Chapter 3
February 23, 1847, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island
Despite the coolness of the day, Baptiste was working on his cow fence when Merritt returned home shortly before dinner. He had all the posts set into the ground just behind the house and was now nailing cross slats into place.
“You know,” Merritt said, one hand on his satchel and the other in his trouser pocket as he approached, “cows can’t swim. Don’t think they’ll get very far without a fence.”
“Funny man.” Baptiste drove a nail in with a single pounding of the hammer—impressive. Then again, much about the French cook was impressive. He was the largest man of Merritt’s acquaintance and made absolutely mind-melting pastries. This past Christmas had been one of the best in Merritt’s life, in part because he hadn’t spent it alone, and in part because Baptiste Babineaux was an absolute god in the kitchen.
Christmas made him think of Scarlet and Beatrice again. Just reminiscing about their meeting warmed him against the late-winter chill. Would he see either of them next Christmas? Would they come out to the island and sip hot cider beside the fireplace while Owein chased around his nieces and nephews? Would Merritt meet his nieces and nephews, or ... had too much time passed? His sisters had moved on to families of their own without including him in their lives. Without the ability to include him, yes, but it had happened just the same. Would they all be creatures too set in habit to rearrange for his sake?
He touched the old scarf he still wore, not liking the dreary direction in which his thoughts were heading, so he refocused on Baptiste, grabbed the box of nails, and moved it closer. “I’m just saying she’s not going to run off.” Merritt had promised Baptiste a milk cow if his next book did well, and Baptiste apparently had a great deal of faith that it would. Granted, with Hulda’s income added to the mix once they were married, a cow wouldn’t be too steep of a purchase, either way.
“I keep her close.” He grabbed another nail, this time taking two swings of the hammer to knock it in. “I take good care of her. I not walk ten miles for milk if she wander.” He paused. “Wanders.”
He then said something in French under his breath that Merritt didn’t catch. Granted, had he heard it clearly, he still wouldn’t have known what it meant.
“Don’t stay out too long,” Merritt chided, and turned for the house.
“Dinner in one hour” was the only response.
Inside, Merritt hung up his coat and satchel on a hook near the portrait of an unknown woman. Even Owein didn’t know who she was. The painting was faded, and when Owein’s spirit had occupied the walls, it used to occasionally melt or walk about the house, as the boy saw fit. Now she just hung, the only life within her the paint strokes that the original artist had given her. It felt wrong to remove the portrait. And so Merritt tipped an imaginary hat to her before heading upstairs.
“Paper came for you,” said Beth as she bustled by, a duster in her apron pocket and a broom in hand. “Left it on your desk.”
“News or work?”
“Work.”
“Thank you,” he called, though she didn’t slow for conversation, merely continued on to the library. Yesterday she’d decided to undertake reorganizing the volumes there by author’s name. Merritt did not envy her. Mayhap the library had once been organized as such, but Owein, as a house, had possessed a nasty habit of throwing books, so titles were merely shoved wherever there was a space for them.
Sure enough, a great ream of paper sat at the corner of his desk in his office, as well as a stack of notebooks. The place was spotless, his breakfast dishes cleared away, the trash bin emptied, the glass window looking out into the bay free of marks. Owein was curled up in the corner on the oval-shaped bed Hulda had given him for Christmas. His fur had developed white patches over the last few months, albeit not ones usually associated with age; they seemed to sprout at random, all over his body, instead of around his eyes and snout as might happen with a geriatric canine. He showed no other signs of age; his dog body remained spry and young.
Owein glanced up when Merritt entered, then rested his head on his paws.
“Long day?” Merritt asked, crossing to the desk and pulling his latest notebook, nearly filled, from its top drawer. He was working on his third book, Two More in the Study . This one was a mystery about two feuding families locked in a magicked house for an entire weekend. Every six hours, someone was murdered. Everyone believed it to be the house at first ... but indeed, it was one of the family members!
Merritt hadn’t figured out which one yet. But he’d get there.
He had an hour until dinner, and a little light left, so he sat down and read his last page, catching himself up on where he’d left off. He’d written, very lightly, a few notes for himself on the next page. He erased them and started anew:
Yet surely Annie had not been in the kitchen that morning—Louis himself had heard her retching upstairs before breakfast, as the smell of eggs had greatly upset her pregnant constitution. He couldn’t believe Benjamin capable of harming a soul, not when he’d cried over so much as a squished spider in childhood. Who, then, could have left the poison? And had he, or she, brought it with him, or had it been in the cupboards all along?
An idea struck him then. If he could—
His pencil, already down to half its length, snapped in his hand.
“Bother,” he muttered, and opened his second drawer for a new one, as well as a sharpener. He began the slow process of peeling back wood from graphite, trying to keep his ideas in his head.
He slowed halfway to a decent point and glanced at the broken pencil, his mind drifting back to the article published today. Or, more specifically, to Gifford. He hadn’t taken a magic lesson from the fellow in a few months, but he remembered them well. Had even reread the dry essays the man had provided for his enrichment.
Merritt possessed quite the odd concoction of magic spells, made all the more surprising by his discovery of them so far into adulthood. He could make wardship walls and talk with plants and animals, but he had some chaocracy as well, passed down from Owein’s side of the family through his biological father. It was weak, but he’d done quite a bit of destruction with it once, unintentionally, of course, so it was certainly part of him.
Chaocracy. The magic of disorder, which caused disorder of the mind in retribution for its use. But there was another side to chaocracy—if something was already in a state of disorder, then the magic could be used to restore order. “Restore order” was a spell he and his great-whatever-uncle Owein shared.
So Merritt set down the new pencil and the sharpener, and picked up the broken ends of his pencil. Held them together and focused.
His magic, they believed, was tied to his instincts and emotion. Chaocracy, supposedly, to his temper. But did that mean he had to be blindingly angry to make it work?
He stared intently at the crack in the pencil. Tried to will it to mend the same way he willed wardship spells to form or mice to quiet. Mend. Fuse. Fix.
And for a moment, the crack began to repair itself.
Then stopped.
Sighing, his thoughts somewhat scattered, Merritt pulled the pencil apart, dropped it on the desk, and leaned back in his chair. “Not worth it,” he muttered.
The pencil pieces then drew together like magnets and stitched into one whole. Merritt did not believe for a second that it was his doing.
You’ll get there, Owein said, pawing over to the desk. Only Merritt could hear his words, thanks to his communion spells.
“Perhaps not. I’ve your spell, but it’s been diluted by two centuries of plebian breeding.” He continued sharpening the new pencil. By the time he was finished, he’d need a candle. “Normally I’d be put out that a child can do anything better than I can, but, well, I suppose you’re not, really.”
Which had become a very curious thing to Merritt. Owein had died at the age of twelve but lived for over two hundred years in this house. Often alone, sometimes with tenants. Yet he still acted every bit a child. “I suppose when you’re not limited by society or body,” he mumbled, “you can be whatever you want.”
The dog tilted his head.
Merritt waved the words away. “Don’t mind me.” After setting the pencil aside, he petted the top of Owein’s head, then scratched behind his ears. “What did you do today?”
Chased birds. He pulled back and scratched his neck with his back paw. Helped Beth with the laundry.
Merritt grimaced. “Do I have terrier spittle and tooth marks all over my clean shirts?”
Owein managed to make his canine countenance look affronted. Only one hole, and I fixed it.
Merritt snorted, then cleared his throat. Communion liked to take his voice away, but in truth, that was the mildest wizarding symptom he had to deal with. He could always whisper—ish—or write if he needed to. Long stretches of work were often done in quiet, besides.
He and Owein chatted a bit more before Merritt returned to his book and scribbled down another two pages. He was interrupted by a soft, barely perceptible knock at the door. Beth waited until he looked up, then said, “Dinner. Do you want it up here?”
Stretching his arms over his head, Merritt answered, “No, I’ll come down.” Owein trotted ahead of him, and they went down the hall, down the stairs, and into the dining room, where the table had already been set. Merritt still felt spoiled sometimes, having these things done for him, but he was grateful. It gave him more time to write, and to travel back and forth between the island and Boston. It was easier for him to get away than for Hulda—hopefully the distance wouldn’t be too exhausting for her once she moved in again, this time officially, and this time in his room, no walls between them. April 12 couldn’t come soon enough.
He was just about to sit down when Owein perked up and bolted to the front door, sticking his nose to the bottom corner of the jamb, sniffing. Merritt exchanged a glance with Beth as Baptiste walked out carrying a pot of soup.
“I’ll get it,” Merritt said, and hurried to the door. Was Hulda stopping by? Perhaps her plans had changed—
He opened the door, and Owein bolted out onto the porch, barking once at a man trudging up the path, his journey made easier by the wintery flattening of the island’s flora. The twilight sky left much to the imagination, but the stranger wore a light-colored suit. He kept one hand on his hat to keep it from blowing away and the other on a cane, though his gait was even.
“Can I help you?” Merritt asked.
The man glanced up when he reached the stairs for the porch. “Indeed, Mr. Fernsby,” he said in a heavy English accent. “I’m here to deliver a message.”
Merritt froze. Not a stranger—Merritt recognized both the voice and the face, once the light of the house fell upon him.
“Mr. Adey,” he said, stiff. Adey was the detective who’d come sniffing around last November, inquiring after Hulda’s ties with Silas Hogwood.
The man held out a letter. “I need not come in this time. I’m merely the messenger.”
Owein sniffed the man’s shoes. Adey seemed not to notice.
Merritt hesitantly took the missive. “There are other ways to send letters.” He glanced at the paper, but there was no return address.
“Sensitive query, this one.” Adey looked past him to Beth, nodding a greeting. “I’ll be back in a couple of days for your response.”
The letter felt heavy in Merritt’s hands. A cold breeze swept by. Close, murmured a bird, possibly nesting in the eaves. Close, closer—
Merritt tuned it out. Not bothering to hide the skepticism from his voice, he said, “Would it not be easier to come in and—”
“I believe,” the British man said with a faint smile, “that you’ll want to mull it over. I’ll be back.” He tipped his hat first to Merritt and then to Owein, which raised gooseflesh up Merritt’s back. He thought about the article, but there was nothing in it that would point to Whimbrel House or Owein Mansel. He’d made sure of it. Even Gifford was still in the dark. Then again, Dwight Adey had proven himself privy to personal information in the past.
Adey turned to go. Using a communion spell, Merritt said, Owein, inside.
The mutt stepped indoors. Merritt closed the door to a crack, then said, “Baptiste?”
The chef cracked his knuckles. “I will watch.” He pushed past them and stepped outside, ensuring Adey got on his boat, just as he had the first time he’d come by.
Beth lingered at the window, watching him go. Merritt stepped into the dining room for better light, Owein on his heels. What is it?
“I don’t know.” Merritt broke the seal and opened up the single-page letter, then caught his breath. “It ... There’s no way.”
What? Owein asked.
Merritt’s gaze shifted to the signature at the bottom, then back to the top of the letter. I am interested in your dog, it said.
And it was signed by none other than Alexandrina Victoria.
The queen of England.