The Wizard of London Read online

  A gush of cold air, as fresh as air in London ever got, streamed in through the broken panes, as bedlam erupted in the room behind Nan.

  She dropped to the floor, ignoring everything around her for the moment, as she breathed in the air tainted only with smog, waiting for her head to clear. Grey ran to her and huddled with her rather than joining her beloved mistress in the poisonous smoke.

  Katherine shrieked in hysteria, there was a man as well as the medium shouting, and Mem’sab cursed all of them in some strange language.

  Grey gave a terrible shriek and half-ran, half-flew away. Nan fought her dizziness and disorientation; looked up to see that Mem’sab was struggling in the grip of a stringy fellow she didn’t recognize. Katherine had been backed up into one corner by the medium, and Sarah and Grey were pummeling the medium with small fists and wings. Mem’sab kicked at her captor’s shins and stamped on his feet with great effect, as his grunts of pain demonstrated.

  Nan struggled to her feet, guessing that she must have been the one worst affected by the hashish fumes. She wanted to run to Mem’sab’s rescue, but she couldn’t get her legs to work. In a moment the sour-faced woman would surely break into the room, turning the balance in favor of the enemy—

  The door did crash open behind her just as she thought that, and she tried to turn to face the new foe—

  But it was not the foe.

  Sahib charged through the broken door, pushing past Nan and using his cane to belabor the man holding Mem’sab; within three blows the man was on the floor, moaning. Before Nan fell, Karamjit caught her and steadied her. More men flooded into the room, among them, Selim and Agansing who went to the rescue of Sarah and Grey, and Nan let Karamjit steer her out of the way, concentrating on those steadying breaths of air. She thought perhaps that she passed out of consciousness for a while, for when she next noticed anything, she was sitting bent over in a chair, with Karamjit hovering over her, frowning. At some point the brazier had been extinguished, and a policeman was collecting the ashes and the remains of the drug-laced incense.

  It was a while before her head cleared; by then, the struggle was over. The medium and her fellow tricksters were in the custody of the police, who had come with Sahib when Nan threw the crystal ball through the window. Sahib was talking to a policeman with a sergeant’s badge, and Nan guessed that he was explaining what Mem’sab and Katherine were doing here. Katherine wept in a corner, comforted by Mem’sab. The police had brought lamps into the séance room from the sitting room, showing all too clearly how the medium had achieved her work; a hatch in the ceiling to the room above, through which things could be lowered; a magic lantern behind the drapes, which had cast its image of a woman and boy onto the thick brazier smoke. That, and the disorienting effect of the hashish, had made it easy to trick the clients.

  Finally, the bobbies took their captives away, and Katherine stopped crying. Nan and Sarah sat on the chairs Karamjit had set up, watching the adults, Grey on her usual perch on Sarah’s shoulder. A cushion stuffed in the broken window cut off most of the cold air from outside.

  “I can’t believe I was so foolish!” Katherine moaned. “But—I wanted to see Edward so very much—”

  “I hardly think that falling for a clever deception backed by drugs makes you foolish, my dear lady,” Sahib said gravely. “But you are to count yourself fortunate in the loyalty of your friends, who were willing to place themselves in danger for you. I do not think that these people would have been willing to stop at mere fraud, and neither do the police.”

  His last words made no impression on Katherine, at least none that Nan saw—but she did turn to Mem’sab and clasp her hand fervently. “I thought so ill of you, that you would not believe in Madame,” she said tearfully. “Can you forgive me?”

  Mem’sab smiled. “Always, my dear,” she said, in the voice she used to soothe a frightened child. “Since your motive was to enlighten me, not to harm me—and your motive in seeking your poor child’s spirit—”

  A chill passed over Nan at that moment that had nothing to do with the outside air. She looked sharply at Sarah, and saw a very curious thing.

  There was a very vague and shimmery shape standing in front of Sarah’s chair; Sarah looked at it with an intense and thoughtful gaze, as if she was listening to it. More than that, Grey was doing the same. Nan got the distinct impression that it was asking her friend for a favor.

  Grey and Sarah exchanged a glance, and the parrot nodded once, as grave and sober as a parson, then spread her wings as if sheltering Sarah like a chick. The shimmering form melted into Sarah; her features took on a mischievous expression that Nan had never seen her wear before, and she got up and went directly to Katherine. The woman looked up at her, startled at the intrusion of a child into an adult discussion, then paled at something she saw in Sarah’s face.

  “Oh, Mummy, you don’t have to be so sad,” Sarah said in a curiously hollow, piping soprano. “I’m all right, really, and it wasn’t your fault anyway, it was that horrid Lord Babington that made you and Papa send me to Overton. But you must stop crying, please! Laurie is already scared of being left, and you’re scaring her more.”

  Now, Nan knew very well that Mem’sab had not said anything about a Lord Babington, nor did she and Sarah know what school the poor little boy had been sent to. Yet she wasn’t frightened; in fact, the protective but calm look in Grey’s eye made her feel rather good, as if something inside her told her that everything was going wonderfully well.

  The effect on Katherine was not what Nan had expected either. She reached out tentatively, as if to touch Sarah’s face, but stopped short. “This is you, isn’t it, darling?” she asked in a whisper.

  Sarah nodded—or was it Edward who nodded? “Now, I’ve got to go, Mummy, and I can’t come back. So don’t look for me, and don’t cry anymore.”

  The shimmering withdrew, forming into a brilliant ball of light at about the level of Sarah’s heart, then shot off, so fast that Nan couldn’t follow it. Grey pulled in her wings, and Sarah shook her head a little, then regarded Katherine with a particularly measuring expression before coming back to her chair and sitting down.

  “Out of the mouths of babes, Katherine,” Mem’sab said quietly, then looked up at Karamjit. “I think you and Selim should take the girls home now; they’ve had more than enough excitement for one night. Agansing can stay here with us while we deal with the results of this night’s adventure.”

  Karamjit bowed silently, and Grey added her own vote. “Wan’ go back,” she said in a decidedly firm tone. When Selim brought their coats and helped them to put them on, Grey climbed right back inside Sarah’s, and didn’t even put her head back out again.

  They didn’t have to go home in a cab either; Katherine sent them back to the school in her own carriage, which was quite a treat for Nan, who’d had no notion that a private carriage would come equipped with such comforts as heated bricks for the feet and fur robes to bundle in. Nan didn’t say anything to Sarah about the aftermath of the séance until they were alone together in their room and Karamjit and Selim had returned to Mem’sab and Sahib.

  Only then, as Grey took her accustomed perch on the headboard of Sarah’s bed, did Nan look at her friend and ask—

  Sarah nodded. “I could see him, clear as clear, too.” She smiled a little. “He must’ve been a horrid brat at times, but he really wasn’t bad, just spoiled enough to be a bit selfish, and he’s been—learning better manners, since.”

  All that Nan could think of to say was—“Ah.”

  “Still, I think it was a bit rude of him to have been so impatient with his mother,” she continued, a little irritated.

  “I ‘spose that magic-man friend of yours is right,” Nan replied finally. “About what you c’n do, I mean.”

  “Oh! You’re right!” Sarah exclaimed. “But you know, I don’t think I could have done it if Grey hadn’t been there. I thought if I ever saw a spirit I’d be too scared to do anything, but I wasn’t afr
aid, since she wasn’t.”

  The parrot took a little piece of Sarah’s hair in her beak and preened it.

  “Wise bird,” replied Grey.

  ***

  Isabelle sat holding her friend’s hand, as the police sergeant questioned her in a painstaking but ponderous manner. Isabelle felt obscurely sorry for Katherine; it was a difficult thing to have to admit that you had given your trust to someone who had then not only abused it, but done so in such a fashion as to make you look incredibly foolish. As Katherine reluctantly admitted the large sums of money she had pressed into “Madame’s” hands—probably, Mem’sab reflected, with all the fervent devotion of a religious convert—she flushed and looked acutely uncomfortable until even the policeman noticed.

  “Begging your pardon, mum,” he said apologetically, “But we have to hev these particulars down in the report, or we can’t prosecute the woman properly. This’s theft, it is, and no two ways about it, as I’m sure the magistrate will say.”

  Well, while it might morally be theft, it actually was fraud under the law, and if Katherine hadn’t been wealthy and highly connected, Isabelle very much doubted whether this police sergeant would be bringing it up to a magistrate on such charges.

  But she was both of those things, and the upshot of that was that Madame—based on the amount of money she had taken—would probably be in prison for the rest of her life or, at least, would be transported to Australia.

  Even more uncomfortable for Katherine was divulging the names of her other wealthy, titled, or connected friends who had been fleeced by this fraud. That was worse than embarrassment, it was very nearly social suicide. Katherine would have to live in India for another five years before people like Lady Harrington forgot who had been the cause of common police appearing at her door to question her—and the ensuing embarrassment on her part of discovering she had been taken in by such a fraud.

  Still, there was nothing for it, and if Lady Harrington had been the one who had introduced Katherine to Madame in the first place, perhaps her annoyance would be tempered by guilt.

  Finally, the police released them all, and Katherine fled to the safety and seclusion of her carriage, looking utterly shattered.

  “She should have thanked you at least, Mem’sab,” said Selim gravely, as the carriage rolled away into the darkness. Frederick had gone to look for a cab with Agansing, leaving her with the third of the guardians.

  “Well, I can’t say as I am surprised that she did not,” Isabelle admitted. “She was one of the girls I went to school with, one in whom Elemental Magic burns very dimly. We tended to be thrown together within the group of the Gifted and the Talented on that account, you see; I had none of their Magic, and she had very little. But I did have something quite powerful that demanded a certain amount of respect. I may have been less than circumspect in my conversations about my powers, and as a consequence, I believe poor Katherine got some unrealistic notions about occult abilities.”

  “And yet Missy Sarah has them,” Selim observed.

  “Hmm.” Isabella’s lips compressed. “I fear that if Katherine makes this known, the consequences will be some exceedingly intrusive and unwanted attention on all of us. There are many bereaved people in the world, none of whom really wishes to know that a loved one has moved on and left them behind.”

  “One cannot blame them,” Selim replied. “But it would be hard on Missy Sarah to be the one to suffer at the hands of their need.”

  The sound that emerged from Isabelle’s throat was of a laugh with no humor in it. “And there is not one in a thousand of them who will consider that asking a very young child to perform mediumistic work is both cruel and uncaring. Each of them is so enwrapped in her grief—for it is predominantly women who flock to mediums—that nothing else is of consequence.”

  “They would be better off seeking solace in the arms of their religion, and leave the child out of it.” Selim’s tone was grim.

  “Well, they will be leaving the child out of it, because we are her guardians, and I have no intention of allowing her to do any such thing.” Isabelle’s tone was just as grim as Selim’s. “Ah! Here is Sahib with our cab!”

  The short journey back was conducted mostly in silence. It was Isabelle who finally broke it. “I know I thanked you all before—but now I have to thank you again, with the full knowledge of what foolishly rushing in to this situation could have brought me to.” In fact, she felt a bit shaken and rather humbled at this point. It was painfully clear that at the least, she, the girls, and Katherine could have been harmed, and at worst—

  “And who was it, Mem’sab, that kept me from believing I could brave the temple of Kalima alone?” asked Agansing.

  “Or insisted that if I would go to meet that fakir, it would be while I was under the eye of my friends?” said Selim.

  “Or told me to go direct to Bhurka Singh with my suspicions instead of allowing them to fester,” added Karamjit, his teeth gleaming in a white smile in the shadows of the cab.

  “Or kept me from rushing into a hundred foolish ventures,” Frederick concluded, with his arms around her. “This is what it means to be human, as I quite recall you saying the last time I came home with a broken head. You succeed, you become a trifle overconfident, and at that point it is the duty of your friends to haul you back and point out the edge of the cliff at your feet.”

  “Well, nevertheless,” she said, feeling a little better and a trifle less stupid. “Thank you.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Frederick, with a squeeze, “You are welcome. Provided you continue to do me the same good turn, my love.”

  And somehow, that made her feel very much better indeed.

  4

  NAN sat on the foot of Sarah’s bed, with her feet curled up under her flannel nightgown to keep them warm. Sarah Jane’s parrot Grey lay flat on Sarah’s chest, eyes closed, cuddling like a kitten. Warm light from an oil lamp mounted on the wall beside the bed poured over all of them. It wasn’t a very big room, just room for Nan’s bed and Sarah Jane’s, a perch with cups screwed to it for food and water and a selection of toys hanging from it for Grey, and a wardrobe and chests for their clothes and things. If the wallpaper was old and faded, and the rugs on the floor threadbare, it was still a thousand times better than any place that Nan had ever lived in—and as for Sarah, well, she was used to a mission and hospital in the middle of the jungle, and their little room was just as foreign to her as it was to Nan, though in entirely different ways.

  While only little Sarah had a pet from “home,” there were plenty of pets acquired here in England for the other children. To make sure that the children never forgot those who had sent them here, other reminders of absent parents were encouraged here, and there was a supply of paper, ink, and penny stamps in each room. Most schools encouraged letters—so long as they were written in class where the teacher could ostensibly check for spelling, grammar, and penmanship, but in reality making sure nothing uncomplimentary about the school or the teachers went out through the mails. There was a great deal of laughter in the Harton School, and the lessons learned were all the surer for it.

  And that was the least of the eccentricities here, in a school where not all of the lessons were about what could be seen with the ordinary eye.

  Nan was alone in not wanting reminders of her family; she had no idea who her father was, and her mother had finally descended (last Nan had heard) to the lowest rung on the social ladder her type could reach, that of a street whore in Whitechapel. She roamed the streets now with everything she owned on her back, without even a garret or cellar room, or even an under-stairs cubbyhole to call her own, satisfying first her craving for drink, before looking for the extra penny for a bed or a meal. She would probably die soon, of bad gin, of cold and exposure, of disease, or of everything at once as her chronically-damaged body gave out. Nan had neither time nor pity for her. After all, it had been her gran that had mostly raised her, not her mam, who’d only been interested in the money Nan
brought in by begging.

  Sarah had a very special sort of bond with Grey—who Sarah insisted was a great deal more than “just” a parrot. Nan was in wholehearted agreement with that estimation at this point—after all, it was no more difficult to believe in than to believe that wolves could adopt a mancub, and Nan was convinced of the truth of Mr.Kipling’s stories.

  Sarah had a new set of lessons, now that they had learned she could on occasion, talk with, and see, the dead. This could be a very dangerous ability, so Mem’sab had told Nan, who had appointed herself as Sarah’s protector.

  Well, if Nan and Grey had anything to say about the matter, danger would have to pass through them to reach Sarah.

  “Nan tickle,” Grey demanded in her funny little voice, eyes still closed; Sarah was using both hands to support the bird on her chest, which left no hands free to give Grey the scratch she wanted.

  Nan obliged by crawling up to the head of the bed, settling in beside her friend and scratching the back of Grey’s neck. It was a very gentle scratch—indeed, more like the “tickle” Grey had asked for than the kind of vigorous scratching one would give a dog or a tough London cat—for Nan had known instinctively from the moment that Grey permitted Nan to touch her that a bird’s skin is a very delicate thing. Of all of the people in the school, only Nan, Mem’sab, Sahib himself, and Agansing were permitted by Grey to do more than take her on a hand. Sarah, of course, could do anything she liked with the bird.

  “Wish’t Oi had a friend loike you, Grey,” Nan told the bird wistfully, the remnants of her Cockney accent still clinging to her speech despite hours and hours of lessons. The parrot opened one yellow eye and gave her a long and unreadable look.

  “Kitty?” Grey suggested, but Nan shook her head.

  “Not a moggy,” she replied. “Mind, Oi loike moggies, but—Oi dunno, a moggy don’t seem roight. Not clever ‘nuff.”

  Sarah laughed. “Then you must not be a witch after all,” she teased. “A witch’s familiar is always a cat, or a toad—”