With Fate Conspire (14 page)

She was watching very closely as she said it, recording every movement of eye and brow and mouth. Goblins
did
sometimes deceive mediums, it was true, but only as an occasional lark. Myers pursed his lips, then shook his head. “I confess, I’ve never given the possibility much thought. It is an interesting theory, at least.”

Not a single twitch, not the slightest spark of recognition.

He doesn’t remember.

Myers
had
given the possibility some thought, in the days before Cyma handed him over to Nadrett. It was why her master had wanted the man, though what purpose such an erroneous idea could serve, she didn’t know. Did Nadrett think this “spiritual realm” or “astral plane” was Faerie itself? Or did he think to extend his control over such a place?

That
question was far too dangerous for Cyma to allow it to remain in her mind. Myers had considered such things, and now did not remember; that meant Nadrett had taken the memory from his mind. Just like he’d done to Dead Rick, though in this case, the removal appeared more precise. Myers was not broken like the skriker.

Perhaps because Nadrett still had use for Myers’s knowledge. After all, he’d let the man walk free, back to his friends in the Society for Psychical Research.

I should get away from him.
Cyma was suddenly cold in a way that had nothing to do with the séance. She murmured something inane when Myers took his leave, going to coax Mrs. Wexford into trying again; after a paralyzed moment of standing where the manifestation had been, she slipped out the door and asked the footman to fetch her a cab.

She was almost free of Nadrett. Not even for Frederic William Henry Myers would she trap herself again.

White Lion Street, Islington: April 11, 1884

Eliza smoothed the bodice of her borrowed dress with nervous hands. “Borrowed” might be the wrong word; Ann Wick didn’t know she’d taken it. But the wages she’d saved so far weren’t enough to buy a respectable dress—something that wouldn’t instantly advertise her as somebody’s maid—so she’d sneaked this one from a hook in the room they shared, and changed into it once she was away from Cromwell Road. It wasn’t stealing, not when she intended to put it back.

Thus disguised, she was going to attend a meeting of the London Fairy Society.

It was the best she could think of to do. A fortnight of working for the Kitterings had gotten her no further than those few stolen minutes of nosing through Miss Kittering’s things; she’d uncovered nothing about faeries, and had no further opportunities to speak to the daughter. So, a month later, she was back where she had been before—but this time, with more preparation.

She would never have dared show her face at the meeting, except that she knew Louisa Kittering wouldn’t be present. Mrs. Kittering had decided to host a dinner party tonight, with the Honorable Mr. Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes in attendance. The row between mother and daughter had been audible two floors in either direction, and when Miss Kittering lost, Eliza had gone promptly to Mrs. Fowler with news that her mother was gravely ill. That had sparked a second row, nearly as fierce as the first, for with the missus planning this dinner party, the housekeeper needed every servant on hand. But Eliza was a good deal more stubborn than Miss Kittering, and had generally been a good enough worker that Mrs. Fowler was not eager to sack her; and Eliza had sworn she would quit if she were not permitted to go.

A threat that worked because she came quite close to meaning it. Louisa Kittering did not matter very much at all, except as a connection to her friend, the one she’d met at the previous society meeting. Eliza’s time in the Kittering household had failed to show her that woman again, though, or to turn up her name. It was worth risking her position at Cromwell Road to come to Islington, where she had a better chance of seeing the woman again.

Eliza’s optimism had been sufficient that she paid for an omnibus fare out to Islington, rather than walking the whole distance. She even looked respectable enough that a gentleman gave up his seat inside the ’bus so she wouldn’t have to climb the ladder to the knife-board bench on top. Crammed in between a mother with three squalling children and a clerk who somehow managed to sleep through all the disturbances, she’d felt very pleased with herself … until she got to Islington High Street.

Where she had stood for the last five minutes, staring down White Lion Street at the innocent facade of No. 9, trying and failing to convince herself to knock on the door.

The problem was that she still didn’t know what to expect inside. How many people would there be, and of what sort? Her skill at lying went as far as pretending to be English, but she’d never masqueraded as anything other than the lower-class woman she was. She did not know how to be a housewife, or a bookish bluestocking—would there even be women in there? Yes, there must; last time there had been Miss Kittering and her unknown friend. But she didn’t have the first notion what would go on at such a meeting, whether they would discuss books, or poetry …

Or personal encounters with faerie-kind.

She heard a church bell ring the hour. Seven o’clock. The time had come either to go in, or to admit that she was a coward.

For Owen’s sake, she could not be a coward. Eliza squared her shoulders, marched down White Lion Street, and rapped the knocker on the door.

It opened almost immediately. No footmen here, and Eliza recognized the signs about the maid’s appearance that said she’d hurriedly cleaned herself up for door-opening duties, and would go back to dirtier work as soon as the meeting was underway. Which put Eliza slightly more at ease. Any family that could possibly afford a manservant to answer the door had one; that meant the people here were not so high above her as she’d feared.

The maid prompted her, “Yes?”

She’d been so busy thinking that she hadn’t said anything. “Oh! I’m, ah—Elizabeth Baker. I’m here for the meeting?”

“Yes, of course. They’re just getting started. If you’ll follow me?”

Eliza stood aside in the narrow front hall so the maid could close the door, then followed her up the stairs.
I’m late. I should have known it; nobody went in while I was standing there, like an indecisive fool.

The house was old and a little shabby, the linoleum scratched in places, the stair railing well worn by countless hands. Voices came muffled through a door on the first floor, which stopped when the maid tapped on it. She waited until she heard a reply, then opened the door. Warm gaslight flooded out, and Eliza had her first proper sight of the members of the London Fairy Society.

There were only seven, but that was enough to crowd the small drawing room, taking up most of the seating. The gentlemen—three of them—stood as she came in, and Eliza dropped into a curtsy before realizing it made her look like a servant. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve come late—is this the Fairy Society?”

She straightened, and found herself staring at Louisa Kittering.

The young woman was seated on a chair by the windows, looking like the very picture of horrified surprise. Eliza feared she mirrored that expression, but her months of lying had been good practice; when she wrenched her gaze away, she saw only mild curiosity in the others’ faces, and nobody was looking between the two of them as if waiting for an explanation.

The remainder were a trio of gentlemen; a pair of middle-aged women who were very obviously sisters; and an elderly woman by the hearth, who answered Eliza. “Yes, do come in—it’s no trouble; we haven’t yet stopped ourselves chattering long enough to do anything like business. What is your name, child?”

Doubt paralyzed her tongue for an instant. Miss Kittering would expect her to say White; the maid had already heard Baker.
You’ll already have to do something about Miss Kittering. Don’t connect yourself to Cromwell Road.
“Elizabeth Baker,” she said, and made herself lift her eyes to the woman’s face. It was a friendly countenance, wrinkled by many smiles—entirely unlike Mrs. Kittering or Mrs. Fowler, whose forbidding expressions had trained her very thoroughly to keep her gaze cast down.

“Welcome, Mrs. Baker—or is it Miss? Miss Baker. I am Mrs. Chase, and as this is my house, so far I have been the de facto president of our little society, though we have not yet gone so far as to establish rules or any kind of official leadership. We are quite informal here, you see.”

Eliza was profoundly grateful for that informality; she’d already had enough of a fright. Mrs. Chase introduced her to the three gentlemen—Mr. Myers, Mr. Graff, and a Scostman named Macgregor—and to Miss Kittering and the sisters, a pair of spinsters named Goodemeade. “Please, have a seat,” the woman said, after all the greetings were done.

The furniture was mismatched in a way no elegant woman would ever have permitted, a mix of heavy new chairs with thick padding and older, sticklike pieces. Mr. Myers surrendered one of the former to Eliza, startling her; she was more accustomed to gentlemen ignoring or making crude suggestions to her. She settled into it, trying not to fidget with the skirt of Ann Wick’s dress. Mrs. Chase said, “You have an interest in fairies?”

“Oh, yes,” Eliza answered. She glanced around as she said it, partly to see if the others read her heartfelt tone as enthusiasm, but mostly to see what Louisa Kittering was doing. The young woman’s face had settled like stone. It didn’t look like anger, though, or the self-righteous indignation of a girl who had caught her maid in a lie; it looked more like confusion and dread.

Then understanding came, and Eliza fought not to laugh.
I’m not the one who’s been caught out—
she
is!

Mrs. Kittering had forbidden her daughter to go out tonight, because of the dinner party. She was utterly inflexible upon that point. It therefore followed that Miss Kittering must have sneaked out of the house. Her supposed plan for the evening had been to attend a theatrical performance with a friend … but Eliza’s presence made it seem as if the truth had been discovered. In which case she had to be wondering where her mother was, and why Eliza had not seized her by the ear to drag her home.

Let her chew upon that for a while.
A plan was taking shape in Eliza’s mind, but it could not be put in motion until the meeting ended.

Which left her with her original purpose in coming. She was disappointed not to see the other woman, Miss Kittering’s friend, who had claimed to know more of faeries than the others here. Still, there might be something of value to learn.

Mrs. Chase had gone on talking, words Eliza only half heard; something about there being a great diversity of interests present. “Mr. Graff, you had indicated that you wished to speak upon—anthropology, was it?”

He rose at her words, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. “Yes, anthropology. Ladies, gentlemen—I recently returned from missionary work in Africa, and as a result have taken quite an interest in the superstitions of primitive peoples. As some of you may be aware, this often takes the form of animism, totemism, and similar beliefs. Well, the chaps I was dealing with were full of such things, always talking about lion-men or what have you, and it occurred to me that what they were describing were not so different from our own English fairies. More primitive, of course—a reflection of their own lesser development—but the kinship can be seen.

“Visiting places of that sort … it’s like looking back into our own, less civilized past. And so I have begun to wonder whether the fairy beliefs we have here might not be a relic of similar practices back in pagan days.”

Eliza did not like him in the slightest. He did not look at anyone as he spoke, but rather directed his gaze above their heads, which had the effect of lifting his nose to an arrogant angle. She liked him even less when he chose an example to illustrate his point. “Take the legends—very common in the north of England, but found elsewhere as well—of supernatural black dogs. We know that the dog was an object of veneration for ancient Celtic peoples; think of Cú Chulainn, the Hound of Culann. Might there not have been a dog cult in northern England? Perhaps a funerary cult, given the association of such phantasms with death; or perhaps they were warriors, garbing themselves as dogs before going into battle. Then we might very easily explain the legends as folk memory, preserving a faint, distorted echo of past truths.”

Her one comfort, upon hearing those words, was that nobody else in the room looked terribly impressed, either. One of the Goodemeade sisters made a faintly outraged noise at the word
distorted;
the other laid a quelling hand on her knee.

There was no one to quell Eliza. “What of people who have
seen
those black dogs?” she asked.

His mustaches did not hide his condescending smile. “What have they seen? Supernatural creatures? Or merely some neighbor’s black-furred mongrel, that startled them along a lonely road at night?”

“If I may,” Macgregor said. The habits of deference made Eliza hesitate, forgetting that she had a right to speak here, and by the time she found her tongue again, the Scotsman had already begun to air his own theory. “I agree that we must look to the past for explanations—but not to superstition. As an educated man, Mr. Graff, you must of course be familiar with Darwin’s theory of evolution…”

As he began outlining a place for fairies in that scheme, Eliza sank back in disgust. If these people believed in evolution, there was no point in wasting her time listening to them.
No wonder that other woman took Miss Kittering aside.
The young woman was observing all this with condescending amusement, while Mrs. Chase exchanged a look with the Goodemeade sisters, who shook their heads. Eliza wished she could leave the meeting, without drawing unwanted attention.

Mr. Myers finally broke in, interrupting the increasingly heated argument between Graff and Macgregor. “Gentlemen, you are debating theory, without evidence. Would it not be more productive to ask ourselves what
proof
we have of fairies?”