The Mislaid Magician (31 page)

I suppose you will not wish to wait for our arrival to learn what has been happening here. If Wrexton is still with you, I am certain he will also be eager for news, though I believe Old Hookey’s people mean to ask for his opinion as soon as may be.

The situation, in its briefest form, is this: Mr. and Miss Webb remain dogs for the moment. Miss Charlotte Rushton removes to Bath on the instant, or so she has been saying for the past week; apparently, she feels a need for stronger restoratives than those provided at Cheltenham Spa, where she had previously been staying. Her shattered nerves seem quite up to the task of terrorizing the Webbs’ servants, however, and as she appears to derive considerable enjoyment from doing so, I expect she will remain as long as we do. Never fear; I shall not bring her to Skeynes. Haliwar is large enough that we meet only rarely, but not even the anticipation of seeing the look on your face would induce me to share a coach with her for three days.

Cecelia, Skelly, and I have spent the last week sorting out the Webbs’ study and workrooms. The fellow was a demon for records, and his sister kept meticulous notes on her magical experiments. Between that and the maps Wrexton brought up with him, I fancy we have pieced together most of the matters that have been puzzling everyone.

I believe I have mentioned before the fact that the Webbs inherited Haliwar from their great-uncle. What we have discovered is that the great-uncle was the last in a line of magicians and wizards dating back to Cromwell’s time, who had been charged with the job of overseeing the ley line network that Cromwell had established to keep his vision of Parliament intact. Haliwar was the keystone and centerpiece of the network. Lyndhurst, who is heading the newly arrived delegation of wizards, thinks that Cromwell’s spell is the reason there have been so many difficulties over the Parliamentary reform bills these past fifteen years and more, but his theories remain unproven.

What we do know is that Ramsey and Adella Webb knew all about the ley line network and determined to exploit it in every way they could. It is a good thing they thought mainly in terms of money; I shudder to think what might have happened if they had attempted serious political manipulation. Their plan was twofold—to repair and expand the ley line network so as to increase their influence, and to use the network as a stepping-stone to wealth.

Their first attempt at moneymaking was an abortive try at peddling Parliamentary influence. Fortunately, no one believed them capable of doing any such thing, and they had just sense enough not to reveal the manner in which they intended to exert their influence.

When the Stockton and Darlington Railway looked like becoming a success without them, the Webbs turned to a different scheme. They proposed the competing southern railway project, and discovered that they could use the ley network to influence members of Parliament not only to approve their bill of incorporation, but to invest in it, as well. Once their railway was approved, I believe they intended to manipulate both the railway and Parliament to promote their fortunes further. One can see where it would have led. In the end, they’d have tried to run the entire country for their own benefit.

Unfortunately for them, things began to go sour when the steam engines started running regularly on the Stockton and Darlington. The engines disrupted the ley lines and looked like putting a premature end to their plans. So they started using the ley lines to disrupt the engines.

That brought Herr Schellen onto the scene. Judging from her notes, it was Adella Webb who contrived the transformation spell, using the ley lines and the stone circles as the focus. Skelly has a long list of reasons why this was an incredibly foolish thing for them to do; I shall get him to write them up and include them separately for Wrexton’s edification. The only one that is directly pertinent is that they still hadn’t determined just what the railway was doing to the ley lines, so using the ley lines in an untested spell was unutterably foolish.

The Webbs didn’t see it that way, of course. Their spell looked like an unqualified success. As soon as they were certain Herr Schellen had been transformed and was safely out of the way, they sent a manservant (your Mr. Scarlet, I believe, who seems to have been surprisingly busy about more plots than one) to collect his personal effects in secret. Once they were sure that Herr Schellen’s landlady thought that he had simply absconded without paying his rent, they went back to business, sending Scarlet south to link additional stone circles to their ley network whilst they tackled assorted potential investors.

Daniel, Duke of Waltham, was high on their list. It’s a good thing for him that, like you, he seldom bothered to take his seat in the House of Lords, because the ley network was still tuned to affect Parliament. The Webbs wanted access to a stone circle near that ancestral castle he brags about, as well as to his bankers, and they’d have had it if Daniel had been attending to politics as regularly as he attends to the gaming tables.

The Webbs were also worried about the effect of the steam engines on their ley network, as well they might have been. Lyndhurst is of the opinion that it was the regular interference between the engine and the central ley line that let Herr Schellen’s transformation spell leak out into the whole network. Skelly thinks the spell was flawed and “over-distributed” from the beginning. Whatever the reason, it meant the Webbs had to invent a counterspell in order to keep living at Haliwar Tower.

By the time Cecelia and I turned up, the Webbs thought they had things back under control. Schellen was still safely out of the way, and Scarlet was busy linking new stone circles to the southernmost end of their ley network. Daniel was being uncooperative, as usual.

The Webbs apparently didn’t know what to make of us. Their initial impression was that I was interested in investing in a railway project, and they invited us to Haliwar partly in the hope that they could persuade me to join their unlikely southern enterprise, partly to see if my interest would persuade Daniel to invest, and partly to discover what we really wanted. They had very nearly decided that we were useless to them when Daniel vanished and the earthquake occurred.

The earthquake was, as you have no doubt realized by now, not an actual earthquake at all, but a disturbance caused by all the ley power the two of them had been building up around Haliwar in pursuit of their various projects. By then, they were quite sure that one of us was a wizard—I believe they detected some of the spells Cecelia cast while we were in residence—but they settled on me as the likelier candidate! Don’t burst your waistcoat buttons laughing. In any case, they were delighted to see the back of us, as they had a good deal of magical repairs to do, in addition to the physical ones, and they didn’t want any magicians around to notice and ask questions.

In Webb’s place, I should have kept more careful track of my departing visitors, but he had other things on his mind. The gossip that drifted back to him all involved my apparent interest in the Stockton and Darlington, and he assumed he had been correct about my interest in railway investment. Then word reached him of Kate’s transformation (I believe this, too, can be set to Scarlet’s account), and someone mentioned that Cecelia and I had adopted a sheepdog.

I believe that at that point Webb panicked, or else he would not have sent to Mr. Medway to arrange that singularly transparent attempt to obtain the nonexistent sheepdog from me in Leeds. His sister was more composed. Wellington’s men have confiscated the notes on the spell she was designing to deal with Cecelia and me, and are sending it by special messenger to the Royal College. I expect Jacobs and Monksleigh will be delighted; they love dangerous experiments.

At the last, it was the steam train that ruined them. The new engine is at least as powerful as Stephenson promised; it might have been enough to break the ley line all by itself. With Ramsey pulling power from the line at one end and Miss Webb’s transformation spell sloshing around between the stone circles, the result was inevitable. All that uncontrolled power blew back through the tower, and instead of transferring the transformation from Miss Webb to her brother, it duplicated the spell. Skelly has been trying to work out the mechanism for the past week, without success. It doesn’t help that we have to keep the two dogs well separated, or they spend all their time growling ferociously at each other. I’m sure that he and Lyndhurst will work it all out eventually.

I believe we have also found a solution to the problem of the interference between steam engines and ley lines in general. Shortly after Herr Schellen and Mr. Skelly joined us at Haliwar, the two of them entered into a little debate on matters mechanical and magical, in the course of which I was called upon for an opinion. As I do not share your fascination with magnetism, I was forced to refer to that book you loaned me in London.

The three of us proceeded to examine the behavior of some iron filings on a sheet of paper, with and without magnetic influence. Watching the iron dust jump into little whorls around the end of the magnet gave me the notion that perhaps some similar effect might be used to cause ley lines to bend around and over a steam engine. The engine might then pass through the lines without dragging them out of place, as if it were tunneling under them. Schellen and Skelly leapt on the idea, and I confidently expect them to have an experimental model ready for testing within a fortnight.

My fingers are cramping and I refuse to begin another sheet. Whatever else you burn to know, it can wait until Cecelia and I arrive.

Yours,

James

Dear James,

You may well be on your way south before this letter reaches you. If it goes astray, such is fate. If it reaches you, then just this once you may have it in writing.

I was wrong.

Reggie Winters is not the half-wit I took him for. The fellow sent me a dozen of port as an apology for having served me with a writ for high treason. I call that handsomely done. As you have always spoken eloquently in his defense, I will share the port with you, provided you don’t dally up north until it’s all gone.

In truth, you deserve every drop of the stuff. If you hadn’t dished the Webbs, the Stockton and Darlington Railway would not have turned out to be such a cracking good investment. Thus, Waltham would never have recouped his fortunes and Georgy might be here still, ghastly thought. Not only that, for the way you’ve dealt with dreaded Aunt Charlotte, you deserve any amount of port. Come and collect your reward. If it isn’t too much trouble, collect your children, too. They’re all very well in their way, but they seem to be missing their parents.

Sincerely,

Thomas

Dearest Kate,

It was perfectly splendid to see you again; my only regret is that our time at Skeynes was necessarily so brief. Next time, you and Thomas must come to Tangleford, though I cannot promise you anything like the stimulating activity we have all had these past few months. (And a good thing, too!)

The children are still quite full of their visit, most especially their unexpected introduction to a royal princess. I am astonished at all the exciting things you left out of your narratives. I also had no notion that the country around Skeynes was infested with poisonous snakes, nor that they commonly grew to such a great size as Arthur and Eleanor assure me they do. (Arthur has taken it into his head to emulate Edward in keeping a menagerie, and seems to feel that I will be more likely to allow livestock in the nursery if he regales me with tales of the
much worse
things his
much younger
cousin is permitted to do. Eleanor, of course, supports him loyally, though she is far more interested in the new greyhound pup James procured on the drive home.)

Fortunately, I expect their interest in snakes and frogs to be short-lived. The new magic tutor, whom Mr. Wrexton was kind enough to recommend, arrives next week, which should occupy the twins most thoroughly. (And I am most grateful to Thomas for taking them aside and explaining all the bloodcurdling things that would certainly befall anyone foolish enough to attempt to scry through all the protective spells surrounding the royal family, else I am quite sure we would have found Reggie Winters and his men awaiting us at Tangleford, charges of treason and spying in hand. Arthur is quite incorrigible, and Drina made a profound impression on him. And James trusts far too much in the efficacy of a simple, stern parental prohibition, despite several instances in which a prohibition was of no preventative use whatsoever.)

The Wrextons are still in London, but they return to the north next week. Mr. Wrexton has come up with some ideas for reversing the transformation spell that still afflicts the Webbs, and with their artificial ley line net in disarray, the collection of wizards there should have no difficulty in keeping them restrained. James tells me that Lord Wellington is still pondering whether to charge them officially with treason or whether to turn them over to the Royal College of Wizards for the summary judgment of their peers.

He—Lord Wellington, that is—is also considering setting up some more formal office to handle the apprehension and punishment of magical malefactors. It is all very well, James says, to claim that wizards are the only persons truly capable of dealing with magicians and other wizards, but without a department to investigate suspicious incidents and pursue unusual happenings, it is too often mere chance that brings such persons to justice. Since the heir to the throne was very nearly kidnapped and replaced by Conroy and the rest, and since Parliament has been tampered with all unrecognized these many years, and since both these things were the work of rogue magicians, it seems very likely that the duke will carry his point with both Parliament and the king.

I am not certain, but something James said made me think that Lord Wellington intends to appoint Thomas as the first chief of his wizard catchers. He has, after all, demonstrated a certain ability in that regard, and I believe the position is not intended to require much in the way of tact and diplomacy. I think it best if you do not disclose this to Thomas, as it may be only my imagination; I mention it to you only to give you warning enough to prepare for Thomas’s inevitable reaction, should it come to pass.