With Fate Conspire (47 page)

Her own heart pounding like a navvy’s hammer, Eliza turned to see for herself. Owen stood swaying by Feidelm’s side, his face wrinkled with apprehension and uncertainty. Eliza didn’t know if her plea to Rosamund had been meant to include his glamour or not, but the brownie had taken it that way, dropping them both at once. The two faeries’ glamours still stood, but they were hardly needed; they could have been a pair of fire-breathing dragons and neither of the Darraghs would have paid an ounce of attention. They had Owen back at last.

Mute, half-witted, snatched out of time. Mrs. Darragh did not seem to see; she stumbled free of the bedclothes, moving faster than she had in ages, to throw her arms around a boy who did not recognize her but had nowhere to retreat. The last seven years might never have happened; for her, it was still 1877, and Owen the age he should be.

But Maggie saw.

Some part of her understood, even if she couldn’t yet put the knowledge into words. Eliza read it in the desperate look Maggie directed at her. “How—” the young woman began, shaking her head; and Eliza answered her.

She kept it to the simplest points. They had never told Maggie about their friend Dead Rick; that had been
their
secret, hers and Owen’s, not for a little sister to share. And the part about Nadrett would only confuse her now. What mattered was Owen’s condition—and the solution Dónall Whelan had given them.

“We tried to take him to St. Anne’s first,” Eliza admitted. The boy had struggled free of Mrs. Darragh, not understanding why she was so desperately glad to see him; Rosamund diverted the woman from him, breaking the news of his situation as gently as she could. “I would have liked to bring him back more healed than this. But he panicked on the steps and wouldn’t go in. Will you go fetch Father Tooley here instead?”

Maggie’s senses were apparently still reeling; she didn’t ask why Eliza’s companions couldn’t go. They
could
enter churches, so long as they had bread to protect them, but neither Rosamund nor Feidelm was eager to explain this matter to a priest. Maggie nodded, still sitting on the floor. And she stayed there until Eliza added, “Better if ’tis sooner.” Then the girl blinked and scrambled to her feet.

Feidelm stepped over to murmur in her ear once Maggie was gone. “The mother … is she well?”

Tears burned in Eliza’s eyes at the question. Mrs. Darragh was busily telling Rosamund about Owen’s apprenticeship to a bicycle maker, while her strayed lamb of a son investigated the biscuits Maggie had left behind. “No,” she whispered back. “Her wits left when Owen did. I pray having him back will do her some good, but…” But no priestly ritual could mend what had gone wrong with her.

Whether one could help Owen remained to be seen.

The church was only a few streets away, and Maggie had gone out the door like a woman determined to drag the priest back by his collar if necessary. She returned in almost no time at all with Father Tooley at her heels—looking, Eliza was glad to see, more curious and concerned than upset at being rousted.

He stopped in the doorway as if he’d slammed into a pane of glass, staring at Owen.

Maggie nudged him in before the neighbors could grow too curious, and shut the door behind him.
“A mhic ó,”
Father Tooley breathed, crossing himself. “’Tis true, then.”

He listened as Eliza repeated her explanation, this time going into more detail on what Whelan and Dead Rick had said. She looked to the fae for confirmation, only to realize they’d slipped out while she was talking; how had they done that, without drawing attention? Faerie magic, perhaps. They’d done right, though. Rosamund and Feidelm had come with her because Owen needed looking after, and trusted them more than the family that were strangers to him now. The question of what to do with him, though, belonged to the mortals.

To Father Tooley most of all. He folded his big hands into a neat package while she spoke, a sure sign that he was thinking hard; when she finished, he stood silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “’Tisn’t that simple, Eliza. Or perhaps I should say, ’tis simpler. Once a child’s been baptized, he cannot be baptized again. There’s no
need
for it; God’s grace is indelible. The Devil himself could not wipe it away.”

For all her doubts about Whelan, it seemed some part of Eliza’s mind had seized upon his suggestion as the answer to their problems. Her bitter disappointment at Father Tooley’s words surprised her. “Your baptism didn’t do much to protect Owen, now did it? Could be you aren’t priest enough to do it right.”

It was unfair, and he frowned at her. “Anyone can baptize, Eliza—even a Jew, so long as his words and intent are right. But I don’t know if ’tis true that baptism protects against such things. That … is not the sort of thing they teach in seminary.”

“But
look
at him.” Helplessness made Eliza’s gesture violent, flinging her hand out to where Owen had curled up on the bed, with Mrs. Darragh stroking his hair. “They say the faerie tried to take his soul, Father. You’ll be telling me next that no one can do that, and maybe ’tis true, but the bastard took
something
. And if we don’t find some way to wash Owen clean, he can never come back to us, broken or whole. He’s eaten too much of their food. It would kill him, and that’s the truth of it.”

“If you pray—”

“You think I
haven’t
?”

Father Tooley conceded the point, but still he frowned. “Some other rite, perhaps—an exorcism—”

Maggie made a furious noise, like a dog defending her pup. A pup who had once been her older brother. Eliza said, “Can you tell me honestly that you think he’s a demon in him?”

The priest looked at Owen for another long moment, then shook his head. “No.”

While he grappled with that question, Eliza’s own mind had snatched up one of its own, from something Father Tooley said before. “You said anyone could baptize.”

“Don’t you think of it for one moment,” he said, alarmed. “Ministering the sacrament to an infant who won’t live long enough for the priest to come—to a Protestant converting on his deathbed—that’s a worthy thing, Eliza. But to do it when a priest has refused, when you
know
the boy has already been baptized, would make a mockery of the sacrament. And sure that would be a grave sin.”

“Then what should I do?” she demanded, forgetting to keep her voice low. “Let him waste away? Abandon him to the faeries? If you think—”

She wanted to keep talking when he raised his hand, but his suddenly thoughtful expression silenced her. “I could,” he began, then stopped.

“Could?” Maggie prompted him, fierce with hope.

Father Tooley grimaced. “The bishop would have my ears for even considering it, he would,” he muttered. “But better to be sure than sorry, and if there’s a chance it might do him good … when I said anyone could baptize, it was true, but not the whole truth. If a heretic administers the sacrament, who’s to say they had the form and meaning of it right?”

“So you baptize the person again,” Eliza said.

He made a cautionary gesture. “Not
again
. A baptism done wrong doesn’t count in the first place. But if you don’t know for sure, there’s conditional baptism.” A hint of rueful humor crept into his voice. “’Tisn’t much different from the ordinary thing.
Si non es baptizatus,
that’s all I add—
if you aren’t already baptized.
If you are, then all you get is a bit of Latin and a bit of water on your head, and no harm to anyone.”

Maggie turned swiftly, as if something could be hiding from her in the tiny room. “Water—I can go to the pump on Old Montague—”

“No,” Eliza said. “Sure it would be better in the church. During Mass—”

Father Tooley barked a laugh. “Oh, no. Think ye two are going to march him up the aisle, and me explaining to everyone what on earth we’re doing?”

Then Eliza remembered Owen’s refusal to enter St. Anne’s. She described it to Father Tooley, and he folded his hands again, tilting his head as if arguing with himself. The debate ended with a decisive nod of his head. “This is what ye’ll do. Next Friday—”

“Next
Friday
!”

He gave Eliza a quelling look. “’Tis the feast day of St. Symphorian, and the octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He’s a patron of children, and if Owen is too old to qualify for his help, we can still beseech the Virgin to intercede. Ye bring him to the church a few hours before dawn. The rite begins on the steps outside; if we can’t get him through the door, then I’ll do it all in the street. And pray God it does some good.”

Owen shivered and curled tighter. He’d gone into that posture, Eliza thought, when they began speaking of God. The faerie stain, no doubt. They couldn’t keep him out here much longer; soon he would have to go back to the Onyx Hall.

Silently, she offered up her own prayer.
Blessed Virgin, Mother of God—for Mrs. Darragh’s sake, if no one else’s, help our Owen be well.

Humming an old lullaby beneath her breath, Mrs. Darragh bent over her son and kissed his forehead. “Sleep, my boy,” she whispered. “Sleep.”

The Galenic Academy, Onyx Hall: August 17, 1884

Yvoir’s workshop stank of chemicals. Dead Rick made the mistake of trying to smell them apart, and sneezed four times in quick succession. The French faerie smiled at him. “Be glad you aren’t mortal. I’m fairly certain the compounds they use have killed a number of photographers.”

“And yours are safer, are they?”

He shrugged. “To mortals, perhaps not. But we are not so easily killed, are we? A moment, please.” Yvoir returned his attention to the bowl in front of him, and the strainer balanced on its rim. The latter held a stone-green blob that jiggled as the faerie lifted it and scraped viscous material away from its underside.

Fascinated despite himself, Dead Rick asked, “What is that?”

“Cockatrice egg.” Yvoir carelessly dumped the yolk into a bucket on the floor. “Almost any sort of egg should work, but I find the albumen of a cockatrice egg is more stable, if slower to develop the image.”

Dead Rick came closer, peering into the bowl, which proved to hold a large quantity of clear, viscous sludge. “This is for photographs, then.”

Yvoir nodded and tossed the strainer into a basin of water, then wiped his hands clean on a towel. “Not like yours, though. Have a seat, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.”

The skriker’s heart beat more quickly at the words. The message hadn’t said anything about Yvoir’s progress, just that the scholar wanted to talk to him. He hadn’t quite dared let himself hope that the news would be good. Too excited to relax, he perched on the edge of the chair and said, “Can you put them back?”

“This is what I called you for, is it not? I have a sense now of what Chrennois did.” Yvoir steepled his fingers and glanced around his workshop. The walls were covered in more photographs than Dead Rick could count, of all different kinds; some had the silver gloss of daguerreotypes, while others glowed a warm amber, or showed the delicate colors of hand-tinting. Mostly they showed people—fae were always fascinated by people—but a few depicted landscapes, sometimes from as far away as Egypt or China.

His accent thickened by distraction, Yvoir said, “They are not quite photographs, not in the way I have created. Not images. You could not put them up on the wall like these. Chrennois was finding a way to capture the …
essence
of things.”

The essence of Dead Rick’s memories. A growl rose in his throat at the thought, but he swallowed it down.

Yvoir searched through a pile on the table by his left arm and produced one of the thin glass plates. Dead Rick had spent untold hours staring at them, after the failed attempt on Aldersgate. The other faerie was right; they didn’t show images like a photograph. Still, he thought he could see something swimming in their depths—as if, should he stare long enough, he could make out the secrets they held. He’d gone half blind trying.

“This,” Yvoir said, tapping the glass—Dead Rick held his breath in apprehension—“is like a daguerreotype. It is on glass instead of copper, but I believe it was coated in moon-silver and then in some fashion sensitized before being exposed, though I do not know how. Willow smoke, perhaps. Are you familiar with the alchemical connections of willow and the moon?”

Dead Rick waved off what sounded like an impending lecture. “Just get to the bit that’ll ’elp me.”

The Frenchman blinked as if not at all clear why anyone would want to skip the details, but he obeyed. “The coating on the plate was made reactive to things less visible than light—thoughts, passions, memories. Which is very intriguing—and so is this.” His stained fingernail traced a nearly imperceptible line down the center of the rectangular plate, which Dead Rick had noticed before. “It seems he took two photographs at once.”

“Two?” Dead Rick frowned. “What in ’ell would ’e want with two?”

Yvoir smiled, like a conjurer about to reveal his completed trick. “Have you ever seen a stereograph?”

Dead Rick shook his head.

The other faerie bounded to his feet and went to the nearest wall, hand floating across the assortment of pictures. “It should be … ah, yes. Here.” He lifted a frame down, then rummaged in a cabinet until he found a small wooden contraption with a clamp at one end. After a bit of fumbling, he got the picture out of its frame and put it in the clamp, then handed the whole to Dead Rick. “Look through the lenses.”

He glanced at the picture before doing so, and saw it was a pair of identical images, showing some tremendous chasm in the wilderness, probably on the American frontier. When he put his eyes to the lenses, though, the two images blended into one—and came to life. He pulled back with a stifled yelp, and found Yvoir grinning at him; grinding his teeth, Dead Rick looked again.

Nothing moved; it wasn’t “life” in that sense. But he felt as if he were standing where the photographer had been, seeing not a flat image, but depth. “’Ow in Mab’s name…”

“It mimics the way your eyes work,” Yvoir said. “You see a slightly different image with each eye, so if the photographer takes two images the correct distance apart, and you view the prints the same way, it creates the effect of proper vision. Don’t you see? It’s like an illusion that mortals have learned to make for themselves!”