That was easier said than done. My mother’s teachings did not carry me so far as I had thought they would. I knew my letters, and while I could read simple sentences, the books in the manor’s library were filled with long and arcane words that were beyond my ability to pronounce, let alone comprehend. What was more, I could not write at all, not even my own name.

Pietro became my teacher. In the mornings, we sat in the drawing room off the manor’s vast main hall, or on fine days outside at a stone table in the garden. We drank tea, brought to us by one of the other household servants. I had never had tea before, and I liked it so much I soon forgot my cravings for whiskey.

My reading began with an English translation of Virgil, a poet who lived in the great city of Rome a long time ago. Pietro admired him, being from Italy himself, as he informed me.

“What of the master?” I asked. “Is he also from Italy?”

“Let us begin at the beginning,” Pietro said, and opened the book.

It was slow going at first, but Pietro was a patient teacher, and I soon found myself drawn in by the tale of the hero Aeneas, and how he fought bravely at Troy, then fled after King Hector told him to found a new city that would later become Rome. I was fascinated by how the ghost of Aeneas’s wife appeared to him, and I liked especially the section in which Aeneas went to Africa and fell in love with Queen Dido, only to abandon her when the gods reminded him of his duty to found Rome. After that, Dido threw herself upon a funeral pyre, which I found horrible and compelling.

I practiced writing, and though clumsy at first, I improved so rapidly that Pietro declared I was gifted by God. I soon took to drawing as well, and playing music on a harpsichord, and I excelled at both, for my fingers were long and dexterous, and if I imagined something in my mind it seemed no effort to make my hands bring it into being.

I saw the master regularly, if not often. Usually several days would pass, and I would see him little if at all about the manor. Then, on the third or fourth evening since I had last spoken with him, he would call me to his library and ask what I had learned since our last meeting.

“I learned it is better to die than lose what one loves most,” I said one evening. This was while I was in the midst of reading The Aeneid.

He raised a dark eyebrow. “And what taught you that?”

“Queen Dido,” I said excitedly, for I was obsessed with her story and liked nothing better than to speak of it. “The warrior Aeneas left her, called away by the gods, and rather than go on without him she threw herself on a fire and stabbed herself with a knife while her people watched. There was a great amount of blood, then she burned up.” I never spared the gory details, and indeed tended to embellish them in the retelling.

His golden eyes were thoughtful. “I see. And do you not think Queen Dido was foolish in her actions? Might she not have done good to live on and continue to lead her people?”

I chewed my lip, thinking of how to answer that. His words seemed wise. Why shouldn’t Dido have gone on? She was a queen. “It just seemed right what she did,” I said finally, unsure how else to explain it. “It was sadder that way. And more beautiful.”

To my astonishment, he laughed—a deep, ringing sound. “Continue with your studies, James,” he said, and our meeting was ended.

As spring passed into summer, I grew determined to learn where the master went and what he did in the days between our meetings. Most often he went to Edinburgh, I knew, always late in the day and returning the next morning. From what scant crumbs Pietro dropped, I learned it was business that took the master to the city—though what sort of business it might be, my young mind could not guess.

At other times he took his horse and rode out across the lands of his manor, and we would not see him all the rest of the day, no matter if the weather was fair or foul. Then, past midnight, I would wake to the clatter of hooves in the courtyard, and I would look out my window to see Pietro limp forward and take the reins of his horse. He would stride into the manor, black cape fluttering, and sometimes it seemed to me he held something in his arms. One time he glanced up, his golden eyes fixed on the window through which I peered, and I quickly jumped back into bed, my heart pounding.

On the days he did not leave the manor, the master most often remained locked in his library. Usually he was alone, though some days horsemen arrived, coats spattered with mud, bearing papers sealed with wax, and Pietro would rush them into the library. Soon after they would depart with new papers, imprinted with the master’s own seal. What was written upon those papers, I didn’t know, but I would have given anything to try out my reading skills upon them.

It was Midsummer’s Day—when the simple folk of village and croft venture out onto the hills, to the old standing stones, and leave offerings of the season’s first fruit to forgotten gods— when the visitors came to Madstone Hall. They arrived just as the sun touched the western horizon, in a glossy black carriage drawn by fine horses. Three figures climbed from the carriage, all wreathed and hooded in rich black. One was slighter than the others, and wore a veil rather than hood, so I guessed it to be a woman beneath the shrouding attire.

I imagined a feast would be prepared for such obviously important guests, only then Pietro told me the servants had been commanded to their quarters, and that I, too, was to remain in my room. However, he seemed too preoccupied to lead me all the way to my chamber himself, and so—left to my own devices—I crept back downstairs and concealed myself in the manor’s hall, in a corner behind a chair. Since I was a child, I had always found it simple to spirit myself into shadows and remain unseen, and my skill had not diminished in my time at the manor, for Pietro walked right past me as he opened the door of the master’s library.

“They are here,” he spoke through the open door.

“Send them in, Pietro,” came the master’s deep voice. “There is no use in delaying, I suppose.”

A moment later three dark figures entered the hall. I shrank into the shadows behind the chair as they drew near, and a certainty grew in me that I did not want to be seen by them. There was something about the three—not a wickedness or malice, but all the same a kind of peril—that caused me to shudder. I bit my lip, lest a sound escape me.

As they drew even with the chair behind which I had concealed myself, one of the three—the slender one—paused. She turned her veiled head back and forth, and I felt the hair on my arms stand on end. Beneath the black veil, I caught two sharp glints of gold. Her gaze passed over the chair . . .

. . . then moved on. The three stepped into the library. Pietro shut the door. He pressed a trembling hand to his brow, then shuffled across the hall and was gone. Once he was out of sight, I bolted away like a rabbit who had just seen a fox—three foxes—and dashed up the stairs. I spent the rest of the evening in my chamber, and when I heard the sound of horses and the rattle of a carriage’s wheels, I did not look out my window.

Although curiosity burned in me, neither Pietro nor the master spoke of the visitors the next day, and I did not dare to ask about them. I tried to occupy myself with my studies, but as the hours passed it grew harder and harder to concentrate on books and ink and quill pens. Would the master never tell me anything at all?

Because of my petulant sighs and inability to perform any meaningful work, Pietro dismissed me early from my studies. He gave me a sharp look, but I ignored him and went to my room. I felt bitter and lonely in a way I had not since the master plucked me from the streets of Edinburgh and brought me here. Why had he not revealed his purpose for me?