The Bone House be-2

by Stephen Lawhead

  As if in answer to her question, they heard a voice calling to them and turned to see a man just then emerging from the inn. “I say, hello there!” he called again.

  They stopped and waited for him to approach. “Is this your horse, sir?” asked Lord Fayth.

  “Indeed it is, sir,” replied the stranger. Lady Fayth cast an appraising glance over the tall man striding quickly across the green towards them. He carried himself with a bold confidence that seemed well-suited to his dark good looks. “This is Aquilo,” he said, indicating the horse.

  Lady Fayth regarded the man instead: with his long black hair, proud moustaches, and flamboyant sideburns, the stranger gave every appearance of one who was part horse himself.

  “I hope you do not mind sharing a bit of the green?” Before either of them could answer, the fellow bent his long torso in a crisp bow. “Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland, at your service. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  “I am Sir Edward Fayth, and this is my daughter, Haven,” answered her father.

  Lady Fayth smiled and offered her hand, which the man who called himself Burleigh accepted and, after the briefest hesitation, raised to his lips. His eyes, however, never left her face. “Charmed,” he said, as she pulled her hand from his grasp.

  “You are a long way from home, Sutherland,” observed Lord Fayth mildly. “What brings you to our patch-if I may be so bold?”

  “Not at all, sir. It is a long story-which I shall not presume to inflict on you-but suffice to say that I am thinking of buying a property hereabouts. It is so very cold and dreary in the north. I have reached the time in life where I believe one must have a southern redoubt if one is to survive from one winter to the next.”

  “Indeed, sir,” barked Sir Edward, all amiability and smiles. “I could not agree more.”

  “If not for the tenants, I would consider a more permanent southern sojourn,” Burleigh explained, almost apologetically. “But with such a great many of them, what with seven towns and villages within the Glen Ardvreck boundaries…” He paused. “Forgive me, I am woolgathering. Northern habit, I fear. I am sorry.”

  “Think nothing of it, sir,” offered Lord Fayth grandly. “I quite understand. This is a beautiful corner of the world, I say.” He brightened with a sudden thought. “If you are at a loose end this evening, would you like to come to dinner? Nothing fancy, mind, just an informal private supper. Bring Lady Burleigh, of course, and anyone else in your party.”

  Lord Burleigh glanced at Lady Fayth and hesitated. “Well, I-”

  “Ah, I have sprung it on you. Thoughtless of me. I suspect you have another engagement.”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Burleigh countered hastily. “I am so newly arrived I have no other engagements at present. And as for ‘Lady Burleigh,’ well-I am entirely on my own. My dear wife died several years ago, and I have never remarried.” He offered a wistful smile. “I am entirely without encumbrance at present, and I would be delighted to accept your kind offer.”

  “Capital!” replied Lord Fayth, moving towards his horse. “We will expect you around half seven.”

  “I will be there.”

  They left the Earl of Sutherland on the village green. Lady Fayth made a point not to look at him again; there was something about the man she did not trust entirely-a touch of ruthlessness around the mouth, a coldness in his dark eyes… something she could not name but which put her on her guard.

  Later, when they had returned their horses to the stables and were walking back to the house, Lord Fayth observed, “Good man, that Burleigh.”

  “Oh? Really?” She stopped walking. “You had heard of him, then?”

  “How should I have heard of him? He said himself he’s only just come south.”

  “Indeed!”

  “He is an earl, my dear,” asserted His Lordship. “Sits a peg or two above our station, I daresay. A fine gentleman-as anyone can plainly see.” He glanced sideways at his daughter. “Do you disagree?”

  “I do not profess to know the man. I fail to see how anyone can form a cogent opinion based on a few pleasantries muttered in passing.”

  “Ha!” Her father continued striding across the gravelled yard. “Obviously, you are no judge of character, my dear. Breeding always tells.”

  These words were still echoing in her mind when, after their cosy meal of cold mutton and turnip mash, talk turned to families and mutual connections the men might share. The three were sitting in her father’s study where a fire had been laid; the men were sipping brandy and Haven was pretending to occupy herself with a swatch of needlepoint, the same piece she had been working on for over a year to no appreciable effect. She was listening to their talk and trying to decide where to place Burleigh precisely in her estimation-an ordinarily simple matter for a young woman of strong opinion and quick judgement. But for some reason, the earl was proving extremely elusive in this regard. Every time she felt she had gained an understanding, he would say something-a turn of phrase, an observation, a single word even-that confused her and put her usually reliable feminine intuition out of joint.

  “Of course,” Burleigh was saying as he swilled his brandy around the rim of the bowl, “as a student of the natural sciences myself, I am sure I would find your work fascinating. I hazard a surmise that we might even share some of the same interests.”

  “My work?” Lord Fayth frowned. “I must confess that I do not dabble in the sciences, sir. These modern men of inquiry,” he sniffed, and took a sip of brandy. “Not worth a boot rag the lot of them, if you ask me.”

  For the first time that evening, Burleigh’s expression betrayed confusion and something else. Shock? Whatever it was, Haven thought she had glimpsed something of the real man beneath the veneer of aristocratic indifference. “Perhaps I misunderstand you, sir,” he suggested delicately, and his manner resumed its easy bonhomie.

  “I do not think I could be any clearer on the subject. This science will be the death of us all.”

  “Father,” said Lady Fayth, speaking up, “I think our guest has confused you with Sir Henry.”

  “Oh? Is that so?” Lord Fayth turned to Burleigh once more. “Ah, yes, I see. Of course.”

  “Sir Henry?” wondered Burleigh.

  “My lunatic brother, Henry Fayth-he’s completely taken in by all this natural science tosh. A wicked waste of a man’s time, if you want my opinion.”

  Before Burleigh could respond to this provocative sentiment, Lady Fayth challenged her father’s assertion. “He is not a lunatic, dear Father. Far from it. Uncle Henry is one of the wisest men I know.” She smiled at Burleigh, adding, “My uncle is a charming and gracious man-and one of the leading lights of the new sciences.”

  “Mad as a March hare,” put in Edward. “Always has been. Lives alone in London like a monk in a cell-a miserable hermit. Never married. Claims it would interfere in his valuable work. Though what that is, God knows. Can’t make head or tail of his gibberish.”

  “Father, really,” chided Haven. “You give our guest entirely the wrong impression.”

  “Please, I assure you I have formed no impression whatsoever,” offered Burleigh. “I prefer to take things as I find them-a practice that has served me well all my life.”

  “Good for you, sir,” affirmed Lord Fayth. He reached for the decanter. “More brandy, my lord earl?”

  Conversation moved on to local matters-chiefly farming, horses, and hounds-and Lady Fayth, having endured enough of what she considered boorish blather, announced that it was time for her to retire. “I will leave you two to set the world to rights,” she said lightly. “Lord Burleigh, it was very nice making your acquaintance. I pray your stay in the southlands is entirely to your edification and profit.”

  “I thank you, my lady,” he said. “Even in my short acquaintance I have found the folk hereabouts very much to my liking. Edification will surely follow in its course.” He rose from his chair and took her offered hand. “I wish you a good night and p
leasant dreams.” He patted her hand, then kissed it. “Until we meet again.”

  “I very much doubt that we shall,” replied Lady Fayth. “I am away to London in the morning and plan to be there for some time. But inasmuch as I expect you and my father will find all sorts of pursuits with which to occupy yourselves, you shan’t miss me in the least.”

  CHAPTER 11

  In Which Wilhelmina Learns the Ropes

  Before Egypt, long before travelling to that time and place-or any other-became even a remote possibility, Mina had paid her dues. Haltingly, painstakingly, maddeningly. Transplanted entirely on her own and completely unexpectedly from her twenty-first-century London home to seventeenth-century Bohemia, and having no Cosimo or Sir Henry to guide her, she acquired her knowledge and skill through hard graft and a long and exhausting process of trial and error. It was an exacting apprenticeship, and it began back in the Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus in Prague on the day she took delivery of the device her friend Gustavus Rosenkreuz had made for her using the plans given him by Lord Burleigh. It began the moment the young alchemist placed the curious object in her hand.

  Now, as she stood alone on a hilltop north of her adopted city, Wilhelmina studied the odd device; neatly rounded like a stone and of a similar size, shape, and heft. It reminded her of just that: a surf-tumbled cobble whose edges have been blunted and streamlined by the endless wash and worry of the waves. That, however, is where the similarities ended. Stones were not made of burnished brass; their surfaces were not chased with a lacy arabesque of filigreed lines; wave-tumbled rocks did not feature a curved row of tiny holes along one side, nor sport a knurled dial. Moreover, beach stones did not possess a central aperture that resembled a squinting eye from which radiated a gently pulsating indigo light-at least, not in Mina’s experience.

  This last she had not seen herself, but had it on Gustavus’ authority that it was so. “The substance inside gives off light when it comes into contact with certain ethers,” the young alchemist had told her. Mina had no idea what these ethers were, but how the device was to be used was another matter.

  As she pored over the peculiar instrument, she mustered the scant facts she possessed and tried to imagine how they might be applied to the task at hand. The instrument had been made according to a design supplied by Lord Burleigh to be employed by him for what the alchemists called astral exploration. If her hunch was right, the earl’s explorations were connected in some way to ley travel: the peculiar phenomenon that had plucked her from the twenty-first century and dropped her so rudely into the seventeenth. From what she could recall of the information Kit had imparted-fractured and confused as it was-and her own limited experience, ley travel was a thoroughly unpleasant and wholly unpredictable exercise that nevertheless could yield serendipitous results, and she was determined to repeat the procedure and, if possible, master it.

  Although she no longer wished to return home to London-a lack of desire that she could not explain, even to herself-as an unwitting transplant in an alien world she felt it something of a duty to learn more about the means and mechanisms by which she had come to take up residence in another time and place. Burleigh’s device, she supposed, had something to do with facilitating such leaps, or calibrating them in some way, and this was where she would start.

  She had decided that her experiments should take place in solitude, reasoning that whatever happened, it would be best if it happened out of sight so as not to alarm any casual passersby. So, after thoughtful deliberation on how to safely embark on the venture at hand, she had told Etzel that she wanted to go breathe some country air and perhaps collect some wildflowers. It was, after all, in the country that she had landed following her first and only ley jump. Leaving the coffee shop, she took the wagon out of the city and up into the surrounding hills. The day was bright and fine; an unseasonably warm spring was swiftly melding into summer-as good a day as any for an experiment in ley travel.

  Holding the device in her hand, she puzzled over how to start. As she recalled, her first leap had been made simply by walking with purpose, so Mina began striding along the hilltop, holding the device before her as if it were a flashlight and she was trying to find a darkly hidden path. She stepped off fifty paces, turned, and walked back. When the expected result failed to materialise, she did the same thing in another direction and obtained the same disappointing result. The mechanism remained happily inert and uninvolved in her efforts. Undeterred, she took herself to a new spot farther away and tried again.

  This went on for some time, and with no different result. After a while, Mina began to feel discouraged-not that she had expected to conquer the device easily, but she felt her efforts entitled her to some small reward for her determination, if not for the considerable effort she had made to obtain it in the first place.

  In the end, she slipped Burleigh’s gismo into the pocket of her smock, collected a large bouquet of wildflowers, and bundled them into the wagon for the drive back to town. Over the next few weeks, she would try her experiments again in various locations around the outskirts of the city. Each time she returned better for the exercise, but no closer to unravelling the mystery of ley jumping.

  Then one day it happened. Quite by accident, and on another errand entirely, she was walking along a sunny open stretch of the Moldau, the river dividing the city. She strolled through the lower town and out into the fields and farming hamlets of the countryside and, as always, had thoughts of the coffee house percolating away on the back burner of her mind. She had an eye peeled for a new source of honey for the bakery; her city purveyors all bought theirs in bulk from rural sources and offered it to her at a price that included a tidy profit for themselves. Well and good, but Engelbert’s recipes were using more and more sweetening as their patrons demanded pastries to compliment the natural bitterness of the coffee. Honey was the costliest ingredient, and Mina had begun thinking about contracting directly with country beekeepers to supply the commodity fresh from the source. By cutting out the middleman, both she and the beekeeper would get a better price, and she could guarantee a constant ready market.

  She walked along beneath a sky of bird’s-egg blue, past fields of ripening barley, beets, turnips, and beans; small herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, and geese. The river rolled away to her right, its long, slow currents barely ruffling the quiet jade-green surface. Mother ducks surrounded by a flotilla of half-grown ducklings paddled among the weeds growing long at the banks, the little ones dibbling for insects and bits of edible flotsam.

  A dairyman walking beside his donkey cart approached on the lane that ran along the bank; he tipped his hat as he passed. The air was momentarily filled with the slightly sour, milky scent of the dairy, and Wilhelmina was instantly plunged back into a time and place she scarcely remembered ever having been: a farm in Kent when she was barely six years old. It was a school trip, and her class had visited a farm that produced the milk she and her classmates drank every day from little bottles. The farmer had shown them into the separating room to see the huge machines at work dividing the raw milk from the cream; the smell of the room-strongly pungent and steeped in the sharp rancid odour of fermenting cheese-had so overwhelmed her young senses that it remained with her ever after.

  She greeted the farmer and then paused to watch him on his way, breathing in the scent as he passed. Mina was still thinking about that school trip, so long forgotten but vividly revived, when the lane turned to follow a bend in the river and passed into a beech wood copse. The sunlight through the trees threw dappled shadows on the path, and she was looking at the pattern as she walked. She happened to slip her hand into her pocket and brushed Burleigh’s device. To her surprise, it was warm to the touch.

  She looked down and saw a deep blue light burning through the fabric of her smock. The thing was glowing.

  She stopped and with trembling fingers drew out the brass-encased device. A strong blue light streamed through the little holes that lined the curve of one side, and through the
central half-moon aperture as well. Something had stirred the instrument to life, but what?

  Mina gazed around her. She noted the trees, the leaf-shadowed lane, the wide sweep of the river, and even the cloud-spotted sky above and the birds soaring there. She regarded everything, yet saw nothing she supposed might trigger the sudden awakening of the curious little gismo that was even now filling her hand with an appreciable warmth.

  Slowly, keeping her eyes on the object, she began walking again. The lane curved as it followed the river, and gradually the light in Burleigh’s object faded. She kept walking until the last little glimmer of blue light died. She turned and retraced her steps. As she half expected, after a few steps the glow rekindled… a few more steps, and the glow grew brighter.

  She marched a dozen swift paces along the lane, moving out from the shelter of the copse. The softly glowing blue light slowly faded once more, and the device cooled in her palm.

  She stopped and, certain that she stood on the brink of discovery, made a slow about-face and moved once more into the copse. The deep indigo light returned, and this time she imagined she heard a small squeaking sound-almost like the chirp of a baby bird. Still walking slowly, she held the device to her ear and confirmed that yes, indeed, the thing was speaking to her. Instinctively, she put her finger to the tiny knurled nub on the surface of the device and gave it a twist: the peeping sound grew louder.

  “’Hello!” she muttered to herself. “It’s a volume knob.”

  Still walking slowly, she noted when the blue glow began to fade once more, then instead of waiting until it went out altogether, she spun on her heel and headed back the opposite way, still holding the instrument out in front of her. At the exact place where the light was brightest and the sound the loudest, she stopped.

  Burleigh’s mechanism was obviously marking the place, but try as she might she could not see why. She stood perfectly still and gazed at the little woodland glade around her. What was different or special about this place? What was the gismo trying to tell her?