David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment - A Novel

Three men approached from the parlor. They looked to Lucy like soldiers or laborers, dressed up like country gentlemen in trousers and plain waistcoats. They were all of them broad in the shoulder and thick in the arms, with bulging necks and the sort of heavy faces that such muscular men often possess.

One of them stepped forward. “Jonas Morrison. They said you’d be foolish enough to come here, and I’m glad you did, for me and the lads was getting restless. Now, let’s see your hands up high, so I know you don’t mean no tricks.”

Lucy took a step back, but Mr. Morrison did nothing other than raise his empty hands to shoulder height and smile amiably at the men. “Nothing in my hands,” he said, as though about to perform one of his tricks.

And he was. Lucy understood that only an instant before it happened, and when it did happen, things moved so quickly she could not be sure she saw it all, or could believe what she did see. The brute who had spoken took a quick step toward Mr. Morrison, grinning with pleasure, one fist pulled back, ready to deliver a mighty blow, but he never had the chance. Though Mr. Morrison had demonstrated that his hands were empty, they no longer were so. In his right hand he held a cudgel, heavy and black, of about a foot in length. As the brute swung his fist, Mr. Morrison deftly stepped to one side, and struck the man in the side of his head, quick, hard, decisive. The brute toppled liked a felled tree.

With a quick and easy gesture, Mr. Morrison tossed the cudgel to his left hand, and now in his right hand appeared a piece of chalk, snatched as if from the air itself as the cudgel had been. Finding an exposed spot on the floor, he quickly drew a set of symbols on it—two interlocking triangles inside a square inside a circle, and then whispered something over the symbol. It took but a second, and it was done. He then dropped the chalk and made manifest a second cudgel. He rose to face the two remaining brutes who were now upon him.

One lunged, and Morrison struck him upon either side of the head simultaneously, causing the man to stagger backwards and collapse. The remaining man pulled from his pockets two pistols, which he held in each hand.

“I’ll not let you get close enough to use those,” he said.

Morrison dropped a cudgel down his sleeve and took Lucy’s hand. His skin was cool and dry, as though his efforts had cost him nothing. She felt his pulse in his hand, and it was calm and regular.

“I see we’ve upset you,” said Mr. Morrison. “We’ll just be on our way.” He began to back up toward the door, pulling Lucy with him.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said the brute. “Stand still.”

“Oh, you won’t shoot and risk hitting the lady, will you?” asked Mr. Morrison, continuing his slow retreat.

“If you don’t stop moving, I’ll shoot the lady first,” answered the man as he advanced, just as slowly, clearly unwilling to close distance between them. As he finished speaking, Morrison stopped and so did he.

Morrison smiled and cast his eyes to the floor, where the brute stood upon the symbol he’d drawn in chalk. “Oh, dear,” Morrison said. “That’s not good.”

“What do you mean?” said the brute, though he already began to appear distressed. A trickle of blood began to flow from his nose, and his eyes were so bloodshot as to be almost entirely red. “What do you mean?” he said again, and this time a trickle of blood fell from the corner of his mouth. Then he fell to the floor.

Mr. Morrison let go of Lucy’s hand and went to check on the men, feeling the pulses in their necks, lifting their eyelids. “We have two hours, at least.”

Martha came into the house and shrieked. Mrs. Emmett took her hand to steady her.

“I do apologize for the mess,” said Mr. Morrison. “Let us leave them for your husband to tend to, shall we? In the meantime, your sister and I have business.”

“But those men might die here,” said Martha.

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Emmett. “Those two right there shall hang within the year, and that one with the fair hair, he shall choke to death upon his own vomit. He drinks to excess, you know.”

Martha stood with a hand over her mouth. “What is all this about?” she asked. Her voice was distant and detached. “Why were these men here? Lucy, I do not understand. I don’t understand anything, and I am so afraid.”

Lucy took her sister’s arm. “Martha, you must trust me. You must have faith that I do what I must and what is right. Now, are father’s old books in the library yet?”

“Yes, of course.” Martha looked away from the bondmen. “Father’s books and many of Mr. Buckles’s too.”

“May we look through them?”

Martha nodded. “Yes. I suppose. I mean, I cannot say.”

Martha gave every sign of swooning, so Lucy took her hands. “I know all of this is strange to you. It is strange to me too. Soon, I think, everything will be different, and better. It is what I hope. For now there is much I must do, and I cannot speak of it. I ask only that you trust me.”

Martha began to tear up once more. “You are so altered, Lucy. I hardly know you.”

“These years since father died have been hard on all of us. It must change us.”

Martha nodded. “Yes, we must all change, but we do not all change for the better. We do not all become stronger. I have diminished and you have become … I don’t know how to say it. You have become who you were always meant to be.”

Lucy hugged her once more, and as they all turned their backs upon the bondmen Lucy, Mr. Morrison, and Mrs. Emmett followed Martha to the library.

When they reached the closed door of the library, Mr. Morrison put up a hand before Lucy. “A moment,” he said. He opened the door, and proceeded to run his hand along the doorjamb, moving slowly, as if feeling for something underneath the wood. He did this several times, his face screwed up in concentration, and then he gave a quick nod to himself.

Reaching into the pocket of his coat, he removed a penknife and began to dig into the wood in a spot at about the height of his shoulder. Martha appeared horrified, and he turned to smile at her, and then went back to his work. Finally, he found something embedded in the wood. It was a small pouch, made of stained white linen, about the size of a grape, and—like Byron’s curse—tied with some kind of hair.

Mr. Morrison sniffed at the bag. “Dried spiders, mixed with the ash of unhatched goose egg, if I’m not mistaken. Powerful stuff, designed to interfere with your concentration.” He strode into the library and tossed the pouch in the fire. “But that’s all behind us. Apologies about the door, Mrs. Buckles.”

“How did you know that was there?” Martha asked.

“Lucky guess,” he said, smiling quite happily.

Martha looked at the damage to the door, then at Mr. Morrison, then at Lucy. Apparently she decided there was nothing to be gained by further comments. Instead, she offered them refreshment, which they refused.

“We only need some time,” Lucy said.

In the distance they heard the shrill wail of an angry infant. At least it would sound like an infant to Martha, and perhaps to Mr. Morrison. She did not know.

“I hardly even hear it any longer,” Martha said in response to the unasked question. “I have hired a wet nurse, you know. I hate that I have, but I cannot any longer endure it. My own daughter. I suppose that makes me a horrid mother, but I feared I must lose my mind, but she is so altered.”

“You are a wonderful mother,” said Lucy. “You can never doubt that.”

Martha glanced over at Mrs. Emmett who was standing near the fire, examining the cut pages of a book with her index finger, and humming softly to herself. “Perhaps your woman would care to wait in the servant’s quarters.”