“A shame,” said Charlie. “Females simply can’t be trained to that extent. Of course it unbalanced her.”
“She burned all the power out of her own brother,” said Bel, “when they were trying some kind of twisted experiment. Hawthorn wasn’t well enough to leave the house for months afterwards, and as for Lady Elsie . . .” Belinda lowered her voice. “Nobody ever saw her in company again. Poor thing, she only lasted another year. Leapt from the roof of their manor house. It was awful.”
Edwin had a memory, sudden and wild as a summer rainstorm, of Elsie Alston, with her tangle of brown hair and her infectious laugh. A laugh that she and her brother would bounce between them like an amplification clause built into a cradling. Edwin had been a small child when the Alstons were the darlings of English magical society, and only thirteen when Elsie died. He remembered chasing the twins across the Cheetham fields, unable to keep up. He remembered the tall, magnificent young woman who’d been a fixture in their lives one day—not seeming unbalanced in the slightest—and vanished into sickness and seclusion and scandal the next.
Edwin’s mother, who still exchanged letters with the Countess Cheetham, said nothing. A fresh bread roll sat entirely untouched on her plate.
“It does sound like a tragic business,” said Robin. He fixed Edwin with a look that said, clear as glass, Help me change the damn subject. “Edwin told me that you’re born with magic or without it. What happens to the people born with great big buckets of power who never get trained? Surely it must pop up from time to time among families where there are no other magicians?”
Miggsy groaned. “Must we have all the great debates over dinner?”
“Sir Robin’s allowed to be curious,” said Charlie.
“I’ve tripped over another of those central questions,” said Robin, quirking a smile at Edwin. “Haven’t I?”
Edwin said, “You’re more or less right. We have to assume that a small number of natural magicians are born outside of registered families, but are never trained, and so never know.”
“Think of someone born with a great musical gift and never put in front of a piano,” said Charlie. “But one can hardly go around testing the general population just in case you unearth the occasional natural case of magic, can one? There’d be no way to keep ourselves hush-hush.”
“Very occasionally there’s an accident that’s probably some child’s magic going wrong,” said Billy. “And then the Assembly has to send people around to fix it up and smooth things over. It’s one of the things that your office is supposed to pick up on.”
Over the course of several seconds, Robin transparently remembered the existence of his civil service position. Edwin resisted the urge to laugh.
It was true, though: hush-hush was the rule of it. There were hundreds of years of near-disasters to prove that. Edwin had read reports from the liaison office’s records, including one of a mass unbusheling in Manchester in the 1850s that had nearly started an urban war and had resulted in two cotton mills and a meeting hall burning down, an extremely difficult cover-up, and a good third of the city’s magicians packing up and leaving.
“Tell me if this is a silly question,” said Robin, “but I hadn’t even thought—I mean, Edwin’s told me about your Assembly, but—is there magical work, officially? Positions of employment?”
Charlie plucked that question up and settled into his favoured role of explainer. Edwin was conscious that he had told Robin exactly no more than the fact of the Assembly’s existence and that they wouldn’t have much in the way of scruples if a smiling example of foresight on well-developed legs presented himself in front of them, full of ignorance, ready to be exploited. He kept forgetting how much there was, if one hadn’t grown up with it.
“I’d have thought there’d be potential for industry,” Robin was saying, in the first gap that Charlie had managed to leave so far.
“Steam and gas still do more work, more consistently, than a magician can. And these electrical gadgets do even more,” Charlie said. “And transmuting a thing to another thing’s a tedious job. Far too much bother per penny.”
“Energy per mass,” clarified Edwin.
“You could spend your life changing dirt to gold, but it’s a lot less exhausting all round to go out and—”
“Invest in railroads,” finished Bel smoothly. She gestured around the room with her knife, illustrating the fruits of their parents’ endeavours.
“That girl of yours works at the Barrel, isn’t that right, Billy?” said Trudie.
“Not my girl any longer,” said Billy to his water glass.
“Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten.”
Bollocks you had, thought Edwin, watching Trudie’s sharp smile.
“I’m sorry to hear that, William,” said Edwin’s mother.
“Power’s the thing, isn’t it?” Billy shrugged. With his shoulders curled in he looked smaller than usual. “My family’s not got the pedigree that hers does, apparently. Her grandfather’s got his heart set on some toff from the colonies for her. Made her break off the engagement. Not much a chap can do but bow out gracefully, is there?”
“Rotten luck,” said Robin sincerely. “We should take your mind off it. Tell me more about what Edwin and I have been missing, toiling away in the library. Is there much to see around these parts? Any hills with a view worth the climb?”
“We went up Parson’s Mount today—that’s not bad,” said Bel. “I suppose there’s a handful of ruins around, if you like boring old stones.”
“It’s not the best time of year for it, but there are some estates with famously good gardens, if you go further afield,” said Florence Courcey. “Audley End, and that abbey with the walled garden—oh, and Sutton Cottage. The grounds there are really sublime, they say, though I’ve not seen them myself.”
“The Sutton hedge maze is supposed to be a grand puzzle,” said Bel. “Not as large as Hampton Court, but not far off it. We should make a day trip of it, Trudie, don’t you think? Perhaps in the spring.”
“Sutton Cottage,” said Robin. “Mrs. Flora Sutton? Edwin, wasn’t she the one writing to Gatling? I could have sworn that was the address.”
It took Edwin a few moments to remember the rose-scented letter in Reggie’s pile of correspondence. “I can’t recall.”
“Well, that’s only natural,” said Edwin’s mother. “Flora Sutton? Yes, she was a Gatling, before she married. She’d be Reginald’s great-aunt. The Suttons have no children of their own, I believe, so—” She gave a couple of dry coughs. Some of her faint, sparkling energy seemed to leave her with them.
“Mother, are you sure you’re feeling well?” asked Edwin. “Do you want to retire?”
“Nonsense, darling. I’m sure I can remain upright at least until the end of dinner.” She turned, chin high, and struck up a bright conversation with Trudie about hats.
Robin caught Edwin with a touch on the shoulder as the dining room was emptying. “Sutton Cottage is worth a visit, don’t you think?” said Robin. “It’s not as though the bushes are crawling with possible leads, when it comes to Gatling’s vanishing act. And—hedge maze,” he added, nonsensically. “It doesn’t seem like something we should ignore.”
“Hedge—oh.” One of Robin’s visions. Edwin said slowly, “You’ll be expected at the office tomorrow. And back home, I’d imagine.”
“I’ll send a telegram home. And one to Miss Morrissey—I say, we should ask her to post that letter from Reggie’s aunt here too. I wish I’d opened the thing now.”