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jealous

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I should abandon all pretence that this is a diary, for I seldom take time to write in it. I could go on and on about the things that have happened in the last two weeks, but I already know them, and who else would be reading this? Anyone that would steal a diary is not someone I wish to confide in anyway. Nonetheless, with Florrie gone and Mercuria’s mind much occupied with drills and preparations (this castle is older than Medmenham; anyone who thinks that it will not react on its own to an attack is a fool), there is no-one to tell what I think. Especially since Endymion is also gone away. Dorian is a very dear friend, but he is also a bit of a twit sometimes, and Crabtree simply would not understand.

I suppose mostly what occupies my mind is that Wood and the others were flogged and sent home, and I can hardly pity them. Someone asked me if I didn’t feel sorry for Pendry, because my family are not traitors but there are other names which are applied to them by almost everyone. And I don’t. It would be different if people had not treated Kat so differently, but they have. Pendry chose to claim not only his family name but his father’s actions.

It is unfair that Jennie Mablin is Florrie’s relation, and through them Endymion’s, and I cannot be. But he is old enough to choose the Leffoys and I am not. I must do what Aunt Gwen and Uncle Jemmie decide, and Maria and Endymion are the only ones who can influence them. I miss Endymion. And Florian. I can hardly set it in writing. And I wish Maria or Vilém were here, because with them I feel safer. Of Hadrian’s relations, it is Justin who best understands me. But there is so much that he cannot know, and I cannot explain.

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numb

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Our father and mother have died in a fire. I know that Maya set it. I am writing the words down, but even though I know they are true, it doesn’t yet seem real. Magistra Chattox is very upset. I don’t know if she likes us or not, though she seems to want to touch us a lot. Hadrian says that she does, but that she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be me, or Thomas Endymion.

Other people talk about their parents in such a way as to make me feel that they really know them. I know Maria and Endymion (though Endymion is often away, and lives with Hadrian now, and Maria visits the Walsinghams lots), and if Maria or Endymion died, I would feel very differently; I’m not sure I could hold myself together at all. But it’s always been Maria or Endymion who’s looked after me, since I was quite small.

Our mother is more like...the weather. Will she be lucid, or will she be drugged? Will she want everything to look perfect, will she want to have her friends around, or will she lock herself up and see no-one? There is no surety, one can only look to the signs. Our father has not had much to do with me. I’m not old enough to be very interesting, I suppose. He’s interested in Thomas Endymion, because he made someone a promise about him and our mother, and he had to keep it in order to keep our mother and have me; he told me that once. That is why he chose Maya, and not someone else, for Endymion; she was supposed to show him the way he must go; but Endymion wouldn’t have her. I suppose he must have broken his promise, because now he and Mother are both gone. I can’t be sorry for it though, because whatever he promised about Endymion, it only made him miserable.

I’m something of an afterthought, I suppose. But I’d rather be an afterthought than whatever Endymion was, and is not any more.

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irritated

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Hadrian’s all right. I suppose. At least he’s not making my brother cry any more. We shall be friends, as long as he’s good to my brother. If he hurts Endymion, he will find out how innocuous I’m not.

I like Florian Leffoy a great deal. Fiammetta, Callista and Lavvy are quite entertaining; I approve of Mercuria’s new friends, even though Camille does not. I do not care much for Miss Walsingham, but as we are to be sister and brother in law when Maria and William are married, we shall have to get on. Fiammetta and I will be sister and brother in law as well, and I suppose Alanna is also my cousin in law; she seems nice, if a bit behind—but at least she isn’t proud of it like Miss Mablin.

MacAran and Ramsden are all right, though none too bright themselves. Dorian and I are happy in Avalon; we are having an excellent time with Leffoy. It is rather a shame that Camille and Mercuria went to Pelby, and Fiammetta to Caerleon. We have Lavvy and Callista. And, unfortunately, Miss Walsingham. (But we are spared Jennie Mablin, of Grecian renown.)

Unfortunately there is a person here called Avery who has made Asher Greengrass his best friend, and as Pelby is sharing the dormitory, we cannot get rid of Greengrass, though I am going to try, as I have already seen him accost Leffoy on the train. (Why are people always attacking Leffoy? The fight on the water, in which de Kernoël may have drowned, was started by Marvell attacking Leffoy.)

Greengrass and Avery are asking everyone and anyone to join their ‘Very Special People’s Club’. I do not think they understand what that word really means, but I am going to find out if they do, or if they think they are playing some sort of a joke on everyone. Greengrass has drawn hearts on his books exactly the way that Endymion did on the ones I’ve inherited (of course, he has not written Hadrian Kyteler’s name in them). I hope this doesn’t mean that E. was anything like them when he was my age, but I am not worried, because everyone who is a friend of his tells me how alike we are.

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worried

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Dorian hasn't answered my letter. I wonder if he even got it. I thought that probably my uncle would read it and something would happen, but nothing has.

They're going to do something to Endymion. I don't know what, of course. But Mother told me if it doesn't bring him home that I must think of him as dead, and that I'll be the Heir so I mustn't be too very sorry about it where Father can see. She also said that Endymion has never been ours to keep and will wander away eventually anyway.

They're all mad.

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cynical

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Endymion came home for a little while the day before yesterday. He let Maria help him get dressed up to go to tea at the Warringtons, but he must not have stayed very long because Mother was very unhappy with him when she came home. Maria says that if he marries Celerity he is doing a bad thing. But our parents made the decision.

Endymion took a lot of things with him when he left; I don’t think he’s coming back here again. I have all his old schoolbooks, that belonged to Maria and then to him. Mother says it’s not good because there are newer editions of some of the books, but I like it that they were my brother’s books first. There are notes in the margins. Some of them are all about goblins and some of them are in alchemical notation and one of them is someone else’s name, he wrote it over and over. It’s Hadrian Kyteler of course. I wish it were Vilém Zitek, though. The Ziteks are the only friends of Endymion’s I’ve ever met that were worth anything.

I wonder if Mercuria’s in trouble again; she hasn’t written for a while. All of the things that our mother said the servants took have come back. How very odd that people we sacked should decide to give everything back in honour of my brother’s engagement.

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worried

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Endymion’s out of the house again and Father’s in a temper because Lady Dee says he left there yesterday morning quite early and the Warringtons say that neither Endymion nor James is there. The Rookwoods don’t know where he is, either, nor the Walsinghams nor the Bainbridges. I have not seen my brother since Tuesday. And we are going to school soon, but I don’t think even his school things are here.

I was talking to Mercuria yesterday (my mother had gone to call upon hers), and I told her that I would marry her if she wanted me to, so that she won’t have to marry Alec (who is not only nasty but mad) and she said thank you, but that she doesn’t want to get married and her parents will never allow it because I am not the heir.

Endymion is supposed to marry Celerity Warrington, of course. They made the contract a month ago. I’m not even sure he knows, but they are going to make the announcement later this week.