“Let me see,” said Will, setting down his fork. He had eaten only a very little of his food, Tessa couldn’t help noticing. The bird design ring flashed on his fingers as he reached for the scroll in Charlotte’s hand.
She swatted his hand away good-naturedly. “No. We shall all look at them at the same time. It was Jem’s idea, anyway, wasn’t it?”
Will frowned, but said nothing; Charlotte spread the scroll out over the table, pushing aside teacups and empty plates to make room, and the others rose and crowded around her, gazing down at the document. The paper was really more like thick parchment, with dark red ink, like the color of the runes on the Silent Brothers’ robes. The handwriting was in English, but cramped and full of abbreviations; Tessa could make neither head nor tail of what she was looking at.
Jem leaned in close to her, his arm brushing hers, reading over her shoulder. His expression was thoughtful.
She turned her head toward him; a lock of his pale hair tickled her face. “What does it say?” she whispered.
“It’s a request for recompense,” said Will, ignoring the fact that she had addressed her question to Jem. “Sent to the York Institute in 1825 in the name of Axel Hollingworth Mortmain, seeking reparations for the unjustified death of his parents, John Thaddeus and Anne Evelyn Shade, almost a decade before.”
“John Thaddeus Shade,” said Tessa. “JTS, the initials on Mortmain’s watch. But if he was their son, why doesn’t he have the same surname?”
“The Shades were warlocks,” said Jem, reading farther down the page. “Both of them. He couldn’t have been their blood son; they must have adopted him, and let him keep his mundane name. It does happen, from time to time.” His eyes flicked toward Tessa, and then away; she wondered if he was remembering, as she was, their conversation in the music room about the fact that warlocks could not have children.
“He said he began to learn about the dark arts during his travels,” said Charlotte. “But if his parents were warlocks—”
“Adoptive parents,” said Will. “Yes, I’m sure he knew just who in Downworld to contact to learn the darker arts.”
“Unjustifiable death,” Tessa said in a small voice. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means he believes that Shadowhunters killed his parents despite the fact that they had broken no Laws,” said Charlotte.
“What Law were they meant to have broken?”
Charlotte frowned. “It says something here about unnatural and illegal dealings with demons—that could be nearly anything—and that they stood accused of creating a weapon that could destroy Shadowhunters. The sentence for that would have been death. This was before the Accords, though, you must remember. Shadowhunters could kill Downworlders on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing. That’s probably why there’s nothing more substantive or detailed in the paperwork here. Mortmain filed for recompense through the York Institute, under the aegis of Aloysius Starkweather. He was asking not for money but for the guilty parties—Shadowhunters—to be tried and punished. But the trial was refused here in London on the grounds that the Shades were ‘beyond a doubt’ guilty. And that’s really all there is. This is simply a short record of the event, not the full papers. Those would still be in the York Institute.” Charlotte pushed her damp hair back from her forehead. “And yet. It would explain Mortmain’s hatred of Shadowhunters. You were correct, Tessa. It was—it is—personal.”
“And it gives us a starting point. The York Institute,” said Henry, looking up from his plate. “The Starkweathers run it, don’t they? They’ll have the full letters, papers—”
“And Aloysius Starkweather is eighty-nine,” said Charlotte. “He would have been a young man when the Shades were killed. He may remember something of what transpired.” She sighed. “I’d better send him a message. Oh, dear. This will be awkward.”
“Why is that, darling?” Henry asked in his gentle, absent way.
“He and my father were friends once, but then they had a falling-out—some dreadful thing, absolutely ages ago, but they never spoke again.”
“What’s that poem again?” Will, who had been twirling his empty teacup around his fingers, stood up straight and declaimed:
“Each spake words of high disdain,
And insult to his heart’s best brother—”
“Oh, by the Angel, Will, do be quiet,” said Charlotte, standing up. “I must go and write a letter to Aloysius Starkweather that drips remorse and pleading. I don’t need you distracting me.” And, gathering up her skirts, she hurried from the room.
“No appreciation for the arts,” Will murmured, setting his teacup down. He looked up, and Tessa realized she had been staring at him. She knew the poem, of course. It was Coleridge, one of her favorites. There was more to it as well, about love and death and madness, but she could not bring the lines to mind; not now, with Will’s blue eyes on hers.
“And of course, Charlotte hasn’t eaten a bit of dinner,” Henry said, getting up. “I’ll go see if Bridget can’t make her up a plate of cold chicken. As for the rest of you—” He paused for a moment, as if he were about to give them an order—send them to bed, perhaps, or back to the library to do more research. The moment passed, and a look of puzzlement crossed his face. “Blast it, I can’t remember what I was going to say,” he announced, and vanished into the kitchen.
The moment Henry left, Will and Jem fell into an earnest discussion of reparations, Downworlders, Accords, covenants, and laws that left Tessa’s head spinning. Quietly she rose and left the table, making her way to the library.
Despite its immense size, and the fact that barely any of the books that lined its walls were in English, it was her favorite room in the Institute. There was something about the smell of books, the ink-and-paper-and-leather scent, the way dust in a library seemed to behave differently from the dust in any other room—it was golden in the light of the witchlight tapers, settling like pollen across the polished surfaces of the long tables. Church the cat was asleep on a high book stand, his tail curled round above his head; Tessa gave him a wide berth as she moved toward the small poetry section along the lower right-hand wall. Church adored Jem but had been known to bite others, often with very little warning.
She found the book she was looking for and knelt down beside the bookcase, flipping until she found the right page, the scene where the old man in “Christabel” realizes that the girl standing before him is the daughter of his once best friend and now most hated enemy, the man he can never forget.
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
. . .
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart’s best brother:
They parted—ne’er to meet again!
The voice that spoke above her head was as light as it was drawling—instantly familiar. “Checking my quotation for accuracy?”