Penny
Role: Book editor; wife of Henry Berkhamsted. Berkhamsted’s neighbour before she became his wife. Affiliation: Unnamed publishing house. Era: Pre-A.L. 1920s Aerth.
Summary
Lives across the balcony from Henry Berkhamsted at the start of the story. Smart (“smarter than Berkhamsted by miles”). An apartment “like a bookshop but with more books.” She opens the door to Berkhamsted when he (under The First Wanderer’s control) needs to borrow a crowbar after the wanderer deliberately jams his key in his own door. That single manipulated meeting turns into a marriage.
The wanderer describes Saturday mornings with Penny as the only time in his entire existence he has felt love firsthand — through Berkhamsted’s body and mind, “evidential proof that the human brain was capable of constructing an internal paradise.”
Accepts Berkhamsted’s growing withdrawal in the second year of their marriage without leaving him, though Berkhamsted lives in constant unreasoning fear that she will. The wanderer’s assessment: she was “angelic to the core, and the only thing that might have steered her towards a departure was this neurotic and absurd hiding of his emotions.”
Appearances
- Ch. 03 — For Every Dove a Bullet: Meets Berkhamsted; marries him; discusses ghosts with him on a park bench in the scene where he first articulates Mentalic Ontology aloud.
Related
- Henry Berkhamsted
- Mentalic Ontology — she is present for its first spoken articulation and responds with the memorable pushback “a table has legs, but that doesn’t make it a horse.”
Open questions
- Does she ever find out about The First Wanderer? She’s present for moments where the wanderer takes over Berkhamsted’s body (“one could lay things on a horse, and ride a table if he employed sufficient vigour”) — does she notice?
- Does Mentalic Ontology survive in part through Penny’s editorial connections after Berkhamsted’s death? Speculative, unresolved.