They were circling the Plain, and anticipating her turn onto Magdalen Bridge, Larkin said: “Not that way; not town. Let’s make our way up St Clement’s.”
So she followed him, in the direction of Headington. He asked no questions about the first part of the story, so she resumed with its next act.
“Lucy was a healthy baby, and also unusual. At the age of six months, she spoke her first sentence – and it was crystal clear. She said: ‘Bring me a quill.’”
“Christ.”
“She said it as her mother dressed her for the day, then had to repeat it, because her mother was so stunned. ‘Bring me a quill, and fine paper’ – which would have been paper made from linen. Eventually her mother went to fetch the items and returned with Lucy’s father. They watched Lucy make a series of strikes on the piece of paper.”
“Babies can scribble, can’t they?”
“Not at six months, and it wasn’t scribble. She was writing, though her family couldn’t tell what language. Her gestures and rhythm and the duration with which she wrote were clearly well controlled. The nanny eventually announced her departure, as she believed Lucy to be a changeling. Her parents were less alarmist, but recognising that the nanny’s reaction was unlikely to be an isolated case, they paid the woman for her silence and kept Lucy’s strange linguistic abilities a secret.”
“Did her parents ever understand what she was writing?”
“No, but her younger sisters were born knowing the language, as she was. It’s a language for sorcery, and they’d learnt it while in the company of the fae folk. The sisters recorded words on small wooden discs – you saw a blank one in the picture of Lucy – which their descendants call hexes. Every descendant of the four women receives a hex when they turn thirteen.”
“Why?”
“It’s a precaution. When Lucy was just entering her teens, she explained to her parents that the fae folk have few natural emotions of their own. In fact the only feeling that is natural to them, and which they feel very deeply, is Envy. They covet human emotions very much but feelings are harder to steal than material possessions, so they try to force a trade through extortion or even abducting the person.
“Now Lucy was a very special child; she understood the language of sorcery, like the fae folk, but she felt emotion, like humans do. So she worked out how to simulate feelings with sorcery. She placed enchantments on her dolls because the fae folk are bad at distinguishing dolls from real people; they could be fooled into taking the doll, rather than its owner. Negative enchantments were included, because they were as attractive to the Thief as positive ones – if not more so. Once Lucy had her sons, she gave them hexes so that they might protect themselves similarly. They gave more of her hexes to their own sons, and it developed into a ritual, which has lasted till the present day, for sons anyhow.”
“What a clever myth,” Larkin observed. “It feels real because envy is the most natural emotion. The myth isn’t about the fae folk; it’s about us.”
Persephone wasn’t sure she had understood him. “But envy isn’t the most natural emotion.”
“Of course it is. It’s the most intense; the most primary. It’s the most real.”
“You don’t think there are any other feelings that are as real?”
“Lust, maybe. Anger – when the others are thwarted.”
“Not – belonging? Happiness? Love?”
“Belonging is an interesting one. There are definitely people with whom one senses a shared goal – and people who are outside that circle. The difference is rather stark, in my experience. I might agree that one is real. But happiness, and love – I think those are rarer than people pretend. Love especially – nearly everyone is pretending about that one. I’m not sure it even exists.”
As a bald statement this struck Persephone as absurd. But she admired Larkin – she valued his perspective; and she tried to reverse engineer a truth from what he had said. Hadn’t she first been drawn to him by a form of envy? She had wanted his skills for herself, and that was the soil from which her other feelings for him grew.
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” she said to Larkin. “But I’ll give the matter further thought.”
“So what do the Sorcerers do with the hexes? Do they paint them somewhere on the doll that’s hard to see? I know there aren’t any visible paint marks – I’d have noticed.”
Persephone was ready to say the words: you lick the hex on the doll. He could do nothing with the knowledge, any more than she could; neither of them owned any hexes. Yet she resisted telling him. For twenty minutes now, she had held his attention. The revelation must be spun out, to prolong his focus on her, for as long as possible.
She steered to the kerb, and stopped. “If I tell you, you won’t need to talk to me any more.”
“What?” Larkin stalled beside her.
“You won’t talk to me any more. I’m interesting because I know something you don’t. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“You are peculiar.” He laughed. “Imagine that being the only interesting thing about you. You’re easily the most interesting person on the eyot.”
“Damning with faint praise. I’m serious. Let me keep a last secret. For the time being.”
“Only one! All right. I can’t have done a very good job of persuading you we’re friends. I must try harder.”
“It’s probably me. I’m not used to having friends,” she confessed.
“Come make dolls with me tomorrow evening. You wanted Alastair to teach you craft, didn’t you? I can teach you craft. I know it’s not the same as learning from a Sorcerer, but—”
“Do you mean it?” Persephone asked fervently. “You’ll teach me?”
“If you’d like that.”
“I would,” she said.
They turned their bikes and rode, slowly, towards home.
24
The next morning, the interior designers discovered a break-in. One of the small windows in the lavatories had been shattered. The parquet floor in the designers’ workroom was damaged; a square yard of wooden blocks had been dislodged and the pieces had been strewn over the muddy earth behind the building. Rieko notified the police. Inspector Naidu and Sergeant Walcott arrived to rule out any connection with the theft of the Paid Mourner. They solemnly examined the shards of glass, and the hole in the parquetry, and took notes.
Rieko and the other designers began an inventory of their stock to see if anything had been taken. It didn’t appear so on first glance, but a small, precious item might easily be missing. Larkin offered to help, less from altruism than curiosity about what the police were doing. He ticked items off a printed list as Rieko checked tiny pieces of furniture.
Her work was charming, and demonstrated a higher level of skill than Larkin had anticipated. He reflected to himself that though her work was interpretive, rather than creative, a Sorcerer might apply his mind to her techniques and elevate them to something truly special.
“How long have you worked here?” Larkin asked, when the first diorama had been fully checked.
“Ten years. I started at the bottom; now I oversee the department. We’re doing OK. The press coverage of the theft gave sales a boost.”
“It’s the same upstairs. Are your customers very different from people who buy the dolls alone?”
“The audience for a full set, including dolls, is smaller, and the proportion of customers who live abroad is higher. We typically make two finished versions of every diorama – one that photographs well, and one that pleases the eye in real life.”
“They aren’t the same thing?”
Rieko shook her head. “In real life, you want your miniatures to be as finely detailed and as accurately scaled as possible, so the owner can delight in the exquisite craft. But in a photograph, it is easy to read highly realistic miniatures as full scale. To derive pleasure from it as a miniature scene the props must occupy a middle ground of being detailed enough to show craft but just slightly out of scale enough
to be recognisable as a model, rather than the real thing.” Rieko positioned a bright yellow bentwood chair, five inches high, in front of a grey backdrop patterned with large pink and green flowers. “See how this floral pattern is too large for the scene? That will emphasise the smallness of the chair.”
Larkin watched Rieko add a table made from an aerosol top. She placed a trio of glass vases, none taller than his forefinger, upon it and arranged purple sprays of miniature alliums inside them. Finally, she put a doll in position: a welder, her face visible beneath a raised mask, her skin marked with grime. Larkin reached out to feel her evocation.
“Ah ah ah – don’t touch,” Rieko scolded. “The interior is one part of a story which also includes what the doll looks like and, yes, how she makes you feel when you touch her. Ideally you want all those three elements to contrast with each other, because that’s where the drama comes from. But there must be sufficient tension, between the scene and the doll, based on visuals alone. The story must be visual first and foremost, because that is how your customer will, most likely, first encounter it.”
At the next table along, a model courthouse was arranged. “This is a commission,” Rieko said. “The purchaser expects to receive a highly realistic scene, and the first time they encounter it will be in reality. We have painstakingly painted the wooden panels to imitate correctly scaled grain. The trim is hand carved.”
In the dock stood a schoolgirl doll, wearing a gymslip, and holding a hockey stick. Dark plaits fell either side of her face. Thinking to ask this time, Larkin said: “May I touch her?”
“Yes – all three elements must work together.”
Larkin brushed the wool of the gymslip with his fingertips. The girl’s expression was neutral, a face composed for the avoidance of others’ judgement. But he was filling with Upstanding Indignation. Despite her youth, she reminded him, in appearance and mood, of Maria; Maria as she had been in Florence, plotting against Cristofano, before both she and Larkin were cast out.
The Indignation burnt him pleasurably, like a first shot of whisky. He closed his eyes to savour its spreading heat, and breathed deeply.
Rieko observed his reaction. “Enchantments have a powerful effect on you.”
“Isn’t that true for everyone?”
“Certainly not. That policeman... Walcott? Enchantments barely register with him. He thinks we’re all quite deluded, I’m sure of it, when we react to dolls. Naidu feels the enchantment but you can see she resents it. She doesn’t like that enchantments affect her. People must have different baselines.”
“So emotionally open people feel enchantments more strongly?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Walcott’s dull but I bet he’s well balanced; what you see is exactly what you get. Perhaps an enchantment is most potent for those of us who keep our feelings hidden. Hidden from ourselves, as much as other people. The enchantment opens a floodgate.”
Larkin didn’t like this observation. Rieko seemed to imply he lacked self-knowledge, and even if she was confessing a similar tendency, that wasn’t very flattering. He changed the subject. “Do you ever wish you could make the dolls yourself?”
“How do you know I can’t?” She veiled the courtroom with a sheet.
“Apologies; I spoke clumsily. I was a hobbyist till lately. I shouldn’t assume that the only true doll-making is for the market.”
“There are more good doll makers than there are vacancies on the top floor.”
“Did you express an interest in sorcery?” Larkin asked, surprised. It occurred to him that his own appointment may have caused resentment among longer-standing hopefuls.
“I never enquired,” she said. “I could see that design had better opportunities for advancement. I wouldn’t be head of sorcery, if I made dolls for sale.”
A passing designer, one of the middle-aged women Larkin didn’t know, remarked: “People would only say Alastair was doing your work for you.”
All the other designers in earshot laughed, except Rieko, and even she smirked.
“Maybe I make Alastair’s dolls,” she said.
Larkin was far more inspired than he expected to be by Rieko’s insights. For his own work, there was so much scope for imagination – in the dolls he would design, in the places he would house them, and most important of all, the enchantments laid upon them. He was sufficiently original to be confident in the first two. And the third he was determined to excel in also.
*
The inventory was finally completed, and Larkin returned to the top floor. The police were there, discussing the break-in with Alastair. Of the other Sorcerers, only Barnaby and Dennis were present at their workbenches, and they had put down their dolls to listen.
“I take it the alarm is normally set at night?” the Inspector asked.
“Yes. I was last out yesterday, and I set it myself,” Alastair replied.
“I was with him,” Dennis added.
“But it was off when you arrived this morning?”
Dennis nodded. “It didn’t make a peep last night. Would a burglar know how to crack it?”
“Depends how dirty it was.” Larkin sat down at his own workbench. “You can work out a code from the cleanest keys – or that’s what I’ve heard.”
The Inspector and sergeant exchanged a glance.
“But why go to that trouble and not take anything?” Barnaby asked.
“They didn’t come to steal,” Naidu said. “Just to vandalise.”
“Local kids making trouble,” Alastair suggested.
“Maybe. Might also be an employee,” Walcott said, “as they were able to turn off the alarm before they were detected. And they seemed to know the CCTV blackspots.”
“Can you think of any employee who’d be likely to do this?” Naidu asked Alastair.
“Since your lot ransacked their houses, morale has been low,” Barnaby cut in drily. “Are you going to interrogate everyone again?”
The Inspector arched an eyebrow. “We’ll take statements from anyone who has relevant information. That will be considerably quicker and less painful with your help. So I’ll ask again – does any employee have specific cause for resentment?”
Larkin was tempted to respond: Briar Kendrick was sacked and has a history of destroying property. But Persephone would hear of it and he needed her to trust him. So he stayed silent.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Alastair said. “If this latest… incident… was an employee letting off steam, we have our own internal disciplinary procedures. You should never have been called, Inspector. I’m sorry my wife wasted your time.”
“She didn’t,” Naidu said. “A pattern’s emerging, Mr Kendrick; it’s unlikely to be coincidence that the eyot’s experienced this break-in so soon after the last. We have to at least consider they’re related acts of sabotage. Now, it may be that someone outside Kendricks is responsible – and if they’ve left any dabs on the window, we’ll have a new line to pursue. But Sergeant Walcott will be speaking to all residents to take down their whereabouts last night and check if they saw anything suspicious in the vicinity. I trust we can proceed with your co-operation?”
Alastair rolled his eyes, but nodded. The sergeant could use his office for the remainder of the day. Larkin was called first, to give Walcott his alibi.
“I was out cycling with Persephone Kendrick,” he said. “Then we returned to the Eyot Tavern around eight. It would be impossible for me to leave again without someone seeing because Margot Mayhew was hostessing one of the Kendricks Collectors’ evenings in the main bar. They go on till dawn. Another one is scheduled for tonight.”
“Who attends those?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know any names, but I do know there’s a guest list – you have to sign in and sign out at the door – and Margot would have that. Possibly it has times on it, too.”
“So there aren’t any residents at these things?”
“Cosima Botham helps Margot with hostessing.”
“But
no one else? No local drinkers? Briar Kendrick wasn’t there for instance?”
“No, he’d be a disaster around the collectors. Too volatile.” Larkin wondered where Briar had been – in one of the town pubs, probably, where he was known by the bar staff and would have his presence verified for at least part of the night by them. But he must have returned home at some point. Then he would have been alone, without anyone to confirm his version of events. Larkin found himself hoping Briar was unalibied. It was right the police should look at him more closely; the man hit his daughter, for heaven’s sake. That made him a fair scapegoat, in Larkin’s eyes, for vandalising the parquet floor or even stealing the Paid Mourner – irrespective of Briar’s actual guilt.
Walcott jotted Larkin’s answer down in his notes, and flipped the page. The white paper beneath was heavily grooved from the force of Walcott’s handwriting.
“That’ll be all for now,” he said. “Send in Dennis Botham.”
Larkin did so. He returned to his workbench, and absently began sketching the courtroom Rieko had shown him. But he did not place the serious-faced schoolgirl in the dock. The figure he drew was Briar.
25
Hedwig returned to the butcher’s on Wednesday afternoon. Seeing that he was busy, and not wishing to repeat the charade of being a normal customer, she slipped along the side alley and let herself in by the back door. She waited between the marble slabs of meat until the butcher had reason to leave the counter. He hawked phlegm into the sink as he passed it. Hedwig wrinkled her nose in distaste.
“Here’s the money,” she said, offering her carpet bag of notes. She had never been as nervous as she was carrying that money on the train. Nervous, but excited, too. “And here’s a bag of elmwood, from the same tree as the Paid Mourner.”
She had scattered most of the pieces outside the workshop, retaining just the few she needed, to conceal that a theft had taken place. But there should be more than enough in the bag for Scarlotta to do the job.
“What about the wax?” asked the butcher.
“I couldn’t get my hands on any the right age. Can Scarlotta find some that’s period appropriate and match it?”
The Thief on the Winged Horse Page 14