Wrapped

by Jennifer Bradbury

  He gaped at me, finally managing to speak. “Y’ought to bow next time.”

  “Quite so,” I said. “I forgot myself.”

  He still looked stunned. “Stampers are a giveaway,” he said, pointing to my shoes, “but in the main you made a bang-up job of it.”

  I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended that I passed so easily for my brother.

  “Shall we?” I asked.

  He nodded and offered his arm to me. I looked at it, wanted so much to take it, to let my hand rest there . . . but it would only confuse matters. No point in starting something that had no hope of ending well. And there was my disguise to consider. I shook my head and tugged the brim of my hat lightly.

  “Right,” he said, setting off as I fell into step beside him.

  We walked quickly, dodging clots of revelers spilling outside pub doors, and questionable women making even more questionable offers of service.

  “I should have known you’d come dressed so,” Caedmon said as we neared our destination. “But how did you give everyone the slip?”

  “Well,” I began, “there was one servant I took into my confidence.”

  “Who?” he asked, alarmed.

  “My lady’s maid. I didn’t tell her about the standard,” I clarified.

  “And she just let you go?”

  I hesitated. “She thinks I’ve come to meet a lover.”

  He seemed to stumble. “A what?”

  “It was the quickest way to secure her cooperation,” I said quickly. “Clarisse is a bit of a romantic.”

  He was quiet a beat too long. “I see.”

  Because I was too nervous to let it lie between us, I began to prattle on in painful detail about how I’d climbed out the window, found my brother, and then made my way to meet him.

  Caedmon shook his head in wonder. “Pluck,” he said, smiling.

  And there it was again. That feeling that bubbled up when I saw him, when he said something that made some door inside me slide open, that made me believe his admiration was genuine, spontaneous, rather than rehearsed and performed the way Showalter’s compliments sounded when he went on about how lovely I looked in a new gown. And it puzzled me that Caedmon seemed to see me more as I was, as I wished to be, even when I was dressed like this.

  At the public invalid house, I allowed him to speak for us both, explaining to the porter that his godfather was within and had been asking after him earlier. After a bit of persuading, the old man admitted us and pointed toward a ward lined with beds on both sides.

  I’d heard about hospitals like these, though they were still thankfully rare. My father worried that soon half of London would have no one at home to care for them—or no home at all in which to recover—and had been urging reforms to provide for the poor. He viewed these hospitals, funded largely at public expense, as a necessary evil.

  I understood now what he meant.

  The smell was like a wound itself, lingering and sticky. A poor soul moaned in his sleep from one corner, and another at the far end sat upright in his bed, rocking as if he were halfway to Bedlam already.

  “Let’s find him quickly,” I whispered.

  Caedmon nodded and moved slowly between the beds, scanning each occupant. We drew closer to the rocking man, whose eyes fixed on us vacantly as we approached.

  “Here,” Caedmon whispered as we reached the bed next to the odd man.

  Deacon was sleeping, his head wrapped in fine white gauze, a dark stain seeping against the bandage.

  “You’re him,” the man in the bed next to us hissed as he ceased his rocking.

  I kept my eyes on Deacon’s ashen face.

  “Pardon?” Caedmon whispered.

  “You’re him . . . the one he was asking after,” he said.

  “I—I s’pose,” Caedmon said.

  “They hurt him bad,” the man said, springing from his bed and causing me to edge backward. “Head all busted about. Hand twisted strange-like. But he wouldn’t tell what happened. Just asked for you. Asked after you and after you and after you. Gave him laudanum to calm him down when you didn’t come.”

  “Dear God,” Caedmon said quietly.

  I laid my hand lightly on Deacon’s arm, hardly able to think about what he might have suffered on our behalf. What he might have suffered because of my foolishness in keeping the object in the first place.

  “Has he been awake since?” Caedmon asked.

  The strange inmate shook his head furiously. “Asleep with the sleep. They dosed him again for pain.”

  “He said nothing of his attackers?” Caedmon asked.

  “Nothing. Just ‘Fetch Stowe at the museum,’ and then nighty-night.” The man giggled.

  We thanked him for his help, begged him to have the staff send for Caedmon again if Deacon woke, and made to depart before he stopped us.

  “Who’s she called?” he asked when we were halfway to the door.

  I stiffened—he’d seen through my disguise.

  Caedmon turned halfway round. “Say again?”

  “Wot’s her name?” he asked again. “So’s I can tell him when he wakes up.”

  Caedmon looked at me. I shrugged. “Deacon will know who it was.”

  The man slumped against the wall and muttered, “Capital,” as we hurried from the ward and back into the anonymity of the streets.

  Outside, Caedmon stopped at the corner. “It’s my fault,” he said. “If I hadn’t gone to Deacon, he wouldn’t be lying there—”

  I didn’t allow him to finish. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” I argued. “I kept the jackal’s head. I came to you for help, and Deacon is injured because of me.”

  “You had no way of knowing,” he said, shaking his head and looking past me. He turned, gazing back at the hospital. “D’you think he’s safe there?”

  I swallowed hard. “I don’t like that place,” I said. “I don’t like him in there with madmen and paupers.” When Father returned and I begged his forgiveness after telling my tale, I would also beg to have Deacon moved to a place more comfortable, to have our physician sent to look after him. . . .

  “It isn’t right,” he agreed, jaw twitching.

  I reached out and took his arm. “It isn’t. But there’s nothing we can do about that now. And if we assume he was attacked because we went to him for help, then we have far more pressing problems than assigning blame.”

  He looked puzzled, but then his mouth slipped open, dark eyebrows lifted with alarm. “We were followed!”

  I nodded. “Likely. At the very least, someone learned of my connection to you and yours to him. Whether they followed one or both of us is beside the point.”

  “It’s very much the point,” he said darkly. “Could mean that this person has been following us for days on the sly.”

  “You’re right,” I said uneasily, realizing that if we were being followed even now, we were making it awfully easy work by standing still in an empty street. “Shall we walk a bit?”

  Caedmon seemed to understand, falling into step beside me. “The way I see things,” I whispered as we hurried onward, “is that whoever is doing all these dreadful things and acting as Napoleon’s agent—”

  “Mr. Banehart,” Caedmon said gravely.

  “Whoever he is, he has not approached either of us directly to interrogate us. But the attack on poor Deacon proves that they know of our involvement, so—”

  “So it means that they are waiting for us to find the standard for them?”

  I shrugged. “Or they believe we won’t surrender the message if we are openly approached.” I thought of Deacon, of what he must have endured to protect us, to keep safe the secret of what I’d found. And it made me more resolved than ever to bring to light the people responsible.

  Caedmon started to glance over his shoulder, but snapped his face back around to mine when I clicked my tongue at him. On the chance that someone was back there, it would be better if they didn’t know we suspected.

 
; “Is there a less public entrance to the museum we can use?” I asked him.

  He fought to focus on my eyes. I fought to keep a clear head. Together we made a plan. Caedmon provided the location of a hidden entrance beneath an overgrown willow on the southeast corner. I suggested we’d stand a better chance at confounding a possible follower if we separated, both using as circuitous a route to the museum as possible, changing cabs and conveyance if the opportunity arose. Caedmon made a halfhearted attempt to protest my going unescorted, an argument he seemed to know he’d lose before he mounted it.

  He slowed again as we reached the corner. “How do you know how to do all this?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure. It didn’t exactly feel like something I’d learned. It felt a little like speaking French now did. I knew at some point I’d learned it, but now when I engaged in conversation or translation, it was as if part of my brain simply took over. It felt innate. This felt a bit like that.

  But I didn’t think I had sufficient time to explain this to Caedmon. “One can learn a great deal reading popular novels,” I said, adding, “and listening at the grate of a well-placed parliament member’s study.”

  I shook his hand abruptly before he had a chance to change his mind and marched past him, my shoulder brushing his chest as I did so.

  “Good evening, sir,” I said, and strode away without turning. I could feel his gaze on me, and hoped against all reason that my form looked reasonably well dressed in my brother’s clothes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As I darted across a darkened park, clambered into a second carriage and gave the driver my fare and my destination, a thought struck me.

  We’d been faced with the very likely possibility that someone had been following us. Yet my first reaction had not been to send word to Father or to rush to Scotland Yard or even find the nearest constable. Rather, I resolved to simply be more careful, to try and evade whoever might be following us. And Caedmon hadn’t suggested otherwise. Something had shifted. We’d become a team of sorts. But were we being utterly foolhardy? Did we have a chance of finding the standard ourselves? And . . . was it possible that Caedmon was enjoying being with me as much as I was with him?

  I found him pacing beneath the branches of the appointed willow.

  “All right?” he asked me.

  I nodded. “Perfectly. Were you followed?”

  He shrugged. “No. Yes. Maybe. I’m half-mad thinking the whole world is after us now. And the other half is going mad thinking you’re a sight better at playing the brave young man than I am.”

  “It’s all show,” I said, deciding to take that as a compliment. “How long have you been waiting?”

  He sighed. “Bells sounded a bit ago. Not long.”

  “Good. And no sign of anyone?”

  He shook his head.

  “From the road, it’s impossible to see you from beneath this tree, so if anyone has been following, they’ll likely think we’ve already gone in. They would have approached by now to try and find our point of entry.”

  He looked at me, dumbfounded. “If you say so.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. We should give it another quarter of an hour, just to be sure.” I sank to the ground and tucked my legs under me as if I were still wearing a dress.

  Caedmon sat and in spite of himself, smiled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You don’t look very convincing at the moment, that’s all.”

  I reached for my hat and felt to be sure my hair had stayed hidden.

  As alarming as it had been to be recognized by the hospital resident, I was just as relieved that Caedmon saw something that reminded him of who I really was, what I really looked like. We sat quietly for a few minutes more before the bells in the clock tower down the road chimed again.

  “Time,” he said, rising to his feet. He led me to a darkened doorway a few feet away. “I’ve used this entrance before to sneak in a few spare hours with the Stone when I couldn’t sleep.”

  A single pane of glass rattled in the door as Caedmon coaxed the lock free.

  I followed him inside. “Mind your feet,” he said, gesturing at the labyrinth created by piles of dusty papers and crates of books. “Acquisitions for the library,” he explained. “First editions of the great masters.”

  “Will A Lady’s works be represented?”

  “Doubtful. These are heavyweights in here. The Gutenberg Bible, Beowulf in the original Old English. Romances and country stories don’t quite make the mark.”

  “Clearly you’ve never read any of her work.”

  “I have—an older sister, you remember? A man will read anything if he’s desperate enough. Not enough tragedy in them—that’s the stuff that lasts.”

  “A Lady’s endings do tend to be insufferably happy,” I admitted, recalling all the virtuous young women who managed to marry for love and money simultaneously. Fantasy of the highest order.

  “Walk soft,” he whispered as we reached the top of the stairs. “I’m not the only one who works late now and again.”

  I nodded as Caedmon led me to the storage room we’d visited earlier today, though our approach was different. He motioned for me to wait, and I allowed my eyes to adjust to the blackness. A moment later I heard him rattling with a tinderbox, the flame sparking to life a few inches from the floor, where Caedmon held it to a nub of candle.

  The room seemed to come alive as painted eyes stared, looking at me. I felt the odd sensation that they were annoyed by our disturbance of their quiet evening. A sculpted cat, ears far too long, loomed above me on a shelf. I stepped involuntarily to Caedmon’s side. “Come,” he whispered, leading me to the corner where the Stone sat on its pedestal. He left me there with the candle, crept toward the offices and the hall to the exhibit room, and disappeared.

  Caedmon’s absence was enough to resurrect the possible fear of the mummy’s curse, if only for a moment. And his return was so silent and sudden that I jumped, spilling a drop of wax onto my wrist.

  “All clear,” he whispered, taking the light from my hand. He took another candle and a sheaf of papers from a wooden box shoved against the wall, placing the papers on top of the Stone, kissing the cold wick to the flame I held. Then he took both candles and positioned them near the top of the inscription.

  “Cozy.”

  “Passable,” he replied. “Cozy doesn’t give you back strain and a squint.”

  I joined him in front of the Stone. “So, what now?”

  He pulled a handful of papers from the pile he’d earlier produced. “I have a theory,” he said, shuffling for a document. “Something I pray the others researching the Stone have not reckoned on.”

  “Other researchers?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Dozens around here. And even more on the Continent. Mostly in France, but a few Spaniards, and there is one persistent Austrian who—”

  “But isn’t this the only stone?”

  “Yes, but loads of copies of the text are floating round,” he explained. “Like this one.” He dove back into the pile and produced a folded piece of fine, flexible paper. He handed it to me, its edges brittle in my clumsy fingers.

  It was a rubbing, the kind of thing Julia and I used to do as children in the Lakes. We’d find leaves, feathers, butterflies, flowers, or anything we thought lovely and press them beneath a piece of onionskin paper, then scribble evenly across the surface to reproduce the image. We even went through a phase wherein we tried to make rubbings of the headstones in the local churchyard before her mother realized what we were up to and thought it an unsuitable pursuit for little girls.

  “I cribbed this one when I first started working with the Stone. You can be sure the French made as many rubbings as they could before they surrendered her to the British army.”

  We stood close in the candlelight, him leaning over me as I studied the images on the onionskin. And it struck me that for the first time, we were truly alone. Before, we’d been on the street or in the museum, or at
the hospital. Even in desolate places there was always the possibility of someone turning up.

  But now? While the rest of London slept, we shared the feeble light of a pair of candles in the darkened back room of a museum that had been closed for hours.

  Suddenly I felt nervous next to him. I leaned back and spoke too quickly. “How does it work? Understanding the glyphs?”

  He sighed. “That’s the trouble. General opinion holds that the Greek and demotic are literal translations, and the hieroglyphs will follow.”

  “” I murmured, the words trickling out before I could clamp my mouth shut.

  “What?” Caedmon asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Bad habit. It’s a bit of A Lady: ‘Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.’”

  “What tongue was that?”

  “Russian,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter. Please go on. You were about to tell me how you think otherwise?”

  He nodded, eyes still narrowed at me. He shook his head slightly. “They don’t always square with each other. First I just figured I’d slipslopped it with my translating. But I did it over and over and they still don’t match.”

  I considered this, thought of the way a word in Hebrew often had no real counterpart in another language. “Translation is always an act of negotiation rather than a science, is it not?”

  “But it’s more than that,” he said, holding the candle closer. “The words and structure of language—even Greek—at the time the Stone was inscribed were different than they are now. But these differences are a bit more havy cavy.”

  I thought of all the trouble and effort it would take to etch the words into a stone of this size. “For a civilization as advanced as the Egyptians, carelessness is suspect,” he said, seemingly reading my mind.

  I ran my fingers lightly across the Stone’s surface. “Then understanding the glyphs relies on understanding how they took advantage of the differences between the other two texts on the Stone?”

  He nodded eagerly. “Right as rain.”

  I lifted my hand and stared at the lines of symbols. “But that would mean they anticipated someone needing to translate the text at some later date. That would mean that they would have foreseen the fact that their civilization—despite the pyramids and other evidence to the contrary—would disappear.”