Mr. Wrexton was only half right in his suspicions about Herr Schellen’s transformation: The spell is linked to, and powered by, not merely one ley line, but several. Mr. Wrexton says that the leys must themselves be linked in some sort of spell network, and in a day or two we plan to ride out toward Goosepool to see whether we can identify which specific lines are involved.
Herr Magus Schellen seems much more comfortable now that we are further north. Mr. Wrexton and Aunt Elizabeth are very pleased by this evidence of the correctness of their theories. They are less pleased by the prospect of having to work directly with ley line power to disenchant Herr Schellen. So we decided that our first task would be a circuit of the town to map the lines nearby, for though Mr. Wrexton brought several charts with him (including a copy of the maps Mr. Morris made in 1653), he felt that under the circumstances it would be wisest to confirm their accuracy before proceeding.
So Mr. Wrexton, Aunt Elizabeth, the sheepdog, and I have spent the past several days riding about Darlington. Or rather, Mr. Wrexton rode; Aunt Elizabeth and I were in a hired carriage, as it is far easier to mark maps in a carriage than on horseback. The sheepdog ran along beside. All three of us performed the sensitizing spells. Aunt Elizabeth had a fresh map on which to mark whatever we found, and I had copies of the official survey to use for verification.
We began with the area around the railway station. There were some faint traces that ought not to have been present, but Mr. Wrexton said that they were just “shadows,” and that this is a well-known phenomenon occurring chiefly in the spring and autumn, when—and so on. One can never stop being a teacher, I suppose.
From there, we worked our way through the town. I must say, Kate, that if this is the sort of thing Herr Magus Schellen does for a living, I do not envy him in the least. Granted, he is not an expert in ley lines, but mapping ley lines cannot be so very different from mapping railroads, and I assure you that mapping ley lines is the most tedious task imaginable. It was not until yesterday that we finally discovered something interesting, and even then it was only because of a mix-up between James’s investigations and our own.
While we were searching out ley lines, James spent his days haunting the offices of various business concerns in town, mostly connected with the railway. He does not intend any implied criticism of Mr. Wrexton’s magical abilities by this, he was careful to explain, but since he can be of no assistance magically, he thought he ought to busy himself with something he is good at.
Yesterday evening, Mr. Wrexton, Aunt Elizabeth, and I had planned to look over our maps. There are rather more of them than you might expect, as Mr. Wrexton had brought several varieties. An ordinary map of all the ley lines in a particular vicinity usually bears a strong resemblance to a diagram of the straw in a haymow. Often, only the strongest ley lines are drawn in, to avoid confusion (though the official surveys are quite complete—and as a result, nearly impossible to read). The top of the table was covered three deep in maps, and Aunt Elizabeth kept scolding Mr. Wrexton for shifting them and smearing the marks we had made.
Mr. Wrexton was reviewing the maps of the area east of Darlington. I believe he has been growing as impatient as I with the pace of our mapping (at the rate we have been progressing, it will be weeks before we reach Goosepool). Suddenly, he frowned. “What’s this?” he said, gesturing at one of the maps.
Aunt Elizabeth glanced over. “It must be one of Mr. Morris’s hopeful sketches,” she said. “The lines don’t look like any of the official maps.”
“I told Simmons to label all of the Morris copies,” Mr. Wrexton said crossly. “I do hope I won’t need to have words with him when we return to London.”
“There will be a good many words when we reach London,” Aunt Elizabeth muttered, which I took as a reference to Georgy’s indiscretion (for she did not seem to be speaking of the maps, and she has been muttering about it from time to time all day). “Is the label on the back?”
Mr. Wrexton turned the map over. “No, there is nothing. Simmons is usually much more reliable.”
Just then, James came in. “Cecy, have you seen—oh, you have it.”
“This is yours?” Mr. Wrexton asked, lifting the map slightly.
James joined him at the table. “Yes. I picked it up at the railway office yesterday. It’s a chart of the two routes proposed for the railway—the original and the one Stephenson finally built. And it wasn’t easy to pry loose, let me tell you. How did it get in here?”
“The maid must have gathered it up and put it with the rest of the maps,” I said. “I’ll speak to her in the morning.”
“Don’t speak too strongly, dear,” said Aunt Elizabeth, of all people. “This is very interesting. Look, Michael.” Her finger traced one of the lines. “That route is the same as the ley lines on Mr. Morris’s map. And this one”—her finger ran along the other line—“I believe only crosses them in one or two places.”
“What?” said James and I together. We both bent forward over the map, and our heads bumped together sharply.
Once we sorted ourselves out, we sat down to study the maps with more care. Aunt Elizabeth was, of course, entirely correct. A large section of the original route planned for the Stockton and Darlington Railway ran right on top of two of the major ley lines marked on Mr. Morris’s chart. The actual railway route was different; parts of it had been built some way south of the original plan. As a result, the tracks merely crossed the two lines in places, instead of following them.
“Who changed the route?” Mr. Wrexton demanded. “And why?”
“Stephenson changed it,” James replied absently. He was still studying the various maps with a frown. “Wrexton, how could the official surveyors miss ley lines as strong as those?” He indicated the thick slashes on the Morris maps.
“I don’t believe they did,” Mr. Wrexton said. “There are leys in the right places on the official maps; they just aren’t as strong as Morris indicated.”
“Wishful thinking on his part,” Aunt Elizabeth sniffed.
“Perhaps,” I said. “Or perhaps the strength of the lines has changed since Mr. Morris made his maps.”
Mr. Wrexton shook his head. “Ley lines have been known to change in strength, it is true,” he said. “But not so significantly, nor so fast. I think Elizabeth is correct; Mr. Morris was puffing up his theories, trying to make the leys in his network seem more important than they were.”
“If so, he was remarkably consistent,” James commented. He picked up one of the other maps Mr. Wrexton had brought with him. “All of the lines he’s marked heavily are of minor strength, according to the official surveys.”
“All of them?” Mr. Wrexton said with interest.
James nodded.
“Perhaps he didn’t intend to mark how strong they were,” I said. “If he thought something else was more important …”
“Just what were his theories?” James asked. Everyone looked at him. “I don’t mean in general—ancient artificial ley line networks and spells holding England together. You explained that very clearly, Wrexton. But how did he think they worked? Even if you don’t have his notes, you must have some notion.”
Mr. Wrexton frowned. “Speculating on Morris’s ideas would not be—”
“Then don’t speculate on his theories, dear,” Aunt Elizabeth said. “Tell us about yours.”
“Yes, well, I admit, I have spent a good deal of time, since we discovered Lord White’s notes, thinking about the question,” Mr. Wrexton admitted. Aunt Elizabeth nodded, and James and I did our best to look expectant, and so Mr. Wrexton really had no choice but to tell us what he thought.
He began with the basic magical theory of spell diagrams (as if none of us had ever heard it before!). All spells need a diagram to contain the magical power and shape it properly, at least the first time they are cast. Everyday spells, like the one you use to keep your hair up and the scrying spell the children have been playing with, only need the diagram the first time, when the wizar
d is learning the spell. More complex or more powerful spells must have a diagram drawn every time they are cast.
Mr. Wrexton thinks the ley lines are the diagram for the old spell that binds the country together. That is part of what makes the spell so powerful and dangerous—unlike a normal spell, where magical power flows through the diagram when the wizard casts the spell, and is used up, the ley lines have enormous magical power flowing through them all the time. It’s as if the spell were being cast over and over—not just from time to time, the way we reinforce warding spells, but continuously, without ever stopping.
“There is only one problem with this theory,” Mr. Wrexton finished. “In order for the ley lines to act as a spell diagram, they have to have been linked together in certain places. And I can see no way to do that without the linkage becoming unstable very quickly.”
“If those ancient wizards could actually create artificial ley lines—” I began, but Mr. Wrexton was already shaking his head.
“It’s not the same sort of problem,” he said. “Magical power behaves in certain ways, just as water does. We can dig canals—artificial rivers—but we can’t make water flow uphill. I can believe, just barely, that those ancient wizards knew how to create new, artificial ley lines. To work as a spell diagram, though, they’d have to be linked, and without something to contain the linkage, it would become unstable very quickly.”
“This is interesting speculation, to be sure,” Aunt Elizabeth put in. “But it doesn’t get us any further ahead with our current problems.”
“Maybe it gives us a place to start,” I said. I put my finger gently on the map I had been looking at, right where three of Mr. Morris’s heavily marked ley lines came together.
Aunt Elizabeth looked across the table. “I don’t see the significance, dear.”
“Well, I am not perfectly certain,” I said. “But I believe this is the location of the Dancing Weans.”
“What?” Mr. Wrexton said.
“The stone circle where James and I found the—found Herr Schellen. It’s just past Goosepool, a little way from the railway line, on top of a hill. And it does seem a bit of a coincidence that so many of Mr. Morris’s leys come together there, doesn’t it?”
“And look here,” James said, pointing to the next junction, southeast of Goosepool on the opposite side of the river. “That’s—”
“Haliwar Tower!” I said.
“And there is another stone circle built right into the tower walls,” James said. “I noticed it after the facing fell away in the earthquake.” He looked at Mr. Wrexton. “Would a stone circle be enough to contain your linkages? There are certainly enough of them scattered all over England.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Mr. Wrexton said cautiously.
You may imagine the flurry of comparing maps that followed. There are several other junctions in the vicinity, so Mr. Wrexton, Aunt Elizabeth, and I are going to visit one of them tomorrow, to see what, if anything, is there. We decided not to begin with either of the places James and I had already been, as that might arouse suspicion. In a few days, if all goes well, we shall return to Goosepool, and eventually to Haliwar Tower.
Meanwhile, James continues his investigations into the finances of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (which, I must confess, I find nearly as tedious as all of the ley line mapping that the Wrextons and I have been doing this past week. I will be vastly relieved to be doing something different, even if it is only a sedate carriage ride through country scenery).
Your bored but busy,
Cecy
9 May 1828
Wardhill Cottage
(in cipher)
My dear Thomas,
I had forgot that there was yet another of those ancient stones near Skeynes. I say “yet another” because in course of their magical inquiries, Cecelia and the Wrextons have unearthed a third stone circle of interest near Darlington. (The first two, your lamentable memory may remind you, were the one built into Haliwar Tower and the one near which we discovered the sheepdog.) The three of them rode out yesterday to investigate the spot where, according to Wrexton’s old maps, several ley lines of some importance came together. They returned with the news that a stone circle sits squarely atop the meeting place, but that they had been unable to examine it closely as the owner of the land has fenced off the entire area due to a strong dislike of fox hunts.
Wrexton is now convinced that there is some connection between the old standing stones and the ley lines that Wellington is so concerned about. I believe he means to write you in extensive technical detail, as a preface to requesting your assistance. He seems to think that any tampering with the leys is restricted to the north country, but since he has no basis for comparison, he cannot be certain. When I mentioned your adventures with that prowler at the Tingle Stone this morning, he conceived the notion of persuading you to provide the basis—that is, he means to ask if you will ride out to the nearest circle in your vicinity and make some observations. Let me add my pleas to his. Anything that can speed the end of this tedious business would be welcome.
For tedious it is, in the extreme. I have spent the last week poring over the financial records of the Stockton and Darlington line. I now know more about the shipping of coal from the northern fields than you would believe possible, and I am positively looking forward to my next meeting with that inquisitive bore Lord Cheffington. For once, I shall not need to hold back when he starts his interminable questioning.
Two promising lines of inquiry have emerged from this flood of involuntary education. First, I have finally got hold of a list of the stockholders in the Stockton and Darlington Railway. In addition to “Stephenson and his lot,” there are a number of persons associated with the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Several of the locals have made recent trips to London; I have arranged a meeting with one of them this coming Monday, in hopes of discovering why they have developed such an urge for travel.
Second, there are plans afoot to provide the Stockton and Darlington with some direct competition. A man named Tennant has proposed building a second railway line from the coal fields to Stockton, along a route some fifteen to twenty miles north of the current system. He has been at work on this proposal for several years; indeed, the incorporation act comes before Parliament soon. The recent spate of accidents on the Stockton and Darlington may or may not work to his advantage. On the one hand, he can argue that he will do a better job than the current railway line, but on the other, the accidents give reactionaries like Sheridan and Fitzhenry the chance to point out that steam railways are unsafe.
Tennant’s proposal is also in competition with the corporation the Webbs have proposed. The more I find out about their scheme, the more absurd it seems. They intend to build a southern line, but both the docks at Stockton and the western coal fields are on the north bank of the Tees, so such a route would require building two expensive and unnecessary bridges. Nevertheless, they have scraped together funds and completed all the preliminaries in near-record time. Their bill of incorporation, too, is to be presented to Parliament this session.
I am in hopes that my meeting with Mr. Pease on Monday will provide some insight, if not some answers, in regard to both Tennant and the southern line. Mr. Pease has a reputation as a knowing one, and is deeply involved in the affairs of the Stockton and Darlington. He’ll have as much information about his competition as anyone, and perhaps more.
In the meantime, I must acknowledge that the years have improved young Daventer’s manners. I am in receipt of a note from him promising to persuade Mr. Skelly (the obstreperous Irish ley line expert) to take an interest in our problem, and no impertinent questions, either. He goes so far as to promise Mr. Skelly’s arrival within the month. This of course means that we shall be stuck fast in the north until then, but I have long since given over hoping for a speedy resolution to this affair, and am currently trying simply for a satisfactory one.
Yours,
James
5 May 1828
Skeynes
(Enchanted by T. Schofield, his mark)
Dear Cecy,
How tiresome it is sometimes, losing one’s temper. I am still out of sorts with Georgy for the remark about my harder stamp, but I am more out of sorts with my own foolishness. I have come to try my hand at nursery life again, to see if the squabbles of the younger set can teach me anything about my own tantrum.
6 May
Please excuse the blotted page. Yesterday I put the pen down with too much haste when I went to answer the latest alarum.
Edward has inherited his father’s youthful fondness for heights. On this occasion, Edward attained the cornice over the dining room door. I think he must have climbed up the curtain of the nearest window and edged his way along the molding. When the servants were laying the table for dinner, he struck a heroic pose on his perch and declaimed one of the improving verses I set him to learn. This poetic outburst was unexpected, to say the least. Only one wine glass was broken. It’s a miracle the damage wasn’t greater.
Thomas gave Edward a fine scolding, partly for startling the servants but mostly for reciting verse. Thomas didn’t say he found it alarming that there may be a family turn for poetry, but given recent events, he doesn’t need to.
I have promised Thomas upon my honor that Edward will be given no more improving verses to learn. If there is a bent toward poesy, the poor child does not have it from me.
Except for another squabble about toy soldiers (Eleanor has commandeered all Edward’s favorites to stand guard over the twins’ famous Map of Skeynes), it has been peaceful in the nursery of late. I like it here at the top of the house. It’s comfortable to sit here by the fire, an impartial observer as the nurses direct bedtime preparations. I feel a bit like one of those domestic goddesses the Romans were so good at inventing, a very minor goddess. Perhaps they had a goddess of nightcaps, or hearth rugs, or candlesticks. I feel a little like that.
The Mislaid Magician Page 16
