A Study in Sable (23 page)

“Because we want to head this off before the mage in question graduates from animals to humans, of course,” Mary said patiently. “Blood magic is generally associated either with mages who have gone to the bad, or with people who are not mages at all, and are raising power with death because they have no natural way of tapping into it as Elemental Mages do.”

“Oh,” Nan replied, thinking that this was a bit of an . . . assumption. Then again, England had been civilized for a very long time, so perhaps John and Mary were right, and she was the one making assumptions.

“At any rate, our plan is to settle in at the Railway and Bicycle Hotel in Sevenoaks and investigate from there,” John told her. “I hope Suki is up to some long walks; I do have directions to the altar stone, but they are not exact.”

“Suki is quite sturdy, I do assure you,” Nan promised. “She can probably out-walk all of us together.”

But that put her in mind of something
else
they might meet out in the countryside . . . or indeed, the wilderness or part-wilderness, as the Downs seemed to be.
Hmm. Probably time I should mention this. . . .

“You do know that Sarah and I have gotten the blessing of Robin Goodfellow, right? And that he has a habit of showing up to see what we are doing when we are out of the city.” She tilted her head to the side. “I should also mention he seems to have taken a liking to Suki as well.”

That made both of them stare at her, dumbfounded. “Ah, no. Lord Alderscroft didn't mention that,” John said, after a long silence. “That could come in handy, if he's inclined to help us out.”

“No promises,” Nan warned. “But the possibility is there. So, we're to take some long, healthy country walks until we find this altar stone, and I am to ‘read' it and see what I can learn?”

“That's the essence. I hope you'll be able to see who's using it. Then we'll try and match the face to someone who lives in the village. Alderscroft has no record of any mages at all there—which isn't at all unusual.” John shrugged. “He knows everyone who's titled, of course, but there are plenty of mages out there without a drop of noble blood in their entire pedigree, and they don't bring themselves to the attention of the White Lodge as long as they've got their own local mentors.”

“If they don't have their own local mentors to train them—if they
do
come to the attention of the White Lodge, it's generally when something has gone wrong,” Mary observed.

“Like now,” John added.

Nan was still not so sure. “Well, those mentors of their own—might they not be like Beatrice? Hereditary witches and that sort of
thing? Wouldn't they have all sorts of family traditions and so forth?” She was
trying,
as diplomatically as possible, to get the Watsons to see that there might be other ways of doing things than they were used to, ways that were just as valid as their own paths. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be getting the hint.

“They generally are. And as a consequence, they can have all sorts of muddled ideas,” John told her dismissively. “They've got no real understanding of what they're doing. Witches like Beatrice, who
do
know what they are doing, are the exception rather than the rule.”

Considering that I know a Water Master who's been taught by an Elemental—one of the Selch that you entrusted the amulet of the Shadow Beast to—I think perhaps I have a better idea of what someone like that can do than you do.

But she didn't say that aloud, and really, it didn't lessen her respect for the Watsons at all. This just had opened her eyes to a weakness in their thinking. And this was probably one of the reasons why Lord A had wanted her working with them in the first place.
Though I would think, having been in Afghanistan, John might be a
little
more broad-minded . . . but then again, probably the native magicians—the real magicians that is—were all on the side of the enemy. That does tend to color your feelings about them.

About that time, the luncheon trolley came along, and they had to turn their conversation to much more ordinary things—such as what sandwiches were available, who wanted lemonade, and who wanted Eccles cakes. Then they were occupied with eating, and when the eating was done, Suki was full of questions about the countryside they were going through, the stations they were stopping at, and the people who were waiting at the stations. Enough of these stations were still serving little villages, in which people still dressed in the manner of the countryside as their grandfathers and grandmothers had, that Suki was intensely curious about what their garments were and why they wore them. The train to Hampton Court Palace had brought no such questions, because it had gone through genteel or middle-class suburbs populated with people who dressed just like those in London. Here she was seeing farmers in their
working smocks, country women with cloth bonnets or little cloth caps, blacksmiths in leather aprons. And she was seeing enormous shire horses, much bigger than the horses still drawing carts and carriages in London. “El-eph-an-tine,” she breathed, sounding out the word carefully.

She hadn't quite got all her questions answered when the train pulled into Sevenoaks, and it was time for Neville to go back in his carrier and all of them to gather up their baggage and disembark.

The Railway and Bicycle Hotel was a real hotel built of cream-colored stone and red brick; the biggest lodging place in Sevenoaks, although it was small by London standards, and nothing like the capital's grand hotels. It was located very near the railway station, which certainly made things easier for all of them. It had two floors of guest rooms over the pub; their rooms were on the second floor. Nan and Suki were established in one room, and the Watsons next door in another. Suki was mightily curious about the lack of a bathroom, but there was an advantage to having been a London street Arab; she was quite well acquainted with, and not offended by, the fact that she was going to have to use a privy in the stable yard.

Nan let Neville out the window between their beds to scout, settled their belongings in the dresser at the foot of her bed, and established a perch for Neville on her iron bedstead by lashing the tin cups from the carrier to the footposts and spreading newspaper beneath. The maid would probably be astonished, but Lord A was supplying enough money that the maid's astonishment would be tempered, if not suppressed completely, by a shilling or two.

Some chicken left over from luncheon and some digestive biscuits broken up would do for Neville's supper, and there was fresh water in the pitcher for the other cup. And that was assuming he didn't manage to catch himself some mice while he was out. Nan had long ago convinced him to suppress his instincts and leave baby birds and wild bird eggs alone, but she had given him
carte blanche
to catch and eat mice.

Suki immediately set to exploring every bit of the little room, even to the underside of the bed, and was voluble in her
astonishment at finding that it had ropes supporting the mattress rather than bedsprings as they had in London.

It's like traveling with a monkey,
Nan thought with amusement.

The room itself was just big enough for the two narrow beds, with a scoured wooden floor with a rag rug between them, a dresser, a low table with a bowl and pitcher of water for washing up and a tiny mirror over it, a small table with a candlestick on it between the beds under the window, flowered curtains on the single window that overlooked the main street of Sevenoaks, a metal matchbox fastened above the head of each bed so that one could find matches in the dark, and a framed picture of the Queen on the wall, which was covered in a rather plain wallpaper of yellow and ochre stripes. She suspected that, as the married couple, John and Mary had gotten a much better bedchamber.

Still, this wasn't bad. And the air coming in the open window was absolutely delicious. Even Suki finally noticed it and went over to the window to lean out, breathing in huge gulps of it.

“Wot's thet loverly smell?” she asked, finally.

“Flowers of some kind. I'm not good enough at plants to tell you what they are by scent,” Nan admitted. “Roses, probably, though. Everyone in the country seems to grow roses. Are you hungry yet?”

“Perishin'!” Suki said decidedly.

“Then let's go find John and Mary, and we'll all go down to dinner,” she held out her hand for Suki's, who scampered away from the window and took it.

“Why've we gotter go
down
fer dinner?” she asked, as they left their room and tapped on the next door. “Missus 'Orace gives us meals i' our rooms.”

“Because we'll be eating with everyone else here in this hotel, and probably some local people, and travelers that might be staying elsewhere, in that big room downstairs,” Nan explained. “Downstairs is a pub. Like a tavern or a pub in London.”

“Niver been in no tavern,” Suki observed, just as John opened the door to a room which, as Nan had suspected, was much nicer than the one she shared with Suki. It was at least twice the size, and
wallpapered in a much more fashionable pink, cream and green stripes with a pattern of cabbage roses between the stripes. It had at least three braided rugs, a wardrobe, two dressers, a toilet table with a magnificent china bowl and matching pitcher, a huge mirror over the bowl rather than the miserly little book-sized one in their room, an absolutely enormous four-poster bed that looked at least a century old, with a beautiful quilt and plump pillows atop it and bed-curtains around it, three chairs, and a couch. From the thickness of the mattress, Nan also suspected it was a featherbed atop a horsehair mattress, rather than the tufted wool mattresses on the beds in her room. On the walls were more framed prints, all of the Royal Family.

“Cor!” said Suki, gazing with big eyes at the lofty featherbed.

“Go jump on it,” Mary said with a twinkle in her eye. Nothing loath, Suki raced across the room and flung herself on the bed, disappearing in an instant.

“Cor! 'Slike a cloud!” came her muffled voice from somewhere in the center.

There were also three chairs—they didn't match in style, but someone, probably whoever did the leatherwork on carriages and furniture hereabouts, had carefully upholstered them in a dusty-rose canvas that matched the sofa and wallpaper. “Are we too early for dinner?” Nan wondered. Suki wasn't the only one who was hungry.

“I don't think so. People keep country hours here,” Mary pointed out. “We can eat and have a walk around the village and get our bearings before bed.”

The pub appeared to be quite popular; the beer was excellent, the fare was limited, but the serving girl promised them that the main offer changed every night. Tonight was stewed rabbit, and Nan knew enough of country life not to enquire too closely about the origin of the rabbits.

Suki was uncharacteristically quiet and watched everything around her with big eyes. She was not allowed beer, nor, despite begging, the scrumpy that Nan ordered, but the serving girl did bring her a big tankard of unfermented apple juice. John finished first, had
a word with both the landlord and the girl who would be their chambermaid about Neville, and came back.

“The girl was a little apprehensive about a raven, but when I pressed a couple of shillings into her hand and told her that if he was in the room, all she had to say was ‘Go in the box, Neville' and he'd go in the carrier, she seemed more at ease. The landlord is going to get the cook to save him chicken offal and meat scraps.” John smiled at Nan, and she grinned back.

“I couldn't have arranged better myself. And really, Neville is likely to be out from sunup to sundown, so she probably won't encounter him.” She looked down at Suki, who was valiantly trying to eat the very last scrapings of her apple tart and cream and blinking sleepily. “Do you want to walk with us, Suki, or go to bed and read?”

“Read, please,” Suki said with an enormous yawn.

“Then you may be excused. Leave the window open for Neville, please,” said Mary. She was doing a very good job of pretending to be Suki's mother, at least in Nan's estimation.

Suki climbed off the bench where they were sitting and trotted over to the stairs and up out of sight. “I don't think she's going to read for very long,” Nan observed. “We had a long, long day yesterday, and this was another.”

“I'd be very surprised if she read more than a page,” John said dryly. “Let's go take a stroll and get our bearings.”

The village turned out to be surprisingly large; really it qualified as a market town, because it had two markets a week. That was why they had several flourishing hotels; the Royal Oak, the Railway and Bicycle, and the Sennoke—which John said he thought was probably local dialect for Sevenoaks. The walk to the edge of town was quiet and pleasant. It took a bit of walking before John found the spot referenced on his crude little map, drawn from memory by the young mage who had reported the altar in the first place—the spot where the walking path he'd taken began just off one of the main streets.

By this time, it was dusk. The three of them strolled back, with Neville landing on Nan's shoulder when they were about halfway back to the hotel.

“Mice,”
said Neville, with satisfaction.

“I know,” Nan replied. “I can smell them on your breath.”

Neville gave an indignant
quork
.

He lifted off just as they reached the hotel, and with a few heavy flaps of his wings, reached the open window and ducked inside.

Nan bade Mary and John goodnight; they arranged that whoever woke first should wake the others, and she opened the door of the little room to find Suki asleep with her arms wrapped around her book and Neville sitting with one foot up on the foot of her bed.

“Comfortable? Or should I pad it with a bandage or a towel?” she asked him.