The Wizard of London

The bravest of them whacked at the poor little things with brooms, and all of them kept their bedroom windows shut tight all night long. But Mem’sab told the children that sort of behavior was silly, so they kept their own windows open to the night air. The children all rather enjoyed the tiny creatures, and eventually even Nan got to liking the way they swooped around the room, clearing it of insects, then flitting out the window again.

Tonight the little ones were full of mischief, and each had to be put to bed half a dozen times before they actually stayed in bed. Weary, but relieved, Nan trudged up the stairs to the room she and Sarah shared, to find Sarah, Neville, and Grey already waiting for her. Nan changed into her nightgown and hopped up to sit cross-legged on her own little bed and looked at her friend expectantly.

Sarah laughed. “You first,” she said.

Nan coughed, because a great deal of what she had heard was not the sort of thing that you told a “nice” girl like Sarah. Country folk were earthy sorts, and they had no compunction about calling a spade a spade, and not an “earth-turning implement.” The maids had certainly filled Nan’s ears, particularly when the cook was out of earshot.

“There was a gal down to the village that put on a lot of airs,” she said, heavily editing out a great deal. The whole truth was that this particular young lady was a lot like Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair; she wanted a husband with money who would let her buy whatever pleased her; if she could get one, she wanted a husband with a title too, and she was perfectly willing to use any and every means at her disposal to get it.

“She set her cap at this feller, this captain, what showed up here at one of them hunting parties,” Nan continued. “Friend of a friend, the maids said, not some’un the master invited himself. Man didn’t make himself real popular; I guess he broke a lot of shooting rules right from the start.” The maids had been vague on that score; they didn’t understand the shooting rules either. What they hadn’t been vague about was that the shooting parties started forming up and leaving without the captain, as the guests tacitly organized themselves to be off when he was busy doing something else. Part of that “something else” had been to flirt with the ladies, and the maids had no doubt that if he’d had his way, there would have been more than just flirting going on. “There weren’t no single ladies at this party, an’ when he made himself unwelcome, he’d take himself down to the pub in the village sometimes, an’ that’s where this gal saw him and decided she was gonna get him.”

And she hadn’t scrupled as to means either. According to the maids she had brazenly hopped into bed with him practically from the time he first appeared.

“So she’s canoodling with this feller, an’ wouldn’t you know, next thing he’s caught cheatin’ at cards up here at the party. There’s a big to-do, an’ he disappears in the morning, an’ his friend don’t feel too comfortable here neither, so he leaves early, too, that same afternoon. Gal at village don’t find out about this till they’ve both been gone two days.”

According to the maids, there had been a “right row” about that, too, complete with the abandoned girl in question storming up to Highleigh, demanding to see the master, claiming the captain had promised to marry her and insisting that the master of Highleigh make it all right.

Except, of course, she never saw the master. The butler handled it all with an icy calm that intimidated even the girl. He had made it clear to her that the man in question—“no gentleman, young person, I assure you”—was neither a friend nor even a casual acquaintance of the master, and that the master had no idea where the cad was, or even if he had a right to the name and title he had claimed. “She got sent away with a flea in her ear,” the dairymaid had said maliciously. Nan had a feeling there had been some bad blood there…

“So come Christmas, seems the gal has another problem, an’ by spring, she’s got a baby an’ no husband.”

The maids had been full of stories of how the girl had tried to seduce her way to a marriage license with anyone at that point, but of course, everyone in the village knew by that time that she had a big belly and nothing to show for it, and not even the stupidest farmhand wanted himself saddled with a child that wasn’t his and a wife that wasn’t inclined to do a bit more work than she had to. She had the baby, and though her family didn’t disown her, they made it clear that she was a living shame to all of them and really ought to show her repentance in quite tangible ways…

She hadn’t cared for being a housemaid. She hadn’t cared for the fact that the baby was the living badge of her disgrace, not to mention a burden of care that no one would help her with.

“So the baby disappears, an’ everyone figgers she took it to th’ norphanage or the workhouse and left it there, an’ she gets to tryin’ to find herself a husband again—”

“But she didn’t take it to the orphanage, did she?” Sarah asked somberly.

Nan shook her head. “No. ‘Cause after some whiles, she was actin’ pretty peculiar, like she’s got somethin’ weighin’ on ‘er, an kept comin’ back to the river at the bridge. She’d come there in dead of night, an’ just stand there, starin’ at the water. Pretty soon she’s actin’ real strange, askin’ if people can hear a baby cryin’, an’ then before Christmas, she drownded herself. So they reckon she drownded it in the same place she done herself, poor mite.”

“Real strange” was a gross understatement. She’d been caught once or twice trying to take babies out of cradles when the mothers in question stepped out of their cottages for a moment. She had covered herself in a set of tatty, head-to-toe black veils she found somewhere. And she had all but haunted the bridge. Everyone knew by then that she had murdered her own child, but without a body or a confession it was hard to do anything about her. There was some tentative movement by the village officials to get her sent to an insane asylum, but before anything could be done, she had already killed herself.

Sarah shivered all over, and her eyes got a little teary. “Poor baby!” she said finally. “What a nasty, wicked woman.”

“But it does pretty much account for what we saw,” Nan replied. She felt obscurely sorry for the baby—but in her part of London, so many babies died all the time, that it was hard to get all worked up about one. Even the ones that were wanted died so easily that a mother was likely to bury four for every one she was able to raise. “So. Your turn.”

Sarah nodded, and her sorrowful expression cleared. “There’s more than one version of the Wild Hunt,” Sarah replied, licking her lips thoughtfully. “I looked through a lot of books and Robin was right, there were several in the library here that talked about legends and magic and things like that. Had you noticed? There are a lot of odd books in that library.”

Nan scratched her head. “Well,” she said finally, after a moment of consideration, “The feller what owns this house is somebody Mem’sab kind of knows. I don’t reckon he’s one of her toff friends from before she went to Indja. You know, mebbe he’s like one of us, and mebbe that sort of thing runs in the family? So the library’d be full of that kind of books.”

Sarah nodded. “I think you’re right. In fact, you know I thought it was a bit odd that a house this old wouldn’t have a ghost, but maybe it doesn’t because the family that lives here has always made sure that ghosts moved on.”

Nan nodded, and hugged her knees to her chest. “I reckon you’re right. So you found some books. What’d they say?”

“Well, one says that the Wild Hunt is—like Robin’s people.” She lowered her voice to whisper, as if she didn’t like to say the words too loudly. “Elves. The Fair Folk. It says they come out of barrows at night to hunt the mortals that drove them out of their circles and groves. That one made it sound like these were bad Elves, though, and that they hunted people down at night for the fun of it.”

Nan mulled that one over. “I don’t see how that can be right,” she said judiciously. “ ‘Cause they took that ghost. But Robin did call ‘em, so mebbe it is.”

“Another couple of books said it was made up of ghosts, people who had lived violent lives and died violent deaths.” Sarah unconsciously pulled her covers a little closer around her. “And some of those books say that they’re trying to make up for what they did by going after bad people. Like they are getting a second chance to keep from going to the Bad Place.”

She meant hell, Nan knew, though she couldn’t imagine why Sarah wouldn’t just come out and say the word.

“But some other books say that they’re wicked people who are keeping themselves from going to the Bad Place by hunting down people and scaring them to death or chasing them until they die. And some say they are already from the Bad Place, and it opens up to let them out.” Sarah shook her head. “I just don’t know, because