The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

by Elsa Hart

  Lady Mayne cut him off. “It has been a trying day, one that has already required me to learn more than I ever wished to know about these vices. It is true that I am not personally acquainted with the author of the letter, but the courtesy with which Lord Wolfden expressed himself assures me he is a man of education and refinement. My husband’s solicitor has since, after the most cursory inquiries, confirmed every detail.”

  “But Inwood,” said Thursby, still dubious.

  Lady Mayne sighed. “I assure you, I share your surprise. He seems far too rational a man to risk his fortunes and those of others on absurd speculation. For whom but the foolish would invest in rumors of sunken treasure?”

  A spark of life revealed itself in one of Thursby’s assistants. “Are you speaking of shipwrecks, Lady Mayne? I heard not a week ago of a Spanish galleon, lost these hundred years, found in shallow waters off the coast of Portugal. Full of doubloons, each and every one of its coffers!”

  “No,” said the other assistant. “No, I heard it, too, but then I heard they hadn’t found it after all.”

  “And thus is Lady Mayne’s observation upheld,” said Meacan dryly.

  Lady Mayne drew in a breath and delivered her next words with dramatic force. “I have it now on more than one authority. Giles Inwood is ruined. The sum—” She paused to allow the quiver of emotion in her voice time to make an impression on the room. “The sum my loving husband intended for the augmentation of my comfort in the twilight years of my life, the sum Inwood is contractually obligated to furnish, far exceeds his present means. What is worse, he has deliberately concealed his insolvency from me in order to protect his own reputation.”

  Meacan pressed a hand to her chest and shook her head in sympathy. “How upsetting this must be for you,” she said. “And yet how fortunate that the veil of deceit has been lifted. I wonder, did the good Lord Wolfden explain what compelled him to write?”

  “Merely his commitment to the truth,” said Lady Mayne. “Dishonesty is abhorrent to him.”

  “I see,” said Meacan.

  “What do you plan to do?” asked Cecily.

  Lady Mayne had her answer ready. “First, I will no longer lend my support to the extended charade that has been imposed upon me. The inventory was Inwood’s idea from the beginning. I understand now that it never had anything to do with concern for my husband’s legacy. It was only an attempt to prolong the time before Inwood had to make a payment. I will not be so used. Not for another moment.”

  Lady Mayne took a shuddering breath and drew her sharp shoulders back. She brought her cool gaze to rest on Thursby. “I am grateful for your assistance, but it is no longer needed.”

  “But—but Lady Mayne,” sputtered Thursby. “Surely the inventory remains an essential step in the preservation of—”

  “No. It does not.” Lady Mayne’s words sliced through Thursby’s sentence. “No, now that I am freed of the influence of my husband’s false friend, my mind is my own, as are all decisions connected to the objects in this house.”

  Martha stepped forward, pulling her hand from John’s gently restraining grasp. “But what of the contract?” she demanded. “You aren’t the one who controls the collection.”

  “If you wish to remain employed in my household,” said Lady Mayne, speaking with the contented condescension of the victorious, “you will curb your tongue. My errand today was with not one, but two highly respected solicitors, both of whom assure me that, according to law, Giles Inwood has broken the terms of his contract with my husband. If he cannot pay for the collection, he cannot have it.”

  “Then the contract—” Thursby began.

  “Is null and void,” finished Lady Mayne. “And yet I believe, and the solicitors agree, that the way forward is clear. My husband intended for me to be the beneficiary of the sale of his collection. Therefore, the collection will have to be sold.”

  “But he wanted it to stay the way it is,” said Martha. “The objects all together as he arranged them.”

  “It is a pity,” said Lady Mayne, though it was clear she did not think it a pity at all. “I understand there is no person or institution willing to pay for such a responsibility. It simply will not be possible.”

  Martha, fists clenched as her sides, looked ready to throw herself across the table. Cecily spoke quickly. “If I might ask, Lady Mayne,” she said, “what is it you intend?”

  Lady Mayne’s pale gray gaze flickered defiantly over the room. She seemed to address herself not to Cecily, but to the walls. “It has been made clear to me by those who graciously came to pay their respects that there are objects in this house of interest to the collectors of the city. What better course of action than to allow the collection to be divided between them?”

  “But it will be broken all to pieces,” said Martha.

  “An inevitable consequence, I am afraid,” said Lady Mayne. “To answer your question, Lady Kay, an auction is what I intend. I have already engaged a reputable firm to handle the business in its entirety and, as my presence will not be required, I have decided not to return to London after the funeral. In light of this, I’m afraid I cannot continue to provide you and Mrs. Barlow accommodation in this house after tomorrow. I’m sure you understand.”

  * * *

  Evening crept silently over the city like a predator trying to catch it unawares before the lamps could be lit. Meacan sat on the window seat in Cecily’s room. “For a woman with so little interest in collections,” she said musingly, “she learned very quickly how best to dismantle one.”

  “Perhaps,” said Cecily. “On the other hand, I suspect it is something she has been wishing she could do for a long time.”

  “A fair point,” Meacan acknowledged. “And I understand why Covo wrote to her. Auctions are good business for him. Collectors will pay to ensure they get what they want.”

  Cecily looked at her in surprise. “How do you know it was Covo who wrote?”

  “The name,” said Meacan. “Wolfden is one of his favorite pseudonyms.”

  The house was quiet. Thursby and his assistants had departed, though not before Thursby had, amid deferential coughs, asked if Lady Mayne would consider reserving on his behalf, when the time came, several small items of interest. A statuette of Hermes had caught his attention, and in addition a box of hummingbirds, and perhaps one or two peculiar fossils that he would consider a credit to his own shelves.

  Cecily sat at the desk. She had restored the labels to the authentic gemstones, returned them to their places in the house, and rearranged the shells and urchins as they had been the day she arrived. “I cannot help but think,” she said, “that the truth of Sir Barnaby’s murder, and with it any hope of liberating Walter Dinley, will be irreparably fractured along with the collection.”

  Meacan’s gaze shifted to the shark’s jaw. “If only we could employ Sir Barnaby’s spells and invocations to charm the skeletons into speaking. We could ask the shark what it has heard. And then ask what it was like to live beneath the sea, swimming through glittering silt and silver shoals.”

  Cecily regarded the silent, desiccated ring of teeth. The sound of rustling fabric made her turn. Meacan was pulling her hand out of her pocket. She held her fist out to Cecily and uncurled her fingers to reveal two slender pins lying crossed on her palm. “I believe it is time to see what is inside Sir Barnaby’s locked cabinets,” she said.

  Cecily hesitated a moment. “We are still guests in this house. There are rules.”

  Meacan’s brows shot up. “And you believe the rules forbid us from picking a lock? My dear old friend, I do not think you are quite aware of the game board we have chosen.”

  A memory presented itself to Cecily. She was standing on a pier, waiting alone to board a ship, enduring the silent shame of having been sent away by a husband who considered her a pest to be swept out with a broom. All because she had sought to expose a hidden truth. All because she had asked questions. What was this, here, in this moment, in the house of Sir Barn
aby Mayne, but a chance to turn around and refuse to board the ship? Tomorrow, the house would close to her. Tonight, she could demand to know its secrets in the hope that it would save a man’s life. She stood up. “I admit,” she said. “I am rather looking forward to seeing how it is done.”

  “You’ll have to watch closely or you’ll miss it,” said Meacan. “I’ve become quite adept at the art.”

  They met no resistance on their journey down to the study, though their progress was closely observed by the hollow sockets, painted orbs, and clouded spheres that made up the eyes of the collection. When they entered the room they could hear, faintly, sounds from the kitchen below. John and Martha were cleaning up from supper and preparing themselves for the following day, when they were to accompany Lady Mayne to the estate.

  The room was lit with a purple glow as if the sun’s final rays had been bruised. Meacan crossed quickly to the locked cabinets and, with a glance over her shoulder at the closed door, braced the sides of her hands against the polished wood and set her pins to the first lock. Her fingers trembled slightly. She rolled her shoulders and shook out her hands to relax them. “I feel as if I’m breaking into a beating heart,” she muttered as she inserted the pins into the keyhole and began her deft manipulations.

  The lock clicked open. Meacan, instead of looking triumphant, regarded the cabinet warily and did not open it at once. When she did, she stepped back as if she thought something might jump out. Nothing did. Together, they peered inside. Cecily felt a sudden sense of disappointment. She had expected the interior of the cabinet somehow to communicate the reason Sir Barnaby had kept it locked. What she had not expected was that it would look exactly as registers suggested it would.

  Most of the shelves were fitted with lidless boxes that could be slid out like drawers or removed completely. Inside each box, specimens of the natural world were arranged with precision in compartments constructed to accommodate each object exactly. The lower shelves contained the larger items, which included specimen jars, skeletons, and birds. Each item was labeled not in red paper, but in white, and every label was written in a controlled, deliberate hand that was not Sir Barnaby’s. It did not take Meacan long to pick the locks of the adjacent cabinets and expose the same structure in both of them. Once all three doors were open, Meacan began to lift objects out and examine them. While she struggled in the fading light to read the labels, Cecily set about lighting a candle.

  “Stone carried by an eagle to its nest,” said Meacan. She returned the spherical gray rock to its place and took up a stoppered vial. “Sand from the coast of Jamaica.” She replaced the vial and continued her perusal. “Horns of an antelope of Barbary, shell of a checkered tortoise, head of a horned crow from the East Indies, tooth of a white shark, lignum aloe from Sumatra, gilt bronze brooch”—Meacan leaned in toward the small assembly of specimen jars—“prickled starfish from the Danish sea, and this one here is called the moon fish.”

  The candle flared to life, illuminating the silver disk of the moon fish in its jar. Cecily held the candle to the open cabinets, careful of its flame. “There must be a reason Sir Barnaby kept these cabinets locked.”

  Meacan had picked up a white shell to which was attached a long and detailed label. “The Venus shell,” she read, “used by the French to adorn the bridles of their horses, by the Italians for the polishing of paper, and by the Egyptians to smooth their linen cloth—” Meacan stopped. “It is all very interesting, of course,” she said. “But it’s no different from— Wait.”

  She had let the label dangle on its twine and was now holding the shell itself up to one eye. She squinted. “Bring the light here—look.”

  Cecily held the candle close to the smooth inside of the shell. “I don’t—”

  “If you tell me you can’t see it I’ll start to be frightened,” said Meacan. “Look closer.”

  Cecily did. Etched into the shell so lightly it might have been only a trick of the eye was a symbol made up of crossed and branching lines, curves, and tiny circles. She stared. It had no meaning for her. “Do you recognize it?” she asked.

  Meacan had already started to pick up other objects and examine them. “No,” she said, “but there are others.”

  Together, they searched the objects for more symbols. Not every item was marked. Of those that were, some bore symbols similar but not identical to the one on the Venus shell. Some were etched with strings of numbers, some with dots that resembled constellations. Still others had words etched into them. “Demaros,” murmured Meacan. “Sameron, nerostiel, chrymos—”

  Cecily was frowning over a small skull identified by its label as that of a parrot. The symbol was etched onto the underside of its beak. “I have seen this before,” she said, half to herself. But where? After a week in the Mayne collection, not to mention hours in Covo’s crowded den, trying to place a single glimpsed image was like sifting through a dream. She had seen the skull. No, not the skull, a drawing of the skull. And of the symbol beside it. It had been in a book. She concentrated. Not a book. Not a printed book. Handwritten. A journal. A journal open to one page.

  Cecily turned around. The book wheel loomed in the corner. She went to it, grasped the wooden frame, and turned. Its gears protested with a loud squeak. Meacan joined her and together, muffling the sound as best they could with their skirts, they turned the wheel so that the book that had been closest to the floor was visible before them. Cecily pulled it from the strap that had bound it in place. On the page to which it had been open was the drawing of the parrot skull and the symbol, framed in a dense network of notes.

  “It’s Sir Barnaby’s writing,” said Meacan.

  “It’s a journal,” said Cecily, turning the pages. She recognized more items from the Rose collection, meticulously sketched beside the symbols and words associated with them. But it was the surrounding notes and figures added by Sir Barnaby himself that explained the importance the objects had for him.

  “Spells,” said Meacan. “This is the diary of a conjurer.” She set her finger to a line of words wrapped around a pentacle. “‘Do thou force and compel the spirit into this circle, in a fair and comely shape, without injury to myself or any other creature, that I may accomplish my desired end, by the power of—’” Meacan stopped with a shudder. “Call me credulous if you like but I’m not so foolish as to complete that sentence.”

  It was Cecily who found the letter tucked into the back of the book. It had been read many times, its creases beginning to tear at either end from being folded and unfolded. Written in the same precise hand that had composed the white labels, the letter was addressed to Sir Barnaby.

  The years advance upon me and I find myself ever more distant from England. At the end of each day, as I watch the sun sink into the azure sea, and at night when the moon casts its path over the waves and the phosphorus dances like fire in the water, I express to the spirits of the air my gratitude that it is you, my dear friend, who will become caretaker of these small observations I have made of the world. I am told your cabinets grow in renown. What an honor it will be to occupy one humble corner of your collection, which will surely withstand time’s hand, though you and I cannot.

  The moment has arrived when I must acquaint you with certain endeavors I have until now pursued in solitude. You wrote to me, long ago, of your conviction that the theories so popular among Society members—I refer to those rules that govern the movement of the heavens and of the earth—have been too quick to dismiss those ancient rituals and sacraments long-veiled in secrecy and persecution. I must apologize now for the response I gave you, offensive in its brevity, unworthy of a friend.

  Since that time I have traveled paths that led me at last to the wisdom you so generously offered, and I so ignorantly refused. My friend, I have uncovered more than even you would believe possible. The powers of which you spoke exist. The tools with which to harness them are scattered through the world by a hand eager to bestow upon true followers the mastery of forces undreamt of by
our predecessors.

  The means cannot be given. They must be found. I fear I will not complete the quest before it is too late, and I have not breath left to speak the rituals. I must pass this burden to one worthy of taking it up. Upon my death, all that I possess will pass to you. I have left you all the signs I am permitted to communicate. It is you who must interpret them, and find the secrets within. Do so, and you will summon servants who will travel swift-footed and invisible through the air to do your bidding, who will build castles in the blink of an eye, who will defeat your every foe, including that greatest malefactor of all, that shadow Death himself.

  The power is there to be claimed. Claim it, and when you do, perhaps you will remember your friend. Perhaps you will come in search of me. I will be waiting. I can say no more, only these names, with which to begin your journey. May Nizael, Estarnas, Tantarez, and Cassiel guide you.

  Your faithful companion,

  John Rose

  CHAPTER 28

  A sepulchral hush presided over the Plant Room the following morning as Cecily reassembled her bundles of specimens. Though strands of night still curled through the fog that pressed against the windows, the household was well on its way toward departure. Activity was concentrated in the lower floors. Lady Mayne’s trunks had already been brought down, and Meacan had been conscripted to help pack kitchen utensils and food. Otto Helm had taken himself once again to the Serpent Room for a final session of observation and note-taking.

  High above the bustle, Cecily pulled the straps tight around her presses and regarded the silent shelves. She could smell the paper and dried herbs. She could picture the flowers, leaves, roots, barks, and fruits sorted carefully within the piles, bindings, and drawers. How many answers waited here, ready for curious minds to come in search of them? She wondered with a pang how much of Sir Barnaby’s painstaking curation would survive the auction, and how much would be lost.