The Seventh World Trilogy omnibus

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She nodded and then gestured toward the girl. “Who…?”

  “Her name is Virginia Ramsey,” he said. “She is the granddaughter of a tenant farmer on my land.” He sighed deeply, and his eyes went back to the figure on the couch. “She fainted some miles back,” he said. “Of weariness, I suppose. We’ve been three days on the road, walking and riding and walking again.” His voice trailed off. “I won’t lie to you, Evie… it’s Mrs. Cook now, isn’t it? That’s what the postmaster told me.” He saw her slight nod of acknowledgment and asked, “Is Mr. Cook at home?”

  “He’s passed on,” Mrs. Cook said. “Some fifteen years ago.”

  Lord Robert nodded. “I’m sorry to hear it. He was a good man?”

  “Very,” Mrs. Cook said. There was a note of rebuke in her voice. He heard it and understood. It had been a long time since she had thought of Lord Robert Sinclair as a good man.

  “You were beginning to tell me something,” she prompted.

  “There are High Police after us,” he said. “Your hospitality to us is kind, but not advantageous to you. We’ll move on again if you wish. Only let us stay until Virginia has some strength back.”

  “Those irons?” Mrs. Cook asked, gesturing at the chains.

  Lord Robert’s face flushed with anger. “The gentility of the High Police,” he said. “How anyone could think it necessary to chain a blind girl… I tried to get them off, but they’re fine pieces of iron. I could do nothing without attracting attention. There were High Police all over the roads. I couldn’t risk taking her to a locksmith.”

  “There’s a locksmith five blocks from here,” Mrs. Cook said. “He’s a good man. He won’t be into the shop till noon today, but you can fetch him then.”

  Lord Robert said, “It may not be wise for me to show my face. I already fear what asking for you at the post might have done.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Cook said, flustered. “I’ll go after him myself, then.”

  Her face paled slightly as Lord Robert’s words sank in. Was her past involvement with the laird to be her undoing now? It had already taken Maggie away from her.

  “Why did you come here?” she asked, suddenly angry.

  “I didn’t know where else to turn,” he said. “I found myself in Londren and realized I couldn’t run forever. My society ‘friends’ would have turned me in to the police.”

  His weary blue eyes looked straight into hers, catching her off guard. “I was despairing, and your name came to me like an arrow. I went to the postmaster and asked after you, and the man knew you personally. Well enough to know that you were the Eva Brown I asked for. I know you do not think kindly of me, but in heaven’s name, Eva, I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “That seems to happen a lot lately,” Mrs. Cook muttered bitterly. “Dan Seaton slept in this very house just over a week ago.”

  Excitement suddenly animated the laird’s face. “He came here?” he asked. “Where is he now?”

  “He’s dead,” Mrs. Cook said. “Died in that room behind you.”

  The unexpected news checked Lord Robert’s enthusiasm, if only for a moment. “Did he bring anything with him?”

  Mrs. Cook sat down in the high-backed chair near the fire. “He did. A scroll, all written up in some ancient tongue.”

  The laird rose to his feet. “Do you have it?” he asked.

  Mrs. Cook pulled herself up on her own feet, her height dwarfed by the laird. “No,” she said sharply. “I don’t deal in mysteries anymore, Lord Robert. I haven’t done so for forty years. The thing is far from here now, where its curse can’t touch me.”

  Lord Robert sank back down to the floor, but he was quiet only for a moment. Then he said abruptly, “Can you truly have turned your back on everything we lived for? Did the scroll do nothing to you when you saw it? My housekeeper said it was very old. Think what it might have contained!”

  “I don’t care to know,” Mrs. Cook said.

  “Daniel came to me with the scroll,” Lord Robert said, “and the fool of a woman who keeps my house turned him away. Do you know what I did when I heard of it? I went back to our old council room. Do you remember the journal Huss began to translate in the last days? It’s still there! Don’t you remember, Eva, how the lore of old days just seemed to come to us, as though it wanted us to find it? And now it is coming to us again, calling us again!”

  “Let it call,” Mrs. Cook said. “It shall have no answer from me.”

  Lord Robert did not seem to hear her, but went on. “And it’s not only the scroll. Do you see this girl, Eva? Do you sense the way the air changes when she comes near? She is Gifted.”

  “As Evelyn was Gifted?” Mrs. Cook said. Her eyes flashed with anger. “Evelyn, who destroyed us all?”

  “Our own foolishness destroyed us,” Lord Robert said. “Not Evelyn.”

  “No?” Mrs. Cook said. “Do you still defend her? After everything that happened, can you still be so blind? We tried to reach into another world, and that world would have taken our very souls if we’d let it. As Evelyn let it.”

  With those words she turned and stalked into the kitchen, leaving the laird alone with Virginia.

  An hour later, when Mrs. Cook could bring herself to leave the laird of Angslie unsupervised in her house, she went after the locksmith. He was a man of average height, with copper hair, a hooked nose, and a very discreet tongue. His name was Benjamin Warne.

  He took in the scene without a word and set to work at Virginia’s shackles. They were off in the space of thirty minutes, and he held the iron chains up with disdain.

  “If I were you,” he said to Lord Robert, “I should take these out and bury them somewhere away from here. If I’m not mistaken, there are High Police inquiring for you all over the city.”

  A quick glance passed between Lord Robert and Mrs. Cook. It did not go unnoticed by Benjamin Warne. Lord Robert reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out sufficient funds to pay for the locksmith’s service, and extra to keep his tongue.

  Warne waved the money away. “No,” he said. “I’ll not accept money for a job compassion would have bound me to do. Take care of the girl; her skin is badly torn. And don’t fear for my silence… that cannot be bought, but my words will not bring chains on her again, or on you.”

  They thanked him profusely. When he was gone, they heard a sound in the sitting room. Virginia was awake.

  Lord Robert rushed to her as Mrs. Cook fetched water to bathe Virginia’s wrists. When she returned, she knelt down and gently began to clean the wounds. As the locksmith had said, the skin had torn deeply and painfully, and the iron soot had worked its way into the raw flesh. Virginia winced with pain as Mrs. Cook worked, but said nothing.

  When dry blood had turned the water to rust, Mrs. Cook sent Lord Robert upstairs in search of a balm. Before he returned, Virginia spoke.

  “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but your hands are very gentle. Thank you.”

  Something about the simplicity of the thanks and the way that Virginia’s eyes stared into nothing when she spoke brought Mrs. Cook to tears.

  “No, dear,” she said. “No, no, there’s nothing to thank me for.”

  Virginia’s hands reached hesitantly for Mrs. Cook, and the elderly woman allowed the young one’s fingers to trace the lines and wrinkles of her face. The fingers met with tears, and Virginia smiled tenderly.

  “Is it for me you are crying?” she asked. “Or for something else?”

  Mrs. Cook nodded and took the searching hands in her own. “For you, dear,” she said.

  They heard the laird’s feet pounding down the stairs, and Lord Robert appeared with a small bottle. Mrs. Cook took it and started to apply the ointment to the wounds. Virginia bit her lip and worked to hold back tears of her own. In moments, the stinging cream began to work its healing magic and the pain ceased. Mrs. Cook wrapped Virginia’s wrists in bandages and then touched the young woman’s cheek kindly
.

  “Finished,” she announced.

  Mrs. Cook had never had children of her own, but her motherly instincts had not suffered for lack of use. She ordered Lord Robert to escort Virginia to the kitchen, where she soon laid out a hearty meal of bread, cheese and sausage from the cold room, and plenty of hot tea. While they ate, she bustled around the house: the lower room, where Old Dan had stayed, was prepared for Virginia, and Maggie’s room upstairs was reluctantly made ready for Lord Robert.

  When the rooms were ready, Mrs. Cook brought Virginia a clean dress of Maggie’s so that she could wash her travel-stained clothing. To Lord Robert’s chagrin, she insisted on washing his clothes as well. “I don’t care what you look like,” she said, handing him a nightshirt and a blanket to wear until his clothes were dry, “but I won’t have you smelling like last week’s rubbish while you’re in my house.”

  Late that night, Lord Robert left the house in slightly damp trousers and shirt, with a shovel and the blood-rusted shackles. He carried them down the street and over the fence to the yard of the yellow house, where he dug a hole under the shadow of a young oak tree.

  The rain had ceased earlier that evening. There was no sound in the night except for that of the shovel penetrating earth. Lord Robert gritted his teeth as he worked. Even this was too loud. What if someone in the house looked out? But the yellow house seemed very much asleep. The windows were dark, and no light or sound stirred in its bulk.

  A sufficient hole dug, Lord Robert dropped the shackles in and grimaced at the clanking sound they made in the darkness. He thought he heard something stir in the alley beyond the fence, and stood stock still while his heart beat out the minutes. There was nothing.

  He shoveled the dirt back quickly and spread damp oak leaves over the spot to disguise the newly turned earth. With that he stood tall, wiped the nervous sweat from his forehead, and climbed back over the fence.

  Shovel in hand, he had just started up the steps to Eva Cook’s home when he heard the sound of running footsteps behind him. He started to turn, his body unable to move with the speed he wished for. A searing pain flashed through him as something heavy hit below the base of his skull. He fell to the steps with a cry. A foot landed squarely in his back and pushed him off the steps onto the street. His eyes, fighting black spots as he struggled against the pain, could just make out a slim form standing over him, hands raised in the air with something clutched between them.

  The object rushed down toward him, and he heard Mrs. Cook’s door swing open. The elderly woman’s voice cried out, “Pat! Stop! He’s a friend!”

  And then he could not see, or hear, anything. The laird’s body lay still on the cobblestones as he slipped into unconsciousness.

  He awoke to the unpleasantness of smelling salts under his nose and a throbbing pain in the back of his head. Mrs. Cook was peering down at him with obvious concern while the hand of an unfamiliar young woman held the salts unmercifully. She was thin and dressed like a boy. As she stood, Lord Robert could see that she was as tall as Mrs. Cook. Her straight, dark hair was cropped short. In the shadows of the street, she could easily have been mistaken for a young man.

  Lord Robert struggled to sit up. The young woman had wandered over to the window and was peering out through the curtains at the street.

  “You’re all right then,” Mrs. Cook said. “I was afraid she’d killed you.”

  “Who is she?” Lord Robert asked, putting his hand behind his head to feel the growing lump there. “And does she have a good reason for attacking me?”

  The young woman answered his questions on her own, walking back to the couch with her arms folded in front of her. Her face was serious and her glare met the laird’s eyes dead-on.

  “My name is Patricia Black,” she said. “I live here. And I had a very good reason for popping you. I thought you were the High Police.”

  The blood drained from Mrs. Cook’s face as Lord Robert quietly said, “Do you often have High Police sneaking around in the middle of the night?”

  “They’re on their way,” Pat said. “On my way here I overheard a racket at the postmaster’s. They’re looking for someone. You, I suppose, though they said you had a girl with you. The postmaster let it slip that you’d come here, but he gave them a good run around on directions. Must have felt guilty for ratting you out.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Lord Robert said. He stood up, ignoring a wave of nausea that hit him at his sudden rise, and pulled his coat from the tall rack that stood by the door. Three long strides took him to Virginia’s door. He knocked loudly.

  “It’s time to go,” he said. His voice broke in mid-sentence. When he turned to Mrs. Cook, his face was weary.

  “You don’t know who we were,” he said. “We seemed to need help, was all. We left hours ago, saying something about going to the country. Cryneth. Understood?”

  Mrs. Cook did not even nod as she pushed into Virginia’s room to help the young woman get ready to leave.

  “Pat,” she called over her shoulder, “get them some food from the pantry. As much as they can carry.”

  Pat disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Lord Robert to pace in the living room, now and then going to the window to look out nervously. Pat reappeared just as Virginia emerged from the bedroom, guided by Mrs. Cook’s hand on her elbow. Pat looked the newcomer over quickly. Her eyes betrayed nothing of what she thought.

  The laird pulled himself up straight and looked at Pat. He’d been thinking.

  “Do you make a habit of attacking police when you see them? Wouldn’t it have been more effective for you to make up a story about your innocence? You might have had the every soldier in Midland down on you.”

  Pat looked away from him suddenly. Mrs. Cook sought to hold the young woman’s eyes and could not. Pat had turned her gaze to the curtains.

  “I meant to tell you,” she said in a muffled voice, “that I’ll be going away again. Now.”

  “Now?” Mrs. Cook said. Her voice was beginning to shake. “You’ve only just come back!”

  Pat reached for the old woman and gathered her in a sudden and unexpected embrace. “I’ll be back soon,” she said. “But I can’t stay. I ran into a bit of trouble in Cryneth. It’s best if I lay low a few months.”

  “Oh, Pat,” Mrs. Cook said in a whisper.

  “Where’s Maggie?” Pat asked.

  “Who knows?” Mrs. Cook, said, dropping bitterly into her high-backed chair. “She’s gone off to Pravik, and I haven’t heard from her.”

  Lord Robert jumped on her words immediately.

  “With the scroll?” he asked. The question made no sense to Pat or to Virginia, who was listening to the proceedings while she leaned against the wall. Lord Robert dropped down to his knees beside Mrs. Cook, who looked at him resentfully.

  “Did she take the scroll to Pravik?” he asked. “To Huss?”

  Mrs. Cook nodded. Her eyes were full of tears, and she turned them away from Lord Robert.

  Pat stepped defensively toward Mrs. Cook. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ll go,” Lord Robert said, ignoring Pat. “Why not? We’ll go to Pravik. There’s nowhere else to go.”

  Mrs. Cook stood up abruptly and pulled her cloak around her shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” Lord Robert asked.

  “You’re right,” Mrs. Cook said, shoving one foot into a boot. “There’s nowhere else to go. I can’t stand another minute not knowing where Maggie is. Come on, Pat, we’re going to Pravik.”

  “You mean to say you’re coming with us?” Lord Robert asked, the beginnings of a smile on his face.

  “That’s what I said,” Mrs. Cook snapped. “Someone’s got to look after that girl of yours. Heaven knows you’re not qualified to do it.”

  Virginia smiled to herself, and Pat approached her.

  “Well, we may as well get ready,” she snorted. “Seeing as no one cares to ask what we think of all this.”

  “I’m glad for your company,
” Virginia said.

  “Yes, well, I can’t say I’m sorry myself,” Pat answered.

  They pulled on outdoor clothes while Mrs. Cook muttered under her breath about temporary insanity and not knowing what she was thinking. Lord Robert gloated to himself. Virginia stood still against the wall, relieved that she would not be alone with the laird on the coming journey.

  In minutes they were out in the rainy street, leaving an empty house for the police to puzzle over.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  The Blackness Has Wings

  Maggie awoke to the deep sensation of fear. It seemed to her that she had been having a nightmare, but the memories of it had already receded into the far reaches of her mind. For a moment she lay awake, staring into the pitch darkness of the wagon. In the bunks beside her, she could hear the Major snoring lightly, and she could just make out the shape of Nicolas’s hand hanging down from the top. The inside of the wagon was familiar to her, but its familiarity refused to slow down the beating of her heart or bring even an ounce of comfort to stop the creeping of fear over her skin. She shivered.

  And then she saw it.

  The raven was perched on the foot of her bed, and it was staring at her with green eyes. Eyes like the death-hound.

  Maggie felt its eyes peering into her own, penetrating her courage, draining strength from her. She fought against the bird’s malevolent grip, even as the air seemed to close in around her. She could barely breathe. At last she tore her eyes away from its hypnotic stare, to catch sight of something in the bird’s claws.

  She gasped, air coming to her in a rush. It was the scroll.

  Her coat was hanging on a hook near the front of the wagon. Somehow the bird had taken the parchment from her pocket. Its black claws gripped the ancient paper with utmost care. Breathing hard now, with sweat gathering on her brow, Maggie watched as the bird’s wings stretched up and its body tensed for flight.

  She knew she had to grab the scroll, but she was unable to move. Her fingers strained against imaginary bonds as she willed herself to move, to reach for the scroll before it was too late.