She paused.
“Rear end?” Mavis suggested.
Hilda shook her head. “I was going to say ‘proverbial,’ but you know how I feel about alliteration, Mavis.”
“I do, Hilda,” Mavis replied sympathetically.
“Pain in thebum,” Hilda amended, scowling, and everyone blushed.
“We heard about you finding the Russian pocket watch and taking it back to that darned villain, Nigel Harroway,” Hilda said, jabbing her spade toward Ravenscroft Manor in such a violent gesture that Caleb wondered if, inside the house, Sir Nigel shuddered as though someone had just walked over his grave. “And now here you are with another antique in your hands, like you’ve got some kind of map to them all.”
“All?” Amelia echoed. “Do you mean there aremoreburied out here?” She drew in a deep breath, clearly intending to lecture the women about safety practices when dealing with thaumaturgic antiques. Just then, Mavis jammed the pronged end of her pitchfork into the ground, causing the handle to shudder, and Caleb watched Amelia change plans between breathing in and breathing out again. “That explains the seasonal anomalies,” she said instead.
Caleb tried smiling at the women again. “I hope we didn’t intrude upon some treasure-hunting game?”
“That’s not for us to say,” Hilda snarled, and he gave up the smile as a waste of effort. “We’re going to take you to someone who’ll decide what to tell you…and what to do with you.”
“We are?” Mavis said with some surprise. “Who, Hilda?”
The other woman gave her a sharp look. “You know, Mavis.”
“No, I— Oh wait, you mean—”
“Yes. Do try to keep up, dear.” She pointed the spade at Caleb and Amelia. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t!” Amelia exclaimed, caution disintegrating in her urgency. “We have to recover a dangerous—”
“Dangerous?” Hilda scoffed. “Pft! What could a little girl like you know about danger? You’re running around out here in the half dark, getting tangled up in magic when a storm’s about to break.”
“We should show them real danger,” Mavis said. Yanking the pitchfork out of the ground, she lifted it and, grinning, touched a finger to one of the sharp points.
“Are you going to kill us?” Amelia gasped.
“What?!” Mavis stared at her with alarm. “Of course not! I’m saying, farm implements are really dangerous. What is it with the younger generation these days, Hilda? So dramatic!”
“It’s probably all that education,” Hilda answered with a shrug. “It bloats the brain.” She shook her head. “Enough talking. Move, Professors.Now.”
Caleb rapidly considered his options. If it came to a physical altercation, fortune almost certainly would not bet on him. He might be a man who kept himself fit by playing rugby and running away from university bursars, but these two elderly ladies clearly had spent their lives breathing fresh air, drinking milk still warm from the cow, and going on hikes through the countrysidebecause they wanted to. Caleb knew his match when hesaw it. He wasn’t even sure he and Amelia could outrace them, no matter how close the shelter of Ravenscroft Manor seemed. He’d thought the road close too. The magical bubble caused by the locket had dissolved, but there might be any number of thaumaturgic objects hidden out here to stop them in one manner or another.
No, all things considered, and with the expertise of someone who’d been in trouble more times in his life than he could count, he decided to surrender for now, and await a better opportunity for escape. “Lead the way,” he said.
“How kind of you to approve your kidnapping,” Hilda remarked dryly, then gestured for them to get moving. Amelia gave Caleb an anxious frown, and he smiled reassuringly at her in response. Without a word, they allowed themselves to be herded across the field toward the rear of Ravenscroft Manor.
As the shadow of the great house reached out to engulf them, a distant horn could be faintly heard, blistering the evening’s quiet. Caleb realized what it was when Amelia exhaled a shuddering breath: the train leaving Staveley, taking Vanity Tunnicliffe and the perilous Hereford teaspoon south to disaster.
Chapter Nineteen
When it comes to history, we only know
what we’ve been told.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
Amelia remained calmas the two women took her and Caleb across the field and through a small kitchen garden toward the back of the manor house. With every step, she evaluated possibilities for escape but ultimately overthought each one so much that they had gone deep in the apple orchard behind the house before she reached any decision. Night thickened as the heavy rain clouds loomed steadily closer, and although Hilda had taken a lantern that hung from one of the trees and lit it to illuminate their way, this provided barely more than a pallid ghost of light in the eerie, whispering darkness beneath the orchard’s canopy.
Amelia felt like a blighted Tudor queen entering the Tower of London, unsure of her fate but anticipating something unpleasant. Her calm intensified until she had to acknowledge it was in fact dissociation, wrought of fear. Beside her, still clutching her hand, Caleb breathed with a spikiness that suggested the carpet of fallen leaves and rotting apples beneaththem was ruining any lingering hope he might have had to save his shoes.
Stopping abruptly between two trees, Mavis dragged the leaf litter with her pitchfork until she located a loop of rope. When she pulled on this, the ground levered up in the form of a hatch, dirt and leaves scattering off its wooden surface. Hilda’s lantern revealed a ladder descending into a tunnel beneath the earth.
