“That was the date we were given,” said Mr. Sacks-Sandbottom, sounding harried.
“I want to see that document again myself.”
To Dorrie’s horror, Mr. Sacks-Sandbottom’s legs came into view. Dorrie and Ebba clutched at each other as he jerked a drawer open. Dorrie heard what sounded like the twists and turns of a combination lock and then a flutter of paper.
“Here. It’s just as I said,” said Mr. Sacks-Sandbottom.
Now a skirt came into view as well as the upside-down head of a snarling fox, swinging back and forth like a fierce pendulum.
Dorrie and Ebba stared at one another. It was Lady Whitcomb!
“You see?” said Mr. Sacks-Sandbottom over the sound of paper being handled.
“Then something is either awry,” said Lady Whitcomb, “or I’m being trifled with.”
Dorrie heard a slosh of liquid.
“You’re having more, Lady Whitcomb?” asked Mr. Sacks-Sandbottom in such a way that Dorrie could almost hear his eyebrows going up.
Lady Whitcomb laughed derisively. “Yes, I will have another nip if I please. Stop popping your eyes at me in that monkeyish manner or I’ll send you to Timbuktu to check on the delivery yourself.”
An envelope fell to the floor and landed perilously close to Ebba’s foot.
Lady Whitcomb laughed again. “What? Did I frighten you?”
Dorrie stilled her breath as a long, gloved hand came into view, feeling for the envelope. It was addressed in loopy handwriting and stamped heavily. A picture in one corner gave Dorrie the impression of a brooding bat, its wings wrapped round itself.
Please don’t see us. Please don’t see us, Dorrie silently begged as the hand snatched the letter up.
“If you want to continue in my employ, you really must do something about those nerves,” said Lady Whitcomb. “Telegram my agent at the manor every day. I want to know the hour the delivery arrives.”
“Yes, milady.” Mr. Sacks-Sandbottom left the room with Lady Whitcomb.
In a rush, Dorrie and Ebba crawled out from beneath the desk and thrust the money they’d collected back into the box. Opening the window back up, they hauled themselves over the sill and into an alley.
With trembling fingers, Dorrie stuffed Lord Cromer’s letter in her pocket, and they ran all the way to McAndrews. Annie wasn’t at the counter.
“She’s out back,” said Daisy. “And don’t sit out there gabbing with her. She’s got work to do. You’ve got two minutes.”
They found Annie sending pillowcases through a mangle. As soon as she saw them, her face broke into a grin. “I don’t know how you managed it, but your print job was brilliant. Really.” She seemed to take in Dorrie and Ebba’s distress, and her grin fled. “What’s wrong?”
“The Home Office has made it illegal for newsagents to sell the Suffragette.”
“Impossible,” said Annie.
“It’s true,” cried Ebba and Dorrie.
Annie stared at them. “How did you…? Wait, don’t tell me. Your mother’s cousin has a friend.” She brought her fist down on the top of the mangle. “The cheating monsters! Maybe my sister has it right with her rocks and matches. At this moment, I’m feeling a great urge to set fire to the Home Office!”
“Annie!” said Dorrie, alarmed. “You don’t mean that. Not really. Right?”
“Two minutes is up,” Daisy yelled from the back door.
“I’m not at all sure,” said Annie.
“Out!” yelled Daisy as Annie gave the mangle’s handle a hard turn.
When they emerged from McAndrews, Dorrie yanked out Lord Cromer’s letter. “And now we’re supposed to make sure this stupid letter gets safely to the Times? After all he’s done?”
“It deserves a garbage heap,” said Ebba.
Staring at the letter, Dorrie experienced a wild desire to tear it to pieces. Lord Cromer was a cheater and a manipulator. If she threw it down a sewer grate, nobody would be any the wiser in Petrarch’s Library or in London. She could tell Lady Agnes she lost it. With great pleasure, she imagined Lord Cromer’s words rotting below apple cores and fish heads, falling to pieces. A flicker of shame called her back. “Except there’s that whole first principle thing.”
They had reached the steps of the London Library.
“Do you think Annie would really, you know, try to burn something down?” asked Ebba.
Dorrie listlessly speared a piece of litter with the tip of her umbrella, and just like that, a possible plan elbowed itself forward. If Savi could use satire, why not Annie and the suffragists? Dorrie’s felt a shiver of excitement. Why couldn’t Annie write something that would seem like a letter from someone arguing against women’s suffrage but would actually convince people that women should get the vote?
She imagined Annie slipping such a letter into the envelope along with Lord Cromer’s and delivering them both to the newspaper office. She’d simply say that they were both from Lord Cromer. If no one was paying too much attention, maybe they’d both be printed!
“Ebba,” she said, turning slowly to her friend. “We have to go back.”
“The Lord Savior on a five-legged horse!” said Daisy when they presented themselves again fifteen minutes later. “What do you want now?”
“I promise, we just need to talk to Annie for one minute,” said Dorrie.
Ebba took off her coat. “Here. We’ll pay to have this ironed.”
Daisy threw it back at her. “Five minutes.”
Annie was now stirring a vat of soapy liquid with a paddle.
“So let me get this straight,” she said four out of the five minutes later. “You are suggesting I deliver an envelope to the editor of the Times. It will contain a letter written by Lord Cromer telling the world that suffragists are a bunch of lunatics and giving reasons why they should be treated like criminals and why no woman should ever have the vote.” She paused in her stirring. “Do I have that much right?”
“Exactly,” said Dorrie and Ebba together.
She began to work the paddle up and down. “It will also contain a second letter: a work of satire I will produce in my copious free time this evening. It will appear to argue that suffragists are lunatics and should be treated like criminals and that no woman should ever have the vote but in actuality argue that suffragists are perfectly sane women who should indeed have the vote.” She stilled the paddle again and raised her eyebrows at them.
“Exactly,” Dorrie and Ebba said again in unison.
“Lots of writers make their points that way,” Dorrie said. She quickly pulled out a bound collection of satiric essays that the Lybrariad’s representative at the London Library had helped them find.
Annie took the book, amused, even in her dark mood. “You’ve thought of everything.” She looked at the contents. “‘A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick’ by Jonathan Swift—oh, yes, I remember that one.” She looked up. “‘Eat them’ was the proposal as I remember it.” She looked farther down the list. “‘For Witches’ by Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac.”
Dorrie had crowed with pleased astonishment when she’d seen the essay listed in the contents.
Annie stared at his name. “I thought Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a fictional character in a play.”
Dorrie cleared her throat and looked over her shoulder, as if Savi might be behind her with steam coming out of his ears. “Yeah, a lot of people do. Actually, he really lived. He wrote a lot of stuff.”
“So what do you think?” Ebba asked.
Annie gave her bottom lip a short chew. “It’s a sneaky thing to do, but given all the cheating and conniving coming from that lot, perhaps there’s justice in it. She looked thoughtfully into the suds. How about…‘Ten Reasons Why S
uffrage for Women Would Destroy Civilization?’”
“That could work,” said Ebba.
“I’m not the slouchiest of slouches with a pen,” said Annie, “but I’m going to have to take tonight to do it. I won’t be able to deliver the letter until tomorrow.”
Dorrie felt a slither of uneasiness. She glanced quickly at Ebba. For all Dorrie knew, Lady Agnes was right and Annie had been stealing the stacks of the Anti-Suffrage Review. If she had, what would keep her from tossing Lord Cromer’s letter in the garbage as Dorrie and Ebba had longed to do?
“But you’ll definitely deliver it?” said Dorrie, thinking of Hypatia’s insistence on the value of the Even Eye. “Because as much as I hate what Lord Cromer is saying…”
“I’ll deliver it,” said Annie.
Dorrie fished for the envelope in her bag and handed it over slowly to Annie.
She and Ebba reached the League’s headquarters at the same time as a jubilant Lady Agnes. The printer’s van had just pulled up outside. A man in an apron threw the new copies of the Anti-Suffrage Review on the doorstep.
“Oh, leave them there for now,” said Lady Agnes to Mrs. Richardson. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. No suffragist all day, the papers will lay.” She gave a trilling little laugh. “And I have so much to tell you!”
Dorrie and Ebba exchanged pained glances.
Lady Agnes didn’t notice. She spent the rest of the afternoon telling Dorrie, Ebba, and Mrs. Richardson about the wonderful effect she felt she’d had on the Lords. At last, it was time to leave. Dorrie and Ebba were in their coats and about to say their good-byes when a shriek from Lady Agnes rent the air.
“She’s done it again!” she shouted, pointing frantically at the door, her hand on her chest. “She’s just run away with some of the newspapers!”
Dorrie and Ebba tore for the door and wrenched it open. They ran outside, letting it slam behind them.
Far down the sidewalk, a figure in a hooded cloak was covering a lot of ground fast.
“Oh, please don’t be Annie,” whispered Dorrie.
“We have to go after her,” said Ebba. “It is our real mission here, remember?”
They pelted down the sidewalk, passersby giving them room and looking surprised at their flying skirts. The figure was turning down a smaller road. When they got to the corner, they could see another wider road quite a distance away—and no running figure.
“She has to be in here somewhere,” said Dorrie. “She couldn’t have made it all the way down to that other road.”
They hurried along, finally coming across a narrow, cobbled alley, dank and full of offal and piles of rotting garbage.
“Do we dare go down there?”
“Yes, we dare,” Dorrie said, feeling for Ebba’s hand.
Sticking close to the wall, they made their way toward a little door. A grime-encrusted window lay closer to them. Cautiously, Dorrie brought herself to it and peeped inside. It was a shabby room. A woman who looked tired and ill sat rocking with her eyes closed in a chair near a little iron stove, on top of which stood a pot. The door of the stove was open, and in its faint glow, Dorrie made out the face of a girl about her own age, kneeling beside it. She tore at the bundle until the papers fell apart and methodically began to feed them into the little stove, making the faint glow temporarily brighten.
“That’s the thief?” whispered Dorrie.
“She doesn’t care what the paper says,” Ebba whispered. “She’s just trying to keep her house warm.”
“What are we supposed to do now?” asked Dorrie.
Ebba dug in her bag. “Knock on the door. I’ve got an idea.”
Dorrie did. Through the window, she watched the girl freeze, looking alarmed. The woman slowly opened confused eyes but made no move to get out of the chair.
Slowly, the girl got to her feet, came to the door, and opened it a crack. She had sandy-blond hair, and her face and hands were sooty. Her eyes were full of fear.
“We don’t care that you took the newspapers,” said Ebba, holding out a handful of shillings. “But could we trade you this for them?”
The girl just stared at the coins.
“We won’t tell anyone,” said Dorrie. “You just have to promise not to take them anymore.”
Nodding, the girl quickly took the money and, after disappearing for a moment, came back with what was left of the papers.
It was with great pleasure that Dorrie and Ebba laid the remaining copies of the Anti-Suffrage Review on one of the tables in the League’s headquarters in front of Mrs. Richardson and a disappointed-looking Lady Agnes.
“It wasn’t Ann—” Dorrie stopped herself. “It wasn’t that suffragist from the soapbox at all.”
As Dorrie and Ebba made their way back to the London Library, Dorrie giggled, remembering how unhappy Lady Agnes had looked at their explanation of who exactly had been stealing the newspapers and why.
“Hey,” said Ebba as they climbed the stairs of the library. “You know what this means? We can stop slinking around the room in the principles practicum. We completed our mission!”
Dorrie paused for a moment. “Annie is going to deliver that letter, right?”
Chapter 22
A Name and a Face
That evening back in Petrarch’s Library, Dorrie felt flush with their success in discovering the identity of the newspaper thief. After dinner, Ebba hurried off to her camel-riding lessons, and Marcus, intent on earning more Filthy Lucre to cover his expenses on his next trip to Athens, begged Fatima to busk again at the Inky Pot. The Archivist hadn’t been at the Sharpened Quill. The revelation of Della Porta’s failure to decipher the journal had reinvigorated the old keyhand’s belief that it was indeed written in a real, if lost, language. He had made trips out into several wherens, following up on new leads for a Rosetta stone that could jump-start the translation. He’s also taken to working late into the night.
Excited to tell him about how her mission in England had finished, Dorrie hurried to his office.
He wasn’t there, but it was clear when she pushed open the door that he’d recently been hard at work. The water in the teakettle was still gently steaming, and the room was strewn with papers. Several doors of the cabinet that held the History of Histories books were wide open, with a good number of the volumes spread across the floor and furniture. One had a feather sticking out from between its pages. Her heart beat a little faster. She immediately wondered if this was the same volume he’d marked with a feather the day she’d ended up out on the water. The day he’d been so upset.
The letters on the spine danced and then became legible: History of Histories—Europa—309 PLE—January. The book seemed to call to her. She couldn’t help but wonder if it were the twin to the one out of which the missing page had come. The one that could tell her who among the lybrarians would die if the Foundation succeeded in reversing the crux mission. She edged closer, part of her longing to know and part of her wanting to run far away.
She let her gaze leap around the page, alighting on descriptions of missions that had saved people from drownings, hangings, beheadings, and a very nasty-sounding poisoning, but nowhere on the page did she see Ursula’s name or Savi’s or Hypatia’s or Phillip’s. Francesco was listed as the keyhand on several of the missions but never as the imperiled subject.
Her breathing slowed. Benedetta Diaz, Bjorn Olmstead, Adelaide Stone, Gerhardt Blum…none of the imperiled subjects sounded even faintly familiar…except… She stared at the last entry on the page, unsure… “Sophia Ana de Reyes.” Where had she heard that name?
There was a lightly penciled star beside the entry. She read the whole thing. “321 PLE January: On this seventh day of April 1481, in Castile, Spain. Foiled. A plot to burn at the stake for heresy, Sophia Ana de Reyes, author of poems, whose writing inspired Pope Sixtus to reject Tomas de Torquemada’s request to exte
nd his Inquisition into Aragon and other parts of Spain, France, and Italy. Lybrarian: Raul Enriquez. Keyhand: Francesco d’Avila.”
She was looking at the crux mission! A word faintly penciled below the poet’s name caught her attention: Dorrie sucked in her breath. She could make out an M and then an I and then… She stopped breathing for a moment. The word spelled out “Millie.” A penciled line led from Millie’s name to a scrawled note in the margin: “ancillary rescue.” Dorrie’s heart began to pound, a powerful dread rising in her. In a flash, she knew. Sophia Ana de Reyes was Millie’s mother, and it was Millie who would die if the Foundation reversed the Torquemada crux mission.
• • •
“Is it true?” Dorrie asked a half hour later while sitting in front of Ursula’s fire, a hot cup of strong tea in her hand.
With Savi away, she hadn’t known where else to go, so she’d plunked down in front of the entry to Ursula’s cottage and waited. At last, Phillip and Ursula had arrived hand in hand, Phillip humming a tune.
Now Ursula handed Phillip a mug as well. “I’m afraid so.”
Dorrie felt her hands began to shake, and she sloshed tea onto the stone floor.
Phillip gently took the mug from her and set it on the table. “Twelve years ago, Francesco set out on a mission to save the life of Sophia Ana de Reyes by breaking her out of a dungeon. She had become the subject of a Lybrariad mission after the Spanish Inquisition arrested her for heresy because of some poems she’d written. When Francesco arrived at her prison, he found that Sophia had given birth to a child. One that only Torquemada knew existed. Millie.”
Dorrie stared straight ahead into the crackling flames. No wonder Francesco had spoken to her so harshly during the meeting with Hypatia. She imagined the terror her own father would feel if Dorrie’s life was in danger and how angry he would be at the person who had placed her there. Her shoulders sagged.
“What happened to Millie’s mother?” asked Dorrie.
The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks Page 21