Free This New and Poisonous Air by Adam McOmber Page A

system I dearly loved. I was free-falling in the world of commerce. And I realized I hadn’t excused myself as I’d intended, but there was nothing wolfish about the man. He was neither superior nor predatory. Instead he was lonely and trying his best to make conversation—on top of that, he was succeeding at holding my interest.
    “My knight discovers how time betrays love,” he said. “The specifics of the story you’d have to come hear for yourself.”
    “I’m afraid I can’t. I have to locate my friend,” I said.
    He drew himself slightly taller and the gold-framed paintings seemed to swim around him in the dim gallery light—all those pallid men and women, sitting for their portraits—stags and oceans, skulls and fields of wheat. “I assure you, Kenton Sands, that you will find these artifacts more interesting than any modern friend. Despite your attempts to hide it, you seem a man of history.”

    FROM THE MUSEUM, we took dinner of stewed turtle and red wine at the Winged Stag, apparently a favorite of Lord Weymouth and then continued on to his home, called Longleat House, which was not as impressive as I’d imagined. Rather forlorn-looking with its black-painted shutters and slouching porch, it stood on the outskirts of the fashionable neighborhood of Mayfair. From a locked cabinet (one of many in the house), he produced the diary, a copy of a copy bound between boards and covered in cracked leather. It bore what he told me was the blazon of Sir Stephen de Lorris—a St. Andrew’s cross. “Unlike Christ,” Lord Weymouth
said, touching the embossment, “St. Andrew was crucified on the diagonal—his cross in the shape of an X, you see. I think my knight identified with such a death. Out of kilter. Ready to fall off the edge of the Earth at any moment.”
    “May I have a look? ” I asked. Lord Weymouth treated the book with such totemic reverence that I felt the need to touch the thing myself if only to prove it did not burn in my hand.
    He pulled away. “I’ll read aloud to you, Mr. Sands,” he said, “if you don’t mind.”
    Who was I to argue? I had no governance in his home. The trip to Longleat had been a lark and, in my mind, remained so. I wondered about Marie—walking the chilly galleries alone, perhaps skulking around the Elgin Marbles waiting for some direction from their pale blank eyes. I might catch up with her in a few hours, I thought, but as soon as we’d settled by the fire and were served brandy by the servant, Mrs. Philips, I forgot the world outside. Lord Weymouth opened his book and situated it in his lap so I could not see the lettering, and I half-closed my eyes to enjoy the narrative.
    What did he read to me that first evening? I want to say it was the story of how Sir Stephen de Lorris met his squire, Pieter, in the woods after competing in an allegory held by the Duchess of Burgundy. This, after all, was the day that would forever change Sir Stephen’s life, and it would make for a logical introduction to his tale. Not only did he meet Pieter, but he won the Burning Armor as a result of freeing a so-called giant from the gilded oak in the center of the battlefield. The Duchess was known to have become involved in alchemy after the death of her husband, an event which had freed her from wifely constraints, and the Burning Armor was purportedly a product of her arts.
Its mysterious sheen of reddish gold that appeared almost alive did not belie such rumors.
    But in truth, the Duchess was more actress than alchemist. The giant was nothing more than a slightly taller than normal man guarded by dwarves, and the gilded oak had been painted earlier that morning so it glittered as if from Avalon. An allegory or a masque as they were sometimes known, according to Lord Weymouth, was a piece of theater—a stylized tournament held during the age of Elizabeth. There were actors dressed as gods and goddesses—the Duchess herself was arrayed as grayeyed Athena, carrying shield and