The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias

Chapter Nineteen
The Hand and the Glove

Do you believe in love at first sight? I did not until the moment when, in my brief conversation with the Earl’s daughter, I detected the beauty of her character. I had often heard it said that only fools love a woman at first meeting her. Yet within that woman’s heart was a fathomless well of purest affection, although its waters slept in silence and obscurity – never failing in their depth, and never overflowing in their fullness. Everything in her seemed somehow to lie beyond my view, affecting me in a manner which I felt rather than perceived. At first I did not know that it was love for her. Amid the strange atmosphere of mystery and conspiracy into which I had so suddenly been plunged, amid convulsions of doubt and fear which had during those past few days harrowed my soul, the tender influence of this woman came like that of a celestial visitant, making itself felt and acknowledged, although I could not understand it. Like a soft star that shines for a moment from behind a stormy cloud, and the next is swallowed up in tempest and darkness, the impression it left was beautiful and deep, but vague.

Perhaps you may blame me. Most probably you will. But man is ever the jetsam of the wind of destiny.

I glanced at her, and took in every detail of her countenance and dress. She was no longer in shabby black, but in a pretty costume of dove-grey cashmere, with silken trimmings of a somewhat darker shade; she looked daintily bewitching, supple and slim, grey lending relief to the delicate roundness, the gentle curves of a figure in which early womanhood was blooming with all its sweet and adorable charm. Her fair hair, streaked here and there with gold, was covered with a hat that suited her exquisitely, whether the eye sought harmony of colour or unity of lines. She wore no veil, and thus I could freely feast my eyes upon her beauty.

“I really don’t understand you,” I exclaimed, after a pause. “You do not trouble me, for until I saw you by chance passing into the street we were entire strangers.”

“No benefit can be obtained by discussing the matter,” she answered blankly. “Why were you watching in Harpur Street if not to witness my despair?”

“I had a motive in watching,” I answered.

“Of course you had. You cannot deny that. My father has already spoken of you, and told me everything.”

“And he is still triumphant?” I queried, recollecting his expression of satisfaction on seeing the fatal sign.

She was silent, her lips set closely, her fair face turned towards the open expanse of grey sea.

“Am I not right in suggesting that your enemy is a person named Selby, and that he – ”

“Who told you that?” she cried. “How did you know?”

“By my own observations,” I replied, as calmly as I could, yet secretly gratified that she should have thus betrayed the truth.

“Ah?” she sighed. “I see! I was not mistaken. You are not my friend, Mr Kennedy.”

“But I am,” I declared. “Give me an opportunity of proving my friendship. You apparently believe that I am implicated in some plot against you, but I swear I am innocent of it all. I myself am a victim of some extraordinary conspiracy – just as you are.”

She looked me straight in the face as though hesitating whether she dared speak the truth. Next instant, however, her natural caution asserted itself, and, with tactful ingenuity, she turned the conversation into a different channel. She seemed uneasy, and eager to escape from my cross-examination; while I, on my part, became determined to obtain from her the truth and to convince her of my good intentions.

I was in a difficulty, because to reveal my connection with The Closed Book might upset all my plans. For aught I knew, she might inform the man Selby, who, gaining knowledge of my presence in England, would suspect that the precious volume had come again into my possession. Therefore I was compelled to retain my secret, and by so doing was, of course, unable to convince her of my intention to be her friend.

Mine was a painful position – just as painful as hers. For some reason quite unaccountable she held me in terror, and now that dusk was darkening to night, was in haste to return to Saxlingham, about three miles distant. It was apparent that my admission of having watched her and her father in Harpur Street had aroused her suspicion of me, a suspicion which no amount of argument or assertion would remove.

She was disinclined to discuss the matter further; and, after some desultory conversation regarding the beauties of Norfolk, she called her dog Rover, preparatory to taking leave of me.

“You must excuse me, Mr Kennedy,” she said, with a smile, the first I had seen on that sad, sweet face. “But it is growing late, and it will be dark before I get back.”

“May I not walk with you half the distance?” I urged.

“No,” she responded. “It would be taking you right out of your way for Sheringham. I have known the roads about here ever since I was a child, and therefore have no fear.”

“Well,” I said, putting forth my hand and lifting my hat to her, “I can only hope, Lady Judith, that when next we meet you will have learned that, instead of being your enemy, I am your friend.”

She placed her hand in mine rather timidly, and I held it there while she replied, with a sigh, “Ah, if I could only believe that you speak the truth!”

“It is the truth!” I cried, still holding her tiny hand in my grip. “You are in distress, and although you decline to allow me to assist you, I will show you that I have not lied to you tonight. Recollect, Lady Judith,” I went on fervently, for I saw that some nameless terror had driven her to despair, “recollect that I am your friend, ready to render you any assistance or perform any service at any moment; only, on your part, I want you to give me a promise.”

“And what is that?” she faltered.

“That you will tell no one that you met me. Remember that, although you are not aware of it, your enemies are mine.”

For a moment she was silent, with eyes downcast; then she answered in a low voice, “Very well, Mr Kennedy. If you wish it, I will say nothing. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” I answered, and having released her hand she turned from me with a sad smile of farewell, and with her collie bounding by her side made her way over the brow of the hill along the straight white road, while I, after watching until she had disappeared from view, turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Anything like mystery, anything withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half-perceive and half-create than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed. But this feeling is part of our life; when time and years have chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out of which we build a shrine for our idol, then do we seek, we ask, we thirst, for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness which revives in us the withered affections and feelings buried, but not dead. Then the excess of love is welcome, not repelled; it is gracious to us as the sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk with its few green leaves.

Like every other man I had had my own affairs of the heart. I had loved unwisely more than once, but the sweetness, sensibility, magnanimity, and fortitude of the unhappy Judith’s character appealed to me in all the freshness and perfection of what a true woman should be.

I cared nothing for the repugnance she felt towards myself, because I knew that it must be the outcome of some vile calumny or some vague suspicion.

As I passed back along the narrow path over the cliffs, my face set towards the gathering night, I calmly examined my life, and saw now that seven years had gone since the great domestic blow had fallen upon me and caused me to ramble aimlessly across the Continent; that I still stood yet in the morning of life, and that it was not too late to win the glorious prize I had asked of life – love incarnate in sovereign beauty, endowed with all nobility and fervour and tenderness and truth.

In any case, whether she became mine or not, I loved her with my whole heart; and to know that I could love again, in spite of all the torture of the past, was in itself both comfort and delight.

Chapter Twenty
Walter Wyman Rejoins me

That night I slept little, my mind being full of thoughts of the evening’s adventure. Before my eyes I had constantly that pale, tragic face, just as, previously, visions of the countenance of the woman I had seen in the prior’s dim study in Florence seemed ever before me. Was it by intuition that I knew that these two women were destined to influence my life to a far greater degree than any woman had done before? I think it must have been; for while I loved the one, I held the other in a constant, indefinable terror. Why, I know not until this day – not even now that I am sitting here calmly chronicling all that occurred to me in those wild days of ardent love, reckless adventure, and impenetrable mystery.

At noon Walter Wyman unexpectedly walked into my room with a cheery greeting, and, throwing himself down upon the couch in the window that looked over the sea, exclaimed, “Well, old chap, what does this extraordinary book contain, after all?”

I took the transcript from the place where I had hidden it, and, seating myself on the edge of the table, read it through to him.

“Oh, hang it!” he exclaimed excitedly, when I had finished, “then we may, if we are persevering and careful, actually discover this great treasure!”

“Exactly,” I answered. “My suggestion is that we lose no time in making preliminary observations at the two spots mentioned by the man who hid it from his enemies.”

“And supposing we found it, would it benefit us, having in view the law of treasure-trove?” was Walters very practical inquiry.

“Not very much perhaps,” I admitted. “But we should at least clear up a mystery that has puzzled the world for ages – the actual existence of the Borgia poison and its antidote, besides rescuing Lucrezia Borgia’s emeralds, and at the same time discovering the real motive of the strange conspiracy surrounding the book.”

“I quite agree with that,” exclaimed my friend; “but does it not strike you that we are considerably handicapped by that folio being missing – the very page of all others most important for the success of our search? Besides, this man Selby has, in all probability, read the chronicle, and therefore knows just as much, and probably more, than we do.”

“That I grant you,” I said. “But, nevertheless, I somehow feel that we ought to search both at Crowland, which is within easy reach of this place, and at Threave, in Scotland.” And I explained how I had written to my old friend Fred Fenwicke, asking that we might both be allowed to come up and visit him.

“You certainly haven’t let the grass grow under your feet, old fellow – you never do,” he said, taking a cigarette from the box I handed to him and lighting it. “I think with you that we ought to try Threave, seeing that the plan is evidently of the spot. But we are unable to do anything till the sixth of September, when we ought to be there at three o’clock in the afternoon, according to the directions given.”

“We have still three weeks, then,” I remarked. “In that case we might go over to Crowland first and look around there. In all probability the other plan is meant to indicate where the treasure of the abbey is concealed.”

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, taking the transcript from my hand. “This list of things, the silver altar, gold chalices, and boxes of gems are sufficient to make one’s mouth water – aren’t they?”

“Yes,” I laughed. “We ought, if we act in a circumspect manner and arouse no attention on the part of the villagers, to be able to make a secret search. The one thing to avoid is public interest. The instant anybody suspects what we are after, the whole affair will get into the papers, and not only will our chance of success be gone, but our enemies, whoever they are, will know that The Closed Book is again in our possession.”

“I quite follow you, Allan,” he said with sudden seriousness. “We’ll go to Crowland tonight, if you are agreeable, and set carefully to work in order to see if the plan tallies with any landmark now existing. It’s a pity the old chap who wrote the record didn’t label it, as he did the other.”

“He may have wanted to give the plan but hold back the secret from anyone who casually opened the book,” I suggested. “You see, the volume has evidently been preserved for centuries in the library of the Certosa Monastery at Florence – the house in which the monk Godfrey Lovel died – and, being written in early English, could not, of course, be translated by the Italian monks.”

“I wonder how many people have died through handling those poisoned pages?” my friend observed. The deadliness of that secret Borgia venom appealed to him as it has appealed to the world through ages.

“Ah!” I said, “it is impossible to tell.”

But my mind was on other things, and as soon as the opportunity offered I related to Walter my strange rencontre with Lady Judith Gordon.

“What?” he cried, jumping up from the couch; “you’ve actually seen her and spoken to her?”

“Certainly. She is charming, and I admit, my dear Walter, that I’ve fallen most desperately in love with her.”

“Love! You actually love her?” he demanded.

“Indeed I do. She is the perfect incarnation of what a good, sweet woman should be. Is there any reason why I should not admire her?”

“None that I know of,” he returned; “but I’m afraid of these people and their connection with this mysterious affair. Remember, all we know about them is that they have led very peculiar lives for years. But time will show whether you are wise. Certainly these people appear to have found the secret just as we have – the secret of the existence of a valuable treasure.”

Chapter Twenty One
We Make Preliminary Investigation

“I thought buried treasure existed only in books!” I remarked, recollecting “Treasure Island” and other such romances. “Certainly I never anticipated that I should be actually engaged in a real treasure hunt.”

“Nor did I, until I saw the gravity of the whole thing, and how deeply in earnest are these people.”

“They have no idea that The Closed Book is again in my possession?” I asked.

“None whatever. The volume was stolen from Harpur Street, of course, and they are puzzled to know into whose hands it has fallen. All the chief dealers in manuscripts in London – Quaritch, Maggs, Tregaskis, Dobell, and the others – have been warned that if the Arnoldus is offered them it is stolen property.”

“Well, it is not very likely that any of them will have the offer,” I laughed. “It will be kept in a safe place now I have it in my possession again, you may depend upon that.”

Walter Wyman had turned over the many folios of my transcript, and was reading the portion concerning the hidden treasure of the Abbey of Crowland. I think the list of gold and silver objects so plainly set out appealed to him.

“We’ll go back to Peterborough tonight,” he said, “sleep at the ‘Angel,’ and visit Crowland, as it is now spelt, tomorrow. I’ve heard that the ruins of the abbey are very fine. It will be an interesting outing, if nothing else.”

“Before we go we had better take a tracing of the unnamed plan,” I suggested. “It may assist us, and yet it may, on the other hand, be a plan of an entirely different place. One thing, however, is certain – namely, that it had been drawn there with some distinct object, just as the plan marked ‘Treyf.’”

To this he agreed, and going downstairs I obtained the packet containing the book from the hotel manager’s safe, and together we carefully traced the rough plan in question. It was merely an arrangement of lines and numerals, which told us absolutely nothing. Still, we both felt half-convinced that it must somehow concern the Crowland treasure which was hidden from the king’s men at the time the abbey was dissolved and destroyed.

At seven-thirty, after an early dinner, we left by the London express for Peterborough, arriving back at the old-fashioned “Angel” just before eleven. In travelling I carried the precious Arnoldus myself, fearing to lose it; but at our hotel I again transferred it to the landlord’s safe, with injunctions to the hotel keeper to be careful of it, as its value was considerable.

Next morning was bright and sunny, and taking a carriage from the hotel we drove out to Crowland, a fen village distant some seven miles.

Perhaps you may have visited it, an old-world straggling place clustering about the time-worn, blackened ruins of the ancient abbey, a venerable pile which even in its present gaunt decay displays mute evidence of a long-past glory.

As we stood before its restored tower and great ruined, roofless aisles, where arches still remain that are the wonder of the modern builder, we could not help reflecting on the vicissitudes through which the grand old place had passed from its foundation, A.D. 713, as a memorial to the Saxon Saint Guthlac, down to its complete dissolution and overthrow by Henry VIII. Because of its isolation in that great marsh, it was for centuries a place of refuge, where the monks were engaged in a noble and great work, employed in prayer, writing manuscripts, building bridges, making roads, or constructing by degrees that noble monument to the glory of God, the great abbey, the nursing mother of Cambridge University, and the very centre of Christian life in the fens of Lincolnshire. Though those venerable aisles are roofless, and the wonderful Early English life-sized statues in the western front of the nave are blackened by age and crumbling to decay; though all traces of the original dimensions of the place are lost in the ill-kept and weedy churchyard surrounding it, the old pile is still one of the noblest buildings in England, wonderful in its station, unique in its beauty, and a valuable relic of Christian devotion, interesting alike to the architect, the historian, and the antiquary.

The guide to the place, which we purchased of the sacristan, told us that the vast structure, consisting of the porch, western tower, and the north aisle, with the ruins of the nave, did not represent one-fourth of the original abbey church. Indeed, the grey, time-stained building which we stood before was little more than the north aisle of the church attached to the abbey, and therefore conveyed no more adequate idea of the extent of the monastic building than the ruins of a domestic chapel will of the castle or mansion to which it was attached. At the time of the dissolution it was standing in all its glory, with the wooden roof of the now ruined nave richly gilt, the great windows full of fine stained glass, two grand organs, and altar blazing with gold, silver, and gems.

The north aisle still remains roofed over, – but uninteresting – to do duty as the parish church; but the magnificent nave is stripped, mutilated, and open to the four winds of heaven, for what sacrilege the commissioners of Henry VIII did not commit in old Godfrey Lovel’s day, Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers completed when they stormed the place and shattered the remaining walls and windows in 1643.

Together we strolled into the space enclosed by the nave, wandering among the grey old ruins, where the quiet was broken only by the twittering of a bird. The morning was bright, with a warm sun and cloudless sky; but its very light seemed to render the venerable pile, rich with deeds long since forgot, the more bare, solemn, and imposing.

We were alone, for the sacristan, having received the sixpence for the guide, had returned to her cottage, allowing us to roam there at our own sweet will. Therefore, when in a spot where we thought we should be unobserved, I drew forth the transcript I had made of the old monk’s record, and reread it aloud to my companion in order that my memory might be refreshed, and that he should know the exact wording of what was written.

We smiled at the simplicity of the old Abbot John sending Thomas Cromwell a present of his fen fish in the hope he would be appeased and pass by the abbey without seizing it; yet, as I afterwards discovered, the original of that very letter is still preserved in the British Museum, and I have had it in my own hand, thus showing that old Godfrey must have possessed the entire confidence of his abbot.

In front of where I stood, let into the ruined wall and beaten by the weather, was a grey slate which I knew to be of fifteenth-century workmanship. The incised marginal inscription, in Lombardic characters, read as follows:

“PETRE: PRECES: P: .ME: PETRO: PASTOR: PIE: P: ME.”

This, being translated, reads:

Peter (offer) prayers for me. Peter,

Pious Shepherd (pray) for me.

In the centre of the slab was a floriated cross, and the words, “Orate p. aia Johanis Tomson.” In 1423 John Tomson gave ten marks for the building of the abbey tower, and it appeared that the marginal inscription was a prayer addressed either to the Apostle St. Peter or to John Tomson’s father confessor, named Peter.

Those great bare walls and high pointed arches, grey and frowning, rudely broken, yet perfect in grace and symmetry, surely furnished a striking instance of the uncertainty of all human labours. In the day when the soldier-monk Godfrey lived there it was the seat of devotion and learning, the abode of luxury and ease, possessing riches in abundance, and vessels for its use of the most costly description; now, except in that portion fitted as a church, it scarcely afforded shelter to a rook or daw, and the last remains of its once almost unparalleled magnificence were smouldering silently and mingling with the soil on which they stood:

“Whilst in the progress of long decay,

Thrones sink to dust, and nations pass away.”

We turned again to the old chronicle of the monk who had lived there and actually seen those massive walls torn down by Southwell’s men; the monk who, with the abbot himself and his friend the Scotch monk Maxwell, had at midnight on the first of December, 1538, concealed the greater part of the abbey treasures.

According to Godfrey’s statement, Malcolm had kept watch at the south door while the abbot and himself had carried the three chests out and sunk them in the centre and at the deepest part of the fish pond. It was hidden in the same pond in which he had previously concealed the Borgia jewels – namely, in the lake at a spot indicated, being one hundred and thirty-one paces south of the grand altar. The pond was never dry, it appeared, even in the hottest summer, and like all other monastery waters contained carp for Fridays. The Borgia treasure he managed to secure before leaving Crowland with his friend Malcolm Maxwell, but the abbey plate and jewels and the silver altar he had been compelled to leave, the two others who alone knew the secret, in addition to himself, having died. He had recorded the existence of the treasure from a sense of religious duty, feeling that the Catholic Church should not suffer by entire loss of such a magnificent property.

His directions were by no means explicit, but in our eagerness we resolved to investigate as far as possible.

Passing up what was once the nave, where great trees now flourished and bushes grew in tangled profusion, we came to the high round-toothed arch and two massive piers which were all that remained of the central tower. Beyond, although the abbey church extended just as far eastward as the ruins ran westward, all had disappeared.

There was no sign of the whereabouts of the grand altar from which to take our bearings. The whole of the eastern side of the church had been swept away and converted into a modern churchyard.

“Perhaps the guide will tell us something,” Wyman suggested, and at once began to scan its pages, while we stood in the rank grass beneath the shadow of that magnificent arch which is the admiration of all modern builders.

Presently he pointed out to me the original measurements, showing that the nave had been one hundred and forty-four feet long by twenty-eight feet wide and seventy-five feet high, which after careful comparison with other calculations, made it clear that the grand altar must have stood eighty-six feet from the broken pier of the central tower where we stood.

We had fortunately purchased a measuring-tape in Peterborough; therefore, without delay, we marked out eighty-six feet in a direct easterly direction towards the open fen pastures straight before us, and, looking round, discovered to our satisfaction some broken stone foundations hidden in the grass and weeds – evidently the lower stones of the grand altar mentioned by the monk Godfrey.

Some twelve feet farther on there were some similar moss-grown stones, which struck me as being the remains of the rear of the demolished altar; therefore from this latter point we determined to take our bearings, and begin our operations.

We stood and glanced around to find the monastery fish pond. Southward in the direction indicated, in the centre of a grass field, which, filled with mounds where old foundations had been overgrown, was a deep dip in the ground, a small pond quite unlike the deep lake full of old carp that we had imagined.

“That’s it?” I exclaimed, much disappointed. “There certainly isn’t much water there. I suppose we had better measure the hundred and thirty-one paces, so as to be quite certain that it really is the spot.”

“Come along,” cried my friend. “Let’s do it separately;” and, turning our faces to the south, we paced on, each counting silently, and being compelled to scale the churchyard wall in our progress.

At one hundred and nine paces, however, I arrived at the edge of what had, no doubt, once been a big pond, for the grassy hollow was some thirty feet wide and sixty long, divided into two, and in each remained a few feet of muddy water from which the cattle drank.

The discrepancy in the distance puzzled us. Was it possible that the celebrated silver altar of Crowland and the three chestfuls of treasure lay buried in the centre of the slime of that half-dried pond?

Surely the lake must have been of much larger dimensions in Godfrey’s day; and, if it were, then the distance between its edge and the grand altar would not be so great.

I produced the tracing of the mysterious plan contained in The Closed Book, but failed to comprehend it in any detail. The shaky lines, intended to be straight, were mostly numbered, as though denoting paces distant. But there was no number 131, or 109, as I had found it, hence we were utterly mystified, and both inclined to believe that in imagining the plan to concern Crowland we had been mistaken.

We both stood at the edge of the muddy pond and glanced into its green, stagnant water.

Was it possible that the great treasures of that half-demolished abbey, whose high ruined walls and buttresses cast their shadows behind, had been hidden deep in the mud below by the same hand that had written The Closed Book, the hand that had envenomed its pages and thus preserved the great secret from age to age?

It seemed almost incredible in these matter-of-fact times, and yet we both felt confident that the treasure enumerated in that list lay cunningly concealed somewhere in that vicinity.