Charlie heard Ribs go to the big wooden cabinet against the wall, fiddle with the drawers. All at once a long heavy line of folders slid out into the air, staggered, tottered, dropped unsteadily to the floor. He couldn’t see her, of course, only the lurch of the files. One of them slid up into the air, flickered open. It was empty. It floated back into place, and then a second one opened, also empty.
“We wasn’t the only ones interested in them what disappeared, I guess,” she whispered. “Weird. Who’d have taken all the papers but left the folders?” She left Charlie to lift the drawer back into position and slide it into its grooves. She was already pulling out the next drawer, riffling those files. Each file for the disappeared kids had been emptied. There were maybe ninety, maybe a hundred files in all. All the talents that had been collected by Cairndale, Charlie thought in wonder. Listed alphabetically. He leaned over the O’s and found his own file and looked past it. But there were no other Ovids.
He flinched at Ribs’s touch, looked up. A file was floating open in the air behind him, its pages turning. She’d had the same idea: it was her own file.
“I thought it’d be a bit thicker, you know?” she grumbled. “It ain’t like I only just got here yesterday. Let’s see. Intelligent, aye, resilient, aye. Why is this here skills part left empty? I got skills … garrulous … garrulous?” The file closed, was turned sideways, turned back, opened again. “Is this even the right file? ‘Lacks discipline in her efforts … Easily distracted…’ Huh.” She laughed. “I guess it is. Look at this, Charlie, look. They reckon I might be from Cornwall! I ain’t from bloody Cornwall.”
She set the file down on the desk and fumbled for a fountain pen.
“What’re you doing?” he whispered.
“Just making it more accurate. How do you spell ‘alluring’？”
“What?”
The pen scratched across the paper. “‘Miss Davenshaw reports that Eleanor has exhibited a fine aptitude in all her studies, even surpassing Miss Onoe, whose scholarship has been rather a disappointment of late.…” Her voice trailed off. “That’s more like it.” The pen paused. “You all right, Charlie? Your own file’s right there.”
His fingers hovered over it. But if he’d been hoping for a different Ovid, a second file, a hint as to who his father might have been, he was disappointed. He opened his file and read it carefully beginning with the first clipping but the details were sporadic and unhelpful. A list of the charges against him from Natchez. An interesting letter from Mr. Coulton describing Charlie and his talent. A young man of integrity despite the cruelty he has been subjected to. A worthy candidate for Cairndale. There was no mention of his parentage or place of birth.
But at the back of the folder was a second folder, misplaced, stuffed badly away. It recorded the details of one Hywel Owydd.
His father.
Charlie knew it at once, even before he began reading. He’d never known his father’s name, not even that, and yet he had no doubts. His blood was loud in his ears. He turned away from where Ribs was standing and slowly, in the weak light from the window, he began to read.
His father, it seemed, was Welsh. He had come to Cairndale at the age of twelve, after manifesting as a clink, a strong. It was the most common of talents. He’d been laboring in a rock quarry for two years by then despite his age and it seemed some form of inducement—that is the word the file recorded, “inducement”—had been necessary in order to free him. He was described as quiet, mathematically gifted, slight of stature. He had been reprimanded twice for swimming naked in the loch. There were several pages of annotated notes recording results in his studies and a further page with dates and abbreviations that made no sense. At the back of the file was a paper dated February 1864, detailing his sudden absence from Cairndale.
Sighted in London by R. F., a cryptic note read. Talent much reduced. Ex-73.
Charlie stared, trying to understand the shorthand. He could not.
At the bottom of the page was a scrawled note, in blue ink: H. O. disappeared. No further details. R. F. reports Thames is full. Subject presumed dead.
The study was still, faint moonlight coming in through the window. All around them the manor was silent.
Hywel Owydd, Charlie thought bitterly. Dad.
And yet he still didn’t know him, never would; his father, who’d walked these same gloomy halls when he was Charlie’s age, who’d fled to London for some reason, who’d had no family in all the world who wanted him except the family he’d someday make and someday lose in the endless American West.