The Master of Heathcrest Hall (6 page)

Only from what? Ivy couldn’t remember, except that it was something terrible. And even as her recollections of the dream grew more detailed, so too a sense of foreboding grew within her. What was the source of her apprehension, she could not say, but it seemed to draw ever closer. Now, as the light of the candle sent the shadows scurrying to the corners of the bedchamber, a veil of
dread draped itself over Ivy. Something awful was going to happen.

Or had it already?

She thought back, trying to recall the dream. It had progressed further this time—or perhaps it was simply that she had remembered more of it. She recalled the face of a woman, preternaturally white, and a man with blue eyes who wore a silver fur. And she remembered the way a darkness closed in around them like a black flood.

Only suddenly the darkness was gone, and she was back in the cave with the blue-eyed man. Something had happened there, something that mattered for some reason. It was important that she didn’t forget it. Only … what was it? Ivy tried to will her sleep-muddled brain to think. A memory began to come back to her, a memory of joyousness and of—

—pain. Violent pain coursed through Ivy, piercing deep. Shocked by the suddenness and severity of the spasm, her back arched away from the pillows and she let out a cry. At the same moment, the door of her bedchamber flew open.

“Great Gods, Ivy, what’s going on?” Lily exclaimed. She stood in the open doorway in her night robe, the pretty oval of her face lit by the wavering candle in her hand. “I heard you give a great shout. I wasn’t sleeping, as I’m reading a very horrid book, but I’m sure the noise would have woken me even if I had been asleep.”

The pain fogged Ivy’s brain. Lily’s bedchamber was at the opposite end of the corridor from Ivy and Mr. Quent’s. “How did you get here so quickly?”

“It wasn’t so very quick,” Lily said. “It took me a minute to put on my robe. But you gave another shout just as I reached your door. What is it? Were you reading a particularly horrid scene yourself?”

Ivy held a hand to her brow; it was damp with perspiration. “It was … I was having a dream.”

“A nightmare is more like it,” Lily said, and frowned. “But I say, you look very queer. Are you all right?”

Ivy shook her head. “I don’t know. I woke up and—” She grimaced as another spasm convulsed her.

Now Lily’s expression grew worried. She hurried across the room and set down her candle on the nightstand. “What is it, Ivy?”

Ivy drew a tight breath. “I think something’s wrong.”

“It’s your light,” spoke a soft voice.

They both looked up to see Rose in the doorway, clad in a pink robe. Her soft brown eyes were wide.

“Her light?” Lily said. “What in the world are you talking about, Rose? There are only the candles.”

Foreboding filled Ivy anew. Pushing herself up in bed, she threw back the covers. And all three of them stared at the dark spot that was slowly spreading across the white fabric of her nightgown.

“There was a spark of gold in your light before,” Rose said, her voice barely a whisper. “Only now it’s green again. Just green.”

Ivy felt a terrible wrenching inside. She let out a gasp, then looked at their youngest sister.

“Lily, go find Mrs. Seenly. Tell her to bring Dr. Lawrent at once.”

I
T WAS LATE in the long afternoon, and little beams of sunlight darted among the leaves of the ash tree outside the window to dapple the room when Dr. Lawrent came once more to see how his patient was faring.

“I am sorry to have to disturb you yet again, Lady Quent,” he said as Mrs. Seenly let him in. “However, as I mentioned earlier, in cases such as this it is important to make sure the loss of blood does not resume.”

“Of course,” Ivy said, pushing herself up against the pillows. “You must not be concerned, Dr. Lawrent.”

“On the contrary, it is my business to be concerned. And I will be so until it is clear that you are perfectly well.”

Dr. Lawrent was somewhat older than Mr. Quent. He was a
small, neatly kept man with a pointed silver beard and clear gray eyes. These now peered at Ivy over a pair of spectacles that were perched improbably on the end of his nose.

“I will leave you to speak privately,” Mrs. Seenly said. Usually the housekeeper’s ruddy face was open and cheerful, but today it was drawn in tight lines.

The door shut, leaving Ivy and the doctor alone. Her sisters had sat with her through the night and for much of that day, valiantly stifling their yawns toward the end. At last Ivy had convinced them to go to their rooms, and she hoped they were still asleep.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Lawrent asked.

It seemed impossible, but physically Ivy felt much improved. The pain she had suffered last night was gone. She felt tired, but that was all. And the pain was not the only thing that had vanished. The sense of foreboding that had haunted her over the past few days had departed as well. What weighed upon her now was not a dread of some vague and awful thing. Rather, it was an all too comprehensible sorrow.

“I am well,” she said. “There have been no more—that is, the discomfort is gone entirely.”

He reached out his hands, then hesitated. “May I?”

She nodded, and with gentle motions he laid aside the clean white coverlet and placed his hands on her robe. He probed with precise, gentle motions, then withdrew his hands and replaced the coverlet.

“I believe the spasms have indeed ceased,” he said, leaning back. “We must remain vigilant these next few days, of course. But seeing how rapidly you have progressed, I predict that you will make a swift recovery.”

Tears stung her eyes. It seemed wrong that she should suffer so few consequences from what had occurred. How resilient was the body, to return to its prior form so quickly! Yet the mind was formed of a less pliable substance. The emptiness in her thoughts would not be so easily filled. Instead there was a hollowness
among them—a place she had reserved for future joys which now would never arrive.

“That is good news, Dr. Lawrent” was all she could manage.

He laid his hand over hers on the coverlet and gave it a fatherly pat. Then, as was his habit, he gazed at her past the rims of his spectacles. In fact, so seldom did he actually look through the lenses that she had begun to think he wore the spectacles not out of any need, but simply so he could peer over them for effect.

“I know it can provide you little comfort now, Lady Quent, but you can have every reason to expect to be a mother in the future. You are very young and in excellent health.”

She gave a hesitant nod. “But is it not possible that, under similar circumstances, a similar result may occur?”

“There is always a possibility. Nature is far from perfect in its workings, but it makes up for this with a remarkable persistence. And sometimes it can astonish us. Your own mother, Mrs. Lockwell, is proof of that. I examined her myself once, and I was quite convinced she would never be able to realize her wish to have another child after her first was taken from her. So I was very glad when you were brought into the household. Then, hardly a year later, your sister Roslend is born, and Liliauda two years after that. It was as if a capability that had lain dormant within Mrs. Lockwell was suddenly awakened by having a child about.” He paused for a moment. “Or more specifically, by having
you
about.”

Ivy sat up a little more in bed. What did Dr. Lawrent mean? She had always supposed it was simply due to luck that her mother finally had another child of her own. But what if there was a reason for it, a cause? Ivy thought of the little hawthorn and chestnut trees in the garden. Her father had planted the seeds after gleaning them from the edges of the Wyrdwood, but they had not sprouted and grown—not until Ivy came to the house. Perhaps her presence here had influenced another sort of seed to take root and grow as well, and Rose and Lily were the result.

But if that was so, then why had Ivy herself not been able to nurture the life that had been growing within her?

“So you see, you have no cause to abandon hope,” Dr. Lawrent
went on. “Occurrences such as this are actually quite common. And in this particular case, I suppose it was even to be ex—”

Abruptly he shook his head and looked away. Ivy wished he had not curtailed his speech. His words had enflamed the inquisitive spark that was a constant part of her being. Even now, when her heart felt broken, her mind continued along its usual course of curiosity.

“What were you going to say, Dr. Lawrent? Does it have something to do with your research?”

He looked back at her, his gray eyes startled. “I can’t imagine you want to discuss my research right now, Lady Quent.”

On the contrary, she had been confined to her bed all day, with nothing to do for endless hours but contemplate what she had lost. Right then, she wished for any sort of distraction.

“Please, I would very much like to know,” she said earnestly. “You said nature continues to try when it does not at first find success. Does that relate to your work at the university? I can see how it might affect the manner in which traits are passed from a creature to its offspring.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Sir Quent informed me that you possessed a scientific mind, and I see that he was right. That is an astute observation, Lady Quent. Yes, the persistence of nature indeed plays a part—though not so much in the manner in which these traits are inherited by offspring, but rather with the overall effect they can have over time.”

Now that Dr. Lawrent was speaking of his work, his worries about disturbing her seemed to ease, and he went on with greater enthusiasm. While the exact mechanisms by which certain characteristics were passed from one generation to the next were not understood, he explained, what was known was the particulate properties of such traits, and how a characteristic could be passed from one parent wholly, and without dilution.

“For example, a white cat and a black cat do not necessarily produce gray kittens,” he said. “Rather, their offspring may be entirely black or entirely white themselves.”

As if sensing the topic of conversation, Miss Mew padded into
the room. Evidently, Mrs. Seenly had not latched the door, and the little tortoiseshell cat had pushed it open with her nose. She hopped up onto the windowsill to look outside.

“That’s all very interesting,” Ivy said, and meant it, “but I’m not certain I see what that has to do with the persistence of nature.”

“Why, it has everything to do with it! Because of the particulate nature of inheritance, a unique characteristic which arises by chance in a parent may be passed to its offspring. Thus, over time, a number of variants can accumulate in a population. And naturalists have observed, those species which display the most variation in form and shape are also those which are best able to survive disruption in the environment in which they live.”

Ivy began to think she understood. “It’s like drawing cards from a deck. The more cards you are able to draw, the better chance you have of finding one to help you win the current hand.”

“Precisely! With a wide variety of types, it is more likely that—if some tragedy befalls, or the world about them changes—there will be at least some individuals able to survive under the new conditions. So, through this inherited variability, a species’ chances of enduring are improved.”

This idea was fascinating, but Ivy felt she was still missing something. “Yet why do such important variations arise in the first place? If they arise by chance, it seems they are as likely to have a negative effect upon the creature who gains them, or no effect at all. After all, it is just as probable that I will draw a card that doesn’t help my hand a bit.”

“Your mind is quick to seize upon the heart of a matter, Lady Quent,” he said with an approving nod. “A variation that curtails a creature’s ability to thrive and reach maturity has little chance of being passed on to its offspring. However, those variations that confer neither harm nor benefit can easily linger within a population. And if circumstances were to suddenly change”—he gave a shrug and smiled—“well, you never know when that card you had tucked in the corner of your hand suddenly trumps all others.”

Ivy felt a familiar, pleasant humming as her mind worked
through these ideas. It was a curious but compelling notion that a creature might have heretofore unobserved features or abilities that remained hidden as they were passed from generation to generation, awaiting only the right event that would allow them to manifest themselves in some efficacious way.

By the window, Miss Mew began to lick at a paw, and at the same time another thought occurred to Ivy.

“What of those traits which can only be passed to some offspring?” she said. “Or more particularly, those traits that can only be passed to a male or female? I read once that tortoiseshell cats, like Miss Mew, are all girls.”

Dr. Lawrent smiled at the little cat, who had turned her head at the sound of her name. “Another interesting question, Lady Quent. As I said, the mechanism by which traits are inherited is particulate, and it seems that some of these particles can be passed only to female offspring, while others go only to males. But as for the reason … I fear I do not know. Perhaps my research will someday give us a better understanding.”

Ivy nodded, watching as Miss Mew resumed licking her paw, only it was not the color of cats that she was thinking of. Rather, it was magick. Only men could be magicians. And like Mr. Rafferdy, they were all of them thought to be descendants of one of the seven Old Houses.

Similarly, only women were ever witches, and it was a thing that seemed to run mother to daughter. The woman who bore Ivy—Merriel Addysen—was a descendant of Rowan Addysen, as were Halley Samonds and the first Mrs. Quent. And all of them had been witches. Did that mean magick and witchcraft were simply types of traits, like the color of fur? And if so, when and how had these traits arisen?

Before she could think of how to frame such a question, Dr. Lawrent rose from the chair. “We can speak again later, Lady Quent. For now, you should try to get some more rest.”

The afternoon light that filtered into the room had turned a deeper gold. The long day was at last drawing on. And now that
their scientific discussion had come to an end, Ivy found her spirits dimming in kind.