'Gentlemen! You see before you Lot 66,' he called in his hectoring cadence, 'from the famous collection of Anton Schwarz von Steiner!'
I started at the name, which I knew I had heard before. I watched the volume flourish in Pickvance's hand, whose fingers looked strangely clawed, as if the digits were malformed. Then I remembered. I had been ascending from the crypt at Pontifex Hall, with Alethea, two steps ahead of me, describing Sir Ambrose's exploits, how he once negotiated for the Holy Roman Emperor the purchase of the entire library of an Austrian nobleman, a renowned collector of occult literature named-I was certain-von Steiner.
Bids on Lot 66 had started at ten shillings. Two men in particular were bidding against each other: one of them in the front row, the other two or three seats to my left. Pickvance was soliciting higher and higher offers. Twenty shillings… thirty… thirty-five…
My spit had dried up and I felt a shiver creep up my backbone like a bead of mercury. I squinted hard at the volume, which Mr. Skipper held aloft as he paraded up and down the platform. What were the chances, given Pickvance's appalling record so far, that it had actually been part of the Schwarz collection, much less in the Emperor's library? But a link, however tenuous, had been forged, something that might connect Sir Ambrose Plessington to the Golden Horn, or at least to Dr. Samuel Pickvance.
I leaned forward in my chair and licked my lips. The room seemed to have gone impossibly silent. The man in my row had ceased bidding. Pickvance raised his mallet.
'Thirty-five shillings, going once… going twice…'
By the time the last of the three hundred lots were sold the bells of St. Bride's had rung four o'clock. I stumbled outside, blinking and squinting in the brilliant sunlight, bumped and pushed on the tide of the departing auction-goers, with whom I now felt, after so many hours together, an unwelcome kinship. To escape them I walked down to the Fleet and stood for a few moments on the bank, watching the water flex and gurgle as the tide pooled slowly inwards. A slick of oil shivered and coalesced on the surface, a perfect spectrum of colour. Then, as the voices finally subsided behind me, I reached into my coat-tails.
Lot 66 was, by the standards of this particular auction, a rather distinguished volume: actual morocco with strong stitching, its rag-paper pages unscathed by either damp or book-lice. It proved to be an edition of Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim's Magische Werke published in Cologne in 1601 and edited by someone named Manfred Schloessinger. I knew little about the work other than that it was a translation into German of De occulta philosophia, a book of spells in which one finds, among other things, the first ever reference to the word 'abracadabra'. It had cost me almost five pounds, which was far too much, of course. I wouldn't be able to sell it for even two pounds, let alone five. But what interested me wasn't the title or the author but the ex-libris pasted to the inside cover. It incorporated a coat of arms, a motto-'Spe Expecto'-and a name engraved beneath in a heavy Gothic script: Anton Schwarz von Steiner.
Of course, the ex-libris may not have been authentic. A bookseller learned to distrust these little tokens of identity. One cannot judge a book either by its cover, as the saying goes, or by its ex-libris. This one, for example, might have been soaked off another book-one that had belonged to von Steiner-and then pasted on to the inside cover of an otherwise undistinguished copy of Agrippa's Magische Werke. Unscrupulous booksellers had been known to resort to such tactics in order to increase the value of a book-something I would not have put past Pickvance. Or else the bookplate might not have been von Steiner's, but a forgery instead. And if this was the case, I wouldn't recognise the fraud unless and until I saw a true example of von Steiner's ex-libris, which didn't seem likely in the near future.
On the other hand, I told myself, it was well known how the contents of the Imperial Library in Prague had been pillaged and dispersed during the Thirty Years War. What was missed by the soldiers looting Prague Castle at the start of the war had been scooped up by Queen Christina of Sweden as it ended three decades later. So it was possible that the ex-libris was authentic and that the volume had found its way to England. It could have been brought over by Sir Ambrose, who would have been acquainted with it through his dealings with the Holy Roman Emperor. Possibly the Englishman had been unscrupulous in his dealings with Rudolf and had kept certain volumes for his own private collection, which in time must almost have rivalled the Emperor's own. But if this was the case, why was the volume not at Pontifex Hall? Why did it not show his ex-libris on the front pastedown? And if it had been pillaged or lost like many of the others, why had Alethea made no mention of it?
As I closed the hide cover, I remembered from somewhere that Agrippa, the so-called 'Prince of Magicians', a friend of both Erasmus and Melancthon, a secretary to the Emperor Maximilian and a physician and astrologer at the court of François I, was said to be the foremost authority in Europe on the Hermetic writings. Even so, the link between his Magische Werke and the Hermetic parchment stolen from Pontifex Hall promised to be a long and tortuous one. Authentic Schwarziana or not, the volume might have no connection whatsoever with either Sir Ambrose or his missing parchment. Had I merely wasted five pounds and an entire day's work?
Perhaps not. I fished in my pocket for the card Pickvance had given me after I had threaded my way to the front of the room to collect my prize. Up close, the auctioneer had been shorter and looked much older. Deep creases criss-crossed his consumptive face, and the whites of his eyes-or, rather, their yellows-were filigreed with red. His long fingers were, as I had noticed, strangely crooked, as if arthritic or even, perhaps, broken by a pilliwinks. I wondered if he had been tortured by one of Cromwell's Secretaries of State, or if his hands had merely been caught in a falling sash-window. As I accepted the copy of Agrippa from these gruesome claws I found myself bold enough to ask who had put the volume up for auction.
'I might be interested in other texts of a similar provenance,' I told him in a low tone. 'Ones from von Steiner's collection.'
Pickvance had seemed startled by the question. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that the volume might have been stolen: yet another reason why he chose to auction his wares in the Golden Horn. Possibly his inventory-those lots that weren't forged-consisted entirely of booty from the libraries of Royalist estates that, like Pontifex Hall, had been pillaged or confiscated. His reply did nothing to alleviate my suspicions. He shrugged and told me that he was 'not at liberty to divulge' his sources. His emaciated face had stretched into an unwholesome grin.
'Trade secrets, after all.'
I caught him by the coat-sleeve as he was turning away to attend to someone else. I suspected the jangle of a few gold sovereigns could easily put paid to what few scruples or discretions he might possess, so I told him in the same hushed tone that my client would be willing to pay a great deal-much more than five pounds-for the right volume. He had paused at that, then turned slowly to face me. For a second I wondered whether I was doing the right thing… and whether Pickvance was anything more than a thief or a charlatan. Whatever, he seemed to set aside his own reservations at once and rise eagerly to the bait.
'Oh, I dare say. Oh, it's possible, yes, that I might have something in that line.' His tone was more respectful now. He was probably inventing plans for more 'Schwarziana' as he spoke, more forged texts. 'Of course, I would have to check my catalogues. But, yes, yes, yes, I may well have-'
Now it had been my turn to leap to the bait. 'You keep catalogues? Records of your sales?'