The ancient curse 2010, p.8
Damned, page 8
‘No, indeed! Yet . . . in the past, I’ve spoken freely to Sophie as a friend – now, it would seem, too freely. Your once-mistress the Baroness of Basing makes herself everyone’s friend and nobody’s enemy, Eleanor. She observes fashion while not being a slave to it. She manages to be on good terms with both the King and the Prince of Wales – and believe me, that’s a difficult path to navigate. She has managed her estate for centuries, though I couldn’t tell you when she took up its reins, and I fancy the dates might be somewhat obscure. Indeed, I wonder just how obscure . . . I pride myself on being a leader of society, my Eleanor – or at least, I did so before my arrest for treason – but Lady Sophie has been involved in Society for far longer than I have.’
‘I didn’t realize she was so well connected,’ Eleanor said.
‘No. I suspect that is the point. Equally, nobody realizes my Percy is so brave, and noble, and strong. Or that you are a mage and a member of the League, and a saviour to many who would have died in France.’ She gave Eleanor a smile that was genuinely warm and affectionate. ‘And nobody realizes just how many strings Lady Sophie has at her disposal, or what she might be beneath her pretty face – or what she might currently be planning. If she were a character in a play, I’d vie for her part. But as matters stand, we must find a way to neutralize her – and whoever is in league with her.’
She clapped her hands together. ‘Now! While Charles is pursuing his own leads, I suggest we investigate the Blackfriars site, or at least what remains of it. We shall be merely a couple of ladies strolling around town, quite unimportant and unworthy of attention.’ Her critical gaze took in Eleanor’s current dress. ‘Hm. I will lend you one of my shawls. With that and a pair of gloves, I believe today you can be my companion rather than my maid – a poor relation, perhaps, or a distant cousin. It comes to much the same thing in Society, in that you’d be running my errands, but it will at least allow us to speak more freely to each other in public.’
‘How will we find the old Blackfriars buildings, or where they used to be?’ Eleanor asked.
‘This is Oxford,’ Lady Marguerite said serenely. ‘It has a great many visitors who wish to see the sights. If the nearest bookshop can’t sell us a book or pamphlet listing the sites of interest for the moral and aesthetic improvement of visitors, I will be extremely surprised. Let us enjoy the city together, and revel in the lack of guillotines. We are in England, after all.’
The benefits of being an assumed companion or younger relation, albeit a dependent one clinging to an employer or aunt for money, included Eleanor being able to walk next to Lady Marguerite rather than trailing behind her. This enabled them to make quiet conversation as they went, rather than Eleanor observing a dutiful silence as a maid should do. Yet to Eleanor’s surprise, she found that in being disguised as someone a few steps up from the lower class, but still lacking in wealth, she wasn’t even given the notice she would have received as a maid. Maids at least got a cheerful smile from shopkeepers, or an appreciative wink, or a commiserative nod at the mistress’s high-handedness. A companion or poor relation was instead given the minimum of politeness and nothing else. It was a new standard in invisibility.
‘I always thought Oxford would be prettier,’ she said softly to Lady Marguerite as the two of them strolled along a crowded street. ‘The vicar – that is, the one who was at St Thomas’s when I was a child, on Lady Sophie’s lands – said there were green lawns everywhere here.’
‘Behind those walls,’ Lady Marguerite said, jerking her parasol briefly at one of the high walls they were passing. ‘A few are open for public viewing and admiration, but I fear most of the colleges prefer to keep their luxuries to themselves.’
Three students were approaching, heads together as they discussed something, and Eleanor caught a few words. ‘Rational enlightenment . . . Regency . . .’ They parted around the oncoming Lady Marguerite to resume their conversation on the other side of her, barely seeming to notice her.
‘Politics,’ Eleanor said, mildly disapproving. It was clearly very much on all the students’ minds at the moment.
‘Oh, you can’t expect young university men to discuss Latin and Greek all the time. I fear not all of them are like Charles, my dear.’
Eleanor had been annoyed more than once by Charles’s studious urges and constant wanderings from the subject – any subject – under discussion, in order to provide additional information from his excessive breadth of knowledge. Yet now she realized she would miss those traits if he were somehow to abandon them. They had become what she expected in an educated man. ‘I’ve always wondered why he joined the League,’ she said, a little wistfully.
Lady Marguerite glanced at her sidelong. ‘I’ll tell you at some point, if you’re curious, but first let us reach the Thames. I believe it’s not much further to Folly Bridge – and have you noted the name of the street we’re currently on?’
Eleanor blushed, not having done so.
‘St Aldate’s. I will have to check my guidebook, once we’re sat down for tea. A clue, perhaps!’ Her eyes sparkled.
Eleanor wished she herself could be as enthusiastic. They had a whole city to search, and only a day or two to do it in – assuming there was anything to find here at all. Meanwhile, the rest of the League, back in London, would be facing the scrutiny of the law. Andrew had been shot – please God that the wound hadn’t become infected – and Tony left the worse for wear too. And Sir Percy was undoubtedly suffering under questioning and threats – would his influential friends actually be any help? Lady Marguerite herself was being pursued as a criminal, or victim of kidnap, or both. And this was England. They were supposed to be safe here. ‘Helen at the inn said this used to be called Fish Street,’ she muttered.
‘I think someone is in need of a cup of tea to restore her mood,’ Lady Marguerite said brightly. ‘Perhaps a cake, too! My dear, have some sympathy with me. After being under house arrest for the past week, even these clouded skies and busy streets are pure freedom and paradise to me.’
Eleanor murmured an apology, then was silent until they came in sight of the Thames. At this she couldn’t help but pause and gasp. It wasn’t like the Thames where it flowed through London – a great seething brown mass which swept along humans and garbage alike in its tides. It wasn’t even like the Seine in Paris – as unstoppable as the Paris mob, seemingly calm and gracious but cold and grasping beneath the surface, as hungry as a vampire for anyone caught in its waters. No, the Thames here in Oxford seemed . . . tame, even pretty. It ran along between green banks on either side, where willows bowed to touch the water and any grasses caught in the flow pointed in the direction of the current. The bridge ahead, captured in a brief moment of sunlight, crossed the river in low pale arcs of stone. It might have been a painting, like the pretty ones hanging in Blakeney Manor, all landscapes and green fields, which Sir Percy claimed were the latest fashion.
‘To the right, I think,’ Lady Marguerite said softly. ‘That is where we find streets with names such as Blackfriars Road and Preachers Lane. Let us be frivolous and look for a teashop there, then plot what to do next.’
When they were finally sitting down, and the waitress was hurrying off to fetch tea and cakes, Lady Marguerite leaned back in her chair. ‘Well, my dear? I can tell you have been deliberating. What do you have in mind?’
Eleanor swallowed. She wasn’t sure what Lady Marguerite would think of the plan she had been formulating – but she wanted to live up to what milady and the others expected of her. She was determined to try. ‘Well, madam . . .’
There was a brief pause while the refreshments arrived. One simply could not discuss ancient mages, vampires and conspiracies with a waitress shuffling round the table arranging tea and cake dishes. Once the risk of listening ears had receded, Eleanor tapped a finger on the heavy Guidebook to Oxford: Its Antiquities, Its Bowers And Its Many Charming Sights which lay on the table between them. ‘While we don’t really know more from this about the Dominicans – the Blackfriars – than Charles could tell us last night, we do know that the site of their abbey was close to where we’re taking tea at the moment.’
‘Indeed,’ Lady Marguerite agreed. ‘Somewhere beneath the current assortment of fields, houses and streets. Yet I fear we will have little luck if we attempt to assault the place with spades.’
Eleanor nodded ruefully. ‘This is a gamble, milady – well, multiple gambles, to be honest. I’m hoping that if I can, well . . .’ The words were strange in her mouth, seeming ridiculous, but she forced them out. ‘If I can use my power in this area and there is some trace left of Matthew – if he bound himself to the place somehow, just as Anima preserved her spirit – then I’ll be able to sense it.’
To her profound relief, Lady Marguerite didn’t instantly poke holes in the proposal or suggest that Eleanor was Bedlam-mad. Instead she frowned thoughtfully, her powdered brows drawing together as she considered. ‘It’s a reasonable scheme,’ she finally said, ‘and you know far more about this magic than any of us.’
‘I know hardly anything,’ Eleanor said quickly. ‘I’m sorry. If only Anima had shown me—’
‘My dear, pray cease this pre-emptive apologizing! Absolutely nobody blames you for any of this. Consider how much greater our danger would have been without your help. My brother Armand might still be a slave of those monarchist vampires in France.’ The pinpoint flare of fury in her eyes was briefly as vicious as any sanguinocrat’s bloodlust, but she kept her voice low. ‘All that you’ve done, all that you’ve achieved, is far above anything we had any right to ask of you. Don’t be ashamed because you don’t know the secrets which were lost seven centuries ago. From what you’ve said, Anima shirked her duty as your teacher. If she were here, I’d give her a piece of my mind.’
Eleanor couldn’t prevent the smile which crept to her lips as gratitude rose in her. ‘Thank you, milady. You’re very . . . comforting.’
‘Perhaps, but at this moment I intend to be inspiring! Now how do you plan to use your power? A thunderstorm?’
‘Oh, that won’t happen till about five or six o’clock this afternoon,’ Eleanor said without thinking. She could feel the sluggish weight of the clouds strengthening from the east. She knew when they would reach the point of no return – unless she were to prod them earlier, of course. ‘No, I think I can do it if I persuade a breeze to blow. My concern is that I may react . . . oddly.’
‘Oddly in the sense of a seizure, like a madwoman on the stage?’ Lady Marguerite asked clinically. ‘Or more in the sense of moaning and collapse?’
‘I seem generally to huddle up in a corner with the air of someone having a violent headache,’ Eleanor confessed. ‘Or so Charles tells me.’ She looked around the teashop. Rather to her surprise, instead of somewhere that was out of the way and off the main street, with convenient shadowy corners and nooks they could have hidden in, Lady Marguerite had chosen a popular one. Most tables were full of students discussing various matters – studies, politics and entertainment – at the top of their voices. The few remaining tables were occupied by groups of middle-aged women, who appeared to be mostly discussing the students. Lady Marguerite’s sole nod to secrecy had been to choose a corner table which gave them a good view of the room and allowed them to sit with their backs to the wall. ‘Perhaps we should go somewhere else . . .’
‘This will do nicely, my dear Eleanor,’ Lady Marguerite contradicted her. ‘Everyone here is far too occupied with their own business to look at us. Had we been lurking in some otherwise deserted teashop, people who saw us would wonder why we were patronizing an outmoded, unfashionable place. Here we are merely a couple of customers – and quiet ones at that. The safest place is in the middle of the crowd.’
‘Or directly beneath the hunter’s nose,’ Eleanor replied, remembering a previous ruse of Sir Percy’s. ‘Very well, milady. I’ll try.’
‘I have every faith you’ll succeed,’ Lady Marguerite said firmly. ‘You have done so with everything else we’ve asked of you so far.’
‘There was Mont-Saint-Michel . . .’
‘A success plucked from the brink of failure is still a success. Now, on with it! Work your magic.’
Eleanor blushed, then lowered her head, her eyes half closing, and tried to feel for the threads which Anima had always plucked so easily in the past.
She could smell the breeze as it came creeping through the room, answering the summons of her crooked fingers. It carried scents from beyond the teashop’s confines – river mud, rotting weed, drying grass that hungered for rain, sweat from straining muscles, animal dung, the stones of the road aching in the July heat. For a moment these overpowered the teashop’s own odours of tea, coffee and hot chocolate, cakes and toast, perfume and hair-powder and newspaper ink. It felt as though Oxford was breathing around her and that the whole city was a living beast, which ate, excreted, sweated and bled, and the people moving through its streets were no more than drops of blood in its veins, necessary as a whole but singularly expendable.
She breathed out, and the city breathed with her. The little gusts kicked along the streets, around the teashop and south and west, to where the remains of the Dominican abbey ought to be – no, must be. Picking up dust and fragments of paper, they stirred the heaps of garbage and combed through the fur of panting dogs and cats that lay spreadeagled in the afternoon heat; they twitched at skirts and shawls and elegant lace cuffs; they pulled at curls and wigs; they ruffled the parched grass and swept across the surface of the Thames, brushing the other bank before returning. A hundred walls turned these gusts aside or made them divert their path; a hundred closed doors and windows barred their way.
All of it swept through Eleanor’s mind in a flow of something that wasn’t quite imagery but felt more as if she was exploring a thousand things at once with her fingers yet was unable to hold a single one in her mind. It drowned her as the Seine nearly had done once, carrying her along in a visionless blur of motion, a swirl of odours. And nothing – none of it – actually meant anything to her. She had no sense of specific geography or location, and could not recognize a single face. There was no prickle of awareness, no stab of a presence, nothing: merely sensation in dozens of different forms.
She stretched her senses outwards for as long as she could, searching for something, anything, to justify the effort, but still nothing came back that conveyed any meaning to her, only the flow of motion and constant interaction – as constant as the wind and as futile. Her head throbbed with effort.
Reluctantly, finally, Eleanor breathed in again, calling her own breath back to her, letting all the other twists and gusts of wind separate and fall away through the streets of Oxford. She had no room in her mind for anything except the thought of her failure. She’d tried so hard last night to think what to do, to remember Anima and what she’d been able to do. So much for her own powers, and for Lady Marguerite’s faith in her . . .
Then something caught her wind. It was like a pin catching in the woven fabric of a skirt and leaving a long rip behind it as it dragged at the cloth. Her eyes flew open and she sat bolt upright, but she wasn’t looking at the teashop around her. She had no exact comparisons for the sensation, but it was like burning ice, or slamming her elbow unexpectedly into a brick wall, or biting into an unripe apple while suffering from a toothache. She’d seen Anima’s magic through her own eyes. She’d sensed Bernard’s magic on Mont-Saint-Michel, though that had been a softer, more fluid thing. This felt as though not only had she perceived someone, but they had perceived her – and they were angry.
Most importantly, she knew where it was. Back the way they’d come, off St Aldate’s, to the east. She couldn’t have named the street, or even described the location by sight, but she was certain she’d recognize the place if she walked through it and felt the touch of wind against buildings.
The pin withdrew itself, and she could breathe again, but she knew this presence was still aware of her, just as she was aware of it.
‘Annie!’ Lady Marguerite exclaimed, shocked. ‘Your nose!’
Eleanor lifted her fingers to it, blinking as her eyes adjusted to normal vision again, and found her hand covered in blood. ‘Oh,’ she said, swaying forward and nearly landing face-first on the table.
Lady Marguerite fussed over her, ordering the waitresses to fetch cold compresses and peppermint tea, passing the whole thing off as a nosebleed brought on by heatstroke. But Eleanor could see the sharp appraisal in her eyes – more than that, the hope that Eleanor had found something. A few of the establishment’s other patrons glanced in their direction, but most of them were far more concerned with their own discussions.
It was then that the teashop door smacked open with far more than usual force, rattling against the wall. All eyes, even Eleanor’s and Lady Marguerite’s, turned to the doorway, where two bulky men were silhouetted. They were wide and muscular enough that they’d probably have become stuck if they’d tried to enter at the same time.
They looked around. One of them pointed out a table to the far right, occupied by several students. The other nodded. Then they stepped aside as a new figure strode in.
While vampires didn’t enjoy going out by day, and especially not if the sun was shining, they were still quite capable of doing so. A day like today, heavily overcast and enshrouded by cloud, was the sort they liked best. The man who’d just entered the teashop had the typical pallor of a vampire, and as he saw the students at the far-right table, his lips peeled back in an arrogant snarl that showed a brief hint of fangs. His wig and shirt were stark white, but the rest of his clothing was dead black, and the heels of his shoes rapped on the floor as he walked through the now silent teashop.
Eleanor could see the students exchanging glances behind his back as he passed. Everyone apparently knew who he was – and nobody cared to attract his attention.
