Clio thought of the remote island where Eleanor Bruton died. “It’s possible they’ve followed you here. These women are dangerous and well resourced.”
“Should we tell the Italian police?” Sid asked.
Clio considered it. If she stayed under the radar, the carabinieri wouldn’t be in touch with her office in London, but if she involved them, chances were it would get back to the UK quickly. There were protocols. “Nobody’s broken the law, so let’s watch and wait for now.”
“But you said they were dangerous.”
“They are. But we can’t be sure that the people you saw are involved with the group. St. Katherine is a popular saint, and this is a Roman Catholic country. Let’s not be hasty.”
They seemed to accept it and she felt a pang of guilt for the ways she was misleading them. She would have to make sure she kept them safe.
“Can you show me how the embroidery links to the Voynich?” she asked.
“It’s so intricate, it probably connects in loads of ways, but this is one of the more obvious.” Flipping between the photos of the two embroidery pieces on Clio’s phone again, Anya pointed out the five embroidered circles, each containing a portrait of a woman in profile, including the one that had been ripped in half. “The letter I translated, from Isotta Nogarola, says that the Voynich was made by five women from her family: her, three of her sisters, and their aunt. I think these profiles are portraits of them, and I think that because each one has her initial beside her, and a plant that’s relevant to her name, growing through it. Juniper for Ginevra, laurel for Laura, basil for Isabella, honeysuckle for Isotta, and angelica for their aunt Angela. She and Isotta were famous poets. What’s exciting is that you can see drawings of these same plants inside the Voynich, on the botanical pages. And look here, I think the Nogarola family crest is also in the embroidery. Do you see here, where it’s been ripped?”
Clio peered at it.
“I think it’s another heraldic shield,” Anya said. “You see there’s one that’s intact below the central roundel?”
“Yes,” Clio said. Zofia Danek had mentioned two shields but she hadn’t been able to identify the torn one.
“If the embroidery hadn’t been ripped in that exact place, this destroyed shield would have been the more prominent one. And look, on each piece we canjustsee the ends of a pair of kinked lines that would have run diagonally across the shield. That’s the Nogarola family crest. And those kinked lines appear as a motif in the Voynich, too, twisted to make the shape of the roots in one of the botanical drawings.” She found the page on her laptop.
“It’s playful,” Clio said.
Anya nodded. “You get a sense of what the family were like. It’s nice.” She smiled. Clio warmed to this side of her. She read everything Anya showed her, looking most carefully at her translation of the final page of the Voynich. “What does this mean?” She pointed at a row of capital letters that Anya hadn’t translated yet.
“I’m not sure,” Anya said. “It’s been a bit of a puzzle figuring out these letters from the Voynichese, and I’m not sure I’ve got it right. The Latin doesn’t translate easily.”
She copied the letters out onto the side of her tourist map of Verona:
HYPOEUMSNTMRSSUNT
Then, eyes narrowed, played with them, rewriting them a few different ways until she had:
HYPO EUM SNT MR SSUNT
“‘Hypo’ is Latin for ‘beneath,’” she said, “but it’s a prefix. ‘Eum’ is a demonstrative pronoun, I believe, so what I’m about to say doesn’t quite make sense, but at a stretch it could be translated as ‘beneaththat,’ or ‘him,’ but the grammar isn’t correct for either word. On first glance at the other groups of letters, I’m seeing an abbreviation. The letters could stand for Santa Maria Assunta, Saint Mary of the Assumption. Churches are commonly dedicated to her.” She frowned, thinking aloud. “Which means that the gender for ‘eum’ is also wrong.”
Clio interrupted. “Are there any churches dedicated to this saint in Verona?”
“The cathedral.”
“Is that the one with the Roman remains beneath it?” Sid asked.
“It’s built over two older churches and a Roman site, and it has a separate baptistery with a famous font.” Her eyes lit up. “And it’s right beside the river. You know, water is a huge theme in the Voynich.”
“Should we go back there?” Sid asked.
“I’ll go,” Clio said. “You two should stay here, especially if you suspect you were being followed.”
“But you’ll need us,” Sid said. “Well, you’ll need Anya to interpret what you’re looking at, and I’m not letting her go without me.”
He got up and went to close the doors to the balcony, then froze, and stepped back from them.
“What is it?” Clio asked.
“The woman and man we saw earlier.”
