Ch. 166 The Hand That Tried

Chapter 166: The Hand That Tried

The keeper’s name was Brother Oren.

I asked whether we already knew an Oren.

Mary looked up from her notes.

“Several people are permitted to have the same name.”

“I was checking.”

“This one keeps a house outside Lethmere. He is sixty-three, has two assistants, and has asked whether we can receive a damaged account book.”

“That seems promising.”

“He also says it smells of mice.”

I considered that.

“Less promising.”

Across the table, Aurelia smiled.

“I told him you would have someone who knew what to do with it.”

Mary’s ears moved.

Then she reached for another sheet.

The book arrived wrapped in two layers of cloth and a piece of old sail.

Oren had sent it with a wool merchant coming to Stoneford.

From there, it came through the gate.

Mary opened it in an empty workroom.

Nobody was permitted to crowd around.

I stood in the doorway.

Evelyn stood beside me.

Aurelia, who could now go almost anywhere she wished, had been instructed to wait until the loose dirt had been brushed away.

She obeyed with visible effort.

“I understand why Hethan slept in his chair,” I said.

Mary did not look up.

“Then you may appreciate his advice about this binding.”

She turned a page with great care.

We waited.

The account book belonged to a former keeper.

Not Oren.

Not his predecessor.

Someone much older, whose name appeared inside the cover in two different hands.

Sister Aveth.

The first entries concerned food.

Cloth.

Oil.

Payment for a new roof beam.

Then came a journey to Veyr’s Rest.

Mary paused.

Aurelia moved closer.

“May I?”

Mary shifted the lamp.

Our teacher read the date.

Then lowered herself into the nearest chair.

“What?” I asked.

“After Greykeep fell.”

“How long after?”

“Long enough that I had stopped expecting news.”

Aveth had gone to the mountain with supplies and two attendants.

The lower bridge still stood then.

Barely.

There were complaints about rotten boards, exhausted mules, and the cost of taking flour uphill.

I found myself grateful for every ordinary inconvenience.

They made her easier to imagine.

A woman with wet boots.

A supply list.

An opinion about a bridge.

Then Mary reached an entry written more heavily than the others.

The inner room remains fastened. I have been instructed that its occupant is not to be disturbed.

Evelyn’s hand settled on the back of Aurelia’s chair.

Nobody spoke.

The next page had been damaged.

Several lines were gone.

What remained described questions sent to a senior house.

No answer.

Another request.

A warning that the matter lay beyond a local keeper’s authority.

Then:

I heard a woman weeping after the others had gone to sleep.

Aurelia closed her eyes.

I looked at the door.

The bare workroom.

The table beneath the book.

For a moment, I wished we had read it somewhere warmer.

Then I realized warmth would not have helped.

Aveth had opened the inner room.

The account did not say how she obtained the key.

It did say she waited until the attendants went down to the spring.

She found the couch.

The plate.

The controls.

She recognized the return.

Mary stopped reading.

Then began the next line again.

The third will not move. There is a fastening beneath the bed which I cannot reach with the tools I have.

Eleanor stood very still beside the window.

She had joined us after hearing what the book contained.

Now she looked at Aurelia.

“That was her.”

There were three more attempts.

On the first, Aveth tried to free the fastening.

On the second, she brought a longer tool.

On the third, the handle broke.

She recorded that in one short sentence.

No explanation.

No excuse.

Then she wrote that she had made matters worse and did not know whom to ask.

I thought of the twisted shaft beneath Eleanor’s tool.

The way it had finally turned.

“She didn’t make it worse,” I said.

My voice sounded too loud.

Eleanor shook her head.

“No.”

Mary waited until I sat down before continuing.

Aveth had sent one attendant to fetch a metalworker.

The other discovered what she was doing.

There was no dramatic account of a struggle.

Only the next entry, written in a different place.

She had been removed from the mountain house.

Forbidden to return.

The tools had remained there.

Her requests for an inquiry were to be sent through the same office that had already told her not to ask.

Aurelia opened her eyes.

“Does she say what happened to the room?”

Mary turned the page.

A short line stood near the bottom.

They intend to close the passage, lest another mistake compassion for permission.

I stared at it.

The blocked wall.

The room without windows.

Now we knew when someone had decided even the door was too much of an opportunity.

We stopped.

Aurelia asked us to.

Mary covered the open book with a clean cloth.

Eleanor went to the window.

Evelyn remained beside the chair.

I knelt in front of Aurelia.

She looked at me as though she had only just noticed where she was.

“Someone tried.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know.”

I took her hand.

Her fingers were cold.

“She came back three times.”

Aurelia looked toward the covered book.

For a long while, she said nothing.

Then she asked whether there was more.

“There is,” Mary said.

“About her?”

“Yes.”

Aurelia drew a breath.

“I would like to hear it. In a little while.”

Aveth had been sent to Lethmere.

The house was smaller.

Its work concerned ordinary sleepers.

People recovering from sickness.

People whose fear made rest difficult.

She continued tending them.

The account returned to food and bedding.

There was a dispute over a goat in the herb garden.

A winter when the chimney smoked.

A young apprentice who used too much lamp oil while reading after everyone else had gone to bed.

Aurelia smiled faintly at that.

Then Mary found the last entry in Aveth’s hand.

Sent another request concerning the mountain. Kept a copy.

The pages after that belonged to someone else.

A successor.

Aveth had died in early spring.

She had been buried beneath the apple tree beside the house.

Her apprentice had written that she disliked being interrupted while mending and never allowed an unattended patient to be blamed for falling.

There was no mention of the mountain in the account of her death.

Only a line added beneath it.

Her papers remain in the lower chest, as she asked.

Mary looked up.

“We should write to Oren.”

Aurelia nodded.

Then she said, “I would like to go there.”

I expected her to ask whether we could come.

Instead, she looked at Evelyn.

“Would you walk with me after supper? I should like to speak before I leave.”

“Of course.”

Aurelia rose.

She touched the cloth covering the book.

Then left the workroom.

Nobody followed immediately.

Eleanor rubbed a hand over her face.

“I want a copy of the part about the handle.”

Mary nodded.

“For the workshop?”

“For me.”

That was all she said.

Mary reached for a clean page.

That afternoon, I found Eleanor examining the broken stem we had brought down from the house.

It lay beside the tool she had made.

I stood in the workshop doorway.

“She would have needed leverage,” Eleanor said.

I came closer.

“She had it?”

“Enough to twist the shaft. Probably braced herself against the floor.”

Eleanor picked up the new tool.

“Then she would have felt it give.”

I imagined the relief.

Then the broken metal in her hand.

I sat on the stool beside the bench.

For a while, we looked at the two pieces.

“She kept asking,” I said.

“Yes.”

Eleanor set down the tool.

“She did.”

At supper, Aurelia asked about the twins.

She listened while Helena described Carol’s attempt to climb a basket.

She laughed when Garrick dropped a piece of bread and appeared personally betrayed by its absence.

She ate.

Not much.

Enough that Evelyn stopped watching her plate.

Afterward, my wife went with her to the lower garden.

I remained upstairs with the children.

Lord Garrick sat beside me on the blanket.

He had heard about Aveth.

Neither of us spoke of her at first.

Then he said, “Hard to learn you were loved when it’s too late to thank the person.”

I looked at him.

“Yes.”

He helped our son turn a wooden ring in his hands.

“Still better to know.”

Evelyn returned after the children had fallen asleep.

I stood when she entered.

“How is she?”

“Sad.”

My wife took off her cloak.

“Angry.”

“And?”

“Going to Lethmere in the morning.”

“Alone?”

“She has asked Oren to meet her.”

I nodded.

Aurelia had a name.

A place.

Someone who knew the path from the gate to the apple tree.

She did not need us to make every journey possible anymore.

I was still learning how to be glad of that without reaching for my coat.

She left after breakfast.

Before going, she asked Mary to keep Aveth’s book safe until Oren could tell us how he wished it returned.

Mary agreed.

I waited beside the hearth.

Aurelia came to me.

“Will you be all right?” I asked.

She considered the question.

“I think I will be glad I went.”

It was not quite an answer.

It was enough.

I embraced her.

Then stepped back.

She vanished with the faint scent of roses.

She returned near dusk.

There was mud along the edge of her gown.

A small apple rested in her hand.

Evelyn was feeding Carol.

I had Garrick on my knee.

Aurelia stood in the doorway for a moment.

Then came to sit beside us.

“The tree is still there.”

I looked at the apple.

“Oren kept some from the harvest.”

She turned it in her fingers.

“Her grave has a stone. The letters are worn, but her name can still be read.”

Evelyn set down the spoon.

“Did you find her papers?”

“A few. Oren will have copies made.”

“And the house?”

“Still caring for people.”

Aurelia’s mouth trembled.

“Her room is used for a woman recovering from a broken hip. She complained that the window sticks.”

I smiled.

“That sounds like a room still being lived in.”

“Yes.”

Later, after the twins slept, Aurelia told us more.

Oren had shown her the garden.

The lower chest.

The place where Aveth had taught apprentices.

There was a chair with a repaired arm that might have been hers, though he would not claim certainty.

“He asked about the mountain,” Aurelia said.

“What did you tell him?”

“That she found what was wrong.”

She looked toward me.

“That we used the return she tried to open.”

I swallowed.

“And that it worked.”

We cut the apple into three pieces.

Aurelia insisted.

It was small and a little wrinkled.

The flesh remained sweet.

We ate beside the fire while she described the tree in blossom as Oren remembered it from spring.

Then she asked whether we might plant an apple tree at Greykeep.

“Of course,” Evelyn said.

“A good one for eating?”

Aurelia smiled.

“Yes.”

I thought about the lower garden.

The pear trees.

The space beyond them.

“Come spring, we’ll find a place.”

She nodded.

Then set the seeds carefully on the edge of her plate.