The Skin Map

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “Oh. I see.” She frowned, and the glad radiance vanished. “Now you are mocking me.”

  “Not at all.” Eager to change the subject, Kit glanced down at his soup plate. “This broth looks good.” He pulled his apostle spoon from the pocket of his waistcoat. “Shall we dig in?”

  “How oddly you speak,” she observed, picking up her spoon.

  They ladled savoury beef broth into their mouths, and Kit was glad for a moment’s respite from the task of having to converse in the obtuse tongue of the seventeenth century—difficult enough at the best of times. And tilting with Lady Fayth was demanding and exhausting; he was happy for a chance to regroup. Silence, broken only by the occasional slurp, stretched between them. When the extended pause began to grow awkward, Kit entered the lists once more. “Do you live in London?” he asked.

  “Good heavens, no!” she exclaimed. Setting down her bowl, she took a bit of dried bread, crumbled it into what remained in the bottom of the bowl, and began spooning up the sops. “What about yourself ?”

  “London born and bred,” he replied, then quickly amended his assertion. “Well, in truth, I was born in Weston-super-Mare. My family has moved around somewhat, but I’ve lived in London a long time.”

  “Weston-super-Mare?” wondered Lady Fayth.

  “It’s in Somerset, I believe.”

  “Is it, indeed?” She sniffed. “My home is in Somerset—Clarivaux, our family’s estate. Do you know it?” Without waiting for a reply, she continued. “My father is Edward, Henry’s older brother. I had a brother, Richard, who sadly died when he was three. I never knew him.” She nibbled daintily from the edge of the spoon, raising her head slightly. The candlelight caressed the curve of her throat and made her fair skin glow. The sight of such transcendent beauty within stroking distance made Kit feel a little dizzy. “Do you have family?” she asked.

  “Well, there’s Cosimo, I suppose.”

  “What do you mean, you suppose? Either he is your grandfather, as you claim, or he is not. There can be no supposition about it.”

  “We are related,” Kit assured her. “There is no doubt about that. But he is not, strictly speaking, my grandfather.”

  “No?” The spoon halted, hovering in midair. “Then who, pray, is he?”

  “He is my great-grandfather.” At her disbelieving glance he added, “I know, I know—it seems unlikely. In fact, I had trouble believing it myself. But it is the honest truth. Cosimo is my great-grandfather.”

  “Upon my word. You do surprise me.”

  “It’s all to do with their, um—secret experiments.”

  “Leaping.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Ley leaping—that’s what I call it. When one jumps from one place to another. . . .” She favoured him with a superior smile. “Leaping.”

  “A good word for it,” granted Kit. “Anyway, all this leaping about from one place to another seems to interfere with the natural process of aging in some way. Cosimo should be a whole lot older than he seems to be.”

  “Is that so?” She spooned up another sop, then pushed the dish away. “Am I to understand that you have been allowed to leap?”

  “Oh, yes. Several times. And you?”

  “No,” she replied. Servants appeared to clear away the dishes and prepare the table for the main course. “It is thought to be too dangerous—though I cannot imagine why—and so, of course, being a woman, I am not allowed.”

  “Well, I’m not very good at it,” Kit said, by way of mitigating her disappointment. “And I don’t pretend to understand much about it. But I do agree it could be very dangerous. I mean, what if you leapt and found yourself in the middle of the sea, or a tiger-infested jungle, or an exploding volcano. . . .”

  “That is why you need the map.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Skin Map.”

  “You know about that too?” said Kit, wondering what else she knew.

  A platter of sliced mutton in gravy, mashed turnips, and carrots was placed on the table, and china plates efficiently filled. The servants topped up the wineglasses and retreated once more.

  “My uncle trusts very few people with his secrets,” she confided, reaching for a clean spoon. “Happily, I am one of that select number. My father thinks it all wool and nonsense. He refuses to allow even the merest mention of leaping—or any of Henry’s other theories, come to that—in his presence. In consequence, they have not spoken in years. Thus”—her smile turned sweetly satisfied—“I have become the sole repository of my uncle’s scientific investigations.”

  “I see.” Kit took her at her word, but there was something in what she said that niggled even as it sought to explain.

  “Indeed, that is why I have come up to London,” she continued, slicing her meat nicely. “It goes without saying that much of his work is complicated and extremely esoteric. Uncle has promised to show me his journals and teach me some of his more abstruse theories. In time, I may be allowed to make a leap myself.”

  “His journals,” repeated Kit, glancing up from his plate. “Wait! You mean he writes it down!”

  “Certainly, he does. He keeps it all in little books,” she explained. “All his thoughts and theories, and also the results of his various experiments. It all goes into the books. Sir Henry is nothing if not scrupulous.”

  “How very admirable,” declared Kit, “About these journals—I suppose you know where they are?”

  “Where? In his study I should think—where else should they be?”

  Kit felt the sense of helplessness that had dogged him since leaving Black Mixen begin to recede. He had only to get his hands on Sir Henry’s books and all would be well. At least this was the track his mind ran along at the moment. In a few days he would discover just how wrong he truly was, but by then this train of thought would have reached a wholly unexpected destination.

  Laying aside his spoon, he placed both hands flat on the table. “Lady Fayth,” he said, adopting a solemn tone to better communicate the sense of gravity he felt, “I don’t mean to frighten you, but Sir Henry and Cosimo are in serious trouble. I think it imperative that we find his notes at once.”

  “Trouble, you say? What sort of trouble?” she asked, cocking one perfect eyebrow. At his hesitation, she pounced. “Come, sir! If we are to get on, we must of necessity agree to a full exchange of confidences. We must keep nothing back.” He saw the defiance leap up in her eyes. “Lest you harbour any misguided sense of chivalric duty to protect a poor weak woman, I do assure you I am fully able and prepared to protect myself.”

  The idea of protecting this fiery spirit had not remotely occurred to Kit. Once suggested, however, he was caught in a proposition of powerful allure, the mere suggestion of which filled him with a sudden pleasure.

  “Speak, sir!” she demanded.

  He shook himself from his caveman reverie. “Yes,” he allowed, “a full and frank exchange of confidences. It is precisely what I was about to suggest myself.”

  “Then, as we are in agreement . . .” She patted her mouth primly with the edge of her napkin, then tossed the cloth aside. “Let us begin the search.”

  Kit looked longingly at the mutton slowly congealing on his plate. “After supper, perhaps—”

  “That will not do, sir!” She pushed back her chair and stood. “If finding his journals is as important as you claim, then we have not a moment to lose.” She strode from the room and into the corridor.

  Kit snatched a last bite of the mutton, then hurried after. She led him to the room where he had first met her: Sir Henry’s library. Kit caught up with her at the wall of books. “Do you know what they look like?”

  “I do not, for I have never seen them.”

  “Well, it should not take long to find them in any case. You start there”—he pointed to the top left side of the bookcase—“and I’ll start on the opposite end. We’ll meet in the middle.”

  Kit began at his end. The books were all big, heavy tomes bound in thick, da
rk leather, darker still in the flickering candlelight; he had great difficulty reading the titles hand-lettered in black ink on the spines, which, as he had noted before, were mostly in Latin. Giving this up as a bad job, he began pulling books off the shelf, one by one, and leafing through them. Some were handwritten on parchment, others printed on paper; occasionally, he came across one that contained a block print or etching—usually of some sort of machine or curious scientific apparatus; mostly, however, the pages were covered with small words crowded on pages with tight margins.

  After examining a number of these volumes, Kit began to suspect that Sir Henry’s journals, if they did indeed exist, would not be among the large and dense folios he was examining. He turned his eye instead to the smaller, more portable books he saw. These were fewer and more easily handled, and he had soon worked his way through all within reach. He moved a couple paces closer to Lady Fayth and became aware that she was humming; although he did not know the tune, the melody was charming.

  He was soon entranced by the lovely, lilting quality of her voice and no longer paying attention to what he was doing. He stood transfixed, a book unopened in his hand.

  “What have you got there?”

  “Hmm?” He glanced down at the small volume in his hand. It had a green cover and was closed by a leather strap that wrapped around a little brass boss; beyond that there were no other markings of any kind. “I don’t know.”

  “Open it,” she instructed.

  His fingers fumbled with the leather strap, and he cracked open the cover to reveal a page densely covered with a script of such eccentric nature he could not make out what language it might be written in, much less what it said.

  “What have you found?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, handing the book to her. “I can’t read it.”

  “It is in Sir Henry’s hand,” she announced, her excitement contagious. He watched her lips moving as her eyes scanned the pages, and he wished he were a page in a book just so he could have those lips moving over him like that.

  With an effort, he turned his eyes back to the book. “What does it say?”

  “Here he is writing about the manifest universe,” she replied, running a white fingertip along the line. “And something called the Omniverse, whatever that may be.”

  “The Omniverse!” cried Kit. “That’s it! That’s the thing they were talking about.” He tapped the page with his finger. “This must be Sir Henry’s ley travel journal. It has to be.”

  “Are you certain?” she asked, glancing up. “Do you want me to read more?”

  “No . . . yes . . . possibly.” Kit reached for the book. “Here, bring it to the light so we can see it better.”

  Without relinquishing the little tome, Lady Fayth moved to the candle stand and, opening the book, cradled it in both palms, allowing Kit to turn the pages. Though he still could not decipher the archaic penmanship, he did manage to work out the word Omniverse. He turned more pages and found tiny diagrams of lines that looked like broken triangles and rectangles, some with numbers attached to them that might have been latitudes, degrees, or distances—he could not tell.

  “We’re going to have to spend some time with this, I expect,” he decided, “if we’re going to find what we’re looking for.”

  “For what, pray, are we looking?” she inquired.

  Kit bit his lip. “I’m not at all sure,” he confessed after a moment’s thought.

  Lady Fayth frowned prettily.

  He turned some more pages. “But I think I’ll know it when I see it.” He reached to take the book. “May I?”

  She closed the book with a snap. “Certainly not!”

  “But—”

  “I will not have you pawing through my uncle’s private journal. If you wish to examine this or anything else you must provide me with an explanation of greater persuasion than you have offered thus far.”

  “Your uncle is in trouble. This book could help—”

  “So you have already said.”

  “After all this, you still don’t believe me?” He regarded the dangerous set of her jaw. “Apparently not.” Kit pushed out his lower lip in thought, then brightened as the solution came to him. “I know! We’ll ask Giles—he was there. He saw it all.”

  “Who is Giles?”

  “The driver—I mean, Sir Henry’s footman or coachman, or whatever. He was with us at Black Mixen Tump. He saw what happened. He can tell you.” Kit started for the door. “Send for him and let him explain.”

  “He will have gone to bed,” said Lady Fayth. “It must wait until tomorrow.”

  “All right,” agreed Kit. “First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll call him in.”

  “Until then, the journal stays with me.”

  “Absolutely. Just don’t let it out of your sight. I have a feeling that little green book is priceless.”

  CHAPTER 23

  In Which Lady Fayth Takes the Lead

  The decision to return to Black Mixen Tump had been swiftly reached—so swiftly that Kit still harboured misgivings. Lady Fayth was confident enough for both of them, however, buoyed as she was by the prospect of at last being allowed to make a leap—the very thing, she proclaimed with endearing enthusiasm, she had been yearning for all her life. In fact, she was almost giddy with it, which made Kit’s more sober assessment appear churlish and curmudgeonly by comparison.

  “Believe me, if leaping was not dangerous enough—”

  “Oh, yes—ferocious volcanoes and man-eating tigers and such, as you have already explained so very colourfully.”

  “Right. Well, aside from all that, there is something I haven’t told you yet. There are people—bad men, very bad men, murderers in fact—who wish us harm. They always seem to show up. So we must assume they will be nearby, waiting to attack. They were at Black Mixen, and there was a fight. Sir Henry and Cosimo got away, but their attackers made the jump with them.”

  “All the more reason to be on our way, I daresay,” replied Lady Fayth blithely.

  “I’m not sure I follow,” said Kit, missing the link in her logic.

  “If our eminent forebears were not in direst danger,” she explained, as if instructing a backward child, “they would not stand in need of rescuing, and it would not fall to us to save them.”

  “Well, yes,” granted Kit, “but that doesn’t lessen the danger to ourselves. We still—”

  “Take courage!” she told him. “All will be well.”

  “I’m glad we got that settled.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I feel so much better now.”

  Sarcasm must not have been in fashion in the seventeenth century, apparently, for his remarks were taken at face value, and Lady Fayth favoured him with one of her incandescent smiles. “I am happy for you. We shall leave at once. I shall inform Villiers of our plans and have the servants prepare the things we require. Kindly inform Giles to ready the coach.”

  “But we haven’t deciphered the book,” Kit pointed out.

  “We can do that on the way. You said it will take three days to reach this leaping place, is that not true?” At his admission that this was the case, she placed the book in his hand and concluded, “Then we must not waste another moment.”

  Having made up her mind, Lady Fayth was across the room and almost out the door. “Wait,” called Kit, “there is one other thing.” He hesitated, uncertain how to put it.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Your clothes, Lady Fayth. Forgive me for saying it, but I sincerely doubt that you can make a leap dressed like that,” he said, indicating her dress.

  She glanced down at her elegant satin gown. “Marry, what is wrong with my attire?”

  The defiant expression her face gave him to know that he was skating on very thin ice. “It is not, ah—functional,” he offered.

  “I suppose you would have me wear nothing at all!”

  The mere suggestion of her lithesome form arrayed in its natural splendour proved so distracting that Kit, with heroic
effort, pushed it promptly from his mind and tried his best to explain in a way that would not be taken amiss. “My lady, we cannot know what we’re leaping into—it might be rough country, a jungle, a desert, anything,” he told her. “Also, there is the matter of time. We might be years or centuries ahead of the current date and age, or behind. In short, we simply cannot know what the people we encounter will be wearing wherever it is we’re going. We must try not to be too, um . . . different.”

  “Such disconformity could draw unwanted attention to ourselves as travellers,” she concluded. “I understand. By my faith, your counsel is wise. I will find something more fitting to the purpose.” She turned again to go. “Further to that, we will require money, I expect, and weapons.”

  “If you can get them . . . ,” Kit began, but she was already gone. He stood gazing at the empty doorway. Faith, my counsel is wise, he reflected happily, his misgivings flittering away like dry leaves before the balmy breeze of her good opinion, if only for the moment.

  They would return in force, but by then the would-be leapers were already beyond the outlying hamlets of London in a carriage loaded with three days’ worth of food and drink, several changes of clothing, a purse full of gold sovereigns, two slightly rusty cutlasses, and a serviceable flintlock pistol. At Kit’s suggestion, Giles, who agreed willingly, was brought into the plan. They departed as soon as the equipment and provisions could be loaded onto the coach and they were soon clattering through the northern suburbs and out into the belt of farming settlements ringing the city.

  During the hours of good light, Kit applied himself to the study of the green book, poring over page after page of Sir Henry’s crabbed text. The book itself was as handsome a specimen of the binder’s art as could be found anywhere: tight pages of fine paper, gold-edged, with a place marker of black silk ribbon, all smartly bound in lustrous jade green kidskin, and so well made that it opened absolutely flat and closed with a satisfying snap. After properly admiring the craftsmanship of the tome, they had got down to studying the contents. Kit could not easily read Sir Henry’s idiosyncratic hand, but Lady Fayth, whose eye was more accustomed to the mode of the day, seemed to have little difficulty. Under her instruction, Kit began to gain some mastery of the script.