The Golden Specific

by S. E. Grove

  Theo couldn’t believe Grey would consider a fourteen-year-old girl a likely murder suspect, but apparently the possibility did not strike the detective as too far-fetched. He was a rule follower, no doubt about it. “She left in the early morning. This was always the day she had in mind for leaving,” he said pointedly. “I just didn’t think she would go.”

  “These circumstances will need to be examined further,” Grey said, his expression grim. “When will Miss Tims return?”

  “Friends of ours are meeting her in Seville at the end of the month,” Theo said.

  Mrs. Clay looked up hopefully. “Are they?”

  “She should come back with them in July.”

  Grey shook his head. “That is much too late for my purposes.” He made a brief note. “I will need to see your identity papers.”

  Theo rose from his chair. “They’re just upstairs.”

  Grey eyed him placidly. “You should know better, young man. I was saying the same to Mrs. Clay. As foreigners, you would be well-advised to carry your papers with you always.”

  Theo gave him an easy grin. “What a good idea. It never occurred to me.” He left the kitchen and returned a minute later with his papers.

  Grey looked them over. Then he took Theo’s identity papers and Mrs. Clay’s, which lay on the table, and tucked them into his jacket. “I will keep these for the time being.”

  “That will make it tough to carry them around with me,” Theo said with a wry smile.

  “Not at all,” Grey replied calmly. “You and Mrs. Clay will be confined to 34 East Ending Street for the duration of this investigation.”

  “What?” she exclaimed. “But we’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “Perhaps not,” conceded Grey. “And yet this is a very serious crime, and it took place in this house. No one is above suspicion. Especially foreigners.”

  There was a long silence.

  “We aren’t foreigners,” Theo said quietly. “We live here now.”

  Grey rose from his chair, ignoring the comment. “There will be officers at the side door and front door at all times.”

  Mrs. Clay put her face in her handkerchief and filled it with quiet sobs. Theo fixed Grey with a cold stare. “It will be difficult to eat if we can’t leave the house for groceries.”

  “An officer will accompany you for essential errands. Naturally, if you are found alone beyond the confines of the house, it will be difficult to interpret it as anything other than willful uncooperativeness. And it will be necessary to arrest you.”

  “This isn’t right,” Mrs. Clay said feebly.

  “What isn’t right, madam, is the murder of a prime minister. Bear that in mind as you consider what is right and what is wrong.”

  17

  Verity’s Helm

  —1892, June—

  None know whence the Dark Age emerged. It offers a window onto a distant past too terrible to contemplate. Like a fatal leech on the fair skin of the States, it clings tenaciously to the peninsula. Only the labors of the Orders, particularly the Order of the Golden Cross, keep the dangers of the Dark Age at bay.

  —From Fulgencio Esparragosa’s

  Complete and Authoritative History of the Papal States

  SOPHIA AGONIZED OVER whether she should demand that the Verity return her to Boston Harbor. She had no notion of how difficult it would be nor how kindly the captain would respond. And then there was Theo’s absence. Why had he not appeared? What could have stopped him? She felt injured by his betrayal one moment and worried on his behalf the next. Various possibilities occurred to her, none of them satisfying: Miles had asked for his company north into the snows, and Theo had decided to go; Shadrack had found her note and extracted an explanation; some terrible accident had befallen him on the way to the harbor. They all seemed possible and impossible, and her mind would not settle. One day she felt certain he had let her down; the next she felt just as certain he never willingly would have.

  Nor could she fathom Remorse’s deception. For several days, as she learned the rhythm of the Verity and its passengers, she contemplated her conversations with the archivist, aghast at her own inadequate sense of judgment. How could I have trusted her so easily? What was I thinking? This is what comes of lying to Shadrack. And lying at the archive. She went over and over the decisions she had made. I should never have gone to the archive alone. I should have told Shadrack about the pamphlet. I should have waited for Theo at the harbor. I should have wondered why Remorse wasn’t aboard. I should have wondered why she was helping me. Sophia could see now, in hindsight, that her eagerness to find the diary and her willingness to trust the signs given by the Fates had made her rash and impulsive, qualities she sometimes admired in others but could not live with in herself.

  With time, her storm of vexation subsided. She was able to look past the humiliation, and she gradually reconciled herself to the circumstances. However foolish the route she had taken to reach it, the diary was still worth searching for. More—it was worth any number of humiliations. I would do it all again if it meant getting the diary, Sophia said to herself resolutely. And so she focused on what lay ahead. Though she had no conception of why or how, someone who could lead her to Minna’s diary was going to meet her in Seville. She reminded herself of this as she clutched her spool of silver thread and hoped, fiercely, that even this misstep was part of the plan. And if I’m being fooled again, she thought, at least I know I can count on Burr and Calixta to meet me there in July.

  Captain Ponder, just as Remorse had promised, was a very able captain. Smooth sailing left Sophia to worry about her own journey, rather than the Verity’s. The Nihilismians politely ignored her. It became clear that they considered her a recent convert, one who had not yet learned to fully school her demeanor and was thereby prone to unseemly displays of emotion. They gave her a wide berth.

  Sophia had no difficulty politely ignoring them back. For the first few days, she was too busy battling the seasickness and her dismay. When she grew tired of rebuking herself and decided to follow the path set before her, she turned her attention to the beaded map, which had remained untouched in her pack.

  With a sigh, Sophia unrolled the beaded map and set it on the little desk of her cabin. Placing her fingers on the linen sent her into the dry, changeless, and stationary landscape of the Papal States. To her surprise, the seasickness vanished. From then on, she took refuge in the barren land for long hours of the day, and sometimes when she emerged from it, the sense of solidity stayed with her long enough to keep the nausea at bay a short while.

  Sophia slipped into a routine. She fell asleep at night in the landscape of the beaded map, where the dark night sky, heavy with stars, was wonderfully still. She awoke with a lurching stomach at dawn. She retreated into the map again for an hour to calm herself before joining the Nihilismians at breakfast. In the morning, she read Esparragosa. After lunch, she wrote in her notebook and sat on the deck if the weather was fair. After dinner, she withdrew into the beaded map again, letting the brilliant sunsets remind her that somewhere, beyond the turbulent waters, lay a land where she would find firm footing.

  The map was limitless. She could spend years drifting through its landscapes. But Esparragosa was finite, and she found herself rereading him by the end of the first week. Captain Ponder surprised her on the eighth day of the journey by arriving in her cabin with a pile of books. “I cannot take credit for noticing,” he said quietly, “but another passenger observed that you were wanting in reading material. You will find my cabin well stocked, and you should feel welcome to borrow from it when you are finished with these.”

  He had brought her other histories of the Papal States. One recounted the history of the plague. Another described the Order of the Golden Cross. A third, entirely on the Dark Age, was written by none other than Fulgencio Esparragosa. Sophia dove into them with pleasure, deeply grateful to the Nihilis
mians for their consideration—however careful they might be to conceal it.

  She had heard of the Dark Age, but even among Shadrack’s wide circle of explorers, none had traveled to it. “To the inhabitants of the Papal States,” Esparragosa’s volume began, “the Dark Age is both familiar and strange.”

  It is familiar because we all live in its shadow, and strange because however proximate it is, we do not know it well. Soon after the Disruption, the Papacy forbade travel into the Dark Age. Its borders are patrolled by the Order of the Golden Cross. And yet the Order cannot watch the entire perimeter at every moment, and people continually pass in—to their great peril. The Spines or Espinas, with their iridescent black trunks and branches, bear thorns like teeth on every limb. Their bite, occasioned by even a slight breeze, is fatal. The Fourwing is the avian sister to the Spine: its iridescent black feathers catch and reflect the sun. Its sharp talons and beak, a more muted black, are as ferocious as its yellow eye. Fully as tall as a man, the Fourwing will devour a flock of sheep, chase away the horses, and drive an entire family from its home to lay eggs. They are now rarer, having been hunted indefatigably by the Orders in the early decades. And yet none of these horrors is so deadly as the Plague, lapena, which has already taken so many lives.

  The volume you have in your hands recounts the history of the Dark Age as it is known to cartologers today, though you must recognize, dear reader, that this knowledge is riddled with holes and embellished with fictions. Only a cartological expedition into the Dark Age, sent for the purposes of exploration, will result in a true history.

  Sophia smiled wistfully to herself, recognizing in Esparragosa’s writing the same spirit of exploration that motivated Shadrack. And so, even on a ship full of strangers, she felt rather more at home.

  • • •

  ON THE SECOND week of the journey, Sophia saw Minna again. Her absence had been disheartening, but not surprising. Without understanding what the specter was or how it appeared, Sophia had assumed it remained earthbound. She was wrong.

  It happened at dusk, when Sophia emerged from reading the beaded map and found that she felt well enough to go out on deck. She walked along it slowly, taking deep breaths and feeling grateful for her settled stomach. The moon, heavy and yellow, hung low in the cloudless sky.

  She saw a shape several paces away. At first, she thought it was one of the Nihilismians, taking the night air as she was. Then she realized the figure was faintly luminous, as if touched by the moonlight. She stopped. The figure turned and approached, though its face was still indecipherable. Then it spoke, and Sophia felt a jolt of recognition as the voice reached her. “Do not regret those you leave behind.” Sophia started and took a step backward. “Do not regret those you leave behind.”

  “How are you here?” Sophia asked, her voice shaking.

  “Do not regret those you leave behind.”

  “Why not?” she whispered.

  “Miss Tims?” A stern voice called her to attention, and she turned to find Captain Ponder standing in a nearby doorway. “Is everything well?”

  Sophia looked back at Minna, but she was gone. She shook her head, dazed. “I thought I saw something. Someone.”

  Captain Ponder observed her for a moment. “I have been to Seville every year for the last decade, and word has reached me of a new peril emerging from the Dark Age.”

  “What is it?” Sophia asked, her throat tight.

  “Wraiths that appear from among the spines. They lure the living away, into the dark forest, never to be seen again.”

  Sophia said nothing.

  “The Papal States are not as they should be, as they were in the Age of Verity.” He paused. “Dangerous illusions abound. You know this better than most: ‘Every vision around you is false, every object an illusion, every sentiment as false as a dream.’”

  “Truth of Amitto,” Sophia said reflexively. But her thoughts rebelled. She could not believe that the beloved figure that had guided her this far was a terrible wraith from the Dark Age. It was impossible. “Good night, Captain Ponder.” She turned her back on the captain and slowly made her way back to cabin 7.

  18

  The Road to Ausentinia

  March 15, 1881

  Rubio died on the sixth day, and Ildefonso and El Sapo died on the seventh. Whatever food and water Bronson and I did not consume remained untouched, and our jailers observed these signs without comment. For several days the fear that we, too, would fall ill paralyzed us. I think at times the fear itself was enough to make me lose my appetite. Watching three grown men kill themselves slowly, passing out of the world as if they had never belonged to it, was horrifying.

  As the days wore on, Bronson and I realized that we remained, somehow, unaffected. I was frightened and disheartened, but I still wanted to live. Every morning when I awoke I searched Bronson’s face with apprehension, terrified that I would find there the weary indifference that marked the first signs of the plague. But every morning he bore an anxious concern that mirrored mine. The desperate wish to escape, to flee that plagued continent, to return to our dearest Sophia, shone brightly in his eyes.

  We had pressed the button on Wren’s watch on the first day and every day since, but nothing came of it. I still held out hope that he might arrive—with a ship like the Roost, anything was possible. But perhaps my hope was naive.

  Even more naive was our hope that resisting the plague would be our deliverance. Surely they could not keep us quarantined if we were not ill? But on the eighth day, after the sheriff’s men in golden masks had carried away the corpses and burned them on the plain beside the jail, we discovered our error.

  We were visited by the sheriff and two other men: a scribe in black robes with a portable desk who wrote down every word of our long exchange, and a small, plump man in red and white robes. Like the sheriff’s men, he wore a beaked mask made out of pounded gold and a magnificent golden cross on a gold chain across his chest. From the sheriff’s explanation, I understood the second man to be Murtea’s priest. Communicating through the barred window, the priest asked us a series of questions, all the while clasping his pudgy, rather dirty hands reverently over his belly.

  “State your names and place of origin.”

  “Minna and Bronson Tims of Boston in New Occident.”

  “Why does your husband not answer?” the priest asked. I could not make out his expression behind the golden mask, but the tone of disapproval was unmistakable.

  “He does not speak Castilian.”

  There was a short pause. “Very well,” the priest said, making clear that it was not. “Why have you traveled to the Papal States?”

  “We came here to find news of our friend, Bruno Casavetti, who contacted us some months ago. I believe he was here, in Murtea. Was he here? Can you tell us where he is now?”

  This caused some consternation. The three men consulted with each other, and though they spoke too rapidly and quietly for me to follow their entire conversation, I heard the name “Rosemary” and the word brujo—meaning “witch”—repeatedly.

  When the priest turned back to us, it seemed that they had already formed some conclusion, for his line of questioning changed. “By what spells or dark arts do you repel the plague?”

  I was so stunned that I could not reply. “What did he say?” Bronson asked.

  “He asked what spells we use to protect ourselves from the plague,” I said, aghast.

  “Fates above,” he murmured. “This bodes ill.”

  I turned back to the cleric. “We are astonished by your question. We do not believe in spells or dark arts. We have no more idea than you do why we did not catch the disease carried by our companions. Truly, it is entirely a mystery to us.”

  “You do not believe in the dark arts?” the priest said, his voice hard. “You deny the existence of such dangerous evil?”

  “Please,” I
said quickly, realizing my mistake, “we do not know what to believe. This illness and the means of treating it are entirely unknown to us. What I meant to say is that we have no knowledge of any spells or dark arts.”

  The priest and sheriff conferred once more, while the scribe diligently took notes. This time I understood nothing of their conversation, and when the priest faced me again, an air of dismissal evident in his every movement, I felt a terrible sense of foreboding. “Your sentence will be determined by midday tomorrow and communicated to you by the sheriff.” Without another word, he began to walk away, followed by the other two men.

  “Please!” I called after him. “Please let us go on our way and we promise never to return. We are not ill! We will cause you no harm.”

  They made no sign of having heard me, but continued without pause toward the walled village of Murtea, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake.

  The relief we had felt at escaping the plague gave way to a contained panic. Bronson spent the long afternoon trying to weaken the mortar holding the bars on the rear window, and I began writing this account with the notepaper in my pack. My thoughts turned somber. I began to feel that escape would be impossible, and that whatever dread fate had befallen Bruno would befall us, too. I did not regret that we had responded to his call for aid, but I regretted with all my heart that we had arrived so precipitously and thereby placed ourselves in peril. We might have stayed longer with Gilberto Jerez. We might have sent someone on ahead of us to inquire what had happened. We might have called upon the authority of the bishop in Seville. All the alternatives seemed, from the vantage point of the Murtea jail, wiser than the one we had chosen.

  As the afternoon darkened into dusk, Bronson abandoned his hopeless task at the window and I put down my pen. I lost track of time as I wandered down the dark pathways of what might have been, before Bronson finally recalled me to the present. We sat in the growing darkness, our hands entwined, not speaking. But our thoughts traveled together over the past, lingering on Sophia and the world we had left behind in Boston. The sun set, and our spirits sank with it.