The Golden Specific (25 page)

“Why are we going to Granada?” Goldenrod asked.

“Sophia has an urgent mission there, and we cannot stay in Seville. You need not go with us.” Sophia gave him a look of admonishment. “In fact, now that we are clear of the house and immediate danger, you are welcome to leave at any time.”

Goldenrod, untroubled, did not flinch. “We are not out of danger.”

“We will be out of the city in fifteen minutes. As long as we do not encounter any others from the Order, we will have no difficulties.”

“I believe you will need my help.”

Errol snorted. “I don't see why.” He looked up briefly and
then held out his arm. Seneca, who had taken flight once they reached the patio, descended smoothly onto his leather-bound forearm.

“You may think you know this land better than I do,” Goldenrod replied calmly. “But believe me—I know it in ways you do not.”

Errol paused in his thoughts. That could be true, he realized. If she was Faierie, there were probably many things about her he did not yet know. “I suppose it would do no harm to have a Faierie on our side.”

“I am not a Faierie, any more than you”—she paused, glancing at Seneca—“are a falcon.” She fixed her brown eyes on Errol's. “But I understand how to you it must seem a likely explanation.”

“You may travel with us. But you must wear your hood and your gloves at all times. Your appearance will draw the suspicions of the clerics.”

Goldenrod did not reply.

They were reaching the city limits. The bells of the cathedral and all the churches tolled laudes, and already they sounded distant. Errol felt the first rush of heat as the sun began to warm Seville in earnest. “This will be a difficult first day,” he said, pausing where the last few houses gave way to scrubby grass and dusty olive trees. “We must walk at least as far as the first inn, and in less than an hour the sun will be scorching.” He held out a leather water sack to Sophia. “Drink. There are wells along the way.”

Sophia obligingly took a long drink of water and then
passed the sack to Goldenrod. She lifted it, turned her face upward, and with her mouth open poured water over her face and head. Errol watched her, eyebrows raised. “Faierie ways,” he murmured, shaking his head. He took the water sack back and tied it to his belt. “If we are approached by travelers on the road, let me speak to them. And if we see the Order approaching from either direction, get off the road and take what cover you can. They will meet a steel-tipped arrow of mine before they can come near us.” He stepped forward onto the dry road.

“Falcon ways,” Goldenrod said quietly.

 27 

Following the Mark

M
RS
. C
ULCUTTY
ENTERED
the parlor, carrying a tray loaded with tea things and a fair-sized cake. “Good afternoon, Charles,” she said with a smile. Though Mrs. Culcutty tended to be rather overprotective of Nettie, Charles had struck her from the first as a very amiable, polite young man. Most young men who visited Nettie were either wolfish fellows who took too many liberties or sheepish fellows who brought too many flowers. Charles was neither: while scrupulously proper in his behavior, he seemed pleased but not overawed in her company. When they visited together she could always hear them talking seriously, and that was a good thing. Dear Nettie had precious few moments of seriousness in her life.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Culcutty!” Theo replied, taking the heavy tray and placing it on the table. “How are you?”

“I am well, thank you, but my cousin across town is suffering from a summer cold, so I will be leaving shortly to see her.” She poured Nettie and Theo each a cup of Charleston tea.

“Oh, poor Agatha!” Nettie exclaimed. “You will take her your molasses remedy, won't you?”

“I certainly will. Mr. Culcutty is in the back mending the fence if you should need anything. I'll be back for supper.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Culcutty.” Nettie gave a sweet smile. She waited for the door to close. “Now,” she said, leaning forward, “tell me the rest.”

Theo shrugged. “There isn't much more to tell. There was nothing there. After a few minutes, they came outside, so I hopped the fence into the neighbor's yard.”

Nettie closed her eyes and chewed on a lock of hair. “Describe everything you remember from inside the shed. Everything.”

“A worktable with a lamp, a ball of twine, a watering can, and the pruning shears. Some tools in the corner.”

“Which tools?”

“A shovel. A couple rakes. Hand spade. Things like that.”

Nettie opened her eyes, scowling. “Charles, I said
everything
.”

“Well, I couldn't very well take notes, could I?”

She huffed with frustration. “What else?”

“Lots of empty pots, some of them broken.”

“What did the ball of twine look like?”

“What do you mean, what did it look like? A ball of twine.”

“Was it rolled tight, or was it loose, as if the twine had been used?”

Theo considered. “Loose. It had been used.”

“What was in the watering can?”

“I couldn't see.”

Nettie sat back with a sigh. “If you are right, and those shears had blood on them, then someone was hurt in that shed.”

“I don't doubt it. Problem is who.”

“It could be one of the missing Eerie—one of the Weatherers or Goldenrod.”

“Or it could be the man who brought her to the farm,” Theo put in. “Don't forget about him. If he was supposed to kill Goldenrod and he didn't, Broadgirdle wouldn't have been happy.”

“I haven't forgotten about him,” Nettie said pensively. “But I have another piece of evidence that you haven't seen yet.” She pulled a crumpled sheet of note paper from between the music books beside her. “Read this,” she said, handing it to Theo.

February 4, 1892

Goldenrod—

I have found the Weatherers. I have even seen them. Their situation is dire, and it requires either great force or great ingenuity. I am devising alternatives. Part of the obstacle lies in how visible the Mark is upon them: if I expose their captivity publicly, their appearance will invite suspicion in Boston. I fear the outcome would be disastrous, given the prejudice toward foreigners. The
solution must be stealthy, and I would welcome Eerie assistance. Further, I regret to say, they will be in need of your curative powers once they are freed.

They send you the enclosed rule. It seemed pressing.

—B

Theo had seen enough governmental paperwork in Shadrack's study to recognize the late prime minister's writing. “Where was this?” he asked.

“In one of the boxes of Bligh's papers,” Nettie said. She grimaced. “I was up all night reading.”

“What about the rule at the end?”

She shook her head. “This was mixed in with a lot of other documents. It's clearly the letter that brought Goldenrod to Boston. My guess is that she had it with her at the farm, and Bligh saved it once she was in his care. Who knows what she did with the rule.”

“I'm not even sure what kind of rule he means. A written rule?”

Nettie's eyes widened with sudden awareness and she gave a little gasp. “Of course!” she exclaimed. “Not rules but rule. How could I not have realized?”

Theo looked at her, perplexed. “Yes, that's what it says.”

Nettie jumped up from her chair. “We have a little time before Mrs. Culcutty returns. Hurry!”

Theo followed her out of the piano room and into the elegant hallway at the rear of the house. It was the first time he had seen it. Patterned wallpaper and a set of pastoral landscapes in
oval frames covered the wall. Nettie stopped before a heavy oak door on the right-hand side and quickly pulled a key from her skirt pocket. “I had a copy made ages ago,” she whispered. “Easier than using a hairpin every time.”

Inspector Grey's office was what Theo had expected. Heavy wooden cabinets and the mahogany desk darkened the room. A navy carpet from the Indies and two worn armchairs formed a tidy sitting area where more than a dozen boxes stood in neat piles. “I should have realized the minute I read it,” Nettie muttered. She opened the top box and rifled through it, then moved on to the next. “No one says ‘rule' unless they mean . . .
this
!” She held up a folded wooden ruler, worn from years of use. “I thought it was just an object from his desk, but it must be what Bligh mentioned in the letter.”

Theo took it up skeptically. “Really? It looks like an ordinary ruler.”

“Except for the date,” Nettie said triumphantly.

“The date?” Theo examined the ruler more closely, and on the unruled side he saw, faintly scrawled in red:
Feb 2 1892.
“I see what you mean. The date would fit with the date on the letter.”

“The Weatherers gave this to Bligh, and he sent it to Goldenrod.”

“But what is it?” Theo asked, baffled. He handed it back to her.

Nettie dropped into one of the worn armchairs. “I don't know.” She seemed to think with her entire face. “No other markings in red. It must be some kind of cipher. Or perhaps
it belongs to one of the Weatherers, and sending it is proof of something. Or the ruler might remind Goldenrod of a particular event that they all were part of.” She wound a curl around her index finger and tugged. “Too many alternatives. I just don't know.” She got up again and began arranging the boxes into their original tidy stack. “Do you think Elli knows about the Weatherers as well? Could you go and ask him?”

“They still aren't allowed visitors.” In truth, the prison did allow visitors, and Theo's investigation would have benefited from a long conversation with Shadrack and Miles. But it was rather difficult to visit them when he was not supposed to leave East Ending Street. Nettie Grey might be fooled by a false name, but he didn't wish to test his luck at the New Jail. “Has your father seen the letter?” he asked in the hallway as Nettie locked the study door.

“I'm not sure. But he wouldn't necessarily think it's important. He doesn't know what we know.” Nettie wound her way back to the piano room and sat down among the poppies.

“But you're going to give it to him, right?” Theo asked. “It practically proves it.”

“Proves what, exactly?” Nettie asked, more to herself than to him. She twirled her hair thoughtfully. “We can speculate that Gordon Broadgirdle kidnapped the Weatherers, and Bligh discovered it. He sent a note to Goldenrod asking her for help, and she came. She was attacked by one of the grappling-hook brutes, but survived. Bligh found her and tried to take care of her. Bligh confronted Broadgirdle on his own about the captive Weatherers, and it got him killed.”

“That's it,” Theo said in earnest agreement. “It makes perfect sense.”

“It does,” Nettie agreed, “but it's not enough. There's no proof. And there are too many questions. Where has Goldenrod vanished to? What about the man who attacked her? And this is the most important: Why would Broadgirdle kidnap the Weatherers?” She tapped her chin. “We need more.”

Theo ran a hand through his hair. “We need to find the Weatherers.”

“You need to get closer to Broadgirdle.”

He stood and walked over to the window. He looked out into the side garden, where the neighbor's roses hung heavy with faded petals. “Maybe there's a different way to do it.”

“Perhaps, but this is the fastest. What other way do you have in mind?”

Theo pressed his forehead against the glass and tried to think.
Sophia would come up with some other way,
he thought.
But I can't see one.
He turned back to face Nettie. “Let me think about it.”

—13-Hour 15—

H
AVING
RETURNED
TO
East Ending Street and fended off Mrs. Clay's anxious questions about where he had been, Theo went to his room to ponder his dilemma. There was some part of him that wanted to forget about the problem altogether.
I could still leave Boston,
he thought.
There's no one forcing me to stay here.
But he knew this was untrue, even as the escape route unfurled in his mind. He could leave Boston, but he could not leave Shadrack and Miles and Mrs. Clay; he could not leave Sophia.
It felt strange every time he thought about it, but every time he reached the same conclusion: even facing Broadgirdle would not be as bad as losing the people who now knew him best.

What is the solution Sophia would suggest that I can't see?
He smiled as he realized the solution Sophia would propose almost certainly resided in a book. But there was no book to tell him what Broadgirdle had done with the Weatherers. He slapped his forehead in frustration.
The Weatherers. They're in the dead center of this, and I have to figure out where they are. I have to figure out
who
they are.

Bligh's letter had referred to “the Mark.” Given what Miles had said about Goldenrod and the bed of flowers, it was almost certainly the Mark of the Vine. Suddenly, Theo remembered one of the books Veressa Metl had given Sophia the previous summer. He hurried into her room and scanned the bookshelf until he found it:
Origins and Manifestations of the Mark of the Vine
, by Veressa Metl. Theo began paging through it, skimming as quickly as he could for some mention of the Eerie or Weatherers. Neither was in the index.

Much of the first half of the book was theoretical, for no one could point with certainty to where or when the Mark had emerged. The second half contained observations on how the Mark of the Vine appeared in different people, and these were organized into chapters titled “Physiological Characteristics,” “Aptitudes,” “Care and Healing,” and “Behavioral Tendencies.” Those with the Mark most often manifested it on their limbs, though in one case a man's chest was encased in bark, and in
others leaves sprouted from the back like wings. Many with the Mark were gifted at working with plants, and in some cases they could grow new plants from their own bodies, without the use of seeds or shoots. Veressa posited that the Mark was not something one did or did not have; rather, it was a spectrum. Some people had very little of the Vine, and some people had a great deal. Perhaps one person might have a single thorn growing from a knuckle, while another might have the Mark on every part of the body.