The Gates of Sleep (39 page)

“Mrs. Langtry is a noted beauty, Madam. I should not
presume to think that I could follow her example.” She applied herself to
her breakfast plate, grateful that there was very little that Madam’s
orders could do to ruin breakfast foods—and that, by its nature, breakfast
was a meal in which there were no courses as such to be removed. So with Peter
attentively—but quietly—seeing to her plate, she was actually
enjoying her meal.

Except for the tea, which was, as always with Madam,
scarcely more than colored water.

“I understand that you are planning to visit the
vicar this afternoon? Something about a Bible-study class?” Madam
continued, with a slight, but very superior, smile. “You must take care
that you are not labeled as a bluestocking.”

“There can be nothing improper about taking comfort
in religion,” Marina retorted, hoping to sound just the tiniest bit
stuffy and offended. Reggie thought she wasn’t looking, and rolled his
eyes. Madam’s mouth twitched slightly.

“Not at all, my dear.” Madam chided. “It
may not be
improper,
but it is—” she hesitated “—boring.”

“And of course, one shouldn’t be boring,”
Reggie said solemnly, though there was no doubt in Marina’s mind that he
was laughing at her behind his mask. “I’m afraid it is an
unpardonable social crime.”

“Oh.” She did her best to appear chastened, and
noted the satisfaction on both their faces. “Then I shan’t mention
it to anyone. It won’t matter in the village.”

“The village matters very little,” Madam
pronounced. “But I believe your time would be better spent in some other
pursuit.”

Marina contrived a mulish expression, and Arachne sighed.
Reggie didn’t even bother to hide his amusement.

“You’re going to turn into a laughingstock,
cuz,” he said. “People will snicker at you behind your back, call
you ‘the little nun’ and never invite you to parties. Turn it into
a Shakespeare class instead—or a poetry society. Try and instill some
culture into these bumpkins. People might think you’re mad, but at least
they won’t call you a bore.”

She set her chin to look as stubborn as possible. “Perhaps
I shall,” she said.

Reggie laughed. Madam hid a smile.

Marina had to pretend to be very interested in her plate in
order to hide her own triumph. Madam hadn’t forbidden her to go to this “Bible
study class” and that was all that was important. Let Reggie laugh at
her; the more that he thought she was a bore, the less time he’d spend
with her.

“No riding off this morning, though, cuz,”
Reggie reminded her, Wagging a finger at her. “Dancing lessons. You’re
shockingly behind. You
might
be invited to parties even if you’re
a bluestocking as long as you can dance.”

She escaped with a sigh of gratitude after luncheon, and
claimed Beau.

The closer she got to the village, the lighter her heart
became. When she was within sight of the vicarage, she felt—

Almost normal.
Being dragged away from Blackbird
Cottage
hadn’t
been the end of the world. Madam was a
tyrant—and a terrible snob—but there were advantages to being under
her care.

The wardrobe, for one. She had never had so many fashionable
gowns. Granted, they were all in black, but still—and being all in black,
it would be a fine excuse next year, when her year of deep mourning was over,
to order another entire wardrobe!

Then there were the half-promises of going to London. The
theater—the music—and the amusements of society. The things she had
read about in the social pages of the Times and wished she could attend them
herself.

And there was the matter of a coming-out ball. She would
never
have had a coming-out ball with Margherita—for one thing, their village
wasn’t exactly the sort of place where one held coming-out parties, and
for another, the Tarrants weren’t the sort of people who held them. But
given Madam’s near-worship of society, there was no way that the
Chambertens would
not
hold a coming-out ball for their ward. If they
didn’t, it would look very strange indeed. They would probably put it off
until next year, rather than this, because of her mourning, but she would
need
that long to get used to all of the clothing and the manners, not to mention
learning the dances.

A coming-out ball! Just like all the ones she had read
about! The prospect was almost enough to make up for everything else.

As for the everything else—things were by far and
away not as wretched as they had first seemed. Now that she had a safe place
away from Oakhurst where she could work magic, she
could
send a
message to Elizabeth and to Sebastian, Margherita, and Thomas. She didn’t
need a stamp; all she needed was time and energy.

Now that she knew that she
could
contact them, the
frantic feeling the fear that she’d been completely uprooted, was fading.
This was more like—well, rather like being away at school, with a
horribly strict headmistress. And the same wretched food that all the books
like
Jane Eyre
described! But there were none of the other privations,
and if Jane could survive her school, surely Marina could sort this experience
out without immediate help.

Besides, I’ve been here for weeks now, and there
hasn’t been a single Undine or Sylph that has tried to speak to me
—so
they must be certain I’m all right.
Even if the others couldn’t
raise Air or Water Elementals to send to her, Elizabeth certainly could.
Perhaps they had scryed, discovered she was all right, and decided to wait for
her to contact them.

But what if they hadn’t? What if they thought she had
forgotten them once she had some inkling of the social position she held, the
wealth she would eventually command? What if they thought she was ashamed of
them? Madam seemed to think she
should
be, after all—

—
perhaps I can ask the doctor or the vicar to
help me. After all, once I make them understand my situation, we could use
letters, as I planned. They can send me postage.
Oh, what a ridiculous
position she was in! A wardrobe worth hundreds of pounds, and she hadn’t
a penny for a stamp! Looking forward to a coming-out ball, yet so strictly
confined she might as well be in a convent!

Riding about on the back of a high-bred hunter, and
knowing that if I took him farther than the village, I’d be so close-confined
that a convent would be preferable.

She shook the mood off; there was work to be done.

There would be no leaving Beau tied up at the gate today,
not since she was planning on spending at least two hours working on Ellen.
Instead, she brought him around to the rear of the vicarage where there was a
little shed that held the moor pony that the vicar hitched to a cart to do his
errands. There was a second stall with just enough space in there for Beau as
well, although she had to take his tack off him outside, since there wasn’t
enough room for her in the stall too. Beau gave her an incredulous look as she
led him in, as if to object. Strongly. She couldn’t understand animals
the way Uncle Thomas could, but she could almost hear him speaking.
“You
intend for me to lodge
here?
Me? A hunter of impeccable bloodline?
Next to
that?”

“Don’t be as much of a snob as Madam,”
she told him severely.

He heaved a huge sigh, and suffered himself to be led into
the stall and offered hay. It was perfectly good hay, as good as he’d get
in his own stall at Oakhurst, but he sniffed it with deep suspicion.

“Now don’t be tiresome,” she scolded, and
shut the half-door on him. “If you can’t learn to enjoy the company
of ordinary folk, I leave you to the Odious Reggie’s good graces from now
on, and we’ll see whom you prefer!”

She left him sighing over his hay, and went around to the
front of the vicarage to tap on the door.

To her immense surprise, it was Dr. Pike who opened the
door of the vicarage at her second knock. “Good gad!” she blurted. “What
are you doing here?”

He laughed, looking much more amiable than he had at the
sanitarium, and held the door open. “That’s a fine greeting! Where
else should I be but here at the appointed time?”

She blushed, then got annoyed with herself. Who was this
fellow, that he made the color rise in her cheeks so often? But it was a rude
thing to say.

I really have to be more careful. Having to curb my
tongue around Madam is making things break out when I’m around anyone
else.

She apologized immediately. “I beg your
pardon—I’m always just bleating out whatever is in my head without
thinking about it. What I
meant
was, your horse and cart are nowhere
to be seen—”

“That’s because my poor horse would hardly fit
in there with that monster you ride and that little pony of the vicar’s.
My horse and cart are doing the weekly errands for the sanitarium, the good
Diccon having carried Miss Ellen in here for me, and will return for us at a
quarter before five.” He grinned. “That will give us time for you
to rest after helping Ellen, and have a nice strong cup of tea.”

She moved into the little white-wainscoted hallway and he
closed the door behind her.

Then, unexpectedly, he shook his head. “What am I
saying? My dear Miss Roeswood, I intend to assist you to the level of my
strength, and as your partner in this enterprise, I will be as much in need of
that strong cup of tea as you. Probably more, as I have often noted that my
female patients seem to have more stamina than the male.”

As my
partner in this
enterprise!
Feeling
pleased and immensely flattered, Marina followed him into the vicarage.

“How is Ellen coming along?” she asked
anxiously, as he led the way past the parlor that the Ladies’ Friendly
Society had used, past what appeared to be a study, and into the back of the
house.

“She was much better for a little, then
relapsed—” he said, looking back over his shoulder at her. “Ah,
I see that you are not surprised.”

“That is what happened to the arsenic-poisoned birds
I treated,” she replied. “But I don’t know why. I had to
purge them several times before they got better and stayed better.”

“I believe that I do, or I have a good guess. You
purge the blood of the poison, which causes the victim to feel better. But that
creates a—a kind of vacuum in the blood, so the tissues release some of
what they hold back into the blood again, and the patient relapses.” He
flung open a door on a narrow little room, painted white, and hung with prints
of country churches, with white curtains at the tall, narrow windows. “And
here we are!”

Ellen lay in an iron-framed bed much like her own back at
Briareley, propped up with pillows like a giant doll. She smiled to see Marina.
“Lord love you, Miss, I wasn’t sure you’d be able to come!
That Madam—”

“Is a terror, but she thinks this is a Bible-study
class,” Marina interrupted, getting a startled laugh from the girl “So,
I suppose we had all better have the vicar expound on a verse before we all So
home again, so that it isn’t a lie.”

“Then I will take for my text, ‘Even as ye have
done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me,’“ said
Davies, who was kneeling beside the fire and putting another log on. “And
for an original and radical interpretation, you may wax eloquent on the point
that I feel—quite strongly—that the text means actions both for
good
and
ill.”

“Oh my—have we a reformer in our midst,
Clifton?” asked the doctor, taking Marina’s cloak and draping it
over a peg on the wall beside his own.

“You do. But on the whole, I prefer to be a
subversive reformer. They get a great deal more accomplished than the ones who
shout and carry placards and get themselves arrested.” Mr. Davies stood
up, and smiled, quite cheerfully. “Which is one reason why, for instance,
that I am providing a space for you and Miss Roeswood to work in.”

“We can talk all about subversion and theology when I
have no more strength to spare for magic,” Marina said firmly. “It
is always possible that Madam will send to fetch me at any point on some
pretext or other—she didn’t forbid me, but she did not altogether
approve of my interest in Bible studies.”

Doctor and vicar turned astonished expressions on her, but
it was the vicar who spoke first. “Whyever not?” he asked. “I
should think it would be entirely proper for a young lady of your age.”

“She says it is because I will turn into a
bluestocking and a bore,” Marina replied with relish. “Although it
is possible that she has got wind of those radical opinions of yours, so I
believe I will not voice them, if you don’t mind, vicar. Well, shall we
to work?”

Ellen made a face, and began drinking water—Dr. Pike
must have remembered everything from the last time, for there was a full
pitcher on the little table next to her. There were three chairs of faded
upholstery, indeterminate age and much wear in this room besides the bedside
table and the bed; Marina was offered the most comfortable-looking of the
three, and took it, on the grounds that
she
was the one who was going
to be doing most of the work. And besides, she was burdened with corsets; they
weren’t. She closed her eyes, and put her right hand out toward Ellen.
The girl took it, and laid it on the covers over her stomach, folding her own
hands over it.

“Shields please, vicar,” she heard Dr. Pike
say, and heard the vicar whisper something in Latin. His voice was too soft to
make out the words, but she rather thought it was a prayer. Then his shields
swept smoothly through her—she felt them pass, like a cool wave—and
established themselves, settling into place with a swirl and a flourish, into
ever-changing and fluid shields that looked much like Elizabeth’s, except
for being a slightly deeper shade and blue instead of green.