At the desk he gave Patricia a perfunctory smile. “Document RQ206, please,” he said.
She shook her head. Her gray hair, pulled back in its usual tight bun, looked like something she’d applied to her head with a paint scraper. She appeared, if possible, more irritated than usual. “That won’t be available until one o’clock.”
He turned to scan the long room with its rows of tables, populated at this hour only by a pair of classics postgraduates. “But I’m the only person here working on the Richmond papers. Who’s got the document?”
“It’s unavailable,” she said. “Until one o’clock.” The repetition seemed to satisfy her.
He blew out air. “I’ll take the next available document, then.”
He worked for another hour before Helen came in.
“Where were you?” he said, rising. “I thought you were going to be here more than an hour ago.” He knew he sounded accusatory, but in truth he felt himself relax at the sight of her.
Helen set down her briefcase. At first she didn’t answer. A tight anguish curved her lips. When she spoke it was quietly, though they were alone in the reading room save Patricia, bent over her glowing computer screen.
“I just saw Wilton and one of his students in the lift, with a camera. Coming down.”
Down from the conservation lab.
Aaron swore.
At the circulation desk he stood over Library Patricia, backing up a step only when she looked up from her computer. A tall man occupying space: now there was a dissertation topic he could have done justice to, if he hadn’t stupidly chosen a death match with Shakespeare. He knew just how to move in space with women, at least those within shouting distance of his own age: when to prop an arm and lean slightly over them as he made a point. When to sit back and let them come to him.
He wasn’t quite as sure of himself, though, with these older women.
He set the fingers of one hand lightly on Patricia’s desk and spoke in what he hoped was a casual tone. “What’s up with the paparazzi in the conservation lab?”
She looked at his hand. He didn’t withdraw it.
“One photographer is hardly paparazzi,” she said. She turned back to her screen. But her distraction showed in the fitful way she moved the computer mouse, and he could see that he wasn’t the source of it.
He didn’t move.
“The document in question is being photographed,” she said after a moment. “Along with a few others.”
His hand faltered on the desk. “They can do that?” he said.
“They can,” Patricia sang under her breath, “if Jonathan Martin wants them to.”
“And Conservation Patricia let them?”
Library Patricia stiffened at the nickname, but he was too aghast to care. He thought quickly. He’d double down. A little camaraderie to sweeten the pot? He said, “I’d think she’d zap them with her laser-beam eyes.”
Library Patricia stared at him. Her eyes were a pale, steady blue. She’d taken off her glasses. Slowly she folded them, with a soft dual click. A sound understood the world over to mean you were in trouble with the librarian.
“Of course,” he began—and before continuing he offered a sheepish smile to ensure that she’d get the joke, and understand both that this was a compliment, and that the flirtation was recreational only. “Your eyes are lethal, too.”
She blinked at him.
He leaned forward conspiratorially, bracing his weight on his hand. “You don’t find me charming,” he said in a low voice.
She leaned forward as well, her gray head nearly brushing his. “Shocking,” she said, “isn’t it?”
Her breath smelled of stale coffee.
She turned back to her computer.
After a moment he withdrew his hand and left.
“Well?” said Helen, back at the table.
He jutted his jaw. “She might not actually have a crush on me.”
Her face was clotted with a desperation he only half understood. She brushed past him and went to Patricia’s desk. After a moment Aaron followed.
Helen was addressing Patricia in a hushed, urgent tone. “They photographed RQ206?”
Patricia referred to her catalogue. She sighed. “Yes. And the next few in the series.”
He watched Helen and Patricia exchange a look. It was like watching two weather-beaten lighthouses flash at each other across a wintry bay. A silent, fleeting exchange to which he had no access.
Helen turned to Aaron and nodded, her jaw clenched. Patricia had turned away in what might have been a gesture of tact or even sympathy—he might have known how to interpret it if only he understood Brits. Or older women.
Maybe people. Maybe what was missing was that he didn’t understand people.
Wilton was going to scoop them on the Sabbatean crisis in Florence. Aaron had trusted they’d be the first. But what hope did he and Helen have of that, when the other team had four able-bodied researchers to work on the project—not to mention a shortcut to publication in the form of Jonathan Martin, who had only to lift the phone to get the attention of the editor of Early Modern Quarterly? Wilton’s choice to photograph this week, when most academics were drifting off to start their boozy holiday rounds, might even mean the editor had agreed to look at it over the Christmas holiday. Wilton was going to rush out an article on the cross-written letter and whatever else he’d read, before he’d even finished going through the documents. It might not be the most thorough scholarship, but it was a brilliant move. Anyone who wrote a second article on the Richmond document cache would merely be deepening Wilton’s work—a follower on the trail Wilton had blazed.
Their only hope, Aaron thought, was that Wilton’s group hadn’t yet figured out the gender bombshell. He consulted his notebook. “I wonder,” he said, “have they photographed RQ182?” The letter from Yacob de Souza carrying the request that the girl be replaced as the rabbi’s scribe at earliest convenience.
“That and the cross-written letter were the first two documents they requested when they came in this morning.” Patricia lowered her reading glasses.
“Well,” Helen said.
Something on Patricia’s desk seemed to require her attention. She busied herself with it; yet though her face was averted, her posture was intent, as though she were silently counseling some course of action.
Helen said, softly, “The next document, please.”
Nodding her approval, Patricia left to retrieve it.
They worked for a half-hour in silence. Making his way through the document before him, Aaron transcribed a trickle of useless material—a statement of household accounts in Aleph’s secretary hand, the flourishes atop the capital letters torqued back so far, they looked like coiled creatures about to fling themselves across the page. For two vessels of whiting a summe of 4d. For 1 lb coffee 2s 6d. He noted again that there were no entries for income from students—an indication, perhaps, that the rabbi’s stream of pupils had dried up? Now and again, he paused in his work and watched Helen furtively. He’d never before taken the opportunity to watch her write. Her white knuckles pushed the stubby pencil across the pages of her notebook in a glacial scrawl so determined, he could imagine its lead point carving valleys and leaving behind boulders. If he’d noticed her writing style earlier, he thought, he’d have been more fearful of her.
At twelve-thirty, Library Patricia, unsolicited, approached their table. She set a cushion before Helen: the next document in the series. Never mind that Helen and Aaron were each already at work on a document. She departed, then returned three times more, bearing more documents. Six at once: a flagrant breach of library rules. Patricia arranged the new pages in a straight line before Helen without a word. Then, without looking at either of them, she laid a bare weathered hand on the tabletop, patted it once, and retreated to her desk.
“Jesus,” said Aaron. He turned to Helen. “She has a crush on you.”
Helen had risen and was busy scanning the documents.