in both palms, allowing Kit to turn the pages. Though he still could not decipher the archaic penmanship, he did manage to work out the word Omniverse. He turned more pages and found tiny diagrams of lines that looked like broken triangles and rectangles, some with numbers attached to them that might have been latitudes, degrees, or distances-he could not tell.
“We’re going to have to spend some time with this, I expect,” he decided, “if we’re going to find what we’re looking for.”
“For what, pray, are we looking?” she inquired.
Kit bit his lip. “I’m not at all sure,” he confessed after a moment’s thought.
Lady Fayth frowned prettily.
He turned some more pages. “But I think I’ll know it when I see it.” He reached to take the book. “May I?”
She closed the book with a snap. “Certainly not!”
“But-”
“I will not have you pawing through my uncle’s private journal. If you wish to examine this or anything else you must provide me with an explanation of greater persuasion than you have offered thus far.”
“Your uncle is in trouble. This book could help-”
“So you have already said.”
“After all this, you still don’t believe me?” He regarded the dangerous set of her jaw. “Apparently not.” Kit pushed out his lower lip in thought, then brightened as the solution came to him. “I know! We’ll ask Giles-he was there. He saw it all.”
“Who is Giles?”
“The driver-I mean, Sir Henry’s footman or coachman, or whatever. He was with us at Black Mixen Tump. He saw what happened. He can tell you.” Kit started for the door. “Send for him and let him explain.”
“He will have gone to bed,” said Lady Fayth. “It must wait until tomorrow.”
“All right,” agreed Kit. “First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll call him in.”
“Until then, the journal stays with me.”
“Absolutely. Just don’t let it out of your sight. I have a feeling that little green book is priceless.”
CHAPTER 23
In Which Lady Fayth Takes the Lead
The decision to return to Black Mixen Tump had been swiftly reached-so swiftly that Kit still harboured misgivings. Lady Fayth was confident enough for both of them, however, buoyed as she was by the prospect of at last being allowed to make a leap-the very thing, she proclaimed with endearing enthusiasm, she had been yearning for all her life. In fact, she was almost giddy with it, which made Kit’s more sober assessment appear churlish and curmudgeonly by comparison.
“Believe me, if leaping was not dangerous enough-”
“Oh, yes-ferocious volcanoes and man-eating tigers and such, as you have already explained so very colourfully.”
“Right. Well, aside from all that, there is something I haven’t told you yet. There are people-bad men, very bad men, murderers in fact-who wish us harm. They always seem to show up. So we must assume they will be nearby, waiting to attack. They were at Black Mixen, and there was a fight. Sir Henry and Cosimo got away, but their attackers made the jump with them.”
“All the more reason to be on our way, I daresay,” replied Lady Fayth blithely.
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Kit, missing the link in her logic.
“If our eminent forebears were not in direst danger,” she explained, as if instructing a backward child, “they would not stand in need of rescuing, and it would not fall to us to save them.”
“Well, yes,” granted Kit, “but that doesn’t lessen the danger to ourselves. We still-”
“Take courage!” she told him. “All will be well.”
“I’m glad we got that settled.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I feel so much better now.”
Sarcasm must not have been in fashion in the seventeenth century, apparently, for his remarks were taken at face value, and Lady Fayth favoured him with one of her incandescent smiles. “I am happy for you. We shall leave at once. I shall inform Villiers of our plans and have the servants prepare the things we require. Kindly inform Giles to ready the coach.”
“But we haven’t deciphered the book,” Kit pointed out.
“We can do that on the way. You said it will take three days to reach this leaping place, is that not true?” At his admission that this was the case, she placed the book in his hand and concluded, “Then we must not waste another moment.”
Having made up her mind, Lady Fayth was across the room and almost out the door. “Wait,” called Kit, “there is one other thing.” He hesitated, uncertain how to put it.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Your clothes, Lady Fayth. Forgive me for saying it, but I sincerely doubt that you can make a leap dressed like that,” he said, indicating her dress.
She glanced down at her elegant satin gown. “Marry, what is wrong with my attire?”
The defiant expression her face gave him to know that he was skating on very thin ice. “It is not, ah- functional,” he offered.
“I suppose you would have me wear nothing at all!”
The mere suggestion of her lithesome form arrayed in its natural splendour proved so distracting that Kit, with heroic effort, pushed it promptly from his mind and tried his best to explain in a way that would not be taken amiss. “My lady, we cannot know what we’re leaping into-it might be rough country, a jungle, a desert, anything,” he told her. “Also, there is the matter of time. We might be years or centuries ahead of the current date and age, or behind. In short, we simply cannot know what the people we encounter will be wearing wherever it is we’re going. We must try not to be too, um… different.”
“Such disconformity could draw unwanted attention to ourselves as travellers,” she concluded. “I understand. By my faith, your counsel is wise. I will find something more fitting to the purpose.” She turned again to go. “Further to that, we will require money, I expect, and weapons.”
“If you can get them…,” Kit began, but she was already gone. He stood gazing at the empty doorway. Faith, my counsel is wise, he reflected happily, his misgivings flittering away like dry leaves before the balmy breeze of her good opinion, if only for the moment.
They would return in force, but by then the would-be leapers were already beyond the outlying hamlets of London in a carriage loaded with three days’ worth of food and drink, several changes of clothing, a purse full of gold sovereigns, two slightly rusty cutlasses, and a serviceable flintlock pistol. At Kit’s suggestion, Giles, who agreed willingly, was brought into the plan. They departed as soon as the equipment and provisions could be loaded onto the coach and they were soon clattering through the northern suburbs and out into the belt of farming settlements ringing the city.
During the hours of good light, Kit applied himself to the study of the green book, poring over page after page of Sir Henry’s crabbed text. The book itself was as handsome a specimen of the binder’s art as could be found anywhere: tight pages of fine paper, gold-edged, with a place marker of black silk ribbon, all smartly bound in lustrous jade green kidskin, and so well made that it opened absolutely flat and closed with a satisfying snap. After properly admiring the craftsmanship of the tome, they had got down to studying the contents. Kit could not easily read Sir Henry’s idiosyncratic hand, but Lady Fayth, whose eye was more accustomed to the mode of the day, seemed to have little difficulty. Under her instruction, Kit began to gain some mastery of the script.
Much of what he gleaned was so far over his head it might as well have been Japanese for all the impression it made. The language was arcane when not archaic, and the concepts discussed assumed a knowledge, or at least a vocabulary, Kit lacked. However, by dint of perseverance, and with Lady Fayth’s patient help, he was able to tease out a few useful nuggets of information from Sir Henry’s theorizing about the nature of ley travel, its purpose, its
