I knew bythe othersthat he meant the attractive pair from the photograph. Just looking at them had made me feel like a tumble-dried cat. In academic circles, everyone always wants to test your accomplishments—What have you published? Where did you study? etc.—and I knew how to play that game even though I hated it, but I wasn’t sure about the rules here. I had a vague fear that someone might try to measure my waist or judge the intellectual merit of my work based on my lack of facial symmetry.
“In the meantime,” he continued, “is there anything I can help you with?”
The relic was on the tip of my tongue, but it didn’t seem like the right moment to ask about it. I didn’t want to risk seeming too eager and arouse suspicion. “No,” I said. “Not right now, thanks.”
“Well, if you need anything, I’ll be in my office. It’s right down the hall from here and to your left. Next to the music room.”
“Just out of curiosity”—I cleared my throat and tried to sound casual—“where is Professor Casimir’s office?”
For a second, I thought I caught a glimmer of suspicion in his eye, but it quickly faded. “Funny you should ask. It’s actually just off from the scriptorium.”
That seemed odd to me. Why would a neuroscientist have her office down there? I didn’t press it, though. I just took another bite of my croissant and nodded.
When breakfast was over, I headed down to the archives to work, but as I passed through that glorious library, the door on the upper landing caught my eye once again. It couldn’t hurt to have a look, could it? Setting my things down on one of the wooden tables, I started up the unstable stairs, grasping the railings for balance. When I reached the door at the top, the handle turned with a creak and the door opened onto a long, thin corridor, illuminated by a stained-glass window at the far end that depicted Virgin Mary cradling an olive branch in her lap like one might hold a baby. On the left side of the corridor was a single imposing ornately carved oak door. I tried the handle, but unfortunately it was locked. So much for secret passages leading me directly to the artifact. I climbed back down the rickety stairwell and readied myself for work.
Down in the scriptorium, I set my bags on one of the tables and went to investigate. I found Casimir’s office in the back of the scriptorium, but it was fairly underwhelming. Windowless, it didn’t contain much more than a metal desk and a wooden chair. It gave the impression that she hadn’t spent much time there, and it seemed like someone had made quick work of clearing it out after she left. There was a closet filled with office supplies, but little else. I’d been hoping her computer might have still been there and that she might at least have photos of the relic on it, but there was nothing. Still, I would keep an eye out. There were some people who still insisted on keeping hard copies of their work. Charles was one; mistrustful of relying solely on technology, he always printed his work out and kept it in binders. I oftenteased him about being a Luddite, but he was the one with the tenure-track job, so the joke was on me.
I closed up the office, intent on looking through some herbal texts. My first day, I had noticed what I thought might be a fairly old translation of theShennong Bencaojing—one of the earliest pharmacopoeias. Although Western and Chinese herbalism were very different practices, I thought it couldn’t hurt to diversify my existing, albeit scant, herbal knowledge. My time in academia had taught me to never discount the role of serendipity in research, and while I had such an impressive collection of herbal texts at my disposal, I might as well widen my scope.
However, before I reached the herbal section, I found myself drawn to the many shelves lined with bestiaries. The monstrous, that was what had originally catalyzed my interest in folklore. In my dissertation, I had quite a bit about modern accounts of monsters, but it was the ancient ones that truly fascinated me. In the Western world, the origin of the bestiary was a text calledPhysiologus. Of unknown authorship, it appeared in the second centuryBCE, and was one of the first to discuss the unicorn and the phoenix. However, it was hardly the first text to mention monsters. In Asia, thePhysiologuswas predated by two centuries by theShan Hai Jing.Also of unknown authorship, it was one of the first texts to describe dragons and sea monsters. A century prior to that, Herodotus gave us a collection of monsters in hisHistories,upon which Pliny the Elder extrapolated inThe Natural History.However, the bestiary as we know it developed directly from thePhysiologus.
I selected three codices from the shelves and brought each over, laying them out on the table. In movies, people always put gloves on when examining a rare book, but in reality, it’s best to handle them with bare hands. The oils in our hands are actuallybeneficial for them. If only people were inherently less damaging to each other than we are to books.
The first, composed in Latin, was a fairly standard bestiary. My guess was it was probably written somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. It contained many of the usual contents—unicorns, sea serpents, griffins—but the craftsmanship was extraordinary. The second was similar, though perhaps not much to write home about.
The final book, though, was absolutely extraordinary. It was gorgeous, with exceptionally supple pages, the softest parchment I’d ever touched. Inside were the most glorious drawings of plants, rendered in vibrant, almost succulent color. And the edges! Marked with curlicued filigree, they were works of art in and of themselves. I’d perused rare manuscripts plenty of times before, but there was something altogether different about this—it bordered on a religious experience.
Paging through it, I was surprised to find that while it was mostly composed in Latin, there were also elements of a different, much older-seeming language as well. Interspersed in the text of what appeared to be a bestiary was a mixture of curious diagrams, illustrations, and maps. I was reminded momentarily of the Voynich manuscript, that inscrutable fifteenth-century codex, the mysterious contents of which served as a perennial topic of debate in academic as well as occult circles, but this wasn’t the Voynich or any manuscript of which I was aware. I wanted to linger over the text, but herbology called. With a heavy heart, I returned the book to the shelf, but I told myself I would revisit it when I had the time.
In the Joan of Arc–Gilles de Rais letter, a blurry screenshot of which I had on my phone (retrieved from a digital archive), Gilles de Rais wrote about an arcane magical text that he believedcontained an alchemical recipe for immortality. It wasn’t clear what that recipe was, but he did note three ingredients: petales d’aconit, racine d’angélique, and sangdhuppe—aconite, angelica, and a third, unknown substance. Despite my best efforts, I’d been unable to uncover anything about this rare text, but if sangdhuppe was in any of the pharmacopoeia, then I might be one step closer to proving that Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais were actually members of a witch cult, potentially proving that witch cults were real. Take that, Charles.
After searching around in the back, I selected a stack of herbal texts, spread them out on the desk around me, and got to work. None of them contained any mention of sangdhuppe, but where the other herbs were concerned, they were definitely illuminating. For instance, I knew that angelica had been used in traditional medicine as a “woman’s tonic” for centuries and that it treated a variety of symptoms associated with painful and irregular menstruation. It was still considered an effective medicinal, most likely due to the phenols, terpenoids, and phytoestrogens it contained, but what I found in the first few herbal compendiums I consulted was altogether unexpected. They focused on angelica’s magical properties as opposed to its healing properties. For instance, one text,Isak’s Language of Hermetic Plants,noted that it was the herb of choice for hexing gossiping women, and another claimed it was used primarily to break curses.
I encountered similar results when I looked into aconite, which though highly toxic was used in trace amounts as an analgesic in various traditional medicines. In these texts, though, it was considered a sacred herb and was mostly used to communicate with the inhabitants of the underworld. It was looking like my residency was going to be much more useful than I’d expected.
No sangdhuppe so far, but then a thought occurred to me. Might this be another name for some kind of metal? Nothing about Gilles de Rais made me think he could be an alchemist, and the process of mixing aconite and angelica was pretty far removed from turning metal into gold, but he had used the termalchemicalwhen describing the recipe, so perhaps it was more of a substance than a plant. Referring to non-plant matter as herbs wasn’t unheard of. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, for instance, had long used oyster shells as part of formulas to “calm the spirit,” and in small doses, the velvet from discarded deer antlers was used as a yang tonic. But that got me thinking. Maybe I was going about this all wrong. Maybe I needed to consult a book of herbal formulas instead of combing through single herbs.
I was just about to get up and go in search of such a text when I noticed an elegantly dressed woman standing in the doorway to the scriptorium.
“Find something interesting?”
She was fashionably tall, and she wore a blue suede pencil skirt with high leather boots. Her purple blouse was sleeveless and silk with a ruffled collar, and she wore her medium-length golden hair in waves that gave her an unexpected innocence. She was hands down the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen.
“I’m Lexi Duarte,” she said with a charming smile as she strode over and offered her hand.
Awestruck, I stood and shook it. Staring up at her, I was reminded of the one time I’d been around an actual model, feeling minuscule and insignificant in comparison.
“I’m so glad you’ve come to use our library.” She had just a hint of an accent, and her dark eyes held my gaze an uncomfortably long time, almost as if searching for something in particular.Those eyes were odd, seemingly filled with emotion, though the precise emotion I would be hard-pressed to name.
“It’s wonderful you were able to join us for the summer.”
She was staring at me intently as if searching for something very important. Her breath was even a little ragged, as if she had just exerted herself.
“Dorian tells me you’d like a tour of the grounds,” she said with a tense smile.
“That would be fantastic.” I started to pack up my things, but an elegant flick of her wrist seemed to communicate that there was no need. I could leave my things here. It was that kind of a place.
I followed her up the stairs to the main library, and as we walked, I couldn’t help but notice a tension between us, as if an alarming degree of electrical energy was circulating between us, repelling us almost like magnets.
