“Gottshal ,” the man said gruffly. “Me family’s been serving the Shadowhunters of the York Institute for nigh on three centuries now. I can see through tha’ glamours, young ones. Save for this one,” he added, and turned his eyes on Tessa. “If there’s a glamour on the girl, it’s summat I’ve never seen before.”
“She’s a mundane—an Ascendant,” Jem said quickly. “Soon to be my wife.” He took Tessa’s hand protectively, and turned it so that Gottshal could see the ring on her finger. “The Council thought it would be beneficial for her to see another Institute besides London’s.”
“Has Mr. Starkweather been told aught about this?” Gottshal asked, black eyes keen beneath the rim of his hat.
“It depends what Mrs. Branwel told him,” said Jem.
“Wel , I hope she told him something, for yer sakes,” said the old servant, raising his eyebrows. “If there’s a man in t’ world who hates surprises more than Aloysius Starkweather, Ah’ve yet to meet the bast—beggar. Begging your pardon, miss.”
Tessa smiled and inclined her head, but inside, her stomach was churning. She looked from Jem to Wil , but both boys were calm and smiling.
They were used to this sort of subterfuge, she thought, and she was not. She had played parts before, but never as herself, never wearing her own face and not someone else’s. For some reason the thought of lying without a false image to hide behind terrified her. She could only hope that Gottshal was exaggerating, though something—the glint in his eye as he regarded her, perhaps—told her that he wasn’t.
SHADES OF THE PAST
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
A ssailed the monarch’s high estate;
(A h, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
A nd round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
—Edgar Al an Poe, “The Haunted Palace”
Tessa barely noticed the interior of the station as they fol owed Starkweather’s servant through its crowded entry hal . Hustle and bustle, people bumping into her, the smel of coal smoke and cooking food, blurring signs for the Great Northern Railway company and the York and North Midland lines. Soon enough they were outside the station, under a graying sky that arched overhead, threatening rain. A grand hotel reared up against the twilit sky at one end of the station; Gottshal hurried them toward it, where a black carriage with the four Cs of the Clave painted on the door waited near the entrance. After settling the luggage and clambering inside, they were off, the carriage surging into Tanner Row to join the flow of traffic.
Wil was silent most of the way, drumming his slim fingers on his black-trousered knees, his blue eyes distant and thoughtful. It was Jem who did the talking, leaning across Tessa to draw the curtains back on her side of the carriage. He pointed out items of interest—the graveyard where the victims of a cholera epidemic had been interred, and the ancient gray wal s of the city rising up in front of them, crenel ated across the top like the pattern on his ring. Once they were through the wal s, the streets narrowed. It was like London, Tessa thought, but on a reduced scale; even the stores they passed—a butcher’s, a draper’s—seemed smal er. The pedestrians, mostly men, who hurried by, chins dug into their col ars to block the light rain that had begun to fal , were not as fashionably dressed; they looked “country,” like the farmers who came into Manhattan on occasion, recognizable by the redness of their big hands, the tough, sunburned skin of their faces.
The carriage swung out of a narrow street and into a huge square; Tessa drew in a breath. Before them rose a magnificent cathedral, its Gothic turrets piercing the gray sky like Saint Sebastian stuck through with arrows. A massive limestone tower surmounted the structure, and niches along the front of the building held sculpted statues, each one different. “Is that the Institute? Goodness, it’s so much grander than London’s—”
Wil laughed. “Sometimes a church is only a church, Tess.”
“That’s York Minster,” said Jem. “Pride of the city. Not the Institute. The Institute’s in Goodramgate Street.” His words were confirmed as the carriage swung away from the cathedral, down Deangate, and onto the narrow, cobbled lane of Goodramgate, where they rattled beneath a smal iron gate between two leaning Tudor buildings.