I looked her up. She was from a large and prominent family in fifteenth-century Verona. She had many siblings and a famous aunt, as the letter suggested: Angela Nogarola, a poet. She also had a very famous sister: Isotta. I clicked on a link to her bio.
Isotta was a well-educated and brilliant feminist writer, a clear voice advocating for women all the way from fifteenth-century Italy. The more I read about her, the more I became convinced she was the letter writer and that she and her aunt and sisters had coauthored the Voynich manuscript.
The reference to a “gray lady” caught my attention, too. The description of her taking the Voynich to Augsburg and leaving it in the safekeeping of her “order” suggested she was a religious woman, probably a nun. I knew it was a journey she could have made in the fifteenth century. Centuries earlier, the Romans had built a road over the Alps directly connecting Verona to Augsburg.
I discovered an order of women who went by the name of beguines and who typically wore gray habits. They owned a network of female-only houses and convents across Europe at the time, including a property in Augsburg. This fit what was known about theVoynich, too. I found an article claiming that long before Voynich himself got his hands on it and gave it his name, this strange book might have been owned by a doctor who lived in Augsburg. It wasn’t a huge leap to think he could have somehow got it from the beguines.
I was pretty much convinced already that Isotta was the mystery author of the letter, but I found one more piece of proof.
The word “Cyanum” had leaped out at me. I knew it related to the nymph Cyane from ancient mythology but not what it might have meant to Isotta, if anything. I dug deeper and found a collection of letters and poems that she’d written. Among them was one titled “Elegy on the Countryside Around the Spring of Cyanum.”
I read an analysis of the poem. It noted that the verses referenced the Nogarola family’s country home, just outside Verona, comparing its location to the mythical and beautiful setting of Cyane’s spring. Isotta’s obvious love of nature also fit with the pages of botanical illustrations in the Voynich.
Evidence was mounting beyond doubt. I needed to tell Sid what I’d learned.
I packed up quickly and found him in the café downstairs. I showed him the fresco and my translation. As he looked at both, I told him what I’d discovered, leaning across the table, keeping my voice low, aware of all the people sitting around us.
“I’ve worked out who wrote this letter. I’m certain it’s a woman called Isotta Nogarola, a famous poet and scholar from fifteenth-century Verona. She was from a prominent noble family. Amazingly for the time, she and her sisters were all educated to the same level as their brothers so they could easily have done this. I wonder if anyone has ever considered that the Voynich manuscript could have been made by women.”
Sid listened carefully as I told him everything, taking it all in. When I’d finished, he had a question: “So if thisBook of Womenthat Isotta mentions in her letter is the Voynich manuscript, what’s the nine-circle page she talks about?”
“I think I know that, too.”
We went onto the Beinecke Library’s website and pulled up their scans of the Voynich, and I found the famous rosette page, a foldout with nine circles, one in the center and the others arranged around it at regular intervals, each linked to its neighbor with fantastical drawings.
We pored over the screen together. Now that I had Isotta in mind as the author of the letter, I saw all sorts of details in the manuscript that suddenly made sense. “There’s so much here that fits with the Voynich being made in Verona,” I told Sid. “See this little castle here?” There was a small line drawing of a tower and some battlements, almost hidden among the more indecipherable imagery. “The crenellations in that drawing is unusual; they’re called swallowtail or fishtail merlons because of their shape. You don’t find them everywhere, but they’re all over Verona.”
I showed him a photograph of Verona’s Castelvecchio, a castle with a famous bridge beside it. Both structures had stunning swallowtail merlons.
“These were built before Isotta was born,” I said. “You can find merlons like these in quite a few locations in northern Italy and southern Germany, and in some places in France and Switzerland, too, but the coincidence with the Nogarolas must relate these in the Voynich to Verona. And look at the pictures of domed buildings in the central rosette. You see architecture like that in Venice, which Nogarola definitely visited, but also in Verona.” I clicked back to the image of Pisanello’s St. George fresco and pointed to the fantastical buildings at the top. “See here: there are even similar domed buildings in this fresco, which, incidentally, was painted in around 1435, precisely the period when they estimate the Voynich was made, based on scientific analysis of the parchment. Everything fits!”
“So, what, we need to go to Verona now?” Sid laughed but he’d voiced what I was thinking, and I was deadly serious about it.
“Why not? What else are we going to do? I don’t think goingabroad is the worst idea right now. We have our passports. What’s stopping us?” I paused. The gravity of our situation weighed heavy. I knew I was going to go, with or without him. “Ineedto do this, Sid. For Mum. For us.”
“How do you explain any of this to your dad? Won’t he be trying to find you?”
He had a point. I had no idea if the women who’d chased us as we drove away from the cottage were working for Magnus, or for the Institute. But deceiving my father was a risk I would have to take if I was going to do this. “I’ll tell him I’m traveling for research. He doesn’t have to know where. He might buy it for a day or two.”
Sid didn’t look sure, and neither was I, but I couldn’t see I had any other option. People were hunting for me, for us, but I thought that if I could findThe Book of Wonderbefore they found me, it could help us bargain our way out of danger. Even if I was wrong, I didn’t have any better ideas.
Sid nodded and I felt a surge of enthusiasm and of hope. We looked up cheap flights. By 4 p.m. we were on a train to Stansted Airport, and by 6 p.m. we’d held our breaths as we passed through security, with the bestiary hidden in my bag, purchased toiletries, booked ourselves an apartment in Verona that we couldn’t afford, drunk a beer at the bar, and were about to board.
For those few hours, we were energized by an illusion of control, a feeling of unstoppable momentum.
I had a window seat on the plane. As we took off, London shrank and flattened below us. We were rising through a blanket of clouds when reality bit. A clock was ticking. At any moment we could be traced to Verona. At any moment, Mum might need me, and I wouldn’t be there. Also staring me in the face was the fact that I didn’t know exactly what we were looking for in Verona. All I had was afeelingthat I might find something and that could amount to nothing.
The plane banked as it turned toward Europe and juddered asthe dense cloud cover enveloped us. I shut my eyes and squeezed Sid’s hand. This felt incredibly reckless.
Clio
Clio sat in her flat. It was evening, dark, but she hadn’t put the light on or shut the curtain. Best no one knew she was home. She’d left Geoff’s house earlier with alarm bells clamoring.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, her laptop on her knees, working in its glow and that of the streetlamp right outside her second-floor window, which settled a sticky orange light over everything around her.
She hit the Zoom link that Zofia had sent her. Zofia appeared in front of the same blurred background as before.
“I can’t be long,” she said. “And I can’t do this again.”
