by David Liss
Lucy continued to dwell on such things because she did not want to dwell on one thing in particular—that she would be returning to the house where she had grown up and once lived in happiness with her father and her sisters. She had been there since Martha’s marriage to Mr. Buckles, but not often, and not since her life had altered so drastically. She did not know what to expect now. She did not know what she would see or how she would feel. She did not want to go there and see her sister and the goblin she believed to be her own baby. Most of all, she did not wish to confront Mr. Buckles in front of Martha.
They had been in the coach not an hour when Lucy turned to Mr. Morrison. “What is this great heroic act that people keep attempting to mention?”
He laughed. “There’s always some threat or other, Lucy. I know this must all seem very new to you, but for me this is only one more time I must save the world from destruction.”
She looked at him to see if he made sport of her, but she could see no sign that it was so.
* * *
They arrived before noon, turning off the main road to enter the grounds, then, onto the circular drive before the old rectangular house, made of dusty and battered red brick. Lucy had thought it grand as a child, but now she saw it was a rather plain house, somewhat tired-looking. Still, it reminded her of Emily and her father, and that was enough to make her love it.
They had sent no word ahead, and Martha came running out of the house to greet them, and Lucy forced herself to stifle a cry when she looked upon her sister. She looked thinner now, and her eyes tired and lined, her skin brittle and dry. She appeared ten years older.
Lucy hugged Martha until she saw she dampened her sister’s neck with her tears.
“What has happened?” asked Martha, as she watched Mrs. Emmett and Mr. Morrison emerge from the coach. “For you to come here unannounced, and with—good lord, Mr. Morrison. It is he. I did not think you would really come.”
“We have come to see Mr. Buckles,” said Mr. Morrison. “Is he at home? We’d just like a quick chat. Nothing terribly violent.”
Martha looked to Lucy, but when her sister offered no further comment about the nature of their visit, she turned back to Mr. Morrison. “I expect him later today. I am told you must come in.” She cast her eyes down and spoke in a quiet voice. “But you must not come in. There are men who wait for you.”
“That is troubling,” said Mr. Morrison, giving every sign of being entirely untroubled. “How many?”
Martha shook her head. “They told me not to say.”
“There are three of them,” said Mrs. Emmett.
Lucy was about to ask how she could know, but saved herself the trouble. She knew there was no point. Instead she looked at Martha. “We shall have a look.”
“You mustn’t,” said Martha. “These men, they will not be gentle.”
“Neither shall I, and we shan’t make anything better out here,” said Mr. Morrison. “Come, Miss Derrick. Mrs. Emmett, please keep Lucy’s sister out of trouble.”
Martha turned toward him, and then stopped, instead fixing her tired eyes on Lucy. “Do you know what you are doing?”
“A little,” said Lucy.
Mr. Morrison raised his eyebrows and then beckoned Lucy to follow. She had seen him silly and charming and gracious and foolish and in love, but now, Lucy understood, she was seeing him for who he was. She now observed Jonas Morrison fully in his element, with a task to do, unconcerned with the odds or the dangers. This, she understood, was his true nature, and she did not wish to miss seeing it.
They stepped inside the house, and the old front hall filled Lucy with instant melancholy. Things had changed, of course—the paintings upon the walls were different, replaced with new paintings and silhouettes of both Mr. Buckles and Lady Harriett—not one of Martha, Lucy could not but notice. There had been a worn Persian rug in her father’s day, but that was gone, replaced by a new rug of garish blue and red. The statue in the corner of the second Charles was replaced by an oriental vase full of bright spring flowers. And yet, for all these changes, it was her old house, her old front hall, and the memories of those years fell upon her, heavy and warm. The wave of nostalgia felt wonderful, but it was soon enough replaced by anger. This house was never to have been hers, of course. It had been entailed to Mr. Buckles, and nothing could have changed that, but so much else had been stolen from her. Here was the house of her happiness, and it had been transformed to the seat of her misery.
Three men approached from the parlor. They looked to Lucy like soldiers or laborers, dressed up like country gentlemen in trousers and plain waistcoats. They were all of them broad in the shoulder and thick in the arms, with bulging necks and the sort of heavy faces that such muscular men often possess.
One of them stepped forward. “Jonas Morrison. They said you’d be foolish enough to come here, and I’m glad you did, for me and the lads was getting restless. Now, let’s see your hands up high, so I know you don’t mean no tricks.”
Lucy took a step back, but Mr. Morrison did nothing other than raise his empty hands to shoulder height and smile amiably at the men. “Nothing in my hands,” he said, as though about to perform one of his tricks.
And he was. Lucy understood that only an instant before it happened, and when it did happen, things moved so quickly she could not be sure she saw it all, or could believe what she did see. The brute who had spoken took a quick step toward Mr. Morrison, grinning with pleasure, one fist pulled back, ready to deliver a mighty blow, but he never had the chance. Though Mr. Morrison had demonstrated that his hands were empty, they no longer were so. In his right hand he held a cudgel, heavy and black, of about a foot in length. As the brute swung his fist, Mr. Morrison deftly stepped to one side, and struck the man in the side of his head, quick, hard, decisive. The brute toppled liked a felled tree.
With a quick and easy gesture, Mr. Morrison tossed the cudgel to his left hand, and now in his right hand appeared a piece of chalk, snatched as if from the air itself as the cudgel had been. Finding an exposed spot on the floor, he quickly drew a set of symbols on it—two interlocking triangles inside a square inside a circle, and then whispered something over the symbol. It took but a second, and it was done. He then dropped the chalk and made manifest a second cudgel. He rose to face the two remaining brutes who were now upon him.
One lunged, and Morrison struck him upon either side of the head simultaneously, causing the man to stagger backwards and collapse. The remaining man pulled from his pockets two pistols, which he held in each hand.
“I’ll not let you get close enough to use those,” he said.
Morrison dropped a cudgel down his sleeve and took Lucy’s hand. His skin was cool and dry, as though his efforts had cost him nothing. She felt his pulse in his hand, and it was calm and regular.
“I see we’ve upset you,” said Mr. Morrison. “We’ll just be on our way.” He began to back up toward the door, pulling Lucy with him.
“You’re not going anywhere,” said the brute. “Stand still.”
“Oh, you won’t shoot and risk hitting the lady, will you?” asked Mr. Morrison, continuing his slow retreat.
“If you don’t stop moving, I’ll shoot the lady first,” answered the man as he advanced, just as slowly, clearly unwilling to close distance between them. As he finished speaking, Morrison stopped and so did he.
Morrison smiled and cast his eyes to the floor, where the brute stood upon the symbol he’d drawn in chalk. “Oh, dear,” Morrison said. “That’s not good.”
“What do you mean?” said the brute, though he already began to appear distressed. A trickle of blood began to flow from his nose, and his eyes were so bloodshot as to be almost entirely red. “What do you mean?” he said again, and this time a trickle of blood fell from the corner of his mouth. Then he fell to the floor.
Mr. Morrison let go of Lucy’s hand and went to check on the men, feeling the pulses in their necks, lifting their eyelids. “We have two hours, at least.”
Martha came into the house and shrieked. Mrs. Emmett took her hand to steady her.
“I do apologize for the mess,” said Mr. Morrison. “Let us leave them for your husband to tend to, shall we? In the meantime, your sister and I have business.”
“But those men might die here,” said Martha.
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Emmett. “Those two right there shall hang within the year, and that one with the fair hair, he shall choke to death upon his own vomit. He drinks to excess, you know.”
Martha stood with a hand over her mouth. “What is all this about?” she asked. Her voice was distant and detached. “Why were these men here? Lucy, I do not understand. I don’t understand anything, and I am so afraid.”
Lucy took her sister’s arm. “Martha, you must trust me. You must have faith that I do what I must and what is right. Now, are father’s old books in the library yet?”
“Yes, of course.” Martha looked away from the bondmen. “Father’s books and many of Mr. Buckles’s too.”
“May we look through them?”
Martha nodded. “Yes. I suppose. I mean, I cannot say.”
Martha gave every sign of swooning, so Lucy took her hands. “I know all of this is strange to you. It is strange to me too. Soon, I think, everything will be different, and better. It is what I hope. For now there is much I must do, and I cannot speak of it. I ask only that you trust me.”
Martha began to tear up once more. “You are so altered, Lucy. I hardly know you.”
“These years since father died have been hard on all of us. It must change us.”
Martha nodded. “Yes, we must all change, but we do not all change for the better. We do not all become stronger. I have diminished and you have become… I don’t know how to say it. You have become who you were always meant to be.”
Lucy hugged her once more, and as they all turned their backs upon the bondmen Lucy, Mr. Morrison, and Mrs. Emmett followed Martha to the library.
* * *
When they reached the closed door of the library, Mr. Morrison put up a hand before Lucy. “A moment,” he said. He opened the door, and proceeded to run his hand along the doorjamb, moving slowly, as if feeling for something underneath the wood. He did this several times, his face screwed up in concentration, and then he gave a quick nod to himself.
Reaching into the pocket of his coat, he removed a penknife and began to dig into the wood in a spot at about the height of his shoulder. Martha appeared horrified, and he turned to smile at her, and then went back to his work. Finally, he found something embedded in the wood. It was a small pouch, made of stained white linen, about the size of a grape, and—like Byron’s curse—tied with some kind of hair.
Mr. Morrison sniffed at the bag. “Dried spiders, mixed with the ash of unhatched goose egg, if I’m not mistaken. Powerful stuff, designed to interfere with your concentration.” He strode into the library and tossed the pouch in the fire. “But that’s all behind us. Apologies about the door, Mrs. Buckles.”
“How did you know that was there?” Martha asked.
“Lucky guess,” he said, smiling quite happily.
Martha looked at the damage to the door, then at Mr. Morrison, then at Lucy. Apparently she decided there was nothing to be gained by further comments. Instead, she offered them refreshment, which they refused.
“We only need some time,” Lucy said.
In the distance they heard the shrill wail of an angry infant. At least it would sound like an infant to Martha, and perhaps to Mr. Morrison. She did not know.
“I hardly even hear it any longer,” Martha said in response to the unasked question. “I have hired a wet nurse, you know. I hate that I have, but I cannot any longer endure it. My own daughter. I suppose that makes me a horrid mother, but I feared I must lose my mind, but she is so altered.”
“You are a wonderful mother,” said Lucy. “You can never doubt that.”
Martha glanced over at Mrs. Emmett who was standing near the fire, examining the cut pages of a book with her index finger, and humming softly to herself. “Perhaps your woman would care to wait in the servant’s quarters.”
“No,” said Mrs. Emmett. “Not a bit of it. Run along now, girl.”
Martha stood with her mouth open.
“She is odd,” said Lucy softly, “but harmless. We will keep her here.”
Martha nodded and left the library, closing the door behind her.
They were alone. Lucy turned to Mr. Morrison. “How did you do those things—make your cudgels and chalk appear out of nothingness, and that symbol you drew upon the floor? I must know.”
He gestured vaguely. “The cudgels and chalk were but a bit of theater, nothing more than the same sort of misdirection I use to pull eggs out of ears or make coins vanish. I have found that combining my technique with a bit of spectacle gives me but one more advantage in combat. And as for the symbol, well, that’s very dark magic, soul-blackening stuff. I don’t recommend using it, and I only trifle with that sort of thing when the stakes are unusually high.”
“And what is at stake here?” asked Lucy.
Mr. Morrison looked at her directly. “You are.”
She could not bear to hold his gaze, so she began to walk the room, bright and well lit, looking at the tall shelves of books—thick folios, tiny sixteenmos, and everything in between. She ran her fingers along the spines, thinking that this one or that had been a book she had seen in the hands of her father as he sat in that red velvet chair by the window, his glasses perched on his nose, reading away the long afternoon, oblivious to the commotion in the house around him.
Lucy closed her eyes and quieted herself, trying to feel if there were pages in the room, and at once she felt their closeness. Indeed, they were in the library, she had no doubt of it, but she could not tell where, and she did not know how to sort through all the books to find them.
“Mrs. Emmett,” Lucy asked, “can you, by any chance, detect the pages?”
“Me? They are yours, not mine.” She continued her strange humming.
Lucy looked at Mr. Morrison. “Were you ever with my father here in this library?”
“Yes, of course. Many times.”
“Then you must see what I see,” said Lucy. “I did not come in here again after I moved away. When I visited, I avoided the room, for it reminded me too much of him, but here, all around us, is the evidence.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Morrison, as he walked about the room, looking at the various books. “It was said that he had to sell his library to pay his debts, but here is the library, right before us. Either Mr. Buckles bought it himself or bought it back or…” He did not choose to finish.
“He never sold it nor paid for any of it,” said Lucy.
“Of course,” said Mr. Morrison. “He is in possession of your father’s books, but they do not belong to him. This explains why everything comes back to you. Mrs. Emmett—she said as much just a moment ago. I almost didn’t hear it, but now I understand why you are at the center of everything.”
32
LUCY SAT AT A WRITING TABLE, AND MR. MORRISON SAT NEXT TO her. “I’ve long suspected, but been unable to prove, that Mr. Buckles defrauded you of your inheritance. Of course, I wondered why he would trouble to do so. He was to inherit the house, and after he married Martha he would receive half of your father’s wealth. The amount he could gain through fraud could hardly be worth the risk of discovery—not when his future was secure and his patronage from Lady Harriett left him without want.”
“He wanted the books,” said Lucy, who saw it as well.
“Your dealings with your father changed in that last year. That is why he left you what you see around us—his library. These are your books, Lucy. Mr. Buckles cared nothing of the money he stole from you. Perhaps he took it because he could or because he believed you would be less dangerous if you were even more impoverished, but in the end it was but a distraction. What he wanted was these books.”
She could hear Mary
’s voice in her head. The Mutus Liber is strongest in the hands of the person to whom it belongs.
“It is mine,” said Lucy. “The book was mine all along. They took it from me, and they tore it to pieces, but they dared not destroy it.”
“They did not take it apart,” said Mr. Morrison. “Your father ordered it done, and I believe he gave the task to the only person he trusted to take the book for herself.”
Lucy nodded. “Of course. Emily. She went to Cardiff shortly before she died, and you went there looking for the book. It was Emily who disassembled the book, to keep it safe, and only she knew where the pieces were.”
“I believe so,” said Mr. Morrison. “But the pages themselves have power. You have discovered that, I think. They contain information for those who know how to read them or are sensitive to them, and so they can be sensed. Some of the pages remain where Emily left them, others have been discovered and changed hands several times.”
“All this time, I have been following in my sister’s footsteps,” said Lucy.
Mr. Morrison nodded. “You see now why Lady Harriett wanted you to marry Mr. Olson. Your property would become his. The book would no longer belong to you. Lady Harriett wanted desperately for you to marry him before all the pages were recovered, because no one wanted the book reassembled while you still owned it.”
“Almost no one,” said Lucy very quietly, for Mary dared. She alone dared to urge Lucy to assemble the book that contained the secret of unmaking her.
Mr. Morrison turned away. “Almost no one.”
Lucy had to know. She swallowed and forged ahead before she lost the nerve to ask. “If you love her, why does it matter? She left, but she returned, so why are you apart from each other? Why does she not use your name?”