by Amanda Dykes
And then there was Lucy, quite literally plumbing the depths of the world’s oceans across the expanses of channels and seas and continents . . . and coming up with empty hands from shallow waters.
She opened those empty hands, as if her palms and fingers might give some explanation for this paradox.
Dash ever so briefly laid his hand on hers, and whispered so that only she could hear, below the steady rumble of the train. “Maybe you’re an M4.”
“A what?”
“M4. Look it up.” He gestured at her flip phone in jest. He’d been giving her a hard time about her lack of smartphone. She hadn’t had one since that night at the Thames. Though she hadn’t thrown her smartphone into the river, in that moment she’d craved simplicity and hunted down a relic of a mobile phone to replace it.
“Why don’t you tell me about the M4.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I think I just did.” He scrunched his nose up, eyes to the ceiling mock-searching for confirmation, and found it. “Yes, yes I did.”
Lucy whacked his arm with the back of her palm, and he laughed. It had been easy slipping back into their old camaraderie. And yet . . . that easiness seemed to tiptoe over a layer of thinnest ice that threatened to crack into the great dark depths below at any moment.
Thankfully, he buried himself, baseball cap and all, in an e-book and she turned to face her window, where more pastureland galloped past. It seemed odd to know that somewhere out there, beyond the green meadows and shadows stretching across the landscape, her little London cottage sat empty. And if scenes from the past could be harbored there, her childhood self would be crouched by a fireplace, a gangly Dash sitting next to her, the two of them bent over a project and wrapped in a story.
Yet here they were, fifteen years after he left, charging into Oxford on a train with a girl who would hardly speak and had not left home in just as much time. And for what? Chasing a few lines from centuries before? Meeting a supposedly helpful person from a chat box on the Internet?
As absurd as the journey seemed, the thrill that used to overtake her soul when Father began one of his stories rose within her now. Something was afoot. Something waited—she could feel it—in the history-shrouded buildings of Oxford.
Soon they were stepping from the train with its yellow-and-blue paint bright against the stone-and-brick of Oxford. Teahouse aromas swirled into the streets, pubs touted fish and chips and gravy, and sidewalks unrolled in cobbles and unseen footsteps of writers and reformers and politicians of eras gone by.
Lucy inhaled. It had been years since she’d been here, a wide-eyed first year with her head buried in a pamphlet map. She remembered reading a list of “notables” who had come here before her, the likes of C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers, Lewis Carroll, John Locke, Jonathan Swift, John Wesley, John Donne, and John Wycliffe. Apparently all the Johns in all of history. She remembered catching a glimpse of herself in a plate glass window of a pub and thinking, All the Johns and me. But who am I? She’d spent the years that followed paddling in that sea of wonder and wondering.
“No way.” Dash nearly fell off the sidewalk and into the path of a red double-decker bus.
“Dash!” Lucy grabbed his elbow.
“The Eagle and Child,” he sputtered, pointing at a pub. It was as if he were twelve again, absorbed in the pages of the book he’d claimed proved “ordinary people can do extraordinary things.”
“We have to go in,” he said. “This is where hobbits were honed into heroes!” His stomach rumbled.
“Time for second breakfast?” Lucy asked, teasing.
“What can I say? Tolkien makes me hungry.”
As much as she loved whiling time away in the Rabbit Room, where Lewis and Tolkien and their Inkling group had met and shared stories and poems for critique, she looked longingly in the direction of the Bodleian Library, where the domed roof of the Radcliffe Camera sat upon the skyline. She checked her watch. “There’s so much . . . librarying to do,” she said, her smile sheepish.
In the silent tension between each of their plans, Violette’s stomach growled, too. Her eyes flew open wide, and her hands flew to her middle. Looking embarrassed, she said, “Tea . . . does sound nice.”
“Go on,” Dash said to Lucy. He dipped his head toward the Bodleian. “It’s waiting for you.”
Lucy’s smile overtook her face, and she could feel herself glowing. “But . . . no. No, let’s eat first. The Bod has stood there four-hundred-some-odd years,” she said. “I suppose it’ll wait half an hour more.”
“Go.” Dash gave a light push at the small of her back. “Violette and I will eat and meet you at the Divinity School. We’ll bring you something. We’re not meeting Mr. Internet for another hour, anyway.”
Lucy studied them, wondering again at the easy camaraderie the two shared. Dash clearly had a soft spot for Violette.
“Yes, all right,” she said. “Very good. You drink your scones and eat your elevenses, and . . .”
Violette stifled a laugh. What? Had she said something wrong? She never could be trusted to be a clear-thinking person when the cloud of library-induced delight descended upon her.
“We’ll do just that,” Dash said. “Get thee to a library, Lucy.”
And just like that, she was headed back to Oxford. She, Lucy Claremont, counter clerk at Cecil Court Clock Shop, who was trying to prove herself worthy to operate measuring equipment in the Channel—she was back to the school of her heart.
And she knew just where to begin.
“I’m researching the M4,” Lucy said, trying and failing to sound as if she knew what she was speaking of.
The young man manning the inquiry desk in the Radcliffe Science Library glanced up from his computer screen. “You mean MI5?” His forehead wrinkled as if to ask what sort of proper British citizen could mix up the Secret Intelligence Service so abysmally. “This is the sciences library. I don’t think you’ll find much in the way of espionage history here. But perhaps All Souls College library might have something. They like that sort of thing over there.”
The Oxford library system was vast, housed in its different colleges, housed off-site, housed on-site. The sheer volume of letters upon pages that crossed the circulation desks was mind-boggling.
“No, I mean . . .” Had she heard Dash correctly? He’d looked almost conspiratorial when he’d said M4, maybe it was a riddle she was meant to have understood. But it rang no bells, summoned no memories. “It’s . . .” Her voice came out louder than she’d meant for it to. “It has something to do with stars. Or galaxies.”
“Ah,” he said, his face lighting up. “In that case . . .” His fingers flew over the keys on his computer. Then he scratched out a few notes on a small white paper and handed it to her. “Try this,” he said. “More star books than you’ll know what to do with.”
She feared as much. What was she getting herself into? She needed to rejoin Dash and Violette before too long, and this was completely out of her realm.
“And . . .” He typed something else and scribbled M4 along with a string of numbers. He tapped it with his black plastic pen. “There,” he said. “That book should have something.”
Climbing the stairs to the sixth level, she at last found her destination. The rolling set of stairs squeaked painfully as she moved it stealthily into place and climbed, praying the pages might hold an answer for her. It was times like this—rare times, indeed—she missed having a smartphone to type questions into and get instant answers.
But where was the magic in the glowing screen of kilowatts staring at her in white-screened splendor? There was nothing of the chase in it, nothing of the dust upon pages of books, the way touching the spines of old tomes was like touching a world outside one’s lifetime. Reaching into the past and fingering pages that some other soul hundreds of years before had last touched.
She began to breathe easier, her soul filling. It felt good to be back in a library. Life at Stone’s Throw had been stunningly brilliant. Bright day
s full to the brim and exhausting, too . . . yet always foreign. Here she slipped into the sound of turning pages as a queen into a trailing cape, finding their adornment safe and boundless.
Afternoon sun poured in through the windows as she pulled a slim dissertation from the shelf. Astroseismology and the Observance of Song through Light. She double-checked its numbers against the note from the inquiry desk and descended the stairs. She looked around at the tables in the long aisle, the chairs tucked next to windows . . . and sat on the bottom of the stairs. With the aid of the index, she flipped to page thirty-two and ran her finger line by line until . . . There. Three-quarters of the way down the page:
Astronomers at the University of Birmingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy have observed song in one of the galaxy’s most ancient star clusters, M4.
Lucy scrunched her nose. “Perhaps you’re M4,” Dash had said. Did he mean . . . she was ancient? He’d always told her she was an old soul, but . . . that didn’t seem to fit his conspiratorial tone on the train ride.
She read on, of how the sound from turbulence was trapped inside stars, causing it to resonate—to glow brighter, to fade dimmer, back and forth and back again. A visual dance, it seemed, to the song silenced within.
Lucy read the explanation three times, then photocopied the two pages and folded them into her messenger bag before returning the book and hurrying to meet the others.
She crossed the gleaming black-and-white-checked floor and went out into the spring air, her feet carrying her past buildings and bobbing daffodils and into the Bodleian Library, with its iconic domed roof.
Inside, a rich hush encircled her. The sound of pages turning, footsteps falling, the occasional door opening, all punctuated an atmosphere of peace. She followed the signs to the Divinity School and paid two pounds to enter. At the threshold, she paused, the long rectangular room stealing her breath.
A ceiling carved in stone centuries ago hovered loftily, like radiating lacework vaulted into the sky and frozen in time. Peaked arches of dark wood ushered her toward the far end, where a man was talking to Dash and Violette, their backs to her. Approaching, she had a sense his was the sort of speech that came at a person with all the power of a train and all the urgency of a snail. A forceful, passionate, kindly snail who liked large words. Stepping closer, she saw a rapt look on Violette’s face.
“He was an anomaly, you see. Killian Blackaby, the balladmonger-turned-seaman who spent his life recording things he found remarkable, or tragic, or exemplary, or good.”
Lucy stepped beside Violette to join the group. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” she said. “Mr. Water, Water, Everywhere, I presume. Big fan of Coleridge, are you?”
“Quite! The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a tome to be reckoned with. A fine example of maritime literature for the ages.”
She offered her hand. “Lucy Claremont.”
“An honor, Miss Claremont. A true honor. I am Spencer T. Ripley. Your humble servant, ready to usher you into the halls of greatness.”
Where had this fellow come from? She’d gotten the basics from her Internet search, but he seemed rather more like a visitor from the past who had landed in the wrong era, and was as happy as could be to make everyone aware of the wonders of his true time. His dark eyes shone behind his wire-rimmed glasses, radiating some sort of eternal youth.
And Violette was radiating, too. A gentle joy as her wonder-rounded eyes fixed upon this gentleman.
“Shall we?” he said, offering an elbow.
Violette—the same Violette who sometimes jumped at her own shadow back on the farm and thought the daily trip to the mailbox up the road was a grand adventure—nodded eagerly. She placed her hand in the crook of his arm and gave him a look that warned if he tried anything or imagined she didn’t have a good head on her shoulders, he’d live to regret it. Well done, Violette.
“Now, what we have here, my friends, is a conundrum. A confounding conundrum, truth be told. I inquired with the librarian-in-charge in hopes of granting you access to the book as my visitors, but wouldn’t you know? It’s in the special collections, and the special collections reading room is in the Weston Library, and the Weston Library is one of two that do not permit visitors.” He shook his head mournfully. “Shame, that.”
Lucy slowed. “So . . . we can’t see the book after all?” She felt puzzlement take over her expression. “Then where are you taking us, Mr. Ripley? If you don’t mind my asking.”
The man gulped, a flush creeping up his neck and overtaking his face. He pulled at the tie that he wore beneath his sports coat and looked shiftily in every direction.
“Look.” He pulled a tablet from inside his jacket, as if dealing in some sort of contraband. “I photographed the whole thing for you just before you came.”
“The whole thing? All of Killian Blackaby’s ballads.” Violette took the offered tablet, turning it on with the expression of a child on Christmas morning.
“Yes, ma’am. Here, if you’ll look at this one, it’s the one you were asking about.”
She passed it to Lucy, then on to Dash, who scanned the poem.
“‘Sisters seven, seven more, cloistered in their cove.’ What do you think that means?”
Spencer took the tablet and read the third stanza aloud.
“Sisters seven, seven more,
cloistered in their cove
His secret keep, this Traitor-Man
In death for to betroth.”
“It begs two questions,” he said. “What’s his secret—is it simply his hiding place? And which sisters are keeping it? It sounds as though he’s wedded death, so I’d submit that we can presume he did perish sometime after his escape.”
“You mean to say he’s not still around?” Violette quipped. Violette. Quiet, reserved Violette, venturing a joke.
Spencer laughed. Not so much an eruption of laughter, like Barnabas, or a spilling, like Dash, but rather he tripped about in his own choppy laughs, in and out, up and down. “That was clever,” he said, pointing at Violette, who beamed.
“Now, are there any convents, abbeys, ruins of convents or abbeys anywhere near Weldensea? Sisters could speak of nuns, with whom he could have taken refuge. Think of Jean Valjean,” he said. “Les Miserables. Something like that.”
Lucy thought of the area, what little she knew of it. “There’s the chapel near the village,” she said. “St. Thomas’s.”
“Hmmm. Worth looking at, certainly, but likely not home to nuns. Anything else? The tricky thing is, it could be anything. With the religious history of this country, abbeys being shut down several hundred years ago, abbeys resuming since, some having fallen into ruins, some being incorporated into homes—it could truly be anywhere.”
Something triggered in Lucy’s mind. “What did you say?”
“I said it could be anywhere.”
“Before that,” she said. “About some being incorporated into homes. Edgecliffe’s ballroom was once a priory.” Her pulse quickened, a smile spreading. “And the painting I found matched the view from that very place. I’m sure of it.”
“Well . . .” Spencer’s face broke into a slow smile. “There you have it.”
Violette reached for the tablet, scrolling through the pictures. “There’s still no sixth stanza.”
“Maybe he wrote the number but couldn’t come up with anything else to write,” Dash said.
“Perhaps,” Spencer said. “But one of the hallmarks of Blackaby is that every letter and space has purpose. His meter fits like puzzle pieces, his alliteration beats like a drum—the details were the icing on the cake for him. Don’t give up on that stanza quite yet.”
The heavy doors opened at the far end of the hall, and the attendant poked her head in. “Time’s up, I’m afraid,” she said. “There’s a tour group headed here shortly.”
They packed up and left through Duke Humfrey’s Library. With deepest wood shelves upon warmest wood floors, light spilling a walkway between rows of medieval tex
ts, it had an entirely different feel than the Radcliffe Camera or the Divinity School. A young man perched near the top of a rolling ladder, his face buried in a book and completely oblivious to their presence.
“The train’ll be off in two hours’ time,” Violette whispered.
Spencer held the outside door open for them, looking suddenly nervous. He shifted his weight between his oxford-clad feet, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes. “Oh, I-I mean I don’t suppose you . . . Is there any chance you’d like to have lunch with me?”
Violette had just eaten, Lucy knew, but her “Yes!” rushed out faster and surer than she’d ever heard the girl speak.
And it was settled. Violette would have lunch with Spencer. Lucy and Dash would meet her at the train station, where they would all travel not home but to London. It was time to get that painting.
thirty
A week ago, Lucy had struggled to sleep in the glass house, for all its quiet and empty. Never did she dare dream she’d return with Dash—who was on the garden green outside her window spreading a sleeping bag beneath his stars—and a new friend reading a book on the sofa by the fireplace.
How . . . had this happened? The return of the boy who had been so much of the reason this cottage had been home. It had felt so empty for the past two years, to the point that she’d usually dreaded returning. And now . . . it felt like home again. Because family, gathered from odd corners of the earth and pieced together in growing friendship, was here.
Dash knocked softly at the arched doorway and came in. “I thought I’d run up to Greenwich since we’re so close,” he said. “Check in with some colleagues and see how the observatory work is going. Anyone want to come?”
“Sure,” Lucy said.
“No, thanks,” Violette said through a yawn.
“Oh . . . then I’ll stay, too,” Lucy said, not wanting to leave Violette alone on her first night away from the farm.