The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias

“Not very much perhaps,” I admitted. “But we should at least clear up a mystery that has puzzled the world for ages – the actual existence of the Borgia poison and its antidote, besides rescuing Lucrezia Borgia’s emeralds, and at the same time discovering the real motive of the strange conspiracy surrounding the book.”

“I quite agree with that,” exclaimed my friend; “but does it not strike you that we are considerably handicapped by that folio being missing – the very page of all others most important for the success of our search? Besides, this man Selby has, in all probability, read the chronicle, and therefore knows just as much, and probably more, than we do.”

“That I grant you,” I said. “But, nevertheless, I somehow feel that we ought to search both at Crowland, which is within easy reach of this place, and at Threave, in Scotland.” And I explained how I had written to my old friend Fred Fenwicke, asking that we might both be allowed to come up and visit him.

“You certainly haven’t let the grass grow under your feet, old fellow – you never do,” he said, taking a cigarette from the box I handed to him and lighting it. “I think with you that we ought to try Threave, seeing that the plan is evidently of the spot. But we are unable to do anything till the sixth of September, when we ought to be there at three o’clock in the afternoon, according to the directions given.”

“We have still three weeks, then,” I remarked. “In that case we might go over to Crowland first and look around there. In all probability the other plan is meant to indicate where the treasure of the abbey is concealed.”

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, taking the transcript from my hand. “This list of things, the silver altar, gold chalices, and boxes of gems are sufficient to make one’s mouth water – aren’t they?”

“Yes,” I laughed. “We ought, if we act in a circumspect manner and arouse no attention on the part of the villagers, to be able to make a secret search. The one thing to avoid is public interest. The instant anybody suspects what we are after, the whole affair will get into the papers, and not only will our chance of success be gone, but our enemies, whoever they are, will know that The Closed Book is again in our possession.”

“I quite follow you, Allan,” he said with sudden seriousness. “We’ll go to Crowland tonight, if you are agreeable, and set carefully to work in order to see if the plan tallies with any landmark now existing. It’s a pity the old chap who wrote the record didn’t label it, as he did the other.”

“He may have wanted to give the plan but hold back the secret from anyone who casually opened the book,” I suggested. “You see, the volume has evidently been preserved for centuries in the library of the Certosa Monastery at Florence – the house in which the monk Godfrey Lovel died – and, being written in early English, could not, of course, be translated by the Italian monks.”

“I wonder how many people have died through handling those poisoned pages?” my friend observed. The deadliness of that secret Borgia venom appealed to him as it has appealed to the world through ages.

“Ah!” I said, “it is impossible to tell.”

But my mind was on other things, and as soon as the opportunity offered I related to Walter my strange rencontre with Lady Judith Gordon.

“What?” he cried, jumping up from the couch; “you’ve actually seen her and spoken to her?”

“Certainly. She is charming, and I admit, my dear Walter, that I’ve fallen most desperately in love with her.”

“Love! You actually love her?” he demanded.

“Indeed I do. She is the perfect incarnation of what a good, sweet woman should be. Is there any reason why I should not admire her?”

“None that I know of,” he returned; “but I’m afraid of these people and their connection with this mysterious affair. Remember, all we know about them is that they have led very peculiar lives for years. But time will show whether you are wise. Certainly these people appear to have found the secret just as we have – the secret of the existence of a valuable treasure.”

Chapter Twenty One

We Make Preliminary Investigation

“I thought buried treasure existed only in books!” I remarked, recollecting “Treasure Island” and other such romances. “Certainly I never anticipated that I should be actually engaged in a real treasure hunt.”

“Nor did I, until I saw the gravity of the whole thing, and how deeply in earnest are these people.”

“They have no idea that The Closed Book is again in my possession?” I asked.

“None whatever. The volume was stolen from Harpur Street, of course, and they are puzzled to know into whose hands it has fallen. All the chief dealers in manuscripts in London – Quaritch, Maggs, Tregaskis, Dobell, and the others – have been warned that if the Arnoldus is offered them it is stolen property.”

“Well, it is not very likely that any of them will have the offer,” I laughed. “It will be kept in a safe place now I have it in my possession again, you may depend upon that.”

Walter Wyman had turned over the many folios of my transcript, and was reading the portion concerning the hidden treasure of the Abbey of Crowland. I think the list of gold and silver objects so plainly set out appealed to him.

“We’ll go back to Peterborough tonight,” he said, “sleep at the ‘Angel,’ and visit Crowland, as it is now spelt, tomorrow. I’ve heard that the ruins of the abbey are very fine. It will be an interesting outing, if nothing else.”

“Before we go we had better take a tracing of the unnamed plan,” I suggested. “It may assist us, and yet it may, on the other hand, be a plan of an entirely different place. One thing, however, is certain – namely, that it had been drawn there with some distinct object, just as the plan marked ‘Treyf.’”

To this he agreed, and going downstairs I obtained the packet containing the book from the hotel manager’s safe, and together we carefully traced the rough plan in question. It was merely an arrangement of lines and numerals, which told us absolutely nothing. Still, we both felt half-convinced that it must somehow concern the Crowland treasure which was hidden from the king’s men at the time the abbey was dissolved and destroyed.

At seven-thirty, after an early dinner, we left by the London express for Peterborough, arriving back at the old-fashioned “Angel” just before eleven. In travelling I carried the precious Arnoldus myself, fearing to lose it; but at our hotel I again transferred it to the landlord’s safe, with injunctions to the hotel keeper to be careful of it, as its value was considerable.

Next morning was bright and sunny, and taking a carriage from the hotel we drove out to Crowland, a fen village distant some seven miles.

Perhaps you may have visited it, an old-world straggling place clustering about the time-worn, blackened ruins of the ancient abbey, a venerable pile which even in its present gaunt decay displays mute evidence of a long-past glory.

As we stood before its restored tower and great ruined, roofless aisles, where arches still remain that are the wonder of the modern builder, we could not help reflecting on the vicissitudes through which the grand old place had passed from its foundation, A.D. 713, as a memorial to the Saxon Saint Guthlac, down to its complete dissolution and overthrow by Henry VIII. Because of its isolation in that great marsh, it was for centuries a place of refuge, where the monks were engaged in a noble and great work, employed in prayer, writing manuscripts, building bridges, making roads, or constructing by degrees that noble monument to the glory of God, the great abbey, the nursing mother of Cambridge University, and the very centre of Christian life in the fens of Lincolnshire. Though those venerable aisles are roofless, and the wonderful Early English life-sized statues in the western front of the nave are blackened by age and crumbling to decay; though all traces of the original dimensions of the place are lost in the ill-kept and weedy churchyard surrounding it, the old pile is still one of the noblest buildings in England, wonderful in its station, unique in its beauty, and a valuable relic of Christian devotion, interesting alike to the architect, the historian, and the antiquary.

The guide to the place, which we purchased of the sacristan, told us that the vast structure, consisting of the porch, western tower, and the north aisle, with the ruins of the nave, did not represent one-fourth of the original abbey church. Indeed, the grey, time-stained building which we stood before was little more than the north aisle of the church attached to the abbey, and therefore conveyed no more adequate idea of the extent of the monastic building than the ruins of a domestic chapel will of the castle or mansion to which it was attached. At the time of the dissolution it was standing in all its glory, with the wooden roof of the now ruined nave richly gilt, the great windows full of fine stained glass, two grand organs, and altar blazing with gold, silver, and gems.

The north aisle still remains roofed over, – but uninteresting – to do duty as the parish church; but the magnificent nave is stripped, mutilated, and open to the four winds of heaven, for what sacrilege the commissioners of Henry VIII did not commit in old Godfrey Lovel’s day, Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers completed when they stormed the place and shattered the remaining walls and windows in 1643.

Together we strolled into the space enclosed by the nave, wandering among the grey old ruins, where the quiet was broken only by the twittering of a bird. The morning was bright, with a warm sun and cloudless sky; but its very light seemed to render the venerable pile, rich with deeds long since forgot, the more bare, solemn, and imposing.

We were alone, for the sacristan, having received the sixpence for the guide, had returned to her cottage, allowing us to roam there at our own sweet will. Therefore, when in a spot where we thought we should be unobserved, I drew forth the transcript I had made of the old monk’s record, and reread it aloud to my companion in order that my memory might be refreshed, and that he should know the exact wording of what was written.

We smiled at the simplicity of the old Abbot John sending Thomas Cromwell a present of his fen fish in the hope he would be appeased and pass by the abbey without seizing it; yet, as I afterwards discovered, the original of that very letter is still preserved in the British Museum, and I have had it in my own hand, thus showing that old Godfrey must have possessed the entire confidence of his abbot.

In front of where I stood, let into the ruined wall and beaten by the weather, was a grey slate which I knew to be of fifteenth-century workmanship. The incised marginal inscription, in Lombardic characters, read as follows:

“PETRE: PRECES: P: .ME: PETRO: PASTOR: PIE: P: ME.”

This, being translated, reads:

Peter (offer) prayers for me. Peter,

Pious Shepherd (pray) for me.

In the centre of the slab was a floriated cross, and the words, “Orate p. aia Johanis Tomson.” In 1423 John Tomson gave ten marks for the building of the abbey tower, and it appeared that the marginal inscription was a prayer addressed either to the Apostle St. Peter or to John Tomson’s father confessor, named Peter.

Those great bare walls and high pointed arches, grey and frowning, rudely broken, yet perfect in grace and symmetry, surely furnished a striking instance of the uncertainty of all human labours. In the day when the soldier-monk Godfrey lived there it was the seat of devotion and learning, the abode of luxury and ease, possessing riches in abundance, and vessels for its use of the most costly description; now, except in that portion fitted as a church, it scarcely afforded shelter to a rook or daw, and the last remains of its once almost unparalleled magnificence were smouldering silently and mingling with the soil on which they stood:

“Whilst in the progress of long decay,

Thrones sink to dust, and nations pass away.”

We turned again to the old chronicle of the monk who had lived there and actually seen those massive walls torn down by Southwell’s men; the monk who, with the abbot himself and his friend the Scotch monk Maxwell, had at midnight on the first of December, 1538, concealed the greater part of the abbey treasures.

According to Godfrey’s statement, Malcolm had kept watch at the south door while the abbot and himself had carried the three chests out and sunk them in the centre and at the deepest part of the fish pond. It was hidden in the same pond in which he had previously concealed the Borgia jewels – namely, in the lake at a spot indicated, being one hundred and thirty-one paces south of the grand altar. The pond was never dry, it appeared, even in the hottest summer, and like all other monastery waters contained carp for Fridays. The Borgia treasure he managed to secure before leaving Crowland with his friend Malcolm Maxwell, but the abbey plate and jewels and the silver altar he had been compelled to leave, the two others who alone knew the secret, in addition to himself, having died. He had recorded the existence of the treasure from a sense of religious duty, feeling that the Catholic Church should not suffer by entire loss of such a magnificent property.

His directions were by no means explicit, but in our eagerness we resolved to investigate as far as possible.

Passing up what was once the nave, where great trees now flourished and bushes grew in tangled profusion, we came to the high round-toothed arch and two massive piers which were all that remained of the central tower. Beyond, although the abbey church extended just as far eastward as the ruins ran westward, all had disappeared.

There was no sign of the whereabouts of the grand altar from which to take our bearings. The whole of the eastern side of the church had been swept away and converted into a modern churchyard.

“Perhaps the guide will tell us something,” Wyman suggested, and at once began to scan its pages, while we stood in the rank grass beneath the shadow of that magnificent arch which is the admiration of all modern builders.

Presently he pointed out to me the original measurements, showing that the nave had been one hundred and forty-four feet long by twenty-eight feet wide and seventy-five feet high, which after careful comparison with other calculations, made it clear that the grand altar must have stood eighty-six feet from the broken pier of the central tower where we stood.

We had fortunately purchased a measuring-tape in Peterborough; therefore, without delay, we marked out eighty-six feet in a direct easterly direction towards the open fen pastures straight before us, and, looking round, discovered to our satisfaction some broken stone foundations hidden in the grass and weeds – evidently the lower stones of the grand altar mentioned by the monk Godfrey.

Some twelve feet farther on there were some similar moss-grown stones, which struck me as being the remains of the rear of the demolished altar; therefore from this latter point we determined to take our bearings, and begin our operations.

We stood and glanced around to find the monastery fish pond. Southward in the direction indicated, in the centre of a grass field, which, filled with mounds where old foundations had been overgrown, was a deep dip in the ground, a small pond quite unlike the deep lake full of old carp that we had imagined.

“That’s it?” I exclaimed, much disappointed. “There certainly isn’t much water there. I suppose we had better measure the hundred and thirty-one paces, so as to be quite certain that it really is the spot.”

“Come along,” cried my friend. “Let’s do it separately;” and, turning our faces to the south, we paced on, each counting silently, and being compelled to scale the churchyard wall in our progress.

At one hundred and nine paces, however, I arrived at the edge of what had, no doubt, once been a big pond, for the grassy hollow was some thirty feet wide and sixty long, divided into two, and in each remained a few feet of muddy water from which the cattle drank.

The discrepancy in the distance puzzled us. Was it possible that the celebrated silver altar of Crowland and the three chestfuls of treasure lay buried in the centre of the slime of that half-dried pond?

Surely the lake must have been of much larger dimensions in Godfrey’s day; and, if it were, then the distance between its edge and the grand altar would not be so great.

I produced the tracing of the mysterious plan contained in The Closed Book, but failed to comprehend it in any detail. The shaky lines, intended to be straight, were mostly numbered, as though denoting paces distant. But there was no number 131, or 109, as I had found it, hence we were utterly mystified, and both inclined to believe that in imagining the plan to concern Crowland we had been mistaken.

We both stood at the edge of the muddy pond and glanced into its green, stagnant water.

Was it possible that the great treasures of that half-demolished abbey, whose high ruined walls and buttresses cast their shadows behind, had been hidden deep in the mud below by the same hand that had written The Closed Book, the hand that had envenomed its pages and thus preserved the great secret from age to age?

It seemed almost incredible in these matter-of-fact times, and yet we both felt confident that the treasure enumerated in that list lay cunningly concealed somewhere in that vicinity.

Chapter Twenty Two

What Happened at Crowland

The long hollow in the field, with a small quantity of muddy water in the bottom, was by no means the kind of place where one would expect to find a treasure concealed. The fields around that neglected churchyard were uneven, where the foundations of the monastic buildings were now overgrown with rank grass and nettles, and in the centre was this hollow where undoubtedly the pond had once been.

Facing us there ran across the eastern boundary of the field a line of beeches, and then, beyond, the broad, bare, misty fenland, without a tree almost as far as the eye could reach, flat, inhospitable, and uninteresting. Like the Maremma, with which I was so familiar in Tuscany, there lay over everything a light mist – that miasma which in Italy is so deadly to the peasantry; and yet even more barren and more cheerless was it than the wide marshes on the road to Rome. The old windmill, with broken sails and roofless outbuildings, stood forth, the most prominent object in that flat, unbroken landscape, without hedgerow, a pitiful relic of the days when it paid to grind corn, before the advent of steam machinery; while clustered on the north side of the abbey were rows of old-fashioned cottages, mostly built of the stones of the monks’ houses thrown down by Cromwell. The quiet old village of Crowland is still far from the railway, and modern progress has therefore been slow in reaching it.

As I stood beside that weedy hollow with my companion, I was bound to admit that although old Godfrey Lovel might have inhabited the monastery for eighteen years or so, and his chronicle might be proved to be correct on comparison with contemporary history, yet his statement regarding the distance of the fish pond from the grand altar was incorrect.

Walter pointed out that we had measured from a spot where we merely surmised the altar to have been, and therefore we might have mistaken the distance. Nevertheless, we gazed about us in uncertainty. We alone knew the existence of treasure there, being in possession of a secret lost to the world ever since the year of grace 1538.

Was not that in itself sufficient incentive to cause us to make a search?

“This is evidently where Godfrey Lovel hid the Borgia jewels,” remarked Walter Wyman, referring to my transcript of the secret record which he held in his hand. “But he apparently dragged the casket out of the pond on the night before his departure for Scotland.”

“Leaving the abbey treasure still hidden,” I added.

“Certainly,” he said. Then rapidly referring to my transcript, he added: “As far as I can make out, the silver altar and the three chests full of treasure hidden from Cromwell’s men were not placed in the same lake as the Borgia jewels. Old Godfrey was clever enough not to suggest that, fearing that the casket he himself had secreted might be discovered by some prying person. You see he says that the abbey plate and jewels were buried ‘at the opposite end to where, through many years, my own treasure lay well concealed.’ Again he says: ‘Once I heard rumour that Southwell intended to pump out the lakes.’ He speaks in the plural, thus showing that there was more than one fish pond at this place. Of course, they’ve since been filled in, and this ground made comparatively level over the old foundations.”

I glanced at the passages he referred to, and saw that his surmise was correct. There was certainly more than one pond there in Godfrey’s day, and although the Borgia jewels were hidden in the water one hundred and thirty-one paces south-east of the grand altar, yet it did not actually allege that the abbey plate was submerged in the same lake, but at the opposite end. That would be south-west of the grand altar.

I pointed this out to my friend, and, both turning at the same moment, we saw the glint of sunshine upon water at the opposite corner of the rough and broken ground, level with the clock tower, and abutting upon the road which skirted the village itself.

Together we eagerly approached it, first, however, returning to the spot where we had fixed the whereabouts of the main altar, and counting the paces towards it. I counted them as one hundred and twenty-nine, while Walter made them one hundred and thirty-two.

The pond was big, full of dark water, and weedless, showing it to be of considerable depth. It had escaped our notice on entering the abbey grounds, and we both saw that although it was now bounded on one side by the high, black-tarred fence of a cottage garden, and at the end by some red-brick farm outbuildings and hayricks, it had nevertheless once been of considerable dimensions – unquestionably the fish pond of the monks from which they caught their Friday fare.

Once it had undoubtedly been well kept and cared for, but today the cattle grazing on that weedy ground drank from it, for round the mud showed prints of hoofs.

“This is it, no doubt,” exclaimed Wyman, again referring to the record. “You see it says ‘the pond was deep and dried not in summer, being fed by several springs.’ This one is of fresh water, while the other is stagnant. If the treasure has not already been found, it is most likely sunk deep in the mud here.”

We both gazed upon the unruffled surface of the water glittering beneath the sun, wondering in which part had been the centre of the original pond. At present it was not more than twenty feet across and perhaps fifty feet long. Its previous dimensions had, of course, been much greater, for it must have extended nearly the whole length of the abbey if, as seemed so probable, the depression on the east side of the field had been in connection with it.

Of course, we had at once seen that the abbey and monastic buildings had originally spread over all the fields southward, eastward, and northward; but we had here sufficient evidence of the existence of the ponds, the hiding-place of the treasure.

A flock of rooks were lazily circling around the tower, and as we stood there in silence at the edge of the pond the deep-toned abbey bell rang out the hour.

“I cannot see how we can search here without its being known,” Wyman remarked at last. “How are we to pump out this pond and dig out the mud secretly? Why, the whole village would be here in half an hour if we attempted it.”

“I am quite of your opinion,” I answered. “And I would point out further that until we are aware of where the centre of the pond was it is no use searching at all. My idea is that the spot where the treasure lies is not beneath the water at all, but in another place, midway between here and the other pond – a place that has since been filled up with the débris when the abbey was destroyed. As you see, the ground has practically been levelled, yet at one time nearly the whole of this field was a deep pond. Recollect that there were sometimes as many as seven hundred monks here; therefore they required good-sized fish ponds. No; I feel confident that if we ever do discover the treasure we shall find it somewhere about the centre of this field.”