Salt Magic, Skin Magic

by Lee Welch

  ***

  He realised he was still grovelling on the new sandstone steps behind Raskelf and forced himself to his feet. The Hall towered before him, a grand and crumbling cage. To make matters worse, Father was somewhere inside. He’d arrived home yesterday for the winter, followed some hours later, and in a different carriage, by the silly second Lady Dalton. Thornby was damned if he’d give either one of them the satisfaction of seeing him with reddened eyes and trembling hands.

  He looked terrible these days. The months of prowling and fretting had caused him to lose weight, and there were new lines to his face that spoke of strain and anguish. He found himself muttering aloud as he paced the endless passages of Raskelf, jumping at shadows and drinking too much. No wonder the servants were afraid of him. He turned his back on the house.

  Before him lay the estate with its rolling parklands and woods, its fields and becks. The park was just as much of a prison, but at least it had open skies. He headed back across the long grass to the boggy path that encircled what was left of the estate. There had been no boundary path when he’d arrived at Raskelf a year and a half ago, but his own feet had worn one bare. He’d always believed the land was entailed, but legalities notwithstanding, Father had disposed of great swathes of it. And every time a piece of land was sold, Thornby’s path must change. Always he was forced to skirt along the edge of whatever land still belonged to Father. It was the strangest thing to stand on the edge of the new boundary and look at the track his own feet had once made, and to know that he could no more walk there now than walk upon the moon.

  Still, the estate remained large enough that if Thornby took the long way round he’d be late for dinner, which would reliably antagonise Father. Annoying Father was now all he lived for. Thornby had no doubt the dinner table tonight would be the usual battleground. Yesterday evening had been surprisingly mellow; the presence of the mysterious Mr Blake had put everyone on best behaviour.

  Blake had arrived yesterday too, just before dinner. And Thornby, who seldom saw strangers these days, had wanted to stare like a rustic at this gentleman from London. Blake had sleek black hair, dark watchful eyes, and a mouth that turned down slightly at the corners. He was handsome enough, with an air of confidence, but his mouth gave him a grim look. Not a man to trifle with. He looked to be in his early thirties, and dressed conservatively in a plain, dark waistcoat and grey coat. He looked, in fact, the picture of the well-to-do industrialist he claimed to be. But he’d come without a valet, which was mighty odd for a man of that type, and he’d brought with him an enormous trunk so heavy it had taken six men to lift it.

  Blake had said he was a friend of Lady Dalton’s cousin, another wealthy industrialist. And Lady Dalton, who generally flinched if one so much as looked at her, had agreed. She’d looked damn glad to see Blake, actually. How lovely if she planned to cuckold Father with him, but she probably hadn’t the imagination.

  Most surprisingly, at dinner, to Father’s aggressive enquiry about what the devil he thought he was doing at Raskelf, Blake had said, almost dismissively, ‘You’ve known me for years, my lord. Remember, you invited me down any time.’ And Father, to Thornby’s lasting astonishment, had said ‘ah, yes’, and gone back to his consommé, just as if he were the kind of man who gave open invitations to the type of fellow he sometimes described as ‘bloody jumped-up trade’.

  Thornby was disposed to like Blake, who never fawned, and who carried himself well; upright, but not stiff, and with a determined city energy that Thornby had desperately missed. And Blake’s eyes, so dark they were nearly Latin, were very fine. Yes, if Thornby let himself, he could enjoy looking at Mr Blake.

  Blake didn’t seem to like him, though.

  Over the roast beef, Blake had given Thornby a peculiar, intense look and said, ‘I think you remember me from Oxford, Lord Thornby.’ Thornby had almost agreed, to be pleasant, because anyone who dared to speak to Father in such an offhand manner was obviously a man of character. But since Blake was so clearly not an Oxford man, though he spoke well enough, Thornby had said with genuine regret, ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Blake’. To his surprise, Blake had gone as white as his nice lawn shirt-front, and then looked daggers at him for the rest of the meal.

  A nagging pain from his bad foot brought Thornby back to the present. With Father back, the pressure to marry would redouble. And yet, how could he marry? Even if he was willing to swallow his pride, how could he involve some innocent girl in all this mess? What if he married and Father trapped the lady here too? It was an impossible situation. His throat was growing tight again, hopelessness threatening to drain away every ounce of vitality. There was only week after week, month after month, until—what? Until he died, or went mad? He sighed and his breath formed a cloud in front of him.

  This was no good. He must not give up. Didn’t Virgil say that adversity is only overcome by endurance? So, he must endure. Father would be alert for any sign of weakness. Thornby needed to drum up some anger, some energy, to get through dinner and prove he wasn’t beaten yet.

  He lifted his chin and walked faster along the boundary path, feet sending up splashes of mud. He began muttering curses and kicking stray sods. He worked up to shouting at sheep and gesticulating at the occasional farmhand. Both sheep and men stared at him with the same blank, open-mouthed incredulity. He knew it did nothing for his reputation in the village, but sometimes, when despair grew so tight it would crush his very soul, there was nothing for it but to shout unreasonable things and shake his fist at hedges.

  “You know what I’ve missed, you pastoral savages? You damned Philistine sheep? I’ve missed the season. Again. Do you have any idea what that means? I’ve missed the Academy Exhibition. I’ve missed Millais’ Ophelia. And what’s more, what’s worst, what’s damned insupportable, is that I’ve missed the Great Bloody Exhibition! A Crystal Palace with trees inside and every damned wonder you could ever hope to see, and I’ve missed—”

  Someone was watching him and it was not a grubby farmhand. He lowered his arms from a particularly expressive flourish. He was now at the farthest possible distance from the Hall, in an area that bordered on open moorland, recently sold to the Howarths. And there, just off the path by a clump of heather, was Mr Blake. Blake was lying on his coat, hands behind his head, as though Thornby had woken him from sleep. Quite how Thornby could have missed him at first, he didn’t know.

  Thornby could feel his cheeks burning. He didn’t much care if a farmhand saw him acting like a lunatic; it would give him a story to tell later over a pot of ale. But Mr Blake was a guest. A rather handsome guest.

  Well, Thornby could hardly slink away. He raised his chin and kept walking.

  Blake fixed him with an intense stare, dark eyes boring into Thornby like augers. If Blake had been a real gentleman, he would have looked away and given Thornby a moment to recover his composure. But Blake barely blinked, lying there like an eastern potentate while Thornby approached. Would the man not get up or acknowledge him in any way? Thornby was suddenly very conscious that his clothes were forty years out of fashion and not especially clean. And that not long ago he had been so heart-sick he had nearly wept. Did that show on his face?

  He decided to give like for like and walk past without speaking, but the ridiculousness of the situation hit him almost at once. They were now only a couple of yards apart. They were staying in the same house. In a few hours, they would be dining together. Was one really going to stride past as if the man were invisible?

  He stopped. Blake was still lying there, still staring. Even lying down, he had the capable look of a man used to getting things done.

  Thornby gave him a nod. “Good day, Mr Blake.”

  Blake got to his feet, face darkening. “So, you can see me. How clever.” He gave a sarcastic bow. “How did you manage that? Reveal charm?” His grim mouth twisted scornfully. “Well, here we are. Let’s stop playing games, shall we?”

  It was Thornby’s turn to stare. A charm? What games? Of cou
rse he could see Blake—he was there in plain view.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I know,” Blake said. “You can tell me what you’re doing to Lady Dalton. Then you can tell me why. And then I’ll decide what to do with you.”

  There was such menace in his voice Thornby nearly took a step backwards. What was this about Lady Dalton? He generally had as little to do with her as possible. He had, perhaps, not been especially civil to the snivelling creature, but he hardly felt it necessary to be charming. And in any case, he hadn’t seen her all summer. Because she had been in London for the season, while he had been here.

  Despite his confusion, the injustice stung. He was the wronged one. He was the one bloody well being kept at Raskelf by mysterious means. Lady Dalton could do what she liked. She could leave, couldn’t she?

  There was, too, a very private reason which made the baseless accusation sting the more for coming from Mr Blake. Lying in bed last night, Thornby had allowed himself to entertain one or two fantasies in which Mr Blake overcame his initial unfriendliness and permitted certain delicious intimacies. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. Blake thought him a cad who was bothering a lady. Thornby looked away from his dark-browed glare, feeling a fool for having allowed the fantasies in the first place.

  It was then he noticed a narrow tape of supple leather that lay on the grass, encircling Mr Blake and his overcoat. It had faint blue writing on it, in some angular foreign script. Inside this peculiar item, a white handkerchief was spread on the rough grass. And on top of the handkerchief lay a small heap of orange sand with a blue glass eye balanced on top.

  Thornby’s skin began to crawl. Protestations of innocence died on his tongue. He must get away from this madman. Quickly. He backed a step and found his voice. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you mean, sir. Good day.” He bowed and walked on, fast.

  Chapter Two

  “You little bastard,” John Blake muttered.

  He pocketed the glass eye and the sand, coiled the spancel, and began to follow Lord Thornby—heir to Raskelf, sometime painter of immodest pictures of ladies, and, it now seemed clear, witch—since only another magician could have seen through the invisibility conferred by the sand, eye and spancel charm.

  John had had a trying couple of days. He wasn’t used to life in a country house, especially one as grand and ancient as Raskelf. And he wasn’t used to being on such close terms with the aristocracy. He’d agreed to come here as a favour to a friend and he was deeply regretting it.

  George Catterall, Lady Dalton’s cousin and only living relative, had taken John for a very good dinner at his club, and over the brandy begged him to rescue the lady from her step-son, the evil Lord Thornby.

  “She’s beside herself,” Catterall had said, in a low voice. “She says whenever she stays at Raskelf her things go missing, or turn up in places she never left them. Or she finds odd things in her rooms, like acorns, or pebbles in her shoes. She’s certain someone’s using—you know—the stuff you do. I can’t ask anyone else. I don’t know anyone else who uses it except Rokeby, and I wouldn’t trust him with tuppence. She says it all began when Lord Thornby came home. But he won’t leave and, well, to make things worse—” Catterall’s broad, fair face, already pink with fine wine and brandy, flushed red and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Deuce take it, John, she’s got connubial troubles. Dalton doesn’t treat her like a wife anymore, and she’s convinced it’s some sort of spell.”

  “I see.” John glanced around the womb-like comfort of the club dining room. The gentlemen at the adjoining table seemed half-asleep in a haze of beef and burgundy. “There are other reasons for a man to cool off. Dalton’s a fair bit older, isn’t he? Maybe he just can’t.”

  “He’s in his fifties, but she says it was all right until Thornby came along. God’s teeth, man, she’s not making it up! She’s not that type of girl. Thornby’s terribly peculiar. She says he dresses in some fancy old-fashioned get-up like a Regency buck. And looks at her sometimes in such a way, she says, and refuses to go to church. And you remember that fuss over a lewd painting last year? That was him.” Catterall took another sip of brandy. “I can vouch for him being odd; he took a parrot to her wedding. We could all hear it screeching in the vestry. And afterwards he gave it to her as a wedding present! Now that’s peculiar, you have to admit.”

  John sipped his brandy and sorted through this catalogue of sins and oddities to decide if there was anything in it. Possibly the strange looks meant something. Acorns, stones in the shoes, things going missing—all these could be magic, or just ordinary mischief. The parrot? Animals could be familiars, but there his experience stopped. John’s area of expertise was the inanimate: iron and glass, salt and sand. It was true he was hoping to escape the factories and foundries, but this seemed a step too far.

  “Thornby may be a bounder, but that doesn’t mean he’s using magic. In any case, I’m an industrial man. Society isn’t my thing. I wouldn’t know what to do with a marquess’s son turned witch. Come on, man, my father was an ironmonger. I’d be horribly out of place.”

  “My dear fellow, you’re too modest. I know what you’ve been doing for Paxton at the Crystal Palace; hasn’t been all anti-leak charms, has it? You fought off a thousand possessed bats, if what I hear is correct. Please, John, I’m begging you. I feel responsible. I should never have let her marry Dalton, everyone knows he’s facing ruin. But she would be Lady Dalton and wouldn’t hear reason. After this Crystal Palace business it’ll be child’s play for you, eh? A breath of country air. Paxton doesn’t need you at the moment. Just see if someone’s using magic on her; you can tell that much, can’t you?”

  So, John had come to Raskelf, and found the whole set-up much worse than he’d imagined. To start with, the whole rambling, crumbling pile that was Raskelf Hall was saturated with old magic. It reeked of the stuff. It clamoured with it. The blackened wood panelling, the tarnished silver, the murky paintings and the uneven parquet floor; all murmuring and chattering with memories of magic.

  And the inhabitants were worse. Lord Dalton had the charnel stink of something old and rotten, possibly a curse. Dalton’s spinster sister, Lady Amelia, was an invalid who seemed to live in an old orangery in a haze of wintergreen and sickly palm trees. There was also a Mr Derwent, an elderly second cousin, who’d been a collector of antiquities until the money went. John had stood, horrified, in front of the few artefacts that were left, listening to them seethe with malice and wounded pride. He’d even caught a whiff of something rough and recent from Lady Dalton, as though she’d taken to dabbling in magic in self defence.

  And, worst, to his amazement and alarm, his charms had no effect on his prime suspect, Lord Thornby. To be so impervious, the younger man must be a magician of great skill. John had set the Judas Voice sigil with great care before dinner last night, but it had not worked on Thornby. Of course, all John had had to set the charm with was an old stocking filched from Thornby’s room by Lady Dalton’s maid—not a token of the highest order, but it should have worked at least partially. And now Thornby had seen past the sand, eye and spancel charm; John had never known that to fail before.

  Now Thornby was walking along the moorland path, calm as you please, nose in the air, apparently admiring the autumn colours in the distant oaks in the park.

  “Stop, Lord Thornby! I want to talk to you.”

  Thornby walked faster, slight limp becoming more pronounced.

  “Stop, I say!”

  John felt in his pockets for his vials and pouches, then changed his mind and simply put on speed. He’d come to this remote part of the grounds in the hope of a rest. He’d not slept much last night with the walls of Raskelf muttering and whispering, and the antiquities from Egypt shrieking muffled curses from the other side of the corridor.

  The thought of Thornby had kept him awake as well; so resistant to the Judas Voice—that had given John an unpleasant moment—and so unapproachable, with that aristocratic hau
teur you could never breach. And so strange. Why did the man wear such peculiar clothes? Today it was tight black pantaloons and a high stock that would have been fashionable forty years ago. And over this bizarre Regency costume was a rusty black greatcoat with wide cuffs, and a tricorn hat that would have looked well in the previous century.

  And, yes, Thornby was handsome—heart-stoppingly so—with arrogant grey eyes, a mane of brown hair that almost reached his collar, and a preposterous red mouth. He was tall and thin and carried himself like a fencer. There was, too, something whip-taut about him, some unbearable tension that made you feel he might lash out. Or suddenly kiss you. Thornby had looked John up and down when he was introduced, finally unbending so far as to give John a slight inclination of the head. And John’s mouth had gone as dry as if Thornby had extended one of those elegant white hands and given his balls a gentle squeeze.

  It was tiresome, really. It made it so much harder to concentrate. He must make sure he didn’t allow his attraction to the man to cloud his judgement. Possibly Thornby was using a glamour spell. John couldn’t sense one, but sometimes by their very nature they were difficult to detect.

  So, he mustn’t think about how good it would be to slide his fingers inside Thornby’s old black pantaloons, how good it would be to taste his lovely mouth, and wipe that damned snooty expression off his face. If John had been in London, he would have gone to one of the houses that catered to men of his taste, and tried to forget about it. Here in the middle of rural Yorkshire it was far too dangerous to approach anyone, and in any case, farm lads were not his type. He’d simply leave as soon as he could tell Catterall he’d done his best.

  They walked in single file for perhaps five minutes. The path smelt of rotting leaves, and a biting wind began to make its presence felt as they crossed into an open piece of moorland. Splashes of muddy water were spotting the back of Thornby’s coat. John used the close proximity to feel for magic. Like last night at dinner, he could sense nothing emanating from Thornby. There was certainly no demon reek, so Thornby probably wasn’t a theurgist, or if he was, he was a very fastidious one.