Hex and Hexability

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

‘H e had a purse of money in each coat pocket, coins sewn into his hems and even a banknote in a pocket of his smallclothes,’ said Esme, as she poured Tiffany a glass of wine. And it looked like proper wine, too, not the over-sweetened ratafia she was usually offered.

‘He’s not short of a few bob,’ said Nora, who wore an apron over her serviceable dress like a servant, and her hair cut short like a Frenchwoman, and yet did not behave as if she was either of those things. She had shoulders like a stevedore and a vocabulary to match. She and Madhu had simply appeared in the house, quite as if they’d always been there.

‘But he is not a gentleman,’ said Tiffany. ‘His hair—his hands , Aunt Esme, did you see?’ Tiffany had only seen the bare hands of a gentleman up close at dinner, but they were usually as soft and manicured as her own. Perhaps a splotch of ink if he was bookish. But Mr Santiago had thick calluses on his fingers and palms, and scars both old and new on the backs of his hands. And as for that black ink…

‘Oh, yes. The hands of a sailor. He might have wealth now, but he has known hard work, and plenty of it.’

‘I think he is well-travelled. When I spoke to him in Kannada I think he understood a little,’ said Madhu, who appeared to be the cook but also might not be. She wore a drape of deep pink and gold over her gown, and had a golden ring in her nose. Her nose .

The women of the house—and it seemed to be just women—moved freely between upstairs and downstairs. Were they servants? Did they have servants? Were they all witches? Tiffany didn’t know how to ask. She still wasn’t sure she wasn’t imagining it all.

‘’Twas the beasty with them squirmers,’ said Gwen firmly. She had paintbrushes stuck in her hair and a great many pockets, all full of notebooks. Tiffany had no idea what she scribbled in them. ‘I seen it three weeks Tuesday.’

There was a pause. ‘Dear,’ said Esme crisply, but not unkindly, ‘three weeks Tuesday last? Or three weeks Tuesday hence?’

Tiffany drank some wine.

‘Depends,’ said Gwen after some thought. ‘It still be to come. And it has been.’ She frowned at something nobody else could see. ‘There be a great light,’ she added, helpfully.

‘Oh, well, hallelujah,’ said Nora. She threw herself down on the settee in a most unladylike manner, but nobody reprimanded her. Perhaps all witches were like this. ‘How long’s he going to be here?’

‘Until he is well enough to leave,’ said Esme. She refilled her own glass, glanced at Tiffany’s and refilled that too. ‘Gwen?’

‘He will escape from Elba, mark my words,’ said Gwen.

‘That was last month,’ said Tiffany nervously. She wasn’t supposed to know about politics, but really, the return of Bonaparte far transcended that, surely? The man could be planning an invasion of these isles at any moment!

‘Well, it’s good to know when she is at the current time,’ said Esme. ‘Now. I mislike having a man about the house as much as the rest of you?—’

‘Hah!’ snorted Nora.

‘—but he is our guest and so is the boy Billy.’

There was a short pause as they all tried not to look around themselves too noticeably.

‘The silverware in the pantry is the most expensive,’ Esme called loudly. ‘Do not accept less than ten guineas for the set.’

After a moment, Billy’s curly head appeared around the edge of the door. ‘I ain’t a thief,’ he said.

‘Really? Then how do you survive?’

Billy’s gaze darted between the five women. ‘Uh, you know,’ he said. ‘This and that.’

‘Hmm. Well, you have my blessing on the silverware—to the left of the kitchen, we don’t lock it—but if you steal anything from me personally I shall cut off your fingers and feed them to you.’

‘Take my pocket-watch and I’ll crush all your bones to flour,’ added Nora, as she took out a knife and cleaned her nails with it.

‘Once I knew a man who was turned into a fish because he stole a chicken,’ said Madhu. ‘Then the fish was caught and the man was eaten.’

‘He’ll put it back by tomorrow,’ said Gwen, and as she spoke, the fire in the grate roared.

Billy’s eyes, which had grown wider with every statement, landed on Tiffany.

‘I shall,’ she began, and tried to think what one did when one was robbed. ‘I shall call the magistrates,’ she said, and they all scoffed and rolled their eyes.

‘Tiffany, you are a witch,’ complained Esme. ‘I am sure you can come up with a better threat than that.’

I am a witch. Esme said it so casually. ‘If he is found guilty, he could be hanged,’ said Tiffany, of the skinny boy who was gazing at the bowl of fruit on the sideboard as if it was all made of gold. ‘And—and I am not accustomed to threatening people!’

‘Oh dear. I recommend you learn. It is most satisfying. Now then, Billy. You indicated that you had not become acquainted with Mr Santiago before the events that transpired upon the shore?’

The boy’s eyes slid in the direction of Nora, who translated, ‘You didn’t meet him until yesterday?’

‘Oh. No. He said he’d give me ten bob for showing him what washed up in the mud,’ said Billy.

‘And what had washed up in the mud?’

‘I dunno. Boxes. I had a look but it was all ruined. Bottles smashed and that. I was gonna get some of the fabric for a blanket but it was all this thin stuff and I ain’t got no use for that.’

‘Lace?’

Billy shrugged. He had just seen the plate of biscuits Madhu had laid out on the table. ‘Nah. That slippery stuff.’

‘Silk?’ said Tiffany, and tried to ignore Nora’s snort.

‘Yeah. Maybe.’

‘They say silk can stop a musket ball,’ said Tiffany, who had read it somewhere.

‘Well, next time someone shoots one at you, your ladyship, you can tell us,’ said Nora.

‘June,’ said Gwen. They waited, but nothing more was forthcoming.

‘Yes. Now, what can you tell us of the gentleman?’ said Esme.

Billy shrugged. He sidled further into the room, and at Esme’s urging snatched a biscuit off the table and shoved it whole into his mouth. He moaned a little, and shoved another one in.

‘He said he’d give me ten bob,’ he repeated, spraying crumbs. ‘And you said he had money.’

‘I shall make sure the ten bob is forthcoming,’ said Esme.

‘Fanks miss, you’re a toff.’

‘Perhaps I shall fetch more biscuits,’ murmured Madhu, and glided from the room.

‘Anything else? About Mr Santiago?’

The boy shoved the last of the biscuits in. ‘He saved my life,’ he said.

‘Yes, you have said. Most chivalrous. Do you know anything else about him? Where he is from? His place of business? The nature of his business?’

Tiffany watched, fascinated, as Billy swallowed what had to be six biscuits all at once. ‘If he chokes,’ said Nora, ‘I ain’t helping.’

‘That will not be necessary. Billy?’

Billy began licking his fingers. ‘He told me to run. When that… ’ere, what was that thing?’

‘Thing?’

‘Like a sort of…’ He made tentacled motions with his fingers.

‘Beasty with squirmers?’ said Gwen.

‘Yeah. Made out of water. I ain’t never seen nuffink like that before. But I seen all them boxes smashed up on the shore and some bits what used to be people, and Mr Santiago saved me from that, so I ain’t telling you anyfink.’

‘Why not?’ asked Tiffany, curious.

‘’Cos you’re witches, innit. You made the beasty with the squirmers.’

‘I assure you we did not,’ said Esme firmly, then darted a quick glance at the others, who all shook their heads.

Tiffany looked away. She probably hadn’t made the beasty. Probably. She certainly had not drawn a tentacled beast or looked at a picture of one recently.

She had dreamed of squirming monsters and crashing waves, but if she could make her dreams come to life then the world would likely be an absolutely terrifying place.

‘And we, I should like to point out, saved his life,’ said Esme. ‘And yours, I should wager, if you were sleeping in a cowshed and in need of stealing a blanket. Ah, Madhu. With some parathas for our young friend, too, I see.’

Billy’s eyes got bigger as the smell of the parathas filled the room. Tiffany didn’t know what they were—some kind of unleavened dough?—but the smell was making her stomach rumble. They smelled of melted cheese and spices and deliciousness.

She watched the boy sit at the table and begin stuffing hot, doughy goodness into his face, grease running over his chin. She had never been allowed to eat like that. Her nurses and governesses had impressed upon her the importance of ladylike manners when she was barely old enough to feed herself. Tiny bites, never finish the plateful, never eat anything that might make a mess of one’s hands or face. Never eat anything that might make one’s breath smell.

She would never have been allowed a paratha.

Aunt Esme sat down in one of the other chairs, leaning on her hand and watching Billy. ‘They are good, aren’t they? We know a wonderful merchant who stocks all sorts of spices. Terribly difficult to get them shipped down to Cornwall but one can’t have everything.’

‘One can if one has a magic door,’ said Nora idly, and was ignored by Esme.

‘Although sometimes it is quite shockingly hard to get hold of nutmeg. I wonder,’ said that lady, ‘if perhaps the merchant buys his spices from your Mr Santiago?’

Billy merely shrugged and carried on eating. The food, it seemed, was its own kind of magic.

‘If that were so, perhaps we could ask if he ships nutmeg. Or knows someone who does.’

‘Woss nutmeg?’ asked the boy, through his food.

‘A spice, quite delicious and versatile. From the Banda Isles of Dutch Indonesia. One would need shipping concerns in the South Pacific to bring it here, I should imagine. I wonder, Billy—could you find out for us? Perhaps supply the name of his shipping concern?’

Billy’s eyes darted from her face to the food, and then back again. ‘I didn’t understand half what you just said,’ he admitted.

Esme smiled. From nowhere she produced a handful of shillings.

‘I reckon,’ she said conversationally, ‘there’s a pound here, in change.’

Billy’s brown eyes got very big.

‘Would a pound help your understanding?’

He nodded vigorously.

‘Good lad.’ The coins tipped from Esme’s hand into two neat columns on the table. ‘Tell me by luncheon and it’ll magically become a guinea.’

* * *

It was a cargo of porcelain that did it.

Santiago had been on board a Dutch vessel, innocently—well, mostly innocently—shipping the stuff from Canton to Penang when they were set upon by pirates. From whom he managed to escape, only to be captured by their leader, a woman half his size and ten times his deadliness.

She had interrogated him about the cargo, about his ties to the Netherlands and to Spain and to Britain, and when he had tried to charm her she had laughed and slid the blade of her curved sword down his cheek.

‘A reminder,’ she had said, or something similar to that. It had been in Cantonese and Santiago wasn’t really all that fluent. He’d probably not been that much older than Billy at the time.

Her questioning had been subtle. The British authorities in Penang had been slightly less polite. And the less said about the time he’d been suspected of smuggling in Manila the better.

None of them held a candle to Billy, whose idea of subtle was to drink his cold tea and announce, ‘The ladies downstairs want to know if you sell nutmeg. What’s nutmeg?’

‘A spice. And yes, sometimes.’ He tried to remember if he had any. The Epunamun might have been bringing some. But she was lost somewhere beneath the briny waves, just like the Pincoya . ‘Why?’

‘I dunno.’ He picked at a biscuit left on the table by the bed. ‘The lassy what cooks makes these bread things, right, like … kind of pies with cheese in them, and spices and stuff. Like the lascars eat.’

‘You know lascars?’ Those were the sailors from Southeast Asia, who had been settling in the docklands of London for decades, but Santiago didn’t know how many of them had made it to Foulness Island.

‘Yeah. When I was in… Before I left town.’ He said it casually, as if London had become such a bore for a young lad. ‘Down the docks. Funny I never met you. The ladies said you was in shipping.’

Ladies. At least one of them was a lady, the daughter of an earl no less. The imperious Mistress Blackmantle would also fall into that category, although he wasn’t sure about the other three. And ladies surely couldn’t be witches, could they?

Now that his head felt clearer, Santiago found his mind recoiling less and less from the idea. In Brazil he had encountered a bruja , a wise woman who had communed with her spirit gods. She had sung and danced in the firelight, seeming unearthly, and yet she had been kind to a small boy whose mother spent all her time praying, and whose father had run away from his debts yet again.

In South Africa he had encountered the sangoma , who interceded between the living and the dead by means of divination, in order to heal and comfort the sick. In the South Pacific he had met sorcerers who passed down their powers from father to son and mother to daughter. None of them had harmed him, although he did recall one ritual whose intent seemed to be to cause the death of a man whose wife was coveted by another. Santiago remembered that, because the lady in question had preferred him to both men.

Why should there not be witches in England? Perhaps they were everywhere, and all those bizarre rituals he had witnessed at the ball were simply another form of arcane belief. What had Mistress Blackmantle and her women done to him, after all? Taken him in and healed his wounds?

Yes, but who called down the cuero in the first place? asked a dark little corner of his soul.

He cleared his throat, aware Billy was awaiting an answer. ‘It’s a busy place. And I am only recently in town.’

‘Yeah? Down Wapping, are you?’

It was almost sweet, the way the boy thought he was being so guileless. ‘Limehouse,’ said Santiago, trying not to smile. ‘Are you angling for a job. Billy?’

‘A job?’ Billy paused with a biscuit halfway to his mouth. ‘I … dunno. I ain’t never had one.’

‘Well,’ said Santiago, ‘I could always use somebody to run errands for me. Carry messages. Fetch food. Such a valuable member of my company would be well remunerated, of course.’

Billy’s gaze darted from side to side.

‘Paid,’ Santiago clarified. He sat up and stretched. The bed was comfortable, but he had spent too much time in it, and he ached as if he had been in a tavern brawl. ‘In fact, you could begin right now, if you like.’

‘I could?’

‘Yes. I should like you to take a message to my office in Limehouse.’

‘How much’d I be paid?’

Santiago smiled. He thought about how much he paid his dockers, and they usually had families to support. ‘Threepence a day,’ he said. ‘Food included.’

Billy’s eyes were huge. ‘I get me grub included?’

‘As much as you can eat.’ Which would almost certainly cost him more than threepence a day at the rate Billy was going.

‘Cor.’ Billy stuffed another biscuit in, apparently without thinking, and said, ‘What’s the message?’

* * *

‘What on earth are you doing, wandering off like that?’ scolded Elinor. She fiddled with her parasol and handed it to her footman in irritation. ‘Lady Dandridge asked after you—of course, her son is worth two thousand a year for all he is so terribly short—and for a moment I thought today was the day you went to visit your aunt.’

Tiffany, who was somewhat out of breath from almost-but-not-quite running back from Aunt Esme’s, smiled and tried to look as if she’d been doing no more than strolling.

‘Today? No, of course not. I was merely chatting with some friends.’

‘Friends?’ Elinor laughed. ‘I don’t recall you ever having friends, Theophania!’

No.

No, she didn’t.

There had been Henry, the boot boy. Tiffany knew she wasn’t supposed to be friends with him, because Elinor had not considered such a child suitable, but she had turned herself unseen and sneaked out of the house to play with him in the fields and the ruins on the hill. But Henry had gone away to fight Bonaparte, and she had heard nothing from his family for months.

There had been no other children near her age in the families whose estates abutted Dyrehaven. Tiffany had tried to befriend the village children, but they’d been frightened of her—or perhaps of Elinor—and Tiffany herself hadn’t really known how to talk to them anyway. That left her nieces and nephews, the oldest of whom was three years Tiffany’s junior and the youngest still in short trousers.

Coming to London hadn’t helped, because every other young lady here seemed to be entirely comfortable with the social whirl, all of them sophisticated and polished and trilling with inane laughter at every silly joke a gentleman made.

But none of them had recently rescued a man from drowning and slipped unseen through a crowded park and had a conversation with a cat .

Because none of them were witches, but Aunt Esme and Gwen and Madhu and Nora were, and they didn’t care in the slightest whether Tiffany’s gown was fashionable or her posture correct or her conversation bland.

None of them were defined solely as daughters or sisters or wives or mothers. They were women, whole and complete with no men in sight.

‘I—’ Elinor seemed to mistake her expression. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I am sure you will make friends once you’ve attended a few more events. Why, it’s simply that at a ball, there is no time to talk.’ She began walking again, taking her parasol from the footman and nodding to an acquaintance. ‘Perhaps we should attend a … a few more At Homes, and then perhaps a gallery. Yes, you can make friends at a gallery.’

‘No’ said Tiffany sharply.

‘No?’ Elinor stopped. ‘My dear, you must have friends. It is positively abnormal to be alone as much as you are. People will begin to think you are strange, and nobody wants to marry a strange girl.’

Then I shall become a witch, and have my own friends, and never have to marry anyone . Tiffany lifted her chin, and as she did, remembered the pirate smile and the gold earring and the black ink. Hah! Perhaps I shall marry a pirate . That would show Elinor!

If Elinor noticed her strange mood, she did not show it. They went home, and ate a cold luncheon while Elinor decided upon whom they would pay calls later.

And as Tiffany followed her from the house, dressed once more in an insipid gown that made her look like a vanilla slice, a raven cawed overhead and a pale rectangle dropped from the sky.

‘Take it,’ said the raven’s voice, a harsh croak inside her head, and she darted to pick it up before she’d even realised what she was doing. She skipped after Elinor into the carriage, the card tucked into her palm, and didn’t look at it until Elinor had turned to her maid to fix a curl of hair that kept unravelling.

Tiffany smiled to herself, because she had been gazing at it and willing it to unravel the whole time. Was this magic? Simply willing things to happen, and therefore making it so? Was this what she had been suppressing her whole life? It suddenly seemed as easy and natural as breathing.

She turned her attention to the card hidden in her palm. It was a trade card, engraved with flourishes and an illustration of a fine three-masted ship. Santiago Pacific and Eurasian Trading Co. , it read. Opp. Bell Inn, next to de Groot’s, cnr Commercial Rd, Limehouse Basin. Wholesale fine silks, tea, coffee, liquors, tobacco…

The list of goods boasted of went on into quite small print. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that thanks to Aunt Esme’s ravens, Tiffany now had Mr Santiago’s direction.

Now all she had to do was find out what Limehouse Basin was.