Phoenix and Ashes

As she had hoped, his head popped up immediately; eyes a little startled, but she ignored that. "Hullo!" she called, waving her hand. "I've brought some nice things for tea, if you want some!"

"And I've brought ginger-beer," was his reply, as he sat up, shaking his head, and rubbing at his eyes. "Hang if I didn't doze off—must've been the sun, makes a chap sleepy."

She paced up to him as he stood up and took the basket from her. "I say," he said, a little shyly. "I'm awfully glad you came. I've been here nearly every day, hoping you would."

It was her turn to blush and feel shy. "It's hard for me to—to get away—I have to work, you see—" she managed, around her stepmother's prohibitions. "Perhaps you shouldn't waste your time."

"It's my time to waste, isn't it?" he retorted, and softened the words with a smile. "Besides, this is probably exactly what the medical johnnies have in mind for me, dozing out in meadows and what-all. They'd probably be perfectly happy about it. In fact, if it will make you feel any better, I'll write one of 'em and ask her to write out a prescription for just that. Before I came out here she was threatening to descend on Longacre to make sure I rested; I'm sure she'd be pleased to find out I had a reason to want to."

Her smile faltered a little. "She?" she replied. "A lady-doctor?"

Of course, and a lady-doctor would be just the sort of woman he'd be fascinated by; able to stand up for herself and clever, and able to talk to him about all manner of things—

"Oh, yes, the only one I really know personally, Doctor Maya Scott," he said happily, completely oblivious to the fact that she had gone quiet. "Married to a friend of mine; capital wench, and does she know her business! If there were any justice, she'd be head of surgery at least, maybe head of an entire hospital." He shook his head, as she belatedly reacted to the words "married to a friend of mine" and brightened again. "Well, maybe she doesn't want that, come to think of it. Can't say I would."

"If she is a really good doctor, she probably doesn't want to be made head of anything, so long as she's left to do what she feels is right, and that she needs to do," Eleanor replied, thinking as she spoke. "It seems to me that taking a good doctor and making her into a—a glorified clerk—isn't the sort of thing that a good doctor would want." "You probably have something there," Reggie said, with a nod. He patted the blanket. "Well, you're here now and I'm glad you could get away. Come sit down and we'll have our tea. What have you been doing with yourself all this time?"

"Work," she replied truthfully. "Not at all glamorous. Servant's work, to tell the truth." That last was pulled out of her, almost unwillingly, but she felt she owed it to him.

He reached into the basket and handed her a sandwich without faltering. "Our good vicar would tell you that there's no shame in an honest day's labor," he replied. "And I'd second him. We got all sorts in our air-wing. Not just the mechanics and the orderlies, either—truth is, I never saw where being a cockney guttersnipe or a Yankee cowboy made a fellow a worse pilot, or being a duke's son made him a better one. Opposite, more often than not, in fact." He bit hungrily into his sandwich, cutting anything else he was going to say short, and she nibbled on hers to keep from having to respond. It was a rather astonishing thing for him to have said; he certainly wouldn't have felt that way before he went off to war.

Yes, and he's been spending all his time down at The Broom, and not at the Broom Hall Inn, hasn't he? she answered herself.

"Did you meet a lot of Americans?" she asked, seizing on his last statement as a way to draw him out a little more.

"More Canadians, which aren't quite the same thing." He ate the last few bites of his sandwich neatly, then uncorked a bottle of ginger beer and handed it to her, before taking one from his rucksack for himself. "The Canadians were—quieter. Didn't seem so intent on making a rowdy reputation for themselves. Mind you, the Australians are at least as loud as the Yanks. Only ever met a few of the Yanks, and they were all cut of the same cloth—right out of a Wild West show, tall, loud, rough. Good lads, but seemed determined that they were going to show all of us that they were larger than life."

She laughed a little at his quizzical expression. "Maybe they only thought they had to live up to what's written in their novels?" she suggested. "And the only novels I've ever heard of that had Canadians in them were all about the mounted police, not about cowboys and outlaws."

"Which came first, the novel or the stereotype?" He grinned and shook his head. "Well, if I could answer that, I'd be a wiser man than I am. All I can tell you is that the Yanks fly like they're trying to ride a wild horse, all seat and no science. It makes them either brilliant, or cracks them up, and nothing in between. The Huns are all science and no seat—"

"And the French?" she prompted.

"Ah, the French. Science with style, and a great deal of attitude." He nodded wisely. "They fly like their women dress. They take a little bit of nothing and make everything out of it, throw themselves at impossible targets and often as not, pull the trick off on the basis of sheer savoir faire. Then when you try and congratulate or commiserate with them, you get the same answer. 'C'est la vie, c'est la. guerre,' and then they beg a cigarette off you and make off with the whole pack, and you end up feeling privileged they took your last fag-end." He shook his head again, chuckling.

She smiled. He seemed easier talking about the war and flying today than he had been the last time she'd seen him. But she didn't want to press things too hard, so she asked him what he had been doing since they'd last met.

He sighed. "Oh, being horribly lord-of-the-manor. Meeting my tenant farmers. Looking at alternatives to some of what we've been raising—things that won't need as much labor. Going over the books with my estate manager. Mater didn't bother; mention the accounts to her and she flaps her hands and looks a bit faint."

"Poor thing," Eleanor said, feelingly. "I hate accounting. I keep thinking I've put numbers in all the wrong columns, even when I haven't."

"Well, she would do just that and never know it, and that's a fact." He set his empty ginger-beer bottle down, and rummaged in the basket inquisitively. "I say! Tea-cakes!"

"They're from a tin," she warned.

"That's the only kind we could get, over there," he replied. "Wouldn't remember what a proper one tasted like. We were always starved for sweets, on account of it being so plaguey cold and never really able to get properly warm except during summer. All tents do is keep off the rain—and sometimes not even that." "Well, have my share," she told him generously. The rest of the afternoon went by much as the first had; in inconsequential chatter. Any time he started to run dry of inconsequentials, she prompted him with something else light. Somehow she knew that this was what he needed. When he talked about the war, he shouldn't be talking about the war, itself, but about things on the periphery. And above all, she was not going to ask him about fighting.

Books, though—that was a safe enough topic. And he had read an astonishing variety. It seemed that once someone was done with whatever volume had been sent him by friends, lover, or relatives, if it didn't have sentimental value, it became common property. A surprising amount of poetry ended up making the rounds of the barracks—somehow he had ended up memorizing a great deal of it, and without too much coaxing she got him to recite quite a bit of it. It wasn't too much of a surprise that he found Kipling to his taste; when he recited "The Bridge-Guard at Karoo" she could almost see the scene played out in front of her, the sound and lights of the train coming out of the hot, dark silence of the desert night, the men on their solitary, isolated duty grasping desperately for the few moments of civilization they were allowed, and then the train moving on again, leaving them—"few, forgotten, and lonely"—to their thankless post.

She thought that he could see it, too. Perhaps that was why he recited it so feelingly.

Then he had her in stitches as he related the rather improbable tales found in some of the American dime novels that had been left with his air-wing.

"How can anyone take any of that seriously?" she gasped, after a particularly funny confrontation between the hero and an entire tribe of Red Indians, complicated by a buffalo stampede and a raid by the James Gang. It probably hadn't been intended to be funny, at least not by the original author, but it was so utterly impossible that it ended up being a parody of itself.

"I have had men swear solemnly to me that such things, if they hadn't happened to them, personally, had certainly happened to a friend of a friend, or a distant cousin, or some such connection," Reggie replied, as she held her aching side. "Great tellers of tall tales, are the Yanks. Even the ones who never got farther west than New York City in their lives seemed to think they should be cowboys."

She looked down at her rosemary sprig, and saw with disappointment that it was starting to wilt. "Oh, bother," she said aloud. "Reggie, I would so like to stay here until suppertime—"

"No, no—I quite understand. Stolen hours, and all that." He said it with surface lightness, but she saw the quickly veiled disappointment, and it gave her a little thrill to realize that he had enjoyed being with her, and he wanted her to stay.

"I have to go," she said, honestly. "I don't have a choice. I can be here tomorrow, but after that—I can't tell you when the next time I'll be able to get away will be."

She was packing up the basket as she spoke. They both reached for the same item as she finished the sentence; she flushed, and pulled back her hand. He placed the saucer in the basket, and said, "If I had my way, you'd be a lady of leisure—but I haven't been getting my way very often lately."

"I don't think any of us have been," she replied, again truthfully. "So we muddle through however we can. Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," he pledged.

She couldn't help herself; she looked back twice as she trudged away, and each time he was watching her, and when he saw her looking, he lifted his hand to wave.

She carried that image with her all the way home.

Reggie decided not to go down to the pub tonight; he returned to Longacre feeling more alive than he had in a long time, even though his nap on the cold ground had made his knee ache abominably. He left the motor at the stables and limped his way up to the main house, entering by the terrace-door as the sun began to set, only to find his mother waiting for him in the sitting-room with a letter in her hand, and her father beside her with a scowl on his face.

"Reggie, did you invite Brigadier Mann here to visit?" she asked abruptly, before he could even so much as greet her.

Ah. That's what this is all about. I did not ask the king her father for permission to bring a guest here.

"As a matter of fact, yes, I did," he replied, "I am the head of this household; he wrote to ask if he could come for a visit and see how I am doing, and I of course was delighted to invite him."

His grandfather bristled all over at that. "Now you see here, you young pup—"

"No, Grandfather, you see here," he interrupted, throttling down an irrational fury that was all the worse because his good mood of the afternoon had been spoiled entirely. "It was all very well for you to play at being the head of this house while I was away, but I'm back now, and I'm perfectly entitled to invite one of father's oldest friends for a visit if I choose."

"And put more work on your mother!" the old man snarled.

Well, that was the feeblest of feeble excuses. "Oh, please," he snorted. "There is a house full of servants here for the three of us, and what is more, I can distinctly recall mother entertaining forty guests for the better part of three weeks during the hunting season with hardly more staff. Are you suggesting she has suddenly become such a ninny-hammer that she can't arrange for an extra plate at meals or bear the conversation of one more old man?"

"Please," his mother said in distress, putting the letter down as if it had burned her, "don't argue."

"I'm not arguing, Mater, I'm standing up for you. Your father seems to be under the mistaken impression that you've regressed to the mental capabilities of a child. I'm correcting that impression." He looked down his nose at the old man, who was going red in the face. "Besides, it isn't as if the Brigadier needs entertaining. He'll probably want to use the library for his researches, he'll be looking forward to the odd game of billiards, and I might persuade him to go riding. I think we can manage that."

"That—so-called friend of your father's can't even be bothered to speak a civil word to me!" his grandfather got out from between clenched teeth.

Yes, and that is the real reason you object, isn't it? Because he doesn't treat you like royalty. He outranks you, old man, in or out of the service.

"Perhaps that was because you sneered at him and his military record the moment he walked in the door," Reggie said, with dangerous calm. "But if you find his company so intolerable, why don't you go back to your own home? We are perfectly capable of managing without your advice, you know."

The old man lurched to his feet. "I ought to horsewhip you for that!" he roared.

"Don't try it, unless you want the favor returned," Reggie replied contemptuously. Even though his stomach was turning at the confrontation, and he wanted badly to retreat to his room, this time he was, by heaven, going to stand his ground. And his grandfather might as well hear the unvarnished truth for once in his life. "I'm weary of your muttered insults, of your accusations of malingering, and your insufferable arrogance. I'm tired of you turning mother into a spineless shrinking violet with no will of her own. Go home, Grandfather. Go and learn some manners. Come back when you're fit to be company for good men like the Brigadier; until then, go roar at your poor valet and threaten your housekeeper like the petty tyrant you are."

He turned to his mother. "Mater, you've always liked the Brigadier's company in the past, and I see no reason why that should have changed. You might see your way clear to inviting a few more people down as well; it would do you good to have some company here. My Aunt April, perhaps; that would give us enough for a good round of bridge of an evening."

His grandfather was still spluttering; his mother was distracted by the thought of inviting someone whose company she enjoyed.

"Lady Williams?" his mother faltered. "But I thought her chattering—"

"I should welcome her chattering, Mater," he replied, gently. "It is good-natured and good-hearted. It would be very pleasant to hear good-natured conversation around here. Perhaps if there were more of such pleasant conversation, I would find the pub less congenial."

By now his grandfather was nearly purple with rage, and driven into incoherence.

"If you were to choose to stay, Grandfather, I'll thank you to remember that," he continued. "And don't bother trying to think of a retort. I'm going to dress for dinner. You, of course, are free to stay or go, as you choose—but if you choose to stay, you know what you can expect. The gloves are off, Grandfather, and they are remaining off."

And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked all the way to his rooms.

Once there, however, he turned the key in the lock and locked himself into his darkened bedroom, and sank nervelessly down onto the neatly made bed, shaking in every limb.

I cannot believe I just did that.

All his life, his mother's father had been the one person that no one dared to defy. Even Reggie's own father had never openly flouted the old man's edicts.

But tonight Reggie had challenged him. Whether or not he'd won remained to be seen. But the challenge had been uttered and had not been answered.

It should have felt like a triumph, but all that Reggie felt was a kind of sick fear that made him curl up on the counterpane and shake. Maybe precisely because he had overturned the old order—it had to be done, but it was one more bit of stability gone.

And he hadn't even done a good job of defying the old man. There had been nothing measured or politic about the way he'd laid into his grandfather; in fact he'd probably made an enemy of the old man. He hadn't planned any of it, hadn't chosen his subject, time, or grounds, and just might have made things worse. It was only that he had been pushed once too often and now he felt he had to push back or die.

He felt too sick to go down to dinner now, stomach a wreck, head pounding and aching like someone had taken a poker to it.

Well, after what he'd just done, the old man probably wouldn't be down to dinner either. Still, he couldn't leave his mother to sit at that long, empty table alone.

So after he got his shaking under control, he dressed, and waited for the gong, and went down, down to a mostly-empty table, the silently rebuking presence of his mother, and food he scarcely tasted and ate very little of.

It should have been a triumph, but it tasted of ashes and gall. And in the end, it led to yet another sleepless night, during which he stared at the ceiling, rigid with fear, and was completely unable to muster a single coherent thought until dawn.

14

April 30, 1917

Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

"I WISH THAT THESE PLACES were somewhere more convenient. Or at least, had decent hotels nearby." Lauralee sighed dramatically, and pouted at the old four-poster bed she was going to have to share with her sister. Carolyn was already sprawled across the expanse of it, and had voiced complaints about the quality of the mattress and the size of the room.

There really was no reason to complain; the room was big enough by coaching-inn standards. It was certainly solid and well-kept. The furnishings might date back to the previous century, but they, too were solid and well-kept. Their early dinner had been palatable, and neither under nor-over-cooked. The real cause for discontent probably lay in the fact that it was not a posh hotel and not in London, nor Bath, nor any other metropolis.

Alison frowned at her offspring; it was occurring to her just now that they were mightily spoilt. The Crown and Cushion in Chipping Norton was the nearest inn to her goal, just outside the village of Enstone, and as such things went, was superior to a great many places where she'd been forced to stay in the course of her occult career. "You ought to be grateful you have a bed, much less a room, much less a decent room in a good, solid inn," she told them, tartly. "I've stayed in hovels, or camped on the ground with gypsies before this. You're just fortunate that there actually is an inn within walking distance of the Hoar Stones."

"And that's another thing, Mother—" Carolyn began.

"Shut your mouth," Warrick Locke said, unexpectedly. "We're not here for your amusement. We're here to work, and if that requires a little walking on your part, so be it. You are the ones ultimately benefiting from this, after all; you ought to be pleased, not whingeing about it."

Carolyn, caught in mid-complaint by Locke's surprising display, gaped at him for a moment before closing her mouth. She still looked sullen, but at least she had shut up.

Not that Alison was particularly happy to be a mile and a half from the hoar stones, but at least it was walking distance, and the stones were secluded in an ancient grove of trees, which would give them privacy and security over the course of the next three days. To her mind that privacy was worth any amount of moderate discomfort.

Fortunately, the Hoar Stones were not associated with any May Eve celebrations on the part of the locals. If anything, they were shunned. Another indication that this site was exactly what Alison needed.

"You had better have packed for the walk, as I instructed you," Alison said, with a hint of threat in her voice. "Or you'll find yourself tottering down the road on whatever shoes you did bring. I have need of you; four is the minimum of participants for these ceremonies. We aren't trifling with Beltane rituals of fertility or love-making you know. The things I plan to awaken need coercing and confining. And to that end, thank you, Warrick. I appreciate you being willing to participate."

Her solicitor looked both surprised and gratified. Well, she didn't often thank him, or anyone, for that matter. Not that she intended to start handing out thanks any more frequently; being sparing with them made them that much more valuable.

"I don't often get to see a Master performing a major ritual," he replied, with a nod of thanks. "I'll certainly learn a lot."

He might at that. Not that it would be anything he could actually use. He wasn't strong enough for that.

She had set the first batch of minor Earth Elementals on Reginald's trail some time ago—but they had been consistently thwarted by the protections Devlin Fenyx had set about the manor house itself, powerful protections that had kept them completely out. Alison had intended them to attack him only when he was asleep, or in that twilight state between waking and sleeping, when they would be best able to terrify him, and they had been unable to catch him sleeping outside the walls of Longacre. Until today.

Apparently he had drowsed off in the sun somewhere outside this afternoon; her minor goblins had caught wind of this, and had surrounded him.

Then something went wrong.

They weren't even as bright as pigeons, and she could get nothing out of them of any real substance, only that Reggie had a protector that had destroyed several of them and sent the rest fleeing for their lives. She thought it might be the village witch; the old woman wasn't really powerful but she was strong enough to destroy a few minor goblins, and Reggie had been spending a lot of time down at the Broom pub. And while it wasn't likely that the witch would concern herself with something happening up at Longacre, even Alison could not entirely blame her for interfering with something that happened in her own personal sphere.

But that only meant that stronger measures were called for here. As it happened, the timing could not have been much better. Beltane was an ancient night of magic; it would be much easier for her to pull through what she needed on May Eve. There was no light without shadow, and though the traditional magics of Beltane were those of growth and life, it would be no great strain to bend some of the solstice power to other paths.

And in fact, the tradition, though not a British or Celtic one, was already in place in other parts of the world.

For every joyous Beltane, there was a terrifying Walpurgisnacht. Samhain would have been better, of course—the time of waning light, and of death, rather than rebirth—but any of the greater pagan festivals would do for her purposes, for every one that celebrated light had the counterpart that celebrated the shadow.

The sun was going down now; soon enough it would be time to slip out of the inn—probably the best time would be while people were coming and going from the bar—and begin the walk to the hoar stones.

"Time to change and gather our things," she declared, leveling a look at the girls that warned them that tonight she would tolerate no nonsense. She and Warrick left the two to follow her orders, while they went to their own rooms.

Any other time she would not have allowed herself to be caught dead in trousers; this, however, was an occasion for the deliberate perversion of society's norms, and she clothed herself in sturdy walking shoes, men's pants, and a warm jumper, with a long coat to go over it all. She stuffed her hair up into a workingman's cap, and picked up the rucksack that she had already packed. Besides being warm and practical, the outfit had another purpose. Anyone who saw them on the road would see two men and two women, and assume he was seeing two courting pairs. He would also think twice about accosting them.

The girls were not wearing trousers, but they were clothed all in black, with sturdy walking-shoes, plain woolen skirts, equally plain shirtwaists and their oldest coats. Warrick Locke followed their example in being clothed plainly and in black. He had the other rucksack.

They slipped out of the inn to discover that night had already fallen. Well, that was all to the good; they were able to move at a brisk walk to the south and east, heading for their goal a mile and a half away.

The moon gave enough light to walk by, and though there were one or two May Eve bonfires in the distance, these were a fraction of the number that used to blossom before the war. Another thing the war was good for—with most, if not all, of the young men across the Channel, the kind of May Eve celebrations that ended in couples and unattached young girls scattered across the landscape to see the sun rise on May Day were probably not taking place this year at all.

Why bother to wash your face in May dew to make yourself beautiful? For whom? The septuagenarian shepherd? The Land Girls?

The boy you'd once giggled over who'd come home without arms or legs or wits? If your lover was still alive and whole, he was probably in the trenches tonight, and would not be home for months, if he ever came home at all. And if he did—

It might have been better for him if he had died.

Alison could taste some of that anguish in the air this night, but it did not come from the area of the few bonfires. It came from the cottages, where lights were going out; May Eve was just another night, and May Day would bring nothing good except, perhaps, a few early strawberries, a few flowers.

Alison kept her ears open for the sounds of other footsteps in the fields, but heard nothing but owls and sleepy sheep, and the unhappy mutterings of her own footsore offspring.

And as for the few couples left, the men either home on leave, or spared having to go to the war by infirmity, like Broom's own Scott Kelsey, with his collapsed lung—well, they were already coupling in conjugal beds, without needing to find May Eve bowers for clandestine trysts. Marriages had been and were being made that would never have been countenanced before the war, some with babies already in the offing, though by no means most. She'd been the avid eavesdropper on the end of one of those little cottage dramas, sitting behind the parents of the prospective groom as pretty Tamara Budd and her handsome young officer-fiance stood to have the banns read in church last Sunday. The groom's mother was sniveling—overdressed for a village church-service, and in lamentable taste, the couple was clearly prosperous enough to have assumed their boy would marry above his class, not below it. "Quiet, woman!" the husband had hissed. "She's not what you want, but she's what he wants, and do you want a grandchild to have his name before he's killed or don't you?"

Oh, those words, and that delicious, delicious despair! People were saying now what they had not even dreamed of thinking before—not "if he's killed, but "when." Women sent off their men with that despair in their hearts, open and acknowledged. And if any of their men came home at all, no matter how damaged, they thanked God and thought themselves lucky. Every time the telegraph-girl came riding into Broom on her bicycle, that despair followed her like the wake of a boat, spreading through all the village until she brought her anticipated, but dreaded burden of bad news to her destined door. There was no other reason for a telegraph to be sent to anyone in Broom except for the most dreaded of reasons. "Killed in action." "Missing in action" (which was the other way of saying "blown to bits and we can't find enough of him to identify"). "Wounded and dying."

And every time the telegraph-girl entered Broom, Alison knew it, and reveled in that wash of fear and anguish. She'd even sent a telegraph or two to herself, when deaths were few, just to trigger it, and the power it unleashed. For all the inconveniences that the war had brought, this was worth it, and if only it could go on for three, four, five more years—

She made a mental note to strengthen those demons of illness she had sent to America. Not tonight, but soon. The longer the war lasted, the greater her power would be.

There was no traffic tonight; none at all, not even when they passed through Enstone itself. Not a foot-traveler, not a cart, certainly not an auto. There was some small activity around the pub, two men going in as they passed the first houses in the village, but no one came out during the time they were on the Enstone to Ditchely road. Not that she had expected any fellow travelers, but she was pleased that things were so quiet.

Alison had an electric torch, but she didn't use it; she was navigating by the "feel" of things, rather than looking for landmarks. After a bit less than an hour of the four of them plodding down the uneven road between the high hedgerows, she began to sense what she was watching for, southwards, off to the side of the road, a sluggish, stagnant pool of power that had not been tapped in a very long time.

"Watch for a gap in the hedge to the right," she ordered. "It will probably be a stile going over, but there might actually be a path."

But it was the crossing road that they saw first, and only after looking closely for it, found not only a stile but a path, off to the right.

Both hedge and stile were in poor repair, as reported by Warrick Locke, who went over first. Now Alison used her torch; the last thing any of them needed was to be lamed by a sprained ankle at this point!

The path lay along the line and under the shelter of another hedge, but now it was clear to Alison where their goal was, and a tingle of anticipation made her want to hurry the others towards that wooded enclosure whose trees shielded imperfectly the glow of power that roused sullenly at her presence.

The enclosure was little more than a couple of wooden railings; they went over and pushed through the holly and other undergrowth to arrive at her goal.

It stood upon a small mound, an arrangement of six stones forming the remains of what had once been a large, chambered structure. A tomb, perhaps; at least, that was what the old men she had questioned in Enstone had said it was, the tomb of an ancient tribal chieftain long dead before the Romans came. She didn't much care; two powerful ley lines ran through it, and it had been made other use of for some time after its former occupant had been looted away by Romans searching for British gold. The largest of the stones was a good nine feet tall.

She wedged her torch where it could best illuminate the interior of the tomb, and set Warrick and the girls to making the place ready, while she slipped out of sight long enough to don her robe. She usually didn't bother with ritual robes, but this was too important and dangerous a ceremony to leave anything to chance. Besides, the things she intended to call might not recognize her authority without her robes. When she re-entered the tomb, Warrick had already gotten the altar-cloth laid out on the ground, and had lit candles and stuck them wherever he could, to save the batteries on the torch. The others' modern clothing would have looked very out-of-place if they had not worn simple black. Instead of being glaring anachronisms, they looked like minor acolytes of no particular order.

The candles, stuck in places sheltered from the breeze, flickered very little. Alison was struck by how timeless the scene seemed. There was nothing to tell that this was 1917—or 1017—or even the first century Anno Domini.

"Take your places," she said, and took her short-sword from the rucksack. It was a genuine Celtic relic, of bronze, and had been the means that ended more than a dozen lives before it had been left in a tomb very like this one. Locke took a candle and stood in the east, Carolyn in the south, and Lauralee in the west. Alison reserved the north, the most important in this ceremony, for herself. When the others were in place, she took the bronze blade in her hands and cut a circle of protection and power around all of them, moving widdershins as she did so. It was a little crowded in the tomb, for the space inside it could not have been more than eight feet across, but when she was done, the light from the candles faded into insignificance as the interior sprang to life, the stones themselves glowing a dull ochre with pent-up power. She took her place in the north, and nodded at Locke to begin.

Locke looked excited; the girls, wide-eyed.

"I guard the East in the name of Loki, the malicious, the betrayer," Locke said, raising his candle to the level of his eyes. "In his name do I call the power of Air."

The candle flared, its flame turning blue, to confirm that Locke had made all the right occult connections. He grinned at Alison, but she was already turning and nodding to Carolyn, who was raising her candle.

"I guard the South in the name of Hecate, the Queen of Witches, the bringer of burning plague, of drought and despair," Carolyn said carefully, her voice sounding higher than usual and a bit strained, her eyes glinting at her mother over the flame of the candle. "In her name do I call the power of Fire."

As Carolyn's candle-flame burned the crimson of blood, Alison was already turning to Lauralee. Other than her own part, this would be the trickiest.

"I guard the West in the name of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, Mist on the Lake, the eater of hearts," Lauralee said, very carefully, without tripping even a little on the difficult name. "In his name do I call the power of Water."

Alison's triumph tasted sweet as the candle-flame flared green; it had been a risk, using that foreign deity—but she had wanted something uniquely western, and could think of no god more bloodthirsty than one of the ancient Aztecs.

But now it was her turn. "I guard the North and close the circle in the name of the Morrigan, Death and Despair, the Storm-Crow, the Blood-Raven, the goddess of battles and harvester of souls," she said, holding aloft her own candle. "In her name do I call the power Earth!"

The flame of her candle was already yellow—but it flared up like a pitch-soaked torch, until for a moment it licked the stone above their heads before subsiding. She didn't need that sign to know that she had tapped into the power sleeping uneasily here in the stones, however; to her senses the place practically hummed, and as the stones increased their glow, you could have read by the light that they shed.

The four of them bent as one to secure their candles in saucers at the four edges of the altar-cloth, then rose again.

And Alison began her chant.

It predated Christianity, this chant; the stones here recognized it, as did the power within those stones. The stones vibrated in sympathy with it, and the power leapt to serve. It was an old chant designed to serve, protect, and avenge those who were great in power but few in numbers. With this magic, they did not have to muster an army. With this magic, the army would come of its own.

An army of the dead.

Not ghosts or spirits called from some afterlife, but revenants, the emotionally charged remnants of the unquiet dead still bound to earth by their own will, the executed, defeated in battle, murdered. Any whose remains were interred in the earth, whose deaths had not brought peace, but anger and pain, who were not at all ready to move on—

On this night when the doors to the spirit-world were cast open, they came, from every direction they came, from hallowed and unhallowed ground, from unmarked grave, from crossroad-burial, from forgotten forest mound they came. Ancient, merely old, and new, they came, singly, then by dozens. They came on the wings of hate, of anger, and of despair. They pressed in upon the shield of power as the air outside it grew thick with their restless spirits, until the pressure outside the shield threatened to crack it. There were so many that they merged into a circling miasma from which only an occasional glimpse of ghostly-glowing face emerged—here a hairy tribesman, there a close-cropped Roman, here an arrogant Cavalier, there an equally arrogant Roundhead, here a robed Druid, there a tonsured monk—faces old as this island, and as new as yesterday.

And Alison's chant bound them to the torment of her chosen target, and painted that target with words that made him the enemy of each of them.

To the flint-wielding tribesman, he was the effete and sophisticated embodiment of the end of the old ways, a man who no longer hunted his food with spear and knife, but who spent his nights in housen, and tilled the soil. To the Cavalier, he was the upholder of the way of Parliament. To the monk he was that horror of horrors, a Protestant—to the Roundhead, he was a man who paid no more than lip-service to God, who blasphemed and gambled and sinned the sins of the flesh. To the poor peasant, he was the noble, the oppressor—to the noble, he was a man who shunned his proper class for the company of the base-born. To the Roman he was a Saxon, to the Saxon he was a Norman. To the Druid, he was the servant of the White Christ who put paid to pagans with fire and sword; to the highwayman, he was the embodiment of the law that had hung him and the hand that had done the deed. And to the shattered wreck of the just-buried war-victim, he was the man who had escaped alive, because he was wealthy, privileged or just plain lucky, when he had not. To the betrayer, to the betrayed, to the killer and the victim, to each of them, Reggie Fenyx became that which he hated the most. They swirled widdershins around the shield of protection, faster and faster, pulling in more and more of the power of this place, the power that would enable them to go forth and torment.

So that in the end, when she uttered the word that freed them and bound them at the same time (all but those few spirits that still had the ability to think as well as feel, and had slipped away before she could ensnare them), no matter what hate had brought them here, the focus for that hate became Reginald Fenyx. She gave them the look, the sense of him; told them without words where to find him.

This was why she had chosen so carefully her gods of East, South, West, and North. Each of them embodied, in his or her own way, the spirit of deception.

She bound the whirling circle of spirits with a word, and set them free with that same word, a single syllable that exploded outward, sending them, the deadly spiritual shrapnel, flying.

The circle of mist burst apart; the light of the stones went out like a snuffed candle. And all of it in a strange and echoing silence in which nothing could be heard but four people breathing as one.

And with that word, she dropped to her knees, exhausted.

But the deed was complete. The tomb was empty, the power within it and beneath it drained. The only glow now came from the guttering candles.

Carolyn and Lauralee stared at their mother, mouths agape, and shaking. In spite of her weariness, Alison could not help smiling. She'd never done a Great Work in their presence. Now perhaps they'd think twice before challenging her.

Warrick Locke was clearly impressed, but not nearly so cowed. And it was he who—following her instructions, true—recovered first, and began the dismissal ceremony, speaking his words and snuffing his candle. Blinking and uncertain, the two girls followed his lead as Alison got back to her feet again.

She snuffed her own candle, then cut the circle rather than going through the tedious business of uncasting it. With the circle cut, the shield dispersed, leaving them all standing in the rock-walled tomb, looking—a little silly. Especially her, in her black velvet, hooded ritual robe.

She wished now that she had given in to the girls and driven here in the auto. But—

But what if someone had seen it here?

On the other hand, Warrick was looking decidedly chipper. . . .

"Warrick, could please I prevail upon you to get the motor from the inn and come bring us back?" she asked, and offered him a smile that promised a great deal more than she was prepared to give. The Morrigan, the deceiver, was still with her, it seemed.

Well, she would let the Morrigan continue to have her way. If he demanded, she would let him take her to his room, then cast a spell of sleep and self-deception on him, and let him dream that he had what he wanted. She had strength enough for that, and even tired, he was no match for her.

Weak-willed man that he was, Locke saw the promise and leapt for it. Then again, perhaps Loki was still with him, and thought to trick his way to what he'd never gotten before. "Of course!" he replied, with a sly smile. "After all that, I'm not surprised that you're tired."

Before she could say anything else, he was off, leaving her to drag off her robe and change back into her masculine garb, then join her daughters in waiting for him She looked up into the night sky at that waning moon. And smiled. Well, let him think he had the upper hand. A contest between the Morrigan and Loki for craft and trickery was no contest.

No contest at all. ...

"Mother?" Carolyn said, timidly. "Were those ghosts?"

"Of a sort," she replied. "They are properly called revenants, and they fall under the power of the Earth Master, since they are bound to earth for—well, for whatever reason. They are the unquiet dead, who never took the step through the door of the afterlife. Some Earth Masters spend their entire lives going about freeing such things and sending them on their way through the door they have been avoiding."

"Why?" Lauralee asked.

"Because some Earth Masters are idiots," she said, surprising a giggle out of both of the girls. "It makes about as much sense to me as going out to be a missionary. Both careers are fraught with hardship and difficulty, and ultimately in both cases you are dealing with creatures who have little or no interest in what you are trying to tell them."

"But you—you told them what they wanted to hear?" Lauralee hazarded.

Alison smiled. Well, it looked as if at least one of the girls had inherited some of her intelligence. "That is how you bind them to your target instead of their own," she explained. "After all, most of the time the target of their hatred is as dead as they are, and generally has more sense than to linger. You tell them how your target represents everything they hate. Then you give them enough power to do what they want, and turn them loose."

"Can they break through the protections on Longacre?" Carolyn wanted to know.

"Some might. But even if they don't they are powerful enough to force Reggie to see them, awake or asleep." She sighed with content. This had truly been a job well done. "We'll let them torment him for a while, and use up all that extra power I gave them. Then you'll move in."

"But how will we banish ghosts?" Carolyn cried. "We can't even make a simple love-charm work on him!"

"Ah—"Alison laid a finger aside her nose and nodded. "There's the beauty of it. Once they use up that extra power I gave them, the geas I put on them will start to fade, and they'll lose the ability to make him see them. And as the geas fades, they'll forget why they're haunting Reggie and start to drift back to their old homes. You won't have to do anything, yet Reggie will think that it's you."

They both stared at her, looking awestruck. They hadn't given her that particular look since they were tiny children, and she had amused them by catching a faun and making it dance.

And as she heard the chattering of the motor in the far distance and chivvied the girls into cleaning up the site and heading back down the path to the road, it occurred to her that this evening might represent a triumph in more ways than one.

Not only had she gained supremacy over an army of the dead, she had once more gained the upper hand, most decisively, over her own children. They would be long in forgetting this.

And that was—a good thing.

15

April 30-May 1, 1917

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

REGGIE HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN—until his mother reminded him of it over dinner—that the next day was May Day, the day of the school treat at Longacre and the school prize day. Well, why should he remember? The day of the school treat and prize day had always been June first, not May Day when he had been growing up.

But the war had changed this, as it had so many other things. School ended early now, so that children could help with the farm work their fathers and brothers were not here to attend to. The country, and more importantly, the army, needed to be fed; farm work came before schoolwork. And the traditional May Day festivities were not nearly so festive as they had been. There would be no church fair, or at least, not the sort that delighted children—the half-gypsy traveling fair folk with their swinging chairs and carousels, their booths of cheap gimcrackery and games like coconut shy and pitch-toss were not traveling any more. In fact, most of them were off in the trenches themselves, and the old men, children, and women that were left simply could not cope by themselves. With sugar and other things being rationed now, there would be no stalls featuring the forbidden foods that one was only allowed to eat at a fair. The church fair would be a very sad and much diminished version of its former self. Someone would probably set up a hoop-la game and a coconut shy, but the prizes would not be the glittery fairy dolls and wildly colored crockery of the past—no, they would be home-made rag-babies and whatever someone had found in the attic that hadn't made it onto the white elephant table. There would not be a greased-pig race, not with pigs being war resources. There would be no egg-and-spoon race for the same reason. Oh, there could have been a race using rocks or plaster eggs, or potatoes, but it wouldn't have been as much fun without the hazard of breaking the egg. No one left in Broom was nimble enough to climb the greased pole, so that had been canceled as well. There would be no Morris dancers, who by tradition were all men. No procession through the town of the hobby-horse, green man, Robin and Maid Marian— once again, tradition decreed these May Day heroes must be men. There would be a maypole, but only girls really took pleasure in the dance around it.

With all these childhood pleasures revoked, it only made sense— and of course Reggie was in complete agreement on this—to combine the school treat with the May Day fair and have it all on the lawn of Longacre. The children might not be able to have rides on the great swing, but they could play in the maze, be driven around the grounds in the ancient pony-cart or Reggie's own auto, and hunt for early strawberries among the fallen leaves of the woods. Through means Reggie could not quite fathom, his mother had managed to connive, beg, or blackmail the authorities into releasing enough sugar to bake cakes and make ice cream for the treat, so if the children could not eat themselves sick, they would at least have some sweeties.

And of course, Reggie himself would have to present the prizes to the winning scholars, to put the final fillip of glory on the whole day.

No, he quite agreed with the whole notion, and the only thing that made him wish the school and the children to the steppes of Mongolia was that because he had forgotten, he had not been able to tell poor Eleanor that he would not be at the meadow at teatime.

And he did not know how to find her to send her a message to that effect, either.

The thought of her arriving at the meadow only to find it deserted made him feel sick—she would be so disappointed, and he found the idea of disappointing her made him feel like a right cad.

Well, maybe someone would remind her what day it was. Yes, hopefully, wherever she was working, she'd be told, and wouldn't turn up only to be disappointed.

Meanwhile, he listened with some surprise and growing pleasure to his mother go on about her preparations for the great day. It was the liveliest he'd seen her since he had arrived. Of course, her father was still sulking, taking his meals in his rooms, so that particular pall was not being flung over the dinner-table.

And perhaps he will leave. Or at least, go off to bully his own servants until—

No. He would not think of going back to the Front, to the war. Not now. He turned his mind resolutely to the plans for the morrow.

"It seems like an awful lot of work for you, Mater," he said doubtfully.

She laughed—really laughed. "Don't you remember? You did most of the planning work, when the date was first changed last year. It was all in your letters. Everything was a great success, especially the prizes."

Good gad—I do remember—telling her that the vicar could give out Bibles and prayer books all he liked, but that we ought to be giving things the kiddies would enjoy reading. Picture books for the littlest. Good ripping yarns for the boys—

"You told me to patronize the local shops, so I did. Really, all I had to do was to consult with Pearl Shapland at the bookstore about what was popular—she's been a great help. She's picked out truly delightful books this year—and for the older girls, lovely writing paper and pen sets instead of books. Well, I did make one little change." She blushed. "When I found out that Lisa Satterfield, the head girl, had won the first prize for essay, I thought, a pretty girl like that, and no money to spare in her family—well, I went to Annie Hagan the milliner, and I got her a hat. I thought she would like it so much better than writing paper."

"I think you're entirely right, Mater," he said, hiding his amusement. School prizes were supposed to reward scholarship—trust his mother to think of giving a hat instead! Then again, he'd seen perfectly sensible girls go all foolish with inchoate longing over a milliner's window display. "That was a capital idea, and terribly kind of you."

It really did seem as if he had been very clever in his suggestions— it was just too bad he didn't remember them very clearly. Those letters seemed to have been written a century ago, by someone he couldn't even recognize. Swings hung from the trees in the park—a treasure-hunt among the paths for tokens to be exchanged for little bags of nuts and other small prizes—crackers at tea to ensure that every child went home with at least some trinket—it amazed him. How had he thought about such things in the middle of death and gunfire?

"So you see, I really had very little to do—other than this year, finding ways of getting the sugar for the cakes and ice creams," she concluded. "The rest of it, I just left orders for."

"I don't believe you for a minute, and you are an angel, Mater," he said warmly.

She smiled at him, then sighed. "It's so little, really, when there isn't a family in the village that hasn't got someone at the front—or has lost someone," she said, pensively. "If I can just help those poor little ones to forget that for part of one day—"

He went up to bed now feeling guilty that he had put his own pleasure ahead of those poor kiddies. As if they had anything much to look forward to anymore. They weren't the only ones who were trying to forget, for just one day, what was going on outside the walls and fences of Longacre Park.

Knowing he would have to look presentable for the children, he took the precaution of using a strong sleeping draught to insure he got a decent night of slumber. He'd avoided them in hospital—preferring to doze during the day when they were less inclined to try and attack him—and since coming home, he'd generally found his drinks at the Broom to be soporific enough. But we don't want to frighten the little ones, he told himself, as he felt the narcotic take hold. You don't want to look the way you feel.

He still felt a bit groggy when his valet woke him, but a couple of cups of good, strong "gunpowder" tea chased most of the mist from his brain. He thought about wearing his uniform to make the presentations, then decided against it. The children saw too many uniforms as it was; he didn't want to remind them of fathers and brothers who were gone, fighting, missing, or dead.

By the time he finished breakfast, his valet Turner came to tell him that the old pony had been harnessed to the cart, and it and the auto were waiting on the driveway.

"What else is done?" he asked.

"The gardener and her helpers have finished seeding the garden with the buttons that will serve as prize-tokens, sir," Turner said, "And the tent has been set up for the refreshments. Her ladyship is already out there, overseeing everything."

He might have known; he finished breakfast and strolled out to be, as he expected, "made useful."

Within the hour, the vicar, his wife, and the entire contingents of the Ladies' Friendly Society and the Women's Institute had made the pilgrimage up the drive with farm carts full of tents and stalls and the bric-a-brac to fill them. And by ten, the fair was set up and waiting for the children. There were already adults moving among the stalls in summer frocks or tea-gowns and tennis-dresses, and cricket-flannels or summer suits suitable for a day at Brighton Pier, or at the very least, their Sunday best.

It all looked so normal until you noticed that frocks outnumbered suits by a factor of four or five to one. It was at that point that Reggie elected to go and stand by his auto and wait for the children to arrive.

Fortunately, they did turn up very shortly after that—being hauled up from the village in two old hay-wains pulled by four ancient workhorses that were spared being sent to pull guns because they couldn't have gotten out of a plodding walk if their lives had depended on it.

Having had the experience of last year, Lady Devlin had very sensibly decided that the first thing to do was to allow the children to run off as much of the energy of excitement as possible. To that end, it was the button-hunt that took place first; well away from the flower-beds, with the buttons seeded all over the artificial "wilderness" and the follies that some Georgian Fenyx had erected. He thought to improve the landscape by dotting it with completely manufactured ruins. With happy disregard for the state of their best clothing, the younger children swarmed the wilderness while the older ones sauntered along, pretending that they were too sophisticated for such a childish pastime, but just as excited as the little ones when they found a button. It took a good hour before the last button was found and handed in for a prize; by then, the smaller ones were lining up for rides in the pony-cart while the older boys were doing the same for a ride in Reggie's motor. The swings in the trees were all fully occupied, the maze had its own set of explorers, and the games at the booths were doing a surprisingly brisk business.

At one, there was a break for luncheon in the refreshment tent, a break that Reggie was pleased to see. He had forgotten, when he had volunteered to take children for rides up and down the long driveway, that this would mean hours of driving. His leg was telling him that it would be some time before it forgave him.

After luncheon, to his relief, came the official proceedings of the day, beginning with the Maypole dance. Reggie's gramophone was pulled into service, with Jimmy Grimsley, the head boy, dragooned into service to keep it cranked up. It had to be the first time in the history of Broom that Maypole dances were held to the tune of melodies by Bach instead of the pennywhistle and fiddle. The adults dutifully gathered around to watch, first the little ones blunder through an attempt at a simple in-and-out weave, then progressively more complicated weaves as the teams of dancers increased in age— the girls with enthusiasm, the boys with reluctance. The eldest—all girls, since not even the headmaster could convince teenaged boys to dance around a Maypole—did a quite credible job, leaving the pole with its crown of flowers covered in a tightly woven, patterned set of ribbons. Then it was time for everyone to assemble for the academic prizes.

A low platform had been erected for the purpose, and the audience sat on blankets and tablecloths usually used for picnics. Reggie and the teachers all stood on the platform, while the children waited, squirming, on the blankets in the very front "rows."

First, Miss Kathleen Davis, the teacher for the youngest children (who were not segregated by sex at their age), announced the winners of Best Penmanship, Most Books Read, Best Speller, and Best Recitation. The children solemnly and shyly, and with maternal encouragement, paraded up to the platform, and Reggie gave them their picture-books, wrapped in beautiful paper and ribbons, with just as much solemnity as if he had been distributing medals.

They all sat through a repetition of the prize-winning recitation— predictably, "How Doth the Little Busy Bee"—which at least the child in question managed to get through without needing to be prompted, without mumbling, or without bursting into tears, all of which Reggie could recall happening on previous prize days.

Then it was Miss Judith Lasker's turn to announce the prizewinners for the older girls. Best Penmanship, Best Recitation, Spelling Prize, Literature Prize, and Best Essay on the subject of [Reggie tried not to groan] "My Country." The winner of the Best Essay looked very surprised when Reggie presented her with a hatbox instead of a stationery set or a book, and when she and her friends gathered around to discover what could be in the intriguing box, the winner was so delighted to discover that it really was a hat she almost forgot to return to the platform to read her winning essay aloud.

Next time it'll be two hats, Reggie thought, ungraciously. That ought to keep them busy enough they'll completely forget to read the blasted thing.

The Literature Prize winner, Maria Holmes, did not get a stationery set; that seemed wrong to Reggie, who had instead culled several unread volumes from his own stores—things given to him in the hospital that he had not had the heart to read. Poems of a V.A.D. seemed appropriate enough, and the complete Kipling verse as well as Kim and The Light That Failed, and a book of Shaw's plays. They weren't the sort of thing that a girl would ordinarily be given, but he had the feeling that a "bookish" girl was more than ready for something stronger.

The Best Recitation was from a girl improbably called Marina Landman, and was, to Reggie's complete shock, "The Last Meeting," written only the year before by Siegfried Sassoon. She recited it beautifully, clearly—he had to wonder if she really understood what the words she was speaking from memory actually meant—

Or to her was it all Romeo-and-Juliet, doomed, romantic young love? Certainly the poem was written that way. Where had she found it? Dear God, if she had seen any of his other poems, she surely would have tossed the book away, weeping. Sassoon might have begun writing his poetry about the nobility of sacrifice in war, and the glory of a grand death, but he was not writing of that now. . . .

Well, it might make him uncomfortable, but evidently no one else was bothered. Or else they had no idea who had written this piece; well, truly there was nothing in it to mark it as the work of a man in the trenches.

Probably someone saw it in The Strand or some other magazine or newspaper, and thought it appropriate for a young girl to recite, he decided. She can't possibly have seen any of Sassoon's other poetry.

He presented her with her prize of stationery and a silver pen-set. She seemed pleased. "I want to be a teacher," she told him, when he'd asked her the usual question of what she wanted to do. "Like Miss Lasker."

Miss Lasker colored up and looked pleased. "I'm sure you'll be a fine teacher," Reggie told her, and signaled the headmaster with his eyes that it was time for the boys to receive their prizes. One more lot, and then I can sit down. . . .

Michael Stone stepped forward and announced the winners. Mathematics Prize, History Prize, Geography Prize—why weren't the girls given challenges like that?—Latin Prize, Best Recitation, and Best Essay on the subject of Patriotism.

The recitation, unmercifully, was "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Reggie tried not to listen. It called up too many memories of similar idiotic charges he had seen from the relative safety of his aeroplane—yet another suicidal dash "over the top" straight into the machine guns. He kept his face fixed in what—he hoped—was a vaguely pleasant expression and wondered what idiot had encouraged the boy to memorize this particular piece at this particular time.

He expected much the same out of the Grimsley boy's essay— But got a shock. It read like the poetry of Wilfrid Owens, or at least, a very, very young Wilfred Owens, one who hadn't yet seen the slaughtering grounds with his own eyes, but knew very well they were there, and knew that their leaders were idiots, and while questioning the sanity of it all, did not question that doing one's duty was the right and proper thing to do.

Oh, it wasn't laid out so skillfully as all that, and there was still more than a veneer of the youthful idealism that sent those first boys to their deaths in 1914, thinking it was a glorious thing to fall in battle. But still, the bones of intelligent questioning were there—and it astonished him.

So much so that the headmaster caught sight of his startled expression and leaned over to whisper, "Jimmy is the only boy left in his family. Father, both brothers, three uncles and all his male cousins. He'd like to go to university in two years, but—" Stone shrugged. "Whether he can get a place, I don't know."

"You just get him ready for the entrance examinations," Reggie said, fiercely. "I'll see that he gets there." He hadn't even known that he was going to say such a thing until after the words were out of his mouth, but he was glad that he had done so a moment later as he caught the look of astonishment, followed by gratitude, on Michael Stone's face.

He nodded to confirm the pledge, then returned his attention to the boy feeling a kind of proprietary determination. Too many of the bright intellectual lights of his generation had been put out already. He would, by heaven, save this one, at least.

After the prizes came the highlight of the day—what one little fellow joyfully called "A proper tea at last!" with jam buns, currant scones, and iced biscuits, ice creams, honey and more jam for the proper sandwiches, all the sweet things that children craved. And if they could not, as they had in days gone by, eat sweet things until they were sick, well perhaps that wasn't so bad a thing. There was just enough of the rationed sugar to make sure every child got enough to feel properly rewarded—to fill them up, they had to make do with slightly more wholesome fare. The adults did have to make do with what they could purchase at the church fair stalls; this was, after all, the school treat. Every child also got one of the finest crackers obtainable, with little prizes inside like pennywhistles, so that they all went home with at least a bag of nuts from the button hunt and a cracker prize in their pockets, along with the memory of a day stuffed full of fun without the shadow of war on it. After tea, the wagons arrived to carry them back down to the village again; the adults lingered until the church fair officially closed.

Reggie kept himself mostly out of the way. By this time, his leg was a torment, but the last thing he wanted was for anyone to notice.

Between the Longacre staff and the men from the village who came up to help with the dismantling, the tents came down and were stowed in the hay-wains. The stalls and booths did not come down quite as quickly as they had gone up, but by sunset, the only vestiges of the May Day festivities were the trampled grass, a few bare places where little girls had been unable to resist picking flowers in the gardens, and the swings still hanging in the trees.

Reggie got up onto the terrace without drawing any attention to himself, and paused there ostensibly to admire the setting sun, but in reality to give his knee a rest. Lady Devlin came up from the gardens when he had been standing there for a few moments to stand beside him. She surveyed the empty lawn and sighed happily. "Well, we'll be scraping our jam a bit thin for the next several weeks, and the gardens will look a little motheaten for a week or two, but it was worth it," she said with content. "Did you see their little faces?"

"And their not-so-little faces," Reggie told her, putting his arm around her shoulders to give her a squeeze. "Well done, Mater; you put on a ripping treat for them. Oh, that Grimsley boy—"

"If you're going to say we're finding him a place at Oxford, good," she interrupted. "That was an amazingly mature essay. Your father always meant to have a fund for the village, and never got around to taking care of it." She stopped for a moment, closed her eyes, then went on, bravely, "Since he never got the chance, we should do it for him. We'll make that boy the first to have it, shall we?"

He blinked at her, then grinned. "Mater, you are trumps!" he exclaimed warmly. "I'll get it set up with Mrs. MacGregor and Andrew Dennis tomorrow. I'll have Andrew set up a trust, and Lee can tell me what we should use to fund it with."

"That would be the wisest, I think." She nodded decisively. "You know, I'm glad you invited the Brigadier. You were right; we need more people about. I will invite your aunt—perhaps Lady Virginia too. We'll have some small summer weekends—"

So long as you don't plan to have 'em with the sole intention of trotting potential brides in front of me, he thought, though in truth, he knew that any such hope was probably in vain. What he said aloud was, "It'll be good to have people around. But at the moment—if you'll forgive me, dearest, I am going to go to my room, put my leg up, and have someone bring me a tray with the sad remains of the feasting. My leg is not at all pleased with me."

Truth to be told, his leg was telling him that if he didn't get weight off it soon, he might not like what it was going to do. He'd been able to ignore the pain for most of the day, but it was coming on with a vengeance now.

"You do look pale, dear," she said, casting a worried glance at him. "And do you know, that sounds like a capital idea to me, too. A hot bath, a book, and whatever the cook can throw together on a tray. The staff have worked their hearts out for this, too." She smiled. "However, I am very glad it is only once a year! Now I'll go and let the housekeeper know we'll be making an early evening of it. I'm sure the staff will be pleased."

She kissed his cheek and wandered back into the house; he waited, though his leg was really beginning to throb, until she was unlikely to see the difficulty he was in. Only then did he limp towards the door, and seize, with wordless gratitude, the cane that was in a stand beside it. His valet had silently, and without being asked, installed stands with canes in them in practically every room he was likely to be in, and at every outside door. Now he rested his weight on the handle and reminded himself to make sure Turner was properly thanked.

As the dusk began to descend, shrouding the rooms he passed through in shadow, he wondered how difficult it would be to get electricity and the telephone up to the place. Mad Ross's wife, Sarah Ashley, a Yorkshire woman, was the local telephone operator, although there could not be more than three or four telephones in Broom itself—so it would certainly be possible to at least get the telephone installed up here. Yes, he would see to that, no matter what. It would be another way to get his mother connected back to the wider world. With the telephone would come invitations to go and do things from her old friends, and he knew from personal experience that it was a great deal easier to refuse invitations that came by mail than it was to refuse the ones that came in person.

Yes. I'll get the telephone in at the very least, and electricity if I can manage it. That should help the staff out a bit, too. Electric lights took less tending, or so he was told.

He paused at the foot of the stairs, looking up to the next floor with a feeling as if he was about to try to scale the Matterhorn. He gritted his teeth, braced himself, and with the cane in one hand and a death-grip on the balustrade, he began the long climb. His knee now felt as if someone was putting a bullet into it with every step he had to climb.

Halfway up he had to stop. I really did overdo. I should have had one of the lads take the kids out after the first hour. He'd thought the leg was in better shape than that. Clearly, it wasn't.

He made it to the top of the stairs on will alone, and stood there for a moment with sweat trickling down his back. He wanted to sit down, and knew he didn't dare; he'd never be able to get to his feet again. At least now he wasn't going to have to climb any more stairs.

But it's a long way to my room.

When he had just finished that thought, his valet appeared as if summoned by magic.

And as he looked into Turner's concerned face, he decided that pride was a great deal less important than pain.

"Milord, may I—" Turner began, diffidently.

"Oh yes, you certainly may," Reggie sighed, and allowed Turner to help him back to his rooms. The valet was a lot more help than a mere cane.

"Milord, if you don't mind my saying so, you've overdone." Turner regarded him sternly. "Now, it's not my place, and I'm no doctor, but—"

"Please, old man, if you don't mind playing nurse, I've no objection to behaving like a patient," he replied.

"Then, I believe that hot water is in order." Turner nodded briskly, and took him straight into the bathroom, almost carrying him—which Reggie was not at all averse to. "Have you actually eaten anything today, milord? Since breaking your fast, I mean."

"Ah—" he blinked, and thought. "A sausage and toast at luncheon. A jam-bun and lots and lots of tea."

"I thought so. The pain takes the appetite, doesn't it?" Turner helped him out of his clothing and into the hot bath; he sank into it with a hiss for the heat, and a sigh of relief as the heat took the edge off the pain of his leg. "You stay there for a bit, and let me deal with this, milord."

Reggie was only too happy to do just that. Once he was in the hot water, he realized that it wasn't just his knee that hurt—the rest of his wounds and broken bones were aching; the knee was just so bad it had overwhelmed the rest.

He remained in the steaming water until it had started to cool, when Turner appeared and helped him out again, and then into bed with a hot compress wrapped around the knee. There was already a tray with hot soup and some assorted sandwich quarters waiting.

And when he saw the familiar bottle on the tray along with his food he did not object. Instead, he looked at Turner with a raised eyebrow. "Was it your idea or Mater's to get this refilled?"

"Mine, milord. I thought you were likely to need it, and I also thought you would not wish to worry your mother." Turner's face was a study in the unreadable.

"I don't pay you enough. We'll have to attend to that in the morning," he replied.

Turner smiled faintly. "I believe, milord, you won't need me any more tonight. Goodnight, milord."

"Good night, Turner."

He took his dose first, then dutifully ate everything on the tray. It meant that his reading was cut drastically short once the narcotic set in.

But considering how he had felt before he took the stuff, that was a very small price to pay.

I hope someone warned Eleanor, was his last thought as he drifted off to sleep. I don't want her to think she was abandoned. . . .

16

May 1, 1917

Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

ALISON WOKE LATE, WITH THE sun streaming in the window of her room in the Crown and Cushion, feeling entirely contented with her life. As it had happened, she had not had to do anything about Locke at all. The Old Gods didn't like machinery; by the time he had arrived at the Hoar Stones with the motor, the last vestige of Loki had long since departed his erstwhile host, and Warrick Locke was back to being his old obsequious self.

Nevertheless, she felt as if he ought to be rewarded in some small way. So on the drive back last night, she had said, quite casually, "Warrick, don't you think it would be useful for us to have something at our disposal that is a bit faster than this? More powerful? It probably isn't going to be the last time we'll have to traipse out into the countryside. It might be a good thing to have something fast enough to take us to our destination and back to Broom in the same night."

"It would be useful," he had replied, doubtfully, "But really powerful autos take a great deal of practice to handle, Mrs. Robinson, and to be honest, I understand they need a certain amount of strength too. Are you certain you want to take something like that on?"

She had laughed. "Oh, I don't mean to handle it; a fine Guy I would look, got up like some demon racer! No, why don't you draw what you need out of the accounts and purchase something appropriate in your own name. Then if we need to make a fast run into the country, I can ring you."

She didn't have to be able to see him—not that she'd have been able to in the dark, even if he wasn't wearing driving-goggles—to sense his rush of elation. She had settled back into her seat feeling amused and content; men were such simple creatures! Give them a new mechanical toy, and suddenly they felt like gods!

As to whether a fast automobile would be useful or not, she had no idea, and didn't really care. It provided an excuse to permit him to draw out a great deal of money and reward himself without actually giving him the money, which would set a bad precedent. And he would be ever so grateful; although he was not doing badly by himself as her solicitor, he would never be able on his own to afford the sort of fast, powerful auto that she could purchase.

It was a bit of an extravagance, but then, once one of the girls was safely wedded to the Fenyx boy, such things would be mere bagatelles. She had gone to bed feeling supremely satisfied with the night's work. She woke feeling, if anything, even more contented. Too contented to go back to Broom.

It was, after all, May Day. She particularly did not want to return today, since May Day meant she would have to attend that tedious church fair and school treat nonsense.

She had decided months ago that she was not going to help out with this function, even though it was to be held at Longacre Park. The only way she would be able to attract the attention of Lady Devlin would be to volunteer for literally everything, and she would be only one person among the horde of common housewives from the Women's Institute and Ladies' Friendly Society doing the same thing. And she really didn't want to attend, either. Merely attending, no matter how much she and the girls spent at the church stalls on things they didn't want and had no use for, would still call up the question of why she wasn't participating. On the other hand if business had called her unexpectedly out of town, she would have the perfect excuse not to even go to the wretched thing. The mere idea of being surrounded by a pack of sticky children, forced to listen to recitations and to buy handmade garbage she would not even dare to throw away, made her nauseated. The only bright spot in the whole day would be in watching the virginal little maidens of Broom trotting around the phallic Maypole in the recreation of a fertility rite, without anyone else having the least notion of what they were doing. And that was not amusing enough to have to tolerate the rest of it.

London, she thought with longing. Yes, and why not? She deserved it. The girls had been very good; they could do with a treat. She could renew her assault on Lady Devlin once her ladyship had recovered from hosting all those wretched children.

A night or two in London would be just the thing. Some theater, there were things she had forgotten in the spring shopping trip. And above all, it would give her a chance to recover her powers before she returned home.

When she went down to the dining room, the girls were already there, pensively eating toast and tea with Warrick Locke; they brightened up considerably when she suggested the trip.

"Mother!" Lauralee said, her face alight with pleasure. "Oh, grand! There are ever so many things I forgot last March—that wretched laundress manages to ruin my stockings with appalling regularity—"

"We were a bit rushed," Alison admitted indulgently. "And Warrick, you can get that automobile I was talking about; with me there, I can simply write a cheque for it and there will be no tedious nonsense with drawing money on account or answering to the trust about it."

The usually dour expression on the solicitor's face brightened to that of a boy on Christmas morning. "That would be more convenient, Mrs. Robinson," was all he said, but she held back her own smile. Men were so transparent!

"Then let's gather up our traps and make for the railway station," was all she said. "I suspect we can purchase a few more new things to eke out the clothing we have with us sufficiently. You know," she added thoughtfully. "The one thing we did not plan on is that we have no common clothing, and if we are going to be making excursions to— special sites—this summer, we really should not be wearing things that will draw attention to ourselves."

"You can get some quite nice frocks ready-to-wear, Mother," Carolyn observed. "Nothing that I would wear to Longacre Park, but good enough for—excursions."

"Then it's settled. Away you go, girls; be so good as to pack up my things as well, while I settle with the innkeeper."

The girls scrambled to obey, leaving her to enjoy her own breakfast in peace, and in the certainty that what had begun so well last night was only going to get better.

May 1, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

Eleanor had had a restless and uncomfortable night, and was mortally glad that Alison and the girls were away. She had been reduced eventually to sleeping on the kitchen floor, near the fire, inside a circle of protection before she could actually get to sleep. Only when her circle was around her and a couple of her Salamanders were frisking about with her would the unsettled feeling that there was something horrible outside the walls of The Arrows leave her.

Then, of course, she overslept—although, for her, oversleeping meant rising around seven. It didn't matter though, since the compulsions that Alison had put on her had weakened to the point that if she was merely in the kitchen at dawn, she would be left alone. So once she slept, she slept long and deeply, and only awoke at the insistent tugging of a Salamander on her finger. The moment she awoke, she knew by the chill even here next to the hearth what it wanted; the fire had burned down to the barest of coals, and before she did anything else, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and got it rekindled. Then she returned to the pallet—which, now that she was able to take pretty much what she wanted or needed within the walls of the house, was now as comfortable, if not more comfortable, than her bed in the attic room. It looked as it always had, but she had carefully hand-stitched a tattered rag of a coverlet over the top of a very nice woolen blanket, had more blankets in hiding if she needed them, and had made up a decent mattress out of one of the featherbeds left in the upstairs maid's room. Anyone looking in on her as she slept would only see her wrapped in something that looked as if she had rescued it from the bin, and once she was awake, the sham was carefully hidden away in a cupboard that had once held enormous pudding-basins. Eleanor could not have boiled a pudding to save her soul, so the basins, now stowed in the cellar, were not required. In all the time she had been here, Alison had never once opened the cupboards, and Eleanor was fairly certain she wasn't going to begin now.

So when she lay back down to wake up properly, it was with no sense of hardship. She did, however, want to think very hard about the dreams she'd had.

Unlike the ones that had driven her downstairs, these had been quite interesting. Not pleasant precisely—she was left with the impression this morning that whatever else had been going on, she had been working very hard—but certainly not disturbing.

"Am I supposed to remember them, or not?" she asked aloud. And that seemed to trigger something—a memory of—voices.

She closed her eyes, and relaxed as Sarah had taught her, because she knew if she strained after those dream-memories, they would vanish.

Voices. The first thing that came into her mind was the hollow, ringing quality of them. Then words. "She's not ready! I care not if she can wield the power, she is not yet ready to do so!"

That was a female voice, more annoyed than angry. But there was something not—quite—human about it. As if it belonged to one of those fiery creatures that she had called "fire fairies" that had appeared to play with her in her dreams as a child. There was a resonance to it that she had never heard in a human voice.

"When are they ever? But the knowledge must be there when she needs it." That was a male, gruff, with the impression of immense age. Now, if a volcano could have a personality, this would have been it. Immense power was in this one, held barely in check; a slow power, slower than that of the first voice, but somehow the impression was that the speaker's strength at need was exponentially greater than anything the first speaker could command.

And a third voice—also male, and by contrast, quite human-sounding. "Very well. But see to it that she forgets when waking."

After that—nothing. No matter how much she blanked her mind, she could remember nothing else, except that she had been working as if she were studying for the examinations to enter Oxford.

Ah, now that was another clue. Whatever she had been "doing," it hadn't been physical labor, it had been entirely mental.

Assuming it was anything other than a dream. Which was a rather major assumption. Yes, she knew very well that magic was real, and very much a factor in her life, but it didn't follow that things she dreamed about were also real. Whatever, that was all she had of it. With a sigh of frustration, she stretched, opened her eyes, and started the day.

Which, once she was clean and dressed, was interrupted again almost immediately, by the sound of a great many people and wagons coming up the street.

This was hardly usual for Broom, and even less so this early in the morning. What on earth could be happening out there?

She left by the kitchen door and went to the garden gate to peer out, and saw, to her puzzlement, a veritable procession of wagons and carts carrying canvas and parcels and no few of the village women, all of it heading up towards the road leading out of the village. Where on earth could they be going?

Across the road, watching with the greatest of interest as he leaned on his stick, was one of the oldest men in Broom, Gaffer Clark. Under the thick thatch of white hair and the equally white beard, it was hard to tell exactly how old he was, and he himself wasn't entirely sure, because there weren't too many other people in Broom old enough to say that they knew they were older than Gaffer.

Well, if anyone would know what this was all about, it would be Gaffer. But—asking Gaffer was like breaking down a dam holding back a lake of words. The moment you asked him the simplest of questions, a veritable torrent of words came out—as Gaffer would say, "Words bein' so cheap an' all, why not make a great tidy heap of "em?" He was never one to keep his thoughts to himself, and one of those was always that there was no reason to use one word when a dozen would do.

Oh well, she crossed the street and approached him.

He gave her that puzzled look that always came over the villagers, because of her stepmother's spells—the look that said, "I think I ought to know you, and I can't imagine why I don't." She just nodded to him in a friendly but subservient fashion; Alison wanted her to appear to be a very, very low-ranking servant who was not a native of Broom, and so she would try and fit in with that. Besides, that very guise would give her the excuse to ask questions.

"Please sir, could you tell me what's going on? Why are all those carts out here this morning?" she asked, looking up at him with feigned timidity.

"Oh, now, well, it's May Day and all, do ye ken?" the Gaffer said, opening his bag of words and beginning to strew them about with a great smile on his face. "And when it's May Day, it's only right and proper that there be something to celebrate! Only that's being a bit hard these days, seeing that the Nine-Man-Morris is down to two men—two and a half, if you counted that poor lad i' there—" he nodded his head at the Broom pub—"what's on'y got half of what he left here with. And there's none of the lads what does the hobby-horse, nor Robin Hood, nor Maid Marian neither, nor not even a decent fiddler, so what's to do? And none of the travelers, nor the peddler-men that does the May church fair, or at least, not many and they ain't men. And school be closing short, so as the little 'uns can be helping with the farming. So, says good milady Devlin, may God himself bless her kindly heart, let's make the May Day fair and the school treat all in one, and have it all up at Longacre! Well, no sooner she says that, than everyone thinks, Hoi! A grand idea, that! And bein' as she's her ladyship and all, she's got—means, d'ye ken?" He stopped just long enough to give Eleanor a huge wink. "She's a-got hold of stuff to make sweeties for the kiddies, so it'll be a real school treat and all, and may God bless their innocent hearts, they can be eating sweets till they be sick, just as is proper for a school treat. And Master Reggie, who's Lord Fenyx now and all, he'll be a-handing out the prizes, as it's prize day along of being school treat. None of your Bibles and prayer books, neither, not that I hold with your prayer books, being chapel, and beggin' your pardon if I've offended ye, miss, but that's the bare truth, for a true man don't need a book to tell him what to pray, and I reckon God Himself gets tired of hearin' the same words bein' prattled every Sunday with no more understanding than a babe. Still! Prizes a young-ster'd be happy to have, not that they shouldn't be happy to have a Bible, but 'tisn't as if they don't get Bibles every time yon vicar has an excuse to hand 'em around. No, none of your Bibles and prayer books for Lord Fenyx, no—he'll be handin' out picture books and grand stories with plenty of pirates and bandits and happy endings and what all! So 'tis to be a grand day, all around. I'll be hauling me old bones up there myself, see if I don't! Gaffer, he's old, but not too old to know what a good time is."

Gaffer paused for breath, and Eleanor took that opportunity to thank him and scuttle back across the road and in through the garden gate—because she greatly feared that once Gaffer got his breath back, she'd be given a detailed account of every good time that the Gaffer had ever enjoyed.

Once inside the safety of the yard, she paused to consider what she had been told. And now that she recalled—there had been the same sort of to-do last May Day, but Alison had not given her the leisure to think about it, much less ask.

And of course, Reggie hadn't been up at Longacre either—

Reggie! If he was to be handing out the school prizes, then of course he wouldn't be able to get down to Round Meadow by teatime. He'd be lucky to get away before sunset, if at all. If she knew Reggie at all, she knew he wouldn't just be a figurehead, he'd be doing something to help.

And she wouldn't be seeing Sarah, either; Sarah herself had said as much. Well, May Day ... there was undoubtedly something witchy to be done on May Day. Sarah had been quite reticent about her plans, and Eleanor knew better than to pry.

There was no way that she could get the bond to stretch all the way to Longacre Park. She was lucky to get as far as Round Meadow— which was far enough from the manor that Reggie drove his automobile to get there.

It was hard not to feel disappointed and deserted, as she walked back into the kitchen and stood staring at the fire on the hearth. Everyone, it seemed, was going to be having some sort of celebration but Eleanor.

As the last of the carts rattled out of the village, a strange quiet settled over the place. It was, quite literally, as still out there as if it was two or three in the morning, except for bird-calls and the occasional distant crow of a rooster. She hadn't until that moment realized how much sound there was, even in such a small village as Broom, until the moment when it was gone.

She was all alone. There was no one to talk to, no one to be with. One of the few days she would be able to get away to see Reggie, and he wouldn't even be there, because he was up there at that enormous manor, playing His Lordship. Tomorrow Alison and the girls would probably be back, and her imprisonment would begin again. It's not fair— She sat down on the kitchen stool and stared out the window. It's not— And she felt tears of self-pity start to well up.

And then, she blinked, and firmed her chin, and sat straight up. What had she to feel sorry about? Good heavens, it was May Day, and Alison and the girls were somewhere far, far away, and she could go out to Round Meadow or anywhere else she could reach and go and gather the first May Day flowers she'd have been able to pick since before the war! And there were at least four old ladies on Cottager's Row that no one would be bringing May bouquets to, and who were too old to get up the hill to the fair! Four poor old ladies who had given all their best years to the service of someone else, and who were now sitting in their little cottages with no one for company except each other. Now there were people who had a right to feel sorry for themselves.

I might as well find out if I can manage two excursions outside The Arrows in a day. With resolution, she got her sprig of rosemary, broke it, and made the proper incantation, then got a basket and went a-Maying.

She wandered through pastures deserted by all but the sheep and cows, finding flowers she hadn't seen in three years. She visited little copses where she recalled the shyer flowers blooming, and there they were, untouched by anyone else.

Of course, that only made sense. The children who would have picked this May Day bounty had been too excited by the coming treat to go make May baskets for their mothers and little sweethearts. And the older girls—

The older girls have no sweethearts to make May garlands for, either. Suddenly, she stopped feeling quite so sorry for herself. In fact, the last wedding in the village had been her old schoolmate Cynthia Kerns— who'd had one day with her husband before he went back to the Front. One day—

No, it was no wonder that the flowers were still blooming here. There was no one to pick them. All the young men were gone, and the young ladies didn't have much heart for picking flowers.

She returned long before the sprig had withered with a basket full of cowslips and primroses, lilies-of-the-valley and other early flowers. With a skill she had thought she had forgotten, she wove grasses into little May-baskets, then raided the tea-cakes for a couple of sweet treats, laying them in the baskets with her own bouquets.

She surveyed her handiwork with pardonable pride. There] Now that's right and proper! She had made up four lovely little May-baskets of the sort she remembered from much happier days. The baskets wouldn't last a day, the flowers would linger only for two or three more, but it was the thought that counted, wasn't it? She cast the spell a second time, and with a larger basket laden with her offerings, went down to Cottager's Row.

The proper May Day protocol was to lay one's offering on the stoop, knock at the door, and run away. The problem was, Eleanor very much doubted that any of these old ladies would be able to bend down to pick up her offerings, and even if they could, they might not be able to get back up again. So she went to each in turn, knocked on the door, and presented very surprised and touched old women with her gift and a simple, "First of May, ma'am," with the little curtsey you would expect from a lower servant girl. And then, with eyes cast down, before any of them could ask who she was or who had sent her, she hurried away. She went around the corner and waited until her recipient went back into her house before going on to the next one. They would probably get together over tea and compare notes, but there was no harm in that. The point was that each should have a pleasant surprise, from someone unknown.

Not that any of these old women would know who she was even if she gave them her real name. The likelihood that any of them would even be aware of a Robinson family living at The Arrows was pretty remote. As servants up at the manor, they knew less than a quarter of the very small population of Broom, only those with whom they had family ties. Servants at a great house had very little time to themselves, no more than a half day or so off every couple of weeks, and even less to spare to go visiting even their own families. From the time they had entered service to the time when they were pensioned off, their social circle had been among their fellow servants, not down here—and any old friends they'd once had might well themselves be dead at this point.

And once again, she realized that she had very little reason to feel sorry for herself. Even if her stepmother's spell kept people from recognizing her, people still knew who she was—and at least one remembered her and recognized her.

As for those four old ladies, at least they knew that someone had remembered them today, and Eleanor found a little smile of pleasure playing about her lips as she hurried back to The Arrows.

She indulged herself with a slightly extravagant luncheon, but as she finished it, a spirit of restlessness overcame her, and she felt far too unsettled to spend the day reading.

So instead, she went all over the house, flung open all of the windows to the spring breezes and—after a moment of thought—began to clean. Oh, not the spring cleaning that Alison would, without a doubt, set her to the moment she and the girls got home. No, this time she would clean what she wanted to clean. In the years since the war began, she'd not been able to air out her own bedding or clean her own room more than twice, and only after she was exhausted from her daily work. So it was her tiny room that got turned out and swept and dusted until there wasn't a speck of dirt anywhere in it, the mattress put out in the garden to air, the blankets and coverlet left to hang over the line, the threadbare carpet beaten within an inch of its life. It was every stitch of her own clothing that got washed and hung to dry, then put away with rosemary sprigs to scent it. It was the pallet-bed from the kitchen that got the same treatment as her bedding from her bedroom. And with time still on her hands in the late afternoon, she decided to go upstairs into the attic and see what was there.

She honestly didn't expect much. After all, she and her father weren't the family that had owned The Arrows for the last however-many generations, and she fully expected that the original family would have cleaned out every bit of their ancestral goods.

Except that once she climbed the stairs and unlocked the door to the long-ignored room—she discovered that they hadn't.

She had never been here before; not even once Alison had turned her into a servant. Perhaps everyone had assumed that the attic was empty, and since the war, there had been such a shortage of things that no one actually had anything to go up in an attic to stow things away. Not even clothing; once Alison or the girls deemed a frock too worn or too out-of-date to wear, it went to the church for distribution to the deserving poor in an ostentatious display of false piety. So the piled up furnishings and dust-covered trunks came as a startling surprise as she blinked at them in the musty gloom.

The air was full of dust, and light shone only dimly through the single grimy window. But there must have been enough in the way of furnishings here to fill two or three rooms, and a great deal more in the way of trunks, boxes, and crates.

To the windowless back of the attic, she could dimly make out the shapes of exceedingly old-fashioned furniture piled up to the ceiling; heavy stuff, ornately carved. At least one very old-fashioned four-post bed with a wooden canopy, straight-back chairs, a table so heavy she wondered how anyone had gotten it up here. In front of the furniture, were the trunks and boxes, piled upon one another. No books, which seemed odd—but then, perhaps most of the former owners hadn't been readers to speak of.

Surely there isn't anything usable up here, she thought doubtfully. But something of the child who cannot help but see a trunk and think "treasure" must still have been in her, for she went to the nearest, and flung open the lid to look. And then the next—and the next—and the next—

Soon enough, she had been half right—and half wrong.

The trunks were full of all manner of things. Children's books, battered and torn, and broken toys. Trunk after trunk full of threadbare linens, moth-eaten blankets, and ancient curtains. More trunks full of antique clothing. All of the clothing dated to the last century at least, from the era of the bustle and the hoop-skirt, and had been thriftily packed away, with springs of lavender so old it crumbled when she touched it. The silks were so old that they practically fell apart when she picked them up; merely lifting them made them tear. The furs had evidently been raising entire hoards of little mothlets, and so had the woolens. And yet, not everything was a complete loss. Most of the trimmings, the laces, the beads, and the embroideries, were still sound. And there were gowns that somehow had escaped the moth and the mildew and dry-rot. Anything linen or cotton was perfectly good, for instance, and there were a couple of Victorian ball-gowns that were, if terribly creased, also wonderfully evocative of the by-gone belles who must have worn them. Of course the ball-gowns were absolutely useless to her, but she gathered up the linen skirts, well aware that each of the voluminous things, made to wear over the huge hoops formerly fashionable, would make two or three modern walking skirts for her. She would have to be very careful, and do all her sewing at night, but she wouldn't have to look quite as shabby as she had been doing. Shirtwaists and blouses, plain ones at least, hadn't changed much in all that time, either. Perhaps a little altering of collars would be needed, but not much more than that.

Then she came upon the trunk that had been tucked away under the dust-covered window, well away from the rest. It was a very small trunk, hardly more than a box, and as she brushed the dust from the top of it, she froze.

For there, carefully written on a paper label stuck to the top of it was her own name. Eleanor Robinson.

17

May 1, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

ELEANOR STARED AT THE FADED words on the old paper label, transfixed. This wasn't a hand that she recognized; certainly not her own writing, and not her father's. Whose, then?

Could it possibly be?

She hardly dared think of it.

She finally took a deep breath, and opened the box. Her hands were trembling as she did so.

It contained two things: an envelope and what looked like a copybook. She lifted both out, carefully, as if they might disintegrate like the shattered silks of the ancient gowns in the other trunks.

She peered at them, and tried to make out what was written on them, only to realize that the light was too dim in here to read the fading words.

I need proper light.

She bundled up her linen skirts and shirtwaists under one arm, put the envelope with great care inside the front cover of the copybook, and took everything downstairs, trembling inside, knees feeling weak, both excited and afraid to discover what it was she had found.

She left the clothing in the wash-house where it was unlikely to be discovered, then, realizing that the sun was setting, she took her two finds into the parlor and lit the oil lamps—

And then, of course, she realized just how grimy she was, so she delayed the moment of discovery still further by going to wash her hands and face. Somehow she didn't want to touch her discoveries with filthy hands. It didn't feel right.

And somehow, she wanted to delay that moment of discovery; she was not sure why, but she both longed for and feared the moment when she would open that envelope and learn what lay inside.

Only then, with clean hands and face, did she sit down at the table, remove the envelope from inside the copybook with hands that shook with excitement, and opened the flap.

There was a note inside, a very short note, in the same hand that had written her name on the box. The paper had yellowed, the ink had browned, but the writing was clear enough. The words hit her like blows, burned into her mind as if they had been branded there.

My dear daughter, it began, and she bit back a cry to realize that the writer, as she had not dared to hope, was her own long-dead mother. My friend Sarah would laugh at me if she knew I was doing this. She would say that I am anticipating the worst. I would only say that since neither of us have the gift of scrying into the future, one cannot anticipate anything, and I am taking precautions. If you have found this, you have found my most important legacy to you, my daughter, whom I knew would one day wield the power of a Master of Fire. Sarah is neither a Master nor of your Element, and cannot teach you most of what you need to know. It was hard for me to find a teacher; it may be that by the time you find this, you already have determined you, too, will not be able to find a Fire Master willing to teach a mere girl. In this book you will find all that I know. If you have not already done so, go to Sarah, the midwife some call our village witch, and ask her to help you, since I am not there to do so myself. Be fearless and strong, and seize your birthright with all the strength that is in you.

And that was all. Eleanor felt—

Disappointed. Horribly, dreadfully disappointed. Where were the tender sentiments, the assurances that she had been loved and cherished, and that wherever her mother was, she still loved her daughter? Where were the gentle words of encouragement from beyond the grave? This might just as well have been a note from one of the tutors at Oxford, for all the warmth that was in it.

She held the note in hands that shook, and felt like a little girl on what she dreamed was Christmas morning who awakens to find that it is not the glorious holiday, but just another day. She had always thought, always assumed, that if she ever, ever found something for her from her long-lost mother, it would be full of messages of love and devotion. This—this was more like the old Roman matron's cry to her son departing for the wars: "Return with your shield, or on it." Where was the love in that?

Maybe she didn't care about me after all. Maybe all she thought of me was that I was someone to follow in her footsteps.

She felt bereft, as if something had been taken from her. And as she sat there, the copybook still unopened, two huge tears gathered in her stinging eyes, overflowed, and burned their way down her cheeks.

"Ah, here you are]" Sarah exclaimed from the parlor door. "What on earth are you doing in here?"

She turned, and Sarah started a little. "And why on earth are you crying?" the witch exclaimed, looking astonished. "What's happened?" Eleanor sniffed back more tears, and held out the note and the unopened book. "I—went up to the attic," she said, around the enormous and painful lump in her throat that threatened to choke her. "And I found these."

Sarah made quick work of the note, her eyes widening and her face taking on an expression of astonished pleasure. "Good heavens, girl, don't you realize what this is? It's what I can't teach you] This is wonderful! Why are you weeping like that?"

"She didn't—she didn't—" Eleanor began to sob; she couldn't help it. The tears just started and wouldn't stop. "She never says she loved me—"

"Oh, my dear—" Suddenly Sarah softened all over, in a way that Eleanor had never seen her do before. She sat down on the chair next to Eleanor, and took Eleanor into her arms. Unresisting, Eleanor sagged against her. "You silly little goose," she said fondly, holding Eleanor against her shoulder, and wiping away Eleanor's tears with the corner of her apron. "Of course she didn't. Why should she? She never expected you to read that note! She always thought she would be there, teaching you herself! Can't you read how self-conscious her words are? How stiff?"

"Yes, but—" Eleanor began.

"Well, there you are, she was just being what I would have called silly-cautious, and she knew I would have made fun of her if I'd known she was writing that." Sarah stroked her hair, her voice full of such unshakeable conviction that Eleanor could not disbelieve. "She told you every single day, several times a day, how much she loved you, first thing on waking and last thing at night. I heard her. She showed you hundreds of times more in a day. Why should she tell you in a note, when she thought she would always be here to keep telling and showing you?"

Eleanor managed to control her sobbing, and Sarah's words penetrated her grief somewhat. "But—why didn't she think—"

"Now, silly child, look at that note, why don't you?" Sarah said, half fondly, half scolding, giving Eleanor's shoulders a little shake. "In her best copper-plate handwriting, and phrased as formally and stiff as an invitation to Lady Devlin to tea! Your mother was a simple village girl, child! She loved to read, but writing things? For her, when you wrote something, it was formal, stiff, and important! Well, except when you were writing down recipes. I don't think she ever wrote a letter in her life, not even to me, her best friend! Your father might have written her a love-letter or two, but she certainly didn't write any back! Do you understand what I'm saying? She could no more have written anything sentimental than—than commanded an Undine!"

The words penetrated the fog of her distress—and more than that, they made sense, perfect sense. Slowly the grief faded. "So she—"

"Yes, you green-goose, she loved you more than her own life," Sarah scolded. "She loved you enough to spend hours writing down everything she knew about Fire Mastery! And this from a woman who, I know for a certain fact, would rather have scrubbed out the wash-house on hands and knees than pick up a pen." Put like that—

Eleanor freed herself from Sarah's motherly embrace, smiled wanly at her, and wiped her eyes with her own apron-corner. "I suppose I am being silly."

Sarah shook her head, fondly. "No, you were being perfectly natural. If you go on weeping, though, you will be acting in a very silly and selfish manner. Have you looked at the book yet?" Eleanor shook her head.

"Then it can wait until you've had some supper." As practical as ever, Sarah drew her out into the kitchen where they put together mushrooms and eggs and wild herbs that Sarah had brought with her, along with careful gleanings from Alison's stores. Only when both of them were finished, the dishes and pans washed and put up, and everything tidy again, did Sarah go out to the parlor and return with the book and the lamp.

"Let's have a good look at this, shall we?" she said, conversationally.

An hour later, and Sarah was sitting there shaking her head, while Eleanor's head ached from trying to understand what was written in the pages of that copybook.

"Now I know I never want to be a Master," Sarah said decisively. "I like things plain! Plain as plain! I like earth to be Earth and not—" she waved her hand helplessly, "Not Erda and Epona and gnomes and fertility and not wrapped up in symbols and fables!" She frowned. "I like things to be one thing and not like one of those silly dolls you open up and find another, and another, and another."

Eleanor blinked, her eyes sore, and rubbed both temples with the tips of her fingers. "It's going to take me a long time," she admitted. "I can—it's like reaching for something on the top shelf that I can't see. I can barely touch it, make out the edge of it, but I know it's there, and if I can just reach a little further, I know I can grasp it—"

"Well, if that's what your mother mastered, all I can say is that I had no idea." Sarah looked forlorn. "She seemed so—ordinary."

"It was all inside her," Eleanor mused, shutting the book with a feeling that if she looked too much longer at those words they would start dancing about in her mind. "I wonder where she learned it all? She doesn't say. She must have found some great Master to learn from, but who?"

Sarah sat back in her chair and reached for her teacup. "Now that is a good question. I don't know who the Masters are, for the most part. They like to keep it that way, so people don't have a chance to let things slip. Other Masters know, of course, but that's all within their own circle." She frowned. "And another thing; the Masters in that circle are almost always men. Hmm. . . ."

"You think she must have found a lady Master of Fire? A secret one?" Eleanor asked eagerly.

"Or one found her. There is that old saying that when the student is ready, a teacher will find her." Sarah nodded. "And there's no telling who it would have been; she was from Stratford-on-Avon, so it wouldn't be anyone I could point a finger at. Stratford's always produced its share of odd ones and wizards, and it's not so much of a city that a Master would feel uncomfortable there. Not like London or Glasgow or Manchester." She licked her lips. "The more I think on it, the more that makes sense. I remember her telling me that the magic ran in her family, but deep; her grandsire was a Master, but not her father. Huh. Maybe 'twas her grandsire found her the Fire Master."

"Well, whoever it was, he or she was like a university don," Eleanor replied ruefully. "This—this is—oh!"

An idea had suddenly occurred to her, and she sat up straight. "What? What?" Sarah asked sharply.

"I just realized that I recognize this!" she said "From the medieval history I was studying for the examinations to get into Oxford. This is alchemy—alchemy and medieval mysticism! The 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' sort of thing! Maybe it was some sort of don she was studying with—"

"Well, it's like no way that I was taught or even heard of, but if it works well enough for you, that is what counts." Sarah stood up to go, and hesitated. "Do you think that book should stay here?"

"No," Eleanor told her instantly. "I want to take no chances that she might find it. I was going to ask you to take it with you and keep it. Besides, if what mother learned is based on alchemy and that sort of thing, there are books in the library here that can help me, that have been here all along. If Alison sees me studying one of those, she'll just assume I'm in desperate want of something to read."

Sarah gathered up the old book and tucked it under her shawl. "I think that's wise, very wise. Well, my day began before dawn, so if Alison doesn't come back, I will see you on the morrow."

"Thank you, Sarah," Eleanor said, getting to her feet and letting her mentor out the kitchen door. "Thank you very much."

She should have been tired, but somehow she wasn't, and she decided to go to the library with the lamp and see if she couldn't find the books she thought that she remembered.

There were a lot of odd books in this room, things that certainly hadn't matched with any of her father's interests, and that up until now, she hadn't associated with her mother, either. Old things, that didn't even have titles imprinted on the spines, much less an author's name. But sure enough, when she took them down, she found that there were several on Natural Philosophy and Alchemie, Ye Historic and Practice of Alchemie, and that when she looked inside the front cover, there was a name in crabbed and faded handwriting utterly unlike her mother's, and a date—the earliest she found was 1845, and the oldest, 1880. The first name was clear enough—"Valeria," which did sound like a woman—but the second was indecipherable.

So I'll probably never know if these were Mother's books given to her by her teacher, or things picked up at a jumble sale. Still, they might prove useful, if her mother's teaching was based on creaky old mysticism, and not the practical approach that Sarah preferred.

She rearranged the rest of the books to keep it from looking as if she had taken anything. No use in alerting Alison or the girls to the fact that she was reading all of the books on alchemy. If they found her reading one, they'd assume it was a fluke.

You know, in all of the time they've been here, and the things they've let slip about their own magic, I don't think they've ever said anything that sounded like the things in mother's workbook. I don't think they were taught the same son of way she was. Well, that was all to the good.

She took the books up to her room and after some thought, distributed them around the room in ways that made it look as if she was doing anything but reading them. One went under the too-short leg of a wobbly dresser, one could be placed to hold open the shutter—the rest she placed here and there, anywhere that looked as if she didn't care what happened to them, as if a brick or a stone could have served the same function. That way, if anyone noticed that they were all about alchemy she could say that she had taken the books she thought no one would ever want to read.

She lit a bedside candle, changed into her night-dress, climbed into bed, and settled in for a read.

Within a few paragraphs, she knew that her hunch was right. Her mother's workbook had paragraphs that were very like a condensed form of what she found here.

Mind, these books were altogether too wordy. But she was used to that; the great classic writers tended to be just about as wordy; they were just better at it. The study of alchemy, according to this philosopher, had never been about finding ways to change base metal into gold. That particular transmutation itself was merely a philosophical expression for the evolution and maturation of a human spirit. . . .

To change one's own self from the heavy, leaden soul who could scarcely lift his eyes to the heavens, much less soar among them, to the winged, pure, and precious intellect that could neither tarnish nor be debased.

The Philosopher's Stone was not a thing, but a process—as, so the book said, a spell was not really a thing but a process. Spells were the processes by which a magician imposed his or her will on the surrounding universe. The Philosopher's Stone was the process by which the magician transmuted his or herself into a state in which he or she could understand the universe. Maybe even become one with it.

And if her mother's workbook had been dense with symbolic meanings, this book was overflowing with them. Nothing, it seemed, existed without having double and triple meanings. Not even the most commonplace items. A broom was a broom, and a means of cleansing, the symbol for cleansing, and a symbol of the cleansing power of Air. Even the old gods were merely symbols for other things, powers, emotions, stages on the life-journey.

But here were the old, familiar friends—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water ... if you knew what to look for, you quickly realized that the man who wrote this book understood Mastery. The book was written in such a way that those who were not magicians could take it as pure philosophy—but for those who were, this book, and probably some of the others, were a guide beyond the practical application of magic into the theory behind it.

And when you knew the theory and the philosophy, you could create your own pathways and applications.

Slowly, with much reading and rereading of the same paragraphs, things began to fit into place.

She had originally intended to concentrate only on her own Element, but it soon became clear that this was a bad idea. Not only were the powers and meanings of all four Elements incestuously intertwined, but after all, Alison was an Earth Master and Reggie an Air Master. To defeat the one and help the other, she had to learn about their Elements, and at that point it made little sense to skip learning about the Antagonistic Element to her own, Water.

She finally felt her eyelids growing too heavy, and set the book aside, blowing out the candle, phrases from the book still echoing in her mind as she drifted into sleep. She didn't understand them yet— but soon—soon—

. . . the first step must be into the first Sphere, the Sphere of Imagination, for Intellect must be the servant of Imagination, and not the master. . . .

Eleanor woke slowly, with the strangest feeling—as if, once she had put the book down last night, she had gone into dreams only to find that in her dreams she was still trying to come to grips with what she had read. Except that in the dream, there was something or someone helping her grasp it.

And the moment she woke, she realized that she did grasp some of what she'd been reading, and had put it together with what had been in the workbook.

In fact, that was exactly what she needed to do—start putting things together, since all things were connected, and each had aspects of the rest. The only actual starting place was the intellect, which led into the imagination. After that, the imagination led everywhere.

She'd been trying to think of all of the Planes of her mother's book—or "Spheres," as the Alchemy book called them—as being separate, and that things somehow passed from one to another. But it wasn't like that at all; everything was layered on top of everything else, and everything coexisted at once. The physical world that everyone saw and lived in was overlaid with all of the magic worlds. The difference between a regular person and a magician was whether or not you could see each layer.

Which was why those nasty little gnomish things in the meadow had seemed to dig their way into the ground without actually disturbing it; they weren't really digging into the ground, they were moving themselves out of the Plane of the "real world"—which the alchemy book called "Middle Earth," and into one of the lower Planes, probably the Dark Earth Plane, where she couldn't see them anymore. And the Salamanders couldn't follow, both because they weren't creatures of Earth and because they weren't creatures of the Dark Ways. Every Sphere had a corresponding Dark Side, and as a Light Path magician, you didn't want to go there, unless you absolutely had to. Not because you could get hurt, but because you could get seduced and corrupted unless you were very, very careful. You couldn't go there, if you were a Light Path Elemental.

She could have, if she had known how to get her imagination to move her awareness into the Plane of Earth, because humans were uniquely able to move among all the Planes. But she wouldn't have been comfortable there, because it wasn't her Element, either.

Imagination. That was the key. Whatever she could imagine, if she could do it well enough, and believe in it, she could see.

Intellect ruled the Middle Earth, which lay between the Spheres of the Light Path and the Spheres of the Dark. It reflected both, though the balance shifted as affairs in the Middle Earth itself shifted, and as the balance of power between the Light Path Spheres and the Dark Path Spheres shifted.

Those who subscribed only to Intellect could never move beyond the Middle Earth. But those who explored Imagination and Intuition found the way into the other Spheres open to them.

And once you learned the symbolic logic of those other Spheres, you knew how to manipulate your magic, and how to counter the magic of other Elements than your own. Now, that meant that Eleanor would have a fighting chance of undoing what Alison had done to her, even if she wasn't as strong a magician as Alison. It didn't take a hammer to crack a nut; a little pressure applied at the right place would split it open. What was more, Eleanor had a shrewd hunch that Alison's spells only worked against her on this Plane. Once she learned how to move among the Planes, she could travel them relatively unhindered.

Once I learn to move among the Planes, once I really understand the Plane of Earth magic, I will find the key to break her spells! She knew that; it made perfect sense. Knowledge and understanding, not force, were going to be the keys to her shackles.

But to do that, to be able to step beyond this Middle Earth and into the rest, she would have to do a lot of work. She had once thought that preparing for the examinations to get into Oxford was hard work. This would be ten times harder. She was going to have to go completely beyond what she had always taken as "the truth" into a whole new set of truths—and then believe in them. Well, no one said it was going to be easy.

She got up and ran through her usual chores in an absentminded fashion; her hands and body did the work, while her mind repeated some of what she thought she was beginning to understand from the books.

It might have seemed odd, but amid all those philosophical musing, she did not forget to wash all those cotton shirtwaists and linen skirts she had brought down from the attic, nor to put them up—well out of sight of the bedroom windows—on lines in the garden to dry. It seemed very strange to be doing all these intensely common and practical things while her head was buzzing with alchemical esoterica.

And as she worked, she kept remembering links to the symbology of even the most ordinary things—as she scrubbed, she was also thinking. Water, is the Sphere of Emotion; although there are emotions associated with all the Elements, they all have more strength here in Water. Especially the nurturing ones—that's the Light Path, though, the Dark Path is the emotions that destroy, like a flood washing everything away in its path. And Water is mutable—solid to liquid to gas and back again, so it represents change, while unchanging Water, the Dark Path, is stagnation. And nothing can grow without it, so it also has an aspect of growth, but too much water can kill, so there's death. It can purify and pollute. It can fill or drown. The alchemical creature is the Hippocampus, showing the links among Water, Air, and Earth. Water is hard to control because it's hard to contain, not as hard as Air, though.

And then that, and a whiff of flowers, sent her into Air, the Sphere of Mercury, the Sphere of Memory. The strongest memory-trigger there is, is scent. More of a Sphere of Intellect than Emotion, though Mercury is changable and volatile, more so than water. The Zephyr refreshes, the Tempest sweeps away. Too much Air can intoxicate, too little and you die. It can cleanse, too, or destroy. Mostly, it's too thin to support emotion, or at least, intense emotion. Memories generally come at a distance; you can forget how you felt when you went through those incidents originally. Pride, though; there's pride there. And that's why Mercury is the god of liars, because people lie to bolster their pride and maintain their pride. And thieves, because thieves are proud of their skill. That's the Dark Path; there's no reason why you shouldn't take pride in your work, and there's nothing wrong with change. Hardest of the Elements to contain, but not so hard to control, since Fire devours it, Water ignores it, Earth deflects it—the Alchemical creature is the Phoenyx, even though the Phoenyx is also a Fire Elemental, showing the links among Air, Water, and Fire.

Scrubbing the floor led to—Earth. Alison's Element. The Sphere of Passion—Love, on the Path of Light, Lust on the Dark Path. Seduction, which sits on the line between the two Paths. Not changeable, no—it takes a lot to force the Earth to change. Passion is a really useful thing; you can't really create something that will live without it. Passion is an implacable force, like an avalanche—once you start it, it takes a long time to stop it. Maybe that's why she had to wait until I was in an emotional breakdown before she could bind me. The Dark Path isn't stagnation though—it's rot or sterility. Creator and Devourer; Earth is, among others, the Goddesses Erda and Hera, who are both prone to creation and destruction. There may be a key to defeating Alison in that, but what is it? The Alchemical creature is the Gryphon, showing the links among Earth, Air, and Water, even though the Gryphon is also an Elemental of Air.

She mused over that while she cooked, then lingered over her breakfast, having come around to her own Element at last. Fire— Sphere of Anger. Mars. The Alchemical Creature is the Dragon, showing the links among Air, Earth, and Fire. The Dragon of the Light is wise and ancient, the Dragon of the Dark is almost mindless and constantly in a rage. Fire cleanses and destroys. The Dark Path is the Fire that only devours, I suppose, since there is no Fire that is not in a state of constant change. The Light Path would be the Fire that cleanses? Or maybe the Fire that serves, instead of the uncontrolled fire that eats everything in its path. I suppose Anger can be productive; righteous anger, but what a narrow divide between Light and Dark! Righteous anger should lead you to Justice, which is why Justice is also here, but. . . but Justice is blind, and there is no Mercy in the Sphere of Fire. Justice? Judgment is more like it. And Anger, like Fire, is hard to control and the most apt to turn and destroy the person trying to control it. Hate—channeled anger. How do I control my anger? Because if I don't, it will control me. . . .

Intellect and imagination, that was what it had to be. That was what it seemed to come down to. Somehow she had to use both. No wonder Fire was supposed to be the most dangerous of the Elements!

And the most seductive; anger was intoxicating, she knew that already. And when anger ran out—

Another branch on the Dark Path—Despair. Oh, I know the taste of that. Despair, because it's Self Hate; yes, that belongs here in Fire, too. Like Fire, Despair devours what sustains it. . . and Despair can coil you right back to Anger again, unthinking Anger, the kind that just lashes out.

She almost wished she had never picked up that book; never read what was in those pages. Sarah's way had been so much simpler]

Sarah's way would never have gotten me where I need to go.

She had to become a Master if she was going to break Alison's hold on her. She was beginning to think that there were masters and there were Masters—those who used their magic, and those who really, truly understood it. And maybe Alison hadn't gotten to her Mastery by following this course, but—

But if she hasn't, then that may be her weakness. If she's gone the simpler, most direct route to power, it means she's left all those other paths that are still there unwatched, unguarded. It's like having a fortress and leaving all the windows open while you carefully lock the only door.

Eleanor finished her breakfast and tidied up, her mind still turning over all the things she had studied. Fire is Swords, in the Tarot deck; there's Mars again. So that's my weakness, the one she'll try to exploit, because if there's one thing she really does understand, it's how to use someone's weaknesses against him, and how to turn a strength into a weakness to exploit. Anger, hate, and despair—

She stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen and clapped her hand to her mouth as a sudden revelation hit.

She already has] She already has! The night we got the news about Father being killed! I was in despair, and she pounced on it!

And the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to her that Alison's spells always got stronger the more depressed that Eleanor was. The question was, did Alison know about the alchemical philosophy, or was this a case of something else—the simple siphoning of dark power from someone who was generating a lot of it?

The sooner she knew the answer to that question, the better off she would be.

And—Imagination and Intellect—the answer just might be right under my nose. . . .

18

May 2, 1917

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

REGGIE HALF-WOKE SEVERAL TIMES DURING the night, responding to a vague feeling of presences in his room with him. Most narcotics and soporifics actually had the effect of taking down the mental barriers between even ordinary folk and the Unseen, but Doctor Maya had seen to it that Reggie's prescriptions had added components to them that had the opposite effect. Or so he assumed, anyway, since after he had started taking the drugs that she had prescribed, his sleep was no longer troubled by unwanted visitors.

So the feeling of presence was never enough to trouble his dreams or fully wake him out of slumber. The painkillers did their job, and he woke late in the morning of the second of May feeling stiff and sore, but not half-crippled. He dressed without assistance, and made his way down to breakfast with only the aid of a cane.

There was an odd addition to the usually spartan breakfast menu. Tea-cakes, split and lightly toasted, in place of actual toast, scones, or crumpets. He eyed them with amusement; it seemed that there were still leftovers from the School Treat.

"Waste not, want not," he said aloud, and treated them like toasted crumpets or scones. His mother, always an early riser, had long since had her breakfast, and was probably out with the gardener, dealing with the inevitable damage done to the gardens by the children. There were always accidents, and little ones too small to know any better who would tear up flower beds making bouquets. Fortunately the famous roses were perfectly capable of defending themselves, the herb garden was in a walled and hedged space of its own that was off-limits during the school treat, and the current gardener was not likely to threaten suicide over some torn-up plants.

After a quite satisfactory breakfast, he went to the windows of the terrace and spotted her, as he had expected, pointing to places in the flower beds and presumably talking over repairs with the gardener. It was too far for him to hear what they were saying, but when he went outside to the balustrade, she saw him watching and waved, and shortly thereafter joined him upon the terrace.

"The little terrors]" she said fondly. "The primroses are quite decimated, and the tulips and daffodils as well. Luckily they did not actually tear up any bulbs this year, and we planned for this, at any rate. There are more than enough plants coming along in the greenhouse to cover the damage. In two days no one will know they were here."

"Hmm," he replied, giving her a sideways glance. "I seem to recall a certain little boy who presented his mother with a May Day bouquet of all of the exceedingly rare double-ruffled tulips that the gardener had been cosseting over the winter in hopes of finally getting a good show out of them."

"And very lovely they looked in a vase on my desk, too," she chuckled. "Furthermore, despite all predictions to the contrary, they gave just as good a show the next spring. And the times being what they are, I would rather have happy children than a perfect garden."

"You're a trump, Mater," he said warmly, bending down to kiss her cheek.

"I have my moments," she agreed. "Oh! Your aunt is definitely coming, and I must say, I am glad of it. The Brigadier offered to bring her in his motorcar, so they'll be arriving together."

"Good! And we ought to start having small parties with some of our neighbors, too," he said, even though that was really the last thing he wanted. He was going to enjoy having the Brigadier here, and his aunt would be good company for his mother, but—

But the truth was, he would have been a great deal happier with no more than that. Aunt has an instinct for when I want to be left alone, and the Brigadier does a good job of keeping himself to himself. But some of the neighbors. . . .

Nevertheless, he could see for himself how much more animated his mother was. She needed the company, even if he didn't want it. It was about time she started to live again.

"Well, we'll see what your aunt suggests," was all his mother said— but he knew there would at least be some dinners, and some card-parties, and very probably things would start simmering and break out in tea dances and garden parties, and tennis parties, and possibly even—

He resolved not to think about it until it happened, but he knew what his mother was thinking when she said, altogether too casually, "I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the strength of your gramophone. It quite takes the place of musicians, doesn't it?"

May 2, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

It was the second of May, and Eleanor was still alone in the house. She could hardly believe her good fortune. Whatever was keeping her stepmother and stepsisters away, Eleanor hoped it was vastly entertaining. The longer they stayed away, the better.

Now, since the entire party had gone off by motorcar, Eleanor knew that she would not be seeing them until evening at the earliest if they even returned today at all. Alison preferred to rise as late as possible and travel in a leisurely manner. So this meant that today, at least, she should have the whole of the day in freedom.

Or at least, relative freedom. More freedom than she'd had for three years. . . .

In that moment, she felt a shadow of depression fall over her. Freedom! She wasn't free. To use that word, even to herself, was to mock her own condition. She could only leave the house for an hour or two at most. She couldn't talk to anyone and be believed. What food she ate that wasn't stolen was scant and poor. Her clothing was the rags of what she'd owned three years ago. She labored as a menial from dawn to dusk, unpaid, no better than a slave. Any tiny crumb of pleasure she got could be snatched away at any time. Such freedom! When her stepmother was in the house, she couldn't leave it. Only one person besides the village witch recognized who she really was, and she couldn't tell him the truth, because her very words were hedged about and compelled by spells.

Freedom . . . scullery maids had more freedom than she did.

She felt her eyes stinging, and stifled a sob.

What's the use? I'm a prisoner no matter what happens.

But she felt rebellion against that despair stirring inside her after a moment. And she scrubbed the incipient tears away with the back of her hand, fiercely. All right. She was a prisoner now—but less of one than she had been a few months ago. Alison was no longer the only one with magic at her command; her compulsions and spells were weakening under the steady pressure of what Eleanor was learning to master. And there was the promise of freedom in her mother's workbook. One day, Eleanor would be a Master of Fire.

She would hold to that hope, and that promise. Hope—so much could be endured so long as there was hope.

I will work! she pledged herself, fiercely. I will become a Master of Fire! And then I will take back my freedom. Nothing else matters. Even if I have to make my way as a servant because no one will believe what happened, I will have that]

And meanwhile—meanwhile life would go on. She would steal what pleasure she could. She would win whatever scraps she could. She would learn by day and hide her growing power under the mask of the meek and frightened girl that Alison expected to see.

And she might as well use Alison's absence to remake some of those skirts and shirtwaists, for instance. Or one set, at any rate. A simple, unadorned skirt and an altered blouse should not be beyond her sewing ability.

In its way, that was rebellion too. Maybe no one would notice, but she would be less ragged, less beggarly, and have regained just a little more dignity, if only in her own mind. It was hard to feel anything but a victim when all you had was patched and threadbare clothing not even a street urchin would want. She would gain back a little of her own pride, in spite of Alison.

The thought was the parent to the deed; after as little cleaning of the house as she could get away with to satisfy Alison's spells, she attacked the now dry and clean skirts and blouses with scissors and needle. She did all her cutting-out at once, because she might not get another chance, took the scraps and put them in the rag-bag to hide them, then laid the pieces away under her bed—all but the makings for one new skirt and shirtwaist.

She had been an indifferent seamstress before Alison arrived; why should she be any good at it, when she'd never had to so much as turn up a hem in her life? But she'd been forced to learn, mostly by observing the maids, for Alison had no intention of parting with a single penny to keep Eleanor clothed—and of course, once all of the maids were gone, Eleanor added the task of mending her stepsisters' clothing to the rest of her chores.

By then, she had learned on her own garments, as they grew shabbier with each day. Hems came down, seams ripped, and when one did all the rough work of the house, sooner or later things got torn. All of her current clothing dated from 1914 and before. Most of it was looking like something even a gypsy would be ashamed of, and the best of it was shabby.

Well, there's one blessing, she thought, as she sat out in the garden, sewing as quickly as she could. There's not a lot of material in a modern skin, compared to the ones I just cut up. If I'd been living fifty years ago, this would take days.

The old linen was soft and heavy, like a damask tablecloth, and if the color had faded from its original indigo to a softer blue, at least it had faded evenly and the color was still pretty. And she could use the time while her fingers worked to continue to puzzle out the cryptic things she had read in the alchemy books last night.

She began by trying to puzzle them out, rationally and logically but as the needle wove through the heavy linen, it became more of a meditation. Fire . . . flame . . . heat. The heat of passion ... of love and anger. Righteous anger, carefully controlled. Anger as a weapon. Could love be a weapon?

A weapon—well, perhaps not, but armor, certainly armor! And as a shield. . . .

It was hard to get past her own education, in a way. Young ladies weren't supposed to think about anger, or passion. Young ladies—

Young ladies weren't supposed to think about a great many things, but she had never let that stop her before.

It was long past the time when what young ladies were "supposed" to think about was changed.

Passion. Passion was dangerous; passion overcame reason. Yes, it could, but only if you surrendered your own will to it. That was in the alchemy books, too. If your will was strong, and your heart listened to your head, passion could be a great force for good. Passion could drive a person to do more, far more, than she thought she could. Passion became strength. . . .

She thought about the book that had held drawings of some strange cards, cards unlike the playing cards she was used to. The card called "Strength" was a picture of a beautiful maiden gently holding the jaws of a lion shut with a single hand. That was passion in control of will, the heart obeying the head. Fire yearned to blaze without control, and yet, under the gentle guidance of will, it was a willing servant. Not tame, but tempered. . . .

The needle flashed in the sunlight, the seams grew of themselves. It was a pleasure to sew out here in the sun, and by just luncheon, she was finished. As she surveyed her handiwork with pleasure and a little pride in her accomplishment—three years ago she would haven't even have been able to sew up the hem!—she couldn't help but wonder that if she wore these up to the meadow, would Reggie notice?

Ah, what am I thinking? Why should he notice what I wear or don't wear?

She shook off those thoughts, changed into her new outfit with a sense of making another little step back toward that world she had been evicted from, and ate her luncheon with her nose firmly in her alchemy books. One of the authors was very taken with a magical discipline called the Kabala, but the moment she tried to puzzle that out, she felt her eyes practically watering. If her mother had ever mastered that school, there was no sign of it in the notes she had left, and all of the numbers and letters and strange words just made Eleanor's head ache. She went back to her medievalists. The book with the drawings of the cards attracted her profoundly; she couldn't have said why, because she wasn't interested in the so-called fortune-telling abilities of the cards. No, it was more as if they could tell her something about the powers of the Elements in a more understandable way than that Kabala book.

It was not exactly pleasure-reading. She had to reread most paragraphs several times, and then pause and think about what she had just read before she went on. She didn't manage to get through more than a couple of pages at that speed. So when teatime approached, she packed up her basket with a sense of reprieve.

Even if he's not there, she thought, as she walked bare-headed in the beautiful May sunshine, I'm staying out for a while, as long as I can. Who knows when I'll get outside the garden again once Alison returns?

No one paid any more attention to her today than they did any other day, but as she made mental comparisons between her new clothing and that of the other girls she passed, she was pleased to see that it held up in the comparison. Of course, this was nothing like the nice frocks she used to have—and as for the wardrobes of Alison and the girls—you might as well compare a head of cabbage to a hothouse rose.

Reggie would not be impressed, she suspected. Not unless he was seeing her in anything like the kind of clothing the girls of his set wore, and that was about as likely as being able to fly. But at least she wouldn't be looking like a beggar or a gypsy.

More like a poor governess, she thought, as she reached the outskirts of the village, and sighed. But then, it isn't as if I have any hope of— She resolutely turned her thoughts away from hopes of any kind. She was spending time in the company of someone who was intelligent and friendly and knew who she was. That was enough. It had to be enough. It was all she was going to get.

And I might not get that today, she reminded herself, as she reached the border of the manor lands, and made her way through the trees, and through grass that seemed longer today than yesterday. After all, what am I to him? Nothing more than someone his mother isn't trying to get him to marry!

And, maybe, a friend.

I want to be his friend, she realized, with an ache of longing. Surely that much isn't too much to ask for. . . .

And how much of a friend could someone be, who probably hadn't said more than a few hundred words to him over the course of a decade? Oh, she could be his friend, readily enough, but why should he be hers?

No, he probably wasn't there. He had no reason to be. She was someone pleasant and intelligent to talk to, but he could find that in any of his old friends from the University.

If any of them are still alive. . . .

But to her undisguised delight, he was waiting for her at the usual spot, reading something, as she came up through the last of the trees.

He looked up with a start as a twig broke under her foot, his head jerking wildly as he scanned the trees for the source of the sound. He recovered quickly, and waved at her, but that first reaction made her furrow her brow as she approached him. What on earth had caused that?

Was he seeing some of those wretched goblins?

But—no, if there were any here to see, she would be seeing them.

But his expression was affable enough as she approached, and as she got near to him, wading through the calf-high grass, he flung himself down on his knees, and looked up at her in imploring mockery.

She bit her tongue. Oh dear. Now what is he about? She was afraid he was making fun of her. But on the other hand, it made her smile to see him doing something silly. How long had it been since he'd felt easy enough to be silly?

"Oh, gentle maid, forgive, forgive!" he cried out melodramatically, holding out a bouquet of cowslips and primroses that he must have picked while waiting for her..

"Forgive what?" she demanded with a giggle, taking the bouquet. "Don't be so ridiculous, you'll get grass-stains on the knees of your trousers!"

He clambered to his feet. "Forgive that I wasn't here yesterday," he said in a more normal tone of voice. "I completely forgot that I had obligations to deal with yesterday. I should have remembered, and I should have told you."

She felt a thrill of delight, at his words—he had thought about her!—but shrugged. "Oh, that! I wasn't here either. I heard you were giving the prizes at the school treat and I know how these things go— it isn't just prizes, it's speeches and the Maypole and all of that, so I knew you'd be busy all day, and I didn't bother to come."

"Sensible girl!" he said, relieved. "And so I was. I've brought things to make it up. Real bottles of lemonade, the fizzy kind, and some only slightly squashed tea-cakes, and jam. And—" he paused significantly. "Chicken sandwiches. That's the great benefit of being the lord of the manor, you see; no pesky officials coming around to count how many chickens you've got, and whether one's gone missing." He shook his head. "And if you think I am going to feel guilty about depriving some poor FBI of a tin of chicken paste with my scandalous and unpatriotic behavior—"

"Actually," she said, "I doubt very much if you're depriving anyone of anything. Most of the villagers have rabbit hutches and unreported hens, and I know for a fact there are unregulated pigs in the woods. No one is feeding any of the contraband animals any rationed grain; they're living off what they can scavenge, and I suspect that's true for what went into your sandwiches."

He regarded her thoughtfully. "I expect that's probably true. My cook has an odd pen on wheels full of birds that she moves over the vegetable garden, and I've never seen her throw any grain to them."

"Exactly." She smiled at him. "The chickens are eating bugs, seeds, and weeds, which is saving manpower in the garden, too. They're probably roosters, or at least, capons, which would have been culled anyway as chicks. So no one is being deprived of anything."

"You salve my conscience as well as my easing my mind." He sat down on the old blanket he had brought and patted it. "Come feast with me, then."

Perfectly happy to, she sat down across from him. Truth to tell, she was rather glad that he had brought most of the tea this time. Without Alison around, there wasn't much bread left, and she had given the old women the last of the cakes yesterday. Her offerings were a bit scanty.

"So how was the school treat?" she asked, conversationally. "Were the children absolute demons?"

"They were rather decent, actually," he replied. "That might have been because we thought of a few more things to keep them out of trouble this year. Swings in the trees, rides in my motor, that sort of thing."

"That was rather kind of you!" she exclaimed, a bit surprised that he had done any such thing with his fast motorcar.

He shrugged, but looked pleased. "Oh, it was just to the gates and back. But they seemed to like it. Played the very devil with my bad leg though. I forgot how much work there would be, what with all the gearing changes and braking. By the end of the day—"

He broke off, a little flushed. Embarrassed? It could be. There were those who would think that, because he wasn't lacking an arm or an eye, he was malingering. "What?" she supplied, trying to sound casual. "You could hardly walk?"

He looked shamefaced. "Something like . . ."

"Then I suspect it's a good thing you found that out driving the children up and down to the gates, and not some other way," she said, trying not to be too specific. "It does seem to me at least that your doctors are right about taking a long time to heal."

"Well, I think you'll be happy about one thing, anyway," he said, sounding as if he was changing the subject. "Listening to the speeches, one of them was—well, rather better than I had any expectation. So Mater and I decided that we're going to put up a scholarship for the village boys to go to Oxford. Father always intended to, so now we shall."

At first, she was irrationally pleased. How many clever boys had she known who could have done very well at university if only they'd been able to go? But then, she thought, All very well for the boys, certainly, but felt a twinge of resentment thinking about the number of equally clever girls who ended up just like their mothers, birthing lambs and babies at nearly equal intervals. "What about girls?" she asked aloud.

"What?" He stared at her as if she had said something startling.

"I said, what about girls?" she repeated, firming her chin stubbornly and daring him to look away. "Why only boys? Don't you think girls from the village ought to be able to go if they're clever enough?"

"But—but—" Now he was really staring at her. "But what are they going to do with a university education? A boy can teach—become an engineer, a scientist, a doctor, a scholar—"

"And a girl can't?" she retorted, now feeling quite angry with him. "What about that lady doctor you were always talking about? Why can't a girl become an engineer or a scientist?"

He looked at her as if she had suddenly begun speaking in Urdu. "But—but—"

"I was going to go to Oxford," she reminded him. "What's more, you told me I should, and that I shouldn't let anyone dissuade me!"

"Yes, but these are just village girls, farmer's daughters, with no expectations!" he said, then continued to make his situation worse with every word. "It's not as if—I mean, you're not the same class as they are—I mean—"

His mouth snapped shut as she flushed, as he realized he had just said something horribly rude. She looked down for a moment at her handmade skirt, then looked defiantly up into his eyes, daring him to make the comparison between the class she was supposed to be in, and the one she was apparently in now. "Maybe they have no expectations because no one ever let them think that they could," she said bitterly. "Maybe, if someone bothered to show them that they could have dreams, they might be able to dream them. Mightn't they? Just because they're shopkeepers' girls and farmers' daughters doesn't mean they don't have minds. Some of them have very good minds. And I think it's a shame and a sin that all they're thought good for is tending babies and putting up jam."

His eyes looked miserable. But she was very angry now. And she wasn't going to let him off the hook.

"Besides," she pointed out, with coldly, poisonously perfect logic. "Someone had better start helping ordinary girls to do things like becoming doctors and teachers. Because thanks to that bloody war, there aren't going to be any doctors and teachers otherwise. And I don't see the pretty young ladies of the proper class rushing off to university to fill the void! Do you? Of course not. It wouldn't be ladylike. It wouldn't be proper."

He made a strangled little sound in the back of his throat, and looked away.

I shouldn't have said that, she thought. And then thought, rebelliously, But I'm right. And I'm not going to apologize.

"You are a truly horrible young woman, you know," he said, very slowly, as if he was weighing and measuring each word, still looking away from her. "Only the truly horrible and the young would dare to tell that much truth."

"Only someone who doesn't have any room for illusions anymore would dare to tell that much truth," she corrected, as the anger slowly faded and cooled to an emotion that was darker and bleaker than that flare of temper. "I can't afford illusions; they are altogether too expensive to maintain. There are a great many of us in that position now."

"Yes," he replied, turning back, slowly. "There are."

They stared at one another, and he finally heaved a great sigh. "That was a very stupid thing to say, wasn't it?"

"It's that whole game," she said, the bitterness back, redoubled. "That whole game of class. It's not going to work, you know! If this wretched war is ever over, it's just not going to work anymore, the whole construction is just going to go smash!"

"Like it did in Russia?" he replied. And managed a wan smile. "You've been listening to Mad Ross Ashley."

"I've been reading," she retorted. She didn't say anything more, but she was thinking a great deal. I don't know what's going to happen, but— well, just look! Even fifty years ago, you had rich American girls with piles of new money coming over to marry a lord with a name but no prospects, and rich tradesmen's boys getting themselves blue-blooded wives out of the Royal Enclosure that were desperate to get themselves out of tumbledown Tudor manors and into a nice London townhouse in the West End! It can't go on, can't you see that! You can't go on playing that silly game of we and they and by now you should know it!

But she didn't say anything. She'd already said more than enough, actually. If he couldn't see this for himself—

But he passed his hand over his eyes, as if his head hurt him. "It's—" He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't even know if we're going to see an end to this, not even with the Americans coming in. Sometimes—" He took his hand away, and looked past her, into the distance, his voice flat. "I don't know if anything matters anymore, because all we are ever going to see is that Juggernaut grinding on and on until there isn't anyone left to fight... so what's the point of anything anymore? Why bother trying to change anything, when there isn't going to be anything left to change?"

She bit her lip. She hadn't meant to throw him into this slough of despair, and the worst of it was, she couldn't disagree with him.

And there didn't seem to be anything she could say to make any difference. Or at least, nothing that wasn't at least partly a lie.

"I'm sorry, Reggie," she said, finally. "I didn't mean to—to remind you."

He looked up, and at least he didn't try to smile. "I don't know how any of us can get through the course of a day without being reminded," he said, quietly. "You have to be lying to yourself, I suppose, or purposefully blinding yourself. Like the people who can't seem to find anything to talk about except how hard it is to find a good servant or the impossibility of getting a good chop. Anything except about what's across the Channel."

"But there are good things left, still," she replied, forcing herself to rally, and trying harder now to give him some sense of hope. "I can't see that it's wrong to remember that. Pretending the bleak things don't exist is wrong, and not trying to do something about them is worse yet, but it can't be wrong to also remember that there is still joy, still a little peace, still things to laugh about, and still love." She felt her voice faltering, but forced herself to carry on, hoping that she didn't sound too maudlin. "If we forget that, we'll lose hope, too."

"Ah, hope," he said, his voice growing a little lighter. And he did manage a smile. "Hope, the last spirit left in Pandora's jar, after she let all the troubles and plagues of the world out."

"And she let hope fly free, too," Eleanor said softly. "Because when all is said and done, hope is sometimes all that keeps us from surrendering to despair."

He heaved a great sigh, and nodded. "That is as true a thing as I think you have ever said," he told her. "You're quite right, and right to remind me. No, we mustn't lose hope; if we do that—"

He looked off into the distance again, but this time as if he was actually looking for something, and not to avoid her gaze.

Perhaps—hope?

"If we do that," he repeated, quietly, as if he was telling himself a great truth "We really shall be utterly lost, and there will be no turning back for any of us."

She shivered. Because that had sounded altogether less like an aphorism, and far more like a prophecy.

19

May 2, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

LITTLE ELEANOR DID HER DISAPPEARING act not long after the quarrel had foundered and crashed, leaving Reggie alone in the meadow, staring glumly after her. The stupid words he'd said, the bitter ones she had responded with, still hung in the air. Nothing was resolved, except, perhaps, she seemed genuinely sorry she had thrown him into a mental funk, and he was genuinely sorry he hadn't thought before he'd spoken.

In fact, in retrospect, he hadn't been at all observant. He'd been so preoccupied with his own thoughts—well, that was a kind way of saying he'd been paying no attention to anything outside of himself. It should have been obvious that her circumstances were changed, drastically, from the last time he had seen her, before the war—her clothing alone should have told him that.

He gulped, as something else occurred to him. Oh, hell. I've put my foot in it, well and truly. She had every intention, the last time he saw her, of going to Oxford, and her father had clearly had the means to send her. Her clothing had been good, she had mentioned tutors and special studies in order to pass the entrance qualifications, so although all Reggie knew about her father was that he was a well-off manufacturer, there was certainly money to spare in their household. But her father had been an early casualty of the war, and where had that left her? Had his businesses gone to pieces? So many businesses had—either wrecked without a supervisory hand on the tiller, or collapsed because the war effort siphoned off more and more in the way of manpower and resources until there was no way to keep going.

So—now she was poor. Having to work for a living—that much was obvious from her clothing and her hands. Probably she was a maid somewhere in the village or the surrounding farms—the servant of one of those shopkeepers' or farmers' daughters whose intelligence and expectations he had so maligned.

And he had babbled on about scholarships for the boys, when she, so quick, so intelligent, with all of her dreams and expectations blighted, had sat there and let him blather fatuously about what he was going to do for boys he didn't even know—

And he had thought that he was being her friend. She assuredly was his—and look how he had treated her! Oh, very clever, Reg. Take a juicy chop and dangle it in front of someone who's been dining on crusts, then tell her she can't have it. He felt sick, absolutely sick as a cat. No wonder she'd blown up at him. He could not possibly have managed anything more cruel if he'd set out to torture her on purpose.

And now, of course, he had set things up so that if he offered her a scholarship, he would look as if he was humoring her, patronizing her. Throwing her crumbs out of misplaced pity, even though he didn't think she had any future other than as the wife of a menial laborer and that any education given her would be wasted. Or worse, as if it didn't matter if he offered her a scholarship because he didn't expect her to last out the first term.

You really are a prize idiot.

She would probably never come back here again after this. And he wouldn't blame her. Why would she care to continue to befriend someone who treated her so shabbily?

But then, guilt turned to irritation. Hang it all, this was at least her fault in parti Why hadn't she simply said something about her current straitened circumstances? She didn't have to ask for help, but if she had just said something about not having the money to go to Oxford, well, of course he would have jumped in with an offer to help her out! Why did females have to be so confounded complicated! He was in hearty sympathy with Bernard Shaw's Henry Higgins. . . .

Except that he was also in hearty sympathy with Bernard Shaw's Eliza Doolittle. Actually, more so than with Higgins, if it came down to cases. Guilt resurfaced. Why should she say anything about her current state? It wasn't as if he had any right to know—and it must be profoundly shaming to her.

Torn between guilt and exasperation, he did the only thing a man of sense would do at such a time. He went in search of his motorcar and a drink.

The first was easy enough to find, as it was parked just off the road where he had left it. The second lay no further away than Broom, and his haven of the Broom Pub.

By now, he was one of the regulars; he was well aware that three years ago, he would never have been accepted as a regular in here if he had been coming for ten years straight. The class differences between himself and the men who made this their refuge would have been too much of a chasm to bridge. But the war made more than strange bedfellows, it made comrades of strangers sharing the same suffering, and moreover, he had, from the beginning, tried to leave the lord of the manor at the door. So he was welcomed for himself, as well as for the fact he could be counted on to buy more than his share of rounds, and in that haven of resolute masculinity, he felt his spirit soothed and his guilt eased the moment he crossed the threshold.

Good beer was balm for the soul, and a good barman has, by convivial nature and training in his trade, as great a fund of wisdom as any counselor and often quite a bit more than most clerics. Tom Brennan was such a barman, and his "gents" felt completely at ease in unloading their woes within his walls.

It is as probable as the sun rising that when fellow sufferers meet together over drinks, before the evening is out, one of them will say "Women!" in that particular suffering tone that makes his fellow creatures shake their heads and murmur sympathetically until the particular grievance emerges.

Reggie had every intention of being the sufferer that evening, but one of the others beat him to it.

Joseph Atherton's hour of discontent was made evident by his heavy footsteps as he pushed open the door. He ordered his pint, took a long draught of it, and as the rest waited and listened in expectation, the cause of his unhappiness was revealed.

"Women!" said Farmer Joe, with unusual vehemence.

Murmurs of sympathy all around, intended to encourage more revelation.

"I mean!" he continued, aggrieved, "A fellow's got enough to do in his day, don't he? And when she says that May Day is all stuff and nonsense, and that she don't hold with sech childish farradiddle, a fellow's got a right to take her at her word, don't he? I mean! Cows need milkin', stock needs feedin', and there's enough to do without muckin' about gettin' a lot of silly flowers, and on the day of fair and school treat, no less, and all them tents and kiddies to be hauled up t'manor!"

With those words, it all came clear to every man in the pub. Clearly, Mrs. Tina had been expecting to get her May Day tribute, no matter what she had said to the contrary. Clearly, what with young Adam being the sort to "volunteer" his father's services—Joseph having one of the few farm horses old enough to have escaped being "conscripted," but young enough to do his work—Joseph had found himself dragooned unwilling into helping out on top of an already heavy workload.

And clearly, when the aforementioned May Day tribute did not materialize, Mrs. Tina had made her displeasure known. Which was probably why Joe was here, and not sitting down to his dinner.

"Unfair, that's what it is," replied another farmer, Albert Norman. "How's a man to guess, when they say one thing, and mean the opposite?"

"Or when they don't say anything at all," Reggie put in, with feeling. "And they expect you to somehow understand what's going on in their heads without any clue! And then when you blunder into some hideous mistake, they turn on you!"

"That's a fact," Joseph sighed. Albert nodded glumly.

"Dunno why they can't just say straight out what they want." A new country heard from: Michael Van, off in the corner with Mad Ross. "I mean! Tha's logical, ain't it? Do we go around sayin' one thing and meanin' the contrariwise?"

Reggie nodded along with the others, and signaled for another pint.

"You say to a girl," said young Albert, to no one in particular, "You say, 'a feller I know was wonderin' if you're seein' anyone in particaler,' an' she says, 'no, not in particaler,' and you get all set to—to see if she'd like to be seein' anyone in particaler, and then you turns around, and whup, there she is, at fair, with another feller, with all the parish t'see! So if she ain't with 'im, then why's she actin' like she's with 'im, is what I want to know!"

More shaking of heads. "Can't account for it," said Michael Van. "And you'd think, wouldn't you, if you'd offended some 'un, they'd tell you, wouldn't you?" He appealed to Ross. "If I said something that made you mad, you'd say!"

"I'd say," Mad Ross replied, with a glint in his eye. "Or I'd punch your nose. Either way, you'd know."

"So there's no call to be mad at a body if he's said summat you didn't like, and you didn't tell him, is there?" Michael continued, sounded aggrieved. "And 'specially if it was months and months ago, and you never said, till it's too late for him to remember what he did say, much less why you should be mad about it!"

"That's a fact," replied Albert.

"My round, I think," Reggie said.

Reggie would have liked to air his own grievance—but with his nerves rawly sensitive, he didn't want to put his standing in jeopardy with the other Broom regulars. He ran it over in his mind. No matter what I say, it's going to offend someone. If I tell them what I told her, surely they'll think I was being patronizing too. It's that lord of the manor business—and it wouldn't matter that not one of them has ever given thought to his daughter doing anything other than marrying another farmer or laborer—the moment I say anything about it, they're going to think the worse of me.

So instead, he just shook his head and murmured, "Women! There's no pleasing them."

The others nodded sagely.

The barmaid, Jessamine Heggins, glanced sideways at young Albert with compressed lips as she passed him, collecting glasses, delivering fresh pints. Reggie wondered if she was the one that Albert was referring to, and felt a distinct touch of annoyance at her. That was a cruel thing, stringing the poor fellow along!

"Well," he said looking into his glass, "Seems to me pretty unfair of them to expect us to know things without being told them. Seems to me it's pretty unfair to expect us to figure things out from a couple of hints not even King Solomon could guess at."

"Aye," Michael grumbled, tossing back his pint.

That was about as close as he dared come to his own grievance, and eventually someone ventured an oblique guess as to the likelihood of rabbitting come fall.

Now Reggie felt a bit more comfortable. "You know," he said, thoughtfully, and with an artfully casual manner, "My manager says that the rabbits are multiplying something awful this year. Three years now, no one's been thinning them out with shooting. I think a few snares wouldn't come amiss." He looked around the pub, as if he didn't know very well that every one of these men had been poaching "his" rabbits for generations. "Any of you fellows know someone that might be willing to put out some snares in the Longacre woods? Proper rabbit snares now, not something to catch a pheasant by accident."

Slight smiles. "Might," Ross offered.

After all, everyone poached. Especially now. But no one wanted to admit he knew how to.

"Now mind," Reggie went on, carefully not meeting anyone's eye, "He'd have to be careful of the season. We wouldn't want any orphaned bunnies. Not unless there were youngsters who knew how to catch them and raise them on goat's milk or something of the sort."

"Orphaned beasties is a sad thing," Michael Van agreed. "But the kiddies do like to make pets of 'em. Wouldn't hurt for 'em to go looking, now and again, just to make sure. No one'd set a snare this early, or at least, I misdoubt, but there's other things that make orphan bunnies. Dogs."

"Cats," put in Albert.

"Stoats," offered Ross, who Reggie knew for a fact kept ferrets. "Even badgers, can they catch "em."

Reggie had a long pull on his beer, hiding his smile. That was settled, then. They knew that he would tell his gamekeeper not to pull up proper rabbit snares, and he knew that anyone that caught a doe out-of-season would send his children, or a neighbor's to look for the nest. And he'd probably lose a pheasant or two; some temptations were too strong to resist.

But he'd have lost a pheasant or two anyway, probably more than one or two. When you worked vigilantly to keep someone from doing something he felt he had a right to do, he often felt justified in taking a little revenge.

Giving tacit permission, on the other hand, was likely to make them more honest.

He'd never felt very comfortable about telling people they couldn't snare rabbits on Longacre property, anyway. After all, what did he ever do with them except in that they kept foxes fed for the autumn hunts? And smart foxes would steal the caught rabbits from the snares anyway. Oh, there was some rabbit shooting in the fall, or there had been before the war, but most gentlemen felt that rabbits were poor sport compared to birds. When meat was getting hard to come by, and hideously expensive, even with the illicit pigs in the woods, a rabbit was a welcome addition to the table.

Besides, you have to wonder how many of my generation are going to be particularly interested in shooting things for span, when all this is over. . . .

He sighed, and signalled another round, while the talk drifted amiably to other shifts for keeping food on the table. Pigeons were being considered, though with some doubt. As Ross said, "Once you get the feathers off, hardly seems worth the time." With the river so near, and plenty of free grazing at the road's edge, geese were popular, but the problem was sorting out whose belonged to whom. Goats were not highly regarded. Having eaten goat on occasion in France, Reggie fully understood why.

Tonight there had been no bad news from across the Channel to stir up melancholy, good spring weather here and summer coming, and the school treat and fair so fresh in everyone's mind, the conversation stayed relatively light. "Relatively," since no one really had the heart for games of darts or shove-ha'penny in this pub. When Reggie left, it was in an even temper, and not the same unsettled state he'd arrived in.

So when, just past the last house in the village, a black mood descended on him—it made no sense.

It came down on him like a palpable weight, and it wasn't grief. It was bleak, despairing anger. It made him shift gears with a harsh disregard for the complaining clatter his motorcar made in protest. It made him want to strangle his grandfather—or hang himself, just to show the old man. Or both. It made him want to find that baggage of a girl and—

And that was where his good sense finally overpowered his mood, because the images that began to form in his mind at the thought of Eleanor were so vicious that they shook him, shook him right out of his mood. He looked sharply around, having even lost track of where he was, only to find that he was on the driveway of the manor and didn't recall actually turning in through the gates.

What is wrong with me? he thought, aghast. And, now with a frisson of fear, Am I going mad?

Because he could not imagine a sane man thinking those things that had just come into his head.

Now feeling both depressed and afraid, he parked the motor and went straight up to his room, not wanting to encounter either his mother or his grandfather.

His valet wasn't about, and he didn't ring for him; in this mood, he wanted to be completely alone—was this some new phase to his shellshock? Or was this something else altogether, the sign that he was truly coming to pieces in a way that would make him dangerous to those around him as well as himself?

If that were the case—

Then, he thought, grimly, as he got himself ready to sleep without the aid of his valet I had better keep away from Eleanor. For her sake. At least until I know—

And that was his last thought as he drifted off into a fully drugged sleep. —at least until I know. One way or another. And if I am—I am going to have to make sure that there is nothing I can do to harm her.

Alison and the girls did not put in an appearance that evening, and Eleanor took herself to Sarah's cottage in a mood of prickly determination. As she had hoped, Sarah had anticipated her coming, and had laid out her mother's workbook and the few bits of paraphernalia that a Fire magician deemed necessary.

But her mind wouldn't settle, and even the Salamanders that now always appeared whenever she was around an open fire and either alone or with Sarah, could not be calmed. Reflecting her restlessness, they wreathed around her like agitated ferrets, never pausing long, twining around wrists, arms and neck. They were a distraction, and she welcomed it.

Sarah was not in much better case. She couldn't keep her mind on business either. Finally, after the third attempt at scrying by flame, she threw up her hands.

"It's not going to happen," she said, with a snort of disgust. "Your mind isn't on it, and neither is mine. What's got you all of a pother, anyway?"

"Reggie," Eleanor said, wrinkling her nose, and described the quarrel. Even though they had made it up, she was still annoyed with him. It was difficult not to be.

I'll try to settle my mind so I don't go to sleep on it—but how could he have been so obtuse?

"Men!" Sarah said, with a dismissive contempt. "A dog's more protective, and a cat will catch mice, but a man causes more problems than he cures, I swear it. I'd have been angry too, in your place."

Reluctantly, Eleanor felt moved to defend him. "He did apologize," she admitted. "Eventually."

"And then he ran right back to his pack at the pub, where they are all maligning the female race even as we speak," said Sarah, with just a touch of a sneer. "I know; I heard his motorcar go by and stop at the Broom. By the time he motors home, he'll be feeling perfectly justified in speaking every word he said."

Eleanor felt her temper flare again, and throttled it down. "Well, then I hope he has a hangover for his pains," she replied. "Why are you so out-of-sorts?"

"Something nasty is out there tonight," Sarah said abruptly, and uneasily, casting a glance at the windows, where the curtains were drawn tight against the dark. "It can't pass the bounds I put on the village, but I can feel it pressing against them. Whatever it is—or they are, since I can't tell if it's one thing, or several—they're angry."

Eleanor felt her annoyance with Reggie melting away. "What is it?" she asked, urgently. "More of those Earth-goblins?"

But Sarah shook her head. "No. I'd recognize those. This is very different. More of this world than the goblins are. No, it's something else. If I didn't know better—and come to think of it, maybe I don't—I'd say it was spirits. Ghosts."

Eleanor blinked. "Ghosts?" Somehow it had never occurred to her that, along with Elemental Magic and everything else, ghosts might be real, too. "But why would ghosts be trying to get into the village?"

"Now, that's where you have me," Sarah admitted candidly. "I don't know. Ghosts usually don't leave the spot where they're rooted. Sometimes it's a place they loved, sometimes it's one where they had something terrible or wonderful happen to them, but mostly it's where they died or their bodies are buried. It takes a lot to uproot them, and a great deal more to set them to some new task of haunting. That's why I can't imagine why or how it could be spirits."

Eleanor shivered, and cast a glance towards the windows herself. "What else could it be?"

"I don't know," Sarah replied, and shook her head. "Whatever it is, it won't disturb anyone inside the bounds, and outside, well, you'd have to be able to see them, and most people can't." She pulled on her lower lip with her teeth for a moment. "I'm inclined to think at the moment that it's just a blow-up left over from May Eve. That's one of the four Great Holy Days when the boundaries between the spirit world and the real world are thinned. Witches—well, we tend those doorways on those days—let the ones that want just to look in on their loved-ones out, and keep the doors open so they can all go back at daybreak. You know the old song, where the lady's three sons come back to her? She called them on May Eve—'I wish the wind would never cease, nor flashes in the flood, till my three sons return to me in earthly flesh and blood.' "

"But—" Eleanor began.

Sarah shook her head. "Can't tell you more than that; it's witch's business. But like every other job, witches have been lost to the war, and if one of those doors wasn't tended—or if it was opened by someone inexperienced who let it slip closed too early—" She shrugged. "If that's all it is, then they might be angry because they know a witch is in this village, and they want me to let them through."

"Well, why don't you?" Eleanor asked, reasonably.

"Because I don't know what door it is." She sighed. "If things don't improve, I'll have to arrange something, but otherwise, we're probably better off leaving well enough alone. There's always the chance they'll find their own way over. There's help on the Other Side if they truly want back."

Eleanor wanted to ask more, but the look on Sarah's face told her that she wasn't going to get anything more, so she changed the subject. "One of the books I found in the library talked about fortune-telling cards," she said instead. "And the one they talked about seemed—well, it seemed to make more sense than some of the other things I was reading."

Sarah's tense expression eased. "Ah. The Tarot. I can see where that'd be useful, and fit right in with your mum's notes. Wait a moment."

She turned and went to a cupboard, bringing out something rectangular wrapped in silk. She set the package down on the table and unwrapped it. It was an oversized deck of cards.

"These are the Tarot cards," Sarah said, picking up the well-worn pasteboards, and separating out one smaller stack from the rest. "The ones that'll be the most use to you right now, for giving you things to think on, are these—"

She fanned out the cards in her hand; Eleanor could see that they didn't look anything like playing cards. They were pictures, like the one she'd seen in the book, called Strength.

"These are the cards called the Major Arcana, the most powerful in that there's the most meaning packed into them, and the most symbolism. There's twenty-two of them, and this," she pulled one out of the deck "is the first, the last, or the card that travels through the whole deck. And in this case, since you're the Seeker right now, this card represents you, on your journey through the Powers as you try to master them."