The Cartographers(9)
What on earth could one of the NYPL’s most revered scholars be doing with a worthless piece of paper like this?
She had to calm down. She had to think.
This was no Vespucci, or Mercator, or Ptolemy mural—it was a little eight-fold on cheap paper that condensed to fit into a glove compartment—but it was still a map, as far removed from those works of art as it was.
This was her father. He had to have a reason.
And she would figure it out. There was a system to figuring out things like this—she had trained her whole life to do it.
Nell set the wineglass aside, adjusted her dish gloves, and picked up the map again.
General Drafting Corporation. 1930 edition. New York State Road and Highway Map.
Carefully, hesitantly, she unfolded it into its full form.
New York City & vicinity, 1930: General Drafting Corporation, prepared for Esso Standard
The vastness of New York State spread out across her kitchen table in pale greens and yellows. The sight brought memories rushing back.
That day seven years ago had started so perfectly. The morning of the Junk Box Incident, Nell and Swann had gone to breakfast, where she’d asked about the chance there might be a permanent position for her after her internship. Swann couldn’t say it outright, but his grin was so big that Nell knew it was for certain. She was going to be a full-time junior researcher at the NYPL.
This was her dream, and she was in. Everything she’d ever hoped for was within arm’s reach, at last.
Too excited to go home before her afternoon shift, Nell swiped her card at the back entrance and went downstairs into the basement archives. Swann was already impressed, but why not make an even greater splash? What if in addition to performing her duties perfectly, she also brought in a specimen of her own to add to one of the collections?
The lights flickered weakly. Nell brushed aside the cobwebs on the railing and tried not to trip on the way down. The uncatalogued archives were a world away from the pristine white marble upper levels, where rich oak bookcases towered and gilded chandeliers twinkled beneath ceilings painted with murals of the sky. The place had always reminded her more of a medieval dungeon. And not just because of the gloom and darkness.
There was an entire lifetime’s worth of maps down there, moldering away in the clammy stillness. More, even. Whenever Nell snuck down to this forgotten level, she got chills of excitement just trying to imagine what she might find.
Since the NYPL’s inception, it had survived not only on funding from the government, but also on the generous donations of its patrons. Wealthy families from all over the United States, and later the world, seeking to put their mark on something prestigious and immortal, often gifted the NYPL books or maps to be held as a public collection in their names. It was how the library had acquired some of its most treasured pieces, and still did. There were just some maps too rare to ever find on the market again—those historical pieces drawn only once or a handful of times, all bought centuries ago and kept in private offices of generals, royalty, warlords, and business tycoons.
Nell could not imagine receiving a box from a prospective donor and not opening it immediately, but after so many years with its illustrious reputation, that’s exactly what had begun happening at the NYPL. Examining a map to ensure it was authentic before allowing it to be displayed took weeks, if not months. Sometimes, there would be an entire library in and of itself inside a donation box. There was simply not enough time. And so, the uncatalogued basement had been born. It was supposed to be a stopgap, but as time went on, more and more deliveries arrived, faster and faster, too many to keep pace with. There were just not enough librarians to care for the NYPL and also go through every single box of the now thousands that were down there. Each one was simply marked on an inventory sheet, then filed away under the ever-optimistic promise that “your donation will be examined soon.”
Well, Nell was going to finally make good on that promise.
She dug through eighty boxes and inhaled at least a lungful of dust by the afternoon. Almost everything had been underwhelming so far, but she was nothing if not a Young—stubborn to the end. She would not give up until she’d found something incredible.
Finally, near the back and buried under a handful of much older arrivals, she stumbled across an intriguing container. It was a simple banker box, like one could get from a university, smaller than most of the others.
On the side, someone had written junk in permanent marker before donating it—but that was not what was inside at all.
Nell peeled the brittle tape free and peered in. The items had been put into polyethylene sleeves to help preserve them from the humidity—whoever had packed it had known a little bit about what to do. Her pulse quickened. Was this her big break? Discovering the needle in the haystack beneath them all this time and being catapulted to full researcher, or even some kind of specialist?
“Wow,” she’d gasped to herself at that moment, and then gave an embarrassed yelp as the soft echo came back from the corners to startle her. “What the . . .”
In her hands was a small pile of treasure. An immaculate 1700s Franklin of New York City, a Calisteri of its early docks and harbor, what looked like a Dutch-style Visscher draft of the same—and the very same 1930 gas station highway map of New York State she would find again in her father’s portfolio.
Nell stared in stunned silence at what she’d uncovered. The focus of her Ph.D. had been on ancient cartography, so she didn’t know exactly what these three specimens were worth—or why the gas station highway map had been tossed in with them—but the Franklin and Calisteri were famous enough that she recognized them on sight. The box was clearly a gold mine.