Chapter 3: A Chance Encounter - Part 1

The east side of Bristol was dull enough as it was, with all the posh young men and women strolling about town with their shit-eating grins and their coin purses rattling. The stuffy aristocracy that clouded the streets like a plague made Ellis want to vomit. However, the library was the worst place of all. It was where—counterintuitive as it may seem—the stupidest folks seemed to congregate. It was full of people who wanted to appear intelligent to their peers and potential partners. They would cross their legs and stare blankly at the books in front of their noses, their glazed over eyes reflecting their dead souls.

More than a few eyes raised as Ellis shifted into the facility that was usually reserved only for the wealthy. Members of the Crusaders of the Lord were admitted into any public or private facility that they so pleased, and nobody had the right to deny them. The Crusaders were, after all, the highest form of law enforcement in the world. They were the Pope’s very own secret service, and with the tenth crusade having left the papacy with near-total control over the eastern hemisphere, it put them in a very high position on the pecking order. This, however, did not sit very well with the aristocrats who had to ‘tolerate’ Ellis’ presence.

His muddied boots clopped along the hardwood floors as he approached the librarian’s desk, and he put on his most award winning smile for the withered old crone. Her hair was tied behind her with a ribbon, and she looked down her nose at him, her glasses perched near the tip.

“Well, you look ravishing today, my sweet,” Ellis cooed.

Her expression did not waver as smacked her lips. After a few moments of silence she raised her eyebrows and continued to stare at him apathetically.

“And, I must say, your personality is just beaming today. Are you pregnant? You’re glowing.”

“Spare me, Carter.”

“Feisty. I like it.”

It looked like the corner of her mouth threatened to twitch upwards in the semblance of some form of entertainment, but any sign of humor was snuffed out instantly as she resumed her expressionless staring.

“Alright, here’s the thing, Tess. I have a bit of a doozy for you.”

“Is that right?”

“Hold your horses, girl. I can feel the excitement rushing through your veins. You might pop a blood vessel.”

“Cut the crap, kid. If you want me to help you, you best get on with it.”

“Is it hot in here, Tess?” He pulled his collar to the side as if to air himself off and bit his lip ever so lightly.

Latessa stood up from her desk and turned around without a word, beginning to walk away from the desk altogether, as Ellis was the only one there anyways.

“Okay! I’m sorry! I really do need your help, though, I swear. It’s about the asylum across the River Avon. Do you know of it?”

Latessa stopped in her tracks at the mention of the asylum and she turned on her heel as she looked him over. “How do you know about that place? It hasn’t been open since before you were born. They buried any records of it a long time ago.”

“Ahh, but they seem to have missed a piece of that information. Word has it that it is hiding somewhere in your domain.”

“Alright, kid, you’ve got my attention.” She was sitting back down now, her gnarled fingers clasped together in front of her. The elderly woman’s eyes seemed to glimmer as she peered over the boney knuckles at him.

“I don’t have much to go off of, but if it’s you, I think it might just be enough. I’m looking for a journal. It would be an unremarkable piece—likely the reason why they managed to let it slip past them when they were destroying the documents linked to the hospital. Apparently it would have been written within the last few years of the asylum’s operation, and it belonged to a scholar of some sort. He would have visited there frequently before it closed down. That’s all I have though.”

“Mick! Mack!” she screamed their names so loud that people stopped what they were doing in order to peer over at the desk.

The two lugs appeared from aisles deep in the library, abandoning whatever menial task they were previously occupied with when they heard their mother calling for them. They sauntered up to the desk, their lengthy limbs dragging behind them like apes as they approached. The faraway look in their eyes and the way they absentmindedly bumbled through their lives caused people to stare or make jests, but if Latessa ever caught someone mocking her children, she would give them what-for.

“Yes, Mum?” the two of them asked in almost perfect unison.

Latessa’s hands were moving at breakneck speed across a sheet of paper. Her old, ravaged hands come to life as she whirred through numbers and letters at a dizzying speed. Ellis just watched in wonder as she went about her work—it was one of the only reasons that his visits to the library somewhat entertained him.

“Yes, Mum?” the voices came again.

Latessa handed a sheet to Mick (or perhaps it was Mack, nobody actually knew which was which, and many doubted that Latessa herself even remembered) without saying a word and the massive man-child looked it over while drool pooled in the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, Mum. Back soon.”

The oafish fellow clapped his brother on the back of the shoulder and pointed to the numbers and letters on the page. After a few brief moments of gazing over the book designations, Mick placed the page into his pocket and they both went their separate ways, trundling through the library to find the books that their mother had asked them to grab. While they were off looking, she continued to write, having stopped short to give her sons something to preoccupy themselves with.

“Apart from what many people think, they really are smart boys, aren’t they?” Ellis asked, looking as they wordlessly hunted down the several books from across the library without ever looking back at the page in Mick’s pocket.

“In their own ways. They can be a pair of damned fools, and sometimes they drive me almost as crazy as they are, but there have been times when they have been remarkably intelligent in their own rights.”

“In their own rights, eh?”

“Aye. If ye don’t believe me, get a load of this.” Latessa stated, a smirk crossing her features as she looked at Ellis. “Mack! How many books are currently out on loan?”

“One hundred and thirty four, Mum!” came the thunderous reply.

“Mick! How many books in this library have less than two hundred pages?”

“Seven hundred and sixty eight, Mum! Though, there are another twenty six that have pages removed, making them less than two hundred. Don’t know if that counts, Mum! Sorry, Mum!”

“That’s fine, dear. You’ve done wonderfully.” She leveled her gaze back to Ellis, and the hunter stroked his chin and nodded to her.

“One hell of a memory.”

“Oh, it’s not just memory. They keep track of all of these things on the spot. They can take a single look at a shelf of books and tell you how many books, and how many pages are in each one. It’s extraordinary. If someone could just teach them to tie their shoes properly and how to stay in bed at night, that would be fantastic.”

“Here you go, Mum.” One of the brothers dropped a stack of books on the desk, and Latessa kissed his cheek lightly.

“Thank you, dear. Here’s the second page. Share it with your brother, and take the books to wherever Mr. Carter is sitting when you find them.” The man nodded to her and strode off to find his brother and the rest of the books they needed.

“Remarkable.” Ellis stated, not even the hint of patronization or sarcasm in his voice.

“Well, you see if any of these are the books you are looking for. They are all journals, and they all belonged to scholars. We have a large number of them, probably another two dozen or so for you to read.”

“Amazing. I should be done by tomorrow night,” he replied, exasperation already setting in as he grabbed the stack of books and headed off into the corners of the library to sit down and begin pouring over the many journals.

The time seemed to fade away like nothing as he read, his feet kicked up onto the table in front of him, the mud slowly oozing down from his shoes onto the furniture. Many of the patrons looked at him with great disdain, wrinkling their nose and distancing themselves from him. A few of them were even bold enough to make complaints to Latessa when he decided to light a cigarette and tap the ashes out onto an end-table beside his chair. Tess merely shrugged them off and sent them packing. Ellis hated this place, it was true, but he adored watching Tess tongue-lashing the snooty bastards that inhabited it. Half of the people who were complaining had been smoking in the library at some point or another anyway, and Latessa was just as sure of that as Ellis.

By the time Mick (or Mack) left him another stack of books he had only managed to crawl through half of the first pile. The words seemed to drawl on endlessly—the language almost completely indecipherable—and before long his head was throbbing. He massaged his temples as he made his way through another journal, his bleary eyes struggling to find the words. As if they had read his mind, the two brothers appeared by the sides of his chairs, holding a very large candle each, which they placed on the table before him.

“Thank you very much, Mick. Mack,” he stated, nodding to them individually.

They seemed nervous as he talked to them, and they shied away, fidgeting with their clothing as they walked off. Ellis smiled as they left—the two of them were off, sure, but they had hearts the size of watermelons.

The candles fueled his reading into the later hours, after all the other folks had left the library and the doors were locked behind them. Latessa told him that he was welcome to stay, as long as he didn’t make too much of a racket. She lived in the building anyways, so it didn’t bother her to have him sifting through the dusty old tomes while she slept.

Eventually, deep into the morning hours, Ellis’ legs began to cramp and he stood up from his chair. Mick and Mack had barely slept through the night. They had lain down for a rest a few hours prior, but they had already appeared from their rooms and begun strolling about the library and making sure everything was in order. One of the brothers was walking toward him, but as Ellis stood and begin to pace with his book, the man continued on his way right by him without so much as a peep. Ellis shrugged his shoulders and he continued on through the final pages of the journal.

The sun was beginning to cast its very first rays across the horizon as Ellis finished the final book of his pile, as he continued to walk circles around the library. He sighed as he put the book down, his eyes bloodshot and sore as he flopped back down into his chair. It seemed there was, after all, something that Tess and her two boy geniuses couldn’t find.

He woke to a loud bang as the library doors clattered open and the sun broke through the darkness, blasting him with a wave of warmth and burning his eyes. He groaned as he covered his eyes with a hand and looked down to see a light blanket thrown over him; there was also a tattered old book placed on his lap. One of his cigarettes hung from his mouth still as he sat there, and he grumbled to himself as he plucked it from his lips and slid it back into the pack. He blinked a few times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, rubbing his eyes, and he grabbed the book to see what they might have missed on their hunt during the previous night.

My name is Marsilio Ficino. I have decided after my long journey across the ocean, that as I find my feet in Bristol, I shall begin a recording of events of my time in this dark place. I long for my home in Florence, but it will be some time before I return to that beautiful city. The people here seem like they are half in the grave, and I have yet to even come close to the asylum I have been hired to assess.

It feels as if the hand of god has missed this place. It is cold and lightless, even as the summer warms my sea-sick bones. I pray that during my stay, I may cast some of His majesty over this forgotten realm of destitution and debauchery. The first man I encountered upon my arrival was so inebriated that he nearly toppled into the Avon. He tried to explain that it was the fact that he was missing an eye that he was walking as such, but his breath was so ripe with the scent of fermentation that I could have likely bottled his saliva and sold it as moonshine.

I am treated kindly, as a man of the cloth, but there are people here who look at me as if I am some sort of devil. I have seen men and women both, glaring from the shadows as I pass—as if my presence alone offends them. I fear this place may become my final resting ground, though I plan on speaking to god every day to ask him to spare me from such a fate. I must find myself a proper place to sleep, and from there my journey shall begin.

Ellis grinned from ear, having lurched out of his chair and thrown the blanket to the side halfway through reading the entry. He looked around for whomever placed the book there, and his eyes fell on one of Tess’ boys as he knelt down and gingerly picked up the blanket that Ellis had thrown to the side.

“Excuse me, but do you know who found this?” Ellis asked, a friendly smile on his face.

“I did, I found the book last night when Mr. Carter was still reading,” the man spoke quietly. “It wasn’t on Mum’s list. It also wasn’t on the master list, but it was a lot like the other ones you were reading. I gave you a blanket too. Mr. Carter looked cold.”

“Last night?” Ellis looked confused. “If I was still awake, why did you wait for me to sleep to give it to me?”

“Mum told me to give any books to Mr. Carter wherever he was sitting. But, Mr. Carter was standing while he was reading last night. By the time you sat down, you were already sleeping. Mum told me, Mr. Carter. Only where you were sitting.”

Ellis was about to try to explain the woman’s orders to her son, but instead he caught himself and shook his head, almost laughing. “That makes perfect sense. Thank you very much, my good lad. You’ve been a gentleman and a scholar.” He tipped an imaginary hat at the man and he turned on his heel, walking toward the exit of the library.

“I trust you have what you need?” Latessa’s voice carried down from her loft bedroom. She stood by the railing, obviously in the midst of preparing herself for the day.

“Indeed. As always, you are as intelligent as you are beautiful,” Ellis stated, folding his arm across his midriff and bowing low to her, his other arm swinging down in front of him in an extravagant show.

“Aye, and you are as charming as you are annoying.”

Ellis allowed himself a burst of short laughter as the older woman turned on her heel and walked back into her bedroom to finish getting ready for the day of maintaining the library once more. “Love you, too!” he called up to her as he breathed a sigh of relief and walked out of the library with the book held tightly under his armpit. Now he just had to work his way through the journal until he found what he needed inside.

At the very least, Ellis knew that he needed to head across the river, so whatever information he might find within the journal, he could ascertain while beginning the journey towards his destination. He began to idly flip through the passages, following the recounting of the man’s dreary adventures and growing paranoia. It seemed that Marsilio was under the belief that he was being followed by someone, or kept under close watch at the very least. By the time that Ellis had reached the ferry that would take him across the River Avon, he had already begun to piece together some form of direction to where the asylum might be.

Most of what was written about the journeys that Marsilio had taken from Bristol to the asylum were merely stating that he had been trundling down a path toward the setting sun, or that he had seen a most beautiful bridge over a small creek. However, these things were exactly the clues that Ellis needed to find his way through the now overgrown trails that lay on the other side of the river. He nodded to the ferryman as he approached, closing the journal and tucking it back under his arm.