The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  I couldn’t read his eyes but he studied mine.

  “When I struck out into the world, I tore away from my dirty roots. I wished to be free of it all. You understand the wish to have a name of your choosing, don’t you?” he asked.

  I did. I hadn’t been called by my given name, Evensong, shortened to Eve, in many years. What I’d chosen for myself felt truer.

  The horses clopped to a halt. The coachman opened the door. Fewmany illuminated my approach to the waiting escort.

  “I shall keep it to myself,” I said at last. I settled upon the taut leather seat, found a cashmere blanket at my side, and felt heated bricks near my feet.

  “Have a pleasant eve, Miss Riven.” He closed the door, pounded the side of the carriage, and shouted for the horses to ride.

  What am I to make of him? I wondered as I peered out of the carriage window. As a child, I had been frightened of him. The night we first met, when I was six, I said not a word to him—I didn’t yet speak—and he teased me in the cruel way adults do, “So, if I tried to eat you up, you wouldn’t even scream?” When I was eleven, there was the incident with the scissors and symbol. Since then, Fewmany and I had had no such dramatic encounters, but I continued to hold my wary childhood impressions, as well as Father’s actions, against him. My cautious feelings, entwined with curious ones, lingered.

  For some time now, the magnate had done nothing to garner my distrust. In fact, Fewmany had been quite generous. Perhaps he didn’t involve himself in the decisions regarding apprenticeships at his conglomerate, but I expected he did, for all of us whose fathers worked for him. Although I was the only girl.4 As to my archivist position, he could have solicited far and wide and found someone experienced.5 But he asked me, more confident than I was I could manage so immense an endeavor. I suppose I should have felt flattered by, rather than suspicious of, those opportunities. What I’d done to earn his favor, I was unsure. I resolved to continue to do my best and not harbor grievances.

  As the carriage halted near the row house’s steps, I had a sudden thought, born of all I knew of myths and tales: There is power inherent in a name. I decided he meant to put me at ease with something we have in common.

  DIARY ENTRY 23 SEPTEMBER /35

  My birthday, 18th. The weather isn’t cold enough, but I wore the new cloak Margana made. It’s a beautiful purple wool, which reminds me of one I had as a child, with appliqués of bird shapes along the back and sleeves. Father made reservations at The Trencher, which is more accommodating to my diet. He had roast quail and I a warm beetroot, fennel, and walnut salad. Almond custard for dessert.

  The evening was pleasant enough, but I do wish Father would stop pretending he doesn’t notice how besotted Mrs. Knolworth’s sister is with him! He could have had his pick among several lonely widows and vivacious spinsters willing for a late start—dare I suggest, a discreet liaison—but he persists with his lovesick grief, which only seems to endear him more to them.

  When we returned home, I opened a package from Nikolas. He sent a collection of fairy tales well-known in Ilsace, in that language. Pressed between the pages were flowers. In his letter, he said he gathered them at a roadside. “Because of this gesture, the coachmen secretly refer to me as The Dainty Prince. I am thoroughly emasculated.”

  I’ve not missed him so acutely of late. I keep my mind busy in the library and at night with books. But sometimes, as tonight, when I’m reminded of how he makes me laugh, or something brings him to mind, or my vigilance fails, I wish he were here, if only for the comfort of his presence.

  Enough.

  I’ll send him a thank-you and tend to tardy replies. Oh—I must remember to send these with my new post address. I have my own cubby! Charlotte is now settled with her relatives and has made several acquaintances. She believes her aunt is determined to have her engaged by this time next year. For Charlotte’s sake, may he be a man who appreciates her directness. Muriel seems happy at the conservatory. She says she practices for hours which pass like minutes.

  I understand that feeling of immersion. Sometimes it happens as I work, even though to many it might seem tedious, so many books to catalog. But for me, there’s always an element of surprise. Everything I touch receives a dallying perusal. My knowledge of the world increases one paragraph, one page, one illustration at a time.

  Every evening, I spend in study, an endeavor which, although natural to me, has become almost insatiable. Anything I wish to learn, I can discover on the shelves. Well, then. Perhaps I’m not as angry about the rejection from Nallar as I thought I was.

  OCTOBER /35

  THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY BIRTH blurred into the weeks preceding the one of my mother’s death.

  Excited about my pending move, little did I think of the occasion until I had to decide what I’d leave behind.

  I planned to take my furniture and clothes, most of my books, the letters and odds and ends in my desk drawers, and a box of old drawings. But the faded blue chest, painted with little animals, and the nesting dolls—no. Those things my mother had kept from her childhood and given to me. She’d never expressed warm attachment to them. The chest had been in my room since I was a baby. The nesting dolls she passed down to me when I turned seven. According to her family’s tradition, the firstborn girl received the old set and the mother purchased a new one for herself. My mother instead bought a vase to fill the gap on her shelves.6

  I wasn’t especially fond of the chest or dolls, but they remained in my possession, vestigial more than sentimental objects. Although I expected to have no children myself, I wondered, if I did, would I bother to pass them on, too, for the sake of tradition?

  The blue chest sat in plain sight at the foot of my bed, but it had long disappeared from my notice. Not so the night before I left my room in my father’s house.

  I unlocked the chest. There, where I’d last stored it, was the illustrated folklore book written in my mother’s native language, which I couldn’t read. Slipped between those pages was the cipher she had drawn, four years earlier. Flushed with anger, my hand scraped against a knot on the chest’s bottom as I made room for the nesting dolls, the stack of twelve to be precise. The thirteenth, the solid one which fit in the center, was already inside, along with the bag of gold ingots and the handwritten clue, which read “A map is to space as an alphabet is to sound.” Those items, too, she’d left for me within the chest, four years earlier, before she died. The dolls, ingots, clue, and cipher reminded me of what I hadn’t found, what remained hidden or lost.

  The arcane manuscript.7

  With a thup of the lid, I shut away the objects and the memories with them.

  The morning of the move, Father insisted that he help even though I hired two bull-armed men for the task. As we waited for them to arrive, I looked at my new home.

  The plaster was patched. One of the curtain bars was broken. The floors showed evidence where a wall once stood and a wide groove as if someone paced many wee hours. The long room served as parlor, bedroom, and kitchen. Next to the stove, meant for cooking and heat, was a large cupboard with a drop leaf. A door led to a tiny water closet with no basin, but there was an ancient privy and a hip tub with a modern spigot. Luckily, the building’s placement on the corner—where there was no newsbox—allowed for much light through the windows.

  The men placed my desk, carved chair, mirror, bed, night table, wardrobe, and bookshelf where I wanted them. Father carried my belongings up the four flights of stairs, defiant that his age winded him. As they stacked my boxes, I thought of what was to be delivered on my next half day—the new dishes and kettle, the secondhand reading chair, and the small table and bench. I contemplated what prints I wanted to hang on the rails.

  Anxious to unpack, I opened a box of linens. I noticed Father peering out of the windows, his body a gray shadow against the streaming light. He huffed quietly and turned then, his fingers pinched at the ring on his left hand. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say, what he’d been thinking as he st
ood alone. I reached into my box again, determined to ignore the unwelcomed presence he’d released in my space.

  I wasn’t successful. How happy I’d been, and how quickly that turned into a raw irritation.

  Father only made matters worse when he offered, yet again, to find some way to extricate me from the lease and assist with rents in a more “suitable” ward, since I insisted on living on my own.

  That was the issue—the appearance of my station, the reflection on him. Father wasn’t conventional about other matters, namely my education or prospects. He had always encouraged my intellectual curiosity, although I wondered if he would have done so if my brothers had lived. I knew he expected me to finish high academy before I married, which is why he made no concerted effort to arrange introductions or pressure me as such.

  What Father loathed were poverty and the marginal hints of it, which he had evaded by his wits and good luck. Born in Foradair, one of Ailliath’s oldest towns and the kingdom’s former seat, Father lived in a cramped walk-up with his parents, who worked as a chimney sweep and a laundry maid. There had been siblings, but all had died before he was born or while he was too young to remember them.

  Like other boys of his station, he should have followed in his father’s footsteps, broom in hand. However, in primary school, Bren Riven gained attention for his charm and intelligence. Kind strangers took an interest in him. Scholarships paid his way to fine schools; his genial disposition made him many friends, including those with influence and power. Proud in their own way, although they never said so, his parents—this I would learn after the plague—often remarked, “Who do you think you are?” and “So, you’re too good for us now?” He meant no insult by his striving, but he suffered their derision and that of the neighbors. Still, after he graduated with honors from a high academy in history and geography, he returned to Foradair to work for a land speculator. His parents rarely visited his modest house; he rarely returned to the ward, that reminded him of what he wanted to escape. Once his fortune took a great turn, thanks to another native son, Fewmany—strange, that coincidence—Father couldn’t bear anything that reminded him of his origins.

  Although there were wards in Rothwyke far more desperate than Warrick, the mere sight of it roused a dormant anger with which he couldn’t make peace.

  Before he left my apartment, he urged me to allow him to send Elinor once a week. I refused. I could tend to myself, and Elinor, old enough to be my grandmother, need not have more to do and more stairs to climb. Our good-bye was on pleasant terms, at least. He kissed me on the forehead, something he hadn’t done since—I couldn’t remember when.

  A FULL MOON WAS SET to rise the seventeenth of October.

  I’d rung for the carriage and was on my way downstairs when I stopped on the landing to adjust my full satchel. When I looked up through the windows toward the west, the twilight shimmered lavender and rose.

  An impulse surged through me. I asked Naughton to unlock the doors to the courtyard and told him to have the coachman wait.

  I walked out among the planters, looked into the sky, then cast my eyes to the trees beyond. Suddenly, my feet stepped ahead of my will, through the courtyard, across the green, and toward the grove. A high fence spanned as far as I could see, made of iron bars set close together, too narrow for deer to pass.

  At the arched gate, decorated with a tangle of metal ivy, I set down my satchel. I tried the latch, but it was locked. My fingers clutched the cold bars as I peered between the gaps. The trees rushed me with their knowledge gathered from roots and branches: the grove was wide and deep; once it had been connected to the woods in the west.

  Their message prompted my memory. When I was a child, my father—and the crow who visited our courtyard—told me that trees covered much of the land, but many were cut to build Rothwyke and the castle. Still more, I realized, to make way for the manors.

  No sound reached my ears, but a vibration rumbled through my soles like a summons. For a moment, I lapsed, listened beyond listening, standing in that threshold space with the light and breeze and bird calls when I heard,

  “Fresh air thins blood that’s long been sitting.”

  I turned to see Fewmany behind me. A colossal key dangled from his finger.

  “Would you care to join me for a stroll?”

  Curiosity, as much as the promise of a wooded walk, prompted my acceptance. I stood aside as he turned the lock, stepped ahead of him, and heard the creaking hinges go silent at my back. I followed his lead at a fork in the path as we spoke of my progress with the catalog.

  Then he changed the subject.

  “This grove was once part of the nearby woods. Much of the land was cleared long ago, but this was left behind,” he said. “Some weeks have passed since I entered the gate for a moment of quiet or a hunt.”

  I remembered the animal heads mounted on his office wall at Fewmany Incorporated. Most of the beasts didn’t roam Ailliath or any close region. “How many acres do you claim?”

  “All told and accounted for, millions. But here, enough for a long walk or vigorous chase.”

  “What do you chase?”

  “Deer, sometimes boar, or whatever is obtained to roam until it meets a sharp demise.”

  “Have you always hunted?”

  “Once to survive, now for sport, but the satisfactions are the same—cooked meat eaten, raw aggression fed.”

  Such is his bluntness, I thought as I stepped from the path to look closer among the undergrowth dotted with red, gold, and orange leaves.

  A blur twirled at my nose, joined by another, then another. I leaned back as the bees spiraled around my head. When they darted toward Fewmany, he stood stiff, his eyes wild, as they zigzagged near his nose and mouth.

  “Go away! Vindictive pests!” His arms swiped through the air.

  “Be still, and they’ll leave. They’re scouts from the hive reading our faces,” I said. Scouts, I thought, this late, in this chill. How odd.

  As quickly as they came, the bees flew away. Fewmany exhaled with a contempt-filled huff.

  I crept farther into the trees, brushed my toe across the ground, and lifted my spectacles to study a cluster of mushrooms. Impulsively my fingers pulled one from the litter. I sniffed the cap and bit into it.

  “What-ho, what if it’s poisonous?!” he said.

  I reached down for two more. I offered one to him as I ate the other. He took it from me with caution.

  “It’s not poison.” I ate a third as he stared at me, then at his mushroom. “If I’m mistaken, I’ll be dead soon, at least by this time tomorrow.”

  Fewmany nibbled the top, which gave me a subtle twinge of satisfaction. His face revealed he liked the taste, and he ate all but the stem.

  “How did you know it was safe to eat?” he asked.

  “I learned it.”

  “Is there a book specific enough that you trusted you could take such a risk?”

  “No. I was taught.”

  “By whom?” He narrowed his eyes.

  My stomach lurched. I revealed something I hadn’t intended to—the truth of it connected to matters I didn’t want to think about—and I knew I must be guarded with my answers.

  “A grandmother,” I said.

  “Mmm-hmm. A grandmother who lived in the woods?”

  “Yes. I was young at the time. I remember the lessons well, though,” I said.

  “Was this your father’s mother or mother’s mother?”

  “The latter,” I lied.

  “Your mother—peace be to the dead—was from a land far from here. Vregol.”

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you then?” he asked.

  He detected something was amiss. That unspoken connection I’d felt with him before drew suddenly taut.

  “I’m uncertain, but I remember I was small and didn’t yet speak.”

  My answer held a conflation of truth and lies.

  “Yet you recall with precision a fungus that wouldn’t cause se
vere illness or death. You must have eaten many of them to retain the memory,” he said.

  “Until I could fill on no more. Surprising what one remembers with such clarity,” I said. “So, as a child yourself, you knew the woods as a hunter . . .”

  “Yes, yes. Hunter, scavenger, predator, prey. Such was a life on the margins where the woods met the pasture.”

  “Who taught you?”

  When he pivoted on his heel and began to walk again, I knew we’d abandoned the prior topic.

  “When I was a stealthy lad,” he said, “a distant neighbor, a kindly woodsman, found me inspecting a dead rabbit with fresh wounds. The man said a hawk had dropped its kill. Strange I’d come upon it when I did. The man taught me to skin, gut, and roast it, then with no rude mention of my hungry look, showed me how to use a snare. This served me well until my body and appetite grew. The woodsman taught me to use a bow and arrow and gave me the use of his hound. In exchange, I was to share my kills. By then, my mother was reduced to bones and hair, so my sister—peace be to the dead, both—was the one who welcomed the fresh meat, shaving slivers of liver to eat raw while she stewed a thigh and fed the collie the heart.”

  “Why didn’t your family eat the sheep?” I asked.

  “My father didn’t own them. He was a shepherd. We received a lamb in spring, a ram in autumn, and on occasion a basket of wool. The man who owned the land and everything on it was fair according to custom, and not unduly unkind. My father despised him, but I admired his horse and fine clothes and the ring on his finger. Once, I stood aside as they spoke and I realized that ’tis always better to own the sheep. There’s far less monotony and uncertainty involved. A fierceness rose up within me I didn’t know I possessed, a deeply buried monster with teeth and claws and fetid breath.”

  I glanced at his profile. A scowl tightened his face. The air itself seemed to weigh upon me. I wondered if he said such blatant things to other people.

  Fewmany looked into the distance. “Ah, but what would you know of these matters? A fortunate child you were—yes?—given the boons of attention and necessities. You have been spared a certain striving.”