The Woman Who Died a Lot

“I’m not so certain. As soon as she opens for business, we’re dumping thirteen years of unsolved caseload at her feet. Up until this morning, there was no one to take responsibility for the wholesale theft and bootlegging, copyright infringement and larceny. We logged reports but didn’t do anything. It’s been a bibliothief’s smorgasbord for the past decade. Why do you think the library is so heavily armed?”

“It’s that bad?”

“You’ve been out of the loop for a while, haven’t you?” I stared at him. “I’ve been working more on the . . . supply side of the literary world.”

“Really? Well, Braxton was doing you a seriously big favor not giving you that job. Any idea how much of our budget is being transferred to SO-27?”

“Duffy says quite a lot. I’ll speak to Braxton.”

“Good luck with that. Want to see what I do here?” I nodded, and we descended in the lift to the basement.

We stepped out into a small lobby with a single armored door and an armed guard sitting behind a window of bulletproof glass. Finisterre licked his finger and held it in the DNA reader’s aperture. There was a puff of air, the light turned green, and I did the same. The door clicked open, and we stepped inside.

“Welcome to the antiquarian section,” said Finisterre, leading me along shiny white corridors. “The Swindon All-You-Can-Eat at Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library isn’t just a central lending library, but a repository of all the important documents currently in county of Wessex’s possession.”

He indicated a row of historic documents displayed in a glass cabinet that stretched down the corridor.

“That’s our copy of the Magna Carta,” he said, walking slowly past the treasures, “and this is a rare first edition of the Mathematica Principia dedicated ‘To dearest Googly-bear. Love, Newt.’ ” He moved to another glass case. “This is St. Zvlkx’s original list of Revealments, and over here as unique a treasure in the whole of Shakespeareana—a blindingly rare First Folio Advanced Reader’s Copy, still with the front page marked ‘Not for sale or quotation.’

We walked into a larger room in which a dozen conservators were working their way over a series of vellum parchments folded into books with flaking leather covers.

“This one’s from the eleventh century,” said Finisterre, showing me a volume that looked like a prayer book, “and we’ve two dozen or so from the ninth. Religious texts mostly, but we’re hoping for a few treasures.”

“In Wessex?” I asked, for the county was not noted for its stock of tenth-century manuscripts.

“We’ve your brother to thank. Now that religious orders are transferring their theological allegiances to the Global Standard Deity, they’ve thrown open their collections for scrutiny, and to be honest—no pun intended—it’s a godsend. We’re seeing stuff that we never thought existed. This one here,” he said, pointing to a badly water-damaged tome, “is Gerald of Wales’s book of recipes. It confirmed what nutritionists have long suspected: firstly, that celebrity chefs were as popular in the twelfth century as they are now and, second, that Welsh cuisine has not improved at all since then and may even have gotten worse.”

He pointed to another, equally worn book.

“Over here is an account of a night out in Copenhagen in 1182 with Saxo Grammaticus—boy, do the Danes know how to party.”

“You’re copying all these, yes?” I asked, for an original and unique work was at grave risk of literary extinction if anything happened to it.

“First thing we do,” he said, leading me into another room where each book was meticulously scanned once the conservators had decided it was robust enough.

“This is cutting-edge stuff, Thursday. Unique codices, right here in my lap—and we don’t have to be shot at to study them. Well, not much anyway.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

He looked at the trolleys full of old books. “The Sisterhood is opening its Salisbury collection for initial appraisal this afternoon,” he added. “Do you want to come along?”

I stared at him. By the Sisterhood he meant the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster, one of the most numerous, long-lived and secretive of Wessex’s religious orders. A lot of time and effort had been expended in defending the library against would-be thieves, eager to get their hands on a collection that was rumored to have treasures of almost incalculable value.

“What a question,” I replied. “Absolutely.”

“I’ll pick you up at your house at three,” he said. “And bring identification. The Sisters can be a bit trigger-happy with anyone they don’t know. I arrived unannounced last week and had to dodge a rocket-propelled grenade.”

“Employing mercenaries, are they?”

“No. The Lobsterhood has often been described as pious but rarely seen as restrained.”

13. Tuesday: Next Thursday