Witchfinder, Free Novel — Chapter 7 and some “director’s commentary.”

UPDATE:  A SLIGHTLY EDITED AND PRETTIED UP COMPILATION OF ALL CHAPTERS UP TO A WEEK OLD IS HERE

*I’m posting this novel here, free, one chapter at a time.  I reserve the right to put in more than one chapter, as I did this time.This is being posted as I write it, so it’s in pre-earc (for those from Baen) or in close-to (but not quite) -first draft state. Once it’s finished it will undergo editing and then it will be published in some form. I’m going to put this up with its own category so you can find it.  For those interested in throwing something in the storytellers bowl, there is a donate button on the right hand side of the site.  Anyone contributing $6 or more will get an electronic (non DRM) version of the novel upon completion.  Of course, donating is not mandatory, nor even required in any way.  I hope you enjoy the chapters.  Today’s installment is closer to first draft than normal, and I’m still not sure how much of it will stay in on final pass.   For Director’s Commentary of sorts, look at the bottom of the chapter.  I don’t feel like dealing with the cover just now, so it will wait till tomorrow morning (I’m scheduling this at eleven pm).*
For first chapter, look here

For chapters five and six, look here

The Coils of Duplicity

Of all the ridiculous situations to be caught in, Gabriel Penn thought.  And then he wanted to laugh at the idea that he would call what just happened – Seraphim almost getting killed, a strange woman in the room, a dragon shifter under Seraphim’s book table ridiculous.

It was too mild a word and too inappropriate.  It was like when, at some grand affair, the most ridiculous things would run through his mind while he leaned against the wall, all but invisible to the company.  If he said half the things he thought, he would be …  No, he wouldn’t be turned out of the house.  The dowager would never do that, and neither would Seraphim.  But they might very well shut him up in the attics to which gothic novels would relegate insane relatives.

The situation was disastrous.  The more so, as he saw the Dowager Duchess’s expression grow grave, her eyes pinch, and her expression acquire that hint of dismay that used to accompany her looks at the husband she doted on, and who was never faithful to her.  She looked at the bed, intently.  Then back at Gabriel.  “Gabriel,” she said.  Unlike Seraphim, unlike what anyone else would have done, she never called him by his surname.  She never treated him as a servant.  She treated him… Not as her son, exactly, but not much different.  “Gabriel.  You will tell me what has happened to my son.”

Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it.  The words had been more than a demand, a certainty.  For a moment, the world shifted under Gabriel’s feet.  He couldn’t remember what he’d told the Duchess before, to excuse Seraphim’s using a transport spell, right in front of his mother.  He didn’t know how to justify Seraphim’s near-mortal wounds or the presence of Miss Helena Felix.

And then he thought again how much like his father’s imbroglios this was, and how if this had been the old lord, the reason would be something like he had to run out for an assignation with a married woman, whose husband in turn had challenged him for a duel and who–

And Gabriel had found his feet.  When caught in something unlawful, you knew better than to try to make himself sound completely innocent.  Unlike Seraphim, he’d had to learn to lie very early and lie very well.  In this house, he, like Seraphim, had been told to speak only the truth.  But in the years before the Duke had found him and brought him home, he’d learned well enough to survive by any means necessary.  The advantage of not being legitimate, of not being the heir, is that you were to an extent free of the constricting bands of honor that imprisoned those of the lawful world.

“Forgive me, your Grace,” he said, and let his nervousness leak through, and his exhaustion.  He intended to let the Duchess know exactly how gravely her son had been hurt.  That way the best of care could be contrived.  And Seraphim was going to need the best of care.  Gabriel would risk both their honors and their reputations rather than his half-brother’s life.  “You will remember I told you that Seraphim had to go to London with all possible speed, to… to take care of a matter of business, and that he would be back upon the instant.”

“You told me he had to go on a matter of gambling.”

“It comes to the same for Seraphim, whose gambling is a debt of honor and who–”

“Cease.  I know the excuses.  But how come he–” the Duchess took a step to the bed, and stared at Miss Felix.  If Gabriel hadn’t stepped in front of her, she would have approached the bed.

“Well, it turned out the betting… well… it went wrong.”

“You will not tell me that my son cheated.”

“No, Your Grace.  But the man he bested thought so.  And challenged Seraphim to a duel, which– His oponent used a spelled knife and– and a magic gun.”

The Lady Barbara reeled.  She stepped backward, taking her hand to her lips, in a gesture of fear, then walked around Gabriel and to the bed.  Now, Gabriel let her.  He would have spared her the pain of realizing how close to death Seraphim had come, but he must not.  The Darkwaters were all magical talents, at least as good as his own and perhaps better.  And it would take all of their talent to get him through this.

He turned around and watched as the Duchess took her son’s hand in hers.  She looked, Gabriel thought, perfectly composed, serene.  It was something he envied Seraphim.  A mother who, without being cold, could be controlled.

Her magic working – which Gabriel was sure she was doing – did not show, nor could he read it by more than a feeling of magic in the air, a sensation on the edge of sound that energy had been sent forth and absorbed.

The Lady Barbara looked up.  “Which of you?” she said, and looked from the young woman to Gabriel, then again.  “Which of you used the resurection spells?  Three times?”

“Mister Penn did, Madam,” Miss Felix said, with such disarming honesty that Gabriel didn’t know whether to respect her for it, or to hate her for making his life yet more complicated.  She must be gentry, he thought.  And legitimate too.  Only someone raised in the strictest bonds of respectability could be so stupidly honorable.

“Gabriel?”

He looked down and let go the will power keeping his immense tiredness hidden.  “I had to, Your Grace.  I couldn’t let him die.”

“No,” the Duchess said.  “But you could have called me.  I have…”  She looked pensive.  “Some experience in saving the lives of the foolish men close to me.”  And, before Gabriel could ask her what she meant, she looked at Miss Felix, “And you are?”

And here, Gabriel consigned his soul to perdition once and for all.  He knew that if the young lady spoke, she would say something disastrous, such as that Seraphim had saved her from the Pyramid world.  Or worse, that Seraphim had saved her and a young lion shifter.  If she was in the habit of uttering the truth with no regard for the circumstances, likely she’d tell it now.  And Gabriel could not allow that.  Not even if it called for the most outrageous lie of his untruthful career.

His voice shook with the sheer enormity of it, but probably made it all the more convincing, as he said, “Miss Felix, Your Grace, is… a personal friend of mine.  With– With the ball in the house, we’d expected to have privacy, you see, and … and we expected to be able to talk undisturbed.”

The expression of shock in the Duchess’s eyes, as she turned back to look at Gabriel was only half that in the eyes of Helena Felix, and Gabriel felt unaccountably gratified that he had managed to pay her back for the position she’d put him in.  He gave her the hint of a restrained smile.  If he was going to burn in hell for eternity, he’d amuse himself while he could.

The Duchess looked at him a long time.  After the shock, a flicker of something in her eyes gave Gabriel the uneasy impression that she knew all too well all that was likely to have happened was literally talk, but then she cleared her throat and said, in a shaking voice, “Well…  Well…  I’m sure that…  That is, you wouldn’t bring a woman of ill repute into the house, so you and Miss Felix shall let me know when I am to wish you joy.”  She gave him the once over, and there was the hint of incredulity in her eyes again.  Or was Gabriel imagining it?  He did tend to think that he was glass front and everyone could see right through him.  “You’ve been very sly and kept it all from us, but I’m glad that Miss Felix was here, to help you save Seraphim’s life.”  Her look at both of them told them she didn’t believe a word of it.

“Now,” she said, taking off the long gloves that had protected her hands and forearms during the ball.  “If you and Miss Felix will leave, I will look after my son.  Tell Martin to send for Doctor Wilson.  And–”

And Gabriel, in a sweat of apprehension, thinking of the boy shifter under the table, and of Miss Felix, who, for all he knew, had nowhere to go in this world, plunged madly into the breach, armed with nothing but his knowledge of etiquette and his experience of living so many years amid the truthful and the honorable.  “Your Grace cannot stay here,” he said.  “I beg your pardon,” he added, to Lady Barbara’s shocked expression.  “But Your Grace cannot.  Your Grace must see that if your grace were to disappear now, with the guests not having left yet, this would become the most astonishing rumor of the season, and no one would cease talking about it… oh, for a year perhaps.  Particularly since the Duke didn’t announce his engagement as everyone expected.”

Lady Barbara favored him with a darkling look.  It was not quite a look of reproach, it certainly wasn’t a look of dislike, but it was the look that told him she knew very well he was manipulating her behavior for her own good, and that she didn’t enjoy it.  “Whenever you start larding your speech with Your Graces, Gabriel,” she said with the disarming frankness she had passed on to her son, “it is a sure thing you’re trying to fool me.  I have not forgotten the forcing house incident.”  She pressed her lips together, if at the memory of the most spectacular mishap of his and Seraphim’s childhood or at the present situation, Gabriel couldn’t guess.  “But much more the worse is that you’re true.  I cannot gratify my feelings by staying here, and thus risk humiliating Lady Honoria, who will be humiliated enough that Seraphim has as good as jilted her in our own ballroom.”  She sighed.  “I shall say Seraphim is indisposed.  They will understand he’s drunk enough to be well and truly disguised, quite out of his mind.  And no one will doubt it, considering the way he smelled and acted in the ballroom.”  She sighed heavily, and leaned over her son on the bed.  Touching her lips to his forehead, she sighed again, then straightened.  “Don’t trouble yourself with sending for the doctor, Gabriel.  I shall do so myself.  Stay by Seraphim’s side, until Doctor Wilson arrives.”

She was out the door before he could get over the feeling she knew very well what manner of lies he’d imposed upon her.

“The forcing house incident?” Miss Felix asked.

“Oh.”  He took a deep breath and wondered if he could find the strength to talk.  He was so tired that he felt as though this must be what it felt like to be ninety.  Not that he expected to ever make it to that age.  “I was …  Nine?  Perhaps ten.  I’m not… precisely sure of my own age, only that I’m older than Sera– His Grace.  Probably a year or so older, and conventionally we consider my birthday the same as his only a year before.  That was Sera– His Grace’s idea.”  He saw she was looking at him in confusion, and tried to call all his strength to him and order his thoughts.  “I arrived on his birthday, you see, and he wanted to share the party, which when you consider that I came into a dining room full of the children of the nobility in the rags in which… in which the old duke had found me–” He saw her eyes widen and decided he was going to far.  No need to tell this stranger from another world about Seraphim’s longing for a brother close to his age, or how he’d decided that Gabriel would be that brother, even when they were both too young to realize they were related by blood.  “Never mind that.  His Grace was kind and generous even as a child.  At any rate, he said it was to be my party too, and therefore it was decided my birthday was the same as his.  And I was allowed to have a piece of the cake and the celebration…  After the housekeeper gave me the most thorough bath of my life, before or since.”  He caught himself up again, knowing he was saying too much.  Curse his weakness and his depleted magic.  “I had lived here about a year, or maybe a little more than a year, when Seraphim and I decided to practice a growing spell we’d seen one of the farmers perform on the strawberries in the forcing house.  We were both, you see, inordinately fond of strawberries, and it was March and the plants just set in the soil.”

“And it worked?”

“After a fashion, Miss,” he said.  “We did grow strawberries, but we must have got something wrong, because they grew to astonishing size.”  Her gaze was interested.  “And exploded.  And we had to clean the inside of the glass with rags.  For five days.  But not for lack of my making up an elaborate story involving robbers.  Her Grace was indulgent, because, I suppose, she feels sorry for me.”  And, plunging as quickly as he could away from that, he said, “But none of this matters, Miss.  What matters now is to find you a place to stay before the doctor arrives.”

She looked surprised.  “I don’t need a place to stay,” she said.  “I need a minute’s calm to put togehter a transport spell.”

“Miss?”  Was she not aware that she’d been brought to a different world.

She blushed, from the neck up, till she looked the rough color of a turnip.  “I beg your pardon,” she said.  “I suppose you assumed I was from that horrible desert world, with the pyramids?  Well, I was not.  My magic simply got entangled with the Duke’s and it pulled me into that world and… It was why I was so distraught and half out of my mind.  I went out of the world and back into it again in less than a few minutes.  And, as you know, magical entanglements are painful and confusing for both people.  It cannot have helped his Grace’s reactions, either.”

“What didn’t help His Grace’s reactions,” Gabriel said, aware that his voice colored the honorific in irony.  “Is that he’d already lost too much blood and was in a considerable amount of pain besides.”  Which was the only reason that Gabriel could think of why Seraphim hadn’t realized that his magic had become entangled.  But it made no sense.  “The thing is, Miss, that entanglements don’t happen, unless– ”

A knock at the door and a voice called out, “Doctor Wilson is here, Mr. Penn.”  It was the voice of the housekeeper.  “He’s coming up the stairs.”

Gabriel felt both relief and annoyance.  Relief that he could now get the young shifter out of the room and into the capable hands of Gabriel’s Godmother, and annoyance that he would not be able to question this young woman till after the doctor left.  But there was no time to lose.  He lifted the table covering, and offered the boy his hand, which the boy took, allowing Gabriel to lead him to the door.

The housekeeper, a kind woman of middle years, who still treated Gabriel as though he, himself, had been an urchin, looked from him to the boy when he opened door.  “I thought there was as good a chance as any that there was someone,” she said.  “If the Duke is took ill.”  She looked at the boy.  “I shall put a damping spell on his shifting, shall I, until he learns to control it.  And the poor boy as naked as the day he was born.  No worry.  I’ll get him into the blue room and bring him clothes.”

Since the blue room was right next door, the empty room reserved for the wife Seraphim would eventually take, Gabriel knew it was safe enough.  The relief of it must have made him weak, because he leaned against the door frame to recover his breath.

When he opened his eyes again, Doctor Wilson was saying, “And what have you been doing with yourself, Penn?  Don’t tell me it is nothing, because you look in need of my services, though it was the Duke I was called for.”

Gabriel managed a weak laugh.  “It is nothing, compared to His Grace’s wounds, sir,” he said.  And as he led the doctor into the room, he realized that Miss Felix was no longer there.  He felt vexed he’d not prevented her transport spell, which she’d told him she would use, then relieved she was no longer there, and he didn’t have to worry about what she might say.  It didn’t matter if she’d gone somewhere.  He wasn’t fooled into thinking her presence acccidental.

And there were always ways of finding out who she really was and where she’d come from.  Many of those ways would have to wait until Seraphim recovered consciousness.  But they would work.  And he and Seraphim would discover who this woman was who took so much interest in the Duke of Darkwater.
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Director’s commentary —
It is clear to me now that Gabriel Penn is not all he seems to be.  Weirdly, I have the impression that the story of his being the son of a cottager’s daughter whom the Duchess sought out and brought to be raised with her own children is not his cover story.  Though it is a cover story.  What I can’t understand is how anyone would believe the story even though he came to the estate at eight or nine.  One the one hand I’m tempted to think that it is something I’ll have to go back and fix in rewrite.  On the other hand I’m almost sure that this really is a cover story and that people do believe it.  If magic is at work, I wonder whose?  Perhaps the old Duke’s.  Unresolved is how come the Duchess brought Gabriel in, and not any of the old Duke’s other illegitimate children, of which I’m sure there are many.  I’m also curious about Gabriel’s origins.  I have some inkling of what his mother’s position in life is — sorry, not revealing that, because it is more than a spoiler — and it doesn’t square with his being in rags.  Um…  However, those parts feel right and I’m sure will stay in the chapter even after revision.  It’s just that my annoying subconscious is not sharing the details there.  In fact, it’s acting downright smug.

I’m less certain on the whole story of the strawberries.  First, because I’m sure that there’s more to it than we have been told, but also because I’m not sure Gabriel would have launched into that story instead of interrogating Nell.  Now, it’s barely possible he would do so, because he’s tired and magic-stressed, but I don’t like giving my characters that kind of excuse.  In fact, most of the week was consumed with fixing something like that in A Few Good Men, where I’d allowed a character to do something silly on the first pass, on account of his being out of his mind with worry and grief.  But while something stupid is allowable, something silly is not.  Not while dealing with a character I suspect (and partly know from what I’ve outlined) is closer to tragic than comic.  I’m not particularly happy with the strawberries, in fact.  BUT for the moment and for a first draft it will do.  Chances are, however, I’ll deal with them in rewrite.  Unless they are the one comic incident that is referred to throughout to alleviate the tension.  This one, I think, I’ll have to let time and sober reflection tell me.