The Sixth Day (A Brit in the FBI #5)(68)

“I know not, sire.”

“Then I will keep these pages. This legend you told me—I know now it is a portent of the blood I will spill in accursed Russia. Mayhap I will show them to the czar as he bows before me.”

The mighty army marched away in the morning and into disaster. Nearly half a million soldiers were lost to a bitter winter, to starvation, to people who would rather die than accept Napoléon’s boot on their neck.

Months later, Napoléon looked at the pages and realized the portent he’d believed to be his mighty victory and the blood of the Russians was his own soldiers’ blood and bitter defeat. But he could not destroy the pages, for fear of their curse staying with him.

And so it was that somewhere near Smolensk, a tinker found a saddlebag lying in a pile of bushes. There were only loose pages within. He had no idea what they were but kept them. Perhaps they had value, perhaps someone would pay him for them.





THE THIRD DAY


THURSDAY

Cabal: a private organization or party engaged in secret intrigues; also, the intrigues themselves.

In England the word was used during the 17th century to describe any secret or extralegal council of the king, especially the foreign committee of the Privy Council. The term took on its present invidious meaning from a group of five ministers chosen in 1667 by King Charles II (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley Cooper [later earl of Shaftesbury], and Lauderdale), whose initial letters coincidentally spelled cabal. This cabal, never very unified in its members’ aims and sympathies, fell apart by 1672; Shaftesbury even became one of Charles II’s fiercest opponents.

—ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN


Falconers are a fortunate breed. Not only do we have the pleasure of our current hawk, but also, increasingly over the years, the memory of former hawks, which were dear to us and individual flights, which are etched in the memory forever.

—Emma Ford, Falconry: Art and Practice

The Old Garden

Twickenham

Richmond upon Thames, London

Isabella woke in darkness. She didn’t know where she was or what had happened. She touched her fingers to her throbbing face. He’d struck her. Why? She stilled. Something was terribly wrong.

Fear swamped her, she was inside a tomb, something black—she was dying.

And then she remembered, saw it all again, and—no, no.

Gil was dead, lying on the kitchen floor, dead, dead, dead, and that obviously insane Laurence Bruce had murdered him and struck her down.

She couldn’t accept it, simply couldn’t, but there was blood, so much blood, and Gil was on his back, his beautiful eyes staring unseeing up at her. His throat, something was wrong. So much blood. And Bruce had struck her. She vaguely remembered the jostle and rumble of a car. The smell of gas and asphalt and—

“You’re awake.”

She jerked her head toward his voice. She tried to scream, but nothing came out. A gag, she was gagged. She was tied down and gagged.

“Don’t struggle. If you fight, he won’t like it. He might punish you.”

The man who’d spoken came into focus. Who might punish her? Dr. Bruce? Yes, of course. But who was this? He stood by the door, hair long and unwashed, his jeans and black T-shirt rumpled and stained. His skin was pale, and he was thin. The words coming from his mouth were no language she’d ever heard aloud, strange garbled sounds that held no meaning, only they did. She realized, somehow, she understood them.

She began twisting and fighting, but the man didn’t move to untie her. He stared as if she were a butterfly pinned to a board. She shuddered. She knew she was as good as dead. As Gil was. Her brain shied away from him lying so still, and all the blood. No, no. She didn’t want to see it again. Was this strange man, his face so pale he was nearly translucent, here to kill her? She swallowed tears, looked away from him, up, at the ceiling. Tall, at least twelve feet, timber beams running across it. Everything was white: the walls, the ceiling, the man’s skin. He still stood silently, watching her twist and turn.

“I was looking at your face. You can understand me.”

She began shaking her head. She could smell him, from that far away. Garlic, cedar, patchouli cologne. And blood. He smelled of blood.

Where was Dr. Bruce? What was happening? Panic rose, and she fought it, hard. She needed to stay in control, or she’d die—like Gil. No, Gil, no.

The man moved even closer until he stood next to her, looking down at her. “How is it you can speak our language?”

Of course she understood him, but she shook her head, felt tears burning her eyes, swallowed. She was gagged, so how could she explain he was speaking Voynichese, the language of the Voynich manuscript?

She hadn’t heard it since her twin sister had caught a flu virus and died, so small, shrunken in the hospital bed, covered with white sheets. She shouldn’t have died, the hospital had said, she shouldn’t have, we did everything we could. But their words were meaningless. Kristiana was dead.

He leaned down and took off her gag. “Speak to me.”

She looked up into that pale, intense face. She knew instinctively there wasn’t something quite right about him. She said, “I was a twin.” A special twin, she thought, but didn’t say it aloud, because, quite simply, she didn’t know what it meant. To him. “Of course I understand you.”