Chapter 12
It was almost dinnertime when they finally stopped. Edmund had lost every game.
Before they started, Edmund was skeptical; Draughts looked perfectly balanced to him. Both sides had the same number of pieces, the same rules for movement…any game had to end in a tie, or at least be very close.
By the end of the sixth game, Edmund had learned differently. He was beginning to see the whole board at once and to plan more than a single step ahead. He was finding pleasure in small victories; he had captured three of Junapa’s pieces in the last game and even kinged one of his own.
When Junapa jumped Edmund’s final piece in their tenth game, she stood up, her face like marble. “That’s enough for today, I think. I come here to read on Wednesdays, in the morning. I trust you can be unobtrusive, both inside and outside of this room?”
Edmund nodded, and left without another word. He let out a breath that he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
What now? He had only a little time before dinner, perhaps he would return to his room to write a poem about draughts or misshapen animal heads before Ung arrived to dress him. The rest of his day planned, he set about re-locking the door.
As he worked at the lock, he thought: First Kolb and now Junapa? In two days, two of his cousins had gone from being his adversaries to being his tutors. Why? His cousins’ changes of heart, though useful, were as befuddling as they were unexpected.
Of course, they had given him their explanations. Kolb wanted Edmund to be able to charm Matron, likely to ask her to put Kolb in the will. Junapa wanted him to think strategically so he’d see reason in giving the estate to her. They were trying to use him the same way Matron was. Why did he mistrust them?
Because they were Mouldes. If Edmund had learned anything these past weeks, peeking in on meetings and huddled planning, it was that the Mouldes never told anyone the whole truth. Not even family.
Maybe they were giving him fake lessons, designed to make him fail? That would mean they were afraid of him, and there was no cause for that. Were they trying to get on his good side? One thing he had learned during his draughts game was the strategic importance of turning a normal boring piece into a king.
When the lock clicked back into place, he turned to see Googoltha staring at him, dressed in the same clothes, smiling the same sharp grinn.
He stared at her. She stared at him.
“Hello,” Edmund said. She didn’t respond. He was about to ask if she was hungry for dinner, when a thought struck him.
How similar were they?
Similar age, similar situation, similar expectations…was Googoltha spying on the Moulde family the same way Edmund was? Had she found the hallways too, and did she spend her days peeking on her relatives and answering the strange questions Tricknee barked at her?
He thought they could be friends before, but now…did they have to be enemies?
Edmund turned and ran.
If the familiarity of his escape would have registered with anyone, it did not register with Edmund. Indeed, his previous flight from Googoltha weeks ago had been the unthinking instinctual act of an animal. Now Edmund was running with calculated purpose. He needed to avoid Googoltha as much as possible, not because she was worrisome, but because she might be an adversary who could learn something of his plans without his foreknowledge.
Turning left and right at random, Edmund moved in such a manner as to foil anyone who was following him. When he was certain he had succeeded, he paused to catch his breath.
Where was he?
Edmund glanced left and right until he was certain: he had never been in this hallway before. This alone was astonishing, as he had spent more than a month at Moulde Hall, and he had believed he had at least walked down every corridor, if not thoroughly explored it.
His memory flashed back to his first night as a Moulde, and the terror he felt at being truly lost. This time, however, he was prepared. Closing his eyes, he carefully reconstructed every step and every turn in his mind.
What he learned was astonishing. It was no wonder he had never seen this hallway before; it was on the fifth floor of the mansion, near the rear, and hidden behind several awkward twists and turns that might have been designed to hide in plain sight. The very architecture had been constructed to fool any passers-by that there was no turn here, no hallway there. Even the very careful might have missed the short path to this hallway unless they knew it was there.
Thoughts of his room forgotten, Edmund walked down the hallway, studying the new paintings and statues, until he came across what appeared to be the only door in the entire corridor.
The door itself was ornately designed: on the left side, a strange dragon-like creature was engraved in silver with green-painted eyes, ornate feathery wings, and spouts of steam pouring out from its feet. On the right, a long dog was curled around a brass tree, its nose tucked under its tail. The tree had a strange knot in the front like a clockwork spring, and the branches were trimmed with red stone. The door was old and imposing; a wooden boundary that separated the real world from somewhere incredible. Not just the size or the carvings, but a presence that filled Edmund with excitement as he slipped his bent-key into the lock.
It was fiendishly difficult; the proper key was obviously a complicated one, and the springs inside the lock were strong and subtle. It took half an hour before Edmund even realized he was more often than not pushing two springs at once instead of just one.
Finally, after another hour of effort, he was rewarded with the soft click of lock opening.
The room was massive, stretching the full five stories from the roof to the ground, with long and winding staircases made from wrought iron and marble. Some spiraled straight down while others swept across the wall. Ramps, ladders, and poles were sprinkled around the room, reaching towards small balconies and long walkways. The whole room could be lit by the sun filtering through a soot-covered skylight that took up the entire ceiling.
The center of the room held a brass statue of a tree covered with shimmering bronze and silver leaves, each perfectly carved and placed, giving the impression of a tall smooth-leaved elm in the full bloom of summer. The tree sat in a small recess in the floor and reached almost entirely to the ceiling, while around it wound slanted floors and small terraces covered with desks, tables, and chairs.
Edmund saw none of this. What he saw was covering the walls and jutting out into the maze of floors. What he saw spread like moss on the inside of a hollow log, filling the room with a dusty scent that intoxicated as well as seduced. What he saw was bookshelves, filled to bursting with books, maps, scrolls, readers, folders, letters, and written word of all kinds.
It was a library.
Edmund leaned out over the railing, staring down through the spinning dizzying architecture to the floors below. All these words cramped together so tightly in such a large space; there were thousands at least, all arranged in a dazzling array of line and verse. He tried to imagine reading those words, each and every one, before he died. The possibility was daunting; it must have taken the lifetimes of hundreds of people to write the words, one person alone couldn’t hope to read them all.
What was this feeling?
As if in a dream, he moved down the thin ramp that dipped its way towards the fourth-floor. He tried to walk carefully, but it felt like his suddenly light body was hurtling pell-mell down the stairs, barely touching the black iron railing as he went. His hand reached out as he flew, brushing the old dry leather of books as he passed, gently caressing the wooden handles of ancient scrolls and tapping the deep brown wood of the shelves.
The entire cylindrical library was filled with alcoves; small curving indentations that held statues, strange curving bookshelves, small tables or chairs, and sometimes all three. There was a small bronze gaslight stuck into the wall in each alcove, and Edmund could guess they would not provide much light to the library when the day was done.
He’d never felt this feeling before. It wasn’t excitement, or anticipation…
The second floor had a balcony that was so long it almost reached to the brass tree, with several tables, candelabras, chairs, settees, and even a tall side table that held a long tobacco pipe; the perfect place to sit and read.
Each shelf was more marvelous than the last, and each floor expressed its own personality. One floor was large and yellow, full of rolled up maps and giant atlases, covered with different lands and tales of faraway kings and queens. The edges of the pages and scrolls were chipped, and crisp, like stale bread-crust. The next floor was stuffed with slick white paper, waxed and bound in thick covers, all the books the exact same size. Another floor was dark brown and black with cracked leather, intermixed with deep greens and blues that covered books of every shape and size.
There were books of science and mysteries of the world, and histories of old kings and queens. There were books of poetry and theatre, stories of romance and drama. One shelf was so packed full of thick green-bound books with gold trim that they were as firm as bricks in any wall. He found seven different books about the index finger, a whole shelf on the uses of garlic, and an entire stack devoted to levers and their uses in everyday conversation.
He wanted to scream, but it was definitely not fear. He wanted to rage, but it wasn’t anger…
Some books were bound in blue with silver lettering, while others were red with gold leaf. Some were plain brown leather with iron latches, while others were covered in a vibrant purple silk that wrapped around the pages several times over. Most of the books were made with paper, while some were written on glinting metal or old wrinkled animal skins.
Edmund was sick with awe by the time he reached the ground floor. There, a single shelf-less space was covered with a tapestry that stretched to the bottom of the floor above. It was brightly colored, if a bit muted with age and dust, and crafted with such obvious care and skill that Edmund at first thought it was a painting. It’s patterns were large, looping, and intertwined like a bramble patch. Squarely in the center, a large raven spread its wings, soaring into the sky through a hole in the twisting lines and branches; a dark purple spot in a sea of greens, purples, and reds.
Unable to contain himself, Edmund grabbed a book from the closest shelf. Inhaling the thick smell of ancient paper, he opened the book to the middle and read a single line:
“Therefore, it seems clear that even in the harshest lands, the aboriginal peoples seem drawn to the flint stone as a tool, rather than a symbol, suggesting that utilitarianism is a suitable anathema to superstitious thought.”
Edmund let the sentence wash over his brain, chewing and drinking it down like a marvelous stew of words. He let the book fall from his hands, and grabbed another.
“My peers, training, reason, common sense, and above all professional pride all force me to admit that perhaps there is no connection; but my soul as an historian, gentlemen, and Britannian force me to delve deeper into the details and instigating factors, to insure that there is nothing more suggestive hidden there.”
And another.
“See how the colors merge and blend, taking the vibrant and natural hues and turning them to a foul and heathenistic shade, indicative of the tincture’s inherent caustic and destructive nature that obviously stems from its origins in the southern part of Spain.”
Another.
“Among the countless forests, hills, mountains, and other such topographical familiarities of the south-eastern continent, the Grand Tooth is perhaps the most egalitarian and pragmatic peak it has ever been my humble privilege to survey.”
Each phrase was more delectable than the last, full of verbs, clauses, and beautiful prepositions that teased him on to new and dizzying heights. Edmund’s head began to spin with each breath until the words in the books called out to him, promising him great wonders if he would only read them first.
Happy. Edmund was Happy.
Edmund danced down the aisles and waved to the books as he passed, laughing and politely returning the greeting of each one until his legs ached. In the orphanage, he had not been given to bursts of excitement; the exhilaration of discovery was new and fascinating to him; and such a discovery! His feet skipped off the stone like it was covered in needles. A library!
This was what happiness felt like!
What should he do first? Walk up and down each shelf with his notebook, writing down the title of every book he could find so he could catalog everything he had to read? Yank out a book at random, start reading, and not stop until hunger or exhaustion made him collapse? Postpone the pleasure and read only one book every day, savoring each page like a marvelous delicacy?
From somewhere deep in the walls, a dull groan began to echo through the room, as if the library were some giant waking from a long slumber. Then, a rapid series of ticks ricocheted about the walls before a deep resonant bell struck the hour. Edmund listened to the beautiful tone as it reverberated though his body, shaking his bones in his skin. The metal tree joined in, the vibrations causing the leaves to chime happily along. The bell was just as strong in this room as the foyer — whatever mechanism caused the hall to ring like a clock must have been nearby — but instead of terrifying, now the tone was more potent than adrenaline; and Edmund was the most alive he had been in some time.
The ringing faded. The sonic adrenaline withdrew like a tide, and his body began to sag. The curtains of sleep crept towards him from the corners of the room. Edmund lingered as long as his tiring body would let him, to run his hands lovingly over the books, until he couldn’t bear it; he lay down on a short broad bench, blanketed in the smell of dust and paper. He kept his eyes open as long as he could, staring in rapt adoration at the books that rose like beautiful white cliffs around him.
Thereafter, Edmund spent every spare hour he had in the Library.
He found intricate treatises on chemical compounds, philosophical breakdowns of the existence of light, ancient diaries of foreign kings, and everything in between. There was a section devoted to foreign countries, like Germany, Spain, and the Colonies; and a section full of books on the stars, their place in the sky, and how they could be used to explain everything from the earth’s position in the heavens to the behavior of children. There were books full of paintings, and books full of formulas. There were shelves covered with books on chemistry, physics, geology, archaeology, history, and literature. (Books about books? Edmund was aghast at the decadence.)
He found another book about poetry: Poetry of the Heart, by Alam Beets. Delighted to read another book about the subject, he snatched the old torn book and read it in a single afternoon.
He was immediately disappointed; the poems were terrible. Some were short, others long, and they never ascribed to the appropriate meter or rhyming scheme for their content. Most of them didn’t even rhyme. Half of the poems were about love, the other half about nothing at all. None of them used proper allegory, or even, as Sir Ekes put it, “a solid reliable English simile.” After reading the book from cover to cover, he tossed it aside, resolved not to think about it again.
After two days of failing to not think about it, he read it again, and then again. Scholars note that this is likely the moment when his poetry shifted to his fabled “Declaritive Period.”
He even found a story-book that he liked: the tale of King Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table. He loved reading about good and handsome knights who rode off to fight evil bandits, ugly monsters, and saved the land for the honor of their king. The knights were kind and just while the monsters were cruel and greedy. It felt right to him. The king even died at the end.
Before long, that was how he began to see himself: a knight in the service of the Moulde Family. A noble figure invested with a great duty; a quest. He was no longer just an orphan trying to fit into a strange family, he was Sir Edmund, fighting to save his family from the evils of hubris, squalor, and moral decrepitude.
Edmund was like a hummingbird, jumping from bookshelf to bookshelf, alternately sipping and drinking deep from any book that had an interesting title or encouraging font. He poured over diagrams of lizard feet and tree bark. He perused formulas for alloys, heating materials, and alchemical mixes for crafting the perfect pot of tea. He delved into papers about Pomegranate Creame and the moral and ethical complications of introducing the dish to eastern Europa. He learned about the important differences between glass and copper alembics, and the powerful effects a pinch of bismuth could impart to suitable elixirs.
He read until his brain was fit to burst, and then he read some more.
This continued until Edmund was distracted still further by discovering what lay behind the large tapestry on the ground floor.
He had just returned from a solitary supper, and climbed down the ladders and stairs to his favorite chair on the second floor of the library. He opened the book he had been reading — a discussion of the chemical effects of pastel paints on sheep hindquarters — and continued from where he left off.
Two seconds later, he stopped reading.
He stopped because he had heard a noise. He wasn’t sure what noise, at first; the mansion had already struck ten in the morning, so he knew it wasn’t the wind-up of the clock. Besides, it wasn’t the metallic ticking of springs or levers — it was a soft sussurus, like the gentle brushing of paper.
There was someone in his library.
The idea that someone else might be in the library — his library — tore Edmund from his book. Jumping out of his chair, he leaned over the second-floor balcony and listened.
It wasn’t the sound of paper on paper, it was scratching.
Edmund looked down as the scratching stopped. A flash of gray shot across the floor below, and then the room was still. Moments later, a thin gray shape crawled on top of a small reading desk.
It was a small rat. Or a mouse. Despite all his reading, Edmund wasn’t clear on the difference between the two, except to say that mice were simply a better class of rat.
As quietly as he could, Edmund climbed down the ladder to the first floor. He hadn’t seen any rats, spiders, beetles…any living animals at all in the mansion. It had been unnerving after the weevil ridden orphanage, and he was eager to see what animals thrived in the confines of Moulde Hall.
When Edmund reached the bottom floor, the rat had moved to another desk and was crawling over a yellowed book Edmund had left open. He was only just beginning to come to grips with there not being any animal life in Moulde Hall; now that he had found one, he was irritated to see it treat his books so disrespectfully. It probably hadn’t even washed its paws.
Edmund took another step.
The rat shot off into the library like lightning. Edmund chased after it as fast as his legs could carry him. It darted in-between books and cracks in the shelves, but Edmund was always just quick enough to catch a glimpse of a tail or flicker of fur that kept him on the right track. At last, Edmund turned around a shelf of books to find himself standing in front of the giant red tapestry.
He ran his eyes carefully around the nearby walls; was there some hole or crack that the rat could have vanished through? Nothing. He scoured the wall around the tapestry, but there was nothing there either. He even tried tugging at the fabric, but it was affixed to the wall with brass nails.
Why nail a tapestry to the wall it was hanging on?
Edmund fingered the nails, testing their strength and age. After a bit of rocking back and forth, one of them popped free. The next one took more effort, the third less. Edmund continued working at the nails until he could lift the tapestry and peek behind it.
As he expected, there was a tiny hole at the bottom of the wall. What Edmund hadn’t expected was the dozens of other holes covering the wall, all the way up and down the masonry. This wasn’t a wall like the other walls in the Library; the other walls had thick white stones all carefully fitted and with smooth white mortar between them. This was a pile of sandy bricks stacked haphazardly and stuck with dried paste.
Edmund poked at the crumbling holes. The paste was like wet sand and pulled away easily. Had the builders become bored? Maybe they ran out of material and threw this wall together only to cover it with the tapestry?
Something glinted behind the holes. Curious, Edmund stuck his eye to the wall. At first there was only darkness, but Edmund was becoming a practiced hand at peeking into dark places, so he was patient. After a moment, his eyes adjusted and the small glint flickered in the darkness again — the rat was looking back at him, its eyes reflecting the faint light from the other holes in the wall.
The rat was at least a meter from the hole. There was a room behind the wall.
With the speed born of imminent discovery, Edmund pulled more nails from the tapestry so he could work at the crumbling mortar, easing the loose bricks out of their weak bonds. It was the work of a moment before he had created a break in the wall large enough to crawl through.
The wall had covered a stone alcove, slightly larger than the other ones in the library. There, facing the tapestry that had hidden it for who knew how long, sat a marble desk covered with a pile of dusty books. Sitting at the desk, with the rat crouching on her head, was a woman.
She was covered with a thick layer of dust. Her head lay on the desk, surrounded by books that had spilled out onto the floor. Her hands lay delicately, encircling her head in the perfect posture of repose; she might have been sleeping. Edmund stepped closer to the woman, reaching out to check for a pulse as described in Doctor Diltori’s Accumulative Anatomies.
The rat squeaked in irritation as Edmund stepped closer, his fingers reaching for the woman’s neck. He had just stepped around the desk to get closer, when he noticed the woman had no legs, feet, nor lower torso. Instead, her body vanished into the large marble block that formed the rear of the desk. This was not a woman at all, but a statue of stone, lovingly painted and carefully posed to look exactly like a sleeping lady.
Disappointed that he had not seen his first dead body, (this would not occur until his first year at school) Edmund blew on the statue to scatter the dust and get a better view.
The powdery explosion tickled his nose and made him sneeze, which scattered more dust, which made him sneeze again. He fell into a fit of sneezes, sending up a whirlwind of dust in the small alcove until the dust was attacking him like a swarm of bees. Unable to breathe, Edmund crawled back out of the alcove, sneezing the dust into the library.
How odd, Edmund thought as his convulsions subsided, that someone should go to the trouble of making a statue of a woman, only to wall it up with such poor quality masonry, and then cover it with a tapestry. Why build a statue only to hide it away?
It was obvious no one had been near the statue for ages — the dust and unkempt desk were proof alone of that, never mind the nailed tapestry. Perhaps the statue had been forgotten, and not even Matron knew of its existence — the brass nails could have been older than her.
As he thought, Edmund’s brain tried to remind him of something illusive yet important. He had forgotten something…hadn’t he?
When no answer came, he crawled back into the alcove to inspect the statue. It was lovingly crafted, slim and cold to the touch. He tried to peek at its face, but the statue’s arms were in the way. The fingers were almost as thin as Edmund’s, but longer and painted a pale yellow that reminded him of the ancient scrolls sitting on oaken shelves only a few floors above.
Edmund leaned closer; that wasn’t all. The sneezed-away dust had been covering hair-thin seams in the statue around the joints. It wasn’t just a statue, it was designed to move.
Edmund caught his breath. He had seen statues throughout all of Moulde Hall, but he had never seen any that could move. Even the suits of armor that sprinkled the hallways had a rusty finality to their pose — not even Ung would be strong enough to move them without a large amount of oil and perhaps a strong chisel — but this!
Edmund’s thoughts whirled with possibilities. He ran back to the stacks to search for books on engineering, stone-masonry, statues, and anything that might make them move. He didn’t know why anyone would hide away such a beautiful statue, but it didn’t matter. As soon as he had seen the beautiful seams and joints, he knew what it was he was going to do.
He was going to fix it.