My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)(102)

“That seems rude.” She sighed. “Oh, very well.” She raised her voice. “Hello? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, please come toward the sound of my voice.”

Mrs. Rochester came to stand beside Jane. “Allez, l’esprits,” she said in her musical French Creole. “Come!”

As far as Charlotte could tell, nothing happened. But then Bran smiled.

“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” he murmured, shaking his head at the wonder of it all. “There’s so very many of them.”

“So many ghosts?” Charlotte wasn’t the type to be frightened by spirits, but the idea of there being “so many” ghosts all around them was a bit unsettling. What a place was London, where you only had to call out, and in seconds ghosts came from every direction. It was a city crowded with both the living and the dead. Even the palace.

“That’s probably enough, ladies.” Mr. Blackwood stretched out his arms to the main guard. “Now the book.”

“Oh! The book.” Jane lifted the book, opened it, and spoke the words in a clear, loud voice.

“‘Ostende nobis quod est post mortem! Nos videre praestrigiae!’”

It was basic Latin. When Charlotte had translated it for them earlier, calling on her Latin studies at Lowood, she’d come up with the following meaning: Show us what is beyond death! Let us see the ghosts! Which felt a bit on the nose, really, as magical incantations went. A little disappointing, if she was being honest. But then she supposed all of the real power stemmed from Jane. And perhaps the book. The book was very interesting. When Wellington had mentioned the Book of the Dead, Charlotte had expected some large and ancient tome written in hieroglyphs or Sanskrit, full of spells to control the dead and a secret knowledge of the underworld. But for the most part, this slim volume was a simple instruction manual on how to manage ghosts, protect oneself against possessions, and guide wayward souls in their journey to the place beyond, observations compiled by the various leaders of the Society stretching back throughout the years. It was not a magical book (although we would argue, dear reader, that all books are slightly magical), but it was certainly useful.

The point was, the Latin worked. The air seemed colder. The candles flickered and then whooshed out. The guards and nobles immediately began to shout in alarm.

Charlotte lifted her spectacles and gazed around the throne room again, and this time she saw them: dozens—perhaps even hundreds—of spirits all around them, the people of London who had long since passed. Bran was right—the sight was truly remarkable. It seemed to her that every period in English history was represented in this crowd of ghosts. There were men in knee-length fur-lined tunics with floppy hats. Women in long, flowing gowns with draping sleeves and veils over their hair. Women in pointy cone hats. Men in tricornered caps. Knights in chain mail and knights in plate mail and English soldiers in red coats. A band of unruly Scots in plaid kilts with blue-painted faces.

A radiant girl with red hair caught Charlotte’s eye. She was dressed in a gorgeous embroidered, jewel-encrusted gown and an Elizabethan headdress. In her hand she held a book. She smiled sweetly at Jane, and reached for the man beside her, who, to Charlotte’s total astonishment, suddenly turned into a horse.

The horse transformation alarmed the poor guards, especially.

“Gytrash!” someone yelled.

“What is this witchcraft?” another cried.

“Oh, we haven’t bewitched you,” Mr. Blackwood clarified. “We’ve simply helped you to see things a bit more clearly.”

The ghosts advanced. Charlotte shivered. Up close, on some of them, one could see evidence that they were not truly living beings. Some of them were translucent or glowing a strange unearthly green color. Others bore the wounds of the injuries that must have killed them—a noose around a neck that was bent at an odd angle, the black pustules that marked a bout of plague, an open, bleeding wound in the chest. Still others looked as though they had just dug their own way from their graves—their flesh was rotted, their clothes hanging from them in tatters.

They were frightening, Charlotte concluded. Especially that horse.

The crowd obviously felt the same way. Pandemonium broke out. The nobles stampeded toward the exit, often pushing right through the ghosts, which spurred them on in their frenzy. Mr. Blackwood darted off to one side, pushing and exacerbating the situation in whatever way he could. Bran and Jane and the Rochesters went off in other directions. It was all going according to the plan.

Except then Charlotte’s glasses were knocked from her hand.

Which was not the plan.

The plan had been for her to creep up to the king during the confusion and snatch the ring.

It had been decided that she should do the snatching. Because she was the most unobtrusive of the group. For once, being little and obscure was going to serve her.

Only now she couldn’t see a blasted thing.

“Blast!” she yelled. “Why can things never go according to my plan?”

She groped about on the floor for her spectacles.

“Miss Bront?,” she heard Mr. Blackwood call out. “Any time now.”

“I really should get the kind I wear on my face,” she grumbled as she searched. “This vanity of mine is going to be the death of us all.”

She encountered the barrel of a small gun and thrust it away from her. She’d never liked guns.