times seems labored, and she has complained of a headache nearly the entire week. Even now, she doesn’t stir. She talked in her sleep a few hours ago, but the words made no sense; she seemed very agitated and anxious. Her feet and hands flailed and kicked with such strength I couldn’t hold her down; I called in two of the servants to help. When she finally calmed, the deep sleep came again, and her mind seemed to drift even further away. Whatever is happening to her is worsening, I’m afraid.”
Matilda bent over Emily, inspecting the wound. “I doubt Ellen did this, she wouldn’t have had time, not if she followed us to Clontarf.”
“I don’t believe Ellen is responsible,” I told her. “I had the misfortune of meeting Emily’s ‘man in black’ that night as well. Come, let us return to the library and I shall tell you more.”
An hour later, surrounded by the volumes from my collection—that is, those spared Emily’s fury—I shared all that had happened that night, including the death of the security guard and my encounter with the man in black.
“So this man now has Patrick O’Cuiv’s body?” Matilda asked.
“I would presume so. Either that or someone else got to him first.”
“For what purpose?”
I shrugged.
Bram poked at the fire, adding a new log. The fresh wood let out a loud pop and settled upon the flames of the old. “What would this man want with Ellen? How would he even know you are acquainted with her?”
Again, I had no answer.
“All of this is connected somehow,” Matilda said. “O’Cuiv, this man, Ellen, whatever she did to Bram.”
“Whatever one of them did to my Emily,” I added.
“Yes, Emily, too.”
I watched as Matilda crossed the room and retrieved the black cloak they recovered from O’Cuiv’s grave. She draped the garment over the round tea table next to my chair and carefully unfolded it, revealing the contents: a looking glass, a brush, a necklace, and a book. She handed the volume to me. “Do you recognize the language?”
I opened the book and began flipping through the pages. “Ellen wrote this?”
“We think so,” Bram said. “The handwriting is very similar to hers, if not an exact match.”
“But these dates?”
“It makes no more sense than the rest of this,” Bram said, spreading his hands wide.
“Do you recognize the language?” Matilda pressed.
The language did seem familiar to me, not something I have studied, but most definitely a language I had encountered before. “I think it may be Hungarian. I own a medical text—” I stood and made my way to the bookshelves lining the east wall. From high atop the third from the right, I plucked out a volume. Returning to the table, I laid the text out beside the handwritten book found in the grave. “This is a copy of the Orvosi Hetilap; I acquired it a few years back while studying abroad.” Running my fingers over both texts, I began to identify words. “Many words are similar. Yes, I am convinced this is Hungarian.”
“But can you read it?” Bram asked.
“No,” I told them. “But I know someone who can, and he may be able to shed some light on everything else.”
“Who?”
I closed the covers of both books. “Have you ever heard of the Hellfire Club?”
* * *
? ? ?
13 AUGUST 1868, 9:51 p.m.—I was surprised to learn that Bram knew of the Hellfire Club by name, though not by location. The organization familiar to him was a group of rowdy gentlemen who frequented the Eagle Tavern near Dublin Castle in the heart of the city. These bucks were known to undertake the night’s festivities drinking scaltheen, a concoction of whiskey and butter, until good and liquored up, then they would wander around Dublin in quest of mischief. The police feared them due to their numbers and a tendency towards things violent, but they were hardly the club I planned to introduce Bram and my sister to this particular evening. The men he knew as the Hellfire Club were nothing more than a smokescreen devised by the