The Twelfth Enchantment Part 6

"Go with you where?"

Miss Crawford's countenance appeared suddenly so serious that Lucy could never have predicted what she said next.

"To a picnic."

She had packed a basket in preparation, and they rode out of town, toward the southwest, in the direction of Gotham Village. It was a pleasant spring day, warm and drya"perfect for a picnic, but somehow Lucy did not think they were to sit out of doors because the weather was fair. In the carriage Miss Crawford tried to make idle chatter, saving the meat of her conversation for their destination. Lucy tried not to stare at her hostess, tried not to notice how her fair hair and pale skin seemed to glow in the dark of the carriage, tried not to notice her pure, almost painful beauty.

They came at last to their destination, near one of the old fairy barrows alongside the road. It was a hillock, much like the one on the road to Mr. Olson's mill. Already the brown gra.s.s was beginning to green, and some flowers were near blooming. A trio of rabbits scattered as Lucy and Miss Crawford approached and laid out a blanket and, upon that, a large basket. The lady had brought only a light meal of seedcakes, a loaf of bread, and a wedge of orange cheese. She had also packed a bottle of wine, the cork pulled and loosely replaced, and two pewter gla.s.ses. Lucy did not drink much wine, certainly not unwatered, and not in the middle of the day.

Miss Crawford removed some plates and prepared portions for them both. She then poured wine and handed Lucy a cup. Something felt almost ceremonial in her gestures, and Lucy somehow knew it would be wrong to refuse to drink. The wine smelled of earth and mushrooms and damp fallen leaves, but the taste was bright and fruity and delicious.

"My solicitor believes this will genuine," said Miss Crawford at last. "The one read after your father's death was false, and you were almost certainly cheated out of your inheritance."

Lucy let out her breath very slowly. This information was neither new nor surprising. She had suspected it from the moment she had first seen the new will, but to hear this fact a.s.serted, without reservation, by another persona"it made her feel faint. She set her cup down, struggling to balance it upon the ground.

"There are difficulties, however. Your father's solicitor, a Mr. Clencher, is dead, and so we know of no witnesses who can directly testify on the matter. The fact that the handwriting of this new will more closely resembles that of other doc.u.ments by your father's hand is to your advantage, but it is a case that would certainly circulate in the courts for years, and cost thousands of pounds to bring to a conclusion. The resolution of the matter would likely cost more than the value of the inheritance. I know you must dream of a speedy reversal of this injustice, but the falsification of your father's estate is hidden behind legal barriers that make prohibitive the cost of revelation."

Lucy sat clutching her cup of wine so tight her fingers began to numb. She set it down with a trembling hand, and then wove her fingers together in an endlessly moving pattern. This life she lived was not hers, it was a fabrication, a falsehood, an unnecessary misery. She ought to be living in comfort, in independence, but that true existence was barred to her. This was the end of her hopes, and she would have to marry Mr. Olson. "There is nothing I can do?" she asked.

"You do have a options, though not perhaps the ones you imagine. I understand you hoped you could deliver yourself from your current situation, and that cannot happen with this will. But I believe I can offer you some help, if you will trust me."

Not daring to speak, Lucy only nodded.

"I think," Miss Crawford said, "we must begin by discussing the man who is most probably the architect of this fraud."

Lucy snapped out of her misery, her attention focused and sharp. At the same time, she observed, as if from a dispa.s.sionate position, how much more powerful was anger than misery. "Then you know who cheated me."

"There is a suspicious circ.u.mstance of a gentleman who shared the same solicitor as your father, and who hired this Mr. Clencher for a number of lucrative endeavors around the time of your father's death. These endeavors are poorly doc.u.mented, and by all appearances, Clencher was paid for facilitating the false will and then keeping silent."

"Who was this other man?" Lucy rose without meaning to, hardly knowing she moved at all. She wanted to move, to act, to do. "Is it someone I would have heard of?"

"I'm afraid so," said Miss Crawford. "The man who has cheated you is very likely Mr. William Buckles, your sister's husband."

12.

LUCY HAD CONSIDERED MR. BUCKLES A POSSIBLE SUSPECT, BUT IT had been an abstract sort of speculation, and she had not really believed that her sister's husband, no matter how much she might dislike him, could have taken part in such a mad scheme. But now to hear it said aloud, to be told it was truea"it was more than she could endure. She began to cry, first a stream of silent tears, and then convulsive waves. Her face was in her hands, and without knowing how it had happened, Miss Crawford was holding her, one arm around her shoulder, and Lucy sobbed into the sleeve of her gown.

"Shh," said Miss Crawford. "We shall make everything right."

"No, nothing will be right." To steady herself Lucy took another sip of wine. And then another. Her cup was empty, and Miss Crawford was refilling it. Lucy could begin to feel the effects of the drink. A soft cloud of indifference gathered around her thoughts. What did any of it matter? "I must marry a man I do not like while I know I have been cheated out of what is mine. It is a nightmare, and I can do nothing."

"It is not so," said Miss Crawford. "I beg you to hear me. You have been much abused, but you are not powerless. I will show you that you can have everything. You can have your freedom, your inheritance, justice for those who have harmed you, and whatever else you desire."

Lucy stared at her as though she were mad. "I am not a child to believe that. I have so oft felt that my life is not my own, that I am where I do not belong, doing things I have no business doing, and now I find that it is so. The life I was supposed to have was stolen from me. And not only from me, but from my sister. Would Martha have married Mr. Buckles if she'd inherited her share of my father's fortune? Everything has been taken from us, and the courts provide no recourse. How can you lie to me so?"

"I tell you the truth. You can have what is yours and you can have justice, and you can set everything aright, but first we must speak of what transpired with that mana"Lord Byron." Miss Crawford said his name as though testing out its feel in her mouth.

"What of him?" The last thing Lucy wished to think of was Byron. She hardly felt equal to discussing anything about him, and yet there was something in Miss Crawford's tone, in her manner, that she could not ignore.

"I believe you can help yourself with the same skills you used to help break that curse. I have no talents in that regard myself, only an interest, much as a person might be an indifferent singer or player, and yet also be a great enthusiast of music. Indeed, I came to Nottingham because it was predicted by another cunning woman, a very good one I met along the Scottish border, that I must come here. I was told that in your county I would find someone remarkable, and now I know I came here to find you."

Lucy hardly knew how to respond. Her cup of wine was empty again. She set it down behind her so Miss Crawford would not fill it again. She was beginning to feel things differently, sharper and more dull all at once. She liked it, but at the same time, she hated it. And she noticed things, as if for the first time. The wind blew a comfortably warm breeze across her face. The sun, which had been too bright a moment ago, vanished behind a cloud.

When Mrs. Quince had tried to teach her to read the cards, she had also said that cunning craft was like music or painting or acting. Everyone could do something, and, as in the various arts, only a few were possessed of sufficient talent to do a great deal. There were those for whom all the application in the world could produce only a mediocre result, and then there were those who hardly needed to apply themselves at all to achieve much. However, Mrs. Quince had come to the conclusion that Lucy was singularly ungifted. She called Lucy a clumsy oaf, too foolish and muddleheaded to grasp even the most basic of principles. Mrs. Quince's efforts to help Lucy learn to read cards had marked the end of those early days of friends.h.i.+p and the beginning of the long period of enmity.

"What is it you tell me?" Lucy asked. "That I might become a cunning woman? I know something happened with Lord Byron, and there were more strange events at Mr. Olson's mill. These things seemed real at the time, but then, that feeling fades, doesn't it?"

"Only because we wish it to," said Miss Crawford.

Lucy shook her head. "Do you suggest I might use magic to reclaim my inheritance?"

Miss Crawford nodded. "I believe that if you apply yourself, you will be able to master all aspects of your life. No one will ever command you again."

Lucy wondered what it would be like to no longer fear her uncle or poverty or her future, to have the means to right the injustices of her life. The thought of such power and freedom thrilled her, but it was a childish dream that she must abandon. To let Miss Crawford lead her down this path would only open her heart to despair.

Yet at that moment, Lucy forgot to be cautious. She forgot to protect herself and to be too cynical to believe. She even set aside her fear and rage. The possibilities all seemed so real when Miss Crawford spoke of them. Her eyes were wide and bright and inviting, and Lucy was ready to believe anything she said.

"We have a selective notion of truth. Look at this mound here." Miss Crawford took a sip of her wine. "Do you know what it is?"

"It is a fairy barrow."

"And do you know what a fairy barrow truly is?" asked Miss Crawford.

Lucy looked at the hill, green and bright. A b.u.t.terfly hovered above it, not ten feet from where she sat. "A hill. No more."

"It is more, but also less. That is a story for another time, I think."

Lucy thought of what she had seen at the mill, what she thought she had seen in her uncle's house. "You don't mean to suggest there are actual creatures, do you?"

"In the mound? No."

"Because I saw something," Lucy continued. "I feel so foolish even mentioning this, but you seem to believe in these things, and I have told no one else. At Mr. Olson's mill, there were workers chanting the same strange words Lord Byron spoke. And there were creatures, dozens of them, made of shadow. And there was a man, a strange man, and he seemed made of shadow too. I sound mad. I know I do, and yet I saw all these things."

Miss Crawford rose to her feet. She walked away from Lucy and then back again. Her fingers moved, as though adding sums, and then she wiped her hands on her skirts. "You have already seen so much, and you have no training." She sat down again. "Can it be that you have truly never studied any sort of music?"

"I have read Mr. Francis Barrett's book, The Magus," Lucy said, referring to a popular book that had been published perhaps ten years earlier. After the unpleasant incident with Mrs. Quince, Lucy had sent off to London for a copy, spending money she could hardly afford. She had believed in a moment of weakness that if she could master magic, she would have a friend once more. It had been a silly notion.

Miss Crawford appeared amused. "Have you, now? All of it?"

"Some of it." Lucy felt her cheeks grow warm.

Miss Crawford did not respond to her embarra.s.sment. She was, on a sudden, quite businesslike. "Have you attempted to make any of the talismans therein, or to cast any spells?"

She shook her head. "It all felt silly. Like I would be playing childish games."

Miss Crawford nodded. "And you would have been. Barrett's is a popular book written for a general readers.h.i.+p. His spells are fabricated or extracted from tawdry volumes meant for the ignorant. And such books are always obsessed with love magic, which you must never practice."

"I thought that was nearly the whole of what cunning women do," said Lucy. "Make this one fall in love with that one."

"Those spells are for dabblers with little skill. For someone with talent, it is a vile thing to make someone believe he feels what he does not, to induce him to make commitments that stand even after the effects of the magic fade. I cannot tell you how many unhappy matches, how many ruined hopes and lives, are the result of cunning folk playing with love magic."

Lucy nodded, though she might as well be promising not to fly too close to the sun with her waxen wings.

"If there is anything of value in Barrett," Miss Crawford continued, "it is cribbed from other writers, princ.i.p.ally Agrippa. I daresay these are the sections you chose not to read."

"But I have read of Agrippa. My father had me read some histories of his life. I found them extraordinarily dull, but my father thought him important."

Miss Crawford's expression remained neutral. "Indeed he is. But you will have to know more than his biography. You will have to read and understand Agrippa's thinking, along with the ideas of a number of other writers even more impenetrable. Yes, I see the look upon your face. No one wants to spend her days and nights buried in dusty old tomes, especially those that are designed to confound, confuse, and defeat the reader, but there can be no true greatness without sacrifice. And, let me a.s.sure you, before I ask you to read anything too dull, you will have seen things, done things that will make you hungry to read the most tedious books in the world if they will advance your craft. Let me give you something."

Miss Crawford reached into her picnic basket and removed a little book, a duodecimo, and put it in Lucy's hand. It was hardly bigger than her palm, though it was heavy. It smelled of old leather and mold, and all at once it reminded her of her father. How at home she felt with Miss Crawford. A warmth spread over her, for here was another great protector, like her father had been, who loved her books. The thought of it made her feel safe, and for the first time in many years, it made her feel like she was somewhere she belonged.

"Are you well?" Miss Crawford asked her. "You have gone quite pale."

"I am well," said Lucy, who felt her eyes beginning to moisten. "It is just that I suddenly felta"I know this will sound odda"but I felt as though, for a moment, I was living my own life."

"I understand youa"more than you can know." She took Lucy's hand and squeezed it. They sat like that for a moment until Miss Crawford let go and invited Lucy to examine the book.

The first fifty or sixty pages contained densely written arguments about magical theorya"Lucy could see that from the most casual of glancesa"but the rest of it was nothing more than various charts. Here were chessboards filled with letters, sometimes English, sometimes Greek, sometimes Hebrew. Some stood alone, some of the squares were embedded within circles, and these circles contained writing as well.

"You may recognize this sort of thing from Barrett," Miss Crawford said. "These are charms and talismans collected from major works on magic. Many of the charms included in those books are false, deliberately false, to deceive dabblers. There has never been a book of spells that was not at least three-quarters nonsense. In that book you hold, one of the better ones I could obtain, there are perhaps three hundred charms, and it may be that forty are genuine. Before you begin to read through material you will find challenging, why don't you attempt to discover which charms are real and make some of them work?"

Lucy examined the book. As she had when looking at the charms in The Magus, she felt vaguely silly, but at the same time she could not help but respond to Miss Crawford's gravity, and she held the book as though it were a piece of delicate and rare china. On the pages, the charms had labels indicating what they did, and most involved some sort of manipulation of another person. To make another cleave to you in loyalty. To drive another from your presence. To inspire feelings of love in another. Many required no other work than to copy out the charm and to hide it in the clothes or things or upon the person of the subject. Others required a small ritual or manipulation of objects.

"How will I know which are genuine?"

Miss Crawford merely said, "You must determine that for yourself."

"Must I choose now?" she asked, feeling slightly panicked and inadequate.

Miss Crawford laughed and her eyes appeared to turn darker, and then grow pale once more, like the moon appearing from, and disappearing behind, clouds. "No, I shall not make you perform for me, Miss Derrick. You take the book as a gift. Do not object. It is not rare."

Lucy hardly knew what to say, but she clutched the book to her chest. She wanted to bask in this new sensation of feeling special and important and of being someone of whom great things were expected. She had learned that very afternoon that she and her sister had been cheated out of their father's money, that their liberty had been stolen from them, and yet this awful knowledge was somehow mitigated by what Miss Crawford promised. This very notion of magic was foolish, but Lucy could hardly dismiss what she had seen. It was silly, she knew that, and yet she also knew it was real and suddenly all set out before her. With Miss Crawford, her friend, to guide her, soon everything would be different.

13.

THINGS DID NOT HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE. LUCY COULD FIND FEW enough quiet hours to take her book out of its secret hiding place and look it over, and perhaps she did not want to find the time. The mere thought of Miss Crawford's pale and pretty face was enough to fill Lucy with a kind of unrestrained happiness, but other times she would push the image away, not daring to hope that her life could be something more than what it was.

In the end, it was a feeling of responsibility toward Miss Crawford that drove Lucy forward. If that lady called upon her and asked how she had done, Lucy wanted to be able to report success, or, at the very least, report an honest and honorable failure. When she did examine the talismans, however, she found herself growing quickly frustrated. They all appeared equally plausible or implausible. They were mostly squares, subdivided into smaller squares, in which were written letters of Roman, Greek, or Hebrew, and occasionally some more mysterious runic symbols. Outside a square was often more writing, sometimes within a circle that surrounded the square. Many of the talismans were merely to be worn about the neck or placed upon the person one wished to affect. Others required more elaborate executiona"combining the charm with particular plants or actions or items. She practiced copying them out, just to be sure that her hand could replicate the images, though she never produced a complete talisman, and always destroyed what she had made.

She sat in the one comfortable chair in her room, the light to her back, flipping through the pages for perhaps the fifth or sixth time, unable to see how she could determine a true talisman from a false. They were all different, all had their own characteristics, and nothing made some stand out and some fade away. Each was as opaque in its meaning as the next.

Perhaps because she was tired and not troubling herself with her feelings of hope or her unwillingness to feel hope, Lucy was able to clear her mind. She began to drift away from herself, something like the act of quieting herself she had learned, so many years ago, from Mrs. Quince. So it was in this half-quieted state that she turned the pages until she stopped hard. Her heart felt as though it would explode in her chest, for the charm upon which she gazed stood out as differenta"as powerful, as vibrant, as unmistakable. The charm upon which she looked was magic.

It was like an image in a book of trompe l'oeil etchings she had once leafed through with her sisters. These were pictures that, when looked at in a particular way, or with a particular disposition, would reveal a second picture hidden within. The means of uncovering these hidden images was beyond her ability to explain. When her sister Martha had begged Lucy to show her how to see it, Lucy could think of no way to instruct her. She could only say that Martha must look in different ways until she found it.

Now Lucy rapidly flipped through the volume, seeing the talismans for what they were, seeing which charms jumped off the page announcing their efficacy, and which lay flat and lifeless. She heard herself laugh aloud as she found one, and then she snapped the book shut and hugged it to her chest. What Miss Crawford said was true. And if there was magic, if it was real and Lucy could do it, what did it mean for her life?

In the end there were fewer true spells than Miss Crawford had said, only thirty-six. Many of these were to coerce love or loyalty or compliancea"a few were so vile, Lucy could not imagine attempting to use them. There were a handful that would be worth trying, if only to see if the charms could be used effectively. Now Lucy wanted only an opportunity to try one, and so she determined to keep the book close at hand, waiting for the proper situation to present itself.

Some days later, the Nottingham a.s.sembly was upon her. Uncle Lowell did not wish to be put to the expense of preparing for an a.s.sembly when Lucy had already found a husband, but it was Mrs. Quince who argued for Lucy's attendance. Mr. Olson would be there, and he'd written to say he wished to dance with Lucy. Mrs. Quince observed that it would be unwise to allow so desired a bachelor to present himself before so many young ladies without Lucy present to maintain her claim. This argument won the day, and Uncle Lowell consented that Lucy might have a new ribbon for her hat, though the extravagance of this gift pained him immensely.

Lucy had no wish to go. She once loved the monthly a.s.semblies, where she could see her friends and make idle chatter and pretend, for a few hours, to be happy. Now she had too much upon her mind, but as she had not the option to stay home, she would make the best of it.

The a.s.sembly hall on Low Pavement, but a short walk from Uncle Lowell's house, was a handsome building, inside and out, and very much grander than fas.h.i.+onable life in Nottingham, such as it was, required. Lucy did not mind, however, for it was bright and open and agreeable, and it always lightened her mood to be in a place so unlike her uncle's house. When she walked into the rooma"her entry was slightly delayed by a row concerning an attorney's clerk who attempted to gain entry to the hall, despite the rules forbidding such drudges from attendinga"Lucy was delighted to hear a competent trio of musicians were in the middle of a sprightly tune that had been enormously popular that year. Mrs. Quince inspected the people about her, making certain there were no conspicuous absences or presences worthy of gossip, and when she had exhausted such comments as she could muster, she retired with the other matrons to the card room. She would have remained with the younger people to keep an eye upon Lucy, but to do so would have been considered ill-mannered, and would have brought unwanted scrutiny on Lucy when it was to Mrs. Quince's advantage that Lucy look well.

Taking advantage of her freedom, Lucy soon found her little group of acquaintancesa"all of about her age, unmarried, and though she liked most of them well enough, none was a particular friend without whom she could not endure. Her position in Nottingham had always been one of a young lady of no prospects, and this had made particular friends.h.i.+ps difficult. Lucy managed as best she could with these ladies, for they approximated true friends well enough in situations such as these, when necessity required such an approximation.

This little group was led, with unanimous and unspoken consent, by a young lady called Norah Gilley, slightly taller than Lucy, thinner, with a narrow face, a sharp nose pointed down, and an unusually long mouth designed for sneering. Though not traditionally pretty, Norah had one of those plastic sort of faces that, had her disposition been sweet, her face must have seemed so too. She was, however, of a rather acidic nature. She was a lover of gossip, of finding fault, of being the first and the most eager to remark caustically upon another's defect. As a result, her countenance had a slightly unseemly cast, less ugly than alarmingly sensuous. She was a young lady whom gentlemen often wished to know, to dance with, to take to coffeehouses. Norah believed this must mean her destined to receive a very favorable offer of marriage, but Lucy understood the world well enough to know she misinterpreted attentions.

Norah stood now in the midst of the other girls, but also present was her father, a gentleman of about sixty years of age, with closely cut, thick white hair, the weathered remnants of a handsome face, and eyes so blue they almost astonished Lucy the first time she'd seen them. Mr. Gilley was an unusual sort of man for his age, because he enjoyed the company of people far younger than he, including his daughter and her friends.

Lucy's father had always made a great show of finding his daughters generally silly, and their friends even more so. In his study, however, when they talked of botany or astronomy or he reviewed her Latin, Papa became patient, understanding, sympathetic, and very interested in what Lucy had to say. Mr. Gilley, Lucy imagined, must be the oppositea"pretending in public to find everyone of interest, whereas, she suspected, he scorned them all in private.

Now Mr. Gilley stood with his daughter and a dozen or so young ladies of her age, all of whom were laughing at a witty comment he'd made. Fans were out, covering mouths, and then, all at once, fluttering like a cloud of startled b.u.t.terflies. Several of these young ladies, Lucy knew, had secret fancies for Mr. Gilleya"a safe diversion, since Mrs. Gilley, while less social, was very much alive. For her part, Lucy had considered fancying the gentleman once or twice, if only as a means to relieve her boredom, but she could never quite summon the will. Mr. Gilley enjoyed the attentions of young ladies too much, and that ruined the effect.

Seeing her approach, he bowed deeply to her. "It is Miss Derrick," he said. "I had hoped to have the pleasure of greeting you here tonight. I should not have come out otherwise, for fear of catching cold. The weather is not yet sufficiently warm for me to feel entirely comfortable." According to local lore, Mr. Gilley had been deeply affected when, as a youth, he'd witnessed his older brother wake one morning with a slight cold and then die before noon. He now avoided cold weather, damp weather, and even cloudy days whenever he could. "An old man such as myself must take precautions."

Several of the young ladies protested that he was not so very old at all, and he raised his hand, waving away their objections, though it was impossible not to see how he relished them. That Lucy did not protest was not lost on him. He studied her very closely and attempted a different approach. "Certainly you are a sight worth making a man risk his health for, even a very old man such as myself."

Lucy wore a gown of ivory with gold French work in the front. It was not her best gown, for she had not wished to wear her best for this occasion, but she believed it did her no great disservice. Certainly the way Mr. Gilley looked at her suggested as much.

"We have the most wonderful news," said Norah, attempting to reestablish herself at the center of things. "One of the undersecretaries of the navy has died!"

"I congratulate you," said Lucy, who did not see how this could be good news, but she knew an opportunity for irony when one came along.

The other ladies giggled, and Norah affected appearing cross. "You goose. My father is to take his place. We are to remove to London within the month."

This truly was a reason for Norah to rejoice. Lucy had never been to London, had never been presented at courta"which Norah had, of coursea"and a removal to London was what all country girls dreamed of. Now Mr. Gilley had received the patronage that he had long sought, and he was elevating his daughter along with him.

As was natural for any young lady, Lucy resented Norah's good fortune, but she knew it was small of her, and she knew what was proper. She hugged Norah and wished her joy and told her what her friend most wanted to heara"that she, Lucy, was green with envy.

"You will visit us, of course," said Mr. Gilley with the magnanimity befitting the station he would soon inhabit. "The city air is thick with coal in the winter months, and that is very dangerous to the lungs, but in life we must take risks if we wish to experience pleasures."

"Of course," said Sarah Nolin, one of the other girls. "We all must visit."

Mr. Gilley turned his full attention to Lucy, gazing at her with those incongruously youthful eyes. "I know Norah would welcome your company most particularly, Miss Derrick. Now, ladies, I know better than to impose myself upon you at any length. You will excuse me as I shall go sit nearer to the fire to warm my lungs."