I try to imagine Kingston at a younger age. Think back to the photos I saw of him in his father’s office. Serious, even as a kid.
But there’s serious, and then there’s…devote your entire life to a near-impossible questserious.
“I guess I just…don’t get why,” I say. “I don’t get why it matters so much. To him,” I clarify.
Emrys tips his head. “How so?”
“Well…look at all this.” I spread my hands over the mess of facsimiles. “We’re supposed to be discovering something, getting at a truth that, by definition, no one has quite uncovered yet. But he’s here mining all of these texts for evidence that he’salready right.” I shake my head slowly. “What’s the point? Why read at all if all you’re doing is trying to find out what you already know?”
A smile plays at Emrys’s lips behind his beard. “A question for the ages,” he says softly. He pauses, lost in thought. “If I were to hazard a guess? For some, it is better that what istrueand what isrightare one and the same. And if what isrighthas already been defined—by some higher authority, say, a Church, or what have you…”
“Then everything they say is right also has to be true,” I finish for him. “And everything outside of it is…false. Necessarily.”
Emrys nods. “An intellectually inquisitive mindset, perhaps it is not. But such thinking is a way to make sense of a senselessworld. And for someone whose entry into this world was itself a senseless loss…”
He trails off. I stare at him, not following.
“His mother,” Emrys says simply. “When he was born.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t known that. I’d known Kingston’s mother was…gone, I suppose, given that Luther had remarried and brought Morgan andhermom into the picture. But that particular detail…
It doesn’t excuse anything. But maybe it explains something.
The smallest, slightest part of something.
“Yes,” Emrys says. “For someone like that, one could understand the appeal. That it will, at some point, all make sense.”
I stare down at the texts.
“Where do we go from here?” I ask.
“I haven’t the faintest.” Emrys shrugs. “What do your instincts say? You’re a scholar of taste. What would you prefer?”
I think about it for a minute.
“Women,” I say.
Emrys laughs. “Ah. Brilliant. Yes, yes of course?—”
“The mystics,” I go on. “Julian. Hildegard…” The names are escaping me, even though there truly aren’t that many recorded women writers. “If you give me more time I can look them up.”
Emrys is all but beaming.
“Yes. Excellent.” He nods. “Since we’ll be absent Mr. Pendragon next class, why don’t you take the period to investigate expanding the corpus—see what our library still holds.”
FIFTEEN
CALLAHAN
“Don’t be nervous,”Lanz murmurs in my ear. “Just a bunch of weird old Frenchmen.”
Easy for you to say,I think.You’ve met them before.
I straighten my shoulders outside the basement door. “I’m not nervous.” Just my stomach is a block of ice, is all.
“You’re a terrible liar.” He brushes a finger against the outside of my ear. I flinch.
“Stop,” I bark.
