by Kevan Dale
At the door, he darted past the one soldier left to stand watch, slipping out into the thick fog that lay across Newgate Street. As the damp darkness swallowed him, he glanced back. The hulking shape of Christ Church faded, tall steeple draped in night, soon blending with the curtains of fog and drizzle that closed in after him.
11
Unseen, Unheard, Unspoken
Swaine’s demons muttered, restless. Tucked away in the back of his mind, their unease lingered like an itch on the inside of his skull while the bindings to their will grew taut, violin strings wound to the point of snapping.
It might be simply a reaction to the precautions he’d undertook since the encounter with the demon by Catherine Nunn’s coffin. Nothing about the incident sat well with Swaine. Thus, the additional glamours laid out in his rooms. Passive wards cast on entrance and egress. Nightly passes around his quarters with the calibrated enharmonic gauge. Protective spells when he left his rooms, as the ones he’d cast this evening, his collar up against the cold breath of coming winter sweeping in from the water.
Perhaps such vigilance in itself raised the hackles of his demons, he thought, ignoring their faint tugs at his awareness. Better than the alternative theories he’d entertained: that they knew their master had been marked by a powerful fiend and were waiting for the inevitable ambush to make a perilous moment even more dire by attempting to turn on him; a reaction to the subtle presence of a new fiend, hiding in the shadows nearby, seeking some sly avenue into Swaine’s mind, ready to poison his thoughts and drag him down the lengthy and terrible road to demonic possession.
Swaine shook his head, frowning. No, he was more careful than that. He’d scanned himself and his surroundings a dozen times, always coming up with nothing. He’d been as thorough as it was possible to be, for precision was the most urgent demand of sorcery. One miscalculation was all it might take to spend every moment in an agony worse than flame, brand, flay, or lash could hope to inflict. Forever, or at least until the will and soul of the possessed wore away to dust, a stone carving disintegrating over eons in the desert winds.
No, caution and prudence received nothing less than Swaine’s full attention since leaving the side of Nunn’s coffin. Any more would require a better sorcerer—and he was the best there was, modesty aside.
Such care, of course, required extra time. Thus, Swaine arrived at the Mitre Tavern a full hour prior to the hour arranged for his meeting with Thomas Summerfield. As discreetly as he could, blending in with the foot traffic that passed along that stretch of Fleet Street, he surveilled the location. Using a combination of subtle magic and sorcery, he determined to a reasonable certainty that the establishment and the alleys and courtyards adjacent to it were free of the infernal. Likewise, he detected no counter-magic, no spells set for triggering, no hex, enchantment, or cantrip wound about the place—the grandson of Alfred Summerfield merited no less than a thorough investigation of the premises. Just as comforting, he saw no signs of constable or King’s soldier, other than a pair of scarlet-clad horsemen who cantered by the Mitre without giving it a glance.
At the appointed hour, Swaine slipped in through the green-painted doorway, his cheeks and fingers burnished red from the cold. Heat from the wide hearth and the many lanterns—not to mention the throng of tradesmen and shopmen laughing as they drained their pewter mugs, already flushed and filling the air with breathy ale fumes—wrapped him quickly and thankfully. A pall of smoke from the hearth and a dozen tobacco pipes gave the public room its own fog.
Swaine found a narrow bench in the back corner and ordered a warm cider, watching the door for the man who would match Devon Woods’s description of Summerfield. But two minutes passed before a plump fellow of clear means—as evinced in the knee-length dark velvet coat, waistcoat trimmed with golden brocade, ruffled silken cuffs, well-tailored breeches, and wig clubbed at the back with a plum-colored ribbon—pushed through the door and glanced about, cutting through the crowd with his silver-tipped walking stick held before him like the prow of a ship. He looked to be no older than his early twenties. With a nod and a lift of his hand, Swaine signaled Summerfield his way. Summerfield stopped before Swaine, breathing notably from the exertion.
He inclined his head. “Thomas Summerfield, at your service, Mr. Swaine.”
“And I at yours, Mr. Summerfield.”
Summerfield slid onto the bench across from Swaine. “Thomas, please.” He raised his cane to the barkeep. “Brandy, your best.” The barkeep nodded and brought over a squat bottle and two delicate glasses. Summerfield slipped him coins. “And anything hearty you’ve got plated up, if you would.” He turned to Swaine. “Have you eaten, Mr. Swaine?”
“August. And no.”
“Two plates, then,” he said to the barkeep. “Extra for you if you don’t dawdle, much thanks.”
The barkeep scooped up the coin and smiled. Summerfield looked back at Swaine and smiled. “I’m famished. And impatient.” He tippled brandy into each glass and slid Swaine’s over to him. Without taking a sip, he sat back and slapped his hands on his considerable thighs. “We meet at last.”
“If I’d only known you were looking to make my acquaintance,” Swaine said.
“If I’d known sooner that a man of your talents called London home, I’d have sought you out years ago.” Summerfield sipped his brandy, pursing his lips as he evaluated it. He smacked his lips and nodded, apparently satisfied. “The paucity of interest in the unseen arts lulled me into thinking I was the only man in England who cared.”
“There are some who care very much. Lionel Sackville, for instance.”
“A fool.” Summerfield shook his head in dismissal, sending the wattle of flesh beneath his chin swaying like a half-full waterskin. “And quite insane. Do you know how I know?”
Swaine raised an eyebrow.
“He attempted to court my sister,” Summerfield continued. “Only the insane would show a carnal interest in my sister, the hideous cow. Ergo, the man is mad.”
Swaine held the surprise off his face at hearing such an opinion hurled out so casually by a man only just met.
“Sackville and his ilk are the very face of the problem this great empire embraces with such dull supplication and dutiful somnambulance,” Summerfield finished. He drained his glass of brandy and refilled it while staring out across the public room, spilling a decent slosh of the amber liquid onto the table. “A toad.”
“Yet he has the ear of His Majesty, does he not?”
“God help us all.” Summerfield waved his fleshy hand as though clearing away a fly before his face. “And one wonders why the glories of yesteryear grow ever more lustrous in the telling. How could they not when such drab minds as those who steer the empire wish the present—and future—to be as uninspiring as their own inner lives?” He looked up from his brandy. “But fear not, Mr. Swaine—I didn’t call on you to subject you exclusively to my cheerful opinions. For where there is a spark, there is hope for a brighter future. And I believe you are that spark, sir.”
“The weight of the future rests on me, does it? How worrisome.”
“Conflagration of the future. Let’s not mix our metaphors. Conflagration. Ready to illuminate the potential of the unseen world.”
Swaine watched Summerfield down his third brandy. His remained between his hands, untouched. “I stand corrected. How fiery.”
Summerfield leaned forward. “Oh, don’t be coy. And, better still, don’t be humble. I’ve large ears in addition to my large belly—and they know where to listen. You’ve been dedicated, that much is clear.”
Devon, Swaine thought.
“And you’ve been impeccable in your purchases,” Summerfield continued. “Before I caught wind of you, I was furious with you, if you must you know: the mysterious habitué of select book dealers, the insufferable purchaser of all the new arrivals, preying on the hundred miles from here to Bath that held me back, in spite of my handsome—but apparently insufficient—commissions to said book deal
ers.”
“London doesn’t appeal, sir?” Swaine said.
“London does, sir—but London doesn’t encompass my family estate, Drumbridge Hall. And the only thing better than fine, cosmopolitan living is subsidized living in the lap of luxury. Even the mice of Drumbridge have their own footmen. Footmice, I suppose.” He smiled, the flush of his cheeks providing clear testimony to the ample brandy Swaine guessed abundant in the cellars of Drumbridge alongside Summerfield’s splendid mice and their servants.
“I imagine your grandfather amassed one of the great libraries of such books,” Swaine said.
“Indeed he did. Yet might I enjoy the fabled Summerfield library? Far from it. Cobbler’s children unshod and all that. The dear man left half a dozen scraps of ill-considered and contradictory wishes in place of a proper will. Between that and the vultures who afflicted that damnable Society of his, six out of seven of his books found their way off the premises before the first snow fell after his disappearance. Most of the rest were stolen by a treacherous wag who claimed to be my grandfather’s solicitor. Positively useless now, by the way—can’t remember a thing about where the books have gone off to. The poor man gathers plaster for breakfast, wanders the grounds half-dressed in his barrister robes, half-dressed in his dear wife’s knickers, and talking to the boles of trees. Mostly arguments, I may attest.”
“Oh, dear. Don’t tell me I’ve been unwittingly buying up your family inheritance?”
“You may have.”
Summerfield smiled as the barkeep set down two pewter plates, stacked generously with a pottage that allured with hints of rosemary and sausage, slices of duck, and biscuits draped in seasoned gravy. A slab of fresh butter and a bowl of cream and berries completed the serving.
Summerfield rubbed his palms together. “And an ale, my good man.” The barkeep looked at Swaine, who shook his head. Summerfield shook out a napkin and tucked it into his collar, digging into the fowl with knife and finger. “And if you have gathered up such tomes as flew off from Drumbridge in a heartbreaking flock so many decades ago, well done. Better in your hands than mine, all told.”
“You don’t practice?”
“Practice? I acquire. I savor. I amass. No, I don’t practice. Far too lazy for that. And as you might imagine, it’s rather frowned upon in the Summerfield line.”
“I’d have thought the opposite.”
“Would you? After losing any chance of our long-sought peerage, shunned by both the local villagers—that frost is just beginning to thaw sixty-five years after the fact—and those men of influence who might clear the way for successful careers, and a legal blot that still follows the name—well, one might forgive my family for not seeing the appeal in the many splendors of the unseen arts.” Summerfield ate with gusto. “The more unseen, the better. Unseen, unheard, unspoken, forever and ever, amen. Might as well change the family motto to that, fancy it up by putting in into Latin.”
“Corvus repente inaudita, indicta est, semper et in saecula saeculorum, Amen,” Swaine said.
Summerfield pointed his knife at him. “And that is why such books belong underneath your nose and not mine. I can’t be bothered.”
“Yet you wish for a great conflagration of magic to light England’s way into the future.”
“Well, I didn’t say that I was the one to raise the flames.”
“A vicarious conflagration.”
“To some extent. Though I’m not entirely useless. I have carefully nurtured relationships. Arrangements. Where family name might fail, family wealth evokes a much more thoughtful response. More than enough of that to bend the bow. All I need now is the proper arrow.”
He looked at Swaine with the same look he’d given his meal on first sight.
“We’ve gone from fires to archery,” Swaine said. “Still well within the language of military assault, I see. To what or whom are we laying siege?”
Not that Swaine in any way felt a we in the offing—he only wanted to know what Summerfield was getting at. Whatever hopes he’d harbored of an evening of intriguing discussions of magic appeared to have been glamoured away by the rubbing together of Summerfield’s hands at the serving of the meal. He knew nothing noteworthy of the unseen arts. The man wanted something of him.
“To ignorance, sir,” Summerfield said. “To the closing of the English mind.”
“I fear you shall require more than a lone arrow for such a victory.”
“True. But all wars begin with the first shot, do they not? That is all I seek.”
“Is it?”
“Well, from you. For now.”
Swaine moved to stand. “I’m afraid I’ve wasted your time already, sir. You seek something I’m not now nor have any desire to be.”
Summerfield raised his hands away from his meal. “You haven’t heard me out.”
“I think it’s fair to say I’ve heard enough, sir. While the closing of the English mind, as you say, is lamentable—I’ve charged those walls enough times to have lost the will for yet another repulse. If enough people are committed to defend such ignorance to the bloody end, they may have at it. I’ve no interest in hearing, yet again, their illogical arguments, their wounded protests, their smug diatribes. To witness the low boil of their eternal anger and resentment roil up into incoherent rage when challenged. To hear their sad displays of indignant outrage, ever at the ready, fill the public square as though volume and scorn were the measure of morality. To confront again and again their flimsy assertions in the ‘wisdom’ of the common Englishman, and how affronted that is in the face of even hard evidence to the contrary. No, if they wish to drop anchor one hundred and fifty years in the past, they may do so. I’ve better ways to fill the precious few hours I’m granted in this world.”
“Mr. Swaine.”
Swaine smiled and slid out off the bench. “Best of luck, Mr. Summerfield.”
“Would five hundred pounds help you more satisfyingly fill your precious hours, sir?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Five hundred pounds. Sterling.”
“That’s a fortune.”
Summerfield nodded his head. He motioned to the bench across from him. Swaine frowned—but took his seat again.
“I told you, Mr. Swaine—I acquire.”
“I’m not for sale.”
“I’m not interested in owning you. I only want some of your time.”
“Five hundred pounds worth?”
“A small commitment of your time—of the right sort—is worth more to me than you might think. Moreover, you just removed the last of my doubts as to whether you fit the bill. You very much do.”
“I don’t understand,” Swaine said.
“Ah, but you just proved exactly the opposite. You understand completely. You understand the enemy we face. You understand their tricks. Their strategies. Their weaknesses. All of it.”
Swaine leaned forward, his palms on the table. He lowered his voice. “If you want me to perform something of a magical nature, I’m afraid I can’t do it. No matter how much money you have.”
“Why, I would never engage in such criminality, sir.” Summerfield’s expression didn’t change. “Nor would I discuss it in a public room, should I be so inclined. Which, of course, I wouldn’t be—for I’m a Christian. An Englishman. A Summerfield. In that order.” He drained his ale and winked at Swaine with a glassy eye. “Or so it has been hammered into my soft head since birth. Bollocks to all that. But, no. I don’t need your talents with the unseen. I need your talents with words—a stirring demonstration of which you just graced me with. That’s what I’m after, Swaine. I think it’s time to strike the spark. Let fly the arrow. And if it costs me five hundred pounds, so be it.” He turned his attention back to his meal and attacked his pottage with vigor. “But if you’re really not interested, Mr. Swaine—I won’t be offended. I understand the pressures put upon a man like you. How the system grinds one down until one’s dreams are whittled away at, year after year, until they better
fit within the confines of their time. Isn’t that the whole point of the system?” He motioned with his free hand. “But at least eat your fill. Why turn up a chance to put a little practical food in your practical belly and call it another fine, practical day? Please.”
The young man was cleverer than he looked, Swaine admitted. He gazed about the public room of the tavern then back at Summerfield, who stared at him with one eyebrow cocked.
Swaine inhaled and sat back down. “Go on, Mr. Summerfield. I’m listening.”
The smile that cracked Summerfield’s face was as wide as dreams.
12
Leave Sorcery to the Sorcerer
Snow squalls whirled from the night sky, piling on cornice, on roof’s edge, on street lantern, on the windward side of chimney, ledge, and step. Passing carriages spun the light snow up in their wakes and drivers squinted against the storm. Swaine swiped small drifts from his hat and shoulders as he waited on newly muffled Black Friars Lane, across from Apothecaries’ Hall. As far as demons went, the hall and neighboring buildings were clear—he’d arrived early to make certain. Now he watched as the members of the audience—scholars, students, men from court, Lords and other members of Parliament, sundry others lured in out of curiosity or the desire to witness a rapier match of reputations—hurried in, out of the whirling snow. He warmed his hands beneath the armpits of his coat and reminded himself what five hundred pounds could do for his situation.
He spotted Phineas Hozier sidling down the street, head forward, shoulders hunched, avian even in his ungainly steps. The man would’ve passed him straight by had Swaine not stopped him with an outstretched hand lowered like a highway pike. As it was, Hozier flailed out of his thoughts in a gust of powdery snow, almost slipping to the cobblestones.