With Fate Conspire (23 page)

He caught Tom’s murmured question to Gertrude Goodemeade. “How many refugees do you think you could pack in here, if you had to?”

“It depends on how well they like each other,” she said—but her levity was a thin mask over real concern.

“I think Hodge is about ready to start—”

Footsteps on the stairs interrupted him. A slender faerie flamboyantly dressed like a carnival barker leapt into the room, struck a grand pose, and announced in a thick Irish accent, “Mistresses and masters, my lady Wilde!”

Startled, Myers rose with the others. The woman who entered was not the grand lady that introduction led him to expect; her shabby-genteel clothing, in widow’s black, spoke clearly of having fallen on hard times. She had the drooping look of a lush-bodied woman reduced by age and circumstance; though Myers judged her to be younger than Mrs. Chase, she moved like the older of the two. Tom hurried forward to help escort her to a chair.

“Lady Wilde?” Myers repeated, when they were introduced. She had not been here the previous month; he would have remembered. “The poetess? I did not know you were in London.”

“I have lived here for some years now,” she said, as he bent over her hand. “With my two sons.” Her own accent was a musical lilt next to her faerie companion’s thick brogue.

Myers bowed again. “I heard your name mentioned at one of the public Society meetings; I might have guessed you would be involved with its more private face. It is an honor to meet you, Lady Wilde.”

People settled into their seats once more. “Who else are we waiting for?” Lady Amadea asked. “You said there was another young woman you were considering—”

Rosamund shook her head. “Miss Baker, but unfortunately she didn’t come to last week’s public meeting. Next month, perhaps. We haven’t seen Miss Kittering again, either, so no decision yet as to whether we should invite her.”

“What about Cyma?” the Irish faerie fellow asked.

The Goodemeade sisters exchanged worried looks. “We haven’t seen her,” Gertrude said quietly. “Not since the earthquake.”

Earthquake? Myers saw his own confusion mirrored among several of the mortals in the room. Not Lady Wilde, though. Or any of the fae. Rosamund took a deep breath and spoke. “It’s time we shared a few things with the rest of you. It—well, it sounds terribly dramatic to say this is the ‘true purpose’ of our Society, particularly since nothing says we must have only
one
purpose, and all the others must be false. But there is something else Gertie and I had in mind, when we decided to begin these meetings, and given events elsewhere, the time for it has come.”

“The time to
talk
about it,” her sister corrected her.

Rosamund nodded. “Yes, of course. We don’t want to rush into anything.

“All of you—our human friends—know the difficulties we faeries face here in London. Religion isn’t so bad anymore; people aren’t as pious as they used to be, and it doesn’t hurt too badly if a man uses the name of divinity as a curse, without much believing in what it stands for. It’s still a problem, of course, but not nearly as much as iron is.”

Mrs. Chase had come quietly downstairs while they spoke, having presumably closed the parlor arch behind her. When Rosamund paused, Myers said guiltily, “I neglected to bring bread. But I will fetch some when we are done here, and tithe it upstairs before I leave.” Others echoed him.

“Thank you,” Rosamund said, and it sounded heartfelt. “But unfortunately, while bread helps, it can’t solve our problems.”

Gertrude gestured at the rustic comfort of their home. “Rose House isn’t the only place of this sort in London. There’s another one, much bigger than this, but it’s falling apart; all the changes in the City are destroying it. Soon enough, all the fae who live there now will have to go somewhere else. Out of London. Maybe out of this world entirely.”

“Flitting,” Lady Wilde said. “Collectors of folklore have been gathering the stories for years.”

Rosamund nodded. “But some folk are determined to stay. The two of us certainly are, and we’ll take in whoever we can. We know that someday, though, our house may face the same problem. Likely it
will
. So we have to think about what we can do to prevent that.”

She drew in a deep breath, then held it, as if unwilling to release the words it bore. Gertrude did it for her. “Rose and I have wondered for a long time now if maybe it wasn’t a mistake, keeping our presence here secret. What might have happened if we showed our faces, right from the start, and been a part of the city as it grew. An open part. We can’t go back and change that, of course—but there’s always the future, isn’t there? And we’re thinking of telling the world that we’re here.”

Again, none of the fae were surprised. It was, as Rosamund had said, a notion they had in mind when they formed this society. But among Myers’s fellow mortals …

“It has been done a bit in Ireland,” Lady Wilde said, while everyone else gaped. “When my late husband withdrew to Moytura and began collecting the local folklore, two Connemara faeries came to him and told him their stories. He never published them, and I myself have not yet decided what to do with the tales. But in Ireland, ’tis still common for people to know about the faeries nearby—if not as common as it once was.”

Myers found his tongue at last. “Are you not afraid that this might be even more dangerous to you?”

“Of course we are,” Gertrude said, with a touch of sharpness. “That’s why we’re being careful. The public meetings to see who’s interested, and then these private meetings for the ones we decide we can trust; and now we’re going to discuss it until we’re blue in the face.”

“And no matter what we decide, we aren’t doing anything yet,” Rosamund added. “Admitting our presence in London won’t save the Onyx Hall—that’s the other place we mentioned—and not everyone there thinks we should do this.” By the faint embarrassment in her tone, the opposition was in a clear majority. “But we intend to talk to the ones who do end up staying in London—especially the ones staying with us—and we’d like to be able to present them with a plan. Some notion of how this might be done, as safely as possible, with the best chance of success.”

Excitement of an unfamiliar sort was building beneath Myers’s ribs. Nothing had fired his imagination like this in years, not even his work with mediums.
Annie would have been delighted,
he thought. It brought with it a familiar lance of pain—but not as sharp as he would have expected. For the first time since she died, he found himself eager to pursue something that was
not
about communicating with her spirit. Eager, and guilty, as if he were somehow betraying her by thinking of other things.

Mrs. Chase rescued him from these thoughts by addressing him. “What do you think your friends in the Society for Psychical Research would make of this, Mr. Myers?”

Henry Sidgwick meeting faeries. The very notion made his head hurt. But— “It falls outside the purview of our usual work,” Myers admitted. “Then again, most of our members view fairy tales as a literary matter rather than a scientific one. If I were to write an article, or speak at one of our meetings—”

“Not yet,” Lady Amadea cautioned him.

“No, of course not. What I mean is, once aware of the situation, I imagine they would be eager to investigate.” He laughed ruefully. “They would probably make a new committee, and force me to be in charge of it. But if faeries are willing to meet with them, and show proof of their—your—natures and capabilities, then my colleagues will establish this field of study so quickly, it will make your head spin.”

“Will they be
friendly
?” the Irish faerie asked bluntly.

Myers blinked. “Why would they not be?”

“What I mean is, sure I don’t fancy being tossed in a cage like some kind of ape for folk to gawp at—”

“Eidhnin,” Rosamund said. Mild though her voice was, it hushed him. “Nobody will do
anything
until we’re sure. And if we can’t be sure, we won’t do it. But don’t gallop to meet future difficulties before you must. Mr. Myers, please continue. You mentioned committees; what exactly would this one do?”

By fits and starts, with contributions from fae and mortals alike, the London Fairy Society laid plans for a future beyond the death of the Onyx Hall.

Cromwell Road, South Kensington: May 19, 1884

For days the storm built, an unsubtle tension that put all the Kitterings’ servants on their toes, jumping at shadows. Mrs. Fowler struck anyone, maid or footman, who fell short in their duties; even the usually pleasant butler, Mr. Warren, began to employ the sharp side of his tongue. Little Sarah, the scullery maid, ceased to speak to anyone, and more than once Eliza caught Ann Wick looking through the “help wanted” advertisements in newspapers.

The source of the storm, of course, was Mrs. Kittering. Not her daughter; no, the creature pretending to be Louisa seemed the only one unaffected. She flitted through the house like a butterfly, delighting in the smallest things—when she was there at all. Her absences were frequent, despite her mother’s attempts to curb them, and that was the source of Mrs. Kittering’s fury; never tractable at the best of times, Louisa had become a wild thing indeed, and threatened to overturn every plan her mother had for her future.

When at last the thunder came, it was almost a relief. Almost—but not quite, for instead of breaking upon Louisa, the cause of all this trouble, it broke upon the servants.

Eliza’s fears took on sharper form the moment the bell rang on the downstairs wall, as if she could hear doom in that brassy, imperious sound. It signaled the drawing room, a place usually unoccupied at this hour of the morning, and Mrs. Fowler went to answer it. Within two minutes the housekeeper was downstairs again, her brows drawn together like those of an unpitying magistrate, and she ordered every last one of them up to the first floor.

Everyone
: not just the maids, but Cook, the footmen, even the gardener and the grooms from the stables. Mrs. Fowler and Mr. Warren lined them all up against the north wall, facing the windows; the curtains had been drawn back, and despite that brilliant light, the gas lamps had also been lit. The effect reminded Eliza of a theater she’d gone to once, when she and Owen had a little money to spare; the searing limelights there had illuminated the actors for all to see. She did not think the staff had been assembled to entertain anyone, though.

Mrs. Kittering was an ominous shadow against the left-most window, looking out over the back terrace into the garden. The missus’s hands were locked above her bustle, and her spine was even more rigidly straight than her stays demanded. Unlike many women who had borne a large number of children, her aging body had not run to fat, and in her dark dress she looked like a skeletal, ravenous crow.

An impression that did not change when Mrs. Fowler murmured that all the servants were present, and Mrs. Kittering turned to face them at last. Eliza could see nothing of the missus’s expression—which was, she was sure, exactly as Mrs. Kittering wanted it. With slow, deliberate strides, the woman paced the length of the room, studying them all; then she pivoted by the grate and came back along their lines. Only when that was done did she speak.

“I want to know,” she said, carving each word into the air as if with a knife, “what has possessed my daughter.”

At the word
possessed,
Eliza tried not to jump. Fortunately, Mrs. Kittering’s attention was on Ned Sayers at that moment, so she did not notice her under-housemaid going rigid.

“It is not possible to keep secrets in this house,” Mrs. Kittering went on. This time, Eliza was better able to hide her reaction.
You like to think that—or maybe you think that by saying it, you can make it be true.
“I
will
discover what Louisa is hiding. Whatever you know, speak up now. I will be very grateful to the one who assists me in this matter.”

Keeping her mouth shut was no difficulty at all. Mrs. Kittering wanted an answer, but she didn’t want the truth; if Eliza spoke, the best she could hope for was a beating and immediate dismissal. Though part of her wanted to do it, just to see the incredulous look on Mrs. Kittering’s face.
Your daughter’s gone, and I’m the only hope you’ve got for ever bringing her back.

Her own thought startled her. Bring Louisa Kittering back? Eliza scarcely cared two pins for the girl; had this been some other kind of trouble, she would have abandoned the silly chit to it, and good riddance. But she couldn’t save Owen and leave Louisa behind. Not if she had a chance to rescue both.

She might not. Among the few things Eliza was certain of, one was that the faerie who’d taken Louisa’s place was not the one who had stolen Owen, seven years ago. To begin with, this one was undoubtedly female. But there could not be many faeries in London; it beggared belief to think the changeling and the thief were not connected in some fashion. Find Louisa, find Owen—and then find a way to bring them back. If she could. Should it come to one or the other, Eliza would choose Owen in a heartbeat, and anyway there might not be a choice: in some of the tales it took true love to win a prisoner free, in which case Louisa was out of luck. But Eliza would cheat the faeries of both if she could.

Fortunately, cheating was another thing that happened in the tales.

With a start, she realized Mrs. Kittering was standing in front of her. In a cold voice, the woman said, “Anyone caught keeping secrets on Louisa’s behalf will regret it most acutely.”

Eliza disciplined her face, trying not to look as though her thoughts had been wandering. After a moment, Mrs. Kittering moved on, to stop in front of the coachman and his grooms. “Where has Louisa asked you to drive her, these last few months? I want to know every destination.”

Hearn began to stammer out a list, naming off dressmakers and dancing masters, museums and friends’ houses. He gave dates when he could, and Eliza wondered if Mrs. Kittering heard what she did, that the pattern had changed in recent days. The faerie had different interests than Louisa—strange ones, a fascination with matters that a human considered mundane or distasteful. What well-bred young lady wanted to tour the halls of a hospital, other than as part of some charitable visit?