Chapter 2
THERE IS NOTHING so prolix as a committee of magicians. It was six o’clock when Zacharias’s colleagues had done opining on thaumaturgical standards, long past the time he would ordinarily have sat down to his dinner.
He was engaged to dine with a colleague, but fortunately his friend kept polite hours, and would not deem even half past six too late for his meal, so that Zacharias mounted the broad white steps of the Theurgist’s Club with nothing but his own appetite to quicken his pace.
The Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers regulated the affairs of English thaumaturgy, but it was within the less stately and more modish corridors of the Theurgist’s Club that thaumaturgy took its ease.
In the Theurgist’s handsome rooms congregated augurers, alchemists, diviners, warlocks, soothsayers, invocators, tempestarians, mages and even the occasional sorcerer.
The only conditions of membership were that the candidate possess some soupcon of magical ability, and that he pass for a gentleman.
In recent years the requirement of birth had assumed rather more importance than that of magic, as England’s magical resource began to dwindle and thaumaturgy lost some of its lustre as a profession.
In truth magic had always had a slightly un-English character, being unpredictable, heedless of tradition and profligate with its gifts to high and low.
Save in the grand old thaumaturgical families—the Burrows, the Edgeworths, the Midsomers and their ilk—magic-making was now really only deemed a desirable profession for younger sons.
In consequence the dining rooms of the Theurgist’s were swelled with gentlemen who cared more for whist than wizardry. Serious-minded unnatural philosophers fled for the refuge of the Society’s august halls and hushed libraries.
It might have been expected that Zacharias would join them, but in fact he found the Theurgist’s young bucks and dandies more congenial company.
He had not been admitted as a Fellow of the Society, despite fulfilling all the requirements of learning and ability, until he had taken up his staff, and even then the Society’s acceptance of its new Sorcerer Royal had been grudging at best.
Boisterous as the Theurgist’s dining rooms were, within them, at least, Zacharias could trust that his colour was no bar.
There he was merely Zacharias Wythe: “Gentlemanly fellow, Wythe, even if he does talk like a book.” Zacharias always experienced a sense of relief upon stepping over its threshold, a relaxation of his guard he could enjoy nowhere else in public.
A group of thaumaturges was busy spell-making in the grand front sitting room of the club as Zacharias passed through. They were reflected in tall looking glasses, so that it seemed as though the room were full of dozens of lounging magicians.
Josiah Cullip stood among them, wobbling on his feet, and declaring, in the deliberate, portentuous manner of the foxed:
“All this talk of Puffett’s impenetrability is humbug! Any middling thaumaturge could cast it. All that is needed is a modicum of ability—and a candle, of course.”
“Well, we have an abundance of candles here,” said an associate. “Perhaps you would condescend to demonstrate Puffett’s for us, since it is so straightforward.”
The exchange was nothing remarkable. The execution of trifling illusions and glamours was the accustomed dinner entertainment at the Theurgist’s, so commonplace that Zacharias would be deemed very eccentric for raising any objection to it.
He might nonetheless have remonstrated with his colleagues for their extravagance—Puffett’s fireworks in miniature was in fact rather a ticklish spell, requiring a significant expenditure of magical resource—but that speaking would entail reproving Cullip.
In the common way of men, Cullip’s guilt led him to resent Zacharias for having been kinder to him than he deserved, and Zacharias had no wish to increase the ill feeling between them.
The footman who greeted Zacharias knew whom he was there to see:
“Mr. Damerell asked to be put in the Blue Room, sir, being quieter than the main hall. Will you be having the lobster as well?”
“A boiled fowl will suffice for me, thank you, Tom,” Zacharias was saying, when there was the most extraordinary noise behind him. It sounded like nothing so much as a thousand deep resonant voices saying at once, “Blurp.”
Zacharias turned to see Cullip brandishing a silver candlestick above his head, like a sword. It held no candles, but Cullip now wore a top hat, made not of beaver or silk plush, but of pure white wax. Small orange flames blazed on wicks sprouting from his ears, illumining his baffled countenance.
Tom tutted. “I knew he would come a cropper! I never saw a man that could carry off Puffett’s when he was in his cups. I doubt whether even Sir Stephen could have done it!”
The thaumaturge who had egged Cullip on said drily:
“I doubt that is quite what Puffett intended! But I am sure you are right, Cullip, and I vastly overrated the difficulty of the spell. I should think it is a problem with the candles.” Noticing Zacharias, he cried:
“Why, we have the Sorcerer Royal among us! He will shed some light on this. Do not you think, sir, that it is a false economy to have candles that will not permit of Puffett’s success? For the skill of the magician cannot be doubted.”
Cullip went crimson, snatching off his wax top hat and hurling it to the ground. He exclaimed:
“Are we to defer to the Sorcerer Royal’s judgment? If the office were held by one deserving the title, English thaumaturges might not be reduced to scrabbling for magic for every inconsequential spell!”
Zacharias stiffened, but he had received snubs worse than this before, and swallowed his resentment.
“There is only so much even my wealth and influence can do to counteract the prejudice against you,” Sir Stephen had told him once, long ago.
“In time you will prove yourself, Zacharias, and your accomplishments will leave no one in any doubt of your worth. Till then your only defence against impertinence must be patience and courtesy. By such means you may win your enemies over—but it is certain you cannot afford the alternative.”
The nearest Zacharias could approach the requisite patience and courtesy now was to ignore Cullip. He said to Tom:
“In the Blue Room, did you say?”
But Cullip was too angry and incautious to let the matter lie.
“At least he knows his place well enough not to seek to defend himself,” he said to his acquaintance. “It is only a pity he has not the wisdom to surrender his office to a true English thaumaturge!”
Zacharias was no paragon, despite his long training in enduring insults. The sneering tone of Cullip’s voice could not be borne. He turned and snapped:
“You need only one candle for Puffett’s—tallow, not wax—and if you had recited the correct formula, you might have carried it off.
As for the rest, sir, I shall not dignify it with an answer—save that if English thaumaturges spent less of their magic in foolish diversions, perhaps they might have more to serve their country with! ”
Cullip was already so purple from claret and temper that he could not turn redder, but he flung down the candlestick and drew himself up, swelling like a bantam.
“Well, sir, I believe you know where I am to be found—” he began, but he was interrupted.
“You are shockingly late, Zacharias. What can you be about?”
No one could recall ever having seen Paget Damerell perform an enchantment, though he had somehow contrived to attain the much-coveted status of sorcerer.
He pursued a life of the completest inutility, flirting with interesting women, eating handsome meals, paying scrupulous attention to his clothes and making it the sole business of his life to know every scrap of news floating about the thaumaturgical world.
For this, as much as the silver sorcerer’s star pinned to his coat, he was respected and even feared at the Theurgist’s, and his appearance threw Cullip off his stride.
As he hesitated, Damerell lifted a quizzing-glass to his eye, saying in a tone of mild surprise:
“Those flames in your ears are a clever trick, Cullip, but dangerous, do not you think? I daresay I am an old fogey, and flaming ears are all the rage. I do not like to take Mr. Wythe from such delightful society, but there is the matter of my lobster, you know.” Damerell’s manner was apologetic, but that of a man who is serene in his conviction of doing what is right.
“A gentleman cannot keep a lobster waiting. You will understand, I am sure.”
By the time Cullip had formulated a response to his own satisfaction, Damerell had hustled Zacharias to the refuge of one of the small private dining rooms.
“I am loath to discourage you from calling out Cullip, for if any man deserved a drubbing it is he,” said Damerell. “But a Sorcerer Royal cannot duel his brother-thaumaturges. It is not at all the thing.”
His ears burning, Zacharias said:
“I had no intention of calling him out, and must thank you for interrupting us before he could commit us. I ought not to have addressed him in such intemperate terms. Cullip’s thaumaturgy was always better than his judgment, but I have not that excuse.”
“Your estimation of his parts is kinder than he merits, if that is his notion of Puffett’s,” Damerell observed. “At any other time I should congratulate you on your intemperance—I would call it candour. But this is not the time for it, Zacharias. Do not you know what they are saying of you?”
“That I am a murderer?” said Zacharias, after a moment. No other man would have ventured to speak so openly of the dark rumours that circled Zacharias, but Damerell’s was a nature that thrived on picking up rocks and making amusing comments on the manners of the creatures scurrying underneath.
Damerell shook his head. “Not only that.”