31. Hieroglyphics
Chapter 31
Hieroglyphics
I do not remember what I dreamt—only how it made me feel.
It was after dawn when I awakened with a slow, comfortable sigh. A soft grey glow from the edges of the curtains illuminated the cobwebs on the ceiling, and I lay still for a few moments more, listening to the patter of raindrops against the windowpane, feeling the weak rhythmic pulses of my thighs fade into a warm, melting languor. I found myself lying on my back on the bed, still in my clothes—and yet, with my hair and corset unbound and no linens to cover me, I felt curiously exposed, almost naked despite my layers of dress, as if I were laid bare before the first fingers of day as the veiled sun crept to my window.
I shifted gently, realizing that my breasts felt swollen and heavy as they rose and fell with my slowing breath, and that my legs lay spread slightly apart.
As if I were laid bare before him .
A mild shiver arched my spine gently against the mattress—and then I let myself relax again, drawing a deep breath, in no hurry to move. I felt no shame, as if to enjoy so sensual a satisfaction were the most natural thing in the world.
Surely I had dreamt of Victor: I needed only think of him to feel my flushed skin warm anew against the cool morning air. A vague notion rose in my mind, and for a passing moment I considered whether I endangered my vow of celibacy with my present state—whether I had broken it already in my sleep—but I let the concern slip away with a quiet sigh. An aftereffect of the elixir; I should not be blamed for such effect as it had upon me.
A taste of herbal bitterness lingered in my mouth, not entirely unpleasant in itself, almost pleasurable in what it signified. Some remained on my lips, and the taste grew in strength as I touched the tip of my tongue to the corner of my mouth. I was to drink a mouthful each midnight, had he said? I had consumed somewhat more than that, I thought, to judge by the level of the green mixture in the flask on my nightstand. No matter: I needed it, after the perils and exertions of the evening before, and from the way that I now felt I knew it had restored me. I was comfortable, and I thought that I was strong again: I felt Victor’s shadow within me, awakening from its embers with no more than a mild stirring of my will; I tested my legs and ankles, leisurely moving them this way and that against the mattress, and I felt no pain.
I could rest again, I thought to myself, and hope to regain whatever lost dream had so pleased me into that melting euphoria in my sleep. I had not entirely forgotten the need to re-administer the poultice at dawn, but the day was still new, and I did not imagine that a few more minutes’ delay would be of great importance. I closed my eyes and turned onto my side, settling deeper into the mattress, when I felt an uncomfortable pressure between my breasts?—
My eyes snapped open, my breath quickening as I sat up suddenly in bed, my hand flying to my chest.
The Talisman.
Now I shivered truly, something sinking within me as I contemplated what might have been. Had Victor returned while I slept—drained by the dangers of the day, under the heavy influence of his shadow, I did not know whether I should have awakened for the sound of the door—would he have seen the Talisman somehow? If I shifted in my sleep, would he notice the new shape pressed between my skin and the fabric of my dress? Would he wonder at a hint of chain straying above my collar?
And if he saw, or guessed, or thought he saw—what then?
A strange burden, this Talisman, I mused as I set a fire in the little hearth and began my morning routine; even had I wished to divest myself of the complication of hiding it, there was no course to take that was certain to run aright. It was not a matter of guilt—I knew well that I had not stolen it, but recovered it from its thief—but of practical appearances. There was no righteous gesture I could make that would not seem suspicious, that would not brand me with the indelible mark of doubt. To whom among the Council of the Order should I return the Talisman and tell my tale? Would Lord Hargrave look kindly upon me for walking the underground with the exiled Reinhardt, circumventing the preposterous rules for taking a book from the spiritualist shop, breaking into the Order crypt and defiling and robbing a grave—to speak nothing of Reinhardt and Greycliff’s struggle that shattered the dry corpse? Some of it (though not, admittedly, all) was for the sole purpose of survival under deadly duress, but I did not know Hargrave well enough to be assured that he would not think the worst of me, suspecting me of conspiracy for running with such company and possessing the Talisman.
No, I could not tell Hargrave, at whose mercy I took my room, board, and stipend. Too precarious a chance, when he remained the master of too much of my fate.
Karvonen, then? He had been kind to me when first I arrived, though I scarcely saw him anymore. To hear Victor tell it, and to trust somewhat in Greycliff despite his madness, the Talisman had most recently been in Karvonen’s laboratory, and therefore it was he who had presently the most right to it—yet Greycliff had said as well that Karvonen was away. If that were so, should I keep the Talisman until Karvonen’s return, only to be questioned as to why I retained it so long in secret? Or should I return it to his laboratory in his absence, as if it were never stolen at all, and risk the disaster of being caught?
Standing before the washstand, I shook my head as I began to remove my clothes. My room was private enough, the fire warm enough for the luxury of nudity, and I preferred both the feeling and the efficiency of my own bare skin to the prim convention of revealing and washing one limb at a time.
Pouring from the ewer into the basin, dipping my washcloth into the water, I looked for a moment to the makeshift chemist’s bench of the dressing table and nearly remembered to avoid my own gaze in the mirror—but even the fleeting glance I caught of my darkened eyes reminded me of Victor again, and the sensation of my forgotten dream drifted back to me. When I looked to the mirror again I could not mistake the fact that my skin was flushed, my breasts full. Settled on its chain between them, the golden Talisman flashed in the firelight.
I closed my eyes.
And were I to tell the Order my lurid tale of search and trespass and escape, of fistfights and madness and mesmerism in a sorcerers’ crypt—and were any to trust so impossible an account—what of Reinhardt, who did no more wrong than to enjoy the earned pleasure of a cigar while changing after his performance, and was drawn into a terrible strife he did not choose? His only crime was his kindness in guiding me underground and protecting me from danger, compelled in no small part, I knew, by his fear of what Victor might do to him if he failed. I had not the heart, after all he had dared and endured on my account—after Greycliff had nearly buried a knife in his neck—to speak any word that might risk his incrimination. Perhaps, already exiled from the Order and known to be a student of Victor’s, there was nothing more they could do to him. But I could not allow the chance, even so.
And what, even, of Greycliff, tormented by visions that drove him beyond his mind? Would he regain himself in time, or with the antidote he sought—or was his sanity lost forever? My regard for him was not without ire: he had stolen Victor’s herb, after all, and done so while in full possession of his faculties; if not for his theft, I would already have been cured, and Victor would have needed not ride out into danger. I wondered if, had Greycliff known somehow of my coming need for it, he would have taken the goldenscythe for himself all the same. But I had some cause to doubt: if I had assembled correctly from the scraps of his ravings such purpose as he claimed, then at the height of his lunacy he was searching for an antidote underground when he thought that he saw or sensed Victor pursuing me, and rushed to my aid. He was mistaken, clearly, so many times over. And yet if it were true that, when all else of it was lost, the last instinct of his tortured mind was to rescue me—as he had attempted already against Balnock?—
I paused in washing myself with the water from the basin, the washcloth lingering at my collarbone as I sighed: not out of any regard that would ever grow between us, but for his plight: that a man with some vestige of a hero’s heart, buried and distorted though it was, could not understand his own futility. If he sought my heart, then he threw himself against another locked door. And this one would not be opened for him.
Let him languish for a time in Victor’s dungeon, if that were Victor’s law. Until Reinhardt spoke of it, I did not know that Victor maintained such a place, though the revelation did not shock me. Let Victor decide what should become of Greycliff—not for the young lord’s misdirected interest, nor (so I hoped) for too much of his unwitting mayhem, but for the willing theft itself—and let that be enough. I had seen his dire torment; I knew that already he had suffered for his crime. I could not be so cruel as to invite the Order to punish him further.
The Order…
My hands wrung the washcloth tighter, twisting a few last drops of water to fall into the basin with the patter of the rain.
The Order that smiled, and bought my Talisman, and in allowing me to name my price gave me everything I wanted—and yet still left me shorthanded in the dark. If not for Victor’s hints and insinuations, vague though they were, I would have known nothing more of the true worth of the Talisman at all.
The Order that harbored my husband’s grave. The Order that built an eternal monument to house forever his putrid remains, while his miswritten will cheated me out of house and home. While his corpse rested in honor, my restless living hands counted out my last coins, setting aside a few for food, a few for black attire and a veil from the mourning emporium, a few more for another investigation into my husband’s hidden fate.
My husband’s death, I thought to myself as I readied one of the same black dresses for the day and began to don my underclothes—my husband’s entombment in the Sorcerers’ Sepulcher, hidden from me by the Order itself.
Yes, by rights one should not recover merchandise one has already sold, keeping the advantage of both the goods and the price. And yes, were I able to return to that fateful day, standing with Victor before Hargrave and Karvonen, offered the same choice in the face of the same imminent destitution, I would have sold the Talisman again all the same, and been as grateful to receive all that I had.
But in my heart was indignation.
And in its kindled heat, I felt Victor’s art stirring through my warming blood.
I was getting ahead of myself in my decision, I knew—I ought first to study the Talisman myself, granted the unimaginable windfall of research material that awaited me under my bed—and then, perhaps, my course would clear. Yet whether it was some premonition born of Victor’s shadow within me, or whether I simply knew my own nature too well, I could not foresee myself returning the Talisman to the Order even so.
No matter the worth of that amulet, I had also my dignity and pride—and they were more precious yet.
Finishing most of my washing and dressing, I saved my healing legs for last, unwrapping them and cleaning away the crust of the past evening’s treatment. The wounds did not, I thought, show any improvement over how I had remembered them from the night before, but the fact that they appeared no worse was a great consolation.
I took fresh bindings and the bowl of poultice from my dressing table and carried them to my bed as I sat down, resting my legs across the mattress and pulling my skirts up to my knees. The herbal scent of the mixture was duller now, neither as sharp nor as bright as it had been, or else I had merely grown accustomed to it; as I dipped my fingers in, I thought its smooth, slippery texture vaguely grainier, a shade less pliant to the touch. I could not help but wonder how much longer its efficacy would endure—how long I would endure until Victor came back to me.
As I thought of him, I closed my eyes.
The touch of the poultice felt no different on the flesh it was meant to heal. It still infused me as deeply with its tingling warmth, the slick heat with which it glided across my skin masking my recognition of my own hand until the firm, gentle pressure on my bare legs became Victor’s own. His touch again —the heady darkness of his shadow’s embrace—the heat of his body—I knew that I meant to move my hand; I felt his fingers rounding the first of my wounds in concentric, tightening circles, and I felt my lips part in a faint sigh as he rubbed the poultice in.
Another dip of my fingers into the bowl, another slow ministration as I tended to the next of my wounds, closing my eyes and allowing myself to drift again into the sensation of Victor’s art—becoming him—feeling his touch, so real and present that I felt my own skin tremble under fingers that could not have been my own. One dawn, one dusk, and now a second dawn; three times now I had administered Victor’s poultice to my injuries, and again every nerve of my body was alive—my body, or his—I could not tell until I finished, and wrapped my legs again, and the strange thrill of it slowly faded into the sounds of the fire and the rain.
And as it did, more and more the matter of the Talisman and its mystery began to press upon my mind.
Surely, I imagined, I would not keep the Talisman secret from Victor. I risked his ire, I knew, in having overexerted myself after he admonished me to do no such thing, but I could not now undo what was done. I would tell him of my impossible adventures of the day before, explain Greycliff’s arrival in his dungeon, and ask him what should become of the Talisman.
And yet—decisive, even comforting as these thoughts seemed—I needed time to think. Time to examine the box and the book, and learn what I could.
I thought it would do me well to eat breakfast first, though I was not hungry. Nonetheless I fixed my hair into its accustomed bun, secured by the same set of pins that had become my key to the crypt, and taking Victor’s cane from where I had left it by my bedside I blew out the candles, banked the fire, and carefully locked the door behind me as I left.
Again I was late to breakfast, obliged to partake of a remainder of the repast by myself, which both suited and relieved me. Beneath my layers of underclothes, the Talisman hung on its chain against my skin, and I could think only of the pleasure and terrifying risk of my own audacity. Was I a greater fool to wear it, entirely hidden though it was, beyond my bedroom door in the very house of the man to whom I sold it? Or would I have been a greater fool to leave it behind in my room without me, secured only by (as I should know better than any) the imperfect barrier of a locked door—as the book from Witch’s Corner and the box from my husband’s grave were now?
I ate swiftly, scarcely able to appreciate a single bite: not even so much for the blandness of the warmed-over odds and ends of food, but because the thought of the book and the box left behind unsettled me so. In this house that had suffered two internal burglaries in only the past night—Absolon’s breach of Townsend’s classroom to search for goldenscythe; Greycliff’s entry into Karvonen’s laboratory and subsequent theft of the Talisman—I abhorred the thought that my room might be next, some possible solution to the Talisman’s mystery stolen away from me, unknown and unexplored, as I picked at the half-stale toast on my plate.
Hurrying down the rest with a gulp of tea, I excused myself to the servant, received with gratitude an envelope he told me he nearly forgot, and returned quickly to my bedroom, the tap of the scorpion cane on the creaking floorboards of the hall betraying my haste.
No matter my urgency to return and my anticipation to open the letter, I made doubly certain to secure the door behind me after I entered, watching every shadow as I relighted the candles—but to my relief, I remained alone. My legs, had I noticed them, were free of pain even after taking a flight of stairs, but they went ignored in my fixation upon the identity of the letter’s writer as I sat down on my bed and examined it by candlelight. Victor, I had dearly hoped—but the stamp in the wax, though not unsuitable for him, was unfamiliar: a death’s-head wreathed in flames. I broke the seal, and hurried to unfold and read the sheet of paper inside:
Salutations, Mrs. Buckingham,
—Surely this was not Victor. With some disappointment I released the breath I had held, and read on:
Hoping this note finds you in good health. You requested last night that I give you some sign as to my eventual safety, and so I say to you now: all is well! I returned home via cab, and have endured no worse than the suspicion and mild ridicule of my assistants (the infernal pair from last night’s performance) for arriving tired and bruised to my own morning rehearsal. Propriety prevents me from repeating their remarks.
I knocked on Doctor D’Arco’s door afterwards to ask Absolon after Greycliff; if you know Absolon, you can imagine he was not forthcoming, but I gleaned from his talk that Greycliff is awake and alive, at least, and has taken some food and water. More than that, I do not know. I suspect Absolon may have manacled and shackled him. He too, it seems, awaits his fate with D’Arco’s return.
If you require anything in the meantime that is within my power, send for me—Hargrave’s servants remember me yet, no matter how they like to pretend otherwise—and I will do what I can.
With sincerest regards, I should surely attempt to trace its movements—surely, but not yet.
First, I meant to examine its contents.
Turning through the assorted written pages and scraps of notes, I found that I recognized at least most of it: the various partial keys to the decipherment of hieroglyphics, the descriptions of artifacts he had found or known—and the odd diagrams of circles that I had never before understood. I had thought them a form of ancient compass, or some kind of legend to a map I had never seen, given that, on some, at each cardinal direction was written a name and an element. I understood them better now: variant versions of something akin to Victor’s circle, alternate designations marking the places where Victor named the four winds.
I paused, holding the paper marked with the circles, listening to the rain.
My husband had indeed been some manner of occultist, then. Perhaps even a sorcerer himself.
Little wonder he was interred in the Sorcerers’ Sepulcher.
Returning the paper to the box, I shook my head. A secret life, a secret death, and both hidden from me by a veil woven of half-truth and omission, placid smiles and patronizing nods.
In my quiet rage I thumbed further through my husband’s papers, one at a time, and the heat that rose within me brought the sting of salt to the corners of my eyes. A tear fell on my hand before I knew I had shed it, but I did not stop: I looked over every page and scrap, albeit with the distance of a dream; I read a paragraph written in his mild, restrained hand, realized I retained nothing of it, and read it again.
And with every passing moment I felt more alone.
I closed my eyes and listened, longing for the impossible chance of hearing Victor come thundering on his black steed through the rain; waiting for the first groan of the old floorboards in the hallway beneath the weight of the swift, deft falls of his boots. I wished that Greycliff were right in his madness, and that Victor would sweep in on the wings of a gathering storm to seize me and carry me away, trapped in his strong arms and deep shadow, safe from the vagaries and deceit and the soul-crushing decorum of the genteel world that sought so desperately to preserve me, against my will, from the fire of my own heart.
With Victor, I was free.
Absolon said that Gremio had diminished me, made me somehow less myself, and that Victor had filled the emptiness with his possessing shadow until my own could be restored. Yet I had been diminished long ago, and every touch of Victor’s hand, every sensation of his sorcery, every stirring of my own art revived me, and I felt like a new flower unfolding for the sun, released from the parched earth by a deep inundation of penetrating rain.
And he could never know.
But I could not forget the way his touch lingered on my naked legs—the slow, gentle stroke of his thumb across my palm—the quickening, fiery pulse in his muscular wrist. Whether or not he knew my heart, I dared to believe that I had begun to know his. Were it not for circumstance…
I shook my head. Were it not for circumstance, I would never have known him at all. And all that brought us together—the chance of our meeting, the Order, my apprenticeship to him—was all that would keep us forever apart.
And there was nothing more I could do, I knew, than allow myself now and again to indulge—a dire risk in itself—in the bittersweet joy of finding and losing him every time we touched. Better the cherished fantasy of a love that could never be, frozen forever in the promise of its bloom, than these bitter memories exhumed from my husband’s grave—a blighted love, at once outworn and never begun.
With a sigh I dried my eyes, and returning to the contents of my husband’s box I forced myself to forego these daydreams. Whatever I had dreamt of Victor last night must, for now, be enough. I had neared the bottom of the box at least, and soon this portion of my research would conclude, for better and for worse. Let there be nothing of note after all , I pleaded silently, against the success of my own venture— let this be over .
Relieved and disappointed, I drew back the final leaf of paper to reveal the box’s floor. But for my new understanding of the circles, there was nothing I did not know or had not seen, and nothing at all about the Talisman. I set the last paper back down against the metal—and paused. It was slightly thicker than the rest: two pages, not one.
I did not know whether my heart should rise or sink. Stuck to the back of a familiar chart of hieroglyphics was a sheet of paper I did not recognize. It was newer—crisper and whiter than the rest, time having only just begun to tinge it yellow—and when I detached it from its fellow, I found on it a series of hieroglyphics again, this time with no English values. This was not a chart, but a text, written by my husband in a language few could read.
He never knew that I had defied him to become one of those few.
Read was perhaps an overestimation of my abilities— decode with greater or lesser speed, depending upon the number of unfamiliar characters was closer to the truth—yet upon scanning the page, I found that I knew already a good many of the symbols by heart. I would need to gather the rest of his hieroglyphic charts to discern the overall meaning, yet before I did so, upon a second glance I noted with interest that two specific sets of signs seemed to be repeated throughout the text.
The first was a representation of the Egyptian god Set, followed by a horse; the second, a figure of a seated man in battle dress with a bow and a quiver of arrows, followed by a figure of a man crouching to hide behind a wall. The meaning of the first man I knew on its own—this was a soldier, representative of either a single man of combat by himself or an entire military unit—while the second was less familiar, but surely suggested some manner of subterfuge. Soldiers and spies , I supposed, though bereft of all context the phrase was little help in understanding the greater subject or purpose of my husband’s writing. Set-horse , soldiers and spies , and?—
Scanning the page again, I noticed another repeated set of hieroglyphics. It was a set of three this time—and this time, the combination could not be mistaken. The first symbol was a necklace. The second was an ibis, sacred to Thoth, the Egyptian god of sorcery. The third was an ankh, the symbol of eternal life.
Necklace-ibis-ankh. My hand flew to my chest as I gasped, feeling through the fabric of my dress and underclothes the form of the amulet where it hung on its simple chain between my breasts. I would know now that ibis and ankh anywhere—anywhere.
Necklace-ibis-ankh. The Talisman of Thoth.
In the month before his death, my husband had written a page-long manuscript—in hieroglyphics, imagining that none but he might read it—about the Talisman.
I held the key, and I knew it well; I set the manuscript down on my bed beside the book, drying my hand on the fabric of my dress so that the sweat of my palm would not warp the paper. All the travails of the past day, the chances risked and taken, the narrow escapes—they had not been for nothing. Nor had the grand irony of my accidental expedition into the catacombs passed me by: as the Egyptologist S.R. Buckingham had raided the tombs of the ancients for their arcane secrets, so had I raided his tomb for his own.
And all that remained was to decipher them. To try, figuratively this time, the puzzle of one last lock.
The book, perhaps, I thought as I turned my gaze to where I had lain the manuscript beside it. Surely my husband’s book might hold some clue. I reached for the hard-won volume as I felt my lip curl in distaste, unable still to look at it without remembering the maddening dedication page—but perhaps it had more secrets yet to reveal, as the terrible revelation of the name of Mr. Emory gave way to the new mysteries of what the Talisman should have to do with the soldiers and spies and the Set-horse ?—
The Set-horse . It came to me suddenly, and after I released my caught breath I nearly laughed, because it seemed suddenly so obvious. The Egyptian god Set, lord of chaos and the howling desolation of the sands; associated by some with the Greek monster Typhon, whom Zeus cast into Tartarus… I did not think my husband had ever discerned a hieroglyphic for demon , but in context this was near enough to be understood: the Set-horse was the demon-horse of Tartarus—none other than Gremio himself—and the soldiers and spies surely were Gremio’s legions, his hosts of Hell.
Setting the book down again, I gathered all the hieroglyphic charts I could find in the box and returned to the manuscript. I had now, I thought, enough to go on, but progress was slow nonetheless: I checked and cross-checked the meanings of the symbols I did not know, attempted to roughly reconcile the discrepancies in my husband’s various notes as to the meanings of the characters, and all the while I watched from the corner of my eye as my candle burnt down.
I lighted another with the wasted stub of the first—another three at once, to ease the strain on my eyes—too engrossed in my studies to care for the sting of the hot wax that dripped onto my distracted fingers.
The hour for the midday meal had long since come and gone; the clock downstairs had tolled several times, I thought, though the sound was always faint in my room, and my will could not be torn from my work for so ephemeral and mundane a concern as the reckoning of the hour.
The rain faded; the quality of the light from the edge of the curtains changed. At last, at long last, I had the roughest of translations of Simon Buckingham’s last writings, some of it still lacking in coherence. It lived only in my mind as I looked over the series of symbols again: for the dual concerns of discretion and sorcery, I dared not write it down:
The patron of the excavation is displeased. Requires an accounting of all minor artifacts. A strange man—the greater discoveries are nothing to him. He does not understand significance. Soldiers and spies much better in this regard. I like none of this, but without funding, it is over. The soldiers and spies remind me it is they who led my patron to me. I know I should be grateful.
The patron revealed himself today. Terrifying sight. A demon-horse emerging in twilight from a green mound in a clearing. A creature of deep earth. It is he. He answers to the same name. I wait for the soldiers and spies to reveal themselves in the same manner, but they do not. They ask me, once the demon-horse has gone, for the necklace with the ibis and ankh. That is all, they say. Only this, and they and the demon-horse will be satisfied. All will be well. They will compensate me. I can keep the rest of the artifacts. I told them I do not have such a necklace. It was true at the time.
I did not ask again about funding. I grew more and more to fear for my life.
The excavation continues without me. I fear to go back to Egypt. I both hope and fear to unearth the necklace with the ibis and ankh. In my book I had written about it already, based on legend, not observation. I should never have mentioned it in the book at all. They suspect me of having it and hiding it from them. I see soldiers and spies almost daily, waiting in the wood behind my house, and while they say nothing, their presence is a threat. I tell my wife not to go that way on her walks. Not to walk at all. Not to look at my artifacts nor my work. Her prying will be my death.
When the courier arrived early with the box of new artifacts from the excavation, I stared in disbelief. The necklace with the ibis and ankh. I should have taken it then to the soldiers and spies in the wood, but I did not. Why should I give up a thing so desperately wanted? I should learn its ways and keep it for myself.
What if the legends of its power and worth were true?
I lied for the first time to the soldiers and spies. I told them I did not have it when they asked. I wonder if they believed me. They are perceptive and silent. Standing before them feels like death. I have grown to fear the soldiers and spies more than the demon-horse himself.
Something has changed. There is an unnatural fog here every night that lingers too long into the day. I know the fog of London. This is not that. I do not trust it. I feel that the soldiers and spies walk in it unseen. It feels like a trap closing in.
They are coming for me. I do not know when. I have resolved that when I sense the time has come I will give the necklace with the ibis and ankh to my wife. Give her money to go entertain herself for the day. Somewhere far from the house. They will come out of the fog and see that I do not have the necklace. If they find her, I will tell them she stole it. Not a perfect plan, but it is all I have.
I was glad that was all he wrote—my hand was shaking in futile wrath, and I could not bear to endure deciphering one more of his damned hieroglyphics.
I hated him—how I hated him!—my husband who used me as some manner of decoy, against my knowledge and my will, imperiling my life to protect his own: to hide the Talisman, and to draw Gremio and his legions away from himself.
Were there a fire in my hearth, I would have crushed the manuscript into a ball and flung it into the center of its heat, watched with satisfaction as the fire consumed it, thrown open my window and scattered its black ash to the wind.
How even should I trust the words of a man who had proven himself so false?
To hear him tell it, the wood behind his house—the very fog that drifted in with the night—was teeming with the hosts of Tartarus. Absurd, paranoid delusion! And if not, then a purposeful lie. I was there with him, in that same house that he made nearly our mutual prison, and I was not insensible. Had I not felt that shivering thrill of the uncanny in the green clearing of that very wood? And though it unsettled me, though I ran from that place and never returned, I saw nothing: not one single soldier, nor a single spy. I cannot think that the house was surrounded by Gremio’s legions, and yet (save for my lone venture to that clearing) I had no knowledge of them at all.
That was before I had met Victor, it is true; before my exposure to his art opened my Sight. And yet even then, I could not think that a man like Simon Buckingham had a such clear sense for the uncanny while I had none.
But had not he written this text for himself alone? And if so, what cause had he to lie in it? Even a liar, when writing for no eyes but his own, should be honest. Yet I was too wary of him now to trust in appearances—the sting of betrayal smarts little less for being expected. Did he truly never know that I regularly picked his lock? Or did he suspect me, and left this manuscript where he hoped that I would find it and read it? And for what cruel purpose, if it were so?
No matter how I turned the notion in my head, there was no face of it which made any better sense than the last, for no variation upon the theme of lie or truth accounted for one vexatious point: if the house were stalked and surrounded by the hordes of Hell, hiding in the fog with their inhuman gaze fixed upon our every move—how, then, did none see me leave with the Talisman before my husband was killed? Why was I not hunted? How is it that I was left alone for a year?
The more I tested its threads, the further the entire fabric of the tale unraveled until I was left with nothing—no more than when I began. I set the paper back into the box, locked it, and returned it with the book to the dust beneath my bed. Snuffing two candles, I took the third with me as I stepped into the hall with the scorpion cane, the old portraits seeming to watch me with considering eyes. I locked the door, checking it twice.
A meal and a walk would do me well, I thought. I needed something, anything, to clear my mind.
But my second meal that day was as hurried and anxious as my first, fraught with a thief’s tension at lingering in the house of his crime, and a miser’s fear of the theft of his precious hoard.
When I finished such food as my nerves could endure I walked the path down toward the gate and the road, the damp earth soft and full beneath my shoes, the leaves of the old yew trees a vivid green beneath the grey clouds—though I knew it would not be long until that green would grow silver in the twilight, and twilight darken to dusk. Once more, I had little time. But I found again the great oak where Victor had read to me, the last place I had summoned his phantom to haunt me: the silhouette and bare branches of the towering tree loomed before me like a cracked fissure in the sky. I approached it, touched it, let my fingers trail the ridges of its bark.
I let my eyes fall closed, breathing in the cool air. I did not expect to feel him—but I could take comfort in the memory.
A moment’s respite from the riddle that awaited me in my room.
From the strange significance of the amulet, still concealed by my clothes, that seemed to hang so heavy around my neck.
The yew leaves began to dim, and I returned.
With a sigh of relief, I saw that my room was as I had left it, and took special care to lock the door at my back.
Dusk had newly arrived, and with it the need to change the dressings on my legs, as Victor had instructed me to do. I set a fire in the hearth for warmth, heaving the bed-warmer into its accustomed place to heat by the fireside—he had said not to allow my legs and feet to become cold, and the rain-sated earth, refreshing though it was on my walk, had afforded my toes a mild chill. I set to washing the morning’s poultice from my legs before applying it anew for the coming night. This was a comfort, as always it had been, not only in the familiarity of the routine itself but in the pleasure of the sensation: the strange, secondhand feeling of his touch I had come to anticipate.
To await.
I closed my eyes, working slowly, allowing myself the indulgence of time.
And as I expected not to go out again for the night, I supposed I could make myself comfortable, and began to undress. I chid myself: it would have been somewhat easier to do so before the poultice and the new wrappings rather than after. Had I become so eager for the sensation of it that the minor detail of changing clothes had slipped my mind?
Could I excuse my oversight, lessen my half-amused chagrin, by telling myself I was distracted again by the riddle of the Talisman?
I was, after all. The supposed presence of Gremio’s legions, the soldiers and spies , still troubled me. My husband’s account, abhorrent though it was, was believable but for that.
Coherent—had I deciphered it aright—but for that alone.
And what if I had not? I thought to myself as I drew my hairpins from my bun, releasing my unbound hair to spill down my shoulders and back. What if my own interpretation were mistaken?
But let it rest for now, I told myself. The book next. Look to the book next, and let the soldiers and spies rest overnight. Perhaps a new clarity shall rise with the sun.
I set the pins into the small wooden box Victor had given me, letting my hand linger as I slowly closed it, brushing my thumb across the emblem etched into the metal piece on its lid. May no dust settle on you , I whispered softly, allowing myself to smile.
And then, as my thumb passed across it, that emblem caught my eye. I felt my smile falter, my eyes grow wide.
A crescent moon, sun-rays breaking from behind it; the arc of a bent bow ready with its arrow.
A bow and arrow.
My breath stopped.
I remembered the sign of a bow and arrow, black on black, emblazoned on the door of Victor’s great dark carriage; I remembered that it appeared to me like a nobleman’s faded crest—some symbol to signify the name.
D’Arco. Arco. Arc. Archer.
“No,” I heard myself murmur, my heart pounding in my breast as with urgent force I slid my husband’s metal strongbox out from beneath my bed, heedless of the dust, my shaking hands scarcely able to pick the lock and my breath coming in shallow gasps. “No! It can’t be… it can’t be! No… no, I won’t let it!”
I took the hieroglyphic manuscript; I took again all the hieroglyphic charts, thankful in passing for the fact that the sobs that racked me were dry—a terrible, hollow sound in the quiet of my room—my vision all too clear, unclouded by tears.
Soldiers and spies , had I thought? Gremio’s legions of Tartarus, his hosts of Hell?
What I had taken to mean spy —the symbol of the man crouched behind the wall—my husband defined variously on his hieroglyphic translation charts as spy, subterfuge, hidden, secret, mysterious, concealed.
The sign I knew to mean soldier depicted an archer. A man with a quiver and bow.
The world seemed to spin, my heartbeat thundering in my head; I was shaking, shaking in disbelief, the chart I held in my hands ripped in two before I could force myself to set it down, crumpling into the heat of my clenching fists.
“No,” I sobbed again, holding my face in my hands as the scraps of paper fell to the floor. “No, Victor… No… It’s only a nightmare… It has to be… Please…”
But I had to know—I had to know—it was so terrible, so surreal I could not turn away.
Hidden, secret, mysterious, concealed?
I thought of the great black cloak that obscured the shape of his powerful body, his cruel steel mask flashing in the shadow of his hood.
Hidden, concealed…
Masked .
I shook my head, clenched shut my eyes, forced them open again.
There were no legions, no hosts, no soldiers and spies . There never were. The demon-horse Gremio’s accomplice was one man.
One Archer in a mask.
I see the masked D’Arco almost daily, I read to myself from my husband’s hieroglyphic manuscript as my mind reeled, testing my unthinkable new translation for the symbols I once falsely presumed to mean soldiers and spies :
D’Arco reminds me it is he who led my patron to me. I know I should be grateful.
I see D’Arco almost daily, waiting in the wood behind my house, and while he says nothing, his presence is a threat.
I lied to D’Arco for the first time. I told him I did not have the Talisman when he asked. I wonder if he believed me. He is perceptive and silent. Standing before him feels like death. I have grown to fear D’Arco more than the demon-horse himself.
He was standing among the trees, as suited him well—standing among the trees, cloaked and masked, and my cowering husband could not endure the eldritch touch of his deep, enfolding shadow.
It was Victor.
I could not think—I could not see—I burst into hot, desperate tears as the darkness of the night closed in, suffocating, stifling me as his art flared inside me, rising to my defense, his dark heat burning at the ends of all my nerves as if to remind me of his shadow within me, possessing me, his vital sorcery bound to my body and my heart?—
The sorcery of the man who became the demon-horse’s informant and enforcer—the man who summoned Gremio, Duke of Tartarus, to seize the Talisman from my husband.
Victor D’Arco.
The man behind my husband’s death.
Tears streaked my face as I shoved the papers back into the metal box, slammed the lid and lock, dropped it and kicked at it so hard with my heel that I heard it scratch and skid across the wooden floor beneath my bed and crash into the baseboard.
I knew now why Victor had seldom spoken of the Talisman except when pressed, why I sensed that I had never been told the entirety of the tale: because he had withheld a part of the truth from me, like the Order, like my damned husband, like all the rest. I could not feel the warmth of the fire in the hearth anymore; I could not taste the hot salt of the tears that streaked my face: the world was hollow, empty and cold, and after how far I had come—all I had been through, all I had become—after I had allowed him touch my skin, my wounds, my heart—I was alone again. For all that I had gained, I was left with no one and nothing. Nothing I could trust.
No one but myself.
I sniffed through my falling tears, raising my bowed head.
And could I trust again, I wondered, in the one thing that had sustained me through that lonely year? I had made a promise to myself, in the face of a world that promised me nothing. It had given shape and purpose to the formless chaos of the night.
Revenge.
A blind vow, hungry, desperate, and alive: I had promised myself to take revenge upon whoever had killed my husband. Whoever had relegated me, thanks to my husband’s poorly written will, to an impending return to my life of destitution.
Revenge. Not for my damned husband. For myself.
I did not know who was present for my husband’s murder; whether the last that he saw was the white webbed claws of the Duke of Tartarus or the iron-grey flash of Victor’s blade, or whether one or the other sent some true soldiers and spies — some infernal host of the deep earth—to drag him down to the world below.
It did not matter. Gremio was a force behind his death, and upon Gremio my revenge must fall.
Gremio… and Victor.
It was impossible, unimaginable: a headlong drive to my certain doom, bitter and brief, like a leap from a sea-cliff to cast myself upon the breaking waves and eternal standing stones below.
But it was better than to live a lie.
The clock downstairs struck eleven, anticipating the tolling of my death-knell.
I drew a breath. The horrific resolve of it dried the tears of my betrayal. Until the hour of my death, soon though now it must come, in my promise to myself I would live again.
And in that wretched hour to come, what vain design would prove my last? Ego sum vis naturae , I remember he called into the night as he encircled us in his sorcery at Crystal Palace Park, his terrible strength clasping me against him, the soft curves of my body pressed against hard muscle and heat and the surging fury of his power— I am a force of nature! —and what defense could I have against him, turning in enmity against a man who had at his command the very elements of the earth and the shadows of the night?
I would have no hope of success.
But I must—mad, impossible, unthinkable thought it was?—
I must attempt to kill Victor D’Arco.
I sighed, looking again at the carven box on my dressing table—the one Victor had given me when he returned my hairpins, the morning after I had lost them when I fainted into his deep art, and he caught and carried me, and I had lain so long and so comfortably in his arms.
And now my eyes looked empty when I saw them in the mirror.
My heart (so full in moments past) was barren now, its yearning flowers withering. They opened for a sun that only burnt the broken earth.
And what now? In all the world, I wondered, what does one do next? How does one fill the awkward minutes after sealing one’s doom?
After vowing to destroy what only a moment ago had been so loved?
“A little light reading,” I whispered to myself with a small, pained smile. It was Walpole, I thought, who wrote that life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel. In this blackest and most absurd of comedies, let me forego feeling and tragedy then, at least for the night, and read of the Talisman in my husband’s book as if none of it mattered at all.
And would I drink the elixir in an hour, I wondered as I glanced to my nightstand, when the clock struck midnight, and feel Victor’s art overcome me once more?
I shook my head. Let me decide when the hour comes.
With my back to the mirror—I did not wish to see that emptiness in my eyes again—I changed into my nightdress, the Talisman still hanging on its chain around my neck. Then I lighted another candle, sat down on the bed, and took the book into my lap.
I gathered enough pages in my left hand to bypass the dedication entirely, and perusing the table of contents I soon found what I sought: Some Legendary Amulets and Their Speculated Purposes , page 128. His supposed great research monograph—I should have grinned bitterly at that as I turned to the page, had I been in any mood to grin at all—was padded with pages of speculation. And this brief description of what he named Thoth Talismans , as I found only a few pages later, was no exception:
Following the legend of that most revered and splendid sorcerer of old, Hermes Trismegistus, the passage began, and I cheered myself a little (if it can be called such a thing) by finding that I still instinctively disliked his style of description, such amulets as these surely feature signs and images pertaining to the god Thoth: that is, Thrice-Great Hermes himself, ascended and immortalized. “As above, so below,” as so many of the wisest and most learned know to say: as Hermes Trismegistus gained eternal life in becoming Thoth, so is it said that ?—
I paused in my reading, my finger on the page. The night was clear and quiet, and despite the lateness of the hour I wondered if I had heard the sound of horse hooves drumming on the road. I wished not to bring myself to think on it too long. This was only the second night after Victor’s departure, and from the amount of poultice and elixir that remained, he expected to be away at least twice as long.
Best not to think of him now.
So it is said , I continued reading where I had stopped, and though I had exhorted myself not to feel, I could little help my frustration at my husband’s drably pompous attempts at erudition, that the holder of such amulet—should he understand the alchemical procedure required to unlock its secrets, and should he be fortunate that his piece be a true one, and not one of those many counterfeits—so it is said, so it is storied and retold in legend, that the holder of the true Talisman of Thoth may himself gain life eternal.
I assured myself it made no difference now—and yet I could not help but read the final phrase of the paragraph again, feeling it cut like a knife through my husband’s bloated bombast:
The holder of the true Talisman of Thoth may himself gain life eternal.
My hand rose from the book to touch the Talisman through the thin cotton fabric of my nightgown.
Life eternal.
Immortality.
When he bought it from me, Hargrave had wagered all that I asked of him—room and board, a stipend, the teachings of the Order—on the chance that this was the true Talisman of Thoth.
A small price—a paltry sum to pay—for the chance to live forever.
And then my mind went blank as I started at a sudden sound, catching my breath: downstairs, the front door slammed. My heartbeat quickened. Within me, Victor’s darkness answered, rising and spreading through my warming blood.
It was Victor.
He was coming.
I sensed him in the depth of my viscera, in the marrow of my bones.
I had seconds, seconds to skim the rest— proof residing in the alchemical test of gold — Lapis Philosophorum — tales of it protecting the wearer against ghouls and other unnatural — ibis, ankh, and lapis lazuli — power over this manner of curse ?—
The distant stairs groaned beneath his Hessian boots.
I clapped the book shut, threw it under the bed, and looked urgently around my room for any stray papers, anything at all that might give me away—I would be nearly bare before him, my hair long and loose and my body covered only by the sheer white cotton of my nightdress, but he had seen me in such a state before, and there was nothing now I could do?—
And then I remembered the Talisman.
I panicked.
His firm, strong footfalls gained the top of the stairs.
The mattress, I thought suddenly; it was a poor choice, but it would have to do. With strength born of my sudden desperation I tore a small hole in the side of my mattress that faced the wall, stuffed the Talisman inside, and covered the ripped fabric with the bedclothes.
I was ready for him now, I foolishly led myself to believe—a ruse that sustained me for a moment, and no more. For every heavy, swift footstep in the hallway, each louder and nearer than the last, I thought that my heart pounded twice; he was coming, he was coming now , the man whom I thought I had loved—who rode into the night for the rare herb to heal me—who was accomplice to my husband’s murder, or the murderer himself—who withheld from me the truth—whom in the extremity of my desperation I had vowed, against all hope, to kill—who would kill me , or throw me with Greycliff into his dungeon, if he knew that I had now the Talisman of eternal life and kept it from him—I could not tell him of it, could not give it to him now?—
And if he were to find it, hastily hidden in my mattress—if he were to find it…
My head swam.
Absolon, who knew I sought the library—Greycliff in his dungeon, mad beyond his mind on stolen herb—Reinhardt and his fear of Victor’s art—the illusionists at Witch’s Corner—all knew I had been underground, all had seen me, all understood at least some part of my purpose, what I had sought, what I had found.
I had no alibi.
I could hear nothing, feel nothing but the pounding of my blood in my ears, the heat of my body as I began to sweat.
I had the Talisman, the book and the box, and I had no alibi. Not until now had I known I needed one. It had never crossed my mind that I could not tell him—that I could not trust him—and now…
“Elizabeth!”
I was roused by Victor’s voice calling my name; by the firm, warm pressure of his first two fingers in the soft hollow between my throat and my jaw, my pulse throbbing on his skin. I could feel him bending over me, eclipsing the light of the hearth; the black tide of his shadow had already washed through me, and I felt it spreading through my blood. My instinct was to welcome it—to relax, to provide no resistance—and until my new revelations came back to me, instinct was all I would have.
He had been riding, I thought idly as consciousness returned: his warm, dark scent was tinged with damp earth, rain, horse.
The pressure of his touch against my throat relented—he must have withdrawn his hand—and from the corner of my eye I saw the flicker of his steel mask in the candlelight.
“Elizabeth,” I heard his voice, so deep and thick with tension it was little more than a low tremor in the stifling air of the room. “What have you done?”