The Plague Diaries

by Ronlyn Domingue

  “Trained as you are to mind these subtleties,” he said.

  “Meaning is malleable,” I said as I studied the paper’s texture.

  “But fact is fact.”

  “As long as there’s proof.”

  “Which has its own mutability.” His eyebrow lifted with a goading tilt, and he smirked with good humor. Had I parried back, we would have bantered. He was in a sparring mood, one I’d come to anticipate and enjoy since the dinners I’d had among his guests and with him alone.

  “The one you’re holding is for my collection,” he said. “The one on the table is for your father. The exhaustive annotations and closing analysis might well render him apoplectic with glee.”

  “You’ve been subjected to one of his half-delirious speeches.”

  “ ’Tis good for a man’s blood to have something to pursue. Regardless, this volume shall, with luck, help him in his efforts.”

  I detected a restraint in him. I assumed he wished not to show an open affection for my father, which touched me. When he looked up, his expression was earnest, instead hinting of practical matters.

  “Blood. Pursuit. What’s this?” Remarque asked, handing the waywiser to Fewmany.

  “My father believes he has an ancestral link to a noble family who had power before The Mapmaker’s War. He’s in a perpetual search to prove it,” I said.

  “Luck be with him. A thousand years since then, much has been lost to fire and purgings, assuming good records were kept at all,” Remarque said.

  Remarque walked away to help himself to another drink. As I set aside the book, I remembered the lecture I attended with Father when I was in my sixth school year. What bored me had invigorated him. The visiting scholar spoke on the topic of subtle inconsistencies found in the old handwritten chronicles.

  Suddenly, the waywiser’s noise grew faint. My eyelids drooped. As my body demanded sleep, my memory swirled among three moments.

  At the lecture, sketching circles with dark intersections, which became not links but gaps.

  The shiny pair of scissors that cut my hair and the drawing of a symbol from a dream.

  The arcane manuscript’s brown-red script and the name, Ee-fah, which pealed like a bell in my blood.

  “Take this seat,” I heard Fewmany say.

  His hand gripped my shoulder—the touch protective, but touch nonetheless—and guided me to the nearest chair. A glass of water appeared. I stared at the ring on his hand, the gem round and red as a drop of blood.

  “You were swaying as if you were about to faint,” Fewmany said.

  Remarque sloshed three glasses on the table. “Perhaps I should drink what I served you.”

  “No, please pass it here,” I said as I reached for the sherry.

  “You look flushed,” Fewmany said.

  “Fewmany, I’m all right. Thank you,” I said, glancing up at him, the rough scar under his jaw and chin visible. I took a sip and shut my eyes.

  Why those memories, why in that moment? My body ached the way it had during the rupture when I held the bronze cogwheel. I suppressed a groan of dread another might be coming.

  “Hair of the dog, Miss Riven,” Remarque said with his glass raised. “I’m told you’re not going to high academy.”

  “I declined. I like my position here, and at night, I can study whatever I wish. I can always apply again.”

  He scratched furiously at his sidechops and some remote location obscured by the table. “Of course. It’s not as if you’d have to endure a trial as your mother did.”

  “Quire—” Fewmany said with a tone of warning.

  Not again, I thought. I should have said No, sir or something else to thwart what came next, because he must have taken some cue from my silence when Remarque told me,

  “Her admittance was quite nearly denied. She had no formal schooling, word spread on that, and nevertheless a prodigy of languages, but the trouble was she was a woman. She took a written test to prove her skills, but those in charge didn’t believe a woman could possess—my pun intended there—such talent. Being men of knowledge as opposed to superstition, they assumed she hid something, rather than that she was a witch. So, the head professors held a meeting, and she was forced to bare herself to prove she wasn’t a man.”

  “How did you learn this?” I asked.

  “A professor, or two, or three, told someone who told another. Boys will be boys, even after the fur has grown in.” He chuckled.

  “What a boor you are,” Fewmany said.

  I reached for my drink again, missed the grip, and splashed it on the table. I remembered again what she said at dinner only days before she died, “Mind what is spilled, girl, and watch it doesn’t spread.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “How clumsy I am this evening.”

  Fewmany found a cloth on the beverage cart and draped it over the puddle.

  “Some respect for the dead, Quire,” Fewmany said.

  “I meant no offense. Oh, Miss Riven, have I upset you? My apologies! Bygones, yes? In the end, she eclipsed everyone, students and professors, and made an excellent reputation for herself. In my case, I failed most of my courses that first year and didn’t return. I am more adept with books and manuscripts as objects rather than subjects.”

  For me, the night ended soon after. Remarque bid me a warm farewell. Fewmany rang for a carriage and waited with me. He asked if Remarque had disturbed me terribly—no, not terribly—and said Remarque’s frankness suffered from a lack of couth but shouldn’t be construed as malicious.

  Fewmany was quite tender with me. Of course he assumed Remarque’s anecdote had saddened me more than it did. In truth, what Remarque said helped to explain the hardness in her—that invisible wall no one but Father ever seemed to scale.

  DIARY ENTRY 13 JULY /36

  As I enjoyed Mrs. Woodman’s cinnamon buns for a late treat, I heard it again. The last few evenings, downstairs, shouting and slamming—twice, the door, and pounding footsteps—then whimpering. That is Julia because after these episodes, Lucas yells as if he’s playing a rough game alone. What Mrs. Elgin did after Mr. Elgin grew quiet or left, I could only imagine. She neither quieted the boy nor comforted the girl.

  So I huddled on my bed, the carved stag clutched between my hands, as I thought, one doesn’t know what misery hides behind a door or pleasant expression.

  A terrible dread has seized upon me. All I want to do is lie down and slip into the breathless black, where I feel safe, calm, disappeared.

  Later: the most vivid dream.

  A haze of light crossed my closed eyes. I thought it was dawn. With lids half-closed, I tried to stand, but my body wouldn’t comply.

  Trees whispered with the night wind. An owl cried from a high branch. A swirling buzz circled my ears, and spots whirled around me. Bees, away from their hive. This frightened me because they shouldn’t be out in the middle of the night. Something had disturbed them.

  The woods crackled. A large animal approached. I trembled but couldn’t move. Under my fear, I hoped if I had to die, the beast was quick to kill.

  “You are far from home,” a man said.

  He moved into the moon’s light to reveal himself, crouched like a bear. His hair and beard were white. A red cap topped his crown. He reached his arm toward me.

  “Drink,” he said.

  I accepted the bladder. Water, cold and fresh.

  “I know who you are, but why don’t you tell me your name,” he said.

  I couldn’t choose among the ones that came to mind and so I remained silent.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

  I nodded. I did, although I had never met him. Nikolas had mentioned him to me several times when we were children.

  Old Man took my hands in his strong palms. His skin shifted, unmoored by age. He held me with tenderness and patience, with love. My bones and muscles relaxed; my breath came full and steady.

  Then he released me without warning. He flicked the tip of my nose, hard.
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  A hot expansive pressure filled the center of my body. I shook with the violence which streamed into my limbs. I went blind for a moment, intoxicated by what consumed me. He trapped my wrists together.

  “Yes, feel it. Feel what has been neglected and starving. Feed it on its loss. Feed it on its need. And when it’s full, tell me, where does the rage go, child?” he asked. His thumbs scratched across the insides of my wrists. “Here?” He grabbed me round the neck. “Or here?” One hand suspended close to my chest and the other pressed against my forehead. “Or here, where the poison eats from the inside out?”

  With force, I knocked his arms away. I hoped he was hurt.

  He laughed, dark and knowing. “Yes. The rage could go there. The strike felt good, didn’t it? Good enough to want more.”

  I glared at him as I nodded.

  Old Man took my left hand. “What you feel is power. It can be hate and become love. Rage to become compassion. Know this: Peace leads to greater peace. Violence leads to greater violence. If you fall in the water, the whole river knows it from your ripple, no matter how small the splash.”

  I stared at his hand. I remained inert, caught between the urge to pull away and the wish for him to hold on. My eyelids were leaden with the need for sleep.

  “The time is coming to bring the pieces together,” Old Man said.

  I awoke with a startle and stared at the ceiling until my heart stopped pounding. When I turned over, I saw a feather tucked under the carved stag on my night table. I know I neither found that feather nor put it there.

  AUGUST /36

  SO—THIS IS HOW IT WAS found.

  Up in the gallery to store a book, I passed the esoterica shelves and noticed the floor was covered in silverfish, in greater numbers than I’d seen months prior in the same place.

  I opened the doors to the shelves and cabinets. Several insects scurried from a lower-corner cabinet. On my hands and knees, I pulled out the manuscripts, looking for chewed edges and crumbs. Little evidence showed they’d feasted there. As I returned the manuscripts to their places, wondering where the silverfish lived, I paused to glance at one text from the middle of the stack.

  Minuscule handwriting, strange alphabet, thin paper, single pages stacked.

  The arcane manuscript.

  Shaking, I took it to my table to study. I couldn’t discern a single mark except for Fewmany’s neat fm on the usual pages. Aside from a few nibbled notches, the manuscript was in fine condition, as it had been when my mother received it.

  Cold dread trickled down the back of my neck.

  I’d found the manuscript at last.

  That Fewmany had it in his library—how was that possible?

  I stayed so late, Naughton came in to see if he’d been mistaken whether Fewmany and I had a dinner scheduled. No, we didn’t, but I told him to send up Fewmany because I had something to discuss.

  An hour later, Fewmany came in whistling. His good mood didn’t sour when I mentioned the silverfish.

  Then I showed him the manuscript. “I found it when I tried to locate them. I’ve never seen writing like this. How did you acquire it?” I asked.

  He turned the pages. “Oh, this. Your father gave it to me.”

  I pressed my toes into my shoes so hard, I thought I’d break my joints. “When?”

  “Four, five years ago. Bren said he found it among your mother’s effects—peace be to the dead—and assumed it belonged to me. I said it did not. His attempt to identify an owner was unsuccessful,” Fewmany said.

  “He didn’t think it was hers?”

  “No. He assumed it had long been in her possession, unclaimed, and gave it to me knowing I’d appreciate the curiosity.”

  “What did you think of it?”

  Fewmany tidied the stack and pushed the manuscript away. “Unusual. Such a delicate paper. The writing meticulous. There are few corrections on the pages, as I recall, and the writing compared to nothing I’ve seen either.”

  “And you stored it away with no other inquiry?”

  “Of course not. I sent a copied page to several high academies and a few pages to Quire. He and imminent scholars agreed with my belief it’s written in a code.”

  “A code.”

  “Quire said the manuscript is worthless,” Fewmany said.

  In a glance, I searched his eyes, his face, his bearing for a hint that he withheld a detail or he lied. I detected neither. He had told me the truth as he knew it.

  “ ’Tis late. Would you like to join me for dinner?” he asked.

  “No, thank you. Cook provided an ample lunch today. I’ll return the manuscript to its place and be off.”

  “You may borrow it.”

  I had every intention to decline but said, “Perhaps I’ll show it to my father to see what he remembers.”

  Fewmany observed me for a moment, his lips slightly parted as if he weren’t sure of his next words. “Very well, then, my keeper of tales.”

  That evening, I studied the manuscript by lamplight. My palms ached when I touched it, as if my body understood something my mind couldn’t.

  Still, I was torn. I didn’t want the responsibility for it, but there it was—found. Although I’d imagined I would return it to the rightful owner and fantasized about burning it, I could do neither.

  The manuscript belonged to Fewmany now. I didn’t want to know what penalty I might face for losing or destroying what was his.

  As well, the very thought of trying to break the cipher nauseated me. A mystery I didn’t want to solve.

  Two evenings later, the seventeenth of August, I took the manuscript when I dined with Father. I planned to make light of the issue, not to provoke him into a fit of melancholy.

  He said he had cooked for us. Elinor was away for the evening with her daughter Bess, visiting from the village of Clyton. As I stirred the warming pot, I asked him to glance at what I’d left on the table. “I borrowed it from Fewmany. He said you gave it to him.”

  Father studied the pages. “Yes, I did. Not long after your mother died.”

  “Was it hers?”

  “I didn’t think it was. She wasn’t one to keep many possessions. I checked the log she kept and found an entry, but it listed no owner’s name. She had no other patrons then. I thought the manuscript was Fewmany’s. But the manuscript didn’t have his mark, which I knew was always there because your mother mentioned how appalling she found it.”

  “There are far more ostentatious ones than his. Regardless, did he claim it belonged to him?”

  “No. I gave it to him, then, as a gift.”

  “But where did you find it? I was the one who stored away her reference books and records,” I said.

  “It was on her table that day,” he said.

  “I don’t remember seeing it.”

  “I cleared some of what was there. There were documents for Fewmany Incorporated to return, one book of his, and that manuscript.”

  A hot rush flooded me. She had meant for me to find the manuscript, not Father. If I’d returned from school when I usually did—instead of taking that walk in the woods with Nikolas—what would I have seen? What Father said he found? My mother on the floor near her worktables, an empty bowl and a piece of bread, the furniture out of place as if violently moved. And the manuscript . . .

  I laid the plates of stew at our places, the old ochre bowl between us.

  “Why do you have the manuscript now?” Father asked.

  I faced him, the memory of a time before trying to escape from where I kept it buried—the scissors, the symbol—then smoothed away a tendril of hair. “I found it in the library. When Fewmany told me of its history, I was curious to ask what you knew.”

  “It’s a mysterious thing. I’m surprised he kept it. He told me it’s valueless,” he said.

  “He likes his oddities. It should belong to someone who can appreciate it,” I said.

  Father touched my hand when I reached for the salt cellar.

  “She would
have been proud of you, my scholarly pet,” he said.

  I forced a smile, for his sake.

  After dinner was done, I placed the arcane manuscript in my satchel and prepared to leave. Father saw me to the door. He opened his palm to reveal a treasure he bought from a peddler, a carved wooden bird with a forked tail, flakes of blue paint peeling from its back.

  “When I saw it, I thought of you, when you were a little girl, outside in the courtyard with your flowers and visiting birds,” he said.

  I was taken aback by the wetness in his eyes. Suspicious, too. I wondered what he meant by the gift but said nothing except thank you.

  I lay awake through much of the night trying to order my thoughts.

  The facts. The manuscript arrived. My mother was paid to attempt its translation. She asked for more time when the courier returned for it. She made a cipher and left in the folklore book. She died.

  The assumptions. She meant for me to find the manuscript on her table. The manuscript was written in code. Whatever the text contained, she thought it important enough to create a cipher. As for her death, she choked, as Father said, or she didn’t choke, or die by accident.

  The truth. She hated me. I hated her. And no matter what she left behind or what Old Woman said about the manuscript or what I was meant to do, I wanted no part of any of it.

  The next morning, I returned the manuscript. It could remain in Fewmany’s library forever, out of sight, out of mind, out of my hands.

  SEPTEMBER /36

  MY DIARY CONTAINED THREE SPARSE entries that September.

  On the ninth, “Charlotte is engaged. She wrote, ‘I’m too young to be a stepmother, evil or otherwise, but if I were to wait too much longer, I’d rot despite my purity! How exhilarating we may now hold hands and share a chaste kiss.’ Yes, what Nature urges and Nurture controls. No word from Muriel, but I’ve failed to keep up correspondence, too.”

  On the thirteenth, “Phantasmagoria! We guests entered a black tent in the ballroom. All went so dark, could hardly discern the outline of those nearby. Around us, a smoky mist, drifting voices, eerie music. Specters and beasts emerged and disappeared. Gasps and screams from the audience at what we saw—and what brushed against us, cloth, hands, breath! Two ladies fainted and one man required a splash of water. Stayed behind with Fewmany to learn how the tricks were done. Images painted on glass, lanterns, thin metal sheets (thunder!), mannequins, ropes and pulleys. How easily we are deceived.”