The Brotherhood of Book Hunters Read online

  A young man was sitting on a rock, in the middle of a small square with granite flagstones. Two olive trees shaded him with their majestic branches. Brown roots and wild ivy wrapped around their giant trunks. This esplanade was at the same height as the ramparts, located on one of the terraced roofs that overlooked the lower town. It was interspersed with barred windows that snatched the light and dispensed its rays to a subterranean world of shopkeepers and artisans, huddled in the booths of a covered market, their backs stooped over stalls and workbenches, forever angry with heaven.

  François preferred to forget the galleries of the cursed city into which men and gods, priests and slaves, mangy dogs and prophets were crammed willy-nilly. Instead, he drank in the soft, limpid air of the little square, where swallows fluttered just above the still burning ground. The young man was enjoying himself, throwing them pieces of oatcake. Behind, in the distance, the bright colors of the gardens of Gethsemane danced in the setting sun. Lower down, sickly scrub descended the sunny slope, rolling with the stones as far as the dark recesses of the valley of the Kidron. In the gathering dusk, a salt-laden breeze blew in from the Dead Sea. It was here that an apostle might at last appear, leaning on his stick, take you gently by the hand, and lead you toward the stars.

  François could almost feel it, this invisible hand drawing him on, leading him into the heart of Judea. He was certain he was here for something other than to traffic in books. When it came to contraband, Colin could handle things perfectly well by himself. Brother Paul grabbed hold of François, drawing him out of his daydream. Come on, let’s go! François let himself be pulled by the sleeve, all the while peering up at the sky in search of a clue.

  As soon as he saw the little group, the young man jumped down from his rock, handed Brother Paul a key, then, without saying a word, returned to his post. The monk took some pieces of material from his pocket and blindfolded the three visitors. Holding each other by the hand like children, they let themselves be led through an invisible labyrinth. Colin had the distinct impression that the monk was taking them around in circles. The chirping of the swallows faded and returned on several occasions. The last rays of the sun warmed his right cheek and left cheek alternately. Beneath his feet, he could still feel still the hard, flat granite of the flagstones.

  A door creaked. The heat from outside gave way to a pleasant coolness. After a few paces, Brother Paul lifted the blindfolds then continued advancing. A narrow corridor led to a spacious room where oil lamps hung from the ceiling on brass chains and a multitude of strange objects jostled for attention on shelves inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl. Indian papier-mâché puppets, ivory abacuses, Venetian masks, Ethiopian javelins, Etruscan vases, fibulas, perfume burners, and jade statuettes basked amid silks from Damascus, carpets from Samarkand, and lace tablecloths from Flanders. Behind a counter carved with imps and unicorns, a white-bearded patriarch was cleaning a binding with wax and a cloth. In between blowing on the precious volume, his lips moved quickly, muttering psalms. Opaque eyes, whitened by cataracts, rolled beneath his lids like two marbles.

  “Good evening, Brother Paul. I’m just getting Master Federico’s order ready.”

  Colin jumped at the mention of the Florentine. François addressed an inquisitive look at Brother Paul, who raised a finger to his lips to indicate that now was not the time.

  The old man stroked the covers and breathed in the odor of the leather then, opening the book, sniffed the ink and rubbed his nose on the parchment, his nostrils quivering above the illuminations. He moistened his thumb, passed it over the crimson surface of a miniature, and licked the rubbed-off gouache with delight.

  “A fine Byzantine edition, in faith. Somewhat faded in style . . . I doubt these dull, diluted colors would tempt the Italian. They would be better suited to more austere tastes, those of a prelate in Cologne perhaps or a burgher in Ghent. But they are done with a sure hand, trust a blind man’s touch.”

  Impatiently, Brother Paul entrusted Aisha to the old man, assuring François she would be well treated. The woman would not let go, squeezing François’s hand hard, while he furtively kissed hers. Brother Paul went behind the counter and approached a tapestry depicting a Persian banquet in a park with fountains. Barely touching the thick fabric of the tapestry, he inserted his key in the mouth of a lion that was spitting out a jet of water. The wall revolved. Brother Paul immediately reached in through the door and took hold of a torch, thus illuminating the steps of a broad stone staircase.

  Outside, on the square, the young man finished nibbling his oatcake. The swallows had gone. A low moon had come to rest on the tops of the olive trees. A cat scurried away, frightened by a slender shadow gliding nimbly along the walls, head covered in a kind of helmet.

  19

  The staircase kept endlessly descending. The walls were smooth and polished, bearing no trace of the ax. At regular intervals, chinks held sticks of incense, the fumes from which chased away the smell of resin given off by the torches. Tunnels led off from each landing, but access to these was barred by guards. They all had dark skin, black curly hair, and long, thick, square-cut beards. In spite of their warlike demeanor, they bore no arms or insignia.

  Brother Paul hurtled down the steps, head bowed, until the rock in which the staircase had been bored suddenly widened out into a vast platform. Dozens of young people—boys and girls—were bustling in all directions. Some were drawing water from a large well, others were leading goats and sheep to a manger. In the middle of a ring of fine sand, a small group was training in unarmed combat. Behind them, two women were throwing knives at a target made of braided reeds. Small huts carved in the sides of this cave marked the perimeter of the space, the ground of which was covered in carefully raked gravel.

  This place, which came as such a surprise to François and Colin, was less unusual than they thought. The bowels of the Holy Land were riddled with these subterranean networks. Latin historians and Jewish chroniclers, including Flavius Josephus, numbered them in the hundreds. Beneath the soil of Judea, wells and water tanks from the days of King David, Roman pipes and sewers, dungeons and thieves’ dens, catacombs and crypts, met and crisscrossed in an impenetrable labyrinth. This one, dating from the time of Vespasian, had been dug by Jewish rebels who had lived there for months, harrying the emperor’s legions until his son Titus crushed them. Soon after this defeat, others came, also to flee Roman oppression. The first disciples of Christ, like their predecessors, set up oil presses, bread ovens, dovecotes, and schools. Then came the turn of the brotherhood of which Gamliel was a member. It had its headquarters here, where it had been training an invisible army for almost twelve hundred years. This clandestine command post was neither a government in exile nor a den of rebels. It ran the many networks that ensured the cohesion of a dispersed people, providing supplies to communities in distress, keeping an eye on hostile governments, trying to ward off the perils constantly threatening the Jews. The existence of this secret organization was mentioned many times, surreptitiously, in the annals of various periods, in travelers’ tales, in pious manuals. This was the “invisible Jerusalem” of which Talmudists and commentators spoke—taking care never to describe it, nor to say exactly where it was located.

  Two sentries saluted Brother Paul. One of them escorted the visitors along a series of corridors until they came to a long, rectangular hall with a low vaulted ceiling. The walls were lined with maps. Bathed in the diffuse light of the oil lamps, some twenty figures, their faces barely distinguishable, sat around a massive table. François made out rabbis’ skullcaps, Bedouin keffiyehs, and the sturdy heads of warriors among this heterogeneous audience, the composition of which he found hard to fathom. There seemed to be nobody presiding over the session. One chair higher than the others, at the end of the table, remained respectfully unoccupied. Even though vacant, this chair imbued the place with the manifest authority of whoever had the right to take his seat there. Its back was carved
with a Hebrew motto, the same one that surrounded the Medici coat of arms on the bindings that François had seen in Paris and in Galilee.

  François regretted the fact that the head of this Brother­hood had not seen fit to be present at the meeting. Colin found his absence frankly offensive. The opportunity to negotiate with the representatives of a monarch surely deserved more consideration. He wondered if he should tolerate such an insult, cause a scene, or ignore it. Emerging from the gloom, Rabbi Gamliel warmly held out his hand.

  “Welcome to Jerusalem, Master Villon.”

  In spite of the rabbi’s friendly demeanor, the two men felt ill at ease, chilled by the impassive faces scrutinizing them. Accustomed to the obsequious bowing, furtive glances, and nervous smiles of the Jews of Bordeaux or Orléans, François and Colin suddenly felt the unease they themselves had so often inflicted on the stranger, the pariah. Even alone and on foot, a true-born Christian could walk the alleyways of a Jewish quarter with confidence, knowing he was the uncontested master of all he surveyed. Not here. For if there was no doubt of the supremacy of the French over Paris, or that of the Germans over Frankfurt, whose fiefdom was Jerusalem truly? Unlike with Frankfurt or Paris, this question preoccupied even those who had never seen the Holy City nor would ever tread its soil.

  Disconcerted, the two Coquillards raised their eyes to the assembly. Its members had the confident demeanor, the haughty, almost arrogant look of lords and people of class. Actually, their lineage went back to Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, who had recruited their ancestors to fill the shelves of the imperial library. Mastering languages as diverse as Greek, Persian, Syriac and Aramaic, trained to study texts, the Jews were excellent at tracking down knowledge. After the fire that ravaged Alexandria, the Brotherhood of Book Hunters went and sold its services elsewhere, to all the tyrants and high priests hungry for knowledge and power. Its agents crossed continents and oceans to unearth the rare or valuable writings sought by their paymasters. But they also found a source of income quite other than keeping temples and palaces well- stocked. Heretics, alchemists, and bold scholars employed them to save their writings from the flames. But to keep any work safe from the hands of barbarians, it was not enough to put it in a cave. Its meaning and significance had to be understood, which obliged the book hunters to keep a kind of comprehensive catalogue of human thought. And so it was that, from generation to generation, these mercenaries became, of necessity and without having ever wanted it, the guardians of wisdom.

  The cellars of the Archivum Secretum Vaticanum, access to which was so jealously guarded by the Papacy, contained documents gathered since the establishment of the Holy See. The collections of the Brotherhood in Jerusalem, though, dated from before Rome itself. They covered three thousand years of history. The Brotherhood held decrees by the Pharaohs, Cretan and Assyrian edicts, Chinese, Ethiopian and Mongolian annals, travel diaries and logbooks, manuals on war, treatises on medicine and astronomy, philosophical works from the four corners of the earth—and even the final statement of Jesus, as transcribed by the high priest Annas just before he handed the Savior over to Pontius Pilate. This document was the true testament of Christ.

  François could not remain indifferent to this last detail. Of all the works mentioned, it was the only one he wanted to read, or even just touch. The only one, probably, for which he had come. He remembered the caress of the air in the Holy Sepulcher, friendly and inviting. Like a call that only he could hear. Had he not himself composed his own poetic testament? He peered into the gloom. Where were all these books hidden? And how on earth to get his hands on the one containing the last words of Jesus? All the same, François couldn’t help wondering if Gamliel wasn’t perhaps exaggerating.

  “So the last wishes of Our Lord have passed into your hands?”

  The rabbi assured that such was indeed the case. The Brotherhood carefully checked the authenticity of each document. This was the daily task of the monks directed by Brother Médard, the pious students of Safed and, in Florence, the scholars of the Platonic Academy founded by the Medicis. The book hunters owed it to themselves to scrupulously corroborate every piece of information, because the volumes housed in this “invisible Jerusalem” were not merely trophies for collectors. They were a war arsenal.

  Gamliel gave François and Colin what he hoped was a reassuring a smile. But his benevolent expression did little to calm them. Colin, who had never seen so many Jews in his life, wondered how Chartier would take it. Somehow he couldn’t see the bishop congratulating him on associating the diocese of Paris with the machinations of some kind of Judean secret society. As for François, he had been expecting to enter a temple with porphyry columns and converse with elderly scribes, white-bearded sages, philosophers—even talk with them about poetry. This place was hardly appropriate for that. It was more like a den of brigands. Worse, it was a nest of spies. And they were keeping Christ’s word hostage.

  A few feet away, the visible Jerusalem was dozing peacefully. The little square with its granite flagstones was deserted. The young man guarding it had just left his post in pursuit of the furtive figure he thought he had glimpsed a few moments earlier. Choosing to take the alley from which Brother Paul had emerged that afternoon, he moved forward cautiously, sniffing the warm air, hugging the house fronts, listening for the slightest sound. He could hear nothing, not even the meowing of a cat, not even the scamper of the rats that stole in packs along the walls at night. It was as if the alley had been gagged. The silence that usually reigned in it was completely different from this total absence of noise. Fleeing an invisible threat, the young man began walking more quickly. He stumbled over a stone boundary marking the entrance to a large building. As he tried to get shakily to his feet, he felt a sharp burning sensation in his insides. In his fall, he caught a brief glimpse of his attacker’s cruel face then, behind the helmet glinting in the moonlight, the starry firmament falling silent. Other soldiers emerged from the doorway and carried off the body. Suleyman and his men crept into position around the little square. A Saracen scout softly approached the houses lining the esplanade, listening at the doors or standing on tiptoe and peering through the cracks in the shutters to try to see inside.

  Lying flat on his stomach on a roof, a Mongol sentry watched the scene, holding his breath. When the moment was right, he let out a languorous meow, like an old cat. He waited and listened. Almost immediately, another meow responded to his, shorter and sharper, like that of a young she-cat. The alarm had been raised.

  20

  Two young girls brought tea, almond biscuits, and dried fruit. The collation was an opportunity for François and Colin to converse with their table companions, who, surprisingly, seemed quite alarmed by Louis XI’s recent setbacks in his struggle with the provincial barons and dukes. They seemed well informed of the threats from Charles the Bold, Jean of Clèves, and Pierre of Amboise looming over the crown, and even stated that, in their opinion, the king should beware of his own brother, the Duke of Berry. It struck François that these comments were probably a way of demanding guarantees. What would be the point of signing an agreement with Paris if the city was besieged? He leapt indignantly to his feet. He’d had enough of insinuations, mysteries, bargaining. Colin and he were the envoys of a monarch who was still in place, a legitimate monarch who—they did not doubt for a moment—could put down this rebellion of scheming country squires. They hadn’t come all this way to be told how to manage the affairs of the kingdom—and certainly not by mercenaries who lived in hiding in the sewers of their own city, survivors of a people who had let themselves be enslaved and mistreated for centuries without offering the slightest resistance. Excellent counselors, indeed!

  Colin stiffened, ready for a fight. But the gathering remained silent, listening to François with rapt attention. Gamliel even seemed delighted. François continued to hold forth.

  “King Louis already has all the ministers and armorers he needs. We haven’t come here
for halberds or cannons. Or for vain talk!”

  But books, François said to himself, surprised by the strangeness of such a request. Only books? François was hardly one to deny the power of the written word. In Fust’s printing works, he had seen the heavy presses beating ceaselessly, inking page after page, making the boldest texts suddenly appear on hitherto blank paper. But he had also seen Chartier there. It was the bishop’s well-known scheming nature that made François doubt the legitimacy of his mission. What was the point of flooding the place with treatises on science and philosophy, with odes and fables, if it was to be the clerics and rulers who decided what everyone should read—and think? François knew that better than anyone. His own verses were either applauded or outlawed by lords and burghers alike, depending on whether they found their rebellious overtones annoying or amusing.

  And now, in this military headquarters, his angry speech also seemed to please rather than shock. He had the impression that he was stupidly allowing himself to be a spectacle once again, just as he had done in the drawing rooms of courtly ladies titillated by his satires and delighted with his insidious tone. Gamliel would no doubt have been disappointed not to see François fight back. He had clearly been counting on that rebellious streak of his. And on Colin’s aggressiveness. Weren’t the two Frenchmen the perfect partners for these book hunters? Dissidents and outlaws like them.

  François regretted having said out loud what had been on his mind. He vowed to be more perceptive in the future. He still lacked too many elements to pull off the kind of trick of which he alone had the secret. He sat down again, looking suddenly calmer. Colin seemed to have understood, and also became less hostile.

  Considering that the storm had passed, one of those present asked permission to speak. He bowed to the empty chair of the commander of the Brotherhood as if expecting his consent. But it was Gamliel who signaled to him to begin. The man was quite young and full of spirit. He spoke quickly, raising his voice as if the august older members of the gathering were hard of hearing. He might not have been wrong. Slumped on his bench, Brother Paul was dozing peacefully, arms folded over his belly, a blissful smile on his lips. This confirmed François in his opinion: the prior was as indifferent to this masquerade as he was. He was here for another reason, although what that might be, François had no idea. What did the monk know that he himself didn’t yet know?