I pushed forward through the crowd, but Ben dragged me back. “Too late now,” he said roughly. “It’s gone.” He pulled me around the front of Lamont, hurrying out the same gate I’d entered, heading back up Quincy Street. Ash sifted through my hair and filled my mouth and nose with grit; smoke stung my eyes.
When we reached Mass. Ave., it seemed that every vehicle with a siren within a hundred-mile radius was racing toward the Yard. We stopped at the curb, looking across the street at my hotel.
“Is that where you’re staying?” Ben shouted over the din.
I nodded and stepped into the street.
He put his hand on my arm. “Under your own name?”
“Mona Lisa’s,” I snapped, licking dry lips. “Whose do you think?”
“You can’t go back there.”
“The police don’t—”
“We have more to worry about than the police.”
I began to retort—and stopped. Kate the cursed, the killer had whispered in my ear. He knew my name. If he went looking for me, the Inn at Harvard—the hotel closest to the libraries—would be the first place he’d check. But where else could I go?
“My place,” said Ben.
There was no other real choice. We sped across Mass. Ave. and swung up Bow Street to Mount Auburn and then across JFK, hurrying across the back end of Harvard Square. He was staying by the river, at the Charles Hotel. An odd mix of airy urban chic and New England farmhouse, the Charles was the most luxurious hotel in Cambridge, the place where royalty and CEOs stayed when they came to visit their children or their doctors at Harvard. I had never been inside one of the rooms.
Ben didn’t have a room; he had a suite. Stepping inside, I had an impression of purple couches, tall black ladderback chairs standing sentinel around a dining room table covered at one end with a laptop and a scattering of papers. Beyond, a bank of windows looked out over the city just before dawn. Widener was mercifully hidden from view.
Clasping the book tight, I stood just inside the door. “Why should I trust you?” I asked again.
“You have every reason for doubt,” said Ben. “But if I’d wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it already. Like I said, Roz wanted you protected, and she hired me. It’s what I do, Kate. I own a security company. As in guns and guards,” he said with the ghost of a smile. “Not stocks and bonds.”
“Anyone could say that.” Somewhere along the line, his pistol had disappeared from view.
Stepping swiftly past me, he closed the door. He was tall, I suddenly realized, and his green eyes were wide-set. He cleared his throat. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
Roz might as well have handed him a letter of introduction. It was her favorite Shakespearean quotation, though she shied from admitting it on the grounds that favorite quotations were, in general, sentimental and predictable. Nevertheless, that snippet from Julius Caesar summed up the serendipitous philosophy that she lived by and had tried to instill in me. Though when I’d actually lived up to it—grabbing the reins of a fleeting opportunity in the theater—she’d howled in protest, branding my departure from academe as abandonment, cowardice, and betrayal. I’d flung those words from Caesar in her face the night we parted. It was only later that I’d realized who said them in the play: Brutus, the disciple turned assassin.
I shivered. “She knew? She knew she was putting me in danger?”
“Give me the book and sit down.”
I pulled away.
“It’s not the book I’m after, Kate,” he said patiently. “It’s your hand.”
I glanced down. A thick dark smear of blood curved like Chinese calligraphy across the book’s cover, dulling the chunk of glass still stuck in its center. I dropped it where I stood, watching it fall to the floor. Slashed across my palm, a long cut was oozing blood. Stumbling across to the table, I sank into a chair.
“Thank you,” said Ben, scooping up the book and following me. He set the book on the table; next to it he set the little red bag he’d dug out of his suitcase. It was a first aid kit. Pulling out some antiseptic wipes, he began cleaning my cut. His hands were gentle, but the antiseptic stung. “Do you have any idea who your stalker was?”
I shook my head. “No. Except that he killed Roz. Turned her into the ghost of Hamlet’s father.”
Ben looked up, and I told him about the needle mark.
At first, caught up in looking closely at the cut, he said nothing. No incredulity, no amazement. Nothing. “There,” he said at last, giving me my hand back. “Good to go. I can bandage it, if you like, but it’ll heal faster if you leave it open to the air…. What makes you think your stalker’s the killer?”
“He told me so, right after he jumped me with a knife: What’s in a name?” The threat sounded strange, slipping through my voice. “Roz changed hers. To old Hamlet. Maybe we should also change yours.”
Again, that small muscle in Ben’s jaw moved.
“He also left me this.” With my good hand, I drew the Folio page from my pocket. “You know Titus?”
“I’ve seen the film.”
I laid the page on the table in front of Ben, watching disgust wash across him as he read it. “Jesus bloody Christ,” he said as he finished.
“You want to protect me,” I said quietly, “don’t let the man who wrote that get anywhere near me.”
Ben rose and went to the window, looking out. “The only way I can do that, Kate, is to work as a team. That means I have to know what you’re doing. I have to know what you’re looking for.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“Just that you were on the hunt for knowledge. I told her, no thank you, that’s the expensive ingredient in nuclear bombs and bioterror. She just waved me off. Said she was looking for Truth with a capital T: Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know….” He shot me a mocking smile. “Don’t look so shocked. I read. Sometimes I even read Keats. It’s not genetically incompatible with knowing your way around a gun. Besides, I’m only telling you what she told me.”
“Which is more than she told me. All I got was a small box wrapped in gold paper. An adventure and a secret, she called it. It led to this.” Opening the book, I pushed it toward him. Inside lay the note I’d found in her study. It was smaller than I remembered, still folded tight. Surely it would explain everything: which of Shakespeare’s Jacobean plays Roz had been hinting at, and just where I should look in the First Folio—and for what. And maybe even something more precious: an explanation. An apology.
Ben leaned over to look. “For Kate,” he read aloud, handing the note to me. The paper crackled as I unfolded it. Block capitals in light pencil spelled out two words: CHILD. CORR.
“Bit enigmatic,” said Ben. “Any idea what it means?”
“Corr is short for ‘correspondence,’” I said with a frown.
“Letters, then. But what’s child short for? ‘Childhood’? ‘Childhood letters’? Whose? Hers?” asked Ben, his questions spattering around me like hailstones.
“That’s presuming she had one—a childhood, I mean—though I wouldn’t count on it. No disrespect to your grandparents,” I added.
“None taken.”
“In any case, I don’t think you call children’s letters ‘correspondence.’” I shook my head. “Child’s a place. The English Department’s private library.”
Child. To me, that small word opened onto a lost world much bigger than the mere space it indicated, a corner suite of rooms on the top floor of Widener. For the department’s grad students, Child was home, a place of deep shabby armchairs, wide tables, and the warm glow of light on old books. It housed an extraordinary collection not only of literature but of all the flotsam and jetsam of literary lives—memoirs, biographies, histories, and letters. Volumes and volumes of letters.
“It’s full of letters,” I groaned.
“Shakespeare’s?” said Ben.
“You find one, you let me know.”
“Child doesn’t have them?”
“Nobody has them,” I said shortly. “There aren’t any. The most famous playwright in the language—in any language, probably—and we have nothing. Not a line to his wife, or a complaint to his bookseller. Not so much as an obsequious thank-you note to the queen. For that matter, we have only one letter written to him, and that’s a request for a petty loan, never sent. Going by the evidence of his letters, he wrote no one, and no one wrote back. You’d almost suspect he was illiterate.” I laid Roz’s note on the open book and stepped back. “He must have written letters, of course. But they haven’t survived. Classic case of fragmentary evidence lying.”
I rubbed my neck, thinking vaguely that what I’d rather do was to wring Roz’s. What correspondence was she on about? Couldn’t the woman ever just say what she meant?
Ben was examining the slip of paper. “Tell me exactly how you found this.”
Quietly, quickly, I told him what I knew, from Roz’s entry into the theater in the role of the ghost, to the coded note she’d tucked in the box, to the card catalog in her study.
“Card catalog?” he said with a frown. “You found this in a card catalog?”
I nodded.
“Buildings at Harvard are named for people, right?”
I nodded.
“So who’s the library named for, Professor?”
“Don’t call me that.” But even as the words spilled out, I saw what he meant. Roz wasn’t pointing to a place. “Child. Corr.” was an abbreviated card catalog entry. A bibliographical entry for “Child. Correspondence.” For “Child’s correspondence.”
“Francis Child was a professor,” I said slowly. “A real one. Roz’s predecessor, by a few generations. He was a professor of English, and one of Harvard’s great scholars, as a matter of fact. Though I have no idea why she should have been ferreting around in his papers, or why she would want me to. His specialty was ballads, not the Bard.” I pointed at Ben’s laptop. “Is that connected to the Net?”
He nodded and pushed it my way. I pulled up HOLLIS, Harvard’s online library catalog, and typed in Child’s name, and the word Correspondence.
“‘Francis James Child,’” read Ben over my shoulder. “‘Correspondence, 1855–1896.’ Bugger.” He groaned. “Nothing like being three hours too late to take the triumph out of being right.”
“We’re not too late.” I shook my head slowly.
“Did you happen to notice something that went boom in the night? That was Widener exploding.”
“Look,” I said, pointing at the screen. “The call number’s MS Am 1922.”
“Eureka,” said Ben. “That explains everything.”
“MS stands for ‘manuscript,’” I said as I closed out the page. “Which means the letters aren’t in Widener. They’re in Houghton. Harvard’s rare book and manuscript library.”
“Where’s that?”
“The low brick building between Widener and Lamont.”
“In other words, next door to Widener.” He shook his head. “What makes you think the library right next door will open this morning, any more than Widener will?”
“This is Harvard; it’ll open at nine.” I gave him a wicked grin. “We’re not too late, we’re too early.”
“Right,” said Ben. He leaned forward, touching my arm. “You’re sure you want to go on with this?”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“You should be scared.”
“That doesn’t mean I should stop.”
He nodded, and I thought I saw a flash of admiration. Getting up, he crossed to the little refrigerator and pulled out a Red Bull. Leaning back against the fridge, he popped open the can. “You sleep on the plane?”
“No.”
“The night before?”
“Not much.”
He met my eyes. “Combat lesson number one: Exhaustion makes you stupid. And stupidity makes you dangerous—to yourself and everyone around you. Right now, that means me. So I’d appreciate it if you’d at least try.” He motioned toward the doorway. “Bed’s through there. So’s the bath. All yours.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
But he wasn’t. “We’ve got time for you to sneak a few hours. You need anything, I’ll be just out here.”
So much for a working partnership. I was being sent to bed like a child. I was irritated, but I was also dead tired. I headed for the bedroom.
“Sleep well, Professor.”
“Stop calling me that.” I shut the door a little harder than necessary. A vast king bed spread with a downy purple coverlet stretched out before me; the windows opposite gave on to another fine view. The bathroom looked like an entire continent of gleaming white tile. I took refuge there, closing as many doors as possible between Ben and me.
I stood under a hot shower, letting my anger flow away with all the grime of the last two days. Pictures floated across my mind: fire snaking along the shelves of Harry Elkins Widener’s study, shimmering over the blue and red leather bindings of precious books. A flat brown burn creeping across the pages of the First Folio. The books, I thought again with a pang. All those beautiful books.
Better than people, Ben had said.
Other pictures slipped into view: Loose papers spiraling down through Roz’s office in a slow, silent flurry. Shakespeare’s bust, shattered—a thin bloodless slice of his cheek lying on the carpet. If I’d been two seconds slower out of that room, I thought as I shut off the water, that cheek might have been mine.
I toweled myself off and pulled a comb through my hair. True, Ben had treated me like a child, which was irritating as hell—but I’d responded by acting like a child, stomping out of the room. At best, I must have seemed churlish and ungrateful; I did not care to think what label I might deserve at worst.
I poked at my clothes with one toe; they reeked of the fire. Unless I wanted to sleep in them, I’d have to go back out to Ben and ask to borrow something else. I stared at my clothes in annoyance. Then I wrapped myself in a plush white towel the size of a beach blanket and padded back out to the living room.
Sitting where he had a good view—a clear shot?—of both door and windows, he had propped his feet up on the table. His gun lying in easy reach, he was flipping through the pages of Chambers. He’d managed to work the glass out from the book’s front cover, but the dark stain was still there. Above the book, the planes of his face were strongly modeled, as if carved by Michelangelo, or maybe Rodin—though he wore far too many clothes for either.
“Roz told me that Shakespeare’s language is so thick because his stage was so bare,” he said without looking up. “No scenery. Nothing but costumes and a few props.”
I jumped. I hadn’t realized that he’d noticed me. “He built his worlds from words.”
“Did either of you ever read this book?” He turned a page, frowning. “According to old Chambers here, London’s stages could spit out fogs and fountains, thunder and lightning, even showers of rain or fireworks—presumably not all at the same time. One playhouse had a movable forest that could rise from trapdoors in the stage floor. Not exactly George Lucas, maybe, but not all that bare-bones either. My favorite is Pluto dressed in burning robes by some frankly sadistic Fates, while—listen to this”—his finger traced a line at the top of a page—“Jupiter descends in majesty beneath a rainbow, his thunderbolt roaring—”
“Did you save my life tonight?”
His finger stopped on the page. “Sounds like Elton John.”
“I’m serious.”
“I try not to be.”
“Well, try. Just this once. For your aunt’s sake, if not for mine.”
Pulling himself away from the book, he leaned back, locking his hands behind his head. His eyes drifted lazily across me, bringing to mind a leopard eyeing gazelles from the branches of a comfortable tree. “You ready to throw in the towel?”
&
nbsp; Instantly, I was aware of every inch of that towel, every curve and terry loop that touched my skin. “Not yet.”
“Then that’s my answer too. Not yet.”
I pulled the towel tighter around me. “Thanks anyway. For saving it so far.”
“Sweet dreams, Professor,” he said with a small smile, turning back to the book.
“Bastard,” I retorted, walking back into the bedroom. At the edge of the bed, I stopped short. I’d meant to ask him for a T-shirt; I didn’t relish sleeping naked in the next room from a man I barely knew, no matter whose nephew he might be. But I was damned if I was going back out there, especially to discuss my nakedness, however obliquely. Dropping the towel, I crawled under the covers and sank into sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I woke into what I knew was a dream. Cold, gray light filled with the scent of the sea; a stone wall stretched off into the distance. A little ways down, a tapestry of Venus and Adonis hung askew, slashed across and smeared with blood. Beneath it sprawled a white-haired king with a crown on his brow. I bent over him. He was dead. Wind rippled through the woven branches of the tapestry. The dead king’s eyes shot open, and skeletal fingers seized my arm. “Vengeance…,” he hissed. Before I could move, a shadow slid over me from behind, and the thin, hot line of a blade sliced across my throat.
I sat up with a start. I must have cried out, because Ben was at the door in an instant. “You all right?”
“Fine,” I said with a shaky smile. “Bad dream, that’s all. Hamlet.”
“Really?” He looked at me in disbelief. “You dream tragedy in five acts?”
“More like B-grade horror.”
Ducking briefly back out the door, he reappeared to toss a T-shirt into my lap. “About time you got up. Breakfast is here,” he added, and left once more, shutting the door after him. The T-shirt was gray, without any markings, creased where it had been neatly folded. I put it up to my nose; it smelled clean, as if it had been hung out to dry in an alpine garden. Heat crept across my chest as I pulled it on, and the dream receded like a slow, whispering tide.