Lee Welch - Salt Magic, Skin Magic

Chapter One

O ctober, 1851

Soren, Lord Thornby, opened the rectory field gate and checked the back of his left hand for the hundredth time. Hed written the word leave on his skin in black ink. His hands had trembled as hed done it, and the l had smeared against his cuff. But he could read it plainly enough.

Leave.

The gate was on the Raskelf estate, which belonged to Thornbys father, the ninth Marquess of Dalton. The hummocky field belonged to the rectory, which was a mile away in the village. A few bedraggled, black-faced sheep grazed at the far end, and Thornby knew he should shut the gate, but somehow did not quite like to. Keeping his left hand in front of him as though offering an arm to an invisible lady, he took a deep breath and stepped across the estate boundary.

As he did so, he realised hed be late for dinner if he didnt go back to the Hall now . It would be unforgivably rude.

But his gaze was on his hand. Leave .

He stood, one pace away from the gate, breathing hard. It was mid-afternoon. The weak autumn sun was still some distance from the horizon. Dinner was always at seven. He fumbled for his watch, hand shaking so much the glass front gave fractured reflections of sky, hedgerow, and his own pale face. It was not yet three. But perhaps it would be best to go back now anyway.

As he put the watch away, he saw the writing on his hand again. Leave .

Yes, he must leave . Heart pounding, he took another step. But he was trespassing. He glanced around, shoulders hunching with guilt, a cold sweat prickling out on his back. This land belonged to the rectory. He shouldnt be here.

He tried to breathe deeply. He was leaving Raskelf. Why shouldnt he walk across a field? The rector wouldnt mind. Although Father was damnably rude to the fellow, the rector had no quarrel with Thornby.

He took a third step.

And stopped. Idiot! Hed left the lid off the inkwell. These days the staff at Raskelf was composed of the incompetent or the unreliablethose who couldnt secure a position elsewhere. Thornby could almost see the inkwell tipping under a careless duster, a black puddle engulfing the work of months. He must go back at once and put the lid on.

His arm was at an odd angle in front of him, as if he expected a bird of prey to swoop down to his wrist. Foolish; thered been no falcons at Raskelf for years. Something black was on the back of his hand. He rubbed at it, but it wouldnt come off. It was writing, very smudged. A word written in ink.

Ink! Yes, he must hurry home and deal with the inkwell. The gate was only a couple of strides away. He shut it so the rectors sheep couldnt wander and hastened back to the Hall, the chimneys of which could just be seen, rising above the yellows and coppers of Ramparts Wood.

Raskelf Hall, the ancestral seat of the Dezombreys, was a huge mish-mash of styles and additions, punctuated by mullioned windows and so many chimneys and baroque flourishes that Thornby always felt it resembled a vast and sickly hedgehog. He approached the northern entrance, at the back of the house. A month ago, the doorway here had been graced by a fine white marble portico, but it had been sold to pay some unavoidable debt of Fathers. The doorway now looked naked and a little surprised, like a man caught with his trousers down.

As Thornby grabbed the cheap new iron handrail to spring up the cheap new sandstone steps, he noticed the blurred scrawl on the back of his hand.

Leave .

Daylight seemed to fall away and the air to grow thin, as if the shadow of the Hall was set on stifling him. Nausea swept over him and his legs turned to water. He dropped to a crouch on the steps, tugging at his tight cravat.

Back at the Hall. For the thousandth time. Back to put a lid on an inkwell. The very banality of the reasoning turned his blood to ice.

Because hed been trying to leave the estate for a year and a half. Hed tried everything. Hed tried walking across the boundary in an ordinary way. Hed tried riding across, but no matter which horse he took, the creature always refused. Hed tried crawling across in the mud, as if by abasing himself he might be let go. Hed tried flinging himself across, screaming. Sometimes he told himself he felt no more than one of the statues in the parkhis heart was marble, his mind marblehe would walk and not stop. But nothing worked. Nothing. Every time he found himself turning and walking back, for some trivial reason like a lidless inkwell. He was trapped as effectively as if an invisible wall surrounded the estate.

His throat was closing so tight it might choke him. A harsh sob of rage and frustration escaped, and he gritted his teeth against another. A tear fell hot on the back of his hand. He would claw his own skin off to get away. Not just from Raskelf, but from himself, from the stupid, weak self that couldnt walk across a field.

Father claimed to have the power to let him goif he married money as Father wished. But Thornby loathed his father and trusted him less than a footpad in a dark alley. And if he swallowed his pride and did as he was told, could Father really free him? Or would Thornby merely have involved some innocent girl in his ghastly predicament?

Father hinted often enough that it was weakness of character that kept Thornby here. Father had forbidden him to leave, and deep down, so deep Thornby couldnt acknowledge it, he must want to obey and so he did. But surely it couldnt be that? Thornby had no trouble disobeying his father in every other aspect of his life. In fact, it gave him a grim satisfaction. He was twenty-seven; not a child to take his fathers word as law.

So, why? Why could he not walk across a field and escape? If it wasnt weakness of character, could it be to do with magnetism? Mesmerism? Hed heard of Elliotsons remarkable experiments, making ladies tell the future or dance and sing. He couldnt remember being mesmerised, but perhaps that was part of the trick?

He knew what some of the servants and the village people thought. Hed seen the sideways looks, the fingers crossed in a sign to ward off black magic. And of course hed heard rumours, over the years, about devil worship and magicians who summoned spirits. But surely all that was flummery, tricks to fool the credulous. Some people might believe in it, even practice it, but magic was not a real enough force to hold an educated man against his will. And in any case, Father was no magicianwas he?

Yet, sometimes, in the dark hours of the night, when sleep would not come and reason grew fevered, there seemed no other explanation.

***

A year and a half ago , Thornby had been sipping Madeira in the sitting room of his Mayfair house. Between sips, hed been reading aloud an art review in The Times for the edification of a recent acquaintancean amusing fellow with a fine arse and a hungry mouth, but who was developing a distressing tendency to gaze at Thornby like a moon-calf.