Opening a sixty-year-old waterlogged folio is an operation of building, not literature.
Tomas cleared a six-foot section of the stone base. He used his hand-adze to scrape away the thick encrustation of dried lime and sulfur crystals until the flat stone slab was smooth and level. He laid down three clean woolen rags from his pack frame to absorb the moisture, and placed the massive book in the center of the improvised workbench.
Hester Quill sat on an overturned salt tub, her glasses adjusted with a length of twine tied behind her ears. She opened her small tin kit of document conservation tools. Two flat bone folders carved from whalebone. A horn spoon. A vial of rectified spirits of wine. And a block of refined pipe-clay used for drawing grease from damp paper.
“Don’t force the boards,” Hester warned, her voice tight with concentration. “The calfskin spine has shrunk from forty years of damp drying. If you pull the front cover back past ninety degrees, the leather will split along the hinge and take the first section of thick parchment with it.”
Tomas braced the back of the spine with two blocks of seasoned oak from his tool roll, ensuring the front oak board could only open to a sixty-degree angle.
