David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment - A Novel

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.