CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Quire (n): Four sheets of paper or parchment folded to form eight leaves, as in medieval manuscripts.
—Oxford Dictionary
FBI Special Agent Ben Houston listened with half an ear to the older chemist, Dr. Hoag, from Princeton, run through the various methods his team had used to date the quire. Ben was familiar with their methods, being the former head of the art crimes unit for the New York Field Office, and now the art (and other things) expert for Covert Eyes. Whereas Dr. Marin had made her dramatic announcement short and sweet, Hoag was droning on and on. Few remained to listen.
He and Melinda were sitting at the back of the room. He leaned close. “This is amazing, imagine the Voynich written in twin talk. But only certain twins, and now Dr. Marin is on the search. Gleaned from this page seventy-four? I wonder if she will find the right twins who communicate cryptophasically—is that a word?”
He was nearly bouncing with excitement.
Melinda said, “I don’t know, do you believe her?”
“Why not? I know Dr. Marin is a renowned expert, spent her career so far with the Voynich. Do you doubt her?”
Melinda was frowning. “I’m not sure. I just felt she was holding something back.”
“Well, that makes sense. Why throw all your surprises out at one time? Melinda, thank you so much for bringing me here today.” He eyed her. “Did you know I worked the case of the stolen Voynich manuscript from Yale? That I became an amateur expert on the Voynich?”
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Didn’t I tell you? As a member of Her Majesty’s Parliament, I’m required to know all specialized information about my lover.”
Her lover. Melinda’s lover. He loved the sound of that.
“I thought it was particularly good timing the announcement came while you were here in London. And yes, a little birdie whispered it in my ear. You’ll meet him later. Imagine, Ben, the lost pages from the Voynich. I wonder when they’ll go on display? If it’s true, it’s amazing.”
Ben said, “Dr. Marin believes only specific twins can read the Voynich, which means, I guess, twins in Africa do not speak the same twin talk as twins in Norway.”
Melinda took his hand. She loved to touch him. “Yes, according to Dr. Marin, only special twins. If and when she finds the special twins, she’ll inform the world.”
“Ben, if she doesn’t find answers before you leave, you can come back to London. Maybe you could even time it to a break when Parliament isn’t in session. Just think, we can share the joy of spending our days staring at a bunch of moldering old paper.”
Ben laughed, and she laughed with him. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was to be here, in London, on his first real vacation in years. He still couldn’t get over this incredible woman, a member of Parliament, or MP as the locals said, who had awoken next to him this morning, seduced him again, then offered him tea, which made him shudder to remember. He looked at her mouth, the pink lipstick a bit smeared after the quick kiss he’d given her in the taxi. They were both redheads, and wasn’t that something? And she fit so nicely against him.
He said, “I suppose I know as much as the next fellow about the Voynich.”
She brought his hand to her lap. “Tell me about it. Oh yes, use little words, since it’s old art.”
He cleared his throat. “Simple words then. Short version: the book itself dates back to the early 1400s. The parchment paper is said to be indigenous to that time and is prepared in the northern European style.
“A while back some said Sir Francis Bacon wrote it, as a joke, perhaps. Then it fell into the hands of John Dee, an alchemist and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. Dee tried to translate it, but he couldn’t, said his best guess was the manuscript was medical in nature. Which makes sense, because it’s broken into several parts: herbal, astrological, balneological, pharmacological.”
“Balneological? I thought you were using small words.”
“Of or related to bathing. There are a lot of drawings of women bathing in unidentifiable green liquids.”
A dark red eyebrow went up. “I seem to recall some green figures. Naked women bathing? Sounds more like medieval porn.”
“Could be, who’s to say? Anyway, John Dee sold it, and it became the property of Emperor Rudolf II, who also had no luck decoding it. Lots more hands got ahold of it over the years—I can’t remember all the names—but it finally ended up with the Jesuits outside Rome for a few hundred years.
“In 1912, a rare book dealer named Wilfred Voynich discovered it with the Jesuits at Frascati. He’d been a pharmacist in Russia, so he knew his chemistry and had a natural interest in alchemy. He’d traveled to Italy looking for books to stock in his store. He brought it back to London, where he was setting up shop, and eventually tried to sell it to his friend Richard Garnett, at the British Museum. Garnett declined. After Voynich died, his wife tried to sell it—no takers. They could never find a buyer, and finally, it was bequeathed to Yale in the late sixties. Once the Beinecke got their hands on it, they did the radiocarbon dating and proved it antedated Bacon by a couple of centuries, so there’s no way he wrote it. They made it a big deal and awakened worldwide interest. And even with worldwide attention, no one could translate or decode it.”
“So bottom line,” Melinda said, “this weird indecipherable collection of pages, some of them porn with naked women bathing, discovered at a Jesuit yard sale outside of Rome, is still a mystery—until today, with Dr. Marin’s announcement. So maybe she’ll find out which twins wrote it, and which twins can read it. I’m sure hoping for a cool set of twins, maybe from Siberia or deepest Africa. This is fairly exciting, Ben. I bet you’ll stay up very late tonight reading all about it. Once I go to sleep, that is.” And she gave him a sweet smile.
“I’ll try to be a gentleman. Do you know all my quirks?”
“Not all, but I’ll learn them, won’t I? Ask Nicholas, he’ll tell you I enjoy doing my own research about someone who’s important to me, which you are. Very. And that, Agent Houston, is of course why I brought you here today. Now, who stole the manuscript from Yale?”
He shrugged. “We don’t know. Someone drilled out the locks and walked right into the room where it was kept. A security guard interrupted the robber, but he or she managed to escape, with the Voynich. We never caught the thief, and the case is still open. Melinda, I really should get in touch with the office and let them know about this incredible find and what it could mean, even though I’m no longer on the case, since I was assigned to Covert Eyes. The FBI will want to send an agent to talk to the museum and Dr. Marin about the found quire.”
She said, “Yes, you should call the FBI. Where have these lost pages been all these centuries, I wonder? And how did they end up in the library upstairs?”
A dark-haired man pushed past them, making his way toward the door, nearly knocking Melinda in the shoulder. Ben said, “Hey!” But Melinda shook her head. “Ignore him. That’s Roger Bannen, a reporter. He once covered Parliament for the Guardian, but he had a spot of bother with a young girl a few years ago, the idiot. I haven’t seen him in quite some time. He’s with the Sun now, I hear. I wonder why he’s in such a hurry. Why are you staring at me?”
“I love to listen to you talk, a female version of Nicholas, all cool and proper upper-class Brit. After I make this call, would you like to go to a pub, get a pint?”
“Don’t you sound British? Sounds lovely. First, though—” Melinda looked at her watch, then stood. “Come on, Agent Houston, I promised you a meeting.”
She led him up the stairs into the museum itself and took a right toward the antiquities department. A thick red rope blocked a stairwell heading up the next flight of stairs.
Ben automatically stopped. “Are we supposed to be doing this?”
She looked down her nose at him, impressive, since he topped her by nearly a foot. “Agent Houston, I’m in Parliament. Do you think a rope is going to stop me?”
“Where are we going?”
“To see an old friend.”
He pulled her around, kissed her, smoothed his finger over her eyebrows. “A last kiss before we get arrested.”
She laughed and grabbed his hand. “Into the breach.” Ben followed her up, then down a long, blue-walled hallway. Three doors down, Melinda stopped and knocked.
The door opened. It was Dr. Wynn-Jones, the chair of the antiquities department himself, who’d introduced Dr. Marin at the press conference. And behind him stood Dr. Isabella Marin.
“My dear Melinda, come in, come in. And who is this very intelligent-looking chap, who, interestingly, was holding your hand?”
Melinda received a bear hug, then stood back, and introduced them. “This is my good friend, FBI Special Agent Houston, from the New York FBI. No, no, despite your reputation he’s not here to arrest you.”
The two men shook hands. Dr. Wynn-Jones said, “And this is Dr. Isabella Marin. She’s my wunderkind. Isabella, this is Melinda St. Germaine and Agent Houston. I’ve known her family for years, smart as whips, all of them. I was crushed when she decided to go into politics, since she has one of the best eyes for art this side of the Thames. It’s been too long, my dear girl.”
Best eyes for art? So you planned this whole thing for me, did you? And then you asked me to give you a history of the Voynich? She probably knows all the names I’ve long forgotten.
Melinda said, “Sir, Agent Houston is a fan of the Voynich. He worked the case last year when it was stolen from Yale. I wondered, do you think it would be possible—?”
Dr. Wynn-Jones beamed at her. “Ah! You want to see the pages? Of course, of course. Isabella, shall we all go down together and take a look?”
Ben was staggered. He shook Dr. Wynn-Jones’s hand. “That would be wonderful, sir, thank you.”
“Call me Persy, although Melinda here refuses to. From the looks of you two, I’d say you’re very good friends indeed.” He looked from one to the other and chortled.
Two hours later, Ben felt shell-shocked. The missing pages were so very old he’d been afraid to touch them. He kept shaking his head, staring at them. When he and Melinda were back on the street, waiting for a taxi, Ben looked at his watch. “I’m glad Nicholas waited to text me until we were leaving Dr. Wynn-Jones and Dr. Marin. He and Mike are coming to London, asked me to come by. How far is it to Westminster from here?”
“Twenty, thirty minutes, depending on traffic. I wish we had my car. We’d get to Westminster faster than in a taxi.”
Ben knew that was fact. She drove her black Range Rover like a bat out of hell, which made his heart occasionally freeze, but he liked it. He’d asked, and no, she’d never had an accident.
As they waited for the taxi, Ben chanced to look up. He saw a small drone flying overhead, then it veered off, toward the east. “Did you see that, Melinda?”
“See what? There’s our taxi.” She threw out her arm and caught him just as he started to step off the curb. “Whoops, you look left, right, left, here, not right, left, right. You’re in London, remember? I don’t want you to get run over by a bus.”
“Thank you. There was a drone overhead. It took off to the east. I wonder what that’s about.”
“A drone? Now that’s odd. I thought the only folk allowed to fly drones in the city are Scotland Yard. Maybe they were testing a new one.”
It took them fifty-seven minutes to get to Westminster.
“Next time,” Melinda said, “It’s the Ranger Rover for us, Agent Houston.”