“No ‘the’ in the title, except in misprinted or pirated copies. What do you think of Kidnapped, Mr. Clover?”
I closed it, as though examining the book’s form would give me a better sense of its whole meaning. “Its story makes me think, no matter where you go, wherever you are taken by life’s events, the one thing you cannot escape is family.”
“You know something, Mr. Clover? You seem too preoccupied for a young man,” he said, and for the moment I imagined those repaired spectacles gave him the power to read my thoughts.
“Mr. Fergins, I have not wanted to disturb you while you are recovering. However, I feel I ought to tell you that when I visited the courthouse I asked someone—an ex-publisher—where I could find you.”
“What did he look like?”
“A slight man with thinning white hair, a neatly groomed mustache, with an old-fashioned cravat.”
“Chisholm. G. R. Chisholm.”
“He is a friend?”
“Publishers do not have friends.”
“He said that he didn’t know your name.”
“In my years of helping Pen Davenport, it became my obligation to know people who would never know me. But please, go on.”
“Well, I mentioned to him you were sometimes reviewing evidence in Belial’s trial.”
He waited. “I see. Did Mr. Chisholm have something to say about it?”
“Oh, I think he was hardly listening to me once he saw I was colored. But when I looked up I saw that Belial was being led away by the bailiff near our seats, and it seemed to me the bookaneer was looking at me. He might well have heard what I was saying, heard me describing the room where the evidence was. I cannot help but fear that he had something to do with the fire that caused your suffering, and that because of what I said he knew where you’d be. Could he have managed such a thing from a jail cell?”
Mr. Fergins wore a brave and impassive face that prevented my guessing how my words affected him. Finally he replied, “Who can say with certainty what a great bookaneer cannot manage?”
“Would he have the motivation to try to harm you, to stop you from assisting the prosecution?” I could not miss my chance. “Mr. Fergins, if it would not exhaust you too terribly, perhaps you can tell me more about the bookaneers.”
“Certainly,” he said immediately. “There’s a book that will illustrate a point, if you don’t mind.”
I followed his directions and retrieved a volume from his collection. I would not have even called it a book, but rather a loosely bound sheaf of old papers in a thick yellow hide.
“This,” he started, taking hold of it as though it were a child, “is a handwritten copy of the Royal Portrait, better known by its Greek title, Eikon Basilike. Charles I is said to have dictated the book while he was in prison, only days before Cromwell beheaded him. This is a copy believed to be transcribed from the original pages by Sir Jeremy Whichcott. Sir Jeremy transcribed the first seventeen chapters and returned the book to the king’s rooms when it became too dangerous.”
“Then what you hold there is incomplete?” I asked.
“Yes. Oh, there are later printed copies of the whole Eikon Basilike, but this one means more to me because Sir Jeremy’s position reminds me of the modern bookaneers. When everyone around a book, including the author, is helpless, that is when the bookaneer must step in to act. Of course, if it had been a true bookaneer, he would have been able to do more.”
“You mean to save the king?”
He seemed amused by me. “To save more chapters. But I see your way of thinking. Yes, if a bookaneer had gotten ahold of it, and circulated the book sooner and to more people, perhaps there even would have been enough agitation to stop the execution, though, on the other hand, I suppose that would make us all very Catholic today. Pray be a good fellow and put it back in its place for me? Gentle with it.”
“I notice it is an unusual sort of leather,” I said, running my finger along the deteriorated yellow hide. “Sheepskin,” I declared, gratified to show how much I had learned from our conversations about books.
“No, no. Didn’t I say? Human skin.”
“What?”
“Do be careful handling it. It’s quite valuable.”
I wanted to throw the thing out of sight but I juggled the horrible creation until it landed on a table. “Human skin! How is that possible? What are you doing with it?”
“Oh, there have been various examples of such a thing in the history of bookbinding,” he said with a professorial air. “In this case, the binder was also a student at the local medical college and thought it fitting that a book written by a dead man should be covered by dead skin. It’s rather a glorious thing, isn’t it? I should like my own flesh to be put to such good use when I have died.”
I stared at his face but could not tell from his expression whether he was joking. I washed my hands furiously at the basin, wishing I had turpentine.
“But you asked to hear more about the bookaneers, Mr. Clover. Have I ever mentioned to you the time Molasses, the sneakiest of the old bookaneers, got his greedy hands on Thackeray’s last work? The look on Whiskey Bill’s face when I told him what had happened . . . Well, never has a fellow, even a ginger-topped one, turned so red as a ruby! What neither of them knew, however, was that a craftier bookaneer from Krakow, by the unlikely name of Baby, already had a scheme to take it.”
He stopped when he saw the disappointment form on my face as I took my usual place at his bedside. “Mr. Fergins, couldn’t you say something about what happened after you and Pen Davenport found Belial in Samoa? Also, I have been wanting more details of Kitten’s demise.”
“Those tales have very dark turns, Mr. Clover.”