The Gates of Sleep

by Mercedes Lackey

  This could be in the manner of a test on Arachne’s part to see if she would behave herself when left on her own.

  So instead of turning Brownie back out the gates and away, she guided the horse toward the stable and allowed the groom to help her down. As she expected, Mary Anne was waiting for her right inside the door.

  “You need to change for tea, miss,” the maid said, with her usual authoritarian manner, quite as if nothing whatsoever had changed. But something had—Mary Anne no longer had the authority of her mistress to back her. And—perhaps—had not been given any directions.

  So we will start with something simple, I think, as a test.

  “Did Madam leave any orders about what my meal menus were to be?” she asked, in a calculated effort to catch the maid off guard. She tilted her head to the side and attempted to look cheerful and innocent—not confrontational. She did not want to confront Mary Anne, only confound her.

  “Why—no—” Mary Anne stammered, caught precisely as Marina had hoped.

  “Ah. Then before I change, I had better take care of that detail for the rest of the day, or the cook will never forgive me.” She smiled slightly, which seemed to put the maid more off balance than before. She detoured to the library, and quickly wrote out a menu for high tea, dinner, and for good measure, breakfast in the morning. And not trusting to Mary Anne, she took the menus to the cook herself, with the maid trailing along behind, for once completely at a loss. Only then did she permit the maid to bear her off to her room to be changed into a suitable gown. But Mary Anne was so rattled, she forgot completely to exchange the riding corset for a more restrictive garment, and the tea gown, designed to be comfortable and loose-fitting, went on over her petticoat and combinations without any corset at all. Marina was almost beside herself with pleasure by the time she sat down—in the empty parlor, of course—to the first truly satisfying meal that she had eaten since she arrived.

  And thanks to her books and the other help she had been getting from Peter, despite Mary Anne’s glum supervision, she poured selected, and ate with absolute correctness. Good strong tea to begin with, not the colored water she had been drinking. And real food, with flavor to it. Oh, it was dainty stuff, for a lady, not the hearty teas of Blackbird Cottage—but it was such a difference from what she’d been having with Arachne.

  It was probably exactly the same food that downstairs ate for their tea, just sliced and prepared to appear delicate—dainty little minced-ham, deviled shrimp, and cheese sandwiches; miniature sweet scones, clotted cream and jam; and the most amazing collection of wonderful little iced cakes and tartlets.

  And those hadn’t been conjured up on the instant. But they certainly hadn’t been making appearances at the teas she had been having.

  Arachne’s been eating on the sly, that’s what. She has that miserable excuse for tea with me, then goes off to her own sitting room and has a feast.

  Well, Arachne wasn’t here to complain that her cakes were gone, and the cook could make more. Marina sipped her tea and nibbled decorously while she watched birds collecting the crumbs that the cook scattered for them in the snow-covered garden outside the parlor windows, ignoring the silent presence of Mary Anne. Left to herself, of course, it would have been a book by the fire, a plate of cakes, and a pot of tea—but she conducted herself as if she had company. There would be no lapses for Mary Anne to report; there was not a single scornful cough. At length, she rang for Peter to come take the trays away and Mary Anne went off to her own splendidly solitary tea while Marina remained in the library with a final cup of tea, a book, and the fire.

  Dinner was delightful, though it required a change into corset and dinner gown. And Mary Anne was so rattled by then that she retired without even undressing her charge. Marina just rang for Sally to help her with the corset, then sent everyone away. So, attired in a warm and comfortable dressing gown and her favorite sheepskin slippers, she should have been ready to settle down beside the fire for a night of reading.

  But two things stopped her. The first was that this absence gave her an unanticipated opportunity. She could write letters tonight without the fear that she would be caught at it. She sat down at her desk in her sitting room, and laid out paper, envelopes, and pen and ink—then stopped.

  How to get them delivered? There was still that problem; she hadn’t had so much as a single penny of money since she arrived here, and she had the distinct feeling that if she asked for any, Arachne would ask her what she wanted it for, since all her wants and needs were supplied.

  She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. There were probably stamps in Arachne’s desk and more in the one in the room used as an office for the estate manager.

  But she counts them. I know she does. She’s the sort that would.

  The same probably held true for the pin money kept in the desk in the estate office. Probably? No doubt; pin money would provide an even greater temptation to staff than stamps, and Arachne had no real hold of loyalty over most of the servants, as demonstrated by their quiet support of Marina, and there was no trust there. So, she probably counted it out three times a day; no use looking for postage money there.

  But—I wonder—does it need to be by a physical letter?

  Arachne was not here—and if ever there was a chance to contact Elizabeth by means of magic, this would be it—

  For a moment, excitement rose in her—if she could call up an Undine or a Sylph, she could get messages to Elizabeth directly. Perhaps even within the hour!

  But, suddenly, she knew, she knew, that was wrong. That if she tried, something horrible would happen. It was just like the night she thought she had dreamed, when the Sylph gave her that warning, when she had been so very frightened. If she used magic here even though Arachne was gone—it would be bad.

  No. No.

  A chill swept over her at the mere thought of invoking an Elemental here. She suddenly felt unseen eyes on her.

  It might not be Arachne—it might be someone else entirely. But now that Marina was out of Blackbird Cottage, she was out from underneath protections that Thomas, Sebastian, and Margherita had spent decades building. It might only be that whoever or whatever was hunting for her now knew where she was and was watching her because she was living openly at Oakhurst, and with only the personal magical protections she herself had in place. Watching her—why? She was beginning to have an idea why Arachne might want to isolate her from all her former friends, but why would some stranger be watching her?

  Well, that made no sense. Not that anything necessarily made obvious sense unless you had all the facts. Still, I cannot imagine why some stranger would wish to spy on me, much less wish me harm.

  Ah, but thinking of Arachne, there might be another explanation for the feeling of an unseen watcher about. What if Madam is a magician after all? Just—not the kind of magician I know about?

  She wondered. Elizabeth had told her to trust her instincts, and right now, those instincts warned her that she was not unobserved. If Arachne was a magician, Arachne would be able to tell if she worked magic. At the moment, the only magic that Marina was practicing was passive, defensive, protective; not only would it not draw attention to her, it was designed, intended, to take attention away from her.

  She could have left something here as a sort of watchdog. And if I arouse the watchdog’s interest… she’ll find out what I was up to, and she’ll discipline me for it.

  Arachne would only have to forbid the servants to give her access to riding to punish her, and it would be a terrible punishment from her point of view. And as to why Arachne might want to keep her away from all her former friends—that was simple enough—

  Marina was not so naive as to think that Reggie was devoting so much of his time to her because she was attractive to him. Maybe Arachne didn’t need Oakhurst or Marina’s fortune, but a fashionable man—about—town like her son was an expensive beast to support. Granted, Reggie did seem to have some interest in working at the potteries, but still�
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  On the other hand, if Arachne could get Marina married to her son, it would be her wealth that he was playing with, not Arachne’s. And if he wrecked someone else’s fortune, Arachne would not particularly care. In fact, it might be a way of bringing him to heel—if he overran himself and had to come to his mama for financial help, Arachne could impose all sorts of curbs and conditions on him.

  The only way for Arachne to be sure that Marina would fall into her plans, would be to keep her niece here, completely under Arachne’s thumb, until Reggie managed to wheedle her into matrimony.

  So it will have to be real letters. For which I need postage. There must be another way of finding the money for two stamps!

  If only—so many little boys were inveterate collectors of stamps—if only the uncles or her father had ever been remotely interested in such things, she would probably have found a stamp-album among the old school books with one or two uncanceled specimens among the ones carefully steamed off of the letters that arrived at the house!

  Then it occurred to her; this house had a nursery that hadn’t been touched since the five children left it, except to clean out the books from the schoolroom. And little children tended to collect and hide treasures. With luck, she could find them—heaven knew she had hidden enough little treasure boxes herself over the years. And with further luck, there might be a penny or two amongst the stones and cast-off snakeskins and bits of ribbon.

  The thought was parent to the act; she put the writing implements away and got resolutely up from the desk.

  This entailed an expedition armed with a paraffin-lamp, but now she knew approximately where everything was, courtesy of Sally. After opening a couple of doors that proved to open up onto disused rooms other than the old nursery—the nurserymaid’s room, a linen closet, and the old schoolroom—she found El Dorado—or at least, the room she was looking for. Aside from being much neater than any five real children would leave such a room it was pretty much as it must have looked when they were still using it. She put the lamp on the nursery table and went to work. She found six caches before she decided that she was finished: one inside the Noah’s Ark, two under the floorboards, two out in plain sight in old cigar boxes and one in a cupboard in the doll-house. When she’d finished collecting ha’pennies, she had exactly fourpence. Quite enough to buy postage for two letters. But by that point, it was very late, she was chilled right through, and she decided to take her booty and go to bed. Must make sure and ask that they send more postage in their return letters, she told herself sleepily, as she climbed into her warm bed after hiding her “treasure” in a vase. I think like the rest of the mines in Devon, my copper-field is exhausted… though at least I haven’t left any ugly tailings.

  Arachne stared out the window of their first-class carriage into the last light of sunset, and wondered how wretched a mess awaited them when she and Reggie got to Exeter. She prided herself on her efficiency, but there were some things that no amount of efficiency could compensate for.

  Such as an accident like the one that had just occurred at the Exeter pottery.

  Right in the middle of her discussion with Reggie, a telegram came. One of the kilns had exploded that morning. At the moment she didn’t know what the cause had been, although she intended to find out as soon as she and Reggie arrived.

  The railway carriage swayed back and forth, and the iron wheels clacked over the joins in the rails with little jolts—but the swaying and jolting was nothing compared with the discomfort of the same trip by carriage, and this first-class compartment was much warmer.

  An explosion. These things happened now and again; water suddenly leaking into a red-hot kiln could cause it, or something in the pottery loaded into it—or sabotage by anarchists, unionists, or other troublemakers. If it was the latter, well, she was going to find that out quickly enough, and it wouldn’t take clumsy police bumbling about to do so, either. A few words, a little magic, and she would know if there was someone personally responsible. If there was, well—whoever had done it would wish it had been the police who’d caught him, before he died.

  The main problem so far as she was concerned was that the kiln had been one of the ones where the glazes were fired, and three of her paintresses had been seriously injured, two killed outright.

  Reggie would take care of the physical details tomorrow, but tonight—he and she would have to salvage what they could from the three injured girls.

  At length, long after sunset, the train lurched into the Exeter station, and came to a halt with a shrieking of brakes and a great burst of steam. Reggie opened the compartment door, but the cachet (and money) attached to a first-class carriage got them instant service—one porter for luggage, another to summon a taxi. Little did he guess he would need to summon two. Their luggage went to the hotel with orders to secure them their usual rooms, but they went straight to the pottery.

  At the moment, Arachne’s sole concern, as they rattled along in a motor-taxi, was the tiny infirmary she kept for the benefit of the paintresses. If the other workers wondered about this special privilege, they never said anything, perhaps because the paintresses were given the grand title of Porcelain Artist and got other privileges as well. They needed the infirmary; after a certain point in their short careers, they grew faint readily, and this gave them a place to lie down until the dizziness passed off. Being paid by the piece rather than by the hour was a powerful incentive not to go home ill, no matter how ill they felt.

  She’d telegraphed ahead to authorize sending for a doctor; if the girls could be saved, it would be better for her plans.

  The taxi stopped at the gates, and Arachne stepped out onto the pavement without a backward glance, leaving Reggie to pay the fare. She went straight to her office; from the gate to the office there was no sign that anything had gone wrong; the sound of work, the noise of the machinery that ground and mixed the clay, the whirring of the wheels, and the slapping of the wet clay as the air and excess water was driven out of it continued unabated under the glaring gaslights—which was as it should be. Accidents happened, but unless the entire pottery blew up or fell into the river, work continued. The workers themselves could not afford to do without the wages they would lose if it shut down, and would be the first to insist that work went on the moment after the debris was shoveled out of the way.

  The main offices were vacant, and unlit but for a single gaslight on the wall, but her managers knew what to leave for her. Her office, a spacious, though spartan room enlivened only by her enormous mahogany desk, was cleaned three times daily to rid it of the ever present clay-dust. This occurred whether she was present in Exeter or not, so that her office was always ready for her. Reggie caught up with her as she entered the main offices and strode toward her private sanctum. By the light shining under the door, someone had gone in and lit the gas for her; she reached for the polished brass knob and pulled the door open, stepping through with Reggie close behind her.

  The doctor—one she recognized from past meetings, an old quack with an addiction to gin—stood up unsteadily as she entered. He had not been sitting behind the desk, which was fortunate for him, since she would have left orders never to use him again if he had been.

  A whiff of liquor-laden breath came to her as she faced him”Well?” she asked, shrewdly gauging his level of skill by the florid character of his face and steadiness of his stance. He wasn’t that bad; intoxicated, but not so badly as to impair his judgment.

  He shook his head. “They won’t last the week,” he told her. “And even if they do, they’ll never be more than bodies propped in the corner of the poorhouse. One’s blinded, one’s lost an eye, and all three are maimed past working, even if their injuries would heal.”

  He didn’t bother to point out that they probably wouldn’t heal; the lead-dust they ate saw to that. The lead-poisoned didn’t heal well.

  She nodded briskly. “Well, then, we’ll just let them lie in the infirmary until they die. No point in increasing their misery
by moving them. Thank you, Dr. Thane.”

  She reached behind her back and held out her hand. Reggie placed a folded piece of paper into it, and she handed the doctor the envelope that contained his fee without looking at it. He took it without a word and shambled off through the door and out into the darkened outer office. She turned to Reggie, who nodded wordlessly.

  “We might as well salvage what we can,” Arachne said, with grudging resignation. “Tomorrow I’ll find replacements. I’ll try, at any rate.”

  “We’re using up the available talent, Mater,” Reggie pointed out. “It’s going to be hard to find orphans who can paint who are also potential magicians—”

  She felt a headache coming on, and gritted her teeth. She couldn’t afford weakness, not at this moment. “Don’t you think I know that?” she snarled. “Of all the times for this to happen—it could take days to find replacements, they probably won’t be ideal and—” She stopped, took a deep breath, and exerted control over herself. “And we can burn some of the magic we salvage off these three to help us find others. We might as well; it’ll fade if we don’t use it.”

  “True enough.” Reggie led the way this time, but not out the door. Instead, a hidden catch released the door concealed in the paneling at the back of the office, revealing a set of stairs faced with rock, and very, very old, leading down. “After you, Mater.”

  They each took a candle from a niche just inside the door, lit it at the gas-mantle, and went inside, closing the door behind them. The stairs led in their turn to a small underground room, which, if anyone had been checking, would prove by careful measuring to lie directly beneath the infirmary.