The Parchment

~ Thursday, June 25, 2026 ~

I have been in this guesthouse for three weeks longer than I intended. The owner has stopped commenting on it. After Kokořín I thought the work was nearly done. I was wrong. The notebook had one more section I had not properly read.

The parchment

The notebook told me where to look. I had worked it out from five words of Latin and a Roman numeral in Pavel’s December margin — the previous entry covers how. I drove west out of Prague and followed a road marked by twenty chapels to its end.

What I found is a parchment. A double folio — a single sheet folded once. Unfolded: 225 by 320 millimetres. Folded: 225 by 160. I measured it three times. I am going to leave those numbers there without comment, except to say that anyone who has spent time with the Beinecke MS 408 catalogue will understand why I sat with a ruler in my hand for a long time before I wrote anything else down. The age is immediately apparent — the kind of age that changes the quality of the thing rather than just its surface. The text — if text is the right word — is not in any script I can read directly. What I had been calling Voynich-adjacent, looking at it now, I am less sure of the “adjacent.”

In the upper right corner of the map side, added in a different hand from the rest: f. 86. The bifolio format and dimensions are consistent with the fold-out construction of quire 14 — the cosmological section, the rosettes. I am noting this because I note everything.

The geography it depicts is Bohemian. I recognised the general shape before I recognised anything specific. The draughtsman knew this landscape. The river systems are not labelled in any language I can read, but they are accurate. The style has something in common with the Klaudyán map of Bohemia — the first printed map of Bohemia, made in 1518 — the same decorative hand, the same way of placing settlements in relation to water. But this parchment is not a copy of the Klaudyán map, and it is not a later work. The geography it shows is the same geography. The language it uses is not.

I photographed everything. I am not publishing the photographs.

The right half of the folio carries text in the same script. It took me two days to work through the letterforms. I will not transcribe it here. What it says is what Pavel had already told me, in different words: the first shepherd, the gate, the three signs assembled into a key. Confirmation, not revelation. I had arrived at everything it contained by following Pavel’s trail. The parchment had been waiting for someone who already knew.

The key

I spent a week with it. The parchment is not the whole thing. I understood that quickly enough. What I could not establish was what was missing.

I went through everything I had brought and nothing answered the question. I am not good at asking for help. I called Bishop anyway.

I described what I had found. He was quiet for a moment.

Then he said: “Markus. I know what you need. And I have it here. The key.”

The next morning I went back.

I know where to go next. It is not an obscure place. Its history is not hidden. It has been there for a very long time, waiting for someone to arrive with the right question. If you want to understand why this place and not another, read the early history of central Bohemia. The answer is there.

I will write again when I have something to report. I expect to be here to write it. Pavel probably said the same.

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