Chapter Seven #2
I snatch the candle from my bedside and slip down the hall.
I worked out that Sylvie and Mr. North sleep one floor above, and the MacDougals a floor below, so I don’t fear waking them.
Even so, I go quietly, feeling like a spirit in a ruin.
I creep past austere portraits, the eyes of North ancestors boring into my back, and suits of armor that glint in the light of my candle.
None of them hold threadkits or spools, though I find one little portrait of a woman at a spinning wheel.
There’s no telling whether the thread she spun was meant for spells or for simple cloth.
Most of what I pass is covered, shapes of furniture spectral as they loom up out of the shadows, set in motion by the dancing light of my candle.
Ordinary objects become fiendish in that light, as if I have entered the realm of demons.
I am Dante descending, thrilled by my own terror.
Spiders spin in every corner, their pale webs rippling slightly; a cold draft of air is blowing from somewhere ahead.
I have the sense of walking downward, delving deeper into a tomb that’s lain untouched for centuries.
At a narrow window, I pause to adjust my slippers, my eyes wandering over the dark moors. Silky clouds flow across the moon, dimming its light and casting strange shadows over the rolling hills. Pale, watery mists creep in the low valleys.
There is someone out there.
I peer harder at a glimmer of movement, a wisp like shifting moonlight. Is it a woman? For a moment, I am sure of it—there is a woman walking on the moor, ghostly white and illuminated by the moon.
But then I blink, and she is gone. Where the “woman” had been, I see only mist breaking around a craggy rock.
Unsettled, I turn, thinking it’s high time I went back to my room. But then I see a door hanging open, not three steps ahead.
I chew my lip a moment, then curse under my breath and go in, unable to resist.
The room is vast, six of my bedrooms put together.
Large beams lift up a vaulting roof, so high and grand it puts me in mind of the great Westminster Abbey, where shuttles of the looms whir as my Moirene sisters spin their prayers to the Fates.
On the far end of the room, a round window looks out to the darkling moors and a pale, round moon floating on fragments of cloud.
Bookcases brace the walls, all of them near to bursting with books upon books upon books, two stories of them, with the upper balcony accessible by a winding iron staircase in the far corner of the room.
A thrill runs through me at the sight, and I creep along the carpet, moving through beams of diffused moonlight.
There are other items stored on the shelves—a wooden comb with a wolf carved on the handle, a spyglass, a set of fossils, a heavy bronze fox, a framed map of the estate—but it’s the books that command my attention.
Among them I find histories, encyclopedias, poetry, and essays and books of law and agriculture.
Whoever stocked this room had an eclectic taste, and an educated one.
I see volumes in French and German and Latin, and even a few in some languages I don’t recognize at all, in script I cannot read.
It reminds me of my uncle’s library, though his collection was only a fragment of this one.
I finally stop in front of a shelf lined with leather books, some so faded I can’t make out the names printed on the spines, and raise my candle.
Those I can read make my skin prickle: Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, King James I’s Daemonologie, Sowerby’s A History of Magic.
Beside them is a whole set of Shakespeare in slender leather-bound volumes, jumbled together with loose papers and journals.
Seeing an estate map among them, I start to reach for it, but the moment my finger touches the paper, a soft male brogue speaks behind me: “If you mean to thieve, you might start with something a wee bit more valuable than those old things.”
I start so violently that the candle falls from my hand. The flame flicks out, throwing the library into darkness. I can hear the hot wax spill across the floor, and the candle clatters as it rolls.
Then another light blossoms not ten paces away—at first I think it’s magic, but then I see the match between Mr. North’s fingers. He holds it to another candle by the chair he’s seated in, and its light flickers over the library.
I stare, my voice frozen in my throat. He’s watching me with a bemused expression, his head bandaged and his injured leg propped on a footstool.
On the table by him lies his sgian-dubh, beside a pile of wood shavings and a half-carved wolf.
The dog, Captain, is lying on the floor at his feet and gives his tail a great thump, as if we’d only just met and he weren’t half responsible for luring me down here in the first place.
“M-Mr. North,” I stammer. “I apologize, I was just—”
“Snooping?” he offers.
“I . . . well, I suppose so.” Intensely conscious of the fact I’m wearing only a thin nightgown and shawl in front of the laird, I nevertheless raise my chin; he could have spoken up the moment I entered the room instead of letting me make a fool of myself. “I did not know you were here.”
“Clearly. You’re Rose Pryor, I take it?” His Scots tongue rolls my name like a peel of oak beneath a whittling knife. “And do you often go about prowling through the personal effects of your hosts, creeping like a wraith in the night?”
My face heats. “I couldn’t sleep. Your dog was scratching at my door.”
Captain lifts his head and gives me a betrayed look.
“How are you feeling, m’lord?” I ask, to change the subject.
“You needn’t call me that. I am no nobleman, just a country landowner.
And I am feeling well. In fact, remarkably well.
Unnaturally well. One might almost imagine it were .
. .” He frowns, then fumbles with his clothes until he finds an item in his pocket which he now pulls out and dangles in the air: a lacy handkerchief, embroidered with a healing spell.
“Magic,” he finishes, the word sounding very much like an accusation.
I take back the kerchief I’d stuffed into his pocket on the road, wadding it into my fist as if it were something shameful, though it was in fact a neat bit of spellwork. “It was the least I could do.”
“’Tis my pride that suffered the most, I assure you, despite your best efforts. I know a spell when I see it, and the wind which spooked my horse was no ordinary wind.”
“Ah” is all I can manage to say. Plainly he is not the bumpkin I’d half hoped he would be. “All right, it was me. But in truth, I had no idea you were on the road. It was an accident.”
“Hm.” He looks as if he only half believes me.
“Well, I should like to know more about my guest with a knack for magic, and how she came to be traveling alone in my wood, and why she should be nosing about my manor at this Fateless hour. Sit.” He nods at an armchair by the hearth, upholstered in a fanciful toile de Jouy of knights and castles.
Once I’ve perched myself there, he settles back in his chair, taking up the sgian-dubh and the wolf.
His thumb guides the blade over the wood, skillfully peeling it away in thin, fine curls.
His fingers are as long and graceful as any Weaver’s, his nails trimmed and clean.
Every subtle movement makes the muscular tendons along the backs of his hands tighten like the warp threads on a loom.
“Mrs. MacDougal told me you’re in Blackswire on business,” he says, startling me from my thoughts. Heat flushes up my neck as I realize how long I’ve been staring at his hands.
“I’m awaiting my employer,” I recite, falling back on the story Lachlan had concocted for me and hoping he cannot see my blush.
“He is a cloth merchant, come to buy wool. But he took ill on the road and is convalescing at an inn some distance from here. He sent me ahead to wait for him, and my hired coach deposited me not far from your estate.”
Lachlan will remain “ill” for several days or even weeks, of course, until I’ve found Elfhame and returned with his prize.
Or until I turn twenty-one and feel the magic dim from my bones for good.
“And how long have you worked for this thread merchant?” asks Mr. North.
“Not long, since I left my teaching position at the Perkins Charity School in Westminster.”
“You were a teacher of magic.” His eyes lock on mine as he speaks, and he gently blows upon his wolf to clear away the fresh shavings.
They glitter in the air, a few specks clinging to his lower lip.
He brushes them away with a slow swipe of his thumb, not once taking his eyes from mine.
“I’d have thought you of some higher position, judging by those wards. Did you sew them yourself?”
His glance has settled on my sleeves. I pull at them self-consciously, surprised he noticed the embroidery winding up to my elbows.
Most people don’t; the thread matches the fabric and the stitches are tiny.
The patterns are sewn all over my clothes, around the hems and neckline, tucked into the seams, worked into my stockings and petticoat.
There is even a little spell woven into the lining of my bonnet, which is still drying by the hearth in the kitchen.
I sewed them in the jolting, crowded coach I rode here in, with much silent cursing at the fae who’d been pressed against me, hindering my elbow movement.