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Authors: Robin Wasserman
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That would be insane. Probably not the kind of thing they could arrest you for, but I had no doubt the Hoff would try his best. Obviously the smart thing would be to bring him the book, show him the stitches in the binding and the slightly raised area beneath them, as if something had been slipped inside. But:
This page, Thomas’s page, is mine .
The stitches split neatly and swiftly, and the thin leather patchdropped away. I nearly gasped. A tightly folded piece of paper was nestled into the binding. I nudged it gently with one finger, half afraid it would turn to dust if I moved it, much less tried to unfold it. Elizabeth had folded this up and sewn it into a beloved book, where it had rested unseen and untouched for four centuries. She was the last person to hold this, I thought, and now her secret was mine.
Carefully, so carefully, I unfolded the page. It turned out to be two pages, one nested inside the other—and then I really did gasp as I realized what I was looking at. One sheet was crammed with dense Latin, terms I’d never seen before, acqua fortis, sal ammoniac , names that sounded like chemicals alongside measurements, some kind of elaborate formula. Beside it was a rough sketch of an odd-looking plant, six pointed leaves framing a seventh rounded one, with a spiraling stalk. But it wasn’t the formula or the drawing that caught my eye. It was the other page, which wasn’t Latin at all, or any language. It was a page of symbols, incomprehensible but familiar , because hadn’t I been staring at those symbols every time I passed the massive facsimile of a Voynich manuscript page hanging over the Hoff’s desk?
The grouping of the text was the same on both pages, as was the strange drawing. “You guys?” I swallowed hard, trying to knock the frog out of my voice. “I think I may have found something.”
17
The Voynich manuscript surfaced in 1912 and has since foiled a century’s worth of historians, linguists, and cryptographers, driving at least one of them insane. Its 240 pages are filled with a language of twenty to thirty distinct glyphs, seemingly a random ordering of meaningless ink marks designed to befuddle andhumiliate readers, but linguistic analysis strongly suggests that the symbols form a language—possibly one that’s yet to be discovered.
Some believe the Voynich manuscript to be a hoax, cooked up in the twentieth century, though carbon dating pushes its origin to the 1400s. The Hoff suspected it was even older than that. He was a traditionalist, as Voynich speculators went, adhering to a theory most had given up for dead. He believed that the demented alchemist Edward Kelley had owned the book but that Roger Bacon, a thirteenth-century friar, philosopher, scholar, and mystic, had written it. The letters were beginning to vindicate him. Kelley referred to a book, written by Bacon in the language of God, and Elizabeth seemed to suggest that—whether thanks to the intercession of his angelic overseers or an epileptic seizure or simply a genius for defrauding gullible acolytes—he had cracked the code and transcribed its holy secrets.
Now we had proof.
18
For a few moments we thought the Hoff might actually pop a coronary, but gradually the red leached out of his face and he stopped ranting about how he would show them all and get out of this hellhole and die at Harvard, where he belonged. When he finally acknowledged our presence, it was only to order us into indentured servitude; naptime was over. “If we work morning, noon, and night, we just might be ready with a full translation by the next American Historical Association conference,” he told Chris and Max. When they stammered something about classes and homework and, not incidentally, having a life, he made a noise like a deflating tire. “We’re talking about the pursuit of knowledge ,” he told them. “This could change the world. Thiscould be your legacy . And you’re worried about some multiplication
This page, Thomas’s page, is mine .
The stitches split neatly and swiftly, and the thin leather patchdropped away. I nearly gasped. A tightly folded piece of paper was nestled into the binding. I nudged it gently with one finger, half afraid it would turn to dust if I moved it, much less tried to unfold it. Elizabeth had folded this up and sewn it into a beloved book, where it had rested unseen and untouched for four centuries. She was the last person to hold this, I thought, and now her secret was mine.
Carefully, so carefully, I unfolded the page. It turned out to be two pages, one nested inside the other—and then I really did gasp as I realized what I was looking at. One sheet was crammed with dense Latin, terms I’d never seen before, acqua fortis, sal ammoniac , names that sounded like chemicals alongside measurements, some kind of elaborate formula. Beside it was a rough sketch of an odd-looking plant, six pointed leaves framing a seventh rounded one, with a spiraling stalk. But it wasn’t the formula or the drawing that caught my eye. It was the other page, which wasn’t Latin at all, or any language. It was a page of symbols, incomprehensible but familiar , because hadn’t I been staring at those symbols every time I passed the massive facsimile of a Voynich manuscript page hanging over the Hoff’s desk?
The grouping of the text was the same on both pages, as was the strange drawing. “You guys?” I swallowed hard, trying to knock the frog out of my voice. “I think I may have found something.”
17
The Voynich manuscript surfaced in 1912 and has since foiled a century’s worth of historians, linguists, and cryptographers, driving at least one of them insane. Its 240 pages are filled with a language of twenty to thirty distinct glyphs, seemingly a random ordering of meaningless ink marks designed to befuddle andhumiliate readers, but linguistic analysis strongly suggests that the symbols form a language—possibly one that’s yet to be discovered.
Some believe the Voynich manuscript to be a hoax, cooked up in the twentieth century, though carbon dating pushes its origin to the 1400s. The Hoff suspected it was even older than that. He was a traditionalist, as Voynich speculators went, adhering to a theory most had given up for dead. He believed that the demented alchemist Edward Kelley had owned the book but that Roger Bacon, a thirteenth-century friar, philosopher, scholar, and mystic, had written it. The letters were beginning to vindicate him. Kelley referred to a book, written by Bacon in the language of God, and Elizabeth seemed to suggest that—whether thanks to the intercession of his angelic overseers or an epileptic seizure or simply a genius for defrauding gullible acolytes—he had cracked the code and transcribed its holy secrets.
Now we had proof.
18
For a few moments we thought the Hoff might actually pop a coronary, but gradually the red leached out of his face and he stopped ranting about how he would show them all and get out of this hellhole and die at Harvard, where he belonged. When he finally acknowledged our presence, it was only to order us into indentured servitude; naptime was over. “If we work morning, noon, and night, we just might be ready with a full translation by the next American Historical Association conference,” he told Chris and Max. When they stammered something about classes and homework and, not incidentally, having a life, he made a noise like a deflating tire. “We’re talking about the pursuit of knowledge ,” he told them. “This could change the world. Thiscould be your legacy . And you’re worried about some multiplication
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