After the bath, Bridget helps me dress. She tuts over the condition of my hair and insists on styling it: drying it with a bath sheet, pulling out all the knots, then patiently coaxing my unruly waves into loose curls before pinning up the sides with a pair of blue-jeweled clips.
“There you are, poppet.” She thrusts me in front of the mirror. “Don’t you look lovely.”
I look at my reflection and my eyes go wide. The color is back in my face, my eyes, even my hair. The bodice of the gown is low and tight, and I expected to see nothing there, just skin and bones. I’m shocked by what’s replaced it: curves.
I never had them before. Curves were soft and vulnerable, and that meant death to me, so they were trained out of me. Instead, I became thin and wiry and strong. My illness tore me down, but I’ve been built back up, not by force this time but by care: by soft beds and sweet potions and gentle hands and magic.
I don’t know what to think anymore. About any of it. Magic killed my parents; Blackwell tried to kill magic. Blackwell is magic; Blackwell tried to kill me. John saved me with magic; now I’m trying to kill magic to save Nicholas. It goes against everything I’ve ever known, a betrayal of everything I’ve ever been taught.
But who betrayed who first?
Bridget leads me downstairs, into the dining room. I’m the last to arrive. Everyone else is seated around the table, pitchers of wine and goblets scattered across the surface. John gets to his feet as I walk in, but Humbert fairly leaps from his chair and rushes toward me.
“Elizabeth!” he roars. “Do come in!”
He hauls me across the room and thrusts me into the seat next to his. The table is huge; it could seat at least twenty people. But he had to put me next to him. I’ll be as deaf as he is before the night is through.
Next to me is Fifer. She’s in a dress, too, copper-colored silk with an embroidered green bodice. But the way she’s scowling you’d think it was made from metal, lined with nails. Even still, I have to admit she looks pretty.
Across from me are George and John, both clean and dressed for dinner. As usual, George looks horrifying. Yellow shirt, purple vest, orange harlequin jacket. Beside him, John looks practically funereal. White shirt, dark green coat. Both already wrinkled, of course. And his hair. It’s still damp from bathing but already running out of control. I’m seized with a wild urge to run my hands through it. Make sense of those curls, push them out of his eyes at least. I wonder what it would look like if it were cut. Although, I rather like it long. Besides, if it were any shorter, it might get even wilder, and—
He grins at me and I realize I’ve been staring at him too long. I flush and turn to Humbert.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”
“It was worth it, I see,” he booms. “I’m pleased you decided to wear the gown sent up.”
Well, it’s not as if he left me much choice.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
“Isn’t it? It belongs to the Duchess of Rotherhithe, a dear friend of mine. She and her family came for a stay one summer, brought ten trunks full of gowns. Left that and several others behind. I doubt she even noticed them missing.”
I shift uncomfortably. I know the duchess. She and her daughter are close friends of Queen Margaret. I served them dinner once, and they were both awful. Worse still, her granddaughter is Cecily Mowbray, one of Caleb’s new friends. I don’t like the idea of wearing her clothes, no matter how pretty they are.
“You see that bird on the bodice there?” Humbert continues. “It’s the symbol of the House of Rotherhithe, embroidered using thread made from real silver. I shudder to think of the cost. But the duchess, she’s not very economical—”
The mention of the bird jars my memory. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir…” I realize I don’t know how to address him.
“Call me Humbert.”
“Of course, Humbert. But I just remembered something. John”—I turn to get his attention but find I’ve already got it—“did you send Horace back to your father? Let him know you’re okay? I don’t want him to worry.”
George and Fifer exchange a glance.
“I did, yes,” John replies. “Thank you for remembering.” He rakes his hand through his hair then, and I notice how green his eyes look tonight. Usually they’re more brown than green, gray around the edges with a little bit of gold in the middle, and—
“Elizabeth,” Humbert trumpets, jerking me to my senses. “I do hope you’ll like what I’ve had prepared this evening. I understand you’re quite an expert on court cuisine.”
A pair of servants walks in then, carrying several platters between them. Manchet bread, salted beef, fruit tarts, cheese, and, of all things, a cockatrice—a dish made by combining one half of an animal with another before roasting and redressing it.
They were common enough at court; Malcolm in particular loved them. His cooks tried to outdo one another with increasingly outrageous combinations: body of a chicken, tail of a beaver. Head of a deer, rear of a boar. This one is half-peacock, half-swan: snow white and long-necked in the front, bright turquoise and plumed in the back.
“Well, then?” Humbert asks. “What do you think of this little one?”
I lean over and examine it carefully.
“It’s very good,” I tell him. The white feathers of the swan blend in seamlessly with the peacock’s, no sign of the careful stitching underneath. That’s the hardest part of presenting a cockatrice, getting the feathers or fur right. It’s the difference between wanting to eat it or run from it.
By the time the servants reappear to clear away the plates, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. I’m tired from the walk, full from wine and cockatrice, and I’ve got an awful headache from Humbert’s screaming in my ear all night long. I’m thinking about excusing myself when he starts in again.
“The Thirteenth Tablet,” Humbert shouts. “What a thing to be cursed by! And what a thing to find.” He shakes his head, pours his fifth glass of brandy. I swear, he drinks more than George, and that’s saying a lot. “You really have no idea where it might be?”
“No,” I say. “I really don’t.”
He looks at me expectantly. “Then I suppose the next question is, what do you want to do about it?”
The room goes quiet. I feel everyone’s eyes on me. There’s a collective intake of breath, as if they’re waiting for me to make a sudden proclamation, like some sort of damned prophet on the mount.
“I don’t know,” I say.
The disappointment is palpable.
“I could go out tomorrow,” I continue because I can’t bear the silence any longer. “You know, walk around a bit? I don’t know the area, so I’d need a map, but what can it hurt? Unless you think it’s better for me to stay put, I guess—”
“No!” Humbert howls. “That won’t do at all! This is a prophecy, Elizabeth. There can be no guessing. No hemming, no hawing. No shilly-shally!” He pounds the table with his fist. “You must be decisive! Whatever happens, you must really feel your decisions, my dear. Know them. In here.” He thumps his fist against his chest.
“Besides,” George says, rolling his eyes at Humbert. “You can’t just go wandering about, not with those guards looking for you.”
“Then what are we supposed to do until Peter gets here?” I ask.
“Sleep?” Fifer mutters.
“For now, I thought I could show you all my cathedral,” Humbert says.
Fifer gets up abruptly and starts stretching. John gives her a disapproving look, which she ignores. I’d rather go upstairs and sleep, too, instead of being dragged on some god-awful nocturnal pilgrimage. But I really can’t resist.
“That sounds lovely,” I say. Fifer gives me a filthy look. Humbert beams.
“I didn’t know you had a cathedral,” George says.
“Oh, well. It’s not really a cathedral,” Humbert says. “That’s just what I call it.”
“What is it, then?” George asks, politely stifling a yawn. “I
t wouldn’t happen to be a privy, would it? Or a wine cellar? Either one would go down a treat right about now—”
“Certainly not, dear boy. The cathedral is where I keep all my artifacts.”
“Artifacts?” George’s yawn grows wider.
“Oh yes. It’s quite a collection! Naturally, I’ve kept it quite secret. I’ve got spellbooks, grimoires, alchemy tools, and other bits and bobs, even an alembic once owned by Artephius himself! An athame made from whalebone and some other rare weapons. I’m a bit of an expert, I’ll have you know. I’ve got spears and staffs and swords and knives—”
“Swords?” Fifer whirls around. “Knives?”
Humbert looks surprised. “I didn’t know you were interested in weaponry, my dear.”
“Of course I am,” Fifer says.
John raises his eyebrows. “Since when?”
“Since now.” Fifer shrugs. “You never know when you may have to defend yourself.” She gives me a nasty look. “As Nicholas always says: There are enemies everywhere.”
HUMBERT LEADS US OUT OF the dining room, back into the checkered entrance hall. He walks straight to the largest of the portraits, the one of Venus and Cupid I admired on the way in. At the bottom of the painting is a pair of masks, their empty, hollow eyes staring blankly in the distance. He reaches out and pokes his finger inside the eyehole, and I gasp—Is there really a hole in the canvas of this priceless painting?—then hear a tiny click. On the other side of the hall, a door swings open, just a crack. I’m impressed. The door is tiny, narrow; the seams so well disguised by the intricately carved walls as to be nearly invisible. That, or I’m losing my touch.
Humbert crosses the hall and pushes the door open, silent on its well-oiled hinges.
“Come on, then.” He motions for us to enter. Fifer slips through the door first, followed by George. I go next. But what I see on the other side makes me stop. A narrow stairway leading down, into darkness. John slides through the door, glances at the staircase, then at me.
“Humbert, maybe Elizabeth and I will wait up here—”
“No, it’s okay,” I tell him.
“Are you sure?”
I nod. I’m a little curious to see Humbert’s collection. And more than a little curious to see what Fifer’s up to. My guess is she’s going to try to steal one of Humbert’s weapons. She can’t hurt me, of course, but I worry about her getting her hands on something anyway. The last thing I need is for her to hurt John, or George, or even herself in some foolish attempt to protect them against me.
I look at John. “Walk with me?”
He nods, and together we start down the tiny staircase. Humbert squeezes through the door then, bolting it shut behind him. Immediately, my hands start sweating.
“Feel free to start singing any time you like,” John whispers. I attempt a laugh, but it comes out sounding more like a groan.
When we reach the bottom of the stairs, I immediately see why Humbert calls it the cathedral. It’s a large, circular room with arched, vaulted ceilings taller than the room is wide. One curve of the wall is made entirely from stained glass; another curve holds a large cabinet. The remaining wall space is lined with shelves, crammed with objects, all alive with movement. Jars that bubble and hiss. Clocks that tick and hum. Globes that whirl and spin. Books stacked upon one another; some leather-bound, others loose-leaf and tied together with string. The tools he mentioned are scattered everywhere: bowls, mortars and pestles, scales, bags of herbs, and jars of various animal parts floating in solution like grotesque fish in a bowl. In the center of it all is a brick furnace, a tiny blue fire dancing inside.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Humbert says. “Have a look around.”
George walks off to examine the spinning globes, while Fifer and Humbert head straight for the cabinet. That must be where the weapons are. I start to follow, but John guides me toward the furnace instead. There are several glass flasks set on stands over the fire, brightly colored liquids bubbling inside.
“What is that?” I ask.
John examines the largest flask, dark red liquid boiling within.
“Aqua vitae, by the looks of it.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Humbert’s an alchemist?”
He smiles. “Well, he’s not trying to turn lead into gold or anything. He’s just making wine. Rather, he’s making wine stronger. This flask over here”—he points to a smaller one filled with orange liquid—“is brandy. It’ll be strong enough to melt paint off walls when he’s done with it.” He watches the liquid boil, then reaches over and lowers the flame. “No sense in his melting his insides, though.”
I laugh, then remember the book he was reading the night he fell asleep in my room.
“You’re an alchemist, too?”
“Not quite,” he says. “I thought about studying it at university next year, though.”
“Where?” Alchemy is far too close to magic for that to be allowed in Anglia.
“Probably Iberia. Or maybe Umbria. I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
“So, no pirate apprenticeship for you, then?”
He laughs. “No, though my father would love that. He’s been trying to talk me into it since before I could walk.”
“No good?”
“No. I mean, it’s fine. I just prefer healing.”
“Better wenching in the pirate trade,” I point out.
He snorts. “Yes. Because I am all about the wenching.” I laugh again. John motions to the shelf holding all the animal parts. “Want to take a look?”
I nod, and we both rush over and start pulling jars off the shelves.
I read the label on a jar that holds what look like tiny gray raisins. “Mouse brains!”
“Oh, that’s good.” He peers at it closely, then holds out a jar for me to see. “Look at this one.”
“Frog eyes,” I say. “Look at them all. Staring at us. They’re so…”
“Judgmental?”
I start giggling. He puts it back and reaches for a bigger jar, this one filled with something yellow and soft.
“Cow pancreas.” I wrinkle my nose.
“Ugh, it looks like cheese.”
“Trust me, you do not want that melted on top of anything,” I say. And then we’re both laughing, and he looks at me and I look at him, and suddenly the space between us seems very small and I feel a little thrill… until I remember what George told me. About his mother, his sister. Then that thrill turns into something else entirely and I take a step back.
John doesn’t seem to notice. He just keeps pulling jars off shelves and examining them, completely engrossed. I should probably leave. Go see what Fifer is up to. I glance at her, standing with Humbert at the weapons cabinet—Look at all those weapons!—deep in conversation. George is still over by the globes, carefully not watching me, which only tells me he is. I should definitely leave.
“How did you become a healer?” I say instead.
John carefully sets the jar he’s holding—sheep intestines—on the shelf and turns to me. “My mother was a healer,” he says. “She ran an apothecary near our house in Harrow. When my father wasn’t dragging me out to sea, I would help her. Sometimes my sister would help, too, but she was usually too busy getting into trouble with Fifer to be of much use.” He smiles a little at that.
“Anyway, when I was about nine, she suspected I had the magic to be a healer, too. So one day she took me to her shop, told me to make potions for two of her patients. One had green fever, the other pemphigus. A very unpleasant skin disease,” he adds in response to my raised eyebrow. “And then she left.”
“She left?” I feel my eyes go round. “What did you do?”
“Panicked, of course.” He smiles. “I’d been helping her for years, but I’d never made a potion on my own before, and never anything that complicated. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t reach the upper shelves without a ladder. I didn’t even know how to light the furnace. I thought for sure I’d burn the shop down, or,
failing that, I’d turn a potion into poison and kill her patients and I’d have to live with that forever. But then…” He trails off, glancing at the ceiling for a moment as if lost in thought.
“What?”
“I just knew what to do.” He looks down at me again, his eyes bright. “It’s hard to explain. But there was something about the shop, the smell of the herbs, the way the light filtered in through the windows, all dusty, all the jars and books and the tools.” He gestures at the shelves in front of us. “The magic took over then, and it told me what I needed to do.”
I’m quiet for a moment, enchanted by the idea of something stealing over you, settling into you, and telling you, with absolute certainty, who you are and what you’re meant to do.
“That sounds lovely,” I say, and I’m surprised to find I mean it.
“I don’t think it looked lovely, though.” He laughs a little. “The shop was a disaster. There were herbs and roots and powders on the counter, the floor; I broke at least three flasks, so there was glass everywhere, too.… My sleeve caught fire when I lit the furnace, so I doused myself with rosewater. I was covered in wet petals.… I must have looked like a lunatic.”
I start to laugh, too.
“And now it’s just me,” he says, and I stop laughing. “I thought about quitting, but magic isn’t something you can just quit. Besides, someone had to carry on after she…” He turns away then, busying himself with the jars again.
I’m quiet for a minute, unsure of what to say.
“George told me what happened,” I finally manage. “I’m so sorry. I know how you feel.” And I do. I wish there were something I could say to make him feel better. But there’s really nothing. I could tell him what’s done is done, but I know that would never be enough for someone like him. John’s a healer. He knows the difference between a bandage and a cure.
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