Mr. Drake and My Lady Silver

Chapter Four-1

Chapter Four

T’ain’t so very odd t’ see Aylfenhame folk wanderin’ the streets of England on the Solstice days, in the usual way o’ things. Thas when the borders weaken, an’ the gates fly open, an’ anybody may pass back an’ forth quite easy-like, if they happen t’ know the way.

But Ilsevel, she ain’t quite yer usual visitor. Ain’t yer usual anythin’, come t’ that. There’s her clothes, fer a start. Nowt but the best on her — silks, jewels, everythin’ fine — an’ she’s trampin’ about in ‘em in the snow? An’ the style! Fashions like that, well, I’ve seen nothin’ like it in Aylfenhame fer twenty year at least — an’ never in England at all.

What, thought I, is such a woman doin’ in England? Especially since she didn’t go back Aylf-side when th’ Solstice was over. Oh, no. Stayed in the city, day after day, always askin’ after this “Wodebean” fellow. Well, now. Thas a name I hadn’t heard in more’n twenty years either…

Mrs. Yardley’s boarding house was not, Ilsevel soon found, in an especially salubrious part of the city. In fact, the neighbourhood was rather dreary. Narrow, cramped streets, characterless houses, and, at times, a medley of unsavoury aromas. What with the cheerless weather casting a pall of gloom over everything, she soon began to wish herself back home in Aylfenhame.

But little was left there to welcome her; and Wodebean’s trail had, for some reason, led her to this grey little city. What the elusive wretch could want with such a place she could not imagine, and on this point — as, indeed, on every other — nobody could help her.

No one had even heard of Wodebean. She asked everybody she met, from Mrs. Yardley herself (‘Mr. Wodebean? I am not acquainted with anybody of that name, dear. It’s to be a bit of mutton for supper, and a bite of apple tart. Shall you be wanting any? And do put a proper gown on. What will people think?’) to Mrs. Yardley’s household brownie, Pettivree (‘Wodebean? No such person in these parts, miss,) to the odd boy at the bakery (a blank, gaping stare, and some rambling tale about his father). Wodebean must be calling himself by some other name, she supposed, but after three days in Lincoln she was no nearer to discovering what it might be, or where he might be hiding himself either.

And now they were all caught up with their winter festivals, and everything was Christmas this, Christmas that… Mrs. Yardley could no longer be drawn upon any subject save for mistletoe, and bob-apple, and negus, whatever those things were, and Ilsevel herself was forever being pressed to participate in some noisy festivity with her landlady, and her fellow boarders.

The latter did not much regret Ilsevel’s absence, at any rate. Lacking Mrs. Yardley’s motive for tolerating Ilsevel’s eccentricity of dress, her ignorance of social customs or her lack of respectable connections (that being monied folk; the good landlady was clearly hard-up;) the boarders made their feelings clear with their chilly, reluctant greetings and their habit of giving her a wide berth whenever they should happen to meet her in the hallway, or over the supper-table.

Ilsevel barely noticed these incivilities. They could not, or would not, help her upon the only point that mattered; and therefore, she had no use for their friendship. And Mrs. Trott snored so loudly at night, Ilsevel could hear her through the wall.

The day after Ilsevel’s disappointment at the bakery, she rose early, well before the sun showed its weak winter rays to the world, and sat awhile in bed, thinking. No fire brightened the empty grate — the scant stock of comforts at Mrs. Yardley’s establishment did not include such luxuries as warmth in the mornings. Candles were in short supply, too, and since Ilsevel could not muster any interest in finding her way to a chandler’s shop and haggling with the proprietor over a purchase, she simply bore with the darkness.

At least her clothes contrived to ward away the cold; they might, some of them, have got a little moth-eaten down the years, but their enchantments had hardly faded at all.

The Greestone Stairs. That was where she had last seen Wodebean — disappearing, so she had thought, through a Solstice-Gate, and back into Aylfenhame. But when she had gone through herself, he had been nowhere in evidence. Invisible? Or had he, somehow, contrived to go somewhere else altogether? The rose had not been a typical example of his arts; it was too delicate, too pretty, and above all, too useless. She did not see that there was much chance of a market for such a frippery, or not one that would much interest Wodebean. He did not deal in trifles.

So: why had he been carrying it about with him?

She got out of bed and lit her sole candle, but its wan glow did not afford her any glimpse of the odd rose in any part of her room. The flower proved to be absent from her chest-of-drawers, and her closet too. Where—

Oh. It darted into her head, then: a memory of the rose, lying on the counter in the baker’s shop, and of herself, walking away without it.

‘Fool!’ she cried. The one link she had with Wodebean, and she had left it with that blank-faced baker’s boy? Who knew what he might have found to do with it by now?

‘Cabbages and sugar,’ she muttered with a sigh, discarding her nightgown — ouch, the sudden bite of the cold ate at her perishing flesh before she contrived to don her undergarments, and her favourite carmine gown. Half-boots! And today, a hat, for perhaps she ought to make some small concession to appearances once in a while. Away she went into the dark early morn, the sky snowless by some small blessing, though a brisk wind did its best to carry her hat away again.

‘Come now!’ she protested, clutching her bonnet as she hurried through the empty streets. ‘Propriety dictates that I must have a hat! You would not wish to expose me to still more censure, surely?’

The wind, being an uncaring sort of fellow, did not lessen its importunity one whit.

No lights shone in the bakery, yet, and Ilsevel was reduced to pacing impatiently outside. She could dimly discern, by the light of a pallid, sinking moon, that the rose was not on the windowsill where she had seen it before. But the rest of the shop was sunk in impenetrable gloom, and she could not determine whether the flower still lay on the counter.

Then came the rattle of locks turning back their tumblers, and with a soft clatter, the boy came issuing from a side-door.

‘Good morning!’ said Ilsevel briskly, and stepped forward to meet him.

The boy — Phineas, that was it, Phineas Drake — blinked at her, silent, and dropped a box into the icy street. He stooped at once and scrambled to collect the contents spilling out onto the cobbles. ‘G-good morning,’ he said while thus engaged, and without meeting her eye.

Ilsevel went to help, but his nimble fingers had everything retrieved and tidied in a trice, and she was not required. ‘I’ve come about my rose!’ she said, before he could drop anything else.

Phineas regarded her properly, and after a moment’s pause — dismayed, perhaps? — he said: ‘Oh, I… I thought you said it was not yours.’

‘I said that I did not drop it.’

A faint glimmer attracted her gaze: moonlight glinting off frost and sugar. He was wearing the rose in one of the button-holes of his overcoat. ‘Oh,’ he said again.

He had fallen in love with the pretty thing, of course. They all did, these starry-eyed human-folk, the moment anything magical came in their way. She suppressed a sigh and said, as kindly as she could: ‘By rights, I suppose, it is yours indeed, for ‘twas you who found it. But I have great need of it. Will you perhaps lend it to me?’

Phineas shifted his burden of boxes to one hand; with the other, he tenderly plucked the rose from his button-hole and gave it to her. ‘No,’ he said incongruously, and then to Ilsevel’s surprise he added: ‘It is yours. Take it.’

Not a trace of resentment was there in his words or his manner; nor of reluctance, either. He adored the absurd thing, but gave it freely nonetheless.

She remembered his odd solicitude about her attire, some days before. Would he really have given her his coat?

‘Thank you,’ she said.

He ducked his head, apparently incapable of further speech, and made to pass her. The boxes, she supposed, had to be distributed somewhere.

‘Wait,’ she said.

He stopped.

Why had she said it? The word had emerged from somewhere within her; she could not have said where. She thought quickly. ‘Do you know this city well?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, milady. I have lived all my life here.’

‘Suppose I might like to buy some illicit goods. Where ought I to go? Will you take me there?’

Phineas gazed at her. ‘Illicit goods…?’

‘Poisons and cursed trinkets,’ Ilsevel elaborated. ‘Elf-bolts and changeling-stocks. Grass stolen from a faerie throne. A convincing replica of the rosewater-strung Lyre of Maldriggan.’ She thought a moment, and amended her speech. ‘No, I retract that last one. Wodebean does not deal in fakery. If he purports to be selling the rosewater-strung Lyre of Maldriggan then it is the real one.’

Phineas was still gazing at her.

‘No?’ she prompted. ‘There must be somewhere like that around here.’

‘The…’ began Phineas, and stopped. ‘Elf-bolts and faerie thrones? You are… quite well, milady, are not you?’

‘Does your household have no brownie?’ she answered, a trifle impatiently. ‘You cannot be entirely oblivious to the ways of Aylfenhame, surely?’

‘My — m-my father drove him off,’ mumbled Phineas, blinking, and then said, as though the idea came as a surprise, ‘You are of Aylfenhame.’

‘Naturally I am.’

‘That does explain one or two little matters,’ he said, and actually contrived to smile at her. His gaze flicked to the soft, velvet folds of her gown, so different from the drab fabrics he was himself swathed in.

Ilsevel smoothed a hand over her bodice. ‘I will not be here for long, therefore it is not at all necessary to blend in.’

‘I quite see that, ma’am.’

‘I wish you will cease calling me by that title, for it is not quite correct.’

The boy blushed. ‘I am sorry. What had you rather I called you?’

Ilsevel opened her mouth, and her true title hovered for a moment on the tip of her tongue. But one or two lucky recollections saved her from making what must be an unwise revelation, and she bit back the words. ‘You had better call me Ilsevel,’ she ordered. ‘It is a serviceable enough name, is it not?’

‘It is a beautiful name.’

‘Very well. Now then, the elf-bolts? Not that I wish to procure any such wares, you understand. I merely need to question the proprietor.’

‘I am but a baker,’ said Phineas. ‘I know nothing of faerie thrones or magic lyres.’

Ilsevel looked him up and down, taking in the scuffed hem and cuffs of his threadbare overcoat and the worn, obviously beloved cap crowning his head. ‘I suppose you would not, at that. But tell me, Phineas the Baker: if you wanted to buy something questionable, where would you go?’

‘I… have never thought about it before.’ He hesitated as he spoke, and there was a look to his face that told her he was not telling the truth.

Ilsevel, exasperated, made him a tiny curtsey and turned away.

‘But,’ he added. ‘I— I— if I wanted something such, I might go to one of the pawn shops.’

Ilsevel turned back. ‘Pawn shop? What is that?’

‘If I was short of money I might take something valuable — a watch, say, or a piece of jewellery — to the pawnbroker and he would give me something for it, and then sell it in his shop. It’s sometimes said that pawnbrokers are not too particular about where the items come from.’

‘Stolen goods?’ Ilsevel pondered that. ‘It is not Wodebean’s trade, but perhaps such a person may know more. Let us go to one of these pawnbrokers.’

Phineas looked down at the pile of boxes he carried, nonplussed.

‘After we have delivered your confectionery,’ she amended.

‘We?’

‘Shall you object to my company?’

‘N-no, ma’am — um, I could have no objection.’

‘And since my hands are free I shall also carry a box.’

Phineas blinked, and offered her the stack of boxes almost reverently. Ilsevel selected two from the top, and tucked them under her arm. ‘Shall we hurry?’ she suggested. ‘It is rather cold.’

‘You don’t look like you feel it,’ said he, setting off up the street.

‘No, not in the least. But you do.’

Phineas threw her a startled look, as though he were not at all used to having his comfort considered. His nose was already blue with cold; and the fool boy had been planning to give her his coat?