A Gathering Storm (Porthkennack Book 2)

by Joanna Chambers

  Such a comely boy this one, he thought, then realised he was staring and that his thoughts were going in entirely the wrong direction. He glanced quickly away, fastening his gaze on the magnets again, reminding himself that Sir Edward Fitzwilliam was a manipulative and ruthless man, not an innocent lad.

  Sir Edward didn’t seem to notice how distracted Nick was. He was already reaching for another box. “Iron filings,” he said, showing the contents to Nick. He held one of the magnets over the box and the filings jumped out, as though they were alive, fastening themselves to the dark metal like a layer of fur.

  Nick couldn’t help but laugh at that and for a while, they messed around like a pair of schoolboys, using the magnets to make the tiny shavings of metal dance and move, building tiny bridges and towers.

  From time to time, Nick cast a sidelong look at Sir Edward, marvelling at his carefree grin and easy manner. Nevertheless, Nick had no intention of allowing himself to forget what had brought him here today. He felt better now—more in control—knowing that there would be an end to this after August. On that point, he was prepared to take Sir Edward Fitzwilliam at his word. But that was as far as his trust went, and he wasn’t going to let go of the lingering resentment that simmered inside him over how the man had got him here.

  After a while, he decided it was time to stop letting Sir Edward charm him. Setting the magnet in his hand down on the bench, he said, “Well now, this has been very interesting, I must say, but don’t you think we should get started?”

  Sir Edward looked up at his words, seeming surprised, and perhaps even a little nervous. “All right. Let’s go back upstairs then.”

  He led Nick out of the laboratory and back upstairs. He ushered him into the study, then closed the door behind them and crossed the floor to draw the curtains, making everything restful and shady. He turned the armchair Nick had sat in earlier so it faced away from the large desk and into the middle of the room instead, drawing up a smaller upright chair for himself.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, and Nick tried to do so, though his gut churned with nerves.

  “How does this work?” he asked as he settled himself down.

  “Have you ever seen a mesmerist perform?” Sir Edward asked.

  “No,” Nick admitted, though he knew all about them—the newspapers were always full of their exploits. Nick took what he read with a pinch of salt though. He had reasons of his own to be sceptical of such sensational stories. He knew how easy it was to deceive with a few simple tricks. “Isn’t the whole thing just a fraud?”

  “Yes and no,” Sir Edward said. “The mesmerists believe that there is an invisible force—animal magnetism as they term it—that influences all living things. They claim to be able to manipulate this force and thereby put their subjects into a trance state during which various phenomena may be witnessed—extreme pain endured by the subject without complaint, for example.”

  “I’ve read stories,” Nick confirmed.

  “The interesting thing,” Sir Edward continued, “is that some of the mesmerists’ claims are irrefutably genuine. This is what confounded so many of the detractors of mesmerism. At least until Mr. Braid came along.”

  “Oh yes? And what did Mr. Braid do?”

  Sir Edward’s eyes were bright with enthusiasm now, an expression entirely at odds with his harsh voice. “He realised that something was genuinely happening to these subjects, but that it must be something other than what the mesmerists claimed. And in quite short order, he discovered that there were indeed simple processes that could be followed whereby almost anyone could be induced into a trance state—provided they were willing participants. It was nothing to do with the mesmerist and everything to do with the techniques employed.”

  “Techniques? What techniques?”

  “There are a few that can be used, but for my part, I stick to the simplest one, which is to have the subject look at an object for a period of time and ask them to fix all their attention upon it.”

  “What sort of object?” Nick asked, his nerves sharpening now that the moment was approaching.

  “Anything will do really,” Sir Edward said, reaching into his pocket. “Though I find something shiny is good, since it naturally draws the eye.” He drew out a silver box, about the size of his palm. It was, Nick saw, a match-safe box. He held it up, a little above Nick’s head, and watched as Nick followed it with his eyes.

  “Look at this box,” Sir Edward said. “Keep your gaze fixed upon it, please.” He shifted the box a couple of times and Nick faithfully followed it, as instructed.

  “Yes,” Sir Edward said at last. “Just like that. That’s perfect.”

  “Wake up.”

  Nick stirred.

  He had been asleep, he realised, surprised. Now he felt amazingly alert, though his eyelids remained closed.

  “I’m awake,” he said.

  “Good. How do you feel?”

  Sir Edward’s voice, when he spoke, sounded further away than he expected.

  “I feel fine.”

  “And are you comfortable?”

  “Yes.” He was conscious—very conscious, in fact—of considering his responses to Sir Edward’s questions. No loss of free will there. On the other hand, his hands felt heavy, weighed down on the arms of his high-backed chair, and the very idea of opening his eyes was unthinkable. He wondered if that should alarm him. It didn’t. In fact, he’d rarely experienced such a feeling of well-being as the one buoying him up now.

  “Shall we begin?” Sir Edward asked.

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Why don’t you begin by telling me about your mother?”

  Nick thought about that. “She loved the seaside,” he said at last. “She loved the wind.” He could see her, vividly, in his mind’s eye, yanking her skirts up to her knees and calling to him to race her along the sands, black hair flying about her face, teeth flashing in a mischievous smile. “We used to go to Mother Ivey’s Bay when I was a boy. Then we’d walk past Roscarrock House on the way home.”

  Sadness flooded him at that memory, an unexpectedly visceral feeling.

  “Didn’t you like going there?” Sir Edward asked.

  “I liked the bay,” Nick said. “Not Roscarrock House.”

  “Why not?”

  “We went because Ma wanted to rub my sire’s nose in his mistake. And he hated when he saw us. He hated me.” Nick rolled his head from side to side against the leather headrest in mute denial. There were no words, at least he had no words, for the remembered turmoil of pain and anger that had flooded him each time his father had laid eyes upon him.

  Sir Edward’s voice was hesitant, almost reluctant, as he asked, “Are you speaking of Mr. Roscarrock? Your employer?”

  Nick shook his head. “No, Jacob. Godfrey’s son.” He said flatly, “Jacob’s dead now. Like Ma.”

  There was a long pause. Nick didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t feel any need to do so. Was happy to simply sit, with his eyes closed. Relaxed.

  “Do you miss your mother?” Sir Edward asked at last.

  “Yes,” Nick whispered, and right then, the way he missed her was a space in his solar plexus that ached and grew. It was white and terrible. Nick rolled his head again, side to side, and something wet rolled from the outer corner of his eye down his face. Clods of sorrow in his throat choked him.

  Sir Edward said, “Mr. Hearn, are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  When Nick said nothing, only choked with misery, Sir Edward used his given name.

  “Nicholas? Nicholas, please. You must breathe for me. In . . . and out. In . . . and out.” He demonstrated what he wanted as he spoke the words—In . . . and out—and at last, Nick managed to do as he said, taking several choppy breaths, then a few longer, slower ones, till it felt as though the white space inside him had contracted and he could send air to his lungs and let it back out again, unimpeded.

  “Good,” Sir Edward said, his harsh voice strained. “That’s good, Nichola
s. Now keep breathing.”

  Nick liked the way the man said his name. Taking the time to say it all, every syllable—Ni-cho-las. He thought about that as he breathed.

  In . . . and out.

  Ni-cho-las.

  Gradually, he calmed. So much so, that he could barely remember having been upset at all. For a while, he drifted.

  At last, Sir Edward spoke again, just a gentle murmuring. “Nicholas—”

  That utterance of his name was like a signpost in the road, a reminder that time had indeed passed. How much, Nick didn’t know. It could have been hours, or minutes. He wasn’t sure and didn’t much care.

  “I’m here,” he said, eyes still closed. His voice was surprisingly ordinary.

  “Do you want to try to reach out to your mother?” Sir Edward asked.

  No.

  No, no, no!

  Nick’s gut tensed with absolute physical refutation.

  “Nicholas? Did you hear me?”

  “No,” he bit out. “No, I don’t want to. Not at all.”

  The silence that greeted those words was profound. After a minute, Sir Edward said, slowly, “That’s all right. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  Nick laughed at that.

  “I mean it,” Sir Edward said. His harsh voice could never soothe, but it was at least reassuringly devoid of tone. No hint of disappointment or disapproval, or indeed anything else, at Nick’s refusal.

  “Perhaps you could tell me about her instead,” he said. “She could speak to the spirits, you said.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Nick sounded surprisingly petulant to his own ears.

  A pause. “I’m sorry. Was it the other man who said so? Hammett?”

  “Yes. Jed.”

  “And could she speak to spirits?”

  Nick was silent for a long pause, then he bit out, “I don’t know. She never did so in front of me.”

  Surprised silence.

  “Do you want to talk about something else?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Can you tell me about the ghost you saw when you were a boy? The Plague Ghost.”

  “Doctor,” Nick said, and his voice was strangled. “It was the Plague Doctor.”

  “Sorry, yes. Plague Doctor. Did you really see him?”

  Nick opened his mouth to scoff. To say, no, of course not, it had just been his imagination. Instead a whisper came out of him. “Yes.”

  The Plague Doctor was vivid in Nick’s memory in that moment, as clear as he had once appeared before his childish eyes. The ghost’s old-fashioned clothes—long waistcoat, cassock coat, wide-brimmed hat, and square-toed buckled shoes—had been enough in themselves to mark out the shadowy figure as something strange. But it was the leather birdlike mask the ghost wore over its face—the round glass-covered eyeholes and long “beak” Nick had later learned would have been packed with aromatic herbs to keep out the putrid air—that had caused the creep of rising gooseflesh on the back of his neck and made him realise he was looking at someone, something, that . . . did not live.

  The worst moment though, had been when the ghost had seemed to become aware of Nick, turning to look directly at him, with that blank, inhuman face. Those empty, soulless glass-lens eyes.

  That was when Nick had begun to scream. When he’d run away, bawling at the top of his lungs with Gid Paget and Jed Hammett on his heels, calling his name.

  “Tell me about him,” Sir Edward murmured.

  “He knew I was there,” Nick said. “He looked at me.” Impossible to convey how terrifying that had been.

  “Were you frightened?”

  “Yes. I was very young—I think I would be frightened even now, though. Seeing him felt . . . wrong.”

  “What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

  “Wrong like . . . that two-headed calf born on Yellow Cove Farm that lived but an hour.”

  “Unnatural, you mean?”

  “I . . . suppose.” He wasn’t sure that was what he meant. He meant a wrongness that reached right into his gut and twisted him up inside. Perhaps a better word was horror. But he didn’t say so.

  “Have you ever seen another ghost?” Sir Edward asked.

  Nick shook his head slowly. “Just that one time. I ran home to Ma, and by the time I got there, I was feverish. She put me to bed and I stayed there three days. I remember in my fever state . . .”

  “What? What do you remember?”

  Nick said, almost wonderingly, “Ma told me she’d speak to the ghost and tell him he must leave me alone. She said I’d never see him again.”

  “And did you?”

  “No. I never did.” After another moment, he added, “It turned out I was ill that day. It was probably just the fever that made me imagine it.” But even as he said the words, he wasn’t sure they were true.

  That thought unsettled him, and he decided to let the memory of the ghost go, turning away from it. Immediately, he felt calmer. He concentrated on the feel of the chair beneath him, the leather-upholstered seat under his thighs, the wooden arms under his hands, the chairback cradling his shoulders. He felt it all, but he felt too as though he floated. Like a dandelion clock drifting on the air. Or maybe a kite, tethered to the world only by Sir Edward Fitzwilliam’s unmistakable voice.

  Was it strange he didn’t want this to end?

  “I think that’s enough for now, Nicholas,” Sir Edward said, as though he’d followed Nick’s train of thought. “Rest for a few minutes. Then, when you’re ready, open your eyes, and wake up.”

  Nick almost laughed. Rest indeed! He wasn’t the least bit tired. He’d never felt so awake.

  But yes, perhaps he would drift on the breeze a little longer before he opened his eyes.

  Ward watched Nicholas Hearn sleep. He’d slid into a light slumber just a minute or so after they’d stopped talking. Whereas before, he’d been sitting upright, with the curious alertness of the hypnotised subject, all inward-focused, now his whole body was relaxed, his head lolling to one side as he breathed, deep and slow.

  Ward let his gaze travel over the man. He was not conventionally handsome, but he was very attractive. There was something about his stark, fierce features that drew one’s attention. He had something of the hunter about him. Something intense and single-minded. Perhaps it was that disconcerting silver gaze, veiled now by thick black lashes as he dozed.

  Nicholas—it was already impossible to think of him as Hearn after what had just passed between them—had surprised Ward with his easy slip into the trance state. The man’s plain reluctance to be here had made Ward wonder if he would go under at all, but it seemed he’d reconciled himself to the idea in his own mind, because after a little while, he’d surrendered willingly enough. He’d answered Ward’s questions with reasonable frankness too. There had been some resistance, of course. Notably his refusal to even attempt to try to reach his mother, but there had been surprising revelations too. Not least that Godfrey Roscarrock was his natural grandfather.

  That had shocked Ward.

  Ward wondered whether Nicholas would remember what he’d shared when he awoke. Ward had hypnotised over a dozen subjects himself now, and he’d witnessed many more demonstrations by others, including the great Braid himself. In his experience, subjects tended to remember what they said, on the whole, though Jago Jones, he recalled, had not. Or, at least, that had been his story.

  If Nicholas remembered, would he be mortified? Angry to have revealed so much? Or would he take it in his stride? Ward hoped he would not be distressed. He had already caused Nicholas Hearn enough grief.

  At last, Nicholas stirred, shifting slightly in the chair before slowly opening his eyes. He gazed at Ward unseeingly for several long moments, then blinked and seemed to come back to himself.

  “I was asleep,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “Yes, for almost forty minutes.”

  Nicholas’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t even tired.”

  “It’s not uncommon,” War
d assured him. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine.” Nicholas frowned and smiled at the same time, an oddly charming expression that made him look puzzled and pleased all at once. “Actually, better than fine. I feel good. As though I slept a whole night through.” He glanced at Ward, curious. “Is that usual?”

  “For some people, yes. Tell me—do you remember any of it?”

  Nicholas frowned, thinking. “Yes, I believe I spoke of my mother—” He broke off, closing his eyes. “I refused to try to contact her, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Please don’t apologise,” Ward said hurriedly. “It must come freely, I think. I would certainly not wish to force the issue, even if that were possible. We can try again next time.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” Nicholas sat up properly and set about straightening his clothes.

  After a moment, Ward said, “If you don’t mind me asking, Nicholas—” He halted, realising he’d used the man’s given name again. “Sorry. Mr. Hearn, I mean.”

  Nicholas looked at him. He was frowning slightly, remembering perhaps. Then his frown cleared and he said, “You called me Nicholas when I was in the trance.”

  Ward nodded. “You became distressed at one point and were not responding to me, so I took the liberty of using your given name in order to get your attention. It seemed to work, but you had not invited me to use it, and for that I apologise.”

  Nicholas just shrugged. “I don’t mind. You can call me Nicholas if you want.”

  Ward felt an unexpected rush of awkward pleasure at that invitation. Perhaps Nicholas was thawing at last? “Well, then you must call me by my given name too.”

  Nicholas didn’t respond to that. Instead he said, “What was it you were you going to ask me anyway?”

  “I was wondering what else you remembered of our discussion while you were in the trance.” Ward considered asking particularly about the ghost, but decided not to. Better to see what Nicholas offered.

  “I think I remember most of it,” Nicholas said. He frowned, then something seemed to occur to him, and a flush rose in his cheeks. “Ah. I think I told you rather more than you needed to know about my family background.”