Page 58 of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

But Ralph held a hand up and the rest of her words died in her throat. “You did what you had to do.”

It didn’t make her feel any better. “What if Arthur catches him?” Ivy asked Mrs. Hewitt, her worst fear spilling into the silence of the room.

“There is one thing you could tell Sir Arthur,” Mrs. Hewitt said quietly, looking down at her hands in her lap. “Tell him you’re a Hewitt. He won’t touch you if you’re one of us. It’s the agreement between our families.”

If they had explained to Ivy why this was the case before, she had long since forgotten. “He locked you in the basement to rot,” Ivy pointed out, her heart further tightening at the memory of coming upon Ralph caged like a broken feral animal.

“To keep us out of the way,” Hewitt clarified. “They wouldn’t have killed us, not intentionally.”

A small comfort. Ivy helplessly watched as Ralph donned one of Hewitt’s old coats, the sleeves too short, the front too baggy. “I’ll be back. I promise,” he told her, finally meeting her eye. The glint there was hard and determined, and she had no choice but to believe him. He was strong and capable, so why did it feel as if she was sending a piece of her heart into the burning abbey with him?

The door had not been shut behind him for five minutes when Ivy threw herself off the sofa and began pacing. A clock ticked on the mantel, the air grew heavier. Outside chaos still rumbled. “I need to stay awake,” she announced to Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt. “And I need air. I’m going to take a walk.”

“My lady, you can’t possibly think to go out and—”

Ivy stopped Mrs. Hewitt. “I’ll go toward the moors and stay out of sight. If I keep sitting here waiting for Ralph, I’ll surely fall asleep and I can’t lose my memories right now, I just can’t.”

Mrs. Hewitt looked too tired to argue, and nodded.

Ivy left the Hewitts to their rest, and made sure they bolted the door behind her when she left. Smoke hung acrid in the air, the underbelly of dark clouds illuminated in the dying orange flashes of the fire. Cold air bit into her, reviving her flagging spirits. Ivy followed the little path out behind the cottage and onto the restless moors, before throwing a last glance over her shoulder, and then taking a sharp left and doubling back toward the abbey.

30

The library doors stood ajar like two crooked teeth, welcoming Ivy inside with a sinister leer. She picked her way over the debris with soft steps, her feet stinging from her journey across the grounds. Burnt rubble sat smoldering in piles in the dark hall, but aside from some smoke stains and the occasional fallen timber, the walls stood intact. Mrs. Hewitt had been right—Blackwood had withstood worse before, and it would be standing long after this.

With footsteps made hesitant by a deep sense of foreboding, Ivy gingerly pushed open the creaking doors the rest of the way and slipped into the library. It was dark. A drifting flake of ash landed on her hair and she flinched before swatting it away. As she moved slowly along the shelves, a long-forgotten song came back to her on threads and tattered moth wings. It was a medieval tune, and though she couldn’t remember how she knew it, the meaning was clear as crystal. People had once believed that when one died, their soul must make a perilous journey over the course of a single night, avoiding demons and darkness, before eventually reaching the safehold of Jesus’s arms.This ae nighte,rang the dark and mysterious refrain. Ivy was a lost soul without the anchors of memory and hope, adrift in the night, unsure of what morning would bring.

Somewhere in the bowels of the house, Ralph was hunting for her lost notes, vulnerable and alone. How would he be able to outrun Arthur or his servants in his state if they came upon him? Would they hurt him, even if he claimed he was a Hewitt as Mrs. Hewitt had instructed? It was no use dwelling on what-ifs and worst-case scenarios; Ivy would either find the books she needed and Ralph would find her notes and together they would rein in the Sphinxes and the manuscript, or Arthur and his club would continue to wreak havoc on the abbey and what was left of Ivy’s life.

The predawn light glowing from the window was just enough to make out the murky outline of shelves and tables haphazardly pushed out of the way in the aftermath of the fire. Ivy didn’t know what she was looking for, other than an astronomy book that might shed some light on the riddle of the constellations in the flowers.

“What are you hiding?” Ivy murmured into the darkness.

The lingering smell of smoke hung heavy in the air as she slowly made her way forward. Her step stopped as a glowing ember leapt from a pile of ash. But as she jumped to beat it out, it rose up higher in front of her, not in the erratic pattern of a rogue ember, but the intentional movement of a sentient being. No bigger than an apple, it glowed rosy gold, casting the shelves behind it in flickering shadows. Ivy watched as the light rose higher still, bobbing and floating like the disembodied flame of a lantern being held aloft by some unseen hand.

Her eyes were playing tricks on her. Exhaustion had finally overtaken her, and she was hallucinating, dreaming. Yet all the same, she moved toward the light, drawn like a hungry street cat to a warm bowl of milk. It wanted Ivy to follow, and in her dreamlike state, it only made sense that she would oblige.

This ae nighte, this ae nighte,

—Every nighte and alle,

Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,

And Christe receive thy saule.

Was this the end for her, the culmination of her soul’s journey? She probably should have been scared, or at the very least, wary. But when one was kicking aside the burnt rubble of an evil library that stole memories, well, she could only muster curiosity and a reluctant sense of acceptance.

She was tired, so tired. But forcing her weary feet through the debris, Ivy followed the light. It would stop, hovering and bobbing as if waiting, and then dart ahead, deeper into the shelves.

For all the damage wrought by the fire and water used to put it out, the books were remarkably unharmed. Shelves had collapsed, and the red velvet drapes were nothing more than threadbare shrouds, but the worst damage to a book seemed to be some singed corners and spines strained from falling to the floor.

The light stopped, gently bobbing in place, in front of a shelf where most of the books remained untouched by smoke or water damage. It looked as if until recently the shelf had been flush against the wall, but was now pulled aside, revealing another row of books behind it. Even in the surreal landscape of the fire-damaged library, Ivy was certain she had never seen this shelf before. The light drifted closer to the books, illuminating the spine of a simply-bound tome before circling back to her. It was so close that she could have reached out and touched the glowing orb if she had been brave enough. Then it flickered, and vanished, leaving her in the stillness of the library.

Outside, a chaffinch sang its first morning song, a flippant trill that cared nothing for the horrors of the previous night. Ivy had come looking for an astronomy book, but this seemed more important now, so with one last lingering glance for the orb, she pulled down the book.

It took her a moment, her eyes blinking against the poor light, trying to make sense of the words that stared back at her. When they did come into focus, her breath caught in her throat.

The Life and Dreams of Ivy Radcliffe, the Lady Hayworth. 1903—

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