“It’s not the Holy Grail,” he said tersely.
“So you do know the painting. Churchgirl42 posted a picture of it on Instagram, but the only reason I found it is because I don’t just follow the hashtag Holy Grail, but I also follow a bunch of others, and she tagged it with hashtag chalice, but she didn’t say where it was except Barchester. So I went to the cathedral Web site to order a guidebook, but apparently they don’t have one. I even e-mailed and they said the guy who is writing it keeps missing deadlines, so I got this one on eBay, but it’s from the 1890s, so I guess it’s a little out of date, but it says that John Collier’s portrait of Bishop Gladwyn is supposed to hang in the chapter house, and this is the chapter house, right?”
This speech left Arthur feeling as breathless as he imagined she must be after such a torrent of words.
“I think I understood about a third of what you just said,” said Arthur.
“I just wondered if you knew what happened to Bishop Gladwyn’s portrait.”
“It’s moved,” he said at last. “It was moved in 1905.”
“Excellent—someone who actually knows what I’m talking about,” she said, striding forward and extending her hand. “I’m Bethany. Bethany Davis. I’m here to digitize the manuscripts in the library.”
She was shaking Arthur’s hand vigorously and her words almost did not register on his consciousness. How was he touching the skin—the cool, smooth, utterly relaxed skin—of this living statue? He had managed to escape the university after lunch and was on his way to a peaceful afternoon in the cathedral library and now there was this . . . this American, he guessed from her accent, shaking his hand and looking boldly into his eyes awaiting some sort of response to whatever she had just said.
“You’re . . . I’m sorry, you’re what?”
“Here for the manuscripts in the library. I’m going to digitize them.”
“That sounds perfectly dreadful,” said Arthur, extricating his hand from hers and finding the world returning to focus. “What does it even mean?”
“Oh, you must be Mr. Prescott. Gwyn said that would be your reaction. You’re exactly who I need to talk to.”
“Whom.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Bethany.
“I am to whom you need to talk.”
“Right.”
“But tell me again—what exactly are you doing to our manuscripts?”
“It’s part of this worldwide project. It’s really exciting. The whole thing is funded by this billionaire in the Midwest who made all his money . . . well, I’m not sure how he made all his money, but anyway. He has this plan to digitize every pre-Reformation Christian manuscript in the world. He’s going to put all the images online and make them available to everybody. Can you imagine?”
“And when you say digitize . . .”
“I’ve got this awesome setup. Most places won’t let you do manuscripts automatically, like with books, which I can totally understand. So I have this adjustable stand that holds the volume—cradles it, really—and then this amazing digital camera that works in low light so you don’t have to risk damaging pages with flashes and stuff. And then I go over every page in this software program that lets me adjust—well, anything that needs adjusting.”
“Sounds revolting.”
“You’re just like Gwyn said you would be. I knew I was going to like you. How about some tea? Or if it’s too early for tea, then lunch. Unless it’s too late for lunch. What do you do then? The pub? I don’t really drink, but they have Diet Coke at the pub, right? Come on, drinks are on me.”
Before Arthur realized what had happened she had linked her arm through his and was dragging him toward the cloister. Given no choice in the matter, he led her out of the cathedral precincts, down Magdalen Street, and through the imposing front door of the Mitre, Barchester’s poshest hotel. The bar, where they settled at a small table, had a view across the water meadows to the cathedral, but that was not why Arthur had brought Bethany here. Still not quite sure what he was doing, he allowed her to buy him a pint of bitter.
“So, Gwyn tells me you’re a book collector,” said Bethany, when she had returned with the drinks.
“Yes, I suppose I’m a species that won’t exist once you and your ilk have reduced the world of books to bits and bytes. But for the time being I collect physical copies of the works of the English humorists.”
“Anybody I might have heard of?”
“I suppose P. G. Wodehouse is the most famous. I have nearly all his books in first editions.” Bethany stared blankly at him as if she were a robot in need of rebooting. “P. G. Wodehouse? He wrote the Jeeves and Wooster stories.”
“Oh, right. I’ve heard of those. I don’t read that much fiction these days. I watched one of the shows on YouTube.”
“If you don’t read fiction, what do you read?”
“Stuff for work, mostly. Lots of blogs on information management and IT, e-magazines. I mean, it’s not like I don’t read books. I have an e-reader, of course. I just read a great monograph on the postbook library from this guy I heard at ALA.”
“I’m sorry, are you speaking English?”
“ALA is the American Library Association.”
“But what do you mean by the ‘postbook library’?”
“It’s amazing. You see, technology is exploding the possibilities for libraries. Now they can exist virtually. Imagine a library that has no building, almost no expenses, and can be used by everyone on the planet.”
“A library without books?”
“Yeah, pretty cool, huh?”
“You do know that library is derived from the Latin librarius, meaning ‘concerned with books.’ Not computers—books.”
“If you want to play the etymology game,” said Bethany, “I read in this same article that the word librarius is derived from liber, meaning ‘the inner bark of trees.’ Do you really think we need to fill our libraries with the inner bark of trees?”
“Touché,” said Arthur, thinking perhaps he had underestimated this young lady.
“The postbook library is a little different from the cathedral library here. Gwyn took me up there this morning just to show me around. Kind of old-fashioned. Can you believe there’s no wireless? Honestly, I don’t know how you get much work done with no digital technology.”
“The only time I employ digital technology,” said Arthur, trying his best to sound charming rather than haughty, “is when I use my fingers to turn the pages.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Bethany. “You need to get wired.”
Really? thought Arthur. Not a chuckle or a harrumph or even a groan for his little “digital” quip? It might have been a bad joke, but she didn’t seem to understand it was a joke at all.