The Gates of Sleep (41 page)

Marina had a good idea that Ellen must have had her share
of those things from the way she spoke of them, wistfully, even knowing what
she knew now, with regret.

It isn’t just their bodies that Madam is
poisoning,
she thought, suddenly. She locked gazes with both Andrew and
the vicar, and saw that they were thinking the same thing.

But it was still hard to believe. The immediate thought was
that surely, surely, Arachne Chamberten didn’t actually know what her
pottery was doing to the girls who worked there. Surely anyone who did would
change things!

But then she remembered that discussion—that most “unacceptable”
discussion—over the dinner-table. No, Arachne knew. She might pretend
that she didn’t, but she knew. And Arachne didn’t seem to think of
the lower orders as being—well—
human.
She didn’t
care what happened to them, so long as there was a steady supply of them at
cheap wages.

When their hands start to shake, she’d rather
have them out selling their bodies anyway, to make room for new ones.

“Difficult as this may seem to you, Ellen’s
situation is worse yet, Clifton,” the Doctor said grimly. “Or was.
One of the reasons that her cousin whisked her away from that vile place so
quickly was that besides being poisoned, she was being drained, magically.”

“What?”
Marina and the vicar exclaimed
together, aghast. “But—how? Why? By whom?” Davies had the wit
to ask, as Marina just stared.

“I don’t know. There definitely was some sort
of tie to her when she was brought to me, something that was acting as a drain
on her personal and emotional energies, but one that I didn’t recognize,
and one I couldn’t trace back.” Andrew shrugged. “Not that I
didn’t want to, but I was too busy trying to save her life at the time. I
just cut it, cauterized it, and dismissed it from my mind. Now, though—”
He paused. “Clifton, you can work through the Church to see that the
physical aspects of this disgusting situation are dealt with—but if there
is an occult aspect to it, I think we ought to look into it. There was only
myself before—frankly, trying to get other Masters to help in something
as vague as this would be like persuading cats to swim.”

“Now you have two more of us,” the vicar said,
with a lifting of his chin and a touch of fire in his eyes. “And Ellen is
going to be all right—”

“If you don’t mind helping us with this,”
Andrew replied, slowly— “The only problem I can see is that the tie
isn’t there anymore.”

Ellen gave him a stern look. “Don’t be daft,”
she said, forthrightly. “Begging your pardon, but the only places I ever
went was the pottery and out with—men. And them men came to the pottery.
So?”

“QED,” Andrew said ruefully. “You’re
right, Ellen. The place to look is the pottery. If this business involves more
girls than just you, it could be the symptom of something much worse.” He
scratched his head ruefully. “This is where I have nothing to go on but
vague premonition—”

“But the premonitions of an Elemental Master are as
important as an ordinary person’s certainties!” Marina and the
vicar said in chorus—then looked at each other—and at Ellen’s
puzzled expression—and chuckled weakly.

“All right. If you agree that my premonition is not
nonsense—well, I just think that this is important.”

Something I can do! Finally, something only
I
can
do! “And—” Marina said, with a sudden smile. “I think I
can get in there. Easily, and with no one suspecting a thing. There’s
just one problem.”

“What is it?” Andrew asked immediately. “I’ll
help you with it!”

“I wish you could, but you are the
last
person who would be of any use,” she replied, with a rueful laugh. “The
problem is, to do so I’ll have to spend at least two days in the
inescapable company of the Odious Reggie!”

And at the sight of his expression, she could only shake
her head.

SEQUESTERED in her office, with orders not to be disturbed,
Arachne fixed her son with an ice-dagger stare. “What,” she asked,
in the coldest voice she could muster, “are you doing about winning that
girl?”

For a long while, the only sound was that of the fire in
the fireplace behind her, crackling and popping. Arachne licked her lips, and
thought she tasted the least little hint of blood on them.

She didn’t have to elaborate her question; there was
only one girl that he was supposed to be winning, after all. He squirmed a
little in his chair; not a good sign. Reggie only squirmed when he was trying
to be evasive. When he was lying, he looked directly into your eyes, and
produced his most charming of smiles. When he was telling the truth, he didn’t
smile, he looked completely sober, and didn’t try to charm. She wondered
if he realized that. Perhaps not; he was not as experienced as she was in
reading expressions and the nuances of behavior.

“She’s a bore, Mater,” he said,
sideslipping the topic—or trying to. “She’s a bluestocking
and a bore. I wrack my brain to tell her amusing stories, and she talks about
literature; I try to make love to
her,
and she asks me about votes for
women or politics.”

She frowned. “That is not what I asked. The girl is
normal enough. She certainly has a craving for fine feathers, she’s
young, and I’m sure you can turn her head with flattery if you exert
yourself; she’s not that different from the little trollops you amuse
your idle hours with. You ought to be able to charm her without thinking twice
about it.”

He couldn’t meet her eyes. Her frown deepened.

“Clearly, you have gotten nowhere. Clearly, you are
not even trying,” she stated. “Reggie, this is important. You
have
to get that girl under your control. You have to win her; it’s imperative
to have her your creature.”

“It’s damned hard to flatter someone who isn’t
listening,” he muttered, casting a resentful glance at her from under
long eyelashes that most women would sell their souls for. Though there seemed
to be plenty of women who would sell their souls to have Reggie himself.
Just—not the one that mattered, it seemed. “Furthermore,” he
continued, “I should think it would make more sense for you to work on
that curse of yours. After all, if the little wretch just dies, the problem
will be solved.”

If she answered that, she’d be on the
defensive—and it was always her policy to be on the offensive, not the
defensive. She glared at him, the “it’s all your fault” look.
“Try harder,” she ordered. “Put some imagination into it,
instead of using all the tricks that work on girls with more sophistication.
She might be intelligent, but she is not sophisticated. You might take her
somewhere, show her some sight or other. From all I can tell, she never
ventured out of that tiny village of hers—take her to Exeter for an
excursion!”

Reggie groaned. “Damn, Mater, what the
hell
is there in Exeter worth looking at?”

“That’s not my business,” she told him,
exasperated at his willful lack of imagination. “It’s yours. Find
something. A conservatory. Theater—there has to be a music hall, at
least. The shops—the cathedral—a concert. Even a pantomime is going
to be something she’s never seen before!” Her eyes narrowed. “She’s
spending every Wednesday
and
Friday at the vicarage, and I’m not
entirely certain that it’s chess and piety that take her there. That
vicar is young and single. Did it ever occur to you that he might be your rival
for her affections?” She raised an eyebrow. “He certainly seems to
be setting the hearts aflutter in the village.”

“A vicar?” To her great annoyance, Reggie
snorted. “Not bloody likely! Not that vicar in particular—he looks
like a bag of bones, and he’s all prunes and prisms. Miss Marina may be a
bore, but I’ve never seen a bore yet that didn’t have repressed
passions seething under the crust. No stick in a dog collar is going to be
my
rival for her.”

Arachne’s exasperation overflowed. Arrogance was one
thing, but this—this was blind stupidity itself. “Then do something
about those repressed passions! Rouse her somehow! Go take her slumming and
tell her it’s the fashion to do so,
I
don’t care, as long
as you impress her.”

“Yes, you do,” he said sullenly, his eyes
smoldering with things he didn’t dare express, at least to her face. “If
I were to take her slumming and she managed to slip away from me and back to
those artists of hers, you’d have my hide.”

He was right about that, at least. “Yes,” she
replied grimly. “I would. And don’t think that you can get out of
this by helping her on her way, either. Don’t even give her the chance to
acquire a single stamp. Because the moment she gets in communication with them,
they’ll tell her enough about me—and you, by extension—that
she won’t trust us. No matter how circumspect they are, they can still
make the case that Alanna sent her away to hide her from me, and there were six
witnesses there to back them up.”

“Even without talking about magic?” he asked
skeptically.

“Especially without talking about magic. Elizabeth
Hastings can turn black into white if she puts her mind to it, and all they
have to do is send the girl to her. Then where will we be? Damn it, boy, all
they have to do is smuggle her over to the Continent and hide her there until
she’s twenty-one for her to have complete control of her property, unless
you manage to get her married to you! Do you want her property or not?”

She did not want to consider what would happen with Marina
on the Continent, and it wouldn’t take waiting until she was twenty-one,
either. If the curse didn’t take effect by the time Marina was
eighteen—and if Arachne herself was not in physical contact to nullify or
even cancel it—it not only could backfire against the caster, it
would.
She had worked that much out, at least. Not that she was going to tell Reggie
any of that. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t use for leverage
against his mother. He was getting altogether too independent lately.

No, the blasted Tarrants wouldn’t have to hide the
girl until she was twenty-one; the eighteenth birthday would suffice. Shuttling
her around France in company with a gaggle of schoolgirls would do the
trick—she’d never be able to find one schoolgirl tour among all the
ones traipsing around Provence and Paris.

“I had intended,” she said smoothly, “to
use the girls from the Exeter works to make the curse work again. I
tried
to do that. The accident put paid to that plan, rather thoroughly. They were
too damaged; there wasn’t enough power in them. None of the others are
strong enough or ripe enough, nor will they be for at least a year.”

Reggie shrugged, striving to look indifferent, and managing
only to look arrogant. He was getting altogether too like his mother for her
comfort. Altogether too like. Ambitious, manipulative, sly… “Do
what you did to set the curse in the first place. Find
me
a sacrifice.
The proper sort.”

“I’ve tried,” she admitted, nettled that
she’d needed to admit anything. “A single virgin child of Master
potential is difficult enough to obtain; it was only a fluke that I managed to
get my hands on four and only because they were all from the same family! And
if you had any notion how long I waited with that curse heavy on my hands, until
Hugh got himself an heir—”

Now it was Reggie’s turn to frown, and his brows
knitted in confusion. “Four? You shouldn’t need four, not for
enough power to reinstate an existing curse. A single child should do, so long
as it’s mage-born and virgin. His Infernal Majesty should—”
At her dubious expression, his frown deepened, and he blinked, slowly, as if
some entirely new thought had crossed his mind. “Mater, don’t you
believe?”

He sounded—shocked. As shocked as any good Christian
would have been to learn that she was a Satanist. Well, now it was coming out;
her son, whom she had raised and trained to be her helper, had finally grasped
the idea that his mother was a skeptic. How had he missed it? How had she
raised a believer? “I have never seen anything to make me
believe—or disbelieve,” she said reluctantly. “The rites give
me power; that was all I have ever cared about. It’s power I take from
the weaker creatures that I sacrifice, so far as I can tell, and not from any
other source; what odd’s that? It’s still power, it works, and it
gives me what I want. Belief doesn’t enter into it, nor does it need to.”

She’d have laughed at the expression on his face, if
she hadn’t known that would make him turn against her. What a joke! To
think that she, a skeptic above all else, had raised up a pious little
Satanist! Could Satanists
be
pious? A true believer, at any rate, and
she wondered how, as careful as she had been with him, she had missed the signs
of it developing.

And how far had he gone down that road? Did he go so far as
to keep a shrine to the Dark One in his room? Oh, probably not; of all the
servants, only Mary Anne and his valet were aware of anything unusual in the
household, and Mary Anne only because she had discovered Reggie’s secret
when she first became his mistress. She had, in fact, been an actress, and a
clever one at that—but not a good one. Good enough to get the secondary
parts, but never the leads; graceful enough to ornament the stage, but nothing
else. So she augmented her status and income with gentlemen, and she managed to
snare Reggie. But she had plans, she did—plans for a comfortable old age,
having seen far too many of her kind tottering around as street whores, without
even a room to take a customer
to.
She was not satisfied with all the
accompanying privileges and presents of being Reggie’s regular, for she
wanted something more in order to keep her mouth shut. Clever girl; you couldn’t
eat a dinner twice, if the man didn’t keep paying for your flat you had
to find a way to pay for it yourself or be out in the street. Presents of
flowers were worthless—presents of jewelry always pawned for less than
they cost. She wasn’t in love with Reggie. It was entirely a mercenary
relationship with nothing in it at all of affection.