The Wizard of London (29 page)

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—