A Fugitive Truth (4 page)

Harry nodded. “And it’s a problem we take seriously.” He paused thoughtfully, then suddenly changed the subject. “In terms of conservation, most of the volumes here are in good shape, but we’ll let you know if you need to wear gloves, to keep the damage from body oils and cosmetics down to a minimum. Actually, if you could refrain from using hand creams or perfumes, that would be a big help. There are a few very rare volumes that we will have to get out of the vault, and if you need one of those, you will have to use it in my office or Sasha’s, for security reasons.” He glanced over at me, and I thought I recognized tentative approval. “But you’ve done this sort of thing before, of course.”

“Oh, yes.” I was relieved that Harry saw that I was a member of this club.

“It’s nice not to have to explain why we can’t let you go romping through the stacks. Too many of our Fellows think that they should be allowed. But we have some terribly valuable things, and it’s just not possible.” He paused and looked around. “What am I forgetting?” He ran down the regulations about photocopying, the hours the library was open, and the rest of the infrastructural details. “Let’s go up to the manuscript section and I’ll show you where you’ll be working.”

I followed him upstairs, thinking about how most people view librarians; they are usually caricatured as stern old creatures out of touch with the rest of the world and with a need for control so great that it drives them to suck the life out of the fun of using a library. The worst librarians act like dragons sitting on a golden hoard, resenting you for threatening to disturb their carefully ordered world. With the best librarians, the sort I so often had a chance to encounter professionally—well, the concern with control was still there, but it was mitigated by their understanding that the care of the books was important but, that theoretically speaking, the books were worthless unless they were used. The good ones try to find out how to facilitate your work while still caring for their charges.

Upstairs was a room of the same size as those below, but differently partitioned. The reading area was similar, but in addition to the small office in the back, I could see a small laboratory to one side. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a fume hood and a sink and a couple of work surfaces. A collection of brown chemical bottles sat on a shelf, along with cases of distilled water. I knew that distilled water was often used to clean paper during its conservation. Harry noticed my interest.

“We are lucky enough to have what we need to do some conservation and repairs to the books right here. We are equipped to do most anything short of rebinding, but at the moment, there’s no one who is skilled enough to do more than the basics.”

“Is that you, Harry?” said a muffled woman’s voice. “I’m still worried about the Whitehead—”

“Ah, here’s Sasha Russo, our manuscript librarian.” Harry was looking over my shoulder and smiling broadly. “Sash, come say hello to Emma Fielding.”

Sasha was stooping by a trolley full of books and had been sorting them when she called him. At the mention of her name, she stood up to introduce herself. And stood up, and up, and up. No wonder Harry was smiling; Sasha’s legs ended on her about where my ears start on me.

It just wasn’t fair. Oh, sure, she was wearing a pair of glasses with thick black frames, a lavender twin set and tweedy brown skirt, and had her hair up in a tight bun. But the sweater looked like it was covering a partial relief map of the Rockies, the hem of the skirt struggled to stay demurely at the tops of her knees, and the glasses looked like a fashion photographer had just decided that smart was chic and stuck them on the pouting face of his latest supermodel creation. And that hair; gold with coppery glints that reminded men why Jason sought the golden fleece, and that was the sole object of every woman who ever tangled with a home bleach kit. Sasha Russo was a manuscript librarian trapped in the body of a Viking goddess.

I’d taken particular care with my appearance that morning and had flattered myself that I looked not only professional and presentable but a little sexy, in a kinky, Edwardian sort of way. Suddenly I felt short, squat, brown, and dull, a toad standing next to a tulip. I consoled myself with the thought that she was probably a bubble-headed miracle of plastic surgery and Aqua Net, with minor talents for alphabetizing and walking away.

“Hi, I’m Sasha Russo,” she said, offering me a hand that was strong and delicate at the same time. “I’m so pleased to meet you, I’ve been telling Harry that it’s long past time that someone with real credentials came to work with the Chandler diary. Margaret Chandler’s historically been given such short shrift, and so when I read your proposal, I was convinced that you’d be the one to finally do her justice. Welcome.”

I never knew how much of a toad I could feel like until I heard her kind words. “Uh, thanks,” I croaked.

“Has Harry told you about our surprise yet?” Sasha could barely contain herself, she was so excited, but of course her voice and Harry’s never broke a whisper.

“Surprise?” I looked puzzled at Harry, then Sasha.

“I thought I’d leave that to you, Sash,” Harry answered.

She beamed at both of us. “When we learned that you were interested in the Chandler journal, we checked the rest of the holdings to see if there was anything else you would find useful. And what do you think we found?”

Harry interrupted. “
You
found, Sasha. Don’t give me any of the credit.”

“Nonsense. It’s a joint effort, Harry. Always.”

I caught a fond glance as it was exchanged between them; as far as they were concerned, they were all alone at that moment. Okay, there was definitely something going on here. “You’re killing me with the suspense.”

“Letters.” The manuscript librarian was practically exploding with delight. “We found part of Madam Chandler’s correspondence to a cousin in London. They were collected just recently, in England, and it’s clear they’re hers!”

I could barely believe what she was saying. “You’ve got them
here
? Now? For
me
?”

“We do indeed! There is a
tiny
bit of work to be done on them,” she backpedaled, in the face of her obligation to the manuscripts. “They should have been put into acid-free folders and catalogued immediately after they came to Shrewsbury. But they weren’t and so I need to deal with some mildew before it gets out of hand, but there’s little harm done. A bit of foxing, some small tears. Speaking of work,” she turned to Harry, “I still can’t find the Whitehead manuscript.”

“I’ve found it, I’ll get it for you,” Harry replied.

“Great!” Sasha was clearly relieved.

Harry explained to me. “Unfortunately, we’re still sorting out things since my immediate predecessor. He was a bit careless in terms of tracking his acquisitions and deaccessioning. He came in at a time—years ago—when the library was still being treated too casually as a private collection, at a time when the family still thought it was a bit of a lark to have a good library, but not a responsibility.” He frowned. “It can be a real problem, to have someone come to study documents that were sold five years ago, but we’re getting things in order—”

“He left things in a muddle,” Sasha agreed vehemently. “It seems to get worse the more we work on it, and I’m beginning to wonder if he didn’t liberate a few things on his way out.”

“Sasha—”

“I know, but I can’t see any reason in not asking—”

Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I broke in as gracefully as I could. “If I could just get set up someplace—?”

The two librarians looked at me and burst out laughing. They managed to convey their mirth almost noiselessly.

“Of course, you want to get started!” Sasha said.

“I’ll see you later, Emma.” Harry left.

Sasha led me to a carrel. “Why don’t you settle in here, and I’ll get you Madam Chandler.” A loud, metallic, grating noise from outside overrode her words. “Oh, drat, we’re still at the mercy of the workmen out there,” she informed me. “Repairing the grout or something, in the walls.”

“Mortar?”

“That’s it, it’s a mess and a racket and there’s been problems with the fire alarms with all their digging around. Poor Harry’s been dragged out of bed several times this month when the alarm’s gone off in the middle of the night—but you don’t need to be worried about all that.” She put the annoyance aside and got back to business. “Now there may be a few other folks in and about. We have scholars who visit for a day and a couple of interns to help with the cataloguing and such. And usually Dr. Faith Morgan is up here too, but she’s in Boston for a few days. She’s been studying some rare examples of Antebellum fiction, doing wonderful stuff on the nature of expressed emotion. With such an interesting topic, you’d think she’d be a little more…a little less…you know, more of a people person. I mean, she and Harry get on famously, there’s no denying that—”

Something in Sasha’s voice changed and her face went red. I was certain that there was at least a little possessive jealousy at play here.

“—and I know the interns are fascinated, she strikes them all as rather mysterious, but she doesn’t make much effort with the rest of us. When she does, it’s almost like she’s trying to push buttons, trying to manipulate you.” Suddenly, Sasha realized that she was speaking out of turn again, and a moment hung awkwardly between us so that when her phone rang, she was eager to excuse herself. “I’ll bring the journal when I get done. I’ll be real quick, I promise.”

Her description of Dr. Morgan’s project rang a bell with me, but I couldn’t remember why. I was too distracted by the length of time that it took Sasha to come back out with the diary—she was taking forever! Eventually she emerged with my book and a slip of paper. “Sorry about that, my phone. It was the director, Evert Whitlow. He likes to have the new Fellows for lunch the first day, but he won’t be able to see you until Wednesday.”

“Okay, thanks.” I paused, not quite certain how to bring up the question I had on my mind. “Dr. Morgan’s work sounds familiar to me. Where does she teach?”

“Out in California somewhere, I think.” She flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…before…you know, some people are just easier to get…and she…just…” Sasha paused, still holding the diary and apparently reconsidering what she was going to say. Finally, she put the Chandler volume down in front of me. “Well, here’s the journal. Good luck. I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”

All other thoughts fled as I was left alone with my treasure. I moved the journal so that it was perfectly square on the desk before me and examined it as an object for a moment. What would it tell me about its former owner? Already it was more than I expected: So many diaries were simply sheets of paper sewn together with a little cardboard cover pasted on the end pages, simple recordings of the quotidian facts of a life, sometimes only a list of visitors or chores. This one already struck me as different. It was about eight inches long and six wide, with a faded blue leather cover, leafy vines outlining its edge, tooled in gold leaf that still shone. Although the corners of the book were dog-eared and browned with age, the cover and endpapers were clean of mildew and other decay. The only problem was that the pages were a little loose within the binding: there was no way that I could photocopy the journal without damaging it further, if in fact Shrewsbury allowed photocopying of bound volumes. That didn’t matter so much, as I would have to transcribe it into my notebook computer anyway.

Taking a deep breath, as if I were about to plunge from the high board, I opened to the first page.

It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the eighteenth-century handwriting, but the first of my several fears was allayed: Madam Chandler wrote with a beautifully clear hand. It would be a pleasure to read this elegant script, and I knew that my work would go so much faster than if I had to contend with poor penmanship. I read the superscript at the top of the page, the once-black ink faded to blurred brown, but still legible:

Margaret Amalie Chase Chandler, her IIId Booke,

Begun this Year of Grace 1723

Stone Harbour, Massachusetts

Since it is possible that thou mayst

depart from Life this very Moment,

regulate every Act and Thought accordingly.

A flood of ideas cascaded through my head even before I finished reading that heading. Her middle name suggested the possibility that Margaret might be part French; the date, I remembered, correlated with the first year of her husband’s tenure as justice in the courts in Stone Harbor and Boston; and she herself must have been in her early twenties at the time. Even as I was digesting this morsel, gooseflesh ran down my spine and arms as I realized that this was the
third
volume of her journal—was it possible that the others still existed? A whole series? Hold on a second, Emma, don’t go looking for more, when you haven’t even read one page of this one!

But the epigram dragged me back to the miracle of this book. I had no idea who had written the quote, but it sounded classical to me. The thing that kept my heart racing was that it was the sort of thing you’d see in a man’s journal—it was extremely rare for women to know the classics, even in translation. She was very well read indeed, if she was familiar with the Greek and Latin writers. Margaret Chase’s family was rich, but not aristocratic—I had learned from her husband Matthew’s documents that her father was a merchant. And it wasn’t yet fashionable in Europe for even wellborn women to be so educated. And the tone of the epigram was so strongly religious, that told me a lot about her as well. This was going to be a trip. I could tell it would be an adventure to learn about this woman’s life.

I closed my eyes and said a little prayer to Saint Helena, the patron saint of archaeologists, before I looked at the first entry:

May 29/This morning took into service Nora, a little blacke Wenche…

That slowed me down a second. The name Nora suggested Irish, while black…of course. It was taking me a minute to acclimate to the idiom of the time. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, black or white generally referred to hair rather than skin color. And her spelling, rather than being condemned for its irregularity, would have been praised for its creativity. I continued to read: