“Did you find something, then?” Mrs. Jones said.
“I found a curious tree,” Uncle Richard said. “Otherworldly, you could call it. And the soil around it . . .” His voice was low, but excitement clung to the edges. His left hand tapped his leg in a steady rhythm, and every few seconds he lifted his cane and clunked it to the floor, punctuating words he did not speak.
“Otherworldly,” Mrs. Jones said. Her voice held a whole pile of skepticism; Lenora could hear it clearly.
Uncle Richard narrowed his starlight eyes. “You do not believe me.”
Mrs. Jones said nothing.
“Would you have believed John?”
Lenora almost sucked in a breath. Was he talking about Father? She worked hard to keep her eyes focused on Mrs. Jones, whose back stiffened.
“Because John believed it. He saw it himself. He knew.” Uncle Richard’s voice cracked and broke.
Lenora swallowed hard. What did her father know?
“He loved those woods.” Mrs. Jones’s voice was thick and indignant. “He would never—”
“He tried to warn me,” Uncle Richard interrupted. “I didn’t listen.”
The silence was heavy with unspoken words, a history that Lenora could not even guess.
“This is my life’s work,” Uncle Richard said. “And it will work. I will break the curse. I will bring him home.”
Mrs. Jones lifted her chin, and Lenora could see the quiver in it, even with all the shadows. Mrs. Jones stared at Uncle Richard for a moment, then cast her eyes to the ground. “Yes, sir,” she said.
Mrs. Jones was turning away. Lenora thrust herself from the doorway and bounded across the room on whispering feet. She sank into the chair in which she had been reading before she’d heard the voices. She pulled out the book she had forgotten to mark with one of the lace bookmarks Mrs. Jones had laid out for her. She hated when she forgot to mark a book. There was nothing worse than trying to find your place again.
She opened the book, however, and pretended to read.
Mrs. Jones entered the library and gasped. When Lenora lifted her eyes, Mrs. Jones had a hand pressed to her chest.
“Mrs. Jones?” she said. “What’s the matter?”
Had she done something wrong?
Mrs. Jones let out a violent, whooshing breath. She moved deeper into the room. She pointed at Lenora, and Lenora’s heart leaped. What had she done?
“Tell me why you chose that chair out of all the others,” Mrs. Jones finally said.
Lenora looked down at the rich green fabric of the wing chair. “Because . . .” She did not want to say the wrong thing. “Because it looked comfortable. Because it’s green.” Her hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Mrs. Jones said. She shook her head, her silver hair shaking with it. “You’ve done nothing wrong, love. It’s just . . .” She seemed lost for words. She scratched her cheek, or maybe she was wiping away a tear that hadn’t yet fallen. Lenora could smell the freshly baked bread in her clothes. “It’s just that Bobby always chose that one as his reading seat, too. Every day he sat there and read until lunchtime.” Her voice sounded fragile, as though it would break any moment. She smiled thinly. “I walked in and thought I was seeing a ghost.”
Lenora looked down at the book in her hands.
“I thought he had walked right back out of the woods and . . .” Mrs. Jones drew in another sharp breath. Lenora’s eyes snapped to her face. The woman looked horrified, and Lenora knew why. She couldn’t let it go; it was not in her nature.
“Bobby went into the woods?”
“I should not have said anything,” Mrs. Jones said. Her shoulders slumped forward. “I only complicate things.”
“Is that why Uncle Richard doesn’t want me to go into the woods? Because something happened to Bobby?”
Mrs. Jones held Lenora’s gaze for a long time before she said, “Bobby walked into the woods and never came home.”
The weight on Lenora’s chest grew heavier.
“Your uncle fears the same will happen to you.” These words, though they were frightening, spread a warmth all the way through Lenora. Uncle Richard wanted to protect her.
“He thinks Bobby is still alive?” Lenora said. “Is that why he is searching the woods?”
Mrs. Jones sighed. “Your uncle has some strange ideas about the woods.”
“That my father believed?” Lenora pressed her hand to her mouth. She hadn’t intended to suggest that she’d heard their conversation. And now it was too late. Mrs. Jones was looking at her with narrowed eyes.
“I don’t know what your father believed.”
“What do you believe?”
Lenora didn’t think Mrs. Jones would answer, so long was the wait. But finally Mrs. Jones said, “I think your cousin is dead. I think your uncle hasn’t been able to come to terms—”
“Maybe he is still alive. Maybe he just needs to be found. Maybe he’s lying somewhere hurt or injured and he can’t find his way to help because of the injury.”
Lenora didn’t realize she was crying until Mrs. Jones wrapped her long arms around Lenora’s shoulders. She shuddered. She didn’t know when the conversation had turned to her family, but somehow it had.
It had been four days. Why was there no word?
“Hush now, love,” Mrs. Jones said. She rubbed her hand along Lenora’s back. “Perhaps a nap after some lunch would do you good.”
Lenora pulled away from Mrs. Jones. She sniffled.
“Your uncle is on his way out,” Mrs. Jones said. “You and I can dine in the kitchen again.”
“Where is he going?”
Mrs. Jones waved her hand in the air, as though dismissing the question entirely. But she answered it. “Not far. He likes to walk.”
Lenora thought that she would like to walk with Uncle Richard, and she almost asked permission—but something about the way Mrs. Jones said the words, the way her mouth pulled down at the edges, the way her eyes flashed with something angry and fierce, told her it would not be wise.
Besides, if he were out, that would give her the perfect opportunity to peek inside his lab.
So she put on her brightest smile and said, “I would like to finish this one chapter, and then I will eat.”
Mrs. Jones smiled back at her and nodded. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll prepare your plate and wait for you in the kitchen.”
Mrs. Jones lingered in the doorway for a moment, and Lenora opened the book on her lap so Mrs. Jones would think she was really reading. When next she looked up, Mrs. Jones was gone.
Lenora rose from her chair.
27
At the doorway of the library, Lenora checked every direction, to make sure her uncle had not returned—to make sure, too, that no ghosts awaited her. She needed to stop thinking about ghosts; they were not productive for her current quest.
Were they ever productive?
A definitive no.
The closed door leading into the east wing was not far. Lenora raced through the shadows (she was getting faster, with all this practice) and reached it having hardly touched the ground at all, it seemed.
The door was a dark cherry color, and the knob turned when she tried it out. Good. It wasn’t locked.
It opened with a click.
She wasn’t sure what she expected, but when she stepped into the hallway, she saw that it was much different from the one in the west wing. For one thing, all the portraits that lined this hallway were turned on their face, only the brown cardboard backing of frames showing. Names were scrawled on the backing. Stephen Cole, 1874; Gladys Cole, 1912; Benedict Cole, 1839. She took them down, one by one. In each picture was a child with a shock of white hair and a thin black X drawn over his or her face.
Strange. But what wasn’t in this house?
She returned the pictures to their places, her mind snagging on the X. What could it mean?
She found one that said Cole Family, 1937. Lenora flipped it over. She recognized her
uncle immediately. He was handsome in a black top hat and a deep green suit coat, and he smiled. Lenora had not seen her uncle smile since she had come to Stonewall Manor. It lit his whole face with mirth.
The woman beside him must have been his wife. She had beautiful black curls that flowed down her shoulders and eyes like the sky at dusk. Her belly was round and full, and one of her hands, pale and elegant, rested on the side of it. And in the middle of them was a boy who looked to be about Rory’s age, nine or ten. He resembled his mother, mostly, with black curls piled on the top of his head and shining blue eyes. They looked like a happy family. A lump wedged itself in Lenora’s throat. She put the picture back as it was. She had come into this wing to look for a lab, not pictures.
She glanced back at the portraits as she moved on. It was odd that they were turned on their faces. She wondered what that meant, too.
What she noticed next was even odder.
Along the deeper length of the hall were white sheets draped over tall, bulky forms. They looked like ghosts standing at attention. Lenora lifted the bottom of one of the sheets and saw an iron boot, with silver and gold gears attached to both sides of the ankle. She lifted the sheet higher and saw gears attached to the sides of copper knees, which were ever-so-slightly bent. A torso, two arms, and a head. She let the sheet fall and stood up.
There were hundreds of these forms lining the hallway. They were taller than she was. Wider, too.
Was this what her uncle was creating? An army of robots? Why?
She wouldn’t find any answers standing in the hall, so Lenora moved on.
A light at the end of the hall beckoned her. She moved silently past the white figures, glancing at them out of the corners of her eyes to make sure they didn’t move; she could imagine her uncle setting some kind of trap, and she didn’t want to be caught in it.
She stopped at another dark cherry door. Her heart hammered inside her chest. It was only slightly cracked. She nudged it the rest of the way open and stepped in quickly before she could talk herself out of it.
She crept around the room, which was larger than her family’s sitting room at home and had a ceiling so tall she had to squint to see its grainy texture. She picked up an instrument here and set down another there. She saw beakers and tweezers and forceps and copper tubes and clock gears of every size and pieces of old metal and what looked like miniature furnaces. She had no idea how to make sense of the mess in this room.
A door on the far side of the room was propped halfway open, as though Uncle Richard had slipped through it in haste and forgotten to close it behind him. Lenora pushed on it, but it did not budge any farther. Something on the other side obstructed it. She tried to slip through, but there was nowhere to go. How did Uncle Richard get inside?
Lenora turned back to look at the room. In the far corner, the one that shared a wall with the door but was farthest away from it, something massive and tall—it almost touched the ceiling!—was concealed beneath another white sheet. A sheet that enormous did not exist. Uncle Richard, or someone, must have sewn several sheets together to make it. Lenora walked closer to examine the mysterious shape, and she had only just reached the corner and bent down when she heard a noise behind her. She froze.
She did not even have time to duck beneath the desk that stood to the right of the enormous white blob before her uncle entered the room. He didn’t notice her at first, so she stood as still as she could manage, holding her breath. Her eyes searched for an escape, but it was too late.
“What are you doing here?” He had seen her. His face was so full of rage that Lenora cringed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She should not have come here; she knew it now.
“You are not permitted in the east wing.” Uncle Richard’s voice rose, clanged against the walls, and drilled into Lenora’s chest.
“I know.” She sidled toward the door, feeling small and exposed. “I was only curious.”
“Curious?” Uncle Richard threw up his hands. She had never seen him so angry. There was no hint of sadness; it had been swallowed by fury. “You could have ruined my life’s work. This is no place for a child!” Spit flew from his mouth. Lenora slid along the wall, trying to find the door.
Another voice entered the room. “Sir.”
Lenora could have hugged Mrs. Jones, so relieved was she to see someone else in the doorway. “She is only a child.”
“A child doesn’t belong here,” Uncle Richard said, and Lenora felt the words like they were a rope tied around her neck, tightening, cutting off her breath. If she did not belong here, in a place that had been her family’s home for centuries, where, then, did she belong?
“I’m sorry,” Lenora said again. She felt tears prickling her nose. “I won’t come again.”
“See that she doesn’t.” Uncle Richard’s voice was an iron wall, hurled at Mrs. Jones. No one could argue with a voice like that.
“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Jones said. She reached for Lenora’s shoulders and pulled her gently but firmly out of the room. She shut the door behind her.
Outside the room, Mrs. Jones held Lenora, and when Lenora closed her eyes she could almost imagine that it was her mother, soothing away a nightmare.
She could almost believe.
28
Uncle Richard did not join Lenora for supper. Lenora stared at his place all through the meal, wishing she could take back her intrusion.
Mrs. Jones accompanied Lenora up the stairs to the west wing so that Lenora did not have to climb into the darkness alone. When they reached her doorway, Lenora said, “Must he always be this way?”
Mrs. Jones tilted her head and studied Lenora. “What way, love?”
“He works all the time.” Lenora looked at her feet. There was more, but this was the safest explanation.
“Your uncle is a very busy man.” Mrs. Jones put an arm around Lenora’s shoulders. “He’s doing important work.”
Lenora thought of the robots. “What is he working on?” She didn’t know if Mrs. Jones knew the answer, but the question was always worth asking.
“Heaven knows.” Mrs. Jones let out a long breath and dropped her arm. “Something scientific is all I know.”
“An invention?”
“That was his specialty.”
“Robots?”
Mrs. Jones’s head swiveled in her direction. “Your uncle always had a fascination with robots. He tried to build them when he was young.”
There were so many stories Lenora wanted to hear—about her uncle, about her father, about what went on in the east wing. “Is he working on something for himself? Or someone else?”
Mrs. Jones pressed her lips together and looked toward Lenora’s window. She had left it open this morning, and Mrs. Jones crossed the room to close it. When she turned back around, she said, “Your uncle used to work for the government, but that was many years ago. He works for himself now.”
“You know what he’s working on, don’t you.” Lenora could feel her eyes narrowing. “And you won’t tell me.”
Mrs. Jones sighed. “It’s not my place, love. Those questions are for your uncle.”
“He won’t tell me.”
“Perhaps he won’t. But I can’t.”
“Because he forbids you to speak?”
Mrs. Jones looked surprised. “No, love. Your uncle does not forbid me anything.”
That was worse. It meant Mrs. Jones didn’t want to tell her. Lenora folded her arms across her chest and stared at her bed. She felt angry, but there was more than that. She was losing hope.
“I’ve seen the robots.”
“I figured you had,” Mrs. Jones said. “You went exploring.”
“They were covered in sheets.”
“It is how your uncle hides them.”
“No one goes into the east wing. Why does he need to hide them?” Her eyes moved to Mrs. Jones’s face, so she saw the pained look slice across it.
“Your uncle . . .” Mrs. Jones folded her hands in fro
nt of her, threading her fingers, pulling them apart, threading them again. Lenora watched her. “He is obsessed with building these . . .” She shook her head and did not finish her thought but started another. “He has been working on robots for many, many years. Decades, maybe.”
“What does he plan to do with them?” Lenora said.
“That I do not know.”
“But you do.” It was there, on Mrs. Jones’s face. She couldn’t hide that she was lying. Lenora had always preferred faces like that; it made things simpler.
Mrs. Jones shook her head and started toward the door. Lenora felt like shouting, she was so irritated and bothered by all these secrets and mysteries. She had never liked mysteries; she preferred the whole truth.
And even Father was not able to give her that.
29
Mrs. Jones hovered in the doorway, as though she did not want to leave Lenora alone. She said, “You must not venture into the east wing again. It is forbidden. Your uncle would not be pleased at all, and then . . .”
Mrs. Jones pressed her lips tight, and Lenora felt the unspoken words, like freezing fingers, settle on her spine. And then what? He would send her away? He would do worse? What was Mrs. Jones hiding?
“Why?” Lenora said. “Why doesn’t he want me there?” And what she meant was, Why doesn’t he want me here?
“Because it’s dangerous.”
“The robots are dangerous?”
Mrs. Jones leveled her gaze at Lenora, her eyes sharp and clear. Lenora felt electrified by them, shocked into obedience. “Your uncle works with tools and elements that could burn the skin off your hands or set you on fire or kill you in a matter of minutes. He only wants to protect you.”
Was it true? Was that all?
Or did he want her gone completely?
“The east wing is off-limits. Do you understand?” The words were short, clipped, matter-of-fact, but Lenora could sense that there was something more behind them. Fear?
Why?
Lenora nodded her head and tried to shake the unease out of her chest by moving. She paced, her mind flipping through the things she knew. The robots. Her uncle’s trips into the woods. Mrs. Jones’s fear.
The Woods Page 9