I’ve seen the Council book, I think. I know about the others.
“Let me ask you this,” George says. “Why do you think Eliza’s so determined to be Miss Sterling everything? Have you ever noticed that?” He twiddles a pencil between his fingers. “Why do you think my mother is always in the middle of everyone’s business? The thing is, Aila, that your mother left. She got the chance to get out, and she took it. And people feel like she deserted Sterling, and that only proved her guilt.” His face softens. “Anyone else who could be a Catalyst is doing whatever they can to show they’re the opposite of what she did.”
I bunch my skirt in my fists under the table.
We’re interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. We gather our things and meet Dr. Cliffton and Will in the foyer.
“Hello, George,” Dr. Cliffton says with surprise. I cringe as he and Will pause at the sight of George and me standing side by side, as if trying to determine exactly what’s going on between us.
“Dr. Cliffton,” George says, stepping forward, “I know you’re looking for a Variant for the music, and I was wondering if you might be open to a few ideas I have?”
“Certainly,” Dr. Cliffton says. “Your mother has mentioned that you have quite the scientific mind. Perhaps with it, we’ll reach the answer in half the time.” He turns to Will. “Can we finish that discussion another time? Or would you care to join us?”
Will looks at George, then back at me. He scratches at his eyebrow.
“No, that’s okay,” he says.
Dr. Cliffton reaches into his bag to show George a book stuffed an inch thick with notes. “I’ve collected ideas for a decade in anticipation of this. Almost a thousand so far.”
George holds up his single sheet of paper. “I’ve come up with . . . this.”
“Excellent,” Dr. Cliffton says, taking it from him. “We’ll add it.” He stuffs it into the book and gestures George into the library. “I feel strongly that it must be in here. Let’s get started.”
The door closes behind them.
Will and I are left standing in the foyer. It’s the first time we’ve been alone since Disappearance Day. Since he asked Eliza to go to the Christmas Ball.
“Hi,” he says, setting down his toolbox.
“Hello,” I say stiffly.
He reaches into his back pocket. “I stopped by the post office on the way home,” he says. “This came for you.”
He hands me a folded envelope inked with Father’s handwriting.
I rip it open on the spot and skim through his words about noon mess and calisthenics and jellyfish and a sun so bright it’s sent men to the infirmary with burns. I can barely imagine how far away he must be from me now—?here, the clouds hang low and gray with threatening snow. Still, I slump against the railing with relief.
Will lingers next to me. “Is everything all right?”
I give him a short nod and turn away without elaborating.
“Swell . . .” This time, his tone returns my coolness.
I’m heading upstairs to leave the letter on Miles’s bed when there’s a sudden knock on the door.
Beas stands just outside, shifting her weight.
“I changed my mind?” she says, shrugging, and I smile and throw the door open wide to let her in.
I give Beas a tour of the house, and we settle on the floor of my room. She hands back my Underwoods. “It was good.”
“Pick another,” I say, gesturing at my meager shelf. She examines my worn copies, and when she selects Yeats, I pull out my mother’s Shakespeare book.
Occasionally we hear the library door open as Genevieve brings tea. “I’ve already crossed off these twelve,” Dr. Cliffton says. “And I’m organizing the rest by materials we need to procure.”
George is starting to read down the list when my eyes fall back to King Henry the Eighth.
“Bid the music leave.”
I lean forward and read the words again as I uncap my pen. I add a circle around the words, as if I’m wreathing them with a crown.
Then I unfold the list I’ve made and add my latest find. It joins my last entry from The Tempest, the one about everything on this great globe dissolving, fading, leaving not a rack behind.
“What are you doing?” Beas asks, peering over my shoulder.
There are so many circled passages. All the things Mother found, and more that I discovered after her. My list now stretches to two pages. Taken altogether, laid out like this, a picture is starting to emerge.
“Dr. Cliffton said that most of the Variants seem to have literary clues,” I say vaguely. “Many found in Shakespeare.”
I flip through more pages, my eyes skimming through the words as fast as I can take them in. Beas returns to her homework. “I like the Bard, but sometimes the Elizabethan English feels like trying to run through mud.”
“It gets easier,” I say, distracted, moving on to Much Ado About Nothing.
My eyes flit over the words until I reach what Mother has circled next.
A funny sort of tremor runs through me.
She’s marked:
Beat.: I am stuffed, cousin, I cannot smell.
Marg.: A maid, and stuffed! there’s goodly catching of cold.
Beat.: O, God help me! God help me! how long have you professed apprehension?
Marg.: Ever since you left it. Doth not my wit become me rarely!
Beat.: It is not seen enough, you should wear it in your cap. By my troth, I am sick.
Mar.: Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, and lay it to your heart: it is the only thing for a qualm.
Carduus benedictus.
Benedictus I recognize. “Blessed,” in Latin, the dead language Mother had once insisted on trying to teach me. Why did that sound vaguely familiar? It takes me a moment to place it.
My heart takes off, as if I’m nearing the edges of something I’ve been missing.
Then I abruptly close Mother’s book and snatch my list. “Beas,” I say, “I have an idea.”
I knock on the library door, my excitement dazzling the higher it climbs. “Come in,” Dr. Cliffton calls.
Beas and I step into the library, which is aglow with lamplight and the searing of the sun as it sets. George and Dr. Cliffton are leaning over a pile of books, the covers all open and layered on top of one another. They look up at me with polite expectation.
“I’ve been reading something of my mother’s,” I begin. “A Shakespeare volume. And I have a theory about the Disappearances.”
Dr. Cliffton straightens. “Go on.”
“I just came across this passage.” I show them my circled words: “Bid the music leave.” I flip to another page. “And here—?when Beatrice says she can’t smell, Margaret recommends trying Carduus benedictus. It reminded me of when you solved the first Variant.”
I pluck out the plant encyclopedia he had shown me earlier. Navigate to the little spiky magenta plant.
The caption underneath says “Carduus Benedictus. Blessed Thistle.”
“You said yourself that you can find so many of the clues in Shakespeare’s pages,” I remind him. I unfold my lists and smooth them out across his desk. “I’ve been working on this. What if—?what if all the Disappearances are found there?”