The Gates of Sleep (8 page)

Margherita laughed. “She certainly isn’t going
to teach you etiquette! You’re more than ready for a teacher of your own
Element, and it’s time you got one.”

The exercises that Uncle Thomas had been setting her had
been nothing but repetitions of the same old things for some time now. Marina
hadn’t wanted to say anything, but she had been feeling frustrated,
bored, and stale. Frustrated, because she had the feeling that there was so
much that was just beyond her grasp—bored and stale because she was so
tired
of repeating the same old things. “But—what about Mrs. Hasting’s
family?” she asked, not entirely willing to believe that someone with a “terribly—terribly
correct husband” would be able to get away for more than a day or two at
most, and certainly not
alone.

“Elizabeth’s sons are at Oxford, her daughter
is married, and her husband wants to take up some invitations for the hunting
and fishing seasons in Scotland this year,” Margherita said, with a smile
at Marina’s growing excitement. “And when the hunting season is
over, he intends to go straight on to London for his Parliament duties.
Elizabeth hates hunting and detests London; she’ll be staying with us up
until Christmas.”

“That’s
wonderful!”
Marina could
not contain herself any more; she leapt to her feet, catching the book of
Shakespeare at the last moment before it tumbled to the floor out of her lap. “When
is she coming?”

“By the train on Wednesday, and I’ll need your
help in getting the guest room ready for her—”

But Marina was running as soon as she realized the guest
would arrive the next day. She was already halfway up the stairs, her aunt’s
laughter following her, by the time Margherita had reached the words “guest
room.”

Once, all the rooms in this old farm house had led one into
the other, like the ones on the first floor. But at some point, perhaps around
the time that Jane Austen was writing
Emma,
the walls had been knocked
down in the second story and replaced with an arrangement of a hall with
smaller bedrooms along it. And about when Victoria first took the throne, one
of the smallest bedrooms had been made into a bathroom. True, hot water still
had to be carted laboriously up the stairs for a bath, but at least they weren’t
bathing in hip baths in front of the fire, and there was a water-closet. So
their guest wouldn’t be totally horrified by the amenities, or lack of
them.

It would be horrible if she left after a week because
she couldn’t have a decent wash-up.

She opened the linen-closet at the end of the hall and took
a deep breath of the lavender-scented air before taking out sheets for the bed
in the warmest of the guest rooms. This was the one directly across from her
own, and like hers, right over the kitchen. The view wasn’t as fine, but
in winter there wasn’t a great deal of view anyway, and the cozy warmth
coming up from the kitchen, faintly scented with whatever Margherita was
baking, made up for the lack of view. Where her room was a Pre-Raphaelite
fantasy, this room was altogether conventional, with rose-vine wallpaper, chintz
curtains and cushions, and a brass-framed bed. The rest of the furniture,
however, was made by Thomas, and looked just a little odd within the confines
of such a conventional room. Woolen blankets woven by Margherita in times when
she hadn’t any grand commissions to fulfill were in an asymmetrical chest
at the foot of the bed, and the visitor would probably need them.

She left the folded sheets on the bed and flung the single
window open just long enough to air the room out. It didn’t take long,
since Margherita never really let the guest rooms get stale and stuffy. It also
didn’t take long for the room to get nasty and cold, so she closed it
again pretty quickly.

Fire. I need a fire.
There was no point in trying
to kindle one herself the way that Uncle Sebastian did. She was eager, almost
embarrassingly eager, for their visitor to feel welcome. When Elizabeth
Hastings arrived, it should be to find a room warmed and waiting, as if this
house was her home.

Marina solved the problem of the fire with a shovelful of
coals from her own little fire, laid onto the waiting kindling in the fireplace
of the guest room. She might not be able to kindle a fire, but she was rather
proud of her ability to lay one. Once the fire was going and the chill was off
the air, she made the bed up with the lavender-scented sheets and warm
blankets, dusted everything thoroughly, and set out towels and everything else
a guest might want. She made sure that the lamp on the bedside table was full
of oil and the wick trimmed, and that there was a box of lucifer matches there
as well.

She looked around the room, and sighed. No flowers. It was
just too late for them—and too late to gather a few branches with fiery
autumn leaves on them. The bouquet of dried straw flowers and fragrant herbs on
the mantel would just have to do.

She heard footsteps in the hall outside, and wasn’t
surprised when her Aunt pushed the door open. “You haven’t left me
anything to do,” Margherita observed, with an approving glance around the
room.

“Well, really, there wasn’t that much work
needed to be done; that tramping poet was only here last week.” The “tramping
poet” was a rarity, a complete stranger to the household, who’d
arrived on foot, in boots and rucksack, letter of recommendation in hand from
one of their painterly friends. He’d taken it in his head to “do
the Wordsworth”—that is, to walk about the countryside for a while
in search of inspiration, and finding that the Lake District was overrun with
sightseers and hearty fresh-air types, he’d elected to try Devon and
Cornwall instead. He was on the last leg of his journey and had been remarkably
cheerful about being soaked with cold rain. A good guest as well, he’d
made himself useful chopping wood and in various other small ways, had not
overstayed his welcome, and even proved to be very amusing in conversation.

“You can’t possibly be a successful poet,”
Sebastian had accused him. “You’re altogether too good-natured, and
nothing near morose enough.”

“Sadly,” he’d admitted (not sadly at
all), “I’m not. I do have a facile touch for rhyme, but I can’t
seem to generate the proper level of anguish. I’ve come to that
conclusion myself, actually. I intend to go back to London and fling myself at
one of those jolly new advertising firms. I’ll pummel ‘em with couplets
until they take me in and pay me.” He’d struck an heroic attitude. “Hark!
the Herald Angels sing, ‘Pierson’s Pills are just the thing!’
If your tummy’s fluttery, hie thee to Bert’s Buttery! Nerves all
gone and limp as wax? Seek the aid of brave Nutrax!”

Laughing, Margherita and Marina had thrown cushions at him
to make him stop. “Well!” he’d said, when he’d sat back
down and they’d collected the cushions again, “If I’m doomed
to be a jangling little couplet-rhymer, I’d rather be honest and sell
butter with my work than pretend I’m a genius crushed by the failure of
the world to understand me.”

“I hope he comes back some time,” Marina said,
referring to that previous guest.

“If he does, he’ll be welcome,”
Margherita said firmly. “But
not
while Elizabeth is here. It
would be very awkward, having a stranger about while she was trying to teach
you Water Magic. Altogether too likely that he’d see something he shouldn’t.”

Marina nodded. It wasn’t often that someone who wasn’t
naturally a mage actually saw any of the things that mages took for
granted—that was part of the Gift of the Sight, after all, and if you
didn’t have that Gift, well, you couldn’t See what mages Saw. But
sometimes accidents happened, and someone with only a touch of the Sight got a
glimpse of something he shouldn’t. And if magic made some change in the
physical world, well, that could be witnessed as well, whether or not the
witness had the Sight.

“Now that the room’s been put to rights, come
down with me and we’ll bake some apple pies,” Margherita continued,
linking her arm with Marina’s. “There’s nothing better to put
a fine scent on the house than apple pies.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Marina laughed. “And
besides, if you give me something to do, I won’t be fretting my head off.”

“Teh. You’re getting far too clever for
me.
It’s a good thing Elizabeth is coming; at least there will be someone
here now whose habits you don’t know inside and out.”

That’s a lovely thought.
One of the worst
things about winter corning on was that she was bound to be mostly confined to
Blackbird Cottage with people she knew all too well—loved, surely, but
still, she could practically predict their every thought and action. But this
winter would be different.
Oh, I hope it’s
very, very
different!

As usual, it was raining. Uncle Sebastian had intended to
go to the railway station in the pony cart, but Aunt Margherita had stamped her
foot and decreed that under no circumstances was he going to subject poor
Elizabeth to an open cart in the pouring rain. So he had arranged to borrow the
parson’s creaky old-fashioned carriage, which meant that there was enough
room for Marina to go along.

Marina peered anxiously out the little window next to the
door; the old glass made the view a bit wavery, and the rain didn’t help.
Finally Sebastian arrived with the carriage, an old black contraption with a
high, arched roof like a mail coach, that looked as if it had carried parsons’
families since the time of the third George. The parson’s horse, the
unlikely offspring of one of the gentry’s hunters and a farmer’s
mare, a beast of indeterminate color rendered even more indeterminate by his
wet hide, looked completely indifferent to the downpour. The same could not be
said of Sebastian perched up on the block where he huddled in the non-existent
coachman’s stead, wrapped up in a huge mackintosh with a shapeless
broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes.

He shouldn’t complain; he’d have been just
as wet on the pony cart.

Marina, her rain cape pulled around her and her aunt’s
umbrella over her head, made a dash across the farmyard for the carriage and
clambered inside. The parson’s predecessor had long ago replaced the
horsehair-covered seats with more practical but far less comfortable wooden
ones, and as the coach rolled away, she had to hang on with both hands to guard
herself from sliding across the polished slats during the bumps and jounces.
When the coach was loaded with the parson’s numerous family, the fact
that they were all wedged together against the sides of the vehicle meant no
one got thrown against the sides, but with just Marina in here, she could be
thrown to the floor if she didn’t hang on for dear life. The coach
creaked and complained, rocking from side to side, the rain drummed on the
roof, and water dripped inside the six small windows, for the curtains had long
since been removed in the interest of economy as well.

Poor Elizabeth! She’ll be bounced to bits before
we get home!

The station wasn’t far, but long before they arrived,
Marina had decided that their guest would have been far more comfortable in the
pony cart, rain or no rain.

But then I wouldn’t have been able to come meet
her.

She’d thought that she’d be on fire with
impatience, that the trip would be interminable. It wasn’t, but only because
she was so busy holding on, and trying to keep from being bounced around like
an India rubber ball from one side of the coach to the other. It came as a
welcome surprise to get a glimpse, through the curtain of rain, of the railway
station ahead of them, and realize that they were almost there. She didn’t
even wait for the coach to stop moving once they reached the station; she flew
out quite as if she’d been launched from the door, dashing across the
rain-slicked pavement of the platform, leaving her uncle to tie up the horse
and follow her.

She reached the other side of the station and peered down
the track, and saw the welcome plume of smoke from the engine in the distance,
rising above the trees. As Sebastian joined her on the platform, the train itself
came into view, its warning whistle carrying through the rain. Marina
remembered not to bounce with impatience—she
wasn’t
a
child anymore—but she clutched the handle of the umbrella tightly with
both hands, and her uncle smiled sideways at her.

It seemed that she was not the only one impatient for the
train to pull into the station. There was one particular head that kept peeking
out of one compartment window—and the very instant that the train halted,
that compartment door
flew
open, and a trim figure in emerald wool
shot out of it, heedless of the rain.

“Sebastian!” Elizabeth Hastings gave Uncle
Sebastian quite as hearty an embrace as if he had been her brother, and Marina
hastened to get the umbrella over her before the ostrich plumes on her neat
little hat got soaked. “Good gad, this appalling weather! Margherita
warned me, and I didn’t believe her! Hello Marina!” She detached
herself from Sebastian and gave Marina just as enthusiastic a hug, with a kiss
on her cheek for good measure.

“You didn’t believe her about what?”
Marina asked.

“Oh, the rain, of course. She swore that in winter,
this part of Devon got more rain than the whole of England put together, and I
swear to you that it was bright and sunny a few miles back!” She took the
umbrella from Marina, as a porter hauled her baggage out of the baggage car
onto the platform behind them. “Not a cloud, not a sign of a cloud, until
we topped a hill, and then—like a wall, it was, and just a wall of
clouds, and most of them
pouring
rain!”

“That’s what you get for not believing
Margherita when she tells you something,” Sebastian said, with laughter
in his eyes. “You should know the Earth Masters by now! They don’t
feel it necessary to exercise their imagination unless it’s in the
service of art. When they tell you something, it’s unembroidered fact!”