The Twelfth Enchantment: A Novel (30 page)

Shortly before she left for London, Mr. Olson came to call. She longed to say that she was unwell and to send him away, but he had suffered much, and even if he had also caused suffering, Lucy did not wish to be cruel. More than that, he had loved her after his own fashion, and she must not hate him for that. On the other hand, he had never declared he no longer wished to marry her, and she did not want to hear him press his case. However, Lucy knew she would likely have to face many things, many people, she would rather avoid. Best to get into the habit.

She went downstairs and found him in the parlor, sitting with his legs pressed close together, hands in his lap, looking uncomfortable, and yet, for all that, he appeared, if not precisely happy then at least contented. His eyes were wide and bright and attentive, his suit new and neat and clean. He had cut his hair into the fashion of late, and it was neatly combed. As she entered the room, he rose to his feet and bowed at her, and he had the air of a man who believed in his own significance.

“Miss Derrick,” he said when they were seated, “I understand you are to leave for London for the remainder of the season.”

“Perhaps not so long. Perhaps longer,” she said. “I do not yet know.”

He nodded. “I thought it would be wrong not to take my leave of you. I know that matters did not end between us as I had wished, and I spoke some words which I now regret. Nevertheless, I hope when you think of me, you will think well.”

Apparently Mr. Olson had set aside any intention of pursuing the wedding, and he’d simply neglected to mention that fact to the bride. In any case, this was good news, making her inclined toward generosity. “With all my heart. I have never said how sorry I was to hear of your mill, and the reversals you suffered. I do not love such enterprises for their consequences to the men of Nottingham, but I never wished that you should face these difficulties.”

“On that score you need have no fear,” said Olson. “My machines were destroyed and I had no money to replace them, but opportunities have arisen, and I now construct a new mill in a new location. From this adversity, great things have arisen.”

He forced a smile at her. Perhaps he wished to show her what she had neglected to seize, but Lucy did not think so. She believed he was just as relieved to have escaped her as she was to have escaped him.

“I wish you much prosperity.”

“I cannot see how we can fail,” said Mr. Olson. “Lady Harriett, my patroness, has a good head for such matters as these—a remarkable trait in a woman.”

Lucy stood up and wrung her hands, and seeing that he stared at her she sat back down again. She opened her mouth, to say that he must not take her money, must not do business with her, but knew how it would sound, and she had no means of convincing him. Nothing she could say would be creditable, and so she put her hands in her lap and looked away. “I can only wish your business brings you the success you desire.”

“Thank you, Miss Derrick,” he said, seeming to find nothing odd in her behavior. “I am sanguine it will all be well. You see now, you would not have suffered for being married to me.”

“And yet,” she offered. “I sense that your feelings have altered.”

He nodded. “It is the strangest thing. You must understand that I know you are a pretty girl, but I have never valued such things in a wife. I have never wanted to marry for anything but property. It merely happened one day that I thought I was in love with you, and then one day I thought I was not. I suppose love is strange in that way.”

He rose to his feet, blushing and announcing that he had taken enough of her time. She saw him to the door and shook his hand, so they parted with declarations of friendship. Yet Lucy was deeply troubled, for now it seemed to her obvious that someone had placed a spell upon Mr. Olson to make him love her, and she could not imagine who that person might have been. It did seem curious, however, that Lady Harriett still had designs on Mr. Olson. Lucy wondered if she had been manipulating him all along. It hardly mattered, though. Soon Lucy would be gone, and this would no longer be her concern.

Two days later, Norah arrived at Uncle Lowell’s house in a handsome coach, drawn by four yellowish horses. Her parents had traveled on ahead, and it was to be just the two young ladies and Norah’s woman. With great difficulty, Ungston and the coachman loaded Lucy’s trunk, which contained no small number of books, including her mostly false copy of the
Mutus Liber
. In addition, there were magical implements, herbs, and, of course, as many of her clothes as she could manage.

Her uncle sat in his study, reviewing some letters, and took his leave of her coolly. “You’ve quite disappointed me in your conduct with Mr. Olson,” he said. “I hope you shall do better in London. You’ll be returning here in the end, I suppose.”

Lucy curtsied. “I have not troubled myself to think of the future.”

“No, I suppose not,” he answered, and then turned away.

Outside his study, Mrs. Quince waited for her. “Enjoy your travels,” she said with a pinched smile. “Do try to bring no more shame upon yourself.”

Lucy studied her, feeling unnerved by her restraint. “I have no notion of why you have treated me as you have, but in the end I will find out. You may be certain of that.”

Mrs. Quince stared in wonder, unblinking and unmoving, and remained that way until Lucy was inside the coach.

When Lucy and Norah approached the equipage, Lucy observed Insworth, Norah’s servant, hunched over her botched knitting, muttering gloomily under her breath as she teased out false stitches. She had been in the Gilley family for a long time, and no amount of ill humor or ineptitude could prove sufficient cause for dismissal. She was a remarkably sour woman, with an offensive smell, and so best not confined to a coach for a long period of time, but it was not she who gave Lucy her surprise. It was the woman sitting across from her: Mrs. Emmett.

Lucy paused, unable to think of what to say, so it was Norah who spoke for her.

“Your woman is here already,” she said, her mouth compressed into a pinched smile. “I did not know you possessed such a person.”

They climbed in, each lady next to her own servant, and soon the coach began to roll. Mrs. Emmett only looked out the window, and occasionally turned to Norah to smile beatifically. Lucy felt a boiling medley of emotions—anger, confusion, and most of all, curiosity, but she could ask nothing in front of Norah, and she postponed all her questions until a convenient time arrived.

Satisfaction, such as it was, had to wait until their first stopover at an inn in Leicester. Lucy found cause to take Mrs. Emmett aside. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“You can’t go to London without your serving woman,” she said cheerily.

“Did Miss Crawford direct you to come to me?”

“Oh, yes. Long ago, but I am your woman now. I told you that, Miss Derrick.”

“How is it that Norah seems to know you?”

“She knows me because I am your serving woman,” said Mrs. Emmett.

Further inquiry produced only answers of an equally unsatisfying and circular nature. Lucy learned nothing of Mary’s whereabouts. The
best she could get out of the serving woman was that she, Mrs. Emmett, had
always
worked for Lucy. Lucy simply had not known it.

The remainder of the journey was without much amusement or event. On the first night they stayed at an inn in Bedford, where a trio of officers made much of the ladies, even if they made slightly more of Norah, perhaps because Norah made much more of them. Lucy had matters on her mind other than officers, but she did not judge Norah, for she recalled what it was to have nothing of import to occupy one’s thoughts. If anything, she felt a pang of jealousy for her friend’s freedom to indulge in these simple pleasures.

They were on the road again before first light, though Mrs. Emmett was asleep again soon enough, snoring so loudly that at first it was comical, later maddening. Before nightfall, Lucy could make out the approaching city looming on the horizon. The farmland around them became less expansive, the people less rude, and the air less clear. Indeed, shortly after lunch the windows of the coach began to cloud over with gray soot, and the air they breathed grew heavier with London’s belching chimneys and coal smoke.

As they entered the city, Lucy gripped Norah’s arm, for the scene around them was not one of refinement, but horror. London had always had its poor, but the new mills built upon the river, spewing forth thick clouds of black smoke, seemed like something out of Dante’s Hell. It was like the poverty of Nottingham, multiplied a thousandfold. A boy walked shirtless against the cold evening air, his body so gaunt Lucy could all but identify his organs. A woman, almost equally uncovered, held her naked baby upside down by its feet while she shouted at a leering, finely dressed man. Two gentlemen laughed while they slapped an insensible woman’s face. A young man, with no hands, held up his begging bowl between the raw stumps of his wrists.

This was the worst of it, but not the whole. Gangs of thieves roamed the streets, their occupation so obvious it might have been emblazoned upon their coats. Likewise the whores made no effort to disguise their trade. The most brazen of them exposed their breasts to the coach before
realizing it was inhabited by ladies, at which observation they would spit or hurl turds. Lucy had never seen such filth—the animal refuse that gathered in the street, the human refuse that did likewise, and besides came flying out of windows as they passed. The stiffly moving rivers of kennel that made their slow, muddy way down the street. Dead dogs, dead cats and rats and horses—the latter being dissected by a gang of feral boys after meat—lay everywhere. And everywhere was soot—so deep and thick and inescapable it caked Lucy’s throat and nostrils and made her long for a bath.

Norah laughed to see Lucy’s response. “Oh, this isn’t really London. We shall go to places in town where these sights do not exist. I don’t trouble myself to look.”

Lucy nodded, not because she agreed or saw the wisdom in pretending that people did not live so, but because she dared not speak, dared not say what was on her mind. Here, in this terrible place, Lucy understood that the Luddites were right, that Ludd, whatever he might be, was right. The machine breakers, the revolutionaries, those who raged against what they could not stop—all of them were right. And Mary Crawford—whatever role she may have had in replacing her sister’s child—she was right too. What terrible thing would Lucy herself not do, would not any sane person do, to turn back the tide upon these horrors, to stopper up the vomiting chimneys, to wipe away the soot and ash and dirt that fell from the sky like snow.

Then, as Norah predicted, their surroundings improved. The streets became wider and cleaner and less populated in general, less populated with mendicants and felons and whores in particular. Suddenly there were broad, glorious houses, gentlemen with ornate walking sticks, ladies in fine gowns, servants with neat little children in tow, or happy little lapdogs in baskets. There were elegant horses and majestic equipages. There were parks and lawns, fields where careless children played, watched over by mastiff-faced nurses. The air was still heavy and thick and dirty, and the occasional wretch still crossed their path, and the occasional whore still leered as she searched for willing coin, but even so it was a different world, and Lucy found herself pretending that
the other place did not exist—not because she wanted to, but because she did not know that she could do otherwise and survive.