Chapter 1
At exactly the moment young Septimus was stretching awake after his nap, sliding his eleven-year-old feet into slippers made for those of a fourteen-year-old and crossing to his bedroom window, Miss Prim was passing through the rusty garden gate.
The boy watched her with interest. At first glance, she didn’t appear nervous or afraid in the least. Nor did she have the threatening air of the previous incumbent, who always looked as if he knew exactly what kind of book anyone daring to ask for a book was going to ask for.
“Perhaps we’ll like her,” Septimus said to himself, rubbing his eyes with the heels of both hands. Then, moving away from the window, he quickly buttoned his jacket and went downstairs to open the door.
Miss Prim, just then making her way calmly along the path between banks of blue hydrangeas, had begun her day convinced it was the one she’d been waiting for all her life.
Over the years she’d dreamed about an opportunity such as this.
She’d pictured it, she’d imagined it, she’d pondered every detail.
And yet, that morning, as she came through the garden, Prudencia Prim had to acknowledge that she felt not the slightest quickening of the heart, nor even the faintest tremor of excitement that would indicate that the great day had arrived.
They would observe her with curiosity, she knew.
People tended to look at her like that, she was well aware of it.
Just as she knew that she was very different from the people who examined her in this hostile fashion.
Few could admit to being the victim of a fatal historical error, she told herself proudly.
Few people lived, as she did, with the constant feeling of having been born at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
And fewer still realized, as she did, that all that was worth admiring, all that was beautiful and sublime, seemed to be vanishing with hardly a trace.
The world, lamented Prudencia Prim, had lost its taste for beauty, harmony, and balance.
And few could see this truth; just as few could feel within themselves the resolve to make a stand.
It was this steely determination that had prompted Miss Prim, three days before she walked down the path lined with hydrangeas, to reply to a small ad printed in the newspaper.
Wanted: a feminine spirit quite undaunted by the world to work as a librarian for a gentleman and his books. Able to live with dogs and children. Preferably without work experience. Graduates and postgraduates need not apply.
Miss Prim only partly fitted this description.
She was quite undaunted by the world, that was clear.
As was her undoubted ability to work as a librarian for a gentleman and his books.
But she had no experience of dealing with children or dogs, much less living with them.
If she was honest, though, what most concerned her was the problem posed by “graduates and postgraduates need not apply.”
Miss Prim considered herself a highly qualified woman.
With degrees in international relations, political science, and anthropology, she had a PhD in sociology and was an expert on library science and medieval Russian art.
People who knew her looked curiously at this extraordinary CV, especially as its holder was a mere administrative assistant with no apparent ambitions.
They didn’t understand, she said to herself peevishly; they didn’t understand the concept of excellence.
How could they, in a world where things no longer meant what they were supposed to mean?
“Are you his new librarian?”
Startled, the applicant looked down. There, on the porch of what appeared to be the main entrance to the house, she met the gaze of a little boy with blond hair and a scowl.
“Are you or aren’t you?” pressed the child.
“I think it’s too soon to say,” she replied. “I’m here because of the advertisement your father placed in the paper.”
“He’s not a father,” the boy said simply, then turned and ran back inside.
Disconcerted, Miss Prim stared at the doorway.
She was absolutely sure that there had been specific mention in the advert of a gentleman with children.
Naturally, it wasn’t necessary for a gentleman to have children: in her life she’d known a few without them.
But when a paragraph contained both the words gentleman and children, what else was one to think?
Just then she raised her eyes and took in the house for the first time.
She’d been so absorbed in her thoughts as she came through the garden that she hadn’t paid it any attention.
It was an old building of faded red stone, with a great many windows and French doors leading onto the garden.
A solid, shabby edifice, its cracked and creviced walls were adorned with climbing roses that seemed never to have encountered a gardener.
The front porch, supported by four columns and hung with a huge wisteria, looked bleak and imposing.
“It must be freezing in winter,” she murmured.
She glanced at her watch; it was almost midafternoon.
All the windows were wide open, their curtains fluttering capriciously in the fresh September breeze, as white and light as sails.
It looks just like a ship, she thought, an old ship run aground.
And coming around the porch, she went up to the nearest French door, hoping to find a host who had, at least, reached adulthood.
Looking in, Miss Prim saw a large, untidy room, full of books and children.
There were many more books than children, but somehow the way they were distributed made it look as if there were almost as many children as books.
The applicant counted thirty arms, thirty legs, and fifteen heads.
Their owners were dotted about on the rug, lying on old sofas, curled up in dilapidated leather armchairs.
She also noticed two gigantic dogs lying on either side of a wingchair that faced the fireplace, its back to the window.
The boy who had spoken to her on the porch was there on the rug, bowed conscientiously over a notebook.
The others raised their heads from time to time to answer a speaker whose voice seemed to spring straight from the wing chair.
“Let’s begin,” said the man in the wing chair.
“Can we ask for clues?” said one of the children.
Instead of replying, the man’s voice recited:
Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;
magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo:
iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.
“Well?” he said when he’d finished.
The children remained silent.
“Could it be Horace?” asked one of them timidly.
“It could be,” replied the man, “but it isn’t. Come on, try again. Anyone dare translate it?”
The applicant, observing the scene from behind the heavy curtains that hung on either side of a pair of lace panels, thought the question far too difficult.
The children were too young to recognize a work from a single quotation, especially when the quotation was in Latin.
Despite having read Virgil with pleasure, Miss Prim did not approve of the game; she didn’t approve at all.
“I’ll give you some help,” the voice continued from within the wing chair.
“These lines were dedicated to a Roman politician from the early years of the Empire. A politician who became friends with some of the great poets we’ve studied, such as Horace.
One of those friends dedicated the lines to him for having mediated in the Treaty of Brundisium which, as you know, or should know, put an end to the conflict between Antony and Octavian. ”
The man fell silent and stared at the children (or so Miss Prim imagined, from her hiding place) with a look of mute interrogation that received no response.
Only one of the dogs, as if wanting to show its interest in the historical event, got up slowly and lazily, lumbered nearer to the fireplace and lay down once again on the rug.
“We studied all this, absolutely all of it, last spring,” complained the man.
The children, still looking down, chewed their pens thoughtfully, swung their feet nonchalantly, rested their cheeks on their hands.
“Pack of ignorant brutes,” insisted the voice irritably. “What on earth’s the matter with you today?”
Miss Prim felt a wave of heat rise to her face.
She had no experience whatsoever with children, this was true, but she was a mistress of the art of delicacy.
Miss Prim firmly believed that delicacy was the force that drove the universe.
Where it was lacking, she knew, the world became gloomy and dark.
Indignant at the scene and growing a little stiff, she tried to shift quietly in her hiding place, but a sudden growl from one of the dogs made her stop.
“All right,” the man’s voice softened. “Let’s try again with something a bit easier.”
“By the same author?” asked a little girl.
“By exactly the same author. Ready? I’m only going to recite half a line.”
. . . facilis descensus Averno . . .
A sudden forest of raised hands and noisy cries of triumph showed that this time the pupils knew the answer.
“Virgil!” they shouted in a shrill chorus. “It’s the Aeneid!”
“That’s right, that’s right,” laughed the man, pleased. “And what I recited before was from the Eclogues, Eclogue IV. Therefore, the Roman statesman who was a friend of Virgil and Horace is . . . ”
Before any of the children could answer, Miss Prim’s clear, melodious voice came from behind the curtains, filling the room.
“Asinius Pollio, of course.”
Fifteen childish heads turned in unison toward the window. Surprised by her boldness, the applicant instinctively retreated. Only a sense of her own dignity and the importance of the reason for her presence stopped her from running away.