The House on Durrow Street

by Galen Beckett

  Eldyn promised that he would keep this knowledge to himself, and the rector was greatly relieved.

  “I am glad the archdeacon is here among us to work so much good,” Eldyn said. “But I fear there will never be a lack of woeful news to print in the broadsheets. It is man’s nature, is it not, to be weak and wicked?”

  “It is the nature of some men,” the rector said with a sniff. “Which is why, if they must print anything at all, they should be printing stories of saints and not villains. When the broadsheets reward criminals with fame and attention, is it any wonder that other men are moved to become criminals themselves? Now the newspapers have given great attention to the affair at the Ministry of Printing, and I can only worry that rather than causing young men to scorn and condemn magick, it will cause them instead to pursue it in an effort to gain notoriety.”

  “I grant you, what was done at the ministry was dreadful,” Eldyn said. “Yet they could have easily used black powder instead of a spell to do the deed. It does not mean magick itself is wicked.”

  “On the contrary, it is dreadfully wicked!” the rector exclaimed. “You can be forgiven for not knowing, Mr. Garritt, for I am sure you have never dabbled in such awful things as the arcane.”

  No, Eldyn had never dabbled in magick and never would. Yet he knew that Rafferdy had—that his friend was descended of one of the seven Old Houses and was these days something of a magician.

  “Why is magick so awful?” he asked.

  “Because it deceives men. Magick convinces them that they can wield power over daemons and devils. Only that is a trick. There is only one thing that can help man fight against unholy forces, and that is the power of God in Eternum. There is nothing else that can preserve men from evil—anything else which would promise to do so is a lie.”

  Eldyn had never considered it like this. He could see how some magicians might be fooled into thinking they had power over the dark things they summoned and thus forsake God’s protections, but he could not imagine Rafferdy ever falling for such a ruse—he was far too clever.

  “Well, as awful as magicians are, they are not nearly so awful as illusionists,” Father Gadby said.

  Eldyn stared at the rector. “What’s that?”

  “Look, there go a lot of them now.”

  The rector’s round face, usually soft and cheerful, had gone suddenly hard. Eldyn followed his gaze and saw a group of young men walking along the street before the church. Their coats were gaudy with lace and brocade, and their faces and wigs were powdered white. Any doubt that they were Siltheri was removed when one of them held up a hand and a silvery dove appeared upon it. The bird flitted upward to circle around the spire of St. Galmuth’s before vanishing into the sky.

  It was far too early in the day for the illusionists to be on their way to a rehearsal or a performance. Nor was Graychurch near the east end of Durrow Street. Eldyn could only suppose the young men had come this way to taunt the priests in the cathedral. He knew from Dercy that some illusionists enjoyed such activities as a sport. Eldyn did not know which house these men were from; none of them looked familiar. All the same he lowered his head for fear one of them might recognize him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the illusionists wave a handkerchief in their direction.

  “Those vile sinners!” Spittle sprayed from the rector’s lips as he spoke. “There is no pit in the Abyss deep enough for their kind. To make men see things that God Himself did not bring into being—why, it mocks God’s own creations. And as if that was not enough …” He shook his head. “Well, you must know they lie with one another in the most foul and pernicious ways.”

  Despite the warmth of the sun, a trembling had come over Eldyn, and he clasped his hands together so Father Gadby would not detect it. What a fool he was to have thought that the Church might somehow help to discover who was preying upon the illusionists of Durrow Street. Eldyn’s own happiness at the knowledge he would soon enter the Church had caused him to forget what he knew. Now he recalled the words the priest outside the old church of St. Adaris had shouted at him that night a year ago.

  Begone, daemon. By all the saints, I command you. Go back to your houses of sin and trouble us no more.…

  No, the illusionists could not look to the Church for help. The Siltheri were already damned, in its opinion.

  Yet was not the greatest revelation of the Testament the knowledge that all men could be forgiven for their sins? The archdeacon himself had said that what Eldyn did in life before he entered the Church did not matter. Surely that meant even an illusionist could find grace.

  Except they would have to give up being Siltheri, wouldn’t they? Just like he was going to have to do himself one day. Eldyn couldn’t imagine that many of the young men at the Theater of the Moon would willingly give up conjuring illusions in exchange for the blessings of the Church. Not Mouse or Merrick or Riethe. And especially not Dercy.

  The illusionists disappeared around a corner, and the rector heaved himself to his feet.

  “Come, Mr. Garritt. I have quite lost my desire to be outside. Let us return within and continue our labors for God.”

  He waddled through the doors of the church, and Eldyn followed after him—though not before casting a glance in the direction where the illusionists had disappeared from view.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  IVY RESTED LITTLE the night before the excursion to Madiger’s Wall. Anticipation made it difficult to sleep, and when she finally did manage to shut her eyes, her repose was once again interrupted by the faint murmurs of voices and the moaning of a distant wind.

  Certain these noises had not been dreamed, she put on a robe, took up a candle, and left her chamber to make a survey of the house. However, she found nothing out of order; the only things that stirred in the house were the wooden eyes that opened drowsily as her candlelight fell upon them, and then closed again as she passed.

  At last she climbed the stairs to return to her bed. Only then, as she was passing the gallery on the second floor, she again heard the soughing sound of wind. She went to the window, but in the moonlight all the trees in the garden were motionless.

  As she gazed at the disheveled little chestnut and hawthorn trees below, she could not help but feel wonder. Yesterday evening, after returning from the tea at Lady Crayford’s, she had made her usual perusal of her father’s journal, and she had come upon a new entry.

  In it, he had described some experiments he had performed with a number of seeds that he had acquired in the West Country—seeds that were purported to have been gleaned on the edges of a stand of Wyrdwood. Mr. Lockwell had made repeated attempts to germinate the seeds to see if they might be grown into seedlings whose properties he could study, but he had never had any luck getting them to grow.

  Until he brought Ivy to the house.

  It was not two months after I brought you here as a small child when I saw the first sprouts, her father had written. They were growing in the garden in the very place where you most liked to run about and play. After all my failed attempts, I knew it could not be ascribed to chance that the seeds germinated almost at once after you came to the house. I hardly needed further proof; but if I did, I had it once I removed us to Whitward Street. Not long after we did so, I returned to the old house and noted that the saplings had become sickly and withered. Ever after that their growth was stunted, and they were always shedding their leaves. Yet they did not perish, and I have often wondered how they would fare if you were to return to the house.…

  To think, here in their very garden were Old Trees! It was strange to think of the little trees, which did not have even as many years as she did, as Old. Yet they were of the same primeval stock as the Wyrdwood.

  Ivy was sure Mr. Quent would be displeased to learn this fact. In the country, such trees would never be allowed to take root near a dwelling, though she could only think that any peril these trees presented was not significant. Did not the power of the Wyrdwood come from the
manner in which the roots spread and twined beneath the soil, thus permitting the trees to communicate with one another? She was certain there were no Old Trees near the city with which these small specimens might converse. All the same, she would be sure to tell Mr. Quent what she had learned.

  As to her father’s question—since their return to the house, the little hawthorns and chestnuts in the garden had begun to thrive and grow, and while they still had a tendency to shed their leaves, they were always gaining new ones.

  Yet those leaves were not moving now. So where had the noise of the wind come from?

  Ivy turned, and as she did the candlelight danced over the surface of the door in the northern wall. The carved wooden leaves seemed to stir as if they felt a breath of air. But it was only an effect of the flickering shadows cast by the candle; and though she stood there for several minutes, listening, the sound did not come again.

  After that Ivy returned to her room. Despite the early hour, sleep was beyond her now, so she made herself ready for the day. Once this was done, she went downstairs and, to pass the time, worked at organizing her father’s books in the library. She must have become absorbed in the task, for when a loud noise echoed through the door of the library, she gasped and nearly dropped the book in her hand.

  The noise came again. It was the sound of someone briskly knocking at the front door. They were here! Ivy hastily slipped the book into place on a shelf, then hurried from the library.

  She reached the front hall in time to see Mrs. Seenly open the door. A moment later Captain Branfort stepped over the threshold. He was handsome in his blue coat, and his hat was tucked under his arm. When he saw Ivy approaching, he gave a deep bow.

  “Good morning, Lady Quent,” he said, rising up. “Are you eager to be off on our expedition?”

  Now that the moment had arrived, Ivy realized that she was eager to go. “I am,” she said. “Very much.”

  He offered his arm. “Excellent! Then let us be off. I can’t tell who’s chafing more at the reins being held—Colonel Daubrent’s horses or the colonel himself!”

  WHICH PASSED MORE swiftly, the horses or the time, Ivy could not say.

  She spent the first part of the journey riding in the viscount’s four-in-hand with Lady Crayford and Mr. and Mrs. Baydon. For much of this time, the viscountess and Mr. Baydon were engaged in a lively argument upon the theme of which was the more vital matter, politics or art.

  He claimed that it must be politics, for the very endurance of the nation of Altania depended upon the decisions being made by Crown and Assembly. But, claimed she, art was of greater importance; for a work of art could endure long after the nation where it was created fell to dust. Were there not masterworks of Tharosian sculpture displayed in the Royal Museum? Art, she declared, was above any government.

  “What do you think on the matter, Lady Quent?” the viscountess asked after it was clear she and Mr. Baydon were at an impasse.

  “It is evident great art can endure long beyond the civilization where it was birthed,” Ivy said, choosing her words with care. “But I would also say that the highest forms of art cannot be birthed at all except when given the nurturing and protection of a great civilization.”

  Mr. Baydon opened his mouth, but he could seem to find no reply to that, and Lady Crayford arched an eyebrow.

  “Lady Quent,” she said, “you have negated all our arguments of the prior two hours with a mere two sentences.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Ivy said, her cheeks growing warm.

  “But you mustn’t apologize!” Mrs. Baydon exclaimed. “For you’ve proven that they are both of them right.”

  Now the viscountess laughed. “Well, that is our Lady Quent; she is as sensitive as she is sensible. I do believe any cause we had to argue has been removed, Mr. Baydon. We will have to speak of the weather instead.”

  To which he could only concur.

  After several hours they stopped the carriages and took a rest, as well as a cup of coffee, at a charming inn along the road that catered to travelers to the wall. When they resumed their journey, their positions were changed, and Ivy found herself riding with Colonel Daubrent in his curricle. The light little carriage fairly flew down the road, though Ivy suffered no fear. By now she was confident in the colonel’s ability as a masterful driver.

  The viscountess’s brother was not one for making idle conversation, but Ivy in no way minded. She was more than content to watch hills and fields and stone crofts pass by. It could not be more different than her first journey to the country. That had taken place in the darkness of a long night, cramped within the confines of a coach. In contrast, even allowing for errors in the almanac, today was to be a lumenal of over twenty hours, and the land all around basked in warm sun.

  At last, just when the ache in her legs began to suggest it would be good to stop driving across the countryside, and instead to get out and walk through it, they crested a low rise.

  And there it was, not two furlongs before them.

  Ivy had read countless descriptions of Madiger’s Wall, and she had seen engraving plates that showed detailed etchings. She knew it was twenty feet high and ten feet thick, and that most of its gray stones had been hewn from a quarry in the mountains of Northaltia and carted here along Tharosian roads.

  While it was one thing to know something, to see it was another matter altogether. For all her reading, she had not conceived just how massive and forbidding the wall would appear, or how ancient. Its surface was shaggy with moss and mottled by lichen. Even the sunlight seemed heavier here: a rich bronze tinged with green, like an ancient coin dug up from the leaf mold where it had lain for a thousand years.

  Movement caught her eye, and Ivy looked up. The wall was so high that only the crowns of the Old Trees showed above. Their highest branches swayed and bent in the breeze like gnarled fingers trying to reach over the top of the wall. Above, crows circled against the sky.

  “I said, Lady Quent, are you ready to depart the carriage?”

  Ivy blinked and looked down to see Colonel Daubrent standing on her side of the carriage, his hand extended.

  “Of course,” she said hurriedly, and allowed him to help her from the curricle. The viscount’s four-in-hand had stopped close by, and the others had already climbed out.

  It appeared Lady Crayford had been right when she said Madiger’s Wall was bound to be more popular than ever. Theirs were hardly the only carriages there. In fact, there were so many—from plain country surreys to glossy cabriolets—that Ivy could not easily count them all. Numerous people walked along the path that led to the wall, while others strolled along its boundaries. They looked very small against it, Ivy thought.

  Everyone in their party was eager to see the wall, and it was determined they should walk to it at once while the driver and the maid set out a luncheon. Mr. Baydon seemed especially enthusiastic.

  “I am anxious,” he said, “to see if it is right to have some confidence in this decrepit old structure, which is all that protects Invarel from so malevolent a thing.”

  “Malevolent!” Ivy exclaimed before she could think not to. “Why do you choose that particular word, Mr. Baydon? You make it sound as if the Wyrdwood has a will to cause harm.”

  “Does it not?” he said, the ever-present furrows in his brow deepening. “I imagine all those poor fellows in Torland who were deprived of their lives would say so if they could.”

  The others were looking at Ivy. She should not have spoken, but Mr. Baydon’s words had shocked her. “It is perilous, of course,” she said carefully. “I do not mean to imply otherwise. Yet even though something has the power to do harm, it does not mean it has the malice to do so.”

  Her gaze went again to the crowns of the trees above the wall. “The Wyrdwood is queer, I grant you. It is far more ancient than men, and I suppose as such it has little care for them. Yet, while I do not mean to detract from the terrible things that happened in Torland, I cannot help but think that no one would have
been harmed if people had given the Wyrdwood the proper berth.” She lowered her gaze to regard Mr. Baydon. “There are a great number of people in Altania these days, and there are very few Old Trees left. From that I would surmise, if all things are summed, it is we who have been the more fearsome.”

  “Very true!” Lady Crayford exclaimed before Mr. Baydon could reply. “Which means we had best go and see the Evengrove before someone decides it must all be cut down.”

  The viscountess took Ivy’s arm, and Ivy was grateful for her humor; for some reason Mr. Baydon’s words had unsettled her. As they walked down the path, though, Ivy’s spirits lifted. She was walking toward the Evengrove and Madiger’s Wall—a place out of so many stories she had read and loved as a girl. If she had not known the others would think her mad, she would have taken up a switch and pretended she was Queen Béanore fending off Tharosian soldiers with her hazel bow.

  “There are so many people,” Captain Branfort said as they went. “I wonder how we will find Lord Eubrey.”

  Even as he uttered this, they saw just ahead the figure of a slim, dark-haired man waving toward them. It could only be Lord Eubrey. He was walking in their direction, while two young men followed just behind him. It was Ivy’s impression that one of them was wearing an exceedingly high hat, only as they drew near she saw that it was in fact a tremendous crown of frizzy hair. The other young man was tall and, she thought, cut a very fine figure in a gray coat as he walked along, swinging the cane in his hand.

  The cane ceased its motions just as Ivy let out a gasp.

  “Mr. Rafferdy!” she exclaimed.

  “Lord Rafferdy, you mean,” Lord Eubrey said with a smile as he drew near. He cocked his head to one side. “Yet I can only presume that you and Lord Rafferdy are already acquainted?”

  Behind Eubrey, Mr. Rafferdy appeared every bit as astonished as Ivy, only then he smiled. “Indeed, Lady Quent and I are very well-acquainted.” He bowed deeply.