His cloaked tone of envy bristled me. I heard myself blurt, “How confident you seem in your assumptions.”
Fewmany gave a curious smile. “Why, she has small fangs after all.”
“You misread me.”
“Do I?”
“Appearances are deceiving at times.”
He halted his steps and met my eyes as best he could through my spectacles and the fading light. “We shall have to see one of these days, won’t we?”
Then he lifted his chin and peered behind my back. I turned my head. A fox sat on the path, her ears alert, her body aware.
“A fine stole it would make,” Fewmany said.
The fox stared at me, trying to force her thoughts into mine. I stamped my foot and she ran into the bosk. As I followed Fewmany to the gate, I realized how many hidden eyes peered out.
Indeed, I could ignore them, but those who looked did not stop watching me.
Their witness, if I were to call it so, began the day of my birth, when—according to my father—a pigeon, a dove, and a sparrow flew widdershins in the room moments after I first breathed. When I was three years old, my mother took me to see her mother in a faraway village within a vast forest. There, I first experienced the profound beauty of Nature—from a single pale yellow mushroom to great stands of evergreens. There, I followed a swarm of bees into a hollow trunk where, to my amazement, one bee told me a story of a terrified girl tied to a tree, a wounded man, and his silver wolf. There, in that same tree, a queen bee stung me three times on the forehead.
Soon after, although I didn’t speak—I was mute, in a way—I found I could communicate with creatures and plants, and they with me.
I was six when Cyril the Squirrel first led me to the woods, then seven when he showed me the way to Old Woman’s cottage. For months, I hid as I watched her and listened to her tell myths and tales to the animals. One of the myths about men in blue coats moved me so intensely that I gasped, and she discovered me in the shade. That very moment, the knot in my belly which had been tied to my tongue loosened, breaking my seven-year silence.
Old Woman taught me to sow, forage, weed, and harvest. At her side, I learned to sew, stoke, wash, cook, and clean. She was the first I trusted with my secret—that I could speak to and hear plants, animals, birds, and insects. She gave me love and told me of my fate—and I tried, how I tried, to abandon both.8
ALTHOUGH I WASN’T YET BORED of the open rooms, I’d developed a habit of checking all the knobs as I walked through the halls. Did no one enter those closed chambers? I wondered. If they were opened for cleaning, did the servants ever forget to lock them? Where were Fewmany’s private quarters? Where were the rooms for guests?
One afternoon in late October, I tended my work, close to the fire Naughton had built, and felt a heavy throb in my forehead. I knew Mutt was at the door even though he didn’t make a sound. I willed him away. He was strong, persistent. Then he started to whine and scratch. I should have rung Naughton to fetch him. Instead, I opened the door. Mutt grabbed my skirt in his teeth and tugged at the hem. The dog wanted me to follow him.
His nails clicked as he walked to the far end of the hall. My blood quickened when the dank smell filled my nostrils. He clawed against the door. Hatch marks marred the lower panel. Mutt wanted to get inside.
I glanced toward the stairs. No sound, no movement. So—I twisted the knob and gave the door a push.
Mutt rushed into the gap, I slipped behind him, and I closed the door behind me. Instinctively my hands reached to the left. Like in every other room, I found a table with a lamp and vesta on top. Wick lit, flame high, lamp raised, I peered into the darkness.
The chamber was filled with wolves.
Paintings and tapestries and mounted heads on the walls; decorated vessels and bronze castings set on tables; a ligatured skeleton; a case of teeth. Dozens, stuffed and posed, their preserved lips snarled, their bloodless paws on breathless prey.
I crept toward the east wall. Behind the dense drapes, the sun’s brightness filtered to a weak glow. Between the windows hung paintings of the beasts in the midst of hunts.
Within a cabinet with glass doors was a carved chair, massive as a throne, and hung across its back was a coat.
Mutt stood at my side as I opened the doors and looked closely. The instant I touched it, I knew I should leave it alone, but my fingers brushed against the silver-gray fur and traced along a sleeve, which ended with a paw, the small bones intact. The hood lay forward, as if a hidden head drooped in sleep. I pinched a lock of hair, lifted the hood, and saw ears, eyes, a snout, and teeth.
My breath seized.
I arranged the coat as I had found it, shut the doors, and looked down at the dog.
He was silent, in voice and thought.
I extinguished the lamp, clutched the spent match in my hand—careful to put things as they were—and opened a crack in the door. Mutt darted around my ankles. I closed the door, quietly, quickly. As I stepped away, I turned to see Mutt with his leg lifted, wetting the chamber’s entry.
I rang for Naughton. As I waited for him to take the dog away, I looked into Mutt’s eyes.
Speak, I said without saying, allowing what I didn’t want.
His answer was only an image.
A lamb, alone.
NOVEMBER /35
THAT NOVEMBER, I VISITED WITH Leo Gray, head of the translations office at Fewmany Incorporated. He had written my letters of recommendation when I applied to high academies the prior year, and he agreed to do so again.
The walk to Old Wheel was miserable in the cold. I realized how quickly I’d become accustomed to the comfort of the carriage which took me to and from the manor each day.
As I neared the plaza, I heard the sound of falling rubble. I walked along a side street and found the passage blocked with ropes and a No Trespassing sign. Several buildings had been demolished. Steam puffed from the mouths of men and horses, who loaded and pulled the debris. The sight of the ruins made my heart ache.
New Wheel would be built upon ghosts.
When I approached Fewmany Incorporated’s portico, I paused to watch King Aeldrich step down from the royal carriage, shake hands with a man who worked on the twelfth floor with my father, and enter the building under escort.
By the time I crossed the lobby, the group was headed up the pulley lift. At the giant carved desk, the attendant gave his rote greeting: “Welcome to Fewmany Incorporated, inspired by innovation, anchored in tradition. How may I help you?” I waited for my pass and skimmed the names of the enterprises carved into stone behind him. Four more had been added since I last counted. The conglomerate held—to name a few—haberdasheries, teahouses, taverns, apothecaries, dry-goods shops, longsheets, coal, jewel, and metal mines, quarries, timber land, arable land, banks, textile mills, armories, several steamwheeler lines—machines and tracks—and various other inventions, including the Tell-a-Bell.
At the translations office door, the familiar garlic and bay rum smell greeted me. Wesley jumped back when he let me in. Cuthbert and Rowland, who rarely acknowledged my presence, leaned forward in their chairs.
“Ye gods, she walks again!” Rowland said.
“Forgive him, but the resemblance is striking,” Leo said as he rose from his chair.
My hand drifted to my hair, black as it had been when I was a child. Last they’d seen me, it had been silver. From my hair, my skin, even my shape, I was the image of my mother, who had once worked as a translator for Fewmany Incorporated.
As Leo went to grab his coat, the men returned to their work. The office hadn’t changed, although a luminotype of Leo’s pretty wife now replaced the miniature portrait which had once been on his desk.
I meant only to collect my letters, but Leo suggested an escape to a teahouse.
He hardly sipped his drink as I told him about the library—it was wonderful to be in the company of someone who appreciated books as well—but wasn’t surprised that I’d taken my own apartment. Father h
ad mentioned it to him in conversation.
Leo said they’d been as busy as ever and had no apprentice that year. On personal matters, Wesley was courting (regardless of his harelip, he was well mannered and hardworking), Cuthbert’s eyesight was failing (he was very old), and Rowland was as curmudgeonly as ever (oddly reassuring). Leo looked well, although I noticed a strain in his face. His wife and son were in good health and content.
He gave me nine envelopes with Fewmany Incorporated’s seal on the flaps.
“I know you didn’t apply to your mother’s alma mater before, but consider it. I took the liberty of writing a letter. With your marks, class ranking, and translation skills, you’d be an excellent candidate for Altwort,” Leo said.
“How thoughtful,” I said.
“As a legacy, you’re sure to find more favor among the committee.”
“I imagine so. Thank you,” I said. I had no intention to apply, though. Why would I want to contend with her shadow?
The sympathetic cast to his eyes said what he didn’t. Poor girl, missing her mother.
We parted ways with a light handshake and my promise to keep him informed of my whereabouts.
A FEW DAYS AFTER THE visit with Leo, my diary confirms, I was compelled to think of her again.
One morning, I entered the library to find two manuscripts left on the supply cabinet, an indication they were meant to be shelved. Each had ribbons lolling out from the pages. That made me curious, so I opened both side by side where they were marked. The one on the left I could translate but not fully comprehend, as it seemed to be written in riddles. Among the pages, some elaborately rendered and colored, were drawings of beasts and humans—one creature strangely conjoined from a man and a woman—as well as sketches of laboratories, vials, tubes, and vessels, and all sorts of symbols. The breath thinned in my lungs as I skimmed the manuscript, suddenly anxious I’d see the symbol which had once interested Father and Fewmany.
I looked at the manuscript on my right. No symbols, no illustrations, only blank spaces where that should have been. The translation was in my native language, in my mother’s handwriting, on the grid-marked paper she had specially printed.
I compared the manuscripts side by side. They were meant to be read in tandem. One page mirrored the meaning of the other. Fewmany had inserted his own thoughts along the margins of her translation. Apparently, he was trying to repeat the experiments.
No surprise he, too, sought to turn lead into gold.
I walked up to the gallery, past the medical and anatomy texts, past the erotica collection—included there presumably for their technical purpose, most written in foreign languages, most with detailed drawings from which I discerned much and quickly—to the cabinets which held the esoteric manuscripts.
A few shiny spots marred the immaculate wood floor. As I bent down, they scurried away. The nemesis—silverfish! One cabinet had the telltale signs of a feast, dust on a shelf and manuscript edges jagged from their chewing. For a creature which likes dampness, they were in the wrong place, and their presence alarmed me.
I left a note with Naughton for Fewmany to decide what must be done.
Through the following days, my concentration waxed and waned. The sight of her handwriting shouldn’t have unnerved me. That wasn’t the first time I’d encountered it among his collection.
I’d known for years she’d been a translator for Fewmany Incorporated, Fewmany’s favorite, Leo once told me. Not until the magnate offered the archivist position to me did I learn she’d been a translator for his library as well.
When I was a small child, before we went on the trip to visit my grandmother, I saw collectors and couriers deliver tattered treasures to my mother, which she arranged in musty stacks on her tables. After our return from Vregol, there was no more of that. During the next ten years, I didn’t see who brought the confidential documents from Fewmany Incorporated, although I realized at some point it had to be Father. As for the books and manuscripts which came one by one, I knew she was bound by agreement to translate for only one patron, but I didn’t know who among the many collectors retained her exclusively. I had no context at the time to make the link to Fewmany himself.
Then, the summer before I turned thirteen, the arcane manuscript arrived.
A messenger presented it with the directive that she attempt to translate it, as all others who tried had failed. My mother forbade me to tell Father it was in her possession. I didn’t ask why. I knew not to cross her. In retrospect, I know she meant to guard herself, as well as Father, against her disloyalty to the magnate. She violated her agreement with Fewmany because she couldn’t resist the challenge.
But there is more, isn’t there?
I couldn’t forget the way my body pealed when she read the one word she could immediately discern on one of the pages, a name, the sound, Ee-fah.
Or how my muttering mother fell into silence, pacing, nightmares. The night she paced the parlor and repeated over and over, I’ve been robbed!
The fever that struck me and brought on twelve days and nights of dreams, terrible and beautiful, and my ability to speak a language I’d never heard before.9
How my mother took the arcane manuscript from its hiding place when I insisted the language I suddenly spoke—as she did, too, with her freakish gift—was the one in which the manuscript was written, but I couldn’t read it.
The return from a twilight walk in the woods to find Father in the dark, who told me, “Your mother is dead. An accident. I believe she choked.”
How she left for me a cipher for the lost? missing? hidden? arcane manuscript, as if she thought—as if she knew—she wouldn’t live to complete the task.
DIARY ENTRY 25 NOVEMBER /35
Most days, I leave early and return late, and I’ve had few opportunities to encounter my neighbors. This afternoon when I returned from meeting Father for a performance (no perfume for matinees!), I met the last of them.
On the first floor are three elderly sisters, the Misses Acutt—one tall, one round, and one short—and their gray long-haired dandy of a cat, Sir Pouncelot (that is not a joke), who wears an embroidered collar. They are obliged to a solitary nephew, whose wife cannot wait until they’re dead.
On the second, two women some ten years older than myself; Miss Jane Sheepshank and Miss Dora Thursdale, both secretaries, at Fewmany Incorporated and an accounting office, respectively.
The third, Mr. and Mrs. Woodman, rough faced, as if they once labored in the sun, always with a ready hello. On her off-day mornings, she bakes cinnamon buns and shares them. He works in a printing shop, and she works as a daymaid.
Then fourth, a family. I’ve met only Mr. Elgin, who has the most enormous hands I’ve ever seen—he’s a mason—and have heard the voices of a woman and at least two children below me.
Everyone seems to keep to his or her own affairs, but is pleasant enough. They know I work as an archivist and have stopped giving me looks when they see me step on or off the carriage. One of the Misses Acutt recently needled me with questions of a biographical nature, and my answers only seemed to exacerbate matters. “So you have chosen to live this way, with your father’s full knowledge. How liberal. And alone—even more peculiar than Miss Sheepshank and Miss Thursdale, not even sisters,” she said.
In moments like that, I wish I had a cutting mouth! But I kept quiet, as one does to keep the peace.
It is strange for me, this proximity. I hardly remember the house where we lived when I was very small, only the corner of the room where I played as she worked, and I saw others when we went to market or for her walk. Possibly other times, but I have no memory. At our row house, only one wall was shared, and it was either thick or the neighbors were silent as owls, because I don’t recall hearing voices or noises on the other side.
Here, that is not the case.
As tonight. It isn’t the first instance I’ve heard Mr. Elgin shouting and slamming some object around. There was no other sound for some time, but when
I went into the water closet to wash for bed, I detected a whimper.
A child is below. She hides; she listens; she waits. Her plaintive suppressed wail needles straight into my belly. My nerves are raw now, my senses too sharp.
DECEMBER /35
Dear Miss Riven,
How is it that you and I have never discussed our common interest? Books, of course, and related scribblings.
Would you be so indulgent as to join me for a convivial dinner, here at the manor, so we might confer on matters near and dear to our hearts?
You are invited at seven o’ the clock, 15 December. Please inform Naughton of your reply.
Sincerely,
fm
Post script. A carriage will be sent for your comfort.
FOR MORE THAN AN HOUR, I fretted over my attire and managed to pin up my hair in time for the carriage’s arrival. At the manor’s door, Naughton greeted me with a tone more reserved than usual as he took my cloak. I heard music and looked around until I saw from where it came. On the grand staircase’s landing was the quartet Fewmany had told me was on his staff.
Mutt scampered from a room and leapt at my knees. I gave him a pat on the head. A moment later, Fewmany stepped out, closed the door, and locked it.
“Good evening and welcome, Miss Riven,” he said. He gave a deep bow. After he rose, Mutt licked the ground near his feet. What looked like crumbs dusted the floor and the fabric at Fewmany’s coat’s edge. Always, the mystery of what he kept in that pocket, but I made no inquiry.
“Thank you, Fewmany,” I said with a curtsy.
His smile was relaxed. He clutched his lapels. A crimson vest blazed against his black pin-striped coat. “Join me in the library. Cook has an eye on the roast.”
I must have given some indication of distress, because he gave me a quizzical look and asked, “Is there something of concern?”
The Plague Diaries Page 5