“So you know about it?”
“No, I’ve never seen it—but it makes sense to make a list of what you have just before it’s about to be plundered. And even if the king’s commissioners didn’t take any books home with them, which is unlikely, that was when the collection of St. Ewolda’s merged with that of Barchester Cathedral.”
“My Latin’s not great, but as far as I could tell there’s no reference to any manuscript about Ewolda.”
“What about the mystery manuscript?” said Arthur. “The missing Psalter?”
“There are three Psalters listed. I think two of them are still in the library; the other one could be the same as the one on Bishop Gladwyn’s list, but it’s hard to tell. The descriptions are pretty basic. There are thirty-five titles on the list. It looks to me like nineteen of those correspond with manuscripts that are still in the library.”
“The rest of them were hauled off by the commissioners,” said Arthur. “The libraries of Oxford and Cambridge are filled with manuscripts stolen from monasteries during the Reformation. If we have a list of the St. Ewolda’s collection prior to the dissolution, we might be able to identify some of those missing manuscripts. Bethany, this is a brilliant find.”
Bethany beamed as Arthur took a bite of toast, but he had a thought as he swallowed. “Of course,” he said, “if the descriptions are, as you say, pretty basic, it may be difficult to tie them to specific manuscripts.”
“That’s the best part,” said Bethany. “There are two columns of Roman numerals on the inventory. One, to the right of the titles, I haven’t figured out yet. But the numbers to the left are each followed by a single word. I started comparing manuscripts in the library to the list. I thought at first these might be page numbers, but it turns out they’re leaf numbers. I go to the leaf that corresponds to the left-hand number and see if the first word on that leaf matches the word next to the number. And it works. That’s how I found out we still have nineteen of the manuscripts. And it should make it easy to identify the St. Ewolda manuscripts in other collections.”
“Where did you come from?” said Arthur in amazement.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“Pretty cool? Bethany, knowing what was in the St. Ewolda’s collection before it was broken up—that’s tremendous. I can’t believe I never found that inventory.”
“Be honest, Arthur,” said Bethany, “have you ever been even slightly interested in mathematics?”
“Point well taken. Ah, here comes my bus.”
“I’ll put the inventory on your table,” said Bethany as Arthur rose to go.
“This business with the missing Psalter and thinking we’re on the trail of the lost Book of Ewolda, or even the Holy Grail—” said Arthur, “sometimes I’m afraid that’s all just chasing shadows. But an inventory of the St. Ewolda library—that’s a brilliant discovery. It could give us a much clearer view of life and scholarship at the priory. Well done, Bethany.”
He stood awkwardly for a moment as the bus eased into its stop. He wondered if he ought to lean down and kiss her on the cheek. Was that now the . . . what was the expression . . . the new normal for good-byes? But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He simply nodded, smiled, and left her prodding her blood pudding with a fork.
“Put Miss Davis’s breakfast on my tab,” he said to the waiter as he headed for the door.
—
Arthur’s afternoon with Stephen Mangum from Sotheby’s turned out to be quite pleasant. How could it be otherwise? thought Arthur afterward. Sifting through a collection of medieval manuscripts with a fellow booklover was Arthur’s idea of the perfect way to spend a few hours. From the moment they met in the cloister, the two men connected over their mutual love of books. When Stephen stepped into the library, he gasped audibly—the only proper reaction, as far as Arthur was concerned. Soon Arthur was pulling one manuscript after another off the shelves to show Stephen.
“How is the library used?” asked Stephen as Arthur was setting a manuscript onto one of the wide oak tables.
“Sadly, it’s not used much,” said Arthur. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately—how this resource can become important again. I’ll be honest, I’d like it to become important enough to render your job superfluous.”
“There must be ways to bring researchers and students here,” said Stephen, “even in a place as remote as Barchester. There’s a stately home near where my family lives in Gloucestershire that works with schools and even the local university to do programs for students. I think the university teaches a course on the history of the book in the library.”
“That’s a rather brilliant idea,” said Arthur. “I had thought about seeing if the library could loan some things to the university—set up a display to get students interested in books. But why not bring Muhammad to the mountain?”
“Do you know anyone at the university?” said Stephen.
“I have a few connections,” said Arthur, smiling.
It was impossible to closely examine eighty-two manuscripts in three hours, so Arthur had concentrated on what he saw as the greatest treasures of Barchester. Stephen’s job that day was simply to write a short description of the collection and come up with estimated prices for a dozen or so of the most valuable pieces. Arthur could have shown off only the least interesting of the Barchester manuscripts—late medieval works of theology with no illuminations. But Bethany had been right; he did not have it in him to disparage the collection. In the excitement of sharing the manuscripts with a fellow bibliophile, he soon forgot the underlying purpose of the afternoon and simply reveled in exploring treasures with Stephen.
“This is our oldest manuscript,” said Arthur, setting a small, browning volume on the table. Like most of the manuscripts, it lacked its front cover and the text began on the first page. There were almost no margins, many of the leaves were chipped, and the ink was faded to illegibility in places. “A Latin Gospel of John. Not much to look at,” he said with a smile.
“Fantastic,” whispered Stephen reverently. “What do you reckon? Late tenth century?”
“We think so,” said Arthur.
Stephen gently ran a finger across the first few lines of text. “Feeling that vellum and touching those words that have been there for a thousand years—that never gets old.”
“Sometimes I pull it out and read a page or two and I feel like it just . . . pulls me back through time,” said Arthur.
“You read medieval Latin?”