A few moments later Pilbeam stood in the street, an inspiringly heavy purse in his hand, allowing himself a sigh of relief—ah, the free air was sweet, all was well that ended well . . . Martin stepped into a puddle, splashing the rank brew of rainwater and sewage onto the hem of Pilbeam’s robe.
Pilbeam availed himself yet again of Martin’s convenient handle. “You rank pottle-deep measle! You rude-growing toad!” he exclaimed, and guided the lad down the street toward the warmth and peace of home.
Grey Eminence
Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes Lackey has been an international supermodel, a psychic detective, an espionage agent, a rocket scientist, and a globe-trotting jet-setter, hobnobbing with the likes of Madonna and Elton John. She is currently nominated for both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes in literature and is coordinating and financing the effort to create the real-life version of International Rescue. She is five feet nine, with flaming red hair to her waist, an IQ of 250, and a flawless figure and complexion, and she thinks that if you believe any of this, you really need to get out more.
Nan Killian sat on the foot of her best friend’s bed, with her feet curled up under her flannel nightgown to keep them warm. Sarah Jane’s pet parrot, Grey, lay flat on Sarah’s chest, eyes closed, cuddling like a kitten. Warm light from an oil lamp mounted on the wall beside the bed poured over all of them. It wasn’t a very big room, just large enough for Nan’s bed and Sarah Jane’s and a wardrobe and chests for their clothes and things, and a perch with food and water and toys for Grey. If the wallpaper was old and faded, and the rugs on the floor threadbare, it was still a thousand times better than any place that Nan had ever lived in—and as for Sarah, well, she was used to a mission and hospital in the middle of the jungle, and their little room was just as foreign to her as it was to Nan, though in entirely different ways.
Sarah and Grey were from somewhere in Africa; Nan was a bit vague as to where, exactly—her grasp of geography outside of the boundary of London was fairly weak. Sarah’s parents were missionary doctors there, and as many parents did during the reign of Victoria, had sent their child to England, where, it was assumed, there were fewer diseases, better food, and better physicians, and it was altogether less likely that their darling would sicken and die. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of children like Sarah, sent off to “schools” that cared only to warehouse them and starved their minds, bodies, and spirits; or to caretakers who were as indifferent to the needs of a child all alone as the schools were. Fortunately, there were also good caretakers and, like this, the Harton School for Boys and Girls, good schools. On the outside, this school might not look like a “good” school—it was an old mansion, now on the outskirts of a neighborhood long since declined into a slum. It had seen much, much better days, and the Hartons had acquired it for a pittance, which was fortunate, since a pittance was all they could afford. They had spent their money on repairs, decent (if much-used) solid furnishings, and common comfort, and had advertised, as so many other schools did, that they took children sent back to England by their parents living and working in the service of the empire abroad.
This school, however, was just a little different from most of the others, to say the least. While only little Sarah had a pet from “home,” pets and other reminders of absent parents were encouraged here. Mrs. Harton—whom everyone called Memsah’b, from the servants up to and including her own husband—employed a staff of servants almost entirely Indian, including the cooks, so children ate the curries and rice and strongly vegetarian fare they were used to, and only gradually had to adapt to English dishes that would have been very heavy and difficult for their tropic-adapted appetites. Toddlers too young for schooling had two Indian ayahs to tend them—familiar lullabies, familiar sounds and scents, all designed to make the horrible separation from Mama less painful. No one was punished for chattering to the servants in Hindustani, and no one forbade the exuberances that were bound to break out in children raised by the indulgent native nurses. There was a great deal of laughter in the Harton School, and the lessons learned all the surer for it.
And that was the least of the eccentricities here, in a school where not all of the lessons were about what could be seen with the ordinary eye.
Now, Nan was London-born, London-bred—poor child of a gin-raddled, opium-addicted mother who had finally descended (last Nan had heard) to the lowest rung on the social ladder her type could reach, that of a street whore in Whitechapel. She roamed the streets now with everything she owned on her back, without even a garret or cellar room, or even an under-stairs cubbyhole to call her own, satisfying first her craving for drink, before looking for the extra penny for a bed or a meal. She would probably die soon, of bad gin, of cold and exposure, of disease, or as her chronically damaged body gave out. Nan had no time or pity for her. After all, it had been her gran that had mostly raised her, not her mam, who’d only been interested in the money Nan brought in by begging—and anyway, the last contact she’d had with the woman was when money and opium had run out, and to get more, she’d sold the last thing of value she had left—which was Nan herself.
It was through the unlikely friendship she had with little Sarah here, and the intercession of Memsah’b herself, that she ended up here and not elsewhere. Since then, she had shared academic classes with Sarah and paid for her keep by helping the ayahs with the children still in the nursery. And she had another sort of “class” that she shared with no one—a class taken at odd times with Memsah’b herself, in using something other than the usual five senses to learn things. Sarah had a class of her own with Memsah’b; Sarah had a very special sort of bond with Grey—who Sarah insisted was a great deal more than “just” a parrot. Nan was in wholehearted agreement with that estimation at this point—after all, it was no more difficult to believe in than to believe that wolves could adopt a Man-Cub, and Nan was convinced of the truth of Mr. Kipling’s stories.
Sarah had other lessons as well, for she could, on occasion, talk with, and see, the dead. This could be a very dangerous ability, so Memsah’b had told Nan, who had appointed herself as Sarah’s protector.
Well, if Nan and Grey had anything to say about the matter, danger would have to pass through them to reach Sarah.
“Nan tickle,” Grey demanded in her funny little voice, eyes still closed; Sarah was using both hands to support the bird on her chest, which left no hands free to give Grey the scratch she wanted. Nan obliged by crawling up to the head of the bed, settling in beside her friend, and scratching the back of Grey’s neck. It was a very gentle scratch—indeed, more like the “tickle” Grey had asked for than the kind of vigorous scratching one would give a dog or a tough London cat—for Nan had known instinctively from the moment that Grey permitted Nan to touch her that a bird’s skin is a very delicate thing. Of all the people in the school, only Nan, Memsah’b, Sahib himself, and Gupta were permitted by Grey to do more than take her on a hand. Sarah, of course, could do anything she liked with the bird.
“Wisht Oi had a friend loike you, Grey,” Nan told the bird wistfully, the remnants of her cockney accent still clinging to her speech despite hours and hours of lessons. The parrot opened one yellow eye and gave her a long and unreadable look.
“Kitty?” Grey said, but Nan shook her head.
“Not a moggy,” she replied. “Mind, Oi loike moggies, but—Oi dunno, a moggy don’t seem roight.”
Sarah laughed. “Then you must not be a witch, after all,” she teased. “A witch’s familiar is always a cat or a toad—”
Nan made a face. “Don’ want no toads!” she objected. “So Oi guess Oi ain’t no witch, no matter what that Tommy Carpenter says!”
Tommy, a recent addition to the school, had somehow made up his mind that she, Sarah, and Memsah’b were all witches. He didn’t mean it in a derogatory sense; he gave them all the utmost respect, in fact. It had something to do with things his own ayah back in India had taught him. Nan had to wonder, given whom he’d singled out f
or that particular accolade, if he wouldn’t be getting private lessons of his own with Memsah’b before too long. There was something just a little too knowing about the way Tommy looked at some people.
“But Oi still wisht Oi ’ad—had—a bird-friend loike Grey.” And she sighed again. Grey reached around with her beak and gently took one of Nan’s fingers in it; Grey’s equivalent, so Nan had learned, of a hug. “Well,” she said when Grey had let go, “mebbe someday. Lots uv parrots come in with sailors.”
“That’s right!” Sarah said warmly, and let go of Grey just long enough to give Nan a hug of her own before changing the subject. “Nan, promise to tell me all about the Tower as soon as you get back tomorrow! I wish I could go—maybe as much as you wish you had a grey parrot of your own.”
“Course Oi will!” Nan replied warmly. “Oi wisht you could go, too—but you know why Memsah’b said not.” She shuddered, but it was the delicious shudder of a child about to be regaled with delightfully scary ghost stories, without a chance of turning around and discovering that the story had transmuted to reality.
For Sarah, however, the possibility was only too real that, even by daylight, that very thing would happen. It was one thing to provide the vehicle for a little child-ghost who had returned only to comfort his mother. It was something else entirely to contemplate Sarah coming face-to-face with one of the many unhappy, tragic, or angry spirits said to haunt the Tower of London. Memsah’b was not willing to chance such an encounter, not until Sarah was old enough to protect herself.
So the history class would be going to the Tower for a special tour with one of the Yeoman Warders without Sarah.
Sarah sighed again. “I know. And I know Memsah’b is right. But I still wish I could go, too.”
Nan laughed. “Wut! An’ you gettin’ t’ go t’ Sahib’s warehouse an’ pick out whatever you want, on account of missin’ the treat?”
“Yes, but—” She made a face. “Then I have to write an essay about it to earn it!”
“An’ we’re all writin’ essays ’bout the Tower, so I reckon it’s even all around, ’cept we don’t get no keepsakes.” Nan ended the discussion firmly.
“I know! I’ll pick a whole chest of Turkish delight, then we can all have a treat, and I’ll have the chest,” Sarah said suddenly, brightening up in that way she had that made her solemn little face fill with light.
Grey laughed, just like a human. “Smart bird!” the parrot said, then shook herself gently, wordlessly telling Sarah to let go of him, made her ponderous way up Sarah’s shoulder and pillow, and clambered up beak-over-claw to her usual nighttime perch on the top of the brass railing of the headboard of Sarah’s bed—wrapped and padded for her benefit in yards and yards of tough hempen twine. She pulled one foot up under her chest feathers and turned her head around to bury her beak out of sight in the feathers of her back.
And since that was the signal it was time for them to sleep—a signal they always obeyed, since both of them half expected that Grey would tell on them if they didn’t!—Nan slid down and climbed into her own bed, turning the key on the lantern beside her to extinguish the light.
It was a gloomy, cool autumn day that threatened rain, a day on which Nan definitely needed her mac, a garment that gave her immense satisfaction, for up until coming to the school she had relied on old newspapers or scraps of canvas to keep off the rain. Getting to the Tower was an adventure in and of itself, involving a great deal of walking and several omnibuses. When they arrived at the Tower, Nan could only stare; she’d been expecting a single building, not this fortress! Why, it was bigger than Buckingham Palace—or at least, as big!
Their guide was waiting for them under an archway that had not one, but two nasty-looking portcullises, and the tour began immediately, for this was no mere gate, but the Middle Tower. The yeoman warder who took the children under his capacious wing was an especial friend of Sahib, and as a consequence, he took them on a more painstaking tour of the Tower than the sort given to most schoolchildren. He did his best—which was a very good “best,” because he was a natural storyteller—to make the figures of history come alive for his charges, and peppered his narrative with exactly the sort of ghoulish details that schoolchildren loved to hear. Creepy but not terrifying. Ghoulish but not ghastly.
Nan was very much affected by the story of poor little Jane Grey, the Nine Days’ Queen, and of Queen Anne Boleyn, but she felt especially saddened by the story of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, not for that unhappy lady’s sake, but for that of her little dog that was hiding under her skirts when she died.
They walked all over the Tower, up and down innumerable stairs, from the old mint buildings to the armory in the White Tower even to the Yeoman Warders’ private quarters, where their guide’s wife gave them all tea and cakes. Nan felt quite smug about that; no one else was getting tea and cakes! Most of the other visitors had to blunder about by themselves, accompanied with maps and guidebooks, or join a crowd of others being given the general tour by another of the Yeoman Warders, and dependent on their own resources for their refreshment. She tasted the heady wine of privilege for the first time in her young life and decided that it was a fine thing.
But the one thing that she found the most fascinating about the Tower was the ravens.
Faintly intimidating, they flew about or stalked the lawns wherever they cared to; they had their very own yeoman warder to attend to them because of the story that if they were ever to leave the Tower, it would be the end of England. But Nan found them fascinating; and kept watching them even when she should, perhaps, have been paying attention to their guide.
Finally, Nan got a chance to watch them to her heart’s content, as Memsah’b noted her fascination. “Would you like to stay here while the rest of us go view the crown jewels, Nan?” Memsah’b asked with a slight smile.
Nan nodded; going up another set of stairs along with a gaggle of other silly gawkers just to look at a lot of big sparklers that no one but the Queen would ever wear was just plain daft. She felt distinctly honored that Memsah’b trusted her to stay alone. The other pupils trailed off after their guide like a parade of kittens following their mother, while Nan remained behind in the quiet part of the green near the off-limits area where the ravens had their perches and nesting boxes, watching as the great black birds went about their lives, ignoring the sightseers as mere pointless interlopers.
It seemed to her that the ravens had a great deal in common with someone like her: tough, no nonsense about them, willing and able to defend themselves. She even tried, once or twice, to see if she could get a sense of what they were thinking, but their minds were very busy with raven business—status in the rookery being a very complicated affair—though the second time she tried, the minds of the two she was touching went very silent for a moment, and they turned to stare at her. She guessed that they didn’t like it, and she stopped immediately; they went back to stalking across the lawn.
Then she felt eyes on her from behind and turned slowly.
There was a third raven behind her, staring at her.
“’Ullo,” she told him.
Quoark, he said meditatively. She met his gaze with one equally unwavering, and it seemed to her that something passed between them.
“Don’t touch him, girl.” That was one of the Yeoman Warders, hurrying up to her. “They can be vicious brutes when they’re so minded.”
The “vicious brute” wasn’t interested in the warder’s estimation of him. Quork, he said, making up his mind—and pushed off with his strong black legs, making two flaps that brought him up and onto Nan’s shoulder. Awwrr, he crooned, and as the yeoman warder froze, the bird took that formidable bill, as long as Nan’s hand and knife-edged, and gently closed it around her ear. His tongue tickled it, and she giggled. The yeoman warder paled.
But Nan was engrossed in an entirely new sensation welling up inside her, and she guessed it was coming from the bird; it was a warmth of the heart, as if someone had jus
t given her a welcoming hug.
Could this be her bird-friend, the one she’d wished for?
“Want tickle?” she suggested aloud, thinking very hard about how Grey’s neck feathers felt under her fingers when she scratched the parrot.
Orrrr, the raven agreed, right in her ear. He released the ear and bent his head down alongside her cheek so she could reach the back of his neck. She reached up and began a satisfying scratch; she felt his beak growing warm with pleasure as he fluffed his neck feathers for her.
The yeoman warder was as white as snow, a startling contrast with his blue and scarlet uniform.
The ravenmaster (who was another yeoman warder) came running up, puffing hard and rather out of breath, and stopped beside his fellow officer. He took several deep breaths, staring at the two of them. The raven’s eyes were closed with pure bliss as Nan’s fingers worked around his beak and very, very gently rubbed the skin around his eyes.
“Blimey,” he breathed, still staring at them. He walked, with extreme care, toward them and reached for the bird. “Here now, Neville old man, you oughter come along with me—”
Quick as a flash, the raven went from cuddling pet to angry tyrant, rousing all his feathers in anger and lashing at the outstretched hand with his beak. And it was a good thing that the outstretched hand was wearing a thick falconer’s gauntlet, because otherwise the warder would have pulled it back bloody.
Then, as if to demonstrate that his wrath was only turned against those who would dare to separate him from Nan, the raven took that formidable beak and rubbed it against Nan’s cheek, coming within a fraction of an inch of her eye. She in her turn fearlessly rubbed her cheek against his.
The warders both went very still and very white.
“Neville, I b’lieve you’re horripilatin’ these gennelmun,” Nan said, thinking the same thing, very hard. “Wouldjer come down onta me arm?”
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