Part 18 (1/2)

Broad Street, Oxford 'How much for the copying?'

'Three and two.'

'And the subwarden let you have it for the week?'

'”One of only two copies of Master Albertus in Balliol,” he tells me. ”Mind it well, young Pelham, mind it well.”'

'And you will?'

'I'll keep it chained to my wrist.'

'And basted with your annotations.'

'Basted, roasted, ruminated-'

'And shat on s.h.i.+tbarn Lane.'

'Into the privy of theology-'

'We call Balliol College.'

The three students erupted in laughter as they walked by, sparing no glance for a robeless Londoner seated on a stone wall. One of them looked a bit like Simon, the same sparkle of wit and ardour in his eyes, brains and charm to burn. They pa.s.sed beneath the arched gate into Balliol yard.

With a heavy sigh I rose, feeling, as always in Oxford, like the slow third wheel of a swifter cart. Though I had travelled here several times in recent years, I was neither a former student nor, like Ralph Strode, a master, my education having led me to the Temple rather than to Oxford or Cambridge. I knew men who had studied in both towns, Strode among them, and Chaucer always swore I could have been a fine philosopher or logician. But I had admitted to myself years before that certain dimensions of these disciplines were beyond me.

Though what, I wondered as I looked up Broad Street at yet another ruined facade, can come of theology when its greatest home lies in rubble? The town of Oxford seemed to have declined since my last visit into a haven of thieves and wh.o.r.es, stealing and swyving in the empty plots and fallow fields along the London road, keeping company with the hanged. Yet as the keeper of the inn at St Frideswide's had remarked, for every structure being pulled down outside the walls another two were going up on Cornmarket Street. Even the Durham monks had ambitions to expand their manse into a full-fledged college, with its own degreed faculty. As Will Cooper had observed to me on our way along the high street, Oxford was a confused town, it was plain to see: uncertain about its future yet eager to sc.r.a.pe away its pestilential past, caught in that strange land between decay and renewal.

I walked through the outer doors of the Durham hospitium as the monks were concluding Tierce. The voice of the abbot dismissed the monks to their work, and outside they broke up into smaller cl.u.s.ters.

One of the last to leave the oratorium was an old man in lay garb. His hose were cut tight around his ankles, tucked into rough boots that wouldn't have looked out of place on a ploughman. He wore a loose jacket of thin brown wool, unb.u.t.toned over a simple s.h.i.+rt dyed a dark red, and from its collar jutted a neck of remarkable length made all the more striking in contrast with its owner's head, which seemed to block the sun as he approached me from across the quadrangle. Though deep crags lined his brow, his skin lay drum-tight against his cheeks, as if pulled by an unseen force somewhere behind his ears.

'Master John Gower?'

'The same.' I half-bowed to the man. 'You are Peter de Quincey?'

'All my life,' was his reply. 'Come to sniff through the bishop's books, have you?' He asked a few other pointed questions, referring to the letter from Strode I had sent around the day before. Apparently satisfied, he led me to a far corner of the outer manse, where a narrow doorway opened to the dormitory pa.s.sage.

'Bishop Angervyle, Strode tells me, was a great man,' I said to his back.

'The greatest,' said Quincey as he stepped along the narrow pa.s.sage. 'His lords.h.i.+p served as the king's cofferer, as dean of rolls, as bishop of Durham, even as envoy to Avignon, to say nothing of his station as lord chancellor. A l.u.s.trous life.'

'Though I've heard, too,' I said, sensing his eagerness to expand, 'that Angervyle was instrumental in the deposition of the second King Edward. That he was forced to hide out in Paris for a time.'

A secretive smile over his shoulder. 'I will not deny it. He was a man of powerful a.s.sociations. An adviser and emissary to kings, emperors, and popes. But above all Richard Angervyle was a devoted collector of books. An ama.s.ser of books, one of unparalleled devotion. You undoubtedly know about the more immense holdings in our realm. Bury St Edmunds, St Albans, the libraries at Winchester and Worcester ...' We left the grange through a rear door facing on the walls. Fields and orchards beyond, workers toiling in the distance. 'And the great libraries of Christendom: the holdings of King Charles of France, the curial libraries at Rome and Avignon.'

'Yes, of course,' I said, thinking of Chaucer's account of the Visconti collection. Our apparent destination was a small, detached building positioned against the north wall and surrounded by a thick cl.u.s.ter of trees and shrubs. The building's walls formed a hexagon of timber and stone.

'Yet these libraries, while great in number, have no soul.' Quincey pulled a long key from its dangle by his waist; it reminded me of Tom Tugg's grotesque key to the Newgate cells, though more finely wrought. There was a click, then, with a reluctant breath, the door swung open on well-oiled hinges.

'Such collections,' Quincey continued as he stepped inside, 'are rich men's baubles, serving the purposes of vanity. Even the most sober monks regard their books as a reflection of their order. These men, Master Gower, collect books as the Duke of Lancaster collects palaces. And b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.' He gestured for me to enter.

The first thing I noticed about the dark s.p.a.ce was the smell: rich, deep, gorgeous. Cardamon, I thought, and cloves and cinnamon and old parchment, and leather, and boards, and dust. It was overwhelming; I had to step back out for a moment to sneeze. Quincey, meanwhile, had taken a pair of wicksnips from a shelf and busied himself lighting several new candles. Despite the opened door the room was not well lit, the shutters having been nailed fast. Old, rickety-looking shelves lined five of the chamber's six walls. All were empty. Angervyle's books, I a.s.sumed, were stored in the many trunks arranged around the room, of varying sizes and laid out like a labyrinth of low walls.

'You'll pardon the spice,' said Quincey. 'An excellent preservative of books.'

Though perhaps not in such quant.i.ty, I thought.

'Bishop Angervyle's library was different. Distinctive in every respect. Richard de Bury, you see, collected only those books that matter most to our modern minds.' He rubbed his hands and approached one of the closer chests.

'I've been told that the bishop was quite particular about his selections,' I said. 'No law texts, for example.'

Quincey nodded. 'The bishop had no patience for law, nor even for much theology, and those subjects he did favour did not exactly endear him to his superiors. The abbot here in Oxford and this was before Angervyle's elevation to the bishopric was unwilling to give over a room to his ma.n.u.scripts. He regarded the books, and also Angervyle himself, as vulgar.'

'Vulgar?'

'Supposedly it demeaned the order to be seeking out wisdom in the works of pagans. In lewd poems, in the spectacles of Seneca, even in the obscenities of Juvenal, one of his particular favourites. So here they are, left to rot in chests, with no dedicated library to house them, despite the talk of all the new building to come. I worry that these, these monks' he shuddered, as if swallowing a spider 'will ruin his legacy. That on my death the collection will be destroyed.'

I surveyed the chamber, wondering if Quincey would let me buy the whole lot.

'Or divided, with some books going to one college, others to another. The bishop's fondest wish was to have all his books housed in a single room, made available for lending.'

'So he writes in the Philobiblon.' I looked around at the many chests, feeling greedy. 'Did he make a catalogue?'

'After a fas.h.i.+on. But the bishop's own lists were organized into rather eccentric categories: books lending themselves to happiness, books sorting virtue from vice, books concerning animals. So I took it upon myself in the years after his death to systematize the collection. Even so, the handlist I've a.s.sembled leaves much to be desired, I'm afraid.'

He led me to a standing desk. On it was a volume of moderate thickness, its clasps locked, its binding chained to the wall. Quincey inserted a small key into the clasp lock, and the tight straps sprang apart at the buckle. 'Here, then.'

I peered down at the neat lists, alphabetized by the author's name if known, by the work's opening words if not. 'This will be enormously helpful,' I said as I scanned incipits.

'I hope so, Master Gower.' He modestly bent his stick-like neck. 'Though perhaps you might save yourself some time if you tell me what you are after. A particular work?'

'Well, I suppose you might know of the author I'm looking for.' I watched the man carefully. 'What significance does the name ”Lollius” have to you, or did it have to Angervyle?'

'Lollius, you say.' He rubbed his nose, looking everywhere but into my eyes. 'Lolliuslolliuslolliuslolliuslollius,' he intoned, his voice running an unmelodious gamut from high to low and back again. 'Do I recall a moment in Petronius, perhaps, or was it Sall.u.s.t?' He squinted. 'Horace,' he said at last, with a snap of his long fingers.

'Horace?'

'Wrote a famous epistola ad Lollium.'

'A letter to Lollius?' I said. My hand twitched.

'And an ode. Do you know Horace?'

'A bit.'