The Wizard of London (9 page)

“And
you were annoyed because I was planning on wandering off into danger without
thinking,” she said, ruefully. In hindsight, she had very nearly made a
dreadful decision. And yet it had seemed harmless enough; the address of the
medium was suitably genteel, no real harm had come to Katherine except to be
fleeced of a few “gifts” in order to see what she thought was her
son.

Isabelle
now acknowledged that she just hadn’t thought deeply enough.

“I
would never have made that mistake in India,” she admitted, “I
would have assumed there was an entire clan of thieves behind the fraud. Or
worse—”

Because
there had been worse. It was not always money that was at stake in India, and
there were worse fates than death.

“You
were thinking of your friend—”

“And
not of danger.” She nodded.

“I
think—” he paused. “I think danger here has become more
subtle than when we first lived in England. The attacks are indirect.”

She
frowned a little. “I would have said, more petty. And that bothers me. We
know there are great occultists with cruel agendas still living here. So where
are they?”

“In
hiding.” He paused, and released her. She stood away from him a little,
looking up into his face. “I wonder if they are not waiting for science
to make people forget that they ever existed.”

“So
that they can return to prey on the utterly unwary?” She shivered.
“An uncomfortable thought.”

“But
not one we need to confront tonight or tomorrow.” He smiled down at her.
“
Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof
.”

“True
enough.” She took his hand, and looked coyly up at him. “And since
it happens to be night—”

He
laughed.

***

The
medium lived in a modest house just off one of the squares in the part of
London that housed those clerks and the like with pretensions to a loftier
address than their purses would allow, an area totally unfamiliar to Nan. The
house itself had seen better days, though, as had most of the other homes on
that dead-end street, and Nan suspected that it was rented. The houses had that
peculiarly faded look that came when the owners of a house did not actually
live there, and those who did had no reason to care for the property
themselves, assuming that was the duty of the landlord. Mem’sab had
chosen her gown carefully, after discarding a walking suit, a mourning gown and
veil, and a peculiar draped garment she called a sari, a souvenir of her time
in India. The first, she thought, made her look untrusting, sharp, and
suspicious, the second would not be believed had the medium done any research
on the backgrounds of these new sitters, and the third smacked of mockery. She
chose instead one of the plain, simple gowns she preferred, in the mode called
“Artistic Reform”; not particularly stylish, but Nan thought it was
a good choice. For one thing, she could move in it; it was looser than the
highest mode, and did not require tight corseting. If Mem’sab needed to
run, kick, or dodge, she could.

The
girls followed her quietly, dressed in their starched pinafores and dark
dresses, showing the best possible manners, with Grey tucked under
Sarah’s coat to stay warm until they got within doors.

It
was quite dark as they mounted the steps to the house and rang the bell. The
door was answered by a sour-faced woman in a plain black dress, who ushered
them into a sitting room and took their coats, with a startled glance at Grey
as she popped her head out of the front of Sarah’s jacket. She said
nothing, however, and neither did Grey as she climbed to Sarah’s
shoulder.

The
woman returned a moment later, but not before Nan had heard the faint sounds of
surreptitious steps on the floor above them. She knew it had not been the sour
woman, for she had clearly heard those steps going off to a closet and
returning. If the séance room was on this floor, then, there was someone
else above.

The
sitting room had been decorated in a very odd style. The paintings on the wall
were all either religious in nature, or extremely morbid, at least so far as
Nan was concerned. There were pictures of women weeping over graves, of angels
lifting away the soul of a dead child, of a woman throwing herself to her death
over a cliff, of the spirits of three children hovering about a man and woman
mourning over pictures held in their listless hands. There was even a picture
of a girl crying over a dead bird lying in her hand.

Crystal
globes on stands decorated the tables, along with bouquets of funereal lilies
whose heavy, sweet scent dominated the chill room. The tables were all draped
in fringed cloths of a deep scarlet. The hard, severe furniture was either of
wood or upholstered in prickly horsehair. The two lamps had been lit before
they entered the room, but their light, hampered as it was by heavy brocade
lamp shades, cast more shadows than illumination.

They
didn’t have to wait long in that uncomfortable room, for the sour servant
departed for a moment, then returned, and conducted them into the next room.
This, evidently, was only an antechamber to the room of mysteries; heavy
draperies swathed all the walls, and there were straight-backed chairs set
against them on all four walls. The lily scent pervaded this room as well,
mixed with another, that Nan recognized as the Hindu incense that Nadra often
burned in her own devotions.

There
was a single picture in this room, on the wall opposite the door, with a candle
placed on a small table beneath it so as to illuminate it properly. This was a
portrait in oils of a plump woman swathed in pale draperies, her hands clasped
melodramatically before her breast, her eyes cast upward. Smoke, presumably
that of incense, swirled around her, with the suggestion of faces in it. Nan
was no judge of art, but Mem’sab walked up to it and examined it with a
critical eye.

“Neither
good nor bad,” she said measuringly. “I would say it is either the
work of an unknown professional or a talented amateur.”

“A
talented amateur,” said the lady that Mem’sab had called
“Katherine,” as she, too, was ushered into the chamber. “My
dear friend Lady Harrington painted it; it was she who introduced me to Madame
Varonsky.”

Mem’sab
turned to meet her, and Katherine glided across the floor to take her hand in
greeting. “It is said to be a very speaking likeness,” she
continued. “I certainly find it so.”

Nan
studied the woman further, but saw nothing to change her original estimation.
Katherine wore yet another mourning gown of expensive silk and mohair,
embellished with jet beadwork and fringes that shivered with the slightest movement.
A black hat with a full veil perched on her carefully coiffed curls, fair hair
too dark to be called golden, but not precisely brown either. Her full lips
trembled, even as they uttered words of polite conversation, her eyes
threatened to fill at every moment, and Nan thought that her weak chin
reflected an overly sentimental and vapid personality. It was an assessment
that was confirmed by her conversation with Mem’sab, conversation that
Nan ignored in favor of listening for other sounds. Over their heads, the floor
creaked softly as someone moved to and fro, trying very hard to be quiet. There
were also some odd scratching sounds that didn’t sound like mice, and
once, a dull thud, as of something heavy being set down a little too hard.

Something
was going on up there, and the person doing it didn’t want them to
notice.

At
length the incense smell grew stronger, and the drapery on the wall to the
right of the portrait parted, revealing a door, which opened as if by itself.

Taking
that as their invitation, Katherine broke off her small talk to hurry eagerly
into the sacred precincts; Mem’sab gestured to the girls to precede her,
and followed on their heels. By previous arrangement, Nan and Sarah, rather
than moving toward the circular table at which Madame Varonsky waited, went to
the two walls likeliest to hold windows behind their heavy draperies before
anyone could stop them.

It
was Nan’s luck to find a corner window overlooking the street, and she
made sure that some light from the room within flashed to the watcher on the
opposite side before she dropped the drapery.

“Come
away from the windows, children,” Mem’sab said in a voice that
gently chided. Nan and Sarah immediately turned back to the room, and Nan
assessed the foe.

Madame
Varonsky’s portraitist had flattered her; she was decidedly paler than
she had been painted, with a complexion unpleasantly like wax. She wore similar
draperies, garments which could have concealed anything. The smile on her thin
lips did not reach her eyes, and she regarded the parrot on Sarah’s
shoulder with distinct unease.

“You
did not warn me about the bird, Katherine,” the woman said, her voice
rather reedy.

“The
bird will be no trouble, Madame Varonsky,” Mem’sab soothed.
“It is better behaved than a good many of my pupils.”

“Your
pupils—I am not altogether clear on why they were brought,” Madame
Varonsky replied, turning her sharp black eyes on Nan and Sarah.

“Nan
is an orphan, and wants to learn what she can of her parents, since she never
knew them,” Mem’sab said smoothly. “And Sarah lost a little
brother to an African fever. The bird was her brother’s, and it is all
she has of him.”

“Ah.”
Madame Varonsky’s suspicions diminished, and she gestured to the chairs
around the table. “Please, all of you, do take your seats, and we can
begin at once.”

As
with the antechamber, this room had walls swathed in draperies, which Nan
decided could conceal an entire army if Madame Varonsky were so inclined. The
only furnishings besides the séance table and chairs were a sinuous
statue of a female completely enveloped in draperies on a draped table, with
incense burning before it in a small charcoal brazier of brass and cast iron.

The
table at which Nan took her place was very much as Mem’sab had described.
A surreptitious bump as Nan took her seat on Mem’sab’s left hand
proved that it was quite light and easy to move; it would be possible to lift
it with one hand with no difficulty at all. On the draped surface were some of
the objects Mem’sab had described; a tambourine, a megaphone, a little
handbell. There were three lit candles in a brass candlestick in the middle of
the table, and some objects Nan had not expected—a fiddle and bow, a
rattle, and a pair of handkerchiefs.

This
is where we’re supposed to look
, Nan realized, as Sarah took her
place on Mem’sab’s right, next to Madame Varonsky, and Katherine on
Nan’s left, flanking the medium on the other side. She wished she could
look up, as Grey was unashamedly doing, her head over to one side as one eye
peered upward at the ceiling above them.

“If
you would follow dear Katherine’s example, child,” said Madame, as
Katherine took one of the handkerchiefs and used it to tie the medium’s
wrist to the arm of her chair. She smiled crookedly. “This is to assure
you that I am not employing any trickery.”

Sarah,
behaving with absolute docility, did the same on the other side, but cast Nan a
knowing look as she finished. Nan knew what that meant; Sarah had tried the arm
of the chair and found it loose.

“Now,
if you all will hold hands, we will beseech the spirits to attend us.”
The medium turned her attention to Mem’sab as Katherine and Sarah
stretched their arms across the table to touch hands, and the rest reached for
the hands of their partners. “Pray do not be alarmed when the candles are
extinguished; the spirits are shy of light, for they are so delicate that it
can destroy them. They will put out the candles themselves.”

For
several long moments they sat in complete silence, as the incense smoke
thickened and curled around. Then although there wasn’t a single breath
of moving air in the room, the candle flames began to dim, one by one, and go
out!

Nan
felt the hair on the back of her neck rising, for this was a phenomenon she
could not account for—to distract herself, she looked up quickly at the
ceiling just in time to see a faint line of light in the form of a square
vanish.

She
felt better immediately. However the medium had extinguished the candles, it
had to be a trick. If she had any real powers, she wouldn’t need a
trapdoor in the ceiling of her séance room. As she looked back down, she
realized that the objects on the table were all glowing with a dim, greenish
light.

“Spirits,
are you with us?” Madame Varonsky called. Nan immediately felt the table
begin to lift.

Katherine
gasped; Mem’sab gave Nan’s hand a squeeze. Understanding
immediately what she wanted, Nan let go of it. Now Mem’sab was free to
act as she needed.

“The
spirits are strong tonight,” Madame murmured, as the table settled again.
“Perhaps they will give us a further demonstration of their
powers.”

Exactly
on cue, the tambourine rose into the air, shaking uncertainly; first the
megaphone joined it, then the rattle, then the handbell, all floating in
midair, or seeming to. But Nan was looking up, not at the objects, and saw a
very dim square, too dim to be called light, above the table. A deeper shadow
moved back and forth over that area, and Nan’s lip curled with contempt.
She had no difficulty in imagining how the objects were
“levitating”; one by one, they’d been pulled up by wires or
black strings, probably hooked by means of a fishing rod from the room above.

Now
rapping began on the table, to further distract their attention. Madame began
to ask questions.

“Is
there a spirit here for Isabelle Harton?” she asked. One rap—that
was a no; not surprising, since the medium probably wouldn’t want to
chance making a mistake with an adult. “Is there a spirit here for
Katherine Boughmont?” Two raps—yes. “Is this the spirit of a
child?” Two raps, and already Katherine had begun to weep softly.
“Is it the spirit of her son, Edward?” Two raps plus the bell rang
and the rattle and tambourine rattled, and Nan found herself feeling very sorry
for the poor, silly woman.