I spent the night on a pallet on the floor of a little room, barely more than a crawl space, above the kitchen. I was warm enough in the nest of blankets, but the kitten woke me long before the sun had risen. Not by mewing, but by pouncing.
“Hey,” I whispered when I realized what had roused me. “Stop that.”
It picked its way over the hills and valleys of wool toward my face, where it dipped its nose toward mine, close enough to give us both a shock. Then it sat back and blinked. Its expression so like Agrippina’s, I felt she was accusing me.
“I’m the one who fed you,” I whispered.
The kitten’s eyes were little lanterns in the dark.
I played mousie with it. Danced my fingers beneath the covers. Its rump lifted. I danced my fingers some more. It pounced. Clung to me through the wool, all four paws. “Ouch,” I whispered, peeling it off. Already it had sharp claws.
There was a window in the room, a single pane of glass. The bottom was frost-burred, but through the top I spied stars. Tiny as the coldest snowflakes.
It was their muteness, maybe, that made me think of the Captain. Of his name, Malachi, and my asking the cook, “Is he a real messenger?” and her scoffing at me.
Where was he at this moment?
Did the same stars shine upon him there?
Were they as messageless for him as they were for me, or did he know how to read them?
My thoughts flocked, restless, this way and that. Now they gathered around Genoveva: I saw her in a stable like the one at the Captain’s house, only this one housed other horses, so she was not alone. Every stall had a warm body in it, all of them snorting and farting and sighing through the night.
Still my thoughts would not settle. They scattered once more before landing on the book I had taken from the drawer below the mirror in the Captain’s room. I reached inside the pocket of the jacket, which I was using for a pillow, and slid it out. It was not much bigger than my hand, but it was fat as a rich person’s wallet. The leather was very soft.
I’d already examined it earlier, when first I climbed the ladderlike stairs to this little room. I was glad I hadn’t put it in the rucksack with the provisions. By the light of a bees-wax candle, I’d inspected it then.
Although I had seen the Captain studying this book on several occasions, I had never before noticed its intricate details. For example, the slip of mirror ornamenting its cover. A cool glass rectangle no longer than my finger, no wider than my eye. I studied myself in it, or the scant scrap of me it reflected back.
Then there was the leather thong wrapped around its middle, belting it shut. When I undid it, the book let out its belly like a person unbuttoning their pants after a heavy meal, and I saw what made it so fat: On several pages an extra leaf of paper had been pasted in, and each of these was pleated like an accordion. If you stretched them out, they reached many times beyond the length of a single page. They were like paper staircases leading up or down.
Turning the pages, I saw all had been filled. The pasted-in staircases, too, were covered with writing and other marks, columns and sketches, all obviously made by the same hand. Although at the beginning, the hand appeared loose and wobbly, and by the end, it had grown smaller and more regular.
How, or when, the Captain had come by this book, I did not know. I could not remember when I first spotted him with it, but often lately I had seen him studying it, sometimes slipping it from his pocket and turning a few pages even when in the middle of a task. Whenever it was not on his person, he kept it by his bed. Could it be his hand that had filled the book? Or had he received it already inscribed?
If only I could read what it said, I might know.
I’d been taught my letters more than once. First by my mother when I was small. Later when I went to the Captain’s house and he tried to help me. The cook tried, too. Once she gave me a bit of extra dough. She showed me how to mold the shapes of letters. I rolled them out and formed each one. She baked them in the oven and, when they had cooled, let me dip them in honey. She said if I ate the alphabet, swallowed the letters one by one, I’d have the knowledge inside me for good. She was wrong.
Still, earlier this evening, holding the book close to my face, I’d given it another go. Tried willing myself to read. The marks bobbed and curtsied in the candlelight. When I blinked, they seemed to swivel the other way. So instead, I studied how the book was put together, unfolding the inserts, noticing the different sorts of markings. Here was a drawing of a man with wings. Here was something that looked like a map of the sky. And here were real flower petals, dried and crumbly, stuck to the page with glue. I walked my fingers up and down the paper stairs, pressed my thumb to a thumb-shaped stain. As if what my eyes couldn’t fathom I might absorb through touch.
On impulse, I’d reached back into the jacket pocket for the Captain’s glasses. They slid down my nose; I used one hand to hold them in place. They were no help. If anything, they made it worse; it was like peering through grease: The symbols blurred, swam out of reach. I brought the candle closer and spilled wax upon the page. Trying to right it, I knocked it from its holder and it went out. That was when I had gone to sleep.
Now, hours later, without a candle, it was all down to touch. The buttery leather, the thong around its middle. The pages floury soft. I skimmed my fingers along the slender strip of glass glued to the cover and traced the rough stitches that ran around the border.
I didn’t notice the kitten’s interest in the movements of my hand. The fresh arousal of its predatory instincts. Not having meant to play mousie, I was caught by surprise when it attacked. This time it gouged my bare hand not only with its claws but its needle-sharp milk teeth, too, and my fury flared up hot and fast and I flung its little body off. It landed several feet away with a thud. No cry. My mouth flooded with saliva. I wanted to spit. I held the saliva in my mouth. I danced my fingers for the kitten. It didn’t attack. It didn’t move. In the light of the snowflake stars, I could see it blink at me. I danced my fingers again but could not coax it into action. Agrippina appeared to me, her eyes two red coals. My mouth was holding sour saliva. I could not swallow. I leaned over and let it dribble onto the floor.
I did not like this new temper that had been coming upon me more and more. I did not know what it was about.
I lay back and rested the open book upon my face. As if, unable to read it with my eyes, unable to understand it through touch, I might inhale its messages instead. It smelled like coffee and bread and mushrooms and grass and hibiscus and molasses and birds and night and tin and clay and stables and manure and rain.