Salt Magic, Skin Magic

by Lee Welch

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  SALT MAGIC, SKIN MAGIC

  First edition. August 9, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Lee Welch.

  ISBN: 978-0473444501

  Written by Lee Welch.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Acknowledgements

  Mended with Gold

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  October, 1851

  Soren, Lord Thornby, opened the rectory field gate and checked the back of his left hand for the hundredth time. He’d written the word ‘leave’ on his skin in black ink. His hands had trembled as he’d done it, and the ‘l’ had smeared against his cuff. But he could read it plainly enough.

  Leave.

  The gate was on the Raskelf estate, which belonged to Thornby’s father, the ninth Marquess of Dalton. The hummocky field belonged to the rectory, which was a mile away in the village. A few bedraggled, black-faced sheep grazed at the far end, and Thornby knew he should shut the gate, but somehow did not quite like to. Keeping his left hand in front of him as though offering an arm to an invisible lady, he took a deep breath and stepped across the estate boundary.

  As he did so, he realised he’d be late for dinner if he didn’t go back to the Hall now. It would be unforgivably rude.

  But his gaze was on his hand. Leave.

  He stood, one pace away from the gate, breathing hard. It was mid-afternoon. The weak autumn sun was still some distance from the horizon. Dinner was always at seven. He fumbled for his watch, hand shaking so much the glass front gave fractured reflections of sky, hedgerow, and his own pale face. It was not yet three. But perhaps it would be best to go back now anyway.

  As he put the watch away, he saw the writing on his hand again. Leave.

  Yes, he must leave. Heart pounding, he took another step. But he was trespassing. He glanced around, shoulders hunching with guilt, a cold sweat prickling out on his back. This land belonged to the rectory. He shouldn’t be here.

  He tried to breathe deeply. He was leaving Raskelf. Why shouldn’t he walk across a field? The rector wouldn’t mind. Although Father was damnably rude to the fellow, the rector had no quarrel with Thornby.

  He took a third step.

  And stopped. Idiot! He’d left the lid off the inkwell. These days the staff at Raskelf was composed of the incompetent or the unreliable—those who couldn’t secure a position elsewhere. Thornby could almost see the inkwell tipping under a careless duster, a black puddle engulfing the work of months. He must go back at once and put the lid on.

  His arm was at an odd angle in front of him, as if he expected a bird of prey to swoop down to his wrist. Foolish; there’d been no falcons at Raskelf for years. Something black was on the back of his hand. He rubbed at it, but it wouldn’t come off. It was writing, very smudged. A word written in ink.

  Ink! Yes, he must hurry home and deal with the inkwell. The gate was only a couple of strides away. He shut it so the rector’s sheep couldn’t wander and hastened back to the Hall, the chimneys of which could just be seen, rising above the yellows and coppers of Ramparts Wood.

  Raskelf Hall, the ancestral seat of the Dezombreys, was a huge mish-mash of styles and additions, punctuated by mullioned windows and so many chimneys and baroque flourishes that Thornby always felt it resembled a vast and sickly hedgehog. He approached the northern entrance, at the back of the house. A month ago, the doorway here had been graced by a fine white marble portico, but it had been sold to pay some unavoidable debt of Father’s. The doorway now looked naked and a little surprised, like a man caught with his trousers down.

  As Thornby grabbed the cheap new iron handrail to spring up the cheap new sandstone steps, he noticed the blurred scrawl on the back of his hand.

  Leave.

  Daylight seemed to fall away and the air to grow thin, as if the shadow of the Hall was set on stifling him. Nausea swept over him and his legs turned to water. He dropped to a crouch on the steps, tugging at his tight cravat.

  Back at the Hall. For the thousandth time. Back to put a lid on an inkwell. The very banality of the reasoning turned his blood to ice.

  Because he’d been trying to leave the estate for a year and a half. He’d tried everything. He’d tried walking across the boundary in an ordinary way. He’d tried riding across, but no matter which horse he took, the creature always refused. He’d tried crawling across in the mud, as if by abasing himself he might be let go. He’d tried flinging himself across, screaming. Sometimes he told himself he felt no more than one of the statues in the park—his heart was marble, his mind marble—he would walk and not stop. But nothing worked. Nothing. Every time he found himself turning and walking back, for some trivial reason like a lidless inkwell. He was trapped as effectively as if an invisible wall surrounded the estate.

  His throat was closing so tight it might choke him. A harsh sob of rage and frustration escaped, and he gritted his teeth against another. A tear fell hot on the back of his hand. He would claw his own skin off to get away. Not just from Raskelf, but from himself, from the stupid, weak self that couldn’t walk across a field.

  Father claimed to have the power to let him go—if he married money as Father wished. But Thornby loathed his father and trusted him less than a footpad in a dark alley. And if he swallowed his pride and did as he was told, could Father really free him? Or would Thornby merely have involved some innocent girl in his ghastly predicament?

  Father hinted often enough that it was weakness of character that kept Thornby here. Father had forbidden him to leave, and deep down, so deep Thornby couldn’t acknowledge it, he must want to obey and so he did. But surely it couldn’t be that? Thornby had no trouble disobeying his father in every other aspect of his life. In fact, it gave him a grim satisfaction. He was twenty-seven; not a child to take his father’s word as law.

  So, why? Why could he not walk across a field and escape? If it wasn’t weakness of character, could it be to do with magnetism? Mesmerism? He’d heard of Elliotson’s remarkable experiments, making ladies tell the future or dance and sing. He couldn’t remember being mesmerised, but perhaps that was part of the trick?

  He knew what some of the servants and the village people thought. He’d seen the sideways looks, the fingers crossed in a sign to ward off black magic. And of course he’d heard rumours, over the years, about devil worship and magicians who summoned spirits. But surely all that was flummery, tricks to fool the credulous. Some people might believe in it, even practice it, but magic was not a real enough force to hold an educated man against his will. And in any case, Father was no magician—was he?

  Yet, sometimes, in the dark hours of the night, when sleep would not come and reason grew fevered, there seemed no other explanation.

  ***

  A year and a half ago, Thornby had been sipping Madeira in the sitting room of his Mayfair house. Between sips, he’d been reading aloud an art review in The Times for the edification of a recent acquaintance—an amusing fellow with a fine arse and a hungry mouth, but who was developing a distressing tendency to gaze at Thornby like a moon-calf.

  Then, incredibly, Thornby’s father was announced.

  The ninth Marquess of Dalton shoul
dered into the room at the same time as the quavering announcement, for all the world like a locomotive engine, right down to the steam coming from his ears. A pair of footmen in the blue-and-gold livery of Raskelf flanked him; strapping fellows both, with thick necks, and thighs that rubbed together when they walked. Not that Thornby was looking at their thighs. He jumped up.

  “My lord. Father. This is a surprise. How do you do? May I—”

  Lord Dalton faced the windows and addressed the golden London twilight. “Well, you damned whelp. What are you trying to do? Ruin the family name?”

  “You’ve seen The Times? The review of my picture?” Thornby had done a number of things that might ruin a family name, but the painting and subsequent review were the most recent. He realised he was still clutching the paper in question, and tossed it onto the chaise longue.

  “‘Lewd and indecent debauchery’, it says. What were you thinking, boy?”

  The moon-calf, who’d been watching with open mouth, now had the decency to stand and clear his throat. “Perhaps I should, er, I beg your pardon, Lord Dalton. Good day, Thornby.” And he slid out between the footmen like a well-tailored eel escaping a trap.

  Thornby watched the back of his father’s head uncertainly. Father had barely spoken to him for almost twenty years. Was he really here after all this time to give Thornby a dressing down about a painting? The last time Thornby had seen his father had been a year ago at the man’s wedding to the second Lady Dalton at a fashionable London church. Thornby had arrived at the service with a green parrot in a cage and a startling magenta waistcoat, and received nothing but a haughty glance.

  “Well? What were you thinking?” repeated Father, still directing his words towards the windows.

  “Mostly of composition, sir. In truth, I didn’t intend—”

  “You’re not a painter.” Father spat the word out, as a man might say “You’re not a cockroach.” “You’re a gentleman, or you damn well should be!”

  Thornby thought of a number of things he might say about the nobility of the muse, but it seemed wiser not to. Father’s fists were clenched and brandy fumes were issuing from him in such measure one could almost see a haze above his tall hat, which he had not removed.

  “I confess, sir, I only submitted the picture because I lost a wager,” Thornby said.

  “And that makes it better, does it? Damned impudence.”

  “As a gentleman, I could hardly back out.”

  Father wheeled, with the air of a man making up his mind to something unpleasant, and looked at his son properly for the first time. Thornby, who had been reaching towards his glass, froze. The sounds of a spring evening in London seemed suddenly louder; the rumble and clatter of a passing carriage, footsteps, and the muted roar of busier streets further afield.

  Father’s weather-beaten features were puce with annoyance. Probably he’d been handsome once, with straightforward, manly features, now blurred by time and extremities of emotion. He was thick-set and tall, and Thornby stood straighter in order to look him in the eye. Thornby was damned if he was going to be intimidated in his own home. Next to his father, he was skinny as a rail, and his fashionable narrow necktie and red silk smoking jacket suddenly felt as louche as a whore’s paints.

  Thornby was used to being stared at. Mostly, he enjoyed it. But he did not like the way Father was looking at him now. Then, even as they glared at each other, Father’s expression grew unfocused, and became almost one of longing—an emotion Thornby was far more accustomed to seeing on the faces around him. Father murmured something under his breath. Could it be some sorrow, some shade of tenderness had entered his voice?

  “Sir, I—” A note of genuine regret entered Thornby’s tone, but his father cut him off, expression changing to a rather stagy rage that put Thornby in mind of a villain in a bad play.

  “You’re coming to Raskelf to cool your heels. Then you’ll marry some respectable girl before it’s too late.”

  “I shan’t. I suppose I’m a bit sorry about the painting since it seems to upset you. I only did it for a lark, but I—”

  “A lark? A lewd painting?” Father’s voice rose. It could surely be heard throughout the house, and probably in the square too. Yet Thornby thought he detected a false note, an edge of boredom, as if Father grew tired of his role of outraged paterfamilias. “You’re coming to Raskelf, and you’ll stay until I give you leave.”

  “No, really. Awfully kind of you, but I don’t think I shall.” Thornby exaggerated his father’s bored tone and picked up his glass.

  Father hit him; a hard, calculated slap that snapped Thornby’s teeth together. The glass fell to the hearth and smashed. Thornby put a hand to his mouth and it came away red. He glared at his father. No one struck Thornby and remained unscathed. At school they had learned not to, eventually, for he always hit back, even if it meant a thrashing. But even as he curled his hands into fists, something stopped him. One did not hit one’s father, however much one wanted to. One could not.

  “It’s not a choice, boy. You’re coming. Then you’ll stay. Once you’re married, we’ll see.”

  Father gestured to the footmen and one of them twisted Thornby’s arm behind his back and wrestled him down the stairs while Father shouted orders about trunks and carriages. Thornby had a confused impression of the horrified faces of the housekeeper and maid, peering up from the lower staircase, then the enormous Raskelf footman manhandled him out into the street without hat or coat.

  Thornby’s trunk arrived at the carriage just behind them. Father’s louts had not given Thornby’s valet much time for packing. Passers-by were staring, but the crest on the carriage door, and the glares of the liveried footmen, caused them to hurry past. Thornby was hustled inside. Father sat opposite and the carriage jolted into motion.

  “I say, my hat­­—” Thornby began, but Father’s face stopped him. His lordship looked as if he’d won the Derby, but then been handed his winnings wrapped up in the filthy handkerchief of a consumptive beggar. It was such a strange look, and so intense, that Thornby felt he would do anything to stop it.

  “This carriage has seen better days,” he said, fingering one of the torn and weather-stained curtains, thinking to goad his lordship into a rant about finances. It was common knowledge that Father was facing ruin. If he wasn’t disowned first, Thornby could hope to inherit mainly debts.

  “Now, boy.” Father’s voice was trembling with emotion. “Listen carefully, because I’m telling you that as of now, you and yours are mine.”

  If Father’s rage had seemed stagy earlier, this seemed positively operatic. Perhaps Father had gone a little mad. Thornby hardly knew the man, after all. Thornby had left Raskelf, aged eight, for school, and seldom gone back there after his mother’s death a few weeks later. But even as a child he’d heard rumours of his father’s eccentricity; his wild, incontinent grief at the death of his wife, his obsession for buying useless coastal bits of Scotland and Ireland, and his hare-brained schemes to grow seaweed as a commercial crop for fertilisers. But perhaps Father’s financial strife had pushed him over into something worse.

  “You hear me?” Father went on. “Your possessions, your household, those ridiculous cufflinks, the shirt on your back. Everything. Mine.”

  Thornby, who had curled protective fingers around one of his coral and gold cufflinks, now found himself unable to hold anything at all. It was as though Father’s words had paralysed him. He fought to stay upright on the swaying seat. A deep, claustrophobic chill settled over him. The very air seemed to have grown thick, and a hideous sense of invasion crept over his limbs as though something was claiming them as its own.

  And then, as quickly as it had come, the fit passed. Father turned to watch the London streets go by, and Thornby laid his head against the side of the carriage, glad of a few moments to recover. The oddness of the situation—riding hatless through London with his father—was staggering. The coach turned onto Regent Street; it looked as if they were heading straight for
the station.

  How long would Father make him stay at Raskelf? A fortnight? A month? Raskelf Hall was in the middle of nowhere, hard by the North York moors. Thornby liked the countryside well enough for a spot of shooting in the autumn or hunting in the winter, but it was spring and the London season had begun. He was supposed to be attending a dinner party that very evening, followed by rather more fun later on, carousing with some fellows from one of his clubs.

  Father had mentioned marriage. Twice, in fact, and in most threatening tones. But Thornby was only twenty-five, and certainly not inclined to marriage yet. Or, probably, ever, but he would not be telling Father that.

  Anyway, the marriage idea would soon blow over. More importantly, no arrangements had been made about Thornby’s valet. Perhaps Thornby could send a message from the station. Or perhaps Father would lend Thornby his own man. Thornby hardly liked the idea. Father looked spruce enough, but there was something repellent about borrowing his valet, who doubtless carried tales.

  Thornby’s head swam, only partly from the after-effects of the blow. His tongue was swelling where he’d bitten it. And yet, despite the pain, the inconvenience and the worry, the novelty of the situation—Father paying attention to him—was at least interesting. Any normal father would have taken a horse-whip to Thornby years ago, and most of society would have thought it none too soon. Perhaps Father was finally taking some paternal responsibility. The idea was mainly alarming, but still.

  Thornby remembered, at school, boys getting letters or half crowns from their fathers. Sometimes boys had told of beatings, or lectures, or new ponies as well. He’d wondered then what it might feel like to be a person of interest to his father. Lord Dalton had never written, never visited, never sent a package. In the holidays, apart from one seaside trip so disastrous Thornby tried never to think of it, he had generally been sent to the house at Beck Hill, fifty miles from Raskelf and barely in the same county.

  He looked at Father’s profile, now a fume-reeking shadow against the darkening streets. Well, he thought, when it becomes dull at Raskelf I can always leave.