A Scholar of Magics

by Caroline Stevermer

  “I agree there is no royal road to magic.” Porteous made no effort to conceal his disapproval of the direction the conversation had taken. “That’s as far as I go with you, Voysey. I see no point in breaking rules unless you learn them first. For one thing, it’s dangerous.”

  “True,” Voysey conceded.

  Robert added, “For another, it’s far more entertaining to break the rules intentionally than inadvertently.”

  “Why, Robin,” Jane turned to her brother in mock astonishment. “Break the rules? You?”

  “A shocking revelation, isn’t it?” Robert was smug. “Is it enough to make you question my authority?”

  “That’s the key,” said Voysey. “That is what makes Glasscastle great. Its scholars have the ability to question all manner of authority. Indeed, they have the responsibility to do so.”

  “If they do so without overstepping the bounds of prudence,” Porteous added.

  Jane glanced across at Lambert to see if she could catch his eye, but all his attention was on Voysey and he was nodding slightly. Jane felt mildly disappointed in him.

  “Agreed,” said Robert. “So you see, Jane, we are all models of intellectual and moral decorum. Therefore we endorse your previous statement, which I suspect you made with your tongue in cheek. Glasscastle is always right.”

  Jane said, “I am left speechless by what passes for logic here.”

  “Then let me provide the toast.” Robert lifted his glass and the others joined him. “Glasscastle is always right. Amen.”

  3

  “And the gilded car of day

  His glowing axle doth allay”

  After yet another boiled dinner in hall that evening, Lambert slowly climbed the staircase to the empty quarters he shared with Fell. Still no sign of his friend. The conversation between Voysey and Jane earlier in the day had given Lambert the chance to let Robert Brailsford know that there was something important he needed to tell him. The need to get Jane out of earshot had made it tricky, but her spirited conversation with Voysey and Porteous lasted longer than their meal did. Eventually the three of them strolled far enough ahead that Lambert could mutter to Brailsford and pass him the plans with a brief explanation of where he’d found them.

  “Good gad, man. What was Fell doing with these?” Brailsford tucked the papers away hastily. “He washed his hands of the project long ago.”

  Lambert didn’t like the critical note in Brailsford’s voice. “I’d lay odds Fell doesn’t even know they were there. If it turns out he does know, I reckon he just doesn’t think they’re anything important. He’s never given two pins for the project anyway.”

  Brailsford shook his head in mock despair. “Tuppence. The idiomatic phrase should be ‘He doesn’t care tuppence.’”

  Happy that Brailsford had let himself be distracted, Lambert continued to play dumb. “He doesn’t give two cents for it either.”

  Whatever Brailsford had in common with his sister, a sense of humor was not included. “I’ll tell Voysey as soon as Jane is safely out of the way. I don’t suppose you’d like to show her the glass at St. Joseph’s, would you?” Clearly, Brailsford thought it most unlikely that anyone would willingly choose to spend time with his sister.

  Lambert didn’t have to think it over. “I would.”

  “Capital.” Brailsford started to move toward Voysey, Porteous, and Jane, caught himself, and turned back to Lambert. “Would you really?”

  Lambert nodded.

  Brailsford frowned slightly. “That’s good. That’s fine. Just—don’t take her too seriously. Jane was rather strange as a child. Fanciful. When it suits her purpose, she can be most—convincing.”

  Lambert had puzzled over that piece of advice for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Much of the afternoon he’d spent in Jane’s company, as Porteous showed them around some of the more restricted areas of Glasscastle. Jane had seemed a bit subdued, politely attentive to Porteous no matter what flights of architectural or philosophical fancy he took them on. Any talent she had for convincing people of things they ought not be convinced of remained hidden. Lambert could appreciate any brother’s urge to protect a sister, but the warning seemed intended to protect Lambert from Jane. Odd, that.

  There had been a moment that afternoon, although no more than a moment, when Jane’s courteous attention to Porteous had faltered. It occurred during Porteous’s lecture upon the architectural excellence of the Wearyall College chapel.

  “There are complexities upon complexities all around us as we stand here,” Porteous told them. Back to the wall, he faced the entrance and his voice boomed beautifully around the empty space of the chapel. “Every element we see tells us something about the way the architect viewed the world. No, let me rephrase that. Not the stained glass windows. Those are a recent restoration and quite extraordinarily insipid at that. But I digress. The use of space here can hardly be understood by the untrained eye. It requires years of study to comprehend and to appreciate the place fully.”

  Lambert tried to catch Jane’s eye and failed utterly. Meekly, he settled for a murmur of polite encouragement and Porteous surged onward.

  “This is where the genius of Glasscastle has been made not merely visible but audible. To hear a fully sung service here at Easter is to witness the auditory equivalent of a glimpse of the gates of paradise. Chanting was not discovered here, but it has certainly been brought to a state of perfection at Glasscastle.” Porteous beamed. “Architecturally, musically, aesthetically, the sum is greater even than its parts.”

  Jane smiled brightly. “Oh, yes. This is where the Yell Magna was perfected, wasn’t it?”

  Jowls quivering, with indignation, Porteous drew himself up to his full, not very impressive height. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I read about it somewhere.” Jane’s expression was demure. “Baedeker, perhaps.”

  “You refer, I imagine, to the Vox Magna, the technique that matches architectural space to the acoustics of the human voice in the performance of magic?” Porteous was ponderously sarcastic. “I can assure you, Miss Brailsford, that your little red Baedeker can do no possible justice to one of Glasscastle’s greatest achievements.”

  Unruffled by Porteous’s massive indignation, Jane said to Lambert, “It’s for opening doors.”

  “Opening doors?” Porteous goggled at her effrontery.

  “My dear child, is this what they taught you at Greenlaw? By no stretch of the imagination is the Vox Magna for ‘opening doors.’” His voice echoed ominously throughout the chapel.

  The acoustics were first rate. The place gave Porteous’s bellow something close to beauty. Lambert wondered what the vibrations of Porteous’s voice would be the auditory equivalent of. A bull moose, maybe.

  “It’s for unlocking things, then,” Jane conceded.

  “Oh, is it?” Belatedly, Porteous seemed to detect something suspicious in the utter gravity of Jane’s demeanor. His indignation subsided and mild sarcasm took its place. “If one could be permitted to describe the guillotine as a device for the radical adjustment of one’s hairstyle or for the drastic reduction of one’s hat size, then perhaps one might say the Vox Magna could be used for unlocking things. Perhaps, I say.”

  Belatedly, Jane seemed to remember her manners. Her deference returned and the remainder of the tour was without incident. Lambert had admired the unobtrusive ease with which she undermined Porteous’s self-control. He wondered if she could do the same to her brother.

  The ticking of Fell’s clock seemed unnaturally loud. Even with the windows open to coax in any night breeze meandering by, the sitting room was stuffy. For a luxurious moment, Lambert allowed himself to picture Fell’s annoyance if he came home to find the clock silent and the pendulum stopped. Fell was not a patient man. The smallest things sometimes made him cross. Interfering with his clock, just to stop the minor nuisance of its repetitive ticking, would not seem a small thing to Fell. Lambert put temptation aside and distracted himself with the day’
s newspapers.

  It was, as usual, difficult to make out what was happening in the world from what the newspapers said. Against all odds, the Republic of China had lasted five months and if the much-discussed China Loan ever floated, seemed likely to last for six. The ocean liner Titanic had broken her own trans-Atlantic record. Lord Fyvie had delivered a speech in the House of Lords demanding the Imperial Defence Committee deal with the question of aerial navigation. Someone else had delivered a better speech about the need for fiscal restraint in these difficult times. The fortunes of the British Empire were detailed in flattering terms. The court calendar figured prominently. Countries far away and ineffectual received short shrift indeed. Lambert read the society news with the same care and attention he gave to the account of an expedition sent to explore the depths of a jungle.

  An item in the society column made Lambert sit up straight in his comfortable armchair. The Earl of Bridgewater, a man sufficiently famous and fashionable that the newspaper saw fit to report his lightest deed, had delivered a speech to the Royal Society the day before. Among the members mentioned as addressing questions to the speaker afterward was Nicholas Fell.

  Lambert was startled at the relief he felt. No unexplained disappearance after all. Bridgewater had spoken on the history of the armillary sphere, with particular emphasis on the one handed down through generations of his family. Fell’s interest in armillary spheres was not as intense as his self-education in the measurement of time, but it was more than sufficient to send him to town to attend a speech without mentioning his plans. If he had bothered to leave Lambert a message, it had somehow gone astray.

  Lambert put the newspaper down, surprised at how late the hour had become. A trip into town might be a good idea. Fell was probably doing research there. Lambert knew which club Fell favored. The intrusion into his study at Winterset would annoy Fell considerably. He would want to know about it sooner, not later.

  There was the possibility Meredith might have more tests of marksmanship for Lambert planned for the next day. If so, Meredith would have to postpone them. Lambert would make sure he left before any possible summons might come from that quarter.

  Sleep came easily to Lambert that night. London first thing in the morning, that was the plan. Lambert always felt happier when he knew what he was going to do with himself. A day in London would make a bracing change.

  In the morning, London still seemed like a good idea. Lambert let himself out into the cool early silence. Glasscastle had only begun to stir itself. The sky was clear. Lambert thought it promised to be another warm day.

  Glasscastle Station was inconveniently distant from both the university and the town itself. The strategy, Lambert had once been told, was that the harder it was for the undergraduates to get to the railway station, the harder it would be for them to abandon their studies to go live it up in London. Whether the strategy worked or not, and it seemed by and large not to, there was no question that it was a long walk to the railway station.

  Lambert walked down Silver Street as far as the Haymarket before he struck it lucky with a drayman he knew from previous venturesome mornings.

  “You’re out early.” The drayman made room on the box to give Lambert a ride to the station. “In trouble, are you?”

  “Not this time.” Lambert gauged the driver’s degree of disappointment at that news and searched for some bit of entertainment to offer in return for his ride. “I knew a fellow once. You could say he got in trouble.”

  The driver looked pleased. “Bison, was it? Or bears?”

  “Worse than either,” said Lambert. “Women.”

  “Ah.” Deep satisfaction from the driver.

  Lambert took that as permission to carry on spinning his yarn. “This fellow was named Max and he was sweet on a girl called Agatha, but Agatha’s pa didn’t think Max was the man for her. He set up a shooting contest. Winner takes Agatha.”

  “This Max was a cowboy?” The driver looked dubious. He turned down Barking Lane on the way to Headstone Road and eventually the railway station.

  Lambert had the advantage of aimlessness. He had no particular train in mind so it didn’t matter if he were late or not. He’d take the drayman’s meandering route to the station and whatever train came next, that would be his. “Yup. Best shot you ever saw. But he wasn’t so sure of himself that he’d risk his girl. So he listened to his friend Caspar. Caspar was a cowpuncher who had traveled in some mighty strange places, and he came back with a Sharp’s rifle and five cartridges that he swore would hit anything he wanted them to. He promised Max that he’d loan him his rifle for the shooting contest.” Lambert knew perfectly well that the driver would put him off the box and make him walk if he admitted that this yarn had its origin in one of Lambert’s visits to the opera at Covent Garden.

  “Ah. What was in it for this Caspar bloke?”

  “You guessed it. Caspar had sold his soul to the devil for that rifle and those cartridges, and he knew the devil would be coming around to collect pretty soon. It was his idea that he’d give the devil Max instead.”

  “Ah.”

  “Max didn’t know any of that. He took Caspar up on his offer and he used four of those cartridges to win the shooting contest. The fifth cartridge was ready and waiting when Agatha’s father told Max to make one last shot. There was a dove flying past and he told Max to shoot that.”

  The driver shook his head. “That’s never good luck, shooting at a dove.”

  “It’s bad luck in Wyoming too.”

  “Did he hit it?”

  “He did. But it was Agatha who screamed and fell down.”

  “Dead, was she?”

  “Looked that way. Agatha’s father was mighty upset.”

  “His own fault, that was.” The driver spat to express his opinion of a shooting contest as a basis for matrimony and gave Lambert an amused look, as much prompting as Lambert required to get on with the story.

  “Women are tough, you know.”

  The driver nodded. His expression made it plain that he had good reason to know.

  “Agatha had only fainted. She wasn’t dead after all. But by the time she was back in her right senses, Max had thrown down the Sharp’s rifle and gone for Caspar’s throat. It was quite a scrap. None of the other boys who’d come for the shooting contest could break them apart. The fight only ended when the devil came to collect Caspar’s soul.”

  “Not Max’s?” the driver asked. He’d reached the station but instead of pulling in, he drew rein and sat waiting to hear the rest of the story.

  “Max was all right, as he’d been innocent of the whole scheme, so he got off free and clear. The devil took Caspar, though.”

  “Didn’t Max agree to cheat by using that Sharp’s rifle?” the driver countered. “Doesn’t sound innocent to me.”

  Lambert decided the driver had a point, and he made adjustments accordingly. “That’s what Agatha thought. By the time the dust had settled, she was feeling more herself, and she came to see what her father had known all along. Max wasn’t the man for her after all.”

  The driver looked dubious. “She didn’t marry him?”

  “She didn’t marry anyone. She settled down to take care of her father instead. When he died, she took over his ranch and ran it herself.”

  “What, lived alone and died a spinster?” the driver demanded.

  “I never said she was dead. She’s living in Wyoming yet.” Lambert gauged the driver’s tolerance for embellishment with care. “It’s a fine spread too. About fifty miles out of Medicine Bow.”

  “Off my rig and get along with you,” said the driver, disgusted. “That’s never how the story goes.”

  “It’s how it goes in Wyoming,” Lambert said, climbing down from the box.

  The drayman spat again, shook his head, and drove on.

  The train to London was mercifully quick. Lambert found himself squarely in the thick of London by midday. In contrast to Glasscastle, the streets were jammed and dirty. Great
buildings crowded wide streets. People of every degree jostled their way through the press as if they had been born knowing where they had to go and what they had to do once they got there. If there was ever a season in which London was supposed to be quiet, it was mid-August. To Lambert, the place seemed about as quiet as a stockyard on market day.

  By one o’clock, Lambert had elbowed his way through the mob to present himself at Fell’s club, a leather-bound retreat well supplied with rubber trees and aspidistras. After a brief wait, he was shown to one of the club rooms, where Fell had covered an entire table with his papers.

  As usual, Nicholas Fell looked as if he had slept in his clothes. There was nothing wrong with the cut of his gray flannels, but something about Fell’s posture made it impossible for him to stay tidy looking for long. He had obviously been immersed in his work, for when Fell looked up at Lambert, he wore the abstracted air of a man trying to listen to a voice from far away. Fell tugged at a corner of his neatly trimmed mustache and greeted Lambert.

  “There you are,” said Lambert.

  “Agreed,” Fell countered. “And here you are. Not your usual choice of outing, is it? May I ask why you have come, Lambert?”

  You disappeared and I was worried about you. Lambert felt a bit sheepish, now the moment to explain his presence had arrived. “I thought you should know that there was an intruder in the Winterset Archive yesterday. Someone was in your study.”

  Fell had gone back to his papers. With no annoyance, only mild curiosity, he asked without looking up, “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t know. But whoever he was, he tore the place up some.” Lambert’s stomach growled. “Have you eaten lunch yet? I’ll tell you all about it while we eat.”

  “Luncheon? Of course I haven’t. I’ve only been here—by Jove—” Fell broke off as he consulted his pocket watch. “It has been a bit longer than I thought.” His apologetic tone gave way to crispness. “What a refreshing change, to be allowed to get on with my work in peace.” Fell surveyed Lambert from head to foot. “Relative peace, that is. Still, I’m glad you’re here. Otherwise I might have missed my appointment. I’m to meet the Earl of Bridgewater for luncheon. You may join us.”