I pored over the glossary, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the last paragraph of the Voynich manuscript. The glossary wasn’t a dictionary, it only gave translations of a small selection of words, so I had to puzzle out the rest.
It really tested me. I felt as if I was working at the limits of my ability, and a voice in my head began to insist that I couldn’t do it. Sid told me to ignore it. Mum would have said the same. I wished she were with us.
After a few hours I was done, my concentration shot. I wasn’t finished but I needed a break. “Let’s go out,” I said. I wanted to walk the streets and see if I could find traces of the city that Isotta had known. I felt like it might help me.
The streets were full of stylish locals and rubbernecking tourists. We blended into the crowds feeling safer than we had in London, though not relaxed, and headed to the tourist office to pick up a map.
I had my eyes open for anything in the city that would have been there when Isotta was alive. I was trying to edit out the new and see it with her eyes. It was much easier than I’d anticipated. So much of Verona was ancient.
The tourist office was beside the Roman amphitheater, so we began there. We climbed up the chunky stone benches to sit at the top. We had a view of the hills around Verona and the whole of the oval amphitheater, set up for a concert that evening. Verona’s church spires surrounded us. We saw swallowtail merlons on more than one building, which bolstered my feeling that we’d come to the right place.
Seated just below us was a well-dressed older woman, in chic dark glasses, her hair cut into a classy bob. She was with a much younger man—her son? He was beautiful, too. They looked away as we passed, but I felt a moment of jealousy that they could spend the day sightseeing without fear.
I forgot them once we’d left the arena. We had so much to see and absorb; I felt like the city was drawing me in. We started by visiting the churches. There were at least four or five that were already built when Isotta was born and that she would have known.
Everywhere we went, my excitement grew. We hunted down anything that could have inspired the Nogarolas. In the basilica of San Zeno, we saw a medieval clock that looked like a drawing in the Voynich; on the ceiling of the tiny San Zenetto there was frescoed foliage almost identical to a plant in the botanical section of the manuscript; in the ancient Christian church hidden beneath the newer church of San Fermo there were more echoes of Voynich imagery in the early Christian frescoes. After a few hours running around I’d seen traces of the manuscript everywhere in medieval Verona, in its architecture and in the detail of the surviving artworks.
There was also a surprise: Verona was a city shaped by water, and in more ways than one. The River Adige was ever present, bordering three sides of the ancient heart of the city, but Verona’s churches and squares contained multiple fonts and fountains that could have inspired the mysterious bathing scenes in the manuscript. I didn’t need any more convincing that we were where we needed to be.
We finished up at the Basilica of Santa Anastasia to see the Pisanello fresco in the flesh, craning our necks as we stared up at it. As high up as it was, it was still stunning. Sid was so absorbed in it that he stepped backward without looking where he was going and trod on a woman’s foot. She yelped and I realized she was the same woman I’d seen in the amphitheater with her son, who was here with her, too. I noticed she wore a distinctive brooch on the lapel of her coat, a spiked wheel. It reminded me of the rose windows all around the city, and of the wheel of St. Katherine we’d seen in both a fresco and sculpture in the Castelvecchio museum.
Sid apologized, and I smiled at the woman, but she didn’t smile back. She still had her dark glasses on, even in the relative gloom of the church. The man took her arm, and they walked away quickly. He was older than I’d first thought. Something about the moment left me feeling unsettled.
In the piazza outside Santa Anastasia, my phone buzzed with a message from Magnus that made my heart thump:
Where are you? I know what you’ve done.
Viv
Viv walked down the cottage garden and let herself into Rose’s potting shed. It was musty in there, full of cobwebs. It was a long time since Rose had been well enough to use it. Viv shut the door and made a call.
“You’ve done well. Excellent work,” her mentor said. The praise made Viv swell with pride. She felt replete with it. This is what happiness is, she thought. It’s being both neededandappreciated.
“If Rose Brown is well enough to travel, we’ll take her today,” her mentor continued. “It’s time.”
“She’s well enough.”
“Good. We left you something to give her. Check where you leave the empty milk bottles. Slip one pill into her tea or coffee later today. Just one. We want her alive, for now. Message me as soon as it’s done, and someone will be there within an hour to help you move her to the car. Don’t try to do it yourself.”
Viv hung up and took a pair of shears from the shed. Back in the house she put her head around the door of the sitting room. Rose was dozing in front of the television.
“It’s such a lovely day, I thought I might do some pruning out the front,” Viv said.
“You’re a dream, Viv,” Rose said. Viv hesitated. Was Rose’s tone a bit off, again? Sarcastic, even? She felt a flicker of annoyance but let it go. No point in a petty argument now.
Tucked between the wire basket where they left the empties for the milkman and the cottage’s crumbling wall, Viv found an envelope containing a foil strip of tablets. She slipped it into her pocket and spent a few minutes snipping at some whippy branches and one or two plants she thought were ugly.
She was excited. This was the first stage of the plan for Rose, and Viv’s information had been instrumental in bringing them to this point. She hoped they would let her stay with Rose, even after they’d taken her from her home. Viv wanted to demonstrate that when the time came she could deliver on her promise that she was willing to end Rose’s life if necessary. It could work wonders for her reputation in the Order.
When she was done, she went back inside and popped her head into the sitting room.
“Do you fancy a coffee, Rose?” she asked.
Rose wasn’t smiling anymore. She’d propped herself up, frail as she was.
“Do I have a choice?” she asked.
Viv stared at her. So she knew. But it wasn’t a problem. Rose was clever, but you could be as clever as you liked. It didn’t matter if yourbody was failing you and you were dependent. Viv smiled and said, “Not really, dear. No.”
