The Spellbinder (Tom & Laura Series) (14 page)

Chapter 16
   
Settling In

The next few days passed quickly and Tom and Laura soon settled into the school’s routine. They were ignored by most of the other students, which didn’t bother them in the slightest.
 
However, Cam, Daisy and
Leon
became good friends. Tompkins spent a great deal of time with the group, but he had become withdrawn and barely spoke. Snood arrived at the school. Tom knew him by sight and recognized him, but so far he had not spoken to Laura.

One of the stranger lessons was called Holistics, which
Cam
informed them was the study of how everything fitted together. They had their first lesson on the subject on their fifth day at Hobsgate.

The teacher was a Scot named Strength McGuiness. Unlike most of the teachers they met, he made no attempt to introduce himself to them and immediately launched into a lecture, droning on in that boring way at which some teachers excel.

Laura found it impossible to follow what he was talking about. McGuiness said everything in a monotonous tone of voice without the slightest inflection. It was almost hypnotic and she was nearly asleep when he shouted her name.

“Miss Young.” Laura sat bolt upright in her chair and tried to remember where she was. It proved a struggle, but her survival instincts took over and she snapped back a “Yes, Sir,” while uncertain if she had been asked anything.

“Come to the board and write down the seven branches of magic.”

Laura didn’t want to leave the safety of her desk, but she had no choice. She saw Tom give her a sympathetic smile and tried to smile back as she made her way to the board. She hated using chalk. She would always hit a harder bit of the stone while writing and the resultant screech on the board would make her teeth ache. On top of that, she had to be careful she didn’t accidently create a bind. Putting a Spellbinder under stress and giving them any kind of a drawing tool could be a recipe for disaster. It wasn’t that they wanted to do magic, sometimes it happened of its own accord.

“In large enough letters for everyone to read, Miss Young, and write a short description of each talent as you go.”

Fortunately the question was an easy one. She could have named the seven branches of magic at the age of seven.

What she wrote was:

Mr. McGuiness seemed pleased with the result. “Very good. And what is special about the last two?”

That was an easy question too, though what any of this had to do with Holistics was beyond Laura.

“They are very rare skills, sir.”

“Anything else about Telepathy?”

Now she was defeated. “I don’t know, sir.”

“What Miss Young is obviously too ignorant to know is that
Newton
’s formulae predicted that Telepathy would be common skill. It is not clear yet whether the mathematics is wrong or if some other reason, such as the expectations of our society, is the underlying cause of the shortage.” He paused for a second, eyeing up his class. His eyes fell on Tom. “Carter, what could social reasons have to do with it?”

Unlike Laura, Tom had managed to follow the earlier part of the lesson and so had a good idea of the answer Mr. McGuiness was looking for.

“Telepaths have a hard time of it, sir.”

The beginnings of a smile tugged at Mr. McGuiness’s lips, but never developed into the real thing.”

“Telepaths, have jobs for life, serving the Empire and our Empress. They do not want for clothes or food or any other necessity. They are encouraged to marry and breed. Why would they not come forward to serve? You, Tompkins.”

Tompkins had his head down staring at his desk and didn’t look as though he was going to answer. Then he looked up at the teacher, his eyes blazing with anger. “Because Her Majesty wants telepathic pairs. People who can send messages to each other. Their lives are never their own. The one who stays home must maintain his life at whatever time zone the other one is living in. Both are constantly on call and the one away will always be at or near the front lines. Not everyone wishes to be a soldier for their whole life.”

Mr. McGuiness beamed at Tompkins, ignoring the boy’s anger.

“As you say, Telepaths are conscripted for life. The Empire places large bounties on discovering them. It pays those families predisposed to have twins to have more children. The assumption is that Telepaths shirk their duty and hide their talents, and the state works hard to root them out.”

Mr. McGuiness paused for breath. “But the truth is, Telepaths are rare.
Newton
may have placed order on the universe, and his laws of motion bind the stars and certainly make the trains run on time. However, he seems to have got the likelihood of telepaths wrong. In the end, even
Newton
was made of the same imperfect clay as the rest of us.”

After the lesson ended, Laura and Tom did their best to get away from the other students without being seen. They had arranged a secret rendezvous and
Cam
in particular was keen to find out where they were going and took to watching them during breaks.

They were off to meet Mick. Mick had become a good friend since the incident in the cellar. He saw nothing strange in them wanting to know all the ways in and out of Hobsgate and their meetings always included showing them another route. Hobsgate was a maze with narrow hidden corridors built to allow the servants to move about the house without being seen. The last thing a Lord of the Manor wanted was for his guests to encounter servants unless they required one.

Mick told them many tales about the locals. This had always been smuggling country and as long as both
France
and
Britain
imposed massive tariff barriers on each other’s goods, it would remain so. According to Mick, the Revenuers were hopeless at their jobs and couldn’t catch a cold, let alone a wily smuggler.

It particularly amused him that they had been based in Hobsgate for many years before the house became a training school. “Right under their noses and they still couldn’t see it,” he said, but he wouldn’t explain what he meant.

Today, he was taking them up to the roof of
Hobbs
Tower
. They met him in the stables and followed him as he took a circuitous route through the house. They entered the main buildings via a small door in the back of the stables. They went past the kitchens without the cook or his helpers noticing, and then climbed an incredibly narrow set of circular stairs. Laura and Tom had to hold on to the stones in the centre as they climbed to avoid falling.

“How do they get ammunition to the guns?” Tom asked. “You couldn’t get them up these steps.”

Mick stopped and Laura stumbled into him. For a few seconds it looked as though she might fall, but Mick braced himself against the wall and held her until she recovered her balance.

“Yer right, Tom. There’s a pulley on the roof and they can haul things up from the keep.”

“Can we just get to the top of these damnable stairs?” Laura pleaded, eager to be get somewhere safe.

“Aye, that we can.” Mick started climbing again.

At the top of the stairs was a tiny door, only four foot high which Mick unlocked using one of the smaller cast iron keys from the housekeeper’s massive key ring. Mick ‘borrowed’ the house keys from the housekeeper for their trips. Tom was sure he never asked her.

Going through that door brought them out onto the large square flat roof, which was about ten yards to a side. There was a crenulated stone wall on the sides of the roof. The cannons poked out over of those two sides. When Tom found the courage to stand at the wall, he discovered the view was magnificent. Laura was happier to stay standing by the door which was set in a low circular stone structure.

Looking out to the west, Tom saw a small fishing village. There was a small harbor with fishing vessels. It looked like a model, it was so far away. The three small fishing boats looked too small to risk using in the wild sea beyond the harbor. Tom marveled at the bravery of fishermen who risked their lives for a daily catch of fish.

“I were born there,” Mick told him. “We keeps oursen’ to oursen’ and don’t ‘ave truck with foreigners.”

“You mean like us?” Laura asked. She had moved to the wall, but held onto it with what looked suspiciously like a death grip to Tom.

Mick laughed, “Aye, yer foreign to us, with yer strange way o’ talkin’ and yer
London
airs an’ graces.”

They had confided in Mick some of their problems, how they had nearly been killed on the train and how Tom had been attacked in Hobsgate. They had a deep trust in Mick and found it easy to tell him things, though neither could have explained why.

“Can you make us copies of the housekeeper’s keys?” Laura asked.

“But yer be a witch, lass.”

“Oh, I could turn an iron bar into a key, but the bind wouldn’t last a long time and we might need these keys weeks from now.”

“Don’t yer even know how to use yer skills, lass? Look, I’ll show thee.”

Laura was slightly offended at his tone, but she knew he meant well and followed him down from the tower. Tom was highly amused. Mick, who had probably never been to school, was going to show Laura how to do spellbinding. Tom had no doubt at all that Mick would deliver on his promise, which only served to make the whole thing more amusing.

Mick took them to the stables and made them sit on bales of hay while he went to get the tools he needed. He came back with a fire bucket filled with sand and a horseshoe. He took the side door key from the key ring.

First pushing the key hard into the damp sand, he carefully removed it with his pocket knife. A negative imprint of the key was left in the sand. He took the horseshoe and balanced it lightly inside the impression of the key, standing it upright.

“Yer witch that shoe so as it’s soft and runny, like thick oil, Witch it slow now.”

Laura instantly understood his method and grinned. She took a scrap of parchment hidden in her drawers, and pen and ink bottle from her pocket to work the bind. The horseshoe became soft and ran as a liquid into the imprint. Mick used his knife to flick away excess metal.

“Now end yer magic,” said Mick and Laura tore the parchment. It burst into flames. The iron was instantly hard again.

Mick dug it out and gave it to Laura, “Go-on give it a try” he commanded and she took it to the door put it in the lock and turned. It was rougher than the real key, but it locked and unlocked the door. Laura was delighted.

“How did you know how to do that, Mick, are you a Spellbinder?”

“Nay Laura, I’ve none of yer gifts, but ‘appen the local blacksmith has, though only a mite. He can witch the metal just long enough to shape it like that. It’s the same as melting it, but much less effort.”

“Let’s do the other keys,” said Laura enthusiastically. She felt they were finally making progress.

Chapter 17
   
Set Up

“Last one,” Mick said wearily as he pulled the key from the sand and rubbed it clean. Laura now had a complete set of the housekeeper’s keys and there were a lot fewer horseshoes in the stables. That worried her a little.

“Will anyone notice the missing horseshoes, Mick? I don’t want to get you in trouble?”

“Nay, Lass. They were worn ones destined to go back to the blacksmith and he’s a mate of mine. I’ll say I took them down to him and he won’t say different.”

Tom collected the keys as Laura and Mick made them. He tied them together with a thick piece of twine.

“Where are we going to put them? They weigh a ton.”

“A lass’s dress provides a few places of concealment, but I doubt yer’d be able to walk straight wi’ that lot dangling from your unmentionables.”

Laura was sure he was right, but she didn’t think that was the right place for them in any case.

“I think we should hide them near the doors they are used for; somewhere where they will not be easily spotted.”

“Aye and which side of the door would that be, Lass, for goin’ in or goin’ out?”

Tom wondered about that himself.

“Mick has a point. I suspect we’ll be going out at first, but if we ever want to get back in again all the other keys would be on the wrong side.”

Laura gave Tom a severe look, as he wasn’t helping. “We hide them on the inside. If we are getting out we’ll be in a hurry, and I can always use a bind to get in again. I don’t want to try and write a bind with Snood chasing me.”

With that decided, they set off to put the keys in place. It would have been quicker to split up, but Tom and Laura needed to know where every key was hidden, in case they were on their own when they needed to use them.

With Mick’s help and a certain amount of hiding in corners as people walked by, they managed to find a place for every key but one. The front door key was much too big to easily hide, not only that, there was no furniture by the door to hide it in.

Laura had wanted to avoid using magic because of the uncertainty about how long it would last and the need to hide the bind nearby, but in this case she had no choice. She turned the key into flat strip of wood and placed it on top of its bind on a light fitting. With luck, it wouldn’t fall down and nobody would notice it. It was the best they could do under the circumstances.

By the time they finished it was time for dinner in the mess. Mick said his goodbyes and left them to return to the stables. Tom and Laura made their way to the mess through the empty building, Tom looking over his shoulder every other step. They hurried because being late for dinner carried significant penalties

Emma Jones had been late to dinner the day before and Snow White had caned her in front of the other students, making her stand on a chair after he had finished with her drawers around her ankles and her skirt pulled up at the back for the rest of the meal. Neither Tom nor Laura relished the idea of being subjected to similar chastisement.

The mess door was ajar when they got there. As they slid inside they saw an old woman in rags in the centre of the room holding everybody’s attention. She had a stooped back and stood uncertainly with the aid of a stick. She lifted her head so that everyone could see the sores weeping yellow puss down her face.

Tom’s eyes were drawn to her enormous nose which was covered in ugly warts with thick black hairs stuck out of them, but his eyes kept returning to the sores as if they had a mind of their own. Her arms were outstretched towards the seated students as if beseeching them for help. What she got in return for her trouble were looks of disgust and contempt.

“Who will feed an old woman down on her luck,” she croaked. She fumbled with her stick and fell to the floor, writhing on it as if possessed by demons.

“Now that’s what I call a distraction,” Tom whispered; a broad grin on his face.

“She always overdoes the makeup” Laura whispered back. “Come on, let’s take her in hand.”

“Come on, my dear,” Tom said as they hauled the hag to her feet in a non-too-gentle manner. They pulled her to a vacant table, her feet dragging across the floor. “You may eat with us, just as if you were a second year student.”

As they reached the table, the old woman broke their grip on her. She reached for her face and pulled her large nose clean off, taking some of the sores on her cheeks with it. There was a collective gasp from the students and teachers as they realized who it was.
Cam
bowed to the rapturous applause that followed.

“Without any doubt your best disguise so far,” Tom told her.

“Where did you get those clothes?” Laura asked as the room began to settle down, “They’re awfully realistic. I hope they didn’t come with real fleas.”

“What are mere fleas to an artist?”
Cam
said airily. She mopped her brow as an elegant lady might. “I am born to be the world’s greatest spy and disguise artist. Who would dare to say otherwise?”

“If you were such a good spy, you would know what was up with Tompkins.” Tom told her, nodding towards the man in question who sat at a table some distance away with his head bowed so low it was nearly in his soup.

“I do know,”
Cam
said as if it was of no import.

“You don’t. Tell us quickly then, I am intrigued.” Laura was anxious to know what had depressed the previously cheerful boy, and besides, gossip is gossip.

Cam
lifted her head, taking on the aloof pose of a saint looking to the heavens for inspiration.

“I cannot talk, my lips are sealed. His pain must remain private.”

“You don’t know,” Tom said, in the hope of getting her to spill the beans “He hasn’t told anybody. There is no way you could know what is causing it.”

Cam
put her arms out and pulled their heads close to hers, whispering in both their ears.

“If a girl was to sneak into his bedroom and read his private mail while he was out, would that be a bad thing?”

“You didn’t?” Laura asked in mock horror and stared at her friend. From the twinkle in
Cam
’s eyes the answer was obvious. “Yes, you did. Well, if you don’t tell us what you have found out right now, I will tell Tompkins what you’ve done.”

Cam
blushed and looked in Tompkins’ direction. He sat, oblivious to the world around him. “Don’t do that, Laura… Very well, I shall tell you. His older brother was a soldier in the
Crimea
. A couple of weeks ago he was hit in the head by shrapnel and lapsed into a coma. Well, the letter was to inform him that his brother has died. I believe they were very close.”

“That’s terrible,” Tom said, feeling sick at the news. “I have an older brother in the army and I worry about him every time we get word of casualties. I should go over and say something.”

Tom started to get up, but Laura pulled him back down.

“If he wanted us to know, he would have told us, Tom. Leave him be. He needs time to grieve.”

“He does, and we will give him all the time he needs,”
Cam
said. “And now, more to the point, where do you two keep hiding? I had to keep my granny routine going twice as long as I planned because you two weren’t here. I didn’t want you displaying your striped red bottoms to the crowd, like Emma had to.”
Cam
paused for a moment to contemplate the image that formed in her mind. “Though in Tom’s case, it might have been worthwhile. Boy’s talk about what they see in the shower, you know, and I hear you are quite hefty below the belt.”

It was Tom’s turn to blush.

“He has the usual male anatomy, only slightly larger than some,” Laura said as if considering the matter dispassionately, which only served to deepen his blush.

“You have seen his apparatus, Laura dear?”
Cam
enquired. “Should I be shocked? Though they say it is always the quiet ones that do the darkest deeds.”

Laura grinned.

“Only ‘en passant’, Camilla. Tom was a dog at the time and changed back rather suddenly. I must say it was not the unpleasing sight that one is led to believe it will be.”

“Girls” Tom said through gritted teeth. “Would you please stop talking about my…?” Words failed him

Camilla grinned wickedly.

“Only if you come clean about where you have been going, and why I am not invited?”

Before Tom could say anything Laura intervened.

“
Cam
, we are trying to ensure our safety. We know things we can’t tell you. Please don’t press us. It’s safest for you if you don’t know.”

Cam
absorbed this information, but did not look happy about it.

“Very well, if you tell me so. This is a rum do and no respect. I shall expect a complete explanation at a later date.”
Cam
grinned at them. “And if not, my superior spying will be turned on the two of you.”

After the meal, they retreated to the dorm room, which had a large fire and a set of comfortable padded leather chairs.
Leon
arrived and joined them. Despite the two of them never sitting together at meals or in the class, Tom suspected that
Leon
and
Cam
were more than just friends. It would be just like
Cam
to keep their relationship a secret. He knew she had good reason. She was already a target for teasing, and if such a thing was to get out it would be over the school and back to the Headmaster in no time at all.

They pulled their chairs in a semicircle around the fireplace, hogging it. The nights had a bit of chill in them as summer turned to autumn, especially in Hobsgate as it sat in such an exposed position.

Cam
read a newspaper and looked over it at them.

“It says here that the
USA
is demanding we return the
Northern Territories
to them.
New York
and such like.”

“Haven’t they been saying that since 1812?” Tom asked.

“They got trounced in the Battle of New York, when was that anyway?” Laura asked sleepily.

“1850, I think.” Tom nudged Laura with his foot. “A Class A ripped their forces to pieces. That will be your job soon.”

“I don’t kill people, Tom.”

“If you say so.” Tom said. He knew she would have no choice. The Empire would not let a weapon like Laura choose what she would do. He felt sad at this thought. Laura was far too nice to be used as a weapon.

Leon
chose that moment to speak. He sounded surprisingly vehement. “The
USA
should consider themselves lucky we drew the border where we did and didn’t go on to retrieve all Her Majesties lands from their traitorous hands.”

Tom disagreed. “They seceded such a long time ago. Let them have their
United States
and much joy may they take in it. We have most of
North America
after all.” He felt there was too much fighting in the world as it was, and the Americans had been British citizens once. It was sad they were slavers though.

“I heard their President said that all the Class A’s in the world should be taken out of combat and held as world assets. He wants to form a League of Nations allied against the
British Empire
.”
Cam
pointed out.

“That’s only because we have nearly all of the Class A’s in the world.”
Leon
said and grinned at Laura. “If the Class A’s were all American citizens you can bet he’d soon change his tune.”

“Everybody hates the
British Empire
,” Laura said wearily, “The USA, the French, not to mention the Spanish.
 
Maybe they will all gang up on us one day and then where will we be?”

“On top, as always,” Tom said cheerfully. “But you forgot to mention the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and they hate us most of all.”