The Sixth Day (A Brit in the FBI #5)(29)
“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.”