The Bartered Brides (Elemental Masters)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Alderscroft smuggled Mary back to 221 Baker Street, where Nan and Sarah had given Mrs. Hudson all the details except the magical ones.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Hudson when they had finished. “It’s a mercy we just finished cleaning, at least.”

  * * *

  The newly cleaned sitting room now held the five of them. Alderscroft sat there calmly enough, but it was clear to Nan there was a still-smoldering fire of anger in the man. Watson had waited with the coroner to get the results of the chemical testing on the fruit. Uncharacteristically, the men had removed their coats and were sitting in rolled-up shirtsleeves at Mary’s suggestion.

  “. . . and there was enough arsenic in just one grape to have killed two men my size,” Watson said, wearily. It had been a very long day for the Doctor, and a trying one, but at least now everything was over but making arrangements for the “funeral.” “There was probably enough in the whole basket to have murdered three dozen.”

  “He wasn’t taking any chances, was he?” Sarah asked.

  “It might not be a he,” Watson reminded her. “Poison is a woman’s weapon.”

  “Don’t tell the Borgias that,” Nan murmured, then spoke up. “Not true. Poison is the weapon of someone who has no intention of getting caught. And the only reason most poisoners get caught in the first place is because they murder someone close to them.” She didn’t mention that if Mary were really dead, John would certainly be a suspect at this point. He was already shaken and heartsick enough.

  But John said it for her. “It’s a good thing I can produce Mary at any moment, then,” he replied grimly, holding her hand tightly. “The coroner was nothing short of wonderful with Scotland Yard. I’m sure they’ll investigate me, but thank the good Lord there is no arsenic in my surgery, and I haven’t bought any in—”

  He looked at Mary, who shook her head. “I don’t remember you ever buying any, after Sherlock once pointed out that arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide are very dangerous substances to keep on hand, because one never knows when one is going to be framed for murder by a real murderer.”

  “I wish Sherlock was here,” John sighed mournfully.

  “Chin up,” Nan said, as Mrs. Hudson tapped on the door and brought in a loaded tea tray.

  Wisely, Mrs. Hudson had included no fruit in what was a very substantial and heartening spread of food. There was some silence as they sorted out who was taking what, then more silence as they ate. John Watson and Alderscroft devoured ham sandwiches with single-minded doggedness that suggested they were trying to get as much energy in the shortest possible time as they could.

  Nan, Sarah, and Mary, to whom Mrs. Hudson had supplied food by way of comfort, let them have the lion’s share. Finally, when the edge was off the masculine hunger, Alderscroft turned to Nan.

  “You have had the plan so far,” he said bluntly. “Did it go past this point?”

  “Actually, it did,” she replied. “John will have a funeral as soon as humanly possible—no one will blame him for hurrying things in this heat. He’ll then close up the surgery and—”

  “Ah, I have a better idea,” said Alderscroft. “I have a gifted young Earth Mage physician who would be happy to take over your practice and your patients, John. He’s here for the summer at least, and if our investigation goes half that long, I’m saying be damned to it all and bringing the full force of the Hunting Lodge down on this blackguard.”

  John looked very much relieved. “I’d hate to leave my patients in the lurch,” he said. “Especially in summer, when so many physicians are on holiday. He might as well take the flat, too, as well as the practice.”

  “That’s perfect,” said Nan. “All right, John. You will announce that you are leaving London—losing your wife and Holmes so closely together has shaken your nerves. You might as well go through with the ruse of leaving—if this fiend was able to discover what grocer you use, who knows what else he can do.”

  “That’s probably wise, John,” Alderscroft said after a moment. “In a moment of grief like this, if you put up shields that are so good he can’t scry you, that would be suspicious. And he used poison as his primary weapon, not magic; I believe we’re meant to think it’s not the necromancer, but a lesser practitioner gone to the bad.”

  John rubbed his temples. “All right. It’s not as if Sherlock didn’t teach me more than enough to shake off pursuit, whether it’s someone actually following me or someone scrying me. I’ll say I’m going on a walking tour; I can take the train to Devon, start off, double back and take the train home in disguise.”

  “I’ve also got an alternate, if you’d rather not leave London,” Nan continued. “You still give over your flat and the practice to this protégé of His Lordship’s, but instead of leaving town, you tell people that you are going to 221B to be tended by Mrs. Hudson.”

  The rest of them sat quietly, considering both options.

  “I like the second choice,” Alderscroft said, breaking the silence. “Less to go wrong.”

  “And a great deal less suspicious,” Watson agreed. “Plus, it means I won’t leave Mary alone.”

  Nan bit her tongue on retorting that Mary was not going to be alone. John was probably feeling both protective and very fragile right now.

  “All right. Does your plan go past the point of John coming here?” Alderscroft asked.

  “Well . . . after that it gets rather nebulous,” Nan admitted. “Obviously we need to discover who this necromancer is, and where he is, but I don’t know that much about magic, so I don’t know how you would go about that. My main idea was to get John and Mary some peace from this monster.”

  “It’s a good plan,” Alderscroft told her.

  “Really, you gave us something to throw the blackguard off the trail initially, which is the most important thing,” John agreed, managing a wan smile. “If you hadn’t done that, he might be planning his follow-up attack on us at this very moment.”

  Nan shrugged. “It’s not pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, but it’s better than pulling defeat from the jaws of defeat.”

  * * *

  The girls finally went back to their own flat just before sundown. Neither of them wanted to travel at night, and both of them kept a sharp lookout for anyone who might have been following them.

  “It’s a mistake to assume this fellow hasn’t got perfectly ordinary minions at his disposal,” Nan pointed out, as they sent the birds to their perches for the night.

  “I don’t think John or his Lordship are making that mistake.” Sarah replied, and went to her room to change into a light wrapper. Nan evidently had the same idea, as she was sprawled in the sitting room in a cotton kimono fanning herself, with two glasses of lemonade waiting, when Sarah came out.

  “It’s my turn to have an idea,” Sarah said. “The one person I can think of who would have the best idea of how that compulsion was done and what it would take is Beatrice Leek.”

  “True, but what would that tell us?” Nan asked.

  “I don’t know, but Beatrice might. We simply don’t know that much about magic, you and I.” Sarah sighed. “It’s hard to be useful.”

  “Then let’s visit her first thing in the morning.” Nan agreed. “Alderscroft can take care of the Watsons. We might as well see if there’s anything Beatrice can add.”

  * * *

  Nan didn’t even get a chance to knock on Beatrice’s door. The self-described witch was waiting for them as they got down from the cab. It made Nan wonder, not for the first time, how Beatrice always seemed to know they wanted to talk to her. And from her sober face, Nan had the feeling that the old woman had some idea that there had been serious nastiness afoot.

  She hurried them inside her house and shut the door quickly. “What is all the hue and cry in the papers this morning about Mary Watson murdered?” she asked anxiously.

  “She’s fine,” Nan assured her. “But someone did try to murder her with the help of magic. That’s why we’re here.”

  Re
lief spread over the old woman’s face. “Then come in and have some tea and toast and tell me all about it.”

  With the birds perched on the backs of their chairs, and the cat in Beatrice’s lap, Nan explained everything that had happened—at least, as far as she knew. “So we came here to find out if there is anything you can tell us about magic that works like that,” she concluded. “And anything else that occurs to you, for that matter.”

  “Well, ducks, I can tell you one thing. That’s the blackest of black magic.” She shook her head. “The important thing is that traditionally, you need something very personal from the victim. Hair, blood, that sort of thing.”

  “I would think that John and Mary would be too careful to leave that sort of thing where anyone could get their hands on it,” Sarah replied, her brows furrowed.

  “Well I did say traditionally. And His Lordship and John and Mary, not having to trouble their powerful little heads with old-fashioned witchcraft, probably haven’t paid any attention to what us simple folk have been experimenting with.” Beatrice smiled slightly. “We’ve found you can use a photograph, and it works just as well.”

  The implications of that staggered Nan. “How—there are photographers everywhere. I’m sure John has had his picture in the papers because of Sherlock. And there may be wedding photographs of John and Mary as well, for the same reason.”

  “Or someone could have caught them in one of those scenes of Hyde Park that people are always taking, or something else,” Beatrice agreed. “All the magician needed to do was find one, and there are clipping agencies for that.”

  “Bloody hell,” Nan swore. “Well, that solves that question. Is there any way we could trace this back to someone?”

  “Not once you threw it in the fire, ducks,” Beatrice said. “Fire breaks those connections.” She shook her head. “All I can tell you is this is a nasty business. I think John was quite right to feign that Mary is dead. This kind of magic is vicious enough in the hands of a plain old witch like me. In the hands of a necromancer . . . I don’t like to think how powerful it must have been.”

  “Does that sort of thing happen often?” Sarah asked. “A necromancer using . . . well . . . “lesser” magic?”

  “Well, you likely would never see the likes of Milord and his Lodge resorting to it, but that’s just why it would be so effective on them, you know.” Beatrice smirked, ever so slightly. “They just wouldn’t be looking for it.”

  Nan sighed. Here, she’d had some hopes of getting some help from Beatrice, but it seemed they were at yet another dead end.

  “Bloody hell,” she muttered, and throttled back the sudden urge to cry. It had been a very long couple of days, and not only had they made no progress, it seemed they were now several steps behind. “Dammitall,” she added, and to her horror, felt a tear running down her cheek.

  “There, there, ducks,” Beatrice said, handing her a napkin to use in lieu of a handkerchief. “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

  “I could use one of those too,” Sarah said, thickly.

  They didn’t break down into sobs, but both of them had to set aside their teacups and wipe fiercely at their eyes for about fifteen minutes while Beatrice politely pretended not to notice.

  “It’s just wretched to feel so damned helpless,” Nan managed after she got her eyes to stop leaking tears. “I’m tired, and Sarah’s tired, and God knows John and Mary are tired, and we just can’t get anywhere with this. And this . . . madman goes right on murdering poor girls and we can’t stop him.”

  “What’s he murdering ’em for though?” Beatrice wondered aloud. “I’ve not sensed any great conjurings going on. And there’s only so much death energy one magician can use at any one time. That’s why usually the most you see is the murdering blackguards killing something once a month.”

  “Could he be . . . storing it somehow?” Sarah wondered.

  Beatrice frowned. “Well, now that would be right outside of anything I know,” she admitted. “I know how to store spells in talismans, but . . . well no. I have no idea how, or even if, you could do that.”

  They fell into a glum silence.

  “And even if he is, what’s he doing it for?” cried Sarah, in an outburst. “Why would he need that much power?”

  “Whatever it is, it can’t be good for the likes of you and me,” the old woman said shrewdly. “But you’d know better about that than I would, I reckon.”

  “Not really,” Nan admitted. “I’m not very good at imagining what people want with a great deal of power. Horrid monsters, yes, they generally want to make everything go smash.”

  “There are people who want to make everything go smash too,” Sarah reminded her. “But I’ve never understood them, either.”

  “In my experience, the ones that want to smash everything up are the same ones who think they won’t go up in flames with the rest of us,” Beatrice opined. “And they’re the first to be shocked when the flames are licking at their toes.”

  “So what are we to do?” Nan asked rhetorically. “Advise everyone to invest in asbestos gowns and watch for the fires to be set off?”

  “No . . .” Beatrice got a thoughtful look on her face. “Now that you mention fires being set off . . . it reminds me of when we had a rash of fire-setting when I was a girl, back in my village. There was a lot of nonsense about curses, and then a lot of finger-pointing when half-burned rags soaked in oil turned up, but eventually me old Gram said to the mayor, ‘You watch and see who turns up first at every fire, and that’ll be your lad.’ And sure enough, there was a fellow who turned up first at every fire, and eventually they caught him dead to rights.”

  “I don’t see how that helps us,” Nan objected. “Whoever this is, he’s not lingering about the Thames, watching for bodies to be pulled out.”

  “No, but he might well turn up at the funeral—just to be sure Mary’s dead,” Beatrice pointed out. “Even if it’s all private like, he’ll be lurking about the graveyard, maybe.”

  Sarah and Nan both nodded, slowly. “All right, we’ll take that back to John and His Lordship,” Nan agreed.

  “And you know who’d make the best fellow in the world to keep an eye out for a lurker—” Beatrice said.

  “Me!” shouted Neville.

  * * *

  The day of the “funeral” certainly turned out to be perfect for discouraging all but the most dedicated of lurkers. The morning dawned without any sun at all, only heavy, lowering clouds. And the threatening storm made good on its threat as the very small funeral party arrived at the equally small chapel where the funeral was being held.

  John Watson in full mourning was supported by Mrs. Hudson, Inspector Lestrade, and some of his medical colleagues. Nan and Sarah had wanted to attend, but Alderscroft and John had warned them off. “We don’t what to alert whoever this is to the fact that you two are working with us,” John had said, grimly. “There have been enough victims already. I’d rather not add you two to their ranks.”

  Mary, of course, could not be seen either, not even in the thickest of black veils—John had no sister, not even a female cousin, so who could she impersonate? “I think it’s very hard that I cannot attend my own funeral,” she said, trying to extract some humor from the situation.

  So only Nan could watch the procession into the chapel, and then to the graveyard nearby, through Neville’s eyes. And Neville was not at all happy about having to sit and fly in the downpour.

  Alas, the only lurkers about proved to be members of the press, who had their hopes of interviews drowned under the steady rain. Neville flapped back to Baker Street in a foul mood, to be let in, dried off in a nice thick towel, and spoiled with bits of beef heart.

  John followed about half an hour later, soaked to the skin and not in much of a better mood than Neville. “I’m beginning to think we should have had the damn sham of a service in Westminster Cathedral,” he grumbled, after going off to change into something dry. “At least then there’d have been
a chance someone would have turned up to spy on us.”

  “Well, I suppose I didn’t miss anything then,” Mary said philosophically. “I hope I got a nice eulogy.”

  14

  Old Don was waiting for him, standing in front of his counter and gripping a girl tightly by her upper arm. She was dressed in a shapeless black tunic and trousers, and her eyes were half-closed.

  There was something very wrong here.

  Spencer eyed the Chinese girl old Don had for him dubiously. “What are you trying to sell me?” he demanded. The girl didn’t look right. She was as pale as a ghost, and it looked as if the only thing keeping her on her feet was Don’s peculiarly small hand gripping her arm so tightly that his knuckles were white. As tight as he was holding her, the girl should have been registering pain, yet she sagged in his grip.

  “Ye said ye didn’ mind ’em used,” Don said, angrily. “’Ere!”

  He thrust the girl in Spencer’s direction. She staggered a single step, made a strange gurgling sound, and collapsed bonelessly at Spencer’s feet.

  She didn’t move. And he couldn’t see her breathing.

  Spencer poked her with a toe. The flesh was flaccid. Literally lifeless. And literally worthless. Don had just tried pawning off another dying girl on him. Only this time, she’d dropped dead before he could make use of her.

  “Bloody hell, you cheat,” he snarled, looking up at old Don. “She’s dead.”

  “She ain’t dead! She’s jest fagged out!” Don protested. “She jest swooned loike.”

  Spencer, of all people, knew “dead” when he saw it. “In your eye, she’s fagged out. She’s bloody dead. She couldn’t get any deader if she was on a slab right this minute. I don’t know how you kept her on her feet this long, but I’m not paying for a corpse and I’ll be having my money back right now!”