Spellcaster

CHAPTER 1

ARRIVING AT THE MARBLES’

Fixing her garden hat and twirling a pink parasol, Allie stretched her longish neck out one of the carriage windows. How I envied her height and Marie’s! Natty snaked her upper body around me and poked her head out the window to the left of Allie’s. Excuse me, Christine, she chirped at me. There were no other windows on the right side, and on the left, a high marble-colored basalt wall that ran along the last two winding miles up to the Marble house blocked the view. To see outside I squeezed in between Allie and Natty, praying I didn’t tear my muslin or anyone else’s dress. Marie Caligheri peeked over my head, resting her soft, round chin on the crown of my hat. Like Natty she’d retained some of her baby fat, so her body felt like a cushion against mine as it pressed down on my back. Not one of us said anything as we watched the passing scene. Miss Hill wore her reading spectacles and perused a volume of Marivaux. Mr. and Mrs. Côté sat next to her, across the carriage from us. We tried not to giggle as Mrs. Côté occasionally brushed her husband’s slick white hair while muttering Oh dear, it’s thinning and Mr. Côté swatted her pale hands away and tried to concentrate on his book.

My adopted family, the kind Côtés, had been so good to the Marbles for years, as they’d been to my birth parents. The Marble children, three girls and four boys, were always a great source of delight, fine playmates when we visited them in America or they came to see us. Mr. George Marble owned real estate in the English countryside, London, and in the West Indies, where his workers raised sugar, cotton, and other highly profitable crops. Mrs. Tracy Marble owned a steel plant back in the States.

Their eldest son, amiable and handsome Richard, had married one Lady Billingsley and inherited her father Lord Conchancello’s title and property when he died six years ago. He and Lord John looked like darker, younger copies of their father. Mr. Marble’s hair had begun thick and dark, his eyebrows bushy, his mustache fat. The two younger boys, Willie and Winston, like the girls, took after their fair-haired, paler mother.

Lady Billingsley was a reasonably fashionable beauty whose ancestry reached back as far as genealogical records went. Richard was among the first of the America-based new money to inject its much-needed blood into old, respectable, but financially-endangered aristocratic families. However, as far as could be told she seemed to love him, as he did her. She was one of those who held with a rather charming snobbery, judging everything, from the way a person laughed to the turn of a woman’s ankle. But my lady was friendly, intelligent, and possessed of admirable artistic sensibility. One might not tell from her elaborate mannerisms, which made me seem positively blue collar, but Lady Billingsley was indeed easy to get along with, even to her social inferiors. Like her older sister, Lady Farrell, she was pretty and lean, with dark brown hair that flowed like silk down her back, piercing hazel eyes, powdery white skin that didn’t seem ashen, and a snub nose with small red lips. I was certain she must think me a bit too buxom and lacking maturity, that at least half my body was adolescent. I hadn’t the nerve to ask her true opinion of me, my reticence so different from when I first began to grow, later perhaps than I’d have liked, and Mrs. Côté and Natty suffered my proud effusions for weeks. When we saw each other, she always looked at me with surprise, as if she didn’t expect to see me. We got along famously.

Every summer since I could recall, the Marbles had come to stay with us for two or three weeks, and we took trips to New York City, Saratoga, Newport, and other great tourist and fashionable spots. We took in the cinema and theaters, explored the best parks and zoos, and attended social assemblies and fancy restaurants. Of course, we had to attend church. But being kids, some of us youngsters would sneak out for the length of services and go downtown or uptown, depending on what bookshop or cinema we wished to visit. We enjoyed seeing people going about their business, and beautiful architectures and hover vehicles. Those of us who did this were me always, and usually Marie, Allie, Willie, Winston, and Shelly, the oldest, now married Marble girl. Like Natty, Clarabel and June Marble, the two younger Marble girls, were too frightened to risk the elders’ wrath. Anyway, they probably would have wandered off and gotten themselves lost, so it was a good thing that they stayed where our parents had told us to.

Up and down the Kennet River at Reading, boats run by male and female athletes slid past us. Sycamore trees whose green leaves the sunlight brightened into near yellow stretched over the bank across the water. The bank beside the dirt road claimed only low shrubbery.

The Marble house claimed a lawn larger than the entire Côté estate. The verandah was so huge it seemed to loom over the river and the awning shaded much of it.

The rhythm of the carriage rocking gently, and the sound of its wheels grinding dirt beneath them, along with the slight humidity, set up an atmosphere of clashing auditory and visual stimuli that induced in us all a mild sleepiness that made us girls still even in our excitement.

Things are a lot quieter around here, Miss Hill remarked, desiring, I guessed, to import some last minute instruction after weeks of meticulously correcting our every fault of mannerism. You’ll have to get used to having your every need met, being waited on hand and foot. It’ll take some time to grow on you, but you’ll do all right.

Oh, I’m so sure, Marie exploded. It’ll take us a long time to get used to this, I’m sure!

Two hundred yards to the right of the house, on a wide field, stood a group of people practicing archery and shooting bullets at cardboard and metal targets. Excitement rippled through me. I found their faces indistinguishable, much as I strained my eyes.

Servants met us at the door with Mrs. Marble, a handsome woman who might have been forty or sixty. The fierce face that was her natural expression gave way to a warm smile as she greeted each of the new arrivals and led us into the house.

Christine, she said, eyeing me slyly, Lady Billingsley has been asking about you ever since she heard you all had landed in London.

Uh-huh, I hummed. I’ll have to look her up.

Well, she’s right out there. Stopping at the stairway to the upper floors, she jerked her head at a window on the right wall of the great foyer. We all looked at it and saw, still far away, the back view of the shooters and archers. Little wisps of smoke went up from some of the men and women’s firearms and from some targets set up on some of a row of wooden posts. The men wore riding and hunting uniforms, the women lovely white muslin and tulle dresses.

Of course you have, Christine, Mrs. Marble added.

I stared at her. Excuse me?

You just said ‘I’ve been here before. As if I don’t know you’ve visited us every summer since time out of mind, child!

Did I say that?

Yes, and you and Her Ladyship always do a little shooting.

Daydreaming. I rubbed my head to simulate a mental block and gave her a foolish smile. Of course. I did not mean to be rude.

You’re one of the most well-behaved young ladies I know, and that’s saying a lot these days. That long trip across the ocean must have been so tiring; perhaps you’d care to rest for a little while first.

The hovership was fine, ma’am. I’m all right.

Are you sure? asked Miss Hill.

I am, thank you. But that oddness lingered on, and I was at pains to return Mrs. Marble’s kind smile with my grateful one.

She’s been this way since Mrs. Côté determined we should come here, Miss Hill informed a concerned-looking Mrs. Marble. It’s just nerves; I keep telling the girls they’ll do fine this season, and to pay those New York snobs not a word of attention. You should be relaxed like the boys.

Mrs. Marble laughed. Of course, of course, the young ladies are always the most uptight when it comes to these things. Of course they usually stand the most to gain, and to lose.

Mm-hm, mm-hm.

Kind Mrs. Marble patted my hands. You can go see her if you’d like, dear. She’s improved her skills so much over the fall and winter and she’s eager to show you. She’s got a gun for you to shoot with.

I’m sure the girls would like to shower and change first, Miss Hill suggested.

But of course, agreed Mrs. Marble. Actually, despite an odd aqueous feeling I felt in and below my belly which I’d not had for ages, I wanted to run right outside, get my gun, and start shooting, wanted to as never before. However, I went upstairs with the other girls to the rooms.

Do they have wet showers? Natty asked as we mounted the stairs.

Allie looked at her for a moment and then answered a bit testily, You know they do, Natty. They told us they did last summer, don’t you remember?

Of course we do, dear, just like at your house, Mrs. Marble called up from the bottom of the staircase. All the way down the hall, to the left. And there is a pair of ultrasound and wet showers in each of your rooms.

You know Father modeled our house in America on the Marbles’, Allie reminded Natty. Our room arrangements will practically be identical. Allie giggled in that sonorous way she had, brushing her long auburn hair and wrinkling her thin, upturned nose and small round lips. I pondered my drab black hair, short stature (though lately friends insisted I was spurting), hips, and somewhat fattish face and blotchy complexion with some envy. I didn’t remember my features feeling as alien to me as they did then, not even when this started back home; for a moment I felt as if I were outside of them looking in and my estrangement was nearly incomprehensible. Moreover, what was this redness that bloomed and faded constantly from areas of me no lady should speak of? Was it real or was it the estrangement surprising me and affecting my brain?

Oh good! said Natty with relief, mostly to Marie and me, ignoring Allie’s somewhat snide tone. I certainly shouldn’t like venturing down the hall in my unmentionables all the time.

Natty, you are so silly! chided Allie. Adjusting the white pallet adorning her hair, she said something else I didn’t quite catch.

The arrangements were the same as those at the Marbles as at our house. I roomed with Natty, Marie with Allie. The plan of the second floor was almost identical to ours back home, but the Marbles had built additional wet showers on the same floor as our quarters, as Mrs. Marble said. There were many little differences besides. But the room arranged for Natty and I was nearest the top of the staircase, if not just around the corner from it, just like in our home. We went in, leaving Marie and Allie without word to find their quarters on down the hall.

There’re so many paintings on the walls, like the ones you collect back in New York, Tom-cat! Natty cried. The length of the hall is almost indecent!

Is it? I gave her a strange look, advancing toward what I took to be my bed.

Looking around her Natty exclaimed, It’s just like home—the furniture, everything—except for the windows! Why do you look so strange? You’ve been here dozens of times!

She was right about our quarters. Fighting down a nasty jolt at Natty’s words, I guessed Mrs. Marble didn’t want us to risk feeling homesickness. There were two windows, set side by side, but they were on the same wall as at home, and also facing the feet of the beds. They afforded a view of the fields leading downward toward an inset in the earth of woodland with, I think, a brownish stream or two running through the latter and heading for the Kennet. The Marbles had even made up the room to look like ours at home.

There lay a long-barrel handgun, a Colt revolver, on the silvery-white silk pillow of my bed. I fondled it as Natty looked on. It was loaded. I examined its workmanship closely, turning it over in my hands. I’d handled such weapons before, of course, but somehow this one felt a little wrong in my hands, like slightly ill-fitting gloves. My hands longed for something longer … somehow more concrete. I flexed the feeling from my hands. The gunsmith had decorated its handle, chamber, and barrel with figures of red flowers and white dragons twisting and cavorting with one another, and slipped a white pearl finish over the handle. It was quite astonishing. A note next to the gun read: I know how much you like to shoot. Happy hunting. Lady Billingsley.

It’s lovely, murmured Natty. I wish I knew how to hunt.

As if you could bear to hurt any creature.

If you or Marie or Allie can do it, so can I! Oh, Christine, don’t condescend to me like the others do!

"My dear, I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right, Natty, and I won’t do it again, I promise."

Yeah, right. Natty’s face appeared heart-shaped in the sunlight through the window and that feeling of past familiarity and present alienation shuddered in me.

After my shower, I put on a pair of denim riding pants, black field shoes, a white work shirt, and a light black jacket. I did my hair up with a beret so it didn’t trail down my back, took the gun with ammunition, which Mrs. Marble had curiously decided to slide under the pillow, and went outside to join the gunners and archers.

Lady Billingsley glanced at me as I approached her through a volley of noise and smoky back trails caused by her and the other people on the range. An image of her sitting for a portrait wearing a pallium and holding a hunting rifle flashed in my head. I regretted not having the graceful motion and slim figure that marked her and the most proper young ladies in the bloom of youth. No combination of creams, elixirs, reluctant spells or soaps would lighten my blotchy pallor; nor could following Mrs. Côté’s various diets of the week reduce my embarrassing buxomness or give my limbs and my hips a more pleasing roundness. An amazing athlete, she took much more care about what she put in her body than I did.

Christine? she said. Tom-cat? Are you all right? So pale. You’re not getting sick like at Newport, are you? You should watch that coughing.

What?

My lady brushed a hand over herself. "Have I got some dirt on me? You gave me a look like Mama does when I’ve unwittingly made some fashion faux-pas."

You look fine. I tried not to let my voice tremble.

"Well, do come on then. I’ve gotten so much better than last time."

Unlike the other ladies, she wore an outfit identical to mine. She took aim at a new effigy that the target droid, a clumsy-looking but efficient silver cubic steel contraption with arms and legs, set up on one of the wooden posts lined up in a row, and closing one eye and slightly aligning her open eye with her pistol’s sight, fired twice. She was the last person to the right. I stopped a few feet behind her, to her right, and watched her reload her Colt and shoot again.

Those targets are a little far for that sort of gun, aren’t they? I asked good-naturedly. Three hundred yards. I made a sound indicating amazement, meaning to flatter.

I’m only shooting one target, my lady answered without looking at me, concentrating on her shots. And like I said, I’ve gotten far better. She made all three in the bulls-eye on the effigy’s chest and peered hard at it to examine her work. See?

"See, master, how far I’ve put that bolt?" echoed a voice in my head, at once both alien and familiar, a paradox that bothered me far more than the voice itself.

I do, my lady, I replied, ignoring whatever voice or memory I’d just heard.

After a pause, she waved her right arm at the droid, signaling it to put up another target, and stepped to the left, glancing at me. I stepped forward next to her and took aim.

Wait. Lady Billingsley offered me her gun. Take this. If you really are feeling all right."

Not asking for an explanation, or offering one of my own, I took her gun and gave her mine to hold. She gave me some rounds and I loaded her Colt with them.

Stand back, I cautioned. Lady Billingsley took a few steps away from me.

"Stand back, squire, watch me," went that voice again.

Raising the gun with my right hand, the one I mostly shoot with, to eye level, ignoring the familiarity of that male (I thought) voice, I remarked, Your mother-in-law tells me you are learning to shoot quite well. I squeezed off three quick shots. They made closely grouped holes in the dead center of the bulls-eye.

You can almost feel them hitting their target.

I wanted to make a larger hole by shooting out the tiny cardboard space between the triad of previous ones. I raised my chin a little and shook my head at the droid to leave the target up and the droid, which had sat upon its spindly legs, humbly retired a few yards behind the effigy.

Lady Billingsley said, You should go out with me to the range at Fairfoxes. Wonderful ground in that park, lots of small game too. There are miles and miles of smooth green ground and sparse woods.

You know I don’t shoot animals for mere sport. I switched hands and easily made the shot. I nodded at the robot, who substituted the old target with a new effigy from a pile behind it. Lady Billingsley had been here a while, I noted. The pile of used effigies behind the post she fired at was much bigger than the stack of fresh ones.

Have you been out there often? I asked over the noise of other people firing.

Almost every day since we last parted, my lady replied proudly.

I looked at her in surprise. Even in the snow? I pictured her running the snow-filled fields and woodlands like a flailing Frankenstein’s creature on a broken, islanded piece of glacier.

Yes.

Examining the gun I held, I nodded in approval.

Here. Lady Billingsley gave me back the revolver. She’d been fiddling with it all along and I had not even seen this. The memory, unknown until now, of hearing her fingering metal, twisting off things, and clapping them back on, came to me like a ghost of consciousness, yet not as familiar to me as the déjà vu I’d started suffering months ago. Yes, this is a nice piece of craftsmanship, isn’t it?

Very. Lady Billingsley—

Call me Anne, she said. You know that, Christina.

Christine, I reminded her.

Oops, sorry.

Listen, Anne, have you heard any word on a Scots mage living here in England?

You mean the Scots curio collector and mage, Lady Kinloss? Yes. My lady watched me load the chamber of my gun and raised her own weapon for another volley. "So you have shown an interest in such things."

What do you mean? I wouldn’t look at her.

Little Natalie sent me the strangest message before you left for England. She practically swore she saw you visiting, what, a psychic or some such nonsense.

I thanked God she didn’t see my hands shake. "Really?

My lady giggled. She says she called to you but you ‘melted into the crowd’ on the street.

Do they even have psychics in New York? I asked. We both laughed. It’s those putrid gothic romances she dotes on, Anne. Mrs. Côté screams like a banshee whenever she sees Natty with one, but Natty hides them. I was just curious, that’s all. Talk I heard in the parlor rooms before they threw us out of New York.

Don’t be melodramatic. You sound like Natalie.

"No wonder she kept giving me all those funny looks on the way over. She made me feel like I’d committed my own faux pas of some sort. I wonder that she didn’t ask me about it."

You, the golden child? She’s made you positively self-conscious. And I’m sure the New York season couldn’t have been as bad as all that.

I shrugged, not wanting to get into it. I had heard we might run into her here. I was just curious.

Well! Lady Kinloss is not supposed to be really reputable, you know. My lady sounded like she was disclosing something naughty. Some say she tangled rather imprudently with Lord John or Richard before he became engaged to me, and she’s long since taken up discreetly—but not too discreetly, I daresay—with Lord Serton, one of our most eligible bachelors, an incurable Tory, if you believe the society papers, and ready to marry, you’ve heard of him. She’s known him all his life. She lives in a dingy little bungalow. She said this last with considerable distaste and scorn. It’s on the Thames and she managed to let it out in the summer while residing in Scotland. You know, actually. The burst of gunfire from both of us almost completely drowned out her voice. We shot well, my work naturally better, though the gun continued to feel somewhat alien in my hands. I noticed the noise of gunfire from the other shooters contributing to the noise we made. Actually, I believe she’s living there now. Her small nose and chin looked very aristocratic as she raised them at the humble droid, who was working on some targets for other shooters. Someone else is living there now. She’s in financial trouble, and she’ll just about let the house to whomever she can, whenever. My lady looked at me and laughed at this.

Curio collector? Mage? I had to take a deep breath to retain my composure. A mage. Where in Scotland does she live when she’s there?

Why? You want to visit her, start dabbling in black magic, perhaps? Did a psychic tell you to find and make friends with a Scottish conjure woman in our fair England?

Don’t be silly, I choked out, grinning ruefully and reloading my weapon. If Natty were surer of herself, I really would find myself in trouble. It’s like I said. Just wondering, that’s all.

Lady Billingsley looked serious. I’ve always admired your intellectual curiosity, Christine, especially in these outré subjects, but watch yourself. Her reputation isn’t sparkling, and not just because of her affair with Lord Serton. She was part of the occultist Samuel Liddell Mathers’s London circle for a while before the authorities threw them out of the city. Police didn’t like their contacting the dead or using clairvoyance or whatever nonsense they claimed they could do. Some even accused them of grave robbing.

Just wondering, that’s all.

She shrugged. She lives on Moray Firth, a few miles west of Elgin. They say you can smell the water when standing right on the coast.

I was amused. Oh really? What does it smell like?

Lady Billingsley raised her left arm to shoot again. Eh! I’m sure I don’t know. Salt, I suppose. I’ve never been out there.

We fired simultaneously.

* * *

I sat opposite Madam Weiss at her table and she reached over my head and drew the curtains closed, muffling the noises of the carriages and people coming from High Street outside her shack. She picked at her cream-colored silk robe on her shoulders and again bent over the cards spread out between us in what looked like an attempt at the infamously difficult five card-Key Spread pattern. No matter how much my derrière pained me, however, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her constant shuffling and reshuffling during the past two hours had fallen so wide of the mark that she’d by now ended up dealing the Great Cross layout instead – the first seven of the eleven cards laid out as a cross, the final four arranged in a column to the right.

The significator is in the ‘Vau’ pack, the gentle young woman told me finally, which suggests Trouble, Loss, Scandal, or Quarreling.

Are you sure you cannot be vaguer? I gently suggested. She squint her milky brown eyes at me in what after a second I took to be her glare.

I’m sorry, I said. Please, go on.

She turned over the significator card, the first one on the cross. It was the Three of Wands. The young woman did a double take at me, shaking her blond hair into her face. Clearing her eyes and nose, she regained her composure, as much as that meant. Virtue, she muttered. Power, strength, hope realized. Pride, nobility, wealth, yet can be conceited and arrogant.

This seemed incredulous even from her. Madam Weiss, I can assure you neither my friends nor my family have ever described me as ‘conceited and arrogant.’

Are you certain? I think she said.

Excuse me?

Madam Weiss shook her head. Nothing. Nervously she yanked on an earlobe. This card is supposed to represent many aspects of your personality, your spirit. But …

Yes?

It’s almost as if I were reading another person here. I stiffened to suppress the shiver going through me as she spoke. Has this ever happened to you before?

No, I lied. I thought of being as honest with her as I’d been with the spiritual folk I’d consulted in New York for this very reason, but two hours of watching her drop cards, treat herself for a paper cut with so inept a healing spell I’d had to help her, and name drop a number of minor society luminaries she’d claimed as her clients had robbed me of my faith. Only the unwitting rightness of her words and the sign inside her door stating once you sat down you had to pay for your reading whether completed or no, prevented my fleeing.

Well, let’s see what the rest of the cards tell us. She turned up the Prince of Cups. I see a young man with brown hair, grey or brown eyes. He is subtle, violent, and crafty. I shook my head at her, and she continued. A fierce nature with a calm exterior. A thinker.

The only boys I know are Winston and Willie, and they may be fierce—or fiercely annoying—but they are no thinkers.

There must be someone. The cards see everything.

I’ll think about it.

The next card was the Six of Wands, which she insisted meant Victory, Gain; Victory After Strife, Avoidance of Strife, yet Victory therein. Insolence, Pride. While I shook my head, eyes glazed like a man lost in an opium dream, so she could not see how right her crazy words seemed to me, she insisted, Something stands in your path. At this point you must reassess your desires and determine if the quest is worthy or if the goal is something better left unattained. Are you all right? Here …

She fetched a napkin from the shelf behind her and I put it over my mouth to stop my sudden coughing. Revulsion had made me feel like vomiting at ‘better left unattained’."

Thank you, ma’am. I snapped the napkin at the cards. Please, do go on.

My enthusiasm (or calling her ma’am though she looked my age) brought a smile to her face and she turned up the Six of Swords. This card shows what you desire. If you’re confused then you must discover the aspect of your goal to which the card refers. You may have to reappraise your goals.

Again, the revulsion. I don’t think I can do that.

Here. The Three of Cups. Abundance. Hospitality, Eating, Drinking. Pleasure, Dancing, New Clothes, and Merriment. Success, Sensuality, Passive Success, Good Luck and Fortune. Love, Gladness, Kindness and Bounty. This is your present circumstance and your foundation.

Yes, this is my life now, more or less. But, I’ve always hoped for a life of … conscience. A life of consequence.

The Knight of Wands. The Past. You’ve fought many battles? Even she shook her head at the cards like one does at a babbling neighbor. I could only gesture helplessly, though her words worked in me like the truth, like a mere fact. Maybe metaphorically, Madam Weiss ventured. The card could also represent something which is still haunting your or unfinished business which still requires your attention.

Yes, yes, yes. I remained mute.

My dear, has anyone given you so strange a reading before?

Like I told you when I came here, the person I went to before said I find and befriend a Scottish mage, that’s all, and suggested a few rituals I can use the seek the spirits’ answer. Maybe that’s it. I noticed her thumbing the Queen of Wands face up.

"In this position, the Queen represents what is to come. If the card refers to a person then you may confront that person soon. It could represent an aspect of that person, which will be a key to your