“Why, we have the Sorcerer Royal among us! He will shed some light on this. Do not you think, sir, that it is a false economy to have candles that will not permit of Puffett’s success? For the skill of the magician cannot be doubted.”
Cullip went crimson, snatching off his wax top hat and hurling it to the ground. He exclaimed:
“Are we to defer to the Sorcerer Royal’s judgment? If the office were held by one deserving the title, English thaumaturges might not be reduced to scrabbling for magic for every inconsequential spell!”
Zacharias stiffened, but he had received snubs worse than this before, and swallowed his resentment.
“There is only so much even my wealth and influence can do to counteract the prejudice against you,” Sir Stephen had told him once, long ago. “In time you will prove yourself, Zacharias, and your accomplishments will leave no one in any doubt of your worth. Till then your only defence against impertinence must be patience and courtesy. By such means you may win your enemies over—but it is certain you cannot afford the alternative.”
The nearest Zacharias could approach the requisite patience and courtesy now was to ignore Cullip. He said to Tom:
“In the Blue Room, did you say?”
But Cullip was too angry and incautious to let the matter lie.
“At least he knows his place well enough not to seek to defend himself,” he said to his acquaintance. “It is only a pity he has not the wisdom to surrender his office to a true English thaumaturge!”
Zacharias was no paragon, despite his long training in enduring insults. The sneering tone of Cullip’s voice could not be borne. He turned and snapped:
“You need only one candle for Puffett’s—tallow, not wax—and ifyou had recited the correct formula, you might have carried it off. As for the rest, sir, I shall not dignify it with an answer—save that if English thaumaturges spent less of their magic in foolish diversions, perhaps they might have more to serve their country with!”
Cullip was already so purple from claret and temper that he could not turn redder, but he flung down the candlestick and drew himself up, swelling like a bantam.
“Well, sir, I believe you know where I am to be found—” he began, but he was interrupted.
“You are shockingly late, Zacharias. What can you be about?”
No one could recall ever having seen Paget Damerell perform an enchantment, though he had somehow contrived to attain the much-coveted status of sorcerer. He pursued a life of the completest inutility, flirting with interesting women, eating handsome meals, paying scrupulous attention to his clothes and making it the sole business of his life to know every scrap of news floating about the thaumaturgical world. For this, as much as the silver sorcerer’s star pinned to his coat, he was respected and even feared at the Theurgist’s, and his appearance threw Cullip off his stride.
As he hesitated, Damerell lifted a quizzing-glass to his eye, saying in a tone of mild surprise:
“Those flames in your ears are a clever trick, Cullip, but dangerous, do not you think? I daresay I am an old fogey, and flaming ears are all the rage. I do not like to take Mr. Wythe from such delightful society, but there is the matter of my lobster, you know.” Damerell’s manner was apologetic, but that of a man who is serene in his conviction of doing what is right. “A gentleman cannot keep a lobster waiting. You will understand, I am sure.”
By the time Cullip had formulated a response to his own satisfaction, Damerell had hustled Zacharias to the refuge of one of the small private dining rooms.
“I am loath to discourage you from calling out Cullip, for if any man deserved a drubbing it is he,” said Damerell. “But a Sorcerer Royalcannotduel his brother-thaumaturges. It is not at all the thing.”
His ears burning, Zacharias said:
“I had no intention of calling him out, and must thank you for interrupting us before he could commit us. I ought not to have addressed him in such intemperate terms. Cullip’s thaumaturgy was always better than his judgment, but I have not that excuse.”
“Your estimation of his parts is kinder than he merits, if that is his notion of Puffett’s,” Damerell observed. “At any other time I should congratulate you on your intemperance—Iwould call it candour. But this is not the time for it, Zacharias. Do not you know what they are saying of you?”
“That I am a murderer?” said Zacharias, after a moment. No other man would have ventured to speak so openly of the dark rumours that circled Zacharias, but Damerell’s was a nature that thrived on picking up rocks and making amusing comments on the manners of the creatures scurrying underneath.
Damerell shook his head. “Not only that.”
He slid a pamphlet across the table. Upon the frontispiece was a caricature of a leering old man in thaumaturgical blue, making his leg to a dark-skinned gentleman with a leopard skin slung over his shoulders and bones entwined in his hair. Emblazoned above the curious pair was the title:ENGLISH MAGIC UNDER SIEGE.
“This was on the floor of my entrance hall this morning,” said Damerell. “You have not seen it?”
Zacharias had not, though he had seen many depictions like it. Unkind portraits of him had begun appearing in the press since Sir Stephen had announced his adoption. These had fallen off as the Society grew accustomed to his existence, but his appointment as Sorcerer Royal had lent fresh inspiration to the pens of the caricaturists.
The tension in Damerell’s manner suggested that this was noordinary joke, however, and Zacharias bent his head to examine it with a sense of dread. The pamphlet proclaimed:
Its most faithful supporters cannot deny that English magic is now at its lowest ebb. We count fewer sorcerers among us than ever before, and in the past twenty years only a single magician has dared venture into Fairyland, where before there was a continual traffic across the border. As for familiars, those most valuable vessels of magic, England has received not a one since the ascension of our King.
Is it any surprise, however, that English thaumaturgy should find itself in such a state of degradation, when it willingly bends its knee to a woolly Afric? One who, so far from overcoming his native savagery, has repaid his benefactor in the coin of villainy, and been rewarded with the staff of the Sorcerer Royal?
