His car was parked down the street. He glanced back at the cottage as they were getting in. A pair of young women stood outside their front door. He recognized them. Before he could warn Anya, she slammed the car door shut, and their heads turned toward the sound in unison.
Sid jumped in, got the car started. In the rearview mirror he saw the women running toward the car. They were fast. He pulled away, foot down. The last Sid saw of them as he braced himself to take a corner as fast as he dared was a pair of dusky silhouettes in the middle of the road and a flash as one of them photographed the car’s license plate.
Anya
We wanted to get as far away from St. Andrews as possible but were worried Sid’s car could be traced. We drove to Edinburgh and left the car on a residential street in the suburbs and walked until we found a hotel.
The journey was grim as we exchanged news of Paul’s death, and of what Mum had told me and what I had done. Once we’d checked into our room, I tried to call Mum even though she’d told me not to. I wanted to tell her I had the bestiary. She didn’t answer.
“Viv should have given her phone back by now,” I said.
Sid shook his head. “I don’t trust her.”
I phoned the ward number and it rang and rang. Sid said, “It’s probably shift changeover time, maybe try again in a bit,” but I held on, gripping the handset so hard my knuckles whitened, until eventually they answered. “Your mum’s fine. She’s asleep,” the nurse told me.
“Can you tell her I called?” I asked, and she promised she would.
The hotel room was small and basic. Sid double-locked the door and closed the curtains. I laid the bestiary on the bed.
“Holy shit,” he said.
The book was bound using two boards, front and back. Embossed leather was glued onto the outside of each cover, and plain parchment on the inside. I used my fingernail to separate the parchment from the front cover.
Carefully, I eased out four small sheets of vellum covered in writing. I did the same for the back cover and extracted another four sheets.
It was just as Mum had said. It was unbelievable.
My hand shook as I put the pages together. I was holding a glossary, a list of words translated from Voynichese into Latin in closely written text. I checked the binding again. As Mum had said, there was one more thing hidden there: a letter, written in Latin.
It felt like a miracle that they’d survived. At first glance there were enough words listed in the glossary that I should be able to translate the entire Voynich manuscript. It would take time, but I felt confident that it could be done.
“This is huge,” I said.
“What does this say?” Sid was looking at the letter.
I took it from him. It was written in Renaissance Latin. I could read parts of it easily, but others would take some work.
“It talks about a manuscript, which must be the Voynich, although this refers to it as theLiber mulierum, which means theBook of Women.”
“So where does the name ‘Voynich’ come from?”
“From a guy who bought the manuscript off the Jesuits in the early twentieth century and spent the rest of his life trying to hawk it for maximum profit because he was convinced there was something special about it. But he failed; there were no takers. It was still in his possession when he died, and it was eventually gifted to Yale.Liber mulierumis a really interesting name for it, because there are pages of pictures of naked women in the Voynich and nobody knows what they’re supposed to represent. That title reminds me of another famous medieval text calledLiber de sinthomatibus mulierum, which meansThe Book of the Conditions of Women. It’s basically an OB-GYN book for medieval midwives. My father actually has a copy of it in his collection. But this is fascinating because it could suggest that the Voynich was written specifically for women.”
“How old do you think the gloss and the letter are?”
I pointed to the last line of the letter. Sid read it out.
It was the author’s sign-off, in brown ink dark enough that I thought it must be made from oak galls, just like the ink in the Voynich.
Vale. 5 Iunius 1461.
“June 5, 1461,” I said.
“Vale?” he asked. “Is that who wrote it?”
“It’s pronounced ‘vah-lay,’” I said. “It’s a Latin sign-off. It means ‘goodbye.’ I can’t see the author’s name, but perhaps when I translate it, I’ll find it.” I had butterflies in my stomach. This was historical treasure.
“How long will that take?”
