The Mislaid Magician

by Patricia C. Wrede

  Unfortunately, the letter is writ in German. I have never studied that tongue, and James’s knowledge of it is limited to what he refers to as “soldier’s phrases,” which I take to mean a combination of military commands and vulgar language. James is sending it to the Duke of Wellington for translation; I hope it may contain something more useful. Tomorrow, we will drive out to the railway, to see whether we can trace Herr Schellen’s movements any further.

  The other news was that on his way back to the inn, James ran into your brother-at-law! What His Grace, the Duke of Waltham, can have been doing in Leeds is beyond me—there is little here in the way of the Society he loves, and I do not believe there are any notable gaming hells, either. James said that he seemed quite distracted and did not so much as mention Georgy. (And it should go without saying that James did not mention her, or her whereabouts, either—but I know Georgy, and I am sure she will ask, so pray reassure her on that head.)

  His Grace is evidently settled in the area for some little time, as we are invited to dine with him next week. (We were invited to dine tomorrow, but James begged off on the grounds of our expedition to Darlington to see the railway.) I am in hopes that he will unbend after a few glasses of port and allow James some idea of what is amiss between him and Georgy. (Do not mention this to Georgy if you think it will overset her.)

  That is all my news for the moment; give my best love to the children, and keep a share for yourself and Georgy.

  Yours,

  Cecy

  22 March 1828

  Skeynes

  Dear Cecy,

  I am on tenterhooks to hear the result of your investigations. What a pity the letter was in German. I can offer no useful advice. You must be content with my admiration for James’s thoroughness.

  Under separate cover, for Thomas is very generous with his franks, you will find letters from your children. Do not believe everything they tell you. The part about the snake is true enough, but I assure you there are no basilisks in Thomas’s study. I would have noticed.

  I mentioned your advice about a shield for the scrying spell to Thomas. Judging by his countenance, I promise you that steps will be taken immediately. Thank you very much for the suggestion.

  For the moment, thank goodness, the twins show no sign of using the scrying spell for anything but their own entertainment. They play hide-and-seek. One twin hides, and the other uses the scrying spell to find the hiding place. This makes the game far more quiet than when we played it, but I now know that quiet is not always to be preferred. The result of this refinement to the game is that they have been seeking darker and darker hiding places, the better to foil the scryer.

  When you and I played rainy-day games with Georgy and Oliver, we spent most of our time in the attic or the box room. (Remember how Georgy invariably hid in the library window seat? I must remind myself she has always been a creature of habit.) It seems strange to me that the twins tend to neglect the attics here. (Too near the nursery to prove of interest, perhaps.) On particularly dreary days, I am tempted to explore them myself.

  Last time I did so, I found the box with Thomas’s lead soldiers. There is a motley assortment of regiments represented, and some look quite old. I suppose they came into Thomas’s possession after his brother Edward outgrew them. With Thomas’s permission, I gave our Edward command of the troops. He fell upon them with cries of joy. It touches me to the heart to think of Thomas playing with those same soldiers when he was Edward’s age and years later going off to be a soldier himself. Should Edward ever join the military, I have perfect confidence in his ability to forage.

  There are also some excellent box rooms on the premises. (Certainly they met with everyone’s full approval on previous visits.) Yet these promising hunting grounds are disdained in favor of the cellars, the cupboard under the back stairs, or (on one memorable occasion) inside one of the stable grain bins. I live in fear that one of them will hide in a chest that can’t be opened from the inside.

  This means that the entire staff has been charged to keep a sharp eye (sharper even than usual, I mean) on the children. Edward seems to find the focus on his cousins inspiring. He has shown great ingenuity in finding new items of scientific interest to bring to the nursery. I would have thought it quite early in the season for snakes, but he has made a more thorough study of the subject than I.

  I told Georgy of your encounter with her husband, partly to assure her that you would never betray her whereabouts and partly to assess her response to the mention of his name. She did not seem particularly alarmed. I judge she was relieved to learn that her stay here is to be held in confidence.

  Really, I am consumed with curiosity. What could possibly have stirred Georgy to bury herself here in the country, with no entertainment but that provided by the children, and to utter scarcely a word of complaint over the change in her circumstances—and then to stay here.

  I have every confidence in your skill at interrogation and in Daniel’s complacency. The man’s sublime interest in himself is only matched by his serene assumption that the rest of the world shares it. With luck, Daniel will never even notice he’s been questioned.

  Good luck with every enterprise.

  Love,

  Kate

  22 March 1828

  The King’s Head, Leeds

  My dear Thomas,

  Still no sign of our missing German. It seems he spent a few days observing the local terrain, made an excursion aboard the Stockton and Darlington Railway, then packed up bag and baggage and removed to Stockton. At least that is what he told his landlord he was doing, as near as the landlord could make out. Due to the unfortunate combination of accents—moderately intelligible Yorkshire, in the case of the landlord, and vilely thick German (according to the landlord) on the part of Herr Schellen—communication seems to have encountered some difficulties.

  The references you provided in London have been instructive, though I have as yet had little opportunity to put their information to any practical use. I shall reserve for light reading the books you included on magnetism, once I have completed the task Old Hookey set me. For the time being, railways and steam engines must be my focus.

  I remain uncertain of the Herr Magus’s reason for insisting on a personal visit to examine the railway here. Cecelia and I spent a day replicating Herr Schellen’s railway ride from Darlington to Stockton and back. I am of two minds regarding the likelihood of such a mode of travel ever catching on. On the one hand, the trip was both fast and cheap; no pauses were needed to rest and water the horses, for there were none, and the entire journey cost us but a shilling apiece. On the other hand, the experience was disconcerting enough to discourage anyone of a nervous temperament. Once one has taken a seat in the wagon, one cannot see the engine, and there is no means to communicate with the driver should the need arise. Then there are the coal wagons—twenty of them, all filled to overflowing on the outward journey, and most of them following the passengers’ wagon, so that the slightest accident must squash it like a nut in a nutcracker. Perhaps something might be done with separate trains, one for passengers and one for haulage, but I doubt there will be enough call for such transport to justify the expense.

  In any event, we made our journey without incident, in both directions. Cecelia informs me that she sensed nothing magical about the engine or the route. Had anyone else told me, I don’t think I would have believed it. It ought to be quite impossible for men to travel at such astonishing speeds (fifteen miles an hour at times, or so the engineer informed me) without magical aid, but she was quite certain of her observations.

  I anticipate further investigations in Stockton, but they must wait upon the social niceties. We dine with your brother-at-law on the twenty-fourth; I all but ran him down in the street the other day, and the resulting invitation was unavoidable. Do not ask me what he is doing in Leeds. I have even less interest in the doings of the Duke of Waltham than you, if that were possible. I intend to leave for Stockton on the day
following the dinner. In the meantime, I would appreciate it if you could learn something of Herr Schellen’s movements in London, and perhaps the proposed Liverpool-Manchester line as well. If Herr Schellen’s disappearance was due to foul play, someone might have feared what a surveyor-magician would find out once he began his work there. If you can discover who proposed hiring him, and why, and whether anyone objected, it could prove very useful. You will not need to stir from home; common gossip is all I want at this point, of the sort that can be had in correspondence. I’d write the letters myself, except that it might give someone the wind up to receive such a missive from me, posted from Leeds.

  Yours,

  James

  25 March 1828

  The King’s Head, Leeds

  Dearest Kate,

  I do hope you will not be troubled any further with unseasonable livestock, but you must admit that snakes in the nursery are better than basilisks in the study would be. For you can order the children to relinquish the snakes, but Thomas would be most unlikely to give up so magical a creature as a basilisk until he was quite finished investigating it. And perhaps searching for more snakes will distract the twins from their scrying.

  I considered writing Arthur and Eleanor a stern parental lecture regarding their studies of magic, in hopes that if they could be induced to view their scrying as obligatory practice instead of as a fascinating new game, they might neglect it. Upon consideration, however, I do not think it will serve. If they have been playing hide-and-seek with the scrying spell for a week or more, no parental injunctions will have the least effect. You might, perhaps, redirect Arthur with steam-works, if you happen to have any handy, but I fear that Eleanor will not be so easily diverted. I trust you have laid in a good supply of ink.

  Our excursion on the railway line would have been just the thing to distract Arthur. The steam engine was a perfectly enormous cylinder on wheels, with a huge black pipe at the front, trailing a plume of coal smoke, and a shorter pipe at the rear, to vent the steam. Behind it came the train of wagons. (I regret to say that our train was only twenty wagons long; the gentleman from whom we purchased our tickets in Darlington informed us that some of the steam engines haul as many as twenty-four wagons, fully loaded!) Most of the wagons were hauling coal from the mines to the west, but two had been fitted out with chairs for passengers.

  We boarded the wagons when the train stopped in Darlington, and rode from there to Stockton in three hours, coal and all. It was a mad ride, like a normal carriage journey turned inside out, for the steam engine works properly only when it moves on smooth, nearly flat ground, so wherever there was a hill, the railway builders had to cut a great rift through it to keep the tracks level, and where the land dipped, they had to build it up. One felt as if one were in a valley whenever the train passed through one of the cuts in a hill, and as if one were on a mountain whenever the land was low!

  We spent several hours careering madly between hills and along the river to Stockton, with damp clouds of steam-scented smoke from the engine engulfing us from time to time and the noise of the wheels pounding away far more rhythmically than in any ordinary carriage. What was most impressive, however, was the speed, and the fact that it took us very little longer to return, though much of the way was uphill. The ride itself produced no useful information— I sensed nothing unusual that might have attracted Herr Schellen—but during our brief time in Stockton, James discovered the name of the lodgings to which Herr Schellen removed when he left Leeds.

  We had planned to transfer to Stockton ourselves today, but matters have taken an unexpected turn, thanks to Georgy’s husband, of all people. We dined with him last night in a private parlor at the Footman’s Chase. If I was surprised to learn that Daniel was spending time in so unfashionable a place as Leeds, I was even more astonished to find him putting up at an inn that at its very best could only be described as “respectable,” whose patrons (those we passed on our way into the parlor, at any rate) had a distinct air of the shop about them. Not what one expects of His Grace, the Duke of Waltham!

  When we reached the parlor, Daniel greeted us and introduced us to his other guests, a couple who had arrived before us. I hid both my surprise and my disappointment (I had expected a quiet meal en famille, during which I had hoped to cross-question him at length). Daniel’s choice of companions was as unusual as his situation. Mr. Ramsey Webb and his sister Adella were both impeccably turned out, from the Italian lace edging on Miss Webb’s cap (for she was a spinster of at least thirty) to the champagne polish of Mr. Webb’s boots. Nonetheless, there was something slightly off about them. You may say that this is only to be expected of His Grace’s cronies, but rackety as they may be, you must admit that they are all persons of the first consideration. Ramsey and Adella Webb are the sort that Aunt Charlotte would refer to as “encroaching mushrooms”—and I am not entirely certain her judgment, in this case, would be unfair.

  James and Daniel were immediately occupied by Mr. Webb. This left me with Miss Webb, or, rather, with Adella (as she immediately insisted I call her).

  “His Grace was so very kind to invite my brother and me tonight,” she began. “But then, he is always so very kind. Unlike many others of high position.”

  I made a noncommittal noise. “Kind” is not a quality I usually associate with Daniel. Of course, he is not particularly unkind, either; the word that comes to my mind is self-absorbed. “To be sure,” I said vaguely when I saw that Adella expected more. “How are you acquainted with His Grace?”

  “My brother made his acquaintance in course of some business dealings,” Adella replied readily enough. “He is a connection of yours, is he not?”

  “He is married to my cousin Georgina,” I said. “I am afraid we do not see them often.”

  Adella frowned slightly. “I thought His Grace spent most of his time in London. What with Parliament and the Season …”

  I had to suppress a snort. The idea of Daniel actually attending Parliament is even more absurd than that of Thomas doing so. For I am sure that if the Duke of Wellington asked it of him, or if there were some bill that seemed likely to affect his interests, Thomas would exert himself. Daniel took up his seat in the House of Lords in the first place only because he wanted an excuse to spend time in London, and he has not attended a single session of Parliament since.

  “His Grace is certainly in London a good deal,” I said instead. “Georgy—Her Grace, that is—enjoys the Season enormously. I suppose she is there now, preparing for it.” (Of course, I know very well from your letters that it is no such thing, but I thought it best not to give a hint, even in such an out-of-the-way place, that I thought differently. Who knows what correspondents Adella Webb might have?)

  Adella gave me a sharp look. “Are you sure? It seems very odd to me for her to go off to London without her husband.”

  I smiled, though I was beginning to dislike Miss Webb. “Georgina does not live in her husband’s pocket. And she prefers London to the country at any season. Why, she and Daniel seldom visit even her sister, though she lives quite close to London.”

  “Her sister?” Adella said.

  “My cousin Kate,” I said. “The Marchioness of Schofield.”

  “The Marchioness of Schofield!” Adella looked impressed. “Your cousins both married very well indeed! Is her husband, the Marquis, in Parliament as well?”

  My dislike of Adella Webb was growing rapidly. “Thomas has a seat in the House of Lords, of course, like every peer,” I said. “But he is not much involved in politics. His interests run more to magic. And magnetism, at the moment.”

  “Magic!” Adella frowned. “He is a magician, then?”

  “A wizard,” I corrected her. “And a full member of the Royal College of Wizards. You disapprove? But I think membership in the Royal College of Wizards ought to make one at least as respectable as the Order of the Garter. The Royal College is the older association, after all.”

  “Yes,” Adella said. She sounded odd
ly disappointed. “Still, one never knows about wizards. There are all sorts of spells they could be doing in private!”

  I smiled to myself and replied with great certainty, “Well, whatever Thomas is doing, it isn’t basilisks.”

  “Basilisks?” Adella looked thoroughly taken aback. Clearly, that was not what she had been expecting.

  “No,” I said. “And I must say, I am glad of it. Arthur would undoubtedly wish to investigate, and I am sure the results would be catastrophic.”

  “Arthur?” Adella was more and more at sea.

  “My eldest son,” I said. “He and the other children are staying at Skeynes while James and I are in the north. He is such an enterprising child …” And I launched into a thoroughly misleading description of my children, full of glowing praise for their dubious virtues, such as must have made me appear a doting mama of the most boring sort. I took positive pleasure in forcing Adella to stay and listen until dinner was served at last.

  The conversation around the table was unexceptionable. I kept an eye on Daniel, who seemed unusually ill at ease. He kept glancing at James, then at Mr. Webb, and then applying himself to his plate (and I assure you, the food was nothing that deserved such attention).

  Near the end of the meal, Mr. Webb asked James how long we intended to stay in Leeds.

  “We leave tomorrow,” James answered. “I have found some property near Stockton that I wish to look over, and it will be more convenient for the business if we are nearby.”

  “Stockton?” Mr. Webb said. “How convenient! You must stay with us.”

  Daniel looked up with an expression of horrified indecision on his face. “I, ah, er, is that really … I mean, Stockton? Not even a watering hole. Bath would be better. For anything.”