‘That’s Saint Richard Gwyn; the library is named after him. Please walk with me, there are things I wish to show you.’
She tags alongside. ‘Saint as in a real saint, or as in a surname, like David St John?’
‘As in real saint. He was martyred — executed in the sixteenth century for an act of high treason, otherwise known as refusing to say Jesus Christ wasn’t the Son of God. He was hung, drawn and quartered — you know what that is?’
‘I guess after the lynching they drain the body then cut it up?’
‘Not quite; the drawing is pre-mortem, not post. It involves tying the condemned man to a horse then dragging him from his prison through the streets until he is in agony. Then he’s carried up the scaffold and hanged until almost dead. He is cut down and emasculated — his testicles cut off. Then they disembowel him, sever his limbs and sometimes his head. The entrails and genitalia are burned in a public fire, the skull spiked and displayed. The four limbs — the ‘quarters’ — would either be nailed in prominent places in the city, or dispatched to different corners of the country.’
‘Jeez, and I thought Californian executions were gruesome.’
‘Britain has a past more brutal than most.’ He stops walking and turns to her. ‘But it’s the present and the future you should be afraid of. Unfortunately, you’re caught in the middle of something you shouldn’t be.’
She fixes him with a challenging stare. ‘Please don’t patronize me. Getting into the middle of things, as you put it, is the nature of my job.’
‘Perhaps, but I suspect we’re talking at cross purposes.’
‘How so?’
‘You think I’m referring to your homicide investigation.’
‘And you’re not?’
‘Not directly.’
‘Then enlighten me.’
‘I will.’ He paces along the library and gestures at the upper floor. ‘Every book in this room is a first edition and almost all are priceless. Some are the only ones in existence. Others are so rare, experts in their field don’t even know they exist.’
‘And I suppose that includes the Camelot Codex?’
He ignores the question and taps the glass of a display case. ‘This book here is the oldest illustrated bible in the world. It’s older than the Garima Gospels, recovered from Ethiopia and older and much finer than the Book of Kells created by Celtic monks.’
Mitzi looks down at a large volume lying open on an ornate brass stand. It is the size of a giant, thick atlas and the pages are covered in lavish illustrations and copperplate handwriting.
Owain swipes an electronic card across a sensor on the side of the cabinet and lifts off the glass cover. The air fills with a tobacco-like fragrance caused by the mass of musty pages and ancient wood they’ve been bound in. ‘This is the Arthurian Bible. It is written on the best of velum, a form of stretched and dried sheepskin.’
She inspects the pages as he continues. ‘The animal’s hair was removed by soaking the stripped skin in lime and excrement and then scraping it with a semi-circular knife called a Luna. The skin was then tensioned on special frames and cut to size by velum-makers. It is a real art.’ He touches the sides of the book. ‘More than two hundred blessed lambs were slaughtered to make this book.’
The main illustration staring up at her is that of a man who looks like a Roman emperor. He is shown in battle on horseback, only he’s not holding a legion’s standard but a large, gold crucifix identical to the drawing Irish had sent her. Around the horse lie corpses, skewered with pikes and swords.
‘It represents God’s never-ending battle for souls,’ says Owain. ‘The text was written by an order of holy men who guarded Christ for the forty days he walked the earth after his resurrection.’
She looks at him sceptically. ‘I suspect you might have a tough time proving that.’
‘I don’t have to. I do not intend to sell the artefact; therefore, the provenance only matters to my family and me.’
She circles the book, inspecting the shape and texture from multiple angles. In places, she can even see hair follicles on the velum. ‘I imagine the person who had this before you also once said that he had no intention of selling it, but he did.’
‘Actually, you’re mistaken. It’s never been sold or stolen. Nor robbed from a grave, if that’s what you are thinking. It was delivered into the hands of my family by Josephus of Arimathea when he came to Britain after Christ’s death.’
Mitzi doesn’t know whether to believe him or not. ‘Joseph of Arimathea — as in the rich guy who persuaded Pilate to allow Christ’s body to be laid in his own private tomb?’
‘No, not Joseph. His son, Josephus. History frequently mixes them up. As it does whether the Holy Grail was a chalice, a sacrament salver or, as a few believe, a sacred and secret text written in the blood of Christ.’
‘And are you one of those believers?’
‘I am.’ He turns a page and reveals a painting of knights riding across open green countryside.
It shows King Arthur and a priest carrying a bible and cross. Mitzi realizes it’s identical to the one found on the Ghent panel in Bradley Deagan’s apartment.
‘To make this folio,’ he adds, ‘a metalworker applied pure gold leaf and silver to the capital letters that start each paragraph. A portrait painter of highest regard drew the figures, and the most accomplished landscape artist of the time completed the background illustrations.’
He turns over a leaf and it crinkles so dangerously Mitzi fears it may crack. On display now is a double-page spread of blood-brown script covered in a matt varnish cracked with time.
The ambassador reads her mind. ‘In a distrusting moment I had a scraping of the letter analysed. It is human blood and the carbon dating puts it in the first century. Every letter written here was done while the manuscript was wrapped in the sanctity of a tabernacle cloth blessed by St Peter. The quills the scribes used came from the tail feathers of birds that Christ himself had blessed before his death. And the wooden binding that holds the folio together was crafted by the carpenter Joseph, Jesus’s mortal guardian.’
The script hypnotizes Mitzi. She can’t understand a word of what’s in front of her but she can tell that it has been painstakingly prepared and such care has to be indicative of a powerful message.
‘The text,’ continues Owain, ‘begins in pre-Christian times. It starts with the birth of the world and the genesis of forces of good and evil. It describes the constant struggle for life and how out of the universal clash between hunter and hunted, oppressor and oppressed, one man has to step forth and become a just and honourable leader, a setter of standards and morals.’
He glides a hand above the pages in an almost reverential motion. ‘These passages explain how that leader must choose followers and how those followers must be divided into disciples, men of words and knights, men of action.’
Owain folds back the pages, then replaces the glass cover and locks the case again. ‘On the gallery above you are scrolls and scripts that pre-date the bible I just showed you. They are written in ancient languages such as Etruscan and they all carry the same message.’
Mitzi casts her gaze up to the top floor and then back to where they are standing. ‘And the other display cases, the ones on this floor — what do they hold?’
‘They are also Arthurian works. They have all been copied into encoded script and kept digitally. Extracts of which have been stolen from me.’
‘The Camelot Codex?’
‘I believe that is what the person who made the copies is calling it.’
‘And this is what Amir Goldman and his assistant Sophie Hudson were killed for?’
‘It is. Lieutenant, do you still have this copy?’