The Aviary Gate (49 page)

‘I remember.'

‘And now everyone's gone to see the English gift, the marvellous organ that plays tunes by itself – did you know?' Celia said, talking too fast. ‘They presented it to the Sultan this afternoon.'

‘But you didn't want to go?'

‘No—' she gave a small wince, put her hand to her side, to where the pain was a constant now.

‘Tell me about the Valide.'

‘Oh, she was very kind, you know how she can be …' Celia began to pace the room again. She seemed restless, feverish almost.

‘Do I?' A tiny seed of suspicion took root in Annetta's mind.

‘What's she said to you?'

‘Nothing.' Celia did not meet her gaze.

‘Then what have you said to her?'

‘Why, nothing.'

‘You seem … different.'

‘Do I?'

‘Yes.'

As Annetta watched, two bright spots of colour appeared on each of Celia's cheeks.

‘Goose?'

Celia did not reply.

‘Oh, goose.' Annetta sat down heavily on the divan. ‘And you say you've not been told where to go? Now that you are no longer
gözde?
'

‘I am to wait here …'

‘For what?'

‘For dusk to fall.'

For one long moment there was absolute silence.

‘For dusk to fall? What will happen at dusk?'

Again Celia did not reply. She was looking at the object she had taken from the niche, something round and metallic.

‘What will happen at dusk?' Annetta was insistent now.

Celia turned to her, her face luminous. ‘The Aviary Gate, Annetta. She says I can see him there, just one last time.'

‘She told you that?' Annetta said.

But Celia did not seem to hear her. ‘If I could see him, just one last time, see his face, hear his voice, I think I could be happy.' She looked up. ‘You see, I know he's here. He sent me this, look.' She pressed the catch and the compendium opened on the palm of her hand.

‘Why, it's you!' Annetta looked at the miniature with astonishment.

‘It was me. Once upon a time there was a young woman called Celia Lamprey,' Celia looked down at it sadly, ‘but I can't remember her, Annetta,' she seemed to struggle to catch her breath, ‘she's lost … gone.'

‘But the Aviary Gate? Surely—'

‘I have her blessing.'

‘It's a trap, you know it is.'

‘But I have to go, you understand that, don't you? I would give anything –
anything
– just to see him one last time. And this is my chance, I have to take it.'

‘But you mustn't!' Annetta was frantic now. ‘It's a
trap
. She's testing you, can't you see? To see where your loyalty lies. If you go, you'll fail the test …'

‘But I've already been there, Annetta, I've already been through
the Gate. When I was there, the other night, I stood at the threshold and for a moment I could almost remember what it was like to be free.' Celia looked around the windowless room, her eyes unnaturally bright. ‘I can't do this any more, Annetta … just can't.'

‘You can, I'll help you, just like I always have.'

‘No.'

‘Don't go – don't leave me …' Annetta was weeping now. ‘If you go there tonight, you won't come back. She won't let you come back. You know that as well as I do!'

But Celia did not answer her. Instead she put her arm around Annetta, kissed her and stroked her dark hair. ‘Of course I'm coming back, silly. I'm going to see him, just one more time, the Valide said so,' she said at last, rocking Annetta against her shoulders. ‘Now who's being a goose?'

After some moments Celia stood up again and went to the door, looking up into the narrow patch of sky.

‘Is it time?'

The late afternoon sky had a pinkish tinge.

‘No, we still have time.' Celia came back to sit next to Annetta. From the chain around her neck she took out the key, and sat holding it in her hand. For what seemed like a long while the two kept vigil, sitting together very close, very still, their arms around one another, not moving. Eventually, Celia stood up again. The room had darkened.

‘Is it time?'

Celia did not reply. She went to the door and looked out again. Outside the pinkish tinge had faded to grey; overhead a bat swooped. She came back into the room. The pain in her side had gone.

‘I love you Annetta,' she whispered, kissing her softly on the cheek.

From her pocket she took out a piece of paper.

‘What's this?'

‘It's for Paul.' Celia folded the paper and pressed it into Annetta's hand. ‘If something—' she started, ‘if I don't, will you get it to him? Promise me, Annetta, promise me you'll find a way to get this to him.'

Annetta looked down at the piece of paper in her hand.

‘Is it time then?' was all she could say.

‘I can't believe it, I can't believe I'm going to see him again, Annetta! Be happy for me.' Joyfully Celia stood at the doorway, poised. ‘Promise me you'll do it, Annetta.'

‘But you're coming back, remember?' Annetta said, trying to smile.

‘Promise me all the same.'

‘I promise.'

‘And if you break your promise – I'll be back to haunt you, you'll see if I won't,' Celia said.

And with those words she was gone. Laughing and running, laughing and running noiselessly, on her little slippered feet, across the courtyard to the Aviary Gate.

Early one bitter January morning in the first week of the Hilary term Elizabeth met her supervisor, Dr Alis, on the steps of the Oriental Library. There were traces of slushy snow on the ground and even the golden brick of the Sheldonian Theatre across the road looked grey in the morning half-light.

‘Well,
you
certainly look well.' Susan Alis, a small, energetic woman in her mid-sixties, gave Elizabeth a kiss on the cheek. ‘Istanbul must have agreed with you.'

‘I've split up with Marius, if that's what you mean.' Elizabeth could not help smiling.

‘Ha!' Dr Alis gave a triumphant shout. ‘So I gather,' she said more gently, pulling Elizabeth to her and kissing her again. Her cheeks gave off a faint, spinsterish smell of old-fashioned face powder. ‘But you're glad to be back, all the same?'

‘Well, I wouldn't have missed this for the world.'

‘You mean our manuscript expert? Yes, it does sound as if they might have to eat their words after all. “Not very interesting” is what they said at first, I seem to remember. But then you know they always say that, especially if it's anything to do with women.' Her small button eyes glittered.

From somewhere close by came the muffled sound of a clock striking the hour. A small fleet of students rode past, the lamps on their bicycles piercing the chilly air.

‘That must be nine o'clock,' Dr Alis was stamping her feet inside
her snow boots to keep warm, ‘come on, let's wait for him inside. It's perishing out here.'

Despite the electric lights it was dark inside the Oriental Library. Elizabeth followed Dr Alis along a linoleum-lined corridor into the Reading Room. The room was the same as she remembered it: a relatively small functional space, long bare wooden tables, open shelves of books all along the walls, banks of drawers with their old-fashioned card indexes; the portrait of Sir Gore Ouseley, bookish and beaky-nosed, gazing down from the wall between the windows.

The Pindar Bequest, twenty leather-bound manuscript volumes in Arabic and Syriac, had been laid out ready for them on a trolley. Elizabeth picked them up one by one, opening each briefly, admiring the beauty of the script inside. From somewhere behind the librarian's desk a telephone rang shrilly.

‘So these are they, the Pindar manuscripts?' Dr Alis came to stand beside Elizabeth.

‘Paul Pindar was a friend of Thomas Bodley. It seems that he asked him to keep a look-out for books on his travels, and these are the result.'

‘When were they acquired?'

‘The bequest was made in 1611, although of course the books could be much older.'

‘My word, very early then.' Dr Alis picked one up and examined the inside back page. ‘And look at the cataloguing numbers, it makes them amongst the first few thousand books in the entire Bodleian. Do we know what they are?'

‘Mostly astronomical and medical text books, I believe. I've got a list here of their contents from the old Latin catalogue.' Elizabeth fished in her bag for her notebook.

‘Rather an esoteric choice for a merchant, wouldn't you have said?'

‘Maybe,' Elizabeth said consideringly, ‘but Paul Pindar was a rather unusual man; quite a scholar, by the looks of it, as well as a merchant and an adventurer.'

‘He sounds absolutely perfect.' Dr Alis gave a surprisingly raucous laugh. ‘Can I have his telephone number?'

She reached into her bag and took out a pair of spectacles with modern oblong-shaped lenses. ‘He was a bit of a gadget man as well, your Paul Pindar, I seem to remember, with that beautiful compendium
of his. The Elizabethans loved gadgets as well as riddles; and that's what a compendium was you know, the most superb little piece of gadgetry. You could tell the time with it, not just during the day, but also at night, by starlight; find your way with the compass; measure the heights of buildings; any number of different uses. What would he have if he were alive today, I wonder? Not just the humble mobile for him, but the most state-of-the-art BlackBerry, or an iPhone.'

‘In that case I don't suppose the humble book would have been enough for him either.'

‘Electronic books all the way.'

‘And I don't suppose he'd be corresponding with the Chief Librarian either.'

‘What? When we now have these fascinating new professors of Cyberspace Studies at the Oxford Internet Institute? Definitely not.'

Elizabeth laughed. Dr Alis's enthusiasm for technology was legendary amongst her much younger colleagues, most of whom, she liked to joke, were still flummoxed by the most basic video recorders.

‘And look, here it is, the manuscript that the fragment was hidden inside.'

With excitement Elizabeth picked up one of the volumes. The book was smaller than she remembered it. Bodley Or. 10. She identified the catalogue entry in her notebook.

‘Yes, look here it is:
opus astronomicus quaorum prima de sphaera planetarum
.'

The manuscript had been leather bound at a much later date, but when she opened it the pages gave off a faint peppery smell, like the inside of an old sea chest. She examined the sloping black and red hieroglyphs; with one hand ran a finger down the pages, feeling its rough edges, the thick, faintly sticky slub of the paper.

This too, she thought to herself. Four hundred years – the phrase came back to her again.
Four hundred years in the dark
.

‘You know it really is amazing that we should still have catalogue entries written in Latin,' Dr Alis was saying, interrupting her reverie.

‘I wouldn't worry, we'll soon be able to look at manuscripts like this online, no doubt,' Elizabeth said, ‘but it won't be the same, will it?'

‘Meaning?' Dr Alis gave her one of her intense bird-like stares.

‘Well, I know how I felt when I first found the fragment. How I felt when I first realised I was holding Paul Pindar's compendium in my hand. How I feel now looking at this …' Elizabeth glanced down at the book.

‘My dear, you always were a hopeless romantic.'

‘Am I?' Elizabeth looked up again. ‘You know, I don't think so. I think it's because they are—' she searched for the right words, ‘human things. They have been handled and written on, breathed over, by others, hundreds of years ago. And it's as if in some strange way they contain the past within them, the stories of the people they once belonged to. This page that I am touching now was once touched by some unknown astronomer who wrote in Syriac …' She shrugged. ‘Who was he, do you suppose? I don't imagine we'll ever know now; or discover how a Levant Company merchant came to acquire his manuscript.'

‘You're quite right. I do agree with you, really. But I also know how arbitrary these things can be. And that we must always be wary, my dear, of reading too much into them.' Dr Alis took the book from her and scrutinised one of the pages. ‘Well, we do know that he had very beautiful handwriting,' she said musingly, looking at the black and red script, ‘and quite an eye for colour too. And I can tell you something else: whatever the catalogue says, this isn't a text book either, this is more like an astronomer's notebook. Look, some of the pages in here are still blank.'

‘So they are.'

Elizabeth saw that there were indeed still some blank pages. On others grids had been drawn in red ink; some were empty, others only half-filled in with strange figures and symbols that she could not interpret; the writing broken off suddenly, as though the scribe had been interrupted in the middle of his work.

‘Dr Alis?' a voice said behind them.

‘Yes, I am Susan Alis. And you must be our manuscript expert?'

‘Richard Omar.' The young man shook her by the hand. ‘And it was you who found the fragment?'

‘No, alas, I wish I could claim it were. It was Elizabeth, Elizabeth Staveley, my graduate student.'

‘Ah,' he turned to Elizabeth, ‘then I expect you'll be glad to see this again.'

He took a sealed plastic folder from his briefcase. Between its pages Elizabeth could see the outline of the manuscript fragment, watermark and all.

‘That's brilliant, you've brought the original with you. I wasn't sure—' absurdly, her heart leapt in her rib cage, ‘may I?'

‘Of course,' he handed her the folder, ‘it's all right, you can take it out.'