They’d rolled violently apart.
Like he was reliving the same memory, Will said to Victor in a whisper, “You’re a doctor, correct? There’s something wrong with my . . . It’s private.” He put his napkin back across his lap.
“Jelly installed that for you, so you’d best ask her what she did.” Victor lolled back in his chair, cackling. “We are scientists, not doctors. I must say, I’m glad you’re here. It’s nice to have a new person to chat to. I’m glad you’re not screaming through the forest.”
Will laughed, too. “Angelika made a strong argument against it. I’ve got nothing. Not even my memory. I’m afraid I will need to rely on your generosity until I have my strength enough to leave.”
“Leave?” Angelika was brought back to the table by this. “Where are you going?”
“To find my old life,” Will replied. “When I see where I’m from, my memories will come back.”
Angelika was aghast. “I forbid it. Here, try some ham.”
Will recoiled at the slice of meat she forked onto his plate. “I cannot stomach it.”
“Only yesterday he was like meat,” Victor reminded his sister. “And it is his decision to make if he wants to leave us. Let’s try to find some clues about you. You speak like you are educated. Here, what do you make of this?” He rummaged in his clothing and then proffered a discolored and well-folded piece of parchment.
Will narrowed his eyes at it, then looked up. “You carry your last will and testament in your breast pocket?”
Victor snatched the page back. “Grand, you can read.”
“Perhaps I should have done the same,” Will said, looking at his hardly touched breakfast.
Victor replied, “You had not a pocket upon your person. So, we have deduced you may be a gentleman indeed. But finding you at a public morgue for commonfolk leaves a question mark.”
“I did not think you would be so interested in your past. Perhaps you could instead think of what the future might offer you?” Angelika looked around the dining room, seeing things through Will’s fresh gaze.
They sat underneath a sixteen-candle French chandelier, with fine glittering ropes of beads that might break under the weight of a dragonfly. When hosting guests, Angelika’s father, Alphonse, would often gesture upward and retell the delivery-day story. Eight people had walked thirty miles from the port of Bournemouth, carrying the chandelier’s crystals in baskets. They were too fragile to withstand the rattle of a carriage or cart. Angelika opened her mouth, ready to share this anecdote, and then closed it again, remembering Will’s concern over Mary carrying the heavy pails of bathwater.
She hardly knew him at all, but she thought Will probably would not like that story.
The dining room walls were stacked to the ceiling with frowning ancestral portraits. One painting of a great-great-uncle, nicknamed “Poor Plague Peter,” stood ajar on a hinge from the wall. Behind it there was an open safe box, glinting with gold in the morning sunlight, and it had not escaped Will’s notice. For a split second, Angelika felt fear.
Was he being truthful about his memory, and who he was?
There were another twelve hidden vaults throughout the house, from the basement cellar to the uppermost chimney on the roof, and now a stranger sat at their table. Hidden treasure, towers of treasure, dusty and forgotten treasure—enough for a hundred extravagant lifetimes at least—were all brought here by persons unknown, to be collected under the one black slate roof.
It was a fine upgrade from the morgue. Wasn’t it, indeed. A swindler could be sitting here right now, with her mother’s napkin on his lap. When she made eye contact with Will again, she saw no guile, no concealment, and she forced herself to let go of her gold-clutching terror. All she could do was hope, and trust.
Angelika put on a smile. “Could you start to make a list of things you would like me to purchase for your wardrobe?”
Will ignored that and replied to Victor’s remark. “Maybe we could go back to the morgue. They must have a record of me. I could be home before nightfall.”
“It is more likely that if you do have a family, they do not know where you are,” Victor said carefully. “Or they had no option but to leave you, rather than bury you at the church. Come now, my good chap. Is this so bad?” He gestured to the table, and then the room around them, and finally, at his sister.
“I am grateful.” Will’s gaze lingered on Angelika’s lips. “There is nothing bad at all.”