The Twelfth Enchantment: A Novel Page 22

  He rose to his feet, blushing and announcing that he had taken enough of her time. She saw him to the door and shook his hand, so they parted with declarations of friendship. Yet Lucy was deeply troubled, for now it seemed to her obvious that someone had placed a spell upon Mr. Olson to make him love her, and she could not imagine who that person might have been. It did seem curious, however, that Lady Harriett still had designs on Mr. Olson. Lucy wondered if she had been manipulating him all along. It hardly mattered, though. Soon Lucy would be gone, and this would no longer be her concern.

  Two days later, Norah arrived at Uncle Lowell’s house in a handsome coach, drawn by four yellowish horses. Her parents had traveled on ahead, and it was to be just the two young ladies and Norah’s woman. With great difficulty, Ungston and the coachman loaded Lucy’s trunk, which contained no small number of books, including her mostly false copy of the Mutus Liber. In addition, there were magical implements, herbs, and, of course, as many of her clothes as she could manage.

  Her uncle sat in his study, reviewing some letters, and took his leave of her coolly. “You’ve quite disappointed me in your conduct with Mr. Olson,” he said. “I hope you shall do better in London. You’ll be returning here in the end, I suppose.”

  Lucy curtsied. “I have not troubled myself to think of the future.”

  “No, I suppose not,” he answered, and then turned away.

  Outside his study, Mrs. Quince waited for her. “Enjoy your travels,” she said with a pinched smile. “Do try to bring no more shame upon yourself.”

  Lucy studied her, feeling unnerved by her restraint. “I have no notion of why you have treated me as you have, but in the end I will find out. You may be certain of that.”

  Mrs. Quince stared in wonder, unblinking and unmoving, and remained that way until Lucy was inside the coach.

  When Lucy and Norah approached the equipage, Lucy observed Insworth, Norah’s servant, hunched over her botched knitting, muttering gloomily under her breath as she teased out false stitches. She had been in the Gilley family for a long time, and no amount of ill humor or ineptitude could prove sufficient cause for dismissal. She was a remarkably sour woman, with an offensive smell, and so best not confined to a coach for a long period of time, but it was not she who gave Lucy her surprise. It was the woman sitting across from her: Mrs. Emmett.

  Lucy paused, unable to think of what to say, so it was Norah who spoke for her.

  “Your woman is here already,” she said, her mouth compressed into a pinched smile. “I did not know you possessed such a person.”

  They climbed in, each lady next to her own servant, and soon the coach began to roll. Mrs. Emmett only looked out the window, and occasionally turned to Norah to smile beatifically. Lucy felt a boiling medley of emotions—anger, confusion, and most of all, curiosity, but she could ask nothing in front of Norah, and she postponed all her questions until a convenient time arrived.

  Satisfaction, such as it was, had to wait until their first stopover at an inn in Leicester. Lucy found cause to take Mrs. Emmett aside. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “You can’t go to London without your serving woman,” she said cheerily.

  “Did Miss Crawford direct you to come to me?”

  “Oh, yes. Long ago, but I am your woman now. I told you that, Miss Derrick.”

  “How is it that Norah seems to know you?”

  “She knows me because I am your serving woman,” said Mrs. Emmett.

  Further inquiry produced only answers of an equally unsatisfying and circular nature. Lucy learned nothing of Mary’s whereabouts. The best she could get out of the serving woman was that she, Mrs. Emmett, had always worked for Lucy. Lucy simply had not known it.

  The remainder of the journey was without much amusement or event. On the first night they stayed at an inn in Bedford, where a trio of officers made much of the ladies, even if they made slightly more of Norah, perhaps because Norah made much more of them. Lucy had matters on her mind other than officers, but she did not judge Norah, for she recalled what it was to have nothing of import to occupy one’s thoughts. If anything, she felt a pang of jealousy for her friend’s freedom to indulge in these simple pleasures.

  They were on the road again before first light, though Mrs. Emmett was asleep again soon enough, snoring so loudly that at first it was comical, later maddening. Before nightfall, Lucy could make out the approaching city looming on the horizon. The farmland around them became less expansive, the people less rude, and the air less clear. Indeed, shortly after lunch the windows of the coach began to cloud over with gray soot, and the air they breathed grew heavier with London’s belching chimneys and coal smoke.

  As they entered the city, Lucy gripped Norah’s arm, for the scene around them was not one of refinement, but horror. London had always had its poor, but the new mills built upon the river, spewing forth thick clouds of black smoke, seemed like something out of Dante’s Hell. It was like the poverty of Nottingham, multiplied a thousandfold. A boy walked shirtless against the cold evening air, his body so gaunt Lucy could all but identify his organs. A woman, almost equally uncovered, held her naked baby upside down by its feet while she shouted at a leering, finely dressed man. Two gentlemen laughed while they slapped an insensible woman’s face. A young man, with no hands, held up his begging bowl between the raw stumps of his wrists.

  This was the worst of it, but not the whole. Gangs of thieves roamed the streets, their occupation so obvious it might have been emblazoned upon their coats. Likewise the whores made no effort to disguise their trade. The most brazen of them exposed their breasts to the coach before realizing it was inhabited by ladies, at which observation they would spit or hurl turds. Lucy had never seen such filth—the animal refuse that gathered in the street, the human refuse that did likewise, and besides came flying out of windows as they passed. The stiffly moving rivers of kennel that made their slow, muddy way down the street. Dead dogs, dead cats and rats and horses—the latter being dissected by a gang of feral boys after meat—lay everywhere. And everywhere was soot—so deep and thick and inescapable it caked Lucy’s throat and nostrils and made her long for a bath.

  Norah laughed to see Lucy’s response. “Oh, this isn’t really London. We shall go to places in town where these sights do not exist. I don’t trouble myself to look.”

  Lucy nodded, not because she agreed or saw the wisdom in pretending that people did not live so, but because she dared not speak, dared not say what was on her mind. Here, in this terrible place, Lucy understood that the Luddites were right, that Ludd, whatever he might be, was right. The machine breakers, the revolutionaries, those who raged against what they could not stop—all of them were right. And Mary Crawford—whatever role she may have had in replacing her sister’s child—she was right too. What terrible thing would Lucy herself not do, would not any sane person do, to turn back the tide upon these horrors, to stopper up the vomiting chimneys, to wipe away the soot and ash and dirt that fell from the sky like snow.

  Then, as Norah predicted, their surroundings improved. The streets became wider and cleaner and less populated in general, less populated with mendicants and felons and whores in particular. Suddenly there were broad, glorious houses, gentlemen with ornate walking sticks, ladies in fine gowns, servants with neat little children in tow, or happy little lapdogs in baskets. There were elegant horses and majestic equipages. There were parks and lawns, fields where careless children played, watched over by mastiff-faced nurses. The air was still heavy and thick and dirty, and the occasional wretch still crossed their path, and the occasional whore still leered as she searched for willing coin, but even so it was a different world, and Lucy found herself pretending that the other place did not exist—not because she wanted to, but because she did not know that she could do otherwise and survive.

  Not an hour in London, and Lucy was becoming a Londoner.

  Mr. Gilley had rented a large, luxurious town house in Crown Street, perhaps not q
uite so close to Hyde Park as Norah would have liked, but close enough to be somewhat fashionable. The interior of the house seemed even more massive than its exterior suggested. The rooms were well lit and beautifully appointed, with the most fashionable furnishings and window treatments and paintings. There were too many servants for Lucy to learn their names at once, and she had the choice of three unoccupied rooms to call her own. Both of Norah’s parents were home, and while Mrs. Gilley greeted Lucy with cool indifference, Mr. Gilley appeared delighted that Lucy was there, and gave her a lengthy lecture on how to protect herself from catching cold while walking about London. He fussed over her in a thousand ways, begged her to make any adjustments to her room, inquired into her preferences for dinner, and promised her that she would enjoy the delights of London or he would alter London to her liking. A room below stairs was found for Mrs. Emmett, and so there was an end to all the necessary adjustments. Mr. Gilley cared not how long she remained because he liked her, and Mrs. Gilley cared not because she had no regard for her at all. Lucy could hardly have asked for more, and the charms she had brought to effect these ends might, perhaps, never have to be unpacked.

  Lucy’s next order of business was clear. It was far easier to make her way to Kent from London than it was from Nottingham, but now that she was in London, she began to realize just how little she had planned. Besides determining how to get to Kent, she would need to determine the best possible course for getting inside Lady Harriett’s house undetected, discovering the pages of the Mutus Liber from Byron’s library, and then getting out again.

  That she would be no closer to saving her niece saddened her immensely. Mr. Morrison, after all, was no doubt deflowering virgins in some foreign land as he searched for other pages, and if he found them, would it do Lucy any good? He would return to her if he could—her spell would see to that—but would he have the pages with him when he did? There was no point worrying about what she could not control, however. She would find the pages, one at a time if she had to. She would study and learn and experiment and practice until the pages were hers.

  Lucy had hoped that Mrs. Emmett might prove to be of some use in these matters, but she appeared utterly confounded when Lucy asked her for advice. “I cannot say anything as to that, Miss Derrick,” she answered. “I only know when it is time for you to go to Kent, you will go.”

  “Then you know I will get there?”

  “I cannot tell you that, Miss Derrick,” she said. “I can only say that if you are meant to go, you will go, and at the time you are meant.”

  “Meant by whom?” Lucy asked testily.

  Mrs. Emmett appeared to detect none of Lucy’s irritation. She only smiled and looked off to the distance, as though the person or force she referenced was just beyond her vision. “By them who mean such things.”

  Only after her arrival did Lucy realize that she had somehow expected Mrs. Emmett to ease her way in London, but that would not be the case, and she was hardly better prepared for the confusion of the metropolis than if she were on her own. How precisely did one get to Kent? How much did it cost? Lucy had her quarterly allotment of ten pounds, and she had to spend with caution. Money could be made by other means. She knew that, but she was reluctant to practice cunning craft when she did not have to. Every spell cast required herbs and paper and pen and ink—things that cast money or might be missed. More than that, she’d never felt comfortable with the idea of using magic to earn money. What came into her purse must exit from another’s, and how could she say whose need would be greater?

  So she told herself that she did what she could. She learned what she could learn, and she planned as best she could plan. She was who she was—a young woman of limited means and almost no freedom, and she could not help being that. If she truly were at the center of things, as so many had told her, then would not the right opportunity present itself? Fate had sought her out in quiet Nottinghamshire. She could hardly be said to be hiding in London.

  Meanwhile, the routine of fashionable London life soon settled on her, and a week had passed before she knew it—a week in which her sister, Martha, lived with a monster and her poor niece was held captive somewhere by something Lucy dared not even contemplate. Instead of searching for lost alchemical books or battling creatures from the invisible world, she browsed in dress shops, attended music recitals, and visited fashionable homes to view art and collections of curios. There was more in her future too: the opera and the playhouse and the tea gardens. On all of these excursions, Mrs. Emmett accompanied her, as though she were Lucy’s chaperone, and dutifully allowed herself to be sequestered in kitchens and servants’ rooms when they were not in transit. Servants began to complain of her, however. They spoke to Norah, and Norah, in turn, spoke to Lucy.

  “She makes them uneasy,” she said one afternoon as they sat in the parlor. She kept her voice down, as though afraid Mrs. Emmett would overhear her, even though she had been sent halfway across town upon an errand. “They say she never eats and never talks except when directly addressed, and then she says only the most absent and polite things.”

  “You make her sound like the perfect serving woman,” Lucy said.

  “She is certainly not the sort of serving woman to be found in fashionable homes, and I’m afraid she’ll have to go.”

  Lucy did not pay Mrs. Emmett, and did not know how to dismiss her or even if she could. She had visions of the woman mooning about the town-house door like a stray dog, or worse—sneaking inside. There would be constables and bailiffs and magistrates. She could not allow any of that.

  “I don’t know that I can do without her,” said Lucy.

  “Of course you can,” said Norah. “There are a hundred women in London who will do for you a thousand times better than that country oaf.”

  “I cannot part with her,” said Lucy, and because she did not know how to argue the point, she left the parlor and fled to her own room.

  The next morning, Mr. Gilley found her descending the stairs, and took her by the elbow to the empty parlor to discuss the matter. Lucy did not like that he touched her so freely. Something about his expression suggested an intense and disproportionate pleasure in the act. It occurred to her, as he led her into the room, that she had never before been alone with her friend’s father, and did not much care for this development.

  “I understand there is some difficulty with your serving woman,” he said to her.

  “Norah says the others don’t like her. I know she is odd, but I cannot let her go.” Lucy kept her eyes lowered because she wished to appear pitiable and because she did not care to see how Mr. Gilley looked upon her. She could all but feel the heat of his gaze upon her skin.

  “If it is a matter of money,” said Mr. Gilley, “I can offer some assistance and send her off. She can offer no objection.”

  “It is not that,” said Lucy. “I cannot do without her. If she cannot remain, then I must return home.”

  Mr. Gilley said nothing, and Lucy felt the quiet of the room, and the warmth that came from the fireplace and the nearness of Mr. Gilley’s lurking form.

  Mr. Gilley looked at her and pressed his lips together in a tight approximation of a smile. “That shall not be necessary. My servants will be more tolerant. You must never fear that I will fail to look after you, Miss Derrick.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Lucy, curtsying. It was the most formal, distancing thing she could think to do, but it was too late to correct her error. She had put herself in the power of a man who was determined to extract from her what he could, and Lucy did not know that she could ever again let down her guard while under his roof.

  While the crisis with Mrs. Emmett had been building and resolving, the rest of the household had been attentive to but one thing: the assembly at Almack’s, to which Mr. Gilley, with some pains, had secured tickets. The Wednesday assembly was the most fashionable event in all of London, and only the grandest people went. If it were known that Lucy had never formally been presented at court, she woul
d have been barred entry, but Lucy chose not to raise the point, and Norah conveniently forgot to tell her parents—likely less out of concern for Lucy than for the difficulty such a revelation might present.

  Lucy’s joy at the prospect of attending was incomplete. Shortly after arriving at the Gilley house, she’d received a letter from Martha in which she made every effort to put a happy face upon her suffering, but Lucy had no doubt that Martha was worried to distraction about what she believed to be her baby. Even Martha’s handwriting appeared unsteady and distraught.

  Lucy had to find a way to get to Kent and to the next pages of the Mutus Liber, even if it meant exposing herself to horrible rumor and speculation. The day after the assembly, she told herself, she would go. She would find some way, no matter the cost. She would be under too much scrutiny before then, but after, when everyone was exhausted and self-satisfied, she would find the opportunity to escape.

  Norah insisted upon new gowns for the both of them, and when Lucy announced she did not have the money, Mr. Gilley offered to pay for hers, explaining that he should love to see her in a new gown above everything. She hated to put herself in his debt, but it was too awkward to refuse, and so she accepted with many thanks. Lucy walked away from the experience with a trainless, stomacher-front gown of a beautiful coral color, flattering to her shape, perfectly matched to her complexion. Accompanied by a shawl of a charming ivory shade, and with her hair dressed up and curled, precisely to the fashion, and then covered with a prim little hat with a saucily small brim, Lucy felt very pleased with herself indeed. When Norah, who looked fine in her somewhat less-flattering tunic of too bright a red—a color she had loved in the milliner’s shop, but now required constant reassurance that it had not been a mistake—told Lucy she looked “well enough,” that was sufficient to feel like a triumph.