Murder by Magic (43 page)

“Miss,” the ravenmaster said carefully, “I think you oughter put him down.”

“I c’n do that,” she said truthfully, “but if ’e don’t want to leave me, ’e’ll just be back on my shoulder in the next minute.”

“Then—” He looked about helplessly. The other warder shrugged. “Miss, them ravens belongs t’ Her Majesty, just like swans does.”

She had to giggle at that—the idea that anyone, even the Queen, thought they could own a wild thing. “I doubt anybody’s told them,” she pointed out.

Rrrk,
Neville agreed, his voice muffled by the fact that his beak was against her chest.

The ravenmaster was sweating now, little beads standing out on his forehead. He looked to his fellow officer for help; the man shrugged. “’Ollis, you was the one what told me that Neville’s never been what you’d call a natural bird,” the first warder said judiciously, and with the air of a man who has done his best, he slowly turned and walked off, leaving the ravenmaster to deal with the situation himself.

Or—perhaps—to deal with it without a witness, who might have to make a report. And what he didn’t witness, he couldn’t report . . .

Nan could certainly understand that, since she’d been in similar situations now and again.

Sweating freely now, the ravenmaster bent down, hands carefully in sight and down at his sides. “Now, Neville,” he said quietly, addressing the raven, “I’ve always done right by you, ’aven’t I?”

Neville opened one eye and gave him a dubious look.
Ork,
he agreed, but with the sense that his agreement was qualified by whatever the ravenmaster might do in the next few moments.

“Now, you lissen to me. If you was to try an’ go with this girl, I’d have ta try an’ catch you up. You’d be mad an’ mebbe I’d get hurt, an’ you’d be in a cage.”

Nan stiffened, fearing that Neville would react poorly to this admission, but the bird only uttered a defiant grunt, as if to say, “You’ll catch me up the day you grow wings, fool!” The feathers on his head and neck rose, and Nan sensed a sullen anger within him. And the fact that she was sensing things from him could only mean that as the warder had said, Neville was no “natural” bird.

In fact—he was like Grey. Nan felt excitement rise in her. The fact was, a tough bird like a raven suited her a great deal more than a parrot.

But the yeoman warder wasn’t done. “Now, on t’other hand,” he continued, “if the young lady was to toss you up in th’ air when you’d got your scratch, and you was to wait over the gate till her an’ her schoolmates comes out, an’ then you was to follow her—well, I couldn’t know you was missing till I counted birds on perches, could I? An’ then I couldn’t know where you’d gone, could I? An’ this young lady wouldn’t get in no trouble, would she?”

Slowly, the feathers Neville had roused, flattened. He looked the warder square in the eyes, as if measuring him for falsehood. And slowly, deliberately, he nodded.

Quok,
he said.

“Right. Gennelmun’s agreement,” the warder said, heaving an enormous sigh and turning his attention at last to Nan. “Miss, I dunno what it is about you, but seems you an’ Neville has summat between you. An’ since Neville’s sire has the same summat with the ravenmaster afore me an’ went with ’im to Wight when ’e retired, I reckon it runs in the family, you might say. So.”

Nan nodded, and looked at Neville, who jerked his beak upward in a motion that told her clearly what he wanted.

She thrust her arm up to help him as he took off, and with several powerful thrusts of his wings, he took off and rowed his way up to the top of the main gate, where he ruffed up all of his feathers and uttered a disdainful croak.

“Now, miss,” the yeoman warder said, straightening up. “You just happen to ’ave a knack with birds, and I just give you a bit of a talkin’-to about how dangerous them ravens is. An’ you never heard me talkin’ to Neville. An’ if a big black bird should turn up at your school—”

“Then I’ll be ’avin’ an uncommon big jackdaw as a pet,” she said, staring right back at him, unblinking. “Which must’ve been summun’s pet, on account uv ’e’s so tame.”

“That’d be it, miss,” the warder said, and gathering his dignity about him, left her to wait for the rest of the class to come out.

Memsah’b, Nan was firmly convinced, knew everything. Her conviction was only strengthened by the penetrating look that her teacher gave her when she led the rest of the Harton School pupils out to collect her. Since the crown jewels were the last item on their program, it was time to go.

“How did you get on with the ravens, Nan?” Memsah’b asked with just that touch of irony in her voice that said far more than the words did. Could someone have come to tell her about Neville being on Nan’s shoulder? Or was this yet another demonstration that Memsah’b knew things without anyone telling her?

Nan fought hard to keep her accent under control. “I’m thinkin’ I got on well, Memsah’b,” she said with a little smile.

Memsah’b raised an eyebrow. If there had been any doubt in Nan’s mind that her teacher might not be aware that there was something toward, it vanished at that moment.

She raised another when, as they made their way down the broad walk away from the Tower, a black, winged shape lofted from the gate and followed them, taking perches on any convenient object. For her part, Nan felt all knotted up with tension, for she couldn’t imagine how the great bird would be able to follow them through London traffic. It seemed that the ravenmaster hadn’t yet got around to trimming Neville’s wing feathers, for the bird had them all but two, so at least he wasn’t going to be hampered by lack of wingspan. But still . . . how was he to get from here to the Harton School?

They boarded a horse-drawn omnibus, and since it wasn’t raining yet, everyone ran up the little twisting staircase to the open seats on top. After all, what child cares to ride inside when he can ride outside? They were the only passengers up there, due to the chill and threatening weather, and Nan cast an anxious look back at the last place she’d seen Neville—

He wasn’t there. Her heart fell.

And right down out of the sky, the huge bird landed with an audible thump in the aisle between the rows of seats, just as the bus started to move. He folded his wings and looked about as if he owned the place.

“Lummy!” said one of the boys. “That’s a raven!” He started to get out of his seat.

“No, it isn’t,” Memsah’b said firmly. “And no one move except Nan.”

When Memsah’b gave an order like that, no one would even think of moving, so as Neville walked ponderously toward her, Nan crouched down and offered her forearm to him. He hopped up on it, and she got back into her seat, turning to look expectantly at Memsah’b.

“This is not a raven,” their teacher repeated, raking the entire school group with a stern glance. “This is an uncommonly large rook. Correct?”

“Yes, Memsah’b!” the rest of Nan’s schoolmates chorused. Memsah’b eyed the enormous bird for a moment, her brown eyes thoughtful. Memsah’b was not a pretty woman—many people might, in fact, have characterized her as “plain,” with quiet brown hair and eyes and a complexion more like honest brown pottery than porcelain. Her chin was too firm for beauty; her features too angular and strong. But it was Nan’s fervent hope that one day she might grow up into something like those strong features, for to her mind, Memsah’b was a decidedly handsome woman. Right now she looked quite formidable, her eyes intent as she gazed at Neville, clearly thinking hard about something.

“Bird”—she addressed the raven directly—“we are going to have to go through a number of situations in which you will not be welcome before we get home. For instance, the inside seats on this very bus—since I think it is going to rain before we get to our stop. Now, what do you propose we do about you?”

Neville cocked his head to one side.
Ork?
he replied.

Now, none of the children found any of this at all peculiar or funny, perhaps because they were used to Memsah’b, Sarah, and Nan treating Grey just like a person. But none of them wanted to volunteer a solution, either, if it involved actually getting near that nasty-looking beak.

“Oi—I—can put ’im under me mac, Memsah’b,” Nan offered.

Their teacher frowned. “That’s only good until someone notices you’re carrying something there, Nan,” she replied. “Children, at the next stop, I would like you to divide up and search the bus for a discarded box, please. But be back in a seat when the bus moves again.”

Just then the bus pulled up to a stop, and slightly fewer than twenty very active children swarmed over the vehicle while passengers were loading and unloading. The boys all piled downstairs; they were less encumbered with skirts and could go over or under seats quickly.

The boys hadn’t returned by the time the bus moved, but at the next stop they all came swarming back up again, carrying in triumph the very thing that was needed, a dirtied and scuffed pasteboard hatbox!

As their teacher congratulated them, young Tommy proudly related his story of charming the box from a young shopgirl who had several she was taking home with her because they’d been spoiled. Meanwhile, Nan coaxed Neville into the prize, which was less than a perfect fit. He wasn’t happy about it, but after thinking very hard at him with scenes of him trying to fly to keep up, of conductors chasing him out of the windows of buses, and of policemen finding him under Nan’s mac and trying to take him away, he quorked and obediently hopped into the box, suffering Nan to close the lid down over him and tie it shut. Her nerves quieted down at that moment, and she heaved a sigh of very real relief. Only then did she pay attention to her classmates.

“I owes you, Tommy,” she said earnestly. “Sarah, she said last night she was gonna get a chest uv Turkish delight from Sahib’s warehouse for her treat and share it out. You c’n hev my share.”

Tommy went pink with pleasure. “Oh, Nan, you don’t have to—” He was clearly torn between greed and generosity of his own. “Half?” he suggested. “I don’t want to leave you without a treat, too.”

“I got a treat,” she insisted, patting the box happily. “An’ mine’ll last longer nor Turkish delight. Naw, fair’s fair; you get my share.”

And she settled back into her seat with the pleasant, warm weight of the box and its contents on her lap, Memsah’b casting an amused eye on her from time to time. Neville shifted himself occasionally, and his nails would scrape on the cardboard. He didn’t like being confined, but the darkness was making him sleepy, so he was dozing when the box was on her lap and not being carried.

There were no difficulties with the rest of the journey back to the school; no one saw anything out of the ordinary in a child with a shopworn hatbox, and Neville was no heavier than a couple of schoolbooks.

They walked the last few blocks to the school; the neighbors were used to seeing the children come and go, and there were smiles and nods as the now thoroughly weary troupe trudged their way to the old gates, which were unlocked by Memsah’b to let them all back inside.

True to her word, Sarah had gotten the sweets, and when the others filed in through the front door, she was waiting in the entrance hall, with Grey on her shoulder as usual, to give out their shares as soon as they came in. Nan handed hers over to Tommy without a murmur or a second glance, although she was inordinately fond of sweets. Sarah looked startled, then speculative, as she spotted Nan’s hatbox.

“Sarah, you just gotter see—,” Nan began, when Memsah’b interrupted.

“I believe that we need to make a very careful introduction, Nan,” she said, steering Nan deftly down the hall instead of up the stairs. “Sarah, would you and Grey come with us as well? I believe that Nan has found a friend very like Grey for herself, but we are going to have to make sure that they understand they must at least tolerate one another.”

There was a room on the first floor used for roughhousing on bad days; it had probably been a ballroom when the mansion was in a better neighborhood. Now, other than some ingenious draperies made out of dust covers, it didn’t have a great deal in it but chests holding battered toys and some chairs pushed up against the walls. For heat, there was an iron stove fitted into the fireplace, this being deemed safer than an open fire. This was where Memsah’b brought them, and sat Sarah and Grey down on the worn wooden floor, with Nan and her hatbox (which was beginning to move as a restless raven stirred inside it) across from her.

“All right, Nan, now you can let him out,” Memsah’b decreed.

Nan had to laugh as Neville popped up like a jack-in-the-box when she took off the lid, his feathers very much disarranged from confinement in the box. He shook himself—then spotted Grey.

Grey was already doing a remarkable imitation of a pinecone and growling under her breath. Neville roused his own feathers angrily, then looked at Nan sharply.

“No,” she said in answer to the unspoken question. “You ain’t sharin’ me. Grey is Sarah’s. But you gotter get along, ’cause Sarah’s the best friend I got, an’ my friend’s gotter be friends with her friends.”

“You hear that?” Sarah added to Grey, catching the parrot’s beak gently between thumb and forefinger and turning the parrot’s head to face her. “This is Nan’s special bird-friend. He’s going to share our room. But he’ll have his own food and toys and perches, so you aren’t going to lose anything, you see? And you have to be friends, because Nan and I are.”

Both birds thought this over, and it was Grey who graciously made the first move. “Want down,” she said, smoothing her feathers down as Sarah took her off her shoulder and put her on the floor.

Neville sprang out of his hatbox and landed within a foot of Grey. And now it was his turn to make a gesture—which he did, with surprising graciousness.

Ork,
he croaked, then bent his head and offered the nape of his neck to Grey.

Now, in Grey’s case, that gesture could be a ruse, for Nan had known her to offer her neck—supposedly to be scratched—only to whip her head around and bite an offending finger hard. But Neville couldn’t move his head that fast; his beak was far too ponderous. Furthermore, he was offering the very vulnerable back of his head to a stabbing beak, which was what another raven would have, not a biting beak. Would Grey realize what a grand gesture this was?