by M. J. Putney
Seeing her expression, Mrs. Rainford put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. “Then we’ll do our best to make this a good one.”
* * *
Having Shabbat with the Rainfords was a mixed blessing. Rebecca enjoyed the familiar ritual, but she missed her family the whole time. She wanted to weep when Mrs. Rainford lit the candles because the silver candlesticks were very similar to the ones her mother used to light.
Those candlesticks, which had been in her mother’s family for three generations, were now gone forever. When the Weisses had been arrested and dragged from their home, they’d had only the clothes on their backs. Rebecca had sometimes wondered what had happened to their house and all their possessions.
She tried not to think about it. She was amazingly lucky that she and her family escaped safely to England. That had been entirely because of Nick, who’d led the mission to find her father.
In the candlelight, his face was intent and interested. He’d even learned the first two lines of the Hebrew prayer of thanks for the candles, though his accent was terrible. The chasm between Jew and gentile didn’t seem as wide tonight.
After Rebecca sang the prayers for the wine and the bread, Nick took his first cautious bite of a matzo ball. “This is good!” He immediately took a larger bite.
“I said you’d like it,” she said smugly.
“You did,” he agreed. “But it takes an act of faith to bite into something that looks like a poached cricket ball!”
Their shared laughter set the tone for the Shabbat, and the peacefulness and joy were familiar even though the faces around the table weren’t her family. No one was in a hurry to finish and do homework or read, and the wireless was turned off.
As Polly cut and served the jam tart, Mrs. Rainford said, “We haven’t really discussed this, Rebecca, but I’ve assumed that during the Christmas school break you’d like to go up to Oxford and stay with your family?”
Rebecca almost dropped her dessert. “I can do that? It’s possible?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Rainford said, surprised. “You just take the train from Dover to London, then another train to Oxford. Half a day’s travel at most. Your English is so fluent now that I’m sure you’d have no problem.”
Rebecca locked her shaking hands together under the table. “I didn’t know traveling on the railroad could be so easy and safe.” Such travel wouldn’t have been easy in France, and it certainly wouldn’t have been safe. Not for a Jewish girl in wartime.
“I could escort you up there,” Nick suggested. “My friend Hal is a student at Magdalen College. He’s invited me to stay with him and look around a bit. I’d like to go to Magdalen, if I ever get to university.”
With the war, he’d probably go into the military as soon as he finished school, but they didn’t talk about war tonight. “That would be lovely. If you permit, Mrs. Rainford?”
“Having company for your first venture on the British railroads would be good,” Mrs. Rainford said. “Nick will come home for Christmas, of course. But if you’re not confident traveling alone, one of us can come up and accompany you back here at the end of your holiday.”
“You are all so kind!” Blinking back tears, she started on her jam tart. The raspberry preserves had the scent and the flavor of summer.
A week in Oxford with her family would be a great gift. She needed them to be a family again. She could also test her parents’ feelings about her keeping company with a gentile boy.
As they finished off Polly’s jam tart with their tea, Nick said, “I understand the Shabbat better now. A whole day of peace, of special meals, of being with one’s family—it’s very spiritual.”
“It really is,” Polly said. “And I definitely like the matzo ball soup!”
“With all the demands on our time, I don’t think it’s practical to treat all of Saturday as a proper Shabbat,” Nick said. “But I’d like to do this every Friday evening. If that’s all right with you, Rebecca?”
She nodded vigorously. “This makes me feel more myself. More Jewish, even though I am the only Jew here.”
Polly grinned. “And I like the special food.”
“Same time next week, then.” Nick pinched out one of the candles.
“No!” Rebecca exclaimed. “The candles must be allowed to burn out naturally.”
“Sorry,” he said hastily. “I didn’t know.”
“I forgot to tell you.” She leaned forward and lifted the candlestick that he’d pinched out and touched the blackened wick to the candle that still burned.
The wick flared and joined the flame of the other candle, and in the heart of the fire she saw images. Soldiers sailing across the English Channel, disembarking in England with their evil weapons, shooting and burning and killing. She cried out and almost dropped the candlestick.
“What’s wrong?” Mrs. Rainford placed a worried hand on Rebecca’s arm.
When she did, the image clarified. Rebecca swallowed hard. “You haven’t given me the lesson in scrying yet, but it’s possible to see images in flames, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Rainford said. “You’ve seen something?”
Rebecca nodded. “I saw soldiers invading England. Sailing over the Channel and wreaking death and destruction. At first I thought it was the Germans, but it wasn’t.” She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “When you touched my arm, the vision became clearer. It was French troops. Napoleon’s Grande Armée.”
“Allarde’s vision,” Polly said in a hushed voice. “Is the invasion he saw taking place now?”
“Not yet, I think.” Rebecca closed her eyes and analyzed what she’d seen and felt. Opening them, she looked across the table at Nick, her gaze stark. “You and I are going to 1804.”
CHAPTER 23
Lackland, 1804
Tory and Allarde had held hands for most of the width of England. He wasn’t talkative during the two days of travel, but she knew he was glad for her company.
They were nearing Lackland when he said, “Not long after my magic appeared, my father told me how difficult it would be if I were a lord who was known to be a mage. I would be ignored by my peers, given the cut direct, insulted to my face and behind my back. There was a mage baron from Yorkshire who took his own life because he could no longer bear the persecution.”
Tory shuddered. “I’ve never really understood why so many aristocrats despise those of us with magic. Except for the power, we are exactly the same as them.”
“That’s the reason right there,” he said quietly. “We are exactly like them, but we can do things they can’t do. No amount of money and no aristocratic title can create a weather mage. When average people have power, a nobleman can still feel superior because of his birth. But we have the birth and the power. So small souls despise us.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Tory said. “But it makes sense. The irony is that there are aristocrats who have magic, but keep quiet about it. My mother and sister both have some power, but were better at concealing it than I was.”
“You have too much power to conceal. Most of us who end up at Lackland are the same way.” He smiled. “My situation is the best possible. I’ll have a comfortable income so I never need to starve, and I won’t have the problems I’d face as a peer of the realm with magical abilities.”
Her return smile was wry. “What will we call you? Everyone uses your title, but once the disinheritance is official, you won’t be the Marquess of Allarde anymore.”
He shrugged. “My family name can’t be taken away from me, so I’ll be Falkirk. Except to you.”
“Justin,” she murmured. “I love the intimacy of being one of the only people permitted to use your Christian name.”
His eyes sparked with unexpected humor. “That’s effective since I’m usually so serious and boring. I’ve been told I was born middle-aged.”
“Never boring!” she protested. “Mysterious. Enigmatic. Wise beyond your years.” She leaned forw
ard and brushed her lips against his. “Madly attractive.”
His arm circled her shoulders. “I am so very glad you see me that way.”
They stayed silent as the carriage drove up to the Lackland Abbey gate. The school wall was designed to keep students in, not out, so returning was easy. Particularly when one was riding in an expensive carriage with a duke’s crest painted on the doors.
As the gates swung open, Tory sank in her seat so the gatekeeper couldn’t see her. He waved the vehicle through without looking inside.
As soon as they passed through the gate, Tory was hit by the suffocating magical suppression spell that blanketed the abbey grounds. As Allarde offered her a hand to sit up, he remarked, “It would have been easier for you to enter the school through one of the outside tunnels.”
“I’ve never been on the boys’ side and I was curious to see it,” she explained.
“The two schools are mirror images,” he pointed out.
“Yes, that’s what the school officials say, but I don’t know if I can trust them,” she said darkly.
“What will you tell the headmistress if she noticed you’ve been gone for several days?” he asked. “When I show up after this absence, I can say loftily that I was summoned by my father, and no one will question how I left the school in the first place. What will you say? That you were sick and stayed in your room?”
“I’ve used that excuse in the past and I’m not sure I can get away with it again. I plan to say that I got lost in the tunnels below the school.” She tried on her best expression of innocence. “It wouldn’t be at all hard to get lost there, you know.”
“I wish I could see that!” As the carriage started to slow, he said quickly, “We need to have a meeting tonight in the Labyrinth to discuss what comes next.”
“But we stopped the invasion. Is there more to come?”
“More, and worse,” he said grimly. He caught her in a swift, intense kiss. “Time for you to slip away if you don’t want to be seen.”
She ended the kiss reluctantly and said, “Until this evening.” Then she quietly opened the carriage door on the side opposite the school and climbed out while the carriage driver and the school porter were welcoming Allarde back. She slipped behind the boxwood hedges that edged the driveway, then worked her way around the administration building.
As it turned out, the school officials hadn’t lied. The two schools really were mirror images of each other. Lackland Abbey had been built centuries earlier with monks on one side and nuns on the other.
The modern school claimed that the abbey had been built to suppress magic. In fact, the opposite was true. Magical power was intensified under the abbey, and that made the Labyrinth a wonderful location for learning magic. There, monks and nuns had worked together as the students did now.
Allarde had explained exactly how to find a tunnel down to the Labyrinth behind the school. It was just where he’d said, and the entry opened easily to her touch. She followed the color coding on the tunnel to the center hall where the Irregulars met. It was empty at this hour, so she entered one of the tunnels that led to the girls’ school.
She surfaced in a ruined outbuilding on the girls’ side and headed back to her room. Since she still wore her boys’ trousers, she used her magic to activate Cynthia’s illusion stone. The suppression spell made working the stone like swimming through treacle, but she managed to look properly dressed.
Life at Lackland was easiest when one wasn’t noticed.
The last class of the afternoon had just let out, so there were girls crisscrossing the cloister garden as they moved between the classroom building and the girls’ dormitory. Tory quietly moved toward the dormitory room along with several taller girls.
Then the group ahead of her turned to the left, and Tory found herself face-to-face with Mrs. Grice, the headmistress, and Miss Macklin, the mean-spirited language teacher. The last two people Tory wanted to meet.
She bobbed her head politely and stood aside to let them by, but to no avail. The teacher and the headmistress both halted and glared at her. Mrs. Grice said in a freezing voice, “And where have you been, Miss Mansfield? I’m told you’ve missed several days of chapel and classes.”
Tory opened her eyes wide and imagined herself small and hapless. “Mrs. Grice, it was the strangest thing! Did you know there are tunnels below the school? I’ve heard they have tunnels under Dover Castle, but I didn’t know there were any here.”
“The tunnels are well-known to the school governors,” the headmistress said tartly. “Since you didn’t break your leg falling into one, what has that to do with you?”
“I was taking a walk on the school grounds. You know how we’re encouraged to walk to keep us fit.” Tory’s eyes widened even more. “Then I saw an odd door in one of the ruined outbuildings. The door swung open when I touched it, and there was a stairway going down! Since I was curious, I took a few steps inside. And then the door closed behind me! I was left in the dark!”
“For over three days?” Miss Macklin asked skeptically.
Tory nodded and summoned tears by thinking of Allarde’s sadness at losing Kemperton. “It was horrible! There are a maze of tunnels and stairs, and not a shred of light! Black, black, black. And cold! I bumped into walls and fell and got bruised all over. It was pure luck that I found a way out. I thought I was going to die down there!” Her voice turned into a wail. As the youngest child in her family, she wailed well. “I was down there for days, and now I’m so hungry!”
Mrs. Grice and Miss Macklin recoiled as if Tory were a ticking bomb. Then a quiet voice said, “It must have been terribly upsetting, Miss Mansfield.”
It was Miss Wheaton. As she patted Tory’s arm, she said to the headmistress, “I’ll make sure she’s taken care of, Mrs. Grice. It was foolish of her to enter an unknown tunnel, but I think she’s been punished enough.”
Miss Macklin hissed, “Make sure you don’t do it again, you fool girl!”
Dabbing at her eyes, Tory let Miss Wheaton lead her away and inside to the teacher’s office. As Miss Wheaton closed the door, she said with humor, “You can end the tears now. You did an excellent job of terrorizing the teachers.”
Tory grinned as she wiped her eyes. “I thought it would work, though probably only once. What’s been going on here? Allarde thought we should have a crisis meeting in the Labyrinth this evening.”
“He’s right,” Miss Wheaton said soberly. “I’m so glad you’re both back. The situation is … not good.”
Tory’s amusement died as she recognized the exhaustion and anxiety in the teacher’s eyes. “Then I’ll see you later in the Labyrinth. Do Elspeth and Cynthia know there will be a meeting?”
Miss Wheaton shook her head. “You’ll see them sooner than I will, so please let them know.”
Tory started to ask for more information but refrained. Miss Wheaton needed some rest before the meeting, and Tory wanted a few hours without the burden of Britain’s safety weighing on her shoulders.
* * *
It was a somber group that gathered in the Labyrinth that evening. Because it wasn’t a regular study night for the Irregulars, the central hall was private. Jack was there with his mother, along with Allarde, the teachers, Tory, Elspeth, and Cynthia.
After they pulled the more comfortable chairs into a circle, Tory asked bluntly, “What’s gone wrong?”
“There have been constant magical assaults on our wards,” Mr. Stephens said with equal bluntness. “If not for Mrs. Rainford and the other mages who have joined the network, the wards might have crumbled. We’re strained to near breaking point.”
“And it isn’t only the wards under attack,” Jack said, his lips tight. “Two more small squadrons have sailed from Brest and attempted to land in Britain. One was headed to Yorkshire and the other to Devon, I think. It looked as if its destination was near your home, Tory.”
Tory felt as if she’d been punched in her stomach. She’d guessed things were bad, but not this
bad. “You were able to head them off with weather magic?”
“Yes, but we can’t keep it up forever,” Jack said, his face tired. “Cynthia and I are the strongest weather mages around and we’ve had to do most of the work. I still haven’t fully recovered from when we fought with the French mage circle. At this rate, I might never have a chance to recuperate.”
“The French seem to be far ahead of us in using magic for military purposes,” Cynthia added.
“There are more war mages like the one we encountered in Wales?” Tory asked with alarm.
Elspeth nodded. “I’ve done a lot of scrying since we returned. I think the fellow we tangled with, Colonel Levaux, is chief of the French military mages. He survived the spar Allarde dropped on him. I saw him wearing a cast on his arm.”
Allarde frowned. “I should have tried harder to drop it on his head.”
“We’re fighting a magical battle with the French,” Mr. Stephens said. “And we’re losing. We have stronger mages, I think, but fewer of them, and we’re not as well organized. So far we’ve been able to counter all of the French assault. But we can’t keep this up indefinitely. If we fail even once, the French may acquire an unbreakable foothold in Britain.”
Tory glanced at Allarde and saw that he looked as tense as she. They’d been proud of what they’d done in Wales, but that had been just one battle in a much larger war. “Does anyone have any suggestions of what we might do to turn the tables?”
“I think there’s only one possible solution,” Miss Wheaton said starkly. “We must go after Napoleon himself.”
CHAPTER 24
“Assassination?” Tory said, aghast. “We’ve caused deaths under battle conditions, but the idea of seeking out and murdering a particular man is repellent.”
“Worse than repellent,” Elspeth said vehemently. “Wrong. Evil! I can’t believe you’re suggesting that, Miss Wheaton!”
“She isn’t,” Mr. Stephens said sharply. “We like the idea of assassination no more than you do, though if I thought that it would end this war, I would shoot Napoleon myself even if it meant I was damning myself to hell. But I don’t think that killing him will improve our situation.”
