I can understand that, and I really hope that some day I will know the city well enough to walk about alone- but that time is not now.
She looked her fill, as the carriage-horses labored up and down the hills; poor things, this was not a very heavy conveyance, and they were still toiling in the traces.
Snyder removed a small, leather-bound book from his breast-pocket and consulted it. 'Your occulist appointment is in the morning, tomorrow,' he told her. 'Around nine. Is there anything you'd care to see this afternoon before you dine? There's just time enough before the shops close.'
'A bookshop?' she asked hopefully. 'A really good bookshop? And a stationer's?'
I can select ancient books from a catalog easily enough, but how can I select contemporary books without browsing?
He nodded, as if that was precisely what he had expected. Perhaps it was, once he knew she was a scholar. 'We'll just leave your trunk at the townhouse for Miss Sylvia, the maid, to unpack, and go straight there. It's Master Cameron's favorite store, Miss Hawkins, and the stationery-supply is right next door. We can certainly arrive there before they close.' implicit, though not overtly stated, was that for someone connected with Jason Cameron, both stores would gladly remain open long past their ordinary closing-times.
She bit her lip, wondering if she ought to change her mind. If the shop was Cameron's favorite, the selection would be extensive-and expensive.
'You are to put your purchases on Master Cameron's account, of course, at both establishments,' Snyder continued, as if it was a matter of course. 'He left orders to give you access to his shop accounts, just as Mr. du Mond does.'
Another reason why Snyder was uneasy about my position in the household, no doubt.
'He's never seen me in a bookstore,' she said wryly. 'He may live to regret his generosity.'
Snyder looked at her for a moment with open astonishment, then actually unbent enough to laugh, though he would not tell her why.
They stopped at the townhouse just long enough to leave the trunk with a burly fellow who appeared to do all the heavy work about the place, and then proceeded straight on. And the moment that Rose walked through the door of the bookstore, she was in heaven.
The interior of the shop was all of polished wood and brass, a reddish wood she could not immediately identify. The bookshelves, which ran from floor to ceiling, were placed as closely together as possible and still permit passage of customers. It was at least as large as Brentano's in Chicago, and just as well-stocked. There actually were a few 'frivolous' writers whose work she admired-Lord Dunsany, for one, though she thought she might die of embarrassment if Cameron actually caught her reading one of his fantasies of the Realms of Faery and if she ever got a chance to read for pleasure instead of research, she wanted to have a few things on hand. For the rest, there were some reference works she thought might come in handy that were not on Cameron's shelves. Then again, there was no real reason why they should be, for ordinarily one did not associate the works with Magick; not hard-headed things like engineering texts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, nor herbals, nor some of the theological works she wanted.
But there were hints in there, clues to alternate translations, that she thought might be very, very useful. Cameron approached his texts as a pure Magician, but she thought the approach might be aided by attempting to replicate the world the writer was brought up in, and see possible meanings through his eyes. There were shades to the meanings of words and phrases then that might not occur to a modern man-and as for slang, it could be as much of a code as anything devised for the purpose.
She kept finding more books she wanted every time she looked at a new case. She simply gave up the struggle against temptation after a while; she consoled herself with the promise that many of her selections would be remaining in the Cameron library when she left. She collected quite a tidy pile of volumes before she was finished; it took two boys to carry them to the carriage, but Snyder didn't raise a brow over it at all. Evidently Cameron's expeditions to this place yielded similar harvests.
Perhaps that was why he laughed. She thought about the library, and realized that this must look like a perfectly normal shopping expedition to Snyder.
Next door at the stationer's, she purchased several blank, leather-bound books of the sort used for sketching and journals. Those would become her reference books, where she would organize her own gleanings. With them, she gathered up reams of foolscap and boxes of pencils; Cameron had nothing but pens available, and with all the notes she would be taking, she was not going to risk over setting inkwells. Nor was she going to waste good paper on scribblings.
Then, strictly because she saw them and lusted after them, she acquired a supply of soft, colored pencils and watercolors for sketching. They were beautiful - 'From Japan,' the clerk said. The colors were fabulous, rich and saturated, and she craved them the moment she saw them.
And since color seemed to play a prominent role in Magick, perhaps they might be as useful as anything else she had bought today.
