The Sword of Straw (7 page)

“But your father said it was a good idea, he said—”

“I am the princess, as you are always reminding me. I may not be princess of much, but it still counts for something. Princesses don’t abandon the kingdom when things go wrong, they don’t run away and go to balls when their people are suffering. Being a princess isn’t about brushing your hair and wearing silk dresses; it’s about duty and honor and love. I love my father, I love my subjects—those I have left. I’m
not going
. Don’t
ever
presume to bring up the matter again.”

The woman looked slightly daunted, but still tried to protest. “Who are you to talk of love? You know nothing about it. I’ve loved you from babyhood—I only want what’s best for you. Who’s turning you against me? It’s that Frimbolus Quayne, isn’t it? He’s always been jealous of me—jealous of my position here—”

“You may leave now.”

“What about the Urdemons? They appeared first when you were a child, playing with magic. If you go, maybe they’ll go.”

“Leave.”

Nell’s face had hardened with determination. Mrs. Prendergoose whisked around, dropping the hairbrush on the floor, and left on a flounce.

Alone, Nell picked up the brush, yanking in vain at her tangles. The hardness faded from her face; she looked confused, doubtful, on the verge of tears.
It’s not your fault!
Nathan wanted to tell her.
Whatever’s happening, it can’t be your fault. Listen to Frimbolus.
She was surely too young, too brave, too good to be the cause of something evil. He wanted to reassure her so badly he thought he would materialize, but the dream barrier held him back. Nell had set down the brush in frustration, murmuring a word he didn’t recognize:
“Ruuissé!”
When she shook her hair it sparkled for a moment as if powdered with glitterdust, and the snarls unraveled by themselves, and the long waves rippled down her back as if they were alive. As the magic dissipated she swept the loose tresses over her shoulder and started to twist them into a thick braid.

Suddenly, the room darkened. The wind—or something worse than wind—screeched around the walls. The darkness pressed against the window, and in it there were eyes. Huge eyes full of a yellow fury, hungry and soulless. But the princess didn’t scream or run. She jumped to her feet, knocking over the stool she had been sitting on, confronting the apparition. Her body shook with anger or fear or both. “Go!” she cried. “All I did was tidy my hair!
All I did
—Go, you foul thing!
Go!
” She thrust the hairbrush in front of her like a weapon, since that was all she had. For a second something like the muzzle of an animal was squashed against the pane, the mouth distended into an unnatural gape ragged with teeth. Then it seemed to dissolve, changing, becoming an ogre’s leer with thick lips and warty snout, before it melted back into the dark, leaving only the eyes. They shrank, slowly, until the shadow swallowed them and they vanished, and the pallor of a clouded afternoon came pouring through the glass, bright as sunshine after the horror of the dark.

But the princess turned away, dropping on her knees beside the bed, her face in the quilt, sobbing not with relief but with despair. Nathan struggled to touch her, to comfort her, but he could feel the dream fading, drifting away from him, and his will couldn’t hold it, and he slid helplessly back into sleep.

“D
O YOU
recognize him?” Bartlemy asked, holding out a sketch that, despite his best efforts, made the average Identikit picture look like something by Rembrandt.

“Should I?” Annie said, clearly baffled by the artwork if not the question.

“I believe he bought a book from you, probably not long ago.”

Annie studied the sketch with a wry expression. “I don’t think…”

“I’m not much of an artist, I know,” Bartlemy conceded. “Even with a little assistance, I’m not going to win any prizes. But I hoped there was enough of a likeness to give you some idea. The book might have been a description of local folklore, a history of satanic practices, even a grimoire. That sort of thing. Or so I suspect.”

“I sold a couple last month to a dealer,” Annie said, “but that was on the Internet. I don’t know what he looks like—we’ve never actually met.”

“This man came in personally.”

“Are you sure?” He nodded. “I’m sorry, I can’t recall anyone…like this. Not lately, anyway. I don’t remember everybody who comes to the shop, but even so, it’s a small place, most of my customers are regulars—collectors, enthusiasts, or just people who can’t live without a book and find it cheaper to buy secondhand. I notice strangers. This man isn’t a regular—at least, I don’t think so.” Her faint grimace betrayed her doubts about Bartlemy’s portraiture. “If he came in recently, I ought to recognize him.”

“Never mind,” Bartlemy said. “It’s probably my drawing that’s at fault. It isn’t important.”

“Isn’t it?” Annie asked shrewdly.

“I don’t know,” Bartlemy admitted. “That burglary attempt was…unusual. I’m not normally troubled by that sort of thing. I’d like to know what was behind it—if anything.”

“And this man?”

“A face in the spellfire. No more. He may not be relevant. He may be involved with something else, something that has little to do with us. Using smoke-magic is like surfing fifty TV channels with no way of knowing which is which. Without reference points, you can’t tell if you’ve got the program you want or not…”

Annie smiled. “That’s a very modern metaphor,” she said, “for such an arcane pursuit.”

“Magic isn’t really arcane,” Bartlemy said. “It’s been around a long time, that’s all. So has drawing—people were doing it on cave walls—but that doesn’t make it arcane. And I’m better at magic than I am at drawing. Not much better, but a little. I prefer cooking to both.”

“Ah, but your cooking is definitely magical.”

“Not magic,” said Bartlemy. “Just practice.”

After he went, Annie found the picture still on her desk. Perhaps he hadn’t considered it worth keeping. She tucked it in a drawer, in case he should want it back, and sat down at the computer in quest of an obscure dictionary of wildflowers for a local botanist. The click of the door latch made her look up, smiling on a reflex—but the smile cooled when she saw Chief Inspector Pobjoy.

She said: “Hello. Can I help you?” in a tone that was strictly polite. She still wasn’t prepared to forget his suspicions of Nathan.

Sensing hostility, his thin features grew a little thinner. “Just passing,” he said. “Since those kids broke in at Thornyhill, I thought I should keep an eye on things.”

Annie allowed herself to thaw a fraction. “You must think we’re prone to trouble,” she said.

“I think…” He checked himself. “There’s a lot I never learned about that business last year.”

“The accomplice,” Annie said promptly. “The woman who pretended to be Rianna Sardou. You never heard any more about her, did you?” She herself knew the truth quite as well as Bartlemy, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could explain to a policeman. It occurred to her that it was unkind to mention it, but in view of Pobjoy’s record she decided she didn’t care.

“We’re still looking,” he said, privately annoyed because he knew they weren’t, and the fugitive would never be found. He felt he had lost control of the conversation, and told himself it had been a mistake to come in, succumbing to the urge to see her again. “I wondered…It was a terrible experience for you. I hope you were able to get over the shock.”

“Shock?” Annie echoed blankly.

“Discovering the corpse. I’ve seen a few—I’m used to it—but it wasn’t pretty.”

“I was all right,” Annie said. “I’m tough.”

She didn’t look tough, he thought, with her slight, compact figure, her soft short curls, the muted shades of her skin and hair. But there was a vein of strength under the softness, a core of something hidden—his detective instincts could sense it, even though it was out of reach.

He said awkwardly: “I just wanted to be sure. You can get help with these things, but…I should’ve come sooner.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Annie responded, confused by the pointlessness of the exchange. “It was nice of you to bother. Er…about the burglary at Thornyhill: do
you
believe there was something behind it?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Could be just teenage youths going off the rails as usual. At that age, they think they can get away with anything.”

“Really?” Annie said, her hostility reviving. She assumed he was alluding to Nathan. “I’ve always thought kids were a lot like adults, both good and bad, only braver—more reckless—more generous. Life hasn’t yet taught them to be careful, to hold back, do nothing. Children are trusting and confident where people like me—and you—are cynical and afraid.”

“I didn’t mean…” He wanted to apologize, but couldn’t find the words. Instead, he said: “I don’t think you’re afraid of very much.”

She stared at him, surprised and disconcerted. Before she could find something to say, another customer came in, and Pobjoy, with a mumbled goodbye, had gone. Annie, feeling the encounter had been oddly unfinished, returned to her computer screen.

But the wildflower dictionary was proving elusive and her mind wandered. She studied the latest customer, idly, conscious that she had come across him somewhere before though she didn’t think it was here. He was a heavily built man who looked as if he had once been heavier: his skin had that ill-fitting sag that occurs when someone has lost too much weight too quickly, and his jacket flapped around his midriff. His hair was thinning above an anxious frown; possibly he was unused to secondhand-bookshops. Annie’s routine “Can I help you?” made him turn, and suddenly she remembered.

“I’ve seen you before,” she said. “At Ffylde. It must have been the carol service last Christmas.”

“Yes.” He didn’t appear to consider it a talking point.

There was a short pause. “What are you looking for?” Annie asked.

“A—a book. A book on pagan customs, magic rituals…A grimoire.”

Annie suppressed a jolt of shock. After all, someone who wasn’t traumatized by a dead body shouldn’t be jolted by a request for a book, particularly in a bookshop. “At the back in the left-hand corner,” she said. “Under Arch and Anth.”

As he moved away Annie opened the drawer, glanced down at the sketch, closed it again. Presently the man came back to the desk carrying an old book with a stained cover, which Annie had bought in a job lot several months ago and never looked at properly. He gave her the money, clutching his purchase as if afraid somebody might take it from him, and refused her offer of a bag. She thanked him, making no further parent-to-parent overtures. When he had gone, she picked up the phone.

“Barty?”

“Yes?”

“Can you see the future in the smoke as well as the past?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “But there are many futures. What you see may not always come true. The future can be changed, if you are resolute.”

Annie waved this irrelevance aside. “A man just came in and bought a grimoire. I can’t tell if he’s the man in your picture—it could be a coincidence—but—”

“There are no coincidences in magic,” Bartlemy said. “Did you get a chance to learn his name?”

“No,” Annie said, “but I recognized him. I’ve seen him at Ffylde, at the carol service. He must have a son there.”

There was a thoughtful silence.

“What was in the book?” Bartlemy asked.

“I never really looked at it. Drawings I think—sigils and stuff. Incantations in Latin—you told me those don’t normally work. Some handwritten notes at the back. I don’t remember anything else.”

“A pity. Still…”

“If you had told me to check any grimoires in stock, I would have done,” Annie said with dignity.

“I know. Magic is invariably unpredictable. You’d think I would have learned that by now. But at least we have the link with Ffylde: that’s something.”

“Do you think he’s the father of that boy you were so interested in?” Annie inquired. “The one who’s always in trouble.”

“That,” Bartlemy said gently, “really
would
be a coincidence.”

“Would it?” Annie said.

I
T WAS
a couple of weeks before Nathan had the chance to tell his uncle what he had learned about the Hackforths. “Dear me,” Bartlemy said. “I seem to have shown my curiosity very plainly. First your mother catches me out, now you. And I thought I was being subtle.”

“Oh, you were,” Nathan said. “Hazel and George didn’t notice anything. Mum and I are more observant—and we know you better.”

Bartlemy smiled. “I must be more careful,” he said.

Nathan was sitting on the hearth rug in the living room where he had sat when he was a baby, while Hoover rolled onto his back to have his tummy rubbed. “I ran into Damon the other day on the stairs,” he remarked. “I mean, literally. He was sprinting down two steps at a time and he clouted me with his shoulder, I think it was an accident but I don’t know. I sort of stumbled and said something—
Look out, look where you’re going
—something like that. Anyway, he swore at me like it was my fault. A bit later he stopped me in the corridor. ‘You’re the wonderboy, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Keep out of my way.’ He looked like he really hated me. It was bizarre, I don’t know why he should even know who I am—or care. He’s four years ahead of me.”

“What did you say?” Bartlemy asked.

“Nothing. I was pretty surprised—and the whole thing seemed awfully silly. You know, as if he was the bad guy in a Western:
This school ain’t big enough for the both of us.
Stupid.”

“Well done,” said Bartlemy. “As Kipling put it:
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…
Restraint is a rare gift at your age.”

My head is the problem,
Nathan thought ruefully. Aloud he said: “There must be something behind it. Are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“What you know—or guess.”

Bartlemy was silent for a long moment, considering. “What I know is very little,” he said. “I wondered about the attempted burglary here, that’s all. I learned that the two boys involved were advised by a very expensive lawyer, the kind they wouldn’t get on legal aid. Among other people, this lawyer has previously worked for Giles Hackforth, in a matter concerning his son. The connection is very tenuous, you see. I’m trusting you not to discuss this with anyone.”