Whisper of Magic

WHISPER OF MAGIC

Unexpected Magic, Book 2

Patricia Rice

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Edition
May 31, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61138-586-1
Copyright © 2016 Patricia Rice

Those of you familiar with my magical Malcolms and
scientific Ives know that I’m playing with possibilities more than I’m using
magic. Centuries ago, flying machines would have been magic and a scientific
impossibility. Today, we know they aren’t magic at all.

Of course, since I’m not dealing with fantasy magic but
elements of humanity, what my protagonists are really learning is to use what
they are given for the betterment of all—a lesson we should all take to heart.

So in Erran’s book, I’m playing with the possibility of
levitation—a psychic gift reported by spiritualists over the centuries and even
in the Bible. I’m also flirting with persuasion and Mesmerism—persuasive voices
have long been the basis for the success of everyone from snake oil salesmen to
politicians. Why else would perfectly sane people do exactly what a
particularly eloquent speaker tells them to do, even though they ought to know
better?

So as Hamlet says:
There
are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.
—
Hamlet
(1.5.167-8)

June 1830

Lord Erran Ives, barrister, glanced back at his client’s
shadow of a wife. The babe in her lap sucked at its fist, but even he could
tell the child was ill, and the children sitting quietly beside them were
undernourished. The family shouldn’t even be here, but they had nowhere else to
go. His sense of injustice burned like a flame in his chest as he waited for
the other barrister to finish speaking.

Once it was his turn, incensed by the half asleep judge’s
inattention to a poor family’s welfare, Erran drew himself up to his full
intimidating height and released his outrage in his closing statement. “To
allow the monstrous greed of the defendant to deprive a hardworking man and his
family the roof over their heads is an injustice so foul that all Britain must
stand and
cry for reparations!
”

As if in agreement with this impassioned speech, a gavel
rose and banged against the bench—startling the half-asleep judge whose hand
wasn’t on it. The judge jerked awake and stared in astonishment as the gavel
flew from the bench and slammed to the floor.

Hiding his puzzlement at this bizarre flight, knowing he’d
indulged in unseemly theatrics, Erran tightened his jaw and squared his
shoulders for the scolding to come. He’d be lucky he wasn’t thrown out of the
courtroom on his first case.

Behind Erran, the baby howled and the crowd awoke, first
with a low grumble, and then with increasingly agitated murmurs of “He’s
right!” and “
Hang all landlords
!”

Surreptitiously studying the now inert hammer on the floor while
he waited for the judge to establish order, Erran let his mechanic’s mind
calculate the possibility of his shouts vibrating the bench enough to bounce
off inanimate objects.

Instead of quieting at the judge and clerk’s commands, the
audience started stomping and chanting louder. They’d found a rhythm in a word
Erran couldn’t quite discern.

Wondering what fresh nightmare this was, he refrained from
glancing over his shoulder again or he would most likely blow a gasket. Were
they chanting at him? Why?

Prepared to face his punishment, Erran focused on the bench.
His head itched beneath his newly-acquired wig. Swallowing a lump in his
throat, he squared his shoulders and stiffened his spine. He hadn’t the
wherewithal to fix his clients’ problem on his own. The court was their only
resource. If Erran lost his plea, the man, his ill wife, and their three very
young children would be on the streets.

He had been their only hope. Now he would be their undoing.

The judge nodded in what appeared to be approval.

Disconcerted, Erran lurched back from his self-flagellation.
What did that nod mean? Why wasn’t the judge shouting at the bailiffs to haul
the noisemakers from his courtroom? Or throwing Erran out for inciting a riot?

Beside Erran, his normally apathetic clerk embraced their
openly weeping client.
What the deuce?

Erran regretted becoming more heated than was suitable for a
courtroom, but he certainly hadn’t said anything new or different to make grown
men weep. Everyone despised greedy landlords. No one ever did anything about
them. They were part of the landscape like sky and trees. Why tears and
sympathy for stating a basic fact?

While waiting for the axe to fall—or another gavel—he
finally sorted out what the crowd chanted:
Reparations,
reparations!

The half-asleep audience had picked up on his speech? Erran
had observed a lot of cases in his years of study. He had never seen or heard
anything of this sort. He glanced across the aisle. His client’s criminally
abusive landlord and his solicitor were conversing nervously.

What the devil was going on? His stomach clenched and his
throat locked. If the judge didn’t act soon, Erran thought he might collapse in
a puddle of sweat. And the mob behind him was likely to take the courtroom
apart.

The audience continued stomping and shouting, while the
bailiffs did nothing and one of the new policemen ran in from the street,
looking confused at the hubble-bubble.

The judge was going to throw him in jail and leave him to
rot. His brothers probably wouldn’t miss him for a year or two if he ended up
in chains.

He’d told them to cry
for reparations—
and they’d obeyed. Why?

With no gavel to restore order, the judge finally shouted,
“Let the court record state that Mr. Silas Greene must forfeit the entirety of
the building at 16 Foxcroft to Mr. Charles Moore and
his family in perpetuity. And if said Mr. Greene should ever face this court
again, he shall be fined every cent in his possession. Court adjourned.”

The crowd roared jubilantly, threatening to bring down the
rafters from the vibrations.

“What does that mean?” Mr. Moore asked anxiously, wiping at
his eyes.

“That the whole damned world has gone insane,” Erran
replied, but the noise was too loud for his client to hear, although his clerk
sent him a strange look.

“You’re possessed of the
devil
,”
Silas Greene, the landlord, snarled as he passed their table.

The devil
, what a
load of crockery . . .

Appalled, Erran shuddered as he recalled that term applied
to his Cousin Sylvester—the Ives with a silver tongue who’d repeatedly sold
fraudulent investments until forced to escape to the Americas. This wasn’t the
same at all, he told himself. He had right on his side.

It was just rare for right to triumph over wrong. And for
gavels to fly, but that had to be a coincidence of vibrations and atmosphere.
Devils did not exist.

Uneasy, but refusing to accept
evil
as an explanation of how an honorable suit over an eviction
had become a triumphant melee, Erran stalked out of the chambers, discarding
his robe and wig into the hands of his clerk before he escaped from the
building.

“The house is mine?” Following in his wake, timid Mr. Moore
stumbled in confusion as they reached the less noisy street. The Moore family
huddled together, confused and waiting to be told what to do.

“The house is yours,” Erran agreed, not believing it either.
“The clerks will draw up the papers and deliver them on the morrow. Tell your
wife she may move out of your employer’s cellar and back home.”

Moore was weeping again, this time in apparent relief as he gave
his family the verdict even Erran hadn’t expected.

Granted, the landlord had been a greedy bastard who’d thrown
the young family out when offered twice the rent by a neighboring merchant—but
that was business as usual for London. Erran had simply taken the case to
practice in a real courtroom now that he’d passed the bar.

He’d
shouted
at a
judge, and instead of rightfully being thrown out on his noggin—he’d won the
case in spectacular fashion.

The cloud darkening the previously bright summer day seemed
an ominous portent.

A crowd of his fellows swarmed up to congratulate him, and
Erran tried to shake off his apprehension. Jestingly, letting himself be
momentarily buoyed by triumph, he climbed up on a mounting block and made a
grandiose gesture. “All bow before your new lord and master!”

His jaw dropped as his fellow students, clerks, and friends
removed their tall hats and bent in half before him.

Worse, everyone on the crowded street—businessmen, urchins,
and timid Mr. Moore—all performed awkward gestures of obeisance. And looked
extremely confused a moment later after Erran jumped from his pedestal and fled
into the nearest tavern.

September 1830

Hunting for dry ground for his polished Wellingtons, Erran
didn’t see the mud ball until it knocked his black beaver hat into a puddle.
Bloody hell
. Erran stalked into the mews
in pursuit of the miscreants while his ten-year-old nephew Hartley Ives-Weldon
ran to rescue the expensive D’Orsay.

These days, Erran kept his formidable voice to himself, but
that didn’t mean he didn’t have fists to shake a few louts into next week. In
the narrow mews, he caught sight of the troublemakers taunting a slender woman
striding through the rutted mud. Realizing his hat hadn’t been their intended
victim didn’t quell his temper. More mud splattered the woman’s long black wool
cloak and hood as she marched toward the reprobates without flinching.

Abandoning his nephew, Erran ran after her, hoping to scare
the ruffians off with his greater size. He despised his preposterous delusions
about his voice, but he was taking no chances in a public venue. To this day,
most of his friends steered clear of him.

And once he’d returned to his senses, the judge had banned
him from his courtroom.

“You will take your mud balls and run or the wrath of all
the gods will rain upon your unworthy heads.” The woman berated her mockers in mellifluous
accents that sounded more like song than curses.

The beauty of her voice almost made up for the damage to his
new hat.

The rain of rocks and mud balls abruptly ceased. Stunned,
Erran watched as the lads vanished into doorways and alleys—terrified by a
song?

Apparently unsurprised by their retreat, the woman opened a
service gate into the yard of one of the substantial houses lining the left
side of the alley. Erran strained to catch a better look at the producer of
such a marvelous sound, but she didn’t turn around. Instead, she slipped into
the yard beyond the gate and shut the panel firmly.

Realizing what gate she’d just used—Erran would have flung
his hat in a puddle again, if he’d been wearing it.

Bloody damn hell
—he’d
been trying to get into that house for a week. No one ever answered the door.
He’d thought no one was home.

“Miss!” he called over solid English oak topped by wrought
iron. He had learned to modulate his voice, but making it carry would require
shouting if she got too far away. “Miss, if I might speak with you!”

For a moment, the black cloak hesitated. A head turned, and
over the top of the gate, he caught a glimpse of an oval face tinted by the
rich hues of a tropical sun, long black lashes, and a frown. Then she hastened
her pace and vanished behind a hedge of greenery.

“Drat.” Erran rubbed at the soiled hat that Hartley handed
him, rattled the barred gate, and kicked an errant stone.

Not tall enough to see over the panel, Hartley tried to peer
between the cracks. “Why were they throwing rocks at her?”

“It’s a puzzlement,” Erran said, scowling at the damage to
his boots. “I’ve not seen so much as a ghost in the place all week. At least we
now know there are servants in there, even if they don’t answer the door.”