The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [273]
So I left Miss Havisham in her darkened chamber with all the trappings of her wedding that never was. In the few days I had known her I had learned to like her a great deal, and hoped someday I might repay her kindness and match her fortitude.
30.
Cardenio Rebound
PageRunner: Any character who is out of his or her book and moves through the backstory (or more rarely the plot) of another book. PageRunners may be lost, vacationing, part of the Character Exchange Program or criminals, intent on mischief. (See: Bowdlerizers)
Texters: Slang term given to a relatively harmless PageRunner (q.v.) (usually juvenile) who surfs from book to book for adventure and rarely appears in the frontstory but does, on occasion, cause small changes to text and/or plot lines.
UNITARY AUTHORITY OF WARRINGTON CAT,
The Jurisfiction Guide to BookJumping (glossary)
HARRIS TWEED and the Cheshire Cat took me back to the library. We sat on a bench in front of the Boojumorial and Harris stared at me while the Cat—who was nothing if not courteous—went to get me a pasty from the snack bar just next to Mr. Wemmick’s storeroom.
“Where did she find you?” snapped Harris. I was getting used to his aggressive mannerisms by now. If he thought as little of me as he made out, then I wouldn’t be here at all.
The Cat popped his head up between us and said: “Hot or cold pasty?”
“Hot, please.”
“Okay then,” he said, and vanished again.
I explained Havisham’s leap from the Goliath vault to the washing label; Tweed was clearly impressed. He had been apprenticed to Commander Bradshaw many years previously, and Bradshaw’s accuracy in bookjumping was as poor as Havisham’s was good—hence the commander’s interest in maps.
“A washing label. Now that is impressive,” mused Harris. “Not many PROs would even attempt to jump blind into less than a hundred words. Havisham took quite a risk with you, Miss Next. Cat, what do you think?”
“I think,” said the Cat, handing me a steaming hot pasty, “that you’ve forgotten the Moggilicious cat food you promised, hmm?”
“Sorry,” I replied. “Next time.”
“Okay,” said the Cat.
“Right,” said Harris. “To business. Tell me, who are the chief players in Cardenio’s discovery?”
“Well,” I began, “there’s Lord Volescamper, an hereditary peer. He said he found it in his library. Amiable chap—bit of a duffer. Then there’s Yorrick Kaine, a Whig politician who hopes to use the free distribution of the play to sway the Shakespeare vote in his favor at tomorrow’s election.”
“I’ll see if I can find which book they’re from—if at all,” said the Cat, and vanished.
“Is that really likely?” I asked. “Volescamper has been around since before the war, and Kaine has been on the political scene for at least five years.”
“It means nothing, Miss Next,” replied Harris impatiently. “Mellors had a wife and family in Slough for two decades and Heathcliff worked in Hollywood for three years under the name of Buck Stallion—no one suspected a thing in either case.”
“But Cardenio,” I asked, “it is the library’s copy, yes?”
“Without a doubt. Despite elaborate security arrangements, someone managed to swipe it from under the Cat’s whiskers— he’s very upset about it.”
“Did you say fig, or whig?” inquired the Cat, who had reappeared.
“I said Whig,” I replied. “And I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.”
“All right,” said the Cat; and this time he vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of his tail, and ending with his grin.
“He doesn’t seem terribly upset,” I observed.
“Looks can be deceptive—in the Cat’s case, trebly so. We heard about Cardenio only yesterday. It nearly gave the Bellman a fit. He was all for putting together one of his madcap and typically Boojum-ridden expeditions. As soon as I found out that Kaine was going to make Cardenio public property, I knew we had to act and act fast.”
“But listen,” I said, my head spinning slightly with all this new intelligence, “why is it so important that Cardenio remain