‘Probs best say I’m not in, miss. Don’t fink I gots any uncles…’
‘As you wish, little sir. Don’t suppose you fancy some refreshments? Or how about them dancing lessons? Scarlet’ll give you the first one gratis?’
‘Not just now, miss. But Fanks. I’ll let you know.’
PART FOUR
The Scholars who Burn Books
Cassandra was lying in bed. It was a big bed, but she’d curled up into the smallest ball in the middle of it. It was made with the finest cottons and threads, fabrics that soothed young princesses to sleep, yet she had pushed them all to the floor. No better sleep could ever be had in any other bed, but she hadn’t slept. She’d spent the night watching the darkness and had spent the morning watching the sun chase it away.
It had been a night of little consequence. The first noise came at about five, that was when the gardeners started work, clipping the perfectly clipped hedgerows and pruning the perfectly pruned redbud trees. A little later she heard the stables. The clip clop of horses being taken around the Palace grounds. She thought of Cornelius, Rufus’ horse, she wondered if he’d noticed that his master had not come in to see him.
Around about seven, the Palace came to life. The servants could be heard going about the rooms, getting everything in order for the day. Cassandra could hear the guards too, marching up and down the staircases, through the corridors and out in the courtyard. They were clearly not Palace Guards. Palace Guards were taught to be respectful. These were the common guards of the City Watch. And they were a noisy bunch.
All the while, the Princess had been lying there thinking about what had happened. Thinking about how that one event had now turned her world inside out. She had been replaying it in her mind, the moving pictures going round like the disc of a zoopraxiscope running at half speed. The Lords were laughing, the table was being cleared, the glasses refilled, dessert had been called for and everything had felt perfectly ordinary.
Then everything changed.
She saw Rufus; no more than a shadowy figure stepping into the room. A look of stone was cut on his face and there was a gun in his hand. She watched it rise, cock, click, then click again without shot. She could remember everyone’s expressions: her mother’s widening eyes, Lord Marston’s gasp, Lord Quincy’s flinch, the servant to her left who had dropped a platter and let it clang against the floor with no effort to catch it. She remembered everything about that moment. Especially Rufus’ face.
He was the sort of man who always looked switched on; wide eyed, jittery, craning his head about the room like a bird of prey looking for the slightest movement out of turn. But in that moment, his eyes had been fixed on only the Queen. He had strode down the room with such determination that even if the floor had been made of burning coals it wouldn’t have deterred him.
She remembered the shot. Or the lack of shot. Any reasonable assassin would have frowned at the gun went it didn’t fire as it should. He hadn’t even noticed. His stony, cold blooded, pale faced, dazed expression hadn’t moved a muscle. Not an eyelash, not a dimple, not even the smallest flickering of his irises.
And she remembered the confusion that followed. She remembered how he looked scared, troubled, like a man who’d woken from sleepwalking, naked, in the middle of a fancy ball without a clue as to how he got there.
It wasn’t right, she thought. She didn’t know why it wasn’t right, but it wasn’t. And she was determined to get to the very logical bottom of it.
At that moment, Rufus was chained up in a cell somewhere inside the tower. They all still thought he did it. Martha, her mother, the Lords, the servants, the cooks, the City Watch, even the Royal Guards who’d worked as closely with Rufus as thread through a needle. All of them, pointing the finger and shaking their heads calling shame. She was the only one who had heard him scream “this is a mistake,” and she was the only one who believed it.
It was up to her.
There was no time to shed tears about how awful it was. She wasn’t that sort of person anyway. Cassandra was a thinker and she was deeply, profoundly stuck into it, searching for a logical solution.
The clue was in the way he looked, she reasoned. His body language had been at odds with its usual tone. He’d looked unwell almost. Drunk? He couldn’t have been. Drunkards stumbled and slurred their words. She remembered Lord Everett, and how Rufus had been nothing like him. And besides, Rufus didn’t exactly have a good view on drinking. It had to be something else. A poison perhaps? She couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d looked when he realised what had happened. It was as if he’d been sleeping…
…a small bug crawled over the pillow next to her.
Cassandra studied it closely. She wasn’t afraid of bugs. Martha had once run out of her brother’s room, down the hall and out into the courtyard screaming because of a spider. It hadn’t been a particularly big spider. Cassandra had rescued it, placing a glass over it, sliding an envelope underneath and setting it free to start a new life at the back of the garden.
This wasn’t a spider. It didn’t have eight legs. It had a lot more than eight legs. It was long and spiky, and crawled like a snake, slaloming across the white cotton sheet. A myriapod, thought Cassandra. Of course what she really meant was a centipede, but the Princess was pretentious like that.
It was the first time she’d ever seen a centipede inside. They usually liked it outdoors under a log somewhere. This one had obviously become misplaced.
And it wasn’t alone.
She felt something tickling her knee. She sat up and looked down as two more blackish red centipedes crawled over her bed.
I like bugs, I’m fine with bugs, she thought to herself. But then she saw another one. It was crawling across the carpet. Its legs scurrying about in a way that made her skin start to itch.
The ones on the bed scrabbled to its edge and fell on the floor. They were all going the same way, and there were even more of them further ahead. She could count at least eight of them, crawling across her floor, up her dresser’s legs and onto the desk.
And she knew just where they were going.
She stood and followed them. There were nine in all. Nine blackish red centipedes crawling around the leather cover of the Zolnomicon.
She watched, partly astonished, partly disgusted as one seemed to force its head into the heavy pages and slither inside. The others began to follow. It was like watching earthworms dig into soil.
Cassandra hadn’t looked at the book since Rufus had come to get her. Last time she checked it was still hidden beneath her pillows. Martha had taken her to her room, and come back a few times in the night and asked if she was ok through the door. Cassandra hadn’t slept and no one had been in the room. It made no sense whatsoever why the book was out.
But all this was just a passing thought. What made even less sense and captivated the Princess’ attention, were the wriggling centipedes forcing themselves in-between the pages of the tome that looked as though it should crush them.
‘Strange,’ she said.
She watched until the last of the nine had crawled inside, then walked over to take a closer look.
There was nothing wrong with arthropods, or insects to everyone else, except when they got together and jumped out on you all legs and antennae jiggling. Cassandra stared at the tome’s ominous black stone. She told herself to stop being silly. They couldn’t hurt her. They were tiny.
One of the centipedes was still struggling to get all the way in, so she reached out and levered the book open to the page it was on.
She had braced for the worst, expecting nine mischievous little beasties to be wriggling about inside. But there was nothing there. Nothing at all. Not even the one that was halfway in. When the book slumped open, there were no creatures at all.
The Princess blinked a few times. She rubbed her eyes. Sleep deprivation can do some odd things, but this was madness.
Nero’s Charm.
It was the picture that caught her attention. The i
llustration was of a skeleton, they were always of skeletons, but this one was kneeling before a cloaked figure. A hand was outstretched over the skull and strings from each finger fell to each joint as if over a puppet.
She read…
He who whispers bestows on thee a gift. To speaketh the tongue of another’s mind. To harnesseth their thread. To shapeth their will. The weaker the mind, the stronger the claim. Maketh thou bind through open eyes. Dust of whispering root will giveth sway. Speaketh in the colour of he who whispers into the other’s ears. Command it to listen and it shall obey. Give it instruction and it shall heed. Whisper in the whispered chants and teach its body howeth its body shall dance.
Cassandra had sat down and leaned right into the book so that her eyes were but an inch from each word. It had had a magnetising effect on her. She felt charged, enlightened and dreadfully afraid. She was having one of those Newtonian realisations.
It wasn’t as foolish as it sounded. She’d read about this kind of thing before in a psychology text. Hypnosis, that’s what they called it. Swinging a pendulum to and fro in front of someone’s face and sending them into a trance like state.
A trance like state just like the one Rufus had been in.
Of course, we know it was something a bit more sinister than a mild case of hypnosis. But Cassandra didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything about that at all.
There was a noise in the courtyard.
She leapt up from the chair and rushed to the window. Perhaps they’d brought him back; if not, perhaps there was something new, something important going on.
The gate had opened for a carriage. The guards had rushed out to meet it.
Mr Eccleston stepped out and adjusted his spectacles.
They were saying something. He said something back. She couldn’t hear through the glass.
Then she heard Martha. Martha’s voice was shrill and penetrated even the brickwork.
‘Sorry, Mr Eccleston, she’s not feeling up to it…’
Cassandra shouldn’t have been in the mood for tutoring. She should have been swept up in the morbid cycles of grief like everyone else. But she wasn’t. She was very much eager to meet someone like her, someone capable of thinking things through.
And Mr Eccleston was precisely that person.
Cassandra hurried out into the courtyard just as Mr Eccleston was entering his coach.
‘Wait,’ she said, ‘Mr Eccleston!’
‘Cassandra, what is it?’ said Martha.
‘Mr Eccleston, stop, don’t go.’
‘Cassandra, it’s ok, I’ve told him you aren’t in the mood for tutoring.’
‘But, Martha, I am. Mr Eccleston, won’t you stay?’
‘You don’t have to Cassandra, not after everything that’s happened,’ said Martha.
‘Perhaps we can reschedule, Cassandra,’ said Mr Eccleston.
‘No. There’s no need for that. We’ll have the lesson as planned.’
‘Cassandra, are you sure?’ asked the maid. Cassandra was usually an ardent pupil, but this level of enthusiasm was unheard of. The Princess hadn’t been down for breakfast, she hadn’t even changed her clothes from the night before.
‘Yes. Everything should carry on as normal, don’t you think?’
‘Well…’
‘It’s ok, Martha, it’ll do her good. A pleasant distraction is most called for I think,’ said the tutor.
‘Alright, Mr Eccleston, should I put a pot on?’
‘Yes, splendid, Earl Grey please, no–’
‘–No sugar, no milk, extra strong just how you like, Mr Eccleston. I know.’
‘Splendid.’
Mr Eccleston unloaded his suitcase onto the library table, took off his glasses and gave each of the panes a blow and a wipe with his handkerchief.
He cleared his throat and looked through the day’s agenda.
‘Right, today we’re to engage in some mathematics. How’s your trigonometry?’
‘My trigonometry is just fine, Mr Eccleston.’
Martha entered with a tray. She placed it down on the table, poured the black tea through the strainer into the tutor’s cup and left the pot alongside.
‘Want anything, my dear?’
‘No, that’s alright. You can go now.’
Martha wasn’t used to being bossed around by Cassandra. She curtsied uncertainly.
‘Alright, you need anything just–’
‘I will, Martha, that’s all.’
Cassandra could get rid of the maid, but the two City Watchmen standing like statues on either side of the door would be much harder to disperse. It would be ok, she thought, they looked like they weren’t listening to anything anyway, and besides, Watchmen weren't intellectuals, they probably wouldn’t understand half of what was going to be said.
Martha left.
‘I shall show you some angles to begin with, and I’ll ask you to work out the missing one–’
‘Mr Eccleston, before we get into triangles, I’d like to ask you something about psychology if I may?’
Mr Eccleston pushed his glasses up his nose.
‘Hmm, you’re full of questions these days but you’ve got the timings all mixed up. Our schedule says we should be doing maths.’
‘Yes, but, it’s just a question and we don’t always have to follow the schedule by the book. I mean, who writes these things?’
‘I write them,’ said the tutor, with haughty offence. ‘And they’re very precise. They’re intended to give you a wide range of study without cramping a subject or neglecting one. I spend a lot of my time perfecting these schedules, Cassandra.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Is it dreams again? You were curious about them last time too.’
‘No, not dreams.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘Do you know much about hypnosis?’
‘Hypnosis?’ The tutor frowned curiously. ‘Well, yes, a little, what do you want to know?’
‘I was just wondering, Mr Eccleston, just curious that’s all, if perhaps it were possible to hypnotise someone? Make them do something they wouldn’t normally do. Something that maybe they didn’t want to do.’
The tutor thought for a bit.
‘There was a chap, Dr William Laurence, whose writings were about this sort of thing. The conscious and subconscious mind.’
‘The subconscious mind?’
‘The part of your brain that’s working behind the scenes. If I ask you to think of a blue chair… there you are, you just thought of a blue chair. That was your conscious mind working. It’s the mind we’re aware of; the thought after thought pattern of our working brains. The subconscious is everything that happens off that track. If I remember correctly, some of the doctor’s work suggested that the subconscious mind can indeed influence the conscious one.’
‘So… is it possible? I mean… in your opinion.’
‘Hmm,’ said Mr Eccleston. He liked a good hmm, and started most of his sentences this way. ‘I believe that certainly most of what we think is inspired by our unconscious mind in some way. There is, without doubt, a connection. But for someone to hypnotise another person, in a sense take hold of their conscious thoughts and presumably their actions, well there’s little empirical evidence to support it. Not in the sense I believe you are alluding to. For example, a psychologist can make someone feel a certain way towards things. That’s a good trick. I read about a man once who was scared of dogs. Hypnosis helped him replace that fear with overjoyed love. It went a bit too far apparently, and the poor chap cried tears of happiness every time he saw a pooch.’
Cassandra didn’t see the intended humour.
‘I read recently that it was possible to control someone’s actions. To shape their will.’
‘Shape their will? That sounds a bit fishy. Not any work I’m familiar with? What book is this?’
‘It said that you could speak to someone’s mind and convince and control their actions, at least I think that’s what it said
. It mentioned something about a whispering root…’
‘Cassandra?’ Mr Eccleston’s tone had changed. His head was tilted and he was showing the Princess two concerned eyebrows. ‘That sounds like alchemy?’
‘Alchemy?’
‘What is this book?’
‘I can’t remember it was in the City Library,’ Cassandra lied, badly, shakily. ‘What’s alchemy?’
‘Cassandra. Alchemy is outlawed. The stuff of pseudo science. Backwards colonial stuff. It has no place in your head or the logical realm.’
‘Yes but, Mr Eccleston, Rufus didn’t do what everyone’s saying. I was there, I saw it, he wasn’t acting himself. He was–’
‘Ah, so this is what it’s about is it?’
‘You don’t understand, Mr Eccleston. It makes no logical sense that Rufus would try to harm my mother. It is more reasonable to believe that someone poisoned him or hypnotised him or–’
‘Cassandra, enough.’
‘But–’
‘No. I don’t want to have this conversation. We are here to do mathematics.’
‘I don’t want to do mathematics.’
‘Then I shall leave.’
‘You can’t leave. I demand you to stay.’
‘Cassandra, what’s gotten into you? I understand you must be shaken about what happened. You must be confused and overwhelmed with lots of emotions, but you must think clearly at all times and not jump to unfounded conclusions from something you’ve read in a… alchemy book by the sounds of it.’
‘It’s not an alchemy book. And if it makes sense why shouldn’t I believe it? Surely it would be illogical to ignore something just because it’s forbidden.’
‘Are you justifying alchemy?’
‘No. I’m saying that what happened doesn’t make sense and that we should explore all the possibilities before we rule anything out. Isn’t that scientific method?’
‘Cassandra, you’re speaking dangerously.’
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