Night Music (18 page)

“Why do you say this?” asked Van Agteren.

“You have not yet touched it,” said the laborer, “nor held it in your hands. It is like being in contact with a living thing. It pulses and smells of blood. I found it just today, but I did not want it to remain a night under my roof. Even your master's coin may end up in the coffers of the Heuvelse Church, for I fear that any food or drink bought with it might end up poisoning my family and me. And—”

“Yes, what is it?”

The laborer was looking out into the night, as though expecting to see someone emerge from the mist.

“Before I left my home to come here, I glimpsed a shape in the fog—a man, but larger than any man that I have ever seen, yet also indistinct. He was watching the house, and I am certain that he followed me here. I thought that I could hear his footsteps under the sound of my own, but when I looked back, I saw nothing, and I can find no trace of him now. Perhaps I was mistaken.”

With that, the laborer left, and Van Agteren never saw him alive again. A wall collapsed on him the following day, and he was dead by the time his colleagues retrieved him from under the stones.

Van Agteren returned to Schuyler's study and found him examining the book, testing its spine and covers for some concealed mechanism that might cause the volume to open.

“Extraordinary,” said Schuyler, stroking the cover of the book. “Feel it, Maarten. It is warm to the touch, like living flesh.”

Van Agteren had no desire to lay a hand on the book, not after what the laborer had told him. He shared the details with his master, but Schuyler just laughed, remarking that the fog often played games with his own perceptions. Van Agteren departed, closing the study door behind him. In the hallway he met Eliene carrying a candle.

“Who was that who came here so late?” she asked.

“A laborer. He found a book in the ground and brought it to your father for examination.”

“A book? What kind of book?”

“I don't know,” said Van Agteren.

“But you saw it?”

“Yes, and I cannot say why, but already I wish that I had never laid eyes on it.”

Eliene stared at him.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I think that you are most peculiar.”

“And if you love me, then you are most peculiar, too.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

Her lips parted, and he kissed her.

“My father—” she said.

“Is lost in the examination of his book.”

“It is almost my time of flowers,” she said. “But you can come to my bed.”

And he did.

•  •  •

Van Agteren did not stay with Eliene for the night. A pair of elderly servants tended to the needs of the house, and he wanted to give them no more cause for gossip than they already had. He also respected Schuyler, although not so much that he was above sleeping with his daughter. He did not know how much the old man suspected of his relationship with Eliene, but he wanted to give him no reason to act on any suspicions that he might have.

The study door was open when Van Agteren awoke. He knocked before entering, but received no reply. The room was empty, and the little compartment in which Schuyler slept was unoccupied. Neither was Schuyler in the kitchen or elsewhere in the house, but the front door was unlocked, which meant that he had left either very early or very late. The servants were already preparing breakfast and had not seen their master. It was most odd.

Eliene rose, but had no more idea of her father's whereabouts than anyone else. She was not concerned for him, though. He was a man of capricious moods, even if they rarely led him to take to the streets at unusual hours. But Van Agteren was uneasy. After eating a hurried breakfast, he went in search of his master. Although Tilburg was a small town, he could find no trace of him.

•  •  •

At the Sign of the Oak, Van Agteren poured Couvret another glass of jenever.

“I admit that you have me intrigued,” said Couvret, “although I still don't understand why you have chosen to share this tale with me.”

“Oh, there is more to come,” said Van Agteren. “And far less pleasant it is, too.”

Van Agteren excused himself to make water, leaving Couvret alone. The inn had grown stuffy and warm, and Couvret had drunk more than he might have wished. He felt the need for some air. He went to the front door and stepped outside. A boy was clearing the snow from in front of the inn so that its customers might have an unobstructed path, but already fresh flakes had begun to fall. Beyond him, Couvret saw a massive figure in black walking in the direction of the Nieuwe Kerk, although it appeared to be more shadow than man, a consequence, perhaps, of the poor light and descending snow.

“Do you know that man?” Couvret asked the boy.

“What man?”

“The one who passed by just moments before I came out.”

“You must be mistaken,
mijnheer
,” said the boy. “No one has passed since I started clearing this snow. You can see for yourself that there are no fresh prints on the ground.”

The boy was right. The new snow had partially filled the old footprints, and there were none more recent.

Despite the cold, Couvret moved past the boy and walked to where he had seen the man, but even here there was no sign of the presence of another, and Couvret's were the only marks that led from the inn.

He returned to find Van Agteren seated at the table, waiting for him.

“Where did you go?” asked Van Agteren.

“To take some air,” Couvret replied.

“You're a braver man than I. I didn't even venture outside, but put most of my piss on the steps. Forgive me, but you seem troubled.”

Couvret took a sip of jenever.

“I thought I saw someone walking, but I was wrong,” he said.

Van Agteren regarded him carefully.

“When you say ‘someone,' what precisely do you mean?”

“A figure in black. A man, I think, but almost a shadow against shadows. Yet when I went in pursuit of him I could find no sign that he had passed this way.”

Van Agteren looked to the door, as though the subject might make himself apparent, summoned by their discourse. Whatever animation the Dutchman had demonstrated up to that point voided itself in an instant, and he seemed to be on the verge of weeping.

“Then I have not much time left for my tale,” he said. “Listen . . .”

•  •  •

Schuyler had not returned to his house by the time Van Agteren reached it. By now even Eliene was starting to fear for his safety, and one of the servants had been sent to instruct the local militia to keep a watch for Schuyler.

Van Agteren found Eliene in her father's study. She was sitting at his desk, the book that the laborer had brought the night before lying open in front of her. Van Agteren could not contain his surprise.

“How did you unlock it?” he asked.

“Unlock it?” replied Eliene. “I found it this way when I came to see if my father had left any indication of where he might have gone. It's odd: only one page will open. The rest appear to be sealed.”

Van Agteren stood over her and watched as she demonstrated. The pages were made from what might have been vellum, with only one side of the parchment used, the roughness of the other betraying the animal origins of the material.

“Here it is,” she said, revealing what Van Agteren took to be a map of constellations, except none were familiar to him, and the markings beside them were in an unknown alphabet. An expert hand had created the map. Van Agteren could not recall ever seeing such perfection in illustration before.

“It's beautiful,” he said.

“But no night sky looks like this,” said Eliene. “It is an invention.”

Although he could not interpret the markings, Van Agteren believed that they might be mathematical calculations, for among them were diagrams familiar to him from Euclidian geometry. Why would someone go to such trouble to indulge a fantasy?

“Wait!” said Eliene. “I think another page has freed itself from whatever substance was used to seal the whole.”

She used two hands to turn a number of folios, such was the weight of the book.

“What's this?” she said. “It cannot be.”

Revealed to them was an intricate drawing of Schuyler's study and its contents—his instruments, his books, his shelves and furniture—but the word
drawing
did not do justice to the execution. Rather, what was contained in the book was a perfect copy of the room, as though the page were not made from paper but was instead a mirror without tarnish. The skill with which it had been created was beyond even the greatest artist. It was impossible to comprehend how it might have been done, or how long it must have taken to complete.

Van Agteren licked his finger and pressed it against the page. It came back without a trace of ink or paint. He gazed at the drawing. The angle of depiction was unusual. It was almost as if . . .

Van Agteren turned and squatted behind the desk, so that he was facing Eliene.

“What are you doing?” asked Eliene.

“I could not swear to it, but the one who did this could only have produced it by using a glass to reflect the room back to him at the same angle as the book. But why?”

“When did you say this book came to my father?”

“Last night.”

“And where was it found?”

“Buried deep beneath the foundations of the old home of Dekker, or so the man who brought it to us claimed.”

“You must find him and bring him back here. He may have more to tell.”

“I promise you that he does not. He is a simple man, but an honest one. He wanted only to be rid of the book.”

“And did you go by Dekker's plot when searching for my father?”

“Yes. I asked after him this morning, but was told that he had not been seen there.”

“Will you try again?”

“Of course.”

She held his hand in hers and kissed the knuckles, one by one.

“Thank you.”

“We will find him,” said Van Agteren. “I shall not rest until he is with us again.”

•  •  •

It was growing dark, and by the time Van Agteren reached the Dekker plot all work had ceased, and the workmen had gone. He found Dekker and his family staying at his father's house while work continued on their own, but the thatcher had not seen Schuyler in days. Neither did he have any knowledge of a book, but he demonstrated considerable interest in any possible value it might have, and was quick to claim ownership of it, and to curse the now deceased laborer who had brought it to Schuyler. It was left to Van Agteren to remind Dekker that anything found on the land was ultimately the property of the lords of Tilburg, and it might be better for all if Dekker did not make a fuss until more could be learned about the book. Dekker assented, but only reluctantly.

As Van Agteren was leaving, Dekker asked him, “Tell me, who was that who walked here with you?”

“I came alone,” said Van Agteren. “There is no other.”

“But I would swear that I saw a man following in your footsteps. Big he was, all dressed in black. I might almost have taken him for a priest.”

Van Agteren denied it again, and left Dekker to puzzle over the mystery without him. But he was reminded of what the unfortunate laborer had told him the previous night, and on the walk back to Schuyler's dwelling he spent as much time looking behind him as ahead.

•  •  •

He was met at the door by Eliene. Only the candlelight gave life to her face. Otherwise, it resembled a porcelain mask.

“Nobody has seen your father,” he said.

But the only reply she made was “Come,” as she led him upstairs to the study.

Another page of the book was open. It showed a detailed anatomical drawing of her father's face, split evenly down the middle, rendered in a manner that would have incited the envy of Vesalius himself. One side depicted him as he was in life, except that his mouth was open wide, as though caught in the act of screaming. The other, the left, was without skin, and some unknown insects writhed in the exposed flesh, four claws visible around the maw of their mouths, and the pincers of an earwig jutting from the end of their lower abdomens. One was forcing itself out of the hollow socket of Schuyler's left eye.

“Someone is playing a cruel game,” said Eliene, and Van Agteren thought he caught a hint of suspicion directed at him.

“Not I!” he said. “I have not even been here.”

Eliene instantly relented.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and clasped herself to him. “I don't know why I should have thought such a thing. But I don't understand what is happening. I came into the study after you'd left, and the book was open at this page. The servants claim to know nothing about it, and I believe them. They never come into this room, not even to clean. They know better than to disturb my father's work.”

Van Agteren closed the book, hiding that dreadful version of Schuyler. For a moment, as he touched his hand to the cover, he felt it pulse in an unpleasant way.

“It is the book,” he said. “It should have been left in the ground.”

“Then what do you propose to do with it? Return it there?”

“No,” said Van Agteren. “I'm going to burn it.”

The fire in the kitchen was already blazing when Van Agteren and Eliene arrived with the book. They sent the servants out, and Van Agteren added more wood to the blaze, until even to approach it was to feel one's skin begin to prickle. Finally, when he was satisfied, he threw the book on it, but the stench that immediately arose was so terrible that they could not stay in the kitchen. Even outside the room the smell was foul, like the rotting carcass of an animal that had been set to roast. It filled the house, and Eliene became violently ill. They heard a knock on the door, and their neighbor, Janzen, was found to be standing before them, come to complain about the smell. The whole street was filled with it, and Van Agteren had no choice but to remove the book from the fire. It was slightly damaged on one side, but no more than that. The cover had blistered like skin.