The Club Dumas

Corso looked doubtful. “That’s always the case. All magic books have the same pedigree: from Thoth to Nicholas Flamel.... Once, a client of mine who was fascinated by al­chemy asked me to find him the bibliography quoted by Fulcanelli and his followers. I couldn’t convince him that half the books didn’t exist.”

“Well, this one did exist. It must have, for the Holy Office to list it in its Index. Don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. Lawyers who don’t believe their clients are innocent still get them acquitted.”

“That’s the case here. I’m hiring you not because you believe but because you’re good.”

Corso turned more pages of the book. Another engraving, numbered I, showed a walled city on a hill. A strange unarmed horseman was riding toward the city, his finger to his lips re­questing complicity or silence. The caption read: NEM. PERV.T QUI N.N LEG. CERT.RIT.

“It’s in an abbreviated but decipherable code,” explained Borja, watching him. “Nemo pervenit gui non legitime certaverit”

“Only he who has fought according to the rules will pre­vail?”

“That’s about it. For the moment it’s the only one of the nine captions that we can decipher with any certainty. An al­most identical one appears in the works of Roger Bacon, a spe­cialist in demonology, cryptography, and magic. Bacon claimed to own a Delomelanicon that had belonged to King Solomon, containing the key to terrible mysteries. The book was made of rolls of parchment with illustrations. It was burned in 1350 by personal order of Pope Innocent VI, who declared: ‘It con­tains a method to summon devils.’ In Venice three centuries later, Aristide Torchia decided to print it with the original illustrations.”

“They’re too good,” objected Corso. “They can’t be the orig­inals: they’d be in an older style.”

“I agree. Torchia must have updated them.”

Another engraving, number III, showed a bridge with gate towers spanning a river. Corso looked up and saw that Borja was smiling mysteriously, like an alchemist confident of what is cooking in his crucible.

“There’s one last connection,” said the book dealer. “Giordano Bruno, martyr of rationalism, mathematician, and champion of the theory that the Earth rotates around the sun ...” He waved his hand contemptuously, as if all this was triv­ial. “But that was only part of his work. He wrote sixty-one books, and magic played an important role in them. Bruno makes specific reference to the Delomelanicon, even using the Greek words delo and melas, and he adds: ‘On the path of men who want to know, there are nine secret doors.’ He goes on to describe the methods for making the Light shine once more. ‘Sic luceat Lux,’he writes, which is actually the motto”—Borja showed Corso the printer’s mark: a tree split by lighting, a snake, and a motto—”that Aristide Torchia used on the fron­tispiece of The Nine Doors.... What do you think of that?”

“It’s all well and good. But it all comes to the same. You can make a text mean anything, especially if it’s old and full of ambiguities.”

“Or precautions. Giordano Bruno forgot the golden rule for survival: Scire, tacere. To know and keep silent. Apparently he knew the right things, but he talked too much. And there are more coincidences: Bruno was arrested in Venice, declared an obdurate heretic, and burned alive in Rome at Campo dei Fiori in February 1600. The same journey, the same places, and the same dates that marked Aristide Torchia’s path to execution sixty-seven years later: he was arrested in Venice, tortured in Rome, and burned at Campo dei Fiori in February 1667. By then very few people were being burned at the stake, and yet he was.”

“I’m impressed,” said Corso, who wasn’t in the least.

Borja tutted reprovingly.

“Sometimes I wonder if you believe in anything.”

Corso seemed to consider that for a moment, then shrugged. “A long time ago, I did believe in something. But I was young and cruel then. Now I’m forty-five: I’m old and cruel.”

“I am too. But there are things I still believe in. Things that make my heart beat faster.”

“Like money?”

“Don’t make fun of me. Money is the key that opens the door to man’s dark secrets. And it pays for your services. And grants me the only thing in the world I respect: these books.” He took a few steps along the cabinets full of books. “They are mirrors in the image of those who wrote them. They reflect their concerns, questions, desires, life, death ... They’re living beings: you have to know how to feed them, protect them...”

“And use them.”

“Sometimes.”

“But this one doesn’t work.”

“No.”

“You’ve tried it.”

It was a statement, not a question. Borja looked at Corso with hostility. “Don’t be absurd. Let’s just say I’m certain it’s a forgery, and leave it at that. Which is why I need to compare it to the other copies.”