“Coffee is in the kitchen,” Bridgette said. “Please help yourselves.”
Aaron followed Helen past a capacious stone hearth set in a long wall of decorative paneling, some sections adorned with simple fluted borders, others carved with intricate wooden wreaths. Their footsteps echoed in the unfurnished room. He trailed her through a large doorway to the left, on the other side of which rose a broad wooden staircase.
And there he stopped. Nothing of the building’s exterior—not even the stone walls, with their once-giant wingspan—had prepared him for this. The staircase was opulence written in wood. The broad treads ascended between dark carved panels featuring roses and vines and abundant fruit baskets; gazing down from high walls, their faces full of sad, sweet equanimity, were more carved angels. And halfway up the stairs, two arched windows let in a white light so blinding and tremulous, Aaron could swear it had weight. Windows to bow down before, their wrought-iron levers and mullions casting a mesmerizing grid across the carved wood: light and shadow and light again.
Helen had lifted her cane and was pointing.
He turned away from the windows, into the nook alongside the base of the staircase, and saw the gap opened in the paneling.
It was easy to see what had happened. The electrician had simply identified the easiest way to access the space beneath the stair, and had worked open a locked panel—a small and modestly decorated section of the staircase’s side wall, with a small keyhole cut into its corner. The panel, now slid to one side, was still partly visible—and to judge by the sawdust speckling its surface, its keyhole had received an enthusiastic working over by whatever tool the electrician had used to prize open the lock.
Inside, in the dim cavity, he could see papers.
“Wow.” He expelled a long breath. “Nobody discovered this till now?”
Helen’s voice sounded almost reverent. “This house is almost three hundred and fifty years old. It must have a half dozen hidden cupboards, jib doors in the paneling to hide the passageways the servants used, heaven knows what else.”
Aaron nodded. A plain panel tucked in a shadowed corner, eclipsed by the front entrance and the distracting grandeur of the staircase, wasn’t likely to capture anyone’s attention.
“Apparently the aunt kept a side table positioned in front of it”—Helen indicated a small antique-looking end table standing beneath the nook’s small window—“and for all we know, her own parents or even grandparents had placed it there.”
“Still,” said Aaron, “three hundred and fifty years, and no one thought to jimmy the lock?”
Her voice sharpened. “How closely do you look at what’s right in front of you?”
He waited a moment. In the silence the accusation dissipated, and he shrugged it off. Something about him, it was true, did seem to make certain people angry. Certain women. He generally found it amusing.
In truth, he saw how the panel could have remained unopened by the house’s various owners—how a few halfhearted attempts to pry open a locked panel could subside easily into That’s the panel that doesn’t open. If no one had the key . . . if no one had any reason to believe there was anything inside . . . ? Time and history might march on, but human nature didn’t change.
Aaron knelt in front of the opening, which measured roughly one foot by two feet. Through it two shelves were visible, packed with obvious care. An archive in miniature: leather-bound spines lined up meticulously alongside the brittle edges of loose documents.
He leaned closer.
Heavily lettered parchment bindings flush with stab-sewn quires. Here and there glimpses of broken and crumbled wax seals in faded browns and reds. Had he ever dreamt this? He felt certain he had. It was as though someone had reached through the centuries with a message: Here it is. I left this for you. As though an ancient library had breached the border into now, into the life of Aaron Levy, who had not until this moment understood how powerfully he needed something like this.
He extended his fingertips.
“Wash your hands,” Helen snapped from behind him.
He could not bring himself to look at her. He found a narrow green-painted washroom behind a paneled door. When he returned, Helen had made no move toward the documents.
There was a single loose page in the gap on the shelf. She nodded him forward, as though toward a skittish animal.
“Take it,” she said.
He couldn’t understand why she didn’t simply reach for it herself. A test? If she thought he’d tolerate having to prove himself at every turn, there would be a confrontation in the near future. For an instant he met Helen Watt’s eyes. Cornflower blue. The even features and pale complexion of a privileged English face, blanched of anything he recognized as emotion.
Reaching a hand cautiously into the stairwell, he stopped abruptly. He checked his balance, one palm against the solid wall to his left. He’d felt, for just an instant, alarmed by the fearsome weight of his own body—as though he might stumble forward and crush the fragile documents, the image like snuffing out a life.
A heartbeat later, though, he’d shaken the feeling—and reflexively began to compose how he would describe the sight before him to Marisa.
The shelves were perfectly packed, he’d write. Like a gift someone had prepared for us. He moved his hand toward the shelf, and as he did so he told himself, Mine is the first human hand in more than 350 years. He touched the loose page. The paper was raspy but pliable between his fingers. Pulling it gently from the shelf, he saw it was a letter, in Portuguese. He read the Hebrew date, Heshvan 5420, and he calculated the English date: October 1657. The salutation read To the esteemed Menasseh ben Israel. The handwriting was eloquent—elegant and decisive on the cream-colored page.
It was signed by the same HaCoen Mendes who had written the letter Helen Watt had described.
At Helen’s direction, Aaron set it down on a small table positioned beneath the nook’s narrow mullioned window, modest cousin to the mighty windows on the landing above. But as Aaron pulled up one of the Eastons’ rickety-looking ancient chairs, Helen turned him back.
“That book too,” she said.
He returned to the stairwell. Reaching in again, he withdrew the stiff leather-bound book that was next on the shelf. It was a thin volume, the edges of the pages marbled in dull purple and black, and well worn.
The last person to hold it: dead three centuries.
He stepped toward Helen, conscious of the radiating warmth of his own body, the thrum of his pulse in his temples. For a moment, he lingered beside the table. Then slowly, ceremoniously, set the book down.
She flicked on the small lamp, its glow weak beside the stark diamonds of light shed by the window.
The cover of the book was embossed in Portuguese. Livro-razao, it said. Ledger. He opened it. Abruptly, a flurry of brown ash assaulted him—in his face, his hair, a bitter sediment on his tongue. “Jesus!” he spat.
“Careful!” she snapped at the same time.
A fine dust clung to his lashes. His fingers, still holding the ledger half open, were coated as well—dark with the remains of now irretrievable words. Something living had just died at his hands. Tears of shame prickled at his eyelids and he shook his head as though against the dust. Then shook it again, as his revulsion with himself rebounded in an instant toward Helen. Straightening, he glared at her.