The Twelfth Enchantment: A Novel

yourself from your current situation, and that cannot happen with this will. But I believe I can offer you some help, if you will trust me.”

Not daring to speak, Lucy only nodded.

“I think,” Miss Crawford said, “we must begin by discussing the man who is most probably the architect of this fraud.”

Lucy snapped out of her misery, her attention focused and sharp. At the same time, she observed, as if from a dispassionate position, how much more powerful was anger than misery. “Then you know who cheated me.”

“There is a suspicious circumstance of a gentleman who shared the same solicitor as your father, and who hired this Mr. Clencher for a number of lucrative endeavors around the time of your father’s death. These endeavors are poorly documented, and by all appearances, Clencher was paid for facilitating the false will and then keeping silent.”

“Who was this other man?” Lucy rose without meaning to, hardly knowing she moved at all. She wanted to move, to act, to do. “Is it someone I would have heard of?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Miss Crawford. “The man who has cheated you is very likely Mr. William Buckles, your sister’s husband.”

12

LUCY HAD CONSIDERED MR. BUCKLES A POSSIBLE SUSPECT, BUT IT had been an abstract sort of speculation, and she had not really believed that her sister’s husband, no matter how much she might dislike him, could have taken part in such a mad scheme. But now to hear it said aloud, to be told it was true—it was more than she could endure. She began to cry, first a stream of silent tears, and then convulsive waves. Her face was in her hands, and without knowing how it had happened, Miss Crawford was holding her, one arm around her shoulder, and Lucy sobbed into the sleeve of her gown.

“Shh,” said Miss Crawford. “We shall make everything right.”

“No, nothing will be right.” To steady herself Lucy took another sip of wine. And then another. Her cup was empty, and Miss Crawford was refilling it. Lucy could begin to feel the effects of the drink. A soft cloud of indifference gathered around her thoughts. What did any of it matter? “I must marry a man I do not like while I know I have been cheated out of what is mine. It is a nightmare, and I can do nothing.”

“It is not so,” said Miss Crawford. “I beg you to hear me. You have been much abused, but you are not powerless. I will show you that you can have everything. You can have your freedom, your inheritance, justice for those who have harmed you, and whatever else you desire.”

Lucy stared at her as though she were mad. “I am not a child to believe that. I have so oft felt that my life is not my own, that I am where I do not belong, doing things I have no business doing, and now I find that it is so. The life I was supposed to have was stolen from me. And not only from me, but from my sister. Would Martha have married Mr. Buckles if she’d inherited her share of my father’s fortune? Everything has been taken from us, and the courts provide no recourse. How can you lie to me so?”

“I tell you the truth. You can have what is yours and you can have justice, and you can set everything aright, but first we must speak of what transpired with that man—Lord Byron.” Miss Crawford said his name as though testing out its feel in her mouth.

“What of him?” The last thing Lucy wished to think of was Byron. She hardly felt equal to discussing anything about him, and yet there was something in Miss Crawford’s tone, in her manner, that she could not ignore.

“I believe you can help yourself with the same skills you used to help break that curse. I have no talents in that regard myself, only an interest, much as a person might be an indifferent singer or player, and yet also be a great enthusiast of music. Indeed, I came to Nottingham because it was predicted by another cunning woman, a very good one I met along the Scottish border, that I must come here. I was told that in your county I would find someone remarkable, and now I know I came here to find you.”

Lucy hardly knew how to respond. Her cup of wine was empty again. She set it down behind her so Miss Crawford would not fill it again. She was beginning to feel things differently, sharper and more dull all at once. She liked it, but at the same time, she hated it. And she noticed things, as if for the first time. The wind blew a comfortably warm breeze across her face. The sun, which had been too bright a moment ago, vanished behind a cloud.

When Mrs. Quince had tried to teach her to read the cards, she had also said that cunning craft was like music or painting or acting. Everyone could do something, and, as in the various arts, only a few were possessed of sufficient talent to do a great deal. There were those for whom all the application in the world could produce only a mediocre result, and then there were those who hardly needed to apply themselves at all to achieve much. However, Mrs. Quince had come to the conclusion that Lucy was singularly ungifted. She called Lucy a clumsy oaf, too foolish and muddleheaded to grasp even the most basic of principles. Mrs. Quince’s efforts to help Lucy learn to read cards had marked the end of those early days of friendship and the beginning of the long period of enmity.

“What is it you tell me?” Lucy asked. “That I might become a cunning woman? I know something happened with Lord Byron, and there were more strange events at Mr. Olson’s mill. These things seemed real at the time, but then, that feeling fades, doesn’t it?”

“Only because we wish it to,” said Miss Crawford.

Lucy shook her head. “Do you suggest I might use magic to reclaim my inheritance?”

Miss Crawford nodded. “I believe that if you apply yourself, you will be able to master all aspects of your life. No one will ever command you again.”

Lucy wondered what it would be like to no longer fear her uncle or poverty or her future, to have the means to right the injustices of her life. The thought of such power and freedom thrilled her, but it was a childish dream that she must abandon. To let Miss Crawford lead her down this path would only open her heart to despair.

Yet at that moment, Lucy forgot to be cautious. She forgot to protect herself and to be too cynical to believe. She even set aside her fear and rage. The possibilities all seemed so real when Miss Crawford spoke of them. Her eyes were wide and bright and inviting, and Lucy was ready to believe anything she said.

“We have a selective notion of truth. Look at this mound here.” Miss Crawford took a sip of her wine. “Do you know what it is?”

“It is a fairy barrow.”

“And do you know what a fairy barrow truly is?” asked Miss Crawford.

Lucy looked at the hill, green and bright. A butterfly hovered above it, not ten feet from where she sat. “A hill. No more.”

“It is more, but also less. That is a story for another time, I think.”

Lucy thought of what she had seen at the mill, what she thought she had seen in her uncle’s house. “You don’t mean to suggest there are actual creatures, do you?”

“In the mound? No.”

“Because I saw something,” Lucy continued. “I feel so foolish even mentioning this, but you seem to believe in these things, and I have told no one else. At Mr. Olson’s mill, there were workers chanting the same strange words Lord Byron spoke. And there were creatures, dozens of them, made of shadow. And there was a man, a strange man, and he seemed made of shadow too. I sound mad. I know I do, and yet I saw all these things.”

Miss Crawford rose to her feet. She walked away from Lucy and then back again. Her fingers moved, as though adding sums, and then she wiped her hands on her skirts. “You have already seen so much, and you have no training.” She sat down again. “Can it be that you have truly never studied any sort of music?”

“I have read Mr. Francis Barrett’s book, The Magus,” Lucy said, referring to a popular book that had been published perhaps ten years earlier. After the unpleasant incident with Mrs. Quince, Lucy had sent off to London for a copy, spending money she could hardly afford. She had believed in a moment of weakness that if she could master magic, she would have a friend once more. It had been a silly notion.

Miss Crawford appeared amused. “Have you, now? All of it?”

“Some of it.” Lucy felt her cheeks grow warm.

Miss Crawford did not respond to her embarrassment. She was, on a sudden, quite businesslike. “Have you attempted to make any of the talismans therein, or to cast any spells?”

She shook her head. “It all felt silly. Like I would be playing childish games.”

Miss Crawford nodded. “And you would have been. Barrett’s is a popular book written for a general