Chapter Six

T here was an extremely old carriage waiting for them at Lychdale station. It had a faded coat of arms on the side and half a dozen magpies perched on the roof. The coachman gave an unenthusiastic grunt as the three men emerged from the station and made a token effort to help with the bags before whipping up the horses.

Stephen grabbed the edge of the seat as the coach began to move. "Is this thing not sprung?"

"No. Absolutely nothing in this place is conducive to comfort," said Crane. "The house is decaying, the furnishings are museum pieces, half the staff are consumed with loathing of me out of loyalty to my father, or because I remind them of my brother. In any case, they're people who lived in the same house as Hector when there are perfectly good ditches to die in, which tells you as much as you need to know. Nobody within thirty miles of Piper can cook. And you can thank your lucky stars for the weather, I doubt we'll need more than four or five fires to make the place tolerable of an evening."

"Well, some cool would be a respite." Stephen fiddled with the ancient catch in an attempt to pull down the window. "It's very hot."

"Piper will be damned cold," said Crane. "If we find a witch, we should definitely burn her."

It was a good half hour's drive in the most uncomfortable carriage Stephen had ever encountered. Crane and Merrick both settled into a sort of traveller's trance, eyes shut, minds inactive, getting through an unpleasant journey by reducing mental engagement to a minimum.

Stephen was hot and jolted, wearisomely tired after his nap on the train but without a chance of sleeping, and his hands were increasingly uncomfortable. The train journey had been unpleasant, but they always were, thanks to the iron of the carriages surrounding him. This was ambient, in the ether; it was old and awkward and dry like a scab, and it was getting stronger as they drove.

When they reached Piper, Stephen began to see what it was.

He stood in front of the house and stared at it. Piper was a substantial Jacobean building in grey stone, with small panelled windows sitting in the thick walls like deep-set eyes. The front was covered with ivy, and the woods encroached too closely on what had once been elegant gardens. The gravelled drive was pierced by weeds. Magpies screeched and cawed in the trees, and a trio of the birds strutted in front of the three men.

"Three for a funeral," he muttered. "This is a mausoleum."

Crane glanced at him but didn't ask for an explanation. Stephen wouldn't have given one anyway. The etheric flow round the house was an abnormal trickle, the woods pounded in his consciousness far more than he'd expected, and there was a dreadful sense of something pent up, bottled for years, brooding.

"Dormant," he said, mostly to himself. "Or dead. Too long asleep to wake. Coma."

"You're being a little unnerving," said Crane. "Are you going to tell me there's a beautiful princess sleeping in the tower room?"

"That wouldn't be my first guess." Stephen pushed his hands through his too-short hair. "Have you seen the mummies at the British Museum?"

"The Egyptian ones? No, not yet. But they have a similar thing in China."

"Did you ever imagine if they started moving? Withered hands reaching towards you and sunken eyes staring?"

"I didn't, but now I know what I'll be dreaming about tonight. "

"It's how this house feels." Stephen realised he was flexing and pulling at his fingers. He jammed his hands in his pockets. "I suppose we should go in," he added without enthusiasm.

Crane led the way. An elderly bald man was standing at the thick wood door, his heavy jowls conveying weary disgust. "Your lordship," he mumbled.

"Graham. This is Mr. Day, who is attending to some legal matters for me. I'll expect you and your staff to answer all his questions as fully as possible."

The butler looked Stephen up and down. He didn't roll his eyes and turn away in contempt, but it was evidently a close-run thing.

"Yes, my lord." Graham bowed them in. "Mr. Skewton has left a number of papers for your lordship on your lordship's desk in your lordship's study. And Sir James and Lady Thwaite have left cards for your lordship, your lordship."

Crane looked at him expressionlessly. Graham stared back.

"Very good," Crane said at last. "Mr. Merrick is of course responsible while I'm in residence. Do take the opportunity to rest your feet, Graham."

The old man's bald head flushed a dark red. " I don't neglect my duty, your lordship. Lord Crane would never have suggested such a thing. The maids have put your guest in the Blue Room, your lordship, but I dare say Merrick will have something to say about that on your lordship's behalf. The Peony Room, perhaps."

He stalked off through the hall towards the servants' quarters. Merrick followed, soft-footed. A door down a corridor slammed, almost certainly in Merrick's face.

"Loyal family retainer?" asked Stephen.

"That's right."

"Couldn't you pension him off?"

"Too much effort. If I got a decent butler, I'd have to import an entire competent household to support him, and since I'm going to sell this damned barrack as soon as I've unpicked the legal situation and clarified the accounts, I can't summon up the energy."

"Oh, you're selling the house?"

"Or setting fire to it," said Crane. "I'm currently leaning that way."

"It's very cold," Stephen agreed, looking around. Darkly panelled walls, heavy wooden furniture, old hangings and threadbare rugs... "Forgive my curiosity, but I thought your family was rich."

"It is. There are extensive landholdings round here and the land is good. Hector was expensive, and Griffin was stealing with both hands, but there's plenty of money. But one of the ways the rich stay rich is by not spending anything."

"I knew I was doing something wrong," Stephen said. "What was the significance of that exchange about rooms?"

"Don't ask."

"Well." Stephen rubbed his arms, feeling grateful for his jacket for the first time that day. "Perhaps I could look round and familiarise myself with the place?" And see if I can work out what's wrong with it , he added mentally.

"I'll take you round," said Crane. "Neither Skewton nor the Thwaites offer the charm of your company, and I'm saying that to a man who spent the night disembowelling cats."

"I did not —"

"This is the drawing room. It probably wouldn't be so bad without the panelling, or the chairs, and if it was in a different house."

Stephen followed Crane round the chilling, ancient house, mentally mapping it, half listening to Crane's sardonic commentary as he tried to pinpoint the source of his discomfort.

Magpies everywhere. They were carved in wood and stone, perched over lintels, etched into metal, in paint and paper and embroidery. He made a protesting noise at a particularly ugly group in china, arrayed along a mantelpiece .

"Aren't they just," Crane agreed. "My great-aunt supplied them. She'd constantly warn us not to play with them, as though any boy in his right mind would."

"Was she responsible for the tapestry-work magpies as well?"

"In the last room? No, I've no idea who that was. Some passing bedlamite, perhaps. My grandfather organised the magpie-bearing silverware, as you will see at dinner if Graham hasn't sold it all. From here we can go down to the library or up to the next floor, which is mostly under covers, except for the Long Gallery where we keep the family pictures, and which will make you think better of Great-Aunt Lucie's porcelain birds."

"Library last, please," said Stephen. "Let's try the gallery."

"If you insist. You're looking for something, aren't you?" Crane led the way up stairs whose oak treads were deeply worn.

"I am, but I'm not sure what," Stephen admitted. "There's something very old and odd and quite unpleasant about this house."

"Yes, that would be Graham."

Stephen grinned and followed him into the long room.

It was very dusty and, again, very cold. There were a couple of chairs, swathed in holland covers. A few tall windows let in the sunshine, which seemed to lose all its heat on the way through the glass. Above, a long skylight was covered in dead leaves and dirt, so that the room was still somewhat murky. Pictures, framed in gilt and dark wood, hung all the way down the walls to the far end.

Stephen stared up at the ceiling. "This could be a lovely room if that skylight was clean." He jumped as something landed on the glass with a thump.

"Bloody magpies," said Crane. "If you cleaned it, they'd just foul it in minutes. Well, here, we are. My father and Hector."

Stephen had never seen the previous Lord Crane. He had seen Hector Vaudrey on the terrible night when he had come to their house. He had been just twelve, and his mother had sent him to his room at once, but he remembered the red face, the smell of drink, the voices .

He made himself look at the full-length portrait. A bulky, grey-haired elderly man stood next to a large, well-built, golden-blond man in his thirties. Stephen remembered him from the vantage point of a terrified child, as a giant, and given the way the painted figure towered over his father, he guessed Hector must have been a similar height to his younger brother. Perhaps three inches over six feet, though much broader in the shoulders.

Hector was staring out of the portrait with a slight sneer on his finely shaped mouth, and a set to his jaw that suggested command, and not a kindly sort. Stephen detected cruelty in his face, nothing in the old lord's neutral gaze. Behind them, two magpies perched on an apple tree.

Stephen glanced round. Crane was watching him. "Is this a good likeness?" he asked, for something to say.

"Probably. Hector got fat, I'm told. This one here is my father as a boy. He kept the magpie as a pet. The next one is him with my grandmother—"

"Is this in chronological order?"

"Yes, pretty much."

"There's not one of you, or your mother?"

"There was a family portrait from when I was a baby, but my father took it down. It's in the attic."

"Oh. Did she die?"

"No." Crane started to stroll down the line of paintings. "She left my father when I was a year old. I've no idea what happened to her."

Stephen stood still for a moment, so that he had to hurry after Crane. "Did you never see her again?"

"No, how should I? This is Great-Aunt Lucie. Fear her. My grandfather, just before his death."

"Really?" The picture showed a mere youth, wearing a waistcoat embroidered with magpies.

"Yes, my father was posthumous. Born the earl. "

"They all keep up the magpie theme in the paintings," Stephen observed.

"Tradition," said Crane, without interest. "Although putting them on one's waistcoat really is the outside of enough. This is the third earl, the second didn't live long either. Here's the first—this is the only good painting in the room if you ask me. Feel free to comment on what a handsome devil he is. Then the next—Mr. Day?"

Stephen was standing in front of the first Earl Crane, staring, the astonishment so powerful it held him completely still. The recognition was instant, and now he saw the picture, and compared it to the man next to him, he couldn't believe it hadn't struck him earlier.

"My God," he said. "I am so stupid."

"Are you all right?" enquired Crane, cautiously.

Stephen licked his lips. "I've seen him before."

"Well, you've seen me," said Crane. "And the resemblance is quite strong."

"No. I've seen that picture. Or rather, a reproduction, an engraving." Stephen shook his head, incredulous. "You said he was the first Earl Crane. So, before that, was your family title Fortunegate?"

"It was. And still is, actually. I'm Viscount Fortunegate too." Stephen couldn't find words for that. Crane contemplated him with amusement. "I wish I'd known that would give you so much pleasure. I'd have saved it for a special occasion."

"You're Lord Fortunegate. Your ancestor was Lord Fortunegate."

"That's how it works. Are you going to tell me why you care?"

Stephen indicated the painting. It was a large gilt-framed oil work showing a man whose lean build and patrician features gave him a distinct resemblance to the current Lord Crane. His long-fingered hand rested on a window ledge on which, inevitably, a magpie perched, adorned with a carved gold ring on which the painter had lavished detail. More magpies flew in the background of the painting, which showed Piper in well-kept days. It looked gracious, spacious, elegant. A table in the foreground was covered in handwritten papers. The first earl looked out at them with a slight smile on his face.

"That man," Stephen said, "your ancestor, Lord Fortunegate...he was a magician. Specifically, he was one of the most powerful magicians this country has ever known. He...good God, he invented modern practice, he shaped our society as it stands today. His book of theory—that picture's in the frontispiece—"

"Wait." Crane had a hand up. "Stop. My great-great-etcetera grandfather was—like you?"

"I wish I was like him," Stephen said. "He was one of the great practitioners and the great lawmakers."

Crane stared at the painting. "Well, that's something I didn't expect. Is it hereditary?"

"Talent? A bit. You do get family lines, though they're often rather crooked ones. My aunt's a witch, for example." Stephen glanced at Crane. "But there's obviously something come down in the blood. Do you know how most people refer to him, the name he used?"

"Go on."

"He was the Magpie Lord. And, of course, that explains the magpie compulsion."

"The what?"

Stephen strolled down the length of the gallery, looking at the older paintings. "These go back a while. And not a magpie in any of them. I wonder if the Magpie Lord renamed the house?"

"I could probably find out. So?"

"So since the Magpie Lord, you've all been frantically filling the house with magpies. Carvings and cutlery and appalling porcelain..."

"It's the family symbol."

"Look at the paintings. It wasn't the family symbol before the Magpie Lord. Did you never wonder why a family titled Crane would use a magpie for a symbol? "

"It occurred to me forcibly when I had my tattoos. Unlike magpies, cranes are common in China. And a lot easier to ink."

Stephen shook his head. "You hate your family. You loathe this house. You were five thousand miles away and never coming back. You could have chosen any design you liked. And you still felt compelled to etch magpies into approximately a quarter of your skin."

"It was a whim." Crane sounded slightly defensive.

"How long did it take, start to finish?"

"Three years or so, but—"

"Quite a whim. I bet they hurt, too."

"I chose to have my tattoos," said Crane, with a flare of anger that took Stephen by surprise. " I chose them. I don't know what you're suggesting but I didn't get them done at the command of some long-dead warlock—"

" He was not a warlock! "

The words rang off the gallery walls. Stephen didn't care. "The Magpie Lord was one of the greatest figures of our history. He was utterly intolerant of abuse of power. He was one of the legislators who codified the law on practitioners, establishing just how we govern ourselves, specifically to prevent warlocks hurting the innocent. And magpies were a key part of his power in some way that I don't pretend to understand, and the people who carry his bloodline and live in his house have been picking up that resonance for two hundred years after his death, and I think your choice to have those tattoos was driven by that resonance, and frankly I would be proud to be touched by the Magpie Lord, even so remotely. Is that clearer?"

Crane was leaning against the wall, watching him. His eyes dwelled appreciatively on Stephen's face. They no longer looked angry, but amused, and held a distinct touch of speculation.

Stephen took a deep breath. "And you have no idea what I'm talking about and don't know what a warlock is," he continued, in a more normal voice. "Sorry. I'm rather an admirer of his, that's all. "

And the atmosphere of Piper was nagging at him, draining, dry, oppressive, like a constant itch behind the eyes.

Crane's lips curled. He was still watching Stephen's face. Maybe in China one could keep staring at another person for a long time and it wouldn't seem out of place. Stephen could feel the colour rising in his cheeks, and he suddenly wished he'd found out more before coming here: why Lucien Vaudrey had been thrown out by his father, and exactly what the whispers of scandal surrounding his name were.

Crane was watching him, with that lazy, speculative smile broadening on his tanned, aristocratic, handsome face, and Stephen realised that he was watching him right back, staring at the man like an idiot girl.

Oh, no. Absolutely not. Don't even think about it.

He turned abruptly, looking back up the gallery, and glimpsed Hector Vaudrey's painted face. "I'll go to the library now," he said, making his voice neutral. "This is a wonderful discovery, and I would very much like to find out more, later, but it's not relevant to the immediate problem of the Judas jack."

As he spoke, he headed back the way they had come. Crane caught up after a few steps and led the way down the stairs.

"It's down here. Will you want me in there?"

"Actually, I'd appreciate it if you'd stay well away till I give you the word. Can you go and be with Mr. Merrick while I do this, just in case?"

"In case?" Crane frowned. "Is that standard professional caution, or are you concerned about something?"

"I don't know yet," Stephen said. "I'll go and find out."