No, time had not been kind to her, Ravyn thought, but time was not the enemy. He recalled Mabel as Queen of the May and Fairest of the Fair from crumbled-to-dust newspapers. The aquiline nose, high cheekbones, delicate jaw and elegant neck had all carried into her elder years. Were it not for a harsh gaze, lips stretched too thin, and a mass of lines that had nothing to do with laughter, the girl she had once been might have dominated the woman before him, and for that she was to blame, not time. But his sympathies were still with the dead. The grave is a fine and private place, he thought, remembering Marvell’s poem of ardent frustration and lust turned to ashes, but none, I think, do there embrace.
“None of those boys called on us, did they?” she said. “No, too afraid they were. Sure, a quick clutch in some dark corner, maybe a torrid roll in the hay at the Feast of the Ingathering, well away from bonfires and the eyes of the Harvest King, but actually coming to our doorsteps, posy in hand and good intentions in heart?” She uttered a bitter laugh. “Timid sods! At age, I was traded for a parcel of land; Martha for even less to an uncaring man.”
“To Lemuel Stryker,” Ravyn said. “For a promise of Power.”
The bitterness in Mabel’s features changed to sly suspicion. Her eyes became slits and one corner of her mouth tugged upward.
“Power, Mr Ravyn?” she murmured. “What Power would that be? Surely a city man doesn’t hold with ignorant village ways.”
Ravyn smiled. Only in Knight’s Crossing would Stafford be a city. The Industrial Revolution that drove the growth of so many English cities retarded Stafford’s, drawing trades and industries from the old river port to seaports serving a changing world.
“You’ve a nice smile, Mr Ravyn.” Her lips curved, suspicion becoming grotesque coquettishness. “Martha and me, we went to the cinema in Denby Marsh, secret like. A smile like James Mason. He needed no concocted love potion to flutter a maiden’s heart. A bit of him in you.” The smile vanished. “So long ago, that was.”
“Actually, I’m not a son of Stafford, but of Abofyl.”
She shook her head.
“Village at the confluence of the Orm and Dresal,” Ravyn said. “Even smaller than Knight’s Crossing.”
She snorted.
“So I do know about village ways,” he said. “And I also know that not everything is writ in books, nor taught in schools.”
“Young swine!” The epithet was not directed at Ravyn, but at some memory raised by his words. “They think they know all, but they are made blind and ignorant by electronic wizardry.”
“The world fears the secrets held by Adepts.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “They spurn the old ways, no longer walk the primal paths trod by Seekers in the Before Time, and have forgotten the Elder Tongue once given voice by mages who knew the way beyond the Veil and into the darkness Below.”
She nodded. The suspicion once accorded Ravyn as an Outsider was replaced by a cautious amity for a man who might be privy to secrets just as powerful as those locked in her own bitter heart.
“Such as Mhoggam.”
The old woman made a sign of protection. “None know it.”
Ravyn drew complex lines on a scrap of paper.
Mabel gasped.
Ravyn wadded the paper into a tiny ball, popped it into his mouth and swallowed it, with not too much difficulty.
“You’re a careful one, you are.”
“I understand you remained friends with Martha after she was married,” Ravyn said.
“Fast friends we were,” she said. “I didn’t fear Wizard Ezekiel or his halfwit son before she married, certainly not after.”
“That put you in the minority, I’d think,” he said. “I don’t know about Lemuel, but Ezekiel was one of the most powerful magicians in Knight’s Crossing in his time.”
“Aye, but he was also a man.” She gave him the remains of a coy look. “He summoned elementals from air and earth, from fire and water, bent them to his will, but he couldn’t keep his head from being turned. No defence against the oldest magic, the magic of a sigh or a glance. No flesh, of course, and he could not force it. Even Ezekiel was wary of angering my father, Amos.”
“Died when you must have been, what, thirteen?”
“Fourteen.” Her eyes misted briefly. “Sad day that. They what know nothing said it was Ezekiel’s hand, but it were no such thing. Fools! Our sigils and wardings were equal to any curse, but weren’t a curse what sent Amos Lea beyond the Veil. A simple accident it was, chest kicked in by a horse he was shoeing. When the Crone whispers your name you must heed the call. Aye, a sad day, but sadder still when my care passed into Cousin Peter’s hands.”
“That was prior to Martha’s marriage?”
“She was fifteen at her binding to Lemuel, but our friendship bonds grew tighter,” she said. “We had husbands we hated.”
“There was enmity between Martha and Lemuel?”
“Nothing to match mine for Thaddeus Link.” Lightning flashed within her eyes. “My father loved me, would not have bartered me so frivolously. Martha was traded too, but for Secrets.” She laughed. “Her witless sire didn’t live to collect that debt, did he?”
“What was life like for Martha like at Stryker Farm?”
“Old Thaddeus wanted the pleasures of young flesh, but not one touch did he get, not one cry in the night. I hated my cousin, but I took pleasure in him getting the land he needed while Thaddeus reaped naught but frost and a sharp tongue.”
Mabel Link was not going to reveal anything Ravyn wanted to know until she had had her say. In Knight’s Crossing, a stranger like Ravyn was an opportunity to rehash old grievances settled long ago. He had brought it on himself, he knew, gaining her confidence as he had, so there was nothing else but to take his medicine.
“The gold what went to Cousin Peter when the Crone called to Father should’ve been mine, but he was a sly one then and still is,” she said. “As my father was with spells and workings, so Cousin Peter was with words and contracts. Addled my poor father with lawyer scratchings till he hardly knew what was being signed. I did not understand his treachery till it was too late to take him to task.”
“There’s no chicanery like legal chicanery.”
Mabel nodded. “Destroyed my life, it did. I was not yet of age, but with money I could have kept free, could have chose a powerful husband.” She buried her face in her hands and Ravyn feared for a moment she might weep. “Without my cousin’s deception, I would be a force in this village and he would be nothing. I hate him. You won’t find me in his damn inn, not to slake hunger or thirst.”
“Peter Vogt is your cousin?”
“On Mum’s side,” Mabel said. “Peter’s village born, but his kin are of Denby Marsh. Marrying foreigners – never no good.”
“I’m surprised your father put much store in Peter Vogt.”
“Well, that was him at his slyest, wasn’t it?” Venom dripped from every word. “He presented to Father he was eager to learn Old Ways, suggested he could get secrets held tight by Wizard Ezekiel.”
“How? Magicians guard their secrets jealously.”
She shrugged. “At that time, no worthy children of Lemuel, maybe never. Ezekiel wanted worthy heir, but a magician lacking heirs might take on apprentices. Rumour was that Ezekiel had two secret students already.” She shrugged. “Don’t know that any was true. But he knew a little magic. Father taught him more than me. After all, I was only the daughter, just a girl.” She sighed. “It all ended when Peter gained control, then bonded me to Thaddeus.”
“Your marriage did not last long.” Ravyn was eager to end her bitter reminiscences. “Another farm accident, was it not?”
“Poor Thaddeus, trampled by a spooked horse. A terrible death. When the Crone whispers a man’s name, there’s naught to do but die.” She paused. “With as much pain as he caused others.”
“After your…widowhood, did you see Martha much?”
“When she came into the village.”
/> “Not at Stryker Farm?”
“You’ve been there.”
“I have.”
“Then you know how bloody isolated it is, hard to get to,” she said. “Besides, I wasn’t wanted there.”
“By Martha?”
She shook her head. “By Lemuel and Ezekiel. Martha was great with child, having Millie she was. Lemuel and Ezekiel did not want outsiders. Then, bang-bang-bang, one child after another, each born in secret, raised in secret. They were the brats Ezekiel wanted, the vessels for his power. As Martha was swallowed by the darkness the Strykers drew to them, I saw less of her.”
“Martha was learning their secrets?”
“So all assumed, me as well,” Mabel said. “But not a word out of Martha the times I would see her. We had tea and talked about better times, happier days for both of us, but nothing of her life out at that damned place, not that there weren’t stories.”
Ravyn nodded. In a village, rumours took on lives of their own. Given the traditions of Knight’s Crossing, many rumours whispered in the pub would not be rumours at all, but sights seen under moons light and dark by the curious, the avaricious and the foolish.
“Many were greatly surprised by Lemuel’s seed-planting, for it was said that his seed-sack were empty.”
Ravyn lifted a quizzical eyebrow.
“Never asked, never wanted to know.” Mabel shuddered at the thought of those long-ago secrets. “She was my friend.”
“What about her relationship with Lemuel?”
“No love on either side. Lemuel took a wife because his father commanded it, and Martha took his bed to fulfil an obligation.”
“Was she lonely?”
“How could she be not?”
“Did she do anything about that loneliness?” Ravyn asked. “I mean, besides the occasional trip to the village?”
A look of sly craftiness returned. “Not at all, as far as I know.”
“How did Martha feel about her children?”
“Everyone thought Dale did it.”
“We now know he didn’t.”
She leaned forward. “What was it like beyond the Portal, down where them bones were?”
He shook his head and gave her a thin smile.
“You are a cautious one.”
“Her children?”
“Dale was her favourite of the brood, I can tell you that much, and that’s what I told Dorry and that detective way back when,” she said. “Allan was like his father, Millie and Heather shared Ezekiel’s dark heart, but Dale was like his mother. He killed no one, and now everyone knows it. I curse all his accusers!” She made a complex sign with her hand. “Pox and pestilence! Destruction and doom! But worse still upon the hand that killed the poor boy.”
The air seemed to quiver a moment with her last word, but the moment passed. She seemed smaller. weaker.
“Any thoughts about who killed the Strykers, including Dale?”
“A magical entity.” Mabel glared as if he were daft for asking what was obvious. “Now, whether it were Wizard Ezekiel’s own dark magic gone awry, the elementals turning and killing them all, or another’s fell workings no one can say, can they?”
“You don’t believe Ezekiel’s magic went awry, do you?”
She shook her head. “No, he was a cautious one for binding the elementals he summoned to do his will. Them elementals being loosed for mischief is a far-off cry from them killing.”
“Nor the magic of others,” he said. “Not really.”
Again, she shook her head. “No, I suppose not. My own father could counter any spell sent against him, not that any would have dared, not even Wizard Ezekiel, but setting up wards and other sorts of defences is hardly the same as attacking.”
“And you wouldn’t curse any magical entity, would you?”
Mabel’s eyes narrowed and she held a tight-lipped silence. He was morphing from a hidden adept into a policeman. Still, he had drawn the Sign of Piercing, and how would he even know of the Mhoggam script? Still, best to be cautious, she decided.
“And ‘worse still upon the hand that killed the poor boy,’ you said.” Ravyn smiled, but the girl who had secretly scurried off to the Denby Marsh cinema was again buried in a dead past. “A man held the knife that killed Dale. Who? Who do you think?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know who. By the Crone and the Horned God of the Woods, I swear I don’t know.”
“I believe you.” He knew what the oath meant in her world.
“I often dream of things gone different, Martha alive and me happy,” she whispered. “When it ends, I wake up weeping. What’s spoiled is spoiled. We fell into black pits, dire fates not of our own making. She’s dead and I’m not, but she’s still the lucky one.”
Ravyn sighed, not so much with compassion or understanding, or even pity. The lives which Mabel saw as fated were the result of blindly following village traditions. Even as teens born and raised in Knight’s Crossing, neither Mabel nor Martha would have been ignorant of the world beyond, of social changes sweeping England. They might have fallen into fates not of their own making, but the fates could not have been sealed without their cooperation.
“I should never have agreed to talk to you,” she said after a sniffled moment. “But I told Hilly I would. She’s a kind girl.”
“Tell me about Peter and the other apprentices.”
“I don’t know Cousin Peter really was. Probably just a story to further befuddle Father.” Her words were sharp as gunshots. In her loneliness, she had too quickly taken Ravyn at his own word. The transformation from adept to detective was complete. “And maybe there were no others. How would I know? I wouldn’t know, would I? Just a silly girl I was then, just a silly old woman now.”
She stood, nearly upsetting the chair.
“I’ve nothing else to say. I want to go. Do not bind me further.”
“I release thee,” Ravyn said, knowing what she wanted to hear. “Thank you for talking to me, Mabel.”
She paused at the door. “You really do have a very nice smile, Mr Ravyn. Perhaps we’ll meet again, gods willing.”
“Goodbye, Mrs Link.” He did not smile. “Again, thank you.”
On a tablet from the desk, he wrote swiftly, without hesitation, recording Mabel’s statement word for word. He would have it typed later. Stark could get her signature. He leaned back.
So, Martha Stryker had lovers, he thought in the solitude of the constable’s office. Certainly two, possibly three.
Time for lunch, he decided. At the Broken Lance.
* * *
Stark opened the book, frowning when he saw writing in a hand no one had used in centuries. It was just an old book, he decided, of interest only to an antiquarian, hidden by Marquest, then forgotten. At least he could return it to Lawrence, a misplaced legacy from his father. Standing to leave, Stark flipped through more pages, then stopped, staring at the open book, breath caught in his throat.
Today Grandfather Ezekiel was wrathful that I heard Mhoggam uttered to the eft-things that he raised, Stark read. My ears burneth from the sounds, but I died not.
Though he knew he should start the trip back to Hammershire, Stark sat in the old barrister’s chair and slowly turned page after brittle page. He entered a world of magical spells, raised demons and strange rites that were old even when the world was young, all revealed by a simple, childish hand,
Mixed with the straightforward narrative of life in the Stryker family were Dale’s own spells, magical charts, and drawings of creatures and beings not of this mortal realm. All nonsense, Stark knew, the fabrications of an impressionable mind steeped in a vile brew of darkness, ignorance and phoney religion. It was revolting and debased, the kind of life young Dale was forced to live among such people, and yet the boy loved his family, especially his mother, and even the old tyrant Ezekiel, though equal parts of fear and envy were mixed in as well.
I expected Grandfather Ezekiel to switch me when I made low comments about Stone Heart, Owl
Screech and Hawk Claw, Stark read, but he bade me speak more of the Acolytes. I was full of fear, but Grandfather Ezekiel spoke softly, even kindly, putting his arm about me. And I told him of what was seen secretly, of the comings and goings he knew not of, their visits when he was not about, of the wails and pig-grunts heard behind locked doors. His eyes smoked at my words, the blue lightning crackled. My hair rose. Again, I was beset with great fearing, but ‘twas not at me he raged. I did not understand all his words, or his questions. He finally released me and bade me hold silent. Did I do right in telling? I fear not.
Stark looked up suddenly. He was sure, well, almost sure, he had heard a sound somewhere in the house. He stood and listened. Perhaps Lawrence had left his fantasy world of goggles and steam-powered contraptions to check on things in the real world. A door closing? A tread upon the stairs? He listened till his ears hurt, but heard nothing else to dispel the fact he was alone.
He needed to head back, he decided. Too much time had been wasted. The book was fascinating, much as was a two-headed snake in the zoo, but he failed to see how it added anything to what they already knew about the old murders. Perhaps Ravyn could get more out of it than could he.
Of course he would, Stark thought. With a lifetime of facts and experiences neatly filed in his pigeonhole mind, how could he not? His ability to squeeze water from a stone was sometimes infuriating, and always annoying. He could almost imagine Ravyn’s mild eyes as he handed over the book. Damned annoying.
Stark pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, slipped the book inside and jotted down the date and time. It was what he should have done immediately, instead of pawing it, but it was a lapse of protocol he need not share with anyone, and would not.
He eased out the attic and down the stairs, unable to convince himself the sound had been wholly of his own imagination. He checked every room and lock. No window was ajar or unlatched and no point of entry seemed breached in any way. He had not searched the house before heading up to the attic area, but nothing seemed amiss. Everything seemed fine, but he could not shake the idea that someone had prowled below while he was above.
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