Chime

It didn’t care.

You are no longer adaptive. Have you never heard of Mr. Darwin?

It hadn’t.

Ignore it, Briony. You shall have to adapt instead. Think! Stepmother was ill; Eldric is ill. Eldric looks just as Stepmother did, like an egg without a yolk. Stepmother fell ill because you called Mucky Face, and Mucky Face injured her spine. Eldric fell ill because—because why?

What did I do?

Dr. Rannigan confessed to being astonished. How could Eldric have made a full recovery in only two days? This had been the damndest season for illnesses, he said. The swamp cough comes and goes. The egg-with-no-yolk illness comes and goes. He didn’t know what the egg illness was, mind you. He’d seen it only in our family. When Father grew ill, when I grew ill. Eldric’s case reminded him particularly of the late Mrs. Larkin’s illness, how with her too the disease came and went. Her decline was slower than Eldric’s, but she’d surely have died of it if there hadn’t been, oh, you know, the unfortunate incident with the arsenic.

I heard Eldric come down the corridor to the library. It’s astonishing that one can recognize a person merely by the way his shoe meets the floor. Now his hand touched the library doorknob, now the door whispered across the carpet. “It’s dark in here.”

I’d left the lamps dark in case my face betrayed me. I wasn’t as sure of my Briony mask as I’d once been. Rain rattled at the windows, coals spat in the hearth. I sat on the carpet, in the shadows. I reserved the spatter of firelight for Eldric.

“You’re looking very well,” I said. One couldn’t say the roses had come back to his cheeks—he wasn’t a pinkish person—but he’d gone gold again.

You’re looking very well. How stupid you sound, Briony! You speak just as Father might.

“I am entirely well,” said Eldric, “which has Dr. Rannigan exploring first one theory, then another, trying to understand. But not being a man of science, I don’t care about understanding. I simply want to go outside and break a few windows.”

Say something, Briony; say something! The Briony mask always had something tart or amusing to say, but the underneath Briony could think of nothing. The clock tut-tutted in the silence. How slowly it spoke, so slowly that between tick and tock came the sharp silvery plink of rain on glass.

“I’m glad you’re better,” I said, which was trite but true.

Better, he was better! As soon as I said the word, I felt relief. For once in my life, I felt relief. It came as a melted-butter drizzle down the back of my legs. It pooled in my knees. Perhaps that’s why people’s knees grow weak.

“I was a little dishonest with you,” said Eldric. “In order to tell you what’s on my mind, I have to bring up Blackberry Night.”

Blackberry Night. On came the crimson tide. I leaned forward to stir the coals; my hair fell over my face.

“It’s uncanny,” said Eldric, “how you’ve adapted to using your left hand.”

I had to be careful. I’d been giving my left hand too much liberty.

“Forgive me for being a nosy parkerius,” said Eldric, “but I wanted to know if you’ve seen Cecil since Blackberry Night?”

“It’s nosy parkerium,” I said. “Twelfth declension, you know.”

“Never mind that,” said Eldric. “I can’t stop fretting about Cecil.”

Cecil? Of all the things I imagined he might want to talk about, I never imagined Cecil.

“Don’t worry about him,” I said, although I thought of the day before yesterday, of how strangely Cecil had acted, of his oblique references and veiled threats. “I can wrap him round my little finger.”

“I didn’t observe the finger-wrap technique on Blackberry Night,” said Eldric. “I keep thinking about what might have happened if I hadn’t come along.”

“And I keep thinking how stupid it all was,” I said. “Stupid that you had to come along and rescue me. Stupid that I practiced boxing with you all those times, but I couldn’t punch Cecil, not even once.”

“Boxing’s not that straightforward,” said Eldric. “You can practice and practice, but the real experience will always be different. Lots of things are like that, actually. It reminds me of the time I first visited Paris.”

“Lucky thing!” I said.

“On the boat over, I practiced French conversations with myself. I’d say to some imaginary Frenchman, ‘The restaurant Chez Julien, she is, if I do not mistake myself, down the Boulevard Saint-Michel, to the right?’

“The Frenchman would obligingly say, ‘Yes, monsieur. The restaurant, she is down the Boulevard Saint- Michel, to the right.’ And sometimes he’d add, ‘Might I remark, monsieur, what very good French you speak.’ ”

Chez Julien. How I longed to visit a city where the very names of the restaurants were spoken in music.

“But the reality was quite different,” said Eldric. “To this imaginary Frenchman I’d say, ‘The restaurant Chez Julien, she is, if I do not mistake myself, down the Boulevard Saint-Michel, to the right?’

“But he’d reply, ‘La plume de ma boulevard, elle est dans la rue de ma tante, monsieur, et vous êtes très ooh-la-la.’ ”

I laughed.

“I’d thank him politely, then consult my map.”

“You’re saying that I can’t win a real fight without first losing some real fights?”

“I’m saying that a beginner can’t expect to perform as well in real life as she might in practice,” said Eldric. “Practice is predictable; real life isn’t.”

“Can you practice with me unpredictably?” I said. “Predictably unpredictably, I mean?”

“I can,” said Eldric, “but let’s not leave the subject of Cecil just yet.”

The door was ajar. The Brownie squeezed through and swung across the carpet on his double-hinged legs. Had Eldric left the door ajar on purpose? To make sure we weren’t quite private? Oh, dear.

The Brownie settled at my side, folding his legs every which way.

“Please listen to what I have to say about Cecil,” said Eldric. “I see you aren’t afraid of him, but I wonder if you should be.”

It was raining harder than before. Shards of sky pounded down the chimney. They set the logs to hissing.

Are you afraid of me? That’s what Cecil had said, as we sat outside the Alehouse. I’d startle-jumped back. Are you afraid?

“He hurt my wrist.” But that was not what I meant to say. My voice went high and whiny. What silliness was this? Did I think I could be a baby again? Grow up, Briony.

“Let’s take a look.”

I produced my wrist with the finger-shaped bruises.

“Bastard!” It was not exactly what one might say to a baby, but it was comforting.

We sat in silence a long time. Eldric stoked the fire. The flames leapt up and admired themselves in the brass grate. “I wonder if you know quite everything about Cecil,” said Eldric at last. “He’s fond of drink, as you know.”

I nodded.

“I don’t like to give away his secrets, but it’s not only drink that affects him.”

Oh! That was interesting. “Opium?”

“Not quite that benign,” said Eldric.

“Morphine?”

“Not quite that bad,” said Eldric.

“Then tell me!”

“Arsenic,” said Eldric.