In Tongues of the Dead (2 page)

As Benicio provided specific details of his research on mythology and self-perception, Cardinal Sebastián Herrero y Espinosa sat near the back of the room, feeling unnatural in his civilian clothes. He decided he'd heard enough, and slipped out the side door. He would contact the young scholar soon. There was no way around it: Benicio Valori would join the Holy Church.

Father Ronald McCallum drew in a deep breath as he entered the library on Thursday morning.
His
library — that's how he'd thought of it for the twenty-two years he'd been in New Haven.

He filled his lungs with the musky smell of paper — a curious combination of dust and age. The odor had been a constant companion here at the Beinecke, which housed Yale's rare book collection.

The Beinecke Library, built by architect Gordon Bunshaft in 1963, was a magnificent edifice constructed to hold more than 160,000 rare books and manuscripts on six levels. A unique feature of the library was a massive glass enclosure that ran through the center of the building. Each floor of the facility wrapped around this central shaft, and thus natural light filled each level. The first floor housed many rare collections that rotated through climate-controlled display showrooms open to the public. The other five floors housed collections of literature, theology, history, and the natural sciences.

Father McCallum knew he could spend every day examining the priceless manuscripts — some of the finest books ever crafted — and still not have scratched the surface of each text. He was honored that the Holy Church had posted him here.

“Hey, Mr. McCallum!”

Father McCallum looked over and smiled warmly at the young security guard. No one knew to call him Father — he never wore his priest's habit. There were always new faces at the security posts, and he couldn't remember all the names — though he shouldn't be surprised; after all, he was almost sixty. His memory for names was starting to wane. These days he opted for a polite nod.

He kept moving, on a direct path to his private office, a path he followed every morning. Even after so many years, he still felt like a spy when he walked into the library. No one knew he was on a mission directed by the Vatican, under orders straight from the sacred office of the Holy See.

He gazed at the twenty-foot-high shelves lining the main holding area but kept walking rapidly toward the back corner, keeping his loving glances at the books to a minimum lest he get distracted and spend the entire day perusing one single shelf. He turned a corner and approached a door.

Father McCallum punched a combination into the door's handle and stepped into a stairwell, then made his way down to the labyrinth of small offices in the basement. He rated an office because of his title: Curator of Ancient Books and Manuscripts. But he'd had to wait fifteen years to get it because there were more curators than offices. Only the senior curators were given a place to hang their jackets.

He opened his office door slowly, careful not to let it bang against his bookcase. He slid into the tiny room, guiding his ample belly past the pile of paper on the edge of the desk. Once inside, he pushed the door shut and hung his coat on the hook on the back. Father McCallum couldn't turn without brushing against the bookcase or the desk. He leaned over the desk — it was too much trouble to get to the chair — and looked at the phone. The message light was not blinking.
Nobody loves me
, he thought, smiling. He frowned when he saw the two-way radio surrounded by triple-A batteries. In the three years he'd had the radio he'd worn it only once. It had started beeping and he couldn't figure out how to answer it. It had been sitting on his desk ever since. He left the office, careful to lock the door behind him, and began his
real
work.

His secret mission at the library was simple: watch the Voynich manuscript. The 500-year-old book had been discovered in 1912, and since then no one had been able to translate a single word of its more than 230 pages. Experts had analyzed the language and revealed that it had a structure, proving the
book was written in an unknown language or at least concealed in a code so elaborate even the most sophisticated computers could not decipher it. The Vatican had long believed it was a book of singular religious importance, and kept an agent close at all times. The exact nature of the Vatican's concern was never revealed to Father McCallum, nor did he ask. He understood his role, and that was all a servant of the Lord needed. But he was curious, so he'd paid attention to the book's history. He knew it had been given to Yale in 1969 by H.P. Kraus, an antiquarian book dealer from New York, and that mainly it just sat in the library in a sealed display case. Occasionally cryptologists and historians delicately examined it, but they rarely handled the manuscript itself: they used the microfilm and Internet versions that had been made of each and every page of the Voynich, which were available to anyone. Father McCallum often wondered about the logic of guarding the manuscript when the contents were public. He'd gathered his courage on one occasion and asked the Cardinal Prefect about it. “A day will come when eyes will look directly upon the manuscript — and read,” the cardinal had said. Father McCallum accepted that. It wasn't his place to question his role.

He headed upstairs to the main floor to check on the Voynich room. This was always his first stop after he dropped off his coat. He needed to make sure the book was undisturbed, and he always checked the tour schedules and visitor times to see who was coming. After that, he usually toured the library to see what jobs were on the agenda. Some days he restocked collections or compiled research lists for academic staff from Yale and other universities. Occasionally a professor gave him a subject to research. Father McCallum loved combing through indexes to find the most relevant texts. He felt like a detective, searching through ancient volumes for clues to questions about “historical influences on Darwin's theory of evolution” or references to “a fossil bat, Icaronycteris, from the Eocene period.” Some of the subjects seemed like scientific
mumbo jumbo, but as soon as he started reading, he would become interested.

He approached the separate alcove that housed the older collections and noticed a group of children. There were often class trips at the library, designed to give children a sense of history and to create a curiosity about books. Father McCallum supported the school visits wholeheartedly. He knew the younger kids thought he looked like Santa Claus, so he took advantage: he espoused the rewards of a career in academia or the library sciences. He wished he could add a recommendation for a life devoted to the Holy Father but couldn't risk blowing his secular cover.

This particular group of kids was leaving the room where the Voynich was kept. He would check the manuscript, then catch up with the children. He pushed open the door, listening for the slight hiss of pressured air — the room was sealed to preserve the manuscript — then saw a young boy in front of the glass case. Obviously a straggler from the class. He watched the boy for a moment, then approached.

The boy was staring into the glass case that protected the Voynich manuscript with an intensity that struck Father McCallum. He thought:
This isn't a boy, but a small mannequin
.

He stepped toward the boy, then crouched, knowing that a towering man could be intimidating. The boy seemed not to notice him. The priest wasn't good at judging a child's age, even after the countless school groups he'd talked to, but guessed the child was probably six or seven. He could see the boy's lips moving ever so slightly as he studied the manuscript.

“That book is over five hundred years old,” he said softly, not wanting to startle the child. He smiled warmly.

The boy didn't react. His lips continued to move, and Father McCallum thought he could hear the boy murmuring, as though he were reading. He strained to hear but couldn't make out the boy's words.

“It is a very important and very mysterious book. We still
don't know how to read it,” Father McCallum continued.

The boy didn't acknowledge him.

Father McCallum gave the boy another moment and then asked, “What do you see when you look at those pages?”

Slowly, the boy said, “It is the language of the forsaken. The tongue of the dead.”

Father McCallum's heart leapt into his throat. “What do you mean? Who are the forsaken?”

“Half man, half angel,” the boy said, still without looking at Father McCallum. “God's secrets.”

“What secrets? How do you know this?”

The boy finally turned to the priest, his face completely vacant. “I can read it.”

“What can you read?” Father McCallum asked, trying to quell his panic and disbelief.

The boy turned back to the book, ignoring the priest's question.

“Read it to me,” he whispered. His voice shook. “What do you see?”

The boy remained silent. Father McCallum waited a few moments, then felt the air stir. He turned his head and saw a very young woman standing behind him. He hadn't noticed the hiss of the door opening.

“I hope he's not bothering you,” the young woman said, smiling.

Father McCallum braced his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He felt unsteady. “No, not at all. Not at all.”

“Little Matthew is sometimes in a world to himself. He wasn't doing anything bad, was he?”

“Of course not. We were just having a chat about this rare book here.” He waved at the Voynich.

The young woman laughed. “Must have been a fairly one-sided chat,” she said. “I'm Matthew's aide. He's autistic and hasn't ever spoken.” She turned to the child. “Come on, Matthew.” She reached for him, but the boy walked past without
looking at her.

“Um,” Father McCallum said, realizing they were getting away, “I'm a curator here. I wonder if I might join your tour.”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

He started toward her, regaining his composure. “I love seeing the children discover the magic of this book collection. What school did you say you're with?”

“Sacred Heart Elementary.”

He made a mental note.
Sacred Heart Elementary. How fitting!

For the rest of the morning, Father McCallum followed the first-grade class as they toured the library, led by his colleague, Rhonda. He added the occasional comment but mainly focused on young Matthew, who remained silent and disengaged. The priest watched him and gathered information: the aide's name was Samantha, and she stayed close to Matthew. After the tour, Father McCallum watched the class go out the main doors, then rushed to his office for his jacket. He would be taking lunch early today.

The security guard watched Father McCallum hurry toward the west staircase. He stood, moved from behind his desk and laced his fingers behind his back, smiling at the old man's obvious urgency.

The bulky flashlight on his belt banged against his thigh, and he looked at it casually. He wasn't used to the guard uniform, but it suited his purpose: keeping watch over the Voynich manuscript.

He made his way to the front door and stepped outside, took a deep breath of the cool fall air, and murmured a quick prayer to God, thanking him for the day. It felt great to be alive.

He watched the children as they walked through the courtyard, making their way to the yellow school bus. One of the children was walking more slowly than the others. The boy suddenly stopped and turned back to the library. He seemed to stare straight at the guard.

The guard matched the boy's gaze without reaction.

The school aide seemed to realize the boy was lagging behind and stopped, urging him to rejoin the group. A few minutes later the children were all on the bus.

The guard stared at the slowly moving bus. “Soon,” he whispered, “you will be dead and it will all be done. You are the last.”

“There are two ways to be dead — the loss of life and the loss of the spirit.” MacKenzie Oak spoke as if he were beginning a lecture.

Dr. Jake Tunnel nodded, pushed back in his leather chair and occasionally made a motion with his pen, as though he were taking notes. He wasn't. If he wrote down everything his patient said, he'd run out of paper.

“I'd much rather lose my life than my spirit,” MacKenzie continued. “I want to live out the rest of my life on this world and go to the next. I refuse to be the walking dead.”

Jake stopped himself from saying something about zombies; MacKenzie didn't need encouragement. Jake knew his patient's lecture was a strategy to avoid talking about the real reason he was sitting in a psychologist's office. Big, burly MacKenzie Oak was an alcoholic and addicted to gambling — or at least to using video lottery terminals. The man had worked for Canadian Pacific Railways for forty-two years, and now he was wasting his life savings and gambling away his pension. His wife had confronted him about their dwindling bank account, and MacKenzie turned to his former employer for help. The cpr's Employee Assistance Program referred him to Jake, who specialized in addictions. And an eap meant Jake didn't have to worry about payment. He felt callous when he listened to a patient pour his or her heart out for fifty minutes, then had to ask, “How will you be paying for all this help?”