The last room was the laboratory.
She opened the door and peered in, then knocked nervously, but no one was here. It was dim, all the window shutters firmly closed. She crossed to one and lifted the bar. The shutter swung inward; daylight turned the room cold.
She saw strange balls of glass that hung from the gilt ceiling, slowly rotating. All the walls were painted with huge, brilliant frescoes; blue and gold and green, great zodiac figures, the Goat, the Fish, the Scorpion, and over the fireplace strange symbols of sun and moon and stars. Even the small colored tiles in the hearth had odd foreign letters and twisted snakes. Machines, scales, peculiar devices littered every surface.
On the benches she walked between were open books, some centuries old, and scattered about them in total confusion strange objects; tubes of evil-smelling stuff, saucers of acrid powder, glass retorts with liquids plopping and boiling inside. She picked up a mothy furred thing and dropped it with a hiss of horror; it was the mummified paw of a small monkey, and she rubbed her hand hurriedly on her dress.
The room smelled musty and sulfurous. Astrolabes and globes and other instruments she didn’t even recognize were piled around. An Egyptian figure with a jackal’s head held down a stack of papers; lifting the top sheet, she found it was covered with the dark sloping writing that had been on her card. There were notebooks of scribbles and diagrams; carefully drawn wheels, a man with all the muscles outlined in his body, arrowed with unreadable symbols she guessed might be Greek.
Then, in the far corner, something shifted.
She dropped the papers and stared over. There was a clutter of things there, an hourglass with sand running through and a lamp, but the movement had been behind those. Curious, she pushed through the benches and went closer.
She saw a tall glass dome. Somehow it seemed faintly lit from inside, as if lined with some phosphorescent material. Above it was a card scrawled with the word GEMINI, and a drawing of twin embryos linked together, so realistic it made her feel sick.
As she lifted her hand, something moved inside the dome.
She stopped. Had it been her reflection?
And then she saw that a boy was sitting in the dome; tiny and far away, but alive. Real! He was reading, his hair short and oddly cut, his clothes strange. He looked well-fed and healthy. She recognized him; he was the boy in her dream, so she crouched, fascinated, her huge face level with him.
How had Azrael imprisoned him here? Tales of horrors crept into her mind, of created beings, things grown from parts of dead men.
“Can you hear me?” she breathed.
The boy ignored her. He pushed a small white box into the wall, where it stuck and made a click. A lamp lit next to him by magic. And she saw she was wrong; it wasn’t one boy but two, one dissolving out of the other, identical, and the second twin could see her, because he jumped up and pointed, and his brother turned and said, “Where?”
Sarah leaped back. Her skirt caught the dome. It wobbled and she grabbed it in terror, the two boys tumbling about inside like toys, and the door opened behind her and in the mirror she saw Azrael’s face, white with shock.
“For God’s sake!” he hissed. “Don’t drop that!”
eight
Azrael drew a black curtain around the dome and pushed it into a small wall safe, which he locked with a key on his watch-chain. Then he came over and leaned against the bench, arms folded. His face was grave, and still pale. She couldn’t tell how angry he was. She clasped her hands behind her back, stopping herself from bursting out with ridiculous excuses.
“Well,” he said finally. “Perhaps Mother Hubbard was right. You are a troublemaker after all.”
“Changed your mind?” she murmured.
He smiled. “Once I set my sights on someone, Sarah, I never change my mind. But there ought to be some rules, don’t you think? The first can be that you never enter this particular room without me.” He picked up a smooth egg-shaped stone and rubbed it with acid-scarred fingers, as if self-conscious. She almost felt disappointed. So she said, “What was in that thing?”
He looked up, sly. “What do you think?”
“I saw . . . two boys. Twins. They were real, like live people. How can you keep them in there? Won’t they suffocate?”
He smiled again, shaking his head. “Oh, Sarah. Your education has been neglected. How we’ll change all that.” He put the stone down and limped down the bench, putting things back in their places. Then he took his topcoat off, tied a white apron on, and began to stir and examine the retorts. “What you saw was best described as an image. Real, but not real.”
“I saw it,” she said, stubborn.
“A vision. Beings that might exist elsewhere.”
“Spirits?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The cat had come in. It picked its way along the bench delicately, over shells and carved wood and models of insects. Then it looked at her and mewed.
“Yes,” Azrael said absently. “Quite right. Mephisto says it’s time you started work.”
She stared at him. “Sorting the books?”
“Indeed.”
“Where do I start?”
He shrugged. “Wherever you wish. You’ll find everything you need out in the rhino room. Take your time. Enjoy yourself.” He stroked his dark faint beard and lifted an eyebrow. “After all, this isn’t Mrs. Hubbard’s academy. This is another world, Sarah.”
And it was. It was heaven. She could hardly believe she had fallen into it. There were books of history, Greek plays and Roman battles, atlases and prints of beautiful paintings; there were poems and novels and scattered pages of strange music and hundreds of sepia photographs of Egyptian mummy cases, their painted eyes wide. Above all, there were the mysterious and magical books of alchemy, bound in calf and leather, their stiff pages closely covered with the dark letters of unknown languages, of spells and philosophic musings and recipes and diagrams.
The quest for gold fascinated her. What process could transmute dull metal into a shining beauty? What sort of power would that be?
For hours she just browsed and read, turning strange, wonderful pages. Scrab shuffled up with a tray at some time but she barely noticed him; later, when she realized she was hungry, the food had long gone cold, the afternoon dark. She hadn’t eaten a thing, caught up in the enchantment and glory of the books.
Her head felt muzzy, her eyes tired. Picking up some meat and stiffened bread, she chewed it in delight, then crossed to the casement and opened it, letting a cold sea wind straight in.
Far out over the fishing fleet, the gulls and terns made screeching clouds; the lobsterpots were being lifted. Below, Lord Azrael was coming up the track on a pale horse. She hadn’t even heard him go out. Scrab came down to meet him, greasy coat gleaming.
Azrael waved up at her. “Don’t strain your eyes,” he laughed, the wind flapping his collar.
She shrugged. “I haven’t even started yet,” she whispered to herself.
It was easy to forget, in the library. All week she lived in its warm cocoon. The books were a spell; once she touched them, their stories and knowledge held her tight. Gradually she worked out a careful plan; to get them all down, room by room, shelf by shelf, and sort them into categories—history, science, religion—and then to number them, making accurate lists. There were thousands, and it would take years to do, even if she could stop herself reading them, but the idea exhilarated her. Already she had discovered a whole cupboard full of chained Bibles in unknown alphabets; the unknowable squiggles of their letters fascinating her. She had to force herself to get out and get some air, walking between the heavy October showers to the beach, where the hard sand was pitted with rain marks. She ate her meals alone and she slept deeply, as if all the worries of the world had been wiped away. Twice, sleepily, she thought she heard the distant unbolting of a door, and sometimes through her dreams ran the deep thunder of a hidden river, far below her pillow, echoing in the foundations and walls and vast chimneys of the old house.