Without a Summer (4 page)

“So good of you to come. We have heard nothing but raves about you since we arrived in town and are so honoured that you are willing to work on our ballroom.” Lady Stratton tucked her hand under her husband’s arm. “Our son Alastar will be coming down for the Season, and we hope to have a number of balls when he does.”

“This is a very agreeable room.” It was not a grand affair, and would hold no more than twenty couples plus any who chose to watch, but the proportions were pleasing and the floor was a fine polished hardwood. Beneath the faded glamour, large windows lined one wall to let in light, while the opposite wall had mirrors facing them. At the far end of the room, a little raised gallery waited for musicians to play from it. Two large crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling.

They would have to design the work with care to avoid having their illusions refracted by the crystals.

Jane paced the length of the dance floor, making notes in her drawing book. They would sketch the design in paint first, then do a few small, rough renderings in glamour before beginning work on the final. She became aware of Lord and Lady Stratton watching her and made an effort at conversation. “From where is your son coming?”

“Cambridge. Studying law. A fine boy. Very proud,” Lord Stratton said.

Lady Stratton beamed. “I think you would be hard-pressed to find a more upright figure, though I must allow that I am partial. Alastar has a sturdy character and a quickness of understanding that I sometimes wonder at.”

Jane’s curiosity was piqued by the mention of an eligible son. If he was at Cambridge, then he could not be too much older than Melody. Perhaps she could contrive to bring Melody with them and make an introduction.
If
he were unmarried. “Will he be bringing his family with him?”

“Ha! He is not yet married, more is the pity. That is why my lady wants to hold these balls.”

Insensible to anything save the details of their commission, Vincent walked to the balcony and looked up at it. “How does one access the gallery?”

“There are stairs through … they are here somewhere.” Lord Stratton led the way to a florid shrubbery under the balcony and waved his hands through the illusion until he patted the wall. He made quite the strange picture, half in and half out of the glamour. It looked as though the bush had sprouted a head. “Ah. Here it is.” He disappeared entirely as he stepped farther into the shrubbery.

Jane followed him through the shrub, into a steep staircase. Tempting though it was to undo the glamour masking it immediately, she merely marked the stair on the plan of the room she was drawing. They would have to confirm that decision with their patrons before taking any action.

“Is there any other access?” She could hardly imagine a musician carrying a harp up that narrow flight, but perhaps they only used violin and flute.

“None that we can find.” Lady Stratton eyed the stairs doubtfully. “I think I shall have to speak to our housekeeper. That is rather more dust than I would like.”

“All in good time, my dear. All in good time.” Lord Stratton led them up the stairs to the gallery. “We only took the house at the new year, and there is much to be done yet.”

The gallery was a small, enclosed space with a good view of the ballroom. Folding chairs leaned against the walls, half-disappearing into tangles of glamour. Like the rest of the ballroom, the decorations were somewhat gaudy. The illusion of thousands of candles played on the wall, but did little more to dispel the shadows of the space than a painting of flames would have. Too often amateur glamourists would try to flood an area with the illusion of light, not understanding that it would make the space seem darker by contrast, as the eye and the mind disagreed on what they saw. Only in a completely dark space, such as a cave, could one perceive the feeble light provided by glamour. The
illusion,
however, seemed bright, which caused the pupil to close and thus make the entire room appear darker. Of all the threads of glamour, representations of light required the most delicacy—delicacy that this glamourist had sorely lacked.

It did not help that, even with snow upon the ground outside, the balcony was stifling. Frowning, Vincent reached into the ether and twitched a thread. At once, a breeze circulated through the tight space.

“Someone had bound the cooling breeze into the candles, no doubt during a repair.” Vincent shook his head, the corners of his mouth turned down in disdain at the mistake. “We shall have to pull all of these out. Unless there is something you wish to keep?”

The tone of his voice left no doubt that he assumed that good taste would not allow them to keep
any
of the current glamour. Lord and Lady Stratton hastened to assure him that they wanted the room completely refashioned.

Jane studied the balcony and made notes as they went. In the course of their examination, they discovered that there was a door leading off the back of the balcony onto a servants’ hall. The challenge with such things was to mask them in a manner that allowed one to find them again—a trick that the previous glamourist had also not employed.

For the next quarter hour, they talked over the broader points of the design, defining the ideas that they had put forth in their correspondence. The glamural was to create the illusion of a forest creeping into the ballroom. Rather than attempting to fully mask the room, this would cause it to appear that the wood panelling on the walls was reverting to its natural state. Branches would spring forth from between panels. The frames of the windows would resemble twisted vines, and tremble with verdant greenery, even in winter. Throughout the whole, songbirds would perch and flit, and in some cases fly in arcs across the ceiling.

After agreeing upon the general plan, Jane and Vincent left the Stratton household. As soon as they were in the carriage, Jane said, “Do you know what I was thinking?”

“That the previous glamourist should be drawn and quartered? Using
nœuds de vache
for tying off? No wonder everything was unravelling.” Vincent drew the curtains and put his arm around her shoulders.

“I agree with you there, but I was thinking of a different matter.” Jane could not expect his thoughts to always run in the same vein as hers. She snuggled into his warmth, tucking her hands inside his coat front. “I was thinking that we should introduce Melody to their son when he arrives.”

“Eh? Why?”

“He might be a good match.”

“I am surprised that you think so.”

“It is true that I have yet to meet the young man, but with his age and situation, it is at least a possibility.”

Vincent peered down at her. “The fact that they are Irish Catholics does not trouble you?”

Jane pushed away from him, all astonishment. “What can you mean? Irish Catholic? They have no accents, no brogue. Nothing aside from Lady Stratton’s red hair could mark them so.”

“Beyond the crucifix in the library and their name, you mean?” Vincent peeked through the curtains, which showed a glimpse of Whitehall. “As for the accent, the sons of Irish nobility that I went to school with had the brogue beaten out of them.”

“But what about their name? Stratton is not a particularly Irish name, I think.”

“He is Baron Conall O’Brien of Stratton.”

Doubtful, Jane tried again. “I do not recall a crucifix.”

“It hung on the right wall of the library, near the door. It is possible that only I saw it because you were on my right, so I faced that direction, while you faced the windows.” Vincent shrugged. “You may look when we return.”

“No … no, I believe you.” She frowned, considering. “Do we need to ask them for payment in advance?”

“What? Why?”

“Well … you said they were Irish. I thought there might be concern about payment.”

Vincent laughed. “No more so than with any other nobleman. In my experience, Irishmen are more prompt with payment than others, because they are aware of their reputation.” He kissed the top of her head. “Do not fret about that.”

In spite of Vincent’s assurances, Jane was hesitant to recommend an Irishman and a Catholic to her sister’s attention. Even if she were not concerned that a Papist would place loyalty to Rome over England, the Irish reputation for being dissipated was too well known to be entirely unfounded. Still, she would have ample opportunity to observe the family while they were employed at Stratton House. Perhaps Mr. O’Brien might yet prove to be suitable.

The carriage rocked to a halt. With London’s traffic, this was not entirely unusual, but a moment later, she became aware of shouting. “Another riot?”

“Let me see.” Vincent disengaged himself from her, and looked out the window. He shook his head. “It is in front of us. A moment.”

Before Jane could protest, he had stepped out of the carriage. Cold air gusted in, stirring Vincent’s hair as he stood on the step of the carriage, peering over the crowd. With the door open, Jane could now make out some phrases coming from the mob, like “coldmonger” and “weather fiend” and “stop the snow.”

Jane leaned out to look down the street. She had expected to see more Luddites pulling a frame out of a building, but instead a crowd had gathered in front of a grocer’s. Their anger was affixed upon a clear spot in their midst. One protester held a sign on a stout stick demanding “God’s wrath for weather meddlers.” Another read, “Coldmongers are the Devil’s servants.”

Jane stared in disbelief. “They cannot think that coldmongers are responsible for the weather. It flies in the face of science.”

“Superstition rarely troubles with facts.”

The crowd rushed around that same clear area. A man in a ragged muffler lifted a cobble from the street and threw it into the middle. For a moment, Jane had a clear view of the centre.

In the middle was a young man of colour wearing the blue armband of the coldmongers’ guild. He was bleeding.

Four

Relations

As the mob heaved around the young man, Vincent’s jaw tightened. “Jane. Stay in the carriage.”

She did not. Jane ran behind her husband as he raced toward the crowd. She snatched her gloves from her hands so that she would be better able to seize glamour. At the back of the crowd, Vincent came to a sudden halt. He drew a mass of glamour out of the ether and knotted it quickly.

It sounded as though an enormous detonation went off in the middle of the street accompanied by blinding light. Neither was true, but the illusion so confounded the crowd’s senses that they backed away from the perceived blast. Jane darted through the gap in the throng.

Vincent shouted at her, but she paid him no mind, intent on the young coldmonger. Behind Jane, her husband caused another concussion, employing military tactics from the Battle of Quatre Bras.

When Jane reached the coldmonger, she seized glamour. As Vincent’s next explosion caused the crowd to cry out and cower, Jane twisted light into a ball, which she expanded quickly into a
Sphère Obscurcie
. This invention of Vincent’s would hide them from the eyes of the crowd. It was too difficult to maintain the folds while walking, but it would guide the sunlight around them and leave them masked for the time being.

She turned to the lad, who had blood trickling from a cut over his eye. “They cannot see us.”

Indeed, someone in the crowd shouted, “He got away!”

Jane wove again, using a variation on the percussion glamour to create the sound of horses galloping closer. It would not pass as real were it not for the discord around them. As it was, the syncopated beats gave the crowd an alarm. She left that to loop around and used a separate thread to sound a whistle, as though the Bow Street Runners were on their way. Crying in dismay, the crowd separated and fled.

One man ran through the apparently empty space where Jane stood with the coldmonger. He collided with her, knocking Jane back and out of the
Sphère
. She fell hard against the cobbles and he tripped, landing heavily atop her. His elbow came down on her ribs and forced all the air out of her lungs. Stars and dark spots swam in front of her eyes as though she had done too much glamour.

A moment later, the man seemed to fly up and away from her. Vincent had seized him by the collar and flung him down the street. After making certain the ruffian was gone, Vincent stood over Jane, wanting only a flaming sword to be a modern interpretation of the angel Gabriel.

He knelt to help her sit. “Are you all right?”

Jane nodded, not entirely trusting her voice. Her breath sounded too loud in her own ears, but she stoutly pretended that she was fine and that her ribs did not ache where the man had landed on her. With Vincent’s help, she clambered back to her feet. The crowd had vanished and even the usual foot traffic had thinned due to the fracas. They stood, nearly alone, on the street.

“Where is the lad?”

“I wove a
Sphère Obscurcie
.” She had become so turned around that she was not entirely certain where she had woven it. The benefit—and trouble—of this particular fold was that the glamour was stretched to such thinness as to be almost impossible to discern even with second sight, unless one peered so deeply into the ether as to obliterate all view of the mundane world. Vincent steadied her as she looked for the
Sphère
and marked the spot when she pointed to it. They walked forward to the seemingly empty patch of pavement. The lad appeared suddenly as they passed within the
Sphère
’s influence.

With some of the urgency gone, Jane had time to examine him more closely. That the coldmonger was a young man of colour came as no surprise given that they were in London. In the country, it was more common to see coldmongers of British stock, but in the City all those coldmongers who had come to London as slaves had stayed and settled. They intermarried among this community, and now a London coldmonger was as likely to have some touch of the tawny as not.

What did surprise her was how young he was—likely no more than fourteen. Blood flowed from a cut over his eye, but he appeared otherwise free from injury.