The Twelfth Enchantment

32

LUCY SAT AT A WRITING TABLE, AND MR. MORRISON SAT NEXT TO her. “I’ve long suspected, but been unable to prove, that Mr. Buckles defrauded you of your inheritance. Of course, I wondered why he would trouble to do so. He was to inherit the house, and after he married Martha he would receive half of your father’s wealth. The amount he could gain through fraud could hardly be worth the risk of discovery—not when his future was secure and his patronage from Lady Harriett left him without want.”

“He wanted the books,” said Lucy, who saw it as well.

“Your dealings with your father changed in that last year. That is why he left you what you see around us—his library. These are your books, Lucy. Mr. Buckles cared nothing of the money he stole from you. Perhaps he took it because he could or because he believed you would be less dangerous if you were even more impoverished, but in the end it was but a distraction. What he wanted was these books.”

She could hear Mary’s voice in her head. The Mutus Liber is strongest in the hands of the person to whom it belongs.

“It is mine,” said Lucy. “The book was mine all along. They took it from me, and they tore it to pieces, but they dared not destroy it.”

“They did not take it apart,” said Mr. Morrison. “Your father ordered it done, and I believe he gave the task to the only person he trusted to take the book for herself.”

Lucy nodded. “Of course. Emily. She went to Cardiff shortly before she died, and you went there looking for the book. It was Emily who disassembled the book, to keep it safe, and only she knew where the pieces were.”

“I believe so,” said Mr. Morrison. “But the pages themselves have power. You have discovered that, I think. They contain information for those who know how to read them or are sensitive to them, and so they can be sensed. Some of the pages remain where Emily left them, others have been discovered and changed hands several times.”

“All this time, I have been following in my sister’s footsteps,” said Lucy.

Mr. Morrison nodded. “You see now why Lady Harriett wanted you to marry Mr. Olson. Your property would become his. The book would no longer belong to you. Lady Harriett wanted desperately for you to marry him before all the pages were recovered, because no one wanted the book reassembled while you still owned it.”

“Almost no one,” said Lucy very quietly, for Mary dared. She alone dared to urge Lucy to assemble the book that contained the secret of unmaking her.

Mr. Morrison turned away. “Almost no one.”

Lucy had to know. She swallowed and forged ahead before she lost the nerve to ask. “If you love her, why does it matter? She left, but she returned, so why are you apart from each other? Why does she not use your name?”

He shook his head. “I will not discuss it.”

“I do not mean to cause you pain,” she said quietly. “I only wish to understand.” It was so odd, she thought as she looked at him. She had spent years hating him, thinking him the most vile of men, but he was never that person. He had only been a kind and loyal man serving Lucy’s father—and serving Lucy herself.

To distract herself, she decided it was time to find the pages. Lucy turned slowly about the room, like a sluggish child at absent play. She ran her hand along the shelves as she walked, hoping for some kind of spark or warmth or feeling of nearness. Then, in some noiseless way, she heard its cry. Lucy walked toward a shelf and there she found her father’s copy of Purchas, his Pilgrimage, just as she had always remembered it, and she opened it up. Inside its pages, folded and neat, were two more sheets from the Mutus Liber.

Lucy looked at them. They were as beautiful and strange and inexplicable as the others. On the pages were trees transmuting into vines and into animals, plant and creature alike twirling and twisting upward and down. It was all about transformation and change and melding. It was about the future and the past. It was about insight, Lucy realized, about seeing the truth behind veils of deception and disguise. There was more than that, however. The philosopher’s stone was the source of transformation and alteration, and such power required wisdom and judgment and patience, and these too were embedded in these images. Lucy stared for a long time, hoping she might become wise and insightful enough to know what to do next.

And then she did.

She turned to Mr. Morrison and Mrs. Emmett. “I need you to keep my sister away from me. I need you to keep her downstairs no matter what.”

“Where do you go?” asked Mr. Morrison.

Lucy swallowed hard, working up the courage to say what would be far more difficult to do. She turned to Mrs. Emmett and straightened herself in a display of determination. “I go to speak to the changeling.”

Perhaps she heard someone upon the stairs, for when Lucy reached the baby’s room, the wet nurse—a plump and pretty fair-haired woman in her early thirties—emerged. Her eyes were red and heavily bagged, and her posture somewhat slumped. Everything about the woman suggested fatigue and dejection.

“I wish to be alone with the—the infant,” said Lucy. “I am the aunt.”

“I don’t care who you are, mum,” the woman said hurrying down the hall. “If you want to be alone with her, she’s yours as long as you’ll have her.”

Lucy stepped into the room. It was dark, with only a small fire burning. This had once been Lucy’s own room, but it was unfamiliar now, with pictures of animals upon the wall, a new rug of plain weave, and entirely different furnishings. Near the fireplace rested the baby’s crib, but Lucy did not have to approach and peer into it. The creature had already pulled itself up and clutched the railings in its narrow, clawed fingers. Its large, reptilian eyes followed her as she moved into the room, and then, as she drew too close, it hissed in alarm, showing its sharp teeth. Its forked tongue darted out, tasting the air.

Lucy took another step forward. It cocked its head and hissed again. So, it was afraid of her. That was interesting.

“Can you speak?” she asked.

“Can you?” it asked, its voice raspy and low.

“Clearly,” said Lucy as she took another step forward.

The thing hissed again and swiped at the air with its claws. “No further, witch.”

Lucy stopped, but more as an experiment than out of fear. She was surprised to discover she was not afraid of the creature. She found it vile, but not terrifying, perhaps because it was so clearly afraid of her. “Why do you fear me?”

“You would send me back if you knew how,” it said.

“And you do not wish to go back? You enjoy tormenting my sister?”

“I am charged to not let you send me back,” it said. “For the baby’s sake. It is what my mistress has commanded, and I obey her.”

“Your mistress is Mary Crawford?”

“Yes,” it hissed.

“How do I find my niece?” Lucy asked.

It opened its mouth, and then only hissed again.

“You were going to tell me,” Lucy said. “But you did not. Because you were commanded not to tell me?”

“Yes,” it said, evidently unhappy.

“But otherwise you seem inclined to answer my questions honestly. Why?”

The creature turned away from her, rubbing its long hands over the rough skin of its head, as if trying to puzzle something out. It mumbled something Lucy could not understand.

“Speak so I might hear you,” Lucy said.

It turned to her and flashed its teeth. “It is the pages of the book. They compel me to tell the truth.”

Lucy smiled and approached closer. “Is there anything you can tell me to help me get my niece back?”

“No, you cannot force me to speak of that.”

Lucy took a moment to think of what she might ask next. She could not stay here forever. The men downstairs might awaken, or Martha might come in to discover what Lucy did. She needed to hurry. “What must Mary Crawford do to banish you?”

“Even she cannot banish me now, not until certain conditions are fulfilled. Not until your niece is safe.”

There must be something it could tell her, Lucy thought. Some truth she could extract that did not directly involve the rescue of her niece but would help effect that rescue. She made another attempt. “Then what of the pages yet missing? Mr. Morrison said that Mary Crawford knew the location of pages. Though why would she not tell me?”

“All she does, she believes is right,” the changeling said.

Lucy realized it had answered part of her question, but not all of it, so she tried again, asking more precisely this time. “Do you know where I will find the last pages of the book?”

The creature backed up in the crib. It looked this way and that and appeared so desperate that Lucy almost felt sorry for it. But she pressed her case and pointed at the changeling. “Tell me.”

And it did.

Downstairs Mr. Morrison rushed toward her, evidently concerned. “Is all well?”

“No,” said Lucy. “It seems you were right about Mary. She did deceive me. She had pages hidden away all along, and now, unfortunately, I know where.”

“Why is that unfortunate?” he demanded.

Lucy turned to study his face carefully, hoping for some clues, some explanations. “Because it seems we were all along deceived, Mr. Morrison. The remaining pages are to be found where we first looked. They are within Newstead Abbey.”

They found Martha sitting near the fire in the sitting room. She held some sewing, but did not appear to have done much of anything with it.

Lucy approached her and took her hands. “I am sorry, Martha, but we must go at once.”

“What shall I tell my husband when he returns?” asked Martha, now sounding alarmed.

“Tell him the truth,” said Mr. Morrison. “With any luck, it shall not matter.”

Lucy gathered at once that Martha feared Mr. Buckles. “I would take you with me if I could, Martha, but where I go is far more dangerous than here. When… when all this is finished, I shall take you then, if you like. I shall save you.”

Martha laughed. It was a bitter, barking sound. “Save me. How shall you do so? You have no money, Lucy.”

“I have other resources.”

“If you want shelter,” said Mr. Morrison, “or if you want money to go where none may find you, then you need but ask. I shall never again neglect to be a friend of your family.”

Martha stared at them. “You have set yourself against Mr. Buckles, haven’t you?”

“Lady Harriett has made herself my enemy,” answered Lucy. “She has, in ways I cannot begin to explain, inflicted terrible harm upon both of us, and she has used Mr. Buckles as her instrument. I am sorry to say this. I do not wish to speak ill of your husband, but it is so. I have not set myself against him, but he has chosen to follow a mistress who has declared me her enemy. I hope you will recollect that I act not against him, but to defend myself. To defend all of us.”

Martha shook her head. “I wish you would say what you mean, what you really mean, instead of speaking in riddles all the time.”

Lucy smiled. “When there is more time, I shall tell you all.”

Martha turned away. “I have this terrible idea in my head that Mr. Buckles will not survive what is coming. Am I all but a widow?”

“Is the wife of the condemned man a widow before he hangs?” asked Mrs. Emmett.

Martha let out a gasp.

Lucy gave a harsh glance at Mrs. Emmett, who only smiled in return. She turned back to her sister. “I do not know what is going to happen. I know only that everything I’ve done, everything I will do, is for you and your child. I beg you to believe that.”

Martha rose and hugged Lucy. “I am afraid.”

Lucy returned the hug and stepped back. “For yourself, you have nothing to fear.” She did not know that it was true. But it would all be over soon. Lucy would find those final pages, and then all would be set right.

“You sound so sure of yourself,” Martha said. “What do you have to fear?”

Lucy forced a smile. “Everything.”

It was to be a long and awkward ride to Nottinghamshire. They would necessarily have to travel slowly once it grew dark, and so be vulnerable to highwaymen, but they dared not stop until morning. There was too much at risk. Both Mr. Morrison and the coachman primed pistols, and they began their long and slow trek that would probably not bring them to their destination until after dark the next day.

They were silent for some time. As was her habit in the coach, Mrs. Emmett fell into a deep sleep at once, snoring in a loud, rasping manner. Lucy did not believe she would be able to sleep so easily. She lay awake and still and frightened she knew not how long. She had presumed Mr. Morrison to be asleep when he, at last, spoke.

“They change,” he said.

“I beg your pardon.” It came out too clipped and formal, for he had surprised her.

“The revenants. They are not what they once were. They are not the people they were before their alteration. It is why I cannot love her, nor she love me. That part of us is lost.”

“I am sorry,” Lucy said. She recalled what Mary had told her about the revenants—that mortality is a fundamental part of humanity. Lucy had no notion at the time that Mary had been speaking of herself.

“What is she like now?” asked Mr. Morrison. The strange flatness of his voice betrayed a pain Lucy could not contemplate.

“She was lovely to me—kind and patient and understanding. She always said what I most needed to hear. Even now, when I consider all I have seen and done, the places I have gone, the enemies and dangers I have encountered, I know that I could have done none of it had she not prepared me.”

“Then you trusted her? You trust her yet, though you know she deceived you?”

“I do not know,” said Lucy. “Perhaps she had her reasons, but I have come to see that, for all her goodness to me, she is cold and calculating and ruthless. She is, in some ways, unknowable.”

“I understand you,” he said. “We spoke once, you know. After she returned.”

“Mr. Morrison, you do not need to tell me these things. I can hear in your voice that it is painful for you. I thank you for your consideration, but you owe me no candor in this manner.”

He laughed. “You are a sweet girl. I cannot imagine how you have come so far and remained so innocent. I do not tell you these things because I wish to unburden my heart. I tell you what you may need to know if you are to survive what comes. You can have no illusions about Mary Crawford, as she now styles herself. It may come to pass that we must destroy her.”

“I will not destroy her,” said Lucy. “Though she lied to me, she is my friend.”

“She has been good to you, and she may even, in her own way, care for you, but she will not be your friend if it is not in her interest. She knows better than all of us that death is not the end, and she will not hesitate to send you on your journey should she believe the situation requires it. Some part of her hates you for your mortality, that you can move on and she cannot.”

“I don’t know that I believe you.”

“I think you had better learn to believe me,” he said. “I cannot go in with you if you are not willing to destroy her if you must.”

For a long time, he said nothing more. In the dark she heard him stir, as if trying to grow more comfortable. He coughed softly, the sound muffled by a handkerchief. Somewhere outside the cart they heard the lonely howl of a dog.

“You cannot know how I loved her,” he said. “At first what I felt for her was more moderate. It was time for me to marry, and she was suitable in so many ways, and I suppose what I felt for her was love, after a species. She loved me, and I hoped that would be enough.”

“She told me of her husband, though she was certainly vague. But she said that he’d been in love with someone else.”

Mr. Morrison said nothing for a moment. “When I met her, I thought I would never love again. I was heartbroken, but I came to love her more than I can say. She was clever and witty, and she understood me better than anyone I had known. And she loved me. Only someone utterly coldhearted could be so adored and unmoved by it. And, of course, she was beautiful. Now she is even more beautiful than she was. Her hair, her eyes, her complexion—they are different, as I am told sometimes happens. Her new nature fairly radiates something so compelling that when we were reunited I was all but lost in an instant, but she did not want me to be lost. When she spoke to me—I know not how to describe it. For all that she resembled my Mary, for all she retained her beauty, and that beauty had grown, it was as though I spoke to the dead. She is not soulless, but the soul is no longer human. I saw in her eyes that she felt nothing for me, that she could hardly remember having felt anything for me. And I knew that my feelings were for someone who was gone forever.”

“How did she come to be what she is?” Lucy asked. “One does not simply… return.”

“No,” he said. “The tale is strange and terrible. It is hard for me to speak of it, so you will forgive me if I pause from time to time to collect myself. I would rather not say any of these things, but I have already withheld too much for too long. You must know everything.”

Mary Crawford had come from Northamptonshire with her brother Henry. They had been before in London, but circumstances had required a move, and there Mary had, if not quite fallen in love with a neighboring gentleman, at least imagined she was in love for a while. Then that gentleman had thrown her over for his penniless cousin, something of a simpleton, and Mary’s brother had become involved in a scandalous affair. The whole business was unpleasant, and at times sordid, and when it reached its conclusion Mary found herself unhappy and vulnerable.

It was then that she met Mr. Morrison, who was also unhappy and vulnerable in his own way, and at once she fell in love. They had met at a mutual friend’s house in London and, before they had parted ways on that first occasion, Mr. Morrison believed he wished to marry her. He saw something in her, in her soul, perhaps.

Soon enough they had married, and relocated to Mr. Morrison’s estate in Derbyshire, though they returned to London for the season, and it was there that the trouble began. Mr. Morrison and his wife came to be acquainted with a young nobleman who mistook Mary’s social graces for an interest greater than what she entertained. He began to press his case to her, and when she flatly refused an improper relationship, he chose not to accept defeat. He appeared in her way often, speculating upon whom she might visit, what events she might attend, even what paths she might walk. He would attempt to visit her at her house when he knew Mr. Morrison was away. In short, this man would not be discouraged.

Mr. Morrison visited him and warned him that he must stay away, but the young nobleman laughed in his face. He would not duel. He would not stoop to take Mr. Morrison’s complaint seriously.

Before events could unfold in this way, the nobleman took a more drastic course. He assaulted Mary’s coachman one afternoon, knocking him quite insensible. He then threatened Mary with his ferocious dog, and forced Mary to drink a tincture of opium, which put her into a deep sleep. With his beloved in the back of the coach, he drove her far outside London to his country estate. The nobleman had convinced himself that, once she awoke there, away from London and her unworthy husband, she would not only accept her fate, but embrace it. She would recognize that she wanted to remain there and be happy.

It did not happen that way. Mary was angry and outraged and terrified. She feared for her life and her virtue, and attempted to run away and seek help. She broke free, escaped her prison, even killed the man’s dog. But the villain, now that he had her, could not let her go. He caught up with her and a struggle ensued. Perhaps he never meant to hurt her, and perhaps, in the passions of the moment, he lashed out, but either way he struck Mary’s head against the ancient stone of his hall, and she fell to the ground, dead.

Lucy sat listening in silence. It was a horrible story—chilling and terrifying—but only now did she believe, truly believe, that the woman whom she had called her friend those many months in Nottingham had been dead, a revenant, something inhuman. Before it had been an idea, a notion; now she felt the truth of it. She saw the truth of it on Mr. Morrison’s face.

“This man,” said Lucy. “What has happened to him?”

“You know him,” said Mr. Morrison in the dark.

Lucy felt at once unbearably cold. It seemed that the carriage had disassembled all around her and she was floating unmoored through space. “No,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

“It was Byron who killed my Mary. On looking upon what he had done, he was filled with—I cannot even guess how his mind functions—remorse, terror, disgust, grief? I shall not trouble myself to speculate. But he wished, as so many in his place have wished throughout time, that he could undo what cannot be undone.”

“Except he could.”

“No, not he. His mind may be able to conjure up silly rhymes, but he does not have the capacity to decipher the Mutus Liber, let alone construct the philosopher’s stone through some other means. Instead, he brought Mary’s body to someone he believed could do these things: Lady Harriett Dyer.”

“How did he know her or know what she was?”

“It has always been so on this island, Lucy. Their kind infuse the nobility, and those mortals who hold titles learn the secret. According to what we have learned, Lady Harriett had already sought out Byron, detecting in him a weakness and self-love that could be exploited by her kind. She even sent him on a mission to Greece on behalf of the revenants’ interests.”

“But why should Lady Harriett agree to help him in this? I can only imagine that others with power and influence have asked for this favor. I know that they do not make these transformations lightly, so why do this for Byron?”

Mr. Morrison laughed a quiet and bitter laugh. “Byron is not like other men. You’ve seen how women respond to him—as men do toward beautiful women.”

“Do you mean to say that Lady Harriett is in love with him?”

“No, of course not, but she understood that a man like that, with the power to enchant, would be an asset. So she did something for him that would put him forever in her power.”

So here was something yet more astonishing, something that defied imagination. Byron was the man who had killed Morrison’s wife, had turned her immortal soul into a twisted, fragile, vulnerable distortion of the true Mary. A man might console himself with the dream of reuniting with his wife in heaven, but not Mr. Morrison. His beloved Mary was damned forever to this terrestrial sphere because Byron had struck, and then struck again.

“You told me once,” she said softly, “that what you cared about was revenge. And yet, since these events began, you have been in Byron’s presence. But you did not act.”

“I have accepted a responsibility far greater than my own desire for revenge,” he answered. His voice was quavering, and Lucy had no doubt that, in the dark, the tears fell freely. “I promised I would not seek revenge until I had settled the matter with Ludd. I promised I would not put my desire to destroy Byron above my duty to my nation. You cannot imagine how I’ve wanted to strangle him each time I have been near him, but I have restrained myself, thinking that the day must come soon.”

Lucy parted the curtain to look out at the passing blackness. She wished she knew what to say to Mr. Morrison, what response was appropriate to this story of love lost and murder and delayed vengeance. She could think of nothing, so she said, “If I may ask, who was the woman whom you loved before Mary?” Then, at once, she regretted it. She had caused him enough pain, made him recount enough of his losses, so she quickly spoke up again. “I am sorry. I should not have asked that. It is none of my concern.”

“Of course it is your concern,” he answered. “Can it be that you truly do not know? But I suppose that is what makes you who you are. After Emily died, your father made me promise never to tell you the truth of the circumstances, for your sake, and I agreed. I would have kept that promise until the day I died had not it been necessary to reveal the truth.”

“But what has that to do with this woman?” asked Lucy, but as soon as she asked the question, understanding dawned on her, and she felt her face burn with embarrassment and her heart flutter with surprise.

“It has everything to do with her,” said Mr. Morrison, his voice heavy and thick. “The woman I was in love with, with whom I could never be, is you.”

Lucy could not consider, truly consider, what he said, and what his words meant or how they made her feel. She dared not ask herself the most pressing question of all—had Mary known, when they first met, that Lucy was the woman her own husband had once loved? She would not torture herself with a question to which she could find no answer. She could only think that here was a man who had lost everything, had sacrificed his heart for duty and service and loyalty. Everything Lucy had ever known or thought about Mr. Morrison was wrong. Never in her life had she misjudged anyone to so great a degree, and she could hardly comprehend what this new information meant to her, but even in her numbness she could no longer deny that her feelings for him had undergone the most profound of alterations.