“So I surmised.”
They regarded each other from across the room, their eyes very slightly narrowed.
She’d increasingly felt as though little by little he was dialing her into focus with a spyglass. She imagined all of his thoughts in his unnerving brain, lining up like pieces on a chessboard.
“Why sheep?” he said suddenly.
She gave a little start and was instantly cagey.
There was a little silence.
“I do not want to tell you,” she said.
His eyebrows went up. He had not expected this.
His silence was not the conceding sort. He was going to be silent until words were compelled from her, like a soldier ordered into formation.
“Very well, Your Grace. I will tell you, if you will answer a question of my choosing, when I choose.”
“Are you negotiating with me, Miss Wylde?” He sounded less incredulous and displeased than she’d anticipated.
“Yes.”
He mulled this. “Very well. I am allowed three refusals.”
“You’re suggesting that you’re allowed to refuse to answer a question three times before you’ll agree to answer one?”
“Yes.”
“One refusal.”
He considered this. “Done.”
She drew in a breath. “When I was a very little girl, my family and I—my mother and father and me—traveled to the seashore. We did this only twice. We lived and breathed our little patch of London, you see, which we quite loved. We knew everybody! But we’d neighbors all on top of and next to us and cobblestones on the ground outside, and—”
“What sort of work did your father do?”
“He was a cobbler, like his father and grandfather.”
He nodded crisply for her to continue.
“He had a little shop on Tully Street near Haymarket, and we lived above it. Cor, we were busy. I still remember all the customers by name and . . . it was lively. And a great deal of work all day. We weren’t rich, but we never wanted for a thing, mind. Anyhow, I was eight years old and my father decided we ought to take a trip to the seashore in Brighton. He’d traded a pair of shoes to a friend who drove a hack, and so we had a carriage to ourselves. I tried very hard to stay awake to see all the new things, but I fell asleep straightaway . . . When I woke up, everywhere there was so much velvety green. Like blankets heaped up in piles. And the sky was so blue and empty, it was like a china plate. And on this green were sheep, andthey looked like clouds in a green sky. It was like waking up in a dream. I thought I was suddenly in a fairy world. What’s more free than a cloud? To drift this way and that. To take on new shapes and colors. To see the whole world.”
He was silent. But it was clear he was listening closely.
“It was a very pretty sight. It was the first thing that came to mind—sheep and clouds. I’ve always wondered who owned those sheep.”
He was quiet a moment. And then he said:
“Mi chiedo chi sia il proprietario di queste pecore.I wonder who owns these sheep.”
She was instantly intrigued.
“Queste pecore mi appartengono.These sheep belong to me,” he continued.
“Queste pecore sembrano piccole nuvole.These sheep look like little clouds.”
“Queste pecore sembrano piccole nuvole,” she breathed slowly, each word phonetically, rhythmically flawless. Like she’d been given a magic spell. “It’s lovely when you say it that way, isn’t it? It sounds like the beginning of an aria. The curtain rises on green fields made all out of heaps of green velvet, and there are little sheep among them, perhaps fashioned out of felt and cotton wool, and the shepherdess in the most adorable frock strolls onstage—”
