Phoenix and Ashes

The last thing he anticipated was to find his mother waiting for him in the settle at the top of the family staircase.

She had an oil-lamp burning on the table beside her, and was pretending to work on some of that infernal knitting every woman seemed to be doing these days, making stockings for soldiers. He staggered back a pace or two on seeing her. 'Ah. Evening, Mater,' he said carefully. 'I've been out.'

'So I see.' She put the knitting down in her lap. She was still dressed for dinner, in a navy-blue gown. Her tone could have frozen the flowers in the vase beside her. 'I presume it was the same place you have been going to every night. The working-man's pub. The—

Broom.'

She acted as if she had never heard the name before. As if she had been completely unaware that there was a working-man's pub. He drew himself up. 'Yes, I have. I've been to The Broom. I went last night, I went tonight, and I intend to go tomorrow night. In fact, I will continue to go to The Broom for as long as I am on medical leave.'

Her face crumpled. 'Reggie—how could you? Everyone in the village certainly knows—it won't be long before the whole county knows, you're down there every night, consorting with socialists and riff-raff—'

'Who give me a better and warmer welcome than I have in my own home,' Reggie retorted, anger burning out some of the whiskey fumes and clearing his head. 'Where I'm not called coward to my face, and told I'm malingering! Why, I'd rather spend four hours in Mad Ross's company than five minutes in your father's!'

Even as he said the words, he was glad they were out, that it was all out in the open, at last. He didn't need the Brigadier for this. Not to lay the truth plain to his mother. He should have stood on his own two feet a long time ago.

His mother cried out, and her hands flew to her mouth. Tears started up in his eyes.

He felt coldly, curiously unmoved.

'If you want to know why I go there, why don't you watch how your father drives me out of my own home every night?' he asked, angrily. 'And you had better get used to my new friends, Mater, because they are my friends, and I have far more in common with them than you could ever understand! We're—' he could find no words to tell her. 'We're soldiers' he said at last. 'Real soldiers. Not tin-toys like your father, who strutted his way around cowing poor little Hindu heathen until he was old enough to claim a pension, and now wants to lord it over me the same way.'

He stared at her, stared her down, stared at her until she shrank back in her seat and dropped her eyes. He took a deep breath, and walked past her, all the stagger gone from his step. He walked straight to his rooms, feeling full of a cold dignity he hadn't known he possessed.

And then, once the door was shut, he sat down abruptly on the side of the bed, and blinked.

'What did I just do?' he asked aloud.

But of course, there was no one there to answer him.

13

April 30, 1917

Broom, Warwickshirte

THE ARROWS WAS EMPTY; ALISON was gone. So were Carolyn and Lauralee, and it wasn't off to tea at Longacre again. It was a two-day excursion somewhere that they did not talk about even amongst themselves. But it was going to involve Warrick Locke.

And it was going to involve the contents of three brass-bound cases that Alison had taken with her.

Magic. That was Eleanor's guess, anyway. They were going somewhere to work magic, somewhere that was special. There were a lot of special places of power around, or so Sarah said; Stonehenge was only the most obvious. There had been enough blood spilled on English soil to make plenty of spots where Alison and her nasty Earth Elementals would feel right at home. Eleanor only hoped that they hadn't gotten hold of anything personal of Reggie's. With luck, this wouldn't have anything at all to do with Reggie, or this new magic would just break itself on the walls of his unbelief.