“Will they be all right?” I asked, noting that even the feather in Agnes’s cap was wilting.
She sighed. “I’ve outlined a plan by which, if they are willing to cut back and be frugal, they should be able to manage. I’m afraid the rest is up to them. If the mother were able to be a little stronger for Helen’s sake . . .” She faltered, perhaps remembering the example my mother set.
“It’s all right,” I assured her. “I’ve learned why my mother did what she did. She may have been weak in the months before she died, but in the end . . .” My voice quivered, but I went on. “In the end she did what she did for me. She drank the laudanum to destroy the shadows, not because she had given in to them.”
Agnes’s chin trembled and I reached out to squeeze her hand. It felt strange to be comforting the indomitable Agnes Moorhen. She must have felt it, too, because she smiled ruefully. “You’ve changed up there at Blythewood, and not just your new hair,” she said, laughing. “Although I do think that it’s quite fetching on you. But what I meant is that you’ve grown stronger.”
I laughed. “Well, I didn’t have much choice, did I?” Agnes looked suddenly somber. “There’s always a choice. And I’m afraid you’re going to have to make some difficult ones in the future.” She looked around the van Beek parlor, peering behind the aspidistras as if someone—or something—might be lurking in the shadows. “There’s something I have to tell you about what happened on the ship. There was a man on board whom I recognized . . .”
“Was it Judicus van Drood?” I asked.
“How did you know?” Agnes cried, trembling at the sound of his name.
“Because he was the man in the Inverness cape who followed me and my mother.”
“But why . . . ?” Agnes’s eyes grew wide. “Wait . . . I remember when he taught at Blythewood your mother was his favorite student. There was some talk that they had formed an inappropriate relationship.”
I shuddered, recalling van Drood’s name on the chart betrothing him to my mother. Was it possible that he was my father? I pushed away the thought. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Agnes.
“Because I didn’t believe it for a minute! Evangeline Hall would never have had an improper relationship with a teacher— not even with Mr. van Drood, whom all the girls liked so much . . . although I always thought he was a bit strange. When we met him on board I was quite sorry that Mr. van Beek invited him to our table.”
“Helen’s father knew him?”
“Why yes, the families have known each other for generations. Mr. van Drood had been advising Mr. van Beek on some business matters . . . oh! I should have thought of that sooner. I wonder if van Drood’s advice led to the van Beek’s financial difficulties.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “What did van Drood talk about at dinner?”
Agnes shook her head as if trying to scatter cobwebs. “It’s all rather a blur. I always had a headache after those dinners. I thought it was from the motion of the ship, but I don’t generally get seasick, as I told Mr. Farnsworth—”
“Mr. Farnsworth! Mr. Herbert Farnsworth! The librarian of the Hawthorn School?”
“Why, yes! He sat at our table. He was quite . . .” She dimpled and colored. “Learned. We had some fascinating conversations about books.”
I quickly explained that Mr. Farnsworth had been carrying a book for me.
“Ah,” Agnes said, “that explains a few things. He carried with him a leather portmanteau strapped across his chest at all times because, he explained, he had some important documents in it that he could not risk leaving unattended . . . oh my!” Agnes turned pale. “I’ve just recalled that Mr. van Drood took quite an interest in Mr. Farnsworth.”
My mouth went dry. “What happened to Mr. Farnsworth?” I asked as gently as I could.
Agnes shook her head and bit her lip. “I don’t really know. Mr. Farnsworth and I were on the deck the night we hit the iceberg. We saw Mr. van Drood standing on the foredeck staring into the sea. Then the iceberg appeared . . . everyone was so shocked at its appearance, but not Mr. van Drood. I remember I had the strangest feeling that he had summoned it.”
I recalled the dream I’d had about the icebergs coming to life as ice giants and what Raven said about the ice giants leaving the woods and going back north. Had van Drood somehow gotten control of the ice giants? Had he lured them to the Titanic to destroy the ship?
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Chaos! I had to go find your grandmother and Mrs. van Beek and help them get into their life vests. Mrs. van Beek wanted to retrieve her jewels from the safe! Can you imagine? Mr. van Beek said he would wait for the jewels and sent us on ahead. Poor Mr. van Beek—we never saw him again! I saw Mr. Farnsworth once more. He helped us find a lifeboat with space to take us. I wanted to go back and help more people but he lifted me bodily from the deck and placed me in the boat! Then he started to give me his portmanteau—”
“He was going to give you the book!”
“Yes, but then he looked over his shoulder and changed his mind. Instead he . . .” Agnes blushed. “Well, let’s just say he gave me a very fervid good-bye. Then he was gone. I lost sight of him when the boat was lowered. That was the last time I ever saw him.”
I squeezed Agnes’s hand. “When Mr. Farnsworth looked over his shoulder, did you see what he was looking at?”
“No . . . I . . . well, now that you ask . . .” She furrowed her brow, trying to concentrate. “When I try to think about it everything gets all . . . shadowy.”
“Do you think it could have been van Drood?”
Agnes winced, as if in pain. Then she shook her head as if she were trying to clear water out of her ears.
“Yes!” she said suddenly, a look of determination replacing the fog on her face. “Yes! I don’t know why I didn’t remember earlier. That man! He was following Mr. Farnsworth even then . . . even with the ship sinking! And Mr. Farnsworth must not have given me the book because . . .” A sob burst from Agnes’s mouth.
“Because he would have pursued you for it,” I said. “And no doubt drowned you and everyone in your lifeboat for it. He lured van Drood away from you.” Back onto a sinking ship, I almost said, thinking of someone who had flown through fire to save someone. “What a brave man!”
“Yes,” Agnes said, wiping her eyes, “but I’m afraid he must have drowned in his heroic efforts. I did not see him among the survivors on the Carpathia.”
“And did you see van Drood?”
Agnes shook her head. “No . . . at least, I don’t think so . . . no, I’m sure. The only place I’ve seen that devil since is in my nightmares.”
“Then let’s hope he drowned,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster. I had a dreadful suspicion, though, that it would take more than the Titanic sinking to destroy Judicus van Drood.
39
HELEN AND I left for Blythewood the next day. Mrs. van Beek insisted that Helen go. “Your kind Miss Moorhen and her friend Mr. Greenfeder have promised to look in on me and help me make some alterations in our domestic economy. You’d only be in the way. Best you go back to school. Who knows? Maybe you’ll marry that funny Beckwith boy and support your old mother in her dotage.”
Helen blushed at the reference to Nathan and chided her mother, but I could tell that it was the reminder of Nathan that decided her. She’d had a letter from him expressing condolences for her father’s death that she must have read a dozen times on the train ride up to Rhinebeck.
“He says Louisa is making some progress. She plays games of patience most of the day, but she’s willing to play bridge with the aunts and Uncle Taddie after tea. He says he’s taking her to a sanatorium in Marienbad this summer.”
“Perhaps they’ll be able to help her,” I said, wondering if it was the same sanatorium that had been unable to restore Uncle Taddie’s mind entirely. “Does he . . . um . . . mention a boarder at Violet House?”
Helen looked at me strangely. “He did s
ay his aunts had
478 Blythewood a boarder who suddenly vanished. A clockmaker’s apprentice . . .” Her voice trailed off. The old Helen would have grilled me on my interest in a mere apprentice, but she only looked out the window, her eyes growing as vague as the mist rising off the river.
Gillie met us at the train station. He took off his cap and bowed formally to Helen to express his sorrow for her father’s death, then turned away when he saw she was struggling not to cry. She lost that struggle when Daisy greeted her on the steps of the school. We shuttled her quickly up the steps then, knowing she’d hate for the other girls to see her crying. As we unpacked Daisy kept up a constant chatter about her plans to get us through finals.
“I’ve organized all my notes and made a schedule,” she said, demonstrating a thick ledger book with color-coded flags for each subject. “Dolores and Beatrice are going to prep you for science and I’m going to quiz you on bell changes. Cam has gotten Miss Swift to agree to drop your practical in archery, seeing how Ava saved the school with that feather trick of hers, and Helen . . .”
“And poor Helen’s father died?” she asked, a bit of her customary tartness returning. “Am I to be passed out of pity?”
Daisy looked embarrassed. “Not at all. Miss Swift said she had no doubt you could shoot the tail feathers off the rest of the girls. She wants you to run the archery club next year.”
“Oh,” Helen said, abashed. Then recovering, she quipped, “Well, high time. I’ll help you practice in exchange for all the work you’ll be doing to get us through finals . . . and . . . er . . . thank you, Daisy. I can’t imagine what we’d do without you.”
Daisy beamed, dropped her ledger, then had to reorganize her colored flags.
Helen was right. We wouldn’t have been able to get through finals without Daisy’s help—or without Beatrice, Dolores, and Cam pitching in. Other girls helped, too—Alfreda Driscoll taught us a spell to help with memorization. Andalusia Beaumont lent me her lucky arrow for the practical, which I chose to take even though I’d been excused and even though my shoulders still ached when I drew the bow.
At first I thought they were all helping because of Helen losing her father, but I soon learned that my role during the Night of Shadows had spread throughout the school and I had become—at least according to Helen and Daisy—a Blythewood legend. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Some of Blythewood’s legends didn’t turn out so well.
Judicus van Drood, for instance.
I wanted to talk to Dame Beckwith about the identity of the Shadow Master, but she had gone to Europe with Louisa and Nathan and wouldn’t be back until the Fall term. By then perhaps I’d know more about what had happened to Judicus van Drood. If he had really perished on the Titanic perhaps there was no need to tell her that her old friend and colleague had been taken over by the tenebrae. Or if I did have to tell her, at least it would come after Louisa was better.
On the day the exam results were posted and we learned we had all passed, Miss Sharp threw a celebratory tea party in the Great Hall for the whole school, helped by her aunts, who were a bit at loose ends since Nathan and Louisa had left for Europe. There were cucumber sandwiches, bread and butter, scones with clotted cream and fresh raspberries, Victoria sponge cake, and iced cakes topped with sugared violets. It lived up to the most elaborate feasts in Miss Moore’s girls’-school books.
But none of Mrs. Moore’s feasts culminated in the strange spectacle we were treated to after tea. Euphorbia Frost stood up to make an announcement. I hadn’t seen her since I’d come back, and I noticed right away how changed she was. She’d lost weight during her illness, and although her figure was still ample, she no longer looked stout. Color had returned to her face and she had stopped dying her hair that awful eggplant color. It had come in a soft, silvery gray that better suited her violet eyes.
“I have been consulting with my esteemed mentor, the eminent Sir Miles Malmsbury, since his return from the field, and he has convinced me that the practice of keeping specimens of the lychnobia is inhumane . . .”
“Do you think?” I heard Daisy mutter under her breath.
“And contradicts the burial habits of the lychnobious people. And so, today, Sir Malmsbury and I will return the lampsprites to their proper burial ground. If you would care to join us . . .”
Gillie had rigged up a pony cart with ribbons and flowers, which he led to the edge of the Blythe Wood. I peeked inside and saw that the sprites’ bodies were laid out on white linen, the pins removed from their breasts. It was a sad sight, but when we reached the edge of the woods, a breeze stirred over their bodies and they began to disintegrate. The breeze quickened into a gust that picked up the sprite dust and carried it into the air. We all looked up to see a conflagration spreading across the sky. Some of the dust fell on our upturned faces and we heard their song as they vanished into the woods.
Remember us, they sang, remember us.
I looked around at my friends and teachers and saw tearstained faces streaked with sprite dust. Would remembering the lampsprites change how they thought of the fairies? Would they ever accept that the Darklings weren’t evil if I didn’t find the book that proved it? I wasn’t sure—but I knew we had all changed this year and that Blythewood would never be the same.
When the last of the sprite dust had vanished into the air, the crowd turned and headed back to the castle, all except Gillie, who stood gazing into the woods, his moss-green eyes the same color as the shadows beneath the trees. I noticed he had a sprite feather tucked behind his ear.
“That’s where you come from, isn’t it?” I asked.
He took so long to answer that I grew afraid that I’d offended him, but when he did speak at last his voice was gentle. “Aye lass, that is where I’m from, but your true home is with the ones ye love and I’ve come to care for the creatures on both sides of the woods.”
“Do they know?” I asked, afraid for him.
“The Dame knows.”
“But how can she teach that all the creatures of Faerie are evil if she knows you’re not?”
Gillie smiled. “Folks can hold two opposite ideas in their heads at the same time, lass. Don’t forget that. And don’t stray too long in the woods . . .” He winked at me. “I’ll only be able to cover for you for a little while.” Then he turned to go, whistling the same tune that the lampsprites had sung: Remember me, remember me.
When he was halfway across the lawn I slipped into the woods.
The trees on the edge of the forest were charred from the fire, but once I got past them I was enveloped in a deep green sea with flashes of sunlight flitting through the depths like tropical fish. As I went deeper into the woods I noticed that the flashes of sunlight had wings, and the birds, which had gone quiet when I first entered the woods, were now calling to each other. Were they warning their flocks that a hunter had entered the woods—or were they sending a message to him?
Since Miss Corey had told me about Raven flying through the fire to save me—and flying back again through it—I had hardly dared hope he had survived. And while I’d told myself that I had stayed out of the woods so far because of the patrols, the truth was that I’d been afraid to learn that he hadn’t.
I found the tree that held Raven’s nest. I looked up, but the canopy of green leaves was too thick for me to make out his nest. I stood still and listened to the birdsong. It was sweet and sad and reminded me of a funeral dirge. Where did Darklings go when they died if they couldn’t go to Faerie? I wondered. Surely not into the shadows . . .
I felt the sting of tears on my face and lifted my hand to wipe them off, but before my hand reached my face something else brushed them away—a sweep of wings that cloaked my back. I spun around, so fast the woods spun with me in a whirl of green, and found him standing there, his dark eyes the only steady beacons in a spinning world.
I rushed into his arms, desperate to know he was real. As he folded his arms and wings around me, I pressed myself to his chest.
I could feel the heat of his skin through the thin cotton of his shirt. Yes! He was real, he was alive! But then I realized his skin wasn’t just warm, it was on fire.
I stepped back and gingerly touched the collar of his shirt. His skin beneath was red and scarred. Looking up I saw that he was wincing against the pain of my touch.
“You were hurt!” I gasped.
Raven shrugged. I noticed now that he held one of his wings stiffly. “You were hurt, too, in saving us. How are your hands?”
I held them out for him to see. He took them both in his and I was glad he was looking down at them so he couldn’t see the blush that had risen to my cheeks. I noticed how small my hands looked in his, like doves cupped in a nest. They fluttered like doves, too, until he covered them both between his two hands and looked up into my eyes. “I’m glad you did not suffer any worse injuries,” he said so formally I almost laughed.
“My shoulder blades still hurt sometimes,” I said, unnerved by the force of his gaze.
His brows drew together. “Your shoulder blades? I didn’t see the fire reach your back.”
I shrugged, embarrassed to seem as if I had been complaining. “It’s nothing,” I began, but he was already turning me around, his hands on my shoulders. I could feel his breath on the nape of my neck and, through the thin fabric of my shirtwaist, his hands running down my back.
His touch seemed to waken something inside me—a stirring that began in my chest and fluttered across my back. My skin felt prickly, as if it were stretched too tight across my bones. My heart beat so hard I thought it would burst out of my chest. After a moment he turned me back to face him. He was very close, his face hovering over mine, his lips only inches away. I felt myself leaning in toward him, but he stopped me by laying a hand on my chest.
“Ava, there’s something you must know. It’s about . . . your father.”
My mouth went dry. I thought about the charts I’d found in the dungeons and the shadow play I’d been shown by the candelabellum and all that van Drood had told me about his courtship of my mother. Van Drood thought she loved him, and even my mother had said she had cared for him once. I didn’t know much about how these matters, but I had begun to suspect that van Drood and my mother might have been . . . intimate before my mother broke things off.
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