‘It’s pretty unusual for items like this to come on the market, Fergus. What else have they got? You make me want to get on the next plane.’

He held up his hand. ‘No. “The market” is exactly what they do not want to know about any of this. They made contact with us under a seal of total confidentiality. I’m not supposed to be talking to you, so I’d be obliged if you said nothing either.’

I was put out. Why tell me at all if my hands were going to be tied as well as my lips sealed?

‘Don’t sulk.’ Fergus looked at me shrewdly. ‘I haven’t mentioned this to anyone and I don’t intend to – apart from anything else, there would be no point. But the thing is, they have a Shakespeare First Folio – one that was supposed to be somewhere in India. It has never been properly accounted for and my view is that it isn’t in India at all but in the Monastery of Saint Mathieu des Etoiles.’

‘How on earth did they acquire it?’

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? But in the past when rich young men entered the monastery as postulants their families gave a sort of dowry and it sometimes took the form of art treasures, rare books and so on, as well as of money. That’s probably what happened in this case.’

‘Do they know what they’ve got?’

‘Pretty much. They’re neither fools nor innocents. And they are certainly not to be cheated. No, I know you would not, Adam, but your trade is as open to charlatans as any other.’

‘I like the way you call it “my” trade.’

‘Oh, don’t look at me,’ Fergus said, smiling slightly. ‘I’m just a simple librarian.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve extended my lunch hour far enough. Are you walking back into town?’

He paid the bill and we turned out of the gate and began to walk towards St Giles.

‘The thing is,’ Fergus said, ‘some of the items they might conceivably sell will go to America – we simply don’t have the money in this country. I am talking to a couple of potential private benefactors but I don’t hold out much hope – they get talked to by the world and his wife. Why should they want to give us a single priceless medieval manuscript when they could build the wing of a hospital or endow a chair in medical research? I can’t blame them. We’ve already got First Folios. So have the other libraries. We none of us need another. But you have a client who could presumably afford three or four million to get what he wants?’

‘He would never have mentioned it to me if he didn’t know how unlikely I was to get one for him, how much it might cost if I ever did and that he could well afford that. He’s a gentleman.’

‘Ah, one of those. Would you like me to get in touch with the monastery and ask one or two discreet questions? I won’t mention your name or anything of that kind – and I’ll have to work up to it. I think I have the way of them now, but I don’t want to pounce or the portcullis will come down.’

‘And they’ll be off to the Huntington Library in a trice.’

Fergus’s mouth firmed slightly. I laughed.

‘You’d all stab one another in the back just as surely as we dealers would,’ I said. ‘But thank you, Fergus. And of course, please put in a word. Whatever it takes.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t call us and all that.’

We parted outside Bodley, Fergus to go in to his eyrie beyond the Duke Humfrey Library, while I went on towards the High. It was a beautiful day now, the air clear and warm, a few clouds like smoke rings high in the sky. There were plenty of trains back to London but I was in no hurry. I thought I would walk down to one of my old favourite haunts, the Botanic Garden, which is surely Oxford’s best-kept secret.

Six

went in through the great gate and began to walk slowly down the wide avenue, looking about me with pleasure, remembering many a happy hour spent here. But it was the Cistercian monastery of Saint Mathieu des Etoiles and its library, as well as the possibility of acquiring a very rare book indeed, which were at the front of my mind. I knew that I could not speak a word of what Fergus had told me, not to Sir Edgar Merriman, nor to a single other soul. I was not such a fool and, besides, I rather wanted to prove to Fergus that antiquarian book dealers are not all charlatans. But I was sure that he had been half-teasing. He knew me well enough.

I wondered how long it would take him to oil his way round to mention of the First Folio in his correspondence with the monastery – presumably by email, as he had hinted. Perhaps not long at all. Perhaps in a day or so I might know whether the business was going to move a step further forward or whether the subject of the Folio would be scotched immediately. There was absolutely nothing I could do but wait.

I had come to the great round lily pond which attends at the junction of several paths. Three or four people were sitting on the benches in the semi-circle beside it, enjoying the sunshine. One woman was reading a book, another was knitting. A younger one had a pram in which a baby was sound asleep.

I sat at the end of a bench, still thinking about the Folio, but as I sat, something happened. It is very hard to describe, though it is easy enough to remember. But I had never known any sensation like it and I can feel it still.

I should stress again how at ease I was. I had had a good lunch with an old friend, who had given me a piece of potentially very exciting information. I was in one of my favourite cities, which holds only happy memories for me. The sun was shining. All was right with the world, in fact.

The young woman with the pram had just got up, checked on her baby and strolled off back towards the main gate, leaving the reader, the knitter and me in front of the raised stone pool in which the water lay dark and shining and utterly still.

And at that moment I felt the most dreadful fear. It was not fear of anything, it was simply fear, fear and dread, like a coldness rising up through my body, gripping my chest so that I felt I might not be able to breathe, and stiffening the muscles of my face as if they were frozen. I could feel my heart pounding inside my ribcage, and the waves of its beat roaring through my ears. My mouth was dry and it seemed that my tongue was cleaving to the roof of my mouth. My upper lip and jaw, my neck and shoulder and the whole of my left side felt as if they were being squeezed in a vice and for a split second I believed that I was having a heart attack, except that I felt no pain, and after a second or two the grip eased a little, though it was still hard to breathe. I stood up and began to gasp for air, and I felt my body, which had been as if frozen cold, begin to flush and then to sweat. I was terrified. But of what, of what? Nothing had happened. I had seen nothing, heard nothing. The day was as sunlit as before, the little white clouds sailed carelessly in the sky and one or two of them were reflected in the surface of the still pool.

And then I felt something else. I had an overwhelming urge to go close to the pool, to stand beside the stone rim and peer into the water. I realised what was happening to me. Some years ago, Hugo, my brother and older than me by six years, went through a mental breakdown from which it took him a couple of years to recover. He had told me that in the weeks before he was forced to seek medical help and, indeed, to be admitted to hospital, almost the worst among many dreadful experiences was of feeling an overwhelming urge to throw himself off the edge of the underground station platform into the path of a train. When he was so afraid of succumbing to its insistence he walked everywhere, he felt he must step off the pavement into the path of the traffic. He stayed at home, only to be overwhelmed again, this time by the urge to throw himself out of the window onto the pavement below.

And now it was happening to me. I felt as if I was being forced forward by a power outside myself. And what this power wanted me to do was throw myself face down into the great deep pool. As I felt the push from behind so I felt a powerful magnetic force pulling me forward. The draw seemed to be coming from the pool itself and between the two forces I was totally powerless. I think that I was split seconds from flinging myself forward into and under the dark water when the woman who had been knitting suddenly started up, flapping at a wasp. Her movement broke the spell and I felt everything relax, the power shrink and shrivel back, leaving me standing in the middle of the path, a yard or so from the pool. A couple were walking towards me, hand in hand. A light aircraft puttered slowly overhead. A breeze blew.


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