The Wizard of London

“Do you always look on the bright side, Nan?” Sarah asked, in a teasing tone of voice that told Nan she was being twitted for her pessimism.

Nan was just about to let her feelings be hurt—after all, just how was someone whose own mother tried to sell her to a brothel keeper supposed to think?—when her natural good humor got the better of her. “Nah,” she said dismissively. “Sometimes I get pretty gloomy.”

Sarah stared at her in surprise for a moment, then laughed.

It was fully dark when they arrived, and the cabby dropped them off right at the front door. “The lady sed’t‘go on in, an’ up’t‘ the room up there as is lit—” he told them, pointing to an upper room. Light streamed from that window; very much more welcoming than the rest of the darkened house. Before either girl could ask anything further, he snapped the reins over the horse’s back, and drove off, leaving them the choice of standing in the street or following his directions.

Nan frowned. “This don’t seem right—there aughter be servants about—”

Sarah, however, peered up at the window. “Mem’sab must be with someone who’s hurt or ill,” she said decisively. “Someone she doesn’t dare leave alone.” And before Nan could protest, she’d run up to the door and pushed it open, disappearing inside.

Bloody ‘ell. Nan hurried after her, with Neville croaking his disapproval as his box swung beneath her hand. But she hadn’t a choice; Sarah was already charging up the staircases ahead of her. Something was very wrong here—where were the servants? No house in Berkeley Square would be without a servant to answer the door! And as she rushed through the door, she noticed something else. There wasn’t any furniture or pictures in the front hall either—and that was just wrong all over.

She raced up the stairs, with her feet thudding on the dusty carpet covering the treads, aided only by the light from that single door at the top. She wasn’t in time to prevent Sarah from dashing headlong into the lit room—so she, perforce, had to follow, right in through that door left invitingly half ajar. “Mem’sab!” she heard Sarah call. “We’re here, Mem—”

Only to stop dead in the middle of the room, as Sarah had, staring at the cluster of paraffin lamps on the floor near the window, lamps which had given the illusion that the otherwise empty room must be tenanted.

There was nothing in that room but those four lamps. Nothing. And more importantly—no one.

“It’s a filthy trick!” Nan shouted indignantly, and turned to run out—

Only to have the door slam in her face.

Before she could get over her shock, there was the rattle of a key in the lock, and a further sound as of bolts being thrown home. Then they heard the sound of footsteps rapidly retreating down the stairs.

The two girls looked at each other, aghast.

Nan was the first to move, because her immediate thought was that the men she’d been sold to had decided to collect their property and another girl as well for their troubles. Anyone else might have run at the door, to kick and pound on it, screaming at the top of her lungs. She put down the hatbox and freed Neville. Even more than Grey, the raven, with his murderous claws and beak, was a formidable defender in case of trouble.

And Neville knew it; she felt his anger, and read it in his ruffled feathers and the glint in his eye.

Grey burst from the front of Sarah’s coat all by herself, growling in that high-pitched, grating voice that she used only when she was at her angriest. She stood on Sarah’s shoulder, every feather erect with aggression, and wings half-spread.

Nan growled under her breath, herself, and cast her eyes about, looking for something in the empty room that she could use as a weapon. There was what was left of a bed in one corner, and Nan went straight to it.

“Sarah, get that winder open, if you can,” she said, wrenching loose a piece of wood that made a fairly satisfactory club. “Mebbe we can yell fer help.”

She swung the bit of wood, feeling the heft of her improvised club. With that in her hand, she felt a little better—and when whoever had locked them in here came back—well—they’d get a surprise.

“Nan—there’s something wrong—”

At the hollow tone in Sarah’s voice, Nan whirled, and saw that she was beside the window, as white as a sheet.

“Nan—I don’t think a stick is going to be much use now—” she faltered, pointing a trembling finger at the lamps.

And as Nan watched, the flames of the lamps all turned from yellow to an eerie blue. All Nan could think of was the old saying, flames burn blue when spirits walk…

Nan felt every hair on her body standing erect, and her stomach went cold, and not because of some old saying. No. Oh, no. There was danger, very near. Sarah might have sensed it first, but Nan felt it surrounding both of them, and fought the instinct to look for a place to hide.

Neville cawed an alarm, and she turned again to see him scuttle backward, keeping his eyes fixed on the closed door. The lamp flames behind her dimmed, throwing the room into a strange, blue gloom. Neville turned his back on the door for a moment, but only long enough to leap into the air, wings flapping frantically, to land on her shoulder. He made no more noise, but Grey was making enough for two. His eyes were nothing but pupil, and she felt him shivering.

“There’s something outside that door,” Sarah said in a small, frightened voice.

“And whatever ‘tis, locks and wood ain’t goin’‘t’ keep it out,” Nan said grimly. She did not say aloud what she felt, deep inside.

Whatever it was, it was no mere ghost, not as she and Sarah knew the things. It hated the living; it existed to feed on terror, but that was not all that it was, or did. It was old, old—so old that it made her head ache to try and wrap her understanding around it, and of all that lived, it hated people like Sarah the most. That thing out there would destroy her as casually as she would swat a fly—but it wanted Sarah.

Grey’s growling rose to an ear-piercing screech; Sarah seemed frozen with fear, but Grey was not; Grey was ready to defend Sarah with her life. Grey was horribly afraid, but she was not going to let fear freeze her.

Neither was Neville.

And I ain’t neither! Nan told herself defiantly, and though the hand clutching her club shook, she took one step—two—three—

And planted herself squarely between whatever was behind the door and Sarah. It would have to go through her, Neville, and Grey to reach what it wanted.

I tol‘ Karamjit where we went—an’ when Mem’sab comes ‘ome wi’out us—

She knew that was the only real hope, that help from the adults would come before that—Presence—decided to come through the door after them. Or if she could stall it, could somehow delay things, keep it from actually attacking—

Suddenly, Grey stopped growling.

The light from behind her continued to dim; the shadows lengthened, collected in the corners and stretched toward them. There was no more light in here now than that cast by a shadowed moon. Nan sucked in a breath—

Something dark was seeping in under the door, like an evil pool of black water.

The temperature within the room plummeted; a wave of cold lapped over her, and her fingers and toes felt like ice. That wave was followed by one of absolute terror that seized her and shook her like a terrier would shake a rat.

“Ree—” Grey barked into the icy silence. “Lax!”

The word spat so unexpectedly into her ear had precisely the effect Grey must have intended. It shocked Nan for a split second into a state of not-thinking, just being—

Suddenly, all in an instant she and Neville were one.

***

Knowledge poured into her; and fire blossomed inside her, a fire of anger that drove out the terror, a fierce fire of protectiveness and defiance that made her straighten, take a firmer grip on her club. She opened her mouth—

And words began pouring out of her—guttural words, angry words, words she didn’t in the least understand, that passed somehow from Neville to her, going straight to her lips without touching her mind at all. But she knew, she knew, they were old words, and they were powerful…

The light from the lamps strengthened, and with each word, she felt a warmth increasing inside her, a fierce strength pouring into her. Was it from her feathered companion, just as the words were? Or was it the words that brought this new power?

No, it wasn’t the light behind her that was increasing! It was the light around her!

Cor—

A golden halo of light surrounded her, increasing in brightness with every word that spilled from her lips. And now Grey joined in the chanting, for chanting it was. She caught the pattern now, a repetition of some forty-two syllables that sounded like no language fragments Nan had ever heard. She knew what Italian, Hebrew, and Chinese all sounded like, even if she couldn’t speak or understand them, for folk of all of those nationalities thronged the slums where she had lived, from Whitechapel to Limehouse. She knew what Latin, Greek, and French all sounded like too, since those were taught at the School. This language definitely wasn’t any of those. But when Grey took over the chant, Nan stopped; she didn’t need to speak anymore. Now it was Grey who wove an armor of words about her—and a moment later, Sarah’s voice, shaking, faltering, but each syllable clear, if faint.

Then—she went all wobbly for a moment. As if something gave her a good cuff, she experienced a sort of internal lurch of vision and focus, a spirit earthquake. The room faded, thinned, became ghostly. The walls receded, or seemed to; everything became dim and gray, and a cold wind buffeted her, swirling around her.

On the other side of that door, now appallingly transparent, bulked an enormous shadow; that was what was oozing under the door, reaching for them, held at bay by the golden light around her. The shadow wasn’t what filled her with horror and fear, however—it was what lay at the heart of it, something that could not be seen, even in this half-world, but which sent out waves of terror to strike devastating blows on the heart. And images of exactly what it intended to do to those who opposed it—and the one it wanted.

Now the shadow was on their side of the door, and there was no getting past it. The shadow billowed, and sent out fat, writhing tentacles toward her.

But Nan was not going to break; not for this thing, whatever it was, not when her friend needed protecting from this horror that was going to devour her and take her body for its own!

She brandished her club—and as the weapon in her hand ripped through the thick, gray tendrils of oily fog the thing sent toward her out of the shadow, she saw with a shock that she no longer held a crude wooden club. Not anymore—

Now she held a shining sword, with a blade polished to a mirror finish, bronze-gold as the heart of the sun. And the arm that swung the blade was clad in bronze armor.

She was taller, older, stronger; wearing a tunic of bright red wool that came to her knees, a belt of heavy leather, her long hair in a thick plait that fell over one shoulder. And Neville! Neville was no heavier than he had been, but now he was huge, surely the size of an eagle, and his outspread wings overshadowed her, as his eyes glowed the same bronze-gold as her sword and the golden aura that surrounded them both.

But the form within the shadow was not impressed.

The shadow drank in her light, swallowing it up, absorbing it completely. Then it began to grow…

Even as it loomed over her, cresting above her like a wave frozen in time, she refused to let the fear it wanted her to feel overwhelm her, though she felt the weight of it threatening to close in on her spirit and crush it. Defiantly, she brandished her sword at it. “No!” she shouted at it. “You don’t get by!”

It swelled again, and she thought she saw hints of something inside it… something with a smoldering eye, a suggestion of wings at the shoulders, and more limbs than any self-respecting creature ought to have.

She knew then that this was nothing one single opponent, however brave, however strong, could ever defeat. And behind her, she heard Sarah sob once, a sound full of fear and hopelessness.

Grey and Neville screamed—

And the ghost door burst open behind the horror.

In this strange half-world, what Nan saw was a trio of supernatural warriors. The first was a knight straight out of one of her beloved fairy books, broadsword in hand, clad head to toe in literally shining armor, visor closed—though a pair of fierce blue eyes burned in the darkness behind the visor with a light of their own. The second bore a curved scimitar and was wearing flowing, colorful silken garments and a turban centered with a diamond that burned like a fire, and could have stepped out of the pages of the Arabian Nights, an avenging jinn.

And the third carried not a sword, but a spear, and was attired like nothing Nan had ever seen except in a brothel or a filthy postcard—in the merest scrap of a chemise, a bit of draped fabric that scandalized even Nan, for inside that little wisp of cloth was—

Mem’sab?

The shadow collapsed in on itself—not completely, but enough for the knight to slam it aside with one armored shoulder, enough for the jinn and Mem’sab to rush past it, and past Nan, to snatch up Sarah and make a dash with her for the now open door, with Grey flapping over their heads in their wake.

Nan saw the shadow gather itself, and knew it was going to strike them down. “Bloody hell!” she screamed—or at least, that was what the words that came out of her mouth meant, although she certainly didn’t recognize the shape of the syllables. And, desperate to keep it from striking, she charged at the thing, Neville dove at it, and the knight slashed frantically upward.

Again it shrank back—not in defeat, oh, no—but startled that they had dared to move against it.

And that was enough—just enough—for Mem’sab and the jinn to rush past bearing Sarah, for Nan and Neville and Grey to follow in their wake, and for the knight to slam the door shut and follow them down the stairs—

Stairs which, with every footstep, became more and more solid, more and more real, until all of them tumbled out the front door of Number Ten, Berkeley Square, into the lamplit darkness, the perfectly ordinary shadows and smoke and night sounds of a London street.

Neville fluttered down, panting, to land on the ground. Sahib slammed the front door shut behind them and leaned against it, holding his side, and breathing heavily. Gone were his armor, his sword—he was only ordinary Sahib again, with a cane to help his bad knee. Selim—and not the jinn—put Sarah down on the pavement, and Grey fluttered down to land on her shoulder. Neville looked up at Nan and quorked plaintively, while Mem’sab, clad in a proper suit, but with her skirt hiked up to scandalous shortness, did something that dropped her skirt from above her knees to street length again.

“Are you two all right?” she asked anxiously, taking Sarah by the shoulders and peering into her face, then doing the same with Nan.

“Yes’m,” Nan said, as Sarah nodded.

“Faugh,” Sahib coughed, as he straightened. “Let’s not do that again any time soon, shall we? I’m getting too old for last-minute rescues.”

Last minute rescues—‘cause we went off alone, like a pair of gormless geese! “Oh, Sahib—Mem’sab—” Nan felt her eyes fill with tears, as it suddenly came home to her that her protectors and benefactors had just put themselves into deadly danger to save her. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’ mean—”

“Nan, Nan, you aren’t to blame!” Sahib said immediately, putting one strong arm around her shoulders. “You did nothing that you shouldn’t have done, and if you hadn’t been so careful, we wouldn’t have known where you were until it was too late! No, it was our fault.”

“It certainly was,” Mem’sab said grimly. “But it was someone else’s as well… and there is going to be a reckoning when I find out who. But let’s get away from here first. I don’t altogether want to find out if the bindings keeping that thing confined to this house will hold under provocation.”

Sahib took Sarah’s arm, giving her Grey to tuck inside her coat, and Selim offered a hand to Neville, who was so tired he hopped onto it without a protest, and then lifted the raven onto Nan’s shoulder. As they walked quickly away from the building, Mem’sab continued.

“Someone came to me a few days ago with a story about this place, how some haunt was making it impossible to rent out and he was in dire difficulty because of it. He wanted Sarah, or me, or both of us together to lay the spirit—but I have heard all of the stories about this address, and I knew better than to try. Something came to dwell there, over a hundred years ago, and it is not a thing to be trifled with. Men have died here, and more than one, and many people have gone mad with fear. Whatever that thing was—”

“Is old,” Nan put in, with a shudder. “Real, real old. I dunno how it got ‘ere, but it ain’t no spook.”

“Well, evidently this person decided to force our hand,” Sahib said thoughtfully—and as Nan looked up when they passed under a streetlamp, she saw that both his face and Selim’s were grim. “I believe that I will have a private word with him.”

“As will I—although I am sorely tempted to tell him that his devil has been laid, and suggest he spend a night there himself,” Mem’sab said, with deep anger in her voice. “And from now on, we will contrive a better way of bringing you girls if I should need you.”

“Please,” Sarah said, in a small voice. “What happened to Nan and Neville? And you and Sahib and Selim?”

Sahib cleared his throat awkwardly; Selim just laughed, deep in his throat. “You saw us as we seem to be—”

“Are,” Sahib corrected dryly.

“Are, then—when we are Warriors of the Light,” Selim concluded.

“Though how Nan happened to slip over into a persona and power she should not have until she is older—much older—I cannot imagine,” Mem’sab added, with a note in her voice that suggested that she and Nan would be having a long, a very long, talk at some point in the near future. Then she sighed. “Pray heaven I will not need to begin teaching you ancient Celtic any time soon.”

But, for now, Nan was beginning to feel the effect of being frightened nearly to death, fighting for the life of herself and her friends, and somehow being rescued in the nick of time. She stumbled and nearly fell, and Sahib sent Selim in search of a cab. In a good neighborhood like this one, they were not too difficult to find; shortly, both the girls were lifted in to nestle on either side of Mem’sab, birds tucked under their coats with the heads sticking out, for Nan had left Neville’s hatbox and was not at all inclined to go back after it. And in the shelter of the cab, Neville providing a solid oblong of warmth, and the drone of the adult voices above her head, safe at last, she found herself dropping off to sleep.

But not before she heard Mem’sab saying, “I would still like to know how it was that the child came into her Aspect without any training—and where she found the Words of Power for invoking the Holy Light.”

And heard Grey answer.

“Smart Neville,” she said in her sweetest voice. “Very smart Nan.”

***

The children and birds were tucked up safely in their beds, and Sahib had gone out for that “private word” with the one who ostensibly owned Number Ten. He had taken both Selim and Agansing with him, leaving Karamjit and Isabelle herself to stand watch over the house. Karamjit had made the rounds, reinforcing his shields and wards, and she had gotten out the set of Elemental Wards given to her a long time ago, before she had left for India, and placed them at the cardinal points of the grounds. She had no way of knowing on her own if they were still powerful, those little four-colored pyramids of stone and glass, but she had faith in the friends who had given them to her. She had seldom had to use them, twice in India, once in England, but never since her return.

The troubling thing about this was that she was not altogether certain the incident had been one man’s ill-conceived attempt to clear his property of the evil that haunted it. In fact, the more she thought about it, the less likely that seemed. She sat in her favorite chair beside the fire, and though the fire was warm, her spirit felt chilled by the prospects of that eventuality.

“Karamjit?” she said to the shadow standing at the window. “Are you as uneasy about this evening as I am?”

“At least, Shining Star,” he replied grimly. “We have not ended what this night began. And the thing behind that door may be the least and most obvious of the evils we face. Sahib is returned.”

She leaped to her feet as the front bell rang, and with Karamjit behind her, hurried to the front hall.

“Not here,” Frederick said, sotto voce, as he handed his hat, coat, and gloves to Sia to take away. She nodded, and all five of them returned to the warmth and privacy of his study.

“The bird,” he said succinctly, as he settled into his chair, “has flown. Not only that, but he was a bird in false feathers. I am reliably told, and Selim has verified, that there was no deception on the part of our quarry’s servants, that Mister Benson has not been resident in his townhouse for a month. He has been salmon fishing in Scotland, and knowing the gentleman’s sporting reputation, that is not an opportunity he would have forgone even for a death in the family. So whoever it was that called himself Benson had no right to that name and no financial interest in the property.” He grimaced. “We have, as young Nan would say, been gammoned.”

Isabelle took a deep breath. “Which leaves us with the question of why someone would lure those two children there. If Nan had not told Karamjit where she was going—we would not have known where they were until they were found.”

“Which would not have been until morning.” Frederick’s eyes were dark with rage. “And we know what state they’d have been in at best. If they had lived. At least four people who remained overnight in that room have died, and several more have gone mad. Someone wanted those two children dead or insane. Specifically those two children, and not you as well, my heart, because the cabby was sent at a time when you were away from the school.”

Isabelle felt her eyes widening, and a cold rage welling up in her heart. “So we have two linked mysteries to unravel—who and why.”

He nodded. “And when we have those answers, we need something more. We need to know what we are going to do about it.”

A deep growl, like that of an angry lion, interrupted him. “Only let me have my hands upon the dog, Sahib,” said Karamjit.

“And I,” added Selim darkly. “The Prophet does not forbid—”

“Peace,” Agansing said unexpectedly. “This has a larger shape than someone who wishes harm to our children. Perhaps it is not what they are, but what they may become that is at issue here. That they may be a great threat in the future. Perhaps we should first see if other such children have been—negated—of late. If so, then we deal with someone who takes the long view, and is willing to eliminate opposition before the opposition is more than a potential.”

Isabelle wrinkled her brows. “But how can we possibly discover that?” she protested. “It would be like trying to find footprints after the tide has washed them away! Even if children have been—murdered—how could we find out who they were and what they could have been had they grown up?”

Agansing raised an eyebrow. “There is one here who can discover that, Mem’sab.”

Frederick’s eyes widened, and Isabelle’s hand came involuntarily to her throat.

“Sarah,” they said, at the same time.

Agansing nodded. But it was Karamjit who raised the objection they all felt. “Not until all other ways have been tried,” he said, in that tone that meant he would not countenance any other course of action.

“Peace,” Agansing said again, this time with a suspicion of a twinkle in his eye. “We are your Long Friends, Lion. When have you known us to do otherwise?”

Karamjit visibly relaxed. “Never,” he admitted. “It is my anger speaking, not my reason.”

Isabelle closed her eyes a moment, then said, reluctantly, “This does tend to point in the direction of Magic, rather than the Esoteric, you know.”

Frederick raised an eyebrow, then sighed. “And you, my heart, are the only one of us with contacts in those circles. I am loathe to ask it of you, but I can only suggest that you will need to pursue them.” Then he shook his head and added with a smile, “It could be worse. It could be the Esoteric rather than the Magic. And some of our friends are a trial even to my patience.”

Isabelle thought over the last party they had attended, when Aleister Crowley had swept in wearing a flamboyant scarlet cape, circled the room without saying a word to anyone, then swept out again, and as a few people bristled, assuming insult, Beatrice Leek had announced in a voice loud enough to be heard in all parts of the room, “Don’t mind Aleister, darling, he’s just being invisible again.”

Trying to get any two of that lot to move in the same direction was like trying to train cats to pull in a tandem harness. “You’re right, as usual, my love,” she said and put her hand to her temple. “In the meantime, I am exhausted, and so should the rest of you be. If we sleep on the problem, we may be given some direction.”

At least, that was something she could always hope for.

5

THE next day, everything was pretty much back to normal, which was both a relief and a bit of a vexation for Nan. For Sarah, it was unalloyed relief; she had confessed to Nan last night that she never, ever wanted to see or even think about “that Thing.” But Nan, like the Elephant’s Child, was full of “ ‘satiable curiosity” and like Rikki-tikki-tavi, if she could not get the answers immediately, she was bound and determined to “run and find out.”

So when her hour with Agansing came around, before he even opened his mouth to begin her breathing exercise, she forestalled him with, “Master Agansing, what was that ‘orrible Thing?” And for a very long moment, there was no sound in the Conservatory but the hiss of the steampipes and the drip of water.

Now, at the Harton School it was the policy of the adults to be as absolutely honest with the pupils as they could. Sometimes the answer to a question was “I don’t know.” Often, it was, “I know, but I want you to go find out for yourself, and I will help you.” Very rarely it was “I don’t think you are old enough to need that answer, but I promise when you are, I will tell you.” This last was seldom if ever invoked for Nan; as a streetchild, there was very little she was “too young” to know, and most of the things under that heading she probably knew already, anyway. The main use for that particular answer to Nan was to let her know as subtly as possible that she was not to impart that information either, if one of the other pupils asked her.

So Agansing merely sighed for the disruption of his lesson, and answered, “I do not know, Missy Nan. I know that it is old, and we are of the opinion that it is a thing more of Magic than of spirit.”

Now, this would be the first time—ever!—that Agansing had used that word with reference to things Nan’s gran would have labeled “uncanny.” He had always spoken of “mental discipline” and “the full use of all of the senses” and “transcending the physical” and the like. She looked at him uncertainly.

“Thoughtcher said there ain’t no such thing as magic,” she retorted.

“I said nothing of the sort,” Agansing replied with unruffled dignity. “I said that we do not use such a thing, nor use that name. I never said it did not exist. There are two sorts of ways in which one can manifest Power,” he continued. “One is to use the Power that is within us all, which is what we do here, myself, Karamjit, Selim, Sahib, and Mem’sab. And you, and Missy Sarah, and some of the other children, of course.”

Odd. He never had come out to tell her which of the other children had Talents. For that matter, neither had any of the other adults. Briefly, she wondered why. Was this one of those things she was supposed to find out for herself? Or was this a reflection of the careful way in which the adults guarded the privacy of all the children?

“The second way, however, is to use the Power that exists around us, often through an intermediary creature, either by means of its cooperation, or its coercion. That is Magic. That is what Missy Sarah’s parents can do, though we cannot.”

She gaped at him. “They can?” This was news to her. She wondered if it was news to Sarah.

“But they cannot teach Sarah in the use of her Talents, nor do they have any understanding of them. This is why she is here.” He shrugged. “At any rate, we believe that creature is a twisted creature of Magic, something called an Elemental, although which it could be, or what Element it owes its form to, we are not equipped to tell. This is why it is not like an ordinary haunting, which we could banish, with some work. But since it is clearly a creature either powerful enough, transmuted enough, or both, for ordinary mortals to see and be affected by, it is quite beyond us to do anything about it. And I can tell you nothing more on that subject, and very little on the subject of Magic. You must ask Mem’sab, though she may not answer you. And now, you will assume the position of meditation.”

Her mind buzzing, she obeyed. And despite her curiosity eating at her, she kept her mind on her lessons, enough so that Agansing gave her a “Well done, under the circumstances. You may go.”

The next lesson was History, and after that, she helped the ayahs get the little ones down for a nap. But she kept thinking about Magic…

Now, given what she had already been learning, she was quite prepared to believe that the sort of Magic you found in fairy tales was real. What she had difficulty in grasping was that there was something that Mem’sab and Sahib couldn’t master.

After some consideration, she decided that she wouldn’t ask Mem’sab about it. Not just yet. Last night had been hard on everyone; it might be best to let things settle for a bit before she started asking questions. Especially since there was no telling just where those questions might lead, because it might be to a place where she really didn’t want to go.

***

Isabelle was paying a call on an old acquaintance, and she wasn’t entirely certain what her reception would be.

It was an acquaintance she had last seen before she had left, brokenhearted (or so she had persuaded herself) for India. Somehow, in all the years she and Frederick had lived in London, she had not been able to bring herself to renew those old friendships. The one or two from those days who had sought her out had made the first overtures, not she.

But after all, she was in a very different social circle from theirs, and far lower in class, as merely the daughter of a country vicar. She had been out of their social class back then, too—but she had deluded herself for a while that social distinctions did not matter. The vicar and his family were always welcome in the homes of the ennobled and wealthy—provided, she now knew, that they did not overstep their place, nor (in the case most especially of a daughter) dare to think they could actually fit in…

***

She felt the old bitterness creeping into her thoughts, and ruthlessly throttled it down. Don’t be a fool, she scolded herself. If you were to ask most of them if they would trade places with you, if they were honest with themselves, they would. How many of those girls she had once called “friend” were now shackled in loveless marriages to men whose sole qualification for the position of husband was a pedigree, wealth, and the interesting distinction of being an Elemental Mage? Half, surely. Among the Elemental Masters, there was the commonly-held sentiment that if one was not wedded for family or love by the time one reached the age of twenty-one, the best one could do would be to at least marry someone appropriate, of the right breeding, from whom one would not have to conceal one’s magic, even if you scarcely knew the prospective spouse, and had less in common with her than an Oxford don with an Irish bricklayer.

Yes. And I was common as dust and without a penny to my name, and no Elemental Magic. Small wonder… She stifled the rest of the bitter thought.

It had taken Isabelle part of the morning and a steady perusal of the present and past editions of Burke’s Peerage to find out what had become of Beatrice DeLancy. She was now Lady Beatrice—or rather, as etiquette would have it, Lady Nigel. Lady Nigel Lytton, to be precise. And since Lord Nigel had figured nowhere in Bea’s adolescent daydreams, it was probably safe to assume she could be counted among those who held with the philosophy of “marry appropriately.”

Isabelle mounted the steps of the elegant townhouse, after paying the cabbie, and was let in by a faintly contemptuous butler. I have faced down psychic vampires, old haunts, and dacoits, my lad. You do not frighten me a bit. She sent in her card, with the added words, nee Carpenter neatly printed after “Harton.” But she was damned if she was going to be ashamed of the address of Harton School for Boys and Girls on it, nor was she going to pretend she was anything other than what she was. She’d tried to do that once… and look where it had gotten her. If this meant she cooled her heels in the hallway, only to be told that “My Lady is not at home,” so be it. One snub was not going to kill her, and Beatrice was by no means the only name on her list.

In fact, she had gotten herself so completely prepared for rejection, that when Bea came flying down the stairs in her soft pink morning wrapper (much to the horror of the supercilious butler) her hands outstretched in greeting, it took her so much by surprise that for a moment she simply gawked at her old friend, dumbfounded.

Fortunately the moment didn’t last; she was too used, after all these years, to thinking on her feet.

So it was to her feet that she jumped, and the two of them met in an embrace which wiped out all of the years in between their last meeting and this one, after which Beatrice drew her up the stairs and into her dressing room.

“The Harton School! Now that is the last place I would have expected to find you, so no wonder I had no idea you were in London! Who is this mysterious Harton?” Bea asked in teasing tones, as she settled Isabelle in a comfortable chair and handed her a plate of sugar biscuits. “He must be something remarkable to have turned you into a schoolmistress! I thought you were going to go become some sort of female guru amongst the Hindus!”

“Frederick is rather more than remarkable,” she replied, noting with amusement, that, aside from a slight fading of the yellow-gold of her hair and a slightly plumper figure, Bea hadn’t changed a bit. “I could equally ask you who Lord Nigel is.”

Bea shrugged, dismissed her maid with a little wave of her hand, and picked up the teapot. “Nigel isn’t the love of my life, but he doesn’t bore me to death either. We both had to marry or our families would have nagged us to death about it, and at least we were friends. But you, Belle—who is this Harton fellow? Did you meet him in India? Tell, tell, tell!”

“There isn’t that much to tell,” she replied. “He was with the Army; he’s common as clay, God bless him, and straight from the streets of this very city, but a very kind and childless gentleman recognized him for what he was, saw to his education and bought him his commission—”

“Ah, another paranormal like you, then?” Bea asked shrewdly.

“Something like, though his Talent lies in clairvoyance and clairaudience rather than telepathy and psychometry,” she admitted with a slight smile.

“Well, being able to see what was going on over the next hill would be quite useful for a soldier, I would think!” Bea chuckled, pouring her a cup of tea. “A good thing he had a mentor, though!”

“A very good thing. His mentor owned a bookshop here in London specializing in rare and Esoteric volumes as you might expect—and I am sure you will be unsurprised to learn that I frequented the place. By that time, Frederick was already in India and had earned his way up the ranks. When this gentleman discovered I was determined to go to India, he sent me with introductions to some teachers of his acquaintance, and that was where I met Frederick.” All perfectly true so far as it went—though her explanation did not go nearly far enough—

“And you are leaving out all the good parts, I am sure,” Beatrice retorted, wagging a finger at her. “Curses and dacoits, phantoms and secret societies, and all manner of dreadful menaces that the two of you faced, which you are sworn not to tell anyone because it all involves occult oaths.”

She had to laugh, because Bea was actually far too close to the truth! “Something like that, yes. With the one detail that I can tell you, that it was love at first sight for the two of us and when he was discharged, we—and some fellow native occultists—decided to come back here to put up the school, so that children with psychical talents would have somewhere to go to learn how to manage themselves.” She sighed. “And a school that would care properly for the poor little dears who might not have such Talents, but who still were being shipped back to England. There are more bad schools than good, I fear. And it is useful for anyone dealing with even ordinary children to have some occult talent.”

“Fellow occultists!” Beatrice’s eyes sparkled. “This becomes more interesting all the time! Hindus?”

“One Gurkha, one Sikh, and one Moslem,” she replied. “And a motley assortment of our old servants from India, so we do have some Hindus among us. And Buddhists.” She thought for a moment. “I am reasonably sure there are no Sufis, Jainists, or Farsi, but I would not be willing to swear to that.”

“Good heavens, Belle, you brought back the entire cross-section of the subcontinent!” Bea seemed delighted. “At some point I am going to have to visit—and now that I know your school exists, I have somewhere to refer children who are Talented rather than Magicians. That is exceedingly useful. I know I can count on you to be practical and caring, and too many of these people mean well, but haven’t the common sense of my canary.”

“Your canary has rather more common sense than some of them,” Isabelle said dryly. “At least the Elemental Mages are more-or-less levelheaded and disciplined, which brings me to the reason I wanted to talk to you. If I were going to find the person who was the closest thing to a leader in your Esoteric circle, who would that be?”

And Beatrice hesitated.

That was distinctly peculiar, and not at all like Beatrice.

“In terms of being a leader, in virtually all ways,” she said slowly, “I would have said Alderscroft. Lord Alderscroft, now; his father died two years ago, poor man. He’s immensely skilled, and quite eclipses most of the other Elemental Masters hereabouts. They’re calling him the Wizard of London, now, and the Young Lion.”

Isabelle managed a slight smile, although it gave her a pang to think of how well that name suited him. “I can see how that would please him,” she said, in as neutral a tone as possible. “He always did enjoy being the recipient of accolades if he thought he had earned them.”

Bea nodded. “Don’t men always? Nigel is just as susceptible. But Alderscroft does have power and skill, and it’s not just Esoteric power either; he’s gotten political, and he has connections. He’s talking about finding a sympathetic Minister, revealing what we can do to him, and making the Elemental Masters into an adjunct arm of the War Department. He says that we will have to reveal our powers to someone eventually, so it ought to be on our terms, so that we are the ones negotiating from a place of strength… but…”

“But?” Isabelle prompted.

“But—he’s just so cold. Which is an odd thing to say of a Fire Master, I know, but he is and he gets worse every time I meet with him. Even Nigel remarked on it, and when it comes to commenting on the foibles of his fellow man, Nigel simply doesn’t.” She smiled, slightly, “He has a terribly sweet temper, does my Nigel, which I thought was a decent reason to marry him. Earth, of course, which is why I am here and he is not, he cannot abide even this little clean area of London for more than a week at a time. But at any rate, Alderscroft began getting distant just before you left, and he would be a hermit, I think, if he didn’t have to interact socially with the rest of us to herd us in the direction he wants. Or—” She wrinkled her brow—“He wouldn’t exactly be a hermit, because he is everywhere, socially. One can’t go to a party without seeing him. But he might as well have an invisible barrier about him.” She shook her head. “I’m doing a very bad job of explaining myself. I suppose you would have to see it for yourself.”

That’s hardly likely. Isabelle hesitated a moment, then asked the loaded question. “Is Lady Cordelia still his mentor?”

“Oh, Her Ladyship is very much present in his life, I assure you.” Bea pursed her lips and looked wise. “If she weren’t such a pillar of dignity, chastity, and sanctity, one would assume all manner of goings-on, but I cannot imagine Her Ladyship removing so much as a glove in the presence of a man.” She sighed. “One wants to like her. After all, it isn’t as if there were that many female Elemental Magicians in London, much less another Air Mage. But that off-putting manner… it’s as bad or worse than that barrier Alderscroft has about him.”

Isabelle nodded, understanding all too well. She was more than halfway convinced that Lady Cordelia BryceColl was at least partially, if not fully responsible for that final snub on Alderscroft’s part that had sent Isabelle off in tears. But, of course, the woman had been as sweet and smooth as honeyed cream in public, and had even sent a little bon voyage gift, so there was no way to prove anything. Lady Cordelia never gossiped, never said an unpleasant word about anyone in public. Back in her girlhood, Isabelle and her friends had formed the habit of referring to Cordelia as “the nun,” both from her penchant for dressing all in ice-blue or white, and her demeanor. Even thinking improper thoughts about her was impossible. To this day Isabelle, who had spent so many years in the sensuous East and been exposed to things that would send most English women reeling back in a dead faint if even hinted at, could not imagine Cordelia BryceColl in any state other than fully clothed, ramrod straight, and cool and calm as the marble image of a saint.

“You know,” Bea said thoughtfully. “I always thought it was her fault that Alderscroft snubbed you.”

Isabelle gazed at her friend in astonishment. “Whatever makes you say that?” she asked.

“Well, who else would it have been? After that incident at Vesuvius, his father wasn’t capable of putting two sentences together, and besides, the old lord liked you. If his mother had been alive, there might have been trouble, but I can’t think of anyone else who would have wanted to meddle.” Bea shook her head. “No, it was Delia, I would stake my diamonds on it.”

Isabelle made herself shrug with feigned indifference and sipped her tea. “It doesn’t matter, really, now does it? It’s all in the past. But I think I would rather not consult with Alderscroft about this, especially not if she is still hanging about him.”

“Well,” Bea said slowly, winding a strand of hair around her finger. “You might tell me what this is all about. I know practically everyone in Elemental circles, at least in London, these days. I might be able to help.”

Since Isabelle could not imagine anyone she would rather talk to, she launched into her narrative with a will. She began all the way back at the point when little Sarah and Nan joined the school—because Sarah and Nan were so integral to the story—

“Though I can’t in all honesty call Nan a charity case, when she more than pays for her way with all of the hard work she does—”

Then she went on to the phony medium, Sarah’s true mediumistic abilities, all the inquiries about the girls—and went from that to the incident in Berkeley Square. Bea listened intently to every word.

“Well, I must say, I wish Nigel was here. That sounds like an Earth Elemental to be sure, but I don’t know enough to make an identification.” She frowned. “And I don’t imagine that an Earth Master gone wrong is going to identify himself to the rest of us.”

“Probably not,” Isabelle agreed, and sighed. “Still, if one of you could look into the situation—”

“That, my dear, is a given,” Bea told her, raising her head with a determined set to her chin. “We simply can’t have something like that loose, even if it is confined to a single building. Someone could be hurt. If we haven’t dealt with it by the time Nigel returns, I’m sure he’ll banish it, but I suspect I can find a Water Master to get rid of the vicious thing.”

Isabelle sighed, and nibbled a biscuit for the sake of politeness. “This was deliberate, you know. Whoever did this intended to frighten or harm my charges. I’d like to know who set it.” She braced herself, knowing she was unlikely to get an answer to that statement that she would like.

“Well—this is really something that the Elemental Masters should deal with, Belle,” came exactly the reply she had expected. “We do try to police our own.”

Run along, little girl, and don’t bother your pretty head about it. The old Isabelle would have snapped something rude at her old friend. Over the years, although diplomacy did not come naturally to her, she had been forced to acquire it.

“It isn’t precisely an issue internal to the Elemental Masters anymore, Bea,” she said gently. “Whoever did this mounted an attack on Talented children. My charges and my charges specifically were lured there and locked in to be attacked. Someone sent a cabby to the school to ask for them by name. Two boundaries have been violated, the one that says that the Masters are not to attack the Talented and vice versa, and the one that holds that children are off-limits. At the very least I would like to know why, if not who. There may be more such attacks, and I am the protector of these children; I have the right to know who I am protecting them against.”

Bea had the grace to flush. “That’s true enough,” she admitted. “I’ll see that you’re told whatever it is you need.”

Whatever you think it is I need. Still, it was the biggest concession she was going to get out of them. She nodded, and changed the subject to that of her old schoolmates. She needed to find out what they were up to anyway.

***

She stayed through luncheon at Bea’s insistence. It was definitely a treat; it wasn’t as if the Harton School could afford the sorts of dainties Lady Nigel could put on her table.

She had arrived by cab; she went home in Lady Nigel’s carriage. The congested streets that slowed the carriage’s pace to practically nil allowed her to sit back against the velvet cushions and think about her old friends, the young—now, not so young—women she had gone to school with.

That school was home to mostly young ladies of rank and privilege. She had, in fact, been given a scholarship, or her family never could have afforded it. Her benefactress had been a Talent of no mean ability herself, and knowing that there was no school for Talented girls had found and sent her to the next best thing. Presumably, the idea had been that she would get the sort of education fit to make her a governess, but whatever had been in the donor’s mind, Isabelle had found herself in the company of those who also recognized her Talent for what it was, and shared with her the secret of their own powers. For the first time she had found herself among girls from whom she needed to hide nothing, for she had been sent to a school populated entirely by, and taught by, the daughters of Elemental Masters and Magicians. There was only one other school like it, and that one was for the sons of these same families. She was not the only girl on scholarship there; nor was she the only one who did not share a spot in Burke’s Peerage. But she was the only one of the less-privileged lot who was comfortable around the titled, the legacy of hundreds of tea parties, tennis parties, and dinner parties accompanying her father to “the Great House” since her mother was no longer alive to do so. In English polite society, the vicar was the one man who was welcome in the drawing rooms of the rich and the front stoops of the poor, and Isabelle was well used to accompanying her father to both venues. Had it not been for her limited and modest wardrobe, she could not have been told apart from any of the girls of rank and title.

Isabelle had a knack for making friends, for being a warm and caring companion, and for acting as both a sounding board and a peacemaker. Once again, of course, such traits were invaluable to the daughter of a vicar. As she had soothed tempers around the tea table of the Lady’s Friendly Society, she now soothed ruffled feathers at the school, and was accepted as a friend by all. As a consequence, she was brought along on every possible excursion, and if her wardrobe was lacking, the clothes’ chests of all the other girls were flung open and at her disposal.

And that, of course, was how the trouble really started. There was no way for David Alderscroft to have known that she was not in his social circle. Her (borrowed) clothing did not betray the fact, nor did her manners. Whenever there was a party that was a girl short, Isabelle, with her wonderful manners, got an invitation, since the parents in question would always think, “Ah, now she’s not an Elemental Mage, nor has she independent means, she’ll be no competition for my girl.” And it was true enough that she should not have been—most of the young men in question already knew of her and her status, and while they laughed and flirted with her, it was lightly, and with no intent on either side.

Not so David Alderscroft. He had no idea she was only a vicar’s daughter; he had been schooled at home, by private tutors, and was not privy to the crucial information that she was, in the delicate terminology of his class, “not quite up to the mark,” at least in the sense that a marriage to her for any of the scions of these noble houses would have been a marriage far beneath them.

But she had flattered herself, when he began to pay her attention, that perhaps she was not so “ineligible” as all that. After all, although she was not a Magician, she did have arcane abilities of her own, inherited from both sides of the family. Her father, the vicar, was sensitive to spirits and to the emotions of others. Although she barely remembered her mother, her older sisters hinted that Mariana Carpenter had been even more Talented than Isabelle was. And vicar though he might have been, her father saw to it she was properly trained in the use of her unusual abilities, and looked the other way when that teaching skirted close to things that might be called “pagan.” He himself did not have the strength of Talent to become a Warrior of the Right-hand Path and a Light Bringer, but he was terribly proud when she proved to have that level of ability. By the time she was enrolled in Madame Grayson’s Academy, in her late teens, she had already achieved that accolade, and it was one acknowledged by the Elemental Masters as well as the Talented. The families of the Elemental Masters themselves were known to acquiesce to marriage across class boundaries, so long as both parties were Masters, and surely the title of Light Bringer was the equivalent. So there was every reason for her to consider herself David Alderscroft’s equal and carry herself that way.

As for David, as Bea had said, his father approved of her entirely, though His Lordship was a tragic case. He and a handful of other Elemental Masters had been forced to deal with an occult circle led by a renegade Fire Master, and as Isabelle understood the story, he had stepped in between the Master and his own men, and absorbed most of the power of an awakening Phoenix himself. He had not been the same man afterward; he acted like one lightning struck, with tremors, facial tics, and an inability to speak clearly. But he was able to convey to David that he approved of Belle.

Probably because I read him newspapers and books for hours on end.

Of course, she and Bea could both have misread the poor man. Maybe he thought David was planning to engage her as a companion, and not that David was interested in making her his wife…

She stared at her hands, fingers entwined in her lap, and sighed. No. No, she was sensitive enough to know, although she had not actually read the poor man’s mind on the subject, that the late Trevor, Lord Alderscroft had liked her for herself, and would have been perfectly happy to see her take a wife’s place beside his son.

No, she didn’t think old Lord Alderscroft had anything to do with what happened after Lady Cordelia appeared on the scene…

Without his father, David had had no one to properly train him. There was no truly strong male Fire Master in that part of the country. But Lady Cordelia was one of those rare creatures that though she was a Master of Air also had just enough of Fire to do as a teacher, and she volunteered to train David the day he turned eighteen. David’s father must have consented to the plan, for Lady Cordelia was soon a long-term guest at Harwinton House, the Alderscroft ancestral home—when she wasn’t living in her own town house in Cambridge.

None of this, however, filtered down to the girls at Isabelle’s school, nor even to Isabelle. All she had known at the time was that David had just begun his university education. David was attending Cambridge, most of the girls’ brothers were either going into the military as officers, too young or too old for university, or going to Oxford. David himself never wrote to Isabelle—after all, it would hardly have been proper, and any letters from a young man not one’s brother would have been confiscated by the headmistress. There should have been no reason for anyone to inform Isabelle about anything having to do with David Alderscroft.

Isabelle brooded out the carriage window, staring at nothing. That, of course, was the official version. The unofficial version was that she and David had come to what was known as an “understanding.” Or at least, she had thought so. He had said, and more than once, that he was going to speak to her father when she came of age. If he had meant the comment in jest, she thought she would have sensed that. She’d had every reason to think he regarded her with deep affection, even love, and she had certainly felt the same. She had dreamed, not of what life would be like as Lady David, but of what life would be like as an occultist Warrior of the Light and a Master, working together.

I honestly don’t recall ever thinking much about the prestige, or the money, or the title. She sighed, and closed her eyes, leaning back against the seat cushions. The carriage was stalled in traffic, and had this been a cab it would have been a great deal less pleasant. It would have been even worse in a ‘bus. This made a good place to think about the past, truth to tell. Surrounded as she was by the noise of traffic, she was conversely as isolated as if she had been on top of a mountain, or sitting in splendid silence in a deserted temple in the jungle.

No, it wasn’t that the money and the title meant nothing, it was that she didn’t regard anything above and beyond what constituted a “comfortable” life as being terribly important. Pleasant, yes, but not vital. So far as her ambitions, well, they had always been centered on the realms of the Esoteric rather than the mundane, and she really, truly, did not think she had thought covetously about what being married to one of the wealthiest peers in the county would have meant.

If her memories were correct, the largest part of the equation had been that she felt very strongly about David—and if it was, perhaps, “only” first love, it was still the most powerful emotion she had ever experienced at the time. True, they had done nothing except walk and talk together for hours at a time. But that was far more than many of their contemporaries ever did. The “understanding” that they had was something she had clung to, dreamed about, and cherished. She had been so certain that the bond between them was such that she didn’t need letters to know how he felt, nor to confirm the depth of his feelings toward her.

Ah, but understanding or not, that all changed the moment Lady Cordelia came into his life.

The next time she saw him, at a shooting party, he was literally a different person. When he greeted her, although it was polite enough, there was no mistaking his tone of detachment. He treated her exactly as he treated all the other girls insofar as affection went—but insofar as the level of courtesy—

To her utter shock he had added to his demeanor with her a touch of arrogance that clearly said, “You are tolerated here because you are polite and well-mannered, but you do not, and never will, belong.”

And that was that.

His attitude clearly surprised and puzzled the other girls, but they said nothing. Perhaps they assumed he and Isabelle had had some sort of lovers’ quarrel. At any rate, it was one of those situations where nothing was said, but everything was understood.

And the moment when Isabelle first saw Lady Cordelia, she had known deep in her heart who was to blame.

You could not have said that David danced attendance on Her Ladyship, because he did not. And there was nothing remotely loverlike about the way he treated her. If anything, his attitude was of deference, as of the disciple to the great teacher, as if she were conveying some great favor to him by giving him her attention. It was the sort of attitude one would expect if she had been a great and wise philosopher of the sort that Isabelle eventually found in India…

But the pupils of those great and wise teachers grew more humble in their attitudes toward others, not more arrogant.

The abrupt change in David’s attitude was, perhaps, the worst and most painful experience of Isabelle’s short life. Perhaps it was just as well that the encounter had occurred at teatime; she had been able to plead a headache and retreat to her room, not to emerge even for dinner. The headache had been real; she had cried for hours, until her eyes were swollen and her head pounding. And, fortunately, the friend that had invited her in the first place quickly took pity on her and arranged for her to return to the school the next morning so that there were no more such encounters.

She never accepted another invitation again; instead, she concentrated on her studies, both academic and occult, and set her eyes on the goal of leaving the country altogether and somehow getting to India. Since that had also been a longtime ambition of her benefactress, they had arranged for a trip for the two of them, with Isabelle as the lady’s companion. Her father had been bewildered, but accepted it. Her friend, the London bookshop owner, gave her people to contact.

And when she had met Frederick—everything changed for the better.

“Well,” she said aloud. “Now I know that my memory of things matches Bea’s.”

That, too, had emerged from their morning of “catching up.” She had not been mistaken, everyone around her had assumed that she and David Alderscroft were going to make a couple as soon as she came of the proper age to do so. She was not the only one who had been shocked by his change of attitude.

But perhaps most importantly, there had been one fundamental mistake that she had made. Her immediate circle of friends did not condone David’s behavior toward her, much less share it. Now, there probably were some girls at the school, and there were certainly some young ladies in the exclusive social circle in which David resided, who applauded what he had done and felt that Isabelle had been pushing herself in where she did not belong. But her real friends, though she had been blind to it at the time, were incensed by his treatment of her. Their doors were still open to her, just as Bea’s had been.

And that was of vital importance, for she was going to have to try to find some way of discovering who had set the trap for Sarah and Nan without the aid of the tacit leader of the Elemental Masters hereabouts.

She laughed aloud, remembering what Frederick had once said to her. When you want something done, you ask a man. When you want it done quietly and without any fuss, you ask a woman.

Perhaps a circle of old friends wasn’t a bad place to start.

6

DAVID Alderscroft looked out over the tree-shaded boulevard in front of his town house and frowned. Too many people, too many untidy people, clattering back and forth along the pavement. A nurse pushing a pram, some wretched boy running an errand, two carriages, and a tradesman’s van—too many people. How much better it would have been had there been no one out there, the pavement spotless, the street silent—

Better still had it been winter. Everything lightly coated in snow, all the imperfections invisible beneath the frozen blanket. That would be ideal—

It would be so tidy if winter remained year round. No mess, people properly remaining inside their own four walls, tradesmen keeping to their proper place in the alleys. He entertained himself with a vision of the frozen city for a moment, everything as pure and white and clean as new marble, with nothing to mar the shining perfection of it.

He shook his head slightly. He shouldn’t be obsessing over such trifles. He had some serious campaigning to do, if he was going to penetrate the circle surrounding Her Majesty, Queen Victoria.

It wasn’t a circle he would normally have entrée to. The Queen was very particular about those she allowed near her. He wasn’t a family man, nor was he particularly fond of children. Her Majesty was not noted for her partiality to young men, nor was she inclined to put her trust in them. But she was susceptible to men in general, in the sense that she tended to rely heavily on them, and to be manipulated by them—not easily, but when you knew what to say to her, when and how to say it, she tended to defer to your judgment, over and above her own.

David didn’t know what those things were, nor when and how to say them—but Lady Cordelia did. So if he did his job correctly, and managed to get into that magic circle, the rest would be easy. So she had told him, and he believed her. Nothing she had told him thus far had ever been wrong.

He turned back to his desk, and the frown smoothed. Here, in his office, everything was precisely as it should be. The books had all been shelved in their proper place along the walls, his massive mahogany desk was dustless and polished until one could see one’s face in it. The Turkey carpet was newly swept, the ashtrays washed, the two leather chairs on the far side of the desk the exact distance from the desk that he favored. The blotter was precisely in the middle, and his pens, pencils, paper and ink right where he wanted them. This was more like it. Here was order, everything properly arranged and tidy. He glanced at his pocket watch, saw that it was precisely ten o’clock, and sat down to begin his correspondence for the day.

Parliament would not be in session again until October; there would be nothing to occupy him there until the summer recess was over, but that did not mean that he would not be planning for the opening.

Politics was something of a new field for the Alderscrofts. His father had taken no interest in his seat in the House of Lords and neither had his grandfather, but David had, on Lady Cordelia’s advice, been active since before his father died. He had been taking his seat nearly every day when Parliament was sitting for the past three years, and had been making a quiet name for himself there, in the cleverest way possible—as a voice of moderation. No one expected a young man to be the voice of moderation; he was attracting attention for that reason. It was good attention, too; the Queen approved.

He worked steadily until luncheon; his secretary James came in twice, quietly and unobtrusively removing what he had finished with and bringing him new correspondence to deal with. Some of it was political, much was social, a very little was business relating to the running of the estate. He spent very little time there, since his father had died; the old manor troubled him in a way he could not define. Perhaps it was simply that there were too many memories there. In any event, he left most of that business in the hands of his estate manager. “Pay competent people who know the job,” Lady Cordelia had said. “Do not try to attempt things you are not expert at and do not care for.” Good advice, and he had gratefully left the estate in the hands of Colin Foxward. The report was good, neither too much rain nor too little, crops looking favorable, and he dismissed the estate from his mind with a feeling of relief. It was more of a burden than a blessing, so far as he was concerned—except, of course, for the income. And these days no one held it against a gentleman if his income derived from investment rather than land. If it were his choice… but it wasn’t. And besides, the old place was useful in the shooting season. Near enough to London to take the train, far enough for good hunting, and his gamekeeper did a fine job in making sure there were plenty of pheasant, duck, and quail. It was useful socially, and would become more so as he rose in social circles.

At noon, precisely, he rose from his desk. He did not need to call for his carriage, for his household knew his habits; it was waiting at the door to take him to his club, where he lunched. He then spent precisely three hours making social calls, not returning home until teatime. He couldn’t abide taking his tea as a social call; difficult enough to make calls on ladies when they were merely receiving, for at least then one could escape when the level of chatter grew too high. One was trapped at tea, and the clatter of china was only eclipsed by the chatter of gossip. Lady Cordelia was the only female of his acquaintance who eschewed gossip; she was the only female of his acquaintance who showed any sense about the matter. Now that he was not busy with politics until the October opening, she had resumed his lessons in Elemental Magic; she would be here for tea, and then, a lesson.

Precisely on time, no more than ten minutes after he had arrived, he looked out of the window to see her carriage roll up to the front entrance. It was a distinctive vehicle; most carriages in London were black or dark shades of red, green or blue. Hers was white, trimmed in light blue, and it was probably the entire job of one servant to keep it clean and shining in the filthy air of the city. Her horses were matched grays; her coachman’s livery was light blue. A moment after the carriage rolled to a halt, the footman opened the door, and Lady Cordelia, dressed in her customary colors of pale-blue and white, descended from the carriage. She moved with a cool grace he had never seen in any other woman; she glided as if she was on wheels.

She was curiously ageless; her hair so white a blond that it was not possible to see any silver or gray in it, her face as smooth and unwrinkled and serene as if carved from alabaster. Her eyes were a pale blue-gray, her form as slender as a young birch, but as erect and straight as a wand of silver, and all in all, there could not possibly have been a more perfect physical representation of an Air Master. There was nothing about her of the occasional giddiness or spontaneity of an Air Master and no sign at all that she had a touch of the passionate Element of Fire in her.

But Lady Cordelia had too firm a grip on the reins of her character and her Element to allow passion to come into play. In fact, she had taught David that passion, especially when dealing with Fire, was dangerous. She had instilled in him a discipline and control he had no notion existed before she began teaching him, and taught him to keep his Elemental creatures under firm control and tight rein.

She had also taught him something else, something he had never seen nor heard of before. The absence of fire was cold; she taught him how to harness his Element in a way that allowed him to create an arctic chill instead of furnace heat.

And there were Elementals that thrived in that atmosphere, odd creatures of negative Fire, if that was possible. Strange little Ice Fey and Frost Fey; a kind of counter-Salamander, creatures of snow and glacier, and—or so she claimed—even the famous Yeti, though it was highly unlikely he would ever see one of those in England. They were utterly obedient to his will, never fighting him, as opposed to their flame-driven brethren. Perhaps this was why he liked them so much, preferring them over the common aspect of his Element. One would have thought that water, in the form of snow and ice, being inimical to his Element would have made these creatures just as hostile. But in fact, this was Water locked away in a crystalline form that rendered it unreachable by Water Elementals. In a sense, this was where Fire conquered Water.

Sometimes, though, he looked back on the days of raw power, of careful negotiations with a Phoenix, with nostalgic longing. Still, those were the days when he was very young, childish in fact. Only children preferred chaos over order, uncertainty over certainty. Children did not understand control and self-control. Cordelia had set him straight on that path.

There was a crystalline order to cold that appealed to him as well. As every snowflake was an orderly lattice, mathematical and precise, so was the matrix of spells that controlled the cold. The only flaw in the situation, and it was a small one, was that the Elemental creatures he had so far encountered were inferior in power to those of Flame. Still, it wasn’t as if he was going into Duel Arcane any time soon. Those unhappy days were over.

Cordelia entered the drawing room, followed immediately by the maid with the tea cart, and he advanced to greet her exactly as always, the comfort of well-rehearsed pathways making him feel settled. She extended a kid-glove-clad hand for him to shake, he took it, squeezed it once, and released it. She smiled faintly.

“My dear David,” she said, taking her place in her favorite chair, and motioning to the maid to begin serving, “I am given to understand you have been exceptionally busy this afternoon. Following up on an invitation to meet with the Prime Minister, no less! I am impressed by your progress.”

He no longer wondered how she knew these things; her sources of information were logical. They were in the same circle of friends, she would have been told of the invitation at some point during her morning calls, and it was beyond the realm of possibility that he would not have been putting great thought into the exact wording of his acceptance this afternoon. “It’s only a large dinner party,” he replied, hastily making it clear that although he had managed this himself, it was an inferior achievement to those things she could do for him. “I doubt very much that I will be able to get more than a word or two with him.”

“But that will be several words more than you have gotten heretofore,” she countered, with no sign of disapproval. “Congratulations.”

He felt a little glow at her praise, and indeed, he had worked hard to get this invitation. He suspected that he had ultimately gotten the invitation because he was an eligible bachelor, and the lady of the house had two unmarried daughters to dispose of. Not that he would even consider either of them.

He had higher ambitions, and any wife he took would have to fit those ambitions. Neither of the two hapless daughters fit that mold, but of course, she would not know that. You manipulated people by knowing their weaknesses and exploiting them in such a manner that they did not actually feel exploited. Best of all was if you could exploit them in such a manner that they felt an obligation to accommodate you, or a desire to fulfill your desire.

He had never met anyone quite as skilled at doing this as Cordelia. She could extract nearly anything she wanted from someone, and leave him (or her) with the feeling that it was Cordelia who had been conferring the favor.

And yet, this approach failed regularly with Elemental Masters, who seemed impervious to her charms. David found that something of a puzzle.

Perhaps it was only that she was a mere female. While men as a whole were susceptible to womanly wiles, Elemental Masters took a longer view of things, and were inclined never to make hasty decisions when it came to matters of Magic. So although they might smile and nod and be charmed while Cordelia was with them, they would commit to nothing without first taking time to think it over. Without Cordelia there, her propositions often seemed less attractive, and even reasonable suggestions coming from a woman appeared to be trivial matters. Even a woman like Cordelia.

“The most that I hope for is to be memorable in a positive sense to the P.M.,” he told her. “Anything beyond that is less than likely, but the next time I stand to speak, if the P.M. has some recollection that I appeared to be a grave, sensible fellow, he is more likely to note my speech.”

Her faint smile bestowed her approval on him. “I wish that all my protégés could have been as wise as you,” she replied. “Those of Air could never achieve a proper understanding of how a serious approach to all things is of great benefit, and those of Fire never would understand that the discipline of the opposite aspect of Fire allows one to impose control on every aspect of Fire.”

He did not allow her rare praise to go to his head; instead, he turned the subject to commonplaces things; the invitations he had accepted or declined, whether he intended to go to the country at all this summer, and some initial planning for the first shooting party of the season. She no longer gave him daily instruction in the control of his Element; only if he found himself at an impasse did he ask for her help. And that, only rarely; she was more likely to direct him to certain volumes in her esoteric library, or his own.

She left at six precisely; they both had social obligations, which often, but by no means always, overlapped.

Tonight, he had nothing; a rare evening to stay at home. Not that it would be a leisurely evening; he had reading to catch up on.

Yet, when the house was silent, the servants all safely “below-stairs,” and only the ever-present hum of London a steady backdrop to his thoughts, he found himself paying very little attention to the book in his hand. Instead he found his eyes straying to the greenery outside the window, and his thoughts back to a time before he had ever met Cordelia…

Belle.

The memories of his first love? No, say “infatuation,” rather, since it was obvious from the first how unsuitable the attachment had been, had he only been sensible enough to acknowledge the fact. The details of her face had become hazy over the years, but certainly Belle had never been the sort of striking beauty that Cordelia was even to this day. Fine eyes, though, really her best feature.

Odd, he hadn’t thought of her in years.

Shame he’d had to snub her the way he had, but Cordelia had been right. It was the only way to effectively put the girl in her place and show her that her foolish dreams were only that; dreams, and no more substantial than air.

Some of the other girls in her set had initially come over a bit nasty to him afterward. He’d been forced to make his indifference to their anger clear, and after all, they were only schoolgirls, they couldn’t possibly have understood that romance had no place in the alliances of their class and their Calling. A word or two by Cordelia in certain parental ears had cleared all that up. After all, if the Masters were to start indulging in the foolishness of romantic attraction when it came to marriage, well! The next thing you knew some duchess’ daughter would go running off with the dustman or the chimney sweeper.

Still, the hurt that had been in those eyes—

He shook his head to rid it of the unwanted thought. It was not as if he had plunged a dagger into her! It was nothing more than something she should have expected from the beginning. It had been no worse a tragedy than a child denied a sweet it ought not to have been promised nor craved in the first place.

It was her own fault anyway. She had brought all the hurt on herself, with her silly lending-library romances and the friends who had done her no favors by allowing the country vicar’s daughter to think she was the social equivalent of the rest of them.

It had been on a night exactly like this one; a summer house party, the first of the summer after the end of the Oxford term. Probably that was why his thoughts had wandered in this unpleasant direction. A breath of breeze holding more than usual of the scent of blossoms, perhaps, or a momentary lull in the sound of the traffic that triggered memories best forgotten.

Memories of startlingly intelligent conversation; of learning, with some fascination, about the world of those whose Talents had nothing to do with Magic. Sometimes, just listening to the stories of life in a small village, so different from his own childhood.

He shook his head again. What was wrong with him? This was ridiculous. Yes, the girl had been vaguely attractive, had a certain intelligence, and a naïve charm, but that was all! She certainly didn’t warrant more than a passing thought!

Still… he wondered what had become of her. She had vanished from the party, had not come down to dinner, and the next day there had been some specious story about being taken ill and going back to school—if the girl really had been ill she wouldn’t have made a journey all the way back to a school that was nine-tenths empty over the summer recess. And after that, nothing, except for a rumor she had gone to India.

Probably chased down some poor officer and married him before anyone got a chance to object. The women that went out to India alone, or as someone’s companion, were generally husband hunting. There were a great many unattached officers in India, and very few unattached British women. Isabelle was probably over there now, queen of a bungalow, having snared herself a captain.

His mind began to complete that picture—except that the bungalow began to shape itself into his drawing room, and the Hindu servant into his own parlor maid, and that was when he resolutely, and with an unwarranted feeling of anger, set his mind to reading that damned book.

***

It was a small room, and austere, but exquisite in every detail. The floor, of the finest white Carerra marble, was polished to a mirror gleam. The walls were likewise of the same marble—which was a little unusual, and gave the room the look of a cube made of snow. The ceiling was made of glass panels, but not clear; they were opaque glass, swirled whites and pale, pale blues, leaded into a pattern that teased at the mind, because it almost looked like a great many things, but it was not possible to say precisely what it was. The effect was slightly disturbing.

There were no windows. Light came from four lamps of opaque white glass, standing on four metal, marble-topped tables, one in each corner. There was something odd about those lamps. The light they gave off was dim and blue, not the yellow of an oil-fueled flame. It could have been gas, turned down until the flame was blue, but there was no evident gas pipe, and at any rate, a flame like that should have been too hot for a glass shade.

And in an era when people crowded furniture into their rooms until there was scarcely space to turn, this room had only the four small tables, and in the center, a very strange chair and a fifth table. The chair, a single solid piece of quartz crystal, looked like something carved out of ice. The table, identical to the four in the corners of the room, held, at the moment, nothing.

The chair, however, held Lady Cordelia.

Her eyes rested on the empty surface of the table and there was a frown of concentration on her face. And only when a puff of mist and a breath of cold manifested on the tabletop did she stop frowning. “Speak,” she said.

The mist curled into the shape of a tiny, wingless dragon, that seemed to be made of transparent crystal. This was an Ice Wurm, the Elemental opposite of the Salamander yet, strangely, controlled by Fire.

“The children are now further protected,” it hissed. “By Earth and Air, by Fire and Water—as well as by Spirit. The woman has new allies.”

Cordelia frowned again. “Powerful allies?” she asked, but the Ice Wurm did not reply, as it would not if it did not know the answer. So, “Show me the woman,” she demanded. She had viewed the face of her enemy in the past, but only briefly, to assess and dismiss her. It seemed further examination was in order.

The Ice Wurm breathed on the tabletop, and a mirror of ice formed at its feet. Cordelia leaned forward and stared into it, pondering the rather uncompromising features of the woman shown there. As she stared, she tapped one perfectly manicured fingernail on the tabletop. She ignored the simple gown, which was perfectly in keeping with a schoolmistress of modest means. This woman was far more than she seemed on the surface, and gowns were irrelevant—a mistake in assessment that Cordelia had already made with her.

She had begun to form the reluctant conclusion that this unprepossessing woman was the same forgettable girl with whom David had formed an inappropriate relationship years ago, just as she herself had come on the scene. She thought the chit had been properly dealt with then, but—there was an echo of that girl there. And how many female occultists in London had attained the levels to which this woman had risen?

And yet, it seemed the height of improbable coincidence that it should be she. There was no reason for their paths to cross at this point, much less their swords. The girl had vanished from polite society, as was only proper; no mere vicar’s daughter should have been pushing herself into Elemental Master circles, much less the social circles in which Cordelia was a leading light. Cordelia had not even troubled herself to discover where she had gone; it was fruitless to attempt to hunt down the fly one has swatted away so long as it does not return. David had seen the error of his ways, and it was unlikely in the extreme that he would ever encounter the girl again.

But—the given name was the same, Isabelle. And—the child had formidable psychical powers, even back then. She would not have been in the school she had been attending, if she had not. The features were similar enough, at least insofar as Cordelia’s vague memory of the girl went.

Cordelia’s frown deepened. This was more than mere coincidence. The longer she stared, the more convinced she became. This woman was the older version of that child she had sent packing. How else would she have gotten Magicians of all four Elements to protect her charges? Certainly not by recruiting from occult circles, which contained, by and large, people with no Elemental Power worth speaking of.

The mere existence of those children could be detrimental to her plans for David Alderscroft. There were just not that many genuine mediums around, and certainly none of the power the younger of the two children possessed. Elemental Magicians, of course, while they could certainly see spirits, were disinclined to do anything much about them. If there was a particularly troubling Revenant, one might send it on its way, of course, but for the most part, Elemental Mages considered the realm of the spirits to be something in which they did not meddle. Renegade Earth Masters could and did use them as weapons, but they were generally not terribly effective against another Master in full possession of his or her powers. It was rather like trying to use a swarm of bees to kill a horse. It could be done, of course, but the horse would have to face a swarm of immense numbers, be unaware of the attack until it was too late, and be unable to run once the attack began.

Cordelia—took a different tack.

It had begun much longer ago than she cared to think about, when the Honorable Cordelia Westron had made the Grand Tour with a number of her schoolmates. They had found themselves locked into one of the finer resorts in Switzerland by an unseasonable spate of blizzards, and while the rest of her party amused themselves with cards and dancing, flirting with the young men similarly stranded, and complaining about the conditions, Cordelia had decided to take up a guide’s offer to walk to a glacier. After all, she was an Air Master; in her opinion, there was nothing that mere weather could do to harm her.

With her own powers keeping her much more comfortable than the shivering guide, she found the landscape utterly fascinating. There was something very attractive to her in those vast stretches of pure white snow and ice and stark black rock; a Spartan beauty that was very appealing, especially after being locked in an overheated hotel, smelling of rich food and perfume, with a lot of chattering magpies.

And when she found the ice cave, despite the guide’s remonstrations, she insisted on going in. The blue stillness drew her, the silence in which she and the guide were the only living things, the purity of it, the hygienic sterility—

And then, suddenly, the guide became very quiet.

She had turned, to find him as frozen in place as any statue; she had tried to shake him, then slap him out of his stupor, but nothing broke the spell. She had been about to invoke the Element of Air to wake him, when a flat sheet of ice formed between her and him, the ice took on a mirror sheen, and she found herself staring at herself—or rather, a reflection of herself.

Pretty mortal child, a voice in her head had crooned. So strong in her Element!

She had looked wildly about for the source of the internal voice, but had seen nothing.

A pity such beauty is mortal, too, the voice continued, and as she watched in horror, the image before her aged, aged rapidly, until what stood before her was a hideously distorted reflection of an old, senile and withered crone wearing her clothing, which sagged and bagged on the shrunken, bent body. With a gasp, she had stepped forward and involuntarily touched the mirror.

You do not like what you see? The voice had been sardonic. Oh, of course not. You silly mayfly mortals, who do not understand preservation, only consumption. You devour in moments what has taken long years to produce, then wonder why everything about you withers, including yourselves. Look at yourself! You who are the very epitome of the eroding property of Air, instead of the slow preserving of Ice. You could remain ageless in your beauty, and instead, you fling yourself headlong into the Abyss to whirl yourself away to nothingness.

That had caught her attention, but she was cautious enough not to grasp for what the voice had hinted at. Instead, she had stepped back. “You imply a great deal,” she had said boldly. “But Ice is only the other side of the element of Fire. I am a Master of Air, and even if I do not yet know how to control you, whoever you are, I have the means to destroy you.”

A silent laugh had been her only answer. And the mirror dispersed into icy mist again, the guide woke from his frozen state without knowing he had ever been in it, and the two of them left the ice cave.

But she had come back… oh, yes. She had come back again, this time alone.

This time determined to have some answers.

She had gotten them, too. Some of them, anyway, though she was still not entirely sure what the creature of the ice cave called itself. Possibly an Ice Dragon; it was more powerful than any Phoenix or Firebird she had ever encountered, and the only Elemental of the flame aspect of Fire that was more powerful was an avatar of a fire god, or a dragon. In return for subjugating her Power of Air to the Power of Ice, she would be granted a force far more effective than that of Air alone. It didn’t matter to Cordelia; she had gotten what she wanted, and near as she could tell, the only thing the entity wanted in return was for more control to be exerted in the world by Ice. Sometimes it was difficult to fathom the motives of Elementals; by definition they didn’t think like humans.

But that was not pertinent to the moment; at this juncture, she faced an obstacle in her path, in the form of a child medium and the woman who guarded that child.

The other Masters who had taught her made little or no use of Revenants and other lingering spirits, either from foolish sentimentality, or the mistaken conviction that they were by-and-large powerless. And that might well be true of those that had been created of random tragedy, or out of their own will and reluctance to leave the earth.

But at the promptings of the Elemental in the ice cave, Cordelia had done some specific and very secret research. She learned it was not true of those who were created and bound from the beginning… and though the power was subtle, it was sure, when properly guided. Cordelia had been creating such servants for decades now, a few at a time.

In any time and place, there were always the poor, and in any given time and place, three-fourths of the poor were children. Now, setting aside the difficulties inherent in their immaturity, children were the best and easiest human beings to manipulate, and thus the best subjects for someone looking for immaterial servants. They were used to obeying orders without question, they would believe anything told them with authority, and they were disinclined to rebellion. They were trivially easy to lure away from parents who had little time for them anyway at best, and at worse were brutish and brutal. Cordelia exploited all of these aspects of childhood.

First, she found children with a certain amount of Elemental or psychical power. Then she lured them into the hands of one of her agents with the promise of food and shelter; using “agents” who were not much older than the children themselves. Where street children were wary of adults, they were often inclined to trust one of their own. With great care and subtlety, she gradually introduced them to herself as the authority figure to which they owed everything. And when they were accustomed to obeying her orders, even those which seemed odd or even bizarre, she killed them.

Quietly. Peacefully. So that they were not even aware that they were dead. A dose of morphia in their evening meal, and then, cold that enveloped them, stilled their hearts, their breathing, their lives. Painlessly, without trauma, they “woke” when she called them and went about the business she sent them on, and even when they eventually realized what had happened to them, it took weeks, months, years before they had that revelation. By then, of course, they were used to their situation. In many ways it was an improvement over their old life. They were no longer hungry, cold, or in need, and none of those Cordelia selected were acquainted enough with Christianity or any other religion to have any expectation of a joyful afterlife. Most, in fact, had been told repeatedly that they were destined for hell, and were not in any hurry to proceed on the next leg of that journey. They had each other for company, and in the endless twilight of their new existence, without the powerful and developed personality that an adult would have to hold them together, they gradually faded into passive, obedient wraiths, all looking very much alike.

So they served her. And the few that rebelled, she was able to control despite their willfulness.

And this was what they could do.

They slipped inside the thoughts of the unwary.

They drifted into dreams, whispering whatever message Cordelia wished the victim to hear. They hovered, waiting for the right moment, to murmur Cordelia’s words when there was a flash of doubt. They could, and did, haunt individuals tirelessly, relentlessly, feeding them what Cordelia wanted them to think until the victim became convinced that Cordelia’s thoughts were his own. Not even Elemental Masters were immune to this, for it was not an attack, and the wraiths drifted in past the shields and protections effortlessly.

So Cordelia had won higher title, then position, then property. So she had won social status in the highest of circles, and amusingly enough, only the fact that she did not want the position, and in fact had worked tirelessly to prevent anyone from offering it, had kept her from being appointed one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. Firstly, she found Victoria herself to be a terrible bore, with her obsession with her dead husband and her living children and complete lack of understanding of politics both domestic and international. And secondly, it was an appointment with less than no power. So one child spirit was assigned permanently to the Queen, murmuring that Lady Cordelia was an admirable woman, perfect in all ways… that Victoria herself was not really interesting enough to be worthy of Lady Cordelia’s friendship… that Lady Cordelia already had so many good works in hand that Victoria would be imposing to offer her the position… that other honors would certainly be much more appropriate…

There really was only one group standing in the way of Cordelia’s ambitions.

Men.

The world was owned and ruled by men. Women were distinctly second-class citizens; cherished pets at best, or chattel at worst. Men maneuvering for positions of power who listened to the advice of women were thought weak. Only the artistic could grant status to women, and the artistic had no power except in their own circles. No matter what she did, no matter how many little whisperers she created, she would never have the position of power she required. Men were particularly resistant to those whispers of self-doubt that were so effective against women.

The day that Cordelia had finally given in to that truth had been one of the few times she had indulged herself in rage. But she had not permitted the rage to last long. Instead, she had gotten down to work, and knowing that she would never have the secular power she craved in her own name, she had set about finding a proper vehicle to be her puppet.

David Alderscroft had not been the first, but he had proven to be the most malleable. Unlike many, he was susceptible to those whispers of negativity, especially when he began his University studies, left the relative isolation of tutors and small private academies, and found himself no longer the leading light of his group.

Once he accepted that, and once he accepted her as his mentor in Magic, he was hers. There had been the small diversion of that girl, but it, and she, were easily dealt with.

Or so Cordelia had thought.

She pursed her lips. Bad enough that there was a true medium in London now who was strong enough to hear her whisperers and free them, but that this child was being guarded by the same person Cordelia had separated from David—that smacked not of coincidence, but of the intervention of something or someone.

“You may go,” she told the Ice Wurm, who vanished, taking its mirror with it.

To say this was displeasing was an understatement. But it was by no means a major setback.

Yet.

Patience. That was the byword here, patience and vigilance. She would have to make sure that her control over her whisperers was absolute, and make certain the child in Isabelle’s custody never got the opportunity to spot one of them. She would also have to investigate Isabelle Harton and her school, looking more thoroughly for chinks in the armor, weaknesses to be exploited, ways to bring the school into disrepute, perhaps.

Or put them on ground of Cordelia’s choosing. It would be enough merely to drive the school and the woman into the countryside, for instance. Or perhaps not even “drive”—perhaps, if she could manipulate matters, the offer of a suitable building would suffice. A building of Cordelia’s selection, of course, and one in which any number of accidents could happen should it become necessary to try and kill the child again. But the main thing was to be patient and enterprising—and no more use of intermediaries. That mad Irish anarchist Earth Master had managed to get himself shot by the police only just in time to keep the others from tracing him back to Cordelia.

The first step: investigation, this time as thorough and as exacting as even the fictional Sherlock Holmes would appreciate. That was one thing she had truly learned back there that day on the ice: there was never enough time to rush into something, because the amount of effort you would spend undoing hasty mistakes would more than exceed the time you spent doing things carefully. Thus was the path of the glacier: slow, relentless, unstoppable.

She left the room to itself, closed the hidden door behind her, and set her mind on that path.

7

NAN and Neville held themselves very still in the darkness of the closet. This was no time for the adults to discover her listening post. Neville did not so much as flick a feather.

Mem’sab was pacing, and Mem’sab never paced; Nan recognized the quick light sounds of her footsteps going up and down, up and down the room. Sahib was not pacing, but Mem’sab was restless enough for both of them.

And Mem’sab was not at all happy. The mysterious friends of hers who were going to find out who had lured Nan and Sarah into the clutches of that horrible haunt had found out the “who”—but not the “why.” And as for the “who,” well, he was, in Nan’s cynical mind, all too conveniently dead. In Nan’s world, when you wanted to make sure no one spilled a secret, you made him a “grave” man.

“There are more things left unanswered than answered,” she complained, an edge of anger to her voice. “Why would an Irish anarchist who had only been in London for two months set a trap to harm or kill two obscure British children?”

That was a very good question. The only Irish Nan knew were not the sort to use a haunt to get revenge when a boot to the head was so much more immediate and satisfying. And she rather doubted Sarah knew any Irishmen at all.

“The workings of a damaged mind?” asked Karamjit, doubtfully. Mem’sab tsk’ed.

“And he came to learn of them, how?” replied Agansing. “An Elemental Master was he, not in psychical circles. And why? This makes no sense, even for a madman. Madmen follow their own logic, it is true, but it is logic. The children could have been of no threat, no rivalry to him, no real interest. He could have made no use of them, and their harm would not help him in any way.”

“He was working for someone else, obviously,” replied Sahib. “Someone who does see one or both of the girls as a potential threat, now or in the future. We’ll never know who, now. And having gotten their immediate answer, the Masters are disinclined to look further into the matter. Sometimes, my dove, these people make me very annoyed.”

Mem’sab sighed. “Trying to get them to work together is, as Bea says, like trying to herd cats. Not that our kind is very much easier, but at least we are a bit more inclined to gather in groups than they are, and to think on the larger scale than personal rivalry and alliance. I wish David Alderscroft joy of them.”

“Hmm. One hears that he has succeeded in reviving a Master’s Circle from the days of Mad King George,” said Agansing. “With some success, if rumors I have heard are true. He and his followers have laid some troublesome things to rest.”

Mem’sab sniffed. “It is a men’s club in fancy dress,” she said dismissively. “It is even headquartered in his club. They admit no women, thus halving their available resources, and few commoners, thus further depriving themselves of power. And they admit none who are not white British at all. If I were to revive a Master’s Circle I would do so in the country, where one could find Earth Masters, and I would scour the countryside for Masters and Mages of both sexes. While I was at it, I would see to it that foreigners were welcome, because there is foreign magic in England now, like it or not, and it would be much wiser to have the weapons to counter the misuse of it in hand before there is need for them. That would be effective. And it’s not to the point, except insofar as it was the Master’s Circle who discovered who was responsible, but only after Bea’s husband confined the Earth Creature for them.”

Nan made notes in her head. Master’s Circle. David Alderscroft. Mem’sab might dismiss both, but at least they had found out something. That counted as a partial success at least, which was more than Sahib and Mem’sab had. Nan got a feeling there was something about this Alderscroft fellow that Mem’sab didn’t like—

The moment she thought that, from his perch on her shoulder, Neville rubbed his big, warm beak against her cheek to get her attention. She closed her eyes and consciously relaxed.

The image she got from him was set in bird terms, of course, and seemed to be a mate squabble, two females competing over the same male. Ravens were monogamous, keeping to one mate their whole life barring accident, so such things were comprehensible to a raven. Neville was much better at picking up feelings and the images called up by those feelings, than Nan was. And now, with much practice, he was better at projecting them to Nan.

So Mem’sab and some other skirt got into it over this Alderscroft… Another quick rub of Neville’s beak, and the impression that the winning rival was much older than the younger “bird” confirmed that. Must’ve been way before Mem’sab went to India, an’ met Sahib. Cor. That ’splains a lot. No young woman in Nan’s circle was ever graceful in romantic defeat.

Well, now, that was interesting. So Mem’sab was probably going to dismiss this Alderscroft fellow right out of hand, which in Nan’s estimation was a mistake. All the signs were pointing at an Elemental Master being the one who wanted Sarah gone. It just made sense to go to the Elemental Masters about it, preferably the fellow on top—but it appeared that the fellow on top was someone Mem’sab wanted to see only the back of.

“We have, thanks to your lady friends, protection against all four Elemental magics on the girls, and on the school,” Sahib pointed out. “Nothing is going to get past those without at least giving up some warning.”

“Which still leaves perfectly ordinary attacks as a possibility, leaving aside the fact that my friends are not the most powerful Elemental Masters in London,” she replied, with a stubborn tone to her voice. “I am not convinced that this is over by any means.”

“Nor I,” Selim put in, as Nan kept her breathing as still as she could in order to catch every word. “I am far more convinced there is something about young Sarah’s powers that is a threat to someone in this city. I do not anticipate that unknown person would lightly give up his attempt to rid himself of that threat.”

“I agree with Selim,” said Karamjit firmly.

Me, too! thought Nan.

“Time—” began Agansing.

“Are you willing to wait to see what time will bring, when realistically speaking, it could bring a threat from an unexpected quarter?” Mem’sab demanded. Nan could picture her whirling and fixing Agansing with a gimlet stare.

“But running off blindly serves no purpose either.” Agansing was silent for a moment. “The wise warrior examines all possibilities. We have a possibility before us. And we have many possible responses to it. We can hunt down the one who is responsible and confront him. We could ignore this, and hope that the threat will fade or go away. We could move the school. Once removed from London, perhaps the unknown assailant will conclude the children are no longer a threat.”

“Retreat?” Karamjit sounded aghast. “Never!”

“If we were all warriors here—but we are not. These are children,” Selim said reluctantly. “They can hardly defend themselves, and they are not old enough to be required to do so.”

“Moving from our stronghold into unknown territory would be a grave error,” Karamjit growled. “We have a fortified home here. It will take very long before a new place is as well suited.”

“Moving at all is out of the question,” Mem’sab replied flatly. “In the first place, all of our available monies are sunk into this building and its grounds. And in the second, even if someone were to offer us as good or better a place elsewhere, we haven’t the money to make such a move. There are resources we can draw on to help educate the children that we cannot find elsewhere. And in the third place, although this is a relatively trivial concern, outside of London there are no places where most of the foodstuffs you all favor can be easily obtained.”

“Ah,” said Selim. There was a note to his voice that made Nan smile. Trust a feller to think of his stomach, she thought wryly. An’ trust Mem’sab’t‘ think he’d think of it.

Nan distinctly heard Sahib stifle a chuckle, so she wasn’t the only one with that particular thought.

“I see no reason to leave permanently,” Sahib said firmly. “However, an interesting offer has come my way, by way of a holiday for the school. The gentleman who actually owned that cursed property wishes to offer the use of his country home near Windsor to the school for a summer retreat. It seems, my dear, that you know him peripherally as he is in some of the saner occult circles. He is going to France for next month. It is not that far from London, but the property includes a small home farm as well as a pond and plenty of parkland to romp in. He feels very much responsible for what happened, and wishes to make some sort of amends.” He paused. “This would remove the children from London and potential harm temporarily, and perhaps that would be enough. If the perpetrator sees the school standing empty, he might believe we had gone.”

“Only a month, you say?” Mem’sab replied dubiously, as Nan held her breath. She had never been outside of London in her life. And London in June could be stiflingly hot. The country was something she had only read about; the wildest place she had ever been were the overgrown parts of the school garden.

“Possibly more, if the situation works to everyone’s advantage; a summer holiday would be good for all concerned. Everything needed could be brought down in a couple of cartloads,” Sahib said coaxingly. “It would be very good for the children. No lessons, fresh air, country food. Think how they would blossom.”

“And let them run wild for a month?” Mem’sab countered. “In someone else’s home? I am not sure I would care to take responsibility for that.”

“There’s a nursery,” Sahib replied. “A proper nursery, big enough to hold all the infants and toddlers twice over. The place is a vast barn, from what he tells me. He has autumn shooting parties for up to fifty there, but there’s no fishing, no adult amusements, and he’s a bachelor. Outside of hunting season and some lazing about in summer, he never uses the place. He says it would be a good thing for the house and the servants to have someone there to look after over the summer.”

A house that big an’ ’e never uses it? Cor! Nan thought with raw envy. Must be nice to be rich!

Strange how her vision of “rich” had changed. Not that long ago, she had thought Mem’sab and Sahib were “rich”—and of course, by the standards of poverty in Whitechapel, they were. But now she was privy to the economies of running a school, the compromises Mem’sab had to make, had seen both Mem’sab and Sahib consulting over the bills and working out what could and could not be done. Nothing here was ever wasted, not a stitch of fabric, not a bit of space, not a scrap of food. It might be given away in charity, but it was never wasted.

“And how would his servants feel about an army of children descending?” Mem’sab countered. “I have no wish to suffer the vagaries of a staff full of resentful servants, and neither will our own people. And as to our own people, I also do not wish to subject them to the rudeness and prejudice of those who are not prepared to welcome them as equals and superiors.”

“He says he believes there will be no problem.” Sahib paused. “But I see your point. Let me explore this further; I’ll even visit the place with Selim and we will sound out the servants. But if there is no problem?”

Mem’sab sighed. It sounded reluctant. “Then I agree, it would be a good idea. But there will be half holidays only. I do not want the children to get out of the habit of the discipline of lessons.”

***

It took every bit of “discipline” in Nan’s body to keep quiet about the promised treat. For one thing, she didn’t want to disappoint anyone if it turned out not to come to pass. She’d had far too many disappointments of her own, things her mother promised in the euphoria of gin that never happened, or promises that sounded enticing that turned out to be traps set by unscrupulous adults eager to take advantage of a child. For another, if she revealed it, they’d know she had a listening post, and then there would go the source of information.

So she kept her lips firmly shut, and went on with life as usual. Not that it was unpleasant! Far from it. There were a great many “school treats” in these summer months, as she came to learn. There were trips by omnibus to the zoo, to the many parks, to the British Museum. There were Sunday School treats for parish children, not only for churches in their parish, but for others nearby, that Mem’sab, with her clever ways, managed to get them all invited to. Sahib somehow contrived a boat ride on two canal barges, one going upriver, and another back down for the return trip, that took them through Camden Lock; a fascinating thing for Nan and even more fascinating for the boys.

Many of these occasions involved ice creams, a treat Nan had never before encountered, which left her wondering what possible reward could be in heaven if Earth was able to provide ice creams.

Well… perhaps if heaven included ice creams for breakfast, luncheon, tea, and dinner…

Neville and Grey came along on these excursions, of course. One of the problems of taking Grey had been completely negated by the presence of Neville; there was not a bird in the sky that would dream of attacking Grey with the enormous raven flying escort, nor was anyone likely to try stealing the parrot with Neville flashing a wicked eye and nasty beak nearby. Only once was there any trouble, when a bully of a lad at Hyde Park tried to make a grab at Grey. Neville dove down out of a nearby tree and made a slashing stab at his clutching hand, coming so close to actually connecting that neither the boy’s governess nor the now-hysterical boy himself could be convinced he hadn’t until the intact fingers were displayed for the policeman who intervened. By then, Neville had wisely taken himself back up into the tree again, so there was nothing to prove that the raven even belonged to anyone in the school party but hearsay witnesses.

“Sounds to me like you been aggravatin’ all the birds hereabouts,” the bobby said, having had just about enough of both boy and governess by then. “If I was you, I’d go hop over to the Museum. Birds are all stuffed there. You can’t aggravate ‘em, they can’t harm you.”

While Nan hadn’t completely forgotten the conversation, she had just about convinced herself that the summer could hold no better joys than this continuing series of excursions, when one night, Mem’sab called for silence just before dinner was served.

Since these wildly infrequent occasions always meant some grand surprise—she always saved bad news for morning assembly—she got instant quiet.

“A very kind gentleman has offered the school the use of his country home for the month of June,” she said, and quelled the uprising before it started with a single look. “There will be rules; this is not our home, and we will take as much care of the things in it as we would the things in the museum, Tommy.”

Tommy, who had very nearly caused an incident over his desire to drop into an enormous jar at the British Museum and leap out again, like the thieves in Ali Baba, hung his head. Nan stifled a grin.

“You will treat his servants with respect, as you treat your teachers and my helpers here at the school,” she continued. “You will obey them when they ask you to do something or refrain from doing something, you will refer to them as ‘Miss,’ ‘Mrs.’ and ‘Mr.’ and you will not play the Little Sahib and Missy Sahib with them. If you are good, there will be half holidays in the week, and Saturday and Sunday will be full holidays. If you are not, we will pack up and return here.”

The silence remained unbroken, but the children exchanged looks of delight. Even Grey mantled her wings and pinned her eyes, though Neville contrived to look bored.

“Tomorrow will be free of lessons as you pack up your belongings for the month,” Mem’sab continued. “And the day after tomorrow, we will all take the train to Highleigh Court.”

Only now did she smile, as whispers began. She said nothing more, though, merely sat down as the signal for serving to begin. All the children ate together except for the few in the nursery, at four big tables arranged down the dining room. One teacher sat at each table, while Mem’sab, Sahib, and the other teachers sat at a fifth table.

Sarah leveled grave eyes on her friend. “You knew about this, didn’t you?” she whispered, as she passed the bowl of boiled carrots to Nan, who served herself and passed it to Amanda Truitt. Sarah handed a piece of carrot to Grey, who took it and held it in one claw while taking neat bites out of it.

Nan nodded, just a little. Sarah smiled. “It’s all right,” she continued. “I know why you didn’t tell.”

Of course she did; she had listened in that same closet herself, more than once. But Nan was relieved that she didn’t take it amiss.

It was hard to sleep that night, knowing that the treat really was in store. Nan expected she would be quite busy the next day, not with her own packing, but with helping to pack up the little ones’ things. It wasn’t as if she had much of her own, after all.

But at midmorning she got a surprise, as Mem’sab took her away from folding little pinafores and pressing small shirtwaists, to go back to her own room where Sarah was packing. There was an enormous stack of clothing on her bed.

“I have several friends with little girls a bit older than your age, Nan,” Mem’sab said without preamble. “So I canvassed them for outgrown clothing for the summer. Some of it won’t fit, of course, and some will be unsuitable, but we should find some things in these piles that will do. So let’s begin trying them on you.”

Some of the clothing made Nan blink. She could not ever imagine herself in a dress so covered with frills she thought she looked like a right Guy in it, nor in the item of embroidery and lace so delicate she was afraid to touch it, lest her rough hands snag on it. But a fair amount fit her reasonably well, and was tough enough to survive her, for when Nan played, she played hard, and with the determination of someone who had the fear she might never be allowed to play again. She played cricket with the boys as often as dolls with the girls. When they were through, Nan had a wardrobe only a little less extensive than Sarah’s.

After she had packed up these new things, she returned to help with the littlest ones, and the next day, when they all filed out to take the omnibus to the train station, with a cart to follow with all of their luggage, it was with startlement that she realized she had just as much as anyone else.

Neville had something new as well, a fine new round cage to travel in with a handle on top, as did Grey. Both cages had cloth covers over them, more to prevent the curious from looking in and poking at them, than to prevent the birds from doing anything or seeing things that might affright them, as there wasn’t much that would frighten either of them. Grey settled onto her perch with a sigh of resignation, but Neville grumbled.

“They won’t let y‘ on the train loose, Neville,” Nan explained to him with patience. “Look! Grey knows, and she’s bein’ good!”

Grey gave Neville the same look Mem’sab gave naughty boys. Neville bristled for a moment with resentment, then shook himself, hopped onto the perch, and muttered once more as Nan closed the cage door and dropped the cover over the top.

The omnibus ride to the station was uneventful except for the excitement of the children. Sahib had closed the warehouse for an hour or two and brought his workers down to help with the luggage at the station. He and Selim would remain living at the school with two of the servants to tend to them and keep the school up; he would only be coming down on the weekends. Seven pushcarts heaped with luggage were all duly checked in and tagged with their destination, and the children all filed into the bright red railway carriages practically vibrating with anticipation. The birds, of course, came in the carriage; one conductor looked as if he might demand that they ride with the luggage, but a gimlet stare delivered by Mem’sab made him change his mind.

The seats right next to the windows were the most desired, but no one disputed the right of the girls and their birds to have two of them. Sitting across from one another on the high-backed wooden benches, with the cages held on their laps, Nan and Sarah pulled up the covers on the window side of the round brass cages so that the birds could see out.

The train pulled out of the station with a metallic shriek of wheels, the final warning hoot of the whistle, and a lurch. It quickly picked up speed to the point where Nan was a bit uneasy… she had never traveled this fast before. She hadn’t known you could. She wasn’t entirely sure you ought to. She had to keep glancing at Mem’sab, sitting beside Sarah, calmly reading a book, to reassure herself that it was all right.

The city gave way to the suburbs, houses each with its own patch of green lawn, set apart from its neighbors rather than crowded so closely together that the walls almost touched, or actually did touch. And then, out of the suburbs they burst, into green space that Nan immediately and automatically identified as “park,” except that it went on as far as the eye could see, it was somewhat overgrown, divided by fences, walls, and hedges, and—and there were animals in it. Herds of sheep, of placid cows, even of goats. All of them browsing, or occasionally raising their heads to watch the train pass.

Nan was beside herself; this was the first time she had ever seen a cow, a sheep, or a live goat. Until this moment, they had only been images in a picture book. She was surprised at how big the cows were, and when she saw the woolly sheep with their half-grown lambs frisking alongside, her fingers itched to touch them. Horses, of course, were everywhere in the city and she knew horses quite well, but it was the first time she had ever seen a foal, and the lively awkward creatures made her exclaim and forget her fear of how fast they were going.

Grey was excited and interested; atypically, she said nothing in words, instead, “commenting” on the passing scenery with little mutters, whistles, and clicks. Sarah, too, kept her attention riveted on the landscape, which surprised Nan, considering how far her friend had traveled, until Sarah said, in a surprised voice, “This is nothing like Africa—”

“It ain—isn’t?” Nan replied.

Sarah shook her head. “The trees are different; the leaves are smaller, the trees aren’t as tall or as green. There are big vines with huge leaves everywhere in the jungle. The bushes are different, too. Even the cattle are different; the cattle in Africa are leaner, with longer horns. We don’t have sheep. The goats are the same, though.”

Grey whistled.

Neville yawned, doing his best to look blasé. Nan laughed.

“Nothing flusters his feathers,” Sarah said fondly. “You’d think he journeyed by train every day.”

“Well, he has done just about everything else,” Nan replied reflectively. “An’ it’s not as if he don’t know what countryside looks like. Reckon he’s flown out to look at it a time or two.”

All four of them continued to watch the landscape fly past with great interest. Nan wondered fleetingly what a longer trip would be like; they were due to arrive, so Mem’sab said, before noon, and would be at Highleigh Park by that hour at the latest. Did you eat on the train? She supposed you could sleep on it, the seat was more comfortable than many other places she had slept. But what did you do about a loo? Did the train stop so that everyone could traipse out, use one, and come back aboard?

This was not a “special,” and it made several stops along the way. The little towns and villages surrounding the railway station were picture-book perfect, so far as Nan could tell; so perfect it was hard to believe people actually lived in them. She wondered what life would be like in one, so small that everyone knew everyone else, and all about everyone else’s business, too.

Finally, at just about the point where she was beginning to wish she could get up and move about, the conductor announced their village. “Maidenstone Bridge. Maidenstone Bridge!” And to Neville’s disgust, Nan dropped the cover over him again and prepared to leap to her feet to get out, for she had a sudden panicked image of herself not managing to disembark before the train pulled out of the station, and the train leaving with her trapped on it.

She needn’t have worried. The train remained in the station for a good long while after they all poured out and their luggage was sorted out and piled, once again, on pushcarts. But as Nan surveyed the quiet village street, without seeing a sign of an omnibus, she had another feeling of repressed panic. Now what? Were they supposed to walk to this place pushing the handcarts before them?

That was when the first of the wagons came around the corner.

There was a veritable parade of them, big commodious farm wagons, and when the first driver hailed Mem’sab, it became clear the carts had come for them. One came with an empty bed for the luggage, and the rest had been padded with a thick layer of hay for the children to sit on. With the wagons came a set of burly farm workers, smelling of tobacco, horse, and hay, who tossed the children up into the back of the wagons as if they weighed nothing. When they came to Nan and Sarah, they lifted each of them, cage and all, over the back of the wagon to settle at the rear. A more dignified charabanc had been provided for Mem’sab, the teachers and some of the servants, though the ayahs were happy enough to be helped in alongside their small charges in a third wagon just for the little ones.

Wisely, the farmers had separated the boys and the girls into separate wagons. They boys were able to tumble about in the hay and roughhouse as much as they pleased without getting into too much trouble over it.

In Nan’s opinion, they were missing the best part of the journey with their skylarking. There was so much to look at, she felt as if her whole body was filling up with new sights. It was all like something out of one of her books; all those things that had been described in words now suddenly had things attached to them. The lane they traveled down, with thick hedgerows on either side, was nothing like the thoroughfare called a “lane” in London, and now she understood, really, how one could get tangled in a hedgerow and be unable to get through it. When they traveled down a part of the lane where the trees formed a dense green archway above it, so it was as if they were traveling in a long, living tunnel, she was practically beside herself with pleasure as she recalled just such a description in another book. The horses’ hooves had a different sound on the soft dirt of the road than they did on the paved streets of London, and the scents! She had never smelled so many wonderful things! Flowers, and new-cut hay, a fresh green scent of water utterly unlike the smelly old Thames, wood smoke and things she couldn’t even begin to identify. Birds sang and twittered everywhere, the hedges were alive with little birds, and there were rooks twanging in trees everywhere. Even Neville forgot to look bored.

And then, they found themselves passing beside a wall, a very tall cream-colored brick wall topped with an edge of white stone, exactly like the one around the school, except this went on for a very long distance. It was covered in ivy, and craning her neck, Nan saw a gate in the wall, a gate made of wrought iron like the one at the school. The charabanc ahead of them turned and went into the gate, as a man stood there holding the gate open. Right inside the gate there was a house of black timbers and white plaster with a thatched roof, and at first Nan was horribly disappointed, wondering how all of them were supposed to fit into that house, because it didn’t look as if it had more than two or three bedrooms at best—

But the charabanc and then the wagons kept going, and that was when the word “gatehouse” connected in her mind with the house at the gate, and she stared at it in awe, realizing that here was a house just for a man and his family to live in so he could tend the gate. And that was all he did!

The cavalcade continued on up a twisting lane that led through wooded and meadowed land that looked exactly as well groomed as a park, and then turned a corner—

And there it was, and Nan blinked in surprise and even shock at the place that would be their home for the next month.

It was a chaotic, glorious pile of a place, a mishmash of styles and eras, and if Nan could no more have named those styles and eras, she could certainly tell that the blocky stone tower with its slitlike windows that anchored the left was nothing like the mathematical center of more cream-colored brick and tall, narrow windows, which was in turn, nothing at all like the florid wing thrown up on the right. The only unifying force was that except for the square tower, it was all built of the same mellow cream-colored brick of the wall, and that was all.

And it was enormous. Easily three times the size of the school.

Nan looked around her, and so did the rest of the children, eyes as wide as they could stretch—at manicured parkland that could easily hold three Hyde Parks and then some—at the huge pile of a building, that promised endless opportunities for exploration—at the glimpse of gardens in the rear, and beyond that, a hint of water. And for the first time they all understood that all of this was, within reason, theirs for the month, to run in, play in, explore, hide, make up stories in and act them out—

And it was Nan who summed up all their feelings in a single word.

A word which burst out of her like a cannonball out of a gun.

“Cor!” she shouted in glee.

Mem’sab, being handed down out of the charabanc, merely looked up and smiled.

8

MUCH as he admired and depended upon Lady Cordelia, there was some relief for David Alderscroft in being in a place to which she could not go. Here in his club, surrounded by men and the things of men, with not even a hint of women about (the few maidservants kept themselves discreetly out of sight as best they could), there was a sense that one could let down one’s guard and relax.

Not that Cordelia was like most women, but still… here, one didn’t have to be so terribly careful of manners and speech, and if one made a faux pas, a man would simply wave it off, where a woman would stew about it for hours. Women were grand ornaments to life, but even the best of them forgot that a man needed to be a man among men on a regular basis.

Small wonder that many men all but lived at their clubs even when they did not have rooms there. Even working men knew the pressure of too-attentive female companionship, and had their pubs and their coffeehouses. He never felt quite so comfortable as when he was at the club, with women restricted to the Visitors’ Parlor and Visitors’ Dining Room—and if there were females in a resident member’s rooms, well, that was his business and had nothing to do with the rest of the members. One could have sisters and a mother, after all. And aunts. And if they were deuced attractive sisters and aunts, who might or might not have careers on the stage, well, such things happened. So long as they did not intrude on anyone else, it was none of his business. Here, not only were the members incurious about who came in and out, so long as it was discreet, they were incurious about what came in and out, and a phenomenal number of them were Elemental Mages, occultists, or had had brushes with the uncanny. Here, they knew how to keep secret and silent when odd things happened. And here he had chosen to make the headquarters of his new incarnation of a much older Elemental Masters’ Master’s Circle.

The Master’s Circle, or White Lodge, was an ancient magical tradition, created for the purpose of self-policing one’s own kind, as it were. Originally intended to hunt down and destroy the enemies of the members, it had evolved to the more civilized function of ensuring that no Elemental Master within its jurisdiction attacked another, or attacked those not blessed with magic.

It had been at its most active during the Regency, when the notorious Hellfire Club (which actually had very little in the way of true Magical power) and those modeled after it (some of which did) had flourished. Since that time, it had declined to little more than a social group that occasionally did some investigative and disciplinary work. One of the most recent had been the ill-fated, though ultimately successful, attempt to track down and bring to heel a wayward Fire Master—the attempt that had cost David’s own father so much. It had been David’s idea, not Cordelia’s, to revitalize the lodge and make it more effective. In this, he flattered himself, he had been quite successful—enough so that he heard that he was being called the “Wizard of London” now.

Truth to tell, Cordelia did not much like the Circle. He suspected that she resented the fact that she was not permitted inside the club and had not been invited to join, but really, a woman had no real place in a Master’s Circle—

Well, most women. There were a few, a very few, who like the few neck-or-nothing riders in his Hunt Club, could keep up in terms of energy and sheer instinct for the kill with the best of the men, but they were rare indeed. He could not imagine Lady Cordelia in such a position, with her cool, calm demeanor and immaculate manners. She would regard much of what the Circle did with distaste, as “dirtying her hands.” For heaven’s sake, he couldn’t even imagine her on the back of a horse in hunting dress, much less traipsing across the countryside in search of a rogue magician!

So he ignored her obvious disdain for the work of the Circle, as he ignored nothing else she said or did, and went early to the meetings of the Circle so he could enjoy the masculine ambience of the club before he picked up his arcane duties.

This particular Master’s Circle had been the one to which his father had belonged, and it had been when his father had been unable to muster an adequate hunting party and had been injured that had made David take notice. He had decided then that the situation simply would not do, and began rectifying it.

Now it was a matter of sending a few messages across the city to muster a full-strength hunting party within the hour, and within three, a Circle of Initiates could be assembled.

There were, in fact, enough Mages and Masters in the group to gather a Circle Trine if the need arose, and that had not been the case since the Circle had first been formed. Possibly the fact that the Circle had been moved to London, where most of the members at least had town homes, had made the difference. Perhaps it was because in London there simply were so many people it was not at all difficult to find enough Mages. Perhaps it was because it was in a men’s club; it was easy to give the wife the excuse that one was going to one’s club in order to slip out. Granted, Mages usually married Mages, but women with the Talent were still women, and inclined to favor commitments to dinner parties over commitments to the Master’s Circle—and were equally inclined to be both far too curious and far too suspicious when a gentleman had to be evasive about where he was going and what he was doing.

Nor could they manage to keep the secrets secret.

But a man could say, “I’m going to the club,” and a woman would nod and think nothing more of it.

And perhaps that was the main reason for the success of the Master’s Circle. A man could come here, do the Work of the Circle, and return home late, and the spouse would ask why so late a return, and a man could say “Oh, Lytton went off on one of his shooting stories and we lost all track of time,” or “A billiard game turned into a match, you know how it is,” and if there were no signs of inebriation or the presence of floozies, there would be no further questions.

Yes, that might be the best reason for success of all.

Tonight would be routine, a follow-up meeting of the key members of the Circle to find out the disposition of a little problem Nigel Lytton had reported, a matter of an Elemental Magician gone wrong in London itself. It was fairly trivial as such things went, and a preliminary report had stated that the miscreant in question had already passed the jurisdiction of mortal justice, but Alderscroft liked to have things properly neatened up in the wake of the resolution of any situation.

And besides, it was as good an excuse as any to take supper here.

Although his cook—his chef, rather—was good, he was also French, and it was a secondary relief to enjoy simple English fare once in a while as well. It had occurred to David, and more than once, that perhaps he ought to sell or close up his town home, take up residence here, and a great many aspects of his life would be improved. There would be no more servants’ crises, for instance; those details were taken care of invisibly by the club staff. Normally such things were handled with equal invisibility by one’s wife or mother, but David had neither, and had to deal with staff upheavals himself.

But no, Cordelia would not be able to go past the Visitors’ Parlor room, which would mean that to get further lessons from her, he would have to come to her home, and something about that made him feel rebellious. Silly, perhaps, but nevertheless such a feeling would be counterproductive to actually learning anything.

He took the steps of the club briskly and nodded to Stewart, the doorman, as that worthy held the portal open for him. The familiar and comforting aroma of tobacco and brandy, books, and newspaper struck him as he entered, and he headed straight for the Members’ Dining Room without a pause. The savory scent of good roast beef met his nose as he entered, which cemented what his selection would be in his mind before he even sat down.

Scotch broth, to begin, and oysters, then roast beef and potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, new peas, and an apple tart… wonderful. He savored his brandy and a cigar afterward, and wondered why his expensive chef could not understand that plain food was just as good as, if not superior to, the fancy sauces of French cooking. And it made him think, fleetingly, of their good old cook, back at the manor, who had made it very clear that she would not be moving to London.

But no. The disadvantages of life there so far outweighed the advantages that there was no comparison. He was not, and never had been, the sort to enjoy country life. Nor was Cordelia, really. Now Isabelle—

With a faint oath, he forced the thought of Isabelle from his mind. What was wrong with him anyway? Time and time again, he found himself thinking of the silly girl, someone he had given no thought to whatsoever for years!

It was enough to put him right off enjoying his brandy and cigar, and with irritation he extinguished the latter and left the table to go up to the top floor of the club, where the rooms reserved for the Master’s Circle were located.

The top floor was called the Founder’s Suite, and had once been the residence of the founder of the club who had himself been an Elemental Master. It had been vacant for years; no one had the temerity to consider taking over the space that had once housed so formidable a personality. But a good half the space was taken up by a Meeting Room and a Working Room, and when David had brought the Master’s Circle to his club, it had been with the idea in mind of using these rooms.

That Founding Member in question had been an Air Master, and the light blues and whites with which the area was decorated had not fared well over the years. By the time he got permission to use the rooms, the whites had yellowed and the blues gone to muddy blue-gray. The net effect was of ingrained grime. At his own expense, David had arranged for it all to be redone in Turkey red, ocher, and other colors he found comfortable. No one seemed to object, though he suspected one or two of the others found it amusing that the place was clearly a haven for a Fire Master. But he consoled himself with the knowledge that the colors were practical, unlike lighter tones that honestly would not survive a winter of soot and pea soupers.

There should be no work tonight, so he went straight to the Meeting Room. Deliberately, with the vague idea that King Arthur’s Round Table was a good idea to establish equality among peers, there was no “head” or “foot” to the square table in the middle of the room, and no difference in the quite comfortable chairs. As he had requested, the gaslights had already been lit; he brought in a newspaper and settled down to read it until the rest arrived.

It would not be a full meeting tonight by any stretch of the imagination, so as the others trickled in, they all clustered at the end of the table where he was. When they were all assembled, he rang for the servant, who brought the decanters of port and brandy and glasses, and left. As was their custom, they served themselves; the brandy had been supplied by David from his father’s private stock, the port by Atherton Crey. Both liquors were over a hundred years old. The pouring of the drink signaled the start of business.

“So, Nigel,” David said, cradling his snifter in his left hand to warm the contents and release the aroma. “Give us the full report on that anarchist incident.”

Nigel, Lord Lytton, was an Earth Master, and as such acutely uncomfortable in London, where so much of the soil was covered over, poisoned, or both. He always looked half-choked whenever he came into town, and today was no exception. His long, solemn face looked even longer than usual, and was certainly several shades paler than it ought to be. “If you don’t mind, I’ll begin this where I think it ought to start, and not with that rogue Talent, Connor O’Brian,” he said, passing his hand over his thinning, nondescript brown hair. “And that is with a little girl. Two of them actually, since they seem to be inseparable, but the one that concerns us is already a powerful medium, and she’s barely ten.”

David, who knew some of this already, merely nodded, but the others looked variously surprised or impressed, depending on their natures.

“There’s a lady and her husband who have a school for the Gifted children of expatriates mostly posted in India,” Nigel continued. “Not all the children are Gifted, of course, but this is where they’re sent if their parents know of the place. Harton School. Isabelle and Frederick Harton; she met him in India, where they picked up some more Gifted servants from among the natives there. My wife knows the woman; old school friend of hers that went off to India once her school days were over.”

The name “Isabelle” had struck David Alderscroft with the force of a blow, and to hear that the woman was a school friend of Nigel’s wife only made it worse. To sit there and listen to a description of a woman that he was more convinced with every word was “his” Isabelle took all his strength of will. It took a great deal of effort to wrench himself out of his numb shock to listen, even with half an ear, as Nigel explained how the little girls had been lured to the building in question and shut in, while an Earth Wight specially conjured and bound to an existing spirit that already haunted the place there was loosed on them. He wasn’t the least interested in two little girls, no matter what their plight had been—

He managed to get his attention back on the subject as Nigel described capturing the creature, then interrogating it as to who had brought it there, then banishing it. It was a strong Elemental; it had taken Nigel and three friends to do the job.

“It didn’t know the Master’s real name, of course, but what it knew led us to O’Brian who was, by that time, dead,” Nigel concluded. “The problem with all of this is that those little girls, obscure little girls, with no enemies, were without any shadow of a doubt, the real targets of the attack. Alderscroft, that makes no sense. Killing them would accomplish nothing, get no notoriety for his cause. Unless—”

“Unless what?” asked Crey.

“Unless he—or someone using him—wanted to be rid of that specific little girl.” Nigel pinched the bridge of his nose, probably to relieve a headache. “That she is already a powerful medium could make her dangerous to someone.”

“Who?” demanded old Scathwaite—old in years and experience, but keen in mind and as agile in body as some of David’s contemporaries.

“I would say, ask that of those in psychical circles,” David said slowly, slowly getting control back over his runaway emotions. “Especially those who claim mediumistic powers and have none. They have the most to lose, and are the most threatened by a real medium. And if you wanted to hide what you were in order to prevent being caught by your own kind, what better than to hide behind an Elemental Master?”

“By heaven, David, you may be right!” Nigel sounded surprised and relieved at the same time. “It’s the psychical ones who knew about the girl in the first place. All right, I’ll go back to Mrs.Harton and suggest that if she hasn’t checked her friends and acquaintances for someone willing to use anyone and anything to further his own ambitions, she ought to. Then see if any of them can be traced back to a contact with O’Brian.”

“The simplest solution is often the right one,” David replied, and shrugged. “Of course the simplest solution is usually something not very palatable.”

He had managed, by dint of great effort, to shove his emotional reactions off to the side, and cool masculine logic had reasserted itself.

“The point is, our involvement in this distasteful incident is fundamentally closed,” agreed Thomas Markham, a viscount. “It seems clear to me at least that it is wildly unlikely that the instigator is one of ours. The Harton woman should definitely be encouraged to look among her own kind for the enemy. Heaven knows there are more than enough unstable types in psychical circles to account for an attack on those poor little children.”

“And Bea has made sure that the children and school are protected from all sorts,” Nigel put in eagerly—no doubt thinking with relief that now he would be able to go back to his country estate and escape the miasma of London again. “I think everything has probably been done now.”

Nods all around the table. David smiled. “Good!” he said. “Now, I would like to discuss some of our tentative plans for becoming more involved with those in political office who are at the moment unaware we even exist…”

***

Nan had decided that if heaven was anything like Highleigh Park, she was going to have to put a lot more effort into being good so she could end up there.

There had been some initial reserve on the part of the servants about a horde of strange children running loose; not that Nan blamed them, no, not at all. They all got rooms in the area that held the nursery, which also held the rooms for the servants of visiting guests.

That was not at all bad; the rooms were plain and they had to share, but the rooms at the school were also fairly plain and they had to share. The littlest children, too young for lessons yet, got the best of it, Nan thought, because the nursery and schoolroom were both enormous, and the nursery was full of old, worn, but perfectly good toys from previous generations or left by visiting children. All the toys were new to the Harton School toddlers, of course, so they were very happy.

The first of the children to get into trouble was, predictably, Tommy, who seemed to gravitate toward trouble the way a moth was attracted to flame. They had all had their luncheon and most of them had gone off in little groups to explore the parkland, except for Tommy, who had gone off by himself.

Nan and Sarah were—with Grey and Neville’s assistance—investigating a charming but neglected little stone building, when suddenly there was a great crash from the direction of the manor house, followed by a veritable chorus of barks and howls. Sarah and Nan exchanged a glance.

“Tommy,” they said as one, as Grey and Neville exchanged a glance of their own, then flew in the direction of the noise.

By the time they all got there, the howling and barking had subsided, and Tommy was in the custody of the Master of the Hounds, for it appeared that Highleigh Court was home to a foxhound pack, and Tommy had decided the half-grown pups were irresistible. Unable to get into the locked kennel, he had climbed the fence around the pens, fallen off, and landed among the hounds, who reacted with confusion and startlement. Once he had fished Tommy out of the pen and ascertained he was not seriously hurt, the Master of the Hounds was pink with anger.

By this time, most of the children from the school had arrived, and so had most of the servants who could spare a moment. The Master had Tommy by one ear and looked as if he was going to haul the boy up in front of some authority but hadn’t yet figured out who that was.

As Nan and Sarah hid, Mem’sab appeared, and the stormy expression she wore did not bode well for Tommy. The Master of the Hounds misinterpreted it, however.

“Now see here, Missus!” he began to bluster. “This boy of yours—”

“Has been getting into where he had no business being,” Mem’sab said, interrupting, her voice stern. “I know this because your master told me that the kennels are kept locked. Tommy knows this because he was told not to attempt any place that was locked up. So what do you suggest his punishment should be? On the whole, I am against whipping or caning, but a good spanking would not go amiss.”

For one long moment the Master of the Hounds stared at her, mouth agape, as Tommy hung limp with resignation in his grasp. “Ah—” the man began. “Don’t much care for beating a boy myself. Beating never helped boy nor dog to my knowledge.”

Mem’sab raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps, then, you could put him to some useful work instead? Since he seems so determined to see the dogs, he could help your underlings clean the kennels?”

Now taken even more aback by the suggestion that Tommy should do manual labor reserved for menials, the Master began to stammer. “Ah—Missus—what would his parents—”

“His parents have left his discipline in my hands,” Mem’sab replied, “And I think he will come to far less harm having a set down to his dignity by learning how much work a servant must do, than he would by a caning. Perhaps afterward he will be more considerate of his servants when he is grown.”

With a silent and astonished audience of manor servants listening raptly, the Master and Mem’sab worked out a compromise that kept Tommy in the kennels, helping to water and feed the dogs and other chores with the hawks and horses until just before suppertime, giving him just enough time for a bath and a change of clothing. Nan couldn’t help but grin; not because Tommy was one of the few who would have been inclined to play Little Sahib over the manor servants, but at the reaction of those servants themselves.

“They’re all on Mem’sab’s side now, aren’t they?” Sarah whispered, as a chastened Tommy was shooed into the precinct which he had but a few moments ago so much desired to get into. Nan nodded, feeling gleeful. She’d known she could count on Tommy to get into something that would put him at odds with the manor staff, but she hadn’t thought he’d do so that quickly.

And Mem’sab cemented that, by turning to her audience—an audience which others in her position might have ignored—and addressing them. “If any of the children get into mischief that discommodes you or violates one of the house rules, I would appreciate it if you would bring your complaint and the child in question directly to me, at once,” she said. “Thank you.”

The servants went back to their work, and the rest of the children went back to their explorations, and Tommy put in a much-scrubbed appearance at dinner in an interesting mood—chastened by the amount of hard work he’d had to put in, but very full of information about foxhounds, rat terriers, and the huge mastiffs that the caretaker and gamekeeper used to help them guard the place.

The next day, and the day after that, passed with only minor incidents—the head cook found three of the boys investigating the cellars looking for a dungeon, and one of the housemaids discovered a toddler who was supposed to be napping running gleefully naked down the portrait gallery.

But the next incident, alas, was all Nan’s doing.

She was passing the kitchen door, when a heady aroma seized her and dragged her inside. It was a scent she had whiffed only once before, and then she’d had no possibility of trying the product, and furthermore, on that occasion she had been literally starving and the aroma had nearly driven her out of her head with longing and despair.

Strawberry tarts. Fresh strawberry tarts. Her mouth watered and the hunger of that long-past day came back quite as strongly as if she had not been eating well and steadily for the past several months.

Perhaps if anyone had been in the kitchen, she would simply have begged a tart from the first servant that looked kind. But the kitchen was momentarily empty, and the tarts were all set out in rows on the big table to cool, and the temptation was too much to resist. She seized as many as she could carry and scurried out with them, to hide (she thought) in a little nook and share them with Neville.

But an alert kitchen maid not only saw that the tarts were missing, but thought to look in the kitchen garden and spotted Neville with half a tart in his beak, and traced his path back to Nan’s hiding place. Found with crumbs on her face and surrounded by empty tins, her guilt had been clear.

Hauled up to Mem’sab with a full belly and just a twinge of regret, she found it hard to look completely repentant.

Mem’sab shook her head and sighed. Without even asking Nan if she was guilty—though of course the sticky fingers were mute evidence of that—she turned to the kitchen maid.

“Who of the kitchen-staff did the preparations for the tarts?” she asked, surprising the maid. “The cleaning and hulling and so forth.”

“Ah, that’d be me, Ma’am,” the maid stammered.

“Then you have charge of her. She’s no stranger to hard work, though you might have to show her what to do. She is yours for the remainder of the day, only see that she gets luncheon and is free in time to clean herself for dinner.” And with that, Mem’sab consigned her to her fate.

So she suffered through the hard work of a day in the kitchen under the direct supervision of the kitchen maid, who took immense and vindictive satisfaction in giving Nan all the most tedious jobs, and Nan discovered at firsthand how much work went into feeding a vast, and now augmented household like the one at Highleigh Park. Worst, probably, had been that she had been denied Neville’s company the entire afternoon of her incarceration, only getting free to scamper outside and try to explain it to him at luncheon. Neville did not entirely understand how doing something so natural as raiding a ready food supply of delicious treats was a bad thing. Nan got the feeling that he comprehended that people thought it was a bad thing, but he still didn’t grasp the reasoning behind that attitude. However, though Nan was incarcerated for the day, there was plenty for him to do, and he simply accepted it phlegmatically.

Two days later, Nan was still debating whether or not the pleasure of stuffing herself with strawberry tarts had been worth the pain of kitchen duty.

By that time the half holiday here was enough to make her giddy with happiness. She could have spent days merely exploring and observing the little lives in the brook that ran through the grounds. The home farm was near enough to run over to, and lambs were just as delicious to pet as she had imagined. There were half a dozen orphaned or rejected little things and extra hands to help bottle nurse them were always welcome.

This was when Tommy, who was now on good enough terms with the Master of Hounds to be allowed inside the kennel to play with puppies, discovered the home farm. Now, he had been utterly forbidden to even consider trying to ride any of the great high-bred horses in the stable, even though the grooms, who were not a great deal older than he, did so regularly to exercise them. There were no ponies there, as there were no children in the household, and he was mad to try and ride something.

And there, lord of the flock of sheep in the pasture nearest the manor, was a great big ram, relatively placid in nature and inclined to accept graciously any tidbits and scratches that came his way.

The combination was as irresistible for Tommy as strawberry tarts had been for Nan.

Nan and Sarah had been bottle-feeding lambs when shouts from the pasture made them and the farm manager come running. By that time, so she later learned, Tommy had already climbed the fence, jumped aboard, and had managed to stay on the ram’s back long enough to get halfway across the pasture before the offended animal bucked him off.

They arrived just in time to see Tommy trying to run—then see Tommy flying through the air when the ram administered his own form of punishment.

He picked himself up again, and the ram repeated the procedure. One more time as he tried to scramble over the fence that divided the pasture from the goose pond sent him sailing into the midst of the geese, who had half-grown goslings with them and were not inclined at all to take this interloper lightly.

The geese decided to compound the retribution. Mister Thackers, in charge of the farm, was by this time laughing so hard that tears were running down his face, and waded in to Tommy’s rescue.

“Oh, my lad,” he said, as Tommy tried very hard not to cry, but was clearly in no little pain, “You’re one of those, ain’t you? Come along of you. I think you’ve learned more than enough of a lesson for one day, without me taking you to your mistress.”

At that point, he took Tommy off to the farmhouse. Nan lingered, as she and Sarah soothed the ram’s anger and indignation, and Sarah wordlessly promised him that no one would try that trick on him again. When Tommy came out again, this time alone, he was walking a bit easier and smelled strongly of horse liniment.

Mem’sab found out about it, of course, but other than a single pointed remark at dinner, nothing more ever came of it.

Neville was in heaven, too; here he had an entirely new set of interesting things to get into and investigate than in London. Mem’sab had gotten him to tolerate a set of bright red glove-leather leggings before they left, carefully fitted to and sewn onto his lower legs, and the gamekeepers and farmers were under strict orders not to shoot the raven with the red legs, so even an incident of egg eating at the home farm was let off with a scolding. Fortunately, the number of eggs a raven could eat at a sitting was far less than the number of strawberry tarts that could be consumed by an active girl at one go. When it was made clear to him that while pigeon, pheasant, quail and chicken eggs were strictly off-limits, rook, starling, sparrow and crow nests were fair game, he was a much happier raven.

As for Sarah and Grey… there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that both were as happy as they could be outside of being home again. Grey, like Neville, managed to get into a great deal of mischief with her curiosity and her prying beak. Unlike Neville, she was sneaky about it and never got caught.

Like Neville, however, she brought back all manner of curious objects for Sarah, and their little treasure boxes were filling fast. Neville found a great deal of trash and treasure in his raids on the nests of rooks and crows. Some were clearly valuable; a silver locket, for instance, and a broken rosary of delicate gold wire and blackened seed pearls that looked extremely old indeed, and a small hoard of coins. Mem’sab always made sure there were no existing claimants for such finds before allowing the girls to keep them. Some were merely interesting; odd pebbles, pot-metal charms, tiny faded pottery figurines and three small dolls of the sort called “Frozen Charlottes” because they were all one solid piece. Some were just trash: horseshoe nails, bits of ribbon and string, unidentifiable pieces of china and metal. Those, the birds kept, in their own little “treasure boxes,” a couple of old tea chests they could open themselves and poke about in.

Mem’sab’s plan for lessons every day was not as onerous as it had sounded. One morning was completely devoted to splashing about in the pond and learning about aquatic life, and similar mornings were spent exploring other parts of the home farm, gardens, and parkland. On rainy days, the servants would open older parts of the building and they would examine history in context as they looked at antique furnishings, pictures, and the rooms themselves. They spent whole evenings learning about stars and planets, and the myths behind the names of the objects in the night sky. There was a daily lesson in gardening, and when the mood was on her, the cook would even give lessons in plain cookery. There was a trip to the forge to learn about metal working, right down to the chemistry of it, and another to the mill to study the mechanics of turning flowing water into something that could grind grain into flour and run other machinery. The French teacher took them out on walks, taught them the French names of things, and required that they converse in that language the entire time. Mem’sab did the same in Latin.

Another set of lessons was that they were going to perform a play, Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They were having to make the costumes and props, learn their speeches by heart, and were also learning what some of the odd things they were saying meant. In Nan’s opinion, none of it was really lessons at all, just a way for Mem’sab to say she was giving lessons without really doing it.

But there were two places where neither Nan nor Sarah felt the least urge to go; two places that made them both feel strange, uneasy and acutely uncomfortable. One was an old dry well that the servants called a “wishing well,” though no one ever made any wishes there, nor in fact, ever seemed to visit. It was in the back of the kitchen garden near the oldest part of the manor. No bird or animal could be persuaded to approach it, and even Tommy, after one curious toss of a pebble into it to see how deep it was, left it alone.

The other was the bridge over the river on the road that led to the next village, a place none of the children had visited yet. Nan and Sarah had followed the road on a long walk one afternoon out of pure curiosity to see where it went.

They came to a signpost, eventually, which at least told them that they had come a half mile from the Highleigh Park gate, and that some place called “Shackleford” was another mile farther on. At this point, the wall of the park ended. The road continued on, as far as they could see, cutting through farm fields. In the far, hazy distance was a church steeple, presumably marking the village.

“Go on, or go back?” Nan asked.

Sarah shrugged. “They didn’t say we couldn’t.” she pointed out. “They just said not to get lost. We can’t get lost if we stick to the road.”

Nan nodded, and they went on.

But they could not have gone more than a quarter mile before they came to a bridge over a substantial river. There was nothing remarkable about the bridge itself; it was built of the same brick and stone as the manor, and was in good repair. Yet the nearer they drew to it, the more uneasy they became—very much like the feeling they had at that dry well, though not quite as strong. As they paused about ten feet from it, Neville circled overhead, croaking that he did not like Nan getting so near to the structure, and Grey fluttered down from where she usually flew beside him, landed on Sarah’s shoulder, and growled.

That settled it. Without a word, they turned, and made their way back to the manor. But both situations had the effect of, not rousing Nan’s curiosity, but cooling it. She did not want to know why the bridge and the well made her feel so uneasy, and even felt a reluctance to discuss it with Sarah, or anyone else.

Finally, she decided that it was a natural reaction, after that encounter with that horrible Thing in Berkeley Square.

“Leave well enough alone,” she told herself, and made an effort to put both of them out of her mind.

For now, at least.

9

DAVID Alderscroft descended from his carriage at the gate of a long-forgotten manor at the edge of some of the least-desirable real estate in London. Though the building itself was substantial, surrounded by an impressive wall and seemed to be in reasonable repair, he could not imagine anyone in his set willing to admit they owned it, much less live in it. He hesitated a moment—surely this could not be the correct address!—but the inscribed brass plaque inset into the right-hand gatepost assured him that this was, indeed, the “Harton School for Boys and Girls.”

So this was where Isabelle, his Isabelle, had come!

With a stern mental hand he shook sense into himself. Isabelle Harton, if indeed she was the same person as the girl he had once been acquainted with, was not, and had never been “his” Isabelle. Not that he couldn’t have had her, had he wanted her! Possibly even, in the crudest and most Biblical sense, had he put his mind to it. But of course, such an action, besides leaving him open to all manner of unpleasant repercussions, was unworthy of him and unworthy of the name he wore.

And, he reminded himself yet again, he had not wanted her.

Well, except during the first flush of infatuation. But Cordelia had persuaded him to responsible behavior, and that flush had cooled under the harsh light of reason.

Even assuming she and the headmistress of this school were one and the same. That was by no means certain, despite the name, and the fact that Nigel’s wife had known the woman in school—that was why he was here, after all, to find out the truth of the matter.

He rang the bell, and while he waited, contemplated the gardens just visible inside the walls. Though not showing the hand of a professional gardening staff, they were not as overgrown and neglected as he would have thought. The plants growing here were all hardy things, sturdy specimens that could tolerate a little neglect and a great deal of London’s bad air. Not manicured, but at least, trimmed and contained.

It took a very long time for someone to answer, long enough that he was about to give up and assume that there was no one in residence, when he became aware with a start that he was no longer alone. A tall, swarthy fellow in a coat of faintly military cut and Indian antecedents had come up soundlessly while he stared at the hostas and ivies through the bars of the gate. It startled him, actually; how long had the fellow been there? How had he managed to slip up so quietly?

“May I help you, sir?” The tones, flavored with a faint accent, were as cultured as his own.

He coughed, momentarily taken off-guard. “I would like to speak with Mrs.Isabelle Harton, please,” he replied after a pause.

“I am devastated that we cannot meet your request, sir,” came the immediate reply, followed by his own surge of anger and disappointment, both quickly repressed. “The headmistress has taken the pupils to the country for a holiday. May I conduct you to Master Harton instead?”

Suddenly he found himself hoist on his own petard. He had wanted to see this woman for himself, and if he discovered that she was the girl of his youthful infatuation, use her current state to destroy any lingering, sentimental memory of that girl. After all, the years were generally not kind to poor vicars’ daughters, and he was certain they would not have been kind to her. One look at a prim-faced, stern-eyed creature in the severe, dark, unfashionable gown that seemed to be the universal garb of all schoolmistresses, and he was sure the soft, pastel-colored memory of that girl would be burned from his mind. The last thing he wanted to do was to confront her husband.

But there seemed no way that he could avoid such a confrontation now. If he declined to meet with Mr.Harton, there would be questions as to why he had turned up, and why he wanted to meet with Mrs.Harton and not her spouse, questions he did not want to , have to answer. Nor did he want the absent Mrs.Harton to have to answer an interrogation about his presence later either—whoever she was.

“Yes,” he said simply, if reluctantly, “Master Harton will suffice.”

The servant bowed, unbolted a little postern door on the left side of the gate, and let him inside the walls. Silently, the man led the way to the front door, and with continued silence, brought him into the vestibule from there into a small parlor.

“If you will wait, sir, I will summon the Master,” the servant said, taking his card. “It will be no more than a few minutes at most.”

In fact, it was less than that. David had no time at all to look at most of the souvenirs of India displayed on the walls and tables of the parlor. The servant’s steps had hardly faded when a different set of footsteps, with a limp this time, heralded the approach of someone new.

David rose and turned toward the door.

Standing in the doorway was a middle-aged man—a gentleman, in fact, who was probably no more than five or six years older than David—with the physique of someone considerably younger than his apparent age. David was immediately conscious that he was not nearly so robust as this fellow; jaunts in carriages around London did not lend themselves to looking as if one hiked six miles through the jungle before breakfast. In coloring, he was ordinary enough, brown of hair and eye, though there was a set to his jawline that suggested toughness and a hint of a smile that suggested sardonic good humor. The hair itself was just a little long and carelessly untidy, as if the wearer had put off seeing a barber for a little. The eyes were frank, honest, and appraising. David had expected a military bearing, given the servant, but there was less of it than he would have anticipated.

He stepped forward, holding out his hand.

The other clasped it, a good, strong handshake, warm, dry and firm. “David, Lord Alderscroft,” David said, wondering what the other made of his own grasp. The man chuckled.

“Plain Frederick Harton, and pleased to meet you. I had been hoping to make your acquaintance, since my wife and I had a bit of a problem with an Elemental Master not long ago.”

David tried not to blink; the fellow certainly did not beat about the bush!

“Erm, yes,” he temporized. “But the problem seems to have solved itself, more or less.”

“So I’ve been told,” came the noncommittal reply. “Would you care to come to my office? You might find it more comfortable than this parlor.”

David had intended to say, “No,” intended to claim he had only stopped to let the Hartons know that the problem with the renegade had been disposed of, but found himself saying instead, “Yes, thank you.”

The man led the way to a small room just off the parlor, lined with books, displaying more exotica, and quite comfortable in that shabby, well-worn way that the lounges of the adventurers’ clubs often looked. Without being asked, Frederick Harton poured and handed him a brandy. Wordlessly, David accepted it, and took a seat in a handsome, if slightly battered, leather chair that accepted his weight and embraced it. He also hadn’t intended to drink what he had been handed, but a whiff and a cautious taste proved it was not an inferior product.

On the wall over the fireplace was a photographic portrait of the Hartons, presumably made in India, since the woman was wearing a white gown suited to the tropics.

And there was no doubt; the woman was “his” Isabelle. Nor did that sepia photograph do anything to erase the memories from his mind. Though looking grave and serious, and certainly as if she had seen many things and perhaps endured many trials, Isabelle Harton looked considerably less aged than the face that gazed back at David’s from his mirror every morning. The years, which had not been kind to him, had laid a light hand on her.

“I hope you understand that while we are grateful for your attention, we are not entirely convinced that the threat has ended with the death of your miscreant,” Frederick Harton said, as he seated himself behind his desk.

“Ah, well, that is what I came here to speak to Mrs.Harton about,” David replied, grateful for a chance to turn the tide of conversation in his own favor. He drew himself up a little and gathered all of his authority about himself. “You see, Mr.Harton, my associates and I think you would be doing better to look among the ranks of the psychical set for your enemy, if indeed there is one.”

He rattled on, repeating all the arguments made in advance, to an attentive, but neutral Frederick Harton, until at last he ran out of arguments.

“I see,” Harton said, sounding unconvinced. “These are all good arguments, to be sure, but it does not answer how such presumed enemy contacted an Elemental Master in the first place, nor how he or she convinced said Master to work for them in the second place. It is a conundrum that has as yet to be addressed.”

Drat the man! Why did he have to be so intelligent and thoughtful? David had hoped to find a stereotypical retired Colonial soldier, rigid and uncomfortable with matters nonmilitary—or else a moony mystic, easily persuaded by a stronger personality. He found neither. Instead, he discovered he was facing an intellect as powerful as his own; he had literally met his match. If this man did not lead a psychical Master’s Circle, it was because he felt enough of them existed that he did not need to create one.

“Unfortunately,” he replied, setting down the empty glass and rising, “The one person who can answer that has gone beyond the reach of our justice, so we shall never know, I expect. Good evening, Mr.Harton. I hope your school continues to flourish with an absence of incident.”

“Oh, where there are children there will always be incidents,” came the ironic reply, as Harton rose and shook his hand. “One simply hopes to keep them confined within the four walls of the school.”

David Alderscroft took his leave, and his carriage, feeling that somehow, though swords had never been crossed in the meeting, he had come off second-best.

***

Props and costumes for the play had mostly been constructed, and still the full cast had not yet been chosen. Nan and Sarah were to be Helena and Hermia, the two friends whose tangled affairs formed the bulk of the play—a natural choice, though Nan was a little disappointed, as she had hoped to be Hippolyta the Amazon Queen. She rather fancied herself in armor.

But Mem’sab and Sarah had convinced her that the semicomic role of Helena suited her better, and after studying the text with Mem’sab’s help, Nan agreed. Anna Thompson, a girl tall for her age and rather angular, would be Hippolyta; the role was not precisely a demanding one, when it all came down to it, and Anna would fill it well enough. Almost all the other roles had been filled, except two of the most crucial: Bottom, and Puck.

The difficulty was that the most natural choice for either of them was Tommy, and he clearly could not fill both roles. Given a choice, he wanted Bottom; he clearly lusted after the donkey’s head worn by the character for the scene with the fairies. He had already tried the papier-mâché creation on so often that not even the much-amused servants were startled to see him cavorting about in it anymore. But in Nan’s opinion there was no one else clever and lively enough to play Puck—

Mem’sab, the girls, and the birds had ensconced themselves in that overgrown summerhouse (which Mem’sab referred to as a “folly”) to sort through the final cast options. And Mem’sab was growing a little frustrated, in an amused sense.

“I vow,” she said in exasperation, after yet another sort-through of the boys, shuffling them into various parts to see if a new configuration would solve the dilemma, “I am tempted to play Puck myself at this point. There is not a single boy half as able to do Bottom as Tommy, he has most of the part by heart already. But there isn’t anyone, girl or boy, as well suited to Puck either! Except, perhaps you, Nan.”

“But I’ve already got most of Helena by heart!” Nan wailed, aghast at the notion of having to learn a different role after all that work.

“Ah, dear lady, and tender maidens,” said a bright voice from the doorway, making them all turn, “Perhaps I can solve this problem for you.”

There was a boy there, perhaps a little older and a trifle taller than Nan. He had a merry face, sun-browned, with reddish brown hair and green eyes, and wore very curious clothing—

At first glance, it looked perfectly ordinary, if the local farmers hereabouts were inclined to wear a close-fitting brown tunic and knee-breeches rather than sensible undyed linen smocks and buff trousers, but at second glance there was something subtly wrong about the cut and fit of the garments. First, they looked like something out of a painting, something antique, and secondly, they looked as if they were made of leather. Now, the blacksmith wore leather trousers, and the village cobbler, but no one else did around here.

And there was something else about this boy, a brightness, a spirit of vitality, that was not ordinary at all.

And that was the moment when Neville made a surprised croak, and jumped down off the marble seat where he had been pecking with great interest at a hole in the stone, to be joined on the floor by Grey. Both of them stalked over to the boy’s feet, looked up at him—

—and bowed.

There was no other name for what they did, and Nan’s mouth fell agape.

But this was not the only shock she got, for Mem’sab had risen from her seat, and sunk again into a curtsy. Not a head-bowed curtsy, though, this was one where she kept her eyes firmly on the newcomer.

“ ‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit!’ ” she said as she rose.

The boy’s eyes sparkled with mischief and delight.

“Correct author, but wrong play and character, for never could I be compared to Ariel,” he replied and swiftly stooped down to offer Neville and Grey each a hand. Each accepted the perch as Nan stared, her mouth still open. “How now, Bane of Rooks!” he said to Neville. “I think you should return to your partner, before bees see her open mouth and think to build a hive therein!”

With another bow, and a croak, Neville lofted from the boy’s outstretched hand and landed on Nan’s shoulder. Nan took the hint and shut her mouth.

Wordlessly, he handed Grey back to Sarah, who took her bird with round eyes, as if she saw even more than Nan did to surprise her. “So ho, fair dame, did you think to plan to play my play on Midsummer’s Day and not have me notice?” he said to Mem’sab, fists planted on his hips.

“I had not thought to have the honor of your attention, good sirrah,” Mem’sab replied, her eyes very bright and eager. “Indeed, I had not known that such as you would deign to notice such as we.”

He laughed. “Well spoke, well spoke! And properly, too! Well then, shall I solve your conundrum with my humble self, and let your restless Tommy play the ass?”

Nan blinked hard, as a furtive glimmer of light that could not have actually been there circled the boy, and then her brain shook itself like a waking dog, everything that wasn’t quite “right” shifted itself into a configuration she could hardly believe, and she burst out with, “You’re him! You’re Puck!”

The boy laughed, a laugh that had a friendly tone of mockery in it, but as much to mock himself as to make fun of Nan. He bowed to her with a flourish. “Robin Goodfellow at your service, my London daisy! Not often evoked these present days, but often in the thoughts of my good country folk, who care very little for the passage of time.”

“And how am I to explain one extra boy to the others?” Mem’sab asked dryly, rising from her curtsy. “Not that I would dare to contradict your will, but we poor mortals must have our proper explanations.”

“Ah, that,” he waved his hand airily. “A simple thing. Say I am the son of a friend of yours, I have conned the part at my school and will come to fill it here. And in your practices, do you take my part as you threatened to.”

Mem’sab smiled. “A sound plan, but what of those others in my charge who will see you for something of what you are and may ask questions I cannot answer without your leave?”

He laid his finger alongside his nose, and then pointed it at her. “Well asked. Well thought. Perhaps a touch of glamorie will not come amiss, with your permission. ‘Twill do them no harm. They will notice nothing amiss, nothing that their minds cannot find an explanation for, and the explanation will seem to come from outside their minds.”

“ ‘Ere!” Nan objected. “Not on us! Please!”

A “touch of glamorie” sounded to her as if Puck was going to do something that would make her and Sarah forget what he was—and she didn’t want to forget!

“We’d like to know what is really happening, please,” Sarah chimed in, as Grey bobbed in agreement and Neville shifted his weight from foot to foot on Nan’s shoulder.

Puck cast a glance at Mem’sab. “And so what think you?”

“That both these girls can hold a secret,” Mem’sab said instantly. “Certainly they already have done so many times in the past.”

“Then I bow to your will, London daisy,” Puck replied with a grin. “Let it be as you wish, and you will see me again, on Midsummer’s Night!”

Nan blinked, as there was a sudden glare across her eyes, like a flash of sun reflected from water, and when she could see again he was gone.

Neville bobbed and quorked once. He sounded surprised.

“Cor!” Grey said, in Nan’s voice. “Blimey!”

“That was… entirely unexpected,” Mem’sab said, sitting down hard, and looking a little out of breath, as if she had been running. “Of all the things that could have happened here, this is not one I would have ever anticipated! To have so powerful a spirit simply walk in on one—I confess it has taken my breath away!”

“Was that really P—him?” Sarah asked, her eyes still round, as if she didn’t quite dare speak the name aloud. “The same as in the play?”

“Ah, now… I hesitate to pin down someone like him to any sort of limited description,” Mem’sab temporized. “And the Puck of Shakespeare’s play is far more limited than the reality. Let’s just say he is—old. One of the oldest Old Ones in England. As a living creature, he probably saw the first of the flint workers here, and I suspect that he will see the last of us mortals out as well, unless he chooses to follow some of the other Old Ones wherever they have gone, sealing the doors of their barrows behind them. If he does, it will be a sad day for England, for a great deal of the magic of this island will go with him. He is linked to us in ways that some of those who were once worshipped as gods are not.”

Nan thought about asking what all this meant and how Mem’sab knew it, then thought better of the notion. Mem’sab had said that she and Sarah could hold their tongues, and this seemed like a good time to prove it.

Instead, she said, “Didn’ you say that them barrows is burial mounds of kings an’ such? So how can they be doors?”

Mem’sab chuckled. “And so they are. But you, Nan, are a little girl and Neville is a raven—yet at the same time, you are a Warrior of the Light, and Neville is your battle companion. Some things, and some people, can be two different things at the same time. Barrows can be both portals and burial vaults, and those who have no eyes to see the doors in the hills will not be troubled by the knowledge that they are both.”

Well, that seemed sensible enough, and Nan nodded.

“Will we see ‘im again afore the day?” she asked.

“Now that I cannot tell you.” Mem’sab pursed her lips. “If you do, be polite, respectful, but don’t fear him. He is the very spirit of mischief, but there is no harm in him and a great deal of good. You might learn much from him, and I never heard it said that any of his sort would stand by and let a child come to harm. His knowledge is broad and deep and he has never been averse to sharing it with mortals.”

“But would he steal us away?” Sarah asked, suddenly growing pale. “Don’t they take children, and leave behind changelings?”

Here, Nan was baffled; she had no idea what Sarah was talking about. But Mem’sab did.

“I don’t believe he’d be likely to,” she replied after a long moment of thought. “Firstly, I don’t think he would have revealed himself to us if he was going to do that. Secondly, what I know of such things is that his sort never take children that are cared for and wanted, only the ones abused and neglected.” She held out a hand, and Sarah went straight to her to be hugged reassuringly. “No one can say that about any of you, I do hope!”

With the casting problem solved, preparations for the play went on so well that it almost seemed as if there was a blessing on the whole plan. Tommy was, of course, in ecstasy at being able to play Bottom. Not only were the servants charmed by the idea of being an audience for such a thing, but the local vicar got wind of the scheme, and asked if they would be part of the church fête, which was also to be Midsummer’s Day. Now that was something of a surprise for all of them, but a welcome one, at least for those who, like Nan and Tommy, felt no fear at performing before larger audiences. So far as both of them were concerned, they’d get right up on stage at Covent Garden without a qualm.

With the new venue in mind, further touches were made on props and costumes. Permission was granted to rummage through selected attics and use whatever they could find there; a happy discovery was that at some point in the past, the inhabitants of the manor had engaged in amateur theatrics and had held many fancy-dress parties. While much of the costuming was sized for adults, there was enough for children, or that could be cut down to fit children, to make vast improvements in the wardrobe.

Mem’sab commented on none of this, but Nan had the shrewd notion that they were the benefactors of someone’s subtle Magics. Not that she cared. She and Sarah were the beneficiaries of this bounty, for Grecian garments (or at least, Grecian-inspired costumes) were the sorts of things easily adapted to child size, and they were now the proud wearers of something that looked entirely professional, rather than something cobbled up from old dust sheets.

Sarah looked utterly adorable, to tell the truth, like something off a Wedgewood vase, with her draped gown and a wreath of wax orange blossoms in her hair. Most spectacular though, were Mary Dowland and Henry Tailor, as Titania and Oberon, respectively; the most amazing, fantastical costumes had been found for them, and if they looked a bit over the top by daylight, in evening rehearsals under dimmer light they looked very magical indeed and nothing like a pair of schoolchildren.

There were enough bumps in the road of production to ease Nan’s fears that things were going entirely too well. There were plenty of forgotten lines, fumbled speeches, and places where it was all too apparent just how amateur this amateur production was. But the closer they got to The Day, the more excited Nan became, and so was everyone else, right down to the servants, who fell over themselves to help.

Rather than cart everything to the church grounds, permission was granted for the audience to come to them. That meant that there would be no need to move anything so far as the players were concerned.

The performance for the servants was set in and around the folly, which would serve partly as stage setting and partly as prop room and changing room, since children able to remember several parts were taking several minor roles at once. The semiclassical structure suited itself well to the purpose, and it was surrounded by picturesque faux “ruins” that removed most of the need for scenery.

The day before the performance, since the weather bid to stay fine (more of Puck’s magic at work?) most of the preparations were done in advance. On Midsummer’s Day the fête was held at the church, and the servants got half days off to attend in shifts. The children also had leave to go, but since it was not a true fair, and the entertainments were entirely home grown, no one really wanted to do anything but final walkthroughs and a full rehearsal. So the fête went on without their attendance.

The final rehearsal was—a disaster. Dropped lines abounded, nerves were everywhere, and even Sarah was reduced to frustrated tears at least once.

At the end of it, Nan was exhausted and discouraged. She felt wrung out—and their Puck had not appeared, so Mem’sab had once again read his lines. She poked at her dinner without any real appetite, until Mem’sab noticed and had it taken away in favor of cucumber soup and buttered bread. That went down easier, getting past a throat tight with nerves.

After dinner, Mem’sab drew her aside before they all got into costume again. “Don’t worry,” she said, with a hug. “The tradition in the theater is that the worse the final rehearsal is, the better the performance will be.”

“But what about our Puck?” Nan asked, forlornly.

“Don’t worry,” was all Mem’sab said. And Nan had to leave it at that, because it was time to climb into their costumes and troop down to the folly, where the servants were already stringing up fairy lights and improvised stage lights, laying out rugs and cushions to sit on for themselves. Wagonloads of people had been arriving since before supper, and people had been picnicking on the lawn in anticipation of the performance to come. There was a steady buzz of talk audible even from the manor itself, and the sound of all those people made Nan’s stomach knot up. It didn’t get better when she heard the couple of hired musicians playing to entertain the crowd—a fiddler, a flute player, and a fellow with a guitar. They had been making dance music for the Morris dancers at the fête, and vicar had arranged that they would also be providing incidental music during the play. They were good. It seemed impossible that even with the desire of the audience to be pleased, the children could pull off a performance to compare favorably with the musicians.

And yet—

Suddenly, between one breath and the next, all of that changed.

The moment Nan set foot in the folly, she felt a change come over her. A curious calm overtook her, curious because she felt tingly and alive as well as calm, nor was she the only one. A quick glance around showed her that everyone had settled. The nerves and restlessness were gone from the rest of the cast; the edge they all had was of anticipation rather than anxiety—

And not one of them mentioned the lack of the promised Puck.

And at the moment when they were all milling about “backstage,” waiting for Mem’sab to announce the play, Nan felt a tug on her tunic and turned to find herself staring into those strange, merry green eyes again. This time the boy was wearing a fantastic garment that was a match for those Titania and Oberon were wearing, a rough sleeveless tunic of green stuff and goatskin trousers, with a trail of vine leaves wound carelessly through his tousled red hair.

“How now, pretty maiden, did you doubt me?” he said slyly. “Nay, answer me not, I can scarce blame you. All’s well! Now, mind your cue!”

With a little shove, he sent her in the direction of her entrance mark, and as she stepped out into the mellow light of lanterns and candles, she forgot everything except her lines and how she wanted to say them.

Now, Nan was not exactly an expert when it came to plays. The most she had ever seen was a few snatches of this or that—a Punch and Judy show, a bit of something as she snuck into a music hall, and the one Shakespeare play Mem’sab had taken them all to in London.