The Wizard of London

But the moment they all got “onstage,” it was clear there was real magic involved. All of them seemed, and sounded, older and a great deal more practiced. Not so much so that it would have been alarming but—certainly—as if they were all well into their teens, rather than being children still. Everything looked convincing, even the papier-mâché donkey’s head. Lines were spoken clearly, with conviction, and the right inflection. Nan and Sarah even made people laugh in all the right places.

And as for Puck—well, he quite stole the show. From the moment he set foot on “stage” it was clear that the play was, in the end, about him.

Yet no one seemed to be in the least put out that he took the play over. Not even Tommy. And perhaps that was the most magical thing of all.

Lovers human and faerie quarreled and reconciled; the rustics put on their silly play with a great deal of shouting and bumbling about. Puck made mischief, then made all right again. The stage lights somehow put out far more illumination than they should have, and the twinkling little fairy lights looked genuinely magical. In fact, there seemed to be a kind of golden, magical haze over it all.

It ended all too soon, with the cast being applauded wildly by an audience on its feet, and all of them—except Puck—carried back bodily by the servants to be treated to a late-evening treat of cakes and ices and tea.

Somewhere, between the folly and the manor, he had vanished again. And no one said a word about his going.

Oh, they remembered him, all right, but no one seemed to find it at all strange that he wasn’t here, sharing in the triumphal treat, basking in the admiration of the servants. As Nan devoured lemon ice and cake with the single-minded hunger of someone who did not eat nearly enough dinner, she found herself in awe of that—

Because it was one thing to work a bit of magic on a couple of people. But Puck had worked a very subtle magic on a great many people; he’d done it flawlessly and invisibly, and in such a way that, as she listened, she realized he had somehow managed to implant in everyone’s mind that the boy who had played Puck was always somewhere on the premises, but in a place other than where the person talking about him was him or herself at that moment.

Out of sheer curiosity, she finally asked Tommy as she got another helping of lemon ice, “Hoy, seen that lad Robin?”

“Went to change out of his costume,” Tommy said around a mouthful of cake. “Said the leaves itched.”

Nan listened with astonishment to the talk going on. No one doubted that it had been him at all those rehearsals, rather than Mem’sab reading his part; memory had been altered, clearly, in everyone except Mem’sab and Nan and Sarah. There were even stories about how he had done this or that in rehearsal! And later that evening, as the servants cheerfully collected costumes and the children prepared for bed, she asked one of the maids where Robin had gone, and was not greatly surprised to hear that, allegedly, his parents had come to collect him at some point while the rest were finishing off the treats.

“Taking the last train back to London,” the maid said cheerfully. “I suppose, a big boy like that, he’s used to staying up late—but it is a pity he couldn’t stay. Still! Your Mem’sab said she didn’t like inviting them to stay without permission of the Master, and that’s only right and proper, since he don’t know them.”

And that seemed to be that.

***

Mem’sab made it a point to come say good night to every child, every night. Sometimes Nan was already asleep by the time Mem’sab got to them, but not tonight. As their mentor entered their little room, Nan was sitting up in bed hugging her knees, Sarah was beside her, and even both birds were still awake and waiting.

Mem’sab held up a hand, forestalling the volley of questions Nan wanted to fire off before they could be launched.

“No, he, didn’t give me any message for you. Yes, that was his ‘glamorie’ at work, and no, I have never seen anything quite like that in my life.” She shook her head. “It was quite amazing. I stood there and watched as peoples’ memories changed, and I could not for a moment tell you how it was done. All I can think is that this is how his kind have protected themselves over the centuries.”

“I thought you said it was wrong to meddle with peoples’ thoughts,” Sarah said, her eyes narrowed.

Mem’sab pursed her lips, and sat down on the bed beside them. “I still think it is wrong—but it would be a greater wrong, and very dangerous for Robin, to have left their memories alone.” She grimaced. “Even I have meddled, now and again. Sometimes you have to balance wrong against wrong and choose the one that does the least harm.” She patted Sarah’s hand, as Sarah looked very troubled. “It’s a hard lesson that you learn, growing up, that you can’t always answer ‘yes’ or ’no,‘ that something is entirely right or entirely wrong. Most of the time the answer is somewhere in the middle.”

“You think we’ll see ‘im again, Mem’sab?” Nan asked softly, hoping that the answer was going to be “yes.”

“I don’t know,” came the reply.

And with that unsatisfying answer, she had to be content. That—and their own, unchanged memories.

10

DAVID Alderscroft had no intention of having any more to do with the Harton School or Frederick Harton. While the man did have a high level of native intelligence, and while he did not have the advantages of a public school education and had clearly worked hard to rise above his plebian origins, he was still, when it came down to the matter, common. He was certainly not in David’s social set. While David considered himself to be free of snobbery, he also regarded himself as a practical man, and practically speaking there was nothing that a man like Frederick Harton and one such as himself could possibly have as mutual interests.

Nevertheless, he decided that it behooved him to do some investigation of the man. After all, frauds abounded in psychical circles, and it was wise to make sure that Harton was not of that ilk. The man’s insinuations that someone among the Elemental Mages of London could be ultimately responsible for the attacks on his charges had been subtle, but exceedingly unwelcome, especially since such insinuations implied that David did not know enough about the Elemental Mages around him to be able to completely refute such a charge. And since when was he supposed to be responsible for the actions of all the Elemental Mages in this part of the world anyway? Wasn’t that like implying that Frederick Harton was equally responsible for the actions of all the psychical Talents in the city?

Yes, whispered a tiny voice inside, but you are the Lodge Master of the Master’s Circle here. You were the one who organized it and runs it. Doesn’t that make you responsible?

As if it wasn’t perfectly obvious that it must have been someone in Harton’s own circles who was responsible. Who else would have had the knowledge and the motivation?

Today he had the results of his investigation on his desk, from the private agent he had employed to delve into the Hartons and their school and small importation business. He should have been pleased to discover that both Hartons had a sterling reputation, but somehow this only irritated him. He knew this irritation was irrational, and that irritated him even more, as he turned the closely-written pages over and read them with care.

Drat them both.

I will forget about this, he vowed. It is a dead issue. Neither of them will trouble me again.

He decided to take refuge from unwelcome thoughts by immersing himself in the round of summer entertainments organized by Lady Cordelia, arranged to introduce him gradually into political circles. Tennis-parties, afternoon teas, dinners—all were designed to make him visible, but not intrusive. Lady Cordelia took a Thames-side summer home for the purpose; something where a wide, spacious lawn suitable for croquet and picnicking al fresco, and the proximity to London were the most important features. Ministers who lived in London had no difficulty in getting to these entertainments, and yet the contrast between the bucolic suburb and the hot, noisy city could not have been greater. In such pleasant surroundings, in an atmosphere in which Lady Cordelia laughingly forbade all talk of politics, it was possible to make a good impression without ever actually saying anything.

Though truth be told, he was finding his acquaintance with these lions of Parliament a bit disappointing. If he had followed his inclinations, they were not the folk he would have been spending these pleasant summer hours with. None of them had much in the way of interests outside of politics. All were devoted, more or less, to the arts of manipulation. They were façades, like stage scenery, implying a substance and solidity that was in reality nothing more than paint on canvas. They did not read; they did not think much past the needs of themselves and their select circle. When they attended plays or concerts, it was not to pay attention to the performance, but to be seen attending the performance. Their wives were pleasant nonentities, chosen for their ability to adorn a dinner table and play gracious hostess—and for the ability to smile and meekly accept whatever their lord and master decreed. Outwardly respectable, the pillars of society, they stood four-square for Moral Behavior, Propriety, Virtue, and Values, and there wasn’t one of them that did not have a mistress tucked away in Mayfair, shared the attentions of a London courtesan, had at least one maidservant who did a bit more for her master than dust, or visited a discreet brothel on a regular basis. And that was merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

That they were venial was not what bothered him so much; it was the hypocrisy. All men had their failings, and he was no more a bastion of personal rectitude than the next fellow, that he should go casting stones. The problem was that these men set themselves up as the models of rectitude while secretly and deliberately choosing the opposite path.

He knew these things—and other personal failings—because Lady Cordelia kept him informed of them. Not that he was supposed to do anything with the information, no, nothing like that. He was supposed to hold it close against the day when a subtle hint would convey a tacit warning that cooperation was better than opposition. And that bothered him, too. It felt somehow wrong.

It was a chess game on a grand scale, hunting for weaknesses, not exploiting them yet, but having the knowledge ready if it needed to be used. He liked chess. He wished he could take the same pleasure in this game. Certainly, the major pieces on the board were as bloodless as the white-and-black marble pieces of his favorite set.

The trouble was, it was always the pawns that were sacrificed, and the pawns were anything but bloodless. Wives, children, associates—people who would probably suffer more than the major players if everything went badly. You thought about these things, the innocent bystanders, when you were the Chief Huntsman of a Master’s Circle. You had to. In Magic, things were different; when you did something knowingly wrong, when you hurt people who did not deserve hurt, it came back on you later. The scales were evened a great deal faster for a Mage than for an ordinary man, who might wait until the day he was called before the Almighty to answer for what he had done.

He consulted his calendar to discover that this evening’s excursion would be a concert on the lawn of Lady Cordelia’s summer residence beneath the stars—taking the cue from the much-less-genteel church fêtes and outdoor entertainments of London, and making it acceptable for the set to which she and David belonged. As usual, the word “concert” was something of a misnomer. Yes, there would be music—tonight it would be a string quartet on the terrace—but the number of people actually listening to the music would be low. Most would be there to be seen—to display new frocks and jewels, to be seen speaking to the “right” people, to make one’s presence known or reinforce one’s standing in this particular group. Miss too many of these social outings without an adequate excuse and people began to talk, to question if you had been invited at all, and if not, why not—

As he was assisted into his evening dress by his valet for another one of these dreary mock-festive occasions, he found his mind drifting back to summer parties when he had still been in school, when he had spent one week after another making the rounds of week-long visits to estates in the country and had not considered those simpler pleasures beneath his dignity. Then he and the others had gone to the church fêtes, and bought useless embroidered cushions and tatted antimacassars and eaten ices and listened to village musicians and actually enjoyed themselves…

And with a curse, he flung himself into his carriage for another evening of pretense and empty smiles.

But, he reminded himself, this was the life of an adult. It was more than time to put away childish notions, to settle into the serious business of life. Life was not church fêtes and ices. Life was doing things one did not want to do with the goal of getting things, great things, accomplished.

Besides, Lady Cordelia had assured him that eventually he would come to take some sardonic amusement in these occasions, as he watched the façades strut about pretending to be substance.

But in the back of his mind he couldn’t help feeing this was all very inferior to honest laughter and the taste of a lemon ice beneath the stars of a country night.

***

With the excitement of the play over, a languor settled over the children for the next couple of days or so. There was, alas, no further sign of Robin Goodfellow either, though Nan looked in vain for him everywhere she went. It was Mem’sab who roused them all out of it by proposing a contest.

“We have gone over a great deal of the history of this house,” she said over breakfast, three days after the play. “But there is a great deal more here that can be discovered. I want each of you to find out all you can about the history of some particular place or object in this house, and link that to the greater history of England. The one with the story that is best will be allowed to come with me to select a school pony at the Horse Fair.”

Now, since the mere existence of a “school pony” had been the subject of much rumor for two days—originating with Tommy who had sworn he had overheard a conversation between two grooms suggesting that some unknown benefactor was going to field the money for such a thing—the news caused a sensation. Every single girl knew exactly what she wanted—a gentle, fat white pony with a soft nose and big eyes, who would willingly be hitched to a cart for rides all over the estate. And every single boy knew what he wanted—a lively black pony with white socks and a blaze, and an eye full of mischief, who would willingly run at breakneck speed beneath his rider, and take fences even a tall hunter would balk at. Never mind that no more than two of the girls knew how to drive, and of the three boys who had been taught how to ride, none of them had been on a member of the living equine species in more than a year. The lines were drawn, the camps set up, and a grim rivalry ensued.

Now Nan, who was still in charge of helping the ayahs with the littlest children, was at a distinct disadvantage on two counts. One, that she had to wait until her chores were over that morning before she could go in search of her research subject. And two, that while she enjoyed history, her knowledge of it was extremely patchy.

So by the time she got to looking over the grounds and manor house, all the obvious choices had been spoken for. Sarah graciously offered to give up her own choice—the set of African tribal weapons she found in the gun room—but Nan was determined to find her own mystery to unravel.

But it seemed that every time she went to Mem’sab with a choice, it was only to discover that either she had misremembered and they had already learned about it as a group, or that someone else had already spoken for it. She didn’t want to try and ferret out anything like the stories behind portraits or bits of furniture or books, Mem’sab had ruled out things that were clearly nothing more than hunting trophies, like the chandelier of stag horns or the heads of dead animals in the gun room, and the boys had all straightaway bagged things like suits of armor and heirloom swords.

It was with a sense of frustration that Nan began poking around the building, looking now for anything that gave her the least little stirring of interest. There was nothing inside in the areas that they were allowed to explore, and not even for the privilege of going to a Horse Fair was she going to dare the wrath of the housekeeper to venture into forbidden zones. Some of the other girls could get away with that, but it seemed that the housekeeper had dire expectations of Nan’s ability to stay out of trouble, and kept Nan’s leash extremely short.

The knot garden and the tiny maze (so small even the toddlers could find their way in and out of it) had already been taken. The other gardens were “too general” according to Mem’sab, “Unless you can find a specific plant that is unusual or clearly imported.” The folly had been taken. The false ruins were spoken for.

At this point it was late afternoon, and there didn’t seem to be anything that was going to be interesting to look into, which meant things that were difficult, dull, or both. At that point, Nan was kicking a round stone along the path in front of her in frustration when the stone smacked into the side of the dry well. She made her usual aversive detour—and then stopped.

Surely, if she felt a sensation that was that strong, there must be something there worth looking into…

She went to Mem’sab, who raised an eyebrow at her. “It is old enough, surely. If that is what you want—”

“I’m about run out of things, Mem’sab,” Nan confessed. “Dunno what else to do now.”

Mem’sab rubbed the back of her right hand as if troubled. “There is something I do not like about that well,” she said slowly. “I do not know that it is dangerous, but the place troubles me profoundly. I would prefer that if you really want to pursue this, you do it without spending too much time at the well itself. There is something not quite right there.”

“Unhappy memories, mebbe?” Nan ventured shrewdly.

“It could well be. Well, if this is what you want, then by all means, use it as your project.” Mem’sab looked down at her own hands for a moment. “But Nan, be careful about that place. It might be that there is nothing there, but it might very well be that we both sense something dormant there; something asleep. Don’t wake it up.”

Nan had figured that the best place to begin in her hunt for information was with the groundskeeper, but to her surprise he neither knew nor cared about something that was not only useless, but a nuisance, since occasionally things got dropped down it that he had to fetch back up again.

Not by accident, of course. No, it was generally deliberate, at least as far as Nan could make out from the man’s grumbling. He didn’t like the well. No one liked the well. But Master wouldn’t brick it over because there was something historical about it.

Excited now, Nan tried to pursue the question further but the old man refused to talk about it anymore.

Frustrated, she began canvassing the rest of the servants, but most of them had no idea what she was talking about, except that few of them cared to go near the well. Most of them simply said that the well was ugly and there was no reason to spend any time around it. Three of them, however, said that the well made them uneasy and wouldn’t even discuss it.

Dejected, she flopped into a chair at dinner between Sarah and Tommy and spent most of the meal interjecting heavy sighs between their excited comments. Sarah began looking at her curiously, and finally even Tommy noticed that she was being glum.

“No luck with your project, then?” he said, sympathetically. “Come on, Nan, tell us what it is, and maybe we can help.”

“Even if we can’t help, we can try and make you feel better,” Sarah offered.

With another heavy sigh, Nan explained her idea, and that she had come up dry. Sarah shook her head—she was doing the history of a Cavalierera portrait, and having no difficulty, for the artist was quite a famous one, and there were lots of books even in the manor library that talked about it. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything in the library about the well,” she said doubtfully.

But Tommy looked thoughtful.

“Maybe Gaffer Geordie can help,” he said.

Nan blinked at him. “Who’s that?” she asked

“He lives down in the pensioners’ cottages,” Tommy explained.

“He used to work in the stable, oh, a long time ago! Before the last of the old family died and the cousins inherited.”

Well, that sounded promising. But if he was that old—

“He ain’t dotty, is ‘e?” Nan asked dubiously.

Tommy shook his head vigorously. “Not a bit! Whenever there’s something wrong with a horse or a dog, they go to Gaffer before they call in the farrier or the horse doctor. Most times, he sets it right. And when they do call the horse doctor, he won’t do a thing unless Gaffer is right there.”

That sounded even more promising. But it didn’t answer the question of why Tommy thought this Gaffer could help. Before she could say anything though, Tommy answered that question.

“Gaffer Geordie knows everything that’s ever happened here right back to his grandfather’s day,” he explained. “So if there’s anything about the well going back that far, he’ll know.”

The next day, armed with the information that Gaffer lived in the cottage “with all the dogs,” Nan and Neville trudged down to the row of cottages that had been built to house Highleigh servants too old to work who had been pensioned off. And very shortly, Nan realized that the seemingly vague directions were not vague at all, for it was obvious which cottage was the Gaffer’s.

Dogs—all of them old, maimed, or both—lay in the sun along the wall of the cottage on either side of the door, sat quietly watching the street, or attended to doggish business around the grounds. There were probably thirty of them; most were foxhounds, though there was a three-legged wolfhound, and a cluster of pretty little spaniels with various imperfections. The Gaffer himself, like a king enthroned among his subjects, sat on a stool beside his doorway, smoking a pipe, and watching the world pass by.

He was an astonishing sight in Nan’s eyes; she had no idea just how old he was, but his hair and beard were snow-white, and two bushy white eyebrows overshadowed a face that was a mass of wrinkles, in which his eyes appeared like two shiny black currants. He certainly looked a lot older than her gran ever did, and gran had been the oldest person Nan had ever known. He wore a linen smock and buff trousers, a pair of old, worn boots, and a floppy hat.

He gave Nan a friendly nod as she approached, and grinned at Neville. She half expected to hear some sort of country dialect she’d only half understand when he opened his mouth, but instead, out came, “So, raven lass, come to see old Gaffer Geordie, have you?”

Nan nodded, distracted by the dogs, which came up to sniff and inspect her. Neville eyed them with disdain, even contempt. It was pretty clear that Gaffer Geordie saved the dogs no one else wanted. Even the spaniels at his feet, while pretty and charming, were not perfect specimens.

“So what can old Geordie do for you?” the old man continued, eyeing her with curiosity. “I don’t know much but dogs and horses, lass. If there’s aught wrong with your bird, I probably can’t help you.”

Neville quorked, and shook himself. “Neville’s right as rain, sir,” Nan said, as politely as possible. “I heard you knew a lot about Highleigh Park, an’ I wanted to ask you ‘bout something. That dry well by the kitchen garden—”

“Oh, now, that’s an uncanny spot that is,” Gaffer Geordie said instantly, and shook his head. “Had a bad reputation. Some said it was a cursed place, and some said it was a curse on the master of Highleigh. Very uncanny, and no surprise, seeing them bones as was pulled out of it.”

There could not have been anything more likely to spark Nan’s interest than that sentence. “Bones?” she repeated, as Neville bobbed his head.

“Oh, aye, bones. A full skellington, it was, and chains, leg chains and arm chains.” Geordie nodded wisely. “Summun dropped that feller down and clamped the lid on the top, leavin’ him to die. Master of Highleigh that was, back when I was no more bigger than you, reckoned to clean out the well, maybe use it for summat, but after the bones was found, he gave up on the notion of usin’ it for anything. Vicar took charge of them, gave the poor fellow a proper Christian burial. Spot’s been a bit quieter since then.” He scratched his head. “Used to be, there was noise in that well, of a night, now and again.”

“Moaning?” Nan asked, shivering.

But the old man shook his head. “Curses.”

That was all he could tell her, but it was more than she had until that point. The next person to approach seemed to be the local vicar who was, in any case, coming to take tea with Mem’sab. Unfortunately, he could not shed light on the matter either. “That was long before my time, dear child,” he said, shaking his head. And that seemed to be that.

Until, however, someone unexpectedly approached Nan the next day, rather than the other way around.

Called out of the nursery by one of the ayahs, she found the estate manager waiting in the hallway with an enormous ledger under his arm. She knew he was the estate manager only because she had seen him consulting with Mem’sab over some matter and had been told who the lean, slightly stooped, middle-aged man was. He was smiling slightly and pushed his glasses farther up his nose with one finger.

“You would be Miss Nan, investigating the mystery of the dry well?” he asked, making it sound far more intriguing than it had been up until that moment.

She nodded, and he handed the large and heavy book to her, bound in brown calfskin. “The Lord of Highleigh of those days was an amateur antiquarian and archaeologist, although they would not have put it that way back then. In his own writing, he referred to himself as a Student of Natural Sciences. He took notes on everything he found and did in and around the estate, so if there is any record of anything to do with the well, it will surely be in this book.”

Flabbergasted, as well as astonished, Nan took it from him. “Thankee!” she exclaimed. “Thankee kindly!”

He waved her thanks off, peering at her benignly from behind his spectacles. “On the whole, having you children here has been no great work or inconvenience and has been quite amusing. This project of your schoolmistress’ is teaching you all valuable lessons in conducting research, and I am happy to be able to assist.”

With that, he went on his way, leaving her clutching the oversized volume to her chest.

After luncheon, she, Sarah, and Tommy—who, having completed his own history of the suit of armor in the library, was eaten up with curiosity about Nan’s project—took it to the dining room, opened the book on the big table, and began looking through it. The three of them knelt side-by-side on dining room chairs so they could all get a good view. The neat, copperplate handwriting was surprisingly easy to read, and the three of them, with the birds looking on from Nan and Sarah’s shoulders, perused the pages with interest.

This self-professed “Student of Natural History” was more of a dabbler in anything and everything, it seemed to Nan. There were notes on chemical experiments, on stellar observations, weather observations, but what clearly intrigued him most was the far past. It was when he was digging the foundations of the folly that he first encountered some Roman artifacts, and the discovery of the few coins, the bits of pottery, and the old dagger changed his life.

While he did not go wholesale into digging up his estate, he used every new construction project as a reason to excavate. When he was not digging, he was finding other places where he could indulge his hobby.

And that brought him around to exploring the past through the records of his own family, and trying to link what he found to the papers and diaries in the family archives.

He wasn’t often all that successful, and some of his notes seemed to be stretching the facts even to Nan. How on earth could he determine that a coin was Roman, for instance, when it was so worn that there wasn’t anything to show it even was a coin except that it was round and bronze?

Eventually, though, he had built all that a reasonable man could, and he turned his attention to other places he might go looking for bits of the past.

That was when he hit on the idea of clearing out the old well.

The children leaned over the book intently as they realized that they had struck gold at last. The first few entries, mostly the general dates Lord Mathew had uncovered telling him who had ordered the well built and why it had gone dry, interspersed with observations about the weather and the implications for the harvest, were rather boring. One very small man had to be lowered down to the bottom on a rope, and dug the debris out, shovelful by small shovelful, dumping it into buckets to be sent up for examination and disposal. Then it all got sifted once it arrived at the top of the well, and anything not dirt, rocks, and plant life were set aside for Lord Mathew to look at in detail. It had been difficult finding someone willing to go down into the well; it had a bad reputation, and according to Lord Mathew’s notes, the servants claimed that on certain nights one could hear moaning and vile curses coming from the bottom.

Then the digger found the skull and nothing would persuade anyone on the estate to go down into the well. Lord Mathew, now afire with excitement, stripped to his shirtsleeves and had himself lowered down into the hole. With the aid of a lantern held over his head, he meticulously excavated until he uncovered the entire body.

Whoever it was, there had been manacles about his wrists and ankles, with chains on them. Clothing had not survived, but there had been silver buttons on his coat and trousers, and he had worn fine leather boots with silver buckles. Another buckle might have been an ornament on a hat. Lord Mathew tentatively dated these objects to the time of Charles the First. Since this was the time of the Civil War, and many records were lost then when the manor was invaded by Roundheads and many things stolen or burned, Lord Mathew despaired of finding any answer.

Still, he tried—and erring on the side of compassion, turned the remains over to the vicar of the time for a Christian burial.

Nothing else of note was taken out of the well, and that ended the tales of moaning and cursing coming from the well. Lord

Mathew’s researches were in vain; because so many people died or vanished during that time, there simply was no telling who it could have been.

They closed the book and looked at each other, the odd sourish smell of an old book still in their nostrils.

“Well,” Sarah said finally, “you have enough to write that report for Mem’sab now.” And it was true that she did, but the results were less than satisfying.

Nan nodded. “But it don’t solve the mystery,” she added, feeling obscurely disappointed.

“Crumbs,” Tommy said, clearly disappointed. “It doesn’t. Maybe Mem’sab will have some ideas where to look next.”

Nan sighed, and went to fetch pen and paper to write her report. She had no illusions about her report winning the coveted place at Mem’sab’s side, but now she was far more interested in getting to the bottom of this than going to the Horse Fair.

***

She had to wait until she was alone with the headmistress before she could bring up the topic. “I wonder,” Mem’sab said slowly, after she and Nan had finished another of her “special” lessons. “I wonder if there isn’t a way to find something out about the mysterious body in the well directly.” And she looked straight at Nan.

The implication was obvious, since Nan had just completed another lesson in psychometry, one in which she had learned to tell how far back in time a particular reading on an object had taken place. They were sitting in the parlor, and Nan had just “read” one of the old vases there, a huge blue-and-white monstrosity that was always full of fresh flowers.

“Wot? Me?” Nan said, startled. “ ‘Ow? We ’aven’t got the skellington, or even them silver buttons.” Whatever had become of those objects was a mystery, though Nan figured they had been buried along with the remains. They weren’t novel enough, nor old enough, to have entered Lord Mathew’s collection of artifacts and souvenirs.

“The well, Nan,” Mem’sab pointed out. “You can ‘read’ the well itself.”

“Oo-eck.” Nan could have hit herself for not thinking of that solution earlier. “ ‘Course I can! Mind, there’s been a lot ‘uv people gone and touched that well since, things’ll be a bit dimlike.”

Mem’sab gave her an admonishing look. “Don’t you think that’s all to the good? Considering that we are discussing the circumstances that led to a man’s perishing there, laden with chains? This is not something that I would care to experience at first hand.”

Nan shrugged. Sometimes Mem’sab forgot how little Nan had been sheltered from. Murder in Whitechapel was a way of life, so to speak. “ ‘Sides,” she continued, “I got Neville now. He stood down that nasty thing in Berkeley Square. I don’t reckon something that never did wuss than swear ‘ud bother him none.”

From the back of the chair beside her, Neville bobbed his head, fluffed his feathers, and uttered a short “quork.”

“I am more than willing for you to try this, or I would not have suggested it in the first place,” Mem’sab said, interlacing her fingers together in her lap. “However, there are some things we should consider first, and discuss, you and I, and things that I should research myself. I don’t want you plunging headfirst into this, and especially I do not want you doing this without me. Do I have your word?”

With a sigh, and with a glare from Neville that suggested that if she did not promise, he might well give her a good peck, she gave her word.

“First of all, although the memories are old and the remains are no longer physically present, a spirit could still be bound to the place of its death and you could awaken it,” Mem’sab said thoughtfully. “That could be good—we might be able to convince it to go on its way—or bad—because it might attack. So at the very least, I need to be there, and most of the children need to be kept away. I would prefer it if Sahib and possibly Agansing could also be present. Agansing’s people have a great deal of experience with Ancestor Spirits, both good and bad, and that might come in handy.”

“Most of the others—you’re thinkin’ Sarah ought to be there, too?” Nan hazarded.

Mem’sab nodded, but reluctantly, keeping her eyes focused on Nan’s. “Yes and no. Yes, because if there is a spirit, she is the one most likely to be able to speak to it. And no, because if there is a spirit, it may attempt to take her.”

“There’s Grey—” Nan pointed out. “She’s Sarah’s protector. Right?”

“Ye-es,” Mem’sab agreed, but with some doubt. “I simply don’t know how powerful a protector Grey is. And there is also the possibility that you could be harmed by this as well. These are all things that need to be balanced.”

With a sigh, Nan agreed. By this point, it was pretty obvious that Mem’sab was not going to march straight down to the well and have Nan try her power of seeing things in something’s past right soon. It was going to wait until the weekend, at best, which was when Sahib would be coming.

She did, however, go tell Sarah about Mem’sab’s idea that night at bedtime. Both Sarah and Grey listened attentively.

And Sarah, who was sitting in bed clasping her knees with her arms, shivered when she had finished. “I’m not very brave,” she said quietly. “Not like you, Nan.”

Nan snorted. “Brave enough,” she said roughly. “ ‘Ow brave is brave, an’ when does it spill over to daft? Eh? I done plenty daft things some ‘un might say was brave.”

Sarah had to laugh at that. “I don’t like to think of anything trapped or in pain, or both,” she went on. “But that horrible thing in Berkeley Square—it scared me, Nan. I don’t ever want to see anything like that again.”

“No more do I, but this thing, the well, it don’t feel like that thing in London,” Nan pointed out. Then she sighed. “Really, though, we ain’t got a choice. We’ll get to do what Mem’sab says we can.”

“That’s true, and Mem’sab won’t let us do anything that is really dangerous,” Sarah replied, brightening, and changed the topic to speculation on who was going to win the coveted expedition to the Horse Fair.

But Nan stared up at the ceiling after the candles were out with her hands behind her head, thinking. It was true that Mem’sab would normally not let them do anything dangerous…

Not knowingly. But even Mem’sab was concerned that there were hidden dangers here she could not anticipate.

That factor alone was enough to give Nan pause, and she tried to think of things that maybe Mem’sab would not, only to decide that this was an exercise in futility.

Oh, well

, she decided finally, as she gave up the fight to hold off sleep.

Things’ll ‘appen as they ’appen, like Gram used to say. Let’t‘morrow take care of itself

.

11

MEMSA’B, Nan decided, looked worried, but was hiding it well. Nan was more excited than worried, and Neville looked positively impatient to get things started.

Sarah, however, was showing enough nerves for both of them. And she wasn’t even the one who was going to be investigating the well and its haunt in the first place!

“Glaah,” said Neville, and Nan got the sense of “of course she’s nervous, she’s nervous for you!” And immediately she felt a little ashamed of herself. Besides Sarah had said herself she wasn’t “brave like Nan,” and it wasn’t nice to be scornful of her for something she had admitted to herself!

And with that thought, she shook her head at how strange her life had become. Not that long ago, would she have cared what anyone thought? Would she have cared that she herself had thought things about someone that weren’t very nice?

No, of course not. It wouldn’t have mattered. When you were going to bed hungry every night, nothing much mattered except finding a way to scrounge another bit of food. When you got thrown out in the street in the middle of winter, all that mattered was that you could find the penny for a place under a roof that night. Whether or not you thought something about someone that might hurt their feelings if they found out was so far from being relevant to how you lived—

It struck her for a moment how much her life had changed, and in her heart she apologized to Sarah for belittling her. Neville rubbed his beak against her cheek.

Beside Mem’sab were Sahib and Agansing, the latter looking entirely serene. That gave Nan heart; for Agansing was the one person she thought likeliest to sense incipient trouble before it became a problem.

Excluding the other children would have been tricky, except for one thing. The new pony had arrived, and all of them were down at the stable, being introduced, and taking their turns with him. There had been neither black ponies nor white at the Horse Fair, only varying shades of brown, which averted that particular crisis—the chosen beast was an affectionate little gelding with two white feet and a white blaze. Tommy—who had won the coveted position—immediately named him “Flash,” but Flash’s main pace was an amble, so he wasn’t likely to live up to it. He had been advertised as being trained to ride or drive, so presumably everyone was going to be reasonably satisfied with him.

But with that sort of a draw down at the stables, probably no one was going to notice that Nan and Sarah weren’t there. And even if they did, it was reasonable to assume that Sarah, raised in Africa, and Nan, raised on the London streets, hadn’t ever had ponies, and probably didn’t know how to ride or drive.

Which was, of course, true.

Nan had, in fact, encountered the pony and had not been impressed. In comparison to Neville, it came off a poor second in her opinion.

It was no hardship to either Nan or Sarah to be here, rather than at the stables with the rest.

They were all waiting for one thing: Karamjit to return from the stable, with word that the rest were all now fully involved with the pony and unlikely to take it into their heads to come back to the manor and go looking for Mem’sab, Sarah, or Nan.

And at length, Karamjit did appear, stalking around the corner of the hedge like a two-legged panther, taking his place beside Sahib. With that arrival, Mem’sab nodded at Nan, who braced herself, approached the well, laid both bare hands on the stone coping, closed her eyes, and slowly let herself “see” what was there.

There was an immediate surge of terror, but she had expected that and pushed past it. It was the reaction of that long-ago worker to discovering a corpse, and she had suspected this would be something she would sense very strongly. It was relatively recent in the life of the well, and it was powerful. With it came panic, the sense of being stifled and trapped, fleeting images of rough walls and above all, the need to get out. It didn’t last long, and she moved beyond the moment.

Then, there was nothing, for a very long time.

Well, not nothing, precisely, but only vague whispers of a thousand passing personalities that hardly left an imprint at all; merest hints of emotion, piled one atop another in a confusing heap, and nothing much in the way of images. She was used to this sort of pattern emanating from a very old object, but the well was so public a place and it was so easy for people to brush a bit of themselves on it in passing that it was like pushing her way through endless, ghostly branches in a haunted forest without an end—

Then—

A force hit her like a runaway wagon.

Damn you!

Words—oh, yes—definitely words, but impact that shook her and made her fall forward against the stone wall of the well.

The anger, the fear, the despair struck her with all the immediacy of a physical blow.

Immediately, she felt Neville push himself into her neck, as her hands clutched the rough stone, and her body reeled along with her mind. She reached for his mental presence even as she managed to raise a hand to touch his neck, and the feelings receded.

But not so far that she could not read them.

She had images now, a dark-clad body curled into a fetal ball, chained hand and foot. A man, dying of thirst, knowing he was dying, and such rage in him that the rage itself took on what was left of his life force.

I know this part, she thought. She pushed past the images and the rage. This was the ending, the last bitter moments of a life. She needed to see where it started—

More images flooded her; she let them come. She knew that the best way for her to decipher the past of an object was to allow all the images to flood in at once, and sort them out after she had taken them in.

The well had “seen” the man, but the well had no eyes, so she would never know what the man had actually looked like, other than that he was lean, and his clothing was dark and quite plain…

Another surge of emotion, more sustained this time; outrage rather than anger, and fear. Disbelief. Horror. Each of these in turn, all linked with a thought: they’re not coming back!

Who was not coming back? No answer there; only the long-ago press of emotion as a man realized that he had been forgotten, abandoned, left to a fate that had only one ending.

“ ‘E can’t believe this. Whoever put ‘im in there either forgot about ‘im or somethin’ happened,” she heard her own voice saying dreamily. “He’s hearin’ commotion an’ ‘e reckons it’s the whole household packin’ up an’ leavin’ and not knowin’ ‘e’s down ‘ere. ‘E’s been yellin’, but nobody ’erd ‘im.” More images, and then, not images at all, but the things that had happened were happening to her; being lowered carefully into the well, head ringing from the blows, licking swollen lips and tasting blood, unable to see out of one eye. Anger at being defeated, at being caught. No words now, only feelings, emotional and physical.

There was a kernel there that was Nan, that knew it was a little girl, that the country was ruled by a Queen and not a King, that none of this was real. There was the sense of an anchor, a protector, who sheltered that kernel of herself. She had to just let it all wash over her, and not try to fight it, because fighting would only wear her out and thin her hold on herself.

She closed in on herself, made herself like a hard little stone, the kind you got in your shoe and couldn’t get rid of. This wasn’t an attack, any more than the foot in the shoe was an attack on the stone. There wasn’t even a person behind it. This was all just idiot emotion, left behind by the trauma of long ago. Maybe there had been a ghost at one time, howling to be found, cursing those who passed by. If so, Christian burial, even though no one knew what name to put on a marker, had probably put an end to the haunts.

Finally, the little stone that was Nan dropped out of the swirling chaos of left-behind emotions. She had come through it. She was on the other side.

She opened her eyes, blinked twice, and sat down quite suddenly on the ground.

***

Isabelle shook her head. “A mystery still,” she mused. “From Nan’s description, I would guess that the man was a Roundhead, perhaps a spy? For whatever reason, someone here decided he was a menace and imprisoned him in the well.”

“And didn’t tell anyone else,” her husband pointed out. “That was where it all fell apart. We know why no one came to let him out—there was no one here.”

Now that they knew what to look for, they knew that as the Royalists lost ground to Oliver Cromwell’s troops, the family here had abandoned their manor, taken all the portable wealth they could muster, and fled across the Channel. As it happened, they had a great deal of “portable” wealth, and they had been able to get across the countryside and into France with no real difficulty. Others who had waited longer had not been so lucky…

Frederick stretched, accepted a cup of tea from Isabelle, and looked to Agansing. “You’re certain that this wasn’t deliberate murder?” he asked. “Clearing that well of the taint of something like murder—”

Agansing shook his head. “The man’s captors were hardly kind, but there is no trace in the original thought patterns that he anticipated such a thing here.”

“Besides, dearest, why would anyone go to the trouble of binding and chaining him, then lowering him carefully into the well, if they intended to murder him?” Isabelle pointed out. “It would have take far less effort to simply knock him on the head or shoot him and throw him in the river. If he was found at all, it would be assumed he was another casualty of the war. It’s what I would have done if I had wanted to murder someone at that date.”

Agansing, for all that he knew her well, looked a little aghast. Frederick reached across the distance between their chairs and patted her hand affectionately. “Sometimes, my love, you make my blood run cold,” he said fondly. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”

She sniffed. “Really, Frederick, I am only saying what I would have done, had I a wicked nature and been inclined to murder someone during the Civil War, not that I would countenance doing any such thing.”

He chuckled; he’d been teasing her, of course, but she was a little irritated at him. It was not the sort of teasing she enjoyed.

Well, perhaps her nerves were irritated by being in proximity to the negative emotions in that wellhead for so long. She sat on her irritation and went on. “We definitely need to cleanse the place, or something might well take advantage of the situation. You saw for yourself how readily little Nan became absorbed; there is a great deal of energy there, and if we still have an enemy to Nan and Sarah, that place could be used to feed and hold a truly dangerous entity.”

Frederick nodded. “I completely agree.” He rose, cracked his knuckles, and held out his hand to assist her to rise. “And there is no time like the present.”

Cordelia was angry.

The servants sensed it, and stayed as far out of her reach as possible. She would have taken her anger out on David, but he had gone off to a country house party for the next several days. She had been invited, but she had turned the invitation down; the host bored her, the hostess was worse, and it would have been one stultifying round of lawn tennis and croquet in the afternoons, and rubbers of bridge and politics in the evenings. Except she would have been excluded from the politics, relegated to gossip and amateur theatrics with the ladies, and the politics were the only part of the house party she would have found interesting.

But several important men had been invited, which meant that David had to go. So he was not here to suffer the sting of her anger either.

She sat in her exquisite parlor, and after long, hard consideration, she leveled her gaze on an extremely expensive porcelain vase David had given her, full of water and white lilies that were nearly as expensive as the vase. She stared at it; obedient to her will, the little cold Elementals that looked like white, furred snakes wrapped themselves around the lilies and began to freeze them.

Within moments, they were solid enough to hammer nails with. They were lovely in this form, but as soon as they began to thaw, they would turn into a blackened mess that the maids would have to clean up. It would take them hours, especially if any of the ruined, rotting blossoms dropped on the tabletop and marred the finish. They would be waxing and polishing half the day.

The gesture didn’t appease her wrath, but it did vent some of her feelings.

For the quarry had escaped! Before she could do anything about those wretched children, someone else had the unmitigated gall to invite them to his estate for the summer! She had no idea who, nor where it was. Her agents had been unable to get anything out of the few reticent servants left, and efforts to follow Frederick Harton had all ended in failure. She hired different agents, to the same end. It was immensely frustrating. The man was utterly ordinary, a commonplace soldier-turned-merchant. To be sure, he had some occult power, but it could not possibly be a match for that of an Elemental Master!

She was left to pursue the quarry through the only route she had left: Isabelle Harton’s friends among the female Elemental Masters. She was forced to be extremely circumspect about it, for she did not want Isabelle to get wind of the fact that she was hunting for her and wonder why.

Her rage, like all her emotions, was icy and calculating. It was a force to be conserved and put to good use. And it occurred to her suddenly that there might be one more way of finding those wretched children. She could use her rage to best effect with it right now. But it would take exceedingly careful work if she was not to tip her hand.

She closed her eyes and took several long, slow, deep breaths, then rose, and went to her workroom.

She closed and locked the door behind herself, and sat down before her worktable. No Ice Wurms to be summoned today… but she left a single gray feather on the table in front of her.

She sat in her crystal throne, folded her hands in her lap, and began to still her body.

Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing became shallow and almost imperceptible, and within the half hour, anyone looking at her would have thought her dead, or near it.

In this state, it was easy to slip across the barrier between the living and the dead. Not far, but enough across the line to shadow-walk. Enough to talk to the ghost she herself had created, though she could not speak to nor see any of the others that she had no hand in making. Enough to be able to call one of her little servants to her, or to see them, enough to travel to a limited extent herself, in spirit, though she could not move far from her body.

She had a particular child ghost in mind, a dream-raptured little thing who in life had been mute, and in death was just as mute. If Isabelle caught the ghost, she could interrogate it all she liked; she would learn nothing from it.

The waif actually knew she was dead, but did not care. She had never seen the inside of church or chapel in her entire life, and so had no expectation of any sort of afterlife. What she did know was that she was no longer hungry, thirsty, or cold. This was a distinct improvement over her lot when she had been alive. While it was true that spirits saw the living world but dimly, as if they wandered about in a London “pea-soup” fog, this did not seem to trouble little Peggoty in the least. She had never owned a toy, she had never slept in a bed, she had never had a permanent roof over her head, so the lack of them did not trouble her either. She had been brought to one of Cordelia’s “shelters” dying of starvation and tuberculosis, and while it might have been possible to prolong her life, Cordelia had simply taken advantage of the situation by putting the mite out of her misery in the usual way. Since then, she had been useful for simple tasks that did not require much thinking.

As nearly as Cordelia was able to tell, Peggoty passed her days as a ghost in the same way that she had passed them as a living child—wrapped in some strange dream world, half-awake and half-asleep. What it was that she daydreamed about, no one would ever know, for she lacked the means to tell them.

Whatever it was, she seemed content to “live” there in her daydreams between times when Cordelia needed her.

In that half world of mist and shadow, Cordelia moved, cutting through the mist to wherever it was in the townhouse that Peggoty had put herself. She could have summoned the child to her, of course, but she knew from past experience that would frighten the waif, who associated being “called” with punishment. Normally, this would not be a problem, but if Isabelle’s pupil was somehow able to see and interact with Peggoty, the last thing that Cordelia wanted was for Peggoty to cling to that little girl for protection.

No, Cordelia wanted Peggoty to be her usual dreamy self, with nothing to cause alarm in her behavior. That way, the worst that would happen if she were discovered would be that Isabelle would succeed in sending Peggoty on to the next world—

Wherever, whatever the “next world” was for Peggoty. She was such a passive little spirit that “the next world” might only consist of a brighter version of the fog of dreams she moved through now.

Passing through the real world in her ghostly equivalent, Cordelia found Peggoty physically haunting the attic of her town house. The child stood dreamily at the window staring at what to her must have been a sea of gray, marked only by vague, shadowy forms, appearing, disappearing, looking more like ghosts to her than she did to the world of the living. Even here, halfway into the spirit world as Cordelia was, the child was nothing more than a wispy wraith, a sketch in the air of transparent white on dark gray. Although her head, hands, and chest were detailed enough, the rest of her was blurred, as if the drawing was incomplete and unfinished.

“Peggoty,” said Cordelia, in her sweetest, gentlest voice.

The child turned and looked up at her mistress with large, dark eyes in a colorless face, a face thin with years of constant near-starvation, and as expressionless as a tombstone. Those eyes seemed to look through her, and Cordelia, although she was used to that look, still felt just a fraction or two colder than she had a moment before.

“Peggoty, I need you to go and find someone,” Cordelia continued. “It is another little girl.”

There was one thing that the Berkeley Square misadventure had produced; a handful of small feathers, gray and black. Peggoty could not touch them, of course, but she could get a kind of “scent” from them, and follow it the way a bloodhound would follow an actual scent.

Of course, Cordelia could have used the feathers to locate the girls with magic—had they not been protected by Masters of all four Elements. Cordelia made no mistake in underestimating her opponents just because they were women. They were, in fact, rather more likely to be supremely competent than not.

Any magical probe would be met by alarms, and if she was very unlucky, the instant response from whoever was responsible for setting up the Fire Wards. Cordelia knew that she was good, but she was not good enough to erase her tracks before another Master could identify her. Her magical “signature” was quite unique.

But a spirit, especially a harmless little thing like Peggoty, could slip in and out without ever being noticed.

She led Peggoty to her workroom, drifting through the walls, where she had left one of the tiny feathers on the table, and Peggoty’s big eyes rested on it. “The little girl I want you to find has a bird, and this is one of its feathers. If you find the bird, you’ll find the girl. I want you to go and find her, and when you do, come back here and show me where she is. Can you do that?”

Peggoty nodded, slowly, her eyes fixed on the tiny feather as she “read” whatever it was that told her where it had come from. Then, without looking again at Cordelia, the wraith turned in the air and floated silently through the wall.

Cordelia sighed, and with a mental wrench, brought herself straight back into her own body again.

This would take time, but Peggoty did not need to sleep, did not even tire, and was not easily distracted once she had been set a task. Perhaps the children enjoyed being given tasks as a change in the unvarying condition of their lives. It was difficult to tell, especially with one like Peggoty, who had never been a normal child.

Of course, the annoying thing was that none of this would have been needed if Cordelia had just been born a man.

She rose carefully from her chair—carefully, because after a session like this she was rather stiff—and left her workroom. After the chill of that room, the summer warmth felt like the sultry breath of a hothouse in July, and she winced. Burgeoning growth… meant burgeoning decay.

There had been another tiny line in her face again today, near the corner of her eye. She had preserved her beauty for so long—but even magic could not hold time back forever, it seemed.

Soon people would stop wondering if David was her lover and start wondering if David was her son.

It was enough to make her break into a rage, but rages were aging, and she had already indulged in one today.

If she had been born a man, no one would think twice about wrinkles and gray hair. In fact, such signs of aging would have been marks of increased wisdom and she would have more respect, not less, for possessing them.

Galling, to have to depend on someone else for the power she should rightfully have had on her own. And doubly galling to see David making his own decisions, without consulting her, as he had been doing more and more regularly of late.

She hated summer. She hated the heat, the unrestrained growth of nature. She hated being forced to relocate to that wretched house on the Thames just so she could continue to attract the right people to her parties. She hated the relaxation of etiquette that summer brought, although the relaxation of conversation was useful, very useful—but the same relaxation could be brought about with the proper application of fine spirits and a warm room.

It was far, far more difficult to collect children to make into her ghostly servants in the summer. Sleeping in alleys and staircases, even on rooftops and in doorways was no longer such a hardship in summer. It was easier to find food; things spoiled by the heat were tossed out all the time. Haunting the farmers’ markets brought plenty of bruised and spoiled fruit and vegetables. They didn’t come to her recruiters, and it was harder to summon the cold to kill them.

She stood at the window, looking out unseeing at the street just beyond her walls.

It was such a waste, too… those lives, those years that she could use, that youth she needed, all going for nothing. There was no way to capture that youth and transfer it to someone else, and even if she could, there still remained the insurmountable barrier of her sex. As long as she was a woman, she would never be taken seriously enough to achieve any kind of power in her own name. She breathed in the scent of summer life, green and warm, and hated it. From hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and from hour to hour we rot and rot, and thereby hangs a tale, Shakespeare had said. Ripe turned to rot all too soon, but sooner for women than men.

And it was a bit too late now to try masquerading as a man. Even if she wanted to. It would take far too long to establish that male persona in the position to which she had gotten David. The door of opportunity was slowly closing.

Her hand clenched. Unfair, unfair!

If only she could somehow become David, to control him directly instead of in this maddening, roundabout fashion! After all, what had he done with his life on his own? Reorganized that silly little Master’s Circle of his! And of what use was that?

If only—

And at that thought, her mind stopped.

She mentally stood stock still to examine that thought again.

If only she could become David.

Was it possible?

Was it desirable?

The answer to that second question was an unequivocal yes. It was very desirable. It wasn’t as if she had gotten any great use from her femininity in ages. Rather, it was something to be suppressed, as was evidence of her intelligence. If she was a man—if she was David—in order to masquerade as a man she would have to sacrifice what was amusingly called a “love life.” There was no way she would be able to simulate lovemaking as a man. But she would be living a life no less chaste than she was now. It was no great sacrifice to give up something she wasn’t “enjoying” in the first place. And in its place, she would get that access to power she craved, and the respect of those to whom she could display her full and unfettered intelligence.

Oh, yes, definitely desirable.

Was it possible?

She turned, unseeing, and sat down on the fainting couch at the window to think.

There was a moment when she collected her ghostly servants that the body was still alive, but soulless. The cold kept it preserved at that moment. If, while the body was still in that state, she could transfer her own self to it—

No one had ever done such a thing. As far as she knew, no one had ever tried. But she felt herself trembling with excitement at the very idea that it could be done at all.

She should not try this herself, not yet. She should try it with two of the children. None of her existing spirit servants, no; they were too useful and she needed most of them where they were. But perhaps, if she could find two children, very much alike so that they themselves would not be aware that the bodies had been switched, she could test it out without risking anything. Because she should try a switch first, before trying a substitution.

Then if a switch worked, she could try disposing of the first spirit before inserting the second. It would probably be useful if she could find a child with a fierce will to live, unlike her usual recruits whose hold on life was already tenuous. Yes…

And then, when she was certain she had the method honed and refined—

She could even picture it in her mind’s eye. Inviting David to a late supper. Wine and brandy and perhaps a dose of opiates. Sending him up to bed—then slipping into the room when he was too deeply asleep to feel the cold, opening the window, and calling the Wurms just to be sure that it was cold enough.

The real trick would be to warm up the body quickly enough after she inhabited it; if she did not, she would die. That would require some physical means. Tricky, tricky. Perhaps—yes. The timing would be crucial, but she could do all this just before the maid was to enter the room to awaken her guest and ask how he wanted his breakfast. The maid would find the cold room and the cold body—but still breathing—and summon help. Only later would they find Cordelia’s shell. Yes, indeed, tricky, but it could be done.

Yes, that would be a good plan, further made valuable by having witnesses that nothing worse than a mania for cold, fresh air had “killed” Cordelia herself and imperiled David.

And then there would be no more troubles over controlling David. She would be David. She could rewrite her will, leaving everything she owned to David as well, so that when her old body was found, she would lose nothing of what she had gained.

And then, when age caught up with the David body, she could find another protégé to school, and repeat the plan. Perhaps a girl this time; perhaps by that point it would be possible for a woman to wield power in her own right. But if not—look far enough and she could find a naïve young male Fire Magician, probably among the disadvantaged, hopefully without the inconvenient burden of parents, with whom she could repeat the process. Why not? Childless men took on protégés all the time. If anything, people would think how wise she was to have done so. The estate would have to go to some collateral line, of course, but the bulk of the money and material goods that were unencumbered could go to anyone. Herself, of course.

She would be immortal. She would have all the benefits of age, and none of the drawbacks. David’s Powers were different. Instead of the weak Power of Air behind the Power of Ice, she would have the immense strength of Fire.

If it worked.

And that was the first step. She must find out if it could work, then perfect the procedure until it was faultless.

And this would be all the more reason to find those children and eliminate them; David knew about them now, and knew what they could do. If she made him into a wandering spirit, he would certainly go straight to them to expose her.

There was a great deal of work ahead of her. Fortunately, she had never been afraid of work.

Fortunate for

her

, at least.

12

SARAH had an unfinished daisy wreath in her lap, but she wasn’t working on it. Nan, whose talents did not run to making wreaths and flower chains, had been splitting grass stems into strings, and by now had more strings than Sarah could ever possibly need.

Nevertheless, she kept splitting, because it was a way to help her concentrate. She and Sarah were having a “discussion,” and Sarah was winning.

“I think we should try it,” said Sarah. Her normally sweet face was set in an expression that Mem’sab would probably call “mulish.”

Ever since they had helped to determine that the old well had been haunted by nothing more sinister than bad memories, Sarah had wanted to investigate the bridge, which had given off the same sort of unpleasant aura. Nan was not so sure this was a good idea, and the oddest thing was, this was a complete reversal of their normal roles. Usually, it was Sarah who was the cautious one.

Then again, it hadn’t been Sarah who had been the one to experience those old memories either. Maybe that was what was making the difference this time.

An’ I don’t get too sympathetic ‘bout her havin’ ghosts move in…

It was no use turning to the birds for advice either. Both Grey and Neville had responded with the mental equivalent of a helpless shrug. Nan got the feeling that neither of them felt as if they had enough information to give a good answer. Like Nan, they didn’t like the idea, but they had no good reason to oppose it.

Still, on the other hand, Nan was also tempted. It felt as if this was something she ought to be doing. They were only going to investigate. If there was anyone or anything bound to Earth there, surely Mem’sab and Sahib ought to know about it. And if there wasn’t, then the nasty feelings ought to be cleaned up and Mem’sab and Agansing ought to know about it. Nasty feelings could affect people that were sensitive to them, and might cause a mischief.

There was a third aspect to this, which was that somewhere deep inside her, Nan felt as if there was a grown-up person chafing to be out and doing things. She couldn’t explain this feeling, but it was definitely there, and growing stronger all the time.

She had to wonder if Sarah wasn’t feeling the same. Maybe that was why Sarah was so adamant about doing this.

“What can it hurt to just go and look?” Sarah asked at last. “We went and looked before and nothing happened. We won’t do anything, just look! I want to fix it ourselves if we can, but not this time.”

Nan grimaced, but she had to think that Sarah was right. “No touching the bridge and reading it, then?” she asked cautiously.

Sarah shook her head. “No. Just going there and getting the feeling of things without touching anything. Maybe we can take care of this by ourselves and maybe not, but we won’t know until we look it over.”

Nan sighed. She had been losing this battle since it began, and there was no point in pretending otherwise. She might just as well give in now as later.

“All right,” she said, shrugging. “We can go and look. But nawt more!”

To her credit, Sarah did not lord it over her friend as some might have. “Then let’s go now, today,” she urged. “Before anyone thinks we might and tells us not to.”

Nan raised her eyebrow at that. Sarah meant “Mem’sab,” of course; there was no one else they had told about the bridge. And Sarah was sounding just a touch rebellious. That was a change. Sarah? Rebellious?

“I’m tired of waiting for things to happen to us,” Sarah added unexpectedly. “I don’t see any reason why we have to sit here and wait for trouble to find us, when we can go scout it the way a hunter would and know what’s coming before it gets here!”

Nan blinked. Put that way—She brushed the grass stems off her skirt and stood up. “Let’s go,” she said decisively. “Mem’sab ain’t convinced more trouble ain’t comin’ an’ I don’t know as buildin’ up ‘igh walls and sittin’ behind ‘em is such a good notion.”

Now Neville finally roused from his own indecision and quorked enthusiastically. Grey just sighed. But she didn’t seem inclined to want to stop them, so Nan took that as tacit assent. She followed Neville as the raven flew ahead, in their usual pattern of going to a tree within calling distance, waiting for the girls to catch up, and going on to another tree.

It didn’t take them nearly as long to get to the bridge as it had the first time they had wandered out that far—but the first time, they had been doing just that, wandering, with no set purpose and no real hurry to get anywhere. As they approached the structure, it seemed to Nan that the uneasy feelings began at a point much further away than the first time.

“Was it like this, this far away before?” Sarah asked, in an uneasy echo of Nan’s own thoughts.

Nan shook her head. “Dunno,” she replied dubiously. “Could be ‘cause we’re expectin’ it this time. Could be ‘cause we know what’t’ look for. Could be misrememberin’.”

They stood on the road, in the shade of a giant oak tree, and regarded the bridge carefully.

When you shut off those bad feelings, there was nothing about the bridge to give anyone cause for alarm. It was a perfectly ordinary structure made of yellowish stone, arcing over the river. It had three low stone arches, and ended in four squat, square pillars, two on either side of the span. The river was smooth and quiet, flowing by lazily. There were no sinister shadows in the bright sunlight shining down on it.

But when you let yourself open to those feelings, it seemed as if there ought to be sinister shadows everywhere, and dark forms lurking behind the pillars. Now even Sarah began to look dubious and uneasy, as if she had just decided this had been a bad idea, but wasn’t going to say so.

Nan, on the other hand, was now determined to get to the bottom of all of this. Never mind that she’d been against it before, now she wanted to know just what it was that was at the root of all this.

“I’m gettin’ closer,” she said shortly, and whistled for Neville to come to her. He landed on her outstretched arm and jumped to her shoulder.

She kept her eyes wide open, and pictured herself peering cautiously through a hole in a wall as she approached the bridge one slow step at a time. It was at the third step that she began to make something out.

It wasn’t just memories. There was something there!

The feelings came first, with the sense of a presence.

It wasn’t like the horrible thing in Berkeley Square, though—this was hunger, a great void of need and of loneliness, but not anything that Nan would have called “healthy.” The closest she could come was to those few times when her mother had gotten maudlin drunk and had hugged her too tight and cried about what an awful mum she was, when all the time she wasn’t so sorry that she wouldn’t go right out and spend supper money on gin as soon as she sobered up. And this was to that experience as the sun was to a candle.

Another step, and Nan saw what it was, or saw something, anyway. Woman-shaped and shadowy, draped in veils, and a vast pit of greed and despair so deep that Nan knew if you fell into it you’d never get out again.

And she had something.

She had a little girl.

Not a living little girl, but another shadow shape, like a sketch made in white mist, a little ghost girl. The shadow woman held the girl ghost, who struggled soundlessly against the shadow arms that held her, eyes wide open in panic, mouth open too, and no sound emerging though it looked as if she was shrieking in terror. The shadow woman, horribly, was crooning a lullaby to the ghost girl, and even as Nan watched, the ghost girl began to fade into the shadow woman. It looked as if the shadow woman was devouring it or absorbing it and the ghost girl grew limp and stopped struggling a moment later.

“No!” Nan shouted. She reached down blindly for a stick, and came up with a sword in her hand. As she brandished it, she saw that Sarah had come to stand beside her, with both hands raised over her head, white light coming from them. Neville had flown down to land on the ground between the girls and the shadow, and Grey, grown to four times her natural size, was beside him, feathers fluffed and growling.

The white light from Sarah’s hands lanced out, not to touch the shadow woman, but the ghost girl. The fading outlines of the ghost girl strengthened, and she renewed her struggles.

“You let ‘er go!” Nan shouted again, flourishing the sword. “She ain’t yours, you let ‘er go right now!”

The shadow woman, who had until this moment, ignored the girls, now turned her attention on them. Eyes like coals burned in the midst of her veils, and a terrible wail burst from her, a sound that brought with it fear and anguish that battered against Nan until she could hardly stand.

Sarah did drop to the ground, and the light from her hands went out—but when the wailing stopped, she struggled to her feet again and held her hands above her head, and the light once again shone from them.

Still holding the struggling girl ghost, the shadow woman took one menacing step toward them. Freeing one hand, she made a casting gesture, and Nan felt as if there was a hand seizing her throat, choking the life from her. Neville and Grey shrieked with anger, and flew at the shadow woman, but could not touch her, while Nan tried to shout, and could get nothing out.

She dropped the sword/branch, and clawed at the invisible, intangible hand, as her lungs burned and she tried to get a breath. Her vision began to gray out—

“Not so fast, my unfriend, my shadow wraith!” cried a fierce young voice that brought with it sun and a rush of flower-scented summer wind—and blessedly, the release of whatever it was that had hold of Nan’s throat.

She dropped to her knees, gasping for breath at the same time that she looked to her right. There, standing between her and Sarah, was Robin Goodfellow. He wore the same outlandish costume he’d worn for the play, only on him, it didn’t look so outlandish. He had one hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and Nan could actually see the strength flowing from him to her as she fed the ghost girl with that light, which now was bright as strong sunlight.

The ghost girl thrashed wildly, and broke free of the shadow woman’s hold, and that was when Robin made a casting motion of his own and threw something at the shadow form. It looked like a spiderweb, mostly insubstantial and sparkling with dew drops, but it expanded as it flew toward the shadow woman, and when it struck her, it enveloped her altogether. She crumpled as it hit, as if it had been spun out of lead, not spider silk, and collapsed into a pool of shadow beneath its sparkling strands.

The ghost girl stood where she was, trembling, staring at them.

“She’s stuck,” Sarah said, her voice shaky, but sounding otherwise normal.

Grey waddled over to the ghost girl, looked up at her, and shook herself all over. Neville returned to Nan’s shoulder, feathers bristling, as he stared at the shadow woman trapped in Puck’s net.

“She doesn’t know where to go, or how to get there, or even why she should go,” Sarah continued, pity now creeping into her voice.

“Oh so?” Puck took a step or two toward the ghost girl, peering at her as if he could read something on her terrified young face. “Welladay, and this is one who can see further into a millstone than most… no wonder she don’t know where to go. Hell can’t take her and heaven won’t have her, but there’s a place for you, my mortal child.”

His voice had turned pitying and welcoming all at the same time, and so kindly that even Nan felt herself melting a little inside just to hear it. He held out his hand to the ghost girl. “Come away, human child, or what’s left of you. Come! Take a step to me, just one, to show you trust your dreams and want to find them—”

Shaking so much her vague outlines blurred, the ghost girl drifted the equivalent of a step toward Robin.

He laughed. Nan had never heard a sound quite like it before. Most people she’d ever heard, when they laughed, had something else in their laughter. Pity, scorn, irony, self-deprecation, ruefulness—most adults anyway, always had something besides amusement in their voices when they laughed.

This was just a laugh with nothing in it but pure joy. Even the ghost girl brightened at the sound of it, and drifted forward again—and Robin made a little circle gesture with his free hand.

Something glowing opened up between him and the ghost girl. Nan couldn’t see what it was, other than a kind of glowing doorway, but the ghost girl’s face was transformed, all in an instant. She lost that pinched, despairing look. Her eyes shone with joyful surprise, and her mouth turned up in a silent smile of bliss.

“There you be, my little lady,” Robin said softly. “What you’ve dreamed all your life and death about, what you saw only dimly before. Summerland, my wee little dear. Summerland, waiting for you. Go on through, honey sweetling, go on through.”

The ghost girl darted forward like a kingfisher diving for a minnow. A flash, and she was into the glow—and gone. And the glow went with her.

Now Robin turned his attention to the shadow woman, lying motionless under his spiderweb net. “Heaven won’t have you neither, and you’re not fit for Summerland,” he said sternly. “Nor am I the one to call hell to come and take you. But you’re too much mischief in the world, my lady, and I can’t leave you free.”

Neville suddenly made a sound Nan had never heard him make before. Something like a quork, and something like a caw, it made Puck glance at him and nod.

“Right you are, Morrigan’s bird,” he replied. “That’s all she’s fit for. It’s the Hunt for her, and well rid of her this middle earth will be.”

He turned to Nan and Sarah. “Close your eyes, young mortals,” he said, with such an inflection that Nan could not have disobeyed him if she’d wanted to. “These things are not for the gaze of so young as you.”

She kept her eyes open just long enough to see him take a cow horn bound in silver with a silver mouthpiece from his belt, the sort of thing she saw in books about Robin Hood, and put it to his lips. Her eyes closed and glued themselves shut as three mellow notes sounded in the sultry air.

Suddenly, that sultry air grew cold and dank; she shivered, and Neville pressed himself into her neck, reassuringly, his warm body radiating the confidence that the air was sapping away from her. All the birds stopped singing, and even the sound of the river nearby faded away, as if she had been taken a mile away from it.

She heard hoofbeats in the distance, and hounds baying.

She’d never heard nor seen a foxhunt, though she’d read about them since coming to the school, and it was one of those things even a street urchin knew about vaguely.

This, however, did not sound like a foxhunt. The hounds had deep, deep voices that made her shiver, and made her feel even less inclined to open her eyes, if that was possible. There were a lot of hounds—and a lot of horses, too—and they were coming nearer by the moment.

She reached out blindly and caught Sarah’s hand, and they clung to each other as the hounds and horses thundered down practically on top of them—as the riders neared, she heard them laughing, and if Puck’s laugh was all joy, this laughter was more sorrowful than weeping. It made her want to huddle on the ground and hope that no one noticed her.

The shadow woman shrieked.

Then dogs and riders were all around them except that, other than the sounds, there was nothing physically there.

Feelings, though—Nan was so struck through with fear that she couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it. Only Sarah’s hand in hers, and Neville’s warm presence on her shoulder, kept her from screaming in terror. And it was cold, it was colder than the coldest night on the streets of London, so cold that Nan couldn’t even shiver.

Hoofbeats milling around them, the dogs baying hollowly, the riders laughing—then the shadow woman stopped shrieking, and somehow her silence was worst of all.

One of the riders shouted something in a language that Nan didn’t recognize. Robin answered him, and the rider laughed, this time not a laugh full of pain, but full of eager gloating. She felt Neville spread his wings over her, and there was a terrible cry of despair—

And then, it all was gone. The birds sang again, warmth returned to the day, the scent of new-mown grass and flowers and the river filled her nostrils, and Neville shook himself and quorked.

“You can open your eyes now, children,” said Robin.

Nan did; Neville hopped down off her shoulder and stood on the ground, looking up at Robin. There was nothing out of the ordinary now in the scene before them, no matter how hard Nan looked. No shadow woman, no ghost girl, no dark emotions haunting the bridge. Just a normal stone bridge over a pretty little English river in the countryside. Even Robin was ordinary again; his fantastical garb was gone, and he could have been any other country boy except for the single strand of tiny vine leaves wound through his curly brown hair.

“What—” Sarah began, looking at Puck with a peculiarly stern expression.

“That was the Wild Hunt, and you’d do well to stay clear of it and what it Hunts, little Seeker,” Robin said, without a smile. “It answers to me because I am Oldest, but there isn’t much it will answer to, not much it will stop for, not too many ways to escape it when it has your scent, and there’s no pity in the Huntsman. He decides what they’ll Hunt, and no other.”

“What does it hunt?” Nan asked, at the same time that Sarah asked, “What is it?”

Robin shrugged. “Run and find out for yourself what it is, young Sarah. And go and look to see what it hunts on your own, young Nan. There’s mortal libraries full of books that can tell you—in part. The rest you can only feel, and if your head doesn’t know, your heart can tell you.”

“Well,” Nan replied, stubbornly determined to get some sort of answer out of him, “What was that thing at the bridge, then?”

“And I need to tell you what you already know?” Robin shook his head. “You work it out between you. She’s not been here long, I will tell you, and I should have dealt with her when she first appeared, but—” he scratched his head, and grinned one of those day-brightening grins, “—but there was birds to gossip with, and calves to tease, and goats to ride, and I just forgot.”

Nan snorted at the evasive answer, but Sarah smiled. “You never will answer anyone straight up, will you?” she asked with a sidelong glance.

“It’s not my way, Missy Sahib,” Puck replied, and tickled her under the chin with a buttercup that suddenly appeared in his hand. “Now go you back and not a word of this to your schooling dame. Just your bad luck that two things came together and you as the third made some things happen that might not have, otherwise. That was bad for you, but good for the little mite. Then came your good luck, that it all made a mighty big stir-up of the world, and that got my attention. And me knowing you, that called me. An hour one way or the other and this would never have happened. The shadow would have claimed the mite, and no doubt of it.”

Nan could well believe that. And she also had no intention of telling Mem’sab about it.

But she was going to find out what that shadow lady had been, and why she was at the bridge.

No one had missed them by the time they got back, and evidently there was no sign of their misadventure clinging to them either. Nan and Sarah stood in the garden doorway for a moment, assessing the mood in the manor, and exchanged a look.

“Think I’m gonna talk to th‘ kitchen maids,” Nan said thoughtfully. “If there’s gossip about, they’ll know it.”

“I’m going to see if Robin was right about the Hunt being in books,” was Sarah’s answer. “There are a lot of oddish things in the library here.”

With a nod, they separated, and Nan ensconced herself, first in the kitchen on the excuse of begging toast and jam and milk, then in the laundry, then in the dairy as the two dairymaids finished churning the butter out of the second milking, and turned the cheeses as they ripened.

By that time, the bell had rung for dinner, and it was too late to talk to Sarah about what she’d found out. She could tell that Sarah was bursting with news, though, and so was she—

The news had to wait. After dinner came the nightly chore Mem’sab had set Nan to doing, helping put the littlest ones to bed. And Sarah went to help Tommy catch fireflies—he had a scheme to put enough in a little wire cage he’d made to read under the covers by, but he couldn’t get the wire bars close enough and they kept escaping, much to the delight of the bats that flew in and out of their open windows at night—

That had been something that had shocked Nan the first time it had happened.

The children from India were all used to it; the same sort of thing happened in their Indian bungalows all the time. But Nan hadn’t ever even seen a bat before, and the first time one had flitted in the open window and fluttered around, she hadn’t known what it was. A lot of the maids hated them, and shrieked when they were flying around a room, pulling their caps down tight to their heads (because bats allegedly would get tangled in your hair). The bravest of them whacked at the poor little things with brooms, and all of them kept their bedroom windows shut tight all night long. But Mem’sab told the children that sort of behavior was silly, so they kept their own windows open to the night air. The children all rather enjoyed the tiny creatures, and eventually even Nan got to liking the way they swooped around the room, clearing it of insects, then flitting out the window again.

Tonight the little ones were full of mischief, and each had to be put to bed half a dozen times before they actually stayed in bed. Weary, but relieved, Nan trudged up the stairs to the room she and Sarah shared, to find Sarah, Neville, and Grey already waiting for her. Nan changed into her nightgown and hopped up to sit cross-legged on her own little bed and looked at her friend expectantly.

Sarah laughed. “You first,” she said.

Nan coughed, because a great deal of what she had heard was not the sort of thing that you told a “nice” girl like Sarah. Country folk were earthy sorts, and they had no compunction about calling a spade a spade, and not an “earth-turning implement.” The maids had certainly filled Nan’s ears, particularly when the cook was out of earshot.

“There was a gal down to the village that put on a lot of airs,” she said, heavily editing out a great deal. The whole truth was that this particular young lady was a lot like Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair; she wanted a husband with money who would let her buy whatever pleased her; if she could get one, she wanted a husband with a title too, and she was perfectly willing to use any and every means at her disposal to get it.

“She set her cap at this feller, this captain, what showed up here at one of them hunting parties,” Nan continued. “Friend of a friend, the maids said, not some’un the master invited himself. Man didn’t make himself real popular; I guess he broke a lot of shooting rules right from the start.” The maids had been vague on that score; they didn’t understand the shooting rules either. What they hadn’t been vague about was that the shooting parties started forming up and leaving without the captain, as the guests tacitly organized themselves to be off when he was busy doing something else. Part of that “something else” had been to flirt with the ladies, and the maids had no doubt that if he’d had his way, there would have been more than just flirting going on. “There weren’t no single ladies at this party, an’ when he made himself unwelcome, he’d take himself down to the pub in the village sometimes, an’ that’s where this gal saw him and decided she was gonna get him.”

And she hadn’t scrupled as to means either. According to the maids she had brazenly hopped into bed with him practically from the time he first appeared.

“So she’s canoodling with this feller, an’ wouldn’t you know, next thing he’s caught cheatin’ at cards up here at the party. There’s a big to-do, an’ he disappears in the morning, an’ his friend don’t feel too comfortable here neither, so he leaves early, too, that same afternoon. Gal at village don’t find out about this till they’ve both been gone two days.”

According to the maids, there had been a “right row” about that, too, complete with the abandoned girl in question storming up to Highleigh, demanding to see the master, claiming the captain had promised to marry her and insisting that the master of Highleigh make it all right.

Except, of course, she never saw the master. The butler handled it all with an icy calm that intimidated even the girl. He had made it clear to her that the man in question—“no gentleman, young person, I assure you”—was neither a friend nor even a casual acquaintance of the master, and that the master had no idea where the cad was, or even if he had a right to the name and title he had claimed. “She got sent away with a flea in her ear,” the dairymaid had said maliciously. Nan had a feeling there had been some bad blood there…

“So come Christmas, seems the gal has another problem, an’ by spring, she’s got a baby an’ no husband.”

The maids had been full of stories of how the girl had tried to seduce her way to a marriage license with anyone at that point, but of course, everyone in the village knew by that time that she had a big belly and nothing to show for it, and not even the stupidest farmhand wanted himself saddled with a child that wasn’t his and a wife that wasn’t inclined to do a bit more work than she had to. She had the baby, and though her family didn’t disown her, they made it clear that she was a living shame to all of them and really ought to show her repentance in quite tangible ways…

She hadn’t cared for being a housemaid. She hadn’t cared for the fact that the baby was the living badge of her disgrace, not to mention a burden of care that no one would help her with.

“So the baby disappears, an’ everyone figgers she took it to th’ norphanage or the workhouse and left it there, an’ she gets to tryin’ to find herself a husband again—”

“But she didn’t take it to the orphanage, did she?” Sarah asked somberly.

Nan shook her head. “No. ‘Cause after some whiles, she was actin’ pretty peculiar, like she’s got somethin’ weighin’ on ‘er, an kept comin’ back to the river at the bridge. She’d come there in dead of night, an’ just stand there, starin’ at the water. Pretty soon she’s actin’ real strange, askin’ if people can hear a baby cryin’, an’ then before Christmas, she drownded herself. So they reckon she drownded it in the same place she done herself, poor mite.”

“Real strange” was a gross understatement. She’d been caught once or twice trying to take babies out of cradles when the mothers in question stepped out of their cottages for a moment. She had covered herself in a set of tatty, head-to-toe black veils she found somewhere. And she had all but haunted the bridge. Everyone knew by then that she had murdered her own child, but without a body or a confession it was hard to do anything about her. There was some tentative movement by the village officials to get her sent to an insane asylum, but before anything could be done, she had already killed herself.

Sarah shivered all over, and her eyes got a little teary. “Poor baby!” she said finally. “What a nasty, wicked woman.”

“But it does pretty much account for what we saw,” Nan replied. She felt obscurely sorry for the baby—but in her part of London, so many babies died all the time, that it was hard to get all worked up about one. Even the ones that were wanted died so easily that a mother was likely to bury four for every one she was able to raise. “So. Your turn.”

Sarah nodded, and her sorrowful expression cleared. “There’s more than one version of the Wild Hunt,” Sarah replied, licking her lips thoughtfully. “I looked through a lot of books and Robin was right, there were several in the library here that talked about legends and magic and things like that. Had you noticed? There are a lot of odd books in that library.”

Nan scratched her head. “Well,” she said finally, after a moment of consideration, “The feller what owns this house is somebody Mem’sab kind of knows. I don’t reckon he’s one of her toff friends from before she went to Indja. You know, mebbe he’s like one of us, and mebbe that sort of thing runs in the family? So the library’d be full of that kind of books.”

Sarah nodded. “I think you’re right. In fact, you know I thought it was a bit odd that a house this old wouldn’t have a ghost, but maybe it doesn’t because the family that lives here has always made sure that ghosts moved on.”

Nan nodded, and hugged her knees to her chest. “I reckon you’re right. So you found some books. What’d they say?”

“Well, one says that the Wild Hunt is—like Robin’s people.” She lowered her voice to whisper, as if she didn’t like to say the words too loudly. “Elves. The Fair Folk. It says they come out of barrows at night to hunt the mortals that drove them out of their circles and groves. That one made it sound like these were bad Elves, though, and that they hunted people down at night for the fun of it.”

Nan mulled that one over. “I don’t see how that can be right,” she said judiciously. “ ‘Cause they took that ghost. But Robin did call ‘em, so mebbe it is.”

“Another couple of books said it was made up of ghosts, people who had lived violent lives and died violent deaths.” Sarah unconsciously pulled her covers a little closer around her. “And some of those books say that they’re trying to make up for what they did by going after bad people. Like they are getting a second chance to keep from going to the Bad Place.”

She meant hell, Nan knew, though she couldn’t imagine why Sarah wouldn’t just come out and say the word.

“But some other books say that they’re wicked people who are keeping themselves from going to the Bad Place by hunting down people and scaring them to death or chasing them until they die. And some say they are already from the Bad Place, and it opens up to let them out.” Sarah shook her head. “I just don’t know, because none of those seemed quite right.”

Nan sucked on her lower lip. “Don’t seem quite right to me neither,” she said at last. “Like somethin’ is missing.”

“Well, the last book I found said that they weren’t any of those things, it said they were gods.” Now Sarah’s eyes were bright with excitement. “It said the leader was a very old god, the Horned God of the Hunt, from back before the Romans came, and that being Hunted used to be the way they chose their kings and the way they punished criminals. So when he wasn’t being worshipped anymore or making kings, he just went on punishing criminals by Hunting them when he could. The things that ride with him are the souls of those that the Hunt caught.”

Nan felt a sudden conviction that this was exactly the answer they had been looking for, though she could not have pointed to anything but feelings. “Well, Robin said he was the Oldest Old One, so it stands to reason he could call ‘em,” she said, thinking out loud. “An’ he said that he couldn’t call hell to take that ghost, an’ heaven wouldn’t have ’er, an’ she couldn’t go to that place ’e sent the little girl, but I reckon riding with that Hunt could be as bad as hell.”

Sarah nodded soberly, her eyes gone very large and solemn. “If the book is right,” she said, “it could be worse. Because you get to see the living world, but you can’t do any of the things you want to do. You’re just stuck riding whenever the Hunter feels like taking the Hunt out.”

“So what happens to you the rest of the time—”

“The book didn’t say, except that it called them ‘tormented souls.’ Maybe just being able to see and be in the world you used to live in and never be able to touch it again is bad enough.” Sarah shook her head. “It also said the worst of them get turned into the Hounds, which would probably be horrible.”

Nan thought about how the Hounds had sounded, and shivered. “I think,” she said aloud, “whatever happened to that ghost, she’s gettin’ what’s comin’ to ‘er now.”

Sarah took a long, shuddering breath. “I’m glad Robin made us close our eyes,” she said finally. “Some of the books say that just the sight of the Hunt and the Huntsman is enough to drive you mad. Some say that’s not true, but that the Hunt is horrible to look at and is sure to frighten you to where your hair turns white. I’m glad Robin kept us from looking.”

“Reckon he’d ‘ave let Mem’sab watch,” Nan said judiciously, “But I reckon he figgered we’re too young.”

“Then I want to be too young for a long, long time,” Sarah said firmly, and got a bow from Neville and a soft “Yes!” from Grey.

And Nan could not possibly have agreed more.

13

THE first experiments had been a success.

Difficult as it had been to achieve the proper depth of cold to hold the bodies in suspension, Cordelia had succeeded in exchanging the souls of two children.

She had acquired them from an orphanage, where they had been two of the scant ten percent that survived infancy and emerged into childhood. That had been an interesting visit in and of itself; she had never considered orphanages as a source of her little servants, but since she intended to let these two actually live so that she could continue to switch their souls from time to time, she had decided to create the persona of a fictional housekeeper looking for two little boys to serve as errand runners. Usually it was factories that came recruiting to the orphanages—very few couples were actually interested in adopting these waifs. After all, who would want a child whose mother was probably a whore, or if not, was without a doubt fallen from virtue? Such a child would have her bad blood, and possibly the equally bad blood of some drunken laborer, or good-for-nothing sailor, or—worst of all—a foreigner. No one ever considered, of course, that the fathers of such abandoned children might be their friends, their neighbors, or the sons of the well-to-do…

Not, of course, that it mattered.

The director of the place had trotted out the best he had to offer, and she had taken two little boys about eight years old, but small and looking five at most, with thin, half-starved faces and dull, incurious expressions. In height and weight, they were virtually identical. The main difference between them seemed to be that one hummed breathlessly and tunelessly to himself constantly and the other did not. They were not very intelligent and altogether incurious; this, too, was probably the result of being starved all of their lives.

This was not what the director would have had her believe, but Cordelia knew better, both from scrying on these places from afar in preparation for selecting one, and from the stories children who had run from the orphanages into the street had told her.

Food was scant, and poor. Generally as little as the directors of the places could get by with. Cordelia suspected that they were pocketing the difference between what they were allotted to feed each child and what they actually used to feed each child. Meat was practically unheard of, the staple diet was oatmeal porridge, thin vegetable soup, and bread. Infants were weaned onto this as soon as possible. The infants in orphanages were generally wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes and laid out on cots, as many as would fit on each cot, so that they looked like tinned sardines. In this orphanage, they were lucky, their smallclothes were changed twice a day; in many other places, once a day was the rule. They were fed skimmed milk, or the buttermilk left after butter had been churned out of it; this was cheaper, much cheaper, than whole milk. They didn’t cry much; crying took energy, and these infants did not have a great deal of that to spare.

It didn’t take very much to kill them either. A bit of the croup, a touch of fever, being too near an open window—nine out of every ten died, and were unceremoniously buried without markers in potters’ fields. They had entered the world noisily; they generally left it silently, slipping out of it with a sigh or a final gasp.

Older children fared little better, though by the time they reached the age of three or four, all but the strongest had been winnowed out. And orphanages would have made fertile ground for Cordelia to hunt for ghostly servants without ever having to kill the children herself, except that these children were either wild creatures or so utterly passive that they made Peggoty look lively by comparison.

However, with a bit of feeding, perhaps the passive ones could be enlivened to the point of becoming useful. It would be interesting to experiment with these two.

She had been told their names were “Robert” and “Albert.” Virtually every other boy child in an orphanage was named “Albert,” in homage to the late Prince of Wales. Presumably, this was in an effort to get the children into someone else’s hands by appealing to their patriotism or sentimentality.

Well, as of this morning, Robert, who was the one that hummed, was silent, and Albert, who had been the silent one, was humming. Proof enough that the transfer had been successful.

She decided that she would wait to see which of the two developed the stronger personality over the next few days, with proper feeding and access to some second-hand toys and worn picture books she had indifferently purchased from a flea-market stall. Toys were supposed to be educational, and she didn’t want to be bothered with actually sending them to school. That would be the one she would use in the second experiment to displace the spirit of the other. The displaced ghost she would make into her servant if it looked as if there was anything there worth the saving, the other she would feed for a while longer to see how he turned out. Orphanages might well prove to be an additional source of servants, when her own efforts on the streets dried up.

Provided, of course, she could keep people from noticing that all of the children she took to work for her died. The problem with using orphanages as a recruiting ground was that the people who ran them were generally busybody nosy-parkering sorts.

Well, she would deal with that difficulty later. For the moment, her experiment was going well, and she might not even need any more ghostly recruits if she could act in her own person as a man.

David was deep in the countryside at the moment. This was annoying, because she could not keep her eyes directly on him—but it was also something of a relief, because she was free to do whatever she chose without having to have him under her supervision.

And the cause was good. A “weekend”—which really meant a week or more—house party, at the estate of a very influential MP. Commons, rather than Lords, but in this case, that was all to the good. It was time for David to move a little out of his own social circle and into the circle that lived, breathed, and ate politics.

Not that the man was crude; it was his grandfather who had actually made the money. His father had undertaken the more genteel path of investing it prudently and skillfully. The son was a solicitor, with the specialty of estate management, and never saw the inside of a courtroom. Actually, he seldom saw the inside of his law offices; he had lesser solicitors and an army of clerks to do most of the work for him. The sole reason for becoming a solicitor, both in his and his father’s minds, was so he could go into politics, the taint of Money having become cleansed and purified by contact with the Law.

So David was there this weekend, under the Great Man’s prudently-extended wing. This would be a purely social occasion; the selected male guests would be examining him for any potential flaws, such as a weakness for dabbling in art or poetry, or a tendency to drink too much in public—or a too-flamboyant manner when drinking. The female guests would be probing his suitability as a husband—not that any of them would have a chance at him. Left to himself, he would marry in due course, but only within the ranks of the Elemental Masters.

Or at least, that was probably what he would do, though there were the odd marriages outside those ranks. It would make things difficult for him, of course, unless his wife was the sort to wish to play Lady of the Manor in the country, while he attended to his business in the city and his position as the chief of his Master’s Circle—Cordelia blinked at that thought, her attention distracted from assessing the two boys as they ate.

“Graves,” she told the maid assigned to care for them, “Give them the toys when they have finished. And at luncheon, see to it that they not be allowed the jam and cakes until after they have finished the nourishing meal Cook will make for them.”

The girl bobbed a curtsy. “Yes’m,” she said deferentially. She had been an under-housemaid, chosen by Cook because she professed to have looked after her younger siblings until going into service. She seemed competent. She would scarcely have done as a nanny, of course, had these been anything other than what they were—pale, passive little specimens unlikely to give trouble. But she was certainly up to watching them, seeing that they were kept clean and neat, and teaching them how to play with the toys they had been provided with.

Cordelia retired to her parlor, but to think, not to conduct business or attend to social obligations.

The Master’s Circle! How could she possibly have forgotten that? It was David’s obsession, and if he suddenly “lost interest” in it, his friends among the Elemental Masters would certainly take note and begin to wonder.

But at the same time, if Cordelia were to continue to preside over it, there would be very little time before she was unmasked. The Masters often performed so-called “out of body” work; the moment she entered into such a work in the presence of others, it would be very clear who she was. You could not mask the soul self—

—or could you?

Was it possible to disguise the persona that your spirit assumed when out of body?

If it was—it would take time to learn. If it wasn’t, she had better find out now.

Another delay! It seemed that every time she found a solution to the problems that beset her path, yet another problem arose! It made her furious, and that was bad; she had to control her anger, to make it icy, rather than fiery, or it would make problems for her. But it was difficult not to be angry. First, that wretched child medium had come to England—the one person who could uncover the ghost servants—

And at that thought, she mentally cursed. The child—somewhere in the country—was potentially within her grasp if only she could be found. She had started the hunt days ago—so where was Peggoty?

Surely, the wretched little girl wasn’t that difficult to locate! There were only so many places near enough to London that it was possible for Harton to travel there and back on the weekend!

Peggoty must have gotten distracted, or gone off into one of her dreams again. It would be the first time she had done so while engaged in a task for Cordelia, but like many spirits, the child was becoming more detached from the world as time went on. That was a flaw she had to constantly battle against, and was one of the reasons why she had to keep making more servants.

Well, it was time to reattach her, and throw a good fright into her as well.

Cordelia retired to her workroom, pausing in the closet that led into it to take three strands of hair from a tiny drawer, one of fifty in a handsome little cabinet meant to hold pills. Each drawer was marked with a name card; only twenty were filled in. Each drawer held hair clipped from the living head of the child in question before it had lain down for its last sleep.

She locked the door of the workroom behind her, and placed the hairs on the table in front of her crystal throne. Sitting down on her throne, and raising her hands, she called three Ice Wurms to her.

A breath of cold mist drifted down over the table, and three of the tiny, exquisitely detailed creatures coalesced out of it.

Like Salamanders, they were sleek lizards. Unlike Salamanders, they were nearly transparent, and looked as if someone had animated a series of three sculptures carved from the purest quartz.

Each of them went to the three hairs lying curled against the stone; each inhaled one.

And sat there, doing nothing.

Cordelia stared at them in growing disbelief and outrage. “Well?” she finally snapped. “Go get her! Fetch her back here!”

The Ice Wurm closest to her looked up at her with colorless, transparent eyes. She is not there to be fetched, it said shortly.

What?

Cordelia felt as if she had suddenly run up against an invisible barrier; stunned, and still in disbelief. “What do you mean, she is not there?” she demanded, with just a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

She is not there to be fetched. Not in this world. The Ice Wurm curled itself indifferently on the table, and its two brothers did likewise. If she is in another, we cannot tell.

For a moment Cordelia contemplated the notion that the creature might be lying to her. But—no, it had no reason to lie. She had other means of verifying the truth, and it knew very well she would mete out punishment if she thought she had been deceived.

So it wasn’t lying. Peggoty was gone—elsewhere. The Other World, whatever thing that might be. And there would be no fetching her back either, despite the claims of so-called necromancers. No one who had ever gone to the Other Side ever could be pulled back by mortal intervention.

The Harton woman. It had to have been her. She was the only one with the power to send a spirit on who would also have had any contact with Peggoty. Cordelia wanted at that moment to have the interfering cow’s throat in her own two hands—

Still, there was always the possibility, however remote, that it had not been the Harton woman. It might even have been the wretched children. It was best to be sure.

“Who did this?” she demanded of the Ice Wurms, knowing that they would be able to sniff out the least trace of whoever had last intersected with Peggoty’s being.

But the answer brought a chill to her heart that nothing she had ever encountered before could match.

It is best that you do not know, Master, came the cool, sibilant voice. And it is best that we not tell you.

***

The endless rounds of empty conversation alternating with the endless rounds of polite scrutiny finally got to be more than David Alderscroft could bear. Perhaps it was the sultry days, and the warm nights that made it so hard for him to keep a cool, calm demeanor. It seemed much more difficult here than in London. And of course, a little talk with Cordelia always put things in perspective.

The trouble was, it was her perspective. The longer he was away from her, the more impatient he became with some of her obstinate opinions.

Another remedy to restlessness and unhappiness was in order. A polite inquiry to his host gave him permission to make free of the contents of the stable; his reputation as a good rider must have made its way even into these circles.

He did not consider himself to be so good a rider that he was willing to mount anything under a saddle, however.

He consulted with the chief stable hand, and soon found himself atop a steady, if unexciting, bay gelding. Unexciting was roughly what he wanted right now, anyway. He needed to be away from the watchful eyes, the endless gibble-gabble, the tiresome matchmaking games. Time alone, that was the ticket. He’d be able to think once he was alone.

He had studied the map, so he knew where he was. His host’s guests had permission not only to ride the grounds of this estate but the far more extensive lands of the neighbor’s. Highclere, was it? Highleigh? Something like that. The owner was away, scarcely visited the place except in hunting season, according to what he’d been told. That was good; the last thing he wanted was to meet up with anyone.

With that in mind, it seemed like the best solution (if he wanted to avoid more of the guests from this party) would be to ride over to the other property. He would be harder to find that way.

The dividing line was a hedge that must have been centuries old, and was far too tall to jump. He rode along it until he came to a gate in the hedge. The latch was at the correct height for a rider. He rode alongside it, opened the gate without thinking, and sent his horse through it.

And his horse suddenly shied violently back, just as a childish voice full of indignation piped, “ ‘Ere! Pay ’eed to where you’re a-goin’!”

It took him a moment to get his horse under control. When he finally did so, it was to stare down into four sets of indignant eyes; two sets of bright, beady birds’ eyes, and two sets changeable and human.

“What are you doing there?” he exclaimed.

One of the two children, for children they were, stood up, arms akimbo. “Might ast you the same thing now, mightn’t I?”

Her accent branded her as a Londoner, and from the streets. Her bold manner, however, was all her own.

And the bird that perched on her shoulder was easily three times as bold as that. The sight made him start. That was a raven. And if it cared to, it could probably take his eye out.

“Little miss,” he said cautiously. “You know that—”

“Neville is an uncommonly large rook,” the child said instantly, and turned to the bird, which ruffled his feathers and stared up at him, as if daring him to deny what the child had claimed.

It quorked derisively at him, proving it was no rook. The girl put her hand up to scratch the nape of its neck. He had once seen what one of those beaks could do to a bare hand, when a Raven-keeper at the Tower was a little too slow in feeding one of his charges. The bird had nearly added the finger to the menu for its dinner that day.

The girl looked at him as if she could read his thoughts, and her expression hinted at her amusement with him. He felt himself getting angry, and warned himself not to do anything nor say anything. These were only silly children. He gathered cold calm about himself, and looked down on them.

The other child had a Grey Parrot on her shoulder; the bird looked at him measuringly, then, without warning, barked a laugh so full of contempt it could have come from a human throat.

It stung, so much so that his next words were a challenge. “Who are you,” he asked icily, “and what are you doing on this property?”

“We’re guests, which is more’n you can say,” the first girl snapped at him. “Don’t you fret, we got permission to be here! Hev you?”

“Nan!” the second girl hissed warningly. The first turned to her, and the two went into a whispered colloquy. The ruder of the two kept looking suspiciously at him as if she expected him to mount his horse and ride them down.

He had never encountered children quite like these two—well, truth be told, he had never encountered a child quite like the one that kept glaring at him. The other seemed tractable enough, but this one! He was accustomed to street children who, at worst, offered to sweep a crossing for him, and if glared at, skittered away. This one challenged him outright, and acted as if he was the one who was the intruder here. Part of him noted that she looked like a little London sparrow, too, with her brown hair and brown frock.

Finally, the whispers ceased, and the rude one planted a fist on either hip and looked him up and down. “Sarah sez I hev to call you ‘sir,’ even though you come through from the other side of thet door, an’ I ain’t niver seed you ‘ere. So, sir,” she somehow made the word a title of contempt. “We got permission’t‘ be ’ere. We’re a-stayin’ at th’ Big ‘ouse. You got permission’t’ come ridin’ through thet door onto this land?”

“Actually, little girl,” he said, carefully coating his words in ice, “I have. By mutual agreement between the gentleman with whom I am staying, and the master of these lands, the guests of my host may ride here whenever they choose.”

Not that it is any business of yours, his tone said, though his words did not.

The little girl snorted. “Awright, then,” she replied ungraciously. “You kin go.”

She and her little friend cleared off to one side; he mounted, but was no longer in any mood to ride. Instead, he made a show of a brief canter in the meadow beyond the door in the hedge, cleared the brook a time or two, then trotted his horse back through the door, shouting as he did so, “Shut the door behind me!” and giving it the force of an order.

The little girl slammed the gate so hard the hinges rattled.

And it was only at that point that he reined the horse in and realized that those had been no ordinary children. Ordinary children did not have ravens and parrots perching on their shoulders and acting like playmates.

They’d had no hint of Magic about them, but in that flash of understanding, he had no doubt that they had some sort of psychical gift.

The second girl hadn’t spoken loud enough for him to hear her voice, but the first girl had been a plain street-sparrow Cockney. And how did that come about?

David’s host had said that the master of Highleigh was “an odd duck,” though he had given no details. Now David wondered if that was a simple description of eccentricity, or if the man was part of one or more esoteric circles. He could think of no other reason why a Cockney child of dubious ancestry and obvious psychical gifts should be on that property…

There was one way to find out, certainly.

He rode back to the house, to ask his valet to make inquiries.

An hour later he was possessed of interesting—and disturbing—intelligence. Interesting, because it seemed that the master of Highleigh was also the owner of that dangerous property in Berkeley Square that his own Master’s Circle had been forced to cleanse.

Disturbing, because the gentleman in question had turned over his home and land to the pupils and teachers of a school for the children of British expatriates for the summer.

Now, David knew of only one school likely to harbor psychically gifted children in London. He knew of only one reason—guilt—why a well-to-do London gentleman would have allowed the masters and children of that school to make free of his property for the summer. And he also knew that two children—two little girls—in that school were the keepers of pet birds.

The conclusion was inescapable. Isabelle Harton was living just on the other side of that hedge, along with her pupils.

All other considerations, all other concerns vanished in the apprehension of that knowledge.

She was here. She was, if not alone, without the oversight of her husband. He could go and speak to her if he liked.

He could. And in so doing, he could make an utter and complete fool of himself.

Or he might rid himself of the memories that continued to intrude on him, no matter what he did.

A dozen times he made up his mind to go back down to the stable and ride over and be done with it. A dozen times he reconsidered. And in the end, the silver chime of the first dinner bell, warning guests that it was time to dress, rendered it all moot. He had been able to escape his obligations for the afternoon, but he dared not shirk them further, and to abandon his place at dinner with no good excuse would be a faux pas he would be months in living down.

He permitted his valet to enter and dress him for dinner, in the stiff evening shirt, formal black suit, and tie that was considered necessary here, even in the midst of summer. The ladies of the party glittered in their jewel-tone gowns of satin and lace, ornamented (since none of them could even be remotely considered ingénues anymore) with small fortunes in gems. And as he made polite conversation and worked his way through the extensive menu, memories kept reintruding, of those times that seemed a world and a lifetime removed now. Times when the dinner menu was restricted to simpler fare than caviar and quail’s eggs on toast, roast pheasant and baked salmon, and a dozen more courses before the end of it all. Times when no one dressed for dinner, or if they did, the young men wore light-colored linen suits, loose and casual, and the young ladies in their muslins and flowers looked far happier than these prosperous dames in satins and rubies. Times when the after-dinner entertainment would be to gather around the piano or read aloud to each other, or for engaged couples, to stroll hand-in-hand in the garden—not for the men to split off in one direction to smoke cigars, drink brandy, and talk into the night while the women went off (again) to their own parlor to do whatever it was they did while their husbands conversed about “important business.”

Suddenly, a feeling of intense dissatisfaction washed over him. But oddly enough, it was not a vision of Isabelle that accompanied that emotion, but the contemptuous eyes of the little street urchin he had seen this afternoon.

He knew instinctively what she would call him, with her voice dripping with scorn. A “toff,” a “guv’nor,” a “stuffed shirt.” Someone who did nothing and consumed everything; who deserved nothing and helped himself to everything. Who had never actually earned anything he had gotten in life—

He wanted to protest that he had, in fact, earned this place at the table, this glittering company, and the promise of power to come.

Oh, yes, said those eyes in his memory, glittering with their own malicious pleasure. You’ve earned them, right enough. Enjoying them?

Well, no—

He could hear her laughter, and the raven’s contemptuous and dismissive quork.

In fact, in a kind of ghostly echo, he heard them all night, whispering under the important conversation, a counter-melody of disdain.

***

“I feel sorry for him, whoever he was,” Sarah said, as the two of them slipped into their nightdresses and turned down the bedclothes.

They had been discussing the pompous and self-important man who had nearly ridden them both down this afternoon. Nan was still of the opinion that he had no right and no invitation to ride the meadow of Highleigh Court; that he had merely pretended to it. She had not liked him, not at all, and neither had Neville. It wasn’t just that he was an arrogant toff, it was that there was something very cold, something not right about him. As if someone had taken away his heart and put a clod of frozen earth where it should have been. He’d nearly trampled both of them, and not one word of apology! No, he was too busy showing two poor little girls how important a fellow he was.

Never even asked if we was all right, she grumbled to herself.

“Well, I don’t,” she replied, climbing into bed. “Not even a little bit. Hope that fancy nag of his throws him inter a mud puddle.”

“Nan!” Sarah replied, but giggled.

“Better yet,” Nan continued, starting to grin, “Inter a great big cow-flop. A fresh one. Still hot.”

“Nan!” Now Sarah could not stop giggling, and that set Nan off, too. The thought of the fellow with his dignity in rags was just too much for her sense of humor. And once she started laughing at him, some of her anger at him cooled. Not that she was going to forgive him for almost trampling them and being rude, but she wasn’t quite as angry at him anymore.

“So why d’ye feel sorry for ‘im?” she asked, as Sarah blew out the candle and the soft, warm darkness enveloped both of them.

“Because—because he’s unhappy, and he knows why, but if he actually admits that he’s unhappy and why, he’ll have to admit that he’s wrong and he’s been wrong about everything,” Sarah said softly, as Nan heard the first soft whirring of bat wings from up near the ceiling.

“Ev’thing?” Nan said, surprised. “That’s a lot.”

“It’s his whole life,” Sarah said solemnly. “He made a wrong turn, and he’s never going to get it right unless he gives up most of what he’s done.”

Whatever Sarah knew or had sensed that led her to that conclusion, it hadn’t been granted to Nan. Still, she didn’t doubt her friend. “Money?” Nan asked, not able to imagine anything in a grown-up’s life that was more important than that.

“Not money, but—” Nan could almost hear Sarah groping for the words. “—I can’t explain it, but it’s all things he thinks are important and really aren’t. It’s like he’s throwing away real diamonds for great big pieces of glass.”

“Huh.” Nan considered this. “Must’ve been some’un convinced ‘im those chunks uv glass was wuth something.”

“It’s very sad, because he’s never going to be happy,” Sarah whispered, then sighed.

“Well, he ain’t our problem,” Nan replied resolutely. “He ain’t our problem, and he ain’t gonna be. He ain’t no ghost and he ain’t no bad thought.”

“No, he’s not,” Sarah agreed, sounding sad. “I wish I knew of a way I could help him, though. It kind of feels as if I ought to.”

Crickets outside sang through their silence, and a moth flew in the window, wings white in the moonlight.

“Why d’ye reckon yon Robin he’ped us out, ye think?” Nan asked.

She figured by changing the subject, she would be able to get Sarah to talk about something other than that so-dislikable man, and she was right.

“I think Robin likes us,” Sarah said at last, after a long moment of silence. “I’m not sure why. I think he likes Mem’sab too.”

“I think ye’re right,” Nan replied, and sighed happily. “It’s a nice thing, ‘avin’ some’un like that like ye.”

“I think he admires you, Nan,” Sarah replied, admiration in her own voice. “I know he thinks you’re brave.”

“Eh, ‘e thinks you’re pretty brave, too!” Nan countered, but couldn’t help feeling a bit of pride at the thought. “I mean, you stood right up’t’ that shadow lady! Not many would ‘ave.”

“They would if they knew it was the right thing to do,” came the soft reply out of the darkness.

Nan thought about that as she drifted off to sleep. Sometimes it was hard being Sarah’s friend—because she would say things like that, things that part of Nan knew weren’t really true—or at least, that everything Nan had ever learned in her short life told her weren’t true. But then, just as she had made up her mind, another part would at least hope for the opposite, for Sarah’s words, and not Nan’s feelings, to be the right one. So part of her wanted to contradict Sarah, while the other part wanted to encourage her.

Eh, what’s it hurt to let her think it? she finally decided, as sleep took her. She’s a queer little duck, and mebbe if she believes it long enough, it’ll ac’chully happen someday.

A comforting thought, and a good one to carry into the night.

14

CRICKETS sang outside the window, and a bat flew into the room, patrolled for insects, and flew out again. Isabelle Harton relaxed in the embrace of her husband’s arms. While she was deeply enjoying this sojourn in what was the next thing to a castle, with far more servants than she could ever dream of employing herself, the pleasure was flawed by not having Frederick with her for most of the time. “Good gad, I have missed you,” she said, contentedly, and yet with some sadness, knowing that on Sunday night he would once again take the train back to London.

She felt him smile in the darkness. “What a scandal!” he replied, contradicting his own words by pulling her closer. “Wives aren’t supposed to miss the carnal attentions of their husbands. They are supposed to endure them for the sake of children.”

She chuckled. “And what idiot told you that?” she responded. “Not the Master, that’s for certain.”

He laughed. “Something a well-meaning clergyman told a young officer a very long time ago, in an attempt to persuade the young officer that his pretty wife would be happier living in England. He swore that women would rather, on the whole, be left alone by men, and that she was merely being dutiful when she told him she didn’t want to leave.”

“And what young officer was that?” she asked, curiosity piqued.

He chuckled deep in his chest. She felt the sound vibrate through him and smiled. Of all of the things she loved about him, hearing him laugh was one of the best.

“Myself, of course,” he said. “Who else?”

She arched an eyebrow, though of course he would not be able to see it in the dark. “I was never pretty.” It was an old “disagreement.”

“I thought you were. And I think you are beautiful now. Since I am the one who looks at your face more often than you do, I think I should be the one allowed to make the judgment.” The usual argument.

She wasn’t going to win it. She never did. “I wish the business would run itself.” She sighed.

She felt his hand stroking her hair. “And I wish the school would run itself, or that you and I could build a little hut on the beach of a tropical island and raise goats like Robinson Crusoe. But goatskins make dreadful gowns, or so I’m told.”

“Smelly, anyway.” There were many things she could have talked to him about, but none of them were as important as simply being here in his arms, and luxuriating in the feeling that this was the best, the only place in the world for her, and that she would never have felt like this about anyone else. This was the still center of the whirling universe, where everything was at rest. In its own way, the jewel in the heart of the lotus, the place where love was, had been, and always would be. Buddhists, of course, would argue that point, preferring their way of detachment from the world. But on the whole, she preferred hers.

So she would not spoil the moment with anything other than things that would make him smile. So she told him about Tommy’s latest misadventure until the bed shook with their laughter.

***

Cordelia wished there was a way to look at “herself” in a mirror.

It turned out that there was a way to turn the face of your soul-self into something other than a reflection of the real world “you.” She’d had to search through some excruciatingly boring manuscripts to find it, plowing with determination through things that ranged from absurd to outright duplicitous, but she had found it. She thought that she had done a creditable job, given the cryptically worded instructions. Fortunately she had done enough out-of-body work with David that she knew what his “self” looked like. It would have been a dreadful mistake to have appeared in something other than the chainmail and surcoat he habitually wore in that semblance.

Perhaps it would be a wise choice to gradually have him wear a helm as well. That way she would have less chance of losing hold of the likeness of his face.

Yes, that would be a good idea. It should be easy enough, a little suggestion that if out-of-body work was becoming hazardous, a helm might be in order, to remind the soul-self to keep its defenses up. It was a very good thing that what the avatar wore was often as variable as the personality within. David, the most conservative of mages, had been known to vary the outfitting of his own avatar to suit the occasion, now and again. No one would wonder that he had assumed a helmet, and he himself could implement the change without much thought.

So the next part of the experiment could proceed as planned; to discover if one living soul could be used to push out another. The child that was silent was a weaker personality than the one that hummed. A dose of laudanum mixed with other drugs and a great deal of honey in its bedtime milk would ensure that its hold on its body was weaker still. There was a distinct advantage in that the second child’s spirit would be drawn more strongly to the body that rightfully belonged to it. That would simulate her own will driving her to inhabit David’s shell.

After watching the two children sharply for an hour or so, she was satisfied that she had set up the best possible conditions. It did appear that the child about to be un-housed was another of the Peggoty sort, however. Unlike the other, which was at least learning to play with toys in the manner of a normal child, the boy just sat there staring vaguely at whatever object his nursemaid put in his hands, now and again turning it over and over and studying it, but otherwise showing no signs of real interest in it. And it was getting fat, in a pale and puffy sort of way, from inactivity. Clearly only the scant rations at the orphanage had kept it so slender.

Useless in every way. Best she get rid of it now, as one would dispose of an unwanted puppy.

But she also wanted to eliminate every thought of suspicion, so she went in and exclaimed about the child’s lassitude to the nursemaid.

“Yes’m,” the little nursemaid agreed, bobbing a curtsy. “He don’t look right, and that’s a fact, Mum. But he being a foundling and all, they sometimes are sickly.”

As if your brothers and sisters weren’t! Cordelia thought with amusement, knowing, as the maid did not know, that her mistress knew everything of note about her family, including her mother’s three miscarriages and five dead children. One in every two poor children died in infancy, and it was just too bad that Cordelia didn’t have a way to harvest or use those spirits.

Ah well, perhaps the answer lay in her researches. Now she had more than one lifetime to look into it, and she no longer felt quite such a sense of urgency.

But for a show of concern, she sent for the apothecary—not the doctor, that would have been an excess—who shook his head and opined that he did not know of too many orphanage children able to thrive even in the best of situations. “Bad blood, My Lady,” he pontificated. “Mothers and fathers both usually addicted to gin, opium, hashish—bad blood there and no mistake. Sometimes it’s just as well that they don’t thrive.”

She nodded and the nursemaid nodded, as he prescribed a tonic, a bottle of which he produced with such readiness that she knew he had brought it here on purpose to sell it to her. As was appropriate, however, he did not offer it to her, nor did he name a price. He gave it to the nursemaid, who thanked him. A bill would be forthcoming, of course, and the housekeeper would deal with it.

There. The stage was set for tonight.

When the apothecary had left, she waited for the nursemaid to take the boys off to their bath, and confiscated the tonic, which might be good or ill, might even be the same ingredients as her own potion, only weaker, but did not suit her purposes. She poured the contents down a drain, and substituted her own mixture. The strength of what she poured in there would have put a grown man to sleep, much less a small child.

Then she waited.

She had been forced to make do now that it was summer and she could not expect an ice-laden wind to do her work for her, replacing the cold of winter with drugs and powerful magic. Instead of arranging for the window to be opened, when the nursemaid was safely asleep (thanks to a heavy dose of laudanum in her tea) she made her way quietly into the nursery where the two boys lay on their cots.

With her arms outstretched, and hands cupped upward, she silently mouthed the words of invocation, and felt power drain from her in response. A chill, white mist formed slowly over the two cots, and settled over the two boys. This was called “The breath of the snow dragon,” and was the opposite side of the “breath of the dragon” invocation used by Fire Mages. That brought a furnace heat; this summoned the wind off the glaciers itself.

When she was satisfied that both boys were chilled to the bone and to all intents and purposes very near death, she closed her eyes and reached with spirit hands toward the strong one’s body.

The spirit already drifted a little above it; now she had to detach it altogether.

The incantation she used was one that would have made any good and decent Elemental Mage cover his ears in horror. She had found it in an ancient book that allegedly contained spells dating from the time of Atlantis. Whether that was the truth or not, this was the only one that actually accomplished what it was said to do.

The silver cord connecting soul with body shattered. She snatched up the spirit and shoved it toward the second boy’s body, at the same time repeating her blasphemous words.

The first child was already trying to reestablish a connection with a physical body, the end of the “cord” drifting about like the groping tentacle of a cephalopod. As she had hoped, because his spirit was the stronger of the two, it made the connection with the body that had originally belonged to it before the second boy re-anchored himself. The soul-self sank into the body, as the displaced ghost drifted toward the empty husk.

But before it could reach its former home, she had summoned a shield around it, preventing it from entering, and making it into one of her servants; this was a bit of magic she had long been familiar with and had used innumerable times. The glow of the shield surrounded the spirit and shrank, forming a kind of “skin,” then faded.

Now it was hers. It could neither move back into the vacant body, nor go anywhere else. The spirit was sealed to the earthly plane, unless someone could be found to open a passage into the Other Side for it, or until it willed one open for itself.

It looked very like Peggoty had, a gray-white sketch in the air of an androgynous child figure, as it opened its hollow eyes to stare at her. “Go and play,” she told it, and it turned away from her and drifted off, through the wall. It would linger somewhere about, just as Peggoty had, until she summoned it. Unlike Peggoty, it probably could be summoned by whatever means she chose without frightening it unduly.

And then she felt it, the triumph, the glee. It had worked! By heavens, it had worked!

And she allowed herself the indulgence of a feral smile, unconcerned, now, for its effects on her face, the possibility of wrinkles or creases. Because very soon now, it would not matter.

Not at all. Not when she could discard this useless body like the outworn thing that it was, for a fine new replacement, a replacement that was in all senses superior in every way to the original.

***

David Alderscroft could not sleep.

It had been a productive, but profoundly boring day. He knew that he should feel pleased about it, but all he could manage was a weary and resigned sense that he had accomplished what he had come for. Although the eminent politicians here were unclear as to why he wanted a new minister appointed to the Cabinet and exactly what the minister would be representing, it was a virtual certainty that he would get to be that minister.

A Minister of Magical Sciences, although that, of course, was not what he would actually be called. And no more than a handful of people would ever know that this was, in fact, the purview of the office.

It was more than time for such a Ministry, however. More than time for the Elemental Masters to step forward and put their hands on the reins of government. Too much secrecy had been going on over the decades, and at some point, without the cooperation of the government, that secrecy was going to fall apart.

He paced the length of the terrace in the darkness as he considered the night’s work. None of the men here tonight would ever know that this “Ministry of Esoteric Sciences” was in fact about magic. Only the Cabinet and the Prime Minister would be told this. But revealing the knowledge at a high level virtually ensured that it would never be revealed at a lower level.

At this point, in David’s view, such protection was absolutely vital. There had been too many near misses already, moments when he thought for certain some enterprising soul would uncover the Elemental Masters along with the proof to convince the skeptical. And then what?

Well, in worst-case scenario, there could be a kind of latter-day witch hunt, a crusade of the ordinary mortals against the extraordinary magicians among them. People did not like the notion that there were those who, by accident of breeding, had some powers or abilities that could not otherwise be attained. At bottom, even the lowest of day laborers swilling his gin was certain that nothing separated him from a baron of industry except luck. To discover, that there were people who had abilities he could never dream of having would certainly inflame tempers to the raging point.

And of course the government could not know of such things without wanting to have some form of control over them. There would be lists and registries, and fines for “practicing magic without a license.” No, it would be a nightmare.

But if the government already knew—if, in fact, it was complicit in covering up the existence of magic and magicians—then it would have every reason to continue doing so. Incorporating the service of magicians into, say, the intelligence services, the “Great Game,” as it were—that made a great deal more sense.

And it would give added impetus to keeping the existence of mages a secret. After all, there was no point in allowing that secret to leak out if a great deal of foreign intelligence was coming in by means of magic.

David already suspected that other governments had come to the same conclusion, although he had no direct evidence. The French of course—bah! Secretive and with logic as convoluted as the new ornamental balustrades of the Metro stations! They had probably been employing Elemental Mages since the time of Napoleon! And the Italians, of course, most probably in the Vatican. The Prussians were a bit more straightforward and the idea might not have ever occurred to them—but then again, they were ruthless and would use any tool that came to hand. The Balkans, thank the good Lord, were so disorganized that it was unlikely there was any concerted effort to use magic by the various factions of Anarchists and the like.

The Americans… unlikely. They simply did not believe in what they could not see, weigh, measure.

The Spanish, perhaps, given their mystical bent, but they were nonplayers so far as the world stage was concerned.

Who did that leave? India, China, inscrutable and of all nations, they were the most likely to be employing magical agents.

He grew tired of hearing his own footsteps on the terrazzo, and decided to stroll down into the garden instead. Maybe his thoughts would slow in the sultry, rose-scented air, and he would be able to get some sleep.

His own muffled footsteps on the turf, slow and deliberate, were the only sound around him. Insects stilled their chatter as he passed, so that he moved in a circle of silence. It seemed a little odd, but not unpleasant, so he merely noted the fact as he passed on, attempting to empty his mind so that he could, eventually, sleep.

But restfulness eluded him, and he let his feet take him farther, out of the manicured gardens and toward the “wilderness.” This was a part of the grounds that differed from the lawn mostly by virtue of the fact that only the paths were mowed; or at least, so far as he could tell in the darkness. He had just stepped under the shadow of the ancient trees there, when a voice from behind startled him.

“So, son of Adam, you venture into my territory at last.”

He turned. No Elemental Mage, much less a Master, would ever have mistaken the creature that stood on the path, arms folded over his chest, for anything other than what he was: a powerful Primal Spirit. Some might have said, a godling, as it was not of any one Element, but of all of them, though Earth held primacy in his makeup. In form, it was an adolescent boy, in antique costume, with a strand of vine leaves tangled in his long, curly hair, and the moonlight seemed to gather itself around the Spirit so that it was as easy to see him as if he stood in broad daylight. There was an impression of veiled Power there, a great deal of it. In this case, the very fact that this power was concealed from David’s normally acute perception told him that the creature was not the usual sort he was likely to encounter.

“I beg your pardon?” he said politely. No point in beginning a confrontation—not that he had any doubt of his ability to handle the situation. It was only some Nature Spirit, after all. True, he had never yet met one this powerful, but still, he was no peasant, to be terrified by such a thing.

“I come to give you fair warning, son of Adam,” it replied calmly. “Had you ventured here in the proper season, I would have no issue with the source of your power. But you come, out of skew with what is right and proper, and I will not have it. Wield your might unduly, and bring blight, and I will remove you—and at need, from this mortal coil entire.”

Well, he might not have intended a confrontation, but there was no mistaking the challenge there! Insolent thing…

He suppressed his outrage, however, and merely said, coldly, “I am afraid I do not take your meaning.”

The seeming youth snorted. “You lie, you do; you lie and feign you do not understand. But I will be plainer, then. You bring winter into summer, you take the Element that should be your companion and twist it to bitter usage. And I do warn you that you tread now on my ground, and I will not abide this thing. Use your breath of ice and bring blight here all out of season, and you will suffer the consequences. I do not meddle in the quarrels of mortals, but I will not permit you to meddle in my affairs and with my charge. Use what you have on your fellow fools, but do not o’erreach yourself.”

David’s temper flared. “And you, sir, dare to threaten me!” He gathered his own power about him like a cloak.

The spirit laughed mockingly. “I do more than threaten, son of Adam. You hold no sway over all that walks the Earth.” And he raised only his eyebrow.

But the moment that he did, David was driven to his knees—literally—by fear. Fear so overwhelming, so crushing, that there was nothing he could do, for his knees gave way and his thoughts collapsed and although every fiber of him urged flight, his body was so paralyzed with terror that he could not move so much as a fingertip.

It lasted a lifetime, that fear. He could hardly do more than breathe, and even that brought with it more fear with every intake of breath.

Then, as suddenly as it had overcome him, the fear was gone.

And so was the spirit.

***

Sarah and Nan should have been in bed, of course. They should not have even considered setting a single toe on the floor now that the rest of the household was asleep.

But Nan had long ago discovered what—though they did not know it—generations of young maids who had been assigned to the room they were now in had discovered. There was a simple way to leave the house when they wanted to meet their swains in the moonlight. The window gave out onto a piece of roof that was nearly flat. That, in turn, led to a series of bits of ornamental stonework as easy to descend as a ladder, and from there to the top of a wall one could walk along until that, in turn, led to the roof of a shed that sloped down to within a mere four feet of the ground. Any girl sufficiently sturdy and willing to tuck up her skirts could get out. Again—although they did not know this—the housekeeper was well aware of this means of egress, and this was why there were no young maids ever given that room. But she had not considered that two little girls, strangers to the manor and mere children after all, might also discover and use this means of egress.

In fact, Nan had worked it out within days of their arrival. She just didn’t bother to use it all that often. There was no real reason to; they hadn’t transgressed so far in mischief as to have been confined to their room, and they were usually so tired at the end of the day that even when they tried to stay awake, they couldn’t. But Nan had lived her entire life in rat-infested tenements that often had fires, and she had early learned to find an escape route in case the normal one was cut off. She had shown this one to Sarah, then both of them had mostly forgotten about it.

But not tonight.

There was something about the air tonight that had made both of them restless. Long after the lights had been put out, Nan had been lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the bat make his rounds, and knowing from the sound of her breathing that Sarah was doing the same. And she felt, more and more strongly, that something wanted her to be awake, wanted her to come outside. She could practically hear it calling her name. Finally she threw off the covers, and got out of bed.

“I’m goin’ outside,” she whispered.

“Me, too,” Sarah said immediately, doing the same. “Do you feel it, too? Someone wants us.”

“Somethin’ like,” Nan agreed.

The two of them groped for their clothing and fumbled it on in the dark, helping each other with fastenings neither could see. Then Nan eased herself over the window ledge and out onto that bit of roof, and from there it was easy to feel her way down with her toes on the stonework. The wall top was broad and Nan felt no fear in walking it; moonlight shining on the stone made it as clear as any path. Sarah followed, and they both dropped down to the turf side-by-side.

Nan looked around, squinting, as if that would make any difference in seeing better in the darkness. She missed Neville, who was asleep, and hadn’t stirred even with all of their moving around; he could see things she couldn’t with no difficulty whatsoever. But Sarah acted as if she had the eyes of a cat, taking Nan’s hand and tugging at it.

“The Round Meadow,” she said, which wasn’t round at all, only an approximation of round, but it wasn’t that far from the manor, just a little ways into the “wilderness,” which was a poetical way of saying that the only things mowed or trimmed in there were the paths for horseback riding. It wasn’t very big either; more of a pocket-sized meadow, in which sweet grasses grew waist-high and flowers bloomed all the time. Sarah and Nan liked to play there, because you could trample down a little “room” in the grass and be quite private but still get to bask in the sun and watch the clouds go by overhead.

That was where they had spent most of the afternoon today, in fact. It had been a very lazy, sleepy sort of day, and no one had wanted to do much of anything. Mem’sab had let them all be somewhat lazy, and not do any lessons. Sarah and Nan had gone to Round Meadow with rugs and books and a picnic basket of tea things. Sarah had made daisy chains and crowns, then they’d both made flower fairies and set them up around their little grass-walled room, creating a village in miniature, with houses, a fairy pub with acorn cups and bowls, and a shop selling new flower frocks and hats. All very silly, of course, but then they had gathered up their “fairies” and divided them into “audience” and “players,” and put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Sarah and Nan dividing up the parts between them.

Nan could not help but think about that, and about how the first planned performance of the play had somehow called Robin Goodfellow. Was that why the two of them felt so restless tonight? Had the play once again worked its magic?

But when they got to Round Meadow, it was not Puck that they found.

There was something four-legged and white standing in the middle of the meadow where their grass-room had been. At first, all they could see was its back and part of its legs and its neck, all gleaming silvery in the moonlight, head down and grazing. They could both hear the sound of the grass being torn up and strong jaws munching it. For one moment, Nan thought it must be a small horse, perhaps gotten loose from that Great House on the other side of the door in the hedge. But then it raised its head and looked at them.

It was a deer. A doe, actually, as luminous as moonlight itself, watching them with gleaming silver eyes. Now, Nan knew how to tell a boy beast from a girl well enough, and this one was definitely a doe, and yet, crowning its graceful, great-eyed head were silver antlers.

“I thought only stags had horns,” Sarah whispered to Nan, who only shrugged. That’s what she had thought, too.

“Ah, but that is no common deer, daughter of Eve,” said Puck, who had materialized out of nowhere beside them, wearing his outré fairy garb again and looking perfectly natural in it. “That is a Sidhe-deer.”

“I c’n tell it’s a she-deer,” Nan responded.

Puck laughed. “ ‘Tis spelled s-i-d-h-e, sparrow, and ‘tis an old, old word for the Good Neighbors.”

The “Good Neighbors,” as they both knew, were another name for the fairy folk. So this must be some sort of animal out of those strange lands where the fairies still walked.

“ ‘Tis said,” Puck continued, rubbing the side of his nose with one finger thoughtfully, “That they can become maidens when they choose. I’ve never seen it, but—‘tis said.”

They watched the deer in silence as she lowered her head to the grass again. “Why is she here?” Sarah whispered at last.

Puck shrugged. “Ask the wind why it blows where it will,” was his enigmatic reply. “She is here because she chooses to be, and she will go because she has decided to. Perhaps your making your games in a round place, and your playing of the play made the spot into a fairy ring. And perhaps it is that you should be wary of the hard man who rode through the hedge the other day.”

Neither of them had any doubt who he was talking about, nor did Puck’s abrupt change of subject give either of them a moment’s pause. The incident was still fresh in Nan’s mind. And besides, there hadn’t exactly been a lot of men riding through the doors in the hedges around the girls.

“I don’t like ‘im,” Nan said flatly. “There’s summat cold about him.”

“And there you put your finger on it, my pretty London sparrow,” Puck responded, with a nod. “Cold. Cold he is, cold out of season, cold at the heart, and there’s an end to it. A man that cannot feel, be he mortal or fey, is a man who may do anything.”

The Sidhe-deer raised its head again and looked at them. Was it nodding?

“But what if he could change and feel again?” Sarah asked quickly. “I feel sorry for him. I think he is very lonely. What if he could thaw?”

Puck shrugged. “I warn about what is, not maunder about what could be. I do not meddle in the affairs of mortals, except as the affairs of mortals affect what I have charge over. May be he can, and may be he can’t and it matters not at all. But his cold, his ice—now that matters, and cold and ice are death and I will not have death in the season of life.” He nodded at the deer. “It may be she is here because of it. The Sidhe-deer will not abide death out of season either.”

Sarah set her chin in the expression that Mem’sab called “mulish.”

“I think there is good in him,” she said.

Puck shrugged again. “ ‘Tis not mine to say nor mine to do anything about,” he replied. “That’s the affairs of mortals.”

Sarah said nothing aloud, but Nan could almost hear her thoughts—then I will.

She sighed, but not loudly. If Sarah had made up her mind to do something, then it would be up to Nan to guard her in it.

Not that she was likely to get into too much trouble. The man was only a toff, maybe one with a bit of magic about him, but he wasn’t bad evil, he was only the sort that would meddle because he thought he had a right and he thought he was stronger than anything he meddled in. So up to the point where he fell into the hole he hadn’t seen, he was safe enough.

“Well,” she said aloud. “If we’re gonna meddle, we best do it afore he gets himself into somethin’ worse nor he is, an’ brings it home.”

Puck gave her a wry little bow. “And there’s wisdom; to know when to run and when to hold fast, and when to stand by your friend.”

But his smile in the moonlight was warm with approval, and when the Sidhe-deer moved on like a drift of mist, glimmering a moment among the trees and then gone, he took them off on a strange, wild walk in the night. He showed them an owl’s nest in a barn, with four round faces peering at them out of it, and he spoke to the mother owl when she came with a mouse, so that she allowed them to stay and watch her feed the hungriest. It made Nan giggle to watch, as the mouse tail hung out of the owlet’s beak, and it gulped and gulped and the tail slowly disappeared. She would have thought that Sarah would have been revolted, but Sarah found it just as funny.

He also took them to a fox den, and let them play with the cubs while mother watched benignly, though he warned them after, when he was taking them home, that they must never try such things when he was not about. “I have the speech with the wild things,” he said. “And they know me. They will abide much from me that they will never tolerate elsewise.”

“Well, of course!” Sarah replied, matter-of-factly.

It was a good thing he was along; he showed them a better way of scrambling up to their window. “I mind me,” he said reminiscently, peering in through the open casement, “when there was a bright-eyed lass a living here had a farmer’s lad all head-tumbled and heart-sore, because he thought she’d set her cap on the steward’s son. But when the banns were posted, it was the farmer lad who won the day. Of course,” he said, with a wink, “it might be that I had a hand in that.”

“With the little purple flower?” Sarah replied archly, referring back to the Shakespeare play.

“Now that would be telling, and I never tell.”

And he was gone in an instant, and they got back into their nightdresses and crawled into bed to fall asleep the moment they got under the covers.

And in the morning, they might have thought it was all a dream—except that when Sarah stuck her hand into the pocket of her pinafore, she pulled out, much to her surprise, an owl feather.

15

THE strange Spirit had rattled David as nothing else had in many, many years. He longed for someone to discuss the incident with, but Cordelia was in London, and he did not think there were any other Masters living near this place.

Which left only Isabelle. After all, she was no expert on these things. He didn’t even know if she could see the Elementals and nature spirits.

But on the other hand, there was only one name for that terror that had overcome him. Panic—named for the Great God Pan…

Surely, that had not been—surely not. It had worn the guise of a mere boy, not the Great Goat-footed One. Why would the Sylvan Faun do such a thing?

For that matter, what would he be doing in England? This was not his place, he belonged in Greece!

And yet, David had seen with his own eyes lesser Fauns in England, little boyish earth spirits that haunted the gardens of Earth Masters. They had come, so why not Pan?

But why should it be so?

Perhaps Isabelle was no Elemental Master, but she did know of the Elementals, and other such creatures, too. Perhaps she had even seen this one herself…

A dozen times David made up his mind to ride over to talk to Isabelle, and a dozen times found an excuse not to, until the day after his encounter when he was very nearly run to earth by a lady determined to have him for her daughter, to the point where he seized on any reason to go riding alone again.

“My dear woman,” he said insincerely, “I would be charmed to speak with you, but I have an appointment to pay a call at Highleigh Court.”

Mrs.Venhill stared at him. “A call?” she repeated. “I was not aware that you had any acquaintances in this part of the county.” Her mouth tightened. She knew exactly what he was doing. But he had no intention of giving her a way to disprove his statement.

“I do not,” he said calmly. “But an acquaintance of mine, a Mrs.Isabelle Harton, is a guest there. I have not seen her in many years, and she was quite eager to renew her acquaintance with me.”

That last was the only lie; the rest was absolute truth, and carried the lie like froth on the top of a wave. And since he did not mention a Mister Harton, this would, he hoped, lead her to think that Isabelle’s husband was no more, and she was a young, lonely, and presumably attractive widow.

And in a case such as this, an acquaintance out of one’s youth was going to trump just about any cards a matchmaking mama could lay out. She was beaten, and she knew it. She retired gracefully from the battle lines, murmuring, “Ah! Well, of course you must go, it would be insufferably rude if you did not!”

Of course, now he had done it; he had to go, or at least appear to go, or Mrs.Vennhill would be very well aware that he had been putting her off. Do that too many times and one found one’s invitations no longer extended or answered.

So he found himself on horseback again, riding off into a day that threatened rain. Not the cleverest idea he could ever have had, but it was too late now.

And he might just as well follow through with the putative visit.

After all, if it did rain, he would have to have shelter somewhere until it passed, and as a visitor he could at least claim that much even if the visit proved to be awkward.

He had no doubt that although he was not expected, he would be received with the proper respect, and so he was. The horse was taken around to the stables, and he was shown to the library, that being a proper and reasonable place for a gentleman to amuse himself when the lady he has come to see might be busy.

He did amuse himself by looking through some of the titles of the books there, and as he had half expected, a good number of them were occult or esoteric in nature. So the owner of the house was in Isabelle Harton’s circle of acquaintances, or at least, presumably knew many of the same practitioners of psychical magic that she did.

He took one down and began to leaf through it, but it was heavy going, and he was having a difficult time untangling the sense of it, when light footfalls heralded the arrival of a newcomer, and he looked up to see Isabelle stepping into the room. She walked briskly over to him, and boldly tilted the book up to read the spine.

“Blithering idiot,” she said, without preamble, and waved at the shelves. “Our host collects any sort of occult writing, but if you examine the shelves carefully and know some of the authors, you will soon determine that he has grouped his books according to their usefulness, or lack thereof.” The half-smile she produced had more than a hint of irony in it; it was the smile of a knowing, worldly-wise woman, not the pretentious irony of a girl. “His categories—and I apologize in advance—are Useful, Moderately Useful, Nothing of Note, Idiot, and Blithering Idiot. I fear that the Blithering Idiots number twice as much as all the rest combined, but he takes some amusement in having them about. I am told, though I have not actually attended such a function myself, that one of the entertainments for his close circle of friends is to take down a book from those shelves and read it aloud as portentously as possible without cracking a smile or laughing.”

He looked from the book to Isabelle and back, and felt something constrict in his chest. The woman of the photo was, in person, so much more.

The Isabelle he had known had been quiet, a little shy, diffident. Her attractive qualities had been shaded by that diffidence. If you knew how to look at her, she was quite pretty, and he had taken a certain amount of pleasure in knowing that nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would never see her true beauty. Unlike Cordelia, of course, who was so strikingly handsome that even a dolt knew how attractive she was.

The woman that Isabelle had become was like Cordelia in that she left the impression that she was completely self-confident. It probably did not matter to her that the frock she wore was a trifle out of date, nor that it had never been in high mode. She wore it with an air that made what she wore irrelevant.

And there was beauty there, for those with eyes to see it. She had never been beautiful before, but she was now.

It was not the sort of beauty that would make her into a subject for photographic postcards, or cause artists to beg her to pose for them. But it was a beauty that would outlast those whose features made them into public icons.

It was the sort of beauty that would look good on the arm of a public official, and presiding at his dinner table. And the confidence she exuded would make her at home at any gathering of Elemental Masters though she did not share their gifts.

This could have been his—and he had thrown it away.

“You are looking well,” he said, making his words formal, a barrier between them.

She inclined her head, graciously, with no sign that she shared the emotional turmoil that racked him. “And you, though I confess that when your card came in, I was rather nonplussed. We attempted to have an interview with you about the threat to my two pupils a few months ago, in which a foreign Elemental Master was involved. Is this the cause of your visit?”

Pupils? What pupils? An Elemental Master attacking children?

Belatedly, he recalled the business in Berkeley Square, and suppressed irritation. This was the last thing in the world he wanted to talk about. “I thought that matter had been adequately closed,” he replied.

“Not in my opinion.” The inflection was of mild rebuke. “But then, I am responsible for them, and you are not. I believe steps have been taken to ensure their safety that do not require the approval of the Master of the Hunt, nor the Wizard of London.”

He felt himself flushing with embarrassment. Something about the way she said those two titles—especially the latter—made them sound overblown, like something a child would give himself in a game of “I Conquer The Castle.” But he endeavored to sound casually dismissive. “Is that what others are calling me, the ‘Wizard of London’? There is no accounting for gossip even among the Elemental Mages.” He shrugged. “As for Master of the Hunt, that title and the duties that go with it have nothing to do with what others outside the Master’s Circle do or do not do. No one needs ask me permission for anything one gets from another Elemental Mage so long as it does not interfere with their hunt duties. If they choose to squander their power, they may do so in whatever fashion they like.”

It was an insult, he realized that a moment later. But she didn’t even blink an eye in reaction. The insult simply slid past her, not as if she did not understand she had been insulted, but as if it simply did not matter to her.

But it was very clear that she was going to extract whatever guilt she could from him before she let him go. “If the safety of two helpless little girls has not brought you here,” she said, “then to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

And now he found himself at a loss for words. There were many things he could say, and none of them were entirely the truth. Would she sense that? He had to wonder about that. Just what were her psychical abilities?

“I am visiting Mansell Hall,” he prevaricated, doing the only thing he could, which was to set it aside. “I understood that you were visiting here, and since it had been many years since we parted, I wished to pay a courtesy call.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth he could have hit himself. Of all the things to say, this was, perhaps the one with the least truth in it. And she would certainly sense that.

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “I was not aware that our social stations were compatible enough for a courtesy call.”

Now there, at last, she showed her claws. Not that he didn’t deserve it—

But the fact that he deserved it made him feel resentful. She was not going to get the better of him in this situation.

“Social graces are never misplaced,” he replied, in a swift parry, “And I have paid a call on Mr.Harton at the school already.”

But she riposted just as quickly and to better effect. “In that case, would courtesy not have dictated that you pay the call when my husband was also in residence, and not when I was here alone? Especially as you have already made his acquaintance?”

Hit and hit again. She was right. This was—despite that there were servants all around in this place, not to mention the teachers and pupils of her school—ever so slightly improper as a courtesy call. “Alone” she was, in that her husband was in London and presumably not expected here for several days. Had he come to see the schoolmistress about her pupils, it would have been one thing; that would have been proper and reasonable, and as he was the one of more social importance, the call would have been appropriately made at his convenience, not hers. Had he really come to see an old friend, it would have been another case, for long friendships dictated a relaxation of formal manners, and their differing social stature would not have mattered, nor would it have mattered that Frederick Harton was not present. Had he come to see the Hartons socially as a couple, that, too, would have been appropriate.

But to come here when her husband was absent and refer to it as a “social call” implied something else. That he wanted to renew more than just “the acquaintance,” and not as one of “friendship.”

And the damnable thing was, now that he had seen her, he realized that there had been something of that sort in the back of his mind, a thought that though she was married to someone else, it might merely be a marriage of convenience on her part. One of the reasons why he had never been able to warm up to any of the young women of his circle was that none of them had struck that particular spark within him that Isabelle had.

And none of them had aroused much interest in him either. There just had been nothing there, no moment of connection. Beneath young Isabelle’s diffidence had been the banked fires of passion, and the promise that the man who could arouse them would have a precious gift indeed.

Beneath the mature Isabelle Harton’s serene competence, those fires of passion blazed for those who could read such things. The promise had more than been fulfilled, and it was the foundation for her attractiveness.

But they did not blaze for him, though they might have had he taken a different path.

There it was: what he had lost, written plain.

And in some forgotten corner of his mind, he knew that he had hoped, with the knowledge of how many of his peers had kept women, that he could get it back, so long as she had not given her heart to Frederick Harton.

Somehow he would have cut her free and married her. Though in that dark corner the baser part of him might have toyed with the notion of making her his mistress, he knew now that he would never have settled for such a tawdry solution. No, if it had been possible to have this woman, it would have been aboveboard.

Oh, it would have caused some difficulties. A man married to a divorcee was unlikely to be made Prime Minister—if anyone knew his wife was once divorced.

And even though he knew the cause was lost, he couldn’t help tracing out those ways in his mind, as if he was probing at a sore tooth. There were ways around that, trivial for someone with the Power of an Elemental Master and the money of an Alderscroft. Records could be destroyed, memories altered. No one need ever know—not even she; with certain spells he could erase the memory of Frederick Harton entirely from her mind. Paying off Harton himself to go lose himself in the wilds of Canada or the fastnesses of the Himalayas would have not even made a significant dent in the Alderscroft fortunes.

But it would not happen. A marriage of convenience could be erased. A marriage of hearts, minds, and souls could not be.

And such a marriage did not allow for any other parties nor any other ties. He had lost her for all time.

There was only one way to retrieve his dignity; to tell a part of the truth, before she guessed at that other, hidden truth.

“Actually, the truth of the matter is that this is not a social call. It is one esoteric colleague calling upon the expertise of another. I encountered something curious, and you were the only person near enough that might be able to explain it,” he said, gathering his dignity about him and allowing her veiled slur to slide past his own icy calm. “Besides paying a courtesy call, I wished to call upon you as a consultant of sorts.”

Her expression did not change as he described the nature spirit to her—though he took care not to describe the circumstances under which it had appeared, nor the creature’s threats.

Her face turned grave. “You would be wise not to meddle with him,” she replied. “He is older than you can guess. The country folk call him Robin Goodfellow—”

“Good gad!” he exclaimed, startled. “Surely not!”

“Surely, for I have encountered him, too,” she replied, with warning clear in her tone. “And Shakespeare did not do him any kind of justice. He is to this land what Attic Pan was to Greece and Sylvanus to Rome. You meddle with him at your peril—”

Now, this made him angry, though he held his anger down firmly. “You meddle with him at your peril,” indeed! It was like something out of a poorly-written novel. What nonsense!

He had been so fixated on his conversation that he must not have noticed that the threatening storm had become actuality, for suddenly, Isabelle’s warning was punctuated, as with an exclamation point, by a bolt of lightning striking an ancient oak immediately outside the library windows, with a simultaneously deafening crash of thunder.

They both jumped; Isabelle clutched at the bookshelves, and he dropped the book he had been unconsciously holding, his heart racing.

His first thought—which he immediately dismissed—was that it had been a warning to echo Isabelle’s. It wasn’t. It was purest coincidence. There was no reason, no reason at all, to think anything otherwise.

It took him a moment to recover; another to pick up the book he had dropped. By that time he thought he knew what he was going to say.

But the conversation was interrupted by the intrusion of—of all things—that wretchedly defiant little girl child, easy enough to identify even in the storm gloom by the raven that rode on her shoulder and glared at him with bright, shining eyes.

“Mem’sab, the lightning frighted the babies half to death an’ they won’t stop cryin’ and the ayahs tol’ me to come get you.” He felt the force of truth behind the words, but he also felt the force of something else. The girl really disliked him and was fiercely happy to be the cause of interrupting the conversation he was having with her schoolmistress.

Nor did Isabelle seem at all displeased by the interruption. “You’ll pardon me, I am sure,” she said, with absolute formality. “But my duties to my charges in this case are something I cannot leave to anyone else. I am sure I can extend the hospitality of Highleigh to you for as long as the rain lasts. You may find research into the books on that shelf—” she pointed, “—to be fruitful, especially in light of what you just told me. You’ll forgive me, I am sure, if I do not make a formal farewell and leave you in the hands of the servants.”

And with that, she turned and followed the infuriating little girl out of the room.

Once again, he found himself struggling against anger, and only by invoking the disciplines that Cordelia had taught him was he able to regain his self-control.

That, too, made him angry. Oh, this was the first and last encounter with Isabelle Harton that he was going to have! He should have known better than to come here in the first place. There was a reason, a good one, why he had broken off the nascent relationship with the woman. Cordelia had been right. Anyone who could invoke such strong emotions in him potentially had a hold over him that he did not need nor want. No, what he needed was control, absolute and complete. He had been an idiot to even think about having any connection to a woman that went past mutual regard and a calm and rational assessment of how each could supply what the other required for a reasonably comfortable life. Marriages of convenience—much better, much more logical than marriages of emotion. Emotion sapped control and self-control and no Elemental Master had any business in allowing that loss of control to happen.

He had no choice but to remain while the storm raged—but he did not have to follow her suggestion to do further research into the nature of the creature that had accosted him. He already knew enough, now. His suspicions had been confirmed, and as irritating as it was to be challenged, then beaten by a Nature Spirit, this one had millennia of power behind him, and he knew, intellectually, that to pit himself against Robin Goodfellow was as foolish as going out and howling defiance at the storm outside. And really, why should he? There was no profit in it. No sense in any sort of confrontation.

He did not, however, have to like that revelation. But he needed to keep his emotional reaction to a minimum, or that, too, would cause a loss of control.

Nor did he have to like the fact that Isabelle Harton had also had an encounter or encounters with the spirit, and presumably had not gotten a similar warning.

So, petty as it was, he did the only thing in his power at the moment. Instead of researching among the books Isabelle had indicated, he selected a novel and set himself in a chair at the window to read it. Or at least, pretend to read it.

And the moment the sky cleared, he summoned a servant to fetch his horse, and was gone.

***

With her experiment a success, Cordelia had no further need for the second orphan. She was, in fact, debating what to do with him when fate itself presented the solution in the form of a tap on the door of her study by the housekeeper.

“Beggin’ your pardon, milady, but I’d like to know if you’ve got any plans for the future of that boy,” the woman said, without preamble. No need to ask “what boy,” since there was only one on the premises.

“Well, I had originally thought to make him a page…” She allowed her voice to trail off, leaving it for the housekeeper to determine that Cordelia now had some doubts about the wisdom of that plan.

The housekeeper jumped on the opening, and shook her head. “You’re kindness itself, milady, but that boy—there’s only so much polish you can put on a lump of coal, milady. Might be shiny, but ‘tis still a lump of coal, and that boy is never going to make a good page, and I don’t need another head in the household that does naught but run errands. He’s simple, milady, and that’s a fact. Not so bad to have a simpleton boy about, but a simpleton man, that’s another kettle of herring.”

Cordelia smiled benignly. “Mrs.Talbot, you would not have come up here to speak to me about one little boy if you did not already have a solution in hand. What is it?”

The housekeeper relaxed visibly. “The sweep’s here,” she said—which statement did not precisely follow, but Cordelia waited for elaboration. “Seems he’s not got an apprentice. Boy’s been following him about, does what he’s told, and he’s small and likely to stay so. Sweep asked where the boy was from and wants to know if you’d ‘prentice him out.”

“Ah.” Cordelia nodded. It made perfect sense. Chimney sweeps’ apprentices had shortened life spans; between falls and the unhealthy effects of crawling through tiny, soot-and-tar-laden chimneys, the number of apprentices that actually made it as far as becoming full-fledged chimney sweeps was exceedingly small. Sweeps were always looking for nimble, undersized boys.

The housekeeper had been more than a bit shaken by the death of the first boy, and was also getting a bit tired of having the second underfoot as well as losing the services of a perfectly capable housemaid for as long as the boy required a nanny. She had already registered one or two mild complaints with Cordelia on the subject. Now, if ever, was the opportunity to tidy up.

“I believe you have hit upon the perfect solution, Mrs.Talbot!” she said, earning a smile of relief from her housekeeper.

And that brought the household neatly back to normal. The boy was taken away, his nanny returned to her normal duties, and afternoon quiet settled over the town house.

Now was a good time for Cordelia to retire to her workroom. Perhaps the Ice Wurms would be able to do something about those little girls… in any event, it was time to put her plans for David into motion.

She lit the lamps—magically, of course—shut the door and sealed herself inside. With a word and a breath, she called up the chill, and the water in the air condensed into a mist, and she waited for it to settle into the forms of her Ice Wurms.

But it didn’t.

Instead, it spread itself in a single even layer on the marble top of the worktable and then—

Then there was ice. A thin film of ice that turned the surface of the table into a mirror, which reflected her face for an instant, and then reflected something else entirely.

She stared, mesmerized, into colorless eyes that took up the entire surface of the worktable, and which stared back at her in some amusement.

So, said a voice she had not heard in a very long time in her head. You have found a way to achieve your desire. Your dream of power. Congratulations.

She shook herself loose from the fascination of those eyes. “And if I have?” she replied. “I can’t see that it would matter to you.”

Oh, but it does, said the voice. Very much so. As a mere female you were vaguely interesting, even amusing, but as a man you will have the reins of power in your hands. That makes you more than interesting, it makes you worth bargaining with in earnest.

Bargaining? Now her curiosity was more than merely piqued.

But the first step in successful bargaining was to never show any interest.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Mostly an agent, a foothold. An opening into your world, and freedom from this cage in which I have been confined.

Aha! So the creature had been imprisoned where she found it!

“And what could you offer me that I would want?” she replied.

It laughed.

Let me show you

—

16

SHE had not wanted to see David. Not ever again. She had thought that it was all over and done with when he appeared at the school and Frederick spoke to him.

She had thought that she had all her resentment, her hurt, and her anger over and done with, too, long ago. It should have been. She should have been past all this. There was no reason why he should still have been able to affect her.

She had been wrong. And she wasn’t entirely sure that the lightning strike right outside the windows had been “accidental.” Give the amount of wild magic in play here, the number of arcane entities simply appearing, and the feeling she had that this was both a nexus for powers and a place where they manifested easily, that bolt from the heavens might merely have been her reaction to David’s presence.

Which meant that truly, her anger was not under control, it was merely being locked in place.

Not good. Not for a Warrior of the Light.

She could not afford to have uncontrolled anger. She could not afford to let this man unbalance her.

She thought, given the circumstances, that she had comported herself well. No longer the tongue-tied teenager when confronted with conflict, she had remained at least outwardly composed. Her words had been civilized. Her manners had been impeccable. He was the one who had acted poorly, if anyone had. She had even given him good advice, not that she expected him to take it. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that he had had no idea of just how angry she had been with him.

Which merely spoke for his blindness, not her ability to control herself.

She paced the confines of the small parlor toward the back of the manor overlooking the gardens that she tended to use as her own. The babies were all soothed, the storm had passed, and David’s physical presence had been removed.

Mentally and emotionally, however…

The anger roiled inside her like those storm clouds had. She thought she had forgiven him. Clearly, she had not.

In fact, she wanted him to be hurt as much as he had hurt her.

This was also not good for a Warrior of the Light, whose will could become action if she was not careful. And then she would be subject to threefold retribution. How had he done this to her?

It was unfair and grossly unjust. Here she was, struggling to make a decent life for herself and those in her charge—unable to bear children of her own, which was a terrible and deep hurt she had revealed to no one, not even Frederick—trying with all her soul to protect and serve as she was supposed to do with the scantiest of resources—

And there he was, arrogant, cold, making demands of her. Offering no apologies for what he had done to her. Treating her like a menial, like a toy he could break, wait for his servants to repair, and pick up to play with again. Clearly coming here expecting that if, once the “goods” had been examined and he still wanted them, they would be free for his taking. Oh, she had not missed the allusion to his powerful friends, had not missed the impeccably-tailored and clearly expensive riding clothes, the aura of power, the arrogance of wealth that assumes that if it wants a thing, it shall have that thing. And he knew that she knew all about the estate, the money, and the title.

She had been glad—glad!—to hear of his discomfiting encounter with Robin Goodfellow! Time and more than time for him to realize that his wants were not the center of the universe, and that he was not the most powerful creature in it! She was glad it was Robin that had done it, too, spirit of mischief that he was. David had never been comfortable with teasing, nor with being made fun of, and Robin surely had taken the starch out of him.