by Nix, Garth
For a moment Elinor wondered if she simply had too much imagination. She was always pretending to be someone else, after all, performing her plays and imagining herself to be in some made-up land or historical locale that never really existed, at least not the way it was portrayed by Breakespear or Eden.
But she was sure she’d heard the low sound, and her mother’s eyes had shone like fire, for a moment. And this was the third time she’d seen and felt the ice.
Frowning, Elinor left the room. She still had the two gold coins clutched in her left hand. For some reason her forehead was aching under the scarf she usually wore around the house, where there was definitely no chance of surprise visitors. She must have tied it too tightly, she thought as she slowly descended the stairs, looking for Mrs. Watkins.
But Mrs. Watkins was not to be found. Cook and Maria were in the kitchen, communing in very few words, as they usually did, over a last cup of tea before bed. Usually Mrs. Watkins would join them, but she wasn’t there, and she wasn’t in her room.
Elinor went to her own room, which was at the back of the house, so she could look out the windows that faced the courtyard and the greenhouse and stables beyond. As she had half expected, there was a light in the windows of the room above the stables, where Ham had his abode. As he usually went to sleep at sunset, this was nearly always an indication that his niece had gone to seek the old man’s counsel.
She briefly considered going over to join them, to tell them the terrible news about her mother’s finances, the likely arrival of bailiffs and the consequent expulsion from her home. Their home. But she didn’t have the heart to do so at night. Ham was old and probably already in bed, with Mrs. Watkins sitting on the end, talking away. Neither of them needed to hear bad news right now. It could wait for morning.
Despite readying herself for bed, Elinor thought it was unlikely she would be able to sleep. Everything had been turned upside down. Where could she go? What could she do? Become a governess? That was what happened to young women like her in lots of books. But who would hire someone with a hideous scarred forehead, or at best an eccentric who always kept her head covered?
Maybe she could join a theater, Elinor thought. Not as an actor, of course. In some sort of hidden capacity, behind the scenes. As a bookkeeper, perhaps, or to look after the wardrobe. Though she was nowhere near as accomplished a seamstress as Mrs. Watkins. Maybe they could both work in a theater on the costumes. It would be fun, far more interesting than simply repainting her wooden cutouts. Probably not well paid, but enough for Elinor and Mrs. Watkins to have a small cottage somewhere, with a thatched roof and window boxes full of azaleas.
Slowly, this daydream overtook Elinor’s worries. Her eyes closed and she began to drift into sleep.
She had entirely forgotten the doctor’s visit, her mother’s strange condition, the questions she wanted to ask about the North, the Old Kingdom, and the Wall.
High above her, the weather vane on the roof turned to the north again, before creaking back toward the south, without ever entirely getting there.
Chapter Three
It was drizzling and cold the next morning, the light dim and the day already showing the signs of the oncoming winter. Raindrops were steadily crawling down the dining-room windows and Coldhallow House, with its fireplaces either unlit or anemically fed, lived up to its name.
Elinor told Ham the unwelcome news of their impending ruin first, because they were both early risers and Mrs. Watkins was not, though she was always up for breakfast by eight.
The old man was far less bothered than Elinor had expected. In fact, he seemed more disappointed there would be no rehearsal of Love Laments Loss that day as planned, since it was one of the plays where he got to be onstage as a jester and do some juggling and partake in a mock quarterstaff duel with Elinor.
“It’s only the last little while I’ve settled,” he said, clearly considering the past decade no time at all. “The road’s not so bad a life, and you’ve the skills, Miss Elinor. Why, any fair or traveling show would take you. And Mrs. Watkins, for her mending and making costumes. And I could go on as the oldest juggler alive, I expect, unless Dan Roberts is still in the business. He’d be ninety-five or -six, now, though, and I ent heard of him working these past few years.”
“Do you really think I could do that?” asked Elinor, a new dream replacing the one about joining a fixed-in-place theater company. She imagined a charming caravan, drawn by matched donkeys of unusually friendly disposition. But this dream, too, could not stand up against reality.
She touched her forehead.
“Even with this?”
Ham opened his mouth, looked across at the house toward Mrs. Hallett’s bedroom, then shut it again to think for a few seconds before answering.
“Might bother some people,” he said finally. “But show folk don’t fuss so much.”
“Really?” asked Elinor, brightening. The possibility that not all people would be repulsed by her scar had not occurred to her before.
But her unsightly forehead was only part of the problem.
“What about Mother?” she said, almost to herself.
Ham heard, but he had no answer.
That question, and a number of others, Elinor put to Mrs. Watkins over breakfast as they huddled in their coats in the fireless dining room, hoping that having to think about practical considerations would lessen the shock for her governess. It was a good tactic, but it proved unnecessary, as Mrs. Watkins already had her suspicions about the economic situation of Mrs. Hallett and Coldhallow House.
“Look at this,” she said, indicating the breakfast spread, which featured porridge, some day-old bread, a small portion of dubious butter, and nothing else, save tea. It would not be an absolute disaster until the tea ran out. “When there’s naught but porridge for breakfast, something is up.”
She repeated this dolefully.
“Something is up.”
At that exact moment, as if in answer to her words, the harsh rap of the bronze knocker sounded from the front door. It was something very rarely heard at Coldhallow House, and they both jumped.
“A bailiff!” squeaked Elinor. “Already!”
“And in this weather,” remarked Mrs. Watkins. It seemed in her world bailiffs did not travel in the rain.
“Whatever you do, don’t accept their paper,” continued Mrs. Watkins in a rush. “Don’t even touch a corner. And . . . and don’t let them touch you with the paper, or with their tipstaff.”
“Do they still do that?” asked Elinor.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t even answer the door,” suggested Mrs. Watkins.
“Good idea,” replied Elinor. “I’m not dressed to receive anyone anyway.”
Under her own good wool coat, she was wearing one of her father’s old suits again, a loud rusty red tweed apparition, with a blue silk shirt, and one of her shabbier cream scarves wrapped tightly around her head, and two pairs of socks—a thick and a thin—inside rubberized blue boots of unknown vintage labeled as “The Gardener’s Friend.”
At that moment they both heard Maria’s heavy-heeled shoes clacking on the no-longer-well-polished floorboards of the short gallery that ran through the center of the house, connecting kitchen, dining room, drawing room, the main staircase, and the front door.
Maria, who would usually be upstairs with Mrs. Hallett and had no business being so close to the front door.
“Maria!” shouted Elinor. “Don’t open the door!”
Since Maria was somewhat deaf, Elinor followed this shout with immediate action, leaping from her chair to almost broad jump into the gallery. Mrs. Watkins puffed as she pushed her own chair back to come after her. But even the fleet-footed younger woman was too slow to reach Maria before the maid had turned the knob and pulled the front door fully open, with a querulous, “Can I help you?”
The young man in the doorway, backed by grey sky and drizzle, did not have a tipstaff. He was tall, and thin, and strangely pale, though he did
not otherwise look unhealthy. A damp tweed cap pulled low shadowed his face somewhat, but could not hide the deep dark brown of his eyes. His hair was as black and shiny as polished ebony. It was long, pulled back and tied in a queue behind with a dark blue ribbon, a fashion disappeared from Ancelstierre these hundred years or more.
He wore a military-looking khaki waterproof cape over a country suit in a subdued dark blue twill shot with faint traces of white or perhaps even silver, and decidedly drab black riding boots, muddy to the ankles. Behind him, Elinor saw Ham holding the head of the visitor’s horse, a well-set-up bay. The old man had a sixth sense for appearing when his work as a groom was needed, rare as it was these days.
The visitor did not look old enough to be a bailiff, Elinor thought. He couldn’t be much older than she was, if at all. Though his eyes, those deep dark eyes, suggested some ancient weariness, in stark contrast to his clear, unlined skin and youthful posture.
She froze in the hallway, staring at him. Maria stepped aside against the wall, as ever the well-trained servant. For a moment Elinor felt as if everything else was blurring away to become a badly painted backdrop behind the principal actor who had just set foot on the stage.
He lifted his hand to show a folded paper.
A bailiff, after all.
“No!” shrieked Elinor, suddenly breaking out of her trance. Racing forward, she slammed the door in his face. It would have broken his nose if he hadn’t leapt back.
“Quick on his feet,” gasped Mrs. Watkins, coming up loyally behind. “I suppose it goes with the business. You were perhaps a little hasty, Elinor.”
“Who was that, Miss Elinor?” asked Maria, for once jarred out of her stolid, almost mechanical demeanor. She had been Amelia Hallett’s maid for more than thirty years, and was either genuinely uninterested in anything other than the work she had to do, or had pretended to be that way for so long it had stuck.
“A . . . a bailiff,” replied Elinor. “I don’t want Mother bothered by him. Or anyone like that. There might be others. So we won’t be opening the front door at all from now on.”
“Yes, miss,” said Maria dutifully. She turned around and clomped along the gallery, heading for the stairs. She often sat by Amelia, doing some of the endless sewing to repair curtains, cushion covers, tablecloths, or clothing that Elinor occasionally felt guilty about never doing herself. Her employer’s lack of responsiveness didn’t seem to bother Maria at all, any more than Amelia’s casual disdain had done before.
“Is it as simple as that?” asked Elinor. “I mean, we just don’t let them in?”
“It should delay matters, at least,” said Mrs Watkins. “While you work out what to do.”
Elinor glanced at her, and was strangely reassured to see that Mrs. Watkins genuinely seemed to think she would work out what to do. Against this, her half-asleep dream of joining a theater company did not seem very realistic in the light of day, nor did Ham’s notion of becoming a circus performer. The harsh reality of being turned near-penniless out of the house had come very much into focus.
“Though there isn’t a lot of food in the pantry or the cellar,” said Mrs. Watkins. “Cook has said she won’t stay past Friday if she isn’t paid her ‘rears,’ as she calls them, and the month ahead as well. Maria will stay on, I expect, even unpaid. As long as she can.”
Mrs. Watkins didn’t need to mention that Ham and she herself would not go anywhere without Elinor, though it had turned out they were both owed more than anyone. Mrs. Hallett had stopped paying them a full two months earlier than the other servants.
“If you take the two gold coins I found to Cornbridge and change them at the bank, I expect we can pay Cook and Maria and get some staples—”
Another knock at the door made both women jump. They held each other and looked at the massive piece of dark-stained oak as if it might suddenly fling open.
“He won’t just keep knocking, will he?” whispered Elinor.
Someone shouted a few words.
“That’s Uncle,” said Mrs. Watkins.
“Yes,” said Elinor. “What . . . what’s he saying?”
They sidled closer to the door, listening. Ham was shouting, but not in anger or fear, simply to get his message through the heavy oaken door and the thick stone walls of the old farmhouse.
“Miss Elinor! You need to see this man.”
“Don’t take the paper, Ham!” shouted Elinor. “He’s a bailiff!”
There was some indistinct talking beyond the door, then the man called out. He had a strong, clear voice, a baritone much clearer than Ham’s bass grumble.
“I’m not a bailiff! I’ve come in answer to your telegram!”
A piece of paper came sliding under the door.
“I’m not falling for that!” scoffed Elinor. But Mrs. Watkins let out a strange noise, scuttled forward, and picked up the paper before Elinor could stop her. She unfolded it and held it flat, reading it quickly, her eyes blinking in agitation.
It obviously was a telegram, red stripe and all.
“It’s the telegram she made me send!” hissed Mrs. Watkins.
“Who?” asked Elinor.
“I told you! Your grandmother! She must have put it in my head years ago. I didn’t even know I was doing it until afterward.”
Elinor took the offered telegram. It was short and, to her dismay, was sent as if from her mother even though she could not have written or authorized it.
THE MAGISTRIX WYVERLEY COLLEGE
STRANGE HAPPENINGS HERE COLDHALLOW HOUSE NEAR PARNE VILLAGE NORTH OF CORNBRIDGE PLEASE PASS ON MESSAGE TO ABHORSEN NEED HELP AMELIA HALLETT DAUGHTER OF MYRIEN CLAYR END
“Who’s ‘the Magistrix Wyverley College’?” asked the bewildered Elinor. “What does ‘Abhorsen need help’ mean? And is Myrien Clayr my grandmother Myr?”
“Yes, Myrien Clayr was your grandmother,” said Mrs. Watkins with an anxious glance to the ceiling and Mrs. Hallett’s bedroom above. “And the Magistrix is the woman who teaches magic at Wyverley College. A school, north of Bain. I suppose your grandmother didn’t know who it would be when the help was needed, or she’d have put in the name.”
“Teaches magic?” asked Elinor. She felt stunned by yet another totally unlooked-for revelation. “Magic?”
“That’s one of the Northern things,” said Mrs. Watkins rather weakly, “we’ve not been allowed to talk about.”
“I wish we had,” said Elinor slowly. She felt suddenly very weak in the knees, but there was nowhere to sit down and she wasn’t going to collapse in front of Mrs. Watkins. She might have a heart attack from the fright. “Magic is real?”
“Yes . . . though what a young man has to do with the Magistrix and Wyverley College I don’t know,” continued Mrs. Watkins suspiciously. “It’s a girls’ school.”
A girls’ school where you could learn magic. When she was younger, Elinor had dreamed of going to an ordinary girls’ school like the New Prospect School in the Billie Cotton books, meeting and having friends, learning more than Mrs. Watkins’s simple curriculum with its emphasis on needlework and outdated etiquette, and circus skills from Ham. Having access to thousands of books in a real library, instead of the mere hundreds in her father’s former study. And now she learned there was a girls’ school that taught magic as well, real magic . . . but it was too late for her.
If it was true. Mrs. Watkins was not prone to imagining things, or telling falsehoods. But could magic possibly be real?
“I think we’d better let him in,” said Elinor, and opened the door.
The young man stood a few paces back from the front step, looking up at the sky. He ignored the raindrop that fell on his upturned face.
“Wind’s swinging around again,” he said. “That’s not good. Where’s Myrien?”
Elinor began an indignant reply along the lines of expecting the basic courtesies, whoever this man might be, but Mrs. Watkins beat her to the punch.
“Myrien’s dead, sir. Six years past. Mrs. Hallett put h
er in a lunatic home, somewhere south.”
“What?” asked Elinor. She felt overwhelmed by all the things she didn’t know, and dull and stupid for not realizing she was so ignorant. “Mother told me grandmama died at her own home when I was five! She was alive for eight years after that?”
“So who sent the telegram asking for help?” asked the young man.
“Mrs. Watkins,” said Elinor, pointing firmly. “And who, exactly, are you?”
“I only sent it after a fashion,” protested Mrs. Watkins. “I didn’t even know I was doing it until afterward. Myrien must have put it in my mind, sir, only it didn’t come up until that north wind and Mrs. Hallett being took peculiar.”
“Mrs. Hallett took peculiar?” asked the young man, ignoring Elinor’s question about who he was.
“My mother. I am Elinor Hallett, and I have to say—”
“So where is your mother, Amelia Hallett, Myrien of the Clayr’s daughter?”
“She is lying upstairs seemingly dead, only the doctor says she isn’t,” said Mrs. Watkins nervously.
“Wattie!” protested Elinor. “You can’t be telling strangers—”
“Seemingly dead but not . . . Does she have the Charter mark?” asked the young man with concern, somewhat belied by the fact that he wasn’t even looking at them. His head was turned toward the poplars. The tops were tilting again, the wind rising.
The wind from the north.
“No,” quavered Mrs. Watkins.
The young man nodded, as if this was the expected, but unwelcome, answer. He walked swiftly back to his horse, unstrapped, and took down a long case from in front of the saddle.
“That stream or burn or whatever you call it here, up there. I saw it coming down the hill, but I couldn’t tell if it’s running?”
“What?” Elinor asked. She was completely thrown now.
“The ghyll. It’s swift, but not too wide, sir,” replied Ham unhappily. “You think it’ll come to that?”