Chapter Forty-One
Frida remembered the embroidered chairs, the drawing table along the western wall. The marble fireplace, now crackling with a warm fire despite the summer heat. The shelves of leather books. The pianoforte. Even down to the easel propped in one corner.
She’d dreamed of this room.
‘The sisters’ drawing room,’ she said softly, under her breath.
Dian jerked their head towards her.
But she was already moving in a daze, forcing Dian to follow her.
The curtains on the tall windows hadn’t been closed yet.
The servant’s wing below them, they were on the ground floor here, and through the windows she could just make out the sheen of the serpentine lake, the water glimmering in the stark moonlight.
Were the kelpies swimming in that lake, at this very moment?
‘Look,’ Dian said hoarsely, lifting their conjoined hands to point.
She thought for a moment they were gesturing towards the lake, towards perhaps the sudden splash of a kelpie’s tail.
But no. Dian had turned towards the left-hand wall.
Frida dragged her eyes away from the windows and followed their gaze, landing on a ginormous floor to ceiling tapestry.
She cocked her head, frowning. She didn’t remember seeing this last time she’d been here.
It was an opulent work of art, and she wondered if the sisters had made it themselves.
Across the entire wall, embroidered kelpies rose out of cerulean waters.
They had coppery manes made of seaweed and hooves of snowy white spindrift.
But as she looked, and the details became clearer, bile began to rise.
Each of the exquisitely detailed water horses were not free, as they should have been.
They had harnesses around their necks, and bits in their seafoam mouths.
Frida didn’t realise her free hand was over her mouth as she let out a gasp.
The largest kelpie, a roan stallion at the centre of the design, had a spear protruding from his speckled side, dripping rusty blood in a pool on the embroidered waves.
How could the sisters, who she knew so intimately and brightly in her imagination, and who’d loved kelpies so much, have looked at a tapestry like this every day?
‘It’s horrible,’ Moth tinkled, in revolted fascination.
Frida agreed. It was horrible. She’d been planning to wait in here, hoping that this was where one or more of the sisters might come when dinner was over.
That’s what women did, right, whilst the men played cards and drank port in the smoking room.
But at the sight of that tapestry, suddenly it felt as if her head was ringing, and the idea of waiting in this beloved room made her knees quake.
Barely waiting for Dian, she fled, tugging them out of the room and back down the corridor.
The raindrops tumbled around them as they went left, right.
Left again, another right. The sound of the piano rose and fell.
Somewhere, she heard Moth and Dian speaking in lowered voices, whispering in concern, but she couldn’t hear what they said through the ringing in her ears.
Finally, she came to another doorway, this one closed, a great towering wall of dark ebony looming before her. She could barely hear for the pounding in her chest. Dian reached out and touched the wood with one finger, before drawing back.
‘What is this room?’
She let out a shaky breath. ‘It’s Sir Joshua’s study.’
When they furrowed their brow, she clarified, ‘The person who owns this house.’
Dian’s face twisted. ‘The person responsible for that laboratory.’
‘No!’ Frida exclaimed. ‘No. I don’t think – that is . . . That is a different person.’
Dian looked sceptical.
‘Sir Joshua would never . . .’ Then she bit her lip, closing her eyes. ‘At least,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t think so. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.’
She was certain Dian could hear her heart thundering.
Sweat beaded on her forehead as she quickly looked down the length of the hallway.
It was quiet, for now. She knew a servant could appear at any moment, but her need to see this door, outside of Dian’s magic, was greater than caution.
She wanted to touch it, to feel the sturdy woodgrain under her fingertips.
Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, ‘I think you can let the raindrops go.’
Dian looked aghast. ‘What?’
‘I – yeah. I think it’s ok.’ She shrugged, trying to keep it light.
‘I’m sure you’d like a break, anyway.’ Pointedly, she raised their conjoined hands and gave an embarrassed laugh.
She was very aware that her palm was clammy with sweat, and theirs was ice cold.
Dian’s gaze jumped between her face, their hands, and back down the way they’d come.
They were on their own here, no other rooms on this small stretch of corridor.
Dian still hesitated. Their eyes were clouded when they eventually slipped their hand from hers.
Frida braced herself for it, but the loss was even sharper than she’d expected.
When the raindrops left her, it was like stepping out of a cool shower, the colours of the real world coming back like a gut punch.
Every line was harsher, the corners crueller, the air infinitely thicker and muggier.
If she’d felt claustrophobic before, this was a hundred times worse.
She stumbled a bit, no longer able to feel Dian’s heartbeat snuggled safely alongside her own.
She flexed her hand, feeling the ghost of their palm, the press of their calluses no longer.
The carpet beneath her boots, which she’d previously thought had been burgundy like aged wine, was blood red.
But the door.
The door, Frida.
With wide eyes, she gazed before her.
It was the door to the New Library. Exactly as she remembered.
She caught her breath to see those familiar dancing unicorns carved into the gleaming ebony.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but somehow, as she pressed a desperate hand to the very real, very solid wood, she felt her own solidity coming back.
Within this absolute clusterfuck, here was something she knew, something from her own past, her own home.
Here was something her mum had touched. Forgetting Dian was there for a moment, she traced the unicorns with trembling fingertips.
In the Forge House of the twenty-first century, this door was a cheap copy, the unicorns’ dance flat.
She remembered the plaque next to it, like it was yesterday: The door to the study of Joshua Beaufort, 3rd Earl of Marlow, is one of the most important artifacts from Forge House.
In 1924, it was relocated to the new location of the London Extraordinary Zoo, and now adorns the building of the New Library, the renowned home of many of the Beaufort family’s extensive scholarship on extraordinary creatures.
The unicorns engraved on this door were the inspiration for the London Extraordinary Zoo’s famous logo, the Leaping Unicorn.
How many times had she pushed open this self-same door, pressed her fingers against these same unicorns, with the sound of the kraken’s whistling in her ears and heady salt spray in her nose?
She closed her eyes. Scouring the wood, she reached reflexively for her mum’s favourite unicorn.
The one in the bottom right corner who, by a casual flick of the carver’s tool, might have been grimacing or might have been laughing.
Finding it with her fingertips, she sucked in a helpless sob.
Then her hand moved over her chest, where the Leaping Unicorn was emblazoned, to where – on her forearm – her mum’s unicorn was tattooed.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and she was all at once very aware of Dian again, barely a few steps behind her.
She pulled away from the door quickly, but perhaps it was too quick, for she didn’t miss the wary expression on their face, the way their jaw had tightened immeasurably.
She tried to cover the logo on her chest, to double check that there was still enough dried mud slathered over her that they couldn’t see it, or at least, not enough to make the connection.
She was relieved too for her long sleeves, which covered That Tattoo.
She flushed and all of a sudden, couldn’t bring herself to look at Dian.
‘Let’s go inside,’ she said abruptly.
At her tone, they frowned.
They know, she thought as she eased open the study door as quietly as possible.
They know. This should have been a pink flamingo moment, going inside Sir Joshua’s actual study, but instead all she could think was: did they know?
Had Dian, by miracle of deduction, just figured out that she’d been lying to them?
Or at the very least, not telling them the truth.
Her boots felt slippery, as if she might lose her footing at any moment and tentacles seemed to crawl up her throat.
She flexed her hand, empty, at her side, reaching out helplessly to touch the ornate green and gold panelling on the walls.
As much time as she’d spent imagining herself sketching with Hannah, reading books with Jane, and gossiping with Georgiana, she’d spent more time imagining herself here, as Sir Joshua’s trusted confidant, planning rescue missions to Papua New Guinea, Kenya, China, Argentina.
The study was just as she’d pictured it, but now a roasting fire crackled in the grate, making her tug nervously at her collar, and there was a fairy in the room with her, rather than the magnetic auburn-haired Sir Joshua.