Magic and Manners (An Austen Chronicle Book 1)

by CE Murphy

  Mr Penney was a sensible man, wholly aware of the disparate stations held by himself and Mr Archer; he recognised without difficulty that a man of Archer’s position might be expected to make such an offer, and that a man of his own certainly ought to refuse it as to not look too hungry for great associates. Nor could he doubt that Elsabeth felt they should go, that Miss Archer felt they should stay and that Mrs Penney would be content with any decision he himself made. Thus caught between propriety, clashing female desires and his own interests, Mr Penney concluded that he knew he had no intention or interest in presuming upon his acquaintance with Mr Archer in the future, and that it was therefore most proper that he should accept Mr Archer’s proposal, and stay on. That it aligned nicely with his own love of fishing was happy circumstance, but not to be belittled. “We will, Mr Archer, and we thank you for your generosity.”

  (51)

  Elsabeth could not pretend, even to herself, that she was displeased by this turn of events; she was too aware that she would have married Mr Archer on the spot, if necessary, to retain access to his library of enchantments. Indeed, all through supper, he continued so politely and with something so close to charm that she was often reminded of the moment he had come upon her making snow angels, and wondered if perhaps, had circumstances proceeded differently, she might have come to welcome the sentiment, if not the actuality, of the offer he had made. She could not see how events might have transpired so differently, though; all the intelligence she had learned that weighed the balance in his favour had come well after that unfortunate proposal, and she had not permitted herself to much linger on what had then become impossible. Even so, she was obliged to wonder time and again at the change in him; it surely had not been brought on by her own comments to him at Charington Place, not when both Miss Archer and the household staff spoke so highly of him as a kind and thoughtful gentleman. Perhaps it was only that he was at home and comfortable there, although, if that proved to be the case, Elsabeth believed he ought to never again leave Streyfield.

  With the late supper concluded, she was given a room of her own that lay alongside her aunt and uncle’s, and was nearly prepared for bed when a knock sounded at the door. Amused, and anticipating the irrepressible Miss Archer, Elsabeth answered with a smile, only to find Mrs Penney standing there in a positive flurry of high colour and emotion. Without waiting for an invitation, she swept in, closed the door, and turned to Elsa with curiosity brightening her features. “What on earth is the situation between you and Mr Archer, Elsabeth? He is not at all the gentleman I heard described at Oakden; he is well-mannered, he is thoughtful, he is handsome—although not so handsome, perhaps, as Captain Hartnell—he has spoken of you with such fervour that all of his household knows your name, and now he has opened his extraordinary library to you! What has passed between you?”

  “He is more handsome than Hartnell,” Elsabeth opined, much to her aunt’s interest, “and greatly changed from Oakden.” This was at first all she could say, and then, in a flood, the story came out: his proposal, her accusations toward his treatment of Captain Hartnell and interference with Rosamund and Webber; her enraged actions in chasing him from Ruth’s home with fireballs; his subsequent letter, which Elsabeth carried with her still; his relenting in the matter of Rosamund, culminating in his advice to use her magic to keep Rosa warm the night she had collapsed, and finally the confrontation with Hartnell that had confirmed him, and not Archer, as the villain, and now Archer’s unlooked-for generosity with the Streyfield library; all of this Elsabeth poured out to her aunt, whose countenance darted between astonishment and dismay, delight and horror, and fi- nally settled into a gentle fondness as the story concluded.

  “I think he must still hold you in some esteem, Elsabeth. What a pity that he did not show these nicer manners earlier.”

  “But he did not,” Elsa replied almost helplessly, “and so I can have no regrets over refusing him. I was right to do so, Aunt Felicity, and if he is now more nicely mannered, then it is still too late for any change on my part. No; I cannot think it is because he still has any affection for me, but rather because he is within his own home now and able to be magnanimous within those walls.”

  “But surely, his support of your sorcery, Elsa—”

  “Rosamund nearly died from Society’s opinions of sorcery, Aunt. For all his arrogance, I do not imagine Mr Archer to be a murderer, or even to wish harm on those who are his inferiors. His support was a life-saving measure when she collapsed, and if it was of use then, I should think his intelligence sufficient as to allow and even encourage a subtle study of magic that could be of further use to others. He was never foolish,” Elsa murmured, the heat gone out of her. “Only insufferably rude, and if he is not any longer—even if I am to concede some error of judgement regarding him—then I am quite certain my emphatic rejection of his offer will have put all thoughts of admiring me out of his mind. I am surprised and grateful that he has opened his library to us; that is more than anyone could expect.”

  Mrs Penney, seeing that her niece was determined on this matter, let it fall in favour of clasping Elsabeth’s hands. “I will hope, then, that we will both learn to be of use to others; I confess, Elsabeth, that I came to speak with you tonight as much because I could not sleep from excitement as to gain an understanding of your acquaintance with Mr Archer. Am I to be a sorcerer after all? Can it be possible?”

  “You can read the books,” Elsabeth said with assurance. “You will be able to work some measure of magic.”

  Her prophecy was proven true before dinner the next day: a book proclaiming itself to be Of Minor Magicks came to hand, and within its pages lay the casting of spells for candle-lighting, for dusting, for setting a moonlight low upon one’s feet to light the way on dark nights, and a dozen more small and practical magics that, once memorised, Mrs Penney found herself quite able to command at any time. She could not hang fire in the air as Elsabeth could, nor cause every hen inside a mile to lay an egg, but neither, she claimed, did she need to: it was quite enough to drive an infection from an inflamed cut, or to cast a pretense of sunlight into a dim room.

  Each of these magics, she reported, created a surge within her. “It is as if I am actually...pushing,” she said thoughtfully. “As if that little physical effort necessary to light a candle is still expended within me, save that I do not need to rise and find a spark to do so. The sensation is greater when I set the moonlight upon my feet, as if—as if that is a less natural act and requires more of my spirit to achieve.”

  “We must find a way to gather more æther,” Elsabeth concluded. “It must be possible, so that you can work larger magics.”

  “Or perhaps we are given as much æther as we can safely burn,” Mrs Penney replied, “and ought not press beyond our limits.”

  “So, we should neither repress nor indulge our magic? Perhaps.” Elsabeth frowned with recollection. “Captain Hartnell used more than he ought to have, in the matter of the bridge, and was convalescent for some weeks after. But Dina, who certainly used as much magic that day as Captain Hartnell, was merely drenched, not exhausted, with her working.”

  “Perhaps she has more natural æther; you, after all, seem to be well supplied with it.” For, by now, Mrs Penney had read the rules of scrying, and knew Elsabeth had succeeded in the most difficult manner of it without so much as intending to. More, as Mrs Penney had mastered the book of small magics, Elsabeth had investigated more dramatic castings: she could, and, in the aftermath, somewhat sheepishly, had, caused every hen within a mile to lay an egg; Persephone had gone running to the coops to see if it was true, and returned triumphantly, bearing an armload of eggs and intending a quiche for supper. After that, a pinch of salt seeded the air, and from it, Elsabeth conjured a raincloud that poured water incessantly onto the library’s marble floor until the three ladies could throw open a window and chase the tiny storm outside with a frantically read spell that caused gusts of winds. “If only Dina was here!” Elsabeth wailed in
the midst of that minor disaster, and Mrs Penney, unaccustomed to hearing Dina wished for, laughed aloud.

  Innumerable spells required components; Elsabeth, reading them, felt certain she could cast them, and as often felt she would not wish to. Too many were for war-efforts, guarantees to damage or destroy flesh and walls; all the best parts of magic turned to delivering ruin. She put those books away with a heaviness in her heart, and sought their counterparts: surely, if magic could harm, it could help as well.

  “Ah,” said Mrs Penney finally, late in the afternoon. They had lunched in the library, well away from where they might stain the precious books but near enough that they felt they were not abandoning their studies. Miss Archer had joined them after lunch, reading in a corner as Elsabeth and Mrs Penney’s studies became more guided by investigation than experimentation. Mrs Penney’s quiet exclamation was the first that had been heard for some time, and she rose with the weariness of many long hours at study, to bring a small, beautiful and very old book to Elsabeth’s table. “I found this inside another. Look at it, Elsabeth. Tell me if it says what I think it does.”

  “Æthers of Health,” Elsabeth read from the cover, and opened the book to see a now-familiar handwriting in its early pages. “Spells of midwives, of hedge-witches, of wise-women and bone-setters. Once, there was hardly a village in England that did not have an old woman or man who could be turned to for easing of pain and the healing of injuries, but those who can work such magics have been banned; they follow the Crusades and the armies who have more need for them than fear of them. M— says there will be more plagues now, and that perhaps those who die deserve to for their distrust of magic. I cannot agree, and so, I hope that one day, these pages will be found and embraced for the good they can do.”

  The pages were fragile beneath Elsa’s fingertips. She paused after the introduction, looking to some of the larger books of war-magic, which were sturdier and more recently bound. “These smallest books, the ones with this handwriting and the mention of M—, they are the oldest of this collection. They are the ones that have how to cure meat and how to cast light on the darkest roads. These are the precious ones, Aunt Felicity. The larger ones are newer, and given over to warfare; they are all that we have left of magic in the wider world. But here: here are spells to cast to ease the pain of childbirth, or to set a shattered bone, or to cool a fever that will not break. It isn’t that only the camp followers and fallen women can cast them; it’s that they are the only ones who still remember this magic at all, and men will not learn what a woman can teach. Persephone, your ancestor may have saved all that is good in English magic here. He may have laid the foundation upon which we can build and change this world.”

  “Change,” echoed Persephone wonderingly from her corner. “What would you do, Miss Dover?”

  “Elect my friend Sophia to Parliament,” Elsabeth replied with a laugh. “I cannot yet say, Persephone. I do not yet know. But I feel that we cannot allow this knowledge to lie fallow now that it is discovered, any more than we could allow Rosamund to go on suppressing her magic when we learned it was the source of her illness. Even if we should do no more than make that common knowledge, we should have changed something; should we copy these books of magic and distribute them, allow them to find those who can make use of them—I do not know what would change, Miss Archer, save everything.”

  “I do not believe that would be...well looked-upon by the crown,” Mrs Penney put forth into the silence following Elsabeth’s proclamation. “Miss Archer has said it herself: it is long since the army has come to collect all the known books of magic, and sheer fortune that Streyfield’s grimoires went unscathed. There must be some reason the government prefers to have what magic there is in their own hands.”

  “Do we not only have to look to the Colonies to answer that, Aunt Felicity? To Africa, and to India? Is not a population littered with magery and the knowledge of how to use it less compliant, more demanding, more egalitarian? I have read that the Civilised Nations in America are ruled by men and women alike, in council, not by circumstance of fortunate birth that deems an individual as the ruler of a whole nation.”

  Mrs Penney spoke with concern indistinguishable from dismay. “You have become a revolutionary overnight, Elsabeth.”

  “How could I not? How could you not, Aunt Felicity? You, who have longed to share your brothers’ power since girlhood, to discover now that you have been kept from it only because someone long ago decided that magic is a barbarous secret, to be stamped out of wealthy families and barely tolerated in lowly ones! I am not ashamed of my gift, Aunt Felicity, and nor should you be! How can I do anything but revolt against the system that has placed us in this position? A system which nearly cost Rosamund her life, and—if you must see it in empirical terms—a system which has cost us the Colonies, for we have so thoroughly rejected our sorcerous heritage that we could not stand against a continent of practitioners! The European presence is tolerated in America, when we had imagined ourselves its conquerors! Oh, that I could fly there myself, and learn a thousand magics no longer dreamt of on England’s spiritless shores!”

  “Elsa,” Mrs Penney responded, faint with shock, but Miss Archer could not restrain herself from rousing applause.

  “Well said, well said, Miss Elsabeth! How I wish my brother had been here to hear you orate! I feel as though we are at the start of something, something dangerous and exciting and important, and that I myself am unbearably fortunate to be a part of it. Would that I could read these pages, but if I cannot, let me at least offer sanctuary to those who can! What use is wealth if I cannot do some good with it?”

  Smiling, Elsabeth clasped Persephone’s hands and drew her into an embrace. “Surely, you must require Mr Archer’s approval before throwing open your doors as a refuge for those who would study magic in peace, but I am grateful for your generous heart and the kindness which prompts the offer. It is enough—more than enough—that your family has kept these books of magic safe for so long; our next duty, I think, must be to copy them, even before we make their presence known to the world, so that they are not endangered by being the solitary window we have left into the past, and the skills they had then.”

  “There are so many,” Persephone replied, suddenly daunted. “How will we copy them all, when sorcerers hide themselves?”

  “We are seven ourselves, we Dovers,” Elsabeth answered. “Or five, perhaps, for the nonce; I am not sure my very youngest sisters have the discipline to sit and copy so many pages with accuracy, but five is a beginning.”

  “Surely, Ruth would not,” Mrs Penney began hesitatingly, but Elsabeth disagreed.

  “Once I would have agreed, but now? And if she should not be comfortable in doing the work in her own home, I am sure Miss Derrington would invite her often to Charington Place to copy in peace.”

  “She would,” Persephone interjected eagerly, “save that she is engaged and due to be married before the end of the month, that she and her husband might return to Oyo before the winter storms come on.”

  Elsabeth cried, “What!” with great delight. “What, Miss Archer? I had not heard this news! Pray tell, who will her husband be?”

  “A gentleman named Swift. He is Irish-born and nephew to some renowned physician of whom I have never heard. His uncle’s connexions are not so appealing to him as the pull of the African sun, or perhaps it is only that he is the fourth son and his uncle cannot do much for one of so little influence himself. But Annabel is so wholly happy that she has been seen to go walking without a wrap, so I must think her heart entirely taken up with such regard as to warm her through and through.”

  Elsabeth’s hands had gone to her lips as Persephone spoke; now she removed them, trembling, and was not ashamed that tears stood in her eyes as she reported, “I have met the gentleman a little; a very little. It was his uncle who warned us to the severity of Rosamund’s condition; without Mr Swift, Persephone, I should have lost a sister. And now, because of him, another lady I cam
e to care for quite sincerely in the little time I knew her shall return to the place that she is happiest; oh, I could not ask for better news than this. Before the end of the month! I must write to her and offer my congratulations.” Merrily, Elsabeth enquired, “Is your aunt entirely enraged?”

  “Very nearly,” Persephone said with a smile. “She is very fond of directing other people’s lives, and is never pleased to discover that her players have free will and direction of their own. But she cannot be wholly infuriated, as Annabel will be quite the superior in their marriage, and it is the custom of the Oyo to take a husband into the wife’s family; Annabel’s children will carry the Derrington name, of which Aunt Beatrice is very proud, and so, in the end, she gains a certain satisfaction that she could not have had if Anna had done as she had wished.”

  Mrs Penney murmured, “How complicated,” but it was said with a smile that gave way to a sigh. “Well, I cannot say that I am alight with the fire of revolution, but I agree that the books must be copied. I hope we might come to some arrangement with Mr Archer, Miss Archer, that will allow us to do so without inconveniencing him.”

  “We will discuss it over supper,” Persephone said, and upon this pronouncement, their studies were done for the day.