Magic by Daylight

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  Five minutes later, when the coast was clear, he returned to his aunt’s room. He all but fell at her feet.

  “Morgain?”

  “Aunt Clarice ... something ... something strange ...”

  “Not the Rider?” she said, starting up in alarm.

  He shook his head. “No, not that. It’s Camber—I mean, it’s not Camber.”

  Clarice raised the boy to his feet and guided him to a chair. “You’re shaking. I feared you were overdoing. Is that cordial still in your room? I’ll ring for Rose “

  She found the boy clutching her arm as she began to move away. In a low, hoarse voice, he said, “Don’t ring for anyone. I’ll sit right here while you go.”

  “I don’t want to leave you. Rose will be happy to…”

  “No! You can’t trust her. We can’t trust anyone.” He seemed to realize that his fingers were digging into her arm and released her. He gripped the stuff of his robe in white-knuckled hands as though the tighter he hung on to something the easier it would be to keep calm. “I’ll sit right here.”

  Clarice didn’t like his color, for he’d gone from naturally pale to white as wax. His green eyes were like a hunted creature’s, never still, darting about as though seeing motion where none could be. She should be firm, ring for Rose, and squash his foolish notion. That blow to the head must have disordered his senses even more than she feared. However, rather than agitate Morgain further, she said, “Very well. I shall return in a moment.”

  She walked past Pringle’s door and into the room Morgain used during his visits. The dark bottle of cordial stood on a lacquer tray with two glasses, one with a trace of the deep red liquid dried to a sticky blob in the bottom. Leaving that one behind, Clarice carried the tray out.

  Pringle stood in her doorway. “Why, my lady, let me carry that.”

  “No, thank you, Pringle. Are you feeling more rested now?”

  “As well as ever,” she said, smiling warmly. “Is Morgain still sleeping? I almost couldn’t fall asleep myself for worrying about him so.”

  “No, Morgain’s awake,” Clarice said. “He’s waiting for me in my room.”

  “Is that wise, my lady, after such a terrible thing! He should stay in bed until Doctor Danby can visit him. Goodness know what fancies he’ll take into his head. I never told you about my cousin Maggie, did I, my lady?

  Well, she was hit on the head when a rock fell out of a tree and she started seeing things—things that just could never be! Why, she even saw Uncle Arthur pinch the governess and you know he was a married man.”

  Interested despite herself, Clarice asked, “Why was a rock in a tree?”

  “That’s exactly what we asked ourselves. My cousin thought that a squirrel must have carried it there mistaking it for a large nut.”

  Clarice knew she should have never asked. “I must go back to Morgain now, Pringle. He needs this cordial.”

  “I’ll come too. He mustn’t be given too much!”

  “I can pour out the proper dose. He asked to be alone with me.”

  “How you coddle him, my lady!”

  “When he is unwell... .” She walked away, leaving the sentence unfinished. She had gone only a few steps when the strangest feeling swept over her. Suddenly, she felt as though she’d been walking forever down this hall, carrying this tray, as if she would never come any nearer to her own room. She’d had this feeling in dreams, laboring all through the hours of the night and waking no more rested than when she’d laid down, but she’d never known it while awake before.

  A mirror hung on the wall beside her. She turned her head, so slowly, to look into it. Between one blink and the next she saw, not her own blond head and fair face, but a woman wearing a dark veil thrown over her hair. Dark eyes gleamed in a face she knew as well as her own. “Mother?” she asked, her voice barely a croak.

  “My lady?” Pringle called from behind her. “Are you well?”

  “Quite well,” Clarice said, after a cough. The face had evaporated at the sound of Pringle’s voice. “Put on your dinner gown. You will dine with us tonight.”

  “Won’t that throw Camber’s plans out?”

  “He won’t mind. He loves a challenge.”

  Quite firmly, she shut her bedroom door behind her. She put the tray down on a table near the door. With a hand that shook only slightly, she poured out a glassful of the cordial and tossed it back in one gulp. It tasted, not unpleasantly, of anise and cherries as it glided over her tongue, but there was a strong aftertaste of charcoal.

  Morgain watched her intently. “What is it? What happened?”

  “Nothing at all. Drink this.” She poured him a dose in the same glass and handed it to him. “Go on. It will put heart into you.”

  “My heart’s a little squalmish, for certain.” He made a face as the licorice flavor went down.

  “It’s not that bad,” Clarice said with a smile.

  “You pulled a worse face when you drank it!”

  “Well, perhaps a little. Now tell me. What’s all this about, Camber?” When he told his tale, she listened quietly. At the end, though, she said, “And is that all?”

  “All? Isn’t it enough?”

  “No. Camber raised an eyebrow and you come here claiming that he is not Camber. Dear Morgain, you are usually the first to point out a flaw in someone’s logic. Permit me to tell you that you sound a trifle unbalanced.”

  “You don’t understand. You don’t know Camber so well as I.”

  “I have known him considerably longer.”

  “But as his mistress, not as a friend. Aunt Clarice, Camber cannot raise only one eyebrow. Both always go up. He told me once that he wished he could, even tried to train himself to do it. He spent weeks in front of a mirror trying to develop the knack.”

  “Why on earth . ., ?” Clarice asked with a choked laugh.

  “Because of somebody who stayed here once when Grandfather Stavely was alive. A—a—oh, what’s the word for a fellow who runs around after another fellow straightening things? A—a valet, that’s it! Some valet who stayed here used to make Camber feel very small and provincial whenever he raised one eyebrow at him. Camber told me all about it. The fellow’s master could do it too, only he did it through a quizzing glass and used to ruin reputations with it or some such nonsense. Sounded silly to me but Camber thought that if he could do it too, it would help him rise in the world. But he couldn’t do it—no matter how hard he tried!”

  “Perhaps he has learned.” She thought about it. “I have never seen him do such a thing, though perhaps he would not raise an eyebrow at me. Still it is hardly enough to say that the butler downstairs is not Camber.”

  “Why is he having Mr. Knight set the table? Why was he reading from a book the proper placement of the flatware? Camber knows protocol as well as he knows his pantry. He wouldn’t have to refresh his memory with a peek in some book—not for a quiet family dinner!”

  “I cannot answer that, but Camber can and he shall.” She turned away to reach for the bell-pull.

  “No! It’s not Camber and heaven only knows what he will say—or do.” More quietly, he added. “Give me until tomorrow. I will find out what is happening. Maybe I am out of my head and this is all some fabulous dream or if strange things are happening, who better to discover this than me?”

  “No.” Clarice hated to say it. “I have a responsibility to you, Morgain. If you are ‘out of your head’ then I shall send at once for Doctor Danby, fog or no.”

  “And if I am not? Do you remember when all the world said you were out of your mind? Were you?”

  “That was different, as you know perfectly well.”

  “Granted. But what if I say is true? What do we do then?”

  Clarice’s hand fell away from the bell-pull, leaving it unrung. “Very well. We will pretend, for now, that we suspect nothing. Do you feel that you can face going down to dinner, or shall I have something sent up to you?”

  His childish chin stuck out. “I can f
ace it—if you are with me.”

  She came to him and kissed his cheek. “Go to dress, then.”

  For herself, she debated awhile before ringing for the maid. Rose came in with nothing less than her usual firm step. Clarice glanced at the candid eyes and rosy cheeks of the middle-aged maid and knew a moment’s doubt. Could any impostor, even with the aid of powers beyond mortal ken, appear so much like the genuine person? “I must dress, Rose.”

  “In what, my lady?”

  “The newest one, from London.”

  “Oh, my lady! ‘Tis ever zo nice.” In a few minutes, she’d brought the dress out from the dressing room and laid it out on the bed. “I niver zee ‘un laike that ‘un afore. ‘Taln’t no top to it!”

  “It’s entirely respectable,” Clarice said, more sharply than she would have if her own doubts in that direction weren’t so great. Then her eyes narrowed. “Rose, you’re wearing gloves?”

  “I thought it best, my lady. Oh, my hands be mortal-bad with the blisters!”

  “Blisters?”

  “Iss, fai! I was pickin’ the burdocks out of the horses’ tails. ...”

  “You were? Why were you? Cannot Drake and those sons of his do it?”

  Rose looked shyly down at her large feet. “I wanted a good reason to talk t’oldest ‘un,” she said. “As he were doin’ it, I did too. But, oh! The blisters! Niver could touch a burdock, not even when I was a little one. An’ now I don’t want to be a-spoilin’ thy new gown, my lady, zo I be-thought me of these gloves of Mr. Camber’s.”

  “They are Camber’s gloves?”

  “Iss, my lady. They’m be clean.”

  “Very well.” She turned her back to Rose, letting her unfasten the lacing up the back of her afternoon dress. With the taking off of that dress, she crossed the line from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. She hoped it would prove a propitious omen.

  The modes were changing with bewildering rapidity that year. Her modiste had talked her into buying one of the new Grecian dresses of sheer white muslin but even wearing it in the privacy of her bedroom left her feeling far too naked. She’d sent it back with regrets all the greater because to some extent the dress was flattering. The new raised waist had given her a pleasing line and the straighter skirts had made the most of her figure. The purity of the white cloth had accentuated her own classical features.

  After some discussion, the dressmaker and the viscountess had come to an agreement. With the addition of an overdress of black drugget, showing the white muslin only in front and with long sleeves instead of absurd puffs at the shoulder, she felt both fashionable and clothed.

  Tonight, after she dismissed Rose, she added two accessories that would have left her dressmaker aghast. One was a cut-steel chain looped twice about her neck, which Morgain had given her for her last birthday. The other was a knife sheath hidden under the overdress.

  As she left her room, Clarice reflected that this would be the first time she’d ever gone armed to dinner. Was that an omen too?

  She rapped on Morgain’s door and, at his call, went in. “You look most dashing,” she said, appraising him. He wore his school uniform, black coat over knee breeches with blue stockings tied with blue-green garters. It was an old-fashioned style, set down by the original Board of Governors when such clothes had been the height of fashion. Morgain was secretly very proud of this attire, as Clarice knew.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Are you frightened?”

  He thought about it. “No. It’s rather exciting.”

  “I suppose so,” Clarice said with a secret smile. Trust Morgain to find some bizarre good in a difficult moment.

  In the hall, with a nod of reassurance to Morgain, Clarice knocked on Pringle’s door. There was no answer. “She must have gone down already.”

  Morgain looked relieved. “She may be one, too.”

  “So might I,” Clarice said. “How do you know I am not?”

  “Because of this.” Morgain reached out to touch the chain of alternating black and bright steel that flowed down to Clarice’s waist. “You wouldn’t be able to bear it against your skin if you were one of them. Nor when you touched me did you instantly agree to grant me a wish.”

  Clarice patted his cheek. “Grant me one wish, Morgain. Don’t make any attempt to expose Camber. If he is not our butler, he will betray himself in a thousand little ways. I will be watching.”

  “I’ll try. What about Mr. Knight? Do you trust him?”

  “I touched him once. He stayed the same as before.”

  “Good. Shall we go?”

  It would not have helped him to know that his aunt was growing so light-minded that she’d kiss a near-stranger on no more than an insane impulse.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Camber was waiting for them. He bowed and said, “My lady, before you proceed, a word?”

  At her side, Morgain stiffened. Clarice put an arm about his shoulders and drew him closer. She could feel his heart beating as swiftly as a rabbit’s, but his face remained serene. She realized he’d learned much more at school than reading and the Rule of Three.

  “Certainly, Camber. What is it?”

  “A small tragedy in the kitchen, or so the cook would have it.”

  “What? Is someone hurt?”

  “No, my lady. Forgive me. I did not mean to alarm you. It is merely that somehow all the meat in the cellar has been stolen.”

  This was so much less than Clarice had feared that for an instant she goggled at the man. “I beg your pardon?”

  “We cannot determine how such a thing happened. No one admits to having left the door unlocked or open.

  Yet when Cook went downstairs to fetch the joint for this evening, every steak, ham, and chop was gone. For myself, I have no doubt it was those Gypsies who came to the back door t’other day.”

  “Then what, pray tell, are we eating tonight?”

  Camber became even more confidential, leaning forward and speaking in a greatly lowered tone. “Cook informed me that as a young woman she was kitchen maid in the house of a gentleman of rank. Being quite remarkably wealthy, he could afford to indulge in some eccentricities. One of which—the mildest in my view, my lady—was an abhorrence of anything remotely savoring of meat. Cook spent several months in this unnatural kitchen until she received an offer to go elsewhere. Though she never liked to add the experience to her references—such a thing being thought so odd— she did learn how to create a great many dishes made solely of vegetables and fruit. The gentleman of rank had no objection to nuts, either, being especially fond of that strange American nut, the—ahem—goober.”

  “But we cannot eat nuts and vegetables alone. What a preposterous notion!”

  “Until the fog lifts, my lady, we cannot send for the butcher.”

  ‘True. Very well. Having no choice, I suppose we must do the best we can. Kindly convey my thanks to Cook.”

  Camber bowed. Clarice and Morgain walked ahead of him toward the dining salon. She glanced down at her nephew to give him a reassuring smile, only to see him doing the same for her. She squeezed him about the shoulders, and let him go.

  “Good evening, Pringle. Good evening, Mr. Knight. So sorry to have kept you waiting. Shall we begin?”

  Chapter Ten

  The three days that followed were the most trying Clarice had ever known. The heavy fog clung to the earth like a wet pillow, muffling everything, even breath. Clarice could scarcely tell night from day. The hours seemed endless between waking and sleeping again. The house felt stuffy and grew steadily colder.

  At first, she’d ordered fires be lit in all the bedrooms. But the low clouds kept any wind from blowing away the chimneys’ smoke and the stink of the fires further exasperated her strained nerves. She couldn’t even open a window, for the fog came wending silently in, hardly noticed until she looked up to see a room full of shrouded ghosts. It was most odd, how long it took for the fog to dissipate, once it was inside,

&nbs
p; “I’ve never known a fog to last like this,” she ranted, taking her fortieth turn at the end of the long hall. Morgain, curled up in an armchair like an elf encircled by warm lamplight, hardly looked up from his book. He’d embarked upon a course of extensive reading for the duration, strange tomes, some bigger than himself.

  “I’m tempted to try for a walk in the garden,” she added, nearly brushing over a Chinese porcelain vase as she made a wider turn than usual at the farther end of the hall. “You know, it sometimes happens that a fog will settle over one spot, while not a hundred yards away it will be clear.”

  She stopped before him and pushed down on his book with one extended finger. “Morgain . ..” she said dangerously.

  He blinked up at her, like an owl awake in the daytime. “You won’t be permitted to go that far,” he said. “But make the attempt if you find it entertaining.”

  Clarice was not convinced, as Morgain was, that anything was wrong at Hamdry Manor that would not be speedily solved by a shift in the wind. She had observed Camber and the other servants closely, and had seen nothing very much amiss. After that first dinner of herbs and vegetables, Clarice had waited until after she’d seen Morgain asleep to ask the butler what he’d meant by permitting a guest to set the table. His answer had been very smooth.

  “Mr. Knight asked me to allow it, my lady, and so I did. He bad, it seemed, some concerns about the proper use and order of utensils—not an uncommon worry among persons who do not go into good society very often, I believe. Naturally, I assisted him in so far as it lay within my poor powers. I have not done wrong, I trust, my lady?”

  “Not at all, Camber. You are very good. Please tell Cook I shall come down in a few moments to discuss what is to be done about the food supply.”

  “Very good, my lady,” Camber had said with just the right inflection as he wiped up a drop of milk that had fallen from the spout of the china milk jug. The tea-tray, brought into the drawing room after dinner, was all that it should have been. It bore the Camber-like touches of a rose in a vase, and a basket of little cakes arranged just so.

  As a proper hostess, she served her guest tea, saw that Pringle had begun dealing a hand of patience, while Mr. Knight spread his coattails before the fire, and excused herself. She’d found reason to excuse herself early every evening thereafter. She had grown used to nut-cutlets and vegetable terrine for her evening meals; she had not grown used to seeing Dominic Knight’s face across from her over the centerpiece.