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Authors: Caroline Stevermer

BOOK: A Scholar of Magics
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“You ate your share of the sandwiches quickly enough,” snapped Polydore.
“Sandwiches we brought ourselves,” Cadwal reminded him. “That's all we can eat here. Anything else would be dangerous.”
“Through
le Forêt Salvage
with Baden-Powell himself,” said Polydore gloomily. “Just my luck.”
Lambert attempted to bring them back to the point. “Look, if you won't tell me why you think Fell is here, at least tell me what you know about the layout of this place.”
Cadwal produced a battered map. It was a proper hiking map with a linen backing, worn to the point of utter limpness. Lambert spared a moment's wistful regret for one of the Minotaur's acetylene lamps, and then lit a match.
The grounds of St. Hubert's priory were marked near the frayed edge of the eastern boundary of the map. Neither the dimensions of the markings nor the contours of the topographic lines corresponded to the landscape Lambert had walked through. The match went out and he folded up the map. It wasn't worth wasting a second match on. “Something's wrong here. The map is old. Things must have changed since the area was surveyed.”
“Look around you,” said Cadwal. “Some of these trees have been here since Magna Carta.”
“Longer than that,” said Polydore. “Something's wrong, that's certain. Only it's not the map that's off. It's this place. On Saxton's map, drawn in the sixteenth century, this place isn't called St. Hubert's at all. It's called Comus Nymet. Nymet comes from
nemeton
, the old word for a holy grove. Does that give you an idea of how long this wood may have been here?”
“He means a grove holy to druids,” Cadwal added.
“Druids?” Lambert suspected he was subject to an elaborate leg-pull. He knew students of Glasscastle took their entertainment in some esoteric forms. Hoaxing the American had to be a possibility.
“This place was a focal point for local legends until the Egerton family enclosed it toward the end of the seventeenth century. Before that, there were all kinds of stories.” Cadwal looked thoughtful but said nothing more.
“Stories about druids?” Lambert asked.
“No druids. Not for the last eighteen centuries or so,” Polydore conceded. “But lots of complaints of demonic possession, angelic visitation, things of that nature. Stolen livestock,” he added after a moment's further consideration. “Indecent exposure. Public drunkenness.” He trailed off.
“In short,
le Forêt Sauvage
,” said Cadwal crossly. “And here we are in the middle of it. No fire, no shelter, and nothing to eat. You know, I'm not terribly keen on spending another night in this place.”
“It isn't my favorite milieu either.” Polydore turned to Lambert. “The question is, what are we to do about it?”
“You haven't gone north yet, have you?” Lambert considered showing them his useless compass but left it in his pocket. “I came that way. I think.”
Cadwal and Polydore became distinctly uneasy. “How did you know that?” Cadwal asked.
“I heard you talking about it,” answered Lambert. “Not very stealthy, are you?”
“We weren't attempting stealth,” said Cadwal stiffly.
“Do you think we ought to?” Polydore seemed to find the idea intriguing.
“You've been here longer than I have.” Lambert knew he sounded sarcastic but he couldn't help it. “What do you think?”
“We'll go north,” said Cadwal. “We'll go the way you came in.”
“I climbed over the wall. The two of you should be able to manage it.”
“We'll go for help,” said Polydore.
From the expression on Cadwal's face, Lambert guessed that Polydore would have his work cut out for him persuading Cadwal to do anything but go straight back to Glasscastle, where they belonged. “If you do, head for Ludlow Castle and tell the Earl I sent you. Maybe you can tell him what makes you so sure Fell is here. What kind of place is this
Forêt Sauvage,
anyway?”
“There's some kind of misdirection spell on this wood,” said Polydore, “but we can't determine what sort. Curious, that, because it's one of Cadwal's specialties, detecting and analyzing spells.”
“We can both tell there is one,” Cadwal volunteered, “but that's all we can be sure of. It's most annoying.”
“We've been wandering around on the outskirts of whatever it is ever since we got here. We did a series of location spells before we crossed the wall. We were positive we had a fix on Mr. Fell's presence here before we came in. By chance, a hat of his came into our possession a few months ago. It was a hat he felt strongly about, and we were able to work that link into a most effective finding spell.” Even in the dark, Polydore's pride was clear. “As soon as we were in the wood, however, all our spells failed. We have no idea where he is now. Nor can we be quite certain where we are. That's the one problem with a good, efficient form of magic. When it fails, it leaves you helpless.”
“You don't need magic to know where you are.” Lambert looked up through the beech leaves toward the darkening sky. “Not while there are stars up there.”
“Stars aren't all that's up there,” said Cadwal. “It was overcast last night.”
“Cloudy again tonight, from the look of it,” said Lambert. “I don't think it will rain, though.”
Polydore asked Cadwal, “Shall we give north a try?”
“Why not. If you're sure it's this way,” Cadwal replied.
To Lambert, Polydore said, “You could come along with us and make sure we don't get lost. We could probably use your help to get back over the wall too.”
“I'm not ready to leave yet.”
“Please yourself,” said Cadwal. “Just don't eat anything while you're here unless you brought it with you. The literature on the subject is quite specific.” He followed Polydore out of the clearing and the pair of them trudged slowly out of earshot, chatting incessantly.
Lambert started gathering downed branches for firewood. It didn't suit him to go blundering around in the dark. He would build a campfire. That would do for a start. Then he'd see what came to him out of the wild wood.
 
T
he fire cheered Lambert considerably. He'd taken care to keep it a small one, just big enough to boil a kettle. Too bad he didn't have a kettle, nor much of anything else.
Lambert spent most of his time at a distance from the fire, his back to the light, watching the darkness. There wasn't much to see. He listened. The rustle of the leaves far overhead and the rustle of the fire behind him fit together in a way that calmed him.
Lambert thought of the bench in the garden outside Wearyall. The music of the chant went on there still. It existed, even if he had strayed too far to hear it.
Could Jane hear the rustle of leaves, where she was? Could Fell?
Belatedly, it occurred to Lambert that now he was missing too. He was glad Amy didn't know it. It wouldn't calm her Lucia di Lammermoor frame of mind any. But maybe everything was all right, with Jane, with Fell, and with Robert Brailsford. Maybe none of them felt any more lost than he did, waiting in the dark. Maybe all three disappearances had as logical an explanation as his own.
Lambert spared a thought for Upton. What would that wise man have made of all this? Ivory spindles and motor cars and a lunatic asylum. Useless to speculate, Lambert decided. A wise man would never find himself trespassing on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.
After midnight, something approached from the west. For a moment, Lambert thought it might be Cadwal and Polydore returning. It wasn't. It was only a deer. There was a moment when the light steps paused, as if uncertain whether to approach or flee, but the moment passed, the steps moved on, and Lambert was alone again in the rustling forest.
Lambert remembered Cadwal's warning about the perils of the forest. He hoped Cadwal and Polydore had found their way to safety. Reinforcements would be useful. In the meantime, he was glad to be alone. With Cadwal and Polydore along, he was convinced there would have been regular debates on the nature of stealth, the need for it, and the lack thereof.
It was late summer, so the nights were still shorter than the days. It was not long before the darkness began the shift toward dawn. Cadwal and Polydore had not returned. Lambert could only hope they hadn't lost themselves again. Lambert let the fire go out. Back to a beech tree, he sat, half dozing, and waited. Whatever he encountered on his own walk through the woods, Lambert wanted light enough to see it by.
“Not that Nepenthes which the wife of Thone
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena
Is of such power to stir up joy as this,
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.”
N
ight yielded at last. Lambert was glad to see it go. He yawned, stretched until every bruise protested, brushed the worst of the twigs and grass from his clothing, and wished hard for breakfast. Even a cup of tea would have tasted good. His forehead still felt tender but the pain of the sting was gone unless he prodded it, an act of foolishness from which, after the first gingerly exploration, he refrained. The few aches that lingered from his encounter with Midsummer Green and the man in the bowler hat had been submerged completely by the discomfort of a night spent in the open.
When full dawn came, Lambert found it unsettling. The sun rose in the east, no doubt about that, but the rising light showed him his sense of direction had been off. His idea of east was ninety degrees away, so that what he'd considered to be east was really south. Internally realigning his sense of the world with a mental somersault, Lambert made himself accept that what he'd considered to be north had been east.
Usually confident in his own grasp of the world around him, Lambert was shaken by the experience. If his internal compass could be so far off, what about his sense of time and distance? Nothing could be taken for granted in this place.
Lambert took extra care to orient himself before setting forth from his beech tree. His plan was to quarter the wood, searching it systematically. Before he'd gone a single step, the angle of the morning light brought him another revelation.
The dew on the grass in the clearing gleamed silver. But it didn't gleam everywhere. There were two strips, parallel paths each as wide as his palm, where the grass had been pressed down by the passage of something heavy. The distance between the parallel paths was the distance between the wheels of a carriage. After careful inspection, Lambert decided that the marks were no mere cart track. What had passed through that clearing had been far heavier. No road in, no road out, but all the same, a motor car had been driven past.
Lambert tracked the marks through the wet grass and into the trees. It must have been hard for whoever had driven the motor car to thread a route among the trees. Lambert had to cast back and forth occasionally to pick up the trail. As he searched, he recognized blue-eyed grass, the folded-heart trefoil of wood sorrel with its reddish stems, and the straplike leaves of bluebells—all that remained once they had flowered. Did snowdrops blossom here, as they did at Glasscastle, a remnant left by the monks who had built the place originally? If monks had built the place. Had there been something there first, something even older?
Lambert paused when he reached a patch of mud that held
a clear impression of a tire track. He could not be sure he'd been that way on his fruitless exploration the day before, but he thought he had. He remembered no mud of any kind, nor any such track. And such a track. Hours of wrestling with a jack had brought him nose to nose with that particular pattern of tread three days before.
Lambert followed the traces of the motor car into another clearing. There he found the Minotaur, with its sheet of canvas still lashed taut over Jane's luggage, drawn up on a sweep of lawn bordered by beech trees. Centered in that lawn was a house the size of the Metropolitan Opera House. Lambert backtracked into the trees to take a long look at the place before he decided on his next move.
St. Hubert's was small in comparison to the hospitals Lambert had seen in London, but it loomed large in its clearing. Three stories high on a foundation that added another half story, it stretched over one hundred feet across the broad frontage, as silent and secure as if it had been locked up tight for years.
Though it was still early morning, Lambert was surprised by the desolate air of the place. He had expected some sign of occupation. Even the mad require breakfast. Lambert thought wistfully of the contents of Jane's picnic basket, probably still under the canvas with the rest of the luggage. They'd finished all the sandwiches, but there had been some stem ginger cake left.
Lambert worked his unobtrusive way around the looming pile of St. Hubert's, staying out of sight. He took his time and it was midmorning before he came back to his starting point, none the wiser about the best way into the building. In
all that time, he had seen no one. It disturbed him, the quiet of the place. Yet it was not utterly quiet. There was birdsong and occasionally the soft rustle of the trees. But nothing from the outer world intruded—no train whistle, no cattle flowing, not so much as the bleat of a sheep. It bothered Lambert considerably.
When another half hour or so had passed, Lambert gave up hope of any sudden inspiration. There was simply no good way to enter St. Hubert's undiscovered. There was no bad way. There was just one way. Lambert would have to use the front door.
With great reluctance, Lambert left the tree he'd been sheltering behind and crossed the clearing. There were four broad stone steps before the door and he climbed them silently to try the latch. Locked. No surprise there.
Lambert raised his hand to knock at the rough-hewn oak but before he had a chance to try his knuckles, the door opened. Morning light raked in over Lambert's shoulder to reveal a portion of the dim interior. Adam Voysey stepped aside to usher Lambert into an empty entrance hall.
“Welcome to Arcadia, Samuel. I'd begun to think you weren't coming.” Voysey beamed at Lambert.
“Voysey.” Lambert stared across the threshold. “What are you doing here?”
Voysey beckoned him in. “Come in, come in. Come in, you must be famished. I've been watching you for hours, all admiration. You really are cautious, aren't you? Excellent quality, discretion, but you can't lurk in the shrubbery forever. Come in and sit down. I was just about to have elevenses.”
Lambert considered his reluctance to obey Voysey and cross the threshold. It wasn't as if he hadn't just spent hours planning how best to enter the place. He'd learned all he could from observation. He needed to get inside. “Thanks.” Lambert followed Voysey in. “Why aren't you at Glasscastle?”
The entrance hall was stark, spotless, and utterly unfurnished. It was cooler even than the morning outdoors. Drafts stirred across the empty floor like cold hands clutching at Lambert's ankles.
“Just at the moment, I'm here for the Bombay toast.” Voysey led the way down the entrance hall and into a small room that seemed to be doubling as both dining room and study. “I can't remember. Do you eat anchovies?” Voysey began folding up the map that covered the table in the center of the room. Within moments, all papers had been cleared from the table to a sideboard.
“Not really. Anchovies are what put me off patum peperium.” Lambert took the chair he was offered. “They smell like something you'd use to doctor a sick cat.” To his unease, he found himself disoriented again. He thought the cluttered little dining room was on the east side of the house but he couldn't be sure. The matter was of no importance in itself, but his continued failure to orient himself bothered him. “What are you doing here?”
“No anchovies, then. Excuse me, I'll just have a word with the cook. No reason you shouldn't have cheese on toast instead.” Voysey left through another door.
Even with daylight to help him, Lambert couldn't place himself accurately. The faded curtains at the windows smothered most of the light as well as all of the view. If Voysey
had been watching Lambert's approach, it hadn't been from the windows in this room.
The sideboard looked as if it had been stacked with books long before Voysey had moved his papers there. In the teetering pile, some of the papers were edging perilously outward. Lambert recognized among them a familiar dog-eared corner. He tilted his head for a closer look. The corner belonged to the hastily folded plans of the Agincourt device he'd found in Nicholas Fell's study and given to Robert Brailsford. Lambert felt the back of his neck prickle as it had when he'd realized his compass no longer worked. It was a bad feeling. Familiarity only made it worse. With a deft tug he removed the plans from the stack and pocketed them. He gave the remaining papers and books a stern look. None of them cascaded to the floor.
Soundlessly, the door opened and Voysey was back. “Everything's fine. Elevenses will be here soon.”
Somewhere not far away, a dog howled. Lambert cocked his head to listen. It sounded as if it came from upstairs. It sounded like a substantial dog. Possibly even a wolf.
Voysey smiled at Lambert's reaction to the howl. “Cook has a dog. A hound, really. I can't say I blame her. The place is rather remote. It was chosen expressly for its secluded location.”
“So you're here eating Bombay toast in the middle of nowhere,” prompted Lambert. The plans seemed to burn cold in his pocket, proof that Robert Brailsford had been here before him. “What brings you here?”
“My dear Samuel, I would go to almost any length for Bombay toast if it were correctly prepared.”
“What are you doing here?”
Voysey sobered. “You'll notice I haven't asked you that, dear boy. I'm glad to see you. We could use your help. You've solved the puzzle. That will persuade my colleagues that you're worthy to join us.”
The service door opened and a woman dressed as a cook brought in a tray. She served them with mute efficiency and left. There was Bombay toast for Voysey, cheese on toast for Lambert, and the perennial, the inevitable, the ubiquitous pot of tea.
Lambert's stomach rumbled at the mere sight of the cheese on toast. He reached for a fork. He'd never seen cheese on toast look better. The dark crustiness of the grilled cheese hinted at the molten texture within. He could imagine without effort the mixed delights of the first bite, crisp yet tender, sharp yet rich. The aroma made his mouth water.
This cheese on toast looked the way cheese on toast would look if it were served in heaven. It dawned on Lambert that there was more to his fascination with the plate before him than mere hunger could explain. He remembered Cadwal's warning and put the fork back.
Lambert's stomach protested again. He steeled himself to ignore the dish. Cautiously, he tried another question. “Why did you call me in for target practice after the Agincourt Project had concluded?”
Voysey's expression as he put down his fork was blissful. “Just the right amount of curry powder. Cook really understands these matters. Aren't you even going to taste your cheese on toast?”
“Aren't you going to answer even one of my questions?” Lambert asked.
“Very well.” Voysey was affable. “I was testing you. To see if your interest in the project was genuine. It is. Your help with the project to that point had been invaluable. Now I am in a position to expand the role you may play.”
“The Agincourt Project is finished,” Lambert reminded him. He remembered Stowe. “Unless you are pursuing an ancillary line of thought.”
“Your own words, Samuel?” The suggestion seemed to amuse Voysey. “In fact, I am. One in which I hope to enlist your aid on a more theoretical level. Now, you haven't touched your tea and I can guess why not. I know something that tastes far better with cheese on toast.” Voysey rang for the cook. When she appeared, he said, “A pint of ale for my friend Sam, if you please.” To Lambert he added, “No shortage of cakes
or
ale with Cook, I'm pleased to report.”
When the pint of ale was put before him, Lambert found it a compelling sight. It was in an ordinary pint glass, but as it caught the light the brown ale glowed a deep reddish gold. Lambert knew without thinking that the glass would be cool to his touch, but just cellar cool, no more than that. Not too cold. It wouldn't do to kill the flavor. He even knew how the thin foam would feel against his lip as he took the first taste, a fleeting kiss before the tingle of the ale itself.
With difficulty, Lambert looked away from the glass and kept his eyes determinedly on Voysey. “No, thank you.”
“What may I offer you instead?” Voysey's courtesy was unimpaired. His patience, apparently, was unending.
“Nothing, thank you.” Lambert's stomach rumbled yet
again, a protest which gave his words the lie. Lambert ignored it. “I'd rather hear your explanation in full.”
“How persistent you are.” Voysey was benevolence itself. Lambert had never seen him so at ease, so genial. “You know the purpose of the Agincourt Project is to create a weapon. Our enemies build armies and navies. We match them. But armies and navies have been the rule for centuries. There is no winning that kind of footrace. The finish line is not a fixed points.” Voysey allowed himself a few more bites of his meal. “We require a new kind of weapon.”
“Won't you still need an army or a navy to use it, whatever it is?” Lambert asked. “Some of those brave men you mentioned when we were last at Egerton House?”
“For the protection of the empire, we seek an advance upon the outworn tools of war.” Voysey grew earnest. “An evolutionary advance, if you will. We seek a weapon that will aid the empire as simply and dramatically as the longbow aided our side at Crecy and Agincourt. My task—our task, rather—was to choose the most suitable of the designs suggested, to verify every aspect of the theory involved in the magic behind it, to build a prototype, and to test it until it will work as intended without fail. You were recruited to help with stage three of the project. Now stage three is finished. We arrive at stage four. The prototype has been built and we are testing it here.”

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