The Saint of the Bookstore by Victoria Goddard

Author:Victoria Goddard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria Goddard

She picked up the kitten, which mewed in faint protest and then rolled into a tighter ball in her hand. It was a soft grey in colour, with very fine and fluffy fur. Mirabelle felt its warmth, and then a vibration as it started to purr, and she had to blink back tears.

She had joined the convent at eighteen, sure of her vocation, ready to dedicate her life to the service of the Lady. She had not wanted children or a spouse or scholarship or a business; she had wanted to pray, and learn about the Lady, and live a quiet, simple, structured life in that service. She had found great contentment within the walls of her abbey, in her work in the dairy, and she had felt reassured, affirmed in her faith, by those faint prickles of holiness every now and again.

This was something else, surely.

It had to be.

She believed in the great saints of old, and in magic as a gift of the Lady, and the small miracles of healing and divination and truth-saying of the lesser saints of her own day.

Mirabelle got up, the kitten cradled to her breast, and in her distraction knocked into the wardrobe. The door swung open, and she jumped at her reflection in the tall mirror on one door. More of the young man’s sumptuous antique clothing hung neatly upon the rail, with a much more modest modern suit next to the velvets and silks. She pulled out one of the fancy coats, not velvet but some sort of quilted silk, and laid it over her arm to carry down. He would be cold, she thought vaguely, after giving Tabitha his coat.

She collected her basket—set the kitten inside so she could carry the lantern with her other hand—and returned downstairs to find him sitting in the chair with the girl on his lap, telling her a story.

Mirabelle set her basket on the counter quietly, and stood there, listening.

Not a story. The story.

The girl was sleepy, snuggling up against him. “Mumsy said the Lady takes us home when we die.”

“Yes,” Jemis Greenwing said, with a certainty Mirabelle had never been able to manage.

“I’m going to die,” Tabitha said. Her eyes were on the fire, one hand buried in the puddled velvet cloth of the young man’s coat, her other hand gripping his thumb securely. “I heard the sicker tell mumsy so.”

“The sicker?” He laughed gently. “Oh, the physicker, do you mean?”

“He said I was going to die,” she repeated. “That’s why, when I saw the unicorn, I thought it meant it was time and I should follow.”

“Hmm,” he said. “How big of a unicorn was it? The size of a horse? The size of a house?”

Tabitha giggled. “No, like a dog. I thought it was a dog, until I saw its horn.”

Mirabelle assumed the girl had been hallucinating—for she had clearly been sick before she grew so dangerously chilled in the snowstorm—but Jemis Greenwing nodded knowingly.

“Ah, yes, that would be Ballory, who belongs to my friend Mr.

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