“Many of the Rom walk a narrow path of acceptability on the edges of society,” I hedged rather than reveal my outrage. And fear. Newgate prison was not a place to take lightly. Even if innocent, people had disappeared into the depths of that dungeon of horrors and never returned. Or never returned to their right mind.
“Few of the Rom that I know openly commit crimes.” They might pilfer and steal small items. They might overcharge for repairing pots and tools. But they never hurt women, children, or horses, often proving better doctors for the latter than educated men.
“And yet they were camping near Norwynd Manor last week when the baron’s fifteen-year-old daughter went missing. She is quite fair and I am told that Gypsies prize blondes.” He gazed pointedly at the heavy braids wound around my head, pale gold in color. When I reinvented myself to become the owner of the Book View Café, I had supported the rumor that I was the bastard daughter of a Gypsy king as well as the widow of a war hero. Neither true, but people believe what they want to believe when seeking explanations for things outside the ordinary.
“Another girl gone missing? This one of quality rather than a nameless street girl no one would miss or report missing. The culprit has changed patterns. I must investigate this.” I hastened toward the kitchen, needing to ask more detailed questions of Philippa.
“No so fast, Madame.”
I froze in place barely two paces away from him. “Yes, Inspector?” I asked with my back to him.
“You have no authority to investigate anything. I know you have an amazing ability to gather information, often faster and more complete than I can.” The inspector held up his hand to stall any protests I might make. “And who is to say the same person, or persons are responsible for Miss Abigail’s disappearance as for your street urchins? I have heard nothing out of the ordinary of street girls going missing. They disappear every day. Their disappearance has nothing to do with Miss Abigail Norwynd.”
“They might. Three of my employees are among the missing. I believe your authority extends only as far as events that might disrupt the coronation.”
“Lord Norwynd is well respected in the royal household. Miss Abigail was scheduled to help carry Her Majesty’s train.”
“The Rom have rules—religious beliefs—that prevent them from harming women, children, and horses. None of my acquaintances could possibly be involved.” In for a pence, in for a pound. “My friends are very respectful of women, virgins in particular. Whoever is behind these kidnappings has no respect for anyone.”
“I have only your word on that.”
“In many circles my word is respected. Especially at Lovelace House.”
“Do I need to remind you of Lady Lovelace’s origins? Seducing virgins, including his own sister, was Lord Byron’s specialty, if I remember correctly.”
“You do not need to remind me. I have spent the last fourteen years protecting Lady Ada from her father’s reputation and his active perfidy.”
Inspector Witherspoon gasped. “He wouldn’t . . .”
“There is nothing I believe Lord Byron would not do in his quest for immortality in a perfect body.”
“Are you saying that he lives, that his death in Greece fourteen years ago was a false report?”
“I have no evidence one way or the other.” The coffin beneath the grave marker at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, could lie empty. We never opened it to study the skull. With the slowness of travel from Greece to England, the body would have been too much decayed for anyone to willingly check the coffin upon arrival.
“But you believe he lives.”
“I have no proof.” Except a few books of necromantic poetry published after his death. “And Lord Byron’s life or death has little, that I can see, to connect him or his fanatical followers to an assassination attempt at the coronation.”
“I have to take your word on that. The Gypsies are still my prime suspects. Be just like them to try to throw the kingdom into chaos by assassinating our queen on her coronation day. Miss Abigail knows details of the procession and ritual that have not been made public. They will torture her for information about the best time and place . . .”
I gritted my teeth. “The Rom will not. But someone else might. Someone with a greater grievance and more resources.” My mind went back to the black balloon shooting green light and my discussion with Ish this morning. I would not think about Drew piloting that balloon, even just for practice. “Look to the skies, Inspector Witherspoon. Look for a midnight-black balloon with a matching wicker basket, not a cloud-gray one.”
“What do you know!” He grabbed my arm.
“Inspector?” I stared at his offending hand.
He separated from me but remained close enough to grab me again should he deem it necessary. “Madame Magdala, what do you know about black balloons with black wicker baskets?”
“Not enough. But I saw one hovering over London when I took a . . . pleasure trip with one of my Romany friends in his cloud-gray balloon.”
“Hovering? Balloons must ride the winds . . .”
“Unless they have the new ailerons that allow them to tack against the wind like a sailing ship. Expensive ailerons. I believe a Hussar regiment in the east is experimenting with them.” I didn’t add that Jimmy Porto had designed and built his own.
“The deuce they are. How did you know? That information has not been made public.”
“I listen and observe all classes of society, as should you. There is more afoot than you want to believe. Now, if you will excuse me, I must prepare my business for the line of customers outside the door.” I curtsied in dismissal, barely deep enough for politeness.
The inspector nodded, bending his back in a perfunctory bow almost as polite as my own.
I threw the door open wide in welcome as he tipped his hat and stalked down the street in the direction of Piccadilly.
Piccadilly, with its avenging angel statue that frightened Toby so badly he sought refuge with the war hero Nelson in Trafalgar Square.
The black balloon had shot its green light in the direction of Trafalgar.
Somehow it was all connected. I just could not find the pattern yet.
Several of my street waifs reported in that day. All with the same story. Fear rode on the wind, driving all sensible people to walk the back streets only in groups or to hide indoors. The major thoroughfares seemed safe enough with the obvious patrols of Bow Street Runners, Horse Guards, and at least three other regiments. The military pretense of casual strolls through the city didn’t fool many. The soldiers’ eyes moved too warily, their posture remained too alert. Their hands hovered over weapons too readily. My customers reflected the same mood, cautious but determined to enjoy the rare festivities surrounding the upcoming grand ritual that defined Englishmen—the peaceful transition of power from one monarch to the next.
Since Henry VII, only once had we succumbed to civil war. But when the war was over and Charles I lost his head, we remained peaceful under Cromwell. And his son had transferred power willingly to Charles II. Even his brother James II had slunk away without a shot when he proved himself unworthy and we’d suppressed the Jacobite rebellion twice—well over three hundred years.
But someone wanted to disrupt this most sacred of traditions.
“Who?” I asked myself several times during the day when a pause in business allowed me to think.
Then the impoverished student returned Archbishop Howley’s dissertation on the reform act.
“Excuse me, Madame Magdala, may I borrow that book?” another student asked within five minutes of the book’s return.
His tailor seemed a little more expensive and more talented than the previous student’s. But he, too, bore the unmistakable signs of attempted scholarship: ink-stained hands, a hopeless cravat, and stooped shoulders from too many hours spent peering at fine print in poor lighting
.
“Do you have a professor requiring a thesis upon this subject?” I asked casually, trying to disguise a tremor in my hands and chin. A pattern had begun to form: a request for the book on the recent reform laws, an overheard conversation among footmen in an alley about those reforms, and now a second request for the book.
The young man blushed and stammered something that might have been a yes, but might also have said “For my own amusement.”
The lingering color in his cheeks and his furtive glances everywhere but into my own eyes, told me that neither statement was true.
“Feel free to peruse the book here in the café.” I smiled as sweetly as I could while sorting thoughts and information.
“But . . . but that other fellow . . .”
“My book, my rules. The topic has become too popular to let the book leave my library.”
His expression turned stone still, frozen in politeness while his eyes blazed in indignation. “Do you know who I am?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I took the book off the counter.
“My father is Sir Winston Chemworth, second son of Earl . . .”
I kept my own firm gaze on his, not caring who paid his tailor.
“Very well. Where may I sit with it? I do not wish to be disturbed.”
I pointed to a back table where I could keep an eye on him. He’d not leave with the book without me or one of my employees seeing him.
Five minutes later, a young cleric with a snowy cravat, a properly brushed beaver flat-crowned hat, and a fine-fitting suit approached the center carousel requesting the same book.
I’d seen him before, I knew it, but could not place his eyes or his accent.
“You’ll have to wait for it,” I replied. “I’m surprised your church library does not contain a copy.”
He looked right and left as if expecting eavesdroppers. “Madame, may I suggest that it would not be politic for me to be seen reading my lord archbishop’s questions on the validity of the reforms . . .” False questions, logical questions, written to appease a blackmailer rather than solidify the archbishop’s stance.
I knew too much and not enough.
“I see.” But I didn’t. “While you await the availability of the book, perhaps a different account of the reforms might interest you.” I led him to where Archbishop Howley’s account usually resided. On the same shelf I found a compilation of the newspaper accounts on the debate in the House of Lords, much cleansed and edited, though.
The cleric raised an eyebrow at the title. “Is this accurate?”
“Perhaps less biased,” I murmured.
He raised his eyebrow again, but he took possession of the book and retreated to the same table as the scholar. At the last moment before seating himself, he turned back to me. “Perhaps a cup of tea and a scone?”
“Lucy will serve you in just a moment.” I half smiled at the idea of Lucy turning her flirtatious nature upon the young man. Unless he was a truly committed celibate priest—and those were rare in modern times, even those who preferred male company usually married to avoid scandal—he’d not think too hard about his reading material. With a few whispered words, I suggested she question him about why he needed to read about the reform acts.
Chapter Thirteen
TWO DAYS LATER, I still had not heard from Drew. For reasons I could not fully define, his absence left me uneasy.
Ish reported from his lodgings in Oxford that he had begun experiments with light passing through crystals and the resulting strength of the prisms. He said nothing about his companion Dr. Jeremy Badenough. Neither did Dr. Jeremy Badenough have the courtesy to write a thank you note for my hospitality at my salon.
I fretted over Badenough’s silence almost as much as I did Drew’s. We had discussed many important aspects of necromancy that touched upon my concerns about Lord Byron and Lord Ruthven. I could well imagine Lord Ruthven digging up Byron’s bones (if his bones did indeed reside beneath his gravestone) and building an arcane spell around them. Either lord seemed capable of kidnapping young women for either bizarre sexual rituals or . . . horrors . . . to fuel a different kind of magic spell: one that required the power of death.
Inspector Witherspoon visited the café twice daily. He ordered coffee only and sipped it cautiously.
“Do you fear I will poison you?” I asked him on the third morning.
“I did threaten to arrest you and throw you into Newgate,” he replied, setting aside his cup and making a grimace.
“But you did not.” I glared at the discarded cup as if it offended me. “Is the brew not satisfactory? Perhaps too much cream? Or is the turibano sugar not to your liking?”
“The plots I chase offend my stomach. I have drunk far too much of the brew of late. No, I came to quiz you about your network of guttersnipe spies and what they report.”
“Nothing for certain, only tales of two men dressed all in black, wearing black masks beneath hooded black cloaks. They take young girls who work the streets by force, into a black coach pulled by two black mechanical beasts wearing the black feathered head stall of hearse horses.”
“Funereal,” he muttered staring at his undrunk coffee.
The golden-brown mixture drew my attention as well. It nearly begged me to stir it out of its sluggish stillness into the life of a whirlpool. The compulsion grew stronger. For once, I indulged my need to heed the maelstrom of sights.
I drew a circle inside the discarded cup with a silver spoon. My vision centered on the swirls of coffee and cream, here and there, now and then, probable and impossible. Another flick of the spoon and another.
The room closed in on my peripheral vision. Sounds faded from my awareness. The word “funereal” echoed over and over inside my head.
The whirlpool deepened, sending its vortex well beyond the confines of a small china cup. The darkness of the abyss swarmed up. Black on red, red on black. Flames that shed no light in a dark cavern. But whitewash brightened the scene without strong light.
Cavern. A whitewashed cave where the screams of the dying burst forth with extreme anger but were swallowed by unforgiving stone walls.
Then a blaze of white nearly blinded me—physically and metaphorically.
I had to sit, groping blindly for the nearest chair.
Gentle hands guided me. “Nice performance, Madame Magdala. Care to share what your urchins have reported? Without the dramatic fainting spell,” Inspector Witherspoon said blandly before I could think on my own.
I repeated my vision, not caring if he believed the source. The information was more important than the source. I found no new details in the memory. Then my eyes cleared, but my hands shook and my stomach trembled.
“Here, drink this,” the inspector said reaching for his nearly untouched cup of coffee. “A frightening scenario. I wonder which of your spies followed the abductors and reported back to you.”
“Not that cup. ’Tis tainted now.” I could still taste the ashes of death in my vision.
He raised a hand and summoned Lucy. The girl, my good girl, assessed my situation in one glance and promptly returned with hot, barely-brewed tea, sweetened heavily.
My head cleared and my hands steadied, but my belly still quivered in fear of what was to come.
“So you seek a cavern. A deep one. You’ll not find it locally,” Inspector Witherspoon said. “But not too far away or your informant would not have been able to travel there and back without assistance. One of the Gypsies perhaps? The one who flies a cloud-gray hot air balloon?”
“More likely the black balloon,” I insisted.
We stared at each other a long moment, both insisting on our own point of view. I broke the standoff. “A crypt, perhaps. An ancient one.” I swallowed back my revulsion at the protests of the dead and dying. Let Witherspoon believe what he wanted; I knew what we sought. “Death feeds on death.�
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“Do you think I might find the Norwynd girl there?” Witherspoon mused.
“More than likely. And many more. Many, many more.” The dying screams of thousands of victims still echoed in my mind.
“Let me ponder this over maps.” The inspector stepped away from the table.
“A moment, sir.” Witherspoon paused while I gathered my thoughts into coherence once more. “You did not question the source of my information.”
“You are the bastard daughter of a Gypsy king. You made your reputation with such performances. I have my informants. You have a wider and more accurate network. Dispense the clues as you must to preserve what you have built.”
I nodded graciously and gulped my tea. “If I were known to be merely a farmer’s daughter from the shores of Lake Geneva, no one would believe me and seek my counsel.”
“True. Nor would they attend your salons and consider an invitation a privilege. You are what you are, no matter your origins. If anyone asks, to me you are indeed a widow with shadowy beginnings among your friends the Romany.” He bowed respectfully and exited.
“Look for a recently whitewashed building with very old cellars. Ancientness need not be a church crypt in the heart of the old city.” Where had that detail come from?
The blinding white light.
Jeremy had said the Persian book on necromancy had insisted upon meticulous cleanliness from whitewash in the work area. I pondered that for many long moments in absolute stillness.
I had resources. Possibly better resources than Inspector Witherspoon. I performed a search on the library engine. The few customers—including a new scholar perusing the reform act literature, original and derivative—who remained during the noon lull, watched with avid enthusiasm. The shelves shifted and rotated, clanging gears and levers—must remember to oil them soon—moved noisily through their dance, pushing books and shelves about. At last, sound and movement ceased with a jerk, then a whoosh of compressed air exited the chute just before an oversized tome of ancient maps thunked into my hands. Applause erupted all around me. I curtsied in acknowledgment of the machine’s ability to find and select the right book based upon my calculations encoded into the brass key.
The Transference Engine Page 11