Unnatural Issue (14 page)

That idea must have alarmed Agatha even further; perhaps she thought she would get the blame for it. In any event, the poor woman mumbled “Yes, Miss,” and took herself back downstairs. Moments later, Prudence returned with the requested baskets. Susanne peeked in the smaller and saw a couple nice thick sandwiches—much more satisfactory than the ridiculous tea-and-toast and cress-and-butter sandwiches she
had
been getting—and a corked stoneware bottle. It was probably cider. It looked just like the lunches that they’d all made up for field workers during the harvest—the overseers got the good ones, in baskets. She hoped that if it was cider, it wasn’t as strong as the stuff the field workers got, because they had heads as thick as planks, but half a bottle would probably make her terribly tipsy.

In any event, this was much more to her liking! She had found a small tea tray and a small old rug bundled into a corner of the closet; the tray would do as a desk and the rug to sit on. These pretty white dresses had the distinct disadvantage that they got grass stained and dirty rather too easily.

With her ink bottle wedged into the empty basket by the books, the rolled-up rug on top and the tea-tray under her arm, she set off for her clearing. She half expected to be swarmed again, but the Elemental creatures were nowhere to be seen. After last night, she was more relieved than otherwise.

She quickly discovered that it was much easier to study in these familiar—and unstifling—surroundings. She was able to relax, which she was not able to do in those stuffy rooms. She could kick off her shoes and stockings. She got so absorbed in her work that only the growling of her stomach told her it was midday.

“And I don’t suppose you’d be sharing any of that?” she heard Robin say from behind her as she unpacked the basket.

“I don’t know why not,” she replied. “I cannot fathom Agatha. When I am brought luncheon in the house, she gives me three tiny butter-and-cress sandwiches with the crusts cut off and a pot of tea. But when I come out here she gives me enough to feed a plough-man and his boy.” She straightened, with a sandwich made up as a packet in brown paper in her hand, and turned slightly to hand it to him as he came to sit in the grass beside her.

“Hmm.” Robin bit into the sandwich approvingly. “I am constantly reminded of why our kind tries to steal food from yours.”

She peeked under the top slice of country loaf to find pickle-and-tongue. She took a bite of hers, happily. “At least I get a decent tea,” she continued. “Robin, when I came out here last night, all the magic things were practically in a panic. It was as if they thought I had deserted them.”

“You can’t be sensed inside that house,” Robin told her, frowning over his food. “Even I can’t—or rather, I
could,
but your father would know I was prying and peering. I don’t want him knowing I’m about.”

She blinked in surprise and put her half-eaten sandwich down. “But—why?”

“He’s meddling in dark things,” Robin said, his frown deepening. “And I may be strong, but there are things as strong as I am, or stronger, unless I call on things I had rather save for some dire time.”

He snapped his mouth shut, as if he had said more than he intended to.

“But . . . the others said that, too, and wouldn’t explain,” she ventured plaintively. “I know that he’s blighted things just by his extreme unhappiness, but I’ve never noticed anything else.” She paused a moment. “Will he hurt me? Harm them? What does all this mean?”

Robin shook his head with irritation. “I bain’t a mind reader,” he snapped, his accent turning odd and thick. “This be mortal magic, and none o’ mine. Happen ye should be the one lookin’ out for it, bein’ mortal an’ all. If’e harms the
land,
that’s my business. If ’e meddles with the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, ’tis yours.”

Startled, she looked into his eyes at that moment and found her breath caught in her throat. Those eyes . . . those were not the eyes of Robin, her playfellow, nor Puck the prankster, nor even Robin Goodfellow, her mentor and teacher. Those were the eyes of something old, old as the moors, old as the stones beneath them. Those were eyes that had seen Queen Elizabeth alighting from her barge on some Great Progress, had seen the Wars of the Roses. He had watched the Saxons overrun what was left of the Romans, watched the Romans slaughter Boudica and her daughters, had borne witness as the Druids made their sacrifices to the Three-Faced Goddess and the Horned God. Those eyes had watched all of that, and he had done nothing—because these were all mortal affairs, and Robin’s care and concern was for something much larger than human lives.

She once again was conscious of how
other
and
different
he was. And how much like a mayfly she must seem to him—short-lived, due to die in a day.

She had seen glimpses of this, the true Robin, before. It didn’t frighten her, but it did remind her very sharply that Robin was not, had never been, and would never be “safe.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said, casting her eyes down. “You’re right, of course. Unless he does something unthinkably vile to the land, this
is
my responsibility. I won’t forget that again.”

“Eh, lass,” Robin replied, his tone softening. He put a finger under her chin and tilted her head up so she could look in his eyes again. They had gone back to being—just eyes, without that terrible sense of age to them. “Forget the fellow’s your father. It may be he’s come to his senses again. But perhaps not. What he meddles in—” Robin shrugged. “It’s nothing that answers to me; he’s got his protections up and about him, and I can’t get past them without him knowing that I have. It may be that his protections are nothing more than to keep the meddlesome Masters from disturbing his gloom, but there is something going on behind them that casts a shadow on the land. Take care. Be wary.”

And then, as abruptly as it always did, Robin’s mood changed. “Is that a treacle tart I see in there?”

P
ETER held his thumb up at arm’s length and peered at it. He had no idea what this was supposed to have to do with painting, but he had been assured that all painters did this. Something to do with perspective, though what his thumb had to do with it, he was dashed if he knew.

Just another reason why all painters were balmy.

Another reason was probably in the paints themselves. As a Master he was well acquainted with poisons, because all too often the hand of man was dumping them in his precious waters. He knew their effects, he knew how to get rid of them, and he certainly knew how to recognize them, and the tubes he was lugging around and plastering indiscriminately on his canvas were full of deadly things. Lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, cobalt . . . he knew plenty of artists who absent-mindedly held brushes in their teeth or even licked a brush to get a pointed end. He had never quite realized until now how dangerous that was.

He was being as careful with these things as if they were explosive. Each brush was cleaned carefully, and the resulting contaminated turpentine was properly dealt with. He badly wanted to deliver a stern lecture to each and every artist he knew, now, but . . . well, most of them wouldn’t even listen, and the ones who would, already knew of the dangers. Small wonder so many artists died young.

“Are we still bein’ observed?” he asked Garrick in a low voice. Garrick, who had a pair of binoculars to his eyes, chuckled.

“No m’lord, and we haven’t been for the last ten minutes or so. I beg your pardon, but my attention was caught by that kite.” Garrick’s disguise was that he was an avid bird-watcher and was taking advantage of his master’s mania for painting to indulge his own predilection. It made for an excellent reason for Garrick to peer around with a pair of binoculars. And that permitted him to be on lookout duty.

“Well, good, because I am dashed if I can make anything better out of this nasty daub.” With relief, Peter put down his palette. “I’ll be only too happy to chuck it in a fire when we get back. And here I thought you were getting a bit too caught up in your own disguise.”

“I know enough about birds, m’lord, to be quite interested in them. Though it is largely an interest driven by what, m’lord, they can tell me about what is going on below them.” Garrick had the binoculars up to his face again. “For instance, that kite has been following the two children that were watching us. I suspect they are frightening things up ahead of them.”

“Acting as the beaters, eh?” Almsley chuckled. “Deuced clever of the bird. So?”

“So it is steadily moving away from us, so although I cannot see the children, I assume they are doing the same, m’lord.” He set the optics down. “Now, m’lord, the usual?”

“The usual, Garrick. Time to earn our keep.” Peter put the palette down and capped the paints, then moved away from the easel to a spot he had selected earlier.

It was a good thing that no one was watching them now, for they would have been certain the two of them were insane. Garrick handed Peter a small basket; Peter sat down right on the grass, and Garrick took a knife and cut a circle in the turf around him, then went four times around the circle again, each time laying down a line of colored string, blue, red, green, and yellow. He tied each line of string with a neat, tight knot before going on to the next. Meanwhile, Peter took a shallow bowl and a stoppered bottle from the basket, and poured pure water into the bowl from the bottle.

What no one but another Elemental magician would have recognized, of course, was that Garrick had just created a shielded space, a magic circle, with Peter in the center of it. Each of those strings represented a great deal of spellcasting on the part of Masters in the White Lodge; each string, when knotted, created an Elemental shield. Red for Fire, yellow for Earth, blue for Air, and green for Water. Most Elemental magicians without such kit with them had to rely on their own personal shields, which left them vulnerable to three other Elements. If there
was
a necromancer about, he wouldn’t detect Peter’s snooping now.

Peter was conducting his searches outside of the well-appointed Work Room in Branwell Hall because the Hall was too well-protected and the things for which he was looking were too subtle. And this sort of magic had limits—distance limits. Peter could effectively search an area not much more than five miles in diameter. A stronger mage, or several working together, could have ranged farther; someone like Garrick could have gone no more than a mile.

He sat with his legs crossed like a mediating fakir and stared down at his bowl, holding his hand directly over the middle. That hand held another, smaller bottle of the same prepared water, and he dripped a single drop of it into the bowl, in time with his own pulse.

The drop struck the surface, and a circular ripple spread out from it. It was these ripples that he watched. The Old Lion was right about one thing; although an Earth mage would have been better for this, since an Earth mage would more easily detect the kind of
wrongness
in the Earth that a necromancer produced, but a Water mage was a good second choice. Water went
everywhere,
and if there was some contamination by necromancy, Water would pick it up and show it.

The drawbacks were twofold. First, that Water purified, so it lost the traces of contamination that Earth would hold. Second, that Water moved; Earth didn’t. Contamination could get picked up and moved for miles.

Nevertheless, this was a good way to start.

Like rocks just below the surface of a lake, this necromantic contamination would make interruptions in the ripple. That was what he was watching for. He’d need to do this for at least a quarter of an hour, because the traces of shadow-magic left by a necromancer might not show up every time a ripple passed over the surface of the water. And because he needed to see whether it stayed put or was moving. If the latter, he’d have to figure out the source.

When the fifteen minutes were up, Peter sighed, and lowered his hand. He put down the bottle, and shook his hand vigorously to loosen it up.

“Nothing, m’lord?” Garrick asked politely.

“Not a blessed thing,” Peter replied. “No more than there has been all morning. I am more than ever convinced this was all a plot on the part of Alderscroft to keep me out of Europe. And to think! I could be sharing coffee and biscotti on the veranda of my hotel room at Monte Carlo at this very moment with the most ravishing soprano ever to rattle the rafters of La Scala.”

Garrick coughed politely. “I venture to say that our stay in this salubrious climate is doing your health a world of good, m’lord.”

“That soprano can do more for my health than a hundred moors,” Peter said wistfully, and sighed again. “Ah, well, can’t be helped. Unwind me, old thing, and let’s be off. The sooner I can burn this disgusting imitation of a painting, the better I’ll feel.”

 

Garrick took the car around to the carriage house, which still contained vehicles meant to be drawn by horses as well as a couple of motor-cars, and Peter was bowed into the house by one of the footmen. He met Charles just inside the door, coming in from another direction. “Still nothing, Peter?” asked Charles, who wore his tweeds with the air of a man who rarely wore anything else.