“But it never spreads to where they live,” Sebastian pointed out dryly, though anger smoldered in the back of his eyes as well. “That’s the thing. If it was their children that suffered, coughing out their lives in black air, dying from poisoned water, it would be different. It’s only the children of the poor, of their workers. And there are always more children of the poor to take their places.”
“It’s doing things to the magic.” Elizabeth’s frown deepened. “Twisting it. Making it darker. I don’t know—if I were able to find a Left Hand Path occultist behind some of this, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. But I haven’t, and neither has anyone else.”
“Then it has to be just a coincidence,” Thomas said firmly. “Don’t look for enemies where there are none. We have enemies enough as it is.”
Elizabeth let out a long breath. “Yes, and I should be concentrating on—and training our newest Mage to deal with—those existent enemies, shouldn’t I? Well said, Thomas.”
Enemies? We—I—have enemies?
“The least of the many things you need to teach her, and I am profoundly grateful that you are here, my dear,” Thomas replied with a smile. “I hope I have given her a thorough grounding, but your teaching will be to mine as university education is to public school.”
It is? The thought of enemies evaporated from her mind.
“Which leads to the question—when do you want to start?” Margherita asked.
“Tomorrow,” Elizabeth replied, to Marina’s unbounded joy, though for some reason, there seemed to be a shadow over the smile she bestowed on her new protegee. “Definitely tomorrow. No point in wasting time; we have a lot to share, and the sooner we start, the better.”
Chapter Four
BREAKFAST was a cheerful affair, despite the gray clouds outside. The rain had stopped at least, and one of Margherita’s favorite roosters crowed lustily atop the stone wall around the farmyard. Sarah did the breakfast cooking. She excelled at solid farm food, and her breakfasts were a staple at Blackbird Cottage. Everyone ate breakfast together in the kitchen, including little Jenny the maidservant, with Sarah joining them when she was sure no one else would want anything more.
This morning there was a new face at the table when Marina came down: Elizabeth, with her hair braided and the braid coiled atop her head, a shawl about her shoulders, cheerfully consuming bacon and eggs and chatting with old Sarah.
The cook was one of those substantial country women, once dark-haired, but now gone gray in their service. She was seldom without a shawl of her own knitting about her shoulders; plain in dress, plain-spoken, she had mothered Marina as much as Margherita, and usually was the one to mete out punishments that the soft-hearted Margherita could not bear to administer.
What she thought of the strange guests that often stayed here, she seldom said. Certainly she was plied for information about her employers whenever she went down to the village, but if she ever gossiped, no harm had come of it. And she was the perfect servant for this odd household; she was the one who found the new maidservants (usually from among her vast network of relatives) when their girls were ready for more exacting duties (and higher pay) in larger households. The hired man John was one of her many nephews. Sarah was the unmoving domestic center of the household, the person who made it possible for all three artists to get on with their work without interruption. She trained the succession of maids—Jenny was the eighth—and made them understand that the free-and-easy ways of this household were not what they could expect in the next. Thus far, the girls had all chosen to move on when places in wealthier households opened, but it looked as if Jenny might stay. She was timid by nature; they all treated her with consideration for her shyness, and Sarah had confided to Marina one day that the idea of going into a Great House was too frightening for Jenny to contemplate. Sarah had seemed pleased by that; Marina thought that their cook was getting tired of the continual succession of girls, and would welcome an end to it.
“Oh, bless you, mum,” Sarah said, in answer to some question of Elizabeth’s that Marina hadn’t heard. “E’en when this table’s crowded ‘round with daft painterly chaps, I’d druther be workin’ for Master Sebastian.”
“And why would that be, Sarah?” Thomas asked, grinning over a slice of buttered toast. “Could it be that our company is so fascinating that you would be bored working for anyone else?”
“Lor’ help you, ‘cause none of you lot ever wants breakfuss afore eight.” Sarah laughed. “Farmer, now, they’re up before dawn, and wants their breakfuss afore that! As for a Great House, well e’en if I could get a place there, it’d be cooking for the help, an they be at work near as early as a farmer. Here, I get to lie abed like one of th’ gentry!”
“You are one of the gentry, Sarah,” said Margherita from the doorway, her abundant dark brown hair tumbling down around her shoulders, shining in the light from the oil lamp suspended above the kitchen table. “You’re a Countess of Cooks, a Duchess of Domestic Order.”
Sarah giggled, and so did little Jenny. “Go on with you!” Sarah replied, blushing with pleasure. “Anyroad, as for going on to a Great House, like I says, my cooking’s too plain for the likes o’ they. And I’m not minded to fiddle with none of your French messes. Missus Margherita can do all that if she wants, but plain cooking was good enough for my old mother, and it’s good enough for me.”
Margherita took her place at the broad, heavy old table and Sarah brought over the skillet to serve her fresh sausages and eggs.
Marina poured more tea for herself and her aunt. She wanted to ask their guest what they were going to start with, but she was constrained by the presence of the two servants.
“I think I’ll borrow one of your workrooms for my visit, Margherita,” Elizabeth said casually. “The little one just off the library. I’d like to organize the notes I brought with me, then get started on my project.”
“Project, ma’am?” said Sarah, who was always interested in at least knowing what the guests at Blackbird Cottage were about. Perhaps in any other household, she’d have been rebuked or even sacked for her curiosity, but curiosity wasn’t considered a vice here, not even in servants.
And Elizabeth already knew that from her previous visits, so she answered Sarah just as she would have another guest, or a visitor from the village. “I’m trying to do something scholarly, collecting old songs, Sarah,” she said. “Very old songs—the ones that people might have heard from their grandparents.”
“What, them old ballads? Robin Hood an’ Green Knights an’ witches an’ ghosts an’ all?” Sarah answered, looking both surprised and a little pleased. “Is this something for them university chaps?”
“Why, exactly! How did you know?” Elizabeth might very well really have been here to collect folk ballads from the way she responded. Marina wasn’t surprised that Sarah knew that scholars were collecting folk songs for their studies; with all of the talk around this table, Sarah picked up a great deal of what was going on in the world outside their little village.
“Well, stands to reason, don’t it? Clever lady like you? Went to university yourself, didn’t you?” Sarah chuckled, and tenderly forked slices of thick bacon onto Marina’s plate, then onto little Jenny’s. After all these years, she knew exactly what each of them liked best, and how much they were likely to want. “I could ask around, down in village for you,” she offered deferentially. “Some folks might know a song or two, and a pint would loosen tongues, even for a strange lady.”