Chapter Six
They say history is written by the winners, but that’s not true.
It’s written by journalists, historians, and conspiracy theorists.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
It was going to be a dark and stormy night.
Well, of course dark, since that was the definition of night, but a storm could also be reliably predicted.
Amelia need not be a geographer to do that.
Turbulent clouds, rumbling with thunder, blotted the sky above the low hills.
To the north and east, the horizon was lavender like…
er…lavender flowers (Amelia’s teachers had never gone in for poetic metaphors, considering them too American for decency), but to the west the last of a bitter red sunset seeped through the clouds, casting beams of old light that illuminated autumnal groves here and there, making them seem to catch fire.
From her seat at the back of the dogcart, Amelia gazed around her with wonder.
She’d had no time to research the history of this region before coming here and so, instead of enjoying it intellectually, was forced to fall back on emotion.
The expansive panorama filled her heart with a great and desperate yearning, such as she’d felt when a Tudor goblet came up for auction at a price higher than she could afford.
As the wind blew loose strands of hair over her face, she imagined herself to be a Saxon princess on her way to marry a great king.
He’d ride out to meet her, his noble brow shining in the late light, his hair golden like his crown, and as he knelt on the dirt road to welcome her with all honor, he would declare—
“Uuurghh,” Caleb moaned at her side.
“Upon my word,” Vanity declared from where she sat in what had been Caleb’s seat until his nausea had forced an exchange. “I’ve never seen a fully grown man be so affected by the smell of horse…er…”
“Excrement,” Amelia supplied complacently, and upon hearing Vanity’s gasped response, she winked at Caleb. He gave her a big-eyed, mournful look in turn.
“Poor boy,” she murmured, and patted his knee. “Look at the beautiful sky.”
“I’d rather look at you,” he said. “It’s less nauseating.”
“Always one with the charming compliments.”
“You deserve it,” he said, and smiled beautifully. Glimmering raindrops began to appear, as if the sky were falling in love with him.
“Eek!” Vanity squealed. “We’re going to be drenched!” She flapped her hand at Sergeant Sheffield. “Make the horse move faster!”
Caleb’s eyes grew even larger, pleading silently with Amelia. “Professor Sterling and I will walk,” she announced. “That will ease the horse’s load. Besides, I’m sure the manor isn’t far now.”
Vanity did not even make a show of polite refusal.
And the look on Sheffield’s face was so disinterested, so utterly incurious, it could have been framed and hung on a gallery wall as a fine piece of postmodern art.
Amelia and Caleb climbed down and stood in the middle of the lane watching the dogcart advance until it disappeared around a bend.
When the dust it had kicked up settled again, they began to walk.
The cold breeze moaned like a dirge around them, shedding a few more raindrops.
“How cruel of you to make me hike in this downpour,” Caleb said mildly.
“I’m a harridan,” Amelia reminded him in a matching tone. Taking from her skirt pocket one of the tissue-wrapped ginger candies she kept for moments like this, she passed it to him.
“You’re a darling,” he countered, unwrapping the sweet. “At least this weather is appropriate for our journey to a place called Ravenscroft Manor.”
“What do you mean?”
Caleb cocked his head to smile at her with mild astonishment. “Have you never read The Mysteries of Udolpho?”
“No.”
“The House of the Seven Gables? Wuthering Heights? I know—you’ve surely read Jane Eyre.”
Amelia frowned slightly. “Eyre. Is she related to Truelove the Eyr, who fought at the Battle of Hastings?”
A laugh burst from Caleb’s throat and lit his eyes. “Sweetheart, tell me you read fiction. Any fiction.”
“I’ve read Shakespeare,” Amelia replied a little snootily. Then, after a moment’s uncomfortable silence, she was forced by honesty to add, “Although only because we had to at school. Can’t say I much liked it.”
Caleb almost tripped on a pebble, so great was his astonishment. “How can you not like Shakespeare? You’re English!”
Amelia shrugged. “There’s too much historical inaccuracy.”
“But every time I turn around you either have your nose in a book or are hugging one. In fact, there’s one in your pocket right now, isn’t there?”
What a foolish question. “Of course there is.”
“But you don’t read novels.” He clearly could not comprehend this.
“I read biographies. National histories. The occasional annotated diary.” After all, what need had she for fiction when the annals of history provided a great, sprawling tale of turmoil, comedy, and romance?
Staring blankly along the lane, Caleb shook his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t know this about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Amelia answered rather darkly.
They entered the heavy shadow of trees shrouding the road’s slow curve.
The world grew mysterious, almost sinister in the gloom.
Leaves rustled with ominous secrets, and whisper-fine ribbons of blue light drifted and faded, suggesting sorcery lurked in the shadows.
Amelia and Caleb slowed their pace, looking around with a natural caution behooving professors of thaumaturgic phenomena (“Magicians,” Caleb liked to say, to which Amelia would just shake her head)—she scanning for an old gravestone or roadside marker that might be enchanted, he for signs that a ghost or werewolf might suddenly pounce on them.
But nothing was evident. As they emerged from the darkness, however, they stopped abruptly.
“Good heavens,” Caleb exclaimed.
They stared out at small hills stitched roughly with stone walls, patched here and there with clusters of dark, shabby pine trees that bled red-tainted shadows in the dying sunset.
A little farther ahead, the dogcart carrying Vanity and Sergeant Sheffield had turned onto a long driveway leading to a manor house set deep within the view.
Built in the late medieval era, it carried its age like a grudge.
Vines crept over its moldering stone. Diamond-paned windows stared out at the cold and murky evening, unlit, secretive.
Monstrous gargoyles perching atop the gables roared without sound.
As they watched, the manor’s great front door opened, revealing a faint luminance that grew stronger as the dogcart drove closer to the house—no doubt servants igniting lamps, preparing for the guests.
Suddenly lightning crackled across the sky. Several of the manor’s windows winked internally with an uncanny sapphire glow that transformed the darkness into a ghost of itself. Sparks leaped along the windows’ lead grilles before vanishing.
Caleb leaned a little toward Amelia.
“I say, those flowers all along the driveway are daffodils, right?”
“Yes,” Amelia answered.
“And would you call that blossom on those trees over there?”
“I would.”
“Blossom. In autumn.” Caleb glanced back over his shoulder. “Did we accidentally take a wrong turn and end up in the southern hemisphere?”
Crossing her arms, Amelia frowned at the view in much the same way a doctor frowns at a mysteriously ill patient—somber, yet not unexcited by the challenge. “Magic,” she said. “That blue light is a sure sign of it.”
“Strong magic,” Caleb added, “considering lambs are frolicking in that field.”
“A fey line must run through here,” Amelia mused as she began walking again.
Her brother Gabriel, a geography professor, had once shown her a map delineating the various seams of thaumaturgic minerals that crossed Britain and that very occasionally flared up to cause magical disorder.
(Which is to say, she’d snuck into his bedroom when he wasn’t home and peeked at the highly classified document, since she had a theory about historic events and zones of earth magic).
“If that’s the case, and Sir Nigel does have thaumaturgic antiques in his collection, we may be facing an interesting situation. ”
“I wouldn’t call it interesting,” Caleb grumbled, pulling up the collar of his coat protectively. “It’s eerie.”
Amelia gave him an amused look. “It’s lambs and flowers.”
“Exactly. It should be wind-torn trees and desperate women escaping ravishment from their cruel landlords.”
Amelia blinked at him, utterly confused. “What?”
“You’d understand if you read books,” he said, grinning mischievously.
“I read b—” She stopped, frowning, although mostly at herself for taking his bait. Caleb chuckled, and when Amelia smacked his arm it became an outright laugh.
“You are a fiend,” she told him.
“But a pretty one,” he argued.
They turned into the driveway. A gust of wind swept past them, setting their coats billowing. White blossom petals scattered through the dim air like sorrows. A lamb cried out plaintively for a mother that was nowhere to be seen.
Amelia shivered, and Caleb looked at her sharply. “You’re cold again,” he accused her.
“I’m fine,” she lied.
“Come here, I’ll give you my coat.”
“You can’t,” she said, walking a little faster as he began to slip the garment off his shoulders. “It’s not safe. Ottersock will surely have mentioned to Miss Tunnicliffe that we’re enemies.”
“Why would he?” Caleb reasoned. “In fact, considering she might have thought it a problem, and given the job to Cambridge Uni instead, he more than likely kept it secret. And there’s no one here from Oxford—no Madame Kharensky, no Throckmorton—to tell her about it. We’re safe, Meely.”