David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment

Emily began to cry, perhaps from the movement, perhaps from the growing heat. Lucy could spare nothing even to soothe her. She pulled and pulled, gaining ground by inches, until she managed to get Mr. Morrison out of the building and ten feet away. She dropped him, heaving, panting for breath. Emily was wailing. Lucy saw a crowd of workingmen, of machine breakers, of Luddites. She recognized one from the crowd who had, so long ago, accosted her outside Norah Gilley’s party.

“Don’t worry, miss,” he said. “We won’t keep the mill from burning, but we’ll make sure it don’t spread. And we already took care of Lady Harriett’s men and her woman Quince too. You do what you’ve got to, while we put out the fire and then destroy every frame in there.” In the crowd she thought she saw a familiar form, stooped and ragged and visible only out of the corner of her eye. It was Ludd. Only it was not Ludd any longer. He was diminished—perhaps by Mary’s death. Lucy could not know. Now he was but a man, a strong, healthy, and vibrant man, but no longer magnificent and unknowable

Lucy set down the baby, who continued to wail loudly, but out of fear, not pain. For now Mr. Morrison needed her. She took out her bag, and began to reach for her healing herbs. She tore open his shirt to reveal the wound, above the heart and to the right. It bled copiously. It would be fatal, she was sure, without her help, but she would keep him alive. She would save him. He would still need a surgeon to remove the bullet, but she would keep him alive until one was found.

Lucy applied her herbs. She wrote out a healing charm in the dirt around him, and gathered dirt and put it in his pocket. She placed a bloodstone and a piece of quartz in his pockets.

His breathing came more easily. He turned to her. “Byron?” he asked.

“Dead,” she said.

“And me?”

“Not dead.” She forced herself to smile. “I mean to keep you that way.”

“If I do not live, you must not use the book on my behalf. I do not want that.”

“I could not if I wished it,” said Lucy. “Sophie had the book all along. I could not risk Lady Harriett finding it upon me.”

Mr. Morrison tried to rise but fell back again. “You must get the pages away from her. She has knowledge of the craft.”

“But what could she …?” Lucy began to say, and then she saw what Mr. Morrison meant. She knew what Sophie could do with it. Holding the crying child close to her breast, she darted up to where she had last seen Sophie, but the girl was gone, as was the body of Byron. In the soft earth, two sets of footprints led away, and remaining, pressed to the earth with a stone, were only the pages of the Mutus Liber fluttering gently in the soft breeze as though they were not mere paper, but living things.

SUMMER WAS NOW COME TO THE HOUSE CALLED HARRINGTON IN Kent, and it was thus far a mild summer, pleasant but not cool enough to worry the farmers who longed for a good harvest. The days were bright and green, and Lucy could not remember ever seeing her sister, Martha, so happy. Little Emily showed no ill effects of her abduction in the spring. She was, as before, a cheerful and robust child, prone to inexplicable bouts of irritation and sadness, as were all babies, but easily soothed by her mother’s kiss or a happy diversion. She was a precocious thing, not yet ten months, already spewing a babble of noises in imitation of words, crawling quite skillfully and making the occasional, if unsuccessful, attempt to walk upon her plump legs.

Lucy was gone from her Uncle Lowell’s house, with no intention ever to return. She was in her old home, and she could not be happier, though her stay there was but temporary. Upon Mr. Buckles’s death, Harrington reverted to an even more distant cousin, a naval captain of no small heroic reputation. He had written a long and blustery letter to Martha, proclaiming that he was in no hurry to take possession of the estate, not when there were so many French prizes yet to be had, and left the house in her care until such time as the war ended and he had the leisure to see to mundane affairs such as farming and household management. She and Martha would have to vacate sometime, but Lucy was grateful for this period of gentle transition.

She went to town but seldom, and only when necessary. Rumor of her shame at the hands of the rake poet Byron had spread quite rapidly to Kent, and Lucy could not appear in public without exposing herself to the upturned noses of women or the lecherous stares of men. The world believed Lucy would lift her skirts without hesitation, and while this infamy saddened her, she could not regret it. Her reputation was a small sacrifice to preserve the people she loved—small indeed in comparison to what Mrs. Emmett and Mary had given.

Mary had given everything to preserve England, to save Lucy and her niece, and to make certain the Mutus Liber did not fall into the wrong hands. Now the book was back with its true owner, and every day Lucy dedicated long hours to decoding the confusing and obscure elements of alchemy. Slowly she came to understand its symbols and how to apply them. Alchemy was change, and change was but an alteration of what was into another shape. Lead into gold, aging into immortality—these were but the low-hanging fruit that had tempted generations of alchemists, but the art was so much more than that, so much more subtle, and Lucy regularly sat up long into the night, her eyes straining by the candlelight, to grasp what was, by its nature, almost too slippery to be contained.

More than once she had almost quit the endeavor and thrown the book aside as incomprehensible madness. Or, if not that, at least too complicated for her mind. Perhaps others might make sense of it, but Lucy would entrust it to no one. In those dark moments she told herself that she need not master the book. Perhaps it was best that she not master it, and enough that she keep the book out of other hands. These moments of despair did not last long, and soon enough, feeling ashamed of her weak will, Lucy returned to the task. Mary had allowed herself to be erased from existence so that Lucy might retain control of the book. Lucy would make certain she honored Mary’s sacrifice.

Lucy could not think of Mary without being struck by melancholy. She had chosen annihilation and oblivion, had elected to be blasted out of existence, with no hope of continuation or resurrection.

Or, Lucy thought, one morning a month or so after the decisive encounter at Newstead, it was what she believed she had done. Could Mary know, truly know, what she would face after her earthly demise? Was she not as ignorant as men are of their own fate? That something lay beyond this life was now a certainty to Lucy. She had seen far too much evidence to doubt it, but Mary could not know that she was barred from such a continuation. It soothed Lucy to think that somewhere, in some state, her friend continued.

It also comforted her to look upon those who had benefited from Mary’s sacrifice. Emily thrived, as did Martha. The loss of her husband had initially been a terrible blow. Lucy had not told her sister the truth, not at first, for there was so much to absorb, but in time Lucy chose to sit Martha down and tell her everything. First she told her about the magic, proved it to her with a dozen demonstrations before Martha could bring herself to anything like belief. Then she unveiled to Martha the truth about Mr. Buckles, and all that had passed between them. It had been a difficult evening, full of tears and horror, but it had been necessary. She would not say it, but Lucy knew that Martha had accepted that if ever a creature deserved destruction, it was Mr. Buckles, a man willing to sacrifice his own child at his mistress’s whim.