She led me toward the back of the building, which opened out into a surprise: a large, tall-ceilinged extension, with two walls and the ceiling made from glass. It was stunning. A large oval table that could seat at least ten occupied one end of the room, where it was widest; the other end tapered to a cozy nook where a woodstove was lit, a small sofa and two chairs gathered around it, upholstered in jewel-like colors. Three women were sitting around the fire. Theyrose to their feet, and I recognized them from their headshots on the website.
Giulia Orlando wore an elegant shift dress and boots. She couldn’t have been more than thirty. Beneath high cheekbones, her smile was fluid and generous. I knew from her bio that she’d studied in Rome before completing a PhD in Paris. She spoke Spanish, Dutch, French, and Italian as well as reading Latin and Old English. She was a reader in paleography, her specialty manuscripts from the fourteenth century. Our research interests were closely aligned. She took my hand between hers and shook it warmly.
“So good to meet you,” she said. I heard a trace of an Italian accent.
The handshake from Karen Lynch was more reserved. She was in her forties, a slender, fit-looking woman with a steady, blue-eyed gaze. Her hair was a furious shade of red, closely cropped. She wore dark jeans and a loose-knit sweater over a striped top.
“A pleasure to meet you.” Her accent was softly Scottish.
“I loved your paper on female mystics,” I said. It was one of the few publications by members of this institute I’d been able to track down, a work of exhaustive research and meticulous conclusions but extremely readable.
She studied me for a second, then thanked me. I got the feeling that whatever Diana Cornish might have told them about me, Karen Lynch would be making up her own mind.
Sarabeth Schilders had pure white hair, pinned into a fraying bun. The frames of her glasses were thick and stylish. She pulled me in for an unexpected hug, enfolding me briefly in the colorful, drapey jacket she wore, then releasing me only partly, to clutch me by my upper arms.
“Welcome to St. Andrews, Dr. Brown. Your PhD is one of the most remarkable pieces of work I’ve ever read. It’s a privilege to have you here.”
I felt embarrassed, that niggle of shame about my natural advantage making itself felt. “Thank you. Please, call me Anya.”
“Why don’t we let Anya sit down before we pepper her with questions,” Diana said.
I sat. They were all smiling at me, apart from Karen, but I got the feeling she didn’t smile much.
“Tell us about this exceptional memory of yours,” Sarabeth said. “I envy it.” I wasn’t surprised she knew. I’d mentioned it in some of my interviews, to mitigate the guilt.
“I have an eidetic memory. I can remember everything I see, in detail.”
“Isn’t it unusual for an eidetic memory to last into adulthood?”
“Very.”
“You’re a lucky woman, then,” Giulia said.
“It’s definitely part luck, but also part nurture. My mother believed that if she actively encouraged me to use my memory, it might last into adulthood, and thanks to her, it has.”
“That was very clever of her,” Sarabeth said. “How did she do it?”
“She taught me a bunch of techniques for cultivating memory, mnemonics and such, but she also exposed me to a wealth of visual stimuli when I was a child and encouraged me to talk about what I saw. Even when I was very little, I remember looking at images and illustrations in books with her. She’d ask me simple questions, like what the best and worst bits of each picture were and why I thought so. It got me into the habit of taking my time to look at things carefully, and it’s helped me to retain my recall.”
“Can you remember everything?” Giulia asked. “Sounds, too?”
I shook my head. “Just what I see.”
“These images your mother showed you, what were they of?” Diana asked.
“Paintings, drawings, sculpture, architecture, textiles. She took me to museums when we could afford it, or we got books out of the library. She worked as a book restorer, so we’d also look at illustrations in the books she was working on and designs on their bindings.”
“She trained you well,” Diana said.
“She did and I don’t take it for granted.”
“So, your mother essentially loaded up your brain with visual references and you applied this library of images to Folio 9 and were able to make connections that others couldn’t because they were focused on decoding the language without the visual context,” Karen said.
“Exactly. Folio 9 had been looked at by a linguist and a few paleographers, and they couldn’t crack it, but Professor Trevelyan and I wondered if the images in it could give us the key to its contents.”
“And so it came to pass,” Karen said.
I flinched at the tone in her voice, because it sounded as if it held an edge of sarcasm, but when I looked at her there was no trace of it in her expression. She was smiling kindly, and I relaxed.
