The Book Man, Chapter 72 (Revised)

72 GARDEN STATUE

After a while, the whole group quieted down. The injured had been cleaned and bandaged, given sedatives and poultices where necessary; fires had been built and food passed around. Now the uninjured sat in small groups, playing cards to pass the time and occasionally checking on wounded friends and circus-animals. Mr. Catcher stayed by Christian’s side. His sisters got up now and then to make rounds among their troupes, with words of encouragement and flasks of whiskey.

(They did not offer any to Morrow.)

Liza came over and plunked herself down at Christian’s side, staring moodily into the fire the ringmasters had built for him. The moment she sat down, he asked, “What did they do to Conrad?”

She sat for a moment without answering him, kneading her eyes with her knuckles. Then she took one long, shaky breath and said, “Took his leg off.”

“Took off—?”

“Yes. To keep the venom from spreading, they told me. Said it would have spread through his whole body in the next week or two and then into his brain and driven him mad, right at the end. Said he’ll get better, now.”

Christian resisted the urge to vomit onto the cobblestones. Minerva’s arm, Graham Chelsea’s fingers—now Conrad’s leg.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyelids. “This isn’t what I wanted. I don’t know what I did want, but it wasn’t this. It’s too much of an adventure for me. It’s—”

She cast about for words and then gazed it the fire as if hoping it would provide the right ones.

“I know,” Christian said, but she shook her head.

“It’s too much,” she said again. She stood up unsteadily. “I’m going home. And I’m taking my husband with me.”

Christian blinked. “What?”

Instead of answering, she blew her nose into a kerchief and stalked off to the wagon to fetch Conrad.

“Liza,” he called, but his voice was too weak to carry over the crowds. Mr. Catcher clucked at him in concern.

“Don’t you worry, my boy,” he said. “I wager our balloon-man won’t let her take him home without a fight. How about you go see Minerva, mm? Best let them sort it out themselves, and I know she’s missed you something fierce.”

Christian couldn’t help staring anxiously after Liza anyhow, but the old man pulled Christian to his feet, handed him his cane, and gave him a shove in the direction of Minerva’s pedestal.

“Go on,” he said. “She’s in your tent. No arguments, now.”

Christian tested his weight against the cane and tried to take a few steps. With every movement, an ache throbbed in his side, but at least he could walk.

The tent he had left stood shabbily beside the marble pedestal with Morrow the Elder’s horse, Rath, standing guard. The horse whinnied and shook its mane at the sight of Christian and plodded over to meet him. The accountant patted its nose and ducked into the tent.

Minerva was asleep on a pillow propped against a stack of books. A lamp burned beside her. Her curls were tumbled down around her face, damp, but her color was better; a pinkish tinge tinted her cheeks instead of the waxy pallor he associated with death. More books lay beside her, one in her lap with her hand on the page as if she had fallen asleep reading it. Christian tilted the cover up to look at it. It was his mended copy of The Hobbit.

“It reminds me of you,” Minerva said. He glanced up to see her dark eyes open and shining. Without thinking, he put his hand in her hair, drew her close, and kissed her forehead. She smiled at him.

“I wanted to wait at the portal,” she said. “I wanted to be there when you returned. Bartimeus threatened to whack me over the head with his cane if I didn’t rest instead.”

“Your hair’s wet,” Christian said.

“I took fever two days ago, he tells me. I don’t remember.”

A fever! Good God in heaven, Christian thought, feeling her forehead with the back of his hand. Thank God, she was cool now. Thank God he hadn’t been there to see that; he would have been reduced to a panicky wreck, waiting for the fever to break. If it had not, she would have died instead and he would have returned to find her lying on her pedestal like it was a mortuary slab, her face pasty and pinched.

His brow puckered with worry at the thought. Minerva bit back another smile.

“It broke near dawn,” she said. “He says I must rest, but I’ll be fine now.”

Christian’s eyes stung, and he had to sit without speaking for several seconds as he tried not to cry. Minerva touched his face. He looked at her with a weak smile.

“Thank God,” he said softly.

With difficulty he eased himself into a sit beside her. She caught sight of his bandages, pushed herself upright, and said, “You’re hurt.”

“Nothing too bad,” he said, although his hip burned with pain. “Just an imp. An imp horn, I mean.”

He began to tell her the story of the attack, but something whooshed by his face halfway through the tale. He threw his hands up to ward it off and knocked his glasses from his face. Minerva retrieved them and put them back over his eyes.

He blushed. “Sorry. Still a little jumpy from the attack.”

“Not an imp or a hellhound this time,” Minerva said. “A moth. Here, look.”

She caught it as it hovered about the flame of her lamp and cupped it in her palms. It was a large moth with beautiful grey and white patterning and four eyespots: one on each forewing and one on each hindwing.

“You see? An emperor moth.” She held it up so Christian could study it more closely. “They’re my favorites.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “I think it’s a female, with those markings. And males fly in the daytime, I read. Colour Identification Guide to Moths of the British Isles.”

Minerva blew gently on the moth until it spiraled into the air above them and then took off in erratic flight through the tent flaps, searching for a place to lay its eggs.

“You really do love books more than anything, don’t you?” she asked.

Christian’s mouth went dry. A voice tugged at his mind as if he had forgotten to do something, but he ignored it.

“More than most things,” he said.

Her cheeks turned pink, but she gazed at him steadily. He remembered the siren kissing him and how he had thought, then, of kissing her the same way, but now that an opportunity had presented itself he could not bring himself to do it. He flushed at the thought. A shouting-match rose up across the courtyard, and one of the shouters was recognizably Liza Smithson. The moment was broken; they looked away from each other shyly.

After a moment he said, “Can I ask you something?”

She nodded.

“The last night I was here—the night the harpies attacked—I came early and waited, and I watched for you to come to life, and you didn’t, not for a long time, and I was sure something awful had happened to you. What took you so long?”

Minerva turned faintly pink and hid her face in The Hobbit. When she spoke, her voice was muffled.

“I wanted you to think I was a real woman,” she said. “I didn’t want you to know I was just a garden statue.”

“But I did know,” Christian said, tilting the book away from her face.

Minerva peeked up at him. “You did?”

“Well—yes. I mean—it was obvious, once I saw you that day.”

Her eyes brightened over the top of the book, but he tilted it further away from her face and said, “I really don’t care if you’re a garden statue. You’re Minerva.”

She closed the book, keeping her gaze fixed on him as she tried to decide the truth of his declaration. Her eyes were on him for so long that a blush crept up his neck and into his cheeks.

“He was right, you know,” he said at last. “Mr. Catcher, I mean. You ought to be resting.”

She gave a faint smile as if she knew embarrassment was his real reason for changing the subject, but she slipped her fingers into his and slid back down onto her pillows without complaint. Christian stayed with her until she fell asleep, despising himself for not kissing her. Then he grabbed his cane and pushed open the tent flaps to head outside.