Page 93 of Confounding Oaths
“Mebbes not that’s helpful,” Barryson admitted. “Magic can be tricky. I can try to do something about the”—he indicated the cracks that were beginning to creep up Miss Caesar’s arms—“but not much, and there’s no guarantee any witch’d be able to do more.”
“So your advice is that we donottrust this enchantress?” prompted Lady Mary, well schooled in the art of telling people that they were saying what she wanted them to say.
“Don’t trust her,” Barryson agreed. “But see her. You’ll neverknow if you don’t, and the captain and me’ll be able to keep her safe while we check.”
“You promise?” asked Lady Mary, a little breathless and a little hopeful.
Being of an old faith, Barryson took promises seriously. But lacking convenient access to a sacred boar or a silver arm ring, he had little to swear on. “Hang on.” He rummaged in one pocket and after a moment’s searching drew out a handful of lint and loose musket balls. “Right, what did you want?”
Lady Mary looked—for want of a better word—flummoxed. “For you to promise to look after my daughter.”
Nodding solemnly, Barryson closed his fist tightly around the bullets. “By Freyr, Njörður, and the greatest of the gods, I swear on my arms that I will bring your daughter back safe from meeting the witch, or else may my powder fail to catch and may I die on a French bayonet.”
“I don’t think you have to go quite that far,” Lady Mary reassured him.
“He does,” explained the captain. “The old gods don’t fuck about.”
The invocation of direct supernatural retribution against an innocent third party should their daughter come to harm didn’t exactly allay the Caesars’ fears, but it did at least convince them of the soldiers’ sincerity and that they would protect Miss Caesar to the best of their abilities.
Somewhat more difficult for them to accept was the suggestion that Barryson be permitted to paint occult symbols on Miss Caesar’s hands and feet in an effort to prevent them from fragmenting further. To this, too, however, they eventually conceded, and a surprisingly timid Miss Caesar—really, whatworsedid she expect?—extended one hand out to Barryson, who had, by this stage, sethimself up in the middle of the parlour with a small parcel of pigments and brushes that he had brought with him for the purpose.
The experiment, however, proved unsuccessful. The surface of Miss Caesar’s hands was cracked and, as the paint was applied, shifted almost wilfully, causing Barryson to stop before even the first rune was completed.
“Sorry, lady,” he told her. “Magic won’t hold. Can’t strengthen glass.”
Miss Caesar took her hand back, wiping the traces of paint away with a handkerchief. “Nevertheless I am thankful for the effort.”
“Proper polite, isn’t she?” Barryson observed to the room in general. “Anyway, can’t be helped. We going?”
The finer folk of the family were not accustomed to being hurried, but there was indeed little to be gained by tarrying. And so Miss Caesar, her brother, Barryson, and the captain set out into the dark of the London night, intending to visit a sorceress.
Captain James had, in my entirely objective and correct opinion, been right. Covent Garden after dark was no place for anybody. The time the party had chosen for their excursion aligned infelicitously with the great flux of theatregoers making their various ways, in disparate states of drunkenness, to their homes or to other more temporary but perhaps more welcoming lodgings.
The ladies of that district, so infamous in their day and so well recorded by Mr. Harris in his list, were out in similar force. And while Mr. Caesar had no especial disdain for that profession nor its practitioners, their customers were another matter and not people he wished his sister to be exposed to. At least, not on the streets.She would meet many of them at balls and salons, but that could scarcely be avoided.
Nor, it was becoming apparent, could the society of rakes and roisters be avoided at their destination. The temple was, after all, a gambling hell as much as it was a house of the goddess, and such places attracted the wealthy and dissolute like iron attracts rust.
So Mr. Caesar was very, very glad of the military men beside him as they pressed through the crowds and into the temple. He had gambled a little, of course, it was the done thing for men of his age, but he had done so more for the appearance of the matter than out of any real love of chance.
Since my exile to the mortal world, I have learned to loathe crowds. The amount of time physical beings spend crammed into tiny, cramped,hotrooms that smell of sweat and desperation—and spend in themwillinglyno less—amazes me. Looking back, I can find in myself a profound empathy for what the dandyish Mr. Caesar must have been feeling in this moment. At the time, I was both invisible and immaterial and rose, insubstantial as smoke, to the ceiling, whence I could look down on the throng literally, as well as figuratively.
With as much confidence as she could muster, Miss Caesar walked forwards, hoping that Amenirdis would stop weaving amongst the tables and come to her side.
Captain James, however, was not so patient. He strode through the crowd trailing Barryson and the Caesars in his wake and put himself directly in the path of the hostess.
“You the witch?” he asked. And then when she looked around he followed up quickly with “Nell?”
Amenirdis gave an enigmatic smile. “Not a name I’ve used in a long time.”
“Since when are you a sorcerer?” asked the captain, perhaps slightly more incredulous than was reasonable.
“Since when are you an officer?”
“Fair point.”
Feeling, ironically given her predicament, overlooked, Miss Caesar spoke up. “Do you know one another?”
“We both grew up in the rookery,” Amenirdis explained. “And both left it. And both returned.”
