At half past four, we took the winding road to the sanatorium. The building loomed on a high hill. Scarlet bricks, wearing webs of tenuous ivy, stood dark and foreboding against the wintry backdrop. On the upper levels, every window had black bars welded across the panes.
At lunch, Lord Thornton had explained his father didn’t stay at a typical bedlam but more of a maison house: a four story composite of small apartments. The patients on the ground floor—most of whom were wealthy and self-diagnosed with little more than exhaustion or a lust for gambling and gin—were free to roam about the enclosed courtyard and ornamental gardens.
Seven physicians and twelve nurses occupied the second-floor apartments, each owning a set of keys which opened the padlocked staircases to the third and fourth levels. There the morbid and incurable cases of mental unrest resided, locked within their rooms.
The elderly Lord Thornton lived upon the third floor due to his failure to grasp reality. With the addition of his blindness, he became easily excited. Since his physician insisted he receive only two visitors at a time, Enya and Uncle opted to wait in the courtyard.
Uncle squeezed my hand. “I intend to find some blooms of heath to share with Enya,” he mimed the words and winked. I smiled, squeezing his palm in return.
Lord Thornton waited for me at the gate. A nurse unlocked the entrance, and led us up to the third floor where the bars over each window pane threw shadowy lines along our path, daring us to cross them.
Lord Thornton offered his free arm and I took it gratefully. Trudging through the sterile corridor to his father’s room made me feel like a pathogen—a menacing intruder bent on disrupting the poor man’s solitude.
“There’s nothing of solitude here.” Hawk said from the opposite side of me. “Be thankful for your deafness, Juliet. There are sounds in this place which could unnerve the dead.”
I didn’t need working ears to sense the wilderness of dementia we entered. I could see it: in the onslaught of fingernail scratches along the walls; I could taste and smell it, in the stench of urine and feces diluted by splashes of ammonia; and I could feel it … in the icy slap beneath my shoes upon tiles scuffed from patients being dragged to their rooms.
I shuddered. The viscount noticed my reaction and drew me closer, his muscle firming where I tightened my clamp on his arm. He assured me with a nod that all would be well.
By the time the nurse reached the end of the long hall and unlocked the elderly viscount’s door, I had myself prepared for the worst. Yet as I stepped into the room behind the viscount, where only a bed, table, and chair testified to a human occupant, I found an orderly, peaceful scene instead.
The nurse nodded toward an old man seated in front of the table beside a lone window, back turned to us. He tilted his head as if hearing us, all the while tapping his fingers across the shiny trinkets spread out on his table top.
His hair, shoulder length and yellowy-white, sprung up in thick knots. The viscount mentioned his father wouldn’t let anyone but family brush his hair or shave his face. So Lord Thornton made weekly trips to tend him.
“What does my father smell like, Juliet?” Hawk stood behind the elderly viscount’s willowy, hunched shoulders. Emotion broke over his voice like a wave crashing on the rocks. It was the first time he’d met his real father—at least that he could remember—and he had nothing tangible to grasp onto.
I weighed the scent against the stench in the halls still clinging to my nostrils. Oil perhaps. And feathers, unmistakably. I studied the table’s contents and the memory Hawk shared upon our journey to the Manor of Diversions rebounded in my mind. Copper glinted on the table, gears of some sort, along with a vial of oil and several feathers used to lubricate the copper teeth. Lord Thornton had mentioned his father being a watchmaker during our talk in the winter garden.
Hawk inched closer. “’It is him. The same old man from my memory. And the one who read to me.”
Time-wise, it made no sense that his father would’ve known him as a child. Had Hawk been a man when his father read to him? We assumed him a youth because the telling of Hansel and Gretel. Could we have been wrong? Perhaps it had been after he met his brother.
Hawk’s trembling hand reached up as if to pat the elderly viscount’s hair. It hurt to watch him try to make contact. I pressed my fingers to my lips, in an effort not to cry.
The gesture caught Lord Thornton’s attention. Assuming me overwhelmed or mortified, he pointed his cane, indicating I should sit on the mattress’s edge. As I settled, the bed springs groaned—a vibrating sensation beneath my hips. The nurse handed Lord Thornton a brush and razor then left the room with a promise of water.
I watched, astonished, as the viscount propped his cane against the table then took his place next to his phantom brother. For an instant, they were the family they should’ve been. The three Thorntons, all together, side by side. An obscure past that never had the chance to see the light of a future star.
The viscount stroked his father’s hair to sooth him as he brushed through the knots. I wondered how many times in Nicolas’s past Miss Abbot had combed his boyish tangles, and if she used the same tenderness.
If only he’d known his mother.
Hawk observed the poignant exchange—unmoving and contemplative. I knew he, too, would’ve given anything to have experienced such love. Either from a father or a mother.
A conversation began between the two viscounts—the young, industrious architect and the waning elder.
“Our father tells Nicolas that all the music is gone from his world.” Hawk relayed the exchange. “He asks why Nicolas never sings him songs anymore. Says it was money well-spent, all those years of voice lessons.” Hawk’s gaze fell to the floor. “I wish I could sing my lullabies to him.”
Sympathy clenched my throat like a vicious talon, making it impossible to swallow. My ghost scooted closer to the table, palms propped on the edge, so intent on relaying the conversation it was as if I listened to the two viscounts myself.
“Father, my heart has lost the will to sing.”
“But I venture you still dress like a dandy clown. You know when I started going blind? T’was that first year when you began sporting circus tents in lieu of nobler trappings.” The old man tilted his head back on a laugh.
Lord Thornton smiled gently. “It is much worse now. You should count yourself lucky you no longer have to view me.”
“A waste.” The old man felt around the table and found a gear—spindled like a miniature wagon wheel. His fingers tapped each tooth, as if forming a mental picture before sandwiching it atop the watch’s base on a screw-shaped piece. “We’ve so little money to spare. For you to buy unnecessary things.”
“The clothes were necessary for me to honor mother’s heritage. Besides, we’ve plenty of money, Father. Everything is fine now.”
“Yet instead of using our newfound wealth to get me out of here, you buy more doctors. Bring them to my room to poke and prod.” The old fellow turned in his seat toward me, staring blindly through Hawk with filmy, white eyes. He had sensed my presence all along. “Sorry doctor. You’re wasting your time. Nothing ails me that a good roll with a whore won’t fix.”
Lord Thornton paled and threw an apologetic glance my way. He turned the old man around in his chair. “Please, Father … there are no doctors. I brought a lady. A special lady. You must be civil. Make her feel welcome.”
“Ah. Should’ve known your bout with celibacy wouldn’t last.” He fitted a solid gear then several other pieces in place, using his sense of touch to guide him.
Flushed, Lord Thornton held out his palm to coax me over. Hawk looked over his shoulder, waiting.
I rose and smoothed my dress. Senseless really, since the old man had no chance of seeing it. Then I took the viscount’s hand.
“Father,”—my host ensured I could see his lips—“I should like to introduce you to Miss Juliet Emerline. Miss Emerline, meet Lord Merril Thornton.”
The viscount secur
ed my hand within his father’s cool and wrinkled counterpart.
Before I could say a word, Merril squashed my palm to his nose, snorting hot moistness over my flesh like a horse seeking out a snack. “Hmmm, this one’s soft … smells of gardenias and fresh snow. Found you a young innocent, aye? Take care not to spoil her. Don’t make her like your mother. That woman reeks of gin and myrrh. Don’t you find it so?”
“Of course Father.” Lord Thornton patted the old man’s shoulder, pity curving his lips downward.
“Gypsy whore.” The old man dropped my hand and scrounged around the table once more. “Leave me with one son when I have two. Have you found him yet? Poor baby child. You must find him so I can raise him proper.”
Lord Thornton closed his eyes and raked a hand through his hair. “He is my age, Father.”
As if not hearing him, Merril snatched a feather and dusted off his developing watch. “I wish to hold him snuggled in a blanket. To tell him stories … as I did you. Find him, Son.”
Lord Thornton raised his broad shoulders on a sigh. “I shall try.” When he opened his eyes again, he looked like a man drowning.
I eased two steps back, out of respect for the intimacy of the conversation. I used my deafness to restore Lord Thornton’s dignity. He did not need to know I could hear every word between them via Hawk’s voice.
“Bring him to me.” Merril turned the gears of his creation with a fingertip, testing his progress. “Your mother will follow. We shall be reunited as a family. Then I’ll kill that Romani king. Yes. That’s what I’ll do. Kill him. Dead.” Agitated, the old man slapped both hands on the table and trifled through the remaining metal forms, desperate in his search for something specific.
Lord Thornton caught his father’s wrists, his features sharp with annoyance, and I wondered if was about to witness his temper firsthand once more. “Father. You mustn’t let the nurses hear you say such things. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll cut yourself. Then they’ll take away your materials. If they perceive you dangerous to yourself or anyone else, they won’t allow you to make your watches.” He released the elderly viscount.
Lips pursed, Merrill nudged a square-shaped base with his thumb. It reminded me of Hawk’s geometric watch and the giant clock in the star tower. Too similar and unique to be coincidences. Had Hawk’s father made the watch in the tower, and the one for him that said Rat King? This same man that thought Hawk was still a baby? It was all so confusing.
Reading my thoughts, Hawk swung the watch at the waist of his trousers, every bit as puzzled as I.
The viscount knelt down to gaze up into his father’s face. He shielded his mouth from my view with Merril’s head, thinking me blind to their discussion. “As I’ve told you. Tobar has already been dealt with. Be at peace with it.”
“I cannot be at peace! Not until I find the blasted click spring!” His hands went wild over the table.
Lord Thornton rose to pick through gears and bits of misshapen metal. His brow crimped as he searched for the key to the clock’s inner workings and his father’s tranquility.
In a clumsy sweep, Merril’s thrashing hands tipped the vial of oil. Inky liquid drizzled from the table’s edge onto Lord Thornton’s elegant leather boots, saturating the tassels.
Irritation tightened the younger viscount’s jaw. He drew out a handkerchief and crouched to dab at the floor and his boots.
His father—oblivious to what he’d done—continued seeking the spring. Without a word to me, Hawk inched forward and stretched out his hand. Chin tight with intense concentration, he moved a tiny wire, shaped like a shepherd’s crook, within his father’s reach.
Merril held it up, beaming. “There it is! Ah yes. There it is.” His milky, white eyes tilted in Hawk’s direction. “Thank you, Sir.”
My chin dropped and Hawk mirrored my surprise.
Lord Thornton looked up from his ministrations, puzzled as he noted my distance from the old man. “To whom are you speaking, Father?”
“The other guest you brought. The one I mistook for a doctor. The gentleman that moves like mist. He found my spring for me.”
The nurse returned just in time to hear Merril’s answer. She exchanged a worried glance with Lord Thornton.
“He knows I’m here …” Hawk’s statement startled me from my shocked stasis. “My father senses me. He bloody-well senses me.”
My breath stalled. No. It is impossible.
Hawk smiled, his hope impermeable. “My father knows I’m here. He feels it, the way the animals do.”
How can it be? The old man is as blind as I am deaf.
“Your point being?” Hawk’s voice resonated within my dysfunctional ears, more of an awakening than if he’d slapped my face with a cold fish.
Chapter 27
The man who does not love a horse cannot love a woman.
Spanish Proverb
Back at the Manor that evening, I couldn’t relax for all of the questions rattling in my brain. As soon as Enya helped me into my bed gown and retired to her own room, I curled up in the chair by the glass French doors with Hawk sitting on the arm next to me, both of us anxious to examine the pages I’d earlier stolen from the viscount’s window seat.
Using nothing more than moonlight and Hawk’s glow, I matched the torn edges to the journal’s spine and found them the perfect fit. They were indeed the missing entries. My ghost deciphered the date and we realized it was the account of my fall into the mines—through Chaine’s eyes. That explained why his brother had it in his possession. Chaine … Hawk … must’ve offered it as explanation to why he searched for me. This also proved that the viscount knew all along, even before buying the mines and reading Larson’s accident files, of my existence. Now I knew why he came seeking me, and why he offered to buy my parent’s estate, yet let me stay.
He was carrying out his brother’s wishes.
This knowledge touched me deeply, and instilled a change in Hawk as we settled in to read, his words tender toward his brother now. Accepting and grateful.
“Today,” Hawk deciphered the foreign script, “I hid up in a tree while Father spoke to young Master Larson about the arsenic supply. I always thought it a stroke of bad fortune Tobar had been given the task as rat catcher on the estate. Never did I realize the two men had arranged it as part of a pact.”
Hawk’s chin stiffened as he leaned closer to the page. The writing took a messy turn, as if Chaine pressed too hard with the quill. “Larson has known all along about the monster and his practices. Larson has condoned my father and his sickness. He kept the monster’s secret in exchange that as gypsy king, Father would arrange for the cheap labor of my people, and the promise of our return each spring and summer to work these mines for the same paltry dues—”
Hawk slumped against the chair. All of the light had drained from his eyes. “They had a bloody business arrangement with my misery as collateral.” He sat so close that could I have hugged him, my cheek would’ve pressed his sternum where his shirt hung open.
I covered the page with a shaky hand, unable to bear another word. Weeks earlier, I shared this child’s humiliation and abuse through entries now as elucidative as any fossil, with traces of emotion so powerful I experienced Chaine’s state of mind as if they were my own. Most indelible was the crown of living rats writhing on his head for hours until his savage step-father deemed fit to lift him out of the pit.
Never would I have imagined that a partnership between two grown men had enabled this unthinkable crime. It made sense now as to why Lord Thornton invited Larson back as an investor—even why he appeared to hate him so.
He was planning revenge.
“Yes,” Hawk murmured. “My brother has something in mind for Larson … something sinister.” Hawk’s quivering timbre made my stomach twist. “I told you what he said to our father about Tobar being ‘already dealt with’? Perhaps I went after Tobar and something went awry. Nicolas must be planning to avenge my death. That must be why my aunt is here as w
ell. Perhaps even the dungeon plays a role. Listen to the rest of the entry.”
His finger floated over the erratic script. “Let them laugh. Let them plot. Aunt Bitti says that to die frees your spirit. You can be places no man can be … do things no man can do. So I’ll let the monster send me to the tunnel today. But I’m taking his arsenic with me. Shouldn’t be so hard to swallow. I’ll close my eyes and pretend it’s garlic. After I’m dead, Aunt Bitti can bring me back to settle everything. Better this way. I want to see the other side … I want to be free. The pit is so dark. So cold. I need proof of light. Any light. There’s none in life, so it must wait for me in death. It must.”
Hawk’s voice broke and tears scorched my cheeks. Perhaps Lord Thornton’s quest was not simply to avenge his brother’s death, but his brother’s stolen childhood as well. And, oh, how I wanted to help.
My thoughts ran rampant with a poison which both boiled and chilled my blood. I burned to leave my room … to storm the dark halls of this house … to find Larson’s chambers and suffocate the greedy pig beneath a wave of rats and mud and arsenic. I’d almost worked up enough senseless rage to rise to my feet and let them take me where they would, when Hawk spoke again.
“Wait.” His composure had returned, so strong and unwavering it gave me pause. “Hear this.” He pointed to the final short paragraph, written later the same day with lilting curves and loops as if Chaine’s entire demeanor had changed. “I chose to live today, with the help of a sky-fallen angel. I thought to swallow the arsenic, truly I did. I held it up to my lips when a tiny slip of a girl fell upon my shoulders and into the pit. I lost the arsenic in an effort to dig us out from under the debris. When I found her, she hugged my neck and wept. I’ve never felt such warmth … to be needed. I never knew that to help another is what gives us light. I made up a fairytale in rhyme to stop her tears, and she giggled with the laughter of a meadow lark. When her family came for her, I had to hide … else they would fish me out and I would suffer the wrath of the monster for being found. But I have a plan now. I’m going to leave … escape this place. And one day, I’ll find the girl again—look upon her in the light—and thank her for saving me.”