Jenk wondered (as he had wondered so many times before): if he gathered the courage to cut the threads that stitched the eyelids closed—would the eyes open—would the magician awake? Almost, Jenk believed that he would, yet he feared to make the experiment, to tamper with the body, lest even so tiny an alteration cause the preservation spell to fail, the corpse to disintegrate.
He turned away from the coffin, shuffled across the room, and opened the iron door of the furnace. He inspected the glass vessel he had been gently heating in a bed of hot sand for four and twenty days now. An oily black sediment was still forming on the walls of the flask, but otherwise there had been no change.
With a shaking hand, Jenk placed the vessel back in its bed of sand. He had followed the formula so carefully, and the early results had been encouraging—He knew that the process was necessarily a slow one . . . yet he was beginning to wonder whether it was time to abandon this attempt and begin anew.
He put a hand to his chest, felt the slow, painful thud of his heartbeat, a buzzing and rattling in his lungs. Time, time was the very thing that he lacked. Indeed, with every passing day, he grew more acutely conscious of his own mortality.
"It ain't going well," said Caleb.
"No," said Jenk. "I believe that this attempt has failed, also."
Caleb waved his hand dismissively. "What does it matter, then? Ain't we done a great thing in creating the homunculus? Seems to me there was a time that would've been glory enough and more than enough for you."
But Jenk shook his head. It was not enough, it was not nearly enough. Yes, the creation of the living homunculus must gain him some measure of fame, it had already served a useful purpose in attracting the interest and the patronage of the Duke. But it was the stone Seramarias and nothing less that would bring Jenk all the wealth and all the power that he craved.
"I must begin again," said Jenk, sinking wearily down on a stool beside the copper still. "It will be very expensive, very time-consuming, but I must begin again. And I am weary, Caleb . . . I am most unutterably weary.
"It has been difficult, has it not?" he asked, with a heartfelt sigh. "Maintaining the illusion—for Sera's sake and for Jed's—that it is still the book trade that principally occupies us. But now that Sera is leaving town (not to return for so many long weeks), now that Jedidiah's new duties, his new friends, keep him so thoroughly occupied, I do not see why we should not close the bookshop and take an extended holiday, you and I."
"Aye." Caleb gave a tug at his kerchief, as though he found it tight around his throat. "It's been a burden on my conscience, lying and deceiving the lad that way that I been. Less need for that now, when he don't have time to ask so many questions—and all for his own good, I keep telling myself—but sometimes it troubles me."
"As I am similarly troubled," said Jenk. "Yet I am convinced that we act for the best in keeping the pair of them as innocent as possible. Less worry for them now, less chance of disappointment later.
"But it has occurred to me, Caleb, that when we do decant the homunculus, someone must be on hand to care for her at all hours."
Caleb took a deep breath and released it slowly. "That case, I'll have to move in, here at the bookshop."
"Yes," said Jenk. "I had already considered that. You may have Sera's old room. Tell Jedidiah . . . tell him whatever story he is most likely to believe. That I am ill—or that you are. You must be entirely convincing, he must not suspect a thing, lest he communicate his concern to those new friends of his."
"He'll think what I tell him to think, believe anything I say," insisted Caleb. "He's just a boy, Gottfried, for all he's growed so big."
As they spoke, the homunculus closed her eyes, apparently went dormant again. Caleb left his stool and began to move restlessly around the laboratory. His eyes chanced to fall on the crudely made garments, the tiny shirt, breeches, and full-skirted coat Jenk had stitched together for the first homunculus. "When the time does come . . . she can't wear these. 'Twouldn't be fitting nor proper."
Jenk felt a surge of annoyance. "I do not see why not. I wish you would not fidget so, Caleb. It makes me uneasy. Oh, very well—" Eager to get his henchman out of the shop and out of his sight, if only for a quarter of an hour, he reached into a pocket in his breeches and extracted one of the Duke's gold coins. "There is a shop at the foot of the hill. Purchase a doll, to forestall any questions, and have it dressed. One or two gowns at the very most, Caleb. There is no need to provide the little creature with an entire wardrobe."
The doll shop was a low white-washed building with bay windows, a thatched roof, and a red door. According to a sign nailed up over that door, Jenny Sattinflower was the proprietor.
Caleb knew her by sight: a stout young dwarf with a shrewd face and a sharp manner. He had encountered her moving briskly through the streets of the town, greeting her neighbors with a clipped word or a curt nod of her head. Something of an anomaly she was: a solitary dwarf, living alone and owning nothing of great value, an independent, bustling little person who cared more for her work than the money it might bring her. Nor had she any time for idle chatter. Six days a week she could be found in her shop, morning to night, sitting at her low work table, sewing gowns for dolls, or painting uniforms on toy soldiers, by the light of a single oil lamp.
When Caleb walked into the shop, a wooden rattle suspended from the door frame clattered to announce his entry. The dwarf immediately put aside her bits and pieces of sewing and came to meet him, lamp in hand.
"I give ye good day, Mistress Sattinflower, and I come to buy a poppet—nigh about this size." Caleb dipped his head sheepishly and indicated a span of perhaps eight inches with his hands.
"Hmmmmph!" replied the gruff little thing—and that was all the greeting that he got from her. "Cloth or kidskin? China, bisque, or porcelain? Composition, paper-paste, wood, or wax? We've a good many dolls here, Mr. Braun, made of just about any material you might care to name. You'll have to be more specific."
Caleb removed his hat and scratched his head; he was new to this business of buying dolls and had never imagined he would be offered such a bewildering array of choices. "Wax'll do, I reckon."
Holding the lamp before her, she led him to the back of the shop, and a glassed-in cabinet filled with dainty wax figures dressed in the latest fashions. "They are rather dear, I am afraid," said Jenny.
"It don't matter. I can pay," said Caleb. He had already set his heart on a delicate little lady in a gown of flowered silk. "I'll take that one—the lass with the flaxen curls."
Without comment, the dwarf opened the glass case, removed the doll, and placed her in Caleb's unsteady hands. Then she escorted him to the counter where she kept her cashbox.
"Three days," said Jenny Sattinflower, after he paid for the doll, described the kind of garments that he wanted for her, and paid for those, too. "I've a number of other commissions to perform first. She indicated the scraps of shimmering silk, the bits of lace and ribbon on her workbench.
"Three days it is, then," said Caleb, bobbing his head. With the wax doll in his hands, he felt easier in his mind, more settled in spirit. It no longer seemed such a long time to wait.
CHAPTER 27
Containing scenes of Travel. Also, a "blessed" event.
It was noon on the last day of the season when the Duchess's heavy berlin rumbled down Thorn Hill, followed by Jarl Skogsrå's light cabriolet and a humbler conveyance carrying baggage and servants.
Out through the Great North Gate lurched the coach and the two smaller carriages, with outriders escorting them before and behind. Along the Prince's highway they traveled, bowling along at a great rate, farther into the green countryside than Sera and Elsie had ever gone before.
The country just north of Thornburg was a pleasant, settled region, sprinkled with neat little farms and picturesque ancient villages. Late wildflowers, goldenrod, milkweed, and fennel, bloomed in all the fields; sheep and cattle grazed in large peaceful herds. The land was gently rolling
, and mostly open country, with an occasional short stretch of forest—mixed beech, oak, and pine, or willow and alder where a stream ran through—so that the journey progressed as a series of pleasant vistas viewed from the top of one hill after another, with every now and then a fleeting glimpse of the river Lunn shining in the distance.
The Duchess had entered the coach in a state of ill humor, but the enthusiasm of the two girls was contagious. They kept her tolerably well amused for most of the afternoon, with their questions, their innocent observations, and their continued exclamations of wonder and delight.
As they had started late, they could not expect to reach the hotel at Mittleheim (where rooms had been reserved for them) before nightfall; therefore, they stopped for an early supper at a country inn. They rumbled into the innyard at about five o'clock, with the Jarl's cabriolet right behind them. Meanwhile the carriage with the servants and the baggage, which had been delegated to go on ahead to Mittleheim, continued down the broad highway and was soon lost to view.
The Jarl was out of his carriage in an instant, and on hand to assist the ladies as they emerged from the berlin. His traveling companion—the Duchess's other guest, Mr. Hermes Budge—stood quietly at his elbow, courteous and gentleman-like. Jarl Skogsrå claimed the honor of escorting the Duchess into the inn. Much to his relief, she left Sebastian the ape behind in the coach. But it was not Sebastian who had incurred the Jarl's displeasure today.
"This companion you have saddled me with, so solemn, so virtuous. Why do we bring him? Is this your idea of a joke?" he asked in a low voice.
The Duchess glanced up at him, through the cobwebby veil of her enchanting bonnet. "I don't deny that Mr. Budge is decidedly lacking when it comes to amusing conversation, but I do not regard that—for he has an interesting mind and speaks quite well on any serious topic. And no," she added, with an impatient gesture, "I did not invite him for the purpose of tormenting you! I bring him along as a favor to the Duke, who will, I believe, find his company stimulating."
After they had eaten, the Duchess and the young ladies decided on an after-supper stroll through the tiny village surrounding the inn. There was a feeble attempt at a country fair on the village green: a juggler, a handful of ramshackle booths selling tawdry half-penny trinkets, and a man hawking gingerbread. The girls were eager to look over the booths, and Mr. Budge offered to accompany them, but the Duchess was troubled by the late afternoon heat and had left her fan and her parasol back in the coach. Jarl Skogsrå declared that he would be delighted to escort her down the High Street and into a pleasant little wood bordering the village.
"The Gracious Lady is rather pale and low in spirits," said the Jarl, as they entered the shade of the trees and the Duchess lifted her veil. "Is it possible that this journey does not agree with her?"
"I thrive on travel, " said the Duchess. "No, it is not the journey that afflicts me, but something I learned quite recently, which has depressed my spirits. Something shocking . . . incredible. I have been robbed, my dear Skogsrå, deprived of something valuable and irreplaceable. And what is immeasurably worse: I cannot escape the conclusion that it was almost certainly stolen by somebody close to me."
The Jarl was the picture of sympathetic curiosity. "But who could have betrayed you in this infamous fashion? And what exactly was it they took?"
"I do not know who or even when," said the Duchess, sitting down on the mossy trunk of a fallen oak and spreading out the skirt of her grey satin polanaise. "You wonder how that might be? Well, I will tell you. I had hidden this valuable object in my bedchamber, in what I supposed a very good hiding place. Indeed, it had rested there unmolested for more years than I care to count. And I had grown complacent, I suppose, and had fallen out of the habit of checking to make certain that I still kept it safe. It must have been half a year since I last handled it—perhaps even longer—and I only thought to examine it again, two days ago, when I meant to pack it along with my other personal effects and carry it with me to Zar-Wildungen."
The Jarl took out his fan—it was nearly as pretty as the one the Duchess had left in her coach. Made of chickenskin, it was painted with a delicate design of funerary urns, cypress wreaths, and drooping willow trees. He opened the fan and began to wave it idly. "You say, then, that this valuable object may have disappeared anytime in the last half a year—and therefore, might have been carried away by any of the people who had access to your private chambers during that time? But of course you are distressed; how could you not be? It is a terrible thing, not knowing whom you may trust.
"I must suppose," the Jarl added, after another moment of thought, "that I, also, am among those suspected."
The Duchess favored him with an irritable glance. "If you were, do you suppose that I would be confiding in you now?"
"I cannot be certain," said Skogsrå, with a low bow. He looked particularly dandified today. He wore a tiny, dagger-shaped patch at the corner of one eye, and another, shaped like a crescent moon, on the opposite cheek. "For the subtlety and wit of the Gracious Lady are so often beyond my poor comprehension."
"Yes," said the Duchess, still a bit snappishly, "you are exceedingly single-minded. But it is just that narrowness of vision that absolves you now. I cannot think you would have the necessary knowledge to recognize the value of the object if you stumbled on it, or to understand its potential uses." She removed her white net gloves and dropped them in her lap, then untied the ribbons of her bonnet. "It is a magic parchment, inscribed with secret signs and figures, created under extraordinary circumstances. One would have to know something of its history to realize that it was anything more than an ordinary charm of protection.
"Now, if your friend Vodni had visited me during that time . . . him I should surely suspect," said the Duchess, removing her hat and placing it carefully on the log beside her. "For he would know its value in an instant."
"Please, he is no friend of mine, this Vodni," the Jarl protested. "My compatriot, if you will, but never my friend!"
"Of course," said the Duchess, with her sweetest smile. "It is natural, I suppose, that you should envy Vodni for his youth and his energy if for nothing else."
This was, undoubtedly, a provocative remark, when spoken by a woman of nearly two centuries, to a forty-year-old dandy. But the Jarl knew he was still a fine figure of a man, and that women still sighed over his handsome face and his golden lovelocks. He was willing to let the remark pass.
"I dislike Baron Vodni for his inflated self-opinion, his insufferable—Ah, well, it is an old grudge, and has nothing to do with the matter at hand," said Skogsrå, snapping shut his funereal little fan. "And so I am absolved by virtue of my dullness, and Vodni by his absence during the time in question. Whom does that leave?" The Jarl started counting the fingers of one hand. "Lord Vizbeck—Mr. von Eichstatt—Dr. Mirabolo—the good Mr. Budge—Lord Skelbrooke—"
"It need not have been a man," the Duchess interrupted sharply. "I have women friends as well, you know. What makes you so certain that it was not one of them?"
The Jarl took her soft little hand and kissed it. "The Gracious Lady is so very formidable a personality, it would take extraordinary nerve to contemplate crossing her in such a manner. Surely a woman would lack—"
"You are forgetting," the Duchess said, with a frosty glare, "that I, also, am a woman."
"But no ordinary woman," the Jarl replied smoothly.
"Nevertheless," said the Duchess, withdrawing her hand, "you cannot flatter me by denigrating my own sex. It might have been a woman, just as easily as a man. It might have been . . . Ursula Bowker, for instance. I am sure that she has effrontery enough for anything!"
"That is true," said the Jarl. "Well then, say that it was a female. Why not as soon suspect Miss Sera Vorder—Miss Seramarias Vorder—the granddaughter of the alchemist, who (we may safely assume) has the very knowledge I lack, and would recognize your artifact on sight."
"And would wish to avoid it, on that very account," said the Duchess, w
ith a little gurgle of laughter. "Or have you forgotten Miss Vorder's well-known distaste for anything which smacks of mysticism?"
"I have not forgotten," replied Skogsrå. "I am merely wondering if I actually believe in this . . . distaste, as you call it. Perhaps it has only been a pose, all along. "
The Duchess stared at him in patent disbelief. "My dear Jarl, what an imagination you do have! I had not thought you capable of such a flight of fancy. My felicitations! But do you actually mean to suggest that Sera Vorder could possibly be so—so clever and so bold as to maintain this incredible pose for all of these years, merely in order to spy on me and to rob me?"
"Most assuredly I do," said the Jarl. "For I am convinced that the young woman, like your friend Lady Ursula, has sufficient effrontery for any enterprise she might choose to undertake."
Three days to the very hour, and Caleb reappeared at Jenny Sattinflower's shop to claim his purchases. The dwarf wrapped up the dresses in brown paper, and the old man returned to the bookshop with the package under his arm.
As Caleb entered the laboratory, his eyes went immediately to the crystal egg on the iron tripod. But the tripod was empty for the first time in many weeks. The egg lay in two empty halves upon the table. The homunculus was gone.
In a panic, Caleb looked around him. Then he spotted a doll-like figure lying under a ragged scrap of blanket in a basket on the floor, tucked away between the furnace and the still.
He looked at Jenk reproachfully. "You give birth to her while I was out!"
Jenk, who was much occupied with his flasks and his vials and his evil-smelling tinctures, barely glanced up from his work. "My dear Caleb, her transition from the liquid element to the aerial seemed likely to be a traumatic one. Indeed, she screeched and struggled so when I removed her from the egg: she sounded like a blackbird in the jaws of a cat. It would have done you no good to witness her distress, and your own apprehension would only have served to increase hers.
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