memory.
The arrival of their food created a welcome intermission.
“Did Morgus say anything to you?” Will asked, dispensing cutlery.
“Oh, yes. It was very strange: she talked as if she knew me, not my face but my name. She said I looked different—plainer. Maybe she thought I was a reincarnation or something. She called me Gwennifer.”
“Guinevere,” said Will. “That’s where Gaynor comes from. You must know that.”
“I never really thought about it. It always seemed too glamorous a name for me.” Suddenly she laughed. “You don’t suppose she really thought I was a reincarnation of the original Guinevere—Arthur’s queen—the ultimate femme fatale? Me? That would be utterly ridiculous.”
“Not from where I’m sitting,” said Will. His smile narrowed his eyes to bright slits, blue against a freckle-topped tan. His hair was blond from what little sun the season had provided. She thought she saw new lines on his forehead, evidence of maturity, or so she hoped, and a sudden warmth rushed through her that was both wonderful and terrifying, heating her cheeks to a glow. The garlic mushrooms on her plate became mysteriously uneatable.
“I never saw you blush before,” Will continued presently. “You should do it more often. It suits you.”
“I don’t get many opportunities,” said Gaynor.
“That’s not what I hear. According to Fern, some man is always dumping his troubles on you.”
“Yes,” Gaynor replied before she could stop herself, “but that doesn’t make me blush.” Panicked that she might incriminate herself further, she rushed on. “We were talking about Morgus. Fern can’t deal with her till we find her weakness, whatever that is—”
“If she has one.”
“The seeresses sort of implied it, didn’t they? Everything that lives must die.”
“That isn’t prophecy, that’s common sense,” Will retorted. “I might have said it.”
“Really?” murmured Gaynor, with a furtive grin.
There was a brief check in Will’s manner; this time, his eyes narrowed without the smile. “The real issue,” he declaimed in an edged voice, “is what we can do. Fern has the Gift, but we have gifts of our own. I can’t immediately remember yours, but I have common sense. And there are more ways than magic of finding things out.”
“You mean ancient manuscripts,” Gaynor said. “I could look up some stuff about Morgus. She must get a few mentions.”
“Ancient manuscripts, modern manuscripts. Questions. People. I told Ragginbone we’d investigate the superbanker.”
Gaynor forgot to balk at the “we.” “I know nothing about banking,” she said. “Nor do you. I don’t even know any bankers.”
“Yes, you do. Everybody knows a banker nowadays. It’s one of those embarrassing facts of life. A couple of generations ago everybody knew a bishop; now it’s bankers. I can think of at least two old school friends who are in high finance. One of them’s in prison, but it’s the same thing.”
“I don’t know any,” Gaynor maintained. “I—oh, shit.”
Will cast her a questioning look.
“Actually, I do,” Gaynor confessed. “It had slipped my mind. Wishful nonthinking. Hugh.”
“Hugh who?” Will uttered owl-like. Hadn’t Fern mentioned someone called Hugh?
“Hugh Fairbairn. He’s married to a friend of Fern’s—an acquaintance really—called Vanessa, only he says she doesn’t appreciate him. He likes me. I’ve had to refuse to—to appreciate him twice already.”
“Good.” Will picked up a fry that had long gone cold and took an absentminded bite. “We can dispense with his help. I’ll get hold of Adam. He’s already declined to invest in my production company, so he owes me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“He failed in his allegiance to our old school tie,” Will explained.
“You never wear a tie.”
Will abandoned the fry and shoved his largely untouched plate to one side. Gaynor’s garlic mushrooms were beginning to look soggy. “Why don’t you just drink up and I’ll get another round?” Will suggested.
The conversation deteriorated rapidly when Gaynor wanted to pay for it.
In the small hours of the morning a mist had oozed out of the ground and hung in pale ribbons along the verges of the Wrokewood, screening the façade of the house. The walls showed only their stony roots rising out of grass and gravel. Above the mist, pointed roofs and gnarly chimneys floated as if detached from their moorings. The stump of the old tower was completely hidden. Such mists normally kept to the open fields, but rain had dampened the earth and the mild air drew the moisture upward into fogs that were thicker and more extensive than usual. A benighted local, on the road after a drunken party, saw the disembodied gables outlined against the predawn gloom and hurried away, sobered and shivering.