03 The Mislaid Magician Read online

  In my unceasing efforts to protect your offspring (I sometimes forget why I bother, particularly when we have had to purchase a fresh supply of India ink for the third time in a fortnight), Kate and I cast and recast the warding spells daily. This requires us to ride the bounds every morning, which I grant you proves no hardship, given the season of the year. As we rode past this morning, our gamekeeper, Josiah Penny, gave me one of his sidelong glares.

  Remember Colonel Ettrick of the Seventh? Come to think of it, perhaps his name wasn't Ettrick. Remember the chap who looked like a broomstick topped by a hatchet? You'd remember him if you ever saw Penny, for not only does Penny have the same hatchet profile, he usually possesses a similar air of half-scandalized disapproval whenever he sees me. Not, however, of late. Indeed, if Penny were capable of beaming at me, he would certainly have done it by now. Our riding the bounds has made his duties far easier, as the local poachers can't cross the boundary spell. The pheasants are safe for months to come.

  I have just come from an exchange of intelligence with Penny. My contribution to the dialogue took the form of a small quantity of ale and a few questions.

  Penny has sources of information you and I can only dream of. Someone he will not name to me (several someones, I suspect) reports that a foreigner has been seen at the very edge of the estate these past two nights. (Don't take the term to heart. To Penny, anyone not from his village qualifies.) It is possible, I suppose, that some gudgeon is out birds-nesting. I think it more likely someone has come to test my attention to spell-casting detail.

  Penny proposes we go out this evening and watch, just to see if the would-be intruder returns. If the third time is the charm, we will question the visitor. If he seems likely to possess useful information concerning the goings-on here of late, either I will try the good old dicemi on him, or Penny and I will roast him over a small fire until he shares all he knows with us.

  If he turns out to be an innocent passerby, I will send Penny about his business and tip the fellow half a crown for alleviating my boredom.

  In either event, I will write again if the results yield anything of interest.

  Yours,

  Thomas

  6 May 1828

  Dear James,

  Damn. I regret that I posted my last letter so promptly. If I had it to hand, I would destroy it and write you a far less falsely confident one. As it is, I will compound my error by writing you yet another hasty missive. When I'm done, I intend to sand it, seal it without troubling to reread it, and go straight to bed, where I should have been hours ago.

  Here is what happened with no bark on it.

  As I planned, I joined Josiah Penny after dinner. It was raining, but I was dressed for it. With some grumbling, he led me to the stone wall that marks part of the southern boundary of Skeynes. Within the wall lies my ancestral property, specifically a bramble thicket of exceptional ferocity. Beyond the wall, centuries of sheep have trimmed the grass on the common to a rough carpet.

  You would find the place unworthy of interest. Lumps of raised ground, which optimistic antiquarians believe to be traces of an ancient earthwork, make a ring. At the center of the ring is a biggish slab of stone, tall as a tall man and about twice as wide. This is called the Tingle Stone.

  No, don't ask me. I don't know why they call it that. It's always been called that, just as it's always been there, a monument to masculine pride, I suppose. As it provides the only proper cover for several hundred yards, I kept most of my attention on it, and the earthworks that circle it, as the time passed and pints of rainwater ran down my collar.

  Penny and I didn't have much to say after the first two hours. By the time another hour passed, despite the miserable conditions, I was beginning to grow sleepy. I'll swear Penny scented the man on the wind before I detected the first glimmer of magic. Once we knew he was there, I could feel him— almost hear him breathe—as he crouched at the foot of the Tingle Stone. I sent out my holdfast cantrip as slowly as I could, hoping to entangle him in it before he noticed it rising from the grass beneath to grip him around his ankles.

  I needn't have wasted a moment on caution. From the first touch of my spell, the visitor was as aware of me as I was of him. He sprang up like a salmon. I let the holdfast run thin, enough to trail along behind him as he sprinted away from us. My intention was to bring him down with it and let the rough grass hold him for me while I built its strength.

  It should have worked. Very possibly, if only Kate had been with me, it would have worked. As it happened, it did not work. Despite all my efforts, our visitor found the strength to run—well, to shuffle—away.

  Penny and I were somewhat hindered by the wet and the brambles, but that is no excuse. The visitor's strength was beyond what I would consider possible.

  Penny gave chase. As soon as he'd fired his ancient fowling piece, he scrambled over the wall and tried his best to bring the visitor down. I was playing the holdfast with all my skill, trying to slow the fellow's flight, but I spared the time to put up a fool's light, a burst of cold fire to give us a look at the man.

  The rain made it hard to make out detail in the greenish glow, but I judge the man was young, of medium height and slender build. He had a workman's cap pulled down as far as one can pull a cap and still see beneath it. His stockings were falling down around his ankles with the force of my holdfast, but he didn't let that slow him enough for Penny to catch up.

  By the time my fool's light faded, he was long gone into the outer darkness. Penny tracked him a few hundred yards, but even Penny's skill has its limits. A search of the place brought us nothing more than some trampled mud and tufts of wet grass to show for our efforts.

  You will understand that the last touch that crowns all my disgust with myself is the one I will hear first once I explain this to Kate. If I had mentioned a word of this to her, she would have insisted on sitting in the rain with us. (My chief discomfort rises from the fact that it was my reluctance to subject myself to Penny's sighs and grumbles about the presence of a lady that prevented me from including her.) Given the strength she lends my ability to focus, my holdfast would have held fast. I would still be wet and cold and covered in bramble scratches, but I would have a prisoner to question. Interrogation would have been no inconvenience, even given this most unreasonable hour.

  Enough. I'll hear all about my misjudgments tomorrow—no, I mean later this morning.

  You now know all I know—at least for the moment. This letter will be on its way to you by the time I wake up. I hope it provides you some slight amusement. Where friends are concerned, I spare no expense. Oh, hell. I'm going to bed.

  Yours,

  Thomas

  7 May 1828

  Wardhill Cottage, Darlington

  Dearest Kate,

  It is a good thing for Georgy that I am currently in the northern wilds, for if I were anywhere nearby I would most certainly box her ears. Anonymous poetry, indeed! It will all come out eventually, Kate, you know it will, for Georgy has never had the least discretion, and it would suit her down to the ground to be toasted by the Ton as a poetess. No other possibility would ever occur to her. It would not surprise me in the least to learn that her "friend" behaved exactly as she wished in publishing her poems, for it would be just like Georgy to think that she would escape censure so long as she had someone else to blame for bringing her poems out in public.

  And even if Georgy's mysterious correspondent really did publish her poetic attempts out of revenge, as Georgy claims (and one must ask, revenge for what? It is too much to hope that it was in revenge for sending him such drivel in the first place), his revenge will hardly be complete until the Ton knows the identity of the poetess.

  Aunt Elizabeth is of the same mind as I—you may well imagine her reaction when I told her that Georgy's anonymous poetry was the talk of the Ton. Of course I had to tell her; she saw that sampler of Georgy's as often as we did, so even if Georgy's identity has not been discovered by the time she returns to tow
n, she would recognize the work at once, and I could not leave her unwarned.

  I believe she intends to write Georgy a stern letter, to be followed, undoubtedly, by a lecture when they at last meet face-to-face. And do not be surprised if Aunt Charlotte arrives unannounced. I shall do my best to talk Aunt Elizabeth out of writing to her (for your sake, Kate, not for Georgy's!), but with all of Aunt Charlotte's correspondents in London, it is inevitable that she, too, will discover Georgy's transgression. And when she does, she will not give a fig that Georgy is a married woman and a duchess, and has been no charge of hers these nine years. Aunt Charlotte will descend in righteous wrath. It is a mercy she is not there already, which I devoutly trust is due to the unfashionable nature of the watering hole where she currently resides.

  James finds the matter quietly amusing, though he is inclined to take more seriously the misdeeds of Georgy's correspondent. He said something about horsewhipping the fellow when he finds him. I told him that would only encourage Georgy, but I do not think he took my meaning. Fortunately, we shall probably be stuck here for a considerable time yet. A bout of fisticuffs would only add to whatever scandal is going to result from all this.

  James has found us the prettiest little cottage just outside Darlington, with whitewashed walls and a thatched roof. With four people, the servants, and a sheepdog, the accommodations are a trifle cramped. There is, however, a large room at the back that is perfect for magical experimentation—convenient to run off and fetch any ingredients one may have forgotten, but private and thick-walled enough to keep any mishaps from discomfiting anyone in the rest of the house.

  The place is called Wardhill Cottage. This naturally made me wonder whether it had once been owned by a magician or wizard, but Mr. Wrexton found no magical residue when he set our wards. James says the name is very old, having been taken from the name of the previous house, which was replaced in the 1500s, so any magical associations cannot be recent.

  This is probably just as well, as I do not need any more distractions. Studying Herr Schellen's transformation spell is proving quite enough of a challenge. (And I can think of only two ways for Arthur to have learned of him: Either he is reading my letters to you, which is not possible unless Thomas has been tutoring him in the more advanced magic he would need to decode them, or else he is using that very fine scrying spell Thomas taught him to watch James and me. I must remember to thank Thomas for providing Arthur with such a useful way of practicing his spell casting.)

  Mr. Wrexton was only half right in his suspicions about Herr Schellen's transformation: The spell is linked to, and powered by, not merely one ley line, but several. Mr. Wrexton says that the leys must themselves be linked in some sort of spell network, and in a day or two we plan to ride out toward Goosepool to see whether we can identify which specific lines are involved.

  Herr Magus Schellen seems much more comfortable now that we are further north. Mr. Wrexton and Aunt Elizabeth are very pleased by this evidence of the correctness of their theories. They are less pleased by the prospect of having to work directly with ley line power to disenchant Herr Schellen. So we decided that our first task would be a circuit of the town to map the lines nearby, for though Mr. Wrexton brought several charts with him (including a copy of the maps Mr. Morris made in 1653), he felt that under the circumstances it would be wisest to confirm their accuracy before proceeding.

  So Mr. Wrexton, Aunt Elizabeth, the sheepdog, and I have spent the past several days riding about Darlington. Or rather, Mr. Wrexton rode; Aunt Elizabeth and I were in a hired carriage, as it is far easier to mark maps in a carriage than on horseback. The sheepdog ran along beside. All three of us performed the sensitizing spells. Aunt Elizabeth had a fresh map on which to mark whatever we found, and I had copies of the official survey to use for verification.

  We began with the area around the railway station. There were some faint traces that ought not to have been present, but Mr. Wrexton said that they were just "shadows," and that this is a well-known phenomenon occurring chiefly in the spring and autumn, when—and so on. One can never stop being a teacher, I suppose.

  From there, we worked our way through the town. I must say, Kate, that if this is the sort of thing Herr Magus Schellen does for a living, I do not envy him in the least. Granted, he is not an expert in ley lines, but mapping ley lines cannot be so very different from mapping railroads, and I assure you that mapping ley lines is the most tedious task imaginable. It was not until yesterday that we finally discovered something interesting, and even then it was only because of a mix-up between James's investigations and our own.

  While we were searching out ley lines, James spent his days haunting the offices of various business concerns in town, mostly connected with the railway. He does not intend any implied criticism of Mr. Wrexton's magical abilities by this, he was careful to explain, but since he can be of no assistance magically, he thought he ought to busy himself with something he is good at.

  Yesterday evening, Mr. Wrexton, Aunt Elizabeth, and I had planned to look over our maps. There are rather more of them than you might expect, as Mr. Wrexton had brought several varieties. An ordinary map of all the ley lines in a particular vicinity usually bears a strong resemblance to a diagram of the straw in a haymow. Often, only the strongest ley lines are drawn in, to avoid confusion (though the official surveys are quite complete—and as a result, nearly impossible to read). The top of the table was covered three deep in maps, and Aunt Elizabeth kept scolding Mr. Wrexton for shifting them and smearing the marks we had made.

  Mr. Wrexton was reviewing the maps of the area east of Darlington. I believe he has been growing as impatient as I with the pace of our mapping (at the rate we have been progressing, it will be weeks before we reach Goosepool). Suddenly, he frowned. "What's this?" he said, gesturing at one of the maps.

  Aunt Elizabeth glanced over. "It must be one of Mr. Morris's hopeful sketches," she said. "The lines don't look like any of the official maps."

  "I told Simmons to label all of the Morris copies," Mr. Wrexton said crossly. "I do hope I won't need to have words with him when we return to London."

  "There will be a good many words when we reach London," Aunt Elizabeth muttered, which I took as a reference to Georgy's indiscretion (for she did not seem to be speaking of the maps, and she has been muttering about it from time to time all day). "Is the label on the back?"

  Mr. Wrexton turned the map over. "No, there is nothing. Simmons is usually much more reliable."

  Just then, James came in. "Cecy, have you seen—oh, you have it."

  "This is yours?" Mr. Wrexton asked, lifting the map slightly.

  James joined him at the table. "Yes. I picked it up at the railway office yesterday. It's a chart of the two routes proposed for the railway—the original and the one Stephenson finally built. And it wasn't easy to pry loose, let me tell you. How did it get in here?"

  "The maid must have gathered it up and put it with the rest of the maps," I said. "I'll speak to her in the morning."

  "Don't speak too strongly, dear," said Aunt Elizabeth, of all people. "This is very interesting. Look, Michael." Her finger traced one of the lines. "That route is the same as the ley lines on Mr. Morris's map. And this one"—her finger ran along the other line—"I believe only crosses them in one or two places."

  "What?" said James and I together. We both bent forward over the map, and our heads bumped together sharply.

  Once we sorted ourselves out, we sat down to study the maps with more care. Aunt Elizabeth was, of course, entirely correct. A large section of the original route planned for the Stockton and Darlington Railway ran right on top of two of the major ley lines marked on Mr. Morris's chart. The actual railway route was different; parts of it had been built some way south of the original plan. As a result, the tracks merely crossed the two lines in places, instead of following them.

  "Who changed the route?" Mr. Wrexton demanded. "And why?"

  "Stephenson changed it," James replied absentl
y. He was still studying the various maps with a frown. "Wrexton, how could the official surveyors miss ley lines as strong as those?" He indicated the thick slashes on the Morris maps.

  "I don't believe they did," Mr. Wrexton said. "There are leys in the right places on the official maps; they just aren't as strong as Morris indicated."

  "Wishful thinking on his part," Aunt Elizabeth sniffed.

  "Perhaps," I said. "Or perhaps the strength of the lines has changed since Mr. Morris made his maps."

  Mr. Wrexton shook his head. "Ley lines have been known to change in strength, it is true," he said. "But not so significantly, nor so fast. I think Elizabeth is correct; Mr. Morris was puffing up his theories, trying to make the leys in his network seem more important than they were."

  "If so, he was remarkably consistent," James commented. He picked up one of the other maps Mr. Wrexton had brought with him. "All of the lines he's marked heavily are of minor strength, according to the official surveys."

  "All of them?" Mr. Wrexton said with interest.

  James nodded.

  "Perhaps he didn't intend to mark how strong they were," I said. "If he thought something else was more important..."

  "Just what were his theories?" James asked. Everyone looked at him. "I don't mean in general—ancient artificial ley line networks and spells holding England together. You explained that very clearly, Wrexton. But how did he think they worked? Even if you don't have his notes, you must have some notion."

  Mr. Wrexton frowned. "Speculating on Morris's ideas would not be—"

  "Then don't speculate on his theories, dear," Aunt Elizabeth said. "Tell us about yours."

  "Yes, well, I admit, I have spent a good deal of time, since we discovered Lord White's notes, thinking about the question," Mr. Wrexton admitted. Aunt Elizabeth nodded, and James and I did our best to look expectant, and so Mr. Wrexton really had no choice but to tell us what he thought.