I enlighten you, sir, with good intentions and all due respect.
Yours, etc.
I walked as slowly as I could across the lawn and past the assistants stretched on the grass, each with a tall glass of lemonade in his hand. As I started up the stairs to Lizzie’s room, Mrs Ballard emerged from the pantry, two eggs in each hand.
‘Not like you to pass through my kitchen without a by-your-leave,’ she said.
‘Is Lizzie around, Mrs B?’
‘Well, good morning to you too, young lady.’ She peered at me above her glasses.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs B. There’s been an upset in the Scriptorium and we’re all taking a minute. I was hoping Lizzie would be around, maybe I could just …’
‘An upset, you say?’ She continued to the kitchen bench, and began cracking the eggs on the rim of a bowl. She looked at me to respond.
‘They’ve lost a word,’ I said. ‘Dr Murray is furious.’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘Do they think we’ll stop speaking it if it’s not in their dictionary? Can’t be the first word they’ve lost.’
‘I think Dr Murray believes that it is.’
Mrs Ballard shrugged and transferred the bowl to her hip. She beat the eggs till her hand was a blur and the kitchen filled with a comforting thrum.
‘I’ll wait for Lizzie in her room,’ I said.
Lizzie came in just as I was reaching for the trunk. ‘Esme, what on earth are you doing?’
‘It’s filthy under here, Lizzie,’ I said, my head under her small bed, my hands searching the void. ‘It’s not at all what I would expect from the most accomplished housemaid in Oxford.’
‘Come out from under there, Essymay. You’ll soil your dress.’
I crawled backwards, dragging the trunk with me.
‘I thought you’d forgotten all about that trunk.’
I thought about the news clipping Ditte had sent. It would be on top of all the other words in the trunk. I hadn’t been able to face it for a long time.
The trunk was covered in a film of dust. ‘Did you keep it safe on purpose, Lizzie, when I went to school? Or just by accident?’
Lizzie sat on the bed and watched me. ‘There seemed no reason to mention it to anyone.’
‘Was I really such a bad child?’ I asked.
‘No, just a motherless one, like so many of us.’
‘But that’s not why they sent me away.’
‘They only sent you to school. And it probably was ’cos you’d no mother to care for you. They thought it best.’
‘But it wasn’t best.’
‘I know that. And they came to know that. They brought you home.’ Lizzie tucked a lock of my unruly hair back into its pin. ‘What’s made you remember it now?’
‘Ditte sent me a slip.’ I showed it to her. As I read the quotation, I saw her relief.
Then I looked at her sheepishly. ‘There is another reason,’ I said.
‘Which is?’
‘Dr Murray thinks a word is missing from the Dictionary.’
Lizzie looked at the trunk, and her hand sought her crucifix. I thought she might start fretting, but she didn’t.
‘Open it slowly,’ she said. ‘In case something has made a home of it and is startled by the light.’
I sat all afternoon with my Dictionary of Lost Words. Lizzie came and went more than once, bringing sandwiches and milk, and reluctantly relaying a message to Da that I was feeling poorly. When she came into her room for the third time, she turned on the lamp.
‘I’m knackered,’ she said, sitting heavily on the bed and disturbing the slips spread across it. She moved her hand through them like she was moving it through leaves. ‘Did you find it?’ she asked.
‘Find what?’
‘The lost word.’
The look on Dr Murray’s face came back to me.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I did find it, eventually.’
I reached over to Lizzie’s bedside table and picked up the slip. There was no question of me giving it to Dr Murray. Even if he wasn’t in a temper, I couldn’t think of a single scenario that would make the word’s presence in my hand acceptable.
‘Do you remember it, Lizzie?’ I said, holding it out to her.
‘Why would I remember it?’
‘It was the very first. I wasn’t sure, but when I took everything out of the trunk, there it was, right at the bottom. Do you remember? It had looked so lonely.’
She thought for a bit, then her face brightened. ‘Oh, I do remember. You found my mother’s hat pin.’
I looked at the engraving on the inside of the trunk, The Dictionary of Lost Words. I blushed.
‘Stop that now,’ she said, then nodded towards the word I was still holding in my hand. ‘How could Dr Murray know that word was missing? Does he count them? There’d be so many.’
‘He got a letter. From a man who expected to find it in the volume with all the A and B words, but didn’t.’
‘People can’t expect every word to be in there,’ Lizzie said.
‘Oh, but they do. And sometimes Dr Murray has to write to tell them why a word has not been included. There are all sorts of good reasons, Da tells me, but this time was different.’ I was excited, recalling the drama of the morning. Against all common sense, I couldn’t help a feeling of accomplishment. I had been the cause of something that seemed to really matter.
I saw concern on Lizzie’s face.
‘What is it, then?’ she asked. ‘What is the word?’
‘Bondmaid,’ I said, deliberate and slow, feeling it in my throat and on my lips. ‘The word is bondmaid.’
Lizzie tried it: ‘Bondmaid. What does it mean?’
I looked at the scrap of paper. It was a top-slip, and I recognised Da’s hand. I could see where the pin once joined it to all the quotation slips, or maybe a proof. If I’d known it had come from Da, would I have kept it?
‘Well, what does it mean?’
There were three definitions.
‘A slave
