With a pang, Lambert remembered Fell’s unwilling admission of the discomfort his resistance cost him. “Is it very bad?”
“It’s nothing I can’t manage. After all, what’s the alternative?”
“The alternative is, you turn into a warden without adjusting things first. That’s probably what it’s going to take to settle Voysey’s account. If a warden can’t do it, who can?”
“A warden could sort Voysey for you.” Fell sighed. “I’m working as fast as I can. It’s simply not my bailiwick. I’ve always considered myself more the researcher than the theoretician, more the careful historian than the clear-eyed visionary.”
“That reminds me. Two of your students were here looking for you.” Lambert went back to his work on the window. “You haven’t marked their papers, I gather. They’re not pleased.”
“Students? What are they doing here?” Fell looked unhappy. “I suppose I should be glad there are only two. Who are they?”
“Cadwal and Polydore, they call themselves. They didn’t want to use their real names away from Glasscastle, something to do with taking covert leave. Cadwal is the string bean and Polydore is the potato.”
“Herrick and Williams?” Fell looked, if possible, more distressed. “Haven’t I finished going over their work with them? Hell.”
“You may not hear from them anytime soon. Even if they managed to escape, they may be reluctant to come back here. It’s possible that they didn’t make it over the wall. Last night I heard something in the dark. I wondered if Voysey might have turned them into deer or something.”
Fell laughed hollowly. “The perfect host.”
voysey spoke from the doorway. “Why, thank you.” He beckoned Fell and Lambert toward him. “Since you’ve been so reckless about destroying the locks, Samuel, I’m going to have to ask you both to move to another room. You’ll find it a bit more crowded, I’m afraid, Nicholas. Jane will be there too. If you put your firearm down on the floor and step away from it, Samuel, you’ll have both hands free to help Nicholas carry his papers and equipment.”
Lambert’s heart sank. Voysey and his henchmen were there in too great a force to resist. All he could do was follow Fell’s lead and obey.
Lambert was surprised by the dispatch with which Voysey’s henchmen escorted them to the cell he and Fell were to share with Jane. Similar efficiency had been shown in the preparation of the cell. Like all the other rooms he’d seen, the walls and floor were tiled. The corner with the washstand and chamber pot was screened off in the name of privacy. There were a pair of narrow camp beds. There was a tray on a small table bearing a plate of what looked like excellent chicken sandwiches, a pot of what looked like tea, and the usual array of cups and saucers. Fell’s worktable, chair, and gramophone were moved in along with him. Fell was back at his studies as soon as his notes were in front of him. The one remaining article of furniture in the room was Jane’s armchair.
Jane herself seemed hardly able to bear the sight of Lambert and Fell, let alone Voysey and his henchmen. She sat frowning, pale and silent.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get away,” Lambert murmured, when Voysey and his men locked up and left them. “I found Fell instead. I let myself be distracted. My fault.”
Jane said, “You did the best you could. Sorry I couldn’t come along. It was all I could do to create the illusion that I’d broken Voysey’s spell. I could make myself fade so only the illusion of me was visible, so you would think I was free. But that’s all. Now I’m paying for my effrontery.”
Lambert remembered the aftermath of her interrogation at the Glasscastle police station. “Headache again?”
“It’s not just that. There’s been a slight complication.” Slowly, Jane lifted her right hand. Her true right hand remained on the arm of the chair. The illusion of her right hand passed through Lambert’s arm without any sensation at all.
“What the—” Belatedly, Lambert noticed that Jane was accompanied by her own full-length illusion. At the moment, both were seated in the armchair. Only the gesture of her hand differentiated the true Jane from the illusion. “Did Voysey do that?”
Jane looked chagrined. “I did it. When I created the illusion, I had to exert more force than usual—I assumed I needed it to counteract Voysey’s strength. Now I can’t seem to undo it. Some kind of split seems to have occurred. Not all the energy I put into the spell is still mine to manage. It’s as if something somewhere is—leaking. Most unsettling. Worse than that, it takes most of my concentration just to keep it under my control. Even if I don’t try to control it, it’s still consuming my energy.”
Rapt, Lambert watched the pair of them. “How long can you keep it going?”
“I don’t know. But what happens if I let it—her—go? She may fade out eventually, but how long will that take? How much of my strength will she take with her when she goes? I’ve never encountered anything like this before.” Jane’s distress was evident in her voice.
“That’s why I couldn’t feel you, back by the stairs.” Lambert thought it over. “It—she can’t be touched, can she?”
“No, she can’t.”
“Can she touch?”
“No. No voice, either. She’s just for the look of the thing”
Lambert didn’t try to conceal his disappointment. “So she might be able to walk through the wall but she couldn’t do anything to let us out once she got there.”
“Alas, no.”
As fascinated by it as he was repelled, Lambert watched the illusion match Jane’s resigned expression. “How does she know what to do?”
“How should I know?” Jane sounded tired. “If I let her go, it might satisfy your curiosity. But what will I do if she doesn’t come back?”
“It takes effort on your part to keep her with you, though?” Lambert ventured. “Won’t you have to rest eventually? Better to experiment a bit now, while you have the strength.”
“I’m beginning to understand how you were able to work with Voysey so long,” Jane said acidly. “This fascination with field testing.” She relaxed and let out a deep sigh.
The illusion of Jane rose to her feet and took a step away from the chair. The vividness of the semblance paled as the distance between them increased. By the time it reached the door, the illusion was almost sepia toned. The lines and shapes were the same; only the colors had faded. Lambert found it easier to deal with the unease the thing’s presence provoked in him if he thought of the illusion as a kind of moving photograph.
“Go on,” Lambert urged as the illusion hesitated at the door. “You can do it.”
The illusion lifted a monotone eyebrow in perfect imitation of Jane and circled back toward Jane’s armchair. On the way, it walked behind Fell, who was muttering to himself, his fingers stuffed in his ears as an aid to concentration. It touched his shoulder, to no avail, and then leaned over him to look at the papers strewn all around him. The illusion pointed at one of Fell’s computations and shook its head reprovingly.
Lambert felt his jaw drop. He recovered himself enough to ask, “She can’t speak, but she can read mathematical formulas?”
“If she could hold a pencil, she could correct them.” Jane was looking more wan than ever. She closed her eyes. “Yes, that’s an obvious enough mistake.”
“You can see what she sees?” Lambert demanded.
Jane opened her eyes to stare at him. “Apparently. I’ve told you. I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”
For the first time, Fell looked up from his studies. His hands dropped from his ears and he pushed himself away from the worktable. “What are you doing?” He gazed from Jane to her illusion and back again, dismayed by the illusion’s interest in his work.
The illusion of Jane studied Fell’s calculations unhurriedly and then looked up with an ironic smile. This time it rolled its eyes a little as it shook its head.
Diverted, Lambert murmured in Jane’s ear, “Is that what you’re like underneath all the manners?”
&
nbsp; “I hope not,” said Jane. “I think it’s just her way to make up for being speechless.”
Fell seemed to find the illusion’s facial expressions less annoying than Lambert did. He took up a pencil, found the spot in the calculations where the illusion had pointed, and challenged, “Well, what’s wrong with it?”
The illusion tapped the numbers above it on the page.
“Oh.” Fell scratched out a line and began to work the calculation again. “Oh. How’s that? Better?”
The illusion nodded. Jane kept her eyes closed as she nodded her own agreement.
Lambert grew accustomed to the illusion as it worked with Fell and Jane. As he watched them, he felt useless, shut out of the proceedings. At this rate, he was going to be bored into watching the label spin round on the gramophone record. He sat on the floor beside Jane’s armchair and let his head rest against the arm. Now that he had time to think about it, he was tired and hungry and his shoulder ached a little where one of Voysey’s henchmen had twisted it manhandling him into the cell. He didn’t have enough education to be any help to Fell. He didn’t know the first thing about helping Jane. The best thing he could do was stay out of the way and try not to distract them.
Lambert shifted restlessly. His attempt to find a more comfortable position brought the sound and feel of crumpling paper from his pocket. Belatedly, he remembered the plans he’d stolen from the sideboard. Plenty of time for a closer look. He brought out the papers and unfolded them.
The plans consisted of three large sheets of paper with mechanical drawings of the Agincourt device as a whole and in parts. The views of the whole, full front and broadside on, were clear enough. There was a kind of a gun sight, a trigger mechanism, and among the bundle of cylinders, one that served as a barrel. The details of the cylinders absorbed Lambert. One was completely hollow. One held mirrors. Another contained lenses. A fourth appeared to be a brass tube designed to encase a wooden cylinder sixteen inches long. This tube was labeled “Egerton wand.”
“Egerton,” Lambert said aloud. “That’s who enclosed St. Hubert’s, isn’t it? The Egertons?”
“That’s right.” Fell sounded abstracted. Intent on the joint scrutiny of his calculations, he seemed to answer with less than half his attention.
“What is an Egerton wand?” Lambert asked.
“It’s not a wand, it’s the wand,” Fell replied. “The Egerton wand belongs to the Egerton family. It’s an artifact of supernatural origin treasured by the family that owns it, the way the Musgrave family prizes the goblet they call the Luck of Edenhall. The Egerton wand appears in Brown’s Glossary of Legendary Motifs under ‘Comus.’”
With exaggerated patience, Lambert said, “Since I can’t look up the reference just now, would you mind telling me?”
“Can’t it wait?” Fell looked up from his papers. “Oh, very well. If you insist.” He folded his hands and gathered his thoughts. “Once upon a time, when the forest stretched all the way from the mountains of Wales to the Severn Plain, powerful things dwelt in the deep woods. Some were good and some were bad.”
“Whoa.” Lambert held up a hand to stop him. “I didn’t ask for a fairy story.”
“On the contrary.” Fell was clearly nettled. “You asked about the Egerton wand.”
Jane had closed her eyes. “To be honest, I could use a bit of rest. Tell us a fairy story, by all means.”
“Fine.” Fell took up his tale again. “One of the bad things in the wood was a shape-shifter. The antiquarian who recorded all this centuries later called the shape-shifter Comus. No proper antiquarian ever failed to trace his subject all the way back to a classical source. In this case, the antiquarian dutifully claimed that Comus’s mother was Circe and his father was Bacchus. That’s nonsense. Whoever Comus was, whatever he was called in his own day, his parents were neither Roman nor Greek. He was British through and through.”
Lambert remembered Polydore. “Comus Nymet? That’s what this place was called once.”
“I wish I’d known that.” Fell said. “Comus was a brute. His favorite occupation was to waylay young women. In the prettified version of the story, published about a hundred years ago, he accosts a girl on her way to market and bargains with her, offering good luck and long life in return for her virtue. This is a whitewashed version of the story, needless to say. In the Anglo-Saxon version, he offers to buy her virtue and when she refuses, he tries to rape her. In every version, the girl runs away. She throws herself into the river rather than submit to him.”
“Did the merciful pagan gods turn her into a trout so she could swim away?” Jane asked. “Or was she considered a Christian martyr and venerated at the nearest holy well instead?”
“I’m coming to that.” Fell continued, “In subsequent accounts, Comus accosts any girl who takes his fancy. In addition to his indecent offer, he threatens the victim with his shape-shifting spells. In these later stories, only those who accept his offer are subject to his power. If the girl refuses him, he cannot change her shape. In some cases, the girl escapes. In every instance of a successful escape, the girl resists Comus and calls upon the local water spirit for help. The water spirit intervenes and the girl escapes. Through the association of ideas, the water spirit is conflated with the original girl of the oldest legend. We have the familiar motif of transfiguration: not girl into trout but girl into water spirit.”
“Poor girl,” said Jane. The illusion looked as if she agreed.
“Sounds like an opera,” said Lambert.
“Now, much more recently, only half a dozen centuries ago, another girl was waylaid in the area. Things have changed dramatically. Much of the forest has been cleared. The Normans have fought their way to a standstill trying to subdue the Welsh. Great castles have been constructed, including the one that still stands at Ludlow. Law, of a kind we would dimly recognize, holds sway over those who lived in these hills.”
“Law.” Jane snorted. “Oyer and terminer for some. Not all.”
“Better law for some than law for none.” Fell was tart. “This time, when the girl fled the shape-shifter, she did not run to the river. She ran to the local authorities to lodge a complaint. The authorities didn’t believe her. In fact, they gave her a month in jail for slander. But the pattern had changed, you see. Comus was still the same, shifting his shape and trying to bargain. But this time, the girl appealed to a civil authority, not a divine once.”
“They let her down,” said Lambert.
“Alas, they did. In time her sentence was up and she was free to go. According to one account, she turned to the spirit of the river and invoked its power in her studies of magic. She worked to protect others from Comus’s influence and for a long time, there are no instances of the shape-shifter accosting anyone. According to this account, when the woman died, her magical powers augmented those of the river spirit.”
“What a pretty story.” Jane’s acid tone made it clear she was still brooding on the injustice done the girl. “So inspiring.”
Fell kept on with his lecture. “Another few centuries go by, flying fast as days now, until there is an Earl of Bridgewater in Ludlow Castle, holding the marches for the king. This man had three children, two sons and a daughter. One day out hunting, they went astray, first from the hunting party, then from one another. You see the pattern, don’t you?”
“Couldn’t miss it,” Lambert said.
“Comus accosted the girl while her two brothers were searching for her in the forest. He charmed her first and threatened her second, but the girl knew her local history and she called on the spirit of the river to protect her. Comus could not harm her, but neither could she go free, for Comus put a spell on the girl to keep her prisoner in a chair. There she might have stayed forever, watching the revels of Comus and the unfortunates he’d bargained with and caught. Fortunately for the girl, her brothers were located by the search party. Together the whole group found the girl, interrupting the revels. Comus and his merrymakers ran away, but not before the
brothers fell upon him and wrested his wand away. With the wand, the brothers freed their sister unharmed. The Earl’s three children returned together in triumph to their father’s castle.”
Jane stared at Fell, as did her illusion. “I don’t believe it. A happy ending?”
“Decidedly so. The wand was held in fear and reverence, counted as one of the treasures of the family, and kept safe.” Fell regarded Lambert with great self-satisfaction. “It is now known as the Egerton wand.”
“What happened to Comus?” Jane asked.
“He ran away. Without his wand, he was all but powerless. He dwindled to a story for scaring children at bedtime. In time he faded away completely, nothing left but a bibliographic listing in Brown’s Glossary of Legendary Motifs. No more assaults. No more abductions. The young women of Shropshire have been growing more dauntless with each passing year. They’ll be driving motor cars next.”
Lambert thought it over. “All right. How much of that yarn is true?”
“Who can say?” Fell returned to his calculations. “None of it, perhaps. Perhaps it’s all just a fairy story.”
“It must be,” said Jane, “if they lived happily ever after.” That brought Fell’s attention back from his paperwork. “In fact, they did—eventually. All three of the Earl of Bridgewater’s children lived to prosperous old age. We could look them up in the parish records and prove it. But there’s a story associated with that fact, and it’s not one Brown dared to include.”
“Go on.” Jane and Lambert both prompted Fell.
Fell appeared to enjoy every moment of the coaxing. At last he yielded to their curiosity. “Very well. This story is not one you may repeat. There is no documentary proof and any references to it are to this day met with charges of libel. Once upon a time, a few years after the Egerton family encountered Comus, the Civil War began. You see, King Charles misunderstood the nature of law completely. He bungled things so badly, he had to go to war against his own people.”
A Scholar of Magics Page 27