Library of Souls (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #3)(53)

“Caul.”

Bentham nodded. “His real name is Jack.”

Emma leaned forward. “Then your sister is …”

“My sister is Alma Peregrine,” he said.





*


We gaped at Bentham, thunderstruck. Could the man before us really be Miss Peregrine’s brother? I’d known she had two—she’d mentioned them once or twice, even shown me a picture of them as boys. She told me the story, too, of how their quest for immortality led to the disaster in 1908 that turned them and their followers into hollowgast and, later, the wights we knew and feared. But she’d never mentioned either brother by name, and her story bore little resemblance to the one Bentham had just laid out.

“If what you say is true,” I said, “then you must be a wight.”

Nim’s mouth fell open. “Mr. Bentham is not.” He was ready to stand and defend his master’s honor when Bentham waved him off.

“It’s all right, Nim. They’ve only heard Alma’s version of things. But there are gaps in her knowledge.”

“I don’t hear you denying it,” said Emma.

“I’m not a wight,” Bentham said sharply. He was also not accustomed to being questioned by the likes of us, and his pride was beginning to poke through his genteel veneer.

“Then would you mind if we checked,” I said, “just so we can be sure …”

“Not at all,” Bentham said. He pushed himself up with his cane and hobbled into the no-man’s-land between our couches. PT raised his head, idly curious, while Nim turned his back, angry that his master should have to endure such humiliations.

We met Bentham on the carpet. He bent down a little so we wouldn’t have to stand on our tiptoes—he was surprisingly tall—and waited while we searched the whites of his eyes for signs of contact lenses or other fakery. His pupils were terribly bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept in days, but otherwise unsuspicious.

We stepped back. “Okay, you’re not a wight,” I said. “But that means you can’t be Caul’s brother.”

“I’m afraid the set of assumptions you are working from is erroneous,” he said. “I was responsible for my brother and his followers becoming hollowgast, but I never became one myself.”

“You made the hollows?” Emma said. “Why?!”

Bentham turned and gazed into the fire. “It was a terrible mistake. An accident.” We waited for him to explain. It seemed to cost him real effort to drag up the story from wherever he’d hidden it away. “It was my fault for letting things go on as long as they did,” he said heavily. “I kept telling myself that my brother wasn’t as dangerous as he seemed. It was only after he imprisoned me, and it was too late to act, that I realized how wrong I’d been.”

He stepped closer to the warmth of the fire and knelt down to stroke the bear’s wide belly, letting his fingers get lost in PT’s fur. “I knew Jack had to be stopped, and not simply for my own sake—nor because there was any danger he’d ever find the Library of Souls. No, it was clear his ambitions had grown beyond that. For months he’d been molding our recruits into the foot soldiers of a dangerous political movement. He cast himself as an underdog fighting to wrest control of our society from what he called ‘the infantilizing influence of ymbrynes.’ ”

“Ymbrynes are the reason our society still exists,” Emma said bitterly.

“Yes,” Bentham said, “but you see, my brother was terribly jealous. From the time we were boys, Jack envied our sister’s power and status. Our inborn abilities were puny compared to hers. By her third birthday the elder ymbrynes who cared for us knew Alma was a great talent. People made such a fuss over her, and it drove Jack mad. When she was a baby he would pinch her just to see her cry. When she practiced turning into a bird, he would chase her and pluck her feathers.”

I saw an angry flame curl up from one of Emma’s fingers, which she extinguished in her tea.

“That ugliness only deepened over time,” Bentham said. “Jack was able to harness and exploit the same poisonous envy latent in some of our fellow peculiars. He held meetings and made speeches, rallying malcontents to his cause. Devil’s Acre was fertile ground, since many of the peculiars here were exiles, alienated from and hostile to the ymbrynic matriarchy.”

“The Claywings,” Emma said. “Before the wights became wights, that’s what they called themselves. Miss Peregrine taught us a little about them.”

“ ‘We don’t need their wings!’ Jack used to preach. ‘We’ll grow wings of our own!’ He meant this metaphorically, of course, but they used to march around wearing fake wings as a symbol of their movement.” Bentham stood up and motioned us toward the bookshelves. “Look here. I still have a photo or two from those days. A few he wasn’t able to destroy.” He pulled down an album from a shelf and turned to a picture of a large crowd listening to a man speak. “Ah, here’s Jack giving one of his hateful speeches.”

The crowd, almost exclusively male, wore big sturdy hats and were packed thirty deep, balancing on boxes and clinging to fence tops to hear what Caul had to say.

Bentham turned the page and showed us another photo, this one of two hale young men in suits and hats, one grinning earnestly, the other expressionless. “That’s me on the left, Jack on the right,” Bentham said. “Jack smiled only when he was trying to get something out of you.”