The First Stone

by Mark Anthony

  I nodded, and could not help notice that the shadows beneath her blue eyes only accentuated their brightness.

  “I was weaker as a girl,” she said, “before my family moved out to the country beyond Whitehall.”

  “Perhaps it’s the city air that troubles you,” I said. “To be certain, it’s thick with soot and other foul humors.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, though she shook her head. “The city is very great, and very loud, and filled with new contraptions. Wheels and gears and pulleys, all grinding away. I feel as if they’re all pressing in on me sometimes. Were it not for the abbey, I doubt I would come to London at all.” She smiled at me. “But I am glad I did so today.”

  “There,” I said. “You look better already.”

  “The rest has restored me greatly. And no doubt Sadie will brew me one of her teas this evening.”

  I inquired politely and soon ascertained this Sadie was a servant, and one with the old woman I had met at the gates of the Faraday estate. She seemed to be something of an herbalist, and had given Alis teas to ease her discomfort and lend her strength since she was a child.

  The bells tolled again, and it was time for her to go. I was pleased when she leaned on my arm instead of the iron railing as we descended the steps before the abbey. Below, her family’s carriage waited. She started toward it, then paused to look at me.

  “What are you, Mr. Albrecht?”

  The directness of her words, and of her blue eyes, startled me. Had she suspected something of my true nature? “As I’ve said, Miss Faraday, I am visiting from Scotland, and—”

  “Yes, Mr. Albrecht, you’ve told me your story.” She smiled. “And I daresay you know all about me already, for there’s little worth investigating there—one more silly nobleman’s daughter in a country full of them. In our meetings I have divined that you are kind and generous, that your wit, for all its gentle courtesy, has teeth, and that you have a goodly face. But I still have no idea what you are.”

  Her expression was beguiled, not accusing; she did not suspect. With a deep bow I said, “I am, my lady, your servant.”

  That response won me a bright laugh, and I stood on the steps, gazing at the street, long after the carriage had disappeared.

  We met often after that, and not always at the abbey. Despite her delicate constitution, her spirit was strong, and she was always ready for an adventure. We went boating on the river, and strolled around the Tower of London as she told tales of kings and queens who had met ill ends within, and sat for hours watching as the builders worked on Christopher Wren’s new cathedral.

  “It shall be finer than Westminster when it is done,” I said.

  She shook her head. “The crypts will not be old. There will be nothing to make rubbings of. How shall we bother the priests?”

  “I’ve heard Wren’s made a gallery, high inside the new dome, where one’s whispers run along the curve of the wall to a listener’s ear clear on the other side, over a hundred feet away.”

  She clapped her hands. “I should like to see that very much.”

  “Then you shall.”

  “But only if I—” She turned away. “How long do you think it will be before the cathedral is completed?”

  I could see the blue lines of veins tracing down her slender neck, toward a shadow at the hollow of her throat. “You shall see the Whispering Gallery, Miss Faraday. I promise you.”

  She turned back, smiling now. “Well, if Lord Albrecht promises it, then it will be so.” She laid her hand over mine, and I smiled as well, and all thoughts of shadows were forgotten.

  Our affection was limited to such innocent physical gestures as this. Always when we met it was in a public place, and one of her father’s men was nearby, so no impropriety could be claimed on any part. Apparently the reports that reached the Faraday estate were favorable, for I was soon invited to dine with the family.

  “My agents tell me Madstone Hall is a fine manor in the county of Midlothian,” Lord Faraday said as we gathered in the hall after dinner. He was a handsome, white-haired man, hale throughout most of his life, but lately troubled by gout. He sat with his bandaged foot propped up on a stool. “The estate is not overly large, I am told, but well situated, and yielding a good income.”

  So he had made some inquiries. I could hardly blame him. From her chair across the hall, Alis gave me a pained look, obviously embarrassed by her father’s scrutiny, but I smiled.

  “It is a good estate,” I said.

  “And why have you come to London?” Lady Faraday said, looking up from her embroidery.

  “I can tell you that,” Lord Faraday interjected. “These days, what young northern lord would not wish to better his connections in the south by a visit to London? Am I right, Mr. Albrecht?”

  In a way, he was—I had indeed come seeking connections, though not any he could imagine—so I simply nodded.

  “Miss Faraday has two brothers, one studying to be a barrister, and the other at sea. The eldest shall inherit everything. I fear there will be nothing for her after I am gone, excepting a small dowry. She will have little to offer save her good name.”

  “I would say she has much more to offer than that.” I gazed across the hall, and my smile vanished. Alis sagged in her chair, her hand to her brow. I hurried over to her.

  “It is nothing,” she said in protest. “A headache, that’s all.”

  “Go fetch Sadie at once,” Lady Faraday said to one of the servants. “Tell her Miss Faraday needs her tea.”

  I took my leave of the family, and despite her pain Alis managed a smile, while Lord Faraday shook my hand firmly and insisted upon my swift return to dine with them again.

  Thus began my fall in earnest. I need not go into great length over my descent. Know only that as snow blanketed the countryside and Christmas neared, I loved her. I loved her truly, with all my being. While sometimes at night, alone in my bed, I would lie awake, thinking of the Desiderata and dreading the wrath of the Seekers, when I was with her such thoughts were driven from my mind. I could think only of her finespun beauty, her angelic voice, and her peculiar variety of humor and liveliness, which never failed to brighten my spirits on the darkest winter days.

  “So who is she?” Rebecca said on one of the rare occasions when we dined together. Of late I had seen her little, for she had been absorbed in her own investigations for the Seekers.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said, looking up from my wine.

  “Who is she?” Rebecca repeated. “The woman you’re in love with.”

  I stared, and she laughed.

  “Come, now, Marius, don’t deny that you’re in love. I know what it looks like on you. I saw it once myself, though not so dewy-eyed as this, I must say. She’s absolutely turned your head. Who is she?”

  “No one,” I said. “It’s a passing thing. I have no time for such fancies.”

  Rebecca coiled a hand beneath her chin. “If you say so, Marius,” though she appeared anything but convinced. “Now tell me, how is your current research going?”

  I spoke briefly, in a detached manner, and I offered no particulars. Everything would be in my reports, and if the Philosophers wished Rebecca to know the details, then she would have read them. Despite being madly in love, I had managed to write regular missives to the Philosophers, describing how Alis suspected nothing of her heritage, how she was usually intelligent and sensitive, as well as bold and inquisitive, though of a fragile constitution, which prevented her from engaging in travel and other activities that might have helped reveal her nature.

  As for replies and further directives from the Philosophers, I received none. I was on my own. Thus there was no one to catch me as I fell.

  I saw her most days, and if a day did pass when I failed to walk with her in Westminster Abbey, or ride out to the Faraday estate, then my mood was bleak and oppressive, and so it would remain until next I saw her.

  For her part, Alis seemed to enjoy all my attentions, which only encouraged me f
urther, as did the apparent approval of Lord Faraday, who found my position and respectable manner more than acceptable. And Lady Faraday—propelled, perhaps, by a bit too much wine—proclaimed at dinner one night that surely I was the most handsome and agreeable young man she had ever met.

  Alis, of course, was duly embarrassed by her mother’s outburst, though the blush that touched her cheeks made her all the more lovely—like a rose so near to white that the palest tincture of its petals, once detected, rendered it more striking than the most vivid flower.

  “What’s the matter?” I murmured, when we were gathered in the hall after supper, bending over the back of her chair where she sat with a book. “Do you not agree with your mother that I am the most handsome and agreeable young man she ever met?”

  “Without doubt,” Alis said crisply. “But Lady Faraday is already spoken for, so I’m afraid you’re quite out of luck in that regard.”

  “Then I’ll just have to make do with her fair daughter.”

  Alis bent back over her book, but not before she could conceal the smile on her lips.

  As weeks passed, the Seekers seemed content to leave me to my own devices, even as the length and frequency of my reports to the Philosophers dwindled. Every day I become further ensconced in the Faraday household. My life on the streets of Edinburgh seemed more than a lifetime away, and I felt a deep certainty that Master Albrecht would be pleased for me—that this was what he had meant when he said he wished for me to live my life.

  There was only one thing that marred my happiness: As my feelings for Alis grew stronger, she herself was growing weaker.

  One day in February, when the unusually balmy weather emboldened us to stroll in the little wilderness outside the Faraday manor, Alis suddenly slumped against me, and when I lifted her into my arms she was as light and trembling as a bird.

  “It’s nothing,” she protested. “All I need is to rest for a moment. You may put me down, Lord Albrecht.”

  “I will not,” I said, and carried her into the house.

  By the time we reached the hall, her protests had ceased, and her trembling had become a violent spasm. She was cold, and her eyes hazed with pain. I set her on a couch and duly retreated to the far end of the hall as Lady Faraday and a swarm of servants descended upon her. It was best for me to stay out of the way, though I wanted nothing more than to be at her side, to hold her hand, and to take away her pain—as if I actually had some power to do so.

  She let out a moan, and I clenched my hands into fists. Words escaped me. “I cannot bear this.”

  “ ’Tis she who cannot bear it,” a soft voice said.

  I turned and found I was not alone in the shadows at the end of the hall. An old woman dressed all in gray stood in a doorway, a weary look on her face. It was Sadie, Alis’s beloved servant.

  “You’re right, of course,” I said, cheeks afire with shame. “I should be stronger, for her sake.”

  The old woman laughed. “You help her more than you know.”

  “Not as you do. They tell me you brew teas that ease her pain.”

  “And love eases pain that teas help not.”

  I sighed. “Would that I knew what afflicted her. If I did, then I would take it away. I would make her as strong in body as she is in spirit.”

  The old woman’s gaze moved across the hall. “It runs more truly in some. ’Tis their blessing, and their curse, for they feel all things more keenly.” Her green eyes turned to me. “Yet in the end, all such folk will feel the same burden.”

  These words sent a chill through me, though I did not understand them. Or did I?

  “You know something,” I said, moving closer to her. “That’s how you can help her as you do. Tell me, please, what’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing is wrong with her. ’Tis the world that’s wrong. This Earth. ’Tis harming her as it harms all like her. In the end it shall be too great. It cannot be defeated.”

  I staggered. These words were a knife to my heart. At last I managed to speak. “That day I first came to the gates, you said she favored sun. But I found her in fog.”

  “Favors it, yes. But bears it? Not well, I fear. Not well at all. It burns her, the sun of this world. She is like a figment born of the night mists, one that can only vanish in the light of dawn.”

  A sickness filled me. I had taken her outside because the day was fine. What a fool I was! What a miserable fool. Yet despite my agitation I felt a spark of curiosity, and for the first time in many days I remembered I was a Seeker. Who was this old woman? How did she know such things?

  “I must go make Miss Faraday’s tea,” Sadie said, and before I could speak she turned and vanished through the doorway.

  Alis was soon resting comfortably, and I made my farewell, which she was too weary to protest. When I returned the next morning she was sitting up in bed, and the day after that I found her wrapped in a blanket in a chair in the hall. She continued to grow stronger, even as outside the weather turned chill and gloomy, wet with the rains of March.

  All the while, I could not forget the words spoken by Sadie. Did she know something of Alis’s true nature? I had not gained another opportunity to speak to the old servingwoman, but all the same I was sure of it.

  This world. It’s harming her, as it harms all like her. . . .

  Were there others in London like Alis? If so, perhaps they would know a way to help her.

  A scheme came to me. I knew it was an utter violation of the Desiderata to do what I intended, but I hardly cared. Damn the Seekers to hell, and damn the Philosophers with them. Alis was not a thing to be watched: an insect to be caught in a jar and observed as it perished. I would find others like her, and I would make them help her.

  Except, even as I began my search, I said nothing of it to Alis; I gave no hint that might reveal her true nature to her. Was this some concession to the Seekers still? Or perhaps I only wished to protect her from knowledge that would trouble her already frail health.

  Even I did not know the reason, for by then a madness had begun to come over me. I could not eat, I could not sleep. I could do nothing but think of Alis and search for those like her, those who could help her.

  I passed my days with Alis as before, but now by night I descended into the vaults beneath the Seeker Charterhouse, as though I were a ghoul again—just like in Edinburgh as a boy, when I slept in the family crypt of the Gilroys. Only I did not come to these vaults to rest, but instead to work, and I did so feverishly, poring over old books, sifting through stacks of crackling parchments whose faded words I strained to read even in the light of a dozen candles. As a master, nothing in the library of the Seekers was forbidden to me; surely I would find some answers there. After all, the Philosophers had to know something about those of fairy heritage, else they would never have given me the assignment to observe Alis.

  I was right. After many nights of searching I came upon a missive. It was addressed to the Philosophers, though it was unsigned. But no doubt they had known who it came from, and the information in it fascinated me even as it chilled my blood.

  The missive spoke of a tavern—though it gave neither name nor location for this establishment— describing it as a place where those with “most peculiar and unearthly heritage” often gathered in secret. How the author of the missive came to know of this place, he did not write, but it became plain as I read that the patrons of this tavern were like Alis: people with the blood of fairies in their veins.

  The missive was maddening in its brevity, but after many nights of searching I discovered a box lost in a corner, and in it found many more letters, all unsigned, but written in the same slanted hand as the first. I read them all, and by the time the candles were burned to stumps I knew not everything I wished to, but much all the same.

  To be a fairy on this mundane Earth was an agony that could not long be borne; such an ethereal creature would soon perish here. Those who possessed some measure of fairy heritage also inherited this affliction, though to a le
sser degree. To dwell on this world for such a person was often painful, though not always fatal, and the folk of the tavern had created various remedies that eased their suffering.

  That was it—that was the knowledge I needed—though I was still frustrated by the anonymous author’s lack of detail as to the name and location of this tavern. The final missive began to glow in my hands as a shaft of gold light fell upon it. I looked up at a window, high in the wall of the vault; it was bright with the dawn. A new day had come, and hope with it. I spirited the letters back into their hiding place, then ascended the stone steps that led from the vaults, back to the world of the living.

  “Hello there, Marius,” Byron said. He was sitting in the hall of the Charterhouse, a book and a cup of tea on the table before him. “So was it a long night at the pub, then? Forgive my saying so, but you look absolutely wretched.”

  I lifted a hand to my temple, only realizing then how it throbbed. Lately, I had begun having frequent headaches. But it was only from the long nights of research, and what did I care anyway? This pain was nothing next to what Alis suffered.

  “I must away,” I said.

  “Nonsense, Marius.” Byron pushed aside his book. “Come, sit with me and have a cup. It’ll do you good.”

  I shook my head. “I have things . . . I must away.” And before Byron could protest further, I was out the door of the Charterhouse.

  I believed I would tell Alis everything that night—about myself and the Seekers, and about her own true nature. Only I didn’t. She was too weary, and I was weary as well from so many sleepless nights spent in the Seekers’ vaults. Nor did I tell her the next morning, or the morning after that. I remained silent, and each day her face grew paler, though if possible more lovely.

  She was stronger some days than others, and on the Ides of March, on a fine spring afternoon, we at last ventured together to London’s new cathedral, St. Paul’s.

  The old St. Paul’s, after much abuse and several attempts at restoration, had perished in the great London fire of 1666, and Christopher Wren had been commissioned to erect a replacement. By the look of things, Wren had much work left to do, for the cathedral was far from completed. The earth was open and raw all around, and much of the structure was no more than a stone skeleton cocooned by scaffolding. However, the dome, while not completely faced, soared toward the sky.