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"Let me finish Wynken. You have Dora now in your mind. Letme go to Wynken. Yeah, you have to get those books.""Great," I said dismally.
"Let me bring you right up to date. You're going to love thosebooks, even if Dora never does. I have all twelve of his books, as Ithink I told you. He was Rhineland Catholic, forced into theBenedictines as a young man, and was in love with Blanche de Wilde, hisbrother's wife. She ordered the books done in the scriptorium andthat's how it all started, her secret link with her monk lover. I haveletters between Blanche and her friend Eleanor. I have someincidents decoded from the poems themselves.
"Most sad of all, I have the letters Blanche wrote to Eleanor afterWynken was put to death. She had the letters smuggled out toEleanor, and then Eleanor sent them on to Diane, and there was anotherwoman in it, but there are very few extant fragments of anything inher hand.
"This is what went down. They used to meet in the garden of theDe Wilde castle to perform their rites. It wasn't the monasterygarden at all, as I'd once supposed. How Wynken got there I don'tknow, but there are a few mentions in some of the letters thatindicate he simply slipped out of the monastery and followed a secret wayinto his brother's house.
"And this made sense, of course. They'd wait till Damien deWilde was off doing whatever such counts or dukes did, and thenthey'd meet, do their dance around the fountain, and make love.
Wynken bedded each of the women in turn; or sometimes theycelebrated various patterns. All this is recorded more or less in the books.
Well, they got caught.
"Damien castrated and stabbed Wynken in front of the womenand put them to rout. He kept the remains! Then, after days ofinterrogation, the frightened women were bullied into confessing to theirlove for Wynken and how he had communicated through the books;and the brother took all those books, all twelve of the booksof Wynken de Wilde, everything this artist had ever created, youunderstand? ?
"His immortality," I whispered,"Exactly, his progeny! His books! And Damien had them buriedwith Wynken's body in the castle garden by the fountain that appearsin all the little pictures in the books! Blanche could look out on itevery day from her window, the place in the ground where Wynkenhad been laid to rest. No trial, no heresy, no execution, nothing likethat. He just murdered his brother, it was as simple as that. Heprobably paid the monastery huge amounts of money. Who knows if itwas even necessary? Did the monastery love Wynken? Themonastery is a ruin now where tourists come to snap pictures. As for thecastle, it was obliterated in the bombing of the First World War.""Ah. But what happened after that, how did the books get out ofthe coffin? Do you have copies? Are you speaking of....""No, I have the originals of every one. I have come across copies,crude copies, made at the behest of Eleanor, Blanche's cousin andconfidante, but as far as I know they stopped this practice of copies.
There were only twelve books. And I don't know how they surfaced.
I can only guess.""And what is your guess?""I think Blanche went out in the night with the other women, dugup the body, and took the books out of the coffin, or whatever poorWynken's remains had been placed in, and put everything back rightthe way it was.""You think they'd do that?""Yes, I think they did it. I can see them doing it, by candlelight inthe garden, see them digging, the five women together. Can't you?""Yes.""I think they did it because they felt the way I do! They loved thebeauty and the perfection of those books. Lestat, they knew theywere treasures, and such is the power of obsession arid such is thepower of love. And who knows, maybe they wanted the bones ofWynken. It's conceivable. Maybe one woman took a thigh bone andanother the bones of his fingers and, ah, I don't know."It seemed a ghastly picture suddenly, arid it put me in mind, withouta second's hesitation, of Roger's hands, which I had chopped offsloppily with a kitchen knife and dumped, wrapped in a plastic sack. Istared at the image of these hands before me, busy, fretting with theedge of the glass, tapping the bar in anxiety.
"How far back can you trace the journey of the books?" I asked.
"Not very far at all. But that's often the case in my profession, Imean antiquities. The books have turned up one, maybe two at atime. Some from private collections, two from museums bombedduring the wars. Once or twice I've paid almost nothing for them. Iknew what they were the minute I laid eyes on them, but otherpeople didn't. And understand, everywhere I went I put out the searchfor this sort of medieval codex. I am an expert in this field. I know thelanguage of the medieval artist! You have to save my treasures, Lestat. You can't let Wynken get lost again. I'm leaving you with mylegacy.""So it seems. But what can I do with these, and all the other relics,if Dora will have no part of it?""Dora's young. Dora will change. See, I still have this vision?
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