Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  Corwen pushed open the coach door and leaned out to see the driver.

  “It’s all right, it’s Twomax on the box with the driver,” he said.

  Relief flooded over me. I’d been preparing to find Walsingham, or the young man calling himself after my brother Philip, or at the very least a Mysterium officer with a guard of redcoats running behind.

  The coach trundled on through London’s streets. I lost track of where we were until we passed the Palace of Westminster and continued beyond. Eventually, the coach pulled up in a street of houses built close together, but beyond them I could see open land. It looked like the end of London’s westward sprawl.

  “Quickly, quickly, follow me.” Mr. Twomax climbed down from the box and opened the coach door. “Into the house, quick as you can.”

  I’d barely set both feet to the ground before the coach drove off. We followed Twomax through the front door of an unremarkable house and into a sitting room where Barnaby Tingle sat hunched in a chair.

  Barnaby wasn’t a full goblin. In most lights he could pass for human—though not a handsome one as his nose was still pointy with slit nostrils and his skin pasty and bloodless. He looked up as we entered.

  “It’s my fault,” he said. “I did it.”

  “Now, boy, stop talking like that.” Twomax balanced on the arm of Barnaby’s chair and patted him on the back. “Tell the Deverells what you told me.”

  Barnaby sniffed and straightened in his chair. “I knew you wanted to get that old bastard Walsingham, so me and the lads—”

  “Barnaby has—had—some friends his own age,” Twomax said.

  He used the past tense. This was getting worse and worse.

  “Go on, Barnaby,” I said.

  “Me and the lads started to ask around. Had anyone seen an old blind bloke with a powerful stink of magic around him? Some of the lads get around . . . underground. I know Grandfather said we weren’t sewer goblins anymore, but honestly there’s a whole city down there, and it’s not all shit. There’s underground rivers and overflow drains. Some of it’s been there since the Romans.”

  “Go on, Barnaby. Get to it,” Twomax said gently.

  “We found something—only not where we expected it to be, and not even when we were underground. We’d decided to have a bit of fun and go to Vauxhall Gardens, it being early in the season. We took a boat across the river, to the Vauxhall Stairs and, getting off the boat, we felt it, smelled it. There was magic happening, and it wasn’t good magic.”

  Barnaby’s voice broke like a schoolboy’s, and he wiped his nose on his sleeve. Twomax pushed a handkerchief into his hands, but all he did was pull it from one hand to the other repeatedly.

  He swallowed and took a deep breath. “We were too afraid to go past it again, so we ran all the way to Westminster Bridge and back over to the north bank. That’s when we split up and ran for home. It took me most of the evening to work my way across the city by a roundabout route. I don’t know why I went to the workshop instead of home, but I slept in the doorway, waiting for Grandfather. When he came, I told him what had happened, but by that time I was feeling peculiar. My heart was pounding, and I had this feeling that . . . that death was coming for me.

  “I’ve never had much magic. I’ve never been able to sustain a glamour for more than a couple of minutes on account of me having a human mother, but I’ve always had a good goblin nose and I could smell something—and it was me. I stank of death. Grandfather could smell it, too. He told me to run and tell the ladies not to come to the workshop today. Then he did something—I don’t know what—and suddenly he was the one who smelled like death. He’d taken my death so that I could live. It was my death. I shouted at him then, but he told me it was too late, and to go and do what he’d told me to do, and he’d see me in the next life, and I was to find Uncle Twomax.”

  Barnaby raised his head and tear tracks marked his face. “I ran. I should have stayed, but I ran. And . . . the others . . . he killed them, too.”

  I glanced at Twomax. “Barnaby’s friends?”

  Twomax nodded, clenched his fist over his heart and mimed an explosion, spreading his fingers out. “All three of them. We carried the bodies safely away before anyone reported them.”

  “Oh, Barnaby.” I knelt on the floor in front of him and took his hands, cold and trembling. “Your grandfather loved you. He still loves you. That was what a parent or a grandparent does for their kin. Don’t blame yourself. He did it because he wanted to.”

  “I can’t even say thank you.”

  I glanced at Twomax and raised one eyebrow.

  Twomax shrugged. It was up to me.

  “Barnaby, would it help to see your grandfather one last time? His spirit, I mean?”

  “What? His ghost? Could I?”

  “I can call him back, but only for a short time and only once. More than that wouldn’t be fair. He has to move on.”

  “Only for a short time. I understand.”

  I wondered if he truly did, but I’d offered, and he’d accepted. Now I had to do it.

  I used to take my abilities lightly. Calling up spirits seemed almost normal to me. I’d loved Will so much that I kept his spirit with me for three years without realizing how wrong it was. If I called up a spirit now, I did it only out of desperate need and only for a very brief time.

  “I don’t know what Mr. Tingle’s first name was,” I said.

  “Joshua,” Twomax and Barnaby said together.

  I rocked back on my heels and sat on the floor at Barnaby’s feet, remembering my first visit to Joshua Tingle’s tailoring business, his outward appearance as a wholly-human, rotund, rosy-cheeked English grandfather with a periwig and a potbelly accommodated by an excellently tailored suit. Then I remembered being appalled by his goblin countenance. It was my first view of a natural goblin, a white-skinned creature with an emaciated body, a large hairless head, a hooked nose, and slit nostrils. His hands were long and tapered with three joints on each finger. I’d been shocked then, but I’d begun to take it for granted and think of goblins as normal when we’d rescued Twomax and a bunch of youngsters from the Guillaume Tell. As goblins went, Tingle was considered handsome.

  I concentrated hard on his goblin form, repeating his name over and over again in my head while staring at the random pattern of color on the pegged rug.

  “Grandfather!”

  The first indication of my success was when Barnaby reacted. I looked up from the rug and a gray, ghostly figure hovered horizontally in the middle of the room. He bent his legs and gradually rotated into an upright position.

  “Mr. Tingle. Welcome,” I said. “Barnaby needs to see you.”

  “Ah, Rossalinde Deverell. I wondered who had the power to call me back. Thank you. I need to see Barnaby as well.”

  “Grandfather, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what? For being a headstrong, reckless young fool? Yes, yes. We’ve all been young. With luck, some of us get over it and become headstrong, reckless old fools.” He chuckled. “There’s no blame attached to you, my boy. The blame is on him who sent the curse.” He looked straight at me. “And I’m sure you know who that is.”

  “Walsingham.”

  The spirit nodded. “Give me a little time to tell Barnaby things he needs to know about the business, and then I have something else to tell you, Rossalinde.”

  “Of course.”

  “Twomax, are you listening?”

  “Yes, Tingle. Here I am.”

  “Barnaby’s going to need your help for a year or two.”

  “Of course. Whatever I can do.”

  There followed a succession of instructions for Barnaby on which ledgers he needed for which transactions and how he was to pay the workers this much and not a penny less, and to keep up the free breakfasts to help them start the day right. And then it got personal because
Tingle said he’d been perfectly aware of the liaison between Barnaby and a certain low-class goblin girl whose family still lived underground, but it was all right because she was a good girl. She had a strong talent for glamour and would help him to keep the business looking the way it ought.

  Barnaby sat there and looked stunned. “Well, boy, if there’s anything you need to ask me, this is your last chance.”

  “I . . . err . . . does it hurt?”

  “What? Oh. It did, briefly, but not now. I have no regrets, Barnaby. I love you, boy. Be brave and be strong, and don’t go looking for black witches.”

  “I won’t. I promise. Never again.”

  “Rossalinde.” Tingle turned his attention to me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your debt to me . . . ”

  “Kill Walsingham?” I said.

  “Yes, that. But also negotiate for the goblins to be a free people under English law, with rights.”

  “I will. I promise.” I saw Corwen wince. I’d made a promise to a magical ghost, which was possibly the most serious promise I could make.

  “There’s consternation here,” Tingle said. “On this side of the divide, I mean. A spirit has been called back across and made corporeal. It wasn’t your doing, was it?”

  “No, I didn’t even know it could be done.”

  “It can’t. It shouldn’t be, but it has been. I wondered if it was you because it’s your brother.”

  “Philip?”

  Mr. Tingle started to fade. “I’ve said too much. Do your best, Rossalinde. Barnaby, I love you. Stay out of trouble.”

  With an audible pop, Joshua Tingle vanished.

  We all sat in silence, contemplating Tingle’s messages. Things were much more serious than I thought.

  If Philip was back, he’d be looking for revenge.

  “Whatever you need, the goblins are with you,” Twomax said. “Except for Barnaby.” He stared at the boy, “Who has promised his grandfather not to go looking for black witches.”

  Barnaby swallowed whatever he’d been going to say and nodded.

  “Walsingham has declared war on the goblins, today. Tingle was a good man, and Barnaby’s three friends were loved sons of good families. We can’t suffer such losses and allow Walsingham to live. When you’re ready to go after him, count us in.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wanted to rouse the goblins with pretty speeches and an appeal to their better nature,” I said to Corwen as we left the house and made our way toward the river. “I didn’t want to do it over the corpses of Tingle and Barnaby’s friends.”

  “I know.” Corwen took my hand and guided me over the cobbles outside the Palace of Westminster. It was a good thing he did because my eyes were blurry with tears.

  * * *

  Corwen and I reached Westminster Bridge and hired a boat to take us to Wapping Old Stairs where the Heart of Oak lay at anchor.

  The tide was on the turn. Soon the waters churning beneath London Bridge would be a death trap, but it was slack water, and, for a brief time, the river idled beneath the arches and burbled around the broad, boat-shaped starlings which both protected the bridge piers and narrowed the river flow.

  The three rowankind had waited for us on board, recovering from their seasickness and resting up, ready for the journey back to Hull from where they’d been stolen some years ago. We wished them well and gave them the fifty guineas we’d promised for news of the book. Alfred shook our hands, each in turn.

  “I’d like to say the fifty guineas is unnecessary,” he said, “since we didn’t actually find the book for you, but it will get us back home and give us enough to set ourselves up with a little shop.”

  “If you have any problems, Iaru is still open,” Corwen said. “You’ll be welcome there.”

  “We know. We’ll remember.”

  “Don’t get caught using magic,” I added.

  “We won’t.”

  The rowankind clambered down into the boat we’d arrived in. They planned to take the York-bound coach from the Cross Keys in Wood Street. Corwen said softly. “I’m going to miss them. I hope they’ll be all right.”

  “I think Alfred’s common sense will guide them through. And the fifty guineas won’t hurt. Where did that come from, by the way?”

  “Old Nick’s coffers. I stood over Jim until he put it into my hand.”

  I laughed. “He’s not going to miss it, is he? He’s got a fortune. Several fortunes.”

  “I hope he lives long enough to spend it all. I don’t usually say that about pirates, but after Old Nick, Jim is positively benign. The people of Auvienne are certainly better off with him in charge.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  38

  Sundered

  THANKS TO BARNABY Tingle, we knew where Walsingham was. We’d found him once before at the White Lion public house close by Vauxhall Stairs. It had been the time we’d rescued Philip. By taking him with us, we’d drawn a viper into our nest.

  I wondered why Walsingham would return to a previous location. Mr. Tingle’s news, however, about the spirit of my brother being dragged from the afterlife and made flesh carried its own weirdly internal logic.

  Walsingham was scarred and maimed. He’d lost one arm and both his eyes, and the explosion on the Black Hawk had scarred him all down one side from groin to head. He needed someone to be his eyes, someone he trusted implicitly—and he was not a man to give trust easily. Philip had been his lieutenant, accepting his ideology absolutely. He’d looked to Walsingham as the father figure missing from his childhood.

  Our father had been a sea captain, absent on long voyages and then seeming like a visitor in his own house. I was his favorite, and he showed it. I’d been too young to know how unfair it was at the time, but with hindsight I recognized it now. Philip was much younger than me, still a child when Father was lost at sea, but I don’t recall any tears other than my own.

  For all those reasons and more, Philip was the ideal person to become Walsingham’s eyes and hands, and the last place Walsingham had had Philip close to him had been when they’d lodged at the White Lion. Bringing a spirit back from the dead and making him corporeal was a massive undertaking. Walsingham would have needed every advantage, so using the right place for a working might be crucial.

  Or Walsingham might have given his spirit another body. Alfred had said the man calling himself Philip Goodliffe looked nothing like me, and I knew that when I dressed as a man, I looked a lot like Philip. So it was possible Philip now inhabited someone else’s body. Had that person shared his body with Philip willingly or not? Had he been ripped from his body and left as a sundered spirit?

  I could speculate all I wished, but if Walsingham was tied to one place, I knew he would have protected it with every spell in his arsenal.

  We needed a magical army.

  Luckily, the goblins had offered.

  We gathered by Westminster Bridge, ten of the best fighters from the Heart and a phalanx of Twomax’s goblins. This time Hookey had insisted on being included. Corwen was in wolf form, using his nose to best advantage, and would undoubtedly use his teeth when the time came. Twomax led the goblins, but he looked small compared to the physique of the fighters he’d brought with him, magically savvy as well as strong and quick.

  We split into two groups, one to approach by road, one by river. I was in the prow of the Heart’s boat as we nosed into Vauxhall Stairs. I had Corwen Silverwolf pressed up against my side and Hookey by my shoulder. Billy and Windward handled the oars while the Greek was at the tiller. Our number was enhanced by six strapping sailors.

  Twomax led the road party, trying to blend in with merrymakers on their way to Vauxhall Gardens. As we approached Vauxhall Stairs, another boat was disgorging passengers dressed for an evening of revels. We hoped the number of people would mask our intent. />
  We took our turn and disembarked onto the steps. The stink from the vinegar works, sharp and pungent, overcame the smell of the river. The White Lion fronted onto the lane that led from the river toward the gardens, a low building with two bow windows and a central door. Last time it had been full of customers and lit warmly with lanterns. This time it was dark and deserted, its bow windows like two blind eyes.

  Corwen’s growl rumbled in his throat. The stink of magic mixed with vinegar was enough to set my eyes watering.

  “Where is the bastard?” Hookey asked.

  My ears were sharp enough to hear Twomax approaching from the back of the inn.

  “We’ll soon find out,” I said. “In we go.”

  Exactly as planned, Twomax’s goblins burst through the back door as we burst through the front, but instead of an inn full of people the ground floor was deserted except for a couple of broken chairs. Corwen streaked up the steps followed by Hookey and Billy as Twomax checked the cellars.

  Nothing.

  The bird had flown.

  “I can still feel it,” I said. “There’s dark magic here.” I put up a witchlight and saw the flagstone floor covered with symbols, scribed in something dark and sticky.

  “Mind where you put your feet,” I said. “Someone’s done a strong working here.”

  “What is it?” Twomax curled his nose. “It smells bad.”

  The last time I’d seen something like this was in an old warehouse in Plymouth where Walsingham had worked blood magic.

  “There’s something here,” I said. “In the center of the working.”

  “Can’t see anything,” Hookey said.

  Everyone was milling about, now, having ascertained the building was empty.

  “Wait.” I put out a hand and searched with my magical senses.

  I found something small and weak, barely a residual shadow of whatever, whoever it had been.

  A sundered spirit, not quite dead, but not alive either.

  “Hush,” I said. “Keep still. Stand back.”