The Keepers of the Library (22 page)

W
hen Annie began to stir, Will hastily
shoved the journal under the mattress. He hardly had time to process what he had read. Years earlier, he’d been astonished to find that the Library had influenced the likes of John Calvin and Nostradamus and even William Shakespeare. Now he’d learned that it had played a role in the American Revolutionary War! The revelation made him giddy but Annie’s dry-throated voice brought him back to the moment.

“What time is it?” she asked, reaching with her free arm for the water bottle by her cot.

“Nearly seven. How’s your leg?”

“Sore. Do you think Melrose got picked up?”

“Hope so, but I don’t think his eye’s going to be saved.”

“I shouldn’t say something so horrid, but I rather think a patch will suit him.”

Phillip sniggered.

“You’re up too,” Will said. “How’re you doing?”

“I need to take a leak,” the boy said sullenly.

“You can use the pee bottle,” Will suggested.

“I’m not going to use it with her here!” Phillip protested.

“Do you think the police have arrived yet?” Annie asked.

He shrugged. “There’d better be more than Community Patrol Officer Wilson. He wasn’t even armed, was he?”

“We are capable of mounting the appropriate response to hostage situations, Will,” Annie said defensively. “You have a dim view of our capabilities in this country.”

“Well, let’s just hope they can take down a few farmers with shotguns.”

Phillip decided to shout at the top of his lungs, “I need to pee!”

Seconds later, Cacia came through the anteroom door with her son, Andrew.

“That’s how you get things done around here,” Phillip said.

Cacia organized bathroom breaks for all of them, and when everyone was rechained to their bunks, Andrew left her alone with them.

Cacia sat down wearily on one of the empty beds.

“So what’s going on up there?” Will asked.

“We have quite a bit of company, I’d say,” Cacia replied with a breathy sigh. “All th’ police lights have turned th’ sky blue. It’s quite lovely in a way.”

“You must surrender,” Annie said, sounding tough and obviously drawing on some kind of hostage training she’d done earlier in her career.

“Must I?” Cacia said. She turned her back on Annie, and said to Will, “I wish none of this’d happened.”

“Meant to be,” Will said. “That’s the funny thing about fate, but I don’t need to tell you that.”

She nodded gravely.

“Has a negotiator contacted you?” Will asked.

“By phone. A pleasant-sounding man—I took the
first call. He asked if you and Phillip were here, but Daniel wouldn’t let me say.”

“They’re going to want something from you. A gesture to start things off right. Why don’t you send Phillip out?”

“Daniel won’t have it. He’s stuck in. He’s a stubborn man. I’ve always liked that in ‘im.”

“Then give them Annie.”

“Also nae.”

“What then?” Will asked. “How does Daniel think this’ll end?”

“He doesn’t know, does he?”

“But you do.”

A single tear left her eye for her cheek. “Come and walk with me, Will,” she said.

He held up his wrist, and she unlocked the cuff. In the anteroom, she asked if he wanted to stroll the Library.

“Could we sit with the writers without disturbing them?” he asked.

She said that would be all right. “Very little distracts ’em from their task.”

They entered the writers’ room, and the savants hardly looked up. Haven was there reading a schoolbook. Cacia told her she could go upstairs but warned her to stay away from the windows and keep her curtains closed.

“Are the police still there?” the girl asked.

Her mother nodded.

“Can I sit with Phillip?”

“If you’re good,” Cacia said. “Please don’t take off his chain. It’s for his own protection.”

“Is that other woman still there?”

“Her name’s Annie,” Will said. “She’s a good enough egg. She’s scared too.”

Will and Cacia sat at the front of the room watching
the writers in silence. Will felt like one of two classroom teachers proctoring an examination as their students scribbled onto copybooks.

The seven writers had a look of utter concentration on their pale faces. Heads down, they moved their pens across the page without a sound. Will imagined that in centuries past the noise of the quills against parchment would have been cacophonous, but the only thing breaking the quiet was the occasional rustle of a page being turned. If they had to search their minds for what they would write next, it was not apparent. There was no turning of heads to the ceiling for inspiration, no sighs or utterances. They were efficient, well-oiled machines.

Will noticed that the oldest writer, a grizzled man with a wispy reddish beard, was drooling onto his blue shirt without seeming to take any note of it. Cacia rose to tend to him. There was a towel hanging from a peg at his station, and Cacia used it to wipe his face and shirt carefully and tenderly. A drop of saliva had found its way to his page, and Cacia blotted it.

Returning to Will’s side, she said, “His name’s Angus. I reckon he’s eighty or thereabouts. There’s something wrong with ‘im, but it’s beyond our ken t’ fix it.”

“I don’t suppose the local doctor makes house calls,” Will said.

“Not to this house he doesn’t,” she said, seemingly happy to have something to laugh at. “We’ve gotten quite good with home remedies. When they get a cough or fever, we put them in th’ room you’re in t’ keep the others away from it. On th’ whole, they’re a healthy lot.”

Will scanned the green-eyed faces. “Can I ask you something?”

“Aye.”

“About your sons.”

“Andrew and Douglas?”

“No, these sons.”

She rose again and stood behind the youngest and put her hands on his shoulders. He briefly stopped writing at the touch but started again without looking up. “This is Robert. He’s seventeen, but he looks younger, doesn’t he?” Then she moved to Matthew. “And Matthew here is twenty-one. I was only nineteen when I had him. The rest are from my mother’s time, may she rest in peace.”

“How do your other children feel about them?”

She kissed Matthew’s ginger hair and rejoined Will. “They accept it. It’s what they know. And the girls know that when it’s their time, they’ll do th’ right thing.”

“But it’s not going to happen now, Cacia. You know that. For better or worse, everything you’ve known is coming to an end. The police aren’t going away.”

Her whispered response was so faint he almost missed it. “I know, I know. What will become of ’em? I can see many things, Will, but when it comes t’ them, I see nowt.”

“I’ll do everything in my power to help them and help you.”

“They’ll be put in a cage somewhere. People will come and look at ’em like they were in a zoo. I can’t bear th’ thought.”

“Then we’ve got to do something. We need to control the situation while we still can.”

“There’s nothing t’ do,” she said in despair.

“Yes there is,” Will said. “Let me help you.”

K
enney and his men huddled in the bushes in the evening cold and watched through night-vision
scopes as the police action unfolded below them. The narrow B road was clogged with police cars, ambulances, and a large command van from the Cumbrian Constabulary. A SWAT team had established positions, but Kenney derided their tactics. “Jesus, would you look at that! They’ve only got two shooters on the high ground behind the farm. The thing’s as watertight as a submarine with a screen door.”

Harper opened an MRE pouch and asked his boss whether he wanted to eat.

“What is it?” Kenney asked.

“Shit stew,” Harper replied.

“Yeah, I’ll definitely have one, but lemme call in first.” He put his earpiece into place, spoke a command into his NetPen, and when connected he said, “This is Kenney. Give me Admiral Sage, Priority Alpha.” He waited a few moments, and Sage was on the line.

“What’s your status?” Sage asked him.

“Well, sir, we’ve probably got every policeman and their cousin within a hundred miles of here. We’re monitoring their comm, and it sounds like they’re not making much progress with the folks holed up inside the farmhouse. There’s a bunch of MI5 guys clucking around reporting back to London every five seconds, but they’re letting the police take the lead.”

“Do we have any confirmation that Piper is inside?”

“None. But he’s there. I’m sure of it. His son too. And Locke, the MI5 gal, is a definite. They picked up her boss, who was shot-up, by the side of the road along with the body of another agent.”

“And you still don’t know what the hell is going on in there?” Sage asked with obvious irritation.

“No, sir.”

“No chatter about librarians?”

“That’s a negative. Anything to tell me about the Chinese situation, Admiral?”

“Continued saber rattling. The diplomatic channels are full of chatter. Lots of smoke getting blown up lots of asses at the UN.”

“Roger that,” Kenney said. “Any changes to our mission package?”

“No, just keep out of the way and out of sight and continue visual and electronic surveillance. Report back in two hours or sooner if there are developments. Out.”

“What did he say?” Lopez asked.

“Told us to keep quiet as mice and keep eyes on the target.”

Harper handed Kenney a pouch of food. “Why do they say that? Quiet as a mouse?” he asked. “A mouse can make a hell of a racket if it’s got a hard-on about something.”

“Should be quiet as a bug, maybe,” Lopez said.

Kenney chewed on his stew. “You have no idea how ignorant you are, Lopez. Bugs are among the noisiest creatures on the planet. Did you know that a tiny, little river bug called the water boatman makes a mating sound that’s almost a hundred decibels? That’s like sitting ten feet away from a goddamn freight train as it’s barreling past. Know how they do it?”

He did not.

“The little bug’s got a penis about as thick as a human hair—about like yours, Harper—and it rubs that sucker against some ridges on its abdomen kind of like a spoon against a washboard. And that’s how it raises hell.”

“How do you know that kind of shit, chief?” Lopez asked.

Kenney stuck his spoon into the stew, and said, “I don’t know, Lopez, I just do.”

Y
ou must be very proud of your father,” Annie told Phillip.

The two of them had lain there side by side in awkward silence until she’d broken the ice.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

“I’ve wondered what it must be like, you know, being the child of a famous parent. My father’s a chartered accountant.”

“I never thought about it much.”

“Didn’t you? I saw that you won an essay contest with him as the subject.”

He seemed embarrassed. “It was after his heart attack. I don’t know why I wrote it.”

“Well, don’t worry, you don’t have to explain it to me. But maybe you can tell me why you’re here in Yorkshire. How did that come about?”

Before he could answer, Haven came into the room and sat on Phillip’s bed, scowling at Annie.

Phillip nudged her, and said, “She just asked me why I came here.”

“Did you tell ‘er?” Haven asked.

“Not yet.”

“He came ‘cause I asked him t’ come.”

“Had you known each other?” Annie asked.

“No, I read ‘is essay at school.”

“Ah, that essay again,” Annie said. “So why did you contact him?”

“You don’t have to tell her,” Phillip told her, shooting Annie a dirty look.

“Why is it I feel like the gooseberry at this party?” Annie said. “If you unlock my cuff, I’ll happily wander off and leave the two of you on your own.”

“Very funny,” Haven said. “I’ll tell ya. I thought Phillip could help let th’ world know th’ Horizon was nonsense. A girl in me school hung herself from worry. I thought I had t’ do something about it.”

“Well, I think that’s very admirable, young lady. When this is over and done with, I’ll make sure the authorities become aware of the good you’ve done.”

Haven began to cry.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” Annie said, “I …”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Phillip said sharply. “I wish you weren’t here.”

“We’re in agreement on that score,” Annie said. “Listen, Phillip, I’m not sure why you’ve got such a bad impression of me but …”

He interrupted her again, “It’s because of the way you look at my father. It’s like there’s something going on. Is there?”

Annie smiled. “Your father is a perfect gentleman. Nothing transpired between us. I give you my word.”

“That’s good to know,” Phillip said, “because my mom would kick your butt if you messed around with him.”

C
ome into th’ Library with me,” Cacia said.

Will followed her through the anteroom. As soon as she closed the door to the Library behind her, she dissolved into tears.

“I didn’t want them t’ see me crying. They’ve never seen it before, and I don’t know how they’d react.”

“It doesn’t seem to me they have much of a reaction to anything,” Will said.

She staunched her sobs as best she could. “Oh but they do. You’ve got t’ really know ’em like I do. It can be as little as a twitch at th’ corner of their mouths or a particularly deep breath. They ‘ave feelings.”

Will sensed an opening, and he went for it. “You have feelings too.”

She reached for him and pulled him against her body. He held her while she poured her heart out.

“It’s been such a lonely life, Will. And a hard ‘un. Constant toil. Secrecy. Isolation. I love Daniel, I swear it, but we’re not close anymore, not intimate. He won’t say, but I think he went funny about my having their children. He knows it’s our lives, but it still affects a man, doesn’t it?”

“I guess it would.”

“I didn’t want this life for me daughters. But we’re Lightburns, and this is what we do. It’s our obligation.”

“I understand,” he said. “I really do.”

“It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, if we could chuck away all th’ fuss going on around us and all the obligations and lie down for a while, just th’ two of us.” She sighed, releasing him from her grasp. “But it would be over soon enough, then where’d we be?”