April 11, 1820 London, England #2
When the hall is empty again, Beatrix takes a small silver key from her pocket, unlocks the door across from the nursery, and slips inside.
The professor’s library looks different under the overcast early-evening light, sharper and more real than it does under the flickering glow of a candle. She can picture him here, bent over his desk, oblivious to the party downstairs.
Beatrix goes to the table just inside the door, piled high with books and papers she has taken care not to topple during her silent nights spent reading here.
She has only ever taken one book from this table, the copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales she suspects previously lived in the nursery, now on her shelf in the schoolroom.
She can imagine Mrs. Winfield sweeping through the house in her mourning dress, gathering up anything that reminds her of her lost husband.
She can imagine her bringing it all to the library, determined to shut it away with every other thing she can’t bear to look at anymore.
She can imagine her freezing on the threshold, unable to bring herself to step inside the room that holds too much of him.
Dropping everything onto the table and locking the door behind her.
Beatrix picks up a thin book bound in olive-green linen. She opens it to the title page.
My dearest Margaret the servant has scurried back to the party.
She closes the door behind her, locks it, and drops the key into her pocket.
Beatrix bundles the books under her coat and steps out into the cool spring evening. Oliver sits on the edge of the stone fountain in the middle of the drive. He stands when he spots her approaching.
“Everything all right?”
“There’s something I need to take care of before we go,” she says, setting off across the lawn. Oliver falls into step beside her. She pulls open her coat to show him the stack of books. “I need to put these somewhere safe for the children.”
They reach the abandoned shed at the edge of the garden, and Beatrix is glad to find it locked. “Hold these,” she says, passing the pile of books to Oliver.
He balances them against his chest, her bag still in his other hand. “This is your somewhere safe?”
She reaches into the bun twisted at the back of her head and pulls out a brass hairpin. One benefit of her unruly hair: She always has an ample supply. “Didn’t you ever have a place of your own as a child? No adults, no worries?” No whispers.
The corner of Oliver’s mouth lifts. “My friend Luke had a tree house in his backyard, growing up. We’d spend entire weekends there during the summer. We even had a secret code to get in.”
Beatrix stoops in front of the door and inserts her hairpin into the lock. “And I bet it was the best place to keep your treasures.”
“I don’t think I’d call them treasures,” he says with a grimace. “Are you picking that lock?”
“Yes,” Beatrix says. She doesn’t look up from her work.
“Why do you know how to pick a lock?”
“I made a bet with a locksmith a few years back. Drank his friend under the table, but he didn’t want to pay up.
He thought I cheated, all things considered,” she says, gesturing to herself.
“I bet him double or nothing he couldn’t pick a lock with my hairpin, which he gladly did.
He even explained exactly how he did it.
” The lock clicks and she grins up at Oliver. “He thought he won.”
Beatrix ducks her head and steps into the darkened shed. It smells of damp earth and linseed oil. There’s an old quilt in the corner and a pair of dirty teacups on the potting bench, a crumpled stack of broadsides that Beatrix is sure Victor fished out of a rubbish bin stashed beneath it.
Oliver shakes his head. “I thought the hairpin thing only worked in movies.”
Beatrix pushes the pin back into her hair. “What’s a movie?”
“It’s sort of like a play, but you watch moving pictures on a screen instead of people on a stage,” Oliver says. “They’re cheaper and more popular than going to the theater. The same movie can play all over the world.”
She takes the pile of books from him. “Something to look forward to, then.” She brushes some soil from the end of the bench and sets the books in a neat stack.
“What’s so special about those?” Oliver asks.
Beatrix picks up the drab green book and hands it to him. “They were gifts from their father.”
Oliver opens the cover. His eyes dart over the inscription. “They’ll love them.”
“I hope so,” Beatrix says. She reaches into her pocket, finds the key to the library and the unopened letter from Tintern. She shoves the envelope back into her coat.
Oliver places the book on her pile. “They will.”
She puts her key on top. “Well, that’s done. I suppose it’s time to go.” She tries to keep the quiver out of her voice. She fails miserably.
Oliver takes her hand, and it eases the hollow ache in her chest. For now, at least, she’s not alone.
Beatrix sits beside Oliver, listening to the rhythmic sound of hooves on cobblestones. London streams past the hansom cab, bleak and gray in the failing light. As if all the color has been washed from the world.
The cab slows, then stops in front of St. Paul’s. Oliver jumps out and offers Beatrix his hand. She takes it and steps from the cab with her carpetbag. “What are we doing here?”
“I’ve got someone important to talk to inside. Come on.” He takes her bag and hurries up the wide stone steps.
This must be the reason he came back today. She hopes she hasn’t made him late. She hurries up the steps behind him.
The grand domed cathedral is a fixture in the London skyline, the tallest building in the city.
Beatrix hasn’t been back since the day she sat on its steps and wept for the London that burned.
It was the day she realized she was the only one left in the city who had walked the old streets, set foot in the old cathedral, knew the old London at all.
“I’ve never been inside the new St. Paul’s. ”
Oliver smiles. “Only you could call a centuries-old cathedral new.”
It is not the same. Still grand and beautiful, maybe even more so than her St. Paul’s, with its missing spire and an aisle long enough to hold the world.
But it is not her St. Paul’s, even though it has the same name, even though it stands on the same hallowed ground.
It feels strange instead of familiar, leaves her hollow with longing.
A homesickness for a place that was never home.
It’s far too sentimental for a heap of stone and colored glass. She tries to shake the feeling and follows Oliver past the gilt archways to a spiral staircase, swirling overhead in graceful curves.
Beatrix loses track of how many steps it takes to reach the dome. She follows Oliver through a low door to a narrow walkway that runs around the edge. Weak light filters through the windows above her, casting the space in a muted, tired quiet.
A ledge that serves as a bench rings the outside of the walkway, and a decorative wrought-iron railing circles the inside.
She leans against the tall rail, peers down to the mosaic tile floor far below.
From this vantage point, she can see how magnificent it all is—how breathtakingly beautiful—and she is in awe that this rose from the ashes of her St. Paul’s.
Oliver puts her bag on the floor. “Wait here. I’ll only be a minute.”
She sits on the bench. There are a few others speaking in hushed voices and several people standing at the rail. Beatrix wonders which one Oliver is here to meet, wonders what they have done or what they will do to warrant a page in his journal.
She leans against the wall and closes her eyes. Now that she has stopped moving, she is exhausted, and a throbbing has started at her temples.
“Talk to me, Bea.” Oliver’s voice is a whisper in her ear. She opens her eyes, but the bench next to her is empty. She must be imagining things. Oliver is sitting all the way across the dome. He turns his head toward the wall, and then his voice is in her ear. “Say something.”
She turns her head like Oliver. Her cheek brushes against the cool stone. “How are you doing this?”
“I’m not doing anything. It’s an unintentional acoustic phenomenon of the architecture.”
Beatrix raises an eyebrow. “Which means?”