The Poisoned Crown (43 page)

“I’ll tell them,” Bartlemy promised.

A second helping of goose and half a plum pudding later, the dwarf was gone. Bartlemy closed the back door, though he didn’t lock it—he never locked it—and went thoughtfully to bed.

O
N NEW
Year’s Eve, he had another visitor.

Nathan and Hazel had gone to a party with the teenagers of the village where Hazel danced with Damian Wicks and Nathan ate marijuana fudge and bored Liberty Rayburn by talking about multiple universes. “He’s one of those geeky scientific types,” she told her brother Michael. “It’s a waste: he’s
so fit.
Of course, he’s much too young for me.” Annie went out to dinner with Pobjoy at the Happy Huntsman, the best restaurant in the county—though not on a par with Bartlemy’s cuisine—but he was called away during dessert to attend a burglary at the house of a local bigwig. As she saw it, this was their first proper
date—she still hadn’t told Nathan—and she went home sober, long before midnight, deciding policemen made bad boyfriends.

Bartlemy’s visitor came through Eade unnoticed by its inhabitants, his long coat flapping, the wolf-dog loping at his heels. The clocks were striking as he crossed the threshold of Thornyhill.

“A dark stranger,” he said. “I may bring you good fortune. If there is any available.”

“Ragginbone,” said Bartlemy. “And Lougarry. A happy New Year to you both.”

“I think not,” said the tramp. “There is a darkness over the future that augurs ill for us all.”

“Then let us drink to the present,” Bartlemy said.

He opened a bottle of wine with the name of a rare French vineyard, a wine as golden as a June day, which tasted of sunshine, and laughter, and summers long gone by.

“I have seen too many summers,” Ragginbone said. “There is always winter, waiting in the wings.”

“And spring again after,” Bartlemy rejoined. “Longevity has made you a pessimist.”

“And you an optimist. Thus the capricious teachings of Time.”

“Ah well,” said Bartlemy. “I have lived longer than you, and seen too many sorrows. Only the hopeful heart survives.”

And so they reran familiar discussions, familiar disputes, comfortable with their divergent views, at ease in each other’s company as only people who have known each other for several centuries can be. Eventually Bartlemy began to talk of Nathan’s adventures on Widewater, and the finding of the Iron Crown.

“Nathan,” said Ragginbone. “Yes. That’s why I came to see you. I heard a story about another Nathan—I would not have thought it significant, were it not for the name. There are few coincidences in the world of magic.”

“If this is the tale of the Eastern witch and her son, who came here more than a millennium ago, I have heard it already.”

“It concerns a witch,” Ragginbone said, “but not from the East.
She came from the same land as this wine, a mere four hundred years past. However, if you are not interested …”

“Go on,” Bartlemy said.

“I heard the tale from a kobold who resided in her house. Her friends thought he was a freak, a stunted human, but she was Gifted: she knew him for what he was, and enspelled him to be her slave. She was an aristocrat, or so she claimed, thrice widowed, a friend of de Montespan and Catherine La Voisin. La Voisin was one of those more cunning than clever, who deemed her power to be greater than it was— I met her once, before the end. She thought the spirits would save her from the fire. She had a pact with the Oldest, the one we do not name, but he abandoned her. However, this other woman, it appears, was a sorceress of a different caliber.”

“She didn’t get caught,” Bartlemy deduced.

“Precisely. The
affaire des poisons
was exposed, and scandalized the French court—without La Voisin’s charms, de Montespan could no longer hold the king’s attention—but our heroine kept a low profile and passed unremarked through the debacle. She was a
marquise
from some Provençale backwater; her husbands had died far from Paris. The Parisians thought they had a monopoly on glamorous crime. Nobody could be mysteriously poisoned out in the sticks: they simply died. The widow had acquired the title from one, money from another, and came to the court to make an impression. She called herself something fancy, the way women did in those days—Margolaine or Mégaire—though she had been christened Marguerite. She had a son whom no one ever saw, save the kobold. He was assumed to be sickly, or insane, or living in the country. His name was Nathaniel.” Ragginbone paused. “It was not a common name among the French aristocracy.”

“What came to him?” Bartlemy asked, his wine glass untouched since the recital began.

“After La Voisin’s demise Marguerite traveled to England. She claimed to have a cousin here, though there was no sign of one. She procured a house in London, admirers, friends. Nathaniel was kept locked in a suite of rooms on the top floor, away from all the servants but the kobold. They would hear him bellowing at night in rage or
pain, and then they would run and hide, calling on God to protect them, for he bellowed in
two
voices—his own and that of his demon, or so they believed. They were uneducated and superstitious. According to the kobold, the boy had two heads. Siamese twins, I assume, with only a single body between them. But his mother appeared devoted to him, spending time with him every day, ordering the servants to scour the market for his favorite foods. She might have murdered three husbands, but her son was precious to her, for all his deformity.” He paused again before offering his own comment. “One wonders why.”

Bartlemy said nothing, stroking Hoover’s neck, almost as though seeking reassurance himself—he who was always the one to reassure.

“She was not, I think, a woman much given to natural affections. You know how it is with the Gifted. The power warps us, corrupting mind and heart, until our generosity of spirit, our capacity for love, is all consumed in the desire for dominion. We become as the werekind with whom we consort, ruthless and cold. I was saved only by the loss of my Gift—you have made a choice, employing yours sparingly, seeking to do good in small things rather than great, and so you have remained human. Few among Prospero’s Children have ever shown such restraint.”

“Yet restraint is possible,” Bartlemy said, thinking perhaps of Hazel and her reluctance to resemble her great-grandmother. “If mind and heart are strong … if the Gift is limited … if love already has a place there …”

“Be that as it may,” said Ragginbone, the pessimist, “I do not think our Marguerite was restrained.”

“What happened to her?” Bartlemy pursued.

“To her—nothing, or nothing unusual. But something happened to Nathaniel.”

“What?”

“One day he disappeared. They went into the country in a closed carriage, leaving the kobold behind. Marguerite was tense, aflame with anticipation. She took with her a chest containing certain magical items and a sacrificial knife. The date was just short of Halloween. She returned without the knife, without the flame, without her son. His
name was never mentioned again. When the kobold ventured to ask what had come to the boy, he was banished from her household. He remained in London, living with the werecreatures who infest cellar and sewer. I learned what Marguerite did from other sources, but it does not seem particularly relevant. She returned to France and went thence to Italy, marrying again, widowing again, involving herself with artists and writers. But they did not paint her or write about her. One of her husbands bequeathed her a disease that destroyed her beauty as Time could not, and she became a recluse, back on her estates in Provence. For all I know she may be there still. Stranger things have happened.”

“Did she say where in the country they were going, when the son vanished?”

“She told one of the servants she was going to Scarborough—the kobold overheard her—but that seems unlikely. She set off south …”

“I daresay,” Bartlemy said, “the kobold misheard.” There was a chill inside him that he couldn’t explain, the glimpse of a pattern he did not want to see. The Great Pattern had a purpose, a purpose he had always hoped and believed was good, but there were other patterns, shadowy designs hiding within and behind it, with a darker meaning, a meaning as yet obscure and unknown.

“I thought the story might be … important,” Ragginbone said. “That’s why I came out of my way to see you. Tomorrow I must be moving on. Or rather, later today. Whatever the New Year brings, I hope you survive it.”

“I hope we all do,” Bartlemy responded.

After all, this was the season of hope. But he feared his supply was running low.

I
N THE
small hours of New Year’s Day, Nathan and Hazel had a fight in which the questionable charms of Damian Wicks became inextricably entangled with the older-woman allure of Liberty Rayburn, alcohol and fudge were mixed in with the brew, and the result was confusion, hostility, and mutual hurt. They parted company on not-speaking terms, and Hazel went home to find Lily in a clinch with Franco on the sofa, while Nathan discovered Annie in the living room watching TV, in a mood he didn’t recognize.

“How was your party?” she asked him.

“All right, I suppose. How was yours?”

“It wasn’t a party,” she said. “I—gave you the wrong impression. It was dinner.”

“Why—” Nathan stopped as realization kicked in. “Who with?”

“James …”

“Who’s James? James who?”

Annie sighed. “James Pobjoy. The police inspector. He—he asked me, so I went. I had nothing else to do.”
Coward
, she told herself.
Making excuses. You went because you wanted to.
“I shouldn’t worry about it. He left before pudding.”

“He took you out to dinner,” Nathan was baffled, “and
left
halfway through?” Men had been challenged to duels for less, he thought, in the days when duels were in vogue.

“He couldn’t help it. It was his job. There was a break-in during a party at some manor or other—I expect, with all the noise, they didn’t hear the burglars. He had to go.”

Nathan sat down abruptly. “Do you—do you
like
him?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Annie admitted, limply. “I suppose I must.”

“But… he’s a policeman,” Nathan said. “How can you like
a policeman?
”

“Don’t be so prejudiced. He believes in justice—he wants to protect the innocent. Cynicism gets in the way sometimes, but he’s a good man at heart, I know he is.”

“He doesn’t believe anything we tell him!”

“Well, you can’t blame him for that. We’ve told him some pretty extraordinary things.”

“Yes, but—”

“Bartlemy likes him,” Annie said, by way of a clincher.

“Does he?”

“Yes, he does.” She went on: “Anyway, you don’t have to panic just yet. I may never see him again. This was our first date, and it wasn’t exactly a big success.”

But Nathan felt a weight of gloom on his heart that her uncertain assurance could not lift. He went to bed and slept badly, but without dreams.

In the morning he called Hazel, one problem displacing another.

“We aren’t talking,” Hazel said, when she finally answered her cell.

“We have to,” Nathan said. “Something’s happened.”

They met at the Bagots’, in the privacy of Hazel’s lair. “I’m going to clear it up,” she announced. “New Year’s resolution. There could be some important stuff under all this—stuff. Have you come to apologize?”

“No. Yes. Whatever. That doesn’t matter now. My mum went on a date last night—”

“Oh …”

“—with Inspector Pobjoy.”

“What?”

“You heard.”

When they had run through the subject several times without arriving at any helpful conclusions, Hazel said: “Now you know how I feel.”

“This is different. Franco’s a toyboy. Toyboys don’t last. The inspector must be forty at least—she might
marry
him.”

“It’s only one date,” Hazel said. “Your mum’s always been sensible. She wouldn’t do that.”

“That’s just it,” Nathan said. “She’s been sensible for too long. That’s when people crack. Besides, women aren’t sensible when it comes to relationships. Everyone knows that.”

That might have restarted the previous night’s argument, but Hazel, with rare tolerance, let the remark pass.

“We’ll find a way to show him up in front of her,” she said. “He thinks We’re all barmy, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“I hope not.”

“There’s no point in worrying now,” Hazel went on, opting for a change of subject. “You’ve got more important things to think about. You’ve got a Great Spell to activate—or whatever it is one does with a Great Spell. You’ve found the Cup, the Sword, and the Crown. D’you have to dream them to Eos or what?”

“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “I’ve never been given a list of instructions. I just have to make it up as I go along.”

“I wish we knew more about the Grandir,” Hazel brooded. “I still think he’s a power-crazed supervillain. Bartlemy told me, the Gift in humans comes from something called the Lodestone, which was in Atlantis thousands of years ago. He has this theory that it came from another world, a world with a high level of magic—that it was, like, a whole galaxy compressed very small, the way our universe was before the Big Bang. It gave off this force that changed everyone around it… Barty said, maybe the Grandir did that, to prepare us, to protect
you.
All that power—Atlantis overthrown—a whole new strand of human history—just for you … That’s so scary it makes my head spin. Only a total megalomaniac would do that.”

“Perhaps … he just sees things differently,” Nathan said. “A different perspective. He’s used to ruling an entire cosmos. Tinkering with the fate of one planet is no big deal for him.” He didn’t like the idea, mostly because it made too much of his own role. He didn’t want to believe that Destiny had put the finger on him.

“If it’s true,” Hazel said, “he has so much power … No one should have that much power.
No one.
It’s like God …”