A look of surprise passed over the librarian’s face, but quickly vanished. “A moment.” He disappeared momentarily through a door and returned with a set of keys. He said, “Follow me.”
Webb followed the monk out of the neon-lit, computerized library back down the stairs to the cloister and past a refectory with a long, heavy table and a small lectern. At the end of the cloister-walk was another set of stairs and the monk led the way down them and along a cool, dark stone-lined passage which ended in a massive wooden door. The monk used two keys. From the push he gave it, Webb inferred that, underneath the wood veneer, the door was basically a slab of steel. The monk punched in a number on a keypad and then locked the door behind them. “To control humidity and temperature,” he said. “I must remain with you, but also I must attend compline in an hour. And tonight, of course, we celebrate the birth of our Saviour.”
Webb took a moment to wander while the Father librarian stood at the door. Some of the books predated Gutenberg; many could have bought a Rolls-Royce, or a yacht, or a house. Here, handwritten, was Vitellio’s medieval compendium on optics, and next to it Kepler’s “supplement to Vitellio,” his Dioptrice, in which he described the principle of the camera centuries before Daguerre. Here, unbelievably, was Nicolas of Cusa’s 1440 De docta ignorantia of 1440, asserting that the universe is unbounded, and that all motion is relative, almost five hundred years before Einstein and the modern cosmologists. There was a little cluster of seventeenth-century comet books — Rockenbach, Lubienietski, Hevelius and others. And there was Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium—the 1617 Amsterdam edition — which had ushered in the painful birth of the scientific revolution. It was Aladdin’s cave, but Webb had no time to explore it. He turned to the monk, who simply said, “Opere di Vincenzo, qui” and took Webb to a shelf.
And there, indeed, were the Opere of Vincenzo; all but Volume Three.
“Volume Three, Father?”
“We have fifty thousand titles here, but unfortunately not the one you seek. It has been missing from our collection for sixty years.”
Webb’s heart sank. “How can I have been so misinformed? Volume Three was the one I sought.”
“And after sixty years, you are the second man to have asked for it in a week.”
You don’t say. “To be frank with you, Father, I’m desperate to see it. I’m involved in a scholarly dispute which only the works of Vincenzo can resolve.”
The librarian lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Perhaps you should speak to our Father Abbot. At this time of day, after chapel, he is often in his study. Follow me.”
The librarian left Webb facing the Abbot across a large desk. A computer terminal on the desk struck the astronomer as somehow odd. Unmonklike, he imagined Noordhof saying. The man was middle-aged, with a thin face and a classical Roman nose. He spoke with easy authority, in English, and had bright, alert eyes.
“So, Mister Fish, you are from Cambridge. Which college is that?”
Webb tensed. “Churchill.”
“On Madingley Road, as I recall. It is many years now. Tell me, that little coffee shop on Silver Street — what was it called?”
“There are a few,” Webb guessed.
“Lyons? Was that it?”
With a start Webb realized that he was being tested. He avoided the trap: “Rings no bells, I’m afraid.”
“How odd. Everybody knew Lyons in my time at Cambridge. I wasted my youth there.” Webb raised his hands expansively, Italian-style, and the Abbot dismissed the matter. “It was so long ago. Perhaps it no longer exists. However, it is not part of our Rule to engage in idle gossip. You seek the works of Vincenzo, Mister Fish. You see that our collection is incomplete. Are you aware of their history?”
“I understand that the partisans rescued them from the Nazis, along with sacred artefacts and works of art, at the end of the last war.”
The Abbot nodded. “It is also widely believed by local people that these things were returned to our monastery whence they were looted. Alas, Mister Fish, that persistent rumour is only partially true. Some treasures, some works of art, were not returned. The volume you seek is amongst them.”
Webb, feeling gutted, closed his eyes in despair.
The Abbot continued, “Vincenzo was a very minor actor in the great drama which was played out so long ago. Now had it been Galileo, great efforts would no doubt have been made to recover his works. But Vincenzo? Few have even heard of him.” The Abbot looked at Webb with curious intensity. “Is it so important, this scholarly dispute?”
“If only you knew, Father Abbot.”
“You can tell me no more?”
Webb shook his head.
The Abbot leaned back in his chair and looked at Webb thoughtfully over steepled hands. “I am left wondering what possible scholarly dispute can require such secrecy and lead to so much despair in your face.”
“I’m not at liberty to say. And I don’t come from Cambridge and my name isn’t Fish.”
The Abbot chuckled. “I thought as much. But we all have secrets to keep. I too have constraints on my freedom to talk.”
This guy knows something, Webb thought, maybe from the confessional. He toyed with the mad idea of blurting out the whole Nemesis story but immediately dismissed the thought. It would be seen as the ravings of a lunatic. He also suspected that the Abbot, faced with a choice between betraying a confession and permitting a holocaust, would tell the planet to get stuffed.
“You are leaving Italy soon?” the Abbot asked.
“I must. I came only for the manuscript.”
“All this way for a missing volume! If only I could help. Before you leave us, perhaps you should take the opportunity to see our monastery. There is an unusual mixture of styles here. You will have seen that our basilica is made in the style of a Greek cross, that is square, rather than in the medieval plan which has a long nave so as to represent the shape of the cross of Christ. The craftsmen who built our monastery were influenced by the Doric, which is simple and strong, rather than decorative. And yet our chapel is entered through a porch with a horizontal entablature supported by columns, more in the style of the decorative Corinthian order.” The Abbot smiled. “But I agree with your expression, Mister Fish. If you prefer, we can satisfy more bodily needs. We have many products. I recommend our liqueur, which is made of over thirty aromatic herbs according to a secret recipe which even I do not hold.”
Webb stood up. “Another time.”
“And our honey is famous. You must see our apiary.”
“Thank you. Unfortunately I have to get away.”
“Our beekeeper is Father Galeno. He is very old, and wanders a little, but he is a most interesting man to talk to. I said as much to your colleague.”
My colleague? Webb made for the door. “Thank you. Time doesn’t permit.”
The Abbot said again, “Our apiary, Mister Fish. Father Galeno is a very interesting man.”
God I’m thick, Webb told himself. The Abbot made the sign of the Cross and Webb said thanks for your help.
The Apiary was a square of grass the size of a small field beyond the bell tower. It was lined by dozens of box-shaped hives painted in bright primary colours. A monk, wearing a plastic hat with a protective veil, was bent over a hive with a metal bucket and a long, flat piece of metal. The air buzzed as Webb approached.
“Father Galeno?”
The Father Apiarist turned. He was a tall, thin man, in his middle eighties. He spoke in Italian and Webb was grateful for the six months he had spent in Rome some years previously. Bees were crawling over the monk’s white robe and his veil. His sleeves were tied with string at the wrists. “Would you like to buy some honey?”