Whatever had happened to her patriotism all of a sudden? She recalled the recruiting posters of the early months of the war, before conscription: THE WOMEN OF BRITAIN SAY “Go!” She had been horrified when D'Arcy enlisted, and yet proud of him. Like everyone else, she knew the war must be fought and must be won—she just did not think that it was Edward's war. He had been called to other duties. The very laws of nature seemed to bend around him. But if she could not justify this feeling even to herself, how could she ever convince him? What would it take to change his mind?
"You declined, of course?"
"Alice, darling! What do you think I—Don't answer that! Of course I did. Even if he'd come up with anything really tempting, Tarion's promises are mere wind and always will be."
"Did you tell him so?"
"Of course. He would just laugh and agree. In a day or two he would try me again."
Edward smirked. He knew what she was thinking. He knew he was good. Well, she could deflate him. She could still make him blush.
"You're young and winsome,” she mused. “I assume he also made indecent advances?"
He blushed an unbelievable scarlet. “How did you guess?"
"From things you didn't say. Golbfish was no pillar of virtue either, I gather."
"Not by our standards,” Edward said primly. “But he was merely debauched, whereas Tarion was depraved. There was a real man inside Golb-fish's blubber. He'd just never had reason to call that man out before."
"Oh, cut it out!” Edward said testily.
"So you turned a frog into a prince? And then—"
The waiter appeared beside them as if condensing out of the air. They ordered dinner. Up ahead, the engine came into view, snaking around a curve, smoke pouring from its funnel. Some poor devil of a fireman was shoveling his heart out there. The dining car rocked unevenly as it reached the bend.
They sat for a while in silence, Alice reviewing a mental list of things she should be asking. Talking was difficult in the crowded train; when they arrived at Greyfriars they would have Julian for company again, possibly Ginger, and also the formidable Mrs. Bodgley. Mrs. Bodgley would probably demand Edward's story from the beginning. She would certainly want an account of what had happened to her son. Alice must put this brief dining-car privacy to good use.
The waiter slid soup plates in front of them and departed.
"This is not bad at all!” Edward announced.
"But look at this awful wartime bread!"
Everything went black.
"Don't eat it!” he said over the racket. “It makes you go blind.” The acrid reek of coal began to foul the air. Then the train burst out of the tunnel, gradually shedding its cocoon of smoke.
"You are still the idiot I used to know,” Alice said affectionately. “Tell me. You want to get in touch with the Service? You said you had three ways in mind."
Edward nodded glumly. “They're all very flimsy leads, though. One of them is that letter I asked Ginger to post for me. Do you remember Mr. Oldcastle?"
"I remember you talking about him."
"He wrote to me just after—after the news.” His bony face seemed to grow even thinner for a moment, remembering the bad times, when Cameron and Rona Exeter had died in the Nyagatha massacre. “Claimed to be with the Colonial Office. He wasn't, of course. He was with Head Office."
Alice had known only that Oldcastle had been an absentee father to Edward. In retrospect, he had been too good to be true. His Majesty's Government would never take so much interest in the orphaned son of a very minor official.
"When you disappeared, I wrote to Mr. Oldcastle."
Edward grinned, popping a crust in his mouth. “What address?"
"I tried Whitehall, and I tried the one Ginger had, at the school."
"Whitehall had never heard of him and the GPO had never heard of Druids Close?"
"Right on."
"There is no Druids Close. There was no Mr. Oldcastle. He was a committee, or so Creighton told me, although he always wrote back in the same hand. Head Office were keeping an eye on me, you see, as a favor for the Service. The Blighters were after me then, too."
Clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click...
"So if Oldcastle doesn't exist, how do you get in touch with him now?"
"I do what I always did—I write him a letter! I already have, and Ginger will have posted it by now."
"I thought Julian had already tried this for you?"
Obviously she had been expected to ask that.
"Ah! But this one has my handwriting on the envelope, which may be important, and it's going in the right box.” Edward smirked like a schoolboy demonstrating his first card trick. “I know a little more about magic now, you see. It would take a great deal of mana to bewitch the entire postal service, but not much to do one pillar-box."
"That is certainly logical."
"And as soon as I worked that out, I remembered several times when Mr. Oldcastle warned me that he would be away—at about the same times I was going to be away from Fallow! So any postcards or letters I sent him, from anywhere else, might reasonably not get answered! Simple, isn't it?"
"And you think the magic is still on that box?"
"Well...” He frowned. “I have no idea. It may not be. I warned you all these ideas were dishwaterish."
"Let's hear the next one."
"The next one is even dicier. The, er, man who rescued me from the hospital was a numen. He used to go by the name of Robin Goodfellow, a fairish time ago."
Blue eyes studied Alice solemnly, waiting for her disbelief. The waiter removed the soup plates and served the roast lamb.
"Puck?"
"The same. One of them. A local representative of the old firm, was how Creighton put it. Forgotten now, and ignored, but still residing on his node, amid the bracken and brambles and the standing stones—husbanding scraps of the mana he received back in Saxon times or the Middle Ages, when people still believed in the People of the Hills."
Gods on a storybook world were one thing. In modern England they took more believing. “What was he like?"
"Nice enough old boy. At least, he was nice to me. Mad as a rabid bat, really, I think. He can't have had anyone to speak to in centuries."
"He's with this Head Office bunch?"
"He's a neutral, but he must know how to find them."
"And where do you find him?"
Edward shrugged, struggling to cut an extra tough slab of mutton. “Not sure exactly. I was half out of my skull with pain that morning, but not far from Greyfriars, on a little hill. I'll know it when I see it."
This sounded even weaker than the first idea. It would take time and transportation to inspect all the hilltops around Greyfriars. The police must be after Edward Exeter now. The ominous Blighters might be. Looking at him, it was hard to believe that he was twenty-one and a man of two worlds. She felt a motherly obligation to dispatch her hopelessly idealistic young cousin off to Nextdoor as fast as possible, whether he wanted to go or not. Details to be arranged.
"Will Puck help you again?"
"I can only ask. He's a stranger here, of course. Originally from Nextdoor. From Ruatvil, in Sussland. I could sacrifice a bullock, perhaps."
He was being remarkably generous with her money.
"A bullock? You'll get thrown in jail if you waste food like that, these days. There's a war on, my lad!"
"Oh. Well, I shall think of something."
"Tell me the third lead.” Alice forked up some well-named string beans.
"I think I still remember the key I used with Creighton, the ritual. Anyone who goes to the same portal and does that dance will arrive at the Sacrarium—that's the ruined temple in Sussvale.” He gave up on the mutton and poked angrily at a soggy potato. “But that's a fair way from Olympus, and who could I ask to risk it? Arriving naked, not knowing the language?"