“Right. The tide should be down now—it rises again around ten o’clock, so we need to get across the causeway and back before then. Since we have two things to do today, I suggest we split up—some of us to the keep, some to St. Michael’s Mount.”
“I’ll take the keep,” said Catherine. “I still think attacking the keep today, or tonight if you insist, is the best idea. And I’ll take Diana with me. She can pick any locks we need picked. All right, Diana?”
“Awww, how did you know I was here?”
Mary turned, startled. Sure enough, there was Diana standing by the door.
“I sneaked in so quietly, too! I thought I would take you all by surprise.”
“You certainly took me by surprise,” said Beatrice. “I did not even notice you had come in.”
“Neither did I,” said Justine. “That was clever of you, Diana.”
Mary hated to admit that she had not noticed either. But she would not give Diana the satisfaction of saying so. The girl was already puffing herself up because Justine had called her clever!
“You can’t outsneak how you smell,” said Catherine. “You didn’t take a bath last night, and you still smell like dog. Anyway, I heard your footstep outside the door, even before you turned the knob. Are you coming with me? We’re not going to attack the keep by ourselves, or try to burn it down, or anything of that sort—so don’t think you’re going to do what you did at the mental hospital in Vienna!”
“You mean saving Lucinda all by myself?” said Diana.
“Cat, do you absolutely promise you won’t do anything foolish, or let Diana do anything but reconnoiter? I don’t want the two of you going off and getting yourselves electrocuted by Queen Tera. But we do need to split up, and I think I had better go to St. Michael’s Mount.” Mary stood up. Her head was, indeed, starting to feel better. “I’ll try to find out Her Majesty’s itinerary. That should give us a sense for when and how they might try to abduct her—and where we can defend her. I think this is a lot harder than what we faced in Budapest! I wish we had Mina here to help us.”
“I shall go with you to St. Michael’s Mount,” said Justine.
“No, cara mia,” said Beatrice. “You are my patient, and I say you shall do no such thing. Your heart is beating strong and steady today, but if we are to fight tomorrow, you must be as rested as possible. We cannot spend your strength on a scouting expedition. I shall go with Mary, and you must wait for what I hope will arrive—a telegram from Ayesha. I remain convinced that she is our best hope for defeating Queen Tera. She must know of some way to counteract or combat energic power.”
“All right then, I’ll get dressed,” said Mary. “We had better grab a quick breakfast downstairs. We all need food—well, except for Beatrice. And then we’ll try to figure out how to save the Queen!”
MARY: It’s ironic, isn’t it? There we were, calling on Ayesha, the President of the Alchemical Society and our enemy, to save us.
BEATRICE: Ayesha has never been our enemy. You simply do not understand her perspective.
CATHERINE: Life is filled with coincidences and strange reversals. If I made one of my Astarte books as complicated and unaccountable as real life, it would be criticized for being unrealistic. And I write about spider gods!
BEATRICE: Although they are quite realistic spider gods. I mean, it is obvious that you have done your research into the anatomy and mating behavior of arachnids.
MARY: I’m not sure what that adds to the books.
CATHERINE: Because you’re not a writer.
As far as Catherine was concerned, autumn in England proved that if God did exist, He was an actively malevolent deity. Who else would have created all this rain? Although it was not raining today. Instead, water simply hung in the air as a curtain of gray mist, shifting so that sometimes she could see the landscape in front of her, and sometimes it was hidden from her eyes. Shrouded—yes, that was the word for it, the word she would use if she ever wrote a book about their experiences.
Although why should she? No one would ever believe it was a true account. Anyway, she was no Mary Shelley, merely a writer of stories for the popular press. The Mysteries of Astarte would be coming out soon. How would the public receive it? Would it be reviewed in The Guardian or St. James’s Gazette? She did not think so. To the important journals, it would be merely an adventure story. But then, it would bring pleasure to readers like Alice, who had been the first to say, “You really should write down that story about Astarte and the spider god, miss. It’s much better than the one I’ve been reading—see? The Curse of the Loathsome Worm. There’s a girl in it, Miss Penelope Tulkinghorn, but the Loathsome Worm has already killed her, and now it’s about how her fiancé and his best friend have to go down into the Worm’s lair. And I’m only on the third chapter! I guess the other ten chapters are about them hunting the Worm or something. Why do the girls always get killed? Astarte never gets killed—she just kills people. You should write that story. I would read it—and pay a penny for it, or even tuppence! Really I would.”
So Catherine had written it, and it had been serialized in Lippincott’s, and soon it would be published as a real book. She was filled with trepidation at the thought. No, the idea of writing about their experiences—hers, Mary’s, Diana’s, Beatrice’s, and Justine’s, was silly. Who would read such an account? Anyway, the others would never allow her to write it. They would not want their lives, their thoughts, exposed to the public.
MARY: And we still don’t. Really, Cat, you ought to listen to us when we tell you there are certain things we don’t want the general public to know. After all, these are our lives.
CATHERINE: Who is this we? You’re the only one who ever objects to anything. Diana says include more of her misadventures, Beatrice wants to make sure we address social issues, and Justine never objects to anything, no matter how personal.
JUSTINE: Forgive me, Mary, but I believe it is best for readers to understand the truth. Perhaps, in some way, they will see themselves in us and our experiences. That is what literature does, is it not?
MARY: If you call this literature! I mean, Catherine is a good writer—you’re a good writer, Cat, I’m not saying otherwise. But this isn’t Shakespeare or George Meredith!
CATHERINE: George Meredith is a bore. Anyway, since when have you been a literary critic? You’re just upset because I keep writing about things that you think are embarrassing.
MARY: Well, yes. There is that.
“I see a village,” said Diana.
“Where?” Catherine walked up to where Diana was standing, on a stile in a stone wall. Yes, there to their left was a village that had not been visible through the hedge. She could see stone houses with flowers growing out of the rough walls that surrounded them, along a street that wound uphill toward a church steeple visible above their slanted roofs. It was a small place, much smaller than Marazion, with none of the seaside shops or tearooms. She looked down at the map she and Mary had bought yesterday, and that Mrs. Davies had marked with an X for the location of Kyllion Keep. “There isn’t supposed to be a village between Marazion and the keep.”