A Study in Sable

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Did ’e, though?” Suki asked, her brow wrinkling. “’Ave a bit of ev’thin’, that is?”

  “Very likely not everything, although he would definitely be offered everything. Heron, I am told, is rather nasty; it was more to show off the fact that you had goshawks who could take them down, rather than something most people would want to eat.” Nan shook her head. “It is true, though, that Henry would have wanted to try almost everything, and it is true he never left the table until he couldn’t hold another bite.”

  When Suki’s curiosity was satisfied, she went back to her history lesson and Nan went back to her own rather unsatisfying book.

  The problem was, not only was Sarah doing something and Nan wasn’t. Now the nightly routine had stabilized to quite polite ghosts quietly lining up to air their grievances, tell her how they had really died (murder, usually), or dictate letters Nan would later transcribe and send off anonymously to their intended recipients. It was tedious, so Sarah said, because it was hard to hear them. Their voices faded in and out, and the older they were, the less they remembered unless they worked very hard at it. So tending to the needs of four to six spirits generally took all night. That was fine, Nan could understand that—but what was . . . irritating . . . was that Sarah was being made quite the pet of by Magdalena.

  There were those delicious late night suppers at which Sarah was tasting things Nan had never even heard of—and equally tasty breakfasts that changed every day. Mrs. Horace was a good plain cook, but her imagination did not pass beyond what was typical for a solid English breakfast or oatmeal. And the Sunday roast tended to get stretched out to cover as much of the week as Mrs. Horace could possibly manage. It appeared in its magnificence on Sunday, reappeared Monday as sliced meat and gravy, made a new appearance Tuesday as an Irish stew, Wednesday as a shepherd’s pie. By that time, Nan was getting rather weary of the mutton or beef or pork of the original. Suki wanted to hear about the suppers and breakfasts, and Sarah was only too happy to tell about them, but in contrast to what they’d had . . . it was hard not to feel a bit poorly done by.

  But on top of that, last night Sarah had been asked to arrive at the hotel much earlier than usual, because Magdalena had taken the fancy to have her come see the opera. After hearing Sarah’s description of the gorgeous spectacle when she’d come home this morning, Nan was convinced it was far superior to the panto, and been consumed with raw envy, and now. . . .

  I’m jealous, she admitted bleakly, staring at the page of her book. I’m just jealous. I’ll never get invited to these things. No one is ever going to grace me with a champagne supper, or put me in a private box at the opera. So far as Magdalena is concerned, I’m probably nothing more than the erstwhile chaperone and occasional companion. And . . . just not posh enough. And it didn’t help that Magdalena was clearly going out of her way to be utterly charming to Sarah—who was, in Nan’s estimation, falling for it.

  And I don’t dare say anything, because I know I’ll be snappish, and then Sarah will just say I’m jealous, which I am, and completely disregard the fact that I think the woman is up to something. Of course, that something might be no more sinister than a plan to get Sarah’s full-time attention as her own private little ghost-banisher, because if she really was somehow attracting spirits, until Sarah discovered how she was doing so, Magdalena was going to need something of the sort. But why should that be Sarah? Let her find her own minion!

  It wouldn’t be so bad if Nan just had something to do—

  “Miz Nan?” Suki said, once again interrupting Nan’s brooding. “Kin we go t’ th’ Tower? We niver could afore, on account’a Miz Sarah, an’ all the ghostes. But you an’ I kin go, aye?”

  Nan’s head came up, and she smiled at Suki. “Yes, we can. In fact, I think that is a capital idea. Get your hat.”

  Neville looked up from the toy he was playing with, a long piece of cord he was threading around an open basketwork of wire. “Ork?” he said, inquisitively.

  “Yes, you can come along too and visit your relatives.” Nan flung open the window, and Neville hopped up onto the sill. “Off with you. We’ll meet you at the Tower. Don’t steal too much of their food.”

  Neville laughed wickedly and lofted away. Nan turned to Grey, who was playing a game of her own with beads and straws. “You don’t want to go, do you?”

  Grey made a rude noise, and shook her head.

  Nan had to laugh at that. “Well, yes. Neville’s relatives aren’t half as intelligent as you. All right, if Sarah wakes up, tell her where we’ve gone and we’ll be back before supper.”

  “Nan and Suki went to the Tower. Back before supper,” Grey said.

  “Excellent.” Suki ran in at that moment with her hat; Nan seized her purse, pinned her own hat to her hair, threw her shawl over her shoulders and took the child’s hand. “Watch over Sarah while we’re gone, Grey.”

  The parrot chuckled happily and bobbed her head, then went back to her game.

  Well, Nan thought as she stopped long enough at Mrs. Horace’s door to let their landlady know that there was only to be lunch for Grey and Sarah, This is certainly better than brooding.

  • • •

  Nan was happy to take Suki all over the Tower, and coaxed the guide to tell them the most bloodcurdling stories he could manage. The man was nothing loath when he realized that absolutely nothing he told them would frighten the sweet-looking little girl with Nan. He told them about Ann Boleyn and how the executioner took her head off so quickly with his sword that her eyes were still blinking and her mouth moving as the head rolled on the grass. He told them about Prince Edward and Prince Richard, the two little boys who were smothered in their sleep in the Tower by King Richard III. And he told them about many of the ghosts who were supposed to haunt the Tower: Ann Boleyn with her head under her arm, the spirit of Margaret Pole running screaming from her executioner as he hacked her to bits, the two little boys in their nightgowns clutching each other, and Henry VI pacing in Wakefield Tower. How no one, not even the Yeoman Warders, would go in the Salt Tower at night for fear of the invisible hands that would try to strangle them. Suki adored it all. But then again, Nan reflected, when the ordinary conversation over the breakfast table consists of deciding how to approach a widow with the detailed instructions of her dead husband, Suki was unlikely to be frightened by any reference to spirits.

  The Ravenmaster recognized her, of course; he allowed them right into the raven mews, where his assistants goggled at the way the Tower ravens, which they could only handle wearing thick leather falconry gauntlets, acted as sweet as doves around her. They goggled even more when the same happened with Suki, ravens coming up to both of them to be scratched and made much of, making little happy chuckling sounds the entire time. Neville wandered among them, the only one with unclipped feathers, and seemed to be holding court among his relatives.

  After that, of course, Nan and Suki got quite special treatment indeed, being taken to places where most visitors were never allowed, and eventually having tea with the Ravenmaster and his wife in their little flat within the Tower itself. Neville behaved himself beautifully, saying “Thank you” very nicely when presented with biscuits soaked in blood, a chopped boiled egg, and fresh fruit to eat. “It’s what we feed the others,” the Ravenmaster said. “That, an’ plenty of fresh meat.”

  “I know!” said Neville, with such enthusiasm that they all laughed.

  “Neville gets almost the same with us,” Nan told him. “Though we’ve given him things like fish, too, when we’re at the seaside, and he quite likes that.”

  “Mmmmm fish!” agreed Neville. Nan reflected that he was truly showing off his vocabulary for the Ravenmaster, who had been Ravenmaster when Neville had first flown off to be with Nan.

  After tea, they all took their leave of the Ravenmaster and the other Yeoman Warders, and at a little shop across from the Tower, Nan indulged Suki’s passion for
souvenirs by buying her a very pretty printed paper fan with views of the Tower on one side and pictures of the Yeoman Warders and the ravens on the other. Suki played carefully with it all the way home on the ’buses, opening and closing it and admiring the pictures to her heart’s content.

  “Since you’re studying the Tudors in history now,” Nan said, as they got off the last ’bus on the corner and walked to the flat, “I think I should take you to Hampton Court Palace, which Henry stole from—” She waited for the answer.

  “Cardn’l Woolsey!” Suki said immediately.

  “Well done! It will be an all-day excursion, and Neville will have to stay home, I am afraid.” She felt both a twinge of self-satisfaction and a twinge of guilt. She and Sarah had visited once, and Sarah had said several times she would like to go back. But Sarah is getting lavish dinners and opera performances. I think we’re due some cheap fun. “But we will certainly take the train!”

  “Coo!” Suki exclaimed, truly excited now.

  They came in the door to find Neville there ahead of them—not a great surprise, since he didn’t have to take several ’buses to get home but could fly direct. Sarah was still in her dressing gown with her hair down, drinking a cup of tea at the fire and reading over some papers in her other hand. She looked up at them and smiled as Suki ran to show her the fan.

  “Did you get to talk with the Ravenmaster?” she asked them both.

  “Better than that, he took us to the raven mews, and then we had tea with him and his wife. They spoiled Neville outrageously,” Nan replied. “Digestive biscuits soaked in blood, if you please! Now he’s going to be wanting them here!”

  “Might,” said Neville, giving a toss of his head.

  Anything else they might have said was interrupted by a knock on the door. Sarah squeaked with embarrassment at being caught in her dressing gown so late in the day and ran for her room. Nan waited until she was safely inside before answering.

  “Just the person I wanted to see!” said John Watson, looking particularly dapper in a very handsome dark suit and a school tie. “Holmes would like to make use of your special Talents, Nan.”

  Nan blinked at him in shock. Since when did Sherlock Holmes have need of “occult” abilities? “Holmes? Surely not—”

  “Oh I assure you, he is entirely serious. May I come in and explain?” John asked, making a little gesture at the sitting room. “You can at least listen to me and decide if what Holmes wants from you is practical or not.”

  Nan stood aside and waved him in. “Take any seat, Doctor. Sarah will be out shortly—as you know, she is dealing with the spirits haunting Magdalena von Dietersdorf, and that can only be done at night, so she has been sleeping by day.”

  “Well, as I said, it is you I wish to speak to principally,” Watson pointed out. He took the seat Sarah had been occupying until her flight to the bedroom. “Holmes wants to know something of the limits of your Talent, and whether or not you could use it to learn something of great importance to an exceptionally dangerous case. And he would like to discuss this at length with you.”

  “Tonight?” Nan asked, startled. “Now?”

  “If possible. He’s under a time constraint, I fear, and if you can do what he needs, the opportunity to utilize your abilities on his behalf will come very soon and may not come again.” If she had any doubts that this was some whim on Holmes’ part, they were immediately dispelled, both by the expression on Watson’s face and the anxiety in his thoughts.

  “But Magdalena has asked me to come to the opera again tonight,” Sarah exclaimed in dismay as she came out of her bedroom, now properly dressed. “And I told her I would. That would leave Suki alone for the better part of the night—”

  A flash of anger passed through Nan and she kept from snapping at her friend with the greatest of difficulty. There is nothing important about going to the opera performance! she thought with outrage. This is work! Why is it that Sarah’s pleasure should interfere with an important request?

  But Watson was holding up a hand. “This won’t take long. If Nan can run out now, I’ll have her back before nine, ten at the most. Surely your landlady would be willing to look after Suki for an extra shilling or two for that long?”

  “I don’ need no lookin’ arter!” Suki exclaimed rebelliously, but Sarah at least had the grace to blush and look discomfited.

  Wasn’t she just boasting about the obscene amount of money Magdalena is paying her? Surely she can spare a few shillings out of that! Nan thought resentfully.

  “Of course; what was I thinking?” Sarah said contritely. “I’ll run down and ask her, but I am sure she will say yes.” Before Nan could say anything, Sarah had snatched up the small purse in which she kept the money she used for cabs and the like and was out the door.

  “Well,” Suki said thoughtfully, looking at the closed door. “Mrs. ’Orace do make sugar-biscuits sometimes when she’s mindin’ me. . . .”

  Sarah was back within a few minutes. “Run on down to Mrs. Horace, Suki,” she said as soon as the door was open. “She’ll give you the birds’ suppers. You’re to feed them, make sure they can get to their night perches and leave a single gaslight burning here, then you’re to have supper with her and make gingerbread afterward. If Nan is not back by bedtime, you are to nap on her sofa until Nan comes home.”

  Suki gave a whoop and ran down the stairs. Sarah picked up her shawl, put her coin purse into the larger reticule, and pinned on her hat.

  “I’ll just leave a little early,” she said and, with a smile, before Nan could say anything else at all, she did just that, putting on her shawl as she closed the door behind her.

  Well . . . that was odd.

  Neville and Grey had flown to their feeding perches and gazed quizzically after her. Then they both turned to look at Nan. Birds did not have facial expressions as such, but Nan sensed they were as puzzled by Sarah’s behavior as she was.

  Nan throttled down her annoyance, and turned to John Watson. “Well,” she said. “That’s that. We might as well go.”

  “Excellent.” He stood up; she gathered her things and they left together. But there’s going to be something said if this goes on much longer . . .

  • • •

  Holmes was pacing when they arrived, and by the scent of gunpowder in the air, he had been making additions to his “VR” design picked out in bullet holes in one wall. Nan mentally shook her head as they came in. Mrs. Hudson is far more tolerant than virtually any other landlady in London. Holmes must be paying her a fortune for the privilege of living here and doing as he pleases. Then again, given that he performed services for crowned heads, he could probably afford to pay a fortune.

  He flung himself down in his favorite chair as they took their seats. “I am sorry to have brought you out with so little notice, Miss Killian, but I am in a position of some urgency. I am . . .” He hesitated; his long face betrayed no emotion, but she understood he was wrestling with how much to tell her. “I have been in pursuit of a very dangerous man for quite a long time. I can trace his actions, but so far, I have been at a loss to discover exactly who he is. Until now, however. I am now in a position to identify him absolutely—if you think you would be able to see into a person’s thoughts from, say, a distance of a hundred feet or so.”

  I am very glad I was able to demonstrate my power to his satisfaction! The notion that she would be able to provide real assistance to Sherlock Holmes was . . . rather heady. And it went a very long way toward salving her hurt feelings at being left on the sidelines. “I think I can do that,” Nan said cautiously. “Provided he does not have some form of protection on his thoughts.”

  “Protection? As you instructed me to produce?” Holmes replied, tilting his head a little, and raising an eyebrow. “Or did you mean something else entirely?”

  “Well, there are several kinds of protection that would make it either difficult f
or me to read thoughts, or dangerous,” Nan said slowly. “For instance, if he suspects, or actually knows, that such a thing as telepathy exists, and suspects there may be a telepath about, he could do as I taught you. If he himself is a telepath, he will always protect his thoughts, as a side effect of having to protect himself from being bombarded constantly by the random thoughts all around him.”

  Holmes had opened his mouth as she got to “if he himself is a telepath,” but had not interrupted her, and now gave her a quizzical look. “Really?” he said instead.

  “The control of this ability begins with locking others out of one’s mind. When the Talent begins to bloom, the first thing that happens is that you are aware of the strong thoughts of those around you. Then their weaker thoughts. Then the thoughts of those farther from you, until there is a veritable babble in your head, like being in the middle of a huge crowd of people all the time. There are a great many natural telepaths who never had the training I did, and who are locked up in madhouses for that very reason,” Nan said with a sigh. “They cannot keep out the thoughts of others, and eventually they cannot tell the difference between their thoughts and those of everyone else.”

  Holmes pondered that for a moment. “That is entirely logical,” he said. “A logical consequence of having the ability itself—but go on. How else could thoughts be protected?”

  “Do not bark at me—but magicians like the Watsons can also protect their minds from being read, if they are protecting themselves from magic. And they have the ability to protect others as well. So.” She clasped her hands in her lap and looked down at them for a moment, before looking up at him. “Do you have any reason to believe the person you want me to read would come under any of those categories?”

  “No,” Holmes told her. “I believe him to be nothing more than an uncommon criminal. Clever, extremely careful, methodical, resourceful, intelligent, dangerous, and ruthless. But I have never seen anything to make me believe he is anything more than that. He is very high in the service of the man I wish to identify; very possibly one of the highest of his trusted lieutenants. He does not know that I know this. I am going to be able to approach him on another pretext entirely, but I will, in the course of our conversation, ask him several questions that I calculate will bring the thoughts of his master to the surface, even though those questions will superficially have nothing to do with the man. Those are what I hope you will be able to read.”