The Bookman's Tale (26 page)

A
bout the time he and Liz were wending their way through Woodstock, past the imposing gates of Blenheim Palace, Peter glanced in the mirror and saw Amanda sitting in the backseat. She winked at him, but when he turned to speak to her, she was gone. On the seat was nothing but Peter’s satchel, containing his future—be it glory or doom.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said Liz, pulling Peter’s attention back to the front seat. “I found out about W. H. Smith. I called Lawrence last night. He’s the speaker I told you about. He’s a great-great-great-nephew, it turns out.”

“What did you find out?” asked Peter, who had almost forgotten about this line of inquiry.

“Well, if Shakespeare is part of this mystery, it’s not surprising Smith is involved. He was one of the original anti-Stratfordians.”

“You’re kidding,” said Peter.

“He thought Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays,” said Liz. “He wrote a pamphlet in the eighteen fifties, I think, and then a book a little after that.”

“And this is the same guy who ran the chain of newsagents and was . . . what did you call it, Lord of the Admiralty or something?”

“Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. in
H.M.S. Pinafore
,” said Liz with a giggle. “The same man.”

“Why would Smith think Bacon wrote the plays if he had seen the
Pandosto
?” said Peter.

“Did he see it?” asked Liz. “What did the inscription say exactly?”

Peter reached into the backseat and retrieved his bag. He carefully removed the book
from its envelope. He cringed to think to what dangers he had exposed this potential treasure in the past two days. He gently opened the front cover and read the relevant entry in the list of owners. “B. Mayhew for William H. Smith.”

“So I guess Mayhew sold books to B.B.
and
W. H. Smith.”

“Maybe so,” said Peter.

“It doesn’t exactly say Smith owned it, though, does it?” said Liz.

“Even if he did,” said Peter, “what if he found it after he was on the record for Bacon?”

“It could have been embarrassing,” said Liz.

“Imagine this,” said Peter, warming to his hypothetical tale. “Mayhew gets hold of the
Pandosto
somehow. The previous name on this list is Robert Harley, who would have owned it in the early eighteenth century. So it’s been hidden away somewhere for a hundred and fifty years or so.

“Mayhew knows W. H. Smith—he’s a customer—and Mayhew doesn’t want Smith exposed to the embarrassment of having his Bacon theory refuted. So he has a nice folding box made, because he can’t stand not to protect such a treasure. He was a bookseller, after all—he’d want to preserve the
Pandosto
.”

“Yes, they’re such a noble breed,” said Liz, smiling.

“And then he hides the book away in Evenlode House, figuring B.B. won’t realize what it is and it will stay safely undiscovered until after Smith is dead.”

“Seems a bit risky,” said Liz. “I mean, if B.B. was a document collector, he’d know what he had. And if Mayhew really wanted to hide it, why not destroy it?”

“He couldn’t bear to do that,” said Peter. “Not if he was a bibliophile. It’s in our blood to preserve such things.”

“Oh, right, I forgot how upright and moral you all are. But what if Mayhew was a forger and he made this phony Shakespeare relic so he could extort the extremely wealthy W. H. Smith by threatening to disprove his Bacon theory?” asked Liz. “Wouldn’t that make more sense?”

“But we think B.B. was the most likely forger,” said Peter. “He was the artist.”

“He was also friends with Mayhew. It sounds to me like you just want a version of the story that lets the
Pandosto
be genuine.”

“It would be nice,” Peter admitted.

“What about this box you were talking about?” said Liz. “Where’s that?”

“I left it at home,” said Peter. “But it’s definitely nineteenth century, so it had to have been made by one of the last names on the list—or for them, at any rate.”

“So what are we going to do when we get to Kingham, exactly?” said Liz. “Walk up to Thomas Gardner and say, ‘Hello, are you a murderer, and if so, why?’”

Peter recalled his last encounter with Thomas Gardner. He recalled, too, the rumors the old sisters in Kingham had spoken of—that Phillip Gardner had been murdered by his wife and buried in the family chapel, perhaps with his mistress.

“I’d sure like to see the inside of the Gardner chapel,” said Peter, almost to himself.

“Wait a minute—I think Graham might have seen it,” said Liz.

“You’re kidding,” said Peter.

“He said something to me about going through an old chapel in the country when he was doing his research. Said the whole thing made him nervous because the fellow who was showing him around carried a bloody shotgun the whole time.”

“Thomas Gardner!” said Peter. “It has to be.”

“Anyhow,” said Liz, “Graham said he spent an hour going over every stone in this chapel with Gardner or whoever it was.”

“And did he find what he was looking for?” asked Peter.

“No, he said it was a dead end. But he said he got the feeling this bloke with the shotgun was hiding something.”

“I’ll bet he was,” said Peter.

“Well,” said Liz, as she turned toward Chipping Norton, “whatever else we do when we get to Kingham, we’re going to have to get into that chapel.”

P
ersonal misfortune was part of Benjamin Mayhew’s stock-in-trade. Though he usually sold books to those whose lives were going well, he most often acquired new stock when someone had lost a career, a fortune, or a life. This morning was no different, he thought, spreading out the
Times
on his desk and perusing the obituaries. He was surprised to see the name of a certain nobleman whose library he had visited on several occasions. Benjamin had sold him a few books over the years, but not enough, perhaps, to be considered the family’s bookman of choice. Still, he well remembered one visit to the stately home in Cambridgeshire when the eldest son of the family had stood in the library and said, “It shall need to be culled a bit after father is gone.”

Indeed it was an overstuffed library, with books so heaped upon books that few could be either found when needed or appreciated as things of beauty when not. Benjamin was on the next train out of King’s Cross. The son, whose remarks about the library Benjamin had recalled, recognized immediately the purpose of his visit.

“I’m afraid you’re too late,” he said.

“So I understand,” said Benjamin with sympathy. “I shall miss my friendship with your father.”

“You and father were never friends,” said the son flatly. “And I meant that you are too late for the books. Father let me sell off nearly half the library three months ago.” Benjamin winced internally at this news, angry that some other bookseller had beat him to what was doubtless a treasure trove. “You can have a look at the Shakespeare folios if you like, though. Father insisted we keep them until he died, but I’ll be glad to get rid of them.”

Benjamin remembered the deceased gentleman’s attitude toward his Shakespeare folios. Family legend, he said, described them as a Second and Fourth Folio, respectively. But he, like his father, refused to allow them to be removed from the shelf, or even touched. They were a revered family treasure, a precious relic of past glories off-limits to present generations. If they were as the old man had described them, Benjamin could almost certainly sell them to one of his wealthy American clients with a single telegram. He followed the son into the significantly pared-down library.

“I shall expect a high price,” said the son. “Have a look and I’ll be back in half an hour. I’ve more important things to attend to than old books. They’re on the bottom shelf, under the Gainsborough.” He turned and left Benjamin alone.

With trembling hands, Benjamin gently pulled from the shelf one of the tightly wedged folios bearing the name
W. SHAKESPEARE
on the spine. It thrilled him to think that no other hands had touched this book for at least a generation. The binding was in remarkable condition, and Benjamin suspected it was an early eighteenth-century rebind. He opened the book carefully to its center and stared dumbfounded at the pages. He didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry. They were completely blank.

He flipped through the pages to the back of the book, without finding a single line of type. Turning to the front of the volume, he discovered that it did have the title page of the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare’s works, published in 1632. The works themselves, however, were missing. Following the title page there were eight pages comprising part of the third act of
Othello
. The rest of the volume was nothing but blank paper. No wonder the old man’s father hadn’t wanted anyone to touch the precious folios. Benjamin had seen this binding trick before used to make a pamphlet or other slim piece look more like a complete book. He couldn’t believe that the lord of this manor had been so hoodwinked by his own father. He laid the book to one side and opened the second volume, the one that purported to be a Fourth Folio of 1685. Again the title page was correct, and as Benjamin fanned out the pages, he saw that they all contained type. Perhaps the day wouldn’t be a total loss. But as he began to carefully page through the volume, he discovered several plays were missing. Without
Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, and
A Winter’s Tale
a Fourth Folio was little more than a curiosity. Benjamin saw no point in doing anything but laughing, though he tried to keep as quiet as he could out of respect for the mourners.

He was just about to replace the folios when he noticed, far in the back of the shelf, a slim volume that had apparently been pressed between them. Judging from the way the back half of the binding was compressed, Benjamin guessed that the book had been there at least as long as the ban on moving the folios had been in place—possibly longer. This binding, worn and battered, looked like it could date from the seventeenth century, or even earlier. He gingerly opened the cover to see if it might contain anything that would make his trip worthwhile.

Benjamin knew the works of Robert Greene well—he had sold many of Greene’s pamphlets to customers in Britain and America, but he had never seen a copy of this, the first printing of the romance
Pandosto
. It was not the book itself, however, but the marginalia that caught Benjamin’s eye. It did not take him long to deduce exactly what he held in his hand. At a lecture given by his friend William Henry Smith, putting forth Smith’s theory of Francis Bacon as the author of Shakespeare’s plays, Benjamin had heard Smith say, “If anyone can present to me a single piece of contemporary evidence that links William Shakespeare of Stratford to the plays published under that name, I shall recant my position entirely.” But afterward, as the two men were walking to Smith’s club, he had confided in Benjamin, “It would be quite embarrassing, were it ever to happen.”

“Don’t worry,” Benjamin had said. “It won’t.”

Now Benjamin sat poring over just such a document. How it had survived undetected for over 250 years he could not imagine, but he did not doubt that when this copy of
Pandosto
was made public, Smith’s humiliation would soon follow.

If Benjamin tried to buy the
Pandosto
, no doubt the young man who would soon be returning to the library would realize what it was, and in no time every book dealer and collector in the world would be bearing down on Sotheby’s for a very public auction. It was unlikely that he, Benjamin, would make a brass farthing off the book. If, on the other hand, he suppressed the book to prevent Smith’s embarrassment, he might someday be rewarded by the First Lord of the Admiralty. He closed the book and slipped it into his newspaper.

“I couldn’t offer you what these folios are worth,” he told the new lord of the manor a few minutes later, reflecting that, in a way, this was true.

“Sorry to waste your time then,” said the young man. “You can show yourself out.”

“D
on’t get me wrong,” said Charlie Ridgefield, taking a sip of bourbon. “I love my wife. You understand that because you love her, too, don’t you?”

“She’s the only mother I have now,” said Peter, staring into his empty glass, “and she understands me better than my own mother ever did.”

The two men sat in a dim corner of the patio behind the house. The other rehearsal dinner guests had gradually drifted off to bed, some to spare rooms in the house and the guesthouse, others to the Marriott in downtown Ridgefield. The wedding would cap three days of events that had begun with Amanda’s graduation. Peter hadn’t noticed the moment when he and Amanda’s father were left alone, but it had been at least a half hour since anyone else had been on the patio. Whether Charlie Ridgefield had planned this pre-wedding confessional with his future son-in-law, or whether the conversation in which Peter now found himself was merely a confluence of opportunity, emotion, and Jim Beam he could not guess, but Charlie was speaking more freely to Peter than he ever had.

“It’s just that being married to a Ridgefield . . . well, it’s a challenge,” said Charlie. “This is a small town, Peter, and the world of people as wealthy as the Ridgefields—it’s a small world. I don’t care how much you’re in love, there are a lot of people who will assume you’re marrying a Ridgefield for one reason and one reason only.”

“Money,” said Peter.

“Exactly.”

“I know why I’m marrying Amanda,” said Peter. “I don’t really care what other people think.”

“Don’t you?” said Charlie. “I was a business major in college and I really like business. When I got married and settled, I decided to go into banking and I loved it. I loved the idea that I could start out at the bottom and work my way up and that every promotion I got would be something I earned with my own hard work. Well, as soon as they found out I was married to Sarah Ridgefield, all that went out the window. My boss assumed I didn’t need a promotion because I was just working as a hobby. When I did get promoted, everyone else assumed it was because of who I was married to, not because I deserved it. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. I finally gave up and went to work for Ridgefield Bank. There at least I could keep moving up the ladder and if people wanted to think it was because of who I was, well fuck ’em.” He took another swig of bourbon.

“But I’m not going into business,” said Peter. “I think the world of antiquarian bookselling is a little different from banking.”

“Is it?” said Charlie. “Tell me, Peter, why do you want to be a bookseller?”

“It’s my passion,” said Peter. “I know it might seem silly to some people, but it’s the way I want to change the world. To bring books together with people who will love them and preserve them for the next generation.”

“Your passion, exactly. And you deserve some respect for that, right?”

“I suppose,” said Peter. “Like I said, I’ve never been that concerned about what people think of me.”

“But how would you feel if these people that you’re bringing together with books, the people who share your passion, think of you as a little rich boy just playing a game? The very people that you want to use to change the world look at you and don’t see a passion—at best they see a hobby, something to pass the time between golf games and debutante balls.”

“They’d be wrong,” said Peter, more loudly than he had intended, for he suddenly understood what Charlie was saying—that his dream of being a well-respected member of the rare-book community could end the moment he said “I do.”

“You bet your ass they’d be wrong,” said Charlie. “You know that and I know that, but right and wrong don’t matter in this game, son. All that matters is what people think, and the minute they find out who you’re married to it’s game, set, and match. Welcome to the Ridgefields.” Charlie drained his glass and stood up. “See you at the altar, son,” he said, and staggered across the patio into the house, leaving Peter alone in the darkness.

—

P
eter and Amanda lay breathless and tangled in the sheets on their third night in London and their fifth night as man and wife. Amanda’s parents had insisted on paying for the honeymoon, and the newlyweds had enjoyed first-class tickets to London and a suite at The Ritz. Through it all, Peter had tried, without success, to forget his conversation with Charlie Ridgefield.

“Beds are fabulous,” said Amanda. “Beds are even better than the carpet in the Devereaux Room.”

“We’ve made love in a bed before,” said Peter.

“Yes, but these are, like, eight-hundred-thread-count sheets. I love you and I love this bed.”

“Can I ask you something?” said Peter.

“You can ask me anything, Mr. Byerly,” said Amanda. “After all, I’m Mrs. Byerly. I like the sound of that. Mrs. Amanda Byerly wrapped in the arms of Mr. Peter Byerly and a set of eight-hundred-thread-count sheets.”

“Would you love me even without the eight-hundred-thread-count sheets?” said Peter.

“Of course. What are you talking about?”

“It’s just something your dad said to me the other night.”

“After the rehearsal dinner? God, I’m sorry. He was drunk, wasn’t he? He doesn’t get drunk very often, but when he does he tends to get morose.”

“He wasn’t morose,” said Peter, “just honest.”

“What did he say?” Amanda asked, tracing lazy circles on Peter’s chest with her manicured fingernail.

“He said . . . well, I guess he said that people are going to think I married you for your money.”

“But you know that’s not true.”

“Sure I do,” said Peter. “But he said that people won’t . . . they won’t take me seriously—as a bookseller, I mean. They’ll think I’m just doing it as a hobby, that I’m living off your money.”

“Well, that’s just silly,” said Amanda.

“Is it?” said Peter. “If we live in a big house and drive nice cars and fly first class to England whenever we want, people are going to know it’s not bookselling that pays for all that.”

“What are you saying, that Daddy is a kept man?”

“He feels that way sometimes, yes.”

“When he’s drunk,” said Amanda, rolling away from Peter.

“Look,” said Peter, “it’s great that we don’t have to worry about money, that we can afford to live where we want and do what we want, but it’s just . . .”

“What?”

“It’s just that I’d like to know that we can make it on our own. That we would make it even if you weren’t a Ridgefield.”

Amanda lay silent for a long moment. “Peter,” she said at last, “would you still love me if I wasn’t pretty?”

“You know I would,” said Peter.

“And would you still love me if I had some horrible disease or if I were crippled?”

“Of course.”

“Of course you would. Because the way I look and the way my body works, that’s all part of who I am. Well, being a Ridgefield is part of who I am, too. For a long time I tried to deny that, but you’re the one who helped me understand it was okay. And now you’re asking me to hide who I am.”

“I’m not asking you to hide who you are,” said Peter. “I love your family, you know that. And I want them to be a part of our lives. I just think it would be nice to try . . . well, living on the money we actually earn. Would it be so terrible to start out in an apartment like most married couples?”

“No,” said Amanda softly. “That wouldn’t be terrible at all.” She slipped her hand into his. “Can I decorate the apartment?”

“You don’t mind?” asked Peter. “I mean, if we just set the family money aside for now?”

“Peter, I can give up eight-hundred-thread-count sheets and first-class flights and fancy cars and houses and everything else that goes with Ridgefield money. I mean, those things are nice, but who cares about nice. It’s not the money that matters to me, it’s my family and you—especially you. I love you. You, Peter Byerly, are what I need.”

“But these are nice sheets,” said Peter.

“Yeah, I think if I’m going to be living in a tiny apartment and shopping at Kmart, I definitely need to make love a few more times in these sheets.” She pulled him into her arms and Peter felt a surge of love so intense he thought he might explode.