The Book of Illumination (6 page)

Tad nodded distractedly. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he responded, hurrying off down the hall, right through the spot where the butler’s ghost had hovered, before he had faded into the air. I thought that if I waited around for a moment or two, Mr. Grady might reappear. So I did. But he didn’t. Leaving me with the problem of how I was going to get back into this house, so that I could help him.

Help him do what? I haven’t explained that part, have I?

Earthbound spirits are just the ghosts of people who get stuck between this world and whatever comes next, assuming there
is
a next, which I firmly believe there is. But I can’t see into it. I don’t know any more about it than any other living person. What I
can
see is almost like a doorway of light, and when ghosts are finally at peace, they walk right through the light into …who knows? Whatever’s on the other side.

The doorway appears when a person is dying. When a spirit leaves its body after the last breath of life has been taken, many don’t go through the doorway right away. First off, there’s a lot of really fascinating action unfolding on the ground. Doctors and nurses performing useless medical heroics, loved ones wailing
and weeping, high drama bursting out left and right. It’s like the season finale of
ER
, or the climax of an Italian opera.

Second, every ghost wants to go to their own funeral. And they always go. Always. After all, who
wouldn’t
be curious to see who shows up, who sends flowers, who fakes their way through crocodile tears, and who is truly hobbled by honest-to-goodness grief? What a show! Even for an audience of one.

The problem is, the doorway of light doesn’t burn brightly forever, and when the light goes out, the spirit is marooned in the in-between. Ghosts of people who still have an earthly agenda—something important they’ve left unfinished, one final task they feel they simply have to do—hardly ever notice that the light is fading, and if they do, they don’t care. But once the light goes out for them, it’s out. They’re stranded.

I can help them in two ways. First, I can find out what it is that’s keeping them here, in the land of the living. I try to resolve that earthly problem so the spirit can feel free to move on. I don’t yet know why the monks have been hanging around for eight or nine hundred years, but it sounds as though Mr. Grady just needs to locate the deed to a house. That’s the kind of problem I like. Simple. Straightforward. Except for gaining access to the house, of course, and then actually finding the piece of paper.

Once the real-life problem has been resolved, I can do one more thing to help a waylaid spirit move on. I can create a doorway of white light for them or lead them to a place, like a hospital or a funeral home, where the light is glowing for someone else, another person who has recently died. This white light illuminates the passageway to the next world.

It took me a while to learn how to create the light. When I was seven or eight, I realized that there was a difference between the spirits of people who had just died and the spirits of people who had been dead for three or four days. The doorway of white light
glowed brightly for the very recently dead, but not for the others. For them, the light had gone out.

Nona taught me how to open up that passageway for a spirit who has waited too long to cross over. It was summertime. We had just finished supper, hot dogs and corn on the cob, and she took me out into the backyard to look at the sunset. She told me to concentrate on the light of the fading sun, really to think about it and observe it, and then to try to visualize that very same light on the side of the barn.

I tried hard. Nothing. There was no light at all when I opened my eyes. I tried again and again, and on my fourth or fifth attempt, I was able to create a tiny pinpoint of light. I practiced for weeks and weeks before I was able to make the passageway big enough and bright enough for an adult spirit to fit through and to keep it open long enough so that the spirit actually had time to enter it and cross over. But once I learned how to do it, the gift never left me. I only have to envision the white light and a spirit can walk through it as easily as I was now reentering Mr. Winslow’s study.

Sylvia was perched stiffly on the edge of her chair. She looked pale. “There are a couple of letters. Tad’s gone to get them.”

“From who? Whom?”

“James Wescott at the British Library and Paola Moretti at The Cloisters. We wrote to them just before Finny died. I drafted the letters myself.”

“Who are they?”

“Two of the most respected authorities on illuminated manuscripts. Tad wasn’t sure what ‘book’ they were referring to; he just explained that the whole collection had been donated to the Athenaeum. He put them in touch with Amanda.”

I must have looked puzzled, because she added, “Amanda Perkins—my boss.”

“When was this?”

“Sometime in June. The letters had been addressed to Finny, so it took a while before they were forwarded to Tad. He was in France for the summer.”

She gave me a look, but I wasn’t sure what it meant.

“You’d think he would have picked up the phone.”

I nodded. “What did they say?”

Sylvia stood up and brushed dust from the books off her skirt.

“We shall see,” she said.

The British Library

96 Euston Road

London NW12DB

ENGLAND

Dear Mr. Winslow and Ms. Cremaldi:

Thank you for your interest in the British Library and for your intriguing letter regarding the illuminated manuscript in your possession. It is, no doubt, a precious treasure, and I should have been overjoyed to be able to validate your suspicion that it might be the legendary lost manuscript of Kildare.

Sadly, however, I cannot, for I am among those not persuaded that the so-called Book of Kildare ever actually existed. I took the liberty of sharing your letter (in confidence, of course) with two trusted colleagues, Professor Julian Rowan at the Royal Foundation for Illuminated Manuscripts and Dr. Susan McCasson at the Windsor Institute of Art. They share my opinion on the mystery of the manuscript and know of no recent findings in our field that might call our shared conclusions into question.

It is, of course, well documented that Giraldus Cabrenses (Gerald of Wales) paid a twelfth-century visit to St. Brigid’s Abbey in Cill-Dara. Many historians believe, and Professor
Rowan, Dr. McCasson, and I are among them, that the book he examined there, the book he described as being so exquisite that it had to be “the work of an angel, and not of a man” was none other than the well-known Book of Kells.

Undoubtedly you are aware that the Book of Kells has been safely in the possession of Trinity College, Dublin, since 1661. Though I would love to be proven wrong, our research has yet to yield any persuasive evidence that a second manuscript of this magnificent caliber emerged from the scriptorium at “the Church of the Oak.” Would that it were so!

I do believe that I may be able to help you, though, and I would be happy to do so. We have in our possession, thanks to the generosity of the bibliophile and collector Charles Burney, an illuminated manuscript that has come to be known as the “Glossed Gospel of Luke.” This manuscript is believed to have been produced in the west country of England sometime between 1150 and 1180.

From your description, I am of the opinion that the book you have in your possession may be English in origin and may date from roughly the same period as the volume we possess. There is even a slim chance that it may have emerged from the selfsame scriptorium.

I shall be coming to Boston in early October. Lady Annabel Barnes, a dear friend and patron of the British Library, is donating her collection of theatrical and literary papers to the Houghton Library at Harvard, and the university has planned a weekend symposium to celebrate her bequest.

My visit is scheduled for October 10—11, after which I plan to spend time with friends in Vermont, returning to London on November 2. I should be happy to meet with you to examine the manuscript and advise you if I can.

Please be in touch with my office before September 21 if
you would like to meet. I shall be traveling on business for the two weeks prior to my departure for Boston. My best wishes to you both.

Sincerely yours
,
James Wescott, Curator
Manuscript Department
The British Library

We were sitting on a bench on the Commonwealth Mall, a luxuriant pedestrian boulevard running between eight tasteful blocks of ersatz French brownstones. It was turning out to be a beautiful day, air and sky alike having been washed clean by the overnight storm. The late-morning sun was bright and crisp, the nearly cloudless sky a deep blue, the bark on the linden and sweetgum trees dampened to shades of deep silver and slate.

“Why on earth didn’t Tad get in touch with me?” Sylvia asked. Then she went on to answer her own question.

“Because vacations are
very
important, when you work as hard as Tad does.”

“What does he do?” I asked.

She gave me a sly smile. “I was kidding.”

Ooh, I was starting to like her.

“If it’s not about scuba diving off islands no one’s heard of, trekking in the Himalayas, or hanging out with hipster filmmakers who lose money for him, it’s not on Tad’s radar screen.”

“Might be just as well,” I suggested.

She turned to me, suddenly earnest. “You’re right!”

“You could call Wescott’s office,” I suggested. “They must know how to reach him. It’s only—what is it?—the thirteenth. He might still be in town.”

“I think I’ll show these to Sam,” she said. “He’ll know what to do.”

We certainly didn’t. In the letter we’d read right before Westcott’s, Paola Moretti from The Cloisters, the branch of the Metropolitan Museum devoted to medieval art, had sounded thrilled and breathless. She urged Sylvia and Finny to call Professor Rory Concannon at Harvard and asked for a phone number at which Finny could be reached.

So much for consensus among “the experts.”

Sylvia tucked the letters into her briefcase and we set off toward Arlington Street. The Public Garden was alive with activity. Toddlers from a nearby preschool, each attired for quick location in a tangerine T-shirt and clutching the rung of a rope ladder, inched along communally like a huge, orange caterpillar. A beaming Japanese couple posed for photographs on the bridge over the pond. They were wearing suits. The woman held a small nosegay. It took me a moment to realize that they must just have been married.

The line for the Swan Boats snaked halfway up the hill, and I remembered the time I took Henry here to be paddled around for fifteen minutes in the white swan catamaran. In his excitement, he grabbed my sunglasses right off my face and promptly dropped them into the pond. I watched them sink into the murk. They were probably still down there.

Our plan, hatched as we headed up Beacon Street, was first to fetch the manuscript from the bindery and bring it up to Sylvia’s office so I could see it, and then to set the wheels of my employment into motion. Strictly speaking, my hiring didn’t have to be approved by the institutional powers-that-be, since Sylvia controlled the restoration fund, but she wanted to introduce me to a couple of people before I suddenly showed up for work.

I never got to see the book.

S
INCE THE FORMER
orchard, known to the locals for decades as Brookside Farm, had been renamed Sherwood Glen, my client, Trip Hollister, thought the commemorative books should have a medieval flair. He liked those stripey tents they erected at jousting matches, with the little triangular flags at the pinnacle, and he liked magenta, cobalt blue, and anything with a sleek, metallic sheen.

He had rejected my suggestion of a dark green suede cover and pages made of a gorgeous handmade paper from France: thick, bumpy sheaves in a deep shade of chocolate. It looked like tree bark, which is probably why I loved it and he didn’t: he didn’t want to be reminded of what he had razed and uprooted.

My cheeks were hurting when I got back into my car, likely from grinding my teeth while pretending to smile for close to two hours. I had an hour and a half before it would be time to pick up Henry, so I drove home via Wilson Farms in Lexington, filling the backseat of my car with macoun apples and parsnips and fresh spinach. I have to be careful at Wilson Farms. Everything looks and smells so good, everything
is
so good, that you can easily
end up buying way more food than it’s possible for two people to eat.