Chapter 7

Frank left Keith and Maddie at the San Diego airport, going straight to Mainz himself to arrange the Guild meeting, while the couple went to Salt Lake City. Keith had found two almost identical notices in a genealogical chat archive that had been retired for over ten years. The postings were apparently for the same book with the same phrasing and description. One citation was to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and the other to the National Historic and Genealogical Archives in Indianapolis. They decided to go to Salt Lake first since it was closest, but Maddie left messages for a friend who worked at the NHGA to ask for help in locating the book.

Salt Lake proved to be a dead end. The librarians could find no record of a Gospel that matched the description in the notice. “I’m sorry,” the librarian said as she shook her head. “It’s not that unusual to have people mix us up with the NHGA. Probably, the person who posted these notices either wasn’t sure which one or posted one then posted the other when they found out the first was incorrect. They should really make note of that kind of thing. Would you like me to call NHGA for you?”

“That’s okay,” Maddie said. “I’ve already put in a call to them and I expect I’ll hear back soon.” They thanked the librarian and left.

“We could have flown straight to Indianapolis,” Keith said. “Now we won’t be able to get to the NHGA until morning.”

“Well, let’s head for the airport. We’ve got the 11:00 flight, and even if it is too late to get there tonight, we can get some rest in Indianapolis and be at the NGHA when it opens in the morning,” Maddie said.

“Always looking on the bright side, aren’t you?” Keith said. “How did I ever manage to find such a good sport?”

“It is kind of like a game, isn’t it?” Maddie asked. “You find a clue here and follow it to there. I’ve decided to make the best of it and just keep following the clues ... and you.”

The couple arrived in Indianapolis at 6:00, had dinner, and collapsed in their hotel room. Keith was tired of traveling with his injuries and examined his pain medication carefully to see that he would have enough for a trip to Germany. Random, blinding light flashes in his bandaged eye left him disoriented and his head throbbing. The number of pills in the bottle was dropping at an alarming rate. He was not much company as Maddie bathed the eye and bandaged it, then applied a cool washcloth to his forehead.

In the morning, Keith and Maddie walked to the National Historical and Genealogical Archives about a block away. Maddie was thankful for the new wool coat and warm clothes Frank had insisted on. It might get warm later in the day, but it was just above freezing when they left the hotel. They were just two of the crowd of genealogical researchers lined up waiting to look at some of the billion plus family records, books, and microfilms kept in the building. They met their guide at the information desk at 9:00 sharp. Leslie Hayden, the librarian who showed Keith and Maddie around the collection, was friendly and outgoing. Though much older than Maddie, the two had done their undergraduate work together years before. Leslie exemplified the dedicated and friendly staff the Archives were known for.

“Of course, what you are really looking for isn’t on any of these floors,” Leslie said as they completed the tour of the second basement. “The rare books that you want to see are on the next level down. Isn’t it funny how your rare book collection is on stilts six stories above ground and ours is buried three stories below? We’re really worlds apart!”

They were worlds apart in more ways than the locations. Maddie’s collection of rare books was carefully acquired from estates and wealthy families, sometimes from churches, or other universities. Each purchase was deliberate and evaluated both before and after the transaction. Most of the Archive’s acquisitions were donated by individuals who had a few family heirlooms to dispose of. Anything that had a family name in it was actively solicited. The speed of intake was such that the typical book was catalogued and shelved with just one criterion: old or new. If the book appeared to be over 150 years old, it was deemed too valuable to be shelved in general collections and was sent to the stacks, which in this case were located underground. Its treatment in the stacks was little different than that in the public portion of the library, but restricted access meant there was less handling of the volumes.

It was amazing to Keith that there were so many people in the public portion of the library whose method of research was to go down the shelves and pull every volume off and examine it. No doubt it was likely to turn up an unexpected reference, but the task was tantamount to cataloguing Maddie’s freckles—a thought that brought a smile to his lips.

“This portion of the library is off-limits to the general public,” Leslie said, “but since you are visiting scholars and librarians yourself, I got you special dispensation.” She led them to a small room with shelves on all walls and a table running down the middle. “Have a seat here,” Leslie said, “and I’ll go fetch the book you want to look at.”

Maddie sat at the table and Keith nearly collapsed at her side.

“Are you okay, darling?” she asked him. What could he say? Maybe checking himself out of the hospital so quickly and then bouncing cross-country hadn’t been such a good idea. Just last night, Maddie had discovered another bruise on his back that seemed to be growing instead of shrinking. And the headaches were certainly aggravated by the number of hours he had spent staring one-eyed at his computer screen.

He closed his eye and rested, leaning against Maddie.

In an impossibly short time, Leslie arrived with the book they had requested. It came in a plain canvas bag with a reference number stamped on the side. The catalog description had simply said, “Old Bible, inscribed ‘In memory Elyssa and Bjorn Wyrich—undated.’”

“We have hundreds of these old Bibles in the stacks,” Leslie said as she laid the book on the table. “If it’s in a canvas bag like this, then usually its condition isn’t too good. So be careful with it and if any pages fall out, try to stuff them back in the right order. You probably won’t need to look at anything but the first few pages. Usually that’s where the family records are kept. Let me know if you need anything else and just drop it off at the information desk when you are finished.” Leslie left them alone with the book.

“Just stuff the pages back in the right order?” Maddie asked incredulously. “I can’t believe Leslie is so cavalier about it.”

“The value of the documents here is in the data about families,” Keith said. “The books themselves are no more than containers. Like she said, they have hundreds of old Bibles. It’s where people kept family information. We can count ourselves lucky that they don’t just cut the dedication pages out and discard the rest.”

“Still...”

They opened the ties on the canvas bag and slid a worn and tattered leather-bound volume out onto the table. Maddie gasped when she saw the binding and held out a hand to stop Keith from opening it. She rummaged in her purse for a moment and pulled out two pairs of lightweight white cotton gloves. She handed a pair to Keith and pulled on the other herself.

“It’s probably a little late for this,” Keith said, pulling a glove over his bandages. “This book is worn to the point of falling apart.”

“There’s no sense in contributing to its deterioration,” Maddie responded. “Here. Let me open the pages. I know how to handle these.”

“Dr. Zayne,” Keith smiled. “May I remind you that I, too, have studied the care and preservation of texts?”

“Yes, Dr. Drucker,” Maddie said, blushing a little. “But your degrees were done with two hands. Besides, you didn’t bring any tools with you.” She returned to her open purse and withdrew two velvet page weights, a small suction cup, and a thin Mylar bookmark. With these at her side she gently propped the book on a reading stand on the table and opened the cover.

It was huge in length and breadth, but thin in depth compared to other Bibles of the era Keith had seen. As worn as the volume was outside however, it was pristine on the inside. Pencil marks on the inside front cover identified the acquisition date and library call number. The book had been donated in 1983. The rest of the words were smeared beyond recognition.

“Pencil!” Maddie exclaimed. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s pretty common,” Keith said. “Lots of books are identified in pencil because of the belief that it causes the least damage. They don’t think about how the graphite smears and leaves prints. It’s interesting that this is plain-bound. Most of this sort from the 16th century have marbled book paper on the inside covers. This appears to be a fairly coarse rag paper.”

“Yes, but the facing page is vellum,” Maddie said. “It looks like the survival of the book might be due to the quality of the paper it was printed on.” Maddie applied the tiny suction cup to a corner of the facing page and lifted it enough to slide the Mylar strip between it and the next page. She released the suction cup and raised the page with the Mylar bookmark. They stared at the page in startled silence.

After a blank sheet, a beautiful, hand-painted dedication page bore the inscription mentioned in the catalog. Keith quickly pulled out a small digital camera and fumbled to get a picture of the page. Maddie took the camera and carefully focused on the page, following Keith’s instructions regarding angle and framing. Beyond the dedication page, the vellum sheets were crisp and the simply illuminated chapter heads were elegant. The book contained only the four Gospels. A blank back leaf was the last thing between the tattered covers.

“Is this your grandfather’s work?” Maddie asked. “It’s almost as if a new book was bound in an old binding,” Maddie speculated. “It can’t really be what it appears to be, can it?”

“If you mean the Gospels from a Bamberg 36-line Bible,” Keith responded, feeling suddenly rejuvenated, “then yes, it could be.”

“But there is no known record of such a book having been printed,” Maddie protested.

“Actually, there is,” Keith said. “Most of the 42-line Bibles were bound in two volumes with a few bound in three. But the extra 200 pages of the 36-line Bamberg made it suitable for four-volume binding. This could simply be the third of four volumes, the others lost.”

“How did you ever find it?”

“The search I did cross-referenced names of Gutenberg’s known associates and the significant locations around Württemberg, “ Keith said. “It was no small task.”

“What name came up?” Maddie asked.

“At various points in the catalog, donors were listed. One of the monastery’s benefactors was a Baron von Hussen. The Baron’s wife was Marie Humery. There is no direct evidence of a relationship with Gutenberg’s second partner, but the name was enough to bring up a flag in the search routines.”

The search results generated from the spiders connected names and places that would have taken Keith days or months to find in any traditional way. Much to his surprise, the von Hussens had appeared on one of the many ship manifests from the Württemberg migration to America in the middle of the 19th century. It was the settlement of the estate of a great grandson in 1983 that led to the donation of the book to the NHGA. Keith was certain the book was the same one mentioned in the catalog.