by On the other side of the door was House’s favourite room. I had been there just once before, in search of the third key to Farringale. In character it is a pretty sitting-room, a perfectly preserved specimen of mid-to-late seventeenth century style, with elegant floral wallpaper, wrought-silver candlesticks (never tarnished) and a tall grandfather clock. House keeps it well hidden.
Val sailed her chair over to a wall and stopped, promptly producing a laptop from somewhere. She started it up and began typing furiously.
I took one of the tall, pale-upholstered chairs, and spent a moment collecting my thoughts.
‘What are we working with?’ said Val. She’d stopped typing and was waiting expectantly.
‘Lost islands,’ I said.
‘You mean like Atlantis?’
‘A bit more real.’
‘Atlantis isn’t real?’
‘It… is it?’ I stared.
Val grinned. ‘Might be.’
‘You did say is, not was?’
With a flick of her fingers, Valerie waved this away. ‘Another time. So like Atlantis or more like Ferdinandea?’
‘That’s the one that keeps vanishing and popping up again? No. No volcanic activity involved, as far as we know. It’s more like Bermeja.’ (I had done some research already).
‘Gulf of Mexico,’ said Val promptly. ‘Marked on a few ancient maps but nobody can find it today?’
‘Exactly. Or any sign that it ever existed at all.’
‘Okay. But you’re certain this island of yours did exist.’
I told her everything we’d heard so far, every miserably insufficient clue we had mustered, and spoken all together it did not sound like much. But Val listened with close attention, and as I’d hoped, the question fired her interest.
She began typing again.
‘Could be vanished,’ she murmured, half to herself. ‘Islands vanish all the time, but they’re usually discernible lying right there on the sea bed, and you say this one was never on any maps?’
‘That’s one of the questions I had for you. Can you find a map with an island marked off the Scarborough coast? Pre-sixteen-hundred, it would be.’
‘Working on that. Really though, Ves, how could anybody hide an entire island? Especially so close to shore.’
‘Well.’ I sneaked a look at the Baron. ‘Er. You know when you’re working on a valuable book, and you want to take a bathroom break, but you don’t want to have to put the book away only to haul it out again ten minutes later?’
Val stopped typing. Her face said: You know about that?
I gave her an apologetic look, and said no more. I’d seen her pull a sneaky trick with just such a book, once. It was incredibly rare, one of the few copies of Agadora’s Miscellany still extant. The library had been empty other than the two of us, and I was at the other end of it, apparently absorbed in a book. Val had left the room — leaving the Miscellany on the table before her.
I thought she had forgotten to put it away, or perhaps trusted to me to guard it. But when I’d looked at the table, there was no book there. I went over to investigate, and I still couldn’t find it, couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it.
When Val came back, there it was again, in the same spot as before, as though it had never moved at all. Which, in all probability, it hadn’t.
‘So, that trick,’ I continued. ‘How big an, er, object could you hide like that?’
Val stared, wide-eyed, at nothing. ‘No idea, Ves. I’ve never tried it on anything bigger than—’ She broke off, shooting a faintly guilty look at the Baron. He, of course, just twinkled. ‘I would not like to attempt it upon a significant land mass,’ she finished.
‘All right, we can hold that idea in reserve. What about the Baron’s idea? Could it be moved around?’
Alban coughed politely. ‘I did not actually intend to propose the notion as my own idea. It is merely a possibility that has surfaced.’
I inclined my head in his general direction. ‘I’m going to keep calling it your idea anyway, because it’s simpler than “the other idea that the Baron happened to raise but that does not necessarily reflect his private thoughts on the matter.”’
He grinned. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Waiving for a moment the question of whether or not it’s possible,’ I continued, ‘it is a plausible explanation. If I were Melmidoc Redclover, and Their Gracious Majesties were trying to prosecute me for breaking a million rules, I’d want to whisk my hideout somewhere far away too. But where would they go? It would have to be somewhere isolated enough that no one would stumble over it — and it seems nobody has, in all these years. But somewhere habitable, too. Survivable climate, source of food, and so on. Where in the world might that put them?’
This is where I wanted Val’s help, aside from the matter of her book-hiding trick. She doesn’t have a search engine so much as a search labyrinth, and as I talked her fingers moved ceaselessly over the keys of her laptop. She was feeding it endless lists of search terms, and as she worked her search-maze was scouring a host of databases for every nugget of relevant information (several of them seriously off-limits to most of us), cross-referencing everything with everything else, and hopefully pulling out something useful.
It occurred to me that the Baron had been quiet, for all his talk of helping. When I looked his way, I found that he was looking at me. I wish I could say it was an admiring look, but it was more of a thoughtful gaze, with a hint of something troubled in it.
I made a questioning face, but he only smiled and looked away.
‘I am happy to tell you that there are exactly zero places on the planet that match those criteria,’ said Valerie after a while.
‘Zero!’
‘It’s the twenty-first century, Ves. We’ve had satellites for a while now. Nobody’s hiding any mystery islands anymore.’
I felt an impulse to chew upon a fingernail, which I suppressed. It is a habit I broke years ago, but it still surfaces occasionally in times of stress. ‘Then it is either hidden after all, or… there’s the third possibility.’
‘That being?’
‘You know. We cannot find the isle because it’s popped off to 1598. And so have Millie Makepeace and the spire.’
Val looked at me over her spectacles. ‘And, therefore, Jay?’
‘Yes. And they had smallpox back then, not to mention bubonic plague—’
‘I thought you were thrilled at the prospect of time travel?’
‘I am, but it might perhaps benefit from a little forethought. If Jay’s in the sixteenth century right now, he’s on his own.’ And it would explain why his phone seemed to have ceased to exist.
Valerie said nothing, but she transferred her penetrating gaze to the Baron’s face.
It was his look of bland innocence that made me suspicious.
‘You know something about all this, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Did the Court send you to help, or to spy?’
I wanted him to deny it, but he passed a hand over his face and sighed. ‘I sometimes have cause to wish you weren’t so astute, Ves.’ He caught Val’s eye and muttered, ‘The whole damned lot of you.’
I folded my arms and gave him the death stare. ‘Explain.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can and will.’
‘Ves—’
‘All that nonsense about the island moving around was misdirection, was it? All right, so it probably is impossible to haul an entire bloody island around but in that case where is it?’
Alban gave me a helpless stare.
‘Is it three and a half miles off the coast of Scarborough?’ I pressed.
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘In which century?’
‘I… Ves, that is genuinely a complicated question to answer.’
‘Or in other words, it’s not this one.’
‘It is,’ said Alban, and then added, ‘in a manner of speaking.’
I stifled an urge to kick him.
Into the icy silence left by the combined efforts of Val and me, he offered: ‘I am not here to obstruct you. Honestly.’
‘No?’ I said.
‘Not necessarily,’ he amended, and held up his hands when I threatened to explode on the spot. ‘The Court is unsure how to proceed, Ves. This is a… it’s an unprecedentedly tricky situation. I am to help where I deem it fit and… and see what happens.’
‘Which means you are also to hinder if you deem it fit?’
‘If it proves necessary, yes.’
‘Hinder whom?’
‘Ancestria Magicka, definitely. Hopefully not you.’
Hopefully.
I looked him square in the eye. ‘Do you know where that island is right now, Alban?’
He met my gaze without flinching. ‘I have an inkling, but I am not yet certain. I have some investigating to do, like you.’
‘Are you going to share your inkling?’
‘I can’t, at present. Their Majesties have expressly forbidden it. But it pains me to have to say no, Ves.’
‘Comforting,’ I said tartly. ‘Thank you.’
His lips curled in a tiny, unhappy smile. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘We’ll find out anyway.’
His smile turned more genuine. ‘I would expect nothing less.’
‘It’s party time,’ said Val crisply.
Startled, I checked the time: six o’ clock. Just an hour left to get dinner and find a dress. ‘Wait,’ I said, frowning at Val. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘How? I was invited.’
‘What? Who else?’
‘I don’t know everybody who got an invitation, but Rob for one. Nell. Indira, Rosalind, Siobhan, Berat, Vincent, Ravindra, Jack, um, rumour has it they even invited Orlando.’
It did not escape my notice that everyone on Val’s list (and mine) was either a figure of some authority at the Society, they were particularly experienced or specialised in their field, or they possessed rare talents of one sort or another. ‘They’re trying to swipe more of our best people, aren’t they?’
‘Milady drew the same conclusion, but I don’t think they’ll get very far with most of us.’
Nobody mentioned Miranda.
The Baron stood up. ‘Time to get something to eat?’ he said, looking at me.
Part of me wanted to be petulant and tell him to get stuffed, but it was a small part. And since we were no longer able to wander down to the cafeteria for dinner… ‘All right,’ I said, grudgingly.
He looked, politely, at Val, but she waved us off. ‘I’ll see you at Ashdown.’
The Baron offered me his arm, which I took with a sniff of disdain.
‘You’ve a good indignant face,’ he said, and that damned twinkle was back in his eyes. ‘Had some practice?’
‘Thanks to the likes of you, yes.’ I refused to be charmed out of my displeasure just yet. Maybe after I’d been fed.
‘Ouch,’ he said with an exaggerated wince.
‘You deserved that.’
‘I did.’
The Baron and I arrived at Ashdown Castle slightly early. He had certainly known about the party in advance, for he had come prepared, and changed into a delicious deep blue dinner suit while I slipped into my favourite slinky evening gown, a wine-red satin confection (and changed my hair to match: auburn bordering upon burgundy). Alban drove us, utilising some of his enviable Troll Roads, I think, for we made suspiciously excellent time.
I had heard nothing from Zareen, and was left to assume that she, too, would meet us there.
They really had sent out a lot of invitations, for when we swung smoothly into the driveway at Ashdown Castle we were met by the sight of at least fifty cars already parked. The grassy grounds had been turned into a giant car park for the evening, event-style, as though they were expecting nearer five hundred guests than fifty. They had also disabled most of the enchantments which protected the place from unwanted incursions. No concealments remained, no shields, no discouragements of any kind.
‘Serious business,’ I remarked, taken aback.
‘They’re planning to cause a stir,’ agreed Alban.
He offered his arm as we got out of the car, and I was glad to take it. We walked briskly up to the castle (carefully as well, in my case — heels on grass is always a risky proposition). The scale of the event and the mystery surrounding it made it clear that this was to be no ordinary party, and I was alert for signs of trouble or intrigue as we made our way to the entrance.
Well, the next thing I noticed was that Ashdown Castle had undergone something of a facelift.
