The First Night

There were three things every applicant to the Vellichor Library was told on the morning of their interview.

The first was that the Vellichor Library opened at dusk and closed at the first light, and the librarian on duty would not, between those two times, be permitted to leave the Reading Room for any reason except a category-one fire, the death of a Fellow, or — and this had been added to the regulations, very late, in 1971, by a Master who had had occasion to discover the necessity of the clause — the breaking of one of the seven windows.

The second was that the Library admitted, by long-standing covenant with the Curators, exactly six readers in a single twelvemonth, chosen by the Curators from a longlist Vellichor itself produced. The six were never told they had been chosen. They were sent for. They could decline. None, in two hundred and sixty-three years, had.

The third — and this was the part the applicant was instructed to repeat back, in their own words, to the Master of the Library before the interview ended — was that there were certain readers, listed in a particular leather binding kept in a particular drawer at the Reading Room desk, who must not, on any night and under any pretext, be admitted to the Library. The binding was called the Banned. The librarian was responsible, on the night, for knowing the Banned.

Saoirse Bloom, who was twenty-four, who had taken her Master's at York, who had been short-listed for the post on the strength of a paper on memory-attribution in seventeenth-century commonplace books that she had written, in the privacy of her own bedsit, between October and December of the previous year — Saoirse Bloom had been told these three things on the morning of her interview, eleven months ago.

She was being told them again, now, on the evening of her first night.

She was being told them, for the second time, by Miss Drevenwood — who was, Saoirse had only recently learned, related to the Drevenwoods of Drevenwood Institute, although Miss Drevenwood had declined, with a small precise smile, to specify how — at the bottom of the spiral staircase that led from the porter's lodge to the Reading Room.

Miss Drevenwood was sixty-three. Miss Drevenwood was dressed, as she had been on the morning of Saoirse's interview, in a dove-grey woollen dress with a small jet brooch at the throat shaped like a closed book. Miss Drevenwood held in her left hand, on a long brass chain, the single key that opened the Reading Room door.

Miss Drevenwood said, 'Repeat them, please.'

Saoirse said, 'Dusk to first light. No leaving the Reading Room except for fire, death, or a broken window. Six readers a year, chosen by the Curators. The Banned must be known and must not be admitted.'

Miss Drevenwood said, 'Word-perfect. Up you go, Miss Bloom. The Banned is in the right-hand pedestal drawer of the desk. Read it once before you take your first reader. The boy from Magdalen is coming up at eight. He has the Ehrenberg fragments out tonight. The fragments are already on the desk. Do not, under any circumstances, sign him out before midnight.'

Saoirse said, 'Why before midnight.'

Miss Drevenwood said, 'You will know why before midnight.'

Then Miss Drevenwood handed Saoirse the long brass chain with the single key on it.

Then Miss Drevenwood — for whom the spiral stairs were, Saoirse had noticed at the interview, increasingly an enemy — turned and walked back down the corridor to the porter's lodge, and was gone.

—

The Reading Room of Vellichor was a long octagonal hall on the upper floor of an octagonal tower built in 1761 by a private antiquarian on a site, in the village of Vellichor, that had been an oak grove until the antiquarian had paid for its felling, and a Druidic clearing before that, and — depending on which of the Curators' histories one read — at least one other thing before any of those.

It had seven windows.

The eighth wall of the octagon was the door.

The seven windows were tall and narrow and glazed, in a glass that the Curators replaced once every twelve years from a stockpile they would not, even to the librarians, disclose the location of. The windows showed, by day, the grounds. The windows showed, by night, a slightly different version of the grounds, the version one would have seen had one been standing in the same spot in the oak grove the antiquarian had felled — which was, the Curators' histories insisted, a useful thing for the Library to be able to see.

The librarian's desk stood at the centre of the room, on a small platform of black oak, with the desk facing the door.

The desk had two pedestals — three drawers on the left, three drawers on the right.

The right-hand top drawer of the desk held the Banned.

Saoirse Bloom set the long brass chain with the single key on it down on the leather blotter, and she sat down at the chair, which had not been used since the previous librarian's last night four years ago, and which received her without complaint. She lit the green-shaded reading lamp. She opened the right-hand top drawer.

She took out the leather binding.

The binding was small. It was about the size of a deck of cards. It was bound in a black calfskin so old it had gone soft, and the spine had been blind-stamped, in a Roman capital, with the single word VETITUM.

She opened it.

The first page, in the same hand as the rest of the book, read:

The Banned of Vellichor. To be known by the Librarian on duty and to be denied admission on every night, without exception, for the term of their banning. No exceptions are to be made; the absence of an exception is the only exception that may be made. — A. Drevenwood, Master, 1819.

Saoirse turned the page.

The Banned were one to a page.

The Banned were, by Saoirse's count as she turned through the book, twenty-three.

Each entry had a name, a date of banning, and — in some cases — a short note, in a different hand, indicating the reason. J. C. Penhaligon. 1844. Removed a folio from the Carmichael shelf. Returned. Carmichael shelf re-collated; nothing missing. Banned for the principle. Anne Rooke. 1893. Read aloud from the Sermon of the Three Lost Saints. Reading Room subsequently uninhabitable for nine nights. Edward Hollis. 1934. Refused to leave at first light. Banned for unspecified duration.

She turned the pages slowly.

She reached the last entry.

The last entry was on the recto of a page that had been added later — the paper was younger, by a hand's-width of time, than the rest — and the entry read:

August Trevelyan. 1935. Banned in perpetuity. See appended sheet, sealed, addressed to the Librarian on duty.

There was a sealed sheet folded into the binding behind that page.

Saoirse looked at the sealed sheet.

Saoirse, in the way Saoirse had been taught by her supervisor at York to handle unopened correspondence in archives, did not open the sealed sheet.

She set the binding down, face-up, on the blotter, and she made a small written note in her duty-book — Banned read at 7:42 PM. Twenty-three entries. Trevelyan 1935 has a sealed appendix; left unopened pending further instruction — and she closed her duty-book, and she returned the binding to its drawer, and she sat at the librarian's desk of the Vellichor Library in the green light of the reading lamp on her first night, and she waited for the boy from Magdalen to come up the stairs.

—

The boy from Magdalen did not come up the stairs at eight.

The boy from Magdalen did not come up the stairs at five past eight, or at ten past eight, or at quarter past, and by twenty past eight Saoirse had stood up from the desk, twice, and twice sat back down, and had checked the porter's bell which was the only line of communication between the Reading Room and the lodge, and the porter's bell, in the small alcove by the door, was, perhaps just irritatingly, perhaps just sleepily, still.

At twenty-three minutes past eight there was a knock at the Reading Room door.

It was not a porter's knock.

The porter's knock — Miss Drevenwood had been very clear, on the morning of Saoirse's interview, about the porter's knock — was three short raps, paused, two short raps, paused, one long.

This knock was a single soft knock.

It was, by ear, knuckle on wood, at a height somewhere between five-foot-eight and six-foot, weighted slightly. The knock had the particular quality of a knock delivered by a man who was, at the time, looking down the corridor in the other direction.

Saoirse waited.

The knock came again.

It came, the second time, very slightly more patiently.

Saoirse rose from the desk. She crossed the room. She put her left hand on the great oak door of the Vellichor Library Reading Room, and she said, in the voice she had been instructed at her interview to use on every reader on every night,

'Who is at the door, and what reader's slip do you carry.'

There was a beat.

Then a voice, on the other side of the door — a voice that was, in the way voices through three-inch oak are sometimes muffled in a way that nevertheless makes them very particular, very particular — said,

'I carry a slip in your own hand, Miss Bloom. Will you open the door.'

—

Saoirse Bloom did not open the door.

She said, after a beat in which she did several things in her head in a particular order, 'My own hand.'

The voice said, 'Your own hand.'

She said, 'I have not signed any slip tonight.'

The voice said, 'No. You will sign it next Thursday. That is the awkwardness. Will you let me in.'

She did not let him in.

She walked, very calmly, back to the librarian's desk. She opened the right-hand top pedestal drawer. She took out the leather binding. She turned, with the same particular Saoirse Bloom calm she had been described by her supervisor at York as occasionally a little bit unnerving, to the last page she had read.

August Trevelyan. 1935. Banned in perpetuity.

She closed the binding.

She put it back in the drawer.

She returned to the door.

She said, through the oak, in the voice the regulation required, 'Reader. Identify yourself by name, college, and Curator's authorisation, in that order.'

The voice said, very politely, 'August Trevelyan. New College, matriculated 1932. Curator's authorisation: none. Slip, as previously stated, in your own hand. Are you going to open the door, Miss Bloom, or am I to stand on this rather chilly landing for the remainder of the night.'

Saoirse said, 'You are banned.'

Mr Trevelyan said, 'I am.'

Saoirse said, 'In perpetuity.'

Mr Trevelyan said, 'Yes. And yet, here I am, with a slip in your own handwriting. I think we shall need to discuss what to do about that, you and I. May I come in.'

Saoirse said, 'No.'

There was a small pause.

The voice, when it came, was the same voice — quiet, polite, very slightly tired — that Saoirse had used herself, on the morning of her interview, when Miss Drevenwood had asked her, towards the end, whether she had understood the regulations as she had repeated them back.

The voice said, 'Miss Bloom. I am not asking you, on the night of your first day, to break the regulations of an institution that has stood for two hundred and sixty-three years. I am asking you to open the right-hand top drawer of your desk, take out the small black binding, and read the sealed appendix to my entry. I have waited ninety years for that appendix to be opened. I am, in the inconvenient way that I am here at all, owed the courtesy of its being opened tonight.'

—

Saoirse Bloom stood with her left hand flat on the oak door, and she did, very quickly, in her head, the same thing she had done on the morning her supervisor at York had handed her the longlisted application sheet for the Vellichor post — she enumerated, in order, the things she could lose.

She could lose the post. She could lose, given the involvement of the Curators, more than the post. She could lose, on the basis of having read a sealed instrument addressed to the Librarian on duty on the first night of her duty, what some Vellichor histories suggested those who broke the Library's deeper customs lost.

She could also, however, not.

She walked, very calmly, back to the librarian's desk.

She opened the right-hand top pedestal drawer.

She took out the leather binding.

She turned to the last page.

She unfolded the sealed sheet.

The seal, she noticed, broke very easily — almost, she would think later, the way a seal breaks that has been waiting a long time to be broken by someone who was supposed to break it.

The sheet inside the seal was a single page of cream paper. The cream paper had a watermark — two crossed quills inside a circle of laurel, which was a watermark Saoirse would, with a small jolt she did not allow herself the time to think about, recognise. The text on the page was in handwriting Saoirse did not, at first, recognise.

Then she did.

The handwriting on the page was her own.

The page read:

To the Librarian on duty, from the Librarian on duty —

If Mr August Trevelyan presents at the door of the Reading Room with a slip in your handwriting, admit him. Admit him without inquiring further; admit him without seeking authorisation from the Curators; admit him without consulting the Master. He is owed admission and you, in the order of things that has not yet occurred, will already have agreed to give it. The slip he carries is one you will sign next Thursday. The order in which the slip is signed and the slip is presented is a matter the Library does not, at present, observe. Do not, on this night, attempt to make the Library observe it; the Library will not be persuaded.

— S. Bloom, Librarian, Vellichor, [date unwritten].

Saoirse stood for a long second at the librarian's desk.

She read the page once more, very slowly, from the bottom upwards.

She did not, when she had finished reading, allow herself the time to think about it.

She refolded the page. She put it back into the binding. She closed the binding. She replaced the binding in the right-hand top pedestal drawer.

She walked across the Reading Room.

She put her left hand on the great oak door of the Vellichor Library on her first night, and she said, very calmly, in the voice the regulation required,

'Mr Trevelyan. You may enter.'

She opened the door.

The man on the other side of the door was perhaps twenty-eight years old, was dressed in a dark suit cut in the way men's suits had been cut in 1934, was holding in his left hand a folded reader's slip and in his right hand a single fresh white camellia, and he was looking, with the patience of a man who had been waiting on a chilly landing for ninety years to be told what to do next, at her.

He did not, when she opened the door, smile.

He stepped across the threshold. He looked, very briefly, at the seven windows. He looked, very briefly, at the green-shaded reading lamp on the librarian's desk. He looked, last, at her.

He said, in the same quiet polite voice, 'Thank you, Miss Bloom. I'd been told you'd open it.'

He laid the white camellia, very carefully, on the leather blotter of the librarian's desk.

He laid the reader's slip beside it, in front of her chair.

He said, 'I'll take the Ehrenberg fragments tonight, please, if that's not an imposition. Trevelyan's slip — sorry — my slip — has the call number on it. I'll be in the third carrel. I won't bother you. I shan't, in fact, bother you at all, if I can help it, between now and the morning. We can talk on Thursday, when you sign me in.'

He turned, then, and he walked across the Reading Room to the third carrel, very quietly, very politely, very particularly, and he sat down, and he opened a notebook — the same kind of notebook, Saoirse noticed in the part of her brain that was still functioning, that she had been issued for her own use at the desk this morning, the same kind of black-bound notebook with the small red ribbon for a bookmark — and he uncapped a fountain pen.

He did not look up at her again.

Saoirse Bloom closed the door of the Reading Room of the Vellichor Library on her first night of duty.

She walked back to the librarian's desk.

She sat down.

She picked up the white camellia.

The camellia was, by her left thumb's reckoning, very recently cut. The cut at the base of the stem was fresh. The petals were faintly cold, the way flowers are faintly cold when they have just been brought in from outside, where the November grounds of the Vellichor Library on the first night of her duty were — by the part of her brain that, very quietly, was beginning to do its sums — perhaps two degrees above frost.

She set the camellia down on the blotter, beside the green-shaded reading lamp.

She picked up the reader's slip Mr Trevelyan had laid in front of her chair.

She read it.

The slip was a standard Vellichor reader's slip — pale blue paper, the call number for the Ehrenberg fragments correctly filled in, the date filled in, the name August Trevelyan filled in, the signature of the librarian filled in — in her own handwriting, neat and small and rounded as she had been writing in archives since she was nineteen — but the librarian's signature line carried, at the bottom, in her handwriting, in a dated hand at the right margin —

S. Bloom. Thursday, 23 November.

That was, by Saoirse Bloom's count, nine days from tonight.

She looked, very calmly, at the third carrel, where Mr August Trevelyan — banned from the Vellichor Library in perpetuity in 1935, admitted to the Vellichor Library by Miss Saoirse Bloom on the eleventh day of November — was writing, by the green light of his carrel lamp, in a black-bound notebook, very quietly, with the patience of a man who had nine days to wait before anything else need happen.

She did not, this time, allow herself the time to think about that either.

She opened her duty-book.

She wrote, in her own neat small rounded hand, in the careful neutral voice of a Vellichor librarian on her first night, the regulation entry:

Admitted: A. Trevelyan, on a slip dated 23 November. No Curator's authorisation. Banned-in-perpetuity entry overridden by sealed Librarian's note in the right-hand top pedestal drawer, opened this evening at 8:36 PM. Reader took the Ehrenberg fragments. Third carrel. No incidents to report at this hour.

She put her pen down.

She did not, on her first night at the desk of the Vellichor Library, sleep.

But she did, for a long time, sit very still at the desk with the white camellia in front of her, and she did, after a long while, write — in the back of her duty-book, in a separate hand from the regulation entry, in a small private hand she had not, since York, used in the front of anything — a single question.

The question was:

Where do I get this camellia from. And from whom. And why am I cutting it.

She did not, that night, answer it.

She would, on the Thursday, nine days from now, when she would walk down the back path of the Vellichor grounds in the dark to the cutting garden the antiquarian had laid out in 1761, with a pair of secateurs in her right hand and a single instruction in her own hand on a piece of paper in her left, finally, answer it.

But that was, on the night of the eleventh of November, still nine days away.