This is why we’re here, said his confident nod.
I sat down next to the emperor, and Strada ushered the courtiers around the room to the unicorn’s horn. Matthew drifted still closer. I stared at the book in front of me, hardly daring to believe that the moment had come when I would at last see Ashmole 782 whole and complete.
“Well?” Rudolf demanded. “Are you going to open it?”
“Of course,” I said, pulling the book closer. No iridescence escaped from the pages. For purposes of comparison, I rested my hand on the cover for just a moment, as I had when I’d retrieved Ashmole 782 from the stacks. Then it had sighed in recognition, as though it had been waiting for me to show up. This time the book lay still.
I flipped open the hide-bound wooden board of the front cover. A blank sheet of parchment. My mind raced back over what I’d seen months ago. This was the sheet on which Ashmole and my father would one day write the book’s title.
I turned the page and felt the same sense of uncanny heaviness. When the page fell open, I gasped.
The first, missing page of Ashmole 782 was a glorious illumination of a tree. The tree’s trunk was knotted and gnarled, thick and yet sinuous. Branches sprang from the top, twisting and turning their way across the page and ending in a defiant combination of leaves, bright red fruit, and flowers. It was like the arbor Dian? that Mary had made using blood drawn from Matthew and me.
When I bent closer, my breath caught in my throat. The tree’s trunk was not made of wood, sap, and bark. It was made of hundreds of bodies— some writhing and thrashing in pain, some serenely entwined, others alone and frightened.
At the bottom of the page, written in a late-thirteenth-century hand, was the title Roger Bacon had given it: The True Secret of Secrets.
Matthew’s nostrils flared, as though he were trying to identify a scent. The book did have a strange odor—the same musty smell that I had noticed at Oxford.
I turned the page. Here was the image sent to my parents, the one the Bishop house had saved for so many years: the phoenix enfolding the chemical wedding in her wings, while mythical and alchemical beasts witnessed the union of Sol and Luna.
Matthew looked shocked, and he was staring at the book. I frowned. He was still too far away to see it clearly. What had surprised him?
Quickly, I flipped over the image of the alchemical wedding. The third missing page turned out to be two alchemical dragons, their tails intertwined and their bodies locked in either a battle or an embrace—it was impossible to tell which. A rain of blood fell from their wounds, pooling in a basin from which sprang dozens of naked, pale figures. I’d never seen an alchemical image like it.
Matthew stood over the emperor’s shoulder, and I expected his shock to turn to excitement at seeing these new images and getting closer to solving the book’s mysteries. But he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. A white hand covered his mouth and nose. When I frowned with concern, Matthew nodded to me, a sign that I should keep going.
I took a deep breath and turned to what should be the first of the strange alchemical images I’d seen in Oxford. Here, as expected, was the baby girl with the two roses. What was unexpected was that every inch of space around her was covered in text. It was an odd mix of symbols and a few scattered letters. In the Bodleian this text had been hidden by a spell that transformed the book into a magical palimpsest. Now, with the book intact, the secret text was on full view. Though I could see it, I still couldn’t read it. What did it say?
My fingers traced the lines of text. My touch unmade the words, transforming them into a face, a silhouette, a name. It was as though the text were trying to tell a story involving thousands of creatures.
“I would have given you anything you asked for,” Rudolf said, his breath hot against my cheek. Once again I smelled onions and wine. It was so unlike Matthew’s clean, spicy scent. And Rudolf’s warmth was off-putting now that I was used to a vampire’s cool temperature. “Why did you choose this? It cannot be understood, though Edward believes it contains a great secret.”
A long arm reached between us and gently touched the page. “Why, this is as meaningless as the manuscript you foisted off on poor Dr. Dee.” Matthew’s face belied his words. Rudolf might not have seen the muscle ticking in Matthew’s jaw or known how the fine lines around his eyes deepened when he concentrated.
“Not necessarily,” I said hastily. “Alchemical texts require study and contemplation if you wish to understand them fully. Perhaps if I spent more time with it . . .”