1940. Nothing after that. I don’t know whether he stopped writing it or whether the next one’s hidden somewhere else.”
“It was the war,” said the old man. “Professor Cade became Colonel Cade, remember? No more time for autobiography.”
“You’re probably right. The book’s pretty interesting, though. Except that there’s nothing in it about what he did to you. Look, here.” Sasha opened the book and pointed to a series of entries dating from late 1937. “Anyone reading this would think that he won that professorship on merit. It’s vile. He called himself a historian, and yet he spent his whole life falsifying history. He knew you were going to win, and so he fabricated that story about you and that student.”
“Higgins. He wasn’t very attractive.” Andrew Blayne smiled, trying to defuse his daughter’s anger.
“I thought I could get you back your good name.”
“I know you did. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s all ancient history.”
“It matters to me.” Sasha’s voice rose as her old sense of outrage took over. She felt her father’s humiliation like it had happened only yesterday. Cade had persuaded one of his rival’s pupils to allege a homosexual relationship and the mud had stuck. Andrew Blayne had lost the contest for the chair in medieval art history and had then been forced by his college to resign his fellowship. Since then he had supported himself through poorly paid private tutoring and temporary lecturing jobs at provincial universities, until ill health had put a stop even to that.
His wife, Sasha’s mother, was a strict Roman Catholic and had chosen to believe every one of the scurrilous allegations against her husband. She’d left him in his hour of need, taking their five-year-old daughter with her and had then stopped the girl from seeing her father for most of her childhood. Sasha had always found this cruelty harder to forgive than all her mother’s neglect, and Andrew Blayne had remained the most important man in his daughter’s life.
“Clearing my name wasn’t the main reason why you ignored all my objections and went to work for that man, was it, Sasha?” said Andrew reflectively, as he stirred the tea in his chipped mug. He noticed how Sasha had filled it only halfway to the top to avoid the risk of his spilling hot tea on his trousers. It suddenly made him feel like an old man.
“You wanted to find the Marjean codex. Just like I did years ago. Because you thought it would lead you to St. Peter’s cross,” he went on when she did not answer. “You should be careful, my dear. You’re not the first to have followed that trail. Look what happened to John Cade.”
“That’s got nothing to do with the codex,” said Sasha, sounding almost annoyed. “Cade’s son killed him. He’s on trial at the Old Bailey right now, and I’ve got to give evidence next week. Don’t you ever read the newspapers?”
“Not if I can avoid it. And plenty of innocent people get put on trial for crimes they didn’t commit, Sasha. They get convicted too.”
“Not this one. The evidence is overwhelming. But look, I didn’t come here to talk about Stephen Cade’s trial.”
“You came here to talk about the codex.”
“Yes.” Sasha’s voice was suddenly flat, full of her disappointment over all her fruitless searches of the last few weeks.
“I’ll tell you again. I think you should leave it alone.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the codex, the cross-they should be yours. He stole everything from you.”
“No, he didn’t, Sasha. I could have looked for the cross if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t. I chose not to.”
“With no money?” said Sasha passionately. “What could you do after he’d taken your livelihood away?”
The old man didn’t answer. He looked up at his daughter and smiled, before using both hands to contrive a sip of tea from his mug. But Sasha wouldn’t let it go.
“I want to make it all up to you, Dad. Can’t you see that?”
“I know you do, Sasha. But can’t you see that I don’t need objects? They mean nothing to me any more.”
“I don’t believe you. Not this object.”
Not for the first time her father’s quiet stoicism grated on Sasha. It was beyond her comprehension that he could be so indifferent to what had been taken from him. Did he know more than he was saying? about Cade’s death? about the codex? and the cross? Suspicion creased her brow.
“Look, I can’t even hold a cup of tea properly in my hand,” said Blayne, gesturing with his shaking hand.
“I know,” she said. “I know.” She felt foolish for a moment, ashamed of herself, looking down at her father’s ravaged body. She felt as if her long, fruitless search for codex and cross had started to make her see shadows in even the brightest corners.
“I just want to have you and for you to be happy. That’s all,” said Blayne.
It was hard to resist the appeal in his quavering voice or the tears glistening in his eyes, but Sasha’s face hardened, and she turned away from her father. Her jaw was set, and her lips folded in on themselves. She looked almost ugly.
“I have to find it,” she said quietly. “I’ve gone too far to stop now.”
Father and daughter looked deep into each other’s eyes for a moment before Andrew Blayne let go of Sasha’s sleeve and allowed his head to fall back against the sofa. He seemed to concentrate all his attention on a stain on the corner of the ceiling, and he kept his gaze fixed there even when he started speaking again.
“Perhaps you’re wasting your time,” he said. “Perhaps Cade never even had the codex.”
“But I know he did,” said Sasha passionately. “That’s why this diary is so important. Look, let me show it to you. You remember that he supposedly hired me to help him with research for his book on illuminated manuscripts?”
“The magnum opus.”
“Exactly. But he didn’t really care about that at all. He was obsessed with St. Peter’s cross. He kept sending me to this library and that, looking for clues. But it was a wild-goose chase, and I think he half knew that deep down. He was like a man who’s followed a trail to its logical end and found nothing there. He goes back, taking every side turn that he passed before but without any faith that they’ll lead anywhere.”
“And he needed you because he couldn’t do his own research. Because he wouldn’t go out.”
“Yes, he was always frightened,” said Sasha. “But the interesting part was that he was always looking for the cross in any place except the one where it ought to be.”
“In Marjean?”
“Yes. It was like he already knew it wasn’t there. I tested him once. I showed him the John of Rome letter. It was a risk that he’d connect me with you, but I don’t think he did. I said that I’d found a copy in the Bodleian Library. But he wasn’t interested. He said it was a false trail. A waste of time.”
“I remember you telling me that,” said the old man, becoming increasingly interested in spite of himself. “I was the one who showed him the letter back in 1936 when I thought we were friends. He pretended not to be interested then too.”
“Except that he was,” said Sasha excitedly, pointing to an entry in the diary. “Here it is. May thirteenth, 1936. He’s copied out the whole of your translation, word for word.” Sasha held up the yellowed document covered with spidery blue handwriting that she’d snatched from Silas in the car. “Here’s your copy and that’s his. They’re the same.”
Blayne took the manuscript in his trembling hand and began to read it aloud. The hoarseness seemed to go out of his voice, and Sasha felt herself transported back five hundred years, out of her father’s disordered attic room in Oxford to a wood-panelled library in the Vatican.
Another old man in a black monk’s habit was writing a letter, dipping his quill in the inkwell at the top of his sloping mahogany desk. The sunshine sparkled on the Tiber and illuminated the parchment across which his old bony hand was moving steadily from side to side.
My dear brother in Christ,
Let me tell you then what I know of the cross of Saint Peter. It has long been lost, but is perhaps not destroyed. Perhaps you will one day see what I have never found.
Certain it is that the cross was made from a fragment of the true cross on which Our Lord suffered. Blessed
