The Wizard of London (30 page)

“He
ain’t dotty, is ‘e?” Nan asked dubiously.

Tommy
shook his head vigorously. “Not a bit! Whenever there’s something
wrong with a horse or a dog, they go to Gaffer before they call in the farrier
or the horse doctor. Most times, he sets it right. And when they do call the
horse doctor, he won’t do a thing unless Gaffer is right there.”

That
sounded even more promising. But it didn’t answer the question of why
Tommy thought this Gaffer could help. Before she could say anything though,
Tommy answered that question.

“Gaffer
Geordie knows everything that’s ever happened here right back to his
grandfather’s day,” he explained. “So if there’s
anything about the well going back that far, he’ll know.”

The
next day, armed with the information that Gaffer lived in the cottage
“with all the dogs,” Nan and Neville trudged down to the row of
cottages that had been built to house Highleigh servants too old to work who
had been pensioned off. And very shortly, Nan realized that the seemingly vague
directions were not vague at all, for it was obvious which cottage was the
Gaffer’s.

Dogs—all
of them old, maimed, or both—lay in the sun along the wall of the cottage
on either side of the door, sat quietly watching the street, or attended to
doggish business around the grounds. There were probably thirty of them; most
were foxhounds, though there was a three-legged wolfhound, and a cluster of
pretty little spaniels with various imperfections. The Gaffer himself, like a
king enthroned among his subjects, sat on a stool beside his doorway, smoking a
pipe, and watching the world pass by.

He
was an astonishing sight in Nan’s eyes; she had no idea just how old he
was, but his hair and beard were snow-white, and two bushy white eyebrows
overshadowed a face that was a mass of wrinkles, in which his eyes appeared
like two shiny black currants. He certainly looked a lot older than her gran
ever did, and gran had been the oldest person Nan had ever known. He wore a
linen smock and buff trousers, a pair of old, worn boots, and a floppy hat.

He
gave Nan a friendly nod as she approached, and grinned at Neville. She half
expected to hear some sort of country dialect she’d only half understand
when he opened his mouth, but instead, out came, “So, raven lass, come to
see old Gaffer Geordie, have you?”

Nan
nodded, distracted by the dogs, which came up to sniff and inspect her. Neville
eyed them with disdain, even contempt. It was pretty clear that Gaffer Geordie
saved the dogs no one else wanted. Even the spaniels at his feet, while pretty
and charming, were not perfect specimens.

“So
what can old Geordie do for you?” the old man continued, eyeing her with
curiosity. “I don’t know much but dogs and horses, lass. If
there’s aught wrong with your bird, I probably can’t help
you.”

Neville
quorked, and shook himself. “Neville’s right as rain, sir,”
Nan said, as politely as possible. “I heard you knew a lot about
Highleigh Park, an’ I wanted to ask you ‘bout something. That dry
well by the kitchen garden—”

“Oh,
now, that’s an uncanny spot that is,” Gaffer Geordie said
instantly, and shook his head. “Had a bad reputation. Some said it was a
cursed place, and some said it was a curse on the master of Highleigh. Very
uncanny, and no surprise, seeing them bones as was pulled out of it.”

There
could not have been anything more likely to spark Nan’s interest than
that sentence. “Bones?” she repeated, as Neville bobbed his head.

“Oh,
aye, bones. A full skellington, it was, and chains, leg chains and arm
chains.” Geordie nodded wisely. “Summun dropped that feller down
and clamped the lid on the top, leavin’ him to die. Master of Highleigh
that
was
, back when I was no more bigger than you, reckoned to clean
out the well, maybe use it for summat, but after the bones was found, he gave
up on the notion of usin’ it for anything. Vicar took charge of them, gave
the poor fellow a proper Christian burial. Spot’s been a bit quieter
since then.” He scratched his head. “Used to be, there was noise in
that well, of a night, now and again.”

“Moaning?”
Nan asked, shivering.

But
the old man shook his head. “Curses.”

That
was all he could tell her, but it was more than she had until that point. The
next person to approach seemed to be the local vicar who was, in any case,
coming to take tea with Mem’sab. Unfortunately, he could not shed light
on the matter either. “That was long before my time, dear child,”
he said, shaking his head. And that seemed to be that.

Until,
however, someone unexpectedly approached Nan the next day, rather than the
other way around.

Called
out of the nursery by one of the ayahs, she found the estate manager waiting in
the hallway with an enormous ledger under his arm. She knew he was the estate
manager only because she had seen him consulting with Mem’sab over some
matter and had been told who the lean, slightly stooped, middle-aged man was.
He was smiling slightly and pushed his glasses farther up his nose with one
finger.

“You
would be Miss Nan, investigating the mystery of the dry well?” he asked,
making it sound far more intriguing than it had been up until that moment.

She
nodded, and he handed the large and heavy book to her, bound in brown calfskin.
“The Lord of Highleigh of those days was an amateur antiquarian and
archaeologist, although they would not have put it that way back then. In his
own writing, he referred to himself as a Student of Natural Sciences. He took
notes on everything he found and did in and around the estate, so if there is
any record of anything to do with the well, it will surely be in this
book.”

Flabbergasted,
as well as astonished, Nan took it from him. “Thankee!” she
exclaimed. “Thankee kindly!”

He
waved her thanks off, peering at her benignly from behind his spectacles.
“On the whole, having you children here has been no great work or
inconvenience and has been quite amusing. This project of your
schoolmistress’ is teaching you all valuable lessons in conducting
research, and I am happy to be able to assist.”

With
that, he went on his way, leaving her clutching the oversized volume to her
chest.

After
luncheon, she, Sarah, and Tommy—who, having completed his own history of
the suit of armor in the library, was eaten up with curiosity about Nan’s
project—took it to the dining room, opened the book on the big table, and
began looking through it. The three of them knelt side-by-side on dining room
chairs so they could all get a good view. The neat, copperplate handwriting was
surprisingly easy to read, and the three of them, with the birds looking on
from Nan and Sarah’s shoulders, perused the pages with interest.

This
self-professed “Student of Natural History” was more of a dabbler
in anything and everything, it seemed to Nan. There were notes on chemical
experiments, on stellar observations, weather observations, but what clearly
intrigued him most was the far past. It was when he was digging the foundations
of the folly that he first encountered some Roman artifacts, and the discovery
of the few coins, the bits of pottery, and the old dagger changed his life.

While
he did not go wholesale into digging up his estate, he used every new
construction project as a reason to excavate. When he was not digging, he was
finding other places where he could indulge his hobby.

And
that brought him around to exploring the past through the records of his own
family, and trying to link what he found to the papers and diaries in the family
archives.

He
wasn’t often all that successful, and some of his notes seemed to be
stretching the facts even to Nan. How on earth could he determine that a coin
was Roman, for instance, when it was so worn that there wasn’t anything
to show it even was a coin except that it was round and bronze?

Eventually,
though, he had built all that a reasonable man could, and he turned his
attention to other places he might go looking for bits of the past.

That
was when he hit on the idea of clearing out the old well.

The
children leaned over the book intently as they realized that they had struck
gold at last. The first few entries, mostly the general dates Lord Mathew had
uncovered telling him who had ordered the well built and why it had gone dry,
interspersed with observations about the weather and the implications for the
harvest, were rather boring. One very small man had to be lowered down to the
bottom on a rope, and dug the debris out, shovelful by small shovelful, dumping
it into buckets to be sent up for examination and disposal. Then it all got
sifted once it arrived at the top of the well, and anything not dirt, rocks,
and plant life were set aside for Lord Mathew to look at in detail. It had been
difficult finding someone willing to go down into the well; it had a bad
reputation, and according to Lord Mathew’s notes, the servants claimed
that on certain nights one could hear moaning and vile curses coming from the
bottom.

Then
the digger found the skull and nothing would persuade anyone on the estate to
go down into the well. Lord Mathew, now afire with excitement, stripped to his
shirtsleeves and had
himself
lowered down into the hole. With the aid
of a lantern held over his head, he meticulously excavated until he uncovered
the entire body.

Whoever
it was, there had been manacles about his wrists and ankles, with chains on
them. Clothing had not survived, but there had been silver buttons on his coat
and trousers, and he had worn fine leather boots with silver buckles. Another
buckle might have been an ornament on a hat. Lord Mathew tentatively dated
these objects to the time of Charles the First. Since this was the time of the
Civil War, and many records were lost then when the manor was invaded by
Roundheads and many things stolen or burned, Lord Mathew despaired of finding
any answer.

Still,
he tried—and erring on the side of compassion, turned the remains over to
the vicar of the time for a Christian burial.

Nothing
else of note was taken out of the well, and that ended the tales of moaning and
cursing coming from the well. Lord

Mathew’s
researches were in vain; because so many people died or vanished during that
time, there simply was no telling who it could have been.

They
closed the book and looked at each other, the odd sourish smell of an old book
still in their nostrils.

“Well,”
Sarah said finally, “you have enough to write that report for
Mem’sab now.” And it was true that she did, but the results were
less than satisfying.

Nan
nodded. “But it don’t solve the mystery,” she added, feeling
obscurely disappointed.

“Crumbs,”
Tommy said, clearly disappointed. “It doesn’t. Maybe Mem’sab
will have some ideas where to look next.”

Nan
sighed, and went to fetch pen and paper to write her report. She had no
illusions about her report winning the coveted place at Mem’sab’s
side, but now she was far more interested in getting to the bottom of this than
going to the Horse Fair.

***

She
had to wait until she was alone with the headmistress before she could bring up
the topic. “I wonder,” Mem’sab said slowly, after she and Nan
had finished another of her “special” lessons. “I wonder if
there isn’t a way to find something out about the mysterious body in the
well directly.” And she looked straight at Nan.

The
implication was obvious, since Nan had just completed another lesson in
psychometry, one in which she had learned to tell how far back in time a
particular reading on an object had taken place. They were sitting in the
parlor, and Nan had just “read” one of the old vases there, a huge
blue-and-white monstrosity that was always full of fresh flowers.

“Wot?
Me?” Nan said, startled. “ ‘Ow? We ’aven’t got
the skellington, or even them silver buttons.” Whatever had become of
those objects was a mystery, though Nan figured they had been buried along with
the remains. They weren’t novel enough, nor old enough, to have entered
Lord Mathew’s collection of artifacts and souvenirs.

“The
well, Nan,” Mem’sab pointed out. “You can ‘read’
the well itself.”

“Oo-eck.”
Nan could have hit herself for not thinking of that solution earlier. “
‘Course I can! Mind, there’s been a lot ‘uv people gone and
touched that well since, things’ll be a bit dimlike.”

Mem’sab
gave her an admonishing look. “Don’t you think that’s all to
the good? Considering that we are discussing the circumstances that led to a
man’s perishing there, laden with chains? This is not something that I
would care to experience at first hand.”

Nan
shrugged. Sometimes Mem’sab forgot how little Nan had been sheltered
from. Murder in Whitechapel was a way of life, so to speak. “
‘Sides,” she continued, “I got Neville now. He stood down
that nasty thing in Berkeley Square. I don’t reckon something that never
did wuss than swear ‘ud bother him none.”

From
the back of the chair beside her, Neville bobbed his head, fluffed his feathers,
and uttered a short “quork.”

“I
am more than willing for you to try this, or I would not have suggested it in
the first place,” Mem’sab said, interlacing her fingers together in
her lap. “However, there are some things we should consider first, and
discuss, you and I, and things that I should research myself. I don’t
want you plunging headfirst into this, and especially I do not want you doing
this without me. Do I have your word?”

With
a sigh, and with a glare from Neville that suggested that if she did
not
promise, he might well give her a good peck, she gave her word.

“First
of all, although the memories are old and the remains are no longer physically
present, a spirit
could
still be bound to the place of its death and
you could awaken it,” Mem’sab said thoughtfully. “That could
be good—we might be able to convince it to go on its way—or
bad—because it might attack. So at the very least, I need to be there,
and most of the children need to be kept away. I would prefer it if Sahib and
possibly Agansing could also be present. Agansing’s people have a great
deal of experience with Ancestor Spirits, both good and bad, and that might
come in handy.”