Charles Bewitched (4 page)

Lorrie took a deep breath.
“I don’t know exactly where she is being held, but I know with whom she is, my
lord.”

“The fairies took her!”
Charles burst out, unable to contain himself any longer. “I went to look for
her, and I met a gypsy boy, and he told me he saw her with them. Miss Allardyce
had just been telling me she was worried that they were after Persy, and she
was right! We’ve got to go rescue her, only—”

Lochinvar held up a hand.
“Wait. I want to know more about this gypsy boy you say you saw, Charles. When
was this?”

“I just
told
you.”
Honestly, wasn’t he paying attention? “It was when you went out on Lord
Chesterfield to look for Persy before dinner. I went into the woods and he was
there, not too far from the house. I gave him some sandwiches and he told me
he’d seen Persy in the woods a lot, but that today he’d seen her with a group
of fairy warriors carrying bows. She was unconscious—one of them was carrying
her. He said they’d probably got her with their enchanted arrows so that she
wouldn’t struggle.”

Lochinvar suddenly looked
angry. “He told you that, did he? And then what happened?”

“Well, I wanted him to come
up to the house and tell you what he’d seen, but he got scared and ran away—”

“Yes, and so did the whole
gypsy encampment. They must have cleared out about then, because there was no
sign of them when our men got there. But they found this on the edge of their
camp.” He shoved a small bundle of fabric at them. Lorrie gave a gasp and
snatched it up, shaking it out to look at it.

“It’s the shawl Lady Seton
was wearing when she went out this afternoon,” she said. “She wanted just a
light one to cover her neck from the sun. It was found at the gypsies’ camp?”

Lochinvar nodded grimly.
“Your gypsy boy was spinning you a tale, Charles. What else was she wearing
today, Allardyce? Any jewelry? Did she have money in her purse?”

Lorrie shook her head. “She
didn’t take a purse, my lord—she never does. She was wearing her pearl brooch
and her wedding ring, and the sapphire ring my lord Northgalis gave her for her
birthday.”

“Enough to be a temptation.
I’ve sent a couple of men out on the main roads to look for them, though they
have several hours lead on us…in case she’s still…still unhurt.” His face
twisted.

Charles couldn’t stand it
any longer. The boy hadn’t been lying. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he
did. “But what about what Lorrie said—and what the boy told me—”

Lochinvar slapped his hand
on the table. “Confound it, Charles, I don’t know what nonsense Allardyce may have
told you, but—”

“I don’t think it’s
nonsense, my lord. Look at this.” Lorrie was holding up Persy’s shawl. Halfway
along one edge, about where it might rest on a wearer’s neck, was a small hole.
Caught in it was a tiny silver point, barely half an inch long, with a short
broken length of slender shaft not much thicker than a straw still attached to
it.

Charles leaned forward and
carefully detached it from the threads that held it, then handed it to
Lochinvar. “That doesn’t look very gypsy to me,” he said.

Lochinvar stared down at the
tiny object in the palm of his hand. “It’s—there’s magic in it.”

Lorrie reached out a
tentative finger. “May I?” At Lochinvar’s nod she took it and lay it on her own
palm. “Oh, yes,” she said softly. “It’s there.”

“What about me?” Charles
reached for it impatiently. Honestly, he was tired of everyone forgetting that
he also had magical abilities.

The silver point seemed to
burn his skin, then freeze it as though it were carved of ice. He felt a woozy
sensation, and hastily picked it up by the broken shaft. No wonder poor Persy
had been knocked out, if they could all still feel the magic left in it.
“Well?” he said to Lochinvar.

“I…we don’t
know
it
was the Fair Folk, though,” Lochinvar replied, but uncertainly, and Charles
suddenly felt sorry for him. Kidnapping by gypsies was something that could be
dealt with on a straightforward, mundane level, with police constables and the
invisible but firm hand of the law. But fairies were another matter entirely.

“I think they were trying to
make it look as though the gypsies had taken her,” Lorrie said. “They scared
them off and left her shawl at the site of their camp on purpose. After all,
they don’t know that there’s anyone else with magic here apart from her who
might guess otherwise.”

“How do they know she’s a
witch? And why does that matter?” Lochinvar had taken Persy’s shawl back from
Lorrie and was gripping it in both hands, as if he could somehow squeeze Persy
from it.

“They must know that she’s a
Leland, from one of the oldest magical families in England. And you know the
stories about how the fairies like to take witches to wife,” Lorrie said
gently.

Charles waited for Lochinvar
to get angry again, but he didn’t. Instead he looked tired and bleak, just as
Lord Northgalis had, but also determined.

“Then I have to go find them
and take her back,” he said simply. “If I have to dig up every barrow in
Hampshire to find her, I will.” He went to the bell pull. “I’ll start with the
ones right here at Galiswood, as soon as Parker brings me my coat—”

“My lord, I don’t think that’s a wise
idea,” Lorrie said. “It’s nearly midnight,
and
night is far friendlier to their senses than to ours. You wouldn’t be able to
get within a half-mile of them without their knowing it.”

Lochinvar looked
as though he might argue, but finally nodded. “I won’t call my men back in,
though. If it were to get out among the servants that there truly are fairies
out there, we would have a panic. And just in case she did only get lost—”

There was a
discreet knock at the door and Parker came in, carrying a dry coat. Lochinvar
quickly moved forward to take it from him. “Thank you, Parker. Why don’t you
get some rest now, and then you can take over for me in a few hours.”

“You’re going out
to look for her some more?” Charles asked. Hadn’t he just accepted that it had
been the fairies who’d taken Persy?

“I have to. You
two should get some sleep as well. I expect we’re going to be very busy come
morning.” Lochinvar was already at the door.

“But—“

“You're quite
right, my lord,” Lorrie said, and with a stern look steered Charles out of the
room. Once they were back in the hall and on their way up the stairs, she
stopped him. “You heard him. He has to keep looking, if only for appearance’s
sake. Tomorrow, we have to start figuring out how we can get your sister back.”

Charles suddenly
remembered that it had been a very long day and that this morning he’d still
been at Eton, where his only trouble had been that he had a lot of boring
summer reading to look forward to. “How do you think we’ll be able to?”

Lorrie shook her
head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Charles was
awakened the following morning by urgent knocking. “Stuff it, Mallory,’ he
mumbled irritably and burrowed deeper into the bedclothes, and then came
sufficiently awake to recall that this wasn’t Eton, nor was it likely that his
friend Mallory was whacking the end of his dresser to wake him up. He scrambled
to a sitting position just as Lorrie opened his door and stuck her head in.

“Get dressed,” she
said without preamble. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“What? Who? Is
Persy back?” he asked hopefully.

She gave him a
look that reminded him remarkably—or perhaps not so remarkably—of Ally. “We’ll
be in the library. Hurry up—he’s skittish enough to bolt at the least thing.”

He? “He who?”
Charles asked, but Lorrie had already left.

Charles leapt out
of bed and pulled on his clothes from yesterday, strewn haphazardly across the
floor. He was still knotting a kerchief around his neck (quicker than a cravat)
as he arrived at the library door and went in.

Lochinvar, looking
like he hadn’t slept at all—which he probably hadn’t, Charles guessed—was
sitting on the edge one of the large tables. Lord Northgalis was seated in a
chair behind it, his shoulders slumped. Lorrie stood by the sofa. They were all
looking toward the fireplace, next to which a small figure stood staring back
at them defiantly, its arms crossed on its chest. It was the gypsy boy from
yesterday.

He looked almost
as haggard as Lochinvar, and it was clear from his reddened eyes that he had
been crying. “I brought you back your
dikla
,” he said when he saw
Charles blinking at him from the doorway. “I told you us Romany aren’t no
thieves.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out the handkerchief that Charles
had wrapped the sandwiches in the day before, carefully folded.

“Thank you.”
Charles approached cautiously and took it from him. “I...er, I’m sorry if I
scared you yesterday. I just wanted you to tell—oh, this is my sister’s
husband, Lord Seton, and his father Lord Northgalis, and her maid, Miss
Allardyce. This is the boy who saw Persy yesterday—I say, you never told me
your name.”

The boy eyed him
suspiciously, then said, “Nando’s what I go by. An’ I weren’t scared. I jist
didn't want to talk to nobody then.”

“We would be very
grateful, Nando, if you could tell us now where you saw Lady Seton,” Lochinvar
said.

“And I would be
very grateful if we could have some breakfast,” Charles said suddenly.
Something about Nando’s face told him that no food has passed the boy’s lips
since the sandwiches yesterday. Maybe food would again allay his suspicions so
he could tell them more about the fairies who’d taken Persy.

Lorrie nodded
briskly. “An excellent suggestion. I’ll go see if we can’t have something sent
up. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

There was an
uncomfortable silence after she left the room. Lochinvar cleared his throat,
and Nando jumped.

“Well,” said
Charles. Someone had to do something, so he plopped down to sit cross-legged on
the hearthrug. After a minute, Nando did too. Charles examined him and saw bits
of leaves and pine needles stuck in his hair and wondered if he’d spent the
night in the woods, then remembered what Lochinvar had told them last night.
“We thought your wagons had left yesterday,” he said, not quite asking a
question but hoping for an answer anyway.

The boy’s eyes
welled up. He rubbed at them fiercely. “Aye, they did,” he said after a moment.

“But you didn’t go
with them.”

“They—they was
gone afore I got there.”

“They left you
behind? Your family—your mother and father?”

Nando sat in
silence. “Don’t have mother nor father,” he finally said. “They’re dead five,
six year. My
beebee
—my mother’s sister—I lived with her and her husband,
but they didn’t like my father and don’t like me. They musta left in a hurry
yesterday ‘cos they left the coney my
kak
had caught, hanging inna
tree—” He looked guiltily at Lord Northgalis, who somehow didn’t seem to have
heard his last sentence.

“So you spent the
night in the woods all by yourself? That was brave,” Lochinvar said gently.

Nando’s shoulders
straightened a little. “I wasn’t scared much. All the
gadze
in the woods
frighted off anything bad.” He looked at Charles. “I don’t know if I can find
my
kumpania
again, or if I want to—I’m tired of my
kak
beating me
all the time. But I wanted to give that back to you before I go, to prove I’m
no thief.”

Charles’s throat
suddenly felt tight. Here was a—a child, really—whose family had abandoned him
with only the scanty clothes on his back, but whose concern was to return a
handkerchief that he probably could have sold or traded for the price of a loaf
of bread. “No, you’re a brick, is what you are.”

Nando looked down
at the hearthrug for a minute, then up at Charles. A shy smile, free from
suspicion or bitterness, lurked at the corners of his mouth.

“Of course he is,”
Lorrie said, backing into the room with a large tray. She set it on a table and
beckoned to the boys. “Very well, you two. There’s cold ham, and boiled eggs,
and bread and butter, and a pitcher of good milk. Mrs. Harris will be insulted
if there’s anything left, by the way.”

Lochinvar and his
father declined to join them, so Charles did his best to keep Nando company in
consuming Mrs. Harris’s bounty. It only seemed to be the polite thing to do,
while the adults watched them with barely concealed impatience. Honestly,
hadn’t they noticed the poor thing was practically starving?

Nando was
obviously aware of their impatience. After his fifth slice of ham and a long
pull of milk, he reluctantly set down his knife, rose, and faced them squarely.
“You’re wantin’ me to tell you about your
bori
who got taken by the
Biti
Foki
,” he said, addressing Lord Northgalis.

The older man
sighed. “I’m not convinced it was the, er—the
Biti Foki
who took her,
but you obviously saw someone with her.”

“With
all respect, my lord, you’re forgetting the arrowhead,” Lorrie said.

Charles
bit back an impatient exclamation. “Shouldn’t you let Nando tell you what he
saw before you decide anything?”

There
was another uncomfortable pause. “Very well, young man,” Lord Northgalis finally
said. “What did you see?”

Nando told them
what he’d told Charles. Lochinvar frowned in concentration as he spoke. “Where
were you again? And in what direction were they going?”

“About…” Nando
went to a window and looked out. “Eeee, all that glass,” he muttered, touching
it gently, and squinted out across the lawn. “About a half-mile that way. I was
in a clump of holly bushes, so the
Biti Foki
couldn’t see me. They were
going northwest.”

“Toward the
barrows up near Mab’s Hill,” Lochinvar said softly, looking at his father.

Lord
Northgalis hesitated, then sighed again. “You truly believe that Persephone was
kidnapped by fairies?”

Lochinvar sighed
too. “Father,” he said gently, and made a penknife sitting in a tray on the
table rise a few inches into the air. Nando’s jaw dropped. “I know you don’t
care for it, but if I can do that—and Persy is capable of far greater
magic—then why not fairies? If what Charles and Lorrie say is correct, then
it’s hardly surprising, even, that they took her. If I’d only known—” He looked
away. The knife fell to the desk with a clatter.

Lord Northgalis
stared at the fallen knife. “Just like your mother,” he said, wonderingly. “I
didn’t know you still remembered how…and Persephone too, you say.”

“Yes,” Charles and
Lorrie both answered.

Lord Northgalis
glanced at them sharply but didn’t comment. “Then what shall we do? Go and dig
up the barrows?”

“I don’t think that would be
wise,” Lorrie said. “The barrows are places where the Fair Folk pass between
this world and their own. If we disturb them, we might never be able to get
Lady Seton back.”

Lochinvar drew in a harsh
breath. “What do you think we should do, then?”

“We should set a watch on
them. If they’re there, they might come out again—if not tonight, then tomorrow
or some other night. We’ll just have to be patient.”

Lochinvar straightened.
“Very well. If I get there shortly before dusk, I should be able to find a good
spot to watch from before I—”

“Wait,” Charles interrupted
him. Was Lochinvar going to wade in among them with a sword or something,
demanding Persy back like a knight rescuing a damsel in distress? Love did make
people horripilatiously
stupid
, didn’t it? “Don’t you think it would
make more sense for me to go?”

“Charles, I appreciate the
thought. But Persy is my wife.”

“Which is precisely why you
shouldn’t go,” Lorrie said, to Charles’s surprise. “If you’ll permit me,
milord—you’re a large adult human who wants his wife returned to him. They’ll
be able to sense you coming from a mile away. Charles has a much better chance
of getting close to them…and I would wait until full dark to go anywhere near
them, well after they’ve come out and relaxed their watchfulness.”

Lochinvar scowled and was
about to speak, but Lord Northgalis forestalled him. “They’re right, my son. I
know you would like nothing better than to storm the castle, so to speak—I
would too. But I get the impression that it is the last thing we should do.” He
looked at Charles soberly. “Do you think you can do this? It isn’t without some
danger, I’m beginning to perceive.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles said
promptly.

“And I go too,” Nando said.
Everyone turned to him, surprised, and he shrugged. “I want to see what
happens. The
Biti Foki
won’t care about me if they don’t care about
him.” He jerked his head at Charles, who grinned at him.

“Done,” he said, and held
his hand out to Nando. “Let’s go spy on the
Biti Foki
, shall we?”

Not long after dusk began to
deepen into night, the two boys slipped out of one of the side doors at Galiswood
and melted into the woods. They moved as silently as possible to avoid the
searchers still out looking for Persy. Lord Northgalis had insisted that the
search for her continue, “just in case the fairies changed their minds,” as he
put it, but mostly because it would be thought strange and even suspicious by
the servants and nearby villagers who had turned out to help search this
morning if they hadn’t.

“I hope we don’t run into
any of them up by Mab’s Hill,” Charles murmured to Nando.

“We won’t,” Nando whispered
back. “They don’t go near there at night if they can help it. They know what
they might see if they do.”

“Hush—I think I hear
someone.” Charles dropped into a crouch and pulled Nando down next to him—a
much better-dressed Nando, thanks to the note Lorrie had written that morning
to Mrs. Groening over at Mage’s Tutterow to send over some of Charles’s
outgrown clothes. Nando now had a proper coat, waistcoat, trousers, and linen
to replace the ragged shirt and trousers he’d been wearing. He’d spent a good
hour peacocking back and forth in front of the mirror in Charles’s room, once
he’d recovered from the indignity of a bath and haircut at Parker’s hands. Both
had revealed a good-looking youth, though one whose eyes still held an alert
wariness.

A pair of men from the
village passed them some yards away, waving lanterns half-heartedly about as
they peered into the darkening woods. Within a few minutes they were far enough
away for the boys to continue on.

“Mister Charles?” Nando said
after a few minutes.

“Uh-huh?”

“Lord Seton—he has magic.
And so does his
bori
—your sister.”

“Yes. And my other sister as
well, who lives in Ireland. They’re twins.”

“Ah?” Charles could just
barely see his nod in the gloom. “So—do you?”

Charles hesitated. It went
against all he’d ever learned from Ally when she was teaching Persy and Pen;
one simply did not tell people about being a witch or wizard. But it was
probably better to tell the boy than startling him if a spot of magic were
needed later tonight. “Um…yes.”

“Eeee,” Nando said with a
sigh. “That’s good. If the
Biti Foki
try to put an
amria
on us,
you’ll stop them.”

It was on the tip of
Charles’s tongue to point out that having magic hadn’t helped Persy one bit,
but Nando’s confidence in him was flattering. He was a good sort, this Nando,
for an uneducated gypsy child. “Yes, I’ll stop them. You don’t have to worry.”

They heard their destination
well before they saw it. Drifting through the woods on a faint evening breeze
was the sound of flutes, underlain with shimmers of harp and a tapping, nervous
drumming. The music grew louder as they crept closer to the foot of the wooded
hill, accompanied now by voices and an occasional trill of laughter. The
fairies were truly there! Maybe he and Nando would be able to spirit Persy away
from them, and that would be that. What a lark to have had over his summer
hols, outsmarting a band of fairies! It would almost make up for the grinding
he had to do—