“She did it!” Ebba crowed.
Dorrie read the first couple “reasons” out loud to the others.
“Those are pretty good,” Saul said. “The title’s kind of boring though. I wish she’d made it something more colorful like ‘Ten Reasons Why Suffrage for Women Would Be the Worst Thing Ever to Happen to Civilization.’”
“I knew you felt that way underneath,” said Mathilde.
Saul threw his hands up. “It was just constructive criticism!”
“Well, I sure hope the article helps the suffragists,” said Dorrie. “I will not miss spending time with Lady Agnes.”
“Mrs. Richardson was pretty nice though,” Ebba said.
“She was,” Dorrie said thoughtfully, wondering why exactly Mrs. Richardson hadn’t wanted women to get the vote. She’d never bothered to ask her.
Walking back to the attics with Ebba and Marcus, Dorrie felt tired but content, thinking about how good it would be to see her parents and Miranda again in just a couple days. As Marcus and Ebba drew ahead, deep in discussion about the potential hazards and pleasures of fizzy lifting drink, Dorrie heard footsteps behind her. It was Millie. She fell in step with Dorrie.
“Hey, I just wanted to say, you know, thank you. I’m really kind of excited I’m going to keep on living.”
Wanting to laugh, Dorrie gave Millie a sidelong glance, not sure, having no experience of joking with the other apprentices, if she had meant that to be funny. Millie’s mouth looked a little crooked, and there was extra light in her eyes. Dorrie took a chance and grinned.
Millie grinned back. She took a deep breath. “If you want to practice rapier some time together next quarter…”
“I’d love that,” said Dorrie.
Next quarter. The words sounded delicious to Dorrie. The Foundation still had Petrarch’s Star, but without a source of Vox Mortis, they weren’t going to be able to make it serve them for at least some time to come. The Lybrariad could breathe. Petrarch’s Library—and Millie—was safe for the moment.
Dorrie and Millie caught up with the others at the Xianyang, 220 BCE archway, where Marcus had stopped to shake a pebble out of his boot.
Beyond the archway, a patron in a flat-topped black hat hovered over a piece of silk painted with characters.
It occurred to Dorrie that unlike everyone else in Petrarch’s Library, she had no idea what the invisible barriers felt like when one wasn’t passing through them. Did they feel smooth like glass? Warm? Cold? She reached her hand out to touch it and, with all the grace of a one-legged table, found herself falling through the archway and knocking off the patron’s hat in the process.
She scrambled backward quickly, regaining the corridor just as the man, looking indignant, turned to see who had assaulted him.
Marcus, Ebba, and Millie were staring at her dumbfounded.
“I don’t believe it!” Dorrie cried, examining her thumbnail. It was the same pinky-white it had been since she’d returned from Athens, so it couldn’t be the Vox Mortis. Then how had she done it?
“Yes!” cried Marcus.
Dorrie stared from the other apprentices to the archway and back again. “Anyone want to go visit Kalliope and get some really bad fish sandwiches?”
Master Phillipus Aurelos Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim’s Second Guide to Petrarch’s Library
People
Rachel Davis: Mission lybrarian serving the Lybrariad and assistant to the director of the Western Colored Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library out in 1913, Louisville, Kentucky. The library in that segregated wheren was the first established to serve African Americans. While it’s considered rude in Petrarch’s Library to talk about the adventures, triumphs, or misfortunes a lybrarian has yet to live out, there’s nothing to stop you from finding out more about her on your own.
Giambattista Della Porta: Former branch lybrarian based at the Academia Secretorum Naturae out in sixteenth-century Naples, Italy. Since he’s no longer serving as a lybrarian, I can tell you that though he found it difficult to conduct himself according to Lybrariad principles, he was in fact, a brilliant cryptographer. Had Petrarch’s journal been written in code, he certainly could have cracked it. Apparently, later in life, he continues to practice the “new” science and invents things like the camera obsura. He has his own brushes with the Roman Inquisition. The Lybrariad will help him as it can—observing our principles while doing so, of course.
Benjamin Franklin: Though he was asked to serve as a mission librarian, Benjamin Franklin (citing an overloaded schedule) opted instead to take a part-time position at Petrarch’s Library, managing its printing and reproduction department. He also agreed to publish an in-house newspaper: Gouty Ben’s Weekly Digest. He commutes from 1742 Philadelphia, where he’s busy publishing another newspaper called Poor Richard’s Almanack, working on his new invention, tentatively called “the Franklin stove” and trying to put together a club for talking about philosophy.
Kalliope: Since Kalliope is not a lybrarian, it would perfectly appropriate for me to tell you all about the rest of her life. Unfortunately, I can’t. Because no one bothered to write any of the details down in any sort of history book. It’s possible that people in later centuries are reading her orations, but if they did survive, they of course bear a man’s name. Perhaps “Dinarchus” or “Isaeus.” What a shame. You could refer to Guy Carleton Lee’s Orators of Ancient Greece written in 2004 to see if you feel Kalliope’s presence there.
Master Hunayn ibn Ishaq: Currently serving as keyhand and Archivist for the Lybrariad. The Archivist’s interest in translation runs deep. When he was young, his skills were so respected out in his home wheren of ninth-century Baghdad that a powerful Caliph hired him to serve at the Bayt al Hikmah or House of Wisdom, a library and center for scholarly studies. He squeezed in work there while he could while serving also with the Lybrariad. When he was asked to become a keyhand, he requested to serve out in 327 BCE, rather than in his home wheren of ninth-century Baghdad, at least in part for the opportunity to research less well-known early written languages.
Ida B. Wells: Journalist, courageous critic of the lynching of African Americans in the south of the United States, suffragist, speaks out about all forms of racial injustice. What is lynching you ask? It’s violence dealt out by a mob on an individual, where there has been no trial. Usually deadly violence. Ida B. Wells is as courageous as they come. Some years ago, after buying a first class train ticket, she was outraged when the crew tried to make her move to a “colored” car. She refused and fought them tooth and nail, as they dragged her physically out of her seat. Out in 1913, she’s living and working in Chicago, trying to address racial injustice there.
Aristotle: Philosopher who founded the Lyceum, a school of philosophy, where he teaches biology and history among other things. After hearing about Dorrie, Marcus, and Ebba’s adventures in Athens, my interest in Aristotle was piqued. I went down to the main reference room to find a biography, and Callamachus suggested a modern one from the Passaic Public Library called Introducing Aristotle by Rupert Woodfin and Judy Groves. Loved the cartoons. The authors say, “All that we know of Aristotle indicates that he was a good man, both kindly and generous.” Ebba contests the assertion. He writes. A lot. And well. Cicero, a fellow writer out in first century Rome, recently spoke of “the suave style of Aristotle…a river of gold.”
Sophie Scholl: Young German Nazi resistor. At this time, the history books say that in the summer of 1942, while her father was imprisoned for making a critical remark about Hitler, news of war crimes committed by Germany horrified Sophie. After reading an anti-Nazi sermon by Clemens August Gra von Galen, her brother and some of his friends established a nonviolent resistance group called the White Rose, which Sophie insisted on joining. The group wrote pamphlets encouraging Germans to resist the Nazis. She was arrested in 1943 for distributing the pamphlets. In court, she said,
“Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.” She was executed by the Nazis soon after. The Lybrariad is currently looking for a way to change that.
Dr. James Risien Russell: Doctor living and working in London of Scottish-Carribean descent. Born in British Guiana in 1863, Dr. Russell earned a ridiculous number of degrees, professorships, and fellowships, and now has a very busy medical practice out in London 1913’s West End. He specializes in diseases of the nervous system. We hope he’s too busy to follow up on any references made by his patients to a visiting niece by the name of Ebba.
Critius: A writer and political figure out in fifth-century Athens. We know Kalliope didn’t care for him. Interestingly, before he became one of the Thirty Tyrants, he enjoyed spending time with Socrates. Have you heard of Plato—another philosopher? Critius was related to Plato’s mother. When someone is so callous as to be willing to condemn hordes of fellow citizens to death as Critius did, I resent having to acknowledge that said person had a reputation for being a good writer. He did.
Tomas de Torquemada: Inquisitor. It’s difficult to imagine him as a child, innocently toddling about picking daisies, and yet he wasn’t born a man. As Mr. Sabatini told us, he was the architect of the Spanish Inquisition and oversaw it until his death in 1498. “His history,” says a commenter named Prescott, “may be thought to prove that of all human infirmities there is none predictive of more extensive mischief to society than fanaticism.”
Lord Cromer: His full name (including titles and honors bestowed) is Evelyn Baring, First Earl of Cromer, Order of the Bath, Order of Merit, Order of St. Michael and St. George, Order of the Star of India, Order of the Indian Empire, Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Fellow of the Royal Society. My name suddenly seems rather pithy. I mention all of this to give you a sense of the connections he enjoys in his society and his comfort with wielding power. He doesn’t know it, but he’s enjoying one of the last years of his life at the moment and will never embrace the idea of women’s suffrage.
Count Sieciech: Count Palatine at the court of Duke Wladyslaw I Herman of Poland out in the eleventh century. Though only a count, he has managed to weasel and intimidate his way to the center of power—and more or less rules Poland at the moment. His ways are not delicate, and he’s busy trying to kill off the duke’s sons in order to gain the throne. It’s no wonder the Foundation reached out to him.
Organizations
Alpha Suffrage Club: Ida B. Wells spearheaded the creation of this club out in 1913, Chicago, with white suffrage colleague Belle Squire. Black women who wanted the vote faced opposition by white men and women, as well as black. By 1919, thousands of black women will have joined, seeking out a way to act to end lynchings of African Americans and to create a means for black women to participate in political life. Twenty-first century reference sources tell us that the Alpha Suffrage Club will play a powerful role in the election of the first African American alderman in Chicago.
National League Opposed to Woman Suffrage: Well, you’ve seen what the members of the League are up to out in 1913 London. They like things as they are and don’t want them to change. They’ve been opposing women’s suffrage since 1910. Twenty-first century sources tell us they’ll be at it until 1918, when the Representation of the People Act will pass (absurdly only extending the right to vote to women over thirty years of age) and take the wind out of their sails.
Women’s Social and Political Union: The WPSU was begun in 1903 by people dissatisfied with the lack of progress in gaining voting rights for women, by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Annie is a member of both organizations, but prefers soapboxing to breaking windows. The WSPU didn’t start out advocating destructive acts as a means of pushing Parliament to grant voting rights. They concentrated on holding demonstrations, including a series in the Parliament building. When Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman refused to act with legislation even after an envoy of three hundred women representing over 125,000 suffragettes made their case, members of the WSPU began to interpret its slogan “Deeds Not Words” in new ways. Out in 1913, the WPSU at the moment is led, some say run dictatorially, by the Pankhurst family: Mother Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters Cristabel and Sylvia.
Places
The Lyceum: The school founded by Aristotle out in fourth-century BCE Athens. Aristotle has a sometime habit of strolling beneath the covered walkways of the school and through the gardens as he lectures. For that reason some call it the Peripatetic School. I leave it to you to figure out why. Students don’t only spend their time at the Lyceum, trailing Aristotle. The Lyceum boasts baths, a gymnasium, and a palaaestrae where students can box and wrestle. It later centuries, the Lyceum’s location was lost, its walkways buried, but I hear from Mr. Kornberger that a few years ago out in the twenty-first century, the Lyceum was excavated, and the site now is now open to the public. I wouldn’t mind a visit myself.
The Agora: In an agora, as Dorrie, Ebba, and Marcus found, one can buy or sell just about anything. But it literally means “gathering place.” In the agoras out in ancient Greece, people assemble to talk politics and business, debate, visit temples, and conduct other business. They also go to hear philosophers hold forth. Some who didn’t go for that reason might find themselves doing that anyway. Before Socrates was arrested, he would install himself in the Athenian agora and question shoppers about the meaning of life. Some years later, Diogenes, a philosopher who has made a virtue out of poverty, has installed himself there in a ceramic jar and given himself a similar mission.
Timbuktu: City. Don’t be alarmed if you see it spelled as Tinbuktu, Timbuctoo, or Timbuktoo. Any of these will do. It’s being established as a permanent settlement out in the twelfth century on the southern edge of the Sahara desert in Africa. Its residents will live in large part on the trade in salt, gold, ivory and slaves for a while to come. Out in the fourteenth century it becomes part of the Mali Empire and develops as a center of learning and scholarship, and enjoys a thriving book trade. Later, the Songhai Empire, and then after them, the Moroccans will claim it. I haven’t yet had time to research what’s going on there in the twenty-first century. Feel free.
Books, Newspapers, and Assorted Other Expressive Works
The Anti-Suffragist Review: The newspaper first of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League and then of the National League Opposing Woman Suffrage. It’s been produced now (in 1913) since 1908 and will go on being printed until 1918. It expresses beliefs such as “They call it [votes for women] equality and justice. It is nothing of the kind. It is the subjugation of men to women.”
The Suffragette: Newspaper of the WPSU between 1912 and 1915. Before that, the WPSU’s newspaper had been Votes for Women. In-fighting resulted in the Pankhursts expelling its editors, Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, from the WPSU leadership when they didn’t want to go along with the new plans for the WPSU to engage in arson.
The Times: London newspaper that has been going since 1785. It’s sold out in that wheren as a two and a half penny broadsheet called the Daily Universal Register. Out in the 1800s, it is fondly called The Thunderer as it publishes quite a lot of strong opinion. Callamachus tells me it’s still being sold out in the twenty-first century.
“Against Witches”: An essay written by Savienen Cyrano de Bergerac. Or Savi, as you know him. In it, as you probably remember, he lays out every argument he can think of to persuade readers that witches do not exist. If you’re from Dorrie’s century, or one of the later ones, which you’d have to be to be reading this, you probably think that the argument would be an easy sell. Not so out in Savi’s time, where he tells me nine out of ten people believe they exist, souring milk when they please, and making darker mischief. He’s not quite ready to publish it and has put it away for now.
“For Witches”: An essay written by
Savienen Cyrano de Bergerac. Or Savi, as you know him. In this one, as you probably remember, he tries to persuade readers that witches do exist—but not really. As he informed Dorrie, it’s a satiric essay. If you’re from Dorrie’s century, or one of the later ones, which you’d have to be to be reading this, you probably think that it would have been obvious to his readers that he wasn’t being sincere. Savi expects that if and when he publishes “For Witches,” nine out of ten people will believe that he’s being one hundred percent sincere and read the satire with breathless pleasurable dread.
“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”: A satiric essay written by Jonathan Swift in which he suggests that eating poor children is the answer. Though Savi has barely finished penning the first draft of his own piece of satire, it already irritates him that young European and American people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are frequently given “A Modest Proposal” to read, as the best modern example of the satiric essay. It may be. If you want to write a satiric essay pointing up the unfairness or absurdity of some parental practice or another, “A Modest Proposal” will serve well as a guide.
Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History: A book by Rafael Sabatini published in London in 1913. Millie, in her quest for more information about Tomas de Torquemada, requested this book just weeks after it became available. Though as a denizen of a later century, you have at your fingertips many newer books on Torquemada’s terrible exploits, Sabatini’s account is told with a certain dramatic flair. After all, Callamachus tells me, he’ll soon be writing high-seas adventure stories like Captain Blood, and the Sea Hawk, which end up getting made into something new to me called “movies.”
The Ninja Librarians: Sword in the Stacks Page 26