But there was no time now for reminiscing, and Pendergast moved on. Reaching a narrow, even steeper staircase, he descended deeper into the stacks.
At last, Pendergast emerged from the closet-like stairwell onto the seventh level. Unlike the flawlessly catalogued levels above it, this was an endless rat’s nest of mysterious pathways and cul-de-sacs, rarely visited despite some astonishing collections known to be buried here. The air was close and stuffy, as if it had—like the volumes it surrounded—not circulated for decades. Several corridors ran away from the stairwell, framed by bookcases, crossing and recrossing at strange angles.
Pendergast paused momentarily. In the silence, his hyperacute sense of hearing picked up a very faint scratching: colonies of silverfish, gorging their way through an endless supply of pulp.
And there was another sound, too: louder and sharper. Snip.
Pendergast turned toward the sound, tracking it through the stacks of books, angling first one way, then another. The sound grew nearer.
Snip. Snip.
Up ahead, Pendergast made out a halo of light. Turning a final corner, he saw a large wooden table, brilliantly lit by a dentist’s O-ring lamp. Several objects were arrayed along one edge of the table: needle, a spool of heavy filament, a pair of white cotton gloves, a bookbinder’s knife, a glue pen. Next to them was a stack of reference works: Blades’s The Enemies of Books; Ebeling’s Urban Entomology; Clapp’s Curatorial Care of Works of Art on Paper. On a book truck beside the table sat a tall pile of old volumes in various states of decomposition, covers frayed, hinges broken, spines torn.
A figure sat at the table, back to Pendergast. A confusion of long hair, white and very thick, streamed down from the skull onto the hunched shoulders. Snip.
Pendergast leaned against the nearest stack and—keeping a polite distance—rapped his knuckles lightly against the metal.
“I hear a knocking,” the figure quoted, in a high yet clearly masculine tone. He did not turn his head. Snip.
Pendergast knocked again.
“Anon, anon!” the man responded.
Snip.
Pendergast knocked a third time, more sharply.
The man straightened his shoulders with an irritable sigh. “Wake Duncan with thy knocking!” he cried. “I would thou couldst.”
Then he laid aside a pair of library scissors and the old book he had been rebinding, and turned around.
He had thin white eyebrows to match the mane of hair, and the irises of his eyes were yellow, giving him a gaze that seemed leonine, almost feral. He saw Pendergast, and his old withered face broke into a smile. Then he caught sight of the package beneath Pendergast’s arm, and the smile broadened.
“If it isn’t Special Agent Pendergast!” he cried. “The extra-special, Special Agent Pendergast.”
Pendergast inclined his head. “How are you,Wren?”
“I humbly thank thee, well, well.”The man gestured a bony hand toward the book truck, the pile of books waiting to be repaired. “But there is so little time, and so many damaged children.”
The New York Public Library harbored many strange souls, but none was stranger than the specter known as Wren. Nobody seemed to know anything about him: whether Wren was his first name, or his last, or even his real name at all. Nobody seemed to know where he’d come from, or whether he was officially employed by the library. Nobody knew where or what he ate—some speculated that he dined on library paste. The only things known about the man was that he had never been seen to leave the library, and that he had a pathfinder’s instinct for the lost treasures of the seventh level.
Wren looked at his guest, venal yellow eyes sharp and bright as a hawk’s. “You don’t look like yourself today,” he said.
“No doubt.”Pendergast said no more, and Wren seemed not to expect it.
“Let’s see. Did you find—what was it again? Oh, yes—that old Broadway Water Company survey and the Five Points chapbooks useful?”
“Very much so.”
Wren gestured toward the package. “And what are you lending me today, hypocrite lecteur?”
Pendergast leaned away from the bookcase, brought the package out from beneath his arm. “It’s a manuscript of Iphigenia at Aulis, translated from the ancient Greek into Vulgate.”
Wren listened, his face betraying nothing.
“The manuscript was illuminated at the old monastery of Sainte-Chapelle in the late fourteenth century. One of the last works they produced before the terrible conflagration of 1397.”
A spark of interest flared in the old man’s yellow eyes.
“The book caught the attention of Pope Pius III, who pronounced it sacrilegious and ordered every copy burnt. It’s also notable for the scribbles and drawings made by the scribes in the margins of the manuscript. They are said to depict the lost text of Chaucer’s fragmentary ‘Cook’s Tale.’”
The spark of interest abruptly burned hot. Wren held out his hands.
Pendergast kept the package just out of reach. “There is one favor I’d request in return.”
Wren retracted his hands. “Naturally.”