Free This New and Poisonous Air by Adam McOmber

in an antique robe and formless hat who’d caught my attention.
    It was my habit in those days to strike up conversation with anyone of interest, especially those of a dramatic
air. I liked the dolor of the older man’s face, the deep-set nature of his eyes. His clothes seemed to absorb the gallery light, and though he was not a man of fashion, the whole room seemed to bend to his gravity. I pointed to the oil on canvas and said wasn’t it interesting how Philip the Good’s melancholic expression likened him to a medieval city; he was girded by his despair, a self-sufficient microcosm who needed nothing and wanted less. The unknown Flemish painter had captured the self-reliance in the subject’s hooded eyes and the ramparts of his cheekbones. Or was it self-reliance? Perhaps isolation was something forced upon him. As with all people who are truly good , I continued, there seemed a barrier between Sir Philip and the world. He retained virtue through seclusion, never venturing into the dark woods beyond his walls.
    Lord Weymouth, the stranger’s title I’d later learn, half-smiled as he listened, hands tucked in the sleeves of his odd robe. He gently reminded me that Philip the Good was known to have had a congenital illness which might account for hooded eyes and melancholic mood, but he was also quick to add that he preferred my poetic sense to any such grim reality. “An artful description not only of loneliness,” he said, “but of its physical deformations.”
    I attempted to catch sight of Marie’s pagoda sleeves and pastel skirts. “Are you a Medievalist then?” I asked, intending to excuse myself after he answered.
    “Hardly an academic,” he replied. “But men with money have time to linger. Endless hours of repose. I’m sure you’ve read about it.”
    I glanced at the gentleman’s hand. He wore a heavy ring—not a wedding ring but an artifact, and I wondered despite myself who he might be. It wasn’t as though I was a fortune hunter, but I was wise enough to know that a young man without options should remain alert. It was
fashionable at the time to play Greek after graduating without coming to abominate, of course.
    “I’m in possession of a text which may be of some interest to a student,” he continued.
    “A student of finance?” I asked, having earned such a degree, which Marie and I were expecting to celebrate that night.
    For a moment, actual amusement lightened his heavy face, transforming him from the memento mori he had been. “It’s worth a great deal, I suppose,” he said. “Though I’d never sell it. It’s quite dear to me—the diary of a knight errant and his squire. I rescued it from a disreputable dealer.”
    “You bought it on the black market?”
    “Rescued,” he corrected.
    “Very like a knight then,” I said. “Courage, honor, and endless self-delusion.”
    He lifted the sleeve of his robe to his mouth and coughed. “You must be a student of psychology as well.”
    “Kenton Sands,” I said, extending my hand. “Incorrigible generalist.”
    He neither shook my hand nor introduced himself, and I’d later learn from his servant, Mrs. Philips, that going to the museum and inspecting the Medieval artifacts was one of the few excursions Lord Weymouth allowed himself. He was not adept at meeting and became terribly uncomfortable around new faces that were not done in oil and brushstroke. “It’s the diary of Sir Stephen de Lorris,” he said. “Sir Stephen of Sorrows. It’s as strange an account as I’ve ever read from the period. There are a few adventures and then the whole thing takes a frightening turn.”
    “Frightening how?” I asked, tucking my untouched hand into the pocket of my velvet jacket and feeling the edge of Marie’s lace handkerchief which she’d given me
earlier that day to blot perspiration. I’d begun having small attacks since my graduation—panic really—a throat-closing, hand-numbing feeling because I’d been cast out of a