Phoenix and Ashes (25 page)

Eleanor
had wondered about that. Her own feeling, once she had begun learning about
magic herself, had been that neither girl would ever be a Master—because
if that were possible for them, they would have surely shown some sign of it by
now.

“Yes,
Mama,” the two chorused as one. They left the table to go up to their
rooms, as Alison rang for Eleanor to clean up.

Is
that
why Reggie recognized me, when no one else in the village does?
she wondered, as she carried plates back to the kitchen. Because Alison’s
spells just don’t work on him?

It
hadn’t been until she had gotten back to the kitchen after first meeting
him that she had realized Reggie had
recognized
her, had known who she
was, almost from the first moment he had seen her. Other than Sarah, he was,
apparently, the only other person who did. And she hadn’t been able to
get away to ask Sarah why that could be since the meeting.

Events
in the household had conspired against her. First, despite Alison’s
assertion that she and the girls would be having tea up at Longacre for the
foreseeable future, that hadn’t exactly come to pass. The next day had
been Alison’s “at home,” and although Alison certainly wanted
to claw her way into the social circles of Longacre, she knew better than to
abandon her post as leading light of Broom. For one thing, there were quite a
number of things that the ladies of Broom could do to undermine Alison’s
progress if they chose. And for another, as she explained to her daughters,
there was no point in prematurely burning bridges. The social set of Broom was
still useful—particularly that centered around the vicarage, for the
vicar, Donald Hinshaw, and his wife Theresa were the one couple who traveled
socially freely between village and the big house.

Then
the next day had been a meeting of the Ladies’ Friendly Society, and it
had been held at The Arrows, though under the auspices of its president, Amy
Hammer. It had been yet another bandage-rolling meeting, and as a consequence,
the house had been filled with women, all of whom required tea and
refreshments. Now, those meetings were ones at which Eleanor had to be
particularly careful of what was served; it wouldn’t do at all to make it
look as if this household was immune from the current privations—but at
the same time, Alison was adamant that the tea be something that would elevate
her status as a hostess. It all came down on Eleanor’s shoulders, of
course. It meant a great deal of cutting up heavy brown bread into thin, thin
slices, toasting it delicately, and removing the crusts, spreading it with
layers of jam and potted shrimp. It meant cutting more wafer-thin slices of
brown bread and adding wafer-thin slices of smoked Scottish salmon atop. It
meant baking whatever sort of cake could be managed with what was available in the
village shops.

So
that pretty well put paid to getting away that day. And the next, Warrick Locke
had come for the afternoon. It had been all about business and legal papers;
there was a good clue now to which sort of “business” was going on
when Locke showed up. If it was mundane business, he brought with him his
personal secretary, a curiously opaque lady named Jennifer Summers, as well as
his “man,” Robbie Christopher. Eleanor was not around Miss Summers
enough to make a judgment of her, but Robbie made her flesh crawl. There was
just something not right about him. As a consequence, she kept well out of
their way. Locke spent the entire afternoon closeted with Alison, going over
any number of matters concerning the manufactories.

He
might be a horrible man, but he did know his business.

So,
that meant no leaving the house on that day.

Finally,
though, today had sent Alison and the girls out into the village on a series of
meetings and whatnot concerning the annual May Day fête for the church,
which brought them home exhausted, and made them perfect targets for
Sarah’s herb-spell. They were in bed by nine and fast asleep by ten, all
three of them, and Eleanor was free to cast her spell and run to Sarah’s
cottage.

Sarah
wasn’t alone—Annette Monstead, the village midwife-in-training, and
sister to Eric, the village sexton, was with her, discussing a possibly
difficult case. Rather than intrude, Eleanor didn’t even knock; she just
waited outside until Annette left. It was scarcely a hardship; it was a beautiful
evening, the kind on which—before the war—courting couples would go
out walking.

Though
that “walking” sometimes resulted in cases for Annette…

Proper
young ladies weren’t supposed to know about that sort of thing, but
Eleanor had never been proper as such—and since the war, there was, if
not actually condoning of such matters, certainly more understanding of them,
and of the acts of desperation that led to an unexpected pregnancy. A fellow
could get emergency leave, at least to get as far as London for a day or two to
“put things right.” There was not so much counting of months
between the wedding-day and the day of the baby’s arrival.

Eric
turned up to escort his sister home—he, too, was above the conscription
age, though his sister was at least twenty years younger. He was the eldest,
and she the youngest, of a truly enormous family. Not so much a family as a
tribe, in fact. Small wonder Annette had turned out to have a talent for midwifery!

Only
after they were gone out of sight did Eleanor knock on Sarah’s door and
let herself in.

“I’ve
met Reggie!” she burst out, unable to hold herself back. “And
Sarah—he
recognized
me!”

“Well,
and he would, wouldn’t he, being an Air Master—” she began,
but this time Eleanor interrupted her.

“Yes,
but there’s no Sylphs around him, and no Air energy,” she
continued, and went on to describe what she had learned watching the fire night
after night.

When
she was finished, Sarah stood next to her own hearth, arms folded over her
chest, tapping her foot. “Hmm. That’s a different kettle of fish
altogether. It almost sounds like—” But then she frowned, and shook
her head. “No, I don’t know. And it’s not right to speculate.
I don’t know nearly as much as your mother did, and sending you off in
the wrong direction wouldn’t do either of you any good.”

“Sarah!”
Eleanor cried indignantly. “At least give me a hint!” Sarah pursed
her lips, and ran her hand through her hair. “Well, if I were to guess,
and not being a Master, I have no business in guessing, I would say that
something happened to him to make him afraid of using any magic. Now, when a
Master decides not to use any magic, none at all, sometimes they stop thinking
straight, and their heart—not their heads, the thinking parts, put the
heart, the feeling part—is so frightened that the heart decides that
means no magic by anyone else is going to get used around them either. So magic
around them gets kind of—swallowed up. Things that the heart decides
usually happen unless the head is well in charge.” Sarah shrugged.
“But that’s just a guess. People like me don’t have enough
magic to do that sort of thing.”

“But
if that’s the case, then why couldn’t I tell him about
Alison?” she asked, feeling desperate now. “Why didn’t
that
spell stop working?”

Sarah
grimaced, but with an air as if it should have been obvious to Eleanor that she
had no idea why these things had happened or not. “Don’t know.
Maybe because that spell is stronger. Maybe because the spell to keep people
from recognizing you is set to work on
them
and the one to keep you
from telling people the truth is set to work on
you
.” She shook
her head. “I don’t know, I’m just guessing. I’m not the
Master Alison is, nor the Master your mother was. I know I’ve had my own
counter-charms set that let
me
see you and talk to you freely, but
then, I already knew what and who you were and I had a bit of your baby-hair I
could use to work them. I don’t
know
the complicated spells; I
never bothered to learn them. I’m only strong enough to work cantrips and
charms. In the case of countering what’s on you, I can make them work for
me, but not other people, unless I were to set the charm on each one of them.
And maybe all of this guessing is going wide of the mark. I’ve no way to
know.”

It
was terribly frustrating. To know that she had someone within reach who
probably
could help her break the spells that were on her, if only he knew what was
going on, was agonizing.

“What
do I do?” she wailed. Sarah gazed at her sternly.

“You
stop whingeing for one,” the witch replied. “It isn’t going
to help. For another, if you can find out what it is he’s so afraid of,
maybe you can do somewhat about it. Do that, and he may come out of that shell
he’s built around himself. If you can crack that, he should see
you’re set about with spells yourself, and wonder why, and try untangling
them himself. But you can’t do any of that if you’re wasting your
time feeling sorry for yourself.”

Eleanor
felt herself flush with anger, but kept a curb on her tongue. Sarah was
right—but the witch’s tongue got oversharp when she’d had a
long day. And it wasn’t as if Eleanor’s day had been any shorter.

“Now,
in the meantime,” Sarah was already continuing, “While you’re
here, you might as well learn something. If Alison ever decides to challenge
you Master to Master in a Sorcerer’s Duel, your little Salamanders
aren’t going to be causing her more than a minute of amusement. So you
might as well start learning how to call the Greater Fire Elementals, and the
best time is now. We’ll start with the Phoenyx.”

Eleanor
was quite ready to fall asleep on Sarah’s floor when the wilting of her
rosemary sprig told her it was time to go. When she got back, she made up her
bed on the kitchen floor again, rather than take the chance of stumbling on the
stairs and waking the household. She thought she saw eyes in the embers as she
drowsed off—not the golden eyes of the Salamanders, but a hot, burning
blue…

Reggie
showed up faithfully in the meadow at teatime, every day—though after the
second day that the girl failed to materialize, he had brought the ‘bus
with him, so he could go on down to the pub if she didn’t show up. After
the third day, as he sat in the sun and listened to the wind in the grass
watched the branches overhead with their haze of new green buds, he wondered
why he kept coming here—there was nothing very special about her—

—well,
other than her quick wit and agile mind.

It
wasn’t as if she were especially pretty; certainly not compared with all
the elegant, doe-like creatures his mother kept trotting past him. She was as
raw as a young filly and just as awkward. She seemed to be as poor as a
church-mouse, too, from the state of her clothing.

That
was odd; as he recalled, old Robinson had been something in the way of a
manufacturing fellow, and when he’d known her last the girl had certainly
dressed well enough. But maybe the money was all gone, thanks to the war. There
were a lot of places that had failed; couldn’t get the raw goods they
needed to keep making whatever it was they were making.

She
looked as if she worked for a living. Maybe she was a maid now, or a
kitchen-girl. Or maybe she worked in one of the other pubs or something. Maybe
that was what she meant when she said she’d be there “if she
could.”

What
was it about her that made him desert his mother’s carefully gathered
bouquet of well-bred beauties and come down here to sit on a log for an hour on
the chance that she might appear?

She
can talk, for one thing. She knows how to listen, for another. And when she
talks, she doesn’t talk nonsense
.

That
was half of the reason why he hated those afternoon teas, the inane chatter.
What was wrong with those girls, anyway? Half of them acted as if the war
didn’t exist, and the other half as if it existed only to inconvenience
them!

She
didn’t talk about the war—but it wasn’t because she was
trying to play as if it wasn’t going on. It was as if she was avoiding
the subject so as not to trouble me
.

It
occurred to him that if she was working, working hard somewhere now—well,
she wasn’t going to be all that sheltered anymore. Maybe he could talk to
her, about some of the things you just didn’t talk about among men. All
right to be bitter, angry, depressed; all right even to admit to being
white-knuckle terrified in the night, and ready to do a bunk. All right even to
admitting to want to take your faithful old Wembley and stick the barrel in
your mouth and—

But
you didn’t talk to another man about losing your sense of wonder and
beauty. You didn’t tell him how your ideals were lying dead beside your
comrades. Oh, maybe you could with the rare fellow like one or two of his
former Oxford chums, the ones that had written damn good poetry, for instance.
Not Steven Stewart, for instance—someone who’d call you “Reg”
and talk about how he was going to start an air mail service when it was all
over. Not Walter Boyes, either; plain as toast and solid as a rock, but who was
reading history, and liked facts, plain and simple. Maybe William Howe—he
was sensitive enough, just think about the stuff he pulled up for the
regimental band to play, not just marches and bombast but Bach and Handel. But
Howe was still at the Front.

Daniel
Heistand—One of the ghosts, the men in the photos probably still on the
canvas wall of his quarters, a dead man with his arms around the shoulders of
the living
. He was someone Reggie could have talked to about this. He
hadn’t written poetry; he was a musician, and not one of your ukulele
players nor your accordion men. He was a violinist, and composed as well as
played; Reggie remembered listening to him play during the pauses in the
shelling, on the long, long, nights when nobody could sleep, playing some
wistful haunting thing, too melancholy to be a lullaby—