by Kevan Dale
“Hozier, it’s me,” Swaine said.
Hozier peered at him, nose thrust forward. “Ah, oh. I see. Thought you were a footpad, sir.”
“Hiding in plain sight?”
“I’ve heard stories. In the library.”
“Would that we all might confine our lives to the stacks, Hozier. But here we are. Thank you for meeting me.”
Hozier bobbed his head. “After the comfort you p-p-p-provided me—I owe you, sir. I believe my heart was literally tearing itself ap-p-part. Without your understanding ears, you see.”
The throng of people across the way heading into the Hall hosting the debate grew. Swaine didn’t have much more time before he’d be expected. “Yes, you’re quite welcome.”
“The funeral haunts me, still, sir,” Hozier continued. “Lowered into the ground just as the sun dipped beneath the clouds, the sky magnificent. A fitting tribute to her beauty, I believed. It wasn’t right—so young, placed so in the earth, denied any more daylight, forever—”
“A loss indeed,” Swaine interrupted. “One that will, in time, grow less raw, if no less tragic. But listen—I very much require your assistance.”
“Assistance?” The word came out strange, as though Hozier couldn’t quite make out how that particular collection of syllables touched upon Catherine Nunn’s last moments above ground.
“Yes, assistance. It should only require an hour or two of your time, but it is most important to me that it happens tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Within the next two hours, to be clear.”
Swaine watched flurries cling to Hozier’s eyelashes and crinkled brows. “The library is closed, sir. I’d need time to arrange to get the keys, as before, sir.”
“The assistance I require is of a more mundane nature, Hozier.” He pointed to the hall across the way. “I’m due to give a lecture in there. Starting in the next fifteen minutes.”
Hozier’s eyes widened. “Apothecaries’ Hall? Do you mean to say that all those gentlemen are here to listen to you?”
“Some are here to listen to me,” Swaine said. “Likely more are here to listen to my debate opponent denounce my positions with all the self-righteous indignation of a man of middling intelligence who feels that God and the masses are firmly on his side. It shan’t be pretty, I can fairly say.”
“Sorry—you don’t mean Conyers Hargrove, sir?”
“Exactly Conyers Hargrove. Word has gotten around, I take it?”
Hozier nodded. “All the talk this past fortnight, sir. The Library is fair to bursting with his acolytes, as is half the University. I never cared for him, to tell you the truth—mostly because he never cared for me. I don’t know what it is, but a certain type of p-p-person renders me equal parts clumsy and idiotic, seemingly. Words come out wrong. Ridiculous expressions take over my face. Mind fogs up and leaves me scrambling around like a frightened mouse looking for any hole to hide in.”
“Oh, he does it on purpose, I can assure you,” Swaine said.
“I’ve never understood why.”
“Because he can. Because he believes it earns him something that passes for respect, or applause, or admiration. Because he’s learned that—much like a muscle-bound brute and his fists—establishing dominance over others comes rather easily for him. It feeds his self-regard, and he lacks the temperance to respect the unspoken boundaries of civility the rest of us adhere to if doing so gains him even the smallest advantage.”
Hozier nodded his head slowly as Swaine spoke—then snapped his gaze back to Swaine. “You’re the sorcerer?”
“Did you think I was a costume designer with an overzealous imagination? Really, Hozier.”
“No, no—it’s not—it’s just that I p-p-pictured a more—sinister figure. That’s all.”
“I’ll take that as the compliment you’re desperately trying to find your way to in lieu of noting my ordinary appearance and bearing.”
“N-n-n-not at all, sir—I meant to say—”
Swaine waved off his explanations. “Irrelevant. Let’s not dwell. In any event, I don’t believe that Hargrove is going to find me nearly as forgiving a target as he’s used to facing. I’m no frightened mouse, to use your own phrase, nor am I quite as impressed with him as the rest of London is. That, however, is my task for this evening. For you, Hozier, I have a different task—one with every bit as much import as my own. It must not fail. Can I count on you, sir?”
Hozier blinked the snowflakes from his eyes, glancing from Swaine to the hall across the street and back to Swaine. “Does it involve sorcery, sir?”
“No, it does not. We’ll leave the sorcery to the sorcerer. Here is what I require…”
With a glance at his pocket-watch, Swaine explained. The snow grew heavier, whipped on the winds that murmured around streetlamp, roof, and doorway, lit golden by the light spilling from the windows of Apothecaries’ Hall.
13
English Magic
Swaine saw it even before Conyers Hargrove spoke: the crowd wasn’t—and would never—be his, not in the slightest. The dark-paneled great hall filled with a diffuse murmur. A few men stared at Swaine where he sat on the elevated stage at one end of the hall, decorative columns and ornamental carved stallions rearing up behind him. Others chatted amongst themselves—many feigning to not even see him at all, as though nothing but an empty chair sat opposite the lectern from where Hargrove prepared to make his opening remarks. The only smile to be found was the inebriated one swimming across the fleshy, perspiring face of Thomas Summerfield, seated in the front row.
When he’d greeted Swaine, reeking of stale tobacco smoke and gin, pumping Swaine’s hand in a clammy grip, he’d assured Swaine that any number of the men in attendance would be cheering him on, at least half the hall.
He was a fool. Wealthy, yes, but a fool just the same, and apparently at such a concentration as to contaminate anyone misfortunate enough to pass within his orbit. Fine. So be it. If Swaine had to endure an hour or more of scorn before a crowd of smug boulderheads, so certain of the gears and workings of the universe seen and unseen, incapable of erring—well, it was nothing he hadn’t borne before. And with the second half of his five-hundred-pound fee somewhere within reach of his drunken benefactor, he would do it with a smile.
As the dry-looking gentleman—the master of the evening’s ceremonies, the man who’d declined to even shake Swaine’s hand—finished up his wheezing introduction of Hargrove and passed in front of Swaine with nary a glance, the audience sorted out its remaining sniffles, throat clearing, shifting creaks, and shoe scuffling while Hargrove approached the lectern. A wide face with bovine eyes peering over a half-height fence of spectacles on his nose, Hargrove wore a tasteful wig, powdered and elegant. Instead of his college robes, he dressed in gray stockings, black breeches, and a heath-green waistcoat. He had no notes. He rested his hands on the polished mahogany and gazed at the audience, a beneficent smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Gentlemen,” he began. “A great claim hangs before us this wintry evening. So great a claim, in fact, that the only proper response from myself, my honorable opponent, or any one of us in this esteemed gathering must be: humility. For as we slough off the chill, as we reaffirm our storied commitment to intellectual rigor, as we remind ourselves that we are but the newest link in an unbroken chain of English progress—we stand, as our forebears, at the edge of knowledge, peering into the great darkness and its tapestry of glittering stars, asking the most meaningful questions granted to those privileged by the Lord to draw breath, and wonder: How much is there to discover? Upon what firmament does the edifice of English civilization rest? All of mankind, for that matter?”
Nods of approval. Swaine kept his face neutral.
Hargrove scanned the crowd, not particularly demonstrating the humility promised. He continued, “Such questions of import. Yet would we not be remiss in asking ourselves if these questions haven’t already been sufficiently asked—and answered? H
ave we not already crawled out from the brambles of superstition, of confidence scandals, of ignorance, of charlatans?” He raised his hands with a jovial chuckle. “Now, now—I’m neither tipping my hand nor slinging arrows from the starting gate, settle down. These are worthy questions. Worthy of my esteemed opponent, a man of uncommon intellect. Nay, a man of genius, without question.”
Most eyes in the hall turned to Swaine. He kept his hands folded in his lap, watching Hargrove.
Hargrove smiled. “For no other word befits the deft approach to the claim that English magic is due for a sober reassessment than that which you shall hear tonight from the man with whom I share the stage. Genius.”
He let the word hang for several beats then turned and nodded to Swaine. Swaine inclined his head in return, ever so slightly.
“How else might we describe the tactic of rendering up into down, of rendering black into white, right before our very eyes?” Hargrove said. “Should I ask my opponent to defend his wish to draw us back into the shadows of ignorance—why, he shall simply look at me and declare that he is not. In fact, he shall insist that we are the ones desperate for the darkness of ignorance, we are the enemies of progress. As I said—genius. For what can one do but lower one’s jaw, stunned, when confronted by such a brash reversal of fact? He shall then press his case: the brambles of superstition, the confidence scandals, the ignorance of charlatans lie not with the unsteady minds spouting off about spells and sorcery, but rather with Christian men of science, men of letters, men of faith, law, and honor. We are the ones clinging to the medieval, we are the ones afraid to unleash the unlimited potential for progress, for reason, for truth. It is only then that we might apprehend the breathtaking nature of my opponent’s arguments, even as we admire the genius with which he makes them. Do note if I’m wrong, gentlemen.”
With that, Hargrove lifted his hands from the lectern and returned to his seat. Muffled applause of gloved hands and a smattering of “Here, here” accompanied him.
Swaine inhaled, then stood. Neither his hands nor his voice shook in the slightest. A hall full of dilettantes was nothing compared to the danger he’d faced every time he’d summoned a demon. He bore the scorn of so-called experts as a Londoner did fog and chill—as a natural feature of the landscape. He stepped to the lectern and coolly gazed across the assembly.
“What a lovely introduction, Conyers,” he said, eliciting a low wave of laughter. “I shall endeavor to not disappoint. And whilst I might return the favor and underscore the clever rhetorical move we all witnessed you make just now, I think it shall be altogether more fruitful to leave behind such a focus on stratagem and turn our attention to the heart of the matter at hand. As you say, we do stand—as ever—at the precipice of achievement. Behind us, history. Ahead of us—unseen, vast, and unplumbed—the future. While we might argue endlessly about history—who behaved in good faith, or bad; who forges, as you say, new links, versus who merely looks to earlier links for their own validation—the future beckons. Insistent. Relentless.”
Well, at least he had their attention, he noted. Hargrove’s gambit had been designed to sweep the legs of his argument out from underneath him before he even started. Clever, but predictable. As those in the audience who’d come expecting him to sputter and flail as he was lured into one oratorical trap after another realized he wasn’t the luring type, they seemingly noticed him for the first time.
“In fact, I might suggest our obsession with history does little more than keep the future at arm’s length in perpetuity. It keeps us in our blinkers. In our tack, hauling forward every tired, dusty, dreary argument ever had. Can we declare ourselves the winners? Can we declare our opponents the losers? Let’s recite it all, again and again, ad infinitum. Fight the same fights. Thunder the same charges. Crown ourselves with glories won by others and gaze into the mirror, congratulating ourselves.”
Swaine paused. The crowd watched him.
“Pointless. I won’t do it. I haven’t an interest in a scintilla of it. I only care for one thing: how might we lift England to loftier heights than ever before, defining the future as we wish to see it, ourselves, here, now.”
Opening statements made, Swaine relinquished the lectern to an enthusiastic wave of applause, none more thunderous than that which erupted from the glassy-eyed and flushed figure of Thomas Summerfield, standing unsteadily from his chair in the front row.
14
Asps and Adders
Phineas Hozier paused, the light of a single candle wavering on a draught. Had he heard a door open below? Straining, he listened. Listened some more. Shook his head.
“Make myself crazy,” he whispered. “Sorcerer’s rooms. That’s all. Perfectly safe. Mr. Swaine assured me.”
To reassure himself, he lifted his right hand. The tarnished ring of silver astride his index finger reflected the flame of the candle. Don’t take this off, no matter what you do—it will protect you, Swaine had told him. Of course, as Phineas gazed around the shadowed rooms, the thought of what he needed protection from leaped to the front of his mind in a way it rather hadn’t as he’d stood on the street listening to Swaine explain what he required of him.
“Sorcerer’s rooms. Sorcerer’s books. What might be ill-advised about this?” he whispered. “Books. Just books. I handle them all day long. Ring or no ring. Just books.”
With another glance at the door behind him, he continued organizing Swaine’s books into the two trunks, maximizing the space allotted with an eye trained in the stacks. Every now and then, he paused, curious as to the contents of a particular book. Burial Curses & Disinterment Magick by S.K. Hayes, for instance. Or The Dreadful Accounte of Softfoot Peter on the North York Moors by Angeline Postgate. They weren’t titles he’d ever seen in either of the libraries he’d worked in. He placed the latter in amongst a pair of slender volumes with a shiver.
As he sat back, his shadow loomed up along the wall, nearly startling a yelp out of him. Testing that the lid of the trunk still closed, he looked over the remaining volumes. He ran a finger along the side of his nose.
“I’ve the will—but where’s the way?” Flipping the lid of the second trunk open again, he worked some magic of his own—allowing himself a smile at the thought—and found a combination of rearrangements that found a home for even those last stragglers. “Never trust a sorcerer to do a librarian’s job, even when—”
The door at the bottom of the stairs closed, the tight doorframe squealing as it had when Phineas himself had shut it. He swung his head around to the door at the top of the stairs. Fast as you can, and don’t let anyone see you, Swaine had also said. With no additional rooms at the top of the stairs but the ones he stood in, Phineas swallowed, realizing that only someone bound for Swaine’s rooms would have cause to use that stairwell. A runner creaked.
“Oh, dear,” Phineas whispered. He stood, both his knees popping loudly. Two trunks. Two satchels. No need to worry about the rest, Swaine had assured him. Phineas grabbed the candle by the holder and brought it to the far room, where another narrow staircase led down to an alley off the street out front. Quickly, he carried down the two satchels, leaving them at the lower landing by the door leading outside. He hurried back up and to the room with the trunks. As he glanced at the front door, all the hair on the back of his neck rippled. The temperature of the room seemed to have dropped by twenty degrees—his breath rolled out in clouds. He unconsciously put one hand to his stomach as it knotted.
Don’t let anyone see you.
In that instant, Phineas decided that the very last thing on earth he wanted was to be seen by whomever was climbing the main staircase to Swaine’s rooms. Spinning around, he attempted to lift both trunks at once, one stacked upon the other. The cords on his neck stood out. His arms quaked.
A sound reached his large ears: something scraping along the wall on the stairs, sharp and hard, like fingernails.
The sigh that escaped his lips was equal parts terror and dismay. Without hesitating, he gr
abbed the top trunk on its own and staggered with it into the far room, grinding his knuckles against the doorframe as he passed through it. Not slowing, he carried the trunk sideways down the stairs, nearly tripping over his feet and tumbling shoulders first to the bottom. Just catching himself, he lowered the trunk as soundlessly as he could manage. Returning to the top with as little noise as possible, he paused. He could just make out a sliver of the front room from his vantage. The door was still closed. Whatever sounds he’d heard earlier had ceased—yet the silence replacing it frightened him even more. He chewed his lip, still not moving.
Who would come up the stairs and stand there without knocking? Without saying a word?
He gazed at the edge of the final trunk. All he had to do was cross through a pair of rooms and fetch it.
If the floor had been writhing with asps and adders, he’d have been more eager to return to the front room.
He rubbed the ring around his finger, turning it, sliding it. Don’t take this off, no matter what you do—it will protect you. He pulled his other hand away, aware that he’d nearly slipped it from his finger without thinking. Why on earth had he been about to do that?
“Right,” he muttered. “No more dawdling. They’re books, Phineas. Your charge. Books. That’s all.”
One careful step at a time, growing lightheaded with each one, he crossed to the threshold of the main room. Shadows blotted out the corners, a faint glow of street lanterns touching the snow-lined window beyond the door. He paused. So silent. Had it truly been that silent as he’d packed away the last of Mr. Swaine’s books? Nothing about the silence felt right. He wondered if he’d made himself hear the noises from earlier—Lord knew his imagination required little prodding to take flight. And if it were colder now—well, the wintery winds of London were ruthless footpads, making their way past window and lock as though they weren’t even there. Shaking his head and scolding himself for overreacting, Phineas stepped forward, ready to pick up the trunk.