“She’s not here, is she?”
“I swear I thought she was.”
“She could be in serious danger, Sid. That’s my priority right now, and I know it’s yours, too.”
He hesitated fractionally. Clio was right, but he was loyal.
She held out her hand. “Sid! Her life could be in danger. Show me your fucking ‘Find My.’”
Anya
One of the men seized me by the arms. There was no getting away. I was no match for his size and strength. I could feel the violence in him, smell his sweat.
My body shook as I stood in his grip in the middle of the central aisle. Shafts of watery sunlight streamed through the windows of the church, but they weren’t strong enough to warm the air. Cold crept through my wet clothing and into my bones.
The other man shut the church doors firmly. He paced energeticallyin front of them as he made a call, big with the energy of capturing me. He spoke in Italian, and I couldn’t understand it, but I got the gist: I may not have found what I was looking for, but they had. I was treasure to them, and they were getting instructions for what to do with me.
I tried to stand tall. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of displaying any submission. I didn’t want it to get back to my father that I’d shown weakness. That, at least, I could do for Mum.
Suddenly, the tone of the man’s voice changed. He glanced at me, and his expression transformed from victorious to angry. The man holding me saw it, too. He tightened his grip on me and barked a question. The answer was barked back. The atmosphere shifted. I sensed fear in them and steeled myself because I didn’t understand why or what it meant.
I was roughly dragged up the aisle toward the doors, where they had another angry exchange over my head, close up, spittle flecking, and I flinched at every word. I was looking for a chance to get away but not finding one. I was shaken like a doll as they shouted at each other. I cried out, and the man let go of me suddenly, shoving me away. I fell hard into the back row of pews and was struggling to sit up, when they fled, and the church door swung shut behind them.
The silence in the church felt loud. The patches of sunlight seemed to be burning. The animal smell of the man hung on me. All my senses were in overdrive, and it took me a few moments to come back to myself. I was very sore. I moved, gingerly, to sit in a pew but I couldn’t get comfortable because I was still wearing my backpack. My arms and torso ached as I slowly wriggled to get it off, and as I did, my shadow moved against the wall beside me, and something there caught my eye.
In a shallow side chapel, windowless and unadorned, a wooden chest was pushed up against the wall. It was very old, the lid warped, the sides carved. It stood a few inches off the ground on solid legs and was about four feet long. It looked as if it weighed a ton. Hidden among the carvings on the front of it, I saw the faint but distinctiveoutline of the Nogarola coat of arms and beneath it, a line that I recognized from my translation of the Voynich. I caught my breath.
Even if nothing of the original church building had survived, apart from its floor, might this object be a survivor from that time? A chest that could relatively easily have been saved from the older building and moved into the newer church after it was built? A chest obviously commissioned by the Nogarolas and perhaps gifted to this special place?
The lid creaked as I lifted it. The chest was packed full of altar cloths and vestments. They were dusty and moth-eaten, but neatly folded. I pulled them out, dumping them in heaps beside me, and ran my hands over the inside of the chest, looking for somewhere, anywhere, thatThe Book of Wondermight be hidden. It felt like this had to be its resting place, though it wasn’t long before I realized that was wishful thinking: the book wasn’t there. I sat back on my heels, exhausted. Disappointment scythed through what felt like my final chance of hope.
Dust motes swirled in a shaft of sunlight above me as I reached out to touch the chest and my fingertips traced the outline of the Nogarola crest and the familiar words carved beneath it. A dog barked outside, and from somewhere in the distance, I heard the faint sound of police sirens.
I felt exhausted, ready to give up, but I realized there was one more place I could try. I leaned down and tried to see beneath the chest, but it was too dark. The sirens were getting louder. They were for me, I realized. They were the reason the men had left. Somehow, the carabinieri had caught up with me. But they weren’t here yet.
I ran my hands beneath the chest and felt a protuberance where someone had built a compartment into its base that was invisible from the inside and outside. It was the right size to house a small manuscript. I lay on the ground and used my phone’s light to get abetter view, but I couldn’t see where it opened. I felt all around it, getting frustrated. It was a sealed box, apparently, with no opening. I wished I could upend the chest, but it was far too heavy. As the volume of the sirens increased, I tried again, forcing myself to take it slower, to be more careful. This time, one side of the box slid cleanly away beneath my fingers and clattered as it fell to the floor.
I reached inside it. I had to explore it by touch, because it was impossible to get an angle to see. I felt a spine and a hard cover, and caught my breath. My fingertips dug gently around it until I felt the soft edges of vellum leaves. The sirens were screaming now, but I had to remain patient, to ease the book gently out of its hiding place. It came painfully slowly and reluctantly, as if afraid of seeing the light of day, and then, finally, I had it in my hands.
The Book of Wonder.It looked like a dusty little volume but that meant nothing. I lifted the cover to a random page, and its beauty and brilliance took my breath away. I could see at first glance that it was the equal of any of the finest manuscripts in the world, jewellike and perfect, exquisite craftmanship in the illustrations. TheMona Lisaof manuscripts. Pages of text—tantalizing—that I had no time to linger over because the sirens were right outside now, tires were squealing, car doors slamming, and footsteps were approaching, at speed.
I seized my backpack and shovedThe Book of Wonderinto it, then threw the piles of fabric back into the chest and shut the lid. As the church doors burst open, I turned to face the door and fear rippled through me. Two carabinieri burst through it with weapons raised and they trained them on me.
Clio
Clio jumped out of the taxi as it pulled up behind four carabinieri vehicles parked haphazardly in front of the church where Anya’sphone had located her. She heard Sid’s footsteps close behind hers as she ran across the square, but they were stopped outside the church by an officer who held them there even when Clio showed him her badge. He spoke no English. He wasn’t interested in her attempts to persuade him to let her pass.
Once she and Sid had located Anya, she’d felt she had no choice but to call her contact and ask him to send the local carabinieri to help Anya, because they had the best chance of reaching her first. Clio had covered her own back, too. To mobilize her colleagues with maximum urgency, she told her contact aboutThe Book of Wonder.
But now she was afraid she’d made a terrible mistake. During the taxi ride here, worry had begun to eat at her as it occurred to her that if these women’s groups had successfully infiltrated the police force in the UK, they might have done the same here in Italy.
She hadn’t said anything to Sid about her doubts, because he didn’t need to know—shouldneverknow—but as she stood outside the church, she was terrified she’d just delivered Anya andThe Book of Wonderright into the hands of the Kats or the Larks.
“There she is! Anya!” Sid said.
Anya stood at the top of the steps, framed by the doorway of the church, a foil blanket around her shoulders. She looked small and vulnerable. She was with a female carabinieri officer, and Clio’s tension rose another notch. She thought of Anya’s mother, of how Anya wanted to useThe Book of Wonderas leverage to get her mum to safety, and her stomach twisted with apprehension.
“Anya!” Sid called again, and she looked toward them but shook her head minutely.Not now.
