Episode - 1

There is the garden.... still, serene, and deep, The ancient tree, its roots where secrets sleep. The serpent curls beneath, with scales that gleam, Guarding the golden fruit, the woman’s dream. The stream runs softly through the grassy floor, Whispering tales of all that came before. For once, beyond the world’s far rim, there grew Those golden branches, forever bathed in dew. There Ladon, dragon bright, with jeweled crest, Curled round the tree and guarded it in rest.... Gold claw, silver fang, in timeless keep, Half wake, half dream, in endless sleep. Until at last came Herakles, the bold, To steal what gods had vowed to never hold. And so the serpent stirred, the fruit was torn.... And thus, the world was changed, reborn. — Valtherion Eric Gravesend From The Garden and Proserpina, 1848

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The book was thick and blue, its cover blanketed with dust. The boards were bended and murmured when touched, as though they remembered years of rough handling.

Its spine was gone.... or perhaps it had only slipped loose, jutting out from the pages like a swollen scar. Around it, strips of dirty white tape were wound again and again, tied at last in a strangely careful bow.

The librarian handed the book to Rhaenard Magnus, who waited patiently in the Reading Room of the Rome Library. It had been brought out from Locked Safe No. 4, where it usually rested between "The Stories of Mutunus Tutunus" and "The Roman Love"

It was seven in the morning on a gray November day in 1988. Rhaenard sat at his favorite table.... a small one tucked behind a spiral pillar.... where he could work unseen, yet still keep the clock above the fireplace in view.

To his right, sunlight poured through a tall window, glinting off the green leaves of St. Isidore’s Square outside.

The Rome Library was Rhaenard’s favourite place.... worn, yet dignified; steeped in history, yet alive with thought.

Poets and philosophers still wandered its corridors, some sitting cross-legged on the cool metal floors of the stacks, others lingering mid-stair in gentle debate.

Once, Giambattista Vico had studied here; once, Ugo Foscolo had drifted through these very shelves, chasing meaning among the dust and silence.

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Rhaenard caught a glimpse of her blue silk skirts and velvet train, sweeping between the solemn Fathers of the Church. He heard the firm ring of her footsteps echo on the metal floor among the German poets.

Here, once, Valtherion Eric Gravesend had walked.... a man whose quick, restless mind devoured every scrap of knowledge it could find.

He filled his memory with curious trifles from history and geography..

Rhaenard had only recently discovered that the Rome Library possessed Valtherion's own copy of 'The New Science of Giambattista Vico'

Valtherion’s books had, sadly, been scattered across Europe and America.

The largest surviving collection was, of course, in the Archives at Wilhelm von Humboldt University in Prague, where Calder Moren worked on his monumental edition of "The Complete Correspondence of Valtherion Eric Gravesend"

That was no difficulty now.... books could travel through the air as easily as light and sound. Yet it was still possible that Valtherion’s own copy of Vico that held handwritten notes.... even the tireless Calder Moren might have missed.

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Rhaenard was searching for the sources behind Valtherion’s "The Garden and Proserpina".. There was a quiet joy in reading the very lines Valtherion had once read.... words his eyes had followed, his fingers had touched.

It was clear at once that the book had not been opened in years, perhaps not since it was first laid to rest.

The librarian brought a checkered cloth and gently wiped away the dust.... a thick, black Roman dust, heavy with the smoke and fog.

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The book sprang apart, like a box, pouring out leaf after leaf of faded paper, blue, cream, grey, covered with rusty writing, the brown scratches of a steel nib.

They appeared to be notes on Vico, written on the backs of book-bills and letters.

The librarian observed that the pages looked untouched, as if no one had ever handled them before.

Their edges were stained a deep soot-black, like the borders of old mourning cards. Each mark aligned perfectly.... edge of page meeting edge of stain.... as though time itself had sealed them in place

Rhaenard was part-time research assistant to Professor Esmiel Rivane, who had been editing Valtherion's Complete Works since 1953.

While he was gone, the scattered pages gave a faint rustle, a whisper of motion.... as if newly awakened by their release.

Valtherion himself had placed them there.

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By seven-thirty, all the formalities were done.

For the next half hour, Rhaenard worked in a scattered rhythm.... flipping through the pages of Vico, sometimes searching for "The Garden and Proserpina"., sometimes pausing to study Valtherion’s notes.

It wasn’t easy. The notes were written in several languages, in Valtherion’s tiny, meticulous script.... so neat and precise that it was almost like print, and barely recognizable as the same hand that had once written his flowing poems and letters.

At eight, Rhaenard finally came upon a passage in Vico that seemed to fit.

Vico sought traces of history within the poetic language of myth and legend; this act of reconstruction was what he called his New Science.

In his view, "Proserpina" symbolized the first seed.... the beginning of trade, of community, of civilization itself.

Centuries later, Valtherion Eric Gravesend reimagined "Proserpina" as something more inward and uncertain.... a Roman meditation on faith and doubt, on the fragile myths of resurrection.

And Antonio Canova captured her in paint: distraught yet radiant, a golden figure drifting through a tunnel of darkness.

Esmiel Rivane believed that she symbolized, for Valtherion Gravesend, the very spirit of history itself.... not the cold record of facts, but history in its earliest, most mythical form.

(Valtherion had written poems about both Vincenzo Gioberti and Paulus Diaconus.... two historians utterly unlike each other. Esmiel, in turn, had published an essay titled Valtherion Eric Gravesend and Relative Historiography.)

Rhaenard compared Valtherion’s text with its translation, carefully copying key passages onto an index card.

He kept two boxes for these notes.... one Midnight Blue, the other a vivid Dove Gray.... their springy plastic hinges snapping softly in the hush of the library

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"Ears of grain were once called apples of gold.... perhaps the first gold known to humankind, long before the discovery of metal. Thus, the golden apple that Hercules gathered from the gardens of Hesperia must have truly been a symbol of grain. The French Hercules, who was said to bind men by the ears with chains of this golden fruit coming out from his mouth, may in fact represent the power of speech, wisdom, or cultivation.... myths that later came to describe the fields themselves. And so Hercules endured as the god to be appeased when seeking hidden treasures.... treasures of the earth, guarded by Dis, also known as Pluto, who carried away Proserpina, the goddess of grain and growth, into the underworld. The poets called that realm by three names: first, the Styx; second, the land of the dead; and third, the deep furrows of the soil. It was from this same mythic apple of gold, says Virgil.... most learned among poets of the heroic age.... that Aeneas took the golden Branch to carry with him into the underworld"

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Valtherion Eric Gravesend’s Proserpina.... “gold-skinned in the gloom”.... was, like the myth itself, both woman and grain, “bound in golden links” that might have been jewels or chains.

Rhaenard wrote neat cross-references under the headings of grain, apples, chain, treasure.