The Devil's Library Read online

  THE

  DEVIL’S LIBRARY

  A RENAISSANCE THRILLER

  TOM PUGH

  Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Author Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Also available from Crux Publishing

  Copyright

  About the Author

  After studying art history in Glasgow, Tom Pugh invented a career as a travelling copywriter and teacher, living and working in London, Sydney and Tokyo before settling in Berlin with his wife and two children.

  The Devil’s Library is his first novel, inspired by his own overland journey from Moscow to Naples.

  For Katia

  Author note

  There is a legend that claims the first men left paradise of their own free will, pursuing the knowledge that would allow them to return as God’s equals. Humanity multiplied, and the sacred task was entrusted to a priestly caste, unbound by ties to any land or king, free to follow the shifting currents of power. Traces of the library they created have been found among the ruins of Babylon, in Cairo and on the island of Samos. Variously described over the centuries as the Hall of Records, the Satyr’s Library and the Oracle of the Dead, it appears in these pages only by its most common name, the Devil’s Library.

  CHAPTER 1

  Rome, April 23rd, 1558

  Rome. City of God on Earth.

  Mathern Schoff shook his head in wonder. Until his father’s death five weeks earlier, he’d never travelled more than fifty miles from Lübeck.

  Schoff had lost weight on the journey south and looked like a boy in his lawyer’s robes. He was just twenty-one years old, but he’d braved the lonely road and the brutish behaviour of the sailors with barely a thought. For the last twelve years he’d lived a lie, breaking bread with neighbours, hiding his fear that one of them would see through the exhausting facade. Now, for the first time in his life, he was among men of the same mind and faith.

  Schoff hurried through the crowded streets, averting his eyes from the shacks and lean-tos. Rome was a city of ruins, ancient squares colonised by scavenger pigs, beggars sleeping on beds of cracked marble. Schoff ignored them, hardly looking left or right until he reached St. Peter’s.

  The great square rang to the sound of stonemasons’ hammers. Not yet finished, the new basilica was already more of a wonder than Schoff had dreamed. A smile lit his pale face, as he stared at men from every part of the known world. Theologians, priests and pilgrims, notaries, clerks and secretaries, all hurrying towards the Vatican. A detachment of the Pope’s Swiss Guard in orange and blue. The immense dome towering over them all.

  Schoff’s heart soared as he thought of the men he’d left behind in Lübeck. Pope Leo X had invited them to contribute to this glorious church. The merchants should have fallen on their knees in gratitude. Instead, the tight-fisted fools had listened to Luther the Apostate, condemning their souls to eternal damnation for the sake of a few pennies.

  The great church continued to soar into the heavens, while Martin Luther was bones in a box, his soul consigned to the flames of Hell these last twelve years. Schoff shuddered; he’d been a child of ten when his father forced him through the crowds in Lübeck’s main square, taken a grip of his collar and forced him to watch men suffer the same terrible fate.

  Small fires are the cruelest. The flames rise reluctantly, licking toes and ankles.

  “Anabaptists,” his father had hissed as he pointed at the writhing heretics, holding the back of Schoff’s head so he couldn’t look away. “Worse than animals.”

  Memories of fear were supposed to be fleeting, but Schoff still saw the flames rising from the meagre pyre, caressing calves and thighs, hands and torso. The dreadful stench of it. Only one of them had spoken; a young man, wild hair dancing in the waves of heat, screaming at the crowd until his vitals cooked.

  “Remember,” his father had ordered that evening. “They burned Anabaptists today, but it could have been us.” He towered over his trembling son. “That young man’s fate will be yours if you breathe a word of what I’m about to say.”

  When the city converted to Luther’s new confession, Schoff’s father had remained true to the old faith. He was a secret Catholic, raising his son to smile at Lutherans but despise them in his heart. There was no greater cause, Schoff had learned, than the destruction of the new heresies, and the ultimate triumph of the one true Church.

  Mathern Schoff crossed the River Tiber, walking east along a street lined with tenements cobbled together from blocks of ruined stone. Only once did the vista open out, granting a view of the fabled Pantheon in one direction and the high gates of the Rione Sant’Angelo in the other.

  The crowds grew thicker around a group of men lifting the cracked flagstones, attacking the hard-packed earth with pickaxes. Schoff paused to ask a well-dressed merchant for directions to the Angelus. He spoke in Latin and received a courteous reply in the same language.

  The university was an austere building. Schoff arranged his features into an appropriately solemn expression. He read the motto carved into the massive stone doorway – To Contemplate and To Bear the Fruits of Contemplation to Others – before knocking.

  The door swung open.

  “Mathern Schoff to see the Master of the Sacred Palace.”

  A young monk led him through a beautiful garden. Schoff looked around in wonder. “What trees are these?”

  “Orange and lemon,” the monk smiled. “Pistachio, olive, fig, palm and laurel.” He pointed to a crumbling fountain in the centre of the garden. “You saw the men digging in the road? Rebuilding an old aqueduct from the time of the Caesars. Another year and we’ll see this tumble of stone brought back to life.”

  The monk led him to a bench. “The Master is busy. He’s unlikely to see you today.”

  “Of course not.” The stone bench was cool after his walk through the city. Schoff leaned back and closed his eyes. Gregorio Spina was one of the most important men in Rome; of course he wouldn’t have time today. Schoff smiled, remembering the way his neighbours in Lübeck whispered when they mentioned Spina’s name. "The Master of the Sacred Palace has spies in every city in Europe. Ceaselessly, he urges the Pope to burn more heretics, condemn evangelicals in ever stronger terms."

  Never before had anyone risen so rapidly through the ranks of the Dominican Order to become Master of the Sacred Palace. Spina was the Pope’s private theologian and Chief Censor in charge of the Vatican’s List of Forbidden Books, known in Latin as the Indices Librorum Prohibitorum.

  Another monk arrived, silently gesturing for Schoff to follow him into a large scriptorium. The young lawyer had never seen so many books in one place, bound in different colours but strangely uniform in si
ze; stacked waist-high in the centre of the room and all the way to the ceiling in the corners. Schoff followed his guide through the maze, past a score of seated prelates. Each held a quill in one hand, poised above pots of red ink.

  “In here,” the man’s tone was abrupt. “The Master will see you now.”

  The Master? Schoff blinked; he’d been expecting a clerk, perhaps a secretary. A simple desk stood in the centre of the room, chairs to either side. A wheeled stepladder climbed to a series of high shelves, piled with papers. Tall windows, hung with gossamer silk, opened onto a private courtyard.

  A man sat behind the desk, regarding Schoff with unwavering eyes. He was about fifty, slim and tanned, with glossy black hair surrounding a neat tonsure. He gestured to the empty chair, a diamond on his forefinger catching light from the windows and cutting a line through the gloom.

  “Mathern Schoff of Lübeck.”

  The young man bowed: “Master, my father is dead.” Spina’s face remained expressionless. Schoff drew a deep breath: “I am here to put my life in your hands.”

  “To what purpose?”

  Schoff hesitated. Spina’s eyes were the colour of mahogany. “It was my father’s last wish.”

  The Master of the Sacred Palace smiled. The effect was chilling. “Your father told you nothing of his work for me?”

  Schoff shook his head, lacing his fingers to keep them still.

  “He never talked to you of Epicurus?”

  The peddler of pleasure? Schoff frowned. “My father insisted I read Dante. He would often test me in the evenings. The Epicureans occupy the sixth circle of Hell. They are the first heretics to appear, because they represent the ultimate heresy.”

  “In this part we shall find the burial place of Epicurus and all his followers,” quoted Spina, nodding. “For whom the soul dies when the body dies. Your father was preparing you to carry on his work.”

  The Master of the Sacred Palace rose to his feet. Schoff followed him through cloisters decorated with huge frescoes of the world: ships bobbed artfully between Europe and Africa, monsters guarded the Indies, but there was no sign of the Americas.

  Spina took a seat beside the silent fountain. “Epicurus wrote three hundred discrete works during his life; the Church burned every last one, but the Devil is cunning. A poet named Lucretius wrote an account of his hero’s philosophy. A single copy survived, hidden in a German monastery. When it was discovered, early in the last century, it unleashed such a plague.”

  Spina’s mouth tightened. “I would rather face a dozen Luthers, ten thousand Mohamedans. Did your father explain Epicurus’ Four-Part Cure?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Do not fear God. Do not worry about death. What is good is easy to get. What is terrible is easy to endure. People are terrified – you will have noticed as you travelled south – the talk of witches, strange objects in the night sky, complaints of a new disease that destroys its victims’ flesh. Some claim it comes from the New World; others that it’s a punishment sent by God. Most see no point in trying to make such distinctions – they only wonder whether this world is still a place they can trust.”

  There was only the sound of Spina’s voice, which never rose in volume, but seemed to fill with passion. The hairs rose on the back of Schoff’s neck. He did not understand everything Spina said; he could not ask for fear of breaking the spell.

  “People are scared,” continued the Master of the Sacred Palace. “Easy prey for men like Luther, who sense the quickening of history, but lack the ability to understand. Petty prophets, with small-minded visions of pestilence and blood. The time of the final battle draws near – but these men are bakers, cobblers, coiners; ignoramuses whose scaremongering plays into the hands of the Antichrist.”

  In the sunshine, Schoff saw lines around Spina’s dark eyes and ached to reassure him. “But the reforms agreed at the Council of Trent. The creation of the Indices Librorum Prohibitorum,” he felt his heart beat faster. “The expansion of the Tribunals of the Inquisition..."

  “Steps in the right direction,” agreed Spina, standing and looking down at his visitor. “It was no accident that Lucretius’ poem was re-discovered. St. Paul warned that the Antichrist would come at a time of great upheaval, flooding the world with novelty – ideas, objects, knowledge, even a new continent – blinding the faithful with the low physical pleasures of life on earth. Epicurus was also a pleasure-monger, who denied the immortality of the soul.”

  Schoff forced himself to meet Spina’s eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Publicly, your father was an implacable enemy of Rome, a stance which brought him to the attention of a group of heretics. They will approach you too, soon after you return to Lübeck, and ask you to carry on his work.”

  Schoff flinched. “My father was no spy.”

  “Your father put aside personal honour for a higher cause.” Spina turned on his heel and strode through the cloisters. Schoff hurried to keep up, almost crashing into him as he stopped in front of a closed door.

  “You can keep a secret, I trust?”

  Schoff felt the colour rise in his cheeks. “I’ve spent my life surrounded by heretics and never revealed my true feelings, by word or deed.”

  Spina’s eyes bored into his. “The Antichrist sows doubt among the faithful. Do not misunderstand me, my friend, or underestimate my commitment to God’s cause, but the fires of the Inquisition are a poor defence against his tricks. To defeat the Devil, we must study the ways of his servants.” Spina opened the heavy wooden door and ushered the lawyer inside.

  Men in black robes sat at long tables, among a vast tangle of alchemical tools. Alembics – finely wrought stills to separate active ingredients from inert matter – and aludels to reduce them to ash and dust. Hessian crucibles, retorts and heating mantles. The walls were lined with vitrines displaying exotic plants and nautilus shells, bones and fossils, all neatly labelled. Everything was exquisitely crafted, from the copper pipes to the glass bowls and hardwood display cases. None of the men looked up from their work, and few wore monk’s tonsures.

  Spina read Schoff’s thoughts. “They have a special dispensation to wear their hair as laymen do. Sometimes it is necessary for them to move among their fellow men discreetly.”

  He led Schoff further into the room. At one long table – its surface scarred and pitted from a thousand experiments – a monk filled a large, earthenware vessel with sawdust, while another polished a thin sheet of copper.

  “An experiment based on ancient Indian texts,” explained Spina. “And here,” he led Schoff on, “the Toys of Dionysus; a golden serpent, a phallus, an egg and spinning top. We also collect and investigate the knowledge of the ancients.” Spina’s voice was a painting, full of light and colour. “We are at war. It is our duty to fight the enemy with every available weapon.”

  Schoff could hear the beating of his own heart as he followed Spina into a small, private courtyard. He did not want to return to his grey city on the Baltic Sea.

  “Let me stay, Master. Let me join you.”

  “Your place is in Lübeck, collecting intelligence on the Otiosi.”

  Schoff recoiled. The group of heretics Spina had mentioned? Even the name was repellent.

  “They spread Epicurus’ doctrine,” continued Spina. “Their leader passes himself off as a harmless scholar, but make no mistake – Giacomo Vescosi is just as much a prophet of the Apocalypse as Luther.”

  “Of course,” Schoff’s voice rose. “Vescosi must be destroyed.”

  “And make a martyr of him?” Spina shook his head. “The Lord is good, Schoff; wherever the greatest danger lies, there you will find the path to Man’s salvation. Unwittingly, Vescosi and the Otiosi serve our purpose, sending mercenaries in pursuit of ancient manuscripts, studying them for references to the Devil’s Library. Like us, they mean to discover the secret of its location.”

  Spina’s stare seemed to penetrate Schoff’s soul. “Thousands upon thousands of heretical texts; a swamp of lies and er
ror. Scrolls that belong in the Vatican Library to be studied by men trained against their seductions; if that proves impossible, they must be destroyed.

  “But among the filth, like a diamond at the centre of the Devil’s black heart, God has placed a treasure, a weapon to defeat the Antichrist and pitch his hordes back into Hell. There is a book among the countless volumes of the Devil’s Library that will teach us to unchain soul from body, to move freely among the angels who flow around us like a hidden river. This world is an illusion Schoff, conjured by Satan to stop us reaching Paradise. The book I speak of will lay waste to his lies. It will give us the power to remake this world as God intended and no man need ever doubt again!”

  Spina kissed Schoff on both cheeks. His dark eyes shone in the afternoon light. “Return home, Mathern Schoff of Lübeck. Denounce the true Church. Spit on the Eucharist if they make you, and pray each night for tidings of the Devil’s Library.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Amsterdam, August 21st, 1561

  Matthew Longstaff heard footsteps on the stairs, approaching his room in the eaves of a modest inn. He remained at the window, clear blue eyes tracing the squat towers of Amsterdam in the evening light. He was thirty-five years old and powerfully built from a decade’s soldiering in the south – brutal work, but there were few honest trades open to a man without land or country.

  His visitor knocked; three quick taps. From habit, Longstaff was armed – stiletto in his left boot, short blade strapped to the inside of his forearm, and a dagger taped beneath his short-waisted jerkin – but he wasn’t expecting trouble.

  “Come in.”

  The door was unlocked. The man who entered was in his fifties, out of breath from climbing so many flights of stairs. He wore a black tunic and fanned himself with a wide-brimmed hat. Longstaff smiled. He’d known the Dutch merchant Quist for three years and liked him.