Then it seemed the ground opened up under her, and she grabbed on to Mr. Morrison’s arm lest she fall. “Whatever he took, is wasn’t the pages,” she said. “They are still inside the house.”
Mr. Morrison smiled without humor. “That is two pieces of good news. The pages are here, and Byron is not. Perhaps this will be easier than we imagined.”
“Yes, so long as we are polite to the dark things, all will be well.” Lucy turned to Sophie and held the girl’s shoulders so her lips would be easier to read. “Go home, Sophie. Mr. Morrison and I must do this, but I would have you safe. Will you go and be safe?”
She nodded.
Lucy turned to Mr. Morrison. “Then let us find the pages.”
They made it only halfway to the front entrance of the abbey before Lucy halted in her tracks. She could feel it, the dark thing Sophie had spoken of. She was not overwhelmed by fear, but there was an energy here, a force of something building, the way the air crackles with electricity before a storm.
“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Emmett. “I am so sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” asked Lucy.
Mrs. Emmett shook her head.
Mr. Morrison turned to her. “I must say, I grow weary of your opaque observations. If you know something, tell us.”
“I know only that I wish I had played no part in Miss Derrick’s being here. Better I should never have come to be than lead her to this, and yet she must go on.”
Mr. Morrison held the lantern up to her heavy face. She seemed not to react at all to the light. She stared at it, her eyes wide below the heavy curls upon her forehead.
“What will happen in there? Is Miss Derrick in danger?”
“I don’t know what will happen, but Miss Derrick has always been in danger. You know that, Mr. Morrison. There is nowhere to go where the danger shan’t find her. There is nothing to do but forge ahead. I don’t know very much, sir, but I can tell you this: There shall never be a better time to strike. This is the moment, danger or no, that she must act.”
Mr. Morrison nodded. “That may be, but things have been stirred up. We will be made to earn those pages.”
“Then you feel it too,” Lucy said in a whisper, for as soon as he spoke the words, Lucy knew it was true.
He shook his head. “No, I am not so sensitive as you, but if things were not stirred up, we would not see something like that quite so clearly.” He gestured with his hand slowly, as though afraid to disturb the air with his movements.
Sitting upon the steps leading to the entrance of Newstead Abbey, white and milky and translucent, was the spectral image of a Newfoundland dog. It seemed not to notice them, but instead pointed its muzzle to something far off in the distance.
“I think it’s Boatswain,” said Mr. Morrison. “Byron loved that dog.”
“Only Byron would have a ghost dog,” muttered Lucy. “What do we do about it?”
“We ignore it,” said Mr. Morrison. “We have amethysts upon us. I am surprised it even manifested before us while we are so protected, but it certainly will not approach us. Likely it will not notice us.”
They took another few steps toward the door, and the dog’s head turned sharply toward them. It began to bark, distant and hollow, as though they had plugged their ears with wax.
“It’s noticing us,” said Lucy.
“Yes,” said Mr. Morrison, clearly irritated. “We may have a problem.”
“I don’t think the ghost dog can actually bite us.”
“The dog will not harm us,” he said, “but it should not be here at all. All our charms and protections and wards ought to keep such things at a distance, but they are not doing so.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means many of the charms and wards shan’t work,” said Mrs. Emmett. “It means that the defenses you have been depending upon will fail.”
“And what do we do?” asked Lucy.
Mr. Morrison adjusted the bag upon his shoulder and took hold of the coach lantern. “We go and have a look.”
The dog, as he predicted, was no danger. They walked past it, and the creature offered nothing more than a ghostly bark or two, and then they were inside the cold and cryptlike entrance to the abbey.
“Have you a sense of where the pages are?” Mr. Morrison asked, keeping his voice low.
Lucy closed her eyes and reached out, as she had done before. Immediately she gasped and staggered backwards. There was something there, blocking her. It was dark and ugly and forbidding—alive. It was like the creature she had seen surrounding Byron when they first met, a creature of void and vastness, featureless and yet grotesque in its features.
“What is it?” Mr. Morrison asked, taking her arm.
“There is something there, in my path. It is… terrible.”
“It is well we are terrible too,” said Mr. Morrison.
Lucy looked at him. “Mr. Morrison, you appear extraordinarily cheerful under the circumstances. Do you know some advantage offered to us with which I am unfamiliar?”
“Let us say that I have confidence in the both of us.”
Lucy would have responded, no doubt saying something cautious and uncertain, but the words never left her lips because that was when Mr. Morrison was struck down by a tortoise.
Newstead Abbey offered many dangers, but among the things Lucy feared most were the animals that Byron, in his lordly indulgence, allowed to roam the grounds. Most frightening among these were the wolf, which they had already once faced, and the bear, which might have been only local myth. That Lord Byron included a tortoise in his menagerie was well known, but it had never occurred to Lucy to fear it. She had been shortsighted in this regard.
It came down the hallway at a gallop, as fast as any horse, and then leapt into the air, its thick and stunted front legs stretched out, clublike. Mr. Morrison attempted to push Lucy out of the way, but it was intent on her, and appeared to change its direction in mid leap. It was as large as a pig, and almost as broad as it was long. And its shell made it heavy, so heavy it ought not to have been able to leap at all, but then it opened its mouth and snapped at him with its birdlike beak, and saliva flew from its jaws.
Lucy was on the ground, landing so hard that for a moment she could not breathe. Both of her hands pushed on the bottom of the tortoise’s shell while it stretched around its thick, leathery neck, trying to bite her, and though its teeth were small and blunt, its power and rage made the creature ferocious. Gaining no ground in its efforts to reach her neck, it attempted to peck at Lucy’s eyes with its pointed beak. She heard it snort, felt its hot reptilian breath upon her face, clogging her nostrils with its thick mustiness. She turned her head aside, but not in time to avoid the creature entirely, and she felt the heat of tearing flesh across her cheek, dripping salty blood into her eye. Smelling this blood, the tortoise hissed and wheezed, then tasted the air with its tongue, and jabbed at Lucy’s face once more.
All of this happened in a matter of seconds. From behind the tortoise, Mr. Morrison grabbed the creature’s head, clamping its jaws together in his hands. Lucy watched in amazement as he pulled the animal’s head backwards until it began to bend toward him. The creature could not open its mouth, but it made a mewling sound between its clamped jaws and let out a series of rapid snorts from its flaring nostrils. With a sharp jerk, he pulled outward and upward, and ripped the tortoise’s head from its body. Lucy managed to roll away in time to avoid a spray of blood as the beast collapsed. Mr. Morrison dropped the head near the body and took a step backwards.
Lucy crabbed her way backwards and then scrambled to her feet. She panted hard as she wiped at the blood on her face, and then dusted herself off as though wishing to remove any taint of indignity that comes with having been assaulted by a great turtle.
Mr. Morrison took her chin in one hand and dabbed at her cut with his handkerchief with the other. “Not so
