The Particulars of Corvus
Being the private diary of Miss Emmeline Foss, engaged as governess to the Haverstock household, Dunmore Hall, North Yorkshire, commencing the fourteenth day of October, 1907.
Entry the First — October 14th
I arrived at Dunmore Hall this afternoon by the post-coach from Harrogate, and found myself confronted with a building that appeared to have been designed by someone with a strong philosophical objection to windows. My employer, Mr. Aldous Haverstock, received me in the library with the distracted cordiality of a man who has already forgotten why he sent for you. His wife, Mrs. Cecily Haverstock, did not receive me at all, being indisposed — a condition which, I would come to understand, was her permanent state.
The two children, Master Frederick (aged nine) and Miss Arabella (aged six), were pleasant enough, though they regarded me with the particular wariness children reserve for new governesses and large dogs of uncertain temper.
I was shown to my room by the housekeeper, Mrs. Paull, a compact, grey woman who communicated primarily through the medium of significant pauses.
There is a raven.
I mention it last because it is, apparently, the household's greatest pride. His name is Corvus — which I note with some professional disapproval, as naming a raven Corvus demonstrates a failure of imagination equivalent to naming a fish Piscis — and he has the run of the house in a manner I find difficult to reconcile with domestic hygiene. He is large. Extraordinarily large. He regarded me from his perch above the library door with eyes that were, I am certain, simply eyes, and nothing more remarkable than that.
Entry the Second — October 17th
Corvus has begun to follow me.
This is, I understand, not unusual behaviour for a raven kept in close domesticity. They are intelligent birds — the literature is unambiguous on this point — and they form attachments. Mrs. Paull assures me this is a great honour. She said this with an expression that suggested she did not think it was an honour at all.
He follows me from room to room. He does not fly. He walks. This is the detail I find myself returning to: the deliberate, unhurried, pedestrian quality of his pursuit. He places each foot with a precision that strikes me, involuntarily, as considered.
He has not spoken. Ravens can be trained to approximate human speech — Mr. Haverstock mentioned this with proprietary pride when I enquired. Corvus, however, has not spoken. He watches. He tilts his head at an angle that is, geometrically speaking, approximately eleven degrees more acute than seems necessary for a bird simply observing a governess correct a multiplication exercise.
I am a woman of education and moderate temperament. I will not be unnerved by a bird.
Entry the Fourth — October 21st
I find I skipped Entry the Third. I cannot account for this. The book shows no missing page, and yet I have no memory of what I might have written — or chosen not to write — on the 19th. I will proceed.
Corvus spoke today.
It was a single word, and it was not directed at me. He was alone in the corridor outside the nursery when I passed him — alone, that is, unless one counts whatever he appeared to be addressing in the corner where the wainscoting has warped away from the plaster. He stood before that gap with his head bowed at that same excessive angle, and he said, quite clearly and with what I can only describe as inflection:
"Still."
I asked Frederick whether Corvus spoke often. Frederick said that Corvus had never spoken before. He said this with the equanimity of a nine-year-old, which is to say: with no equanimity whatsoever concealed beneath a performance of perfect calm.
Entry the Fifth — October 23rd
He has begun to rearrange things.
Small things. Arabella's pencils, sorted each morning by the length of their remaining lead — longest to shortest — in a line so precise I measured it against my ruler and found not one pencil displaced by more than a millimetre. The books on the lower shelves of the library, reordered not by title, not by author, but by a system I cannot identify. I have spent two evenings attempting to identify it. I cannot.
Mr. Haverstock, when I raised the matter at dinner, laughed with the confidence of a man who has decided not to hear what you are saying. He told me that ravens were remarkable mimics of human behaviour, that Corvus had always been a clever bird, and that I would, in time, find him quite the character.
I did not pursue the matter. I looked at my soup. The soup was fine.
Entry the Seventh — October 28th
[Several lines here are struck through with such force that the paper is scored. What remains legible beneath the crossings-out reads: "— the way he looked at Mrs. Haverstock —" and "— not a sound, not a single sound, and yet the door was —" and "— I should not have opened the —"]
I have decided to focus on the observable. I am a woman of science, insofar as a governess may claim that description, and I will attend only to what may be recorded with precision.
He does not sleep. I have checked. On three occasions now, rising at two in the morning, at four, and once at half-past five, I have found him at his perch — not motionless as a sleeping bird is motionless, but still, in the way that a person is still when they are listening to something you cannot hear. His eyes were open. They were always open. They did not catch the light in the manner that eyes catch light.
This is, I appreciate, a very small thing to trouble a diary entry.
Entry the Eighth — October 30th
The oak at the edge of the formal garden has stood on this property, according to Mr. Haverstock's own account, since before the hall was built — which is to say, before 1641. It is a very old tree. One does not carve into it without some effort.
The groundsman, Tibbs, discovered it this morning and summoned Mrs. Paull, who summoned Mr. Haverstock, who summoned me, though I do not know why he summoned me specifically, except that perhaps he needed someone who would look at the thing and not simply close their eyes.
The carving is at eye level. My eye level. Not Mr. Haverstock's, who is considerably taller, and not Tibbs's, who is shorter. Mine precisely.
The letters are three inches tall. The cuts are clean. They could not have been made with a beak — this is the first thing one thinks, and one thinks it very quickly, because if one does not think it immediately one will think instead about what it would mean if they could.
Corvus was on the lowest branch above the inscription. He had been there, Tibbs said, since before dawn. He watched us read.
The inscription read:
SHE UNDERSTANDS NOW
SHE HAS ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD
SHE SIMPLY HAD NOT YET BEEN TOLD
I looked up at him.
He tilted his head. Eleven degrees. Exactly eleven degrees.
I understood, then, that the diary would not require a ninth entry. Not because nothing further would happen — but because I had, at that precise moment, arrived at the limit of what language could usefully contain.
The oak stood. The light came flat and grey across the garden. Corvus did not blink.
Neither, I think, did I.