The Wizard of London

Values, and there wasn’t one of them that did not have a mistress tucked away in Mayfair, shared the attentions of a London courtesan, had at least one maidservant who did a bit more for her master than dust, or visited a discreet brothel on a regular basis. And that was merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

That they were venial was not what bothered him so much; it was the hypocrisy. All men had their failings, and he was no more a bastion of personal rectitude than the next fellow, that he should go casting stones. The problem was that these men set themselves up as the models of rectitude while secretly and deliberately choosing the opposite path.

He knew these things—and other personal failings—because Lady Cordelia kept him informed of them. Not that he was supposed to do anything with the information, no, nothing like that. He was supposed to hold it close against the day when a subtle hint would convey a tacit warning that cooperation was better than opposition. And that bothered him, too. It felt somehow wrong.

It was a chess game on a grand scale, hunting for weaknesses, not exploiting them yet, but having the knowledge ready if it needed to be used. He liked chess. He wished he could take the same pleasure in this game. Certainly, the major pieces on the board were as bloodless as the white-and-black marble pieces of his favorite set.

The trouble was, it was always the pawns that were sacrificed, and the pawns were anything but bloodless. Wives, children, associates—people who would probably suffer more than the major players if everything went badly. You thought about these things, the innocent bystanders, when you were the Chief Huntsman of a Master’s Circle. You had to. In Magic, things were different; when you did something knowingly wrong, when you hurt people who did not deserve hurt, it came back on you later. The scales were evened a great deal faster for a Mage than for an ordinary man, who might wait until the day he was called before the Almighty to answer for what he had done.

He consulted his calendar to discover that this evening’s excursion would be a concert on the lawn of Lady Cordelia’s summer residence beneath the stars—taking the cue from the much-less-genteel church fetes and outdoor entertainments of London, and making it acceptable for the set to which she and David belonged. As usual, the word “concert” was something of a misnomer. Yes, there would be music—tonight it would be a string quartet on the terrace—but the number of people actually listening to the music would be low. Most would be there to be seen—to display new frocks and jewels, to be seen speaking to the “right” people, to make one’s presence known or reinforce one’s standing in this particular group. Miss too many of these social outings without an adequate excuse and people began to talk, to question if you had been invited at all, and if not, why not—

As he was assisted into his evening dress by his valet for another one of these dreary mock-festive occasions, he found his mind drifting back to summer parties when he had still been in school, when he had spent one week after another making the rounds of week-long visits to estates in the country and had not considered those simpler pleasures beneath his dignity. Then he and the others had gone to the church fetes, and bought useless embroidered cushions and tatted antimacassars and eaten ices and listened to village musicians and actually enjoyed themselves…

And with a curse, he flung himself into his carriage for another evening of pretense and empty smiles.

But, he reminded himself, this was the life of an adult. It was more than time to put away childish notions, to settle into the serious business of life. Life was not church fetes and ices. Life was doing things one did not want to do with the goal of getting things, great things, accomplished.

Besides, Lady Cordelia had assured him that eventually he would come to take some sardonic amusement in these occasions, as he watched the facades strut about pretending to be substance.

But in the back of his mind he couldn’t help feeing this was all very inferior to honest laughter and the taste of a lemon ice beneath the stars of a country night.

***

With the excitement of the play over, a languor settled over the children for the next couple of days or so. There was, alas, no further sign of Robin Goodfellow either, though Nan looked in vain for him everywhere she went. It was Mem’sab who roused them all out of it by proposing a contest.

“We have gone over a great deal of the history of this house,” she said over breakfast, three days after the play. “But there is a great deal more here that can be discovered. I want each of you to find out all you can about the history of some particular place or object in this house, and link that to the greater history of England. The one with the story that is best will be allowed to come with me to select a school pony at the Horse Fair.”

Now, since the mere existence of a “school pony” had been the subject of much rumor for two days— originating with Tommy who had sworn he had overheard a conversation between two grooms suggesting that some unknown benefactor was going to field the money for such a thing—the news caused a sensation. Every single girl knew exactly what she wanted—a gentle, fat white pony with a soft nose and big eyes, who would willingly be hitched to a cart for rides all over the estate. And every single boy knew what he wanted—a lively black pony with white socks and a blaze, and an eye full of mischief, who would willingly run at breakneck speed beneath his rider, and take fences even a tall hunter would balk at. Never mind that no more than two of the girls knew how to drive, and of the three boys who had been taught how to ride, none of them had been on a member of the living equine species in more than a year. The lines were drawn, the camps set up, and a grim rivalry ensued.

Now Nan, who was still in charge of helping the ayahs with the littlest children, was at a distinct disadvantage on two counts. One, that she had to wait until her chores were over that morning before she could go in search of her research subject. And two, that while she enjoyed history, her knowledge of it was extremely patchy.

So by the time she got to looking over the grounds and manor house, all the obvious choices had been spoken for. Sarah graciously offered to give up her own choice—the set of African tribal weapons she found in the gun room—but Nan was determined to find her own mystery to unravel.

But it seemed that every time she went to Mem’sab with a choice, it was only to discover that either she had misremembered and they had already learned about it as a group, or that someone else had already spoken for it. She didn’t want to try and ferret out anything like the stories behind portraits or bits of furniture or books, Mem’sab had ruled out things that were clearly nothing more than hunting trophies, like the chandelier of stag horns or the heads of dead animals in the gun room, and the boys had all straightaway bagged things like suits of armor and heirloom swords.

It was with a sense of frustration that Nan began poking around the building, looking now for anything that gave her the least little stirring of interest. There was nothing inside in the areas that they were allowed to explore, and not even for the privilege of going to a Horse Fair was she going to dare the wrath of the housekeeper to venture into forbidden zones. Some of the other girls could get away with that, but it seemed that the housekeeper had dire expectations of Nan’s ability to stay out of trouble, and kept Nan’s leash extremely short.

The knot garden and the tiny maze (so small even the toddlers could find their way in and out of it) had already been taken. The other gardens were “too general” according to Mem’sab, “Unless you can find a specific plant that is unusual or clearly imported.” The folly had been taken. The false ruins were spoken for.

At this point it was late afternoon, and there didn’t seem to be anything that was going to be interesting to look into, which meant things that were difficult, dull, or both. At that point, Nan was kicking a round stone along the path in front of her in frustration when the stone smacked into the side of the dry well. She made her usual aversive detour—and then stopped.

Surely, if she felt a sensation that was that strong, there must be something there worth looking into…

She went to Mem’sab, who raised an eyebrow at her. “It is old enough, surely. If that is what you want —”

“I’m about run out of things, Mem’sab,” Nan confessed. “Dunno what else to do now.”

Mem’sab rubbed the back of her right hand as if troubled. “There is something I do not like about that well,” she said slowly. “I do not know that it is dangerous, but the place troubles me profoundly. I would prefer that if you really want to pursue this, you do it without spending too much time at the well itself. There is something not quite right there.”

“Unhappy memories, mebbe?” Nan ventured shrewdly.

“It could well be. Well, if this is what you want, then by all means, use it as your project.” Mem’sab looked down at her own hands for a moment. “But Nan, be careful about that place. It might be that there is nothing there,