Chapter Eight
Trinity College, Dublin (Coláiste na Tríonóide, Baile átha Cliath)
Four Days Before Samhain
The Long Room at Trinity College didn’t hold the rarest books in Ireland—that honor went to Marsh’s Library near Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, where they locked readers in cages with their chosen reading so they might not escape with it.
Nor did it hold the most dangerous books in Ireland, which were sealed in the medieval Record Tower at Dublin Castle, where they allowed no readers at all.
But its collection was amongst the oldest and most extensive in the United Kingdom.
It was also the most magnificent library Sam had ever seen, a thrill coursing through her as the doors opened.
Stretching two stories high and nearly two hundred feet long, the aptly named Long Room had a ceiling like the inside of a barrel and floors the color of warm honey.
Mahogany bookshelves ribbed its length with spindly ladders scraping the heavens, punctuated with marble busts from Socrates to Shakespeare.
The symmetry was such that when first Sam walked in, she had the dizzying impression that the library was perched atop a lake, the lower level little more than a reflection in still waters.
She imagined, giddily, needing a boat to get from one side to the other, stacking it full of books, and poling it down to a nook where she might read by puddled candlelight.
Then Hel brushed past her, and the illusion broke. Sam hurried after, unwilling to be left behind. The dusty scent of old books and wood warm with gaslight hooked into her chest. Sam closed her eyes, wishing the scent didn’t still make her think of Arsène Courbet.
Hel shot her a look. Are you all right?
Fine, Sam nodded firmly. She had to be. She didn’t want to let him take this from her too.
Van Helsing joined them shortly after they arrived. Hel leaned against the stacks nearest the tall window, silhouetted against the falling light.
They had taken over the space between two of the bookshelves—the librarian being unwilling to let them abscond with their selection into one of the reading rooms. It would be, in his words, practically impossible to watch over what chambers they might enter, let alone how long they might linger and with whom.
It had taken Sam a moment to realize he wasn’t worried about their loyalty but the virtue of the young men in his charge.
They passed by in their black robes, gazes lingering on Sam in her blue capelet and dress, until inevitably, the scowling librarian found his way into the students’ field of vision like a disgruntled imp, and the students startled, Adam’s apples bobbing as they lowered their eyes and hurried past.
“How did the business with Lord Lusk go?” Hel asked without looking up from the book she was paging through.
“It didn’t,” Van Helsing scowled, his crossed arms flexing at the memory, as if strength alone could force it into compliance. “Lord Lusk had the temerity to be offended, claimed he had been too overcome with grief to even notice a ring.”
Sam chewed her lip. That was odd. The ring had taken up nearly half Mr. Enfield’s pointer finger. It was singularly hard to miss—and even if he had, he ought to have felt it, having clasped the man’s hand. But the fact remained, the man was innocent. At least of theft.
“Perhaps I was mistaken—” Sam ventured.
“No, he’s hiding something. I can feel it,” Van Helsing said, and Sam couldn’t argue with that. “Tell me you found something here, that you know what we’re up against.”
“Unfortunately,” Sam said, “until the recent efforts of Anglo-Irish unnaturalists such as W. B. Yeats and Lady Jane Wilde, little of the Irish and Otherworldly has been recorded in writing. There are oral accounts, but—”
Hel cut her off. “Research takes time.”
“We don’t have time,” Van Helsing said.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Hel said, pushing off the wall with a feline motion. “I’ll inform the monster we’re in a bit of a rush—”
It was Sam’s turn to cut Hel off. “What she means to say,” Sam said, with a hard look at Hel, “is that it will go faster if you help us.”
Van Helsing scowled. But still, when Hel went back to the darkroom to finish developing the photographs, he joined Sam in pulling down books, skimming through the pages, looking for anything that might be of use.
Despite having Van Helsing breathing over her shoulder, Sam felt at ease. Oh, how she’d missed this! The thrill of discovery, chasing down references, weaving together a story from often contradictory scraps. Knowing her efforts weren’t wasted, because this, at least, Sam was good at.
“You know we could have the researchers back at the Society do this,” Van Helsing grumbled.
“Could we?” Sam asked. Her impression was that they weren’t supposed to tell the Society anything at all.
Van Helsing frowned, as if he hadn’t truly understood the researchers were people, that they might tell other people the things they heard. It was, unfortunately, an epidemic amongst field agents. Sam had to be careful now, or she’d give away all her secrets.
By late afternoon, Sam had a feast of books laid out before her. Van Helsing had given up and was scowling at a sketch he’d made of Mr. Enfield’s ring.
“I think I found something!” Sam said, just as Hel returned with the photographs in hand.
Immediately, Van Helsing and Hel crowded over her shoulder.
She pointed at an illustration: thick swirling lines illuminating a storm-racked sky, hounds baying before a host of horses with their Otherworldly riders.
“‘The Wild Hunt,’” Van Helsing read doubtfully.
Certainly that was the most common name for them, on account of the German unnaturalists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
Though little was agreed upon about them—least of all their name.
They were known as Herod’s Hunt in England, the Devil’s Dandy Dogs in Cornwall, and the far more sinister Dead Hunt in Italy.
It was as if they changed their form and tenor depending on the ground over which they rode, like a piece of music played on different instruments.
“They’re lost souls that hunt at night,” Sam explained, pulling references from the books laid out before her. “It’s said you can hear their hoofbeats and the baying of their hounds in the howling of the storms, as they ride in search of men’s souls to join their endless hunt.”
“Then it can’t be them,” Van Helsing said dismissively. “There were no horses last night. Flying or otherwise. Let alone hounds.”
“In Ireland, they’re a bit different,” Sam said. “They’re called—”
“The sluagh,” Hel breathed. “It means ‘the host.’” Which was to say they were Folk, who might be fallen angels, nature spirits, the old gods, or the dead, depending on who you asked. And unbaptized children, but then everything awful in Ireland was associated with that.
“Instead of hooves, you hear wingbeats in storms that smell of rotting meat.” Sam skimmed the book, summarizing as she went.
“They can take the dark crescent form of birds, and a more demonic form with black talons and wings of smoke. It says here they creep in west windows to steal the souls of the dying, but they’ll take the souls of the living too—the brokenhearted, the desperate, and anyone who says their name nine times.
The only way to avoid being taken is to offer another in your place, but that only buys you time, and when that time is up, your soul will ride with the Wild Hunt until the end of all things. ”
“Birds . . .” Hel said. “Just like the photograph.”
“What photograph?” Van Helsing demanded.
Hel tossed the photographs on the books spread out before Sam. The murmuration of birds silhouetted against the setting sun sky, blurred with motion. The Duke, looking up at them in black, his sword a sliver of light by his side.
They’d known, Sam thought with a chill. They must have, to have taken such a picture. They’d known it was the Wild Hunt, and still that hadn’t saved them.
Van Helsing looked at it for a long moment. “That could be any flock of birds.”
“On the Viscount’s camera?” Sam pressed. “Why else would he photograph them, if they weren’t important?”
“How should I know?” Van Helsing said. “Perhaps he was testing his camera.”
“It shouldn’t be the sluagh,” Hel agreed. “The Wild Hunt isn’t supposed to be able to venture into the light of day any more than they can wither moss. But we already know something’s affecting their behavior.”
“Do you think the poets of Keogh’s pub might be right?
” Sam said, thinking of Miss Shinagh, of the way the English had bound Ireland in iron, with its railroads like chains around the gates of the Otherworld.
Even the marking of victims—if the Wild Hunt were essentially ghosts, who was to say they weren’t marking their quarry themselves?
“That it’s Ireland itself rising up against the English? ”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Van Helsing snorted. “They’re poets. They’re being poetical. Leveraging tragedies as a metaphor for their politics, as a self-fulfilling prophecy for war.”
“But if they aren’t, if there’s some kernel of truth to it,” Sam persisted, “then perhaps we ought to stop looking at who is behind the attacks and instead find out how to appease them.”
“The Wild Hunt cannot be appeased—they are hunters, their hunt eternal. Nor should we stoop to appeasing monsters,” Van Helsing said sharply. “Do not forget what they are, nor that one of them almost killed you last night.”
Sam’s saint medal felt like ice against her breast. “I know, but—”
“Don’t tell me you feel sympathy for the things,” Van Helsing said.
“Last I checked, we are the Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena,” Sam said tartly, “not the Society for the Murdering of Abnormal Phenomena.”
“The only thing you need study is how they might be killed,” Van Helsing said dismissively. “Anything more is a distraction.”