Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  Again the broadsheets picked up the news, although this time the Times didn’t lag behind, reporting that beef was now so cheap due to the excess of bullocks that even beggars could eat beefsteak.

  So far as we knew, these happenings were occurring only in London. That was confirmed when we had a letter back from Lily.

  Corwen and I had taken a room at the Town of Ramsgate public house, by Wapping Old Stairs, letting Hookey have his cabin back. Our room was on the upper floor at the back of the building, so we had a view over the river to the Heart’s mooring and beyond. It made sense to keep the Heart in dock for a while longer until we’d dealt with the Walsingham threat.

  Hookey was all in favor of the idea because Lady Henrietta Rothcliffe was in town on some unnamed government business, and he had departed the Heart, dressed in his smartest outfit two days before and had not yet returned, though he’d left an address where we could reach him. I noted it was a good address in Mayfair. I wished him and Etta happy for as long as it lasted, and hoped that if their relationship were to end, it wouldn’t hurt my friend. Tough as he was with a pistol in his good hand, I didn’t think Hookey’s heart was armored against rejection.

  Lily’s letter confirmed all was normal in Yorkshire. No unaccountable unicorns or dairy cows turning into bullocks. They’d had no further trouble from the Mysterium, she said. Also George had written to his grandfather but felt everyone would benefit from disclosure of information. She’d underlined information three times for emphasis. We knew what she meant.

  Corwen read the letter twice and then passed it over to me. “If we don’t test Pomeroy soon, in a controlled situation, Lily’s going to give the game away. We should go to Yorkshire.”

  “What if the goblins get news of Walsingham while we’re away?”

  He groaned. “I know. We need to be in two places at once.”

  “We could invite George to come down here.”

  He frowned, thinking it through. “I suppose it makes sense in a way. If he reacts badly to magic, and, lord knows, I hope he doesn’t, arranging an accident might be our only option. It will be easier to arrange when he’s a hundred and eighty miles away from Lily and in a large and dangerous city.”

  I shuddered. “I’m not sure I could do it. I’m getting soft.”

  “I sincerely hope I don’t have to,” Corwen said, “but I’ll not see Lily endangered. If it’s a choice between Pomeroy and my little sister, then I’ll not be found wanting.”

  This was a side of Corwen I didn’t see very often; though I knew he would never turn such ruthlessness against me, it still made me shudder.

  He wrote back to Lily suggesting Pomeroy might come to London where certain information—underlined three times—might safely be disclosed.

  40

  Mrs. Pomeroy

  WE MIGHT NOT even have noticed the next wonderment from the Fae except that the Times reported it. Members of Parliament, both the upper and lower houses, awoke on the morning of the twelfth day of June to find that their left feet had grown to be a full three inches longer than their right. Those keen to undertake their Parliamentary business had wrapped the offending foot in bandages and ventured out, but most had sent for their physicians and remained abed.

  What next, we wondered.

  On the fourteenth day of June the leaves of every tree in London turned blood red.

  “I think the Fae have made their point,” Corwen said as we rode Timpani and Dancer around the edge of St James’ Park. It seemed like half the population of London was abroad, all ogling the trees in their crimson glory.

  We listened to snatches of conversation. There was no sense of fear, rather a sense of wonderment and speculation as to what magic was causing this. Some even suspected the Mysterium of having a hand in it. Some grumbled at the lack of fresh milk; others laughed at the predicament of the politicians with their odd-sized feet. It seemed there was nothing the average Londoner liked more than the discomfiture of the political classes.

  “Do you think the king and Parliament are ready to listen yet?” I asked.

  Corwen shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  On the fifteenth day of June we received a message at the Town of Ramsgate to say Pomeroy had arrived and would like to receive us at number thirty-eight Margaret Street, an address near Cavendish Square.

  “It’s a good address,” I said as we rode through streets which had become familiar last year when we’d been in London looking for Freddie.

  “Indeed. Well, he did tell us his grandfather was an earl, but I didn’t expect Pomeroy himself to be a gentleman of any great wealth.”

  We arrived at the correct address, a town house of substance. As we mounted the steps, the butler opened the door and called a footman to take our horses. He showed us upstairs to where Pomeroy was waiting, standing with his back to the fireplace. Next to him stood Lily.

  I felt a shock run through Corwen. Lily had come to town with Pomeroy, and there was no evidence of a chaperone. Our own conjugal behavior before we’d married was one thing, but Lily was Corwen’s little sister and a respectable miss, now much compromised. He took one step forward in anger, but Lily forestalled him and jumped between Corwen and Pomeroy, holding out her left hand to show the gold band on her third finger.

  It stopped Corwen in his tracks.

  “Don’t be angry, brother,” Lily said. “Wish us happy.”

  I saw emotions cross Corwen’s face so fast he probably wasn’t aware of them all himself. Rage, frustration, and then despair. He glared at Pomeroy and then said in a low voice, “How much does he know?”

  Pomeroy took hold of Lily’s hand, pulling her to his side, then faced us.

  “I know Mrs. Deverell is a witch,” he said. “A powerful one who numbers Fae among her acquaintances. I know there are secrets in the Deverell family, and I swear that nothing you can tell me will make me love Lily any less. Whatever happens, I will protect this family from the Mysterium if it costs me my life to do it.”

  “See,” Lily said. “I told him nothing.”

  “Then you married him under false pretenses, and I am sorry for it.” Corwen’s look would have withered grass where it grew, but it slid off Lily in her naiveté.

  “Do you have servants in the house besides the butler and footman?” Corwen asked Pomeroy.

  “Five, including them,” Pomeroy said. “They’re my grandfather’s. This is one of his houses which he lets me use when I’m in town.”

  “Send them all out for the afternoon,” Corwen said. “What we must discuss needs complete privacy.”

  Pomeroy nodded and went to give the order. While he was out of the room, Corwen glared at Lily. “You had no right to put him in this position,” Corwen said. “If he can’t accept what he’s about to see, he’s a danger not only to us, but to all magicals. I can’t let that happen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I . . . you can’t . . . I didn’t think . . . ” She took a deep breath. “Don’t hurt him, Corwen. If you do, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “At least you’ll be alive and free and will have a choice about forgiving me or not.”

  “What’s all this about forgiveness?” Pomeroy came back into the room.

  “A small family disagreement, Mr. Pomeroy,” I said. “It will soon be resolved one way or the other.”

  “Please we’re family now. Call me George.” He waved us to the elegantly upholstered chairs. “The servants are leaving, so I’m afraid I can’t offer you tea. May I offer you a glass of something stronger?” He waved to an array of decanters on the sideboard.

  I gave Corwen a sideways glance.

  “Maybe later,” Corwen said.

  Pomeroy sat on the sofa with Lily by his side.

  “Let me start,” I said. “Mr. Pomeroy . . . George . . . you’re right, I am a witch, and not a registered one, either. I e
xpect you already checked the Mysterium’s registers to ascertain that. It’s a long story as to why I didn’t register, but the main reason is that I was out of the country when I turned eighteen. I’m not a regular spell-using witch, though I have some small spells I can work. I’m a summoner. I can summon the spirits of the dead and I can also find things and people and summon them to come to me under certain circumstances. I have an affinity for wind and weather, and I can do this.”

  I called light into the palm of my hand. I tossed it up and brought it down into the unlit oil lamp on the table. It settled into the glass, giving off a glow like a perfectly normal lamp.

  “It’s cold light, though. Making it hot enough to turn into fire is much more difficult.”

  “That’s beautiful,” George said. “There’s nothing frightening in that.”

  “Yet the Mysterium would hang me for it.”

  “The Mysterium was formed in 1590 to preserve the country from witchcraft,” Corwen said. “I’m sure the intentions of Queen Bess were the best, but power corrupts. You need only look at the history of Matthew Hopkins, who named himself the Witchfinder General. Hundreds of innocents condemned for one man’s greed.”

  “The Mysterium no longer offers a bounty for witches.”

  “That’s one good thing, though with the zeal which some officers pursue witchcraft, one might almost think the days of the Witchfinder General have returned.”

  George Pomeroy nodded. “Something my grandfather is most concerned about.”

  “It’s not only witchcraft, George,” I said. “This country has always had magical beings: goblins, hobs, pixies, trolls, shapechangers, and sprites. Most of them are shy and rarely interact with humans, so they’ve stayed hidden for centuries.” I slipped in the idea of shapechangers along with all the others before we got into specifics.

  “And rowankind, too,” George said.

  “Rowankind are different. They’re related to the Fae.”

  “You didn’t mention the Fae in your list of magical beings.”

  “The Fae are different again. You can’t compare a goblin, a hob, or a pixie to a Fae. The Fae are as far above them as humans are to cats. The Fae don’t live in our world; they live in a parallel world called Iaru. Some scholars call it Orbisalius, the Otherworld. It exists in the same space as our world, but maybe not in the same time.”

  I tried to describe it by telling him about two sheets of paper, loosely rolled, that take up the same space as one roll but are still separate. “And where the papers brush up against each other, there are gates where those who know how to use them can travel from one world to the next.”

  George nodded. All right so far. I glanced at Corwen, and he nodded at me to continue. “So, George, imagine the Fae are all-powerful, and they have their own magical realm, yet for all their power, the one thing they rarely manage is procreation with their own kind. There are very few children born to two Fae parents. Thousands of years ago the Fae solved their problem by creating the rowankind from their own selves and the rowan trees of the forest. The rowankind became Fae servants, and then helpmeets and then lovers and mothers of Fae children.”

  I told him how Martyn the Summoner, had drawn the rowankind from Iaru with a magical working so huge that he’d never recovered from it. “That’s how Queen Bess defeated the Spanish Armada, but the working drove Martyn half mad. He couldn’t undo what he’d done, and neither could the Fae, so the Fae did what they thought was best for the rowankind. They took away their memories of Iaru, so they could live in our world without being consumed by sadness for what they’d lost.”

  “But the rowankind got their magic back suddenly,” George said.

  “That was Ross,” Corwen said. “Martyn the Summoner was her many times great-grandfather, and so it fell to her to restore the magic and the memories to the rowankind, at no small risk to herself, I should add.”

  “And while you might think the Mysterium is our biggest problem,” I said, “it isn’t. There’s a government appointee so secret that even the Mysterium doesn’t know much about him and his followers. The first one was Sir Francis Walsingham, appointed by Queen Bess over two hundred years ago to investigate magical threats to the kingdom. Ever since the first Walsingham, the new appointees have been Walsinghams. It’s a position, not a name.”

  “Sir Francis Walsingham sought Ross’ ancestor but couldn’t find him,” Corwen said. “Successive generations of Walsinghams have sought successive generations of Summoners, or Sumners as they came to be called, until a Walsingham killed all of Ross’ family except the twin sisters, Marjorie and Rosie, and died doing it.”

  “Marjorie was my mother,” I said, “and a new Walsingham, the oldest apprentice, arose and continued the quest to wipe out my family to keep us from restoring rowankind power.”

  “But you did.”

  “And now he wants his revenge. It’s gone beyond his commission from the king. It’s personal. Sooner or later, I’ll find him, or he’ll find me, and we’ll finish this thing between us.”

  “That’s the big family secret?” George asked.

  “No, that’s the background to it,” I said. “This is my family secret. I met Corwen while I was trying to solve the problem of the rowankind because he was sent by the Lady of the Forests to watch over me. To be my watch-wolf.”

  I saw George mouth the words, watch wolf, with a puzzled look on his face and then I saw the understanding dawn in his eyes as he remembered the list of magical beings, including “shapechanger.” He turned to Corwen. “You’re a werewolf.”

  Corwen raised his eyes to heaven. He’s always been markedly annoyed when someone has confused him with a werewolf. “Please, I’m not moon-called. I can control my changes and my bloodlust. I’m a shapechanger.”

  Lily cleared her throat. “George, my love, I should have told you. It runs in the family.”

  * * *

  Lily fell to her knees in front of George and took both his hands in hers.

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you before we married, but I was so afraid of losing you.”

  George said nothing. It was as if the knowledge had turned him into a statue. I’m not even sure he was breathing.

  I crossed to the sideboard and poured brandy from a decanter into a glass. Leaning over Lily, I pushed it into George’s unresisting hand. “Drink, George.”

  As if in a dream he downed it all in one gulp and then began to cough. I took the glass from him and refilled it.

  “Another?”

  “No.” His voice cracked. “No, thank you. Lily, I . . . I need time to think.”

  He walked out of the room, apparently in full command of his emotions, but the instant the door closed behind him, I heard him let out a great shuddering breath. Then the front door slammed behind him as he ran out into the street.

  “George!” Lily dashed to the window. “He’s gone.” She gulped back a sob.

  “I should follow him,” Corwen said. “If he’s heading for the nearest Mysterium office or militia post, we’re all dead.”

  “Don’t hurt him!” Lily said.

  Corwen simply shook his head, which could have meant anything, and slipped out after Pomeroy.

  “For what it’s worth, I think George just needs time,” I said. “I can’t believe that he’d put you in danger.” I touched Lily’s arm. “He’ll be back.”

  I was sure of that, but I didn’t know whether he’d be returning as part of the family or whether he’d have a Mysterium death squad at his heels.

  I watched the minutes tick past on the elegant grandfather clock in the corner. Five became ten. Ten became twenty. Lily began to pace the floor, then she flung herself in a chair for a few minutes before leaping up and pacing again. There was nothing I could say to comfort her, but the longer it went on, the more I thought it unlikely that George had reported us. Surely if he had,
we’d have been running from the law by now. I trusted that if George had gone to the Mysterium, Corwen would have been able to come back with a warning and give us time to escape.

  It seemed like days, but it was perhaps not much more than an hour before Corwen returned. “He’s on his way back,” he said. “And he hasn’t spoken to anyone. He’s simply been walking the streets.”

  “Oh, thank heavens!” Lily collapsed into a chair with tears running down her cheeks.

  I pushed a handkerchief into her hands. “Mop up,” I said. “No sniveling, no apologies. Explain all you like, but don’t apologize for what you are.”

  She sniffed and gulped but dried her eyes.

  We all tried to look calm when George came back into the room, but Lily’s eyes were red-rimmed. He immediately knelt in front of her.

  “I’m sorry. I needed to think.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to tell you sooner, but . . .” She remembered my words. “I’m not sorry for what I am. I’ll try not to let it complicate your life if . . . if you still want me to be your wife.”

  “Oh, Lily, of course I do.”

  I glanced over at Corwen with one eyebrow raised, and he shrugged. That was it. George was family now.

  I put a second glass of brandy on the small table close to his right hand.

  “You’ll get used to having a mate who is sometimes human and sometimes not,” I said. “Corwen and Lily’s changes are beautiful, and they can control them perfectly. When they are in wolf form, they retain human understanding though it meshes with their animal instincts. The advantage is that they have heightened senses of smell and hearing, and in the change, they can heal themselves of wounds.”

  “And the disadvantage?”

  “None at all, unless the Mysterium catches them.”

  I didn’t delve into the story of Corwen and Freddie aboard the Guillaume Tell. There was time enough for that detail later.