The Story of Cirrus Flux Read Online Free PDF Page A

floor, her ears burning. For a moment she was no longer in the Governor’s study, but was standing in a drafty kitchen somewhere in the country. An enormous woman—Mrs. Stockton, the woman employed to be her nurse—lay on the ground in front of her, an empty mug of kill-grief in her hand, while in the corner, still alive, stood a small, sniveling boy, his nostrils caked with snot and his cheeks blotched by fever.… Her brother.
    The tears came again.
    “Good heavens, child. Do not cry!” said Mr. Chalfont, rushing to her side.
    She was back in the Governor’s study, on a rug before the fire.
    He crushed her into his arms, nearly suffocating her, until all she could feel was the edge of his neckcloth biting into her skin. Then he straightened.
    “I know. How about some ginger? There is no ill that cannot be cured by ginger!”
    He dashed to a slim writing desk by the window and withdrew a small japanned tin from an inside drawer. Pandora could see some of his other possessions, too: a shiny silver locket, a tortoiseshell comb and a peculiar pendant shaped like a globe. A portrait of a woman hung above the desk.
    The Governor noticed the direction of her gaze and quickly closed the drawer.
    “She was my wife,” he said, indicating the oval portrait and holding out the tin in front of Pandora. “She died not long after we were married.”
    Pandora did not know what to say, but reached into the tin, as instructed, and selected one of the golden nuggets for herself.
    “That’s right,” said Mr. Chalfont. “Now pop it in your mouth.”
    Pandora cradled the gem of ginger in her hand, treasuring its flame of color, and then placed it experimentally on her tongue. A small fire erupted in the center of her mouth, and her face crimsoned with the unexpected heat.
    Mr. Chalfont looked delighted. “There now,” he said, dabbing at her cheeks with his handkerchief. “All better?”
    Pandora nodded dutifully and turned her attention to Madame Orrery, who was studying a large oil painting above the mantel—a seascape featuring a fully rigged ship surrounded by cliffs of ice.
    “The Voyage of the
Destiny,” remarked the woman, reading an inscription on the frame. “An unusual subject for a hospital, is it not?”
    “Not at all,” said the Governor, helping himself to a large piece of ginger and returning to the table. He pulled a document from a sheaf of papers and started filling in some of the details with a quill. “There was once a time when many of our boys were sent to sea. Several of them even served on the
Destiny.”
    “Is that so?”
    Madame Orrery turned to watch him closely and then perused the other objects in the room: a spyglass on a nearby table, a nautilus shell on a shelf and a model ship sailingacross a desk. Finally, her eyes settled on a row of cabinets against the wall. They were lined with slender drawers, one of which was partially open, revealing a tangled heap of objects inside.
    “Tell me, Mr. Chalfont,” she said, moving closer. “What do you keep in here?”
    Pandora tightened her grip on the scrap of fabric in her pocket, praying the Governor would not discover her theft. She knew exactly what the drawers contained: hundreds of trinkets laid out in trays, each corresponding to a child in the hospital.
    “Tokens,” answered Mr. Chalfont. “Buttons, rings, bits of folded paper. Anything the poor mothers can find to identify their children when they leave them here at the hospital.”
    The woman looked up, intrigued. “And is there a token for each child?” she asked.
    “But of course. It is a condition of the hospital.” Mr. Chalfont set his quill to one side. “Most of the mothers are maids or young women down on their luck when they arrive at the hospital. The tokens they leave are normally objects of personal significance but little value. Something for their children to remember them by, that is all. We record each item here,” he said, indicating the ledger on the table in