The Book of the Lion (2 page)

“We could agree to have the manuscript called the Whatever-his-name-is manuscript of Chaucer's
Book of the Lion
. Like the Ellesmere manuscript.”

“Or the Elgin Marbles,” Spanner said. “But maybe he hasn't got a hungry ego, and maybe he isn't wealthy enough to care about tax breaks.”

“We still have to come up with some way to get control of the manuscript. The last major work of Geoffrey Chaucer—what would that be worth in dollars? We have to be sure the manuscript doesn't get to auction, or there will be a bidding war with a bunch of Oxford-educated Arab princes, three software companies, and an Australian billionaire or two. This would be like what happened in the art world—Van Goghs going for the price of a medium-sized company.”

“You want me to offer to buy it.” Spanner said.

“I've been thinking about that,” Hallkyn said. “But it's too much to buy alone, even for you. What we should probably do is put together enough money for a pre-emptive bid. But I don't want to offer him any money. I just think we should have it waiting, in reserve.”

Spanner said, “That seems wise. Let's come up with an estimate. What do we need? What do things like this go for?”

“There is nothing like this. In 2001 a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio was sold at Christie's for about six million dollars. But the First Folio is only a printed book. There are forty surviving copies, and hundreds of millions of reprints.
The Book of the Lion
is vellum— each sheet a sheepskin cured and hand-rubbed with stone to make it smooth, and then covered with calligraphy and paintings— one of a kind. A work of art.”

“Okay, so what is the physical manuscript worth? What's the most it could be worth?”

“We'd have to see what the object looks like. In 1983, a group of Germans paid nearly twelve million dollars for a Romanesque gospel. It was beautiful. But nobody ever spent twelve million because he was wondering what a Bible was going to say, or six million because he didn't know what was in Shakespeare.”

“We need a number.”

“I don't know,” Hallkyn said. “Or maybe I'm afraid to think it through.”

“Try.”

“All right,” said Hallkyn. “Figure that the physical book is, in today's dollars, worth at least five million. It's probably not going to be as pretty as the Ellesmere, but it's much rarer, because there are other manuscripts of the
Canterbury Tales
. Assume this is the last major missing work of the first great writer in English, like finding the last living dinosaur there is or will ever be. Are you with me?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“Also, the contents of
The Book of the Lion
are utterly unknown. The first thing a responsible owner would do is publish three editions of it. First would be a facsimile; second, a popular reader's edition; third, a scholarly edition with footnotes, a historical introduction, and a critical introduction. Possibly there would also be articles by major experts. We don't know the length of the book. It could be just 1,300 lines of poetry, like
The Book of the Duchess
. But
Troilus and Criseyde
is over 8,000 lines, in five sections. If
The Book of the Lion
isn't as good as the other works, it will still be of equal importance to scholars.”

“I'm starting to see a way of recouping some of the price,” Spanner said. “The publishing rights might help.”

“It probably wouldn't be a crowd-pleaser,” said Hallkyn. “But it would sell to scholars in every English speaking country. The United States, Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland—”

“I'm familiar with the English-speaking countries.”

“And it would keep selling modestly forever. Every student who studies Chaucer would read it. And not every student of English literature is from an English-speaking country. Two thirds of Germany and Switzerland speak English, eighty-five percent of Sweden and the Netherlands, twenty percent of India.”

“All right,” said Spanner. “We can estimate that whoever owns the manuscript would be able to defray a tiny part of what he paid for it from sales.”

“There might also be grants from foundations or even the government,” said Hallkyn. “But that all takes time, and they might not add up to much.”

“We still have to come up with an idea of what the manuscript is worth if we want to deal with this man,” Spanner said. “Suppose we add the twelve million paid by the German cartel for the old gospel in 1983 and the six million paid for the Shakespeare folio in 2001. That's eighteen. I think eighteen million is our number. At least it's based on something real. And it's a number that shows we're serious.”

“I think so,” Hallkyn said. “Is it possible to get that much?”

“I'll see what I can do,” Spanner said. “We'll need investors. It's going to be tricky. We can't tell anybody what the investment is, or we'll be turning our allies into competitors. They'll have to be willing to put up money without knowing what I want to buy with it.”

“Are there people like that?”

“We'll see whether my reputation is good enough to make some. Have another scotch, put your feet up, and remain calm. I'm going to start making some calls tonight. The more money we have lined up before this person calls again the better.”

Hallkyn slept fitfully that night. Whenever he woke up, he would go over the whole topic in his mind, separating dream from memory until he had them clear, but then couldn't get back to sleep for a time.

He waited for the second call. A day passed, and Hallkyn could hardly bear it. Then a second night passed, and he began to feel unsure of himself. He played back the voicemail from the caller a dozen times, trying to be sure he hadn't misunderstood or missed any part of it—a phone number, a name. Then he called the phone company to be reassured that the messages could not have been cut short by the company's equipment. Yes, they were sure. The plan that Mr. Hallkyn had been paying for would have allowed a message several minutes long. Everything was digital, and so there was not a question of a tape running out. There was no tape. And the caller's number was blocked.

The day after that Hallkyn had to go to the university and teach his classes—a morning medieval survey that the undergraduates had decided to call “
Beowulf
to the Bowel Shift.” That was quick and simple. His goal was mostly to infect the little cynics with the enthusiasm he felt for the early period, and once again the literature itself was doing the job for him. The graduate seminar had been a tedious business—John Gower's
Confessio Amantis
, a perfectly fine and masterful work, but today he kept thinking that Gower was no Chaucer. Nobody else was Chaucer either. Not even the Pearl poet or the Gawain poet had been capable of the breadth of vision, the fascination with humanity, the sheer ambition of Chaucer.

Hallkyn rushed home, swerving into his driveway too fast and nearly hitting the line of privet hedge beside the pavement and then coming too close to the side of the garage door opening. Then had to squeeze out of the driver's seat with the car door too close to the garage wall to open far enough. He hurried into his house, picked up his phone, and listened to the messages.

Nothing. Well, something, but not the call he had been hoping for. First were just a few more undergraduates who had dire symptoms that made paper-writing impossible. Next, that graduate student wanted his oral exam the Tuesday afternoon after the written. Fine. Why prolong the ordeal? Next, his friend Norman Sammons had called inviting him to contribute an article for a collection on Gawain and the Green Knight. He would say yes to that, of course. It would give him an excuse to rework the article he'd done ten years ago for the
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
. Anybody who remembered the JEGP article would be delighted to see how much he'd learned since then.

Hallkyn hit on a new idea. He would change his phone message. He punched in the code and said in his best professorial tones, “This is Dominic Hallkyn. You may leave a message at the tone, or you may call me on my cell phone. The number is,” and then he recited the number and hung up. Then he called himself and listened. Perfect. Now he would not have to live in torment, thinking that he might be missing the crucial call from the possessor of
The Book of the Lion
.

Hallkyn spent four full days and nights enslaved by his cell phone. He tested its ring repeatedly to be sure he would hear it over any of the sorts of noise he might encounter in his mostly quiet life. He kept the vibration on too so if the call came, he would feel it, and then kept checking the messages to see if he had missed the call anyway.

And then, like a fever breaking, his worry passed. The call must have been a silly prank. If someone had a treasure like that, he would hardly neglect to do something with it. And no matter what he wanted to do, he would need to have an expert authoritatively authenticate the manuscript. He would have to get somebody like Hallkyn to say “Yes, this is the real thing.” The caller had never even mentioned that.

Hallkyn let himself settle back into a normal frame of mind. Normal was restful. He didn't have any responsibility for this supposed manuscript. There was no crisis. He went on with his life.

He had only one problem, which was that his cell phone number was now too easy to get. Undergraduates were calling him past midnight with their excuses and brown-nosing questions, as though his phone were a twenty-four hour emergency literature help line. The department chair had started using his cell number to invite him to her damned cheese and sherry gatherings, making him invent his alibis on the spot.

Hallkyn recorded a new message, left out his cell number, and substituted, “If your business is urgent, you may leave a message after the tone.” He was pleased, because the message signaled a more restrictive policy than before the Chaucer hoax.

Still, he didn't call Spanner immediately. It was one thing to change his message to institute a new regime of sanity in his personal life, and another to say good-bye to a glittering possibility by telling Spanner it was a hoax. For about a week he was able to put it off, but then he called.

Spanner answered, and then said, “I was just thinking of calling you. Is it all right to tie up your phone line?”

“Sure. It won't matter.”

“I've done it,” said Spanner.

“Done what?”

“I've lined up the financing,” Spanner said.

“Eighteen million dollars?” Hallkyn felt sick.

“I used some properties I own in Europe and one in Virginia as collateral for letters of credit. I also spoke with a few friends in hedge funds and banks who were willing to invest a bit of money without knowing what it is I'm buying. They've all agreed to have the money available instantly if we need it.”v“I'm so sorry, T.M.” said Hallkyn. “I've heard nothing. I should have known the whole thing was too good to be true. I'm almost certain I've been duped.”

“
Almost
certain,” Spanner simply repeated it.

Hallkyn was quiet for a moment. “I'm pretty sure. And it was so unlikely to begin with. Over six hundred years have passed, without even a rumor that the book still existed.”

“I respect your telling me, and I thank you for your apology, Dom. But if you don't mind—and even if you do—I'm going to keep the money available for the moment. No money has actually been borrowed, nobody has had to sell anything. We've only agreed to keep some assets liquid for a while.”

“You don't have to,” said Hallkyn. “I feel pretty stupid about this, and I don't want you to risk your reputation on a hoax.”

“No harm done,” he said. “We won't worry about this for now. Just be aware that the money is going to be available.”

The call came seventeen hours later. Hallkyn was on his way to the university in his car, and when his cell phone rang and vibrated it startled him. He pulled his car over to the curb and answered. “Yes?”

“Hello, Professor Hallkyn.” The voice was unmistakable—a bit nasal, pitched a tiny bit higher than the ear liked to hear, the diction formal. Hallkyn had listened to the message so many times that he recognized every tone, every inflection. “Is this a good time for us to speak?”

“I've pulled over to the side of the road,” said Hallkyn.

“I assume you got my message.”

“I got a message,” said Hallkyn.

“Yes. I only called once. And then I gave you some time to think about it, and then to prepare to talk in specific terms. I have what I believe is the only remaining copy of
The Book of the Leoun
.” This time he pronounced it using Middle English vowels. “For all we know, it might be the only one ever made for public use after Chaucer's personal draft.”

“What makes you think it's genuine, or that it's
the
The Book of the Lion
, by Chaucer? There were plenty of lion images throughout medieval literature, and plenty of people with that nickname—Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, for instance.”

“It says it's
The Book of the Lion
by Geoffrey Chaucer on the first page. I had a snip of the vellum carbon-dated, and it dates to the mid- 1390's. The poetry is, like everything else Chaucer wrote, flawless, earthy, brilliant, spiritual, funny, dirty.”

Hallkyn tried to sound less enticed than he was. “When can I see it?”

“Now. I've sent you a précis and some sample pages already.”

“How?”

“It's an email attachment. You can look any time you want.”

“Are you expecting me to authenticate a manuscript, particularly one of this importance, to risk my reputation and credibility without so much as inspecting it in person?”

“I'm not expecting you to do anything. I'm just giving you the opportunity to look.” And then the man hung up.