The Mislaid Magician (14 page)

Are you still afflicted with your superfluous child, or has the lapse of an additional week been enough to discover her appropriate residence? I am desolated to inform you that my familiarity with the term
laid couching
derives primarily from my father’s occasional tirades on the rapacity of my mother’s dressmakers, which he was used to punctuate by reading off details from the bills. From that alone, I conclude that one would be well-inlaid indeed to spring for a petticoat adorned with such stitch work.

Waltham remains among the missing, so far as I am aware. Should he resurface, I shall send him your way at once. In deference to your preference for a calm, well-ordered life, I shall try to warn you of his coming in sufficient time to make your escape before he arrives, but a taste of his wife’s temper is the least he merits, after foisting that house party on us.

Yours,

James

(This letter warranted to be enchanted against the unknown reader by the ever patient and always dutiful T.S.)

Dear Cecy,

This will make the third time I have begun this letter. The first time, Edward spilt ink on my opening lines. The second time, I spilt the ink myself. This time, I have taken steps to prevent a recurrence. I write to you from a table by the east window of the nursery, a table free of arrowroot biscuit crumbs and lead soldiers. I write to you whilst the children are having their naps. I write to you with the help of a sadly depleted inkwell. Even if I knocked this one over again, it wouldn’t have much left to spill.

It rained yesterday, and it is raining today, the kind of soaking, cold rain that I am assured is good for the crops but that seems as if it will go on falling day after day after day, forever and ever, amen. I persuade myself this is an excellent thing, for if the weather were fair, it would be even more difficult to keep the children safely indoors. Still, I wish it would stop.

In truth, I see signs of restiveness amongst the infantry. Edward has squabbled disgracefully with Arthur over sharing his toy soldiers. This morning I heard Eleanor ask Drina if she is under an enchantment that forbids her to speak. Drina held her peace. Of course.

Yet I had the distinct impression that if Drina is not under an enchantment already, Eleanor would like to see that situation remedied, this time with an enchantment to compel her to speak. I must remember to warn Thomas. This is no time for him to indulge his niece’s taste for spell casting. It would be just like Thomas—

I take up my pen again after a short interruption (a disagreement between Laurence and his last meal, alas). This time I do not write in solitary peace. No, the children are at the table with me, as we all write to you. A fresh ink pot is at hand, so anything can happen. As usual.

Cecy, at last I think we have established a reliable means of communication with young Drina. As we shared the new ink pot peaceably among us, Eleanor asked Drina if she would write to her mother, too. Drina’s face lit up, and she seized pen and paper with such joy that I have been castigating myself ever since for not thinking to suggest it sooner.

Drina did not write to her mother. On the sheet of paper, she carefully formed the words, “If I speak, my mother will be harmed,” and turned the paper so Eleanor could read it aloud.

“Goodness, who says so?” I demanded.

It required another dip into the ink pot, but Drina put her pen to paper and wrote, “Mister Scarlet.”

It took time, persistent questioning, and quite a lot of paper, but I now have what I believe to be as much information about Drina as she is willing to give us.

I also believe I have a full account of Edward’s experience and at least a partial one of Drina’s. I take great pride in this feat, not least because I managed it despite Thomas’s attempts to help.

You will forgive me, I hope, for forming a halting series of questions and answers into a narrative. I begin with Edward’s experience, on the grounds that while it may be less important in the grand scheme of things, it matters more to me.

What happened to Edward:

As has been speculated, Edward climbed into the tinker’s cart whilst under the misapprehension that it was the most attractive and fascinating mode of conveyance in the world. His mistake was borne in upon him speedily, when the true nature of the wagon reasserted itself a few miles down the road. Edward found himself in a rattletrap of a cart, crowded in among a bale of rags, a roll of mildewed carpeting, and a few stoneware jugs.

The driver of the vehicle, such a convincing gypsy woman to our eyes, appeared to Edward as a man with ginger hair and a face flushed red as beetroot (he had to have been our Mr. Scarlet) when he discovered his stowaway.

“I don’t believe it,” Scarlet said.
“Another
brat.”

For a moment, Edward was sure that Scarlet would hurl him out of the wagon, but the man relented. With a few muttered words, Scarlet put what I surmise to have been a sleeping spell upon Edward, for he grew drowsy and remembers nothing more of the journey. Edward denies this vigorously and claims that he saw a gnome spinning straw into golden jackstraws, but I believe this must have been a dream.

Once in Stroud, for that is the next thing Edward remembers at all clearly, Edward was rolled into the carpet and transported from the wagon to the house. Sputtering and indignant, he emerged to find himself locked in an upstairs room, Mr. Scarlet’s prisoner.

At first, Drina was distinctly hostile. Edward had to explain to her that he had been kidnapped whilst protecting his Aunt Georgy before Drina grasped he was a fellow prisoner. Once she did so, however, she was prompt about ordering him to escape and fetch help immediately. The first stage of this plan pleased Edward enormously, as a leg up into the soot of the chimney was exactly what suited him.

Unfortunately, escape was not so simple. Although he was able to climb up high enough to elude any groping arm Mr. Scarlet cared to extend, Edward could not go very far without the risk of wedging himself into a flue that would neither let him advance nor retreat. Drina exhorted him mightily, but there was no help for it. He could hide, but he could not flee.

Edward would not be Edward, however, if some exploration had not taken place. Whilst discovering that he did not indeed have the entire run of every flue, Edward succeeded in climbing far enough to overhear a discussion from one of the rooms downstairs.

“Pretty work, Captain Crimson,” a deep voice said, loudly enough to capture Edward’s complete attention. I believe he thought the presence of a captain implied the possibility of pirates. “You were supposed to steal the lady, not tell her fortune.”

In hope of hearing more clearly, Edward wriggled into a perilously narrow spot. From there, he was certain he recognized the voice of Mr. Scarlet. “You were supposed to deliver your message and be on your way. I don’t need advice from you.”

“I can’t leave empty-handed, Scarlet. You haven’t given me your reply.”

Scarlet sounded cross to Edward. “If I’m not nippy enough to suit him, tell his nibs to send more money. All this racing from one end of the world to the other takes time, and the faster I travel, the poorer it leaves me.”

The deep voice laughed an unpleasant laugh. “I don’t think you’d really care to send him that message.”

“I don’t think I really care what you tell him. If he doesn’t like the way I work, he can find someone else.”

“Brave talk. Now, in all seriousness, how shall I explain your delay to the old boy?”

Scarlet sounded angry. “What delay? The moment you gave me his orders, I carried them out.”

The deep voice was patient. “You didn’t. You only frightened her. Leaving that aside, you kept me waiting here for two days before I could give you the message. He’s going to ask me where you were.”

“I was making arrangements. Places like this don’t just spring up like mushrooms, you know.”

The sarcastic voice sounded surprised when Edward heard him speak again. “What the devil was
that?”

Mr. Scarlet sounded brisk. “That’s a finding spell, you gudgeon. Someone with the goods is headed this way. Either he’s right on top of us, or he’s powerful enough to turn us to stone from a mile away. Best not be around when he gets here.”

“I was supposed to bring the chit back with me,” the deep voice protested.

“You just look to yourself—you have your work cut out for you.” This time Mr. Scarlet sounded sarcastic. “Who do you think the finding spell is for, anyway? You? I’m the one who stuck his neck out.”

“You’ll get it stretched one day.”

“That’s why I’m off out of here. Come along or it will be you for the jump.”

From the sound of things, Edward judged Mr. Scarlet and the man with the deep voice left together. Edward extricated himself from that particular bit of flue but heard nothing more.

I gather that Edward’s exploration of the system of chimneys fully occupied the rest of his time, for if anything, he seemed to feel our arrival cut his adventure short. Edward believes that but for our interruption, he might yet have found a way out. For me, our arrival came not a moment too soon. Given that my eldest son ran the additional risk of getting stuck up a chimney to be smoked like a kipper, I’m even happier we arrived when we did.

Now for Drina’s story, much of which I have discounted on the grounds that it is all too easy for a youngster to exaggerate matters to earn attention. She views her family as the most important and influential in the world, with the possible exception (a grudging concession made to Arthur’s persistence) of Lord Wellington. And King George, of course.

What happened to Drina:

Drina refuses to explain how she fell into the hands of the man she calls Mr. Scarlet. She seems embarrassed, as if she considers it to be her fault. I assure her that whatever happened, it is the fault of Mr. Scarlet and no one else, but this does not sway her. She writes that she found herself in the room where she met Edward, with no recollection of an arrival, let alone a journey. There must be more to tell than that, but that is where Drina begins.

Drina woke to find herself a prisoner in a strange room, in a strange house, in a strange town. I dread to contemplate what I would feel finding myself in such circumstances even now. At her age, I am convinced I would have wept myself into a spasm.

Drina, I judge, is made of stern stuff. She viewed her situation with aplomb. Her opinion of Mr. Scarlet is low. It was formed during their first encounter.

Mr. Scarlet performed a spell. He didn’t tell Drina what it was supposed to do. Drina felt no different after than she did before. Mr. Scarlet performed a second spell, still to no effect, and then a third. Drina still felt no different, but Mr. Scarlet informed Drina that she was under an enchantment. If she dared speak to anyone of her family, they—specifically her mother and older sister—would be harmed. Silence was her duty.

If Drina dared to attempt escape, her mother would be murdered, her older sister sold into the stews. If Drina were recaptured, Mr. Scarlet promised her that by then she would be nothing more than a helpless orphan; thus he would deal with her as he saw fit, perhaps even unto selling Drina into the stews herself.

Monstrous as the stews are, shameful as the very idea of their existence must be to any decent man or woman, I find men like Mr. Scarlet more monstrous still. That he made threats of that nature to anyone—most of all to a child—brands him an unspeakable coward as well as a villain of deepest dye. How can the likes of Mr. Scarlet run free in the streets?

Reardon comes from Stroud. Even if her last relation there is gone, there remains a web of mutual acquaintance. I rely on Reardon to be our eyes and ears in the hunt for Mr. Scarlet. A creature like that deserves the fullest punishment.

Upon consideration, however, I will grant that Mr. Scarlet seems to have confined his villainy to bullying threats. Judging from Drina’s account, and judging from the condition of her clothing, as well as of her person, Drina was in his hands no more than one or two days. She seems to have come to no physical harm whatsoever at his hands.

Indeed, Mr. Scarlet—or possibly an accomplice—went to sufficient trouble to prepare her regular meals. Mr. Scarlet delivered those meals on a tray, using each visit as a chance to confirm that Drina was secure in her cell and that she had sufficient drinking water as well as a change of chamber pot.

Mr. Scarlet was vigilant. The only meal Drina missed was luncheon on the day of Edward’s arrival. There was no tray that afternoon. (I presume the cur was too busy threatening Georgy and abducting Edward.)

Fortunately, Thomas and I scared Scarlet off before he could harm either Edward or Drina.

Drina appears to consider herself to have been an involuntary houseguest, rather than a prisoner. I think she is now enjoying herself very much. The chance to be a figure of mystery plays a part in her enjoyment, but I suspect there is something more basic at work. From her deportment, I judge her to be almost painfully well brought up. Here at Skeynes, she has the opportunity to be a child among children. She enjoys being with the twins, who are of an age with her, so greatly that I am sure it is a novelty to her. She mothers our babies at every opportunity, showing little skill but great enthusiasm for the art. Where she comes from we are sure to learn in time. When we do, I am convinced we will find she is the baby of the family, lectured sternly as often as she is indulged.

I shall persist in my efforts to win Drina’s confidence. Be sure that I will share every detail I discover.

Love,

Kate

P.S.
Your letter of the 21st has just arrived. Thomas is beside himself with questions. I am relieved and delighted that you and James are safely out of Haliwar Tower. Take great care. —
K.

P.P.S.
Georgy is composing a letter of apology to you and James. She (belatedly but sincerely) regrets exposing your children to risk. From the amount of time she devotes to this missive, I fear it will be extremely long. It may even be in verse. I thought you should be warned. —
K.