A Study in Sable (26 page)

Suki closed the book with a relieved
snap,
and Nan took a pack of ordinary playing cards out of her handbag. She shuffled them thoroughly, then went through them, one by one, while Suki recited what they were. Suki had made about five mistakes in sending the words from the herbal, but made none in receiving the cards. Then Nan shuffled again, and handed them to Suki, who now sent the images to Nan. She was much better at images than words; flawless, in fact. They probably didn't even need to run the cards anymore, but Nan liked it as an exercise and a way to tell if Suki was tired or losing her ability to concentrate for some other reason.

Suki really
was
tired after that, so Nan assigned her a reading lesson; read a story with new words in it aloud, look them up in the dictionary, then use them in an appropriate sentence that had
not
been in the story. Like “elephantine.”

From time to time, Nan checked with Neville. Thanks to John Watson, Neville found their quarry fairly easily and perched himself
out of the way on the eaves of a nearby building, where he would be inconspicuous but able to see the man clearly.

John, however, was not having much luck; the man was here to buy, it seemed, and not to sell, and that made him difficult to approach. Through Neville's eyes, Nan saw him trailing the man all over the market, and she could only hope he was able to overhear something, or have some pretext to ask people who he had bought from who he was.

Finally the man moved out of the market. Neville pushed off, and followed him to the yard of the “Farmer” pub and hotel. Under Neville's watchful eye, he harnessed a cart horse to a farm wagon, went back to the market with them, and proceeded to load his purchases into the wagon. Then, as John watched from a corner of the market, he drove off, with Neville in leisurely pursuit.

Nan left Neville to his task; she could do nothing to aid it, and it would be just as well not to distract him.

“Neville's gone chasing our man,” Nan reported, and Mary and Suki looked up from the book Suki was cheerfully laboring through.

“What about John?” Mary asked.

“You can ask him yourself in a minute, he should be coming up here as soon as he works his way through the market,” Nan replied, and stood up to stretch. “I hope it turns out that the farmstead isn't as far away as that grove was, or we're in for another long walk tomorrow.”

At that moment, there was a tap on the door, and John Watson opened it. “Frustrating,” he said, closing it behind himself. “Very frustrating. Evidently he was here to buy supplies for the farm, and I could not make an excuse to speak to him. I did find out that his name is Cedric Edmondson, and he and his family have owned Sennoke Farm ‘forever,' at least according to the lady who sold him a coil of rope. I also discovered that his reputation hereabouts is very good, so we should tread carefully here.”

Mary handed the book to Suki and regarded her husband with thoughtful eyes. “Perhaps we should return to London and merely report this to Lord Alderscroft.”

But John shook his head. “Lord Alderscroft left this in our hands. I think we will have to confront him and find out how far he has gone. No matter how much blood magic he has performed, since he hasn't yet descended to sacrificing humans, he will be no match for two Elemental Masters. And then—” He glanced at Nan. “—there is the little matter of Miss Killian's . . . other aspect.”

“My other aspect, as you call it, was utterly furious at the sight of him,” Nan confessed. “I fear that if he should act at all aggressively I will not be able to hold that part of me back.”

“All the more reason to confront him, then,” John said with confidence. “By daylight would be best; black magic of all sorts is weaker in the day. We'll wait for Neville and the sylph to return and see what they can tell us.”

When the sylph returned, it was merely to give John the directions to Sennoke Farm. When
Neville
returned, however, it was with more detail. Neville had flown over the place with an eye to memorizing where each and every building was and all of the people on the farm. He had returned with every bit of information that a human scout might have.

With Suki looking on attentively, Nan sank into a half-trance, communing closely with Neville, and slowly sketched out the raven's-eye view of the farm from above. The buildings whose purposes were obvious she labeled—
house, barn, cowshed—
and those whose purposes were not, she left alone. “Neville can count up to eight, but there were more people than that there, so he counted them up by type,” she said, as she “listened” attentively to what Neville had to tell her. “Four Big Skirts—that would be grown women, probably the wife, and servants or female farm folk, I suppose. Eight Big Trousers, including this Cedric. Two Little Skirts—little girls. Two Medium Skirts—girls in their teens, I think. One Little Trousers, and five Medium Trousers.”

“That is a big farm,” John observed. “Our best chance might be to approach him when he is alone in the fields. Otherwise there's no telling how much help he might be able to draw from the others.”

“Me go,”
croaked Neville.

“That would be the best idea, Neville,” John agreed. “And you can tell us when he is alone, and where.”

“A good, sound night's sleep, then,” Mary declared. “A good meal before it, and John, you and I will make our preparations.” She hesitated. “I don't like the idea of leaving Suki here alone, but—”

“Oi ain't stayin'!” Suki declared, crossing her arms over her chest, and glaring. “Yer cain't make me!”

Nan sighed. She knew Suki in this mood. “She's right,” Nan said, to forestall any attempt at argument from John and Mary. “We can't make her stay, and if something terrible does happen, she needs to
know,
and we need to be able to send her for help.”

“What kind of—” John stopped, as he realized what Nan meant. “Do you think he'd come for her?”

“More readily than for an adult,” Nan replied. “Robin considers adults to be capable of defending themselves. Children, however . . . that's another story.” She turned to Suki. “I'm going to give you my charm for summoning Puck; you must promise me that if things go badly, you will run very far and very fast, and when you get somewhere you think is safe, call him.” She would have liked to add, “and take Neville with you,” but the likelihood of Neville deserting her in a crisis was next to nothing.

Suki nodded solemnly, her curls bobbing. “Oil roight,” she promised.

Nan could only hope it would not come to that.

• • •

The silence in the flat was . . . unnerving. When she got back to the flat in the morning, there were no cheerful greetings from Nan and Suki, no raucous
quork
from Neville, just Grey's happy whistle and “Welcome home, Sarah!” She made sure that Mrs. Horace had brought up Grey's breakfast, spent a half an hour cuddling her, then went to bed wishing for the chatter she had sometimes found annoying.

It was the silence that actually woke Sarah in the afternoon. Usually she slumbered, lulled by the murmur of voices in the next room
as Suki and Nan did lessons. Today the only sounds were those of the street outside. It made her unsettled, and instead of lying in bed, waking up slowly, she got out of bed immediately.

She wandered the flat in her dressing gown for a bit, picking at the food that Mrs. Horace had left, feeling a bit disoriented to find herself in almost sole possession of the space. She kept expecting to hear Nan and Suki coming up the stairs, but there wasn't a single sound in the hallway, only, faint and far, Mrs. Horace singing over her work. Finally, though, she settled with Grey and a book, and the silence stopped being so unsettling. In fact, as she got herself dressed in a more leisurely fashion than usual, she began to enjoy it. It was rather
nice
not to have to listen to chatter about lessons, or answer Suki's infinite questions while she got ready for the opera. Grey expressed herself in very few words, preferring simple companionship and now and again a scratch or a cuddle. Things felt unhurried, and as a result, she left the flat in Grey's sleepy charge with a faint smile on her face, instead of feeling as if she had to rush out of the house on the instant.

She loitered in front of the house, watching the few people on the street in the evening light. A small skein of starlings flew overhead, chattering, and she reveled in the knowledge that for once, she was not beholden to anyone to set the time of her leaving and coming back. Freddy Smart turned up for her, right on time, and handed her into the cab with a little bow that made her giggle. She settled against the cushions of the hansom with a sense of relaxation for the very first time since she had begun this particular adventure.

He dropped her at the opera house early for the performance, since Magdalena liked to see her in her dressing room before the curtain rose. The front of the opera house was shut up and silent, all the lights extinguished, the doors locked. She went around to the stage entrance, where the doorman let her in without a murmur, and proceeded down the plain, even spartan backstage hall to the dressing room reserved for the Prima Donna.

“Ah, you are here!” Magdalena cried, as Alicia let her in.
“Ausgezeichtnet!”
It was one of her rare lapses into German, but apparently
there was no equivalent word in English. “Sit, sit, and have some grapes, have some wine!”

The first thing that struck
all
the senses were the flowers; vases and vases of them, wreaths hung up on pegs on the wall or even a corner of the folding screen, fragrant, colorful—dying, wilting in the heat. There were always flowers waiting for Magdalena before the performance, and after, it seemed as if the entire contents of Covent Garden had been loaded into the room until they spilled out into the hall. There was a folding screen across one corner where Magdalena changed; there were costumes hung up on the walls, a chair and a couch much stained with makeup from countless previous occupants were jammed against the wall, with their worn upholstery concealed by opulent silk shawls thrown over both. The rest of the room was taken up by the dressing table, dressing stool, and huge mirror with another full-length mirror standing on the wall opposite, so Magdalena could survey herself before and behind. Lights were all around the mirror over the dressing table: the cause of the heat. The dressing table in other divas' rooms might be strewn with a chaos of makeup and hairpieces, notes from the producer, notes from lovers, notes from admirers, jewelry both paste and real, half-eaten boxes of bonbons. Not Magdalena's. Everything was precise and in its place. Stage jewels were in boxes covered with the same fabric as the costume they went with.
Real
jewels were in velvet jewelry boxes that were kept in a small strongbox under Alicia's care. The real jewelry went in there when Magdalena took off her jewelry to exchange it for the stage jewels and came back out again at the end of the performance, when Magdalena took off the stage jewels. That strongbox always returned under Alicia's guard to the hotel when the performance was over. Frequently, more velvet boxes went into the strongbox for their return than there had been before the performance. Notes from the producer, conductor, and the director went on the mirror to be studied. Personal notes went into a floral pasteboard box, secured with ribbons. Sarah suspected there was a color code to the ribbons, but Magdalena had never revealed it.

There was always fruit on the small table between the chair and the couch. There were always boxes of bonbons beside the couch, which Magdalena never indulged in, and which she gave away to the chorus the day after she had been gifted them. There was always wine next to the dressing table in a footed bucket, which she
did
indulge in, but not to excess, that Sarah could tell.

The chair and the couch were reserved for visitors while Magdalena was dressing; Sarah was the only visitor allowed before the performance. After the performance, once Magdalena had doffed the final costume and taken off her stage makeup, the chair and the couch went to admirers. Magdalena would hold court for some indeterminate time while Alicia and Sarah went to the hotel in Freddy Smart's hansom. If Magdalena planned to spend some time with an admirer, she sent a note, and Alicia and Sarah would share the feast meant for the diva and Sarah, giggling and gossiping in a way Sarah had never experienced before, because Memsa'b never seemed to gossip, and Nan didn't know how.

Sarah took her seat in the chair, curling her legs under it to as to take up as little room as possible. Magdalena's costumes for this opera were absolutely
enormous;
she was playing Violetta in
La Traviata
, and the dresses were all those huge wedding-cake-like creations of decades ago, big bell-shaped skirts held out with hoops. It was a mercy that the hoops collapsed and could be stacked against the wall, or there would never have been room for anything in here but the costumes.

Sarah ate grapes slowly and watched as Magdalena transformed herself from a healthy and hearty German woman who did not look to have had a sick day in her life to the fragile, consumptive, Violetta. It was, frankly, startling, and when Magdalena donned Violetta's black wig, which underscored her pallor by contrast, she didn't seem to be the same person at all.

Then Magdalena rose from her stool to begin donning the ball gown of the first act, and that was Sarah's signal to leave. As she edged past Alicia, who was shaking the hoops into shape, Magdalena, as always, gave her an arch wink. “Guard me from spirits,
faithful one!” she said gaily, and bent so that Alicia could slip the hoops over her head.

Now Sarah made her way down into the theater—not yet open for patrons, except for those few, very special ones like herself. Behind the lowered curtain workmen were everywhere, and she took care not to get in their way. The stage smelled of dust, sawdust, and paint. She went past the curtain and paused on the stage front, as she always did, looking up into the dim half-light in front of the closed curtains—looking for spirits. She hadn't seen any yet, but Magdalena insisted that she be on the alert anyway, and the stagehands all swore the theater was haunted by the spirits of performers long dead and their own fellows who had died in accidents. When she was satisfied there were no lurking ghosts this time, she made her way down the stage steps, into the halls, and then up to the left-hand box nearest the stage, reserved, now, for her and only her. Alicia had told her that some of Magdalena's admirers were angry that they could not make use of it, but she was adamant. Only Sarah could sit there, so that if she needed to protect Magdalena from ghosts, she would not have to do so with distractions.