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said, his voice cracking. ‘All of it gone, burned or stolen. Even the library… There’s nothing left, son.’
    â€˜Yes there is,’ cried Thomas. He grabbed his father’s arm, led him to the tomb and pointed through the hole where the sunlight shone down, illuminating the books piled on the floor.
    His father stared in disbelief.
    â€˜I couldn’t save everything,’ said Thomas. ‘But I tried. I really did try.’
    Later, as they headed down towards the village, tired and hungry, Thomas’ father drove the cart in silence. Thomas could see he was turning things over and over in his head. Finally, he spoke. ‘Our lives are going to be dangerous now. We can never tell anyone where the books are, but we have to use them… they have to be seen. To be read. To teach people. Otherwise they may as well have burned.’
    The previous night had been the end of everything Thomas had ever known, but somehow this morning felt like a beginning. Yesterday the library was crumbling and doomed. Today there was a new library. A secret library in a tomb guarded by a monster. And Thomas Marchant and his family were its keepers.

Chapter 4
William Marchant 1693
    William Marchant looked around the table at the faces flickering in the candlelight. Were they serious? Did they really still believe this stuff?
    They weren’t stupid. More than half of them could read, thanks to his secret library. And yet the head of every farming family in the village was sitting around the table, leaning in to hear what the old white witch had to say.
    Juliana let her audience wait in silence for a long time before opening her bag and pulling out a fingersized wooden statue of a veiled goddess and placing it deliberately in the centre of the table. It made a loud hollow sound.
    William opened his mouth, but quickly shut itagain as he caught a sideways look from his mother Elizabeth, sitting at the head of the table. She was reminding him that he had to be careful. He only had a place at the meeting because it was taking place at his home, and what he had to say was far too important to say badly.
    He looked around at the faces, and his feelings softened a little. Juliana did know a fair bit, it was true, and she was harmless enough. She had earned respect in the village, despite her son’s job. It was to her that everyone in the village went when they were sick, desperate, or when they feared for the future. Somehow she usually helped them to feel better.
    Right now, the whole village was desperate and fearful. If the early seeds they had planted didn’t grow fast and strong, there would be death from starvation in every house.
    Perhaps it was not belief that made them listen to her, but lack of anything else in which to put their faith.
    The little statue stood in the centre of the table while Juliana explained how the crops would return if only the Great Mother, the Goddess Freya or the Virgin Mary – she seemed to use the names interchangeably – blessed and looked over the crops.
    Everyone stared in silence at the tiny figure, while Juliana described in detail how villages in northern France ensured their harvests by a ritual in which they took their goddess statue on a tour of the fields as they sowed them. They danced and sang for the wooden idol, and gave tribute. And in return, the goddess, by whatever name you called her, blessed the fields and the crops grew strong and tall.
    In William’s opinion, such superstition was ridiculous, but at the mention of northern France the assembled farmers looked at each other, nodding sagely. Everyone knew that the crops over the Channel were thriving, and everyone wondered why those few short miles of sea made such a difference.
    Everyone also knew, although they were far too careful to mention it, that one among them was something of an expert on northern France. And everyone was looking at William now. He cleared his throat. The library and