It was a great shock! I tried to think clearly because my eyes were telling me something impossible. The shape of the object suggested one thing to me: a terrible, mythical animal that was known once in Italy long ago, hundreds of years ago - that had been ridden by Hannibal across the mountains. Its tusk lay there in mud that was as hard as rock.

**********************************

‘He found the tusk of an elephant?’ Howard said, glancing up from his book on anatomy. ‘How could he?’

Mrs Van Dijk smiled, looking up from her more flimsy book. Her eyes seemed bright in the firelight. It was already late; even though they’d got back from Nottingham well after dark they had both wanted to look at their books, and so they were sat either side of the fire like two scholars in a library. Howard was not really reading, but looking through the extraordinary drawings in the book that he had paid five shillings for. He was listening intently to Mrs Van Dijk’s translation which had become more and more fluent as she learned the ‘right to left’ style. The rain still roared outside. They had been lucky to get a lift in a farmer’s covered wagon all the way to the crossroads a mile from Earls Court and had missed the worst of the rain on the walk back to the village.

Mrs Van Dijk nodded, turning her attention back to the book: ‘an elephant! In Italy!’

‘Could they have been right?’

‘I don’t know. Would they have known what an elephant really looked like then? The date was 1478. Are you enjoying your book?’ she said, changing the subject.

‘I’m not reading much. Some is too difficult; some is in German. There’s something here about right-handed and left-handedness. How the muscles are more developed in your right hand if you are right-handed. It also says that most people are right-handed and that left-handed people are unusual – unorthodox and something else that I don’t understand. It says here that left-handedness should be discouraged from birth, that children who show signs of left-handedness should be taught to write with the right hand, and...’ he read from the book, ‘...do all other things with the right hand’

‘I heard also - that children who were left-handed were taught to be right-handed, and that sometimes this affected them badly, because it wasn’t natural for them’

‘...and your writer...he wrote from right to left’, Howard nodded at the ancient book in Mrs Van Dijk’s hands.

‘You think he was left-handed?’

Howard nodded and went back to his book, feeling the soles of his boots getting hot in the fire.

**********************************

Would the rain never end? Every day there was more. The dry hard ground of autumn, with its drift of feathers and leaves, its dry cover of brittle acorns, was gone. The grass, blonde and wiry in the dry days, was now soft and brown, wet on Howard’s boots. He trudged up the low slope back to the oaks, to cut more wood and collect more acorns.

It was early. He and Mrs Van Dijk had read their books until late: he looking through the pages of anatomical drawings idly; she reading episodically as she translated the book by the unknown Italian lover and painter. The rain had poured as they read and then beat on the thatch all night above them as they slept. The wood from the fallen oak would slowly get wetter and more difficult to cut. As wood for furniture, it would be ruined if it was left in the rain too long.

So he had come out. But he was already wet. Rather than cross a rather exposed field he stood for a while under a big willow tree, watching the lemon-yellow leaves flutter under the bombardment of the rain. Across the field he saw a fox pick slowly through the stalks of harvested wheat. Its greyish red fur was bright with water droplets. It delicately moved, seemingly unaffected by the deluge all around it, pricking its nose at grass and soil. Howard knew that the fox hadn’t seen him, and he would be able to watch its precise movements without being noticed, perhaps because of the rain. The fox couldn’t hear or smell him.

But he couldn’t stay forever and so dipped under the branch and back into the rain walking along the path lifting his oilskin around his neck so that water didn’t flow down his back. The fox saw him and ran off to the far side of the field.

Up on the low slopes the oaks looked remote. They were almost leafless already – from the force of the wind. They looked like the masts of ships packed close together in a harbour. The last oak with the broken trunk swayed more in the wind. It might lose another of its big branches, he thought. It was more exposed than the others. The wood that he’d cut in a neat pile was still quite dry under the main trunk and the biggest pieces were protected by thick bark. He could collect them tomorrow when he would borrow the horse. In between the branches on the wet ground were the hundreds of acorns that had fallen from the horde, the unknown crow’s collection. They shone, small, like currants or sweet black fruits, scattered over the ground, wet with the rain. There were hundreds. He bent to collect as many as he could in a white cloth bag, also picking some of the new ones that had fallen this season. He hoped that the pigs would eat the old acorns too.

They were like fossils he thought. But not so old, not so changed from the original.

An elephant’s tusk in some mud! Could it have been one of Hannibal’s elephants? Mrs Van Dijk had told him of the attack by the wild barbarian Hannibal who came from the north of Africa and led elephants over the Alps. It would have been nice to see a picture of the tusk that Alfredo had found. Alfredo wasn’t his real name but they would probably never find the man’s real name, so they should call him that. Alfredo was an artist – that was why he had been employed by his Patron. Where were the pictures that Alfredo had painted? Where was the picture of the tusk?

He filled the bag with acorns as he thought about the elephant, and forgot temporarily about the rain pounding on his back. Crows circled above his bowed body in the rain.

**********************************

This evening we returned with the tusk, Tomasino and I. It took almost all day to dig the thing out. The mud around was hard – like rock. Like the rock of the mountains. The tusk was huge, curled in a broad crescent but broken at the end, so its full length was not preserved.

I left the tusk lying on the wood floor beside my stool by the window. The night was coming and feeble candle light illuminated the rooms of the houses in the steep cobbled street. The crickets whispered. A note from the Patron lay under the door to my poor room. He said that he had already returned from his visit to the outer parts of his estate and he invited me to eat with him.

And so I left the tusk and my notebook and went to climb the last part of the cobbled street to his palace.

I had never before been inside the inner sanctum of the Patron. He has a reputation in this region of being an intellectual, a leader, a man of thought. His corridors were dark with wood, and empty. The Patron has no wife, nor many servants and so his many rooms are quiet. A cook makes his food each evening. I am told that he spends each night studying and reading – ancient Latin and Greek texts, the poetry of Homer and Ovid. I found him in a large room with a long table and gallery of high windows looking out on the town below, even on the guesthouse where I live, then the fields of the Po plain below; then the mountains of the Apennines. But in the dark they were but shadows.

Wine was on the table and two places were laid. The Patron greeted me gravely, shaking my hand and nodding slowly. He already knew that we had dug out the tusk. His eyes glittered with the excitement of his discovery, for he’d known about the tusk before.

But he wanted to ask me. The question burned in him. ‘Alfredo – what is your conclusion?’

I sat and accepted a glass of heavy wine. His eyes glittered ever more waiting for my answer. I had not examined the tusk very closely. I knew only that it was a tusk and therefore must have come from an almost mythical beast: The elephant.

I told him what I thought, and the great man sat heavily on the chair. He looked triumphant but tired at the same time, relieved to find that I thought the same as him. He began to talk of religion, of the beliefs of the church, of his responsibilities as a spiritual guide to the people of Castell‘Arquato. I didn’t understand at first, but as the food was brought in by a silent woman, and as we began to eat, I began to see his predicament.

I am a religious man only in the sense that I was brought up to fear God. Though my conduct has been against the rules of man and nature, I took solace in the fact that God has never struck me down, and that despite my sins I have not been punished. This I took as evidence of the forgiving nature of God. I had done wrong but not been punished by God – only by man. And so I was a believer – in my early years.

The Patron spoke of his responsibilities - and a few times – as the wine softened him – he used my real name, which I found made me greatly happy.

But his responsibilities weighed him down because he had  - and at this point his voice lowered so as almost to be inaudible  - begun to doubt the existence of God.

I sat with the wine glass half way to my mouth as I heard these words. They were almost unbelievable – coming from a man of his seniority, his background – steeped in the traditions of Catholicism and of the countryside. It seemed even to shock him - the sound of the words-  and he looked at me for a long time, his watery eyes blinking. Perhaps he regretted what he had said? I began to believe that I was the first living person that he had confessed this to. There was something about the tension in the Patron that made me think this. He had wished to confess this idea to a fellow intellectual: someone that would listen to him objectively – and not overreact.

But  - Dear Diary – I nearly did overreact. I thought for a moment that he had come to confuse me – knowing my doubtful past. Perhaps he sought to trick me or take advantage of me. But no! Tears appeared in the Patron’s eyes; his face softened into a smile. He wanted my opinion, and he began to explain his reasoning. The tusk was part of it - but there were many things down in the river valley in the mud – other fossils – and they simply spoke of another kind of belief.

**********************************

Howard walked slowly down the path between a hedge and a fallow field of yellowing grass, feeling the weight of logs he carried over his shoulder and the bag of acorns around his neck. He had decided to bring some of the wood down to the cottage and collect the rest – the really big pieces – the next day. The big pieces were still dry, with their thick covering of bark, and they would keep until the next day, even in heavy rain. He’d store them in the cottage or take them to a farmer who worked as a carpenter sometimes. The wood was good enough for furniture – and oak furniture was very highly prized in the Vale at that time.

But the smaller pieces were so heavy, and he was already quite wet. It hadn’t taken long for the rain to soak through his jacket and down his neck. He felt cold and uncomfortable and the path was slippery in places. The sky ahead was an angry boiling grey with the lower levels of the blanket clouds were all shredded into pieces by the rain. The shreds were like cloudy ghosts hanging over the slopes of the escarpment up ahead. His feet squelched in the mud of the path.

He had to stop at the bottom of the slope knowing that there was another two miles to walk. He sat disconsolately on a tuft of grass feeling the damp penetrate his trousers, not bothering to take off the harness in which he carried the logs. He felt like a donkey, a beast of burden. He thought for a second about the painter, Alfredo, and his job to draw and record the fossils of the castle village in Italy. He couldn’t remember its name. It was so interesting. Alfredo was using a special talent – to record those strange things. But here was he, a woodsman, sitting in the damp grass with logs tied about him like a donkey. He didn’t even have a horse to help him carry the wood. He felt sorry for himself, but shaking his head he slowly stood up, thinking of the warmth of the cottage. He would have a horse tomorrow, after all - and he would hear more of the story of the castle village that night. Perhaps he’d read his book on anatomy too.

He balanced himself and began the slow walk.

In a large tree, strangely devoid of leaves, he saw a pair of crows regarding him frankly. They were a little above head height, their strange eyes flashing. Their feathers were slick and black with the rain. He stopped for a second to look at them and they stared back unmoving.

He shook his head and walked onward under the outstretched branch, aware of the crows’ presence above him, and then along a path close to a dense copse of silver birch trees. Then he followed the path diagonally across a muddy field of sparse stems of cut wheat, under an increasingly angry sky.

It was as he crossed - annoyed by the heavy mud attached to his boots - that he felt the presence of something in the air behind him. It was like he could feel a shadow cast, but couldn’t actually see a shadow. Then there was a sound like wind, and a flapping sound – like washing flapping while it dries in the wind. He stopped alarmed and looked up and saw a flash, like a black cloth flashing across his line of sight. He turned around, looking back along the path, but couldn’t see anything. He looked up and saw against a bright grey sky, two shapes, untidy black shapes; like blowing pieces of black cloth circling above him. He couldn’t see at first, but then saw with unease that the crows were following him, flying behind like deep shadows.

Howard said nothing when he arrived at the cottage. It was almost dark even though it was early afternoon. The crows had flown off when Howard had reached the edge of the field, and he’d seen nothing of them. He was worried, because a superstition of the Vale said that crows and ravens followed a doomed man, a soon-to-die man. But they’d flown off somewhere, or at least he wasn’t able to see them as he’d walked into the village.

He unloaded the wood by the door. Mrs Van Dijk sat with a candle reading the book. She smiled and stretched like a cat. It was very warm in the room.

‘How’s the book?’

‘Howard’ she said. ‘Can you do something? The paper I bought yesterday...can you take some of it – about thirty sheets....I know this sounds mad, but will you put it in some water, in a bucket of dirty water? Just some water with mud in it. Soak it a bit and then take it out and lay it by the fire – on the floor by the fire – so that it dries out? Build the fire up...’

‘But....’

‘I know it’s a bit crazy – but will you do it?’

‘Of course Lotte’

‘Don’t ask me, Howard’ she said, waving his unsaid question away.

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk read the last part of the story to Howard while he took off his damp shirt and warmed himself by the fire. Her voice rose at the end, at the last sentence ‘…there were many things down in the river valley in the mud – other fossils – and they simply spoke of another kind of belief...’

Howard was standing only in his trousers and didn’t look very dignified, trying to warm his knees. He looked over at Mrs Van Dijk.

‘What does he mean?’

‘I don’t know Howard. This part stops and then there is only the love story, the letters. It seems that the dinner with the Patron only made Alfredo more lonely for his woman friend...all the talk of philosophy and belief. This part is very sad’

She held out the page. Still the same dense writing.

‘Then after two blank pages, Alfredo describes how the Patron had collected shells from beaches in Liguria  - while he’d been away on his estate– and showed them to him. He was given the living shells and told to compare them and then draw them with the fossil shells from the mud banks of the river in Castell’Arquato. Alfredo writes about it. It seems that the shells are exactly the same – from the beach – from the sea - and the ones in the mud from the banks of the river. Then there is a discussion of a huge fossil, something unnamed. In the river bank’

‘The elephant tusk?’

‘No. Something much bigger and stranger. It’s something Alfredo hasn’t seen yet. Then there’s a discussion - a little bit boring - where Alfredo says that if there are sea shells in a hill valley a hundred leagues from the sea, then the sea must once have flooded the land’

‘Noah’s flood? It’s what the Bible says...’

‘Yes  - I didn’t understand that either. It seems that the fossils support the idea of the Bible – of Noah’s flood – so that fish swam in a sea that had flooded the land’

Howard was now dry. He went to find a dry shirt, and Mrs Van Dijk sat down again to read more. She had completely forgotten her other translation and had become very curious about what the Patron had proclaimed so strongly. After all it could be a reason why the book was considered so dangerous.

Howard went outside to the back yard to take a bucket. Would it be better to soak the paper inside or outside? This was one of the strangest things that Mrs Van Dijk had ever asked him to do. He thought that she perhaps wanted him to colour the paper – perhaps for some new book. But he also knew that the paper would lose its smooth finish and become ridged and uneven – when it dried out. But he was too tired after the long walk with the heavy wood to ask so he went outside. Some of the clay soil in the garden coloured the water in the bucket orange-brown. It looked like strong, milky tea. Howard called her to come and look. He was still not sure about submerging paper in the water. After all, he’d seen how much the paper had cost to buy.  But when she came out – still clutching the old Italian book - she nodded and told him to carry on. He took sheets of the paper and plunged it into the cold water.

**********************************

My Amor, tonight I dined with the Patron who was in a state of high excitement, describing his idea of the history of the world. He believes that he and I can collect evidence to show that the history of the world is wrongly written. In his eyes I saw stimulation and intelligence but also fanaticism. He wants to draw me into his world, and thinks that I will forget all things, my love for you, even my past. He wants me to live the life of the mind. Strangely, this intensity made me miss you more, because I saw how different our lives could be – you and me – if I pursue the course the Patron wants for me. Our similar worlds pulled us together. I fear that different worlds will pull us apart. The Patron wants me to document – with drawings – all the fossils I collect and slowly build a case for his view of history – which is different to that of the church. For example he believes that there was not just one Great Flood but many. And he believes that these are natural – not a punishment of God – not even caused by the will of God.

But I’m being pulled away already – from my thoughts of you. His temptation will not distract me from you, from my memories of you. I think  - though I have been told that I will never see you again – that we will be together. Some time. I don’t believe those things that the Patron said about you – all those bad things. It is part of his plan to turn me away from you. For this I hate him. But I have to shelter here for I am a criminal and my name  - my real name – is known in Firenze and the other cities. If I were found, I would be taken and punished. And so I am beholden to the Patron because whatever I feel about his plans to take me away from you, he has saved me and has given me sanctuary.

And he needs me – for he will never prove his idea without my skill with pencil and with paint. His protestations will not be believed.

Tonight, my heart is finally stilled for the moon is again hanging above the horizon, dwindling to a crescent only, its yellow luminosity replaced with a cold whiteness, the pure whiteness of stars and of nothing. I console myself that though you are far away you can see this too – our lines of sight converge on that celestial shape in the sky all over this dark country.

But later I know the dogs will begin to bark.

**********************************

Howard led the big horse along the path between two hedges trying to see the state of the weather up ahead on the slopes. He’d only need a few hours to tie the big logs up and harness them to the horse. But the horse plodded quite slowly; he was huge, white and grey and shaggy with enormous shaggy hooves. Howard didn’t like leading the horse, because although he was slow and steady, he sometimes moved into the hedge without thinking and pushed Howard into the thorns. The horse was so strong and heavy he hardly noticed. The horse was communally owned, but looked after outside the village in a farm. Howard had had to go very early – before sunrise - to collect him. He’d left Mrs Van Dijk hardly awake, murmuring in her sleep. He wondered if she’d woken yet. He would be back by lunchtime – because he had to return the horse.

There was definitely no sign of the crows. This made him feel much better. He’d not said anything to Mrs Van Dijk about the birds, because he thought it was silly and superstitious to worry. He’d seen them three times – once on a branch, once flying above him, the third time on the fence. Maybe they hadn’t been the same two birds? And crows often came into the village in the autumn looking for scraps of food. There were probably always crows sitting on the fence in the garden.

The story had been interesting. Mrs Van Dijk had read it slowly before they’d gone to bed. She was much more fluent now. At first she’d stopped and started when translating, but now she could read slowly but continuously, as if she were reading a story. She seemed to find the separation of Alfredo and his girlfriend very sad, and the idea of the moon uniting them very nice, somehow consoling. The moon had a special meaning in love – it was always in stories about love. When she’d finished reading, he and Mrs Van Dijk had gone to bed and the moon was high in the sky. They couldn’t see it lying in bed but its light made a square of silver on the floor by the window.

Thinking and dreaming in the early grey light, Howard arrived at the line of oaks without noticing the long walk. He tied the great horse with a long rope to let him graze the wiry blond grass and started to cut the final smaller branches of the fallen trunk and put everything into manageable bundles. He worked slowly, sometimes watching the horse lazily eating the grass. He wondered what the horse thought about. Perhaps he didn’t know that he would shortly have a big load to carry. But he never complained and was very strong. He could easily carry the whole tree – he would be able to drag it in one piece all the way to Earls Court.

But it was hard work for Howard. He had to lift the bundles to the horse’s flank and tie them on. The break – where the big stem had detached from the main trunk of the still-living tree was raw and white. He’d have to cut it back a little to make it heal quicker. He stood for a moment looking at his work when he’d finished loading the horse. It was neat, but the grass under the tree was all white with sawdust and dotted with broken and muddy acorns. He smiled to himself thinking that it was a bit like the job of a butcher – cutting up an animal that had been shot. But instead of blood there was only sawdust. And he had not killed the tree – probably he’d helped it to live longer.

Rain began to dot the grass and he looked into the face of a grey cloud that had come suddenly from the west without him seeing. It was a good time to leave. He would have to be careful not to get to the side of the horse, but stay in front, leading him. After all, if the horse were to crush him against a tree with all the logs it would be serious. Also the slope was steep and the horse needed guidance. The wind was building and gusts blew at their backs, peppered with rain drops, as they left the high oaks.

Down on the plain, Howard relaxed a little. He realised that walking by the horse he could actually feel the huge animal’s heat. He was very warm, and smelt of hay and somehow of summer. What would it be like to walk in front of an elephant – like Hannibal had done? What did elephants smell like – Africa? Were they warm? How had hot-country animals like elephants coped with the snowy Alps? He smiled to himself, imagining himself as a new Hannibal leading a great horse over the mountains down to Earls Court. He resolved to ask Mrs Van Dijk more about the Patron’s ideas about the history of the earth.

*********************************

There was a letter on the table at lunchtime. Mrs Van Dijk was in the kitchen garden at the back. He could see her leaning over - picking leaves of herbs, perhaps leaves of basil.

‘Who is the letter from?’ he called from the living room. Out in the back above the fence, the sky was grey and purple. The wind had stripped almost all the trees of leaves so the branches were like black engraved veins on the cold sky. The wind was boisterously pushing the bushes around. Mrs Van Dijk’s skirt flapped.

He saw her jump, startled. ‘I didn’t know you were there’ she said, but her voice was faint carried off by the wind.

She came in with a handful of leaves – basil and thyme and something else that Howard didn’t recognise. Her face was red with the cold and her hair like a cloud over her face.

She shut the back door behind her and the hiss of the wind was gone.

‘Can you light a candle, Howard? It’s dark when I close the door... The letter’s from the Librarian – I can’t remember his name. It’s rather officious. They are asking already about the book. They want a report very soon. I think he’s coming tomorrow’

‘You have to write something?’

‘No, not write. The librarian’s coming here. I have to tell him’

‘Can I bring some of the wood in? There’s some good oak. I talked to Joe – the carpenter – on the way home. He says he could make a dresser for us – with shelves – a traditional one. There’s enough wood’

‘That would be nice’ she said absently. She put the leaves in a bowl by her cooking.

‘Will you have to read the rest of the story? There’s only a few days...’

‘I’m halfway through. We can read some more tonight’

Howard took off his coat and went outside to pick up the largest pieces of the oak. If he was going to have furniture made, he wouldn’t let it stay out in the rain. It was huge and bulky - piled up it looked like a heavy figure standing in the shadow by the door. Howard had asked the carpenter to come over to the cottage to look at the wood. That afternoon he’d help Joe to cut and prepare it. Then he’d let Joe take over.

As it had every day for a week, the rain came after lunch, and they heard it drumming on the thatch. Puddles in the lane grew and even the trees on the far side of the churchyard became grey and misty in the rain smoke. Howard knew that Joe would not come in this terrible weather. He was glad that he’d brought the wood inside. He was looking forward to seeing some furniture made. It would have to be cut and then left to dry. The wood had only been dead for a while, and you couldn’t make furniture from living wood. But Howard liked the idea of furniture made of a tree that was still living up on the escarpment.

After eating, they sat by the fire. Some water was coming down the chimney – Howard could see a dark stain on the stone. This meant the wind was blowing in a certain direction. The wood crackled and steam puffed up.

‘What was the part about the bad things? Things the Patron had said about Alfredo’s woman?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve not read any further Howard.’ She held the book in her hand, looking into the fire. The light flickered on her cheeks. She lifted it and looked at its cover. She liked the colour – maybe it had been white once – but now the paper was the colour of yellow stone. It was warm and reminded her of the south. Even the writing did – when Alfredo described the walks in the valley of Castell’Arquato – the hissing of insects and the smell of warm water and of clay. The soft sound of river grass turning in the wind. She would miss this book when she’d finished reading it.

She opened the book at the last page she’d read. There were the familiar two pages – on the left the description of the fossil collections, the theories of the Patron; on the right the more personal letters of love. Or rather it was a single long letter of love.

My Amor, tonight I began drawing shells. The Patron wants me to draw both the shells he collected at the sea and some of the fossils. Side by side. To show how they are the same. He says that this shows that the sea must have flooded into this part of Italy - because if there are sea shells then the sea must have been here. It’s clever. He says that there are many layers of these shells with other layers in between. He says this means that there was more than one flood. So, the Bible is wrong! He says this so assertively! He is so sure of himself that he annoys me....’

Howard stirred in his seat. He had been tired and sleepy, nodding at the fire until his mind had told him something.

‘Which side are you reading?’

‘The personal side’ Mrs Van Dijk smiled at her phrase. ‘The right side is always the personal side’

‘But have you noticed? It’s less about love’

She looked at the book turning the page, checking. But he was right. She’d read it so fast that she hadn’t noticed. As the story progressed there was less and less love.

**********************************

Today I finished a very careful drawing of the tusk and shells and took them up to the Patron. It was long after dark, warm and humid. Children were still playing in the cobbled street throwing a ball around. The street is so steep – I’ll never get used to it. I was out of breath when I arrived at the great door, and I had to knock for a long time before I saw light filter from under the wood. The Patron himself opened the door and blinked his eyes at me - not seeing me in the dark at first. He called me by my real name and became suddenly a genial host. It seems to me that he feels alone and isolated in the castle – he expects visitors that he doesn’t want but was happy when he saw me. His ideas – as he slowly unwinds them – are strange, but rational. But to the simple people of this country, they would appear heretical and sacrilegious. And so he is trapped in his castle – a rich man with privilege and a position of leadership. But he does not believe in what he is supposed to say.

As before he led me into the dining room. There was more of the dark wine. It was heavy and almost black – like the velvet of the curtains.

I laid out the drawings. I was pleased with both. A tusk is difficult to draw - because it is so simple – a smooth outer surface and a curve. I asked then, if he wanted the drawing to be idealised, to be more carefully fitted to the page, more decorative. To this the Patron vigorously reacted - he wanted the tusk to be precisely portrayed – with all its imperfections. This he said made the object more believable – more obviously real. Each object, he said, was a part of the discourse, the argument that he put for his theory. If the drawings were not believed, he would not be believed. And the shells. These were more beautiful to draw – their subtle curve – like the curve of a part of a human body – where skin and bone turn, making creamy hollows and mounds.

He gazed for a long time, and I listened to the crickets chirping in the garden far below the window. It was still hot.

‘Here you hear the howl of the wind and the drumming of the rain at night’ said Howard, looking across at Mrs Van Dijk. He could tell that she was tired of winter, and this was why she turned to the book so much. He felt like apologising for the savagery of the weather.

‘I like it here too, Howard.  I like the cottage. I like my life here. It’s small on the outside and big on the inside’

He smiled. He didn’t know what she meant. She turned back to the book.

‘Your work is superb’ said the Patron, at last. ‘The delicacy of the drawings is extraordinary. I’ve never seen pencil drawings like them. It is as if the objects are alive on the page. These shells...it is as if they are organic – like a part of a human body....’

The Patron looked penetratingly at me. He seemed to know what had inspired me, that when I draw or paint, I am inspired by the things I love, and love fills everything that I draw.

He said: ‘Now...’ and he used my real name again. ‘Now – you should forget your weakness. You will not be able to be yourself again. You must forget love - of the physical kind – forever. You cannot love in the way you have before. Not again. That way lies disaster for you. And...’

I waited for him to speak. ‘It would be better for you to channel your feelings into pictures, into your imagination’

I opened my mouth to speak, but he shook his head. He had heard my protestations of love before.

‘You should know that...’

But then he stopped speaking. Perhaps he thought that he would hurt me.

‘I don’t understand what he’s saying. Do you?’ said Howard. He was losing interest. He didn’t understand Alfredo’s relationship. What were the things that couldn’t be said? If he loved her why not just leave the castle and the Patron and go and find her? Go and be with her?

‘I don’t know either – but I should read it. The librarian’s coming in the morning’

She put the book down. The rain had stopped. The darkness was coming.

Howard stretched. He thought of eating an evening meal, bed and sleeping. He looked at the pile of wood by the door and his mind jolted him into remembrance.

‘Oh no’

‘What Howard?’

I left the big saw up on the escarpment. I hooked it over a branch after I’d cut one of the big trunks! Oh no...’

‘Can’t you get it in the morning?’

‘I don’t want to let it get wet, Lotte. It will rust. Someone might see it and it cost a lot of money. I can’t afford another one. I’d better go now. I’ll be back before it’s really dark. We can eat when I get back.’

She looked concerned. She felt uneasy about him going out at night in the wind - a dread of the wind and the heavy sky. The stark trees.

‘Don’t worry. You keep reading. Tell me what you find out’

He took his bag and big coat and went out into the roaring wind.

**********************************

It was only late afternoon but it was almost dark. There was a purple sky in the west and the leafless trees sent black threads across it. He walked quickly between the hedges hearing the wind roar in the upper branches; across the fields the old summer grass was flattened by the rush of air. It wasn’t cold, but he instinctively pulled his coat about him, fastening the collar to keep the wind off his neck. It was light enough to see the path in front, and he could remember the way down so he wouldn’t get lost. If it was dark, from the slope he would see the faint lights of the villages. He would be able to find his way. It was important to get the saw. He oiled it regularly to stop the rust, but a night in the rain wouldn’t be good for it, and any passing walkers or a farmer might take it.

Where the slope started it looked different in the dark. The incline seemed steeper, the hilltop further away. The darkness made everything seem bigger. The purple sky yawned hugely behind, and stars were beginning to show – just little pin pricks overhead. The wind wasn’t as bad as he thought, and the rain was holding off. Out of breath he reached the top and strode through the wiry grass to the first of the oaks. The area under the tree was ghostly white with the sawdust. It looked like snow. If you closed your eyes a little it was as if there had been a fall of snow. He stood under the tree and heard the wind rushing above him and looked down at the Vale below. At one time he had been afraid of the dark and as a child he would never have come to such a place in the dark. But in the wind, he felt triumphant. He had made the distance in only half an hour. The saw was where he had left it, hooked over a branch. He took it, reassured. He looked down again across the plain happy and rather exhilarated, and holding the handle of the saw blade downward, he immediately began to descend.

He felt the rush of wind behind his ears halfway, and then a violent flapping sound. He stopped and looked behind, up the slope, seeing nothing but the lonely path and the bristly trees. He shook his head, but suddenly felt a little frightened. He looked overhead into the blackness seeing a few scattered stars.

There was a bang, like the noise of a door slamming, and he found himself flat on his face, leaning downward in the long grass. His head was stinging. He tried to turn and stand. He’d fallen in an awkward position. He rubbed his head where it stung, feeling something sticky in his hair. He had a headache. But he managed to stand; now dizzy, feeling sick. He looked at his hands in front of his face. One was dark, slimy.

It was blood. He was bleeding from his head, from his scalp. He looked around. Had he fallen? The blood was coming onto his forehead, now in his eyes. He tried to wipe it away and then there was another flapping sound and a rush of air, an untidy flurry of black in front of his eyes -  and a harsh croak – unbelievably loud – right in his ear.

‘Crow’ he said out loud, dropping his head, looking up sideways. There was one high up, turning in a circle, like a black tear in the sky – blacker than the purple. Now it was coming - it looked like it was looping up and down - its wings flapping - then it was on him and he felt its feet, its claws, on his shoulder and then a shove on his neck from the weight of the bird. It nearly knocked him down again. He smelt the sour smell of crow, and two or three feathers fluttered down onto the grass. It seemed peaceful with the falling feathers, but he knew he was not right in the head, not thinking right. He’d been cut badly.

He stood up and almost fell, but his instinct for self-preservation was dominant all of a sudden and he found he was charging down the slope, the blood dripping on his nose. He crashed into the black hedge at the bottom and pressed himself into the rough leaves knowing that the crow couldn’t attack him in that position. But he couldn’t see the crow.  He looked out searching the purple sky for a black shape, but saw nothing. After a while he walked out. The sting in his hair had gone and the blood was no longer flowing. He walked between hedges keeping close to their thick foliage all the way back, and stumbled up the lane in Earls Court, trying to rub the blood from his face.

**********************************

‘The crow scratched your scalp, quite deep. Does it hurt?’

‘A bit. Just a sting. Will it heal alright?

‘Oh yes. But it must have been frightening’

‘It was. I’ve never...’

He felt like crying. It was extraordinary now he thought about it – to be attacked by a crow. He couldn’t understand what had happened. He stared into the fire gloomily and Mrs Van Dijk rinsed the dried blood from her hands and sat down.

‘You’ll be alright, Howard’ she said.

He tried to change the subject. ‘Did you read anymore?’

‘No I thought I’d wait for you. I did something else. I wanted you to hear the last parts’

‘Is there much left?’

‘Ten pages. But the personal part finishes after one more page: here’

She read:

In the night the dogs are barking all over the countryside, all over Italy. Late in the night there is only the sound of dogs barking. Everyone is asleep but me. I am the only person awake in the whole of this country. Perhaps you are awake like me? But I don’t dare think of you now. I feel unhappiness, despair and even betrayal. Do I believe the Patron’s lies? Or do I trust to my feelings, my heart?

The moon has gone and the sky is black or dark grey. I can see the shapes of the hills and stars hanging above, twinkling white and blue and pink.

‘That’s it’ said Mrs Van Dijk, shutting the book.

‘Really? How strange. So there’s no explanation of who he was writing to. Is there no name, nowhere?’

‘Nothing’

She looked into the fire thinking about the twinkling stars. It was an odd way to finish a letter. Rather sad.

‘How is your head?’

‘It’s alright Lotte. Really. It was just a shock. A bird could never really hurt a man. Read the longer part...’

She took the book.

The drawings and paintings accumulated in my room and each evening I took a finished picture that I particularly liked up to the Patron. We would drink the dark wine and discuss the pictures, and he would unravel more of his story, his new history of the world. On the origin of fossils, he was very clear, and rational. There was in the country an idea that the fossil shells lived in the rock, in the stone. That they somehow occupied this strange stone territory, living and breathing underground and so were part of the modern world of life, though they were dead when we saw them. This the Patron established as nonsense, if only because many of the shells that I drew – that had been dug from the stone – had exact living counterparts at the coast. The Patron said: why try to explain fossils in such a complicated way as saying that they lived in the rock – when it was clear that they were simply the remains of a once-living animal that had been covered with sand and had over time turned to stone?

And he was right!

The Patron continued to say that the sand that envelopes the animals - that collects in layers - must get thicker as time goes on. One layer which is above another must be younger. The layer below must be older. If the layer contains a fossil, then the fossil itself must be older, would have died some time before. This was rational - a great explanation. So, the layers were like days of an endless calendar going back. How long? A very long time. Because as the Patron said: there were layers and layers – some with seashells, some with bones of animals or wood of trees. There were many seashell layers – which meant many floods, many inundations. There was no ‘one great flood’. And the animal fossils went from flood to flood – the same appeared time after time – they were not destroyed by floods but rose and continued to walk the land time and time again. The new history of the earth was recorded at Castell’Arquato.

‘There are only five pages left, and this page of drawings...’

Mrs Van Dijk held out the book. There were rough drawings of shells on one page and dense writing in ink around the drawings. Then the last page of writing with the words CRYPT A in the margin.

**********************************

This evening the Patron took me from the dining room through passages and stairwells to a circular storeroom low down in one of the castellated towers. It was cold with only a single narrow opening in the wall. It was deep night and so no light was coming from the opening, but it would not have provided much light anyway. We carried tall candles and their light flickered on the bare stone. The room smelled of the clay of the river valley.

Two narrow tables were laid with large fossils. Some were light grey, almost white, which meant that they must have been collected long ago and had dried in this room, perhaps for years. The Patron had been collecting since a child. These were his most prized fossils.

He stood, holding a candle, while I inspected them. There were huge barrel-shaped and blade-like objects, fragments of bones. The largest were far too heavy to lift. They would have needed a donkey to be brought from the river, they were so big. The upper surface of the barrel-shaped fossils was rough – like the texture of degraded bone.

I asked from where they had come, because I had never seen such objects before, and the Patron replied to say that they came from the other side of the bridge in the village, to the south. I had never been there. It was strange – in my two weeks with the Patron I had never thought that there was anything else to look for. I had never thought that upstream of the bridge, south toward the hills, there was anything of interest.

The Patron watched me, the light from the candle lighting the underside of his face. He said that fossils were much rarer above the bridge, into the hills, and harder to find. They were harder to identify also. These – and he spread his hands to indicate the tables of untidy fossils – had confused and perplexed him for years. He’d never shown them to any knowledgeable person but me. The servants had helped him to carry them up to the castle, but they all said that they were the remains of giant men that roamed the Apennines long before the foundation of Italy. But that was madness.

‘Above the bridge’ said I. ‘That means...’

The patron immediately nodded, knowing the way my mind was going. He said what I was thinking: that these fossils must be older than those downstream of the bridge where the river entered the plain. The Patron said that the clays recorded many floods between these big unidentifiable fossils and the shells above the bridge. Thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years separated them. Perhaps more years. More years than the church would allow.

I looked again at the big cylindrical fossil but I knew that the Patron wanted to go back up to the warm upper levels of the castle. Its shape reminded me of the bones of the back, the central strengthening strut of a single vertebra. But it could not be such – being so large.

The Patron was shivering as we climbed, perhaps from excitement or from the cold stone, but I also detected fear in him – for the first time. He had no idea what these fossils showed and whether they fitted in with his theories or not. And so he kept them in the dark.

He said over his shoulder that we would go to look above the bridge. There was something incredible there, something I wouldn’t believe unless I saw it.

In the dining room, the Patron was more at ease, and he poured more wine for us both. It was late – after midnight- and I was tired, but he wanted to talk more. I could see that he felt relieved in some complex way to show me the big fossils. They didn’t fit into his theory and so they worried him, but they fascinated him at the same time. I told him that I thought one resembled part of a vertebra. He had obviously thought the same – for on the edges of the curved wall of the object had been broken surfaces that looked like the attachments of ribs, just stumps long ago broken off. But the size of the creature that could have such a backbone! He laughed

Then he reached over and patted my hand, laying his hand on mine for more than a normal space of time. He looked rather candidly at me.

‘We have to be careful. People like us. Ideas are dangerous things’, he said.

**********************************

Descending the steep street I began to understand the Patron. It had been the touch on my hand that had alerted me, and his strange penetrating look that seemed to reach into my soul. It explained his concern for me. After my arrest in Firenze - my brief incarceration - there was no one that supported me. He found out about my predicament and sought me out, then offered me sanctuary under an assumed name.

I do not like to think about those days, less so write about them: the ignominy of the interception and accusations, the arrest and carriage through the streets. I was paraded as a deviant and criminal – like a murderer would be. My companion was taken away, and I have not seen him or heard from him since; either because he is still in detention, or because he is no longer able to write or communicate because of the trauma. But then I remember what the Patron said – that he was an opportunist, working sometimes in the studio, making canvas frames, working in the markets, working as a carpenter – a poor boy getting what money he could, by whatever means.

But I cannot believe after all this time, even now, that he was what the Patron said.

Then this evening I felt that the Patron understood some of my problems. Perhaps he had even been in a situation like the one I had suffered. Perhaps as a young man like me – born into privilege – he had fallen into a trap and suffered in similar ways.

Why had I not guessed? The Patron had never been married. He devoted his life to intellectual pursuits; he was convinced of himself as an outsider – as a thinker. But now I thought of him also as an outsider in his way of life – or at least the way of life he could have had.

He says I should devote myself to the mind and think not of love. Our affliction weighs on us but also sets us free.

Mrs Van Dijk put the book down. ‘That’s it. There’s nothing about shells. Or the strange place above the bridge’

Howard stretched his legs toward the fire. While listening he had become more and more horizontal in the chair, because his back was tender from lifting heavy wood. He liked his back to be straight when it hurt, but didn’t want to go to bed while the story seemed to be so important. But he’d not understood very much at all. It was more like a code than a story. It seemed that the Patron had changed. Who was the ‘companion’? What was the Patron saying about him?

‘No wonder the book was hidden,’ said Mrs Van Dijk. ‘All the work – the paintings of the shells and the fossils - it’s all gone. Nothing remains. It was probably all destroyed. But this book somehow survived’

‘Why? I mean why destroy the pictures?’

‘Because it criticised the story told by the Bible- or offered another story... But also because of the people that wrote it – or who suggested the new story’

‘What do you mean?’

She looked at Howard. He genuinely didn’t understand.

‘Because of who they were: the two of them. One unmarried - a recluse in a castle. The other already arrested’

‘But what was wrong...this ‘affliction’... I don’t understand’

Mrs Van Dijk told him.

His mouth formed into a silent ‘Oh’ but he said nothing.

**********************************

Howard couldn’t sleep. It had been a shock - that this man – the painter and naturalist – had loved another man. .And to think he had been writing to another man all this time – about the moon, the barking dogs at night. It was a real shock.

He thought of the huge bones like vertebrae, the fossils above the bridge, toward the hills. In his mind’s eye he saw the hills. He imagined them tree-covered with white farmhouses and stony valleys with fast flowing streams. He imagined the country above the bridge was different - wilder and more unrestrained – while the river and lands below the bridge were tame and agricultural. Though he had never been to Castell’Arquato he imagined the landscape very clearly. He thought of it as a warmer, more hospitable place than the Vale. But now the big bones – the strange huge fossils - made the landscape seem more uncertain. Animals with huge backbones walking the Earth – giants!

His mind swirled. He listened to Mrs Van Dijk in the next room. She had wanted to stay up and work on her translation a little – for the lawyers. He could hear her scraping her chair on the floor and then the sound of paper being screwed up into a ball. He thought that she seemed tense as well. Perhaps because of the strangeness of the story, perhaps because the translation work she had to do was weighing on her, the lists of mariner’s equipment, the barren terminology of the insurer.

He listened to the wind moaning outside. The rain had stopped and Mrs Van Dijk had said before he’d gone to the bedroom, that the sky would be clear the next day. Perhaps he would go and see the carpenter? He listened for barking dogs, remembering the sad parts of Alfredo’s story. He actually missed the sadness of those small descriptions of night loneliness. Strange to miss sadness!

But he heard no barking dogs. The Vale was quiet. Howard slipped into sleep and Mrs Van Dijk worked on into the night

**********************************

The Librarian came up the lane mid-morning. Howard saw a thin black-clad man looking around. He was grey haired, his hair in two thick masses above his ears, passing to his chin. The top of his head was completely bald, reddish and shiny. He was facing the churchyard.

‘I think he’s here’ said Howard speaking into the open door of the bedroom. Mrs Van Dijk was getting dressed. She’d slept very late saying she’d been working on her lawyers’ work. There was ink on her fingers.

He heard the clink of a belt buckle as she pulled on her skirt. He watched the man through the window. The sky was grey above him, and it wasn’t very light. The trees were still.

‘Shall I call him? He’s looking in the wrong direction’

‘Alright’

She came in smiling. Her face was bright, but she seemed a little nervous and pre-occupied. She picked at her skirt and smoothed her jacket. She looked more formal than usual.

‘Is it nice?’ she asked.

‘Yes very nice’ said Howard. He’d hardly said anything to her about the visit. ‘What do we do? Just give the book back?’

‘We’ll just explain what it says. They originally gave me two months - do you remember? Now they want to see me straight away. I wonder why they changed?’

She came to look through the window, hanging on his shoulder.

‘That’s not the man that came the first time’ she said.

The man turned as she said this and looked directly at the cottage. It was as if he’d heard them talking. But that would have been impossible. Howard went to the door. Mrs Van Dijk went to make tea.

Howard opened the door to the man. From the front the two masses of grey hair were like earmuffs that people wore to keep their ears warm on the farms. His face was long and wrinkled, his nose thin and red. He was shivering with the cold, and his long cloak was wet.

‘Van Dijk?’ he asked. His voice was old and cracked. There was no accent of the Vale – this was an educated man.

‘Yes’ said Howard. ‘My wife is inside. We were expecting you’. He was used to being called by his wife’s name. It was too complicated to explain to visitors.

The librarian shuffled into the living room and Mrs Van Dijk came to shake his hand. She noticed how cold his hand was. Thin and dry and cold.

‘I came from the crossroads this morning, early, but was caught in the rain. I’m afraid I’m wet through’

‘Would you like to sit down by the fire, Mr? We have some tea’

‘I am Mr Fitzsimons, the Librarian at the Cathedral. You must have received my note. My assistant visited you last time. I thought that since you were to give a verbal report of the book – the manuscript - that I had better attend, being more senior’

He coughed a bit pompously, but he was still shivering a little. Mrs Van Dijk thought it would not be good to catch cold early in the winter. It would persist for weeks.

‘Please sit by the fire, Mr Fitzsimons. I am Mrs Van Dijk. I have been looking at your book. I and my husband have read through the whole thing’

Mr Fitzsimons coughed again and stood by the fire. His thin boots – made for the town not the country - were wet with mud. His feet would be thoroughly wet. It would be better for him to wrap himself in a blanket, but he was probably too proud to do that. But he accepted tea with a nod of approval and clasped the cup with both hands. He smiled a weak smile and his crooked teeth showed.

‘I have some knowledge of the book’, he said. ‘It was I that decided to have it properly studied. My assistant, John, has no Latin and so has no idea of its contents. I have only the vaguest notion of what it contains but thought in the circumstances that since you were making progress I would come and ask you about it. I know that its contents are very troubling – and possibly rather corrupting - for country people – for people who do not understand the arguments’

Fitzsimons remembered something and clutched at his long coat or cloak, looking for a pocket. There was a folded tube of paper.

‘This is one of the reasons I came early – a few drawings that should have been included with the book. I thought that they might help in your interpretation’

He passed the rolled card to Mrs Van Dijk.

She said: ‘Please sit’ indicating a chair at the table

‘You should look at the pictures’ Fitzsimons said.

She took the roll and pulled a few sheets of coarse paper from its slightly damp interior. She unfurled them and spread them on the rough surface of the table. Howard could see the marks of drawing, some in pencil some in dark ink. One seemed to be an outdoor scene. There was dense writing under the picture.

Fitzsimons craned his neck trying to make out the images, which from his vantage point across the table were upside down.

Mrs Van Dijk sighed, her eyes scanning the pictures.

‘Do you have any idea who wrote the book?’ she asked. What Fitzsimons had said about country people could have constituted an insult, but Mrs Van Dijk had not known whether he meant her and Howard when he said ‘country people’.

‘We do not know. The book is stored below ground, in a section for obscure texts’

‘In Crypt A?’ asked Howard.

‘Why yes’ said Fitzsimons, turning to him.

‘We know because it says Crypt A on the back of the book’

‘The crypt is rather cold, but it is dry. The cold seems to favour good preservation, and the lack of damp also. I’ve good reason to suppose the book is very old.’

‘In fact it was written around 1478’

‘Mrs Van Dijk!’ The librarian smiled. ‘How did you work that out?’

He was pleased despite himself. He might be there to protect the ignorant country people, but he was, at heart, a librarian and so loved information on his books.

‘It’s written in roman numerals – on the inside front cover’

He sipped his tea. He looked at Mrs Van Dijk admiring her for a moment. If he thought he had come to see ignorant country people, he was being happily surprised.

‘And you understood something of the book? Did you read it?’ Mrs Van Dijk continued cautiously.

‘I understand some Latin, but I quickly realised that this author wrote in ancient Italian, perhaps the Tuscan dialect, like Dante, the Florentine’

‘The two writers must have been near contemporaries’ nodded Mrs Van Dijk. Howard wondered why she hadn’t got the book out.

‘...and what did you understand by the book?’ she said again.

‘Well’ Fitzsimons looked down modestly. Now he was a little disadvantaged. He had no real idea of the subject matter of the book; he just had a few suspicions. He was sure it was a bad book. He was certain. Someone long ago in the cathedral had locked it in the crypt hoping that it would be lost or forgotten about.

‘I think it has some anti-religious message. Something that falsifies or undermines the teaching of Christ’ he said.

‘It has a message about fossils, found in a riverbed in a place called Castell’Arquato, in northern Italy’ said Mrs Van Dijk

‘What do these fossils signify?’ Fitzsimons knew something about fossils. You could find them on the limestone in the quarries near the cathedral. Houses in Lincoln were made of yellow limestone - sometimes filled with fossils.

‘They show the ages of the Earth. In fact the writer and his Patron, a Don Flavio Corbera, were of the opinion that the fossils – the succession of the fossils - showed that there had been many floods over the Earth. As many as twenty - each large and deep - covering the land with water. They considered that this was evidence that there was no one Great Flood...’ Mrs Van Dijk let her words hang in the air. She watched the librarian’s reaction.

‘It was as I suspected then’, Fitzsimons said with satisfaction. ‘A heretical text’. He said the word heretical slowly, enjoying its sound.

‘Did you read the part about love, the love story?’

Fitzsimons hardly heard her. He was pleased. He’d found what he wanted to know. The Bishop would be pleased. The book would have to be destroyed as soon as possible. It was pointless storing it at all.

He sat, pleased with himself, finally getting warm. He thought to himself how nice the tea was.

**********************************

Mrs Van Dijk explained the theory of Don Flavio Corbera, but Fitzsimons wasn’t listening. The thin man had stopped shivering, and his boots were drying out.

He asked: ‘These fossils – what kinds were there? Like the shells of Lincoln? No doubt you have seen fossils here, in the Vale. In the church we believe that fossils are the remains of creatures that lived inside the rock. This is the correct explanation.’ He looked at Howard and Mrs Van Dijk. It was dark inside the living room, even though it was just midday. Perhaps it would rain again in the afternoon. Fitzsimons could hardly make out the faces of his hosts. He much preferred his room in Lincoln - which though cold, was high, wide and airy.

‘A variety of fossils. Seashells, wood and leaves, fish, elephant tusks’ said Mrs Van Dijk.

‘Elephant tusks!’ Fitzsimons laughed. ‘Impossible. These are African animals – I’ve seen drawings’

It was quiet for a while and the fire crackled. Mrs Van Dijk got up to make some more tea.

‘Really I should not stay much longer. I have a long way to travel today. I’m grateful for the work you’ve done and there is some payment here’

He put a bag of coins on the table and stood up.

But Mrs Van Dijk put another cup of tea in front of him. She said rather suddenly. ‘What will happen to the book?’

‘It will be destroyed’ said Fitzsimons rather arrogantly. ‘Heretical books always should be’

Howard was surprised. He felt like saying something, but caught Mrs Van Dijk’s gaze. She seemed to be telling him to be quiet though he didn’t know why.

‘It will be burnt?’ she said quietly.

‘Yes.’

‘In the book there is a part about love. The writer explains a passionate love affair’ she said quickly, watching Fitzsimons’ reaction.

Howard was confused. What was she doing?

‘The writer was uranian’ she blurted out. She blinked, eyeing Fitzsimons.

The old man swallowed hard. He knew the meaning of the word.

‘I see’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Are you sure, Madam?’

‘Oh yes. The letters in the book are to a man, possibly a male prostitute’

This was enough to propel Fitzsimons to his feet.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to take the book now.’ He almost shouted.

‘It would not be better simply to burn the book now? Here in the fire?’ Mrs Van Dijk said experimentally.

Howard had no idea what she was saying. He really thought she had liked the book! But she seemed a little tense. She pointed at the fire.

But Fitzsimons shook his head vigorously. ‘The book will be disposed of at Lincoln. It will be in the fire very soon, don’t you worry. I can see that the book offends you as much as it does me’. He said this last uncertainly as if he didn’t quite believe it.

‘I will take the book now’ he said firmly. ‘I would appreciate it if you would seal the book in an envelope or something similar. I’ve no wish even to touch its pages’ he said with a stupid expression on his face.

Mrs Van Dijk went into the bedroom. This was puzzling too, because the book – all the time it had been at the cottage – had been in the living room. When had she taken it into the bedroom?

But she reappeared very quickly with the book wrapped tightly in one of the large envelopes she used for her other books – the envelopes she used to store unfinished pages.

She gave the folded envelope to Fitzsimons, who nodded his thanks, not seeming to notice Mrs Van Dijk’s distracted state. He was still a bit damp – his trousers and his shoulders - but the walk to the crossroads might warm him up, and he would get a coach from there. By nightfall he would be back in the library. The Bishop would be very pleased with him.

‘Don’t worry Madam, the book will be destroyed! Never fear. But I could not just throw it in your fire. We have to deal with these things in a proper official manner.’ He touched her shoulder condescendingly and smiled showing his crooked teeth.

Mrs Van Dijk tried to smile herself, but Howard saw that she was shaking a little. She nodded but could not meet Fitzsimons’ eyes.

‘You will not have more tea?’ she asked.

‘No Madam’, said the Librarian softly.

He lifted his small bag and put the envelope inside. ‘I will not touch this disgusting book with my hands again, rest assured’

And with that he left the cottage and strode down the lane. He looked more purposeful than when he’d arrived. Perhaps he was convinced that he had done something good for his beloved Library – and for the Church of England.

**********************************

They watched him leave through the village gate, standing in the lane, and then went back into the cottage. Howard noticed the thatch looked dark and damp, and thought that it might need some new thatch or to be dried out. He also thought it would rain in the afternoon.

But he was intrigued by Mrs Van Dijk, who still seemed agitated. She went into the living room and sat down and drank the tea that she had just poured for the librarian. She was breathing quickly.

‘Lotte - I thought you liked the book. It’s terrible that they’re going to burn it. Such a book –so unusual – so old’

He almost felt angry at her, but at the same time he was uncertain. She said nothing and continued looking at her feet, holding the teacup tightly in her hands.

‘What’s wrong Lotte?’ He felt that she’d been troubled by the stupid librarian and his stupid ideas about church doctrine. But she’d never listened to people like that before; she’d always been independently minded.

‘I did a stupid thing’ she said, saying the word stupid in her characteristic way, compressing the first syllable to nothing.

‘What?’

She smiled at last, amazed that he hadn’t guessed. She went into the bedroom. She had no shoes on and she was very silent. She came back immediately and put the book - the Castell’Arquato book – straight into Howard’s outstretched hand. He looked at it with his mouth open, holding it with one hand. She thought he might drop it.

He twisted his wrist and looked at the back cover. There was the tear, the words ‘Crypt A’. It was the book, no doubt.

‘But you’ve just given this to the librarian!’ He said bluntly.

‘I gave him something else. A copy’

She sat down. ‘What do you think I was doing so late – last night?’

‘Working on your translation for the lawyers?’

‘No. I was making a copy of this. I started yesterday...’ she giggled. ‘I used the paper you made for me. The stained paper’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I had to cut the paper’, she said ignoring his question. ‘...to the right size. Then write on the outer pages, imitating the original writing. I had to bind the pages’

‘How did you do that?’ Howard looked at the binding of the book in his hand which was quite small and fine – it looked like silk thread.

She laughed again quietly. ‘I used some of the string from the garden’

‘The string you use to tie the tomato plants?’

‘Yes, Howard’. She smiled guiltily.

‘...and the outer pages you copied – the inner pages are blank?’

‘Yes – most of them’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said again.

‘Because you would have told me not to do it’

‘Ah’

‘Do you think they’ll notice?’ she said.

‘No’ he said. ‘The silly man was even too frightened to touch the book. They’ll probably just burn it in the package without opening it. I understand now why you suggested burning the package here in the cottage! You thought that there would be no risk if he burned it here’

‘Yes. But it didn’t work’

He looked at her. She was still smiling guiltily. She was clever, there was no doubt.

She had begun to feel pleased with herself. She took the book from Howard and thought that perhaps she might get it bound professionally in Nottingham – with a proper leather cover. With a neat cover it would look nice on the bookcase.

She glanced at the large sheets that Fitzsimons had brought, and had forgotten in his haste. There was a scene in a river with a waterfall, with great bones in a cliff. She wondered what to do with the drawings.

She would think of something.

**********************************

For this last observation, and drawing, I took larger sheets of paper. The Don had some bigger pieces. He said that this drawing would be the most important. It would serve as proof. We would spend the whole morning above the bridge in a small gorge with overhanging trees – this is what Don Corbera said – a deep gorge that is hard to descend. The Don had been there several times. He said that sometimes he could not believe what you could see there. He needed an educated man, a man to record the scene in an accurate drawing. This is what I had been brought to Castell’Arquato to do. If there was anything that I should do during my time at Castell’Arquato – said Don Flavio Corbera – it was to record that place, that scene.

The day was hot and humid. We walked past the bridge on a small lane that passed through two farms. Only after a long time of walking did we move down through the long grass and odorous ferns and across some stretches of black mud. I could hear the river splashing some way below. Trees blotted out the light and filtered it to a soft green illumination. The water became louder.

‘It’s only possible to go round and descend to the stream, then walk up a little’ said The Don. ‘You cannot descend directly from here. It’s too steep’

The stream at the bottom was the same as it was below the bridge, cloudy and fast flowing, filled with mud. There was a faint path on the far side said The Don, made by himself on his few visits here, so we had to cross. This was possible to do by stepping on stones. I clutched my drawing board tight and secured my pencils, pen and brushes.

It was only a few moments to walk to the gorge, which was small – the width only the width of the stream itself. There was a small perch in the grass - a little platform – which I could see was the place where Don Corbera usually stopped. He stopped there now and indicated across the stream to the other side of the gorge – trying to keep his balance.

In the gloom the other side was steep, almost vertical: a dark mass of grey clay that descended from the roots of trees above, to the water. It was too dark to see anything – though I could see from Don Corbera’s gestures that this is where I should look.

There were boulders or roots that seemed to protrude from the mud, greyish or white in colour, rounded. They seemed to be aligned.

‘Look!’ demanded Don Corbera. He could see that I had not seen, had not understood.

The cliff continued to be obscure to me. There was a small waterfall to my left, then the cliff above the stream that extended downstream about fifty paces. A line of boulders? Perhaps they were tusks. A mass of elephant tusks?

‘Can you see?’ He was getting anxious. He struggled to sit down, still with his arm waving toward the darkness of the gorge.

‘Bones?’ I said. I sat and took my drawing board from the strap across my back, and my pouch of pencils. The grass was wet. The sun was hidden by the green canopy above: the stream loud in the enclosure of the gorge.

Don Corbera nodded. His head was tilted back. His pointing finger began to trace the bones for me.

‘See these strange flanges – like huge fingers pushed forward enclosing something. These are the bones of the skull – the jaw’

‘But they are so large, Don Corbera’

He ignored me, his hand began drawing in the air.

‘Then some kind of shoulder, then a part of the pectoral fin, then ribs, some ribs; you can see a line of vertebrae’

I looked down at my board. I had secured paper on the board that morning. I needed to see the scene in its entirety before I began.

‘The head, the skull, is too large’ I said. It was man size, slightly tilted, half exposed by the years of stream’s work.

‘What head is too large?’ said Don Corbera. ‘What do you mean Leo?’

Yes – he used my real name forgetting everything.

‘It cannot be’

‘It can!’ said Don Corbera.

‘Behold the whale’ he said.

(c) M H Stephenson 2026