A Scholar of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  Lambert said, “It wasn’t weaponry alone. It never is.”

  “That’s true,” said Mr. Wright. “It always comes down to the courage of the men who fight.”

  “I have nothing but respect for the men who hold the weapons. Brave men, all,” Voysey said, “yet superior armament never yields to gallantry alone. We are here today on behalf of brave men to come. Mr. Wright, if you will do the honors?”

  In silence, Mr. Wright demonstrated the fine art of loading a Baker rifle. His strong hands were surprisingly deft as he prepared the weapon, doling out gunpowder and placing the leaden ball with an artist’s delicate care. Voysey’s enthusiasm for Wright’s expertise made a sharp contrast to Meredith’s pragmatism. Lambert wondered if he might not have become a little spoiled by Meredith’s calm efficiency. With Meredith, firearms deserved the utmost respect, but the point of the exercise was to shoot things. With Voysey and Wright, firearms seemed to hold a fascination that went past respect to border on veneration.

  As Voysey and Lambert, with Wright’s expert assistance, worked slowly through Voysey’s checklist, the change in the angle of the sun made the shadows deeper. This time the target was a standard size, but the rings were hardly more than pencil lines, impossible to see at a distance.

  Lambert took his time. He had to. Wright could reload with dexterity, but Lambert needed the recovery time to nurse his shoulder. The kick of the weapon was formidable. When he was finished, he’d put three shots into the heart of the target, after another three that ringed the center at three, six, and nine o’clock, and had collected six new bruises, each atop the last, for his trouble. After the kick of the Baker rifle, the fight in Fell’s study, and his sojourn on the forbidden grass of Winterset Green, Lambert felt ready for a hot bath, a tot of brandy, and a bit of horse liniment. Lambert knew he was unlikely to get anything but the horse liniment, and it did nothing to cheer him up.

  “Not bad at all,” Wright conceded. Before Voysey had the target down, Wright was already cleaning his treasured antique.

  Voysey was as satisfied with the result as Wright was. Lambert initialed the spot beside his name on the ammunition inventory, claiming responsibility for fifteen cartridges for the derringer, six for the Colt Peacemaker, and for the Baker rifle, what the inventory described as six projectiles. The projectiles looked like lead musket balls but might, given the unpredictable enthusiasms of the Agincourt research committee, have been anything from solid silver to the magical bullet from Der Freischütz.

  The whole exercise took hours. By the time he had gone back to his quarters, washed, and changed for dinner, Lambert had just enough time left before the evening meal to look in at the Winterset Archive. Fell might know where Lambert could get some horse liniment for his shoulder. Lambert was also curious about what sort of progress his friend had made bringing order out of the chaos in his study.

  “Fell, are you there?” Lambert pushed the half-open door wide.

  No answer. Lambert regarded the deserted study with disbelief. Every object in the room gave mute testimony to the work that had been interrupted. Books were on the floor, some open, spines straining and pages bent. Papers, more than Lambert remembered, were scattered everywhere. Broken glass had been swept into a heap, but the heap had been scattered as if by a careless misstep. The armillary spheres had been tipped over in one corner, worlds within worlds jostled recklessly together.

  Fell was gone.

  The study windows were open to the warm twilight, but no breeze stirred the heavy fabric of the institutional brown curtains. Not a floorboard squeaked. Lambert could hear nothing but random birds chirping and the distant sound of bells as they struck the quarter. The room might have been deserted for five minutes or five hours. There was no way to tell.

  For an hour and twenty minutes, Lambert searched the desk, the floor, and the bookshelves. He scanned every bit of paper he could find, looked for any juxtaposition of objects that might convey a message, and found nothing. The bowler hat was gone. Fell was gone. Lambert could find no other clue. At last he sat at the desk and rested his chin on his clenched fist.

  If Lambert had come sooner, there might have been a chance of interrupting the intruder, if there had been another intruder. If Lambert had thought faster, there might have been a point in alerting the gatekeepers, or notifying the authorities of Glasscastle immediately.

  But had there been an intruder? Could Fell have left of his own volition?

  Lambert knew that Fell hadn’t been back to the rooms they shared. Or if he had, he’d disturbed nothing. If Fell had been called away, it would have been the work of a moment, if he wished, to leave some kind of message. But what could have called Fell away? Who would have? What reason could Fell have for leaving without a word, if he had left willingly?

  Did the man in the bowler hat have a partner? Had Jane’s friend, the warden of the north, resorted to more direct methods of persuasion? Could Jane herself have played some role in Fell’s disappearance?

  Lambert caught himself. That line of thought was ridiculous. Jane was honest, if anyone was. She had her reasons for pestering Fell, but she was on the square about them. In fact, her keen interest in Fell probably made her Lambert’s best ally in the search.

  Lambert found the idea of a second intruder a more likely scenario. If one man could be provided with a cantrip to equip him to come and go through the gates of Glasscastle, why not another? Fell might have left of his own free will. Lambert chose to think otherwise.

  When at last Lambert yielded to the urge to swear, it took him several minutes to cover the full situation. He swore because it was human nature, because he wanted to, because he could, and most of all because it was time yet again to visit the Brailsford house. Four times in a single day was well over his limit. His only consolation was that it was far too late for anyone to offer him a cup of tea.

  The sun was long since down and the late summer twilight was deepening to evening. The intense shadows of afternoon had run together and mellowed into a general chiaroscuro as the light faded. The day was at that point between twilight and evening when all but the most vivid colors yield to shades of gray. The spires of Glasscastle, each tipped with its finial as a flame tips a candle, took on a sharp edge, black against the deep blue of the sky, proud and graceful as wildflower spikes of agrimony. Bells and birdsong provided counterpoint as the world grew quiet. Through the beauty of the twilight, Lambert walked muttering under his breath, his language as blue as the sky.

  As Jane approached the great gate, she removed one glove, put her hand inside the drawstring Dorothy bag she carried, and drew out the intruder’s cantrip, handkerchief and all. She put the handkerchief back and held the wooden cylinder in her bare hand. It would be a good test of the cantrip to see if it worked for her as well as it had for the intruder. Jane stepped softly. It wouldn’t do to have an unwary footfall betray her presence.

  As Jane drew near the gatekeeper, he looked up and smiled. “Nice to see you again, miss. Just wait at the visitors’ bench until your escort comes to meet you.”

  Hopes dashed and feeling foolish that she’d ever let them rise in the first place, Jane turned back to the bench. She would need a moment to put the silly thing away and get her glove back on. Then she’d send for Fell. If Fell ignored her, she’d send for Lambert. If neither came, she’d wait. She would grind her teeth, but she would wait.

  So resigned was Jane to this program, she was astonished and delighted to see Lambert stalking through the arch before she’d buttoned up her glove again. He saw her and changed course to join her at the bench. Her pleasure was squelched by Lambert’s thunderous expression. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Fell’s gone.” Lambert spoke softly but his anger and concern were unmistakable. He seemed oblivious of the incongruity of their situation, a gentleman dressed for dinner accosting a lady dressed for a late afternoon stroll in the very shadow of the great gate.

  “He’s gone?” Jane forgot about butto
ning her glove. “What happened?”

  “All I know is, his study is a worse mess than ever. If he left a message, I sure can’t find it.” Lambert looked at her sharply. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see Mr. Fell.” Jane met Lambert’s challenging gaze and watched it soften. “You’re worried about him.”

  “Hell, yes.” Lambert shook his head as if to clear it. “Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to use that kind of language. Yes, I’m worried. He’s gone, but his valise is still right where he dropped it when we got in this afternoon.”

  “This morning, not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Fell tried to run away,” Jane reminded him. She couldn’t keep a touch of waspishness out of her tone.

  Lambert glowered. “He wasn’t running away. He was leaving. There’s a big difference.”

  Jane raised an eyebrow. “You were both doing a bunk.”

  “Fell wanted to go to London.” Lambert’s face cleared as he pushed his hat back on his head. It gave him an air of utter harmlessness. “I didn’t want to let him go alone.”

  Jane turned away from the gate, back in the direction she’d come. “Walk with me.” Lambert fell into step beside her. For a hundred yards they walked side by side in silence, each consumed by their own thoughts.

  Jane touched Lambert’s sleeve and he stopped beside her. “You’re concerned for Fell’s safety. Yet we don’t know that he’s come to any harm.”

  “Concerned? I’m scared stiff.” Lambert held out his hand to show Jane the slight yet distinct tremble in the fingers. “I don’t even have a vice to blame this on. It’s all me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I was headed to your place to ask you that.”

  “Who else knows?” Jane gazed up at Lambert, wishing for more light. “You are going to report this to the authorities, aren’t you?”

  “I guess I should, shouldn’t I?” Lambert sounded resigned. “I have to. But I haven’t told anyone yet”

  “Good.” Jane took Lambert’s arm for a moment, just enough to draw him along beside her as she set forth for her brother’s house again. “Let’s think this over before you do. The police won’t take you seriously until Fell has been missing for more than twenty-four hours, so you aren’t behindhand with them yet. Who would you tell at Glasscastle?”

  Lambert rattled off the names without hesitation. “Voysey, Stowe, and Stewart. Brailsford, only he’s not here to tell. Porteous is sure to find some way to push his nose in where he doesn’t belong. I should see Voysey first.”

  “Yes, you should, but not yet.” Jane wished Robin were there to advise her. The relative merits of Glasscastle’s wise men were difficult for her to discern. To Jane, they all seemed alike, marvelously pleased with themselves and inexplicably certain of their own superiority over the rest of the world.

  Lambert went on, “Why shouldn’t I? Fell is gone. The bowler hat is gone too. But nothing else seems to be.”

  “The hat is missing? Oh, dear. I had great hopes of that bowler.” Jane castigated herself for not insisting that she conduct an immediate examination of the hat as soon as the intruder was in custody. A little excitement and a large headache were no excuse for neglecting the fundamentals. Now she would have to think of a way to get back in the police station to question the intruder again. It made her tired just to imagine the effort it would take to conduct a reprise of her spell.

  “If Fell left, why would he go without taking anything else? Just the bowler hat?” Lambert sounded frustrated.

  “Put that way, it does seem unlikely. But what if Fell isn’t really missing? What would he say if you’d raised the alarm prematurely?” Jane cautioned.

  “What would—” Lambert stopped in his tracks, all indignation. “I thought you believed me.”

  “I do, I do,” Jane assured him. She tugged at his sleeve again, just enough to get them moving.

  “That’s a good point about the false alarm,” Lambert conceded. “Fell would hate it if we kicked up a fuss for no reason.”

  “Too bad if we did. It would serve him right, if he was that careless about leaving a message for you. Not only is it foolish for a warden to be so cavalier, it’s rude.”

  “But neither one of us really thinks this is a false alarm.”

  It was Jane’s turn to concede the point. “No.”

  “What should we do?” Lambert looked as frustrated as he sounded. “I know what I’d like to do. I’d like to turn the whole place upside down and shake it. Either we would find Fell or we would know for sure that he isn’t there. But unless I can persuade a Provost or a Senior Fellow to authorize it, that’s not allowed”

  “We will plan the best way to search for Fell, I promise.” Jane used her most soothing voice. “But first, we’ll have a nice cup of tea.”

  Far from being soothed by this prospect, the suggestion made Lambert touchier than ever, but by the time they walked to the Brailsford house, she had talked him around. There was no time for a restorative cup of tea, however. Jane and Lambert were scarcely inside the door when Amy joined them. Despite the hour, she still wore that morning’s delicately filmy white dress and her hair had come unpinned in the back.

  “Thank goodness you’re back.” With only a moment’s hesitation, Amy welcomed Lambert in. She touched her hair. “I’m sorry I’m in such a state.”

  “You look fine,” Lambert said stoutly.

  Amy gave him an absent smile, and said, “James Porteous has just sent a message here for Robert, Jane. He has had word from the police station. That man you caught has fallen into some sort of trance. They’re sure it’s magic but they can’t identify the source or the nature of the spell.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Jane. Another source of information gone the way of the bowler hat. This was what happened when she yielded to her own weakness. She should have continued her interrogation, no matter the risk of discovery.

  “It’s not something you did to him, is it?” Amy asked.

  Jane was horrified by the very suggestion. “Please remember that I am thoroughly trained in my discipline. I would never use a spell unless I were confident of the result.”

  “You are rather a confident person, though,” said Amy. “Aren’t you?”

  Jane bristled.

  “Do you have the message?” Lambert asked. “May I see it?”

  Amy handed him the note and Jane read it over Lambert’s shoulder. Porteous had used a great many more words than Amy had, but the meaning was the same.

  “Oh, dear,” said Jane. “This is most distressing.”

  To judge from her stance, all but a-tiptoe, Amy had more to tell them. “There is something else I must show you at once. Come into the library.”

  “It isn’t anything you did to him, is it?” Lambert asked Jane sotto voce, as Amy led the way.

  “Here’s a scriptural reference for you,” Jane retorted. “‘O ye of little faith.’”

  “Matthew 8:26, I think,” said Lambert, after a moment of silent cogitation. “So it wasn’t you?”

  Jane wrestled with exasperation and won. “No. Did you really think it was?”

  “No.” Lambert gave her a long, measuring look. “I figure if there’s anyone in this world I can trust to help me with this, it’s you.”

  Lambert’s gravity took Jane completely off guard. “Oh.”

  Jane and Lambert followed Amy into the small library Robert Brailsford used when he worked at home. Across the table in the center of the room, Amy had arranged tiles painted with letters and numbers. A tiny ivory drop spindle was tied to a stout cord of braided white horsehair. Amy dangled the spindle over the tiles.

  Lambert stopped in his tracks. “Uh-oh.”

  “Oh, no.” Jane recognized the props with mild revulsion. “Not divination. There’s no point to this, Amy.”

  Amy looked mulish. “You do your magic, don’t expect to stop me doing mine. Now, silence, both of you, or it won’t work.”

  “Do we have time for this?�
�� asked Lambert.

  “Just let me show you.” Amy held the spindle’s cord steady and waited.

  Jane suppressed the urge to deliver a terse lecture upon the unreliability of the domestic enchantments. It might relieve her temper and her conscience, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything else. Amy was a devotee of parlor magic, and this device to spell out messages was among the least effectual of any of the sociable magics.

  After a long pause, the spindle began to swing. It moved slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, but with time, the movement became more pronounced. The spindle swung out and back from the central point. At the height of its arc, it indicated the tile marked L.

  Frowning, Jane watched the pendulum swing of the spindle closely.

  Amy was triumphant. “There, you see? L for Ludlow. I asked it where Robert is. It spells out the rest of the word, but it’s terribly slow. You must be patient.” The spindle continued swinging, not bothered by Amy’s explanation.

  Lambert was looking embarrassed. “We’ll be sure to include this in our report to Voysey.”

  That brought Amy’s attention to Lambert. “What report?” The spindle kept swinging relentlessly despite her distraction.

  “Fell is missing. We’ll have to tell the authorities. If he were here, your husband would be the first one I’d tell.”

  “If Robert were here, no one else would be missing. Nor in a trance.” Amy glanced meaningfully in Jane’s direction. “He would have things well in hand.”

  “L.” Jane ignored Amy and kept her attention on the spindle and the scattered tiles. “U. D.”

  “There it goes,” said Amy. “I told you.” The spindle picked out the rest of the letters in turn: L-U-D-L-O-W.

  Jane looked from the spindle to Amy with respect and resignation. “I’m glad it knows how to spell. So often they don’t.”

  Lambert continued, “We’ll have to tell Voysey and Stewart and Stowe.”