The Dictionary of Lost Words(32)

I crawled backwards, dragging the trunk with me.

‘I thought you’d forgotten all about that trunk.’

I thought about the news clipping Ditte had sent. It would be on top of all the other words in the trunk. I hadn’t been able to face it for a long time.

The trunk was covered in a film of dust. ‘Did you keep it safe on purpose, Lizzie, when I went to school? Or just by accident?’

Lizzie sat on the bed and watched me. ‘There seemed no reason to mention it to anyone.’

‘Was I really such a bad child?’ I asked.

‘No, just a motherless one, like so many of us.’

‘But that’s not why they sent me away.’

‘They only sent you to school. And it probably was ’cos you’d no mother to care for you. They thought it best.’

‘But it wasn’t best.’

‘I know that. And they came to know that. They brought you home.’ Lizzie tucked a lock of my unruly hair back into its pin. ‘What’s made you remember it now?’

‘Ditte sent me a slip.’ I showed it to her. As I read the quotation, I saw her relief.

Then I looked at her sheepishly. ‘There is another reason,’ I said.

‘Which is?’

‘Dr Murray thinks a word is missing from the Dictionary.’

Lizzie looked at the trunk, and her hand sought her crucifix. I thought she might start fretting, but she didn’t.

‘Open it slowly,’ she said. ‘In case something has made a home of it and is startled by the light.’



I sat all afternoon with my Dictionary of Lost Words. Lizzie came and went more than once, bringing sandwiches and milk, and reluctantly relaying a message to Da that I was feeling poorly. When she came into her room for the third time, she turned on the lamp.

‘I’m knackered,’ she said, sitting heavily on the bed and disturbing the slips spread across it. She moved her hand through them like she was moving it through leaves. ‘Did you find it?’ she asked.

‘Find what?’

‘The lost word.’

The look on Dr Murray’s face came back to me.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I did find it, eventually.’

I reached over to Lizzie’s bedside table and picked up the slip. There was no question of me giving it to Dr Murray. Even if he wasn’t in a temper, I couldn’t think of a single scenario that would make the word’s presence in my hand acceptable.

‘Do you remember it, Lizzie?’ I said, holding it out to her.

‘Why would I remember it?’

‘It was the very first. I wasn’t sure, but when I took everything out of the trunk, there it was, right at the bottom. Do you remember? It had looked so lonely.’

She thought for a bit, then her face brightened. ‘Oh, I do remember. You found my mother’s hat pin.’

I looked at the engraving on the inside of the trunk, The Dictionary of Lost Words. I blushed.

‘Stop that now,’ she said, then nodded towards the word I was still holding in my hand. ‘How could Dr Murray know that word was missing? Does he count them? There’d be so many.’

‘He got a letter. From a man who expected to find it in the volume with all the A and B words, but didn’t.’

‘People can’t expect every word to be in there,’ Lizzie said.

‘Oh, but they do. And sometimes Dr Murray has to write to tell them why a word has not been included. There are all sorts of good reasons, Da tells me, but this time was different.’ I was excited, recalling the drama of the morning. Against all common sense, I couldn’t help a feeling of accomplishment. I had been the cause of something that seemed to really matter.

I saw concern on Lizzie’s face.

‘What is it, then?’ she asked. ‘What is the word?’

‘Bondmaid,’ I said, deliberate and slow, feeling it in my throat and on my lips. ‘The word is bondmaid.’

Lizzie tried it: ‘Bondmaid. What does it mean?’

I looked at the scrap of paper. It was a top-slip, and I recognised Da’s hand. I could see where the pin once joined it to all the quotation slips, or maybe a proof. If I’d known it had come from Da, would I have kept it?

‘Well, what does it mean?’

There were three definitions.

‘A slave girl,’ I said. ‘Or a bonded servant, or someone who is bound to serve till death.’

Lizzie thought on it for a while. ‘That’s what I am,’ she said. ‘I reckon I’m bound to serve the Murrays till the day I die.’

‘Oh, I don’t think it describes you, Lizzie.’

‘Well enough,’ she said. ‘Don’t look so stricken, Essymay. I’m glad I’m in the Dictionary; or would have been, if not for you.’ She smiled. ‘I wonder what else is in there about me?’

I thought about the words in the trunk. Some I hadn’t heard or read until I saw them on a slip. Most were commonplace, but something about the slip or handwriting had endeared them to me. There were clumsy words with poorly transcribed quotations that would never end up in the Dictionary, and there were words that existed for one sentence and no other: fledglings, nonce words that never made it. I loved them all.

Bondmaid was no fledgling word, and its meaning disturbed me. Lizzie was right; it referred to her as it referred to a Roman slave girl.