(in cipher)
My dear Thomas,
Cecelia and I retrieved your letter of the eighteenth from Haliwar this morning. I expect that you’ve had the dramatic rendition of our escape from that interminable house party in Cecelia’s version—there was a bit of shaking and some small fires, which we used as an excuse to depart. I should have been perfectly happy never to see the place again, but Cecelia was sure that the shaking was magical in origin, and wanted to examine the house in daylight and with a bit of magical preparation.
So we rode out this morning, pausing half a mile short of the house for Cecelia to work her spells. Then we went on, paid our respects to Miss Webb (her brother having taken himself off on some “urgent business” or other), collected the post, admired the progress that had been made on cleaning up the place, and left.
Two circumstances alone cause me to provide so much detail regarding this boring little excursion. The first is that Cecelia reports several changes in the flow of magic around the house. Previously, the ley line ran strongly north toward the river but disappeared when it reached the gates of Haliwar Tower; the house and grounds had little or no magic associated with them—“stagnant” was the term Cecelia used to describe the feeling. Now, she says, the ley line has dimmed noticeably, and the house and grounds have a decided, though disorganized, sense of magic about them.
The second matter of note was the curious nature of the damage to the house itself. Haliwar Tower is an odd building to begin with; the tower is a great squat, round, thick-walled thing in the Norman style, though it was built by one of Cromwell’s followers in the 1600s. Two modern wings run off on either side, of somewhat later construction, and the tower had been faced in brick, presumably to make the contrast in style less obvious. In a reversal of the usual system, the family and guests are housed in the central tower, while the new wings are devoted to servants’ quarters, kitchens, and so on.
Judging from the commotion on the night of the fires, and from the widespread locations we found smoldering at the time, the disturbance affected the entire building. But in the sober light of day, it was plain that only the central tower had suffered any real damage, apart from that caused by the fires. All of the tower windows were broken; along the wings, the glass was intact. More significantly, the brick facing had crumbled away from the tower, showing some deuced peculiar stonework behind it.
The tower is only three stories high. The upper floors are built of mortared stone, uncut and irregular but nothing at all out of the way. The ground floor, however, showed three enormous, irregular lumps of granite—single stones at least four feet wide and between eight and twelve feet high—set at even intervals, with the spaces between filled in with stones of a more usual size. I rode around the house, under pretext of inspecting the damage for Miss Webb, and found the rear of the tower to be in much the same condition—broken windows, and enough of the brick peeled off to show four more of these granite rocks embedded in the stonework there.
I was not able to get a look at the interior of the tower, but I would be surprised indeed if there are not several more of those large stones in the section of the walls hidden by the new wings. Their significance eludes me, but I have sent off an express note to Michael Wrexton in hopes of enlightenment. While I cannot say that either architecture or Cromwellian history is within his usual area of expertise, I have no doubt that the library at the Royal College of Wizards can supply any of his deficiencies.
Meanwhile, I ride out tomorrow to a village bearing the unfortunate name of Goosepool, following the latest scent of my missing surveyor. There is some rumor of a foreigner disappearing from a farmhouse there, and while it seems unlikely that a railway surveyor would find it preferable to lodge at a farmhouse instead of at an inn in Darlington or Stockton, the timing seems right.
Are you still afflicted with your superfluous child, or has the lapse of an additional week been enough to discover her appropriate residence? I am desolated to inform you that my familiarity with the term laid couching derives primarily from my father’s occasional tirades on the rapacity of my mother’s dressmakers, which he was used to punctuate by reading off details from the bills. From that alone, I conclude that one would be well-inlaid indeed to spring for a petticoat adorned with such stitch work.
Waltham remains among the missing, so far as I am aware. Should he resurface, I shall send him your way at once. In deference to your preference for a calm, well-ordered life, I shall try to warn you of his coming in sufficient time to make your escape before he arrives, but a taste of his wife’s temper is the least he merits, after foisting that house party on us.
Yours,
James