by David Liss
Lucy was nervous to the point of shaking as she and Mr. Blake were shown into the sitting room. A middle-aged woman of no discernible expression informed them that Mr. Morrison was engaged, but he would be with them when he became available. No doubt he would make Lucy wait longer than necessary. He would wish to punish her, to show that he was not at her disposal, and perhaps even to postpone the unpleasantness of their conversation.
The woman showed them to a pleasant room to endure this waiting. It caught much of the afternoon light, and there were two bookcases filled with innocuous novels, volumes of poetry—mostly of the last century—and some popular history. Upon the walls were paintings of nondescript gentlemen, a landscape of a boy leading a horse across a river, and a ship sailing toward a Mediterranean-looking port. The furnishings were comfortable but unadorned. It was, in short, a room designed to give the impression that Mr. Morrison was a man of mundane taste and an utter lack of imagination.
Mr. Blake took a few moments to examine the contents of one of the bookshelves, and finally settled upon a volume of Milton, which he brought to a chair by the window. He gave every impression of wishing to make himself invisible.
Lucy paced. She attempted to find a book to look at, but as the titles could not hold her attention, she very much doubted an open book would serve as a better distraction. After waiting for half an hour, Lucy heard footsteps outside the door, and when they passed without entering, she breathed a sigh of relief. She would have preferred to wait in that room indefinitely than to start the conversation she came to have. When Mr. Morrison did, after perhaps an hour, enter the room, he appeared flustered and hurried. His hair was messy, as though windblown, and his cravat was soiled, suggesting he had not found time to refresh himself since returning from a journey. Perhaps it was her feelings of guilt for how she had used him, and perhaps it was Mrs. Emmett’s revelation that he and her father had been Rosicrucians together, but for the first time since he had appeared at the Nottingham assembly, Lucy did not feel revulsion when she looked at him.
Mr. Blake rose, and Lucy made the necessary introductions between the two men.
“Mr. Blake,” said Mr. Morrison. “You are very good to look after Miss Derrick.”
“And you, sir,” replied Mr. Blake. “Though it is not well known, your service to this country in the matter of—”
Mr. Morrison clapped the old engraver upon his back. “Those sorts of things are not meant to be generally known. Just as the world does not generally know of your particular talents, though they have come to the attention of my order. I hope you will not object if we call upon you from time to time for some small service.”
“So long as the service is just,” said Mr. Blake.
“Of course. I would not ask otherwise.” He now turned to Lucy. “You must tell me what you want,” he intoned. His face was stony, his eyes distant.
Lucy had not precisely rehearsed what she was going to say, but she knew what points she wished to make. Now that he was here, she could not think of any of them. She could not remember the logic of her arguments or the turns of phrase that, when uttered in her mind, sounded eloquent and masterful, certainly convincing. She rose, clasped her hands together, and forced herself to speak while trying very hard not to weep.
“Mr. Morrison, I cannot blame you for hating me. I cannot, but I beg you to listen to me, to attempt to hear my words without color or prejudice of the wrong I have done you.”
He shook his head. “No, Miss Derrick. You misunderstand me. I mean to say that you must tell me what you want, and I shall do my best for you.”
Lucy was too stunned to answer.
“You are a young lady with no money and no influence,” Mr. Morrison continued. “You have been drawn into events of national and historical significance against your will, and your sister and her child have been made to suffer. I do not like being used as you used me, and my anger when I first discovered it stemmed in no small part from simple humiliation. Nevertheless, I cannot blame you for using what tools you had at your disposal. This is your war as well as mine, and I admire you for your boldness, though I fell victim to it.”
Lucy could have endured his harsh words and held her tears in check, but this was more than she could withstand. The tears fell now freely, and though she removed a handkerchief to wipe them away, she made no other effort to stop them.
Mr. Blake, meanwhile, retreated back to his chair and his volume of Milton. Lucy and Mr. Morrison moved to the far corner of the room. This would have to do for privacy.
“I had not expected such kindness,” she said in a very quiet voice.
“I gave you no reason to expect it,” he said. “For that I am sorry. Now I shall offer you what assistance I can.”
“But why?” Lucy asked. Her tears began to abate, though the effect of his words still reverberated through her. The sense of palpable, overwhelming gratitude was dizzying. “Why would you help me? You must know that we are on different sides of this conflict. I must side with—with Ludd—if I am to save my sister’s child.”
“No,” he said. “Mr. Perceval was a good man, and he led the order as he thought best, but he was wrong in his truce with Lady Harriett. We were prepared to sacrifice too much for expedience, but no longer. The new head of the order believes that there is another way, a compromise position.”
“Who is this man?”
“I am he,” said Mr. Morrison. “The matter has just now been put to a vote, and I have been elected to this position, for which I am unworthy. It is unusual that one as young as myself would be offered this post, but I have an advantage none of the others could claim.”
“And what is that?”
“My friendship with you.”
Lucy could not imagine why that should prove an advantage, but even more shocking was his characterization of what stood between them as friendship.
“What do I …?” Lucy did not know how to finish the question.
“You have the pages,” he said with a half smile. “You had me turn my own pages over to you. Surely you did not think I would not discover your little mesmeric trick, deft though it was. And, again, I do not blame you. You did what you believed right, and now we believe it right as well.”
“I cannot think that your order cares only to save my niece,” said Lucy.
“We care whenever there is an innocent in harm’s way and we are in a position to save him. But our interests are now aligned, I believe. Ludd and Lady Harriett are poised each to destroy the other, but we believe that an absolute victory of the old way or the new need not happen. We believe that a compromise position that will place a check on the new mechanical developments and allow magic to survive is our best option. And we believe you are the key to that approach.”
“In what way?” Lucy asked, not much liking this new burden.
He shook his head. “That is the central mystery, isn’t it? I can tell you that since all of this has begun, Lady Harriett, my order, and”—here he paused—“and Mary Crawford have all understood your centrality. Accordingly, I place myself at your disposal.”
“At my disposal how?” asked Lucy, staring at Mr. Morrison as though he were a stranger she had never seen before, dressed in some curious foreign costume.
“At your disposal to go where you wish and do what you say. I am here to obey your commands, Miss Derrick.”
Lucy continued to stare at him for some minutes, blinking rapidly as she considered his words. “Then let us go to Kent. I believe there is a set of pages in the hands of my sister’s husband, Mr. Buckles.”
“Then we shall go fetch them,” he said.
“There is something else.” Lucy looked out the window as she spoke, unwilling to gaze upon his expression when he heard what she had to say. “Was my father, like you, a Rosicrucian? I would know, if you do not mind, the story of my own life.”
* * *
Mr. Morrison sat across from her, slumped forward, his hands dangling between his knees. He appeared utter
ly defeated by her request. He glanced over at Mr. Blake, and observed that the old engraver sat with the book on his lap, his mouth open, conveniently asleep.
Mr. Morrison spoke in quiet tones. “Your father wished it all kept from you, and after everything that happened, it never seemed the proper moment to reveal those secrets. I suppose it is the right moment now. Yes, your father was a member of the order. He led the order when I joined. He and I were very close. I thought of him as a father.”
Lucy hardly knew how to understand this. “But you chose to corrupt his daughter?”
Mr. Morrison looked away, and then rose, walked to the window, where he adjusted the curtains, and then returned to his seat. “Your father always knew you were special. There were certain card and crystal readings around the time of your birth that alarmed him, and he believed you needed to be sheltered from your own natural talents, which he believed would be too conspicuous. This moment of transition we live in has been long coming, and your father suspected if you were to practice, dark forces would seek you out. That is why he kept you at a distance before Emily died—not because he did not love you, but because he wished to protect you. He wanted that you might live a life free of danger.”
“Then why did you attempt to convince me to run off with you?”
Mr. Morrison let out a long sigh. He shook his head and looked away, and then down. “Your father and I had a disagreement. We received intelligence that there would be an attempt upon your life, but he did not believe it, or he did not believe it was something from which he could not protect you. He was not careless with his daughters—you must never think that—but just the opposite. He was so careful, he believed such wards and spells and precautions that he had taken were impregnable. I was less optimistic. I believed there was danger, particularly to you, for Emily could take care of herself.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lucy, hearing her voice catch.
“You must know what I mean. Emily practiced. She was very skillful. Your father taught her everything he knew, and she was widely regarded as something of a prodigy, though she lacked the raw talent he believed you to possess.”
Lucy could not think of what there was to say. Her father had been a hermeticist, a Rosicrucian, and her sister his apprentice. They had studied magic together, the two of them, locked in his study, as Lucy was later to do—or begin to do. All those books he had her read, the philosophers, the languages, the botany. He had been laying the groundwork for what Lucy would later become. It was all so clear now.
“As the time drew closer,” Mr. Morrison continued, “as the hour of danger approached, I became convinced that you would die if you did not leave. I had to get you away, if only for a little while, until the danger passed.”
Lucy looked at him. His eyes were cast down, his face was red.
“And so you pretended to love me?”
“I needed you to go with me,” he said. “If I told you a tale of magic and spells and curses, you would have laughed at me. I needed you to want to go.”
“Then, what you did—you were not being cruel. All this time I have spent hating you, thinking you horrible, and you said nothing. Why did you say nothing?” Lucy felt herself growing angry again. He had let her hate him when she should have regarded him as her friend. She hardly knew where her anger belonged, but it balled up inside her, threatening to explode.
“Your father never forgave himself for being wrong, but he was, and your sister paid the price for it. The curse meant for you found her, and it killed her.”
Lucy sat still and silent, hearing nothing but the rushing of blood in her ears. It came on her, wave after wave, grief and rage and anger and loathing for herself. “Emily died, when it should have been me.”
“No!” Mr. Morrison jumped to his feet. “No, damn it. Can you not understand? Your father did not want you to know, not because he feared you would blame him. He blamed himself sufficiently that he needed no aid. He never wanted you to know because he feared you would blame yourself. He feared you would see it in that absurd way. You did not know, and you could have done nothing. It should not have been you. It should not have been either of you. She was murdered and it is no one’s fault but the murderer’s.” When Lucy said nothing, he sat down again and took her hands in both of his. “Can you not see that?”
She nodded. “Who was it? Who killed my sister?”
“The leader of the revenants.”
It was Lucy’s turn to rise to her feet. “Lady Harriett killed my sister, and you struck a deal with her?”
He shook his head. “Lady Harriett was not then leader. She took that post after the death of her husband, Sir Reginald. He had led them for centuries before he died. Before I killed him.”
“You?” said Lucy, sitting slowly.
“Out of love for your father, I did what needed doing. They had done the unpardonable, and a message had to be sent. I destroyed him.”
“Then you know how to kill them.”
“My order has known for a long time, and that knowledge had led to our truce.”
“You must tell me,” whispered Lucy.
“I cannot. I have taken an oath to guard the secret. It is a simple thing, a mixture of common elements, but the nature of these elements is something I cannot reveal.”
Lucy’s understanding came into such sharp focus, it was like a slap across her face. “Gold, mercury, and sulfur,” she said.
Mr. Morrison’s eyes went wide. He said nothing, but he did not have to. His closely guarded secret was now Lucy’s.
Lucy kept moving her hands, not quite sure what to do with them, putting them on her knees, winding them together, stroking her chin. There was so much to think about. Mr. Morrison had not been an unrepentant rake all those years ago. He had tried to help her, the only way he could think of. Her father had not suddenly decided he loved her, but he had loved her all along, wanting only to protect her from the terrible dangers posed by her own nature. He had made an error, a terrible, catastrophic error, and Emily had paid the price. So much had gone wrong, and now it was Lucy’s lot to set it right. Everything that she had ever done, or that had been done to her, had happened along the path—the crooked, winding, back-turning path—to her destiny.
“And what of Mary Crawford?” asked Lucy, with some trepidation. She did not wish to alarm Mr. Morrison by again mentioning her name, but she had to know. “Is she my friend? Can I depend upon her?”
“No,” Mr. Morrison said, his face utterly without expression, his voice entirely flat. “She is dead, and she is no one’s friend. She lies. Her kind always lies, Lucy. Never forget it.”
“And what has she lied to me about?”
Mr. Morrison sighed. “I hardly know what she told you, so I cannot inventory it all, but if she sent you to look for the pages of the Mutus Liber, I suspect she neglected to mention that she, herself, knows the location of two of the remaining pages.”
Lucy was on her feet. “What? That cannot be. She would have told me.”
“Only if she wished you to know. You think she is helping you? She is using you. No more.”
“How can you know that she had them?”
“I can’t,” he admitted. “Not for certain, but my order had long suspected that two of them were in her hands.”
Lucy walked to the window and peered out, taking in none of what she saw. She did not know if Mr. Morrison was right. She supposed it hardly mattered now. There was but one course, and she would follow it.
“My niece awaits,” she said. “And so does everything else, I suppose. Mr. Morrison, will you take me to what was once my father’s house? Will you take me to Harrington?”
Mr. Morrison rose and bowed. “You need not ask. You need only command. But you must know that Lady Harriett will suspect that Mr. Perceval’s death means the end of our agreement. She and her kind will come after us. Are you prepared to face them?”
Lucy thought of her sister Emily, whom she had loved so much. She thought of her niece, th
e child who bore her sister’s name. “Mr. Morrison, I am prepared to kill them.”
* * *
It was too late to leave that evening, but Lucy and Mrs. Emmett joined Mr. Morrison in his coach at first light. Mr. Blake awoke early to see Lucy out, and he appeared uncommonly pleased that she was going—not because he wished to be rid of her, but because he sensed that she was doing what she must do.
“Your father must be very proud of you,” he told her. “I have but known you a little, and I certainly am.” He thrust some papers into her hands. “You must take these.”
Lucy looked at the pages. They were engravings like the engravings of the Mutus Liber, full of similar imagery. Even the pages were old, like the pages of the true book, but these were not true pages. They felt light in Lucy’s hand, like dry leaves.
“What are they?”
“They are pages made in the likeness of your own book. I have been practicing against the day that I must make the true pages, even if that day is hundreds of years in the past.” He smiled at her. “It is how I live my life.”
“Thank you, Mr. Blake.”
“They are but a reminder,” he told her, “that we are all works in progress. Even at my age, I strive to improve. You must be kind to yourself, my dear girl.”
He took her hand and smiled upon her, and then led her to the coach where Mr. Morrison and Mrs. Emmett already awaited them.
When Lucy climbed in, she saw that Mr. Morrison found Mrs. Emmett puzzling. He looked at her and then, realizing he was being rude, looked away, only to sneak glances out of the corner of his eye. As the coach began to roll, he looked at Lucy and, in the dim light, raised his eyebrows questioningly. Lucy answered with a shrug, perhaps not the most reassuring answer as they embarked upon a dangerous mission, accompanied by a curious serving woman.
For much of the morning they rode in silence, Lucy only half awake, watching the landscape pass before her, thinking of everything she’d like to ask Mr. Morrison, but daring to ask none of it. More than anything, she wanted to ask about Mary, but she had seen the look of heartbreak upon his face at the mention of that name, and she would not inflict that upon him. And yet, after everything they’d discussed, one question remained above all else. If he had loved Mary as he said, and if she had loved him, then why were they not together? She had died, but she had come back. What kept them apart?