The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  At the end, the boy collapsed in tears. The woman took the child in her arms, and the man placed a paternal hand on the woman’s shoulder. They bowed to effusive applause.

  When the lights rose, I stayed in my place to scan the seats and stage below. The drone of leaving settled into silence. For the briefest instant, I thought I heard a sharp chirp and saw a small face peek through the closed curtains. My skin burned as my blood chilled.

  Oh, I wanted no reminder of a bizarre occurrence from the previous summer involving a light-haired child only I appeared to be able to see. A peculiar, peeping little orphan named Harmyn who spoke of things that couldn’t be known. Descendants and survivors, that name is familiar to you, and there will be more to say in due time.

  As everyone left, I finished the last sips of wine, grateful for the soft drowsiness and blunted thoughts. The usher who discovered me suppressed a smile when he placed the almost empty bottle on a tray. He was close to my age, comely, a scar on his temple, his hands hidden in white gloves.

  “Do you finish what’s left?” I asked as I stood with a sway.

  “That’s not allowed, Miss,” he said.

  “Yes, but do you?” I asked, goading him.

  He raised his eyebrow and smiled so conspiratorially, I wanted to abandon all good sense and kiss him, although I’d never kissed anyone.

  “If ever there’s a drop left in this box or the King’s, Miss,” he replied.

  “It tasted of smoke and cherries,” I said.

  He tilted the bottle to read the label. “And rain. Among his favorites, this one.”

  We wished each other good evening. I walked home. I took the main routes. It was so late, I watched a news-speaker lock his box and place the evening’s reports in a nearby bin. He tipped his hat as he crossed my path.

  FEBRUARY /36

  FEWMANY’S MELODIC WHISTLE ANNOUNCED HIS approach and his rap-rap, rap-rap prepared me for his entry. I stood next to my seat, the fire searing my back.

  He laid his top hat on the cabinet next to a narcissus bouquet. Sleek sable cuffs and a collar trimmed his black coat. Pinned on the chest was a red rose crafted in enamel. He set a package wrapped in linen on the table’s edge near me. “Unbound printed text, hand-colored copper etchings in gruesome anatomical detail. We are nightmares under the skin.”

  “Did you place your mark?” I asked.

  “Ah, no,” he said, reaching for my pen and ink. I unwrapped the book and counted to find the center page.

  “I’ve been needled with inquiries regarding the solitary woman who sat in my balcony some weeks hence,” he said as he wrote his initials on the first page.

  “I wished to be inconspicuous,” I said, but did not add I found it entertaining to be a mystery.

  “Speculation was easily squelched once I revealed you to be my archivist and my right-hand man’s daughter. What a curiosity you are, watchful as an owl, fleeting as a mouse, solitary as a cat.”

  “Such qualities serve me well,” I said.

  “But there were two tickets,” he said.

  “I know.” Fewmany’s silence begged for, if not required, an explanation. “Circumstances are such that my friends are away studying or traveling abroad.”

  “A paucity of those with whom to consort,” he said.

  “My father would have been pleased to accompany me, but he’s been traveling, as you know.”

  “A paternal chaperone at your age seems, dare I say, unfashionable.”

  I pressed my spectacles against my face with a splayed hand. I willed the color to bleed out from my cheeks. When I looked at him, I could tell he was trying not to grin. “Yes, sir.”

  “A good, virtuous lass,” he said. Fewmany finished his task and left the text where it was. “Next week, several guests will be coming for dinner. Two visiting lecturers and actors with a traveling play who are in Rothwyke through the month. Please, do join us.”

  “I’m grateful for the invitation, but I recall I have plans those evenings,” I said. The refusal was impulse as much as instinct, which had little to do with Fewmany. Ever since I was a child, I’d hid when I could, even from my closest friends. The thought of a dinner at the manor among strangers, oh dread!

  Before he could reply, his Tell-a-Bell released its tinktinktinktinktink into his ear.

  “I’ll have Naughton give you the exact date and time, should there be a cancellation. You are most welcome. Good day,” he said, then began to list his toll of to-dos as he left the library.

  I VACILLATED FOR DAYS WHETHER TO go. Fearing if I went, I’d fail at the etiquette, I searched the library for an appropriate book. Finding none, I purchased the latest edition of Mrs. Swope’s Primer for Proper Ladies. I skimmed the whole and memorized the chapter on dinner parties. Once again, my curiosity proved stronger than my trepidation, so I attended.

  Once there, I discovered little of what I read applied. We did gather for introductions and beverages served by a footman, but instead of the parlor, this occurred in a first-floor room which was always locked, filled with paintings and sculptures. With ease, Fewmany moved among his guests, and from their expressions and laughter, clearly they found him charming. From the way two women looked at him, I believe they thought him alluring, even handsome.

  When Naughton called us for the meal, the ladies were not paired with escorts to dinner, there seemed to be no attention to rank or status in the seating, and even though Mrs. Swope instructed that no lady should take wine at dinner—lest it lead to sullied cheeks and reputation—the ladies did. Fewmany gave me a teasing look when I accepted a glass during the meal. I dared not say in front of everyone I’d recently acquired a taste for it.

  I would not have spoken much, if at all, if Fewmany hadn’t stated I was his “keeper of tales” and a scholar of myth and folklore. During most of the dinner, I listened to him and the other guests. I hoped Admiral Linville would give a more invigorated lecture than his dinner conversation indicated, or the audience might want to find themselves drowned at sea. His wife seemed inured of his pontifications as she nodded and took frequent drams from her wineglass. Professor Perch, a theologist, spoke on reincarnation, the belief one lives, dies, and is reborn again and again. As I’d never heard of this, I intended to search the library for a book to learn more. The four visiting actors were comical, especially Miss Sawyer and Mr. Billings, seated to my left and right, who told of their adventures.

  During the main course—venison, of which I could eat only morsels—Miss Sawyer asked about my studies. As a child, she had adored fairy tales, and the enticement of make-believe was what led her to the theater.

  “What we were told in the familiar ones are tame compared to their sources,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The stories were changed. The tales borrow from older, far more primal roots. It was parlor entertainment at the court of Ilsace, and others, to create new tales. Also, there have been scholars of a sort who’ve recorded the lore told at firesides and in remote villages, only to sanitize what was spoken,” I said.

  “In what way?” Mr. Billings asked.

  “In the old lore, far worse than fairy tales, there’s unspeakable violence and cruelty. If a slipper doesn’t fit, toes and heels are cut off. Children aren’t abandoned because there’s no food; they become the food. The wicked stepmothers in the tales we know—they are instead true mothers without compassion or remorse. And awakening kisses and bedchamber visits, well, all is not so innocent,” I said.

  I glanced up to see the guests’ eyes on me, from Mrs. Linville’s offended squint to Fewmany’s wide amusement.

  Mr. Billings flourished his napkin, left his chair, and draped an imaginary garment across Miss Sawyer’s shoulders. “Stand, Little Red Cape, you must fetch your basket to take to Grandmother’s house.”

  She clasped her hands under her chin and batted her lashes. “Oh, but isn’t it dangerous for a girl to go alone through the dark woods?”

  “Let us
find out,” he said, smiling to expose his teeth.

  Then and there, the two gave a hilarious bawdy improvisation of a tale everyone knew well. I tried not to blush as I imagined Mr. Billings at my neck instead of Miss Sawyer’s when he declared “all the better to eat you with.”

  They bowed as we clapped at the end. The actors took their seats. Spirits remained light through the remainder of the evening. When I returned to my little apartment, I didn’t mind the cold. I was warmed by something I hadn’t enjoyed in months—laughter.

  MARCH /36

  Yourself and a guest, if you wish, are cordially invited to attend the Masquerade Ball to take place at the manor of Fewmany on the evening of 1 May.

  Guests must be masked before they arrive and remain so until they depart from the event.

  Carriages will be offered at the end of the evening for those who require them.

  All due confidentiality regarding this invitation and whatever occurs that evening is obligated.

  The honor of a reply is requested.

  I accepted. Only a magnificent costume would do, so I went to see Margana the seamstress. She asked how much I wished to spend. Her eyebrows raised when I told her the amount, which I assured her I could pay. Again, Margana asked to create a design of my behalf. Again, I agreed.

  The silver I’d saved from my wages would have paid her in full, but I knew I had another means to cover her fee.

  The day I planned to go to Father’s for a visit—and to get what I needed—I received the last response from the high academies to which I’d applied. So, I had news to share along with my errand.

  Over tea, I told Father, “I’ve heard from the academies. Six rejections, two waiting lists, Erritas and Goram.”

  I expected him to be terribly disappointed, as he’d been the previous year.

  “I’m sorry, Secret. How do you feel about it?”

  My stomach twinged at his tone, inquisitive more than sympathetic. Father, although he had always been attentive in his own way, was rarely so direct. Neither was I, but I gave a frank reply. “I’m conflicted. I want to attend high academy, a prestigious one, and Erritas would be excellent, if I’m admitted. But I do enjoy my work and have evenings to read whatever I wish, and my experience as an archivist has as much worth as a conferred degree.”

  “Then there’s nothing to do but wait to see if either opens a seat,” he said.

  I agreed, then excused myself to go upstairs to find a book—that’s what I claimed—I’d put in storage.

  I guessed, rightly, that the old faded blue chest with the painted animals was still where I’d left it. No dust coated the floor or baseboards. Elinor continued to clean it as a room even though Father had begun to encroach with his boxes of documents, books, and ephemera. Several were stacked in the far corner opposite the windows.

  When I knelt next to the chest, I paused. The memory of how the gold came into my mother’s possession rushed back.

  She received the ingots as payment to attempt an arcane manuscript’s translation. The messenger had assured her the compensation was to try, implying more was to come if she succeeded. Nearly a year after my mother’s death, the same messenger appeared to ask about the manuscript. I had no idea where it was, or, at the time, where the ingots were. The messenger said there was no concern about the gold, but certainly for the manuscript.10

  Eventually I searched for the text. The box in which it had been delivered was stored in the third floor’s garret, but the text itself was gone. The gold ingots, the clue, and the cipher were all I had in my possession.

  The chest’s lock broke when I turned the key. I cursed under my breath. I shoved the nesting dolls aside, slipped the cipher into the folklore book, and reached for the ingots. I rationalized the gold I’d use for my costume was compensation for the trouble my mother had caused me. She died and left me responsible for something of which I wanted no part. If, or when, I found the manuscript, I told myself, I would return it to its rightful owner, and if the ingots came into question, I’d address the problem then.

  I’d dropped the gold into my pocket and was reaching for the folklore book when Father’s hand grabbed it first. As he lifted it, the spine opened, the pages spread, and the cipher fell to the ground. His grasp was faster than mine. He held the book in one hand, the cipher in the other. I blanched as he tucked the latter in the book’s corner, balanced the spine in his palm, and turned the pages.

  “I remember this!” he said. “Now, what was the name of the town? Far from your mother’s village. Regardless, I found it in a small bookshop. Three attempts to identify a language we both spoke, and the clerk managed to convey it was printed in their native one. Local folklore. The rarest of finds.”

  I’d studied the illustrations when I was a child, but she never read any of the stories to me. She never shared Father’s appreciation for wonder and whimsy.

  He whisked the cipher away before he handed the book to me. My pulse sped to full gallop. “What’s this?” he asked.

  Father’s eyes glanced at it before I snatched it from his hand. “Some old thing I made at one of those summer activities I attended. You remember. I took botany once, and woodblock printing, among others.”

  “You did enjoy those classes,” he said.

  Sweat dampened my palms. How I wanted to hide the cipher—and stem the rush of memory of those summers, those school-day afternoons, Cyril appearing to no one else’s witness to lead me to the woods, to Old Woman. Father never suspected; neither of my parents ever knew.

  “You’re pale. Are you feeling sick?” he asked.

  I wedged the cipher between the book’s pages. “I’m fine. I have what I came for.”

  “Have you been eating well enough? Do I need to send Elinor to help at last? Or have you simply been staying up too late reading?”

  “You know how I adore my books,” I said.

  I’m not sure he believed me, but he didn’t pry any more. By fortune, he asked nothing about the cipher.

  I stayed through dinner and allowed him to escort me home. When he lingered to chat with the Misses Acutt, I went up to my apartment alone. After I changed into my nightclothes, I stared at the cipher—two concentric circles mounted at the center of a square of paper.11

  Outside of the larger circle were twenty-three small drawings, among them a flower, a boat, a wheel. Along the perimeter of that circle were the letters of my native language’s alphabet, three missing. Through a triangular window in the smaller circle, I read the letters of an unknown alphabet—or code—used in the arcane manuscript.

  As I turned the circles, I pondered the meaning of the only clue my mother seemed to give me: “A map is to space as an alphabet is to sound.” Two years after she died, I found the cipher. Even then, I was baffled that she’d had the forethought to create it, as if she knew she wouldn’t live to translate the text. I told no one but Nikolas about the cipher and my realization. Neither of us could say aloud what it meant if an accident had not ended her life.

  Resentment seeped into my blood like a quick poison. I shoved the folklore book and the cipher to the bottom of my wardrobe, wondering why I couldn’t bring myself to burn the cipher and be done.

  BY EARLY SPRING, FEWMANY AND I had attained a comfortable rapport. That is, my trepidation about him dissipated, and his occasional visits to the library—to deliver an acquisition, return something he’d finished reading—ceased to agitate my nerves. Our conversations were brief, kept to inquiries about the catalog and usual pleasantries, but now and then, we would talk of books we’d found interesting.

  When he invited me to a dinner with him and his book dealer, my impulse to decline reared itself but wasn’t indulged. I had enjoyed the prior evenings in his, and his guests’, company. As well, I was curious to meet William “Quire” Remarque. His correspondence with Fewmany provided information about new acquisitions as well as critiques of eateries in several kingdoms, detailed weather reports, and intrigue within their book-collecting
circle.

  Fewmany gave due warning that Remarque would “make a memorable impression.” Fewmany did not overstate.

  Naughton led me to the chamber of moving marvels when I arrived. As Fewmany made the introduction, I studied his guest. Remarque had a hirsute nimbus of silvery-brown curls and fleecy sidechops, truly piercing blue eyes, and a red speckled nose. He wore a black tailcoat and matching trousers, brocaded vest of orange chevrons, and gray-striped cravat. His boots were scarred, not scuffed. His Ilsacean accent failed to soften his blaring voice. I thought he might be somewhat deaf, but no. At dinner, we were not once asked to repeat ourselves. He appeared to be an insatiable gossip—the things he told Fewmany, in front of me—and a connoisseur of fine spirits.

  Dinner was rousing. How Remarque managed to swallow and talk simultaneously was a biological phenomenon. His animation elicited stifled smiles among the footmen, and even Naughton barely suppressed a laugh at an extraordinarily lewd joke. Proper young lady that I was supposed be, I almost burst from trying to contain my appalled but genuine amusement.

  Remarque entertained my inquiries about his work, and he asked of mine. We three discussed whether the penny serials sullied the appetites of an ever-growing reading public and foretold of the demise of books as we knew them.

  Then at dessert, Remarque held his fourth? fifth? glass of wine against his stained lips and stared at me. “Doesn’t she so remind you of her mother?”

  My jaw locked in mid-chew. A needle of betrayal burrowed under my skin. Fewmany had mentioned no such connection before.

  “At times, yes,” Fewmany said. He set his jeweled eyes on me.