A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(18)

“Now I’m curious, Nan, what exactly did you see in Amelia’s mind?” John Watson asked, eying her speculatively.

She described everything she had seen; he had taken out his little notebook and was jotting things down as she spoke. When she finished, he shook his head.

“Well, all I can say is, this is nothing like the other visions she had,” he said. “Huntley took very careful notes, and documented everything with newspaper clippings. I’ll grant him this much, he has a first-class mind when it comes to science. Amelia did, indeed, witness several murders—horrific, I am sure, to her, and to Huntley, who doesn’t seem to have seen a cadaver outside the dissecting room. But fairly run-of-the-mill for London. Tragic, cold-blooded, absolutely, but nothing you young ladies or Mary or I would witness and fall into hysterics over. By Jove, even your little Suki has seen worse with her own two eyes.”

“I wondered about that,” Nan said, frowning. “That is what makes this vision so troubling to me. And I absolutely do not myself believe that Banbury tale I spun for her about it being a ‘mental metaphor’ for the very real horrors of London.”

“But it certainly wasn’t reality, since we just came from London, and it’s not crawling with monsters,” Mary objected, looking extremely skeptical.

“Nor can I imagine how London could end up that way,” John agreed. “Why . . . on the face of it, that’s impossible. Mary and I and every other Master and magician would have to be dead, first.”

Nan kept her mouth shut. She remembered all too clearly how London had very nearly become a frozen wasteland many years ago, and how Robin Goodfellow himself had been willing to bring the terrifying powers of something not unlike a minor god against Lord Alderscroft to keep that from happening. So . . . on the face of it, it wasn’t impossible.

“Report it all to Alderscroft anyway,” she suggested. “He may have some ideas of what it all means.”

John shrugged, a little skeptically, but agreed. “In any event, we’ve done a good day’s work, ladies. And I suggest that since you want this reported to Alderscroft anyway, we go straight there and partake of his hospitality while he has the townhouse open. We should arrive just in time for luncheon.”

“John!” Mary laughed.

“I believe there’s a Bible verse about not binding the mouths of the cattle that thresh your corn,” he countered. “And this old bull could do with a good feed.”





4





ALEXANDRE frowned in concentration, bent over his writing desk, though not in a flurry of creation. His creative spates rarely lasted more than an hour or two at best, though of course, poetry did not require long periods of thought and hours and hours of writing the way prose did. But he had been at this task for hours, and expected to be at it for hours more. Days, actually. This was going to take days, even if he kept at it from the time he rose until the time he went to bed. Which he fully intended to do—not only did he feel a fever to get this accomplished, but it was an excellent way in which to avoid Christmas nonsense altogether.

The Book—he was starting to think about it with capital letters—had been handwritten, which made it problematic when it came to using it for actual ritual work. One minor mispronunciation, and all your hard work would go straight out the window—or worse. Although he himself had never had anything backfire, there were stories . . . and he had no intention of becoming another one of those stories. So he was copying The Book, word by word, taking great pains to make sure he clearly understood every word, in his own printed writing. Not script. While Eton had given him beautiful copperplate handwriting, even that was problematic when it came to reading something in a ritual. He had a dozen other books on the desk beside him, using them as references for words he was not sure he had made out clearly.

Mind, even that was not as much help as it might have been. There were many names in The Book that he not only was not familiar with, but could not find in his references. It was taking a great deal of concentration to compare letters in these names to similar letters in familiar words elsewhere on the page, verifying each unfamiliar word letter by letter.

He had finally abandoned this task last night about midnight when he no longer trusted the light and his tired eyes. He had begun it again as soon as he arose. It amused him to think, when he paused to rest for a moment, that he was taking more pains with this—and working harder at it—than he had for his viva voce exams at the University.

On the other hand, if this Book was going to give him what he thought it would—it would be worth a hundred times more than any University degree.

Every so often he had to rest his eyes and his cramping fingers. And were this any other task, he would have fortified himself with wine, whiskey, or even just beer. But . . . no. It would be monumentally foolish to have performed all this work only to have alcohol fuddle him at some critical point. So he directed Alf to keep him supplied with hot tea and soldiered on.

It was exacting and meticulous work. And while not exciting in and of itself, the potential was enthralling.

He was in the middle of his second day of it when, to his intense irritation, he was interrupted.

“Pardon, guv,” Alf said from behind him, delicately timing his speech to make sure Alexandre’s pen was not on the page. “The soli’ster’s here.”