Page 76 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER TEN
A maranthe hired a chair to take her back through The Strand and Fleet Street, having no desire to cover the duchess’s silk skirts with the muck and dirt of London traffic.
But she disembarked in Ludgate Street, within sight of the great edifice of St. Paul’s, so she might stroll through Ave Marie Lane and admire the imposing Stationer’s Hall, home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, who controlled most of the publishing trade in London.
She was not a member, and not likely to become one, which was just as well.
The Stationers controlled copyright for all works registered with them, and while their concern was more for preserving the property and income of modern authors and publishers, her work in reproducing ancient manuscripts fell into an undefined grey area.
Was it not a public service to preserve ancient works of historic value?
Look what else might be known, for instance, about the world of her father’s Anglo-Saxon forebears if half of their poetry had not burned in the fire at Ashburnham House.
She made reproductions so she might have samples of her art to display when it came time to open her antiquarian bookshop, specializing in old and rare volumes.
But one could not live on books by eating them.
She wondered what Mal and his compatriots in the Middle Temple would have to say about the very, very grey areas into which she was venturing.
She hugged her valise close, not entirely out of concern for pickpockets.
Traffic was light on Paternoster Row, as it customarily was save for Magazine Day, when the periodicals were published, or the release of a highly anticipated work.
The street had of old belonged to stationers and booksellers, with most of the printers, book binders, and booksellers in London clustered here or nearby.
Amaranthe attracted much attention as the sole woman in evidence, and in such gorgeous dress.
She took care to step carefully over the old, uneven cobbles, generally kept clean by the sweep boys.
Women were a rarity in the publishing field, though she had heard a Mary Cooper had kept a shop here until recently and had made a success of the business, buying several copyrights in her own name.
She looked fondly into the tall windows letting light into Longman and Rees, one of the most venerable publishing houses in Britain, then picked her way past Dolly’s, famous for its beefsteak, and the Chapter Coffee House, frequented by hopeful authors and booksellers taking a break.
The many bookshops beckoned her like siren calls, but one was not welcome to amble and browse through the more traditional establishments.
Most booksellers still operated as combined printers and publishers, like Mr. Karim, and one was expected to discharge their business and depart, not linger.
A musical chime rang out as she entered under the Sign of the Scroll, and for a moment the quiet, crowded stacks of the bookshop, with dust motes glimmering in the air, called her back to Mr. Finney’s in Callington and the treasure Amaranthe had labored long for.
Now she was parting with another treasure, one she had labored less over, but which she had considered a stepping stone to her own future. Was Malden Grey worth parting with it?
She thought of young Camilla in her fancy white dress, her exasperation that she was not allowed a tutor, and it was easy to push her doubts away.
“Miss Illingworth. Salaam alaykum ,” Mr. Karim greeted her, emerging from the back room and wiping his hands on a cloth dark with ink.
“ Wa 'alaykum as-salaam ,” she replied, and he smiled broadly.
“Your Arabic is improving.” His dark eyes flared as he noted the leather bag beneath her arm. “You have something for me?”
She looked around to ensure they were alone, save for his apprentice in the back room. She didn’t wish witnesses to this discussion.
She withdrew the vellum pages from the valise carefully, so as not to put them out of order. With reverent hands Mr. Karim spread the first few over the wooden counter, pushing aside a stack of books to make room.
“The Kitāb Sirr-al-asrar ,” he breathed. “Where did you find this?” He lifted the pages one by one. “Parchment, in fine condition. Gothic script, Latin—twelfth century?” He gave her a quick, sharp look from beneath knitted brows.
“Thirteenth,” Amaranthe replied.
“This is astonishing,” he muttered, lost in the pages.
Masoud Karim, who had been born in Morocco, had never adopted the dress of his new home but still wore his culture’s traditional tunic and pantaloons underneath a caftan.
The colorful turban wrapped around his head and the slippers that curled ever so slightly at the toes attracted attention whenever he set foot outside his shop, but he appeared content to be singled out as the Moor, as long as it brought recognition to his bookshop.
Quite unusual for the traditions of his birth country and hers, Karim didn’t mind doing business with a woman, and Amaranthe had come to rely on him for many of her commissions.
“It is complete. Not just the sections of advice on kingship, which are so often redacted into a mirror for princes. This contains the sections on medicine, astrology, alchemy, magic.” His face held the wonder Amaranthe had felt when she first held the parent of this copy in her hands.
“The Book of the Secret of Secrets. It is all here.”
“Aristotle’s advice to his young protégé, Alexander, who would go on to establish a great kingdom,” Amaranthe confirmed. “An extremely popular medieval work.”
She’d chosen it for that purpose. It was marvelous, but not impossible for a well-known ancient work to surface.
She’d made a mistake early on in her career, one she didn’t mean to replicate.
An Oxford don and a mentor of Joseph’s, in learning of Amaranthe’s skill, had asked her to restore a valuable and unique manuscript he held in his personal collection.
She’d made a practice copy first to ensure her restoration was perfect, and he’d been pleased with the result.
Later, when they’d come to London and the existence of Derwa meant they were unwelcome in most lodgings, Amaranthe in desperation had brought the copy to Mr. Karim to see if he could sell it for her.
Her reproduction had been so exact he’d thought it dated to the Conquest—a result of the skill she’d acquired from working with Mr. Finney on his replications of the Domesday Book.
As the supposed age and uniqueness of the manuscript fetched a much higher selling price, one that made the difference between a small flat above a shop or a shop and rooms of their own, Amaranthe hadn’t disabused Mr. Karim of his conclusions.
Tracing the provenance of valuable manuscripts was a matter of hearsay and luck, but Amaranthe hadn’t dared thereafter to peddle a manuscript she knew was unique.
If the buyer of that first manuscript ever discovered he’d paid for a clever copy, a long explanation would be due, and the result was sure to require a fine or time in prison.
Or worse.
“The earliest surviving manuscript of the Kitāb is a tenth-century Arabic text,” Karim mused.
“I have seen many translations into vernacular tongues, but not many of the Latin manuscripts survive. This is truly remarkable, Miss Illingworth. You happened upon it combing the bookshops, as you love to do?”
“Mmm.” She had found a copy of the revered Latin work called the Secretum Secretorum in one of the Oxford libraries, managed through Joseph to obtain access, and made a copy working at night while he was away or asleep, burning their precious candles and using her own recipe for ink to save coin.
“I acquired this manuscript through—a distant family member. In Cornwall.”
His eyes narrowed, his exuberance faltering. “Ah. That is, I recall, how you came upon the impeccable Physiologus you brought me some time ago, is it not?”
“Indeed. The same—er, family member. He is a prodigious collector.”
Who thought Reuben would ever prove useful? If Karim inquired, he would learn Amaranthe did indeed have relations in Cornwall. Never mind that she wanted nothing to do with them.
The Physiologus had been copied from one of the Oxford college libraries too.
Once one had obtained suitable premises, a household required candles and fuel and food.
The ancient Christian text had supported them until Mr. Karim, impressed with her skill, had begun to connect Amaranthe with commissions for work.
“Such a pristine copy,” Mr. Karim said. “The parchment looks almost new.”
It was new, because she had found a bookmaker in Cheapside who prepared the vellum for her. But Mr. Karim could sell the manuscript for more if he identified it as a thirteenth-century translation, and they both knew that.
“Text is intact,” she couldn’t help adding.
Mr. Karim studied the manuscript, and Amaranthe quaked in anticipation of further questions.
He was an honest businessman; he had to be, for prejudice would turn all too quickly against him for his dark skin and foreign birth.
The reign of their good King George III was a more tolerant age than some had been—and a more licentious age, too—but it was not a realm where all men were considered equal.
And women were well below men in the hierarchy of being.
“I have a patron who would pay five hundred for this, sight unseen,” Karim said. “I shall have to bind it, of course, but I see no reason we could not share the profit. Or I could give you two hundred now?”
Amaranthe’s chest compressed. “Pounds?” she choked.
He raised his dark eyebrows. “Guineas.”