Chapter 28

Vibrations quivered through the bedroom air, like the collective wingbeats of starlings taking flight ahead of a storm. Ivy had always cherished books for the stillness they allowed in a world that valued fast, unforgiving progress regardless of the human expense; there was a magical link between words on the page and the vivid images that simultaneously unfolded in her mind. But there was no unspoken pact between the secret manuscript's author and herself, wherein she was given the bricks for building castles in the air. Instead, it felt as if she were on a derailed train, forced to helplessly witness the destruction wrought in its wake. The most unsettling and grotesque images filled her mind, even when she set aside the pages and closed her eyes. The manuscript demanded to be seen, an insistent tune that wormed its way through her head.

And yet, she still made headway with the decryption. She had been right: the illustrations did provide context. Occasionally a set of characters were repeated next to similar images, and Ivy was able to pair them together. Every night she meticulously recorded her progress, and spread her notes over the top of the desk so that she would see them when she awoke, a trail of bread crumbs for Hansel and Gretel wandering through a fog of memory. Some mornings everything came back to her fast and sure in a flash. Other days it felt as if she was starting from scratch, and she would stay up into the small hours of the morning only to fall asleep from exhaustion and lose everything again.

On a dreary day, when the wind mercilessly howled outside, Ivy pored over the pages, her porridge gone cold and gluey, the steam from the teapot long since evaporated. She stifled a yawn as she studied a page filled margin to margin with cramped text. Based on the illustrations alone, the manuscript was clearly someone's life work, a compendium of knowledge on herbs, astrology, fertility, and so much more. But in addition to the fantastical birds and blooming flowers, there were disturbing drawings, hellmouths and figures engaged in bizarre orgies, bloody rituals. And the words still remained elusive; every time she thought she had found purchase with the encryption, the key fell through her fingers, slippery as an eel. Even with her notes laid before her, Ivy's mind wandered, but finding no memories upon which to dwell, it quickly returned, submissive as a broken dog.

She stopped her fingers on a page toward the end, sat back, then leaned forward and squinted at the text again. It was in a different hand, she was sure of it. The hand that had written the rest of the manuscript was tight and neat, but this script was flowing, and in another style entirely, perhaps a different language too.

There had been two authors.

And? What difference does it make? Ivy thought. Many manuscripts had been completed over the course of years, decades even, and were written by more than one scribe. The monk who had illuminated the capital letters on each page might not have been the same one who had penned the text. But this manuscript was different. This was not a manuscript that would have graced the halls of the British Library, open to an illuminated and gilded frontispiece. The drawings were crude, and any embellishments were more utilitarian than decorative. It hadn't been made for a wealthy patron, or even for the glory of a monastery, so why had there been more than one author?

Ivy's eyes were burning, and the light was growing low. Someone had taken her tray away, replaced it with another that also sat untouched. Soon she would have to succumb to sleep, and her revelations would be subjected to a perilous waiting period while she rested. Scrawling out her thoughts and questions, she climbed bone-weary into bed. Tomorrow, she would find her answers.

The monk arrived on a gust of frigid air, sour breath, and half-buried memories.

The sound of a thousand writhing maggots crawling over each other filled the air, the clicking of bodies on bodies. Ivy clamped her eyes shut, willing it to be a dream, to be a trick of her overtired mind. But dream or not, when she opened her eyes, the monk stood before her as real as the manuscript that lay open on her desk. He brought with him blood-curdling screams, knives on bone, flesh ripping. The calm, removed voice of a man documenting his experiments as he conducted them, searching for the answer to eternal life and death and everything in between. Ivy clamped her hands over her ears, but it was no use; the voices were inside her head, echoing relentlessly through the chamber of her mind.

Flying to the door, Ivy began pounding furiously against the unforgiving wood. "Let me out! Arthur, goddamn you, let me out!"

The screams drilled through her head, her chest tightening until it felt like her heart would implode from the pressure. Her palms were red and smarting, but it was no use. No one could hear her here; she was simply another forgotten memory in the abbey.

With the blanket over her head like a child hiding from the monsters in her room, Ivy curled herself into a tight ball, waiting for exhaustion or death to take her, whichever came first.

Rain was drumming on the windows when she awoke, the pleasant smell of woodsmoke distantly drifting in from outside. Ivy had fallen asleep propped up against the door, and her body was restless, as if she had not used her legs in a long time. Perhaps she would find a pair of wellies and take a walk on the grounds today, really explore the gardens. There was so much she still didn't know about her new home in Blackwood. But then the bars on the windows came into focus, and she remembered that she was a prisoner, trapped. There would be no walks, no exploring, no freedom.

Her head was pounding as she slowly got up, and she had the vague notion that she'd had an unpleasant dream, but nothing lingered more than a hazy feeling of disquiet.

Wandering to her desk, Ivy idly sorted through the neat stack of papers. She frowned. The manuscript was open, and notes in her handwriting directed her to the last page. There, amongst the strange language were two sentences written in the Latin alphabet, as clear as day. The words were scrambled though, with extra characters. All she had to do was remove the nulls, and she would have something readable. Why hadn't she seen it before? It looked simple enough. Pulling out her chair, she sat down and set to work, mindless of her nightgown and growling stomach.

The code was complex, and this was only the first step. With the null characters removed and letters unscrambled, she had a legible sentence:

LIGHT SHAFTS AGLOW, COMET, SUN REBORN

It was nonsensical, but then, it didn't need to have any meaning on its own; the letters had to be rearranged in an anagram, the simplest of encrypting techniques. In theory, once they were, they would provide the first key for translating the rest of the text. Squaring her shoulders, she individually wrote out all the letters in the phrase and began the painstaking process of rearranging them.

She quickly fell into a comforting pattern. Try a word, scratch it out. Try a word, scratch it out. Some of the phrases she produced were just as nonsensical as the original sentences. But unlike the cipher clue, she was looking for some semblance of meaning. When she found it, it would be like a key fitting into a slot.

ALCHEMIST'S STONE ORB FUNGAL GROWTH

HOW BURGS GET CONSTELLATION FARMS

SUCH STRANGE FLOWERS BLOOM AT NIGHT

Sitting back, she reread the last phrase in her list. The problem with anagrams was that there could be multiple correct answers, and the more letters one contained, the more possibilities there were.

Her gaze wandered to the window, where a sparrow sat preening its damp feathers. It cocked its head, regarding her for a moment before returning to its bathing ritual. Then, when some mysterious threshold had been reached, took wing into the misty garden, landing on a skeletal rosebush.

Such strange flowers bloom at night. The flowers. Hastily thumbing through the pages, Ivy stopped at a colorful illustration of a monstrous flower with thorny leaves and red, dagger-like petals. The key was right there in the strange flora in the margins. It was easy to be distracted by the bizarre figures and their baths of blood, but the flowers were equally enigmatic if one studied them long enough. And there, in the space above them, pinpricks, dots. Constellations, vaguely recognizable ones. The sky had never held much interest for her, being in the opposite direction one must look if one was to enjoy a book, but now she wished she had taken some time to study the scattered jewels of the night sky. If only she had access to an astronomy book. But it didn't matter. This meant that in a sea of the absurd and impossible, there was something real and anchored to work with. She only had to apply the cipher and assign the constellation characters a value.

Ivy's neck was stiff and her eyelids dry, but she worked as if it was her last day on earth, her father's voice always in the back of her mind. The key is not to try to find new meaning, but to illuminate what is already there. You can do this, Ivy.

It was dark and the fire in the grate was nothing but embers by the time Ivy put her pen down and massaged her aching neck. As she glanced through her notebook, the smallest of smiles touched her lips. This was it. This was the most she would remember, and she had in front of her the key to unraveling the manuscript. All that remained was to find an astronomy book and set the translation into work. But what then? Tell Arthur? Try to somehow get to the library and then stay awake all night deciphering it herself? Ivy bit at her fingernail. It had to be now. She could not risk falling asleep or forgetting anything, not when she had the answer right at her fingertips at long last.

Wrapping the manuscript in its heavy velvet cover, she tried to tuck it under the arm of her largest cardigan, but it was still too big, too obvious. She would have to leave it. She didn't know what would happen to it if it were to be destroyed, but something told her it wasn't a simple matter of letting the pages burn. After all, that would be too easy, wouldn't it? Someone long before her would have simply chucked it into the fire and been done with it.

There was something else she was forgetting, something she would need. Ivy stood, her gaze sweeping over the room, but her mind was fuzzy, and there was no time to try to remember; it had to be now.

When she had placed the manuscript prominently on the desk, she doused a handkerchief in water and held it to her face. Then, crossing to the fireplace, she opened the grate and poked at the coals. Embers sparked to life. Carefully reaching in a piece of scrap paper, she let it ignite, flames greedily licking at the edges.

With a flick of her wrist, Ivy watched as the paper landed at the base of the curtains. In only a few moments the flames were gobbling up the velvet, and smoke was spreading. There was nothing to be done about her clothes and other meager possessions, but they were a small price to pay for her freedom.

Removing the cloth from her mouth, she ran to the door and began screaming and pounding. "Fire! Someone help, there's a fire!"

Almost instantly there was a key in the lock, the door swung open, and a large, red-faced man with wild eyes burst into the room. "Oi, get out o' there!" He pushed her aside, frantically scanning the room. "Where is it?" But he'd already spotted the manuscript and was lunging to save it from the encroaching flames when she slipped through the door.

And just like that, she was free.