Page 17 of A Rare Find

Matilda raised her head. “Bears can’t use spoons.”

Elfreda opted for logic instead of silliness.

“Bears can’t speak English either,” she said in a brisk, stern voice. “Therefore, you are not…”

Matilda was looking crestfallen. Hilda raised her head too and pawed sadly at the oats stuck to her cheeks.

Elfreda sighed. “You are, therefore, magical bears. Ready?”

The twins nodded.

“Abracadabra.” Elfreda stretched out her arms and wiggled her fingers. “Now. Try to use a spoon.”

Brow furrowed, Matilda picked up a spoon and held it clumsily in her mittened hand.

“Miraculous,” said Elfreda. “Magical, spoon-using bears.”

Unfortunately, the magical bears followed her up to the bluff, where they transformed into magical, trowel- and sieve-using bears. They kept stealing hers, which made it difficult to proceed with her dig. When she brought them back to the house, so Agnes could mind them, all three started crying, so loudly the wails summoned Papa from the library. He looked distraught and disheveled, with ink on his fingers and smudges on the lenses of his spectacles. He didn’t meet Elfreda’s eyes as he lined his children up by age on hard chairs and began to read to them from the Venerable Bede. But he did, when his throat grew hoarse, pass the Venerable Bede to her, so that she could pick up where he’d left off, and he nodded along in a way that signaled his sulk was almost over.

Later that night, he showed her the letter of resignation he’d written to Mr. Clutterbuck, and after she’d begged him to tear it up, he did so, ceremonially, for the good of the Society. They went back to work, together, on the book that he hoped to publish, Ancient Derbyshire, which expanded upon their pamphlet, Two Dissertations on the Saxon Grave Hills of the Peak District. By dawn, clouds blew in and deluged. She couldn’t dig in such weather, or get on with laundry day, and so she continued working at Papa’s side, their pens scratching in unison. It was almost as if Mr. Clutterbuck hadn’t visited, as if she hadn’t found the amulet, and lost it again, at Georgina’s hand. She was almost relieved by the rain, for the pocket of peace it provided.

The next night, she was less relieved. The rain hadn’t ceased, and the stain on the ceiling of the blue room began to bulge, droplets pattering down onto the threadbare rug, and more upsettingly, onto Grandmama’s writing desk. She couldn’t ask Mrs. Pegg for help. Mrs. Pegg looked sweet and soft, with her lace cap, white hair, and dimpled face, but she was implacable. Papa had tried and failed to sack her with the rest of the staff. She’d boxed his ears. As the sole remaining servant, she acted as cook, nurse, and housekeeper, but within limits. Her rules stipulated no tower, no library, no blue room.

Elfreda positioned the ash bucket under the leak, wiped off the desk, and pushed it, with difficulty, to the drier side of the room.

“Papa,” she said, tiptoeing into the library, “the ceiling is leaking again, in the blue room.”

He was reading a topographical survey in a wingback chair and didn’t lift his gaze. “Catch it with the ash bucket.”

“I did. But the leak is bigger than before. Don’t you think it’s time I ask Mr. Hibbert to come by?”

Mr. Hibbert was Twynham’s master builder. He employed several stalwart carpenters in his workshop in the village. They could fix the leak in a trice.

“No, I do not think.” Papa raised his head. “I won’t have that villain in my house.”

“But Papa—”

“Not after what he did to St. Alcmund’s.”

“He was responsible for the repairs, not the…” She hesitated. The restoration committee had called the alterations to the church “improvements,” but she knew better than to repeat the word.

Her delicacy made no difference. Papa’s mood turned explosive.

“Desecration!” He thundered it. “That man carted Anglo-Saxon masonry out of an eighth-century nave and used it to mend the road. He should be subjected to rat torture. I won’t have Marsden Hall disfigured by brutes. Better the ceiling collapse. Now, bring me the opodeldoc. My shoulders ache.”

When Papa used that tone, her head ached. She pressed her lips together and went for the opodeldoc. The bottle was empty. In the kitchen, she mixed a fresh ointment with extra rosemary oil. She brought the bottle to Papa, put the twins to bed, gave up on Agnes, and peeked once more into the blue room, to assure herself that the ceiling hadn’t, in fact, collapsed.

It hadn’t. But Grandmama’s desk was still wet. Or rather, it was wet again. Water dripped from the ceiling directly above. A new leak. She pushed the desk all the way over to the fireplace. No drying warmth emanated from the fireplace—Papa forbade fires after May Day—but at least there weren’t any leaks on this side of the room. Yet.

A horrible thought occurred to her.

She lowered the desk’s fall front. As she’d feared, the water had seeped inside. The poems Grandmama had written on scraps of paper and stuffed in the pigeonholes—also wet. Mostly just the edges, but on a few, the inked lines had lifted up and run together.

“No,” she cried, not for the first time that week. “No, no, no.”

She extracted poem after poem, carrying the damp scraps to her bedchamber, where she could spread them out. No poem had been rendered truly illegible, but even so, she felt shivery and sick, and furious with herself. Why hadn’t she ever made a fair copy of Grandmama’s magnificent sonnets? She’d treated Grandmama’s desk like a cabinet of wonders, each scrap a one-of-a-kind object.

As soon as the poems dried, she’d copy them all.