The Librarian's Spell

by Patricia Rice

  “And if there is no device?” Lydia whispered, unable to imagine the dark grim place they worked in.

  “Max plans to dig him out,” the marquess said. “But the walls in that section appear to be undermined from below. I’ll tell him you’re looking up the dungeon, and he’ll stick to propping up the walls a little longer. His cousin’s likely to suffocate if left in there too long.”

  Max’s uncle moaned in despair.

  Twenty-seven

  More pebbles rained down from the drainage tunnel. Max wished for a hat. Why the devil was there a void beneath the damned sewer?

  From the ragged opening in the ceiling, Simon lowered a brighter lantern so he could have a look at where Max was digging.

  The light illuminated a narrow shaft with dirt and pebble walls and the remains of what might have been wooden supports. Wood that old could not support the stone sewer forever. The rubble indicated that what once might have been a mine shaft had been filled to provide a foundation for the more solidly-built sewer above.

  Maybe this was where Cadwallader’s ghost had descended—a tunnel to the spirit world. Or a graveyard.

  “Someone created this channel for a reason,” Max called to the men above.

  Having disappeared into a void beneath the pebbles that Max couldn’t access, his cousin was ominously silent now that his cries had been answered. Max didn’t trust George, but he didn’t think a senseless bookkeeper like his cousin could build a trap in Max’s own damned cellar. George had just been his usual doltish self, assumed the warning sign meant Max was hiding something, and had gone where he didn’t belong.

  “We’re looking for any signs of iron,” Simon called down. “They may have had chains to lower a cage. Have you found Mr. Franklin yet?”

  “There appears to be a fresh pile of rubble over in the far corner. I want to prop up the walls before I risk going over there. The soil is slick with oil and water, and there’s likely subsidence that’s causing the dirt to give way.” Max had never mined shale, but Gerard had been right. This smelled like oil. “I figure George slid into that corner and the ground gave out beneath him.”

  Or a rusted metal grate covering an oubliette had fallen through, which was why he needed Lydia’s knowledge. Before he’d gone silent, George’s screams had indicated he was trapped and suffocating. That didn’t sound as if he’d fallen into a mine.

  Like any bloodthirsty adolescent, Max had listened to the teacher’s description of medieval torture devices. He didn’t think even mad Englishmen would dig storage holes beneath sewers. This had the design of a trap—an ancient one.

  “You don’t want to fall in on top of him,” Simon agreed. “I have someone tying a rope ladder in case we can’t stabilize the walls, but he has to be conscious to climb up it.”

  One way or another, Max would have to lower the ladder into that black hole before the ceiling caved. His only hope was that Lydia could find another way out. Rebuilding a medieval shaft would take too long.

  * * *

  Lydia raced through the yard, back to the garden door, forgetting there were dozens of aristocrats waiting inside for reassurances she didn’t have to offer. Poised and confident in their perfume, pearls, and silk, the women crowded around her the moment she entered. Their elegance reminded her of all she was not and never would be.

  Not only was she not a beautiful lady, she wasn’t even the one thing they thought her—a librarian.

  Her ineptitude might be the death of Max. With heart breaking, Lydia brushed past, shaking her head at the questions she heard but couldn’t answer. She slammed into her office, locked the door, and escaped into the silence of the waiting library.

  It waited for her. She could tell. To her, the library was a sentient being, disapproving, calculating, more judgmental than her family had ever been. It would spit her out or swallow her whole if she failed.

  She’d asked it how to be a librarian and it hadn’t replied. She’d asked for information on the tower for Max, and it had given her everything he expected.

  “Max needs this,” she shouted at the waiting emptiness of towering books. “Max needs to know if there is an oubliette!”

  Thundering silence.

  Failure was not an option. Weeping would not help. She had to force the books to give up their information.

  “I need to know about the dungeon!” she cried. “Max’s life depends on it. My life depends on it. The future of this library might depend on it!”

  As she shouted, her fear blew a hole in the wall of composure she’d projected her entire life. She didn’t radiate just helpless frustration but fury. Rage at all the times in her life when she’d been lost and helpless and had no means of dealing with the world except with fake calm and wishful thinking. Those wouldn’t help Max now. She needed the library.

  The tower trembled. Or perhaps she did.

  Her sisters were the foolish creatures who railed and swooned and panicked if things didn’t go their way. Lydia had never been like that, especially after her father had fallen off the roof. She’d known someone had to be the strong one, the cautious one. As the eldest, she had always been the epitome of moderation, the solid foundation others counted on. She might weep in private at her inability to control anything, but she never displayed how she felt.

  Until now. With her placidity in shreds, Lydia shook her fist and railed at the silent books. She wept and poured out her heart and soul in tears and terror. In a rage, she yanked out volume after volume, starting with the bottom shelf, demanding that the books respond. The journal yesterday had made no mention of an oubliette, but the books surrounding that journal must be from the same time period. . .

  “I need you!” she cried as the books remained silent. “I need your help! Please, please don’t let him die because of my incompetence. I know you have the answers. Please!”

  Feeling as if she’d taken a knife and ripped herself open, she dropped to her knees and hugged the strewn books to her breast. “Speak to me,” she commanded. “I’ll do whatever it takes, be whatever I must be, but speak.”

  Oubliette, a breeze whispered.

  Lydia glanced frantically at the mess she’d made. How would she see a book pushing out at her now that they were on the floor?

  Oubliette, the breeze repeated.

  What had she said to gain this response? That she would be whatever the library wanted her to be? Did it want her to be the librarian? Max had said she didn’t analyze, and she didn’t. She’d always accepted whatever life threw at her. . .

  She wasn’t accepting the library’s silence. She was demanding its help. She believed wholeheartedly that she was worthy of the library and its vast store of knowledge and had commanded her troops to obey. Or begged, perhaps, but she’d opened herself to the terrifying realization that she could do what Mr. C had done, if only she knew how.

  Gathering this tiny bit of confidence, she demanded, “I need the journal on the oubliette, and I need it now.” She was the Librarian. She must act like it. She must believe it, as she pretended to do in the solicitors’ office. She held out her palm.

  And there the book was, opening to crabbed Latin script it might take days to parse and translate.

  And she knew what it said. Opening her mind, Lydia heard the voice in her head. It spoke more clearly than it ever had before.

  Clinging to the precious volume, trembling with fear at this invasion of her mind, she obeyed what the voice told her. She determined north from south and made her way past the stacks to the wall opposite her office.

  I prayed future generations would never need to know this door. The woman’s voice was low, almost an angry Latin chant, but Lydia heard and understood. The fulcrums are concealed beneath the lions.

  Lydia faltered when she found the brass ornaments on the back wall. She’d known they were there. She’d polished them a time or two. Was her desperation simply feeding her mind? Had she gone insane?

  The voice quieted.

  Lydia starte
d to panic again, pushing and pulling at the ornaments, looking for the hinge. “I can do this,” she repeated over and over. “I can do this. I can hear you. Speak again, please. I love him. I love him so very much, and I’ve never told him so. If you ever loved anyone, please speak to me.”

  As if she’d never grown silent, the voice began again, still in Latin, still clear to Lydia. Twist the second one and push to the left at the same time.

  A narrow door slid to one side, leaving a pitch dark opening she had to crouch to look into.

  “Max,” she called hesitantly. “Max, can you hear me?”

  She couldn’t even hear her own voice in the void. She spoke louder, with more confidence. “Max, I have the book. It told me to open this door. Are you there?”

  A shout of fury and a rumble of rock nearly brought her to her knees. “Max!” she screamed.

  “Lydia?” His voice was distant but clear. “I’m good. The ground slipped under me. Where are you?”

  Relief flooded through her and tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m in the library. There’s another concealed door in the back, a very small one.”

  The voice in her head grew louder, more urgent. Words rushed through her so quickly, they emerged from her lips without registering in her head. She feared she spoke Latin. Max didn’t know Latin. She struggled to regain control of her vocal chords, but she was shouting now.

  Max called to her in bewilderment.

  It didn’t matter. She scrambled down the crude iron ladder built into the wall below her, a ladder her head said was there.

  A rush and tumble of stone rang loudly from the far side of the cramped passage. Max shouted orders. Men yelled back. Her pulse escalated as she made her way across rocks. She’d brought no lantern. The voice in her head wanted a candle. She didn’t have one of those either.

  “Max,” she cried in her own voice.

  “Speak English,” he cried desperately. “Or Gaelic or French or anything but Latin!”

  An Anglo-Saxon obscenity escaped her lips. She covered her mouth in shock. She thought she heard Max’s wry chuckle.

  But the book was in Latin, and it was Latin that continued to emerge, faster than Lydia could translate. She could only duck her head under the low ceiling and follow her feet. Her feet seemed to understand the instructions better than her head.

  “She’s saying something about a trap door to a mine shaft,” a weak male voice said from nearby.

  “By all the fates, I thought you were dead, George.” Max sounded relieved. “Is she telling us how to break out of this hole?”

  “Why won’t she speak English?” the querulous voice asked.

  “Because the journal is in Latin,” Max responded sensibly. “If you can translate, we may both escape alive.”

  “You’re sitting on my head, just like you used to do,” George complained.

  “Only after you kicked me,” Max retorted.

  “You were bigger than me. Still are. You’ll break my neck.”

  The voice in Lydia’s head shouted with irritation in a language that sounded more Gaelic than Latin. Max retorted in a similar language, which seemed to pacify the lady’s anger.

  “She’s insulting the entire male gender,” Max said with a laugh.

  How could he laugh? How could he accept that she was speaking in tongues? Because he was a Malcolm. He’d lived with insanity most of his life. Lydia reached the solid barrier of another wall and began feeling the rocks, speaking rapidly in a dead language from her books.

  “Your Latin lady says there’s a trap door, that her sons built it. Something about not approving their. . .” The weak voice hesitated over the translation. “I think that meant bastard. They didn’t approve of this hole.”

  “By George, he knows Latin.” Max sounded closer. “Lydia, do you have anything to hammer with? Another rock maybe? Let us know where you are. It’s a pretty damned tight fit in here. We’re likely to tumble out as soon as you find the door, so be careful.”

  She could hear other men shouting louder now. But the walls were thick and solid. She cried more Latin as her hands pried at the stone. She pounded with her keys so they could hear her.

  “I think I’ve got you,” Max called. “You’re near the floor. Stand back and let me kick.”

  “She’s saying there’s a latch on the outside,” the feeble male voice complained. “Quit being a bully and listen.”

  A latch. What kind of latch would last centuries? Leather, perhaps. Iron. Lydia ran her hands along the walls until the voice in her head sighed in relief and directed her to a niche in the stone. Finding a lever, she cautiously pulled. “I think I have it. It’s pretty rusted. Do I have time to go back and look for oil?”

  “She’s speaking English again,” the stranger cried.

  And so she was. The medieval lady had departed. She was on her own.

  “No time,” Max said tersely. “The rock fill has loosened. If we can’t leave this way, we have to climb out of this hole. That means more people above us in the tunnel with ropes and ladders.”

  Risking more lives or crushing Max and his cousin or. . . Lydia twisted and yanked at the decaying lever. She heard Max kicking from his side.

  Metal grated. Stone moved. Lydia hastily stepped back, trying to keep her footing, having no idea of the precariousness of the stones she’d crossed on.

  Max’s excited shout rang out as his boot pushed free.

  “I think the lady said the trap door was mostly for feeding the prisoners,” Lydia said tentatively. “It may not be large enough.”

  “I’ll damned well make it large enough. I have a wedding to attend.” Max drew his boot in again and pounded at another stone.

  An ominous cracking warned the wall wasn’t happy.

  “Run, Lydia. This is likely to all come down. Light a lamp on the other side so we can find you.”

  “I can’t leave you, Max. I haven’t even told you I love you,” she cried. “Can I pull the stones from this side?”

  “If you love me, then for the sake of any child of mine, get the hell back to the library!” Another stone flew out of the wall.

  “That’s disgusting, Max.” The weak voice was growing stronger and another thud hit the wall.

  Lydia clasped the fabric over her abdomen. A new sensation took root, one that wasn’t lust or fear but. . . life? Throwing a despairing glance to the crumbling wall, she followed Max’s wise advice and protected the innocent. She hurried across the narrow passage and climbed up the metal rungs to the library.

  Lloyd and Marta were waiting for her. With cries of distress, they helped her out.

  Once back on her feet, Lydia hugged the loyal servants. “Fetch Max’s mother and aunt. Tell them Max is coming in through the library and may need help. They’ll know what to do.”

  She didn’t know where she found the assurance to say that. Even an hour ago she might have doubted the giddy old ladies of doing anything except wringing hands.

  But she knew better now. They held the wisdom of their Malcolm ancestors—just as Lydia did. And Max, if only he accepted it. Ancient knowledge flowed through them in the same way they inherited blue eyes or black hair.

  Now that she was safe, the servants rushed to do her bidding. The clatter of falling stone echoed across the empty shaft. Inside the inner tower, Lydia couldn’t hear what was happening in the yard. She lit a lamp and held it up in the doorway for Max to use as guide.

  “I see the light,” the weak voice cried.

  “About time,” Max answered with a distinct tone of sarcasm.

  Lydia screamed as a crash and tumble of stone sent the two men sliding from their prison into the shaft.

  Twenty-eight

  Bruised and shaken from the fall, Max reveled in the beauty of Lydia’s screams, knowing they meant that someone cared.

  He grabbed his cousin before the dolt toppled, then shouted at the light ahead. “We’re fine, my love. You’re brilliant. We may need a helping hand to haul the idiot up.
He seems to have injured himself.”

  His betrothed didn’t disapprove of his thick-headedness. She’d said she loved him. He could topple mountains with that knowledge.

  Max had never really understood what love was. He still didn’t. He just knew Lydia filled him with joy.

  Since his prim Lydia was uncharacteristically shouting some of the Latin lady’s obscenities, he thought maybe he’d unleashed the passion she’d only shown him in bed. He could live with that. She had every right to be furious with him for ruining their wedding day.

  She left the light and disappeared from view.

  For a moment, a gray shimmering phantasm hovered between him and the library. Max froze. Was that the old librarian?

  I told you, she’s more valuable than she understands, the ghost whispered. Be good to her.

  The shimmering image evaporated, exposing the iron rail in the wall. Relieved that he didn’t have to battle a ghost, Max caught a rung, but George was clinging to him like a limpet, one arm dangling uselessly at his side. Sore all over, Max couldn’t see a good way of hauling him out without help. Ghosts were bloody well useless.

  Richard appeared in the entry above. “Father! They’re forming a party to dig you out.”

  “I sent the ladies to inform them otherwise,” Lydia said in her normal pragmatic voice, returning to hold up the lantern. “Richard was at the door, and I thought him trustworthy enough to introduce to the library.”

  The library, of course. She couldn’t haul in just anyone. “Excellent thinking, my love. Rich, I think if you can grasp George’s coat just at the shoulder—watch his arm—we can guide him up. How steady are you on your feet, Cuz?”

  “Steadier than when you’re sitting on my head, Cuz,” George grumbled.

  “Your head needs sitting on if you thought we were hiding silver in a dungeon,” Max said with scorn. “I only dirtied your shirt last time. Test me again, and I’ll break both arms.”