Clare chimed in then with the self-evident observation that there was no colour in a photograph, and Felix explained that this simply meant he would have to use light and shadow, framing and composition, to evoke the same emotions; but Lucy was only half-listening now.
She couldn’t stop looking at Lily Millington. She did not think she had ever heard the other models say anything sensible, let alone show up Thurston Holmes. Lucy had imagined, if she had given it any thought at all, that Edward would exhaust the inspiration he had drawn from Lily Millington, just as he had grown tired of the other models who came before her. But she glimpsed now that Lily Millington was different from the others after all. That she was a different kind of model entirely.
Lily Millington and Edward spent each day squirrelled away in the Mulberry Room, where Edward had set up his easel. He was working diligently – Lucy recognised the look of distracted inspiration that came upon his features when he was in the process of creating a painting – but so far he had been unusually circumspect about his planned piece. Lucy had thought at first that this must be an effect of his contretemps with Mr Ruskin after the latter’s lack of support the previous year when Edward exhibited the La Belle painting. Between Ruskin’s appraisal of the work and Mr Charles Dickens’s reporting of it, Edward had been left fuming. (When the review was printed, he had stormed down to his studio in the back garden and set fire to every work penned by Mr Dickens, along with his prized copy of Mr Ruskin’s Modern Painters. Lucy, who had lined up at W. H. Smith & Son every week between December 1860 and August 1861 in order to purchase the latest instalment of Great Expectations, had to hide her treasured copies of All the Year Round, lest they, too, should be sacrificed to his fury.)
Now, though, she had begun to wonder if there was something else at play. It was hard to say what it was, exactly, but there was an element of secrecy that surrounded Edward and Lily Millington when they were together. And just the other day, Lucy had approached her brother when he was working in his sketchbook, and as soon as he realised that she was beside him he’d snapped it shut – not before she’d caught a glimpse, though, of a detailed study of Lily Millington’s face. Edward did not like to be watched when he worked, but it was highly unusual for him to behave with quite so much furtiveness. It seemed particularly unwarranted in this case, because what was there to hide in a study of his model’s features? The sketch had been like any of the hundred others that Lucy had already seen on his studio wall – except for the pendant necklace she was wearing. Other than that, it was just the same.
Whatever the case, Edward was much intent upon his work, and so, while the others were busy during the day, and Emma was occupied by her many tasks, Lucy took possession of the library. She had told Edward that she would pace herself, but she had no intention of doing any such thing: each day she chose a clutch of books and then took them outside with her to read. Sometimes she read in the barn, other times beneath the ferns in the garden, and on days when there was too much breeze for Felix to attempt to shoot the Lady of Shalott, when he had stalked about the dawn meadow with a finger lifted to assess the prevailing wind and then returned to the house with his hands thrust deep and disconsolately in his pockets, she would sit in the little rowing boat, moored down at Edward’s new jetty.
They had been at Birchwood for almost two weeks when she came across a particularly ancient and dusty book, its covers hanging by threads. It had been pushed to the back of the very top library shelf, hidden from view. Lucy paused on the ladder and opened to the book’s title page, where it was announced in elaborate font that the book was called Daemonologie, In Forme of a Dialogue, Divided into three Bookes and that it had been printed in ‘Edinbvrgh’ by ‘Robert Walde-grave, Printer to the Kings Mage∫tie’ in the year 1597. A book on necromancy and ancient black magic, written by the king who had also brought them the plain English Bible, was of more than passing interest to Lucy, and she put it under her arm and climbed down the ladder.
She took a number of books with her that day when she set off for the river, along with her lunch, wrapped in cloth. The morning was hot and as clear as glass and the air smelled like drying wheat and secret, muddy, underground things. Lucy climbed into the boat and rowed herself upstream. Although it wasn’t still enough for Felix to make his photographic exposure, it was not windy and Lucy planned to let the boat drift slowly back towards Edward’s jetty. She stopped rowing as she neared St John’s Lock and took up On Liberty. It wasn’t until after one o’clock that she finished with John Stuart Mill and opened Daemonologie, and she did not get far with King James’s explanation as to the reasons for persecuting witches in a Christian society, because beyond the first few pages she discovered that the book had been hollowed out to create a cavity. Inside were a number of sheets of paper, folded and tied with a length of twine. She undid the knot and opened the pages. The first was a letter, very old, dated 1586, and written in such faded scratchy writing that she did not even attempt at once to read it. The other pages were drawings, designs for the house, Lucy realised, remembering that Edward had said that it was built during the reign of Elizabeth.
Lucy was thrilled, not because she had any particular interest in architecture, but because she knew that Edward would be delighted, and anything that earned his pleasure made her glad. As she studied the designs, though, she noticed in them something unusual. There were sketches of what the house would look like, the twin gables, the chimneys, the rooms that Lucy now recognised. But there was an additional layer inscribed on the most transparent of paper, which overlaid the first. When Lucy put it on top and lined them up, she noticed that it showed two additional rooms, both of them tiny. Far too small to be bedrooms, or even antechambers. Neither of them had she come across in her explorations.
She frowned, lifting the fine paper and then replacing it in a slightly different position, trying to get a sense of what the rooms might be. The boat had come to rest by now in a small inlet, its prow nosing into the grassy riverbank, and Lucy folded the floor plan away, taking up the letter in the hope that it might shed some light. It was written by a man called Nicholas Owen, the name vaguely familiar to Lucy – perhaps from something she had read? The writing was of an elaborate historical style, but she managed to pick out some of the words – protect … priests … holes …