Bookman's Tale , livre ebook

Alma Books - Charlie Lovett

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

192 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

A mysterious portrait ignites an antiquarian bookseller's search for his lost love. Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books and literature - in particular the golden age of Shakespeare, Jonson and Marlowe - The Bookman's Tale is a sparkling novel and an engrossing exploration of one of literature's most tantalizing mysteries. After the death of his wife, Peter Byerly, a young antiquarian bookseller, relocates from the States to the English countryside, where he hopes to rediscover the joys of life through his passion for collecting and restoring rare books. But when he opens an eighteenth-century study on Shakespeare forgeries, he is shocked to find a Victorian portrait strikingly similar to his wife tumble out of its pages, and becomes obsessed with tracking down its origins. As he follows the trail back to the nineteenth century and then to Shakespeare's time, Peter learns the truth about his own past and unearths a book that might prove that Shakespeare was indeed the author of all his plays.

Informations

Publié par	Alma Books
Date de parution	19 juillet 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781846883057
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Bookman’s Tale
The Bookman’s Tale
C HARLIE L OVETT

ALMA BOOKS
ALMA BOOKS LTD London House 243–253 Lower Mortlake Road Richmond Surrey TW9 2LL United Kingdom www.almabooks.com
First published in the US by Viking in 2013 First published in the UK by Alma Books Limited in 2013 © Charlie Lovett, 2013
Charlie Lovett asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
ISBN : 978-1-84688-302-6 EBOOK : 978-1-84688-305-7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.
Contents
Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Wednesday, 15th February 1995
Ridgefield, North Carolina, 1983
Southwark, London, 1592
Kingham, Friday, 17th February 1995
Ridgefield, 1984
Southwark, London, 1609
London, Friday, 17th February 1995
Ridgefield, 1985
Kingham, Saturday, 18th February 1995
Westminster, London, 1612
Ridgefield, 1985
Kingham, Saturday, 18th February 1995
Ridgefield, 1985
Kingham, Saturday, 18th February 1995
Wakefield, Yorkshire, Northern England, 1720
Ridgefield, 1985
Kingham, Sunday, 19th February 1995
London, 1856
Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Sunday, 19th February 1995
Ridgefield, 1985
London, 1875
Hounslow, England, Monday, 20th February 1995
London, 1875
Ridgefield, 1985
Cornwall, South-western England, Monday, 20th February 1995
Ridgefield, 1985
London, 1875
Cornwall, Western England, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
Ridgefield, 1986
London, 1876
London, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
Ridgefield, 1986
Kingham, 1876
London, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
Ridgefield, 1986
Kingham, 1876
Ridgefield, 1986
London, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
London, 1877
Ridgefield, 1987
Oxfordshire, England, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
Cambridgeshire, England, 1878
Ridgefield, 1988
Kingham, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
Kingham, 1878
Ridgefield, 1988
Kingham, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
Kingham, 1879
Ridgefield, 1994
Kingham, Tuesday, 21st February 1995
Kingham, 1879
Ridgefield, 1994
Kingham, 1879
Kingham, Wednesday, 22nd February 1995
Kingham, Friday, 23rd June 1995
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
The Bookman’s Tale
Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Wednesday, 15th February 1995
Wales could be cold in February. Even without snow or wind the damp winter air permeated Peter’s topcoat and settled in his bones as he stood outside one of the dozens of bookshops that crowded the narrow streets of Hay. Despite the warm glow in the window that illuminated a tantalizing display of Victorian novels, Peter was in no hurry to open the door. It had been nine months since he had entered a bookshop; another few minutes wouldn’t make a difference. There had been a time when this was all so familiar, so safe; when stepping into a rare bookshop had been a moment of excitement, meeting a fellow book lover a part of a grand adventure.
Peter Byerly was, after all, a bookseller. It was the profession that had brought him to England again and again, and the profession that brought him to Hay-on-Wye, the famous town of books just over the border in Wales, on this dreary afternoon. He had visited Hay many times before, but today was the first time he had ever come alone.
Now, as the cold ache in his extremities crept towards his core, he saw not a grand adventure but only an uncomfortable setting, a stranger and the potential for shyness and unease to descend into anxiety and panic. Anticipation brought cold sweat to the back of his neck. Why had he come? He could be safe in his sitting room with a cup of tea right now instead of standing on a cold street corner with a sense of dread settling into the pit of his stomach.
Before he could change his mind, he forced himself to grasp the door handle and in another second he was stepping into what should have been welcoming warmth.
“Afternoon,” said a crisp voice through a haze of pipe smoke that hovered over a wide desk. Peter mumbled a few syllables, then slipped through an open doorway into the back room, where books lined every wall. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the cocoon of books shielding him from all danger, inhaling deeply that familiar scent of cloth and leather and dust and words. His rushing pulse began to slow, and when he opened his eyes he scanned the shelves for something familiar – a title, an author, a well-remembered dust jacket design – anything that might ground him in the world of the known.
Just above eye level, he spotted a binding of beautiful blue leather that reminded him of the calf he had used to bind another book – could it have been nearly ten years ago? He pulled the book from the shelf, revelling in the smooth luxurious feel of the leather. Taking a closer look at the gold stamping on the spine, Peter smiled. He knew this book. If not an old friend, it was certainly an acquaintance, and the prospect of spending a few minutes between its covers calmed his nerves.
An Inquiry into the Authenticity of Certain Miscellaneous Papers , by Edmond Malone, was a monument of analysis that unmasked one of the great forgers of all time, William Henry Ireland. Ireland had forged documents and letters purporting to be written by William Shakespeare, and even the “original manuscripts” of Hamlet and King Lear . Peter turned past the marbled endpapers to the title page: it was a copy of the first edition of 1796. He loved the feel of heavy eighteenth-century paper between his fingers, the texture of the indentations made on the page by the letterpress. He flipped a few pages and read:
It has been said that every individual of this country, whose mind has been at all cultivated, feels a pride in being able to boast of our own great dramatick poet, Shakespeare, as his countryman: and proportionate to our respect and veneration for that extraordinary man ought to be our care of his fame, and of those valuable writings he left us.
Peter smiled as he recalled reading “those valuable writings” from an actual copy of the First Folio, that weighty 1623 volume of Shakespeare’s works in which many of his plays were printed for the first time. He was calm now – all sense of dread and panic banished by the simple act of losing himself in an old book. Remembering how that First Folio, given the opportunity, always fell open to the third act of Hamlet , he spread the covers of the Malone and let the pages fall where they would. The book opened to page 289, revealing a piece of paper about four inches square. The brown foxing on the pages between which the paper had been pressed told Peter it had been there for at least a century. Out of habit more than curiosity he turned the paper over.
The sharp pain that stabbed his chest almost made him drop the book onto the dusty floor. He thought he had outrun that pain, that he could escape it with distance and distraction, but even in the corner of a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye it had found him. Knees suddenly weak, he slumped against a bookcase and watched, as if in a dream, as the paper fluttered to the floor. The face was still there; he closed his eyes again, willing the face and all that went with it to retreat, willing his pulse to slow once more and his hands to stop shaking. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. She lay there calmly, serenely, looking up at him, waiting. It was his wife. It was Amanda.
But Amanda was dead – buried nine months ago in the red earth of North Carolina, an ocean away. A heartbeat away. And this painting, so much older than Amanda or her mother or her grandmother, could not possibly portray her. But it did.
Peter leant over to retrieve the paper from the floor and examine it more closely. It was an expert watercolour, almost imperceptibly signed with the initials “B.B.” He looked again at the book from which it had fallen, hoping for a clue to the watercolour’s origin. On the front endpaper was a pencilled interlocking “E.H.”, the monogram of some long-forgotten owner. The description printed on a card inside the cover made no mention of a watercolour, only the price: £400. He had seen copies catalogued for half that. Copies that didn’t hide a century-old painting of his dead wife.
On the shelf in front of him was a shabby copy of Dickens’s unfinished final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood . The original cloth binding was worn at the corners and spine, the hinges were broken and a few pages were loose, but nothing was missing. He could easily restore it to be worth two or three times the asking price.
Glancing around, he found himself still alone in the room. His hand trembling, Peter slipped the watercolour into Edwin Drood . He could not leave Amanda here, so far from home. He reshelved the Malone and tucked Drood under his arm. Twenty minutes later he had purchased a stack of books, including the Dickens, and was walking towards the car park on the outskirts of town, two heavy bags hanging at his sides.
The drive from the Welsh border to Peter’s cottage in the Oxfordshire village of Kingham took just over two hours. Peter’s cottage was down a narrow lane from the village green and, like the rest of the village, built of golden Cotswold limestone. It was in the middle of a row of terraced cottages, but in five months of residence, Peter had yet to meet either of the neighbours with whom he shared the thick stone walls.
By seven, he had a fire in the grate, a cup of tea in his hand and the watercolour propped up on the coffee table. Despite Dr Strayer’s advice, he had boxed all his pictures of Amanda and left them