by Mark Hayden
‘I wouldn’t blame him if he did,’ said Ben. ‘But does Conrad ever run away?’
‘Yes, he does,’ I said. ‘Nothing wrong with a tactical retreat. Nor is there anything wrong with calling in reinforcements.’
‘Who? Mina? She didn’t say when she messaged me this morning.’
‘I thought it was best to keep Mina out of it. I had Vicky and Sofía outside on standby. I sent a text from the gents and they came in.’
‘Sneaky,’ said Myfanwy. ‘And also rather sad that we’re talking about a drink with your sister as if it’s a military manoeuvre.’
‘You’ve only met her once,’ said Ben.
Myfanwy banged him with her hip, nearly dislodging him from the roller. ‘What happened next?’
‘We chatted for ten minutes, then Vicky said that her ribs hurt and I asked if I could escort her back to Elvenham. Rachael waved us off and we left her and Sofía to bond.’
‘Wow. How did it go?’
‘They discovered their mutual love of tennis and dislike of cricket. They’re going to play tennis later then go to the spa to get to know each other properly.’
‘Talking of cricket,’ said Ben. ‘What do you reckon after that rain? Bat or field if we win the toss.’
Myfanwy shook her head. ‘The men should definitely bat first. I don’t think it will make much difference to the Coven. My first game as captain and we’re doomed either way.’
Ben loyally tried to reassure her. I didn’t bother, because all three of us knew that she was right.
Later that morning, Clerkswell Ladies, aka The Coven, were soundly thrashed, and only Mina and Myfanwy stopped to watch the men edge our game by a dozen runs and move into the promotion places.
Rachael and Sofía enjoyed their day together. I think that Sofía was as anxious about meeting Rachael as we were, and when it went okay Sofía decided to go back to San Vicente until her interview with the Dean. I collapsed into bed on Saturday night surrounded by open suitcases and outfits on hangers suspended from every hook and hold.
The traffic in central Birmingham on Monday morning was awful, and I was glad I’d insisted on leaving early. Saffron was dropping us at the station for the train to Liverpool before beginning her solo stint as Officer of the Mercian Watch. I sent Mina into the station to get coffees and arranged the luggage outside the car before having a last word with Saff.
‘I want you to call on Lloyd Flint next week. He’ll have a package for me.’
She made a face. Saffron does not like Gnomes. ‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes. Clan Flint are an important part of our Watch, so you should keep in touch anyway.’
‘Fine. I’ll stock up on latex gloves and wear trousers. What’s in the package?’
‘Nothing dangerous. It’s personal.’
Understanding dawned in her eyes. ‘It’s not a ring! Are you going to…’
‘…Just collect the package. And don’t even think of opening it to take a peek.’
‘Yes sir. Have a good time.’
When the train pulled out, Mina fiddled with her bangles and said, ‘Do you think anything bad will happen on this cruise?’
‘How bad are we talking? Socially awkward bad or tragically bad?’
She took my hands and ran her fingers round them. ‘I don’t know. Attack by Norwegian Trolls. Kidnap by Frost Giants. The Wild Hunt. Something like that.’
‘None of them would dare spoil Mother’s bridge tournament. We should be safe. My biggest worry is trying to hide a border collie on a ship for twelve nights.’
Scout was curled up at our feet. When I thought about him, he lifted his head and yawned.
‘I trust Saffron, even if you don’t,’ said Mina. ‘If she says that the collar will hide him, I’m sure it will. It was nice of Sofía to help her finish it.’
Saffron’s speciality is making Artefacts and enchanting items. Over the weekend, she’d brought a present from her cousin, the even more talented Artificer known by her family as the Great Geek of Oxford. Saff and Sofía had spent Sunday adapting it to Scout’s individual Imprint.
You can’t hide a dog for very long, but you can make every one without magick ignore him and think that he’s an assistance dog who belongs to some other passenger round the corner. All we had to do was smuggle him on to the ship in the first place.
She changed the subject. ‘Have you got your pilot’s licence through? I’d hate to miss this trip to Pellacombe because you hadn’t sorted your paperwork.’
‘It came on Saturday, while you were being bowled for a duck. The postie left it with Rachael.’
‘Good.’ She digested the comment about her batting for a second. ‘This Leah Kershaw. I think we should meet her.’
‘Is that the royal “we”? I’m seeing her the day after we get back.’
She waved her hand as if such details were beneath her. ‘For your last lesson, you should land in that field you own, behind the garden, and she can come in for afternoon tea.’
She was being serious. I have no idea why, but she was. ‘Fine. I’ll ask Leah about it.’ I checked my watch. ‘Time to turn our phones off.’ I dug mine out and powered it down.
‘Why should I do that?’
‘Because in ten minutes, Alain will tell Rachael about my involvement with the Mowbrays and she will go through the ceiling like a moon rocket. If she can’t get through to me, she’ll call you.’
‘What? Why didn’t you tell her yourself?’ Mina scrambled for her phone.
‘Alain needs the money. I bribed him to do it. It’ll save us a lot of hassle.’
She watched her screen go dark and breathed out. ‘Your poor mother. She’ll get it instead.’
I settled back and nudged Scout out of the way so that I could stretch out my legs. ‘The holiday starts now.’
Mina’s fingers hovered over her phone, itching to turn it back on. She looked up. ‘In that case, I’d better prepare, hadn’t I?’
She took out a copy of Bid Better, Play Better and didn’t speak to me until we got to Warrington. That’s one of the many things I love about Mina: you always know exactly where you are with her, and right now, I was in the doghouse. I leaned down to tickle Scout’s ears. At least I had good company.
Part Two — Hospitality
7 — Intelligence Quota
Food can be made with love, with resentment or for a living. It can also be made out of duty, and that was what the plate of sandwiches under clingfilm represented. Mina pressed the film into place and rotated the plate before depositing it on the kitchen table next to some fruit and a box of flapjacks. She stood back and looked at me.
‘You’ve done this deliberately, haven’t you?’ she said. ‘Just to stop me meeting her.’
‘You were the one who wanted to invite a pregnant woman with morning sickness to a tea party.’
‘I thought she’d be okay in the afternoon.’ She pointed a finger. ‘You had lunch with her last month.’
‘You didn’t see what she ate: chicken soup and vanilla ice cream. I had to drink my coffee at the other end of the room because she couldn’t stand the smell. The poor woman’s in a state.’
‘Hmmph.’
It was bizarre that a man should be defending the rights of pregnant women to one of the sisterhood, but there you go.
‘I shall see you later. Say Hi to Rick.’ She picked up her cricket bag and headed for the door.
It’s been nearly three weeks since Mina and I smuggled Scout on to the Queen Anne for our Baltic bridge cruise. We had a lovely time, thanks, and Mina still polishes her trophy for Best Newcomer every morning.
We had returned to the news that Leah simply couldn’t fly at the moment, and my training was carried out by the Mowbrays’ relief pilot, a man of few words, no gossip and absolutely no entanglement in the world of magick. He’s not even on their payroll and works for an agency. Instead of preparing a confection of dainties to soften up Leah Kershaw, Mina had prepared a snack for Rick James, the Seni
or Watch Captain, who was making a (metaphorical) flying visit.
Mina has never met anyone from my days in the RAF, still less a woman. Had Leah been feeling better, she’d have been grilled like the anchovies about my time in the service. I’ll count that as a bullet dodged.
Rick was on time, despite the Friday traffic, and was escorted to the back door by Scout. He has his uses, that dog. Rick is the only non-white Watch Captain, and rose to be Senior by having a good nose for trouble and knowing when to nip things in the bud. He and I are technically equal in rank – I’m the Watch Captain at Large, but I work directly for the Boss, something that Rick had had to come to terms with. That he did, has made life a lot easier.
‘Some animal, that,’ said Rick. ‘How’s the training going?’
‘Hard to tell. I might need to call on a specialist Mage before he gets too much older.’
Rick looked round the empty kitchen. ‘Where is everyone?’
The simple, honest answer would be avoiding you. I opted for diplomacy instead. ‘The Clerkswell Coven have got their first away game tomorrow, so it’s extra nets for them. Vicky still needs to rest in the afternoons. They all said Hi.’
‘Saffron doesn’t play cricket.’ Ah. Yes. That was my decision.
The others were avoiding him in solidarity with Vicky; Saffron was on a mission because I wanted to keep her away from him. ‘Gone to see a Gnome about a gift,’ I said.
He nodded acceptance and turned his attention to the table. ‘Are these mine? I’m starving. Any chance of a beer?’
He ripped off the plastic film while I got a bottle of Inkwell Gold from the fridge. Rick’s appreciation of Inkwell beers is one of the many things that make him hard to dislike, unless you’ve been dumped, cuckolded or two-timed by him. Thankfully, none of those has happened to me. Unlike Vicky.
He lifted a sandwich and eyed it with approval. ‘What do you know about the Daughters?’ he asked before biting into it.
I told him what I knew while he munched away, and then I went on to my scant gleanings about the Mowbrays. My lunch with Leah had been good for gossip, less useful on magick. Rick drained his beer and pushed his plate away.
‘Tea?’ I offered.
‘Please.’
Rick’s Watch covers most of the staff kingdom of Wessex. No one knows it better. He should be doing this job, not me. There’s a good reason for that, something he didn’t shy away from. ‘You know Cordy’s gonna be in the party, yeah?’
I nodded.
‘Well, first thing you need to know is never call her that. It’s Cordelia or you’ll be in trouble.’
‘Are you having the kids next week?’
He grinned. He and his ex-wife, Cordelia, have two children. Cordelia is also known as 11th Daughter of Ash.
‘Yeah. I get them for the weekend, too. Weather looks good for next week, so we’re going camping. If you can scupper the talks, or better still make them drag on for a few days, I’ll get them for the bank holiday, too.’
We both knew he was joking. ‘I’m afraid that the Boss is expecting me on Friday.’ I poured the tea. ‘What really happened between the two of you? It won’t go any further. I promise.’
He looked at his mug of tea. ‘On a good day, I tell myself it was because she got an invitation to join Ash Coven and had to dump me. On a bad day, it was because I got caught playing away once too often.’
I am not the guardian of Rick’s morals and I let the silence speak for me. Rick nodded and reached into his bag. He passed me a brace of folders, one each on the Daughters and the Mowbrays. ‘This is all my notes that aren’t on the Merlyn’s Tower servers. The Daughters are a funny bunch. I can’t get my head round them. I’ll tell you this for nothing: they rarely tell you what they’re really after. A bit like Melton.’
‘I’m not going to refer to him as Melton. I might slip up and use it to his face. I’ll stick to Lord Mowbray. Does he even have a first name?’
‘Arthur. He hates it as much as Cordy hates being called Cordy. Even his girlfriend calls him Mowbray.’
‘According to Leah, she’s his fiancée now.’
‘Is that right? Leah would know.’
‘She flew the Mowbrays all round Britain, Ireland and the Low Countries, but Lord Mowbray never talked business once. The files say he’s a Geomancer, so…?’
Rick nodded. ‘There’s a few notes in there, but there’s a problem with old Arthur: he’s both very good and very deep. In the last thirty years, he’s done more to restore the old Ways of Lux than anyone since the Romans. Ever heard of Thomas Brassey?’ I shook my head.
‘If you were a Victorian railway pioneer with a vault full of investors’ cash and parliamentary approval for a new railway, you’d write to Thomas Brassey and he’d build it for you. When he died in 1870something, one mile in twenty of all the railways in the world had been built by him, and no one ever had a bad word to say about his work.’
‘Impressive. I had no idea. You’re saying that Mowbray is the modern day magickal Thomas Brassey?’
‘Professionally, yes, but Brassey never stood for parliament, still less did he try to become king of anything, and that’s why I’ve got no idea what Mowbray is up to with this business. Neither has the Boss, nor Cora. He used to be friends with Roly Quinn, not that Roly would have given any secrets away.’
Roly is the late Warden, the job Cora would like to have. ‘Thanks, Rick. Did Hannah send any off the record briefings?’
‘No. Not even a sarcastic one telling you not to crash the Mowbrays’ helicopter. She’s genuinely stumped.’ He gave a micro-shrug to show that he was equally in the dark and moved on. He took a slim, leather bound volume out of his case. ‘Special delivery from Francesca. She says it’s her personal copy.’ He looked at the title. ‘What’s this? Auf Zauberie?’
I accepted the book and said, ‘It’s a basic primer on magick written in German. Old textbook from before the First World War.’
He didn’t ask any more questions about the book and finished his tea. He tapped the file labelled Homewood, and said, ‘There’s one story I haven’t written down. Nor should you.’
Mages have few superstitions, for obvious reasons: if you know what goes bump in the night (and why), you’re not inclined to avoid walking under ladders. Where Mages do have what looks like superstitions, they should be followed religiously. I know you’re about to read what he told me, but I didn’t write it down; this section, I dictated.
‘You know that Cordelia is Page to Raven, 1st of Ash, yeah?’
‘I saw that, yes.’
‘You’re in for a shock when you meet Raven.’ He grinned. ‘She has something in common with Chris Kelly.’ He paused, the smile still on his face.
‘What? They’re both bald as a coot?’
He shook his head. ‘I won’t spoil the surprise. Raven is thirty-five years old, but looks a lot younger, as you’d expect given her life so far.’ He hesitated and shifted his shoulders, reluctant to get on with it.
‘One of the Daughters tends a sacred flame through the night, every night. Have done since … whenever. One night just as she was saying the prayer before dawn, a giant raven flew down from nowhere and landed with a bundle handing from its beak, just like the stork in the baby cartoons.’
‘There was a baby?’
‘Too right. The bird lets out an ear-splitting cry. Literally. The poor Witch went deaf for a week. Every Daughter wakes up and comes running. At least six of them saw the bird for themselves, and saw it rise up and take off. The draught from its wings knocked them over. One of them swore that she saw two faces looking down on her from the sky.’
He drummed his fingers on the table, moving the rhythm from his right hand to his left and back again. ‘One of the faces was male. It had one eye. The other was the Morrigan. All the Daughters know her.’
‘You’re saying that Raven, 1st of Ash, is the daughter of two gods, Odin and the Morrigan?’
‘I ain’t saying nothing, Conrad.
I’m just telling you the story.’
I nodded and cleared the things off the table while Rick rummaged in his bag again. He pulled out a box made of shiny, pale, new oak, a cube about six inches on each side. The lid was formed on the diagonal rather than on the flat. It was held shut with a silver clasp. He put it on the table, along with a letter addressed to Mina using her official title – The Peculier Auditor.
‘Mina will need this,’ he said, ‘to witness the agreement at Pellacombe, if there is one. It’s magick, but anyone can bond with it, so she has to be the one to open the box first or it won’t work for her.’
‘Right.’
‘Thanks for the food and good luck, Conrad.’
‘Will I need it?’
He grinned again. ‘In Cornwall? I hope not. In the cricket? Most definitely. According to the Internet, you’re playing the league leaders tomorrow.’
‘We are. Safe journey, Rick.’
‘And you. Love to the girls.’
The gravel in front of Elvenham is both decorative and a good alarm. As soon as Rick’s car had crunched away, Vicky appeared, wrapped in a pristine white dressing gown bearing the logo of a country house hotel in Lancashire. It was a sort-of present – she nicked it, and I had to pay for it.
‘Is that tea still hot?’ she said.
I poured and put it in front of her. She opened the Tupperware box of Myfanwy’s flapjacks and started munching. ‘Low blood sugar. Ooh! What’s in the box?’
‘Seal of the Cloister Court or something. Mina needs to bond with it, so don’t touch.’
She peered closely. ‘That’s new, that is, and it’s been sealed with a Jackson Spiral.’ She remembered who she was talking to and explained. ‘It doesn’t hide the fact that there’s magick inside, it just completely camouflages it.’
‘Are you going to give the girls moral support at the game tomorrow?’
‘Aye. They’ve even made me the scorer, would you believe. I hate the game, but with you and Ben otherwise engaged, they need all the help they can get.’ She turned the mug around. ‘I feel so old, Conrad. That’s the real reason I couldn’t face Rick.’
