Russell Square lies a kilometre north of Covent Garden on the other side of the British Museum. According to Nightingale, it was at the heart of a literary and philosophical movement in the early years of the last century, but I remember it because of an old horror movie about cannibals living in the Underground system. The address was on the south side of the square where a row of Georgian terraces had survived. They were five storeys high, counting the dormer conversions, with wrought-iron railings defending steep drops into basement flats. The address I wanted had a noticeably grander flight of stairs than its neighbours, leading to double mahogany doors with brass fittings. Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST. Science points East, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists? I hauled my rucksack and two suitcases up to the landing. I pressed the brass doorbell but I couldn’t hear it ring through the thick doors. After a moment, they opened on their own. It might have been the traffic noise, but I swear I didn’t hear a motor or any kind of mechanism at all. Toby whined and hid behind my legs. ‘That’s not creepy,’ I said. ‘Not even in the slightest.’ I pulled my suitcase through the doors. The entrance lobby had a mosaic floor in the Roman manner and a wooden and glass booth that, while in no way resembling a ticket booth, indicated that there was an inside and an outside to the building, and that one had better have permission if one wanted to proceed inside. Whatever this place was, it certainly wasn’t Nightingale’s private residence. Beyond the booth, flanked by two neoclassical pillars, was a marble statue of a man dressed in an academic gown and breeches. He cradled a mighty tome in one arm and a sextant in the other. His square face held an expression of implacable curiosity, and I knew his name even before I saw the plinth, which read: Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light. Nightingale was waiting for me by the statue. ‘Welcome to the Folly,’ he said, ‘the official home of English magic since 1775.’ ‘And your patron saint is Sir Isaac Newton?’ I asked. Nightingale grinned. ‘He was our founder, and the first man to systematise the practice of magic.’ ‘I was taught he invented modern science,’ I said. ‘He did both,’ said Nightingale. ‘That’s the nature of genius.’ Nightingale took me through a door into a rectangular atrium that dominated the centre of the building. Above me there were two rows of balconies, and an iron and glass Victorian dome formed the roof. Toby’s claws clicked on a floor of polished cream-coloured marble. It was very quiet, and for all that the place was spotless I got a strong sense of abandonment. ‘Through there is the big dining room which we don’t use any more, the lounge and smoking room, which we also don’t use.’ Nightingale pointed to doors on the other side of the atrium. ‘General library, lecture hall. Downstairs are the kitchens, sculleries and wine cellar. The back stairs, which are actually at the front, are over there. Coach house and mews are through the rear doors.’ ‘How many people live here?’ I asked. ‘Just the two of us. And Molly,’ said Nightingale. Toby suddenly crouched down at my feet and growled, a proper rat-in-the-kitchen growl that was all business. I looked over and saw a woman gliding towards us across the polished marble. She was slender and dressed like an Edwardian maid, complete with a starched white bib apron over a full black skirt and white cotton blouse. Her face didn’t fit her outfit, being too long and sharp-boned with black, almond-shaped eyed. Despite her mob cap she wore her hair loose, a black curtain that fell to her waist. She instantly gave me the creeps, and not just because I’ve seen too many Japanese horror films. ‘This is Molly,’ said Nightingale. ‘She does for us.’ ‘Does what?’ ‘Whatever needs doing,’ said Nightingale. Molly lowered her eyes and did an awkward little dip that might have been a curtsey or a bow. When Toby growled again Molly snarled back, showing disturbingly sharp teeth. ‘Molly,’ said Nightingale sharply. Molly demurely covered her mouth with her hand, turned and went gliding back the way she came. Toby gave a little self-satisfied snort that didn’t fool anyone but himself. ‘And she is…?’ I asked. ‘Indispensable,’ said Nightingale. Before we went up, Nightingale led me over to an alcove set into the north wall. There, resting on a pedestal like a household god, was a sealed museum case containing a copy of a leather-bound book. It was open to the title page. I leaned over and read: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis, Autore: I. S. Newton. ‘So not content with kicking off the scientific revolution, our boy Isaac invented magic?’ I asked. ‘Not invented,’ said Nightingale. ‘But he did codify its basic principles, made it somewhat less hit and miss.’ ‘Magic and science,’ I said. ‘What did he do for an encore?’ ‘Reformed the Royal Mint and saved the country from bankruptcy,’ said Nightingale. Apparently there were two main staircases; we took the eastern one up toe the first of the colonnaded balconies and a confusion of wood panelling and white dust sheets. Two more flights of stairs led us to a second-storey hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. He opened one, seemingly at random, and ushered me in. ‘This is yours,’ he said. It was twice the size of my room at the section house, with good proportions and a high ceiling. A brass double bed was shoved into one corner, a Narnia wardrobe in the other and a writing desk was between them, where it could catch the light from one of the two sash windows. Bookshelves covered two entire walls, empty except for what turned out on later inspection to be a complete set of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1913, a battered first edition of Brave New World and a Bible. What had obviously once been an open fireplace had been replaced with a gas fire surrounded by green ceramic tiles. The reading lamp on the desk had a faux-Japanese print shade and beside it was a Bakelite phone that had to be older than my father. There was a smell of dust and freshly applied furniture polish, and I guessed that this room had dreamed the last fifty years away under the white dust sheets. ‘When you’re ready, meet me downstairs,’ said Nightingale. ‘And make sure you’re presentable.’ I knew what that was about so I tried to stretch it, but it didn’t take me long to unpack.
---
You know you’re staying somewhere posh when the breakfast room is a completely different room and not the same place where you had dinner, only dressed up with different china. It faced south-east to catch the thin January light, and looked out over the coach house and mews. Despite the fact that only Nightingale and I were eating, all the tables had been laid and bore laundry-white tablecloths. You could have seated fifty people in there. Likewise the service table sported a line of silver-plated salvers with kippers, eggs, bacon, black pudding and a bowl full of rice, peas and flaked haddock that Nightingale identified as kedgeree. He seemed as taken aback by the amount of food as I was. ‘I think Molly may have become a little overenthusiastic,’ he said and helped himself to the kedgeree. I had a bit of everything and Toby got some sausages, some black pudding and a bowl of water. ‘There’s no way we can eat all this,’ I said. ‘What’s she going to do with all the leftovers?’ ‘I’ve learned not to ask those questions,’ said Nightingale. ‘Why’s that?’ ‘Because I’m not sure I want to know the answers,’ he said.
---
My first proper lesson in magic took place in one of the labs at the back of the first floor. The other labs had once been used for research projects but this one was for teaching, and indeed it looked just like a school chemistry lab. There were waist-high benches with gas taps for Bunsen burners placed at regular intervals and white porcelain basins sunk into the varnished wooden tops. There was even a poster of the periodic table on the wall missing, I noticed, all the elements discovered after World War Two. ‘First we need to fill up a sink,’ said Nightingale. He selected one and turned the tap at the base of its long, swan-necked spout. There was a distant knocking sound, the black swan neck shook, gurgled and then coughed up a gout of brown water. We both took a step backwards. ‘How long since you used this place?’ I asked. The knocking grew louder, faster and then water poured from the spout, dirty at fist but then clear. The knocking faded away. Nightingale put the plug in and let the basin fill three-quarters before closing the tap. ‘When you’re attempting this spell,’ he said, ‘always have a basin of water ready as a safety precaution.’ ‘Are we going to make fire?’ ‘Only if you do it wrong,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m going to make a demonstration and you must pay close attention – as you did when searching for vestigia. Do you understand?’ ‘Vestigia,’ I said. ‘Got it.’ Nightingale held out his right hand palm upwards and made a fist. ‘Watch my hand,’ he said and opened his fingers. Suddenly, floating a few centimetres above his palm was a ball of light. Bright, but not so bright that I couldn’t stare right at it. Nightingale closed his fingers and the globe vanished. ‘Again?’ he asked. Up until then I think a bit of me had been waiting for the rational explanation, but when I saw how casually Nightingale produced that werelight I realised that I had the rational explanation – magic worked. The next question of course was – how did it work? ‘Again,’ I said. He opened his hand and the light appeared. The source seemed to be the size of a golf ball with a smooth pearlescent surface. I leaned forward but I couldn’t tell whether the light emanated from inside the globe or from its skin. Nightingale closed his palm. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to damage your eyes.’ I blinked and saw purple blotches. He was right – I’d been fooled by the soft quality of the light into staring too long. I splashed some water in my eyes. ‘Ready to go again?’ asked Nightingale. ‘Try and focus on the sensation as I do it – you should feel something.’ ‘Something?’ I asked. ‘Magic is like music,’ said Nightingale. ‘Everyone hears it differently. The technical term we use is forma, but that’s no more helpful than “something”, is it?’ ‘Can I close my eyes?’ I asked. ‘By all means,’ said Nightingale. I did feel a ‘something’, like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation. We repeated the exercise until I was sure I wasn’t imagining it. Nightingale asked me if I had any questions. I asked him what the spell was called. ‘Colloquially it’s known as a werelight,’ he said. ‘Can you do it underwater?’ I asked. Nightingale plunged his hand into the sink and, despite the awkward angle, demonstrated forming a werelight without any apparent difficulty. ‘So it’s not a process of oxidisation, is it,’ I said. ‘Focus,’ said Nightingale. ‘Magic first, science later.’ I tried to focus, but on what? ‘In a minute,’ said Nightingale, ‘I’m going to ask you to open your hand in the same manner as I have demonstrated. As you open your hand I want you to make a shape in your mind that conforms to what you sensed when I created my werelight. Think of it as a key that opens a door. Do you understand?’ ‘Hand,’ I said. ‘Shape, key, lock, door.’ ‘Precisely,’ said Nightingale. ‘Start now.’ I took a deep breath, extended my arm and opened my fist – nothing happened. Nightingale didn’t laugh but I would have preferred it if he had. I took another breath, tried to ‘shape’ my mind, whatever that meant, and opened my hand again. […]
---
When I got back to the Folly I found Nightingale in the reading room on the first floor. This was a scattering of upholstered green leather armchairs, footstools and side tables. Glass-fronted mahogany bookcases lined two walls, but Nightingale had admitted to me that in the old days people had generally come here for a nap after lunch. He was doing the Telegraph crossword.
---
There’s nothing like excruciating pain for waking you up, so once it was clear I wasn’t going back to sleep I left my room and went looking for a snack. The basement of the Folly was a warren of rooms left over from when it boasted dozens of staff but I knew that the back stairs bottomed out next to the kitchen. Not wanting to disturb Molly, I padded down the steps as quietly as I could but as I reached the basement, I saw that the kitchen lights were on. As I got closer I heard Toby growl, then bark and then there was a strange rhythmic hissing sound. A good copper knows when not to announce his presence, so I crept to the kitchen door and peered in. Molly, still dressed in her maid’s outfit, was perched on the edge of the scarred oak table that dominated one side of the kitchen. Beside her on the table was a beige ceramic mixing bowl and sitting, some three metres in front of her, was Toby. Since the door was behind her shoulder Molly didn’t see me watching as she dipped her hand into the mixing bowl and lifted out a cube of chopped meat – raw enough to be dripping. […]
---
You don’t tell your governor that you need a broadband connection, cable for preference, because you want to watch football. You tell him that you need the internet so you can access HOLMES directly instead of having contstantly to rely on Lesley May. The football coverage, movies on demand and multiplayer console games are all merely serendipitous extras. ‘Would this involve physically running a cable into the Folly?’ asked Nightingale when I tackled him during practice in the lab. ‘That’s why they call it cable,’ I said. ‘Left hand,’ said Nightingale, and I dutifully produced a werelight with my left hand. ‘Sustain it,’ said Nightingale. ‘We can’t have anything physically entering the building.’ I’d got to the point where I could talk while sustaining a werelight, although it was a strain to make it look as casual as I did. ‘Why not?’ ‘There’s a series of protections woven around the building,’ said Nightingale. ‘They were last set up after the new phone lines were put in in 1941. If we introduce a new physical connection with the outside, it would create a weak spot.’ I stopped trying to be casual and concentrated on maintaining the werelight. It was a relief when Nightingale told me to stop. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I think you’re almost ready to move on to the next form.’ I dropped the werelight and caught my breath. Nightingale wandered over to the adjoining bench, where I’d dismantled my old mobile phone and set up a microscope I’d found in a mahogany case in one of the storage cupboards. […] ‘You’re about to suggest the coach house,’ said Nightingale. ‘Sir?’ ‘For this cable connection,’ said Nightingale. ‘The heavy defences tended to disturb the horses, so they skirt the coach house. I’m sure this cable connection of yours will be very useful.’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘For all manner of entertainments,’ continued Nightingale. ‘Sir.’ ‘Now,’ said Nightingale. ‘The next form – Impello.’
I couldn’t tell whether the coach house had originally been built with a first floor, to house footmen or whatever, which had then been knocked through in 1920s, or whether the flood had been added by sticking a new ceiling on the garage when they bricked up the main gate. At some point someone had bolted a rather beautiful wrought-iron spiral staircase to the courtyard wall. When I’d first ventured up, I was surprised to find that a good third of the sloping roof on the south-facing side had been glazed. The glass was dirty on the outside and some of the panes were cracked, but it let in enough daylight to reveal a jumble of shapes shrouded by dust sheets. Unlike those in the rest of the Folly, these sheets were furry with dust – I don’t think Molly had every cleaned in there. If the chaise lounge, Chinese screen, mismatched side tables and collection of ceramic fruit bowls that I found under the sheets weren’t enough of a clue, I also found an easel and a box full of squirrel-hair paint brushes gone rigid with disuse. Somebody had used the rooms as a studio, judging from the empty beer bottles neatly lined up against the south wall. Probably apprentices like me – that, or a wizard with a serious alcohol problem. Stacked in the corner and carefully wrapped in brown paper and string were a series of canvases, painted in oils. These included a number of still lives, a rather amateurish portrait of a young woman whose discomfort was palpable, despite the sloppy execution. The next was much more professional – an Edwardian gentleman reclining in the same wickerwork chair I’d found under a dust sheet earlier. The man was holding a silver-topped cane and for a moment I thought he might be Nightingale, but the man was older and his eyes were an intense blue. Nightingale senior, perhaps? The next, probably by the same painter, was a nude with a subject that so shocked me I took it to the skylight to get a better look. I hadn’t made a mistake. There was Molly, reclining pale and naked on the chaise lounge, staring out of the canvas with heavy-lidded eyes, one hand dipping into a bowl of cherries placed on a table by her side. At least, I hope they were cherries. The painting was in the impressionist style so the brush strokes were bold, making it hard to tell: they were definitely small and red, the same colour as Molly’s lips. I carefully rewrapped the paintings and put them back where I’d found them. I did a cursory check of the room for damp, dry rot and whatever it is that makes wooden beams crumbly and dangerous. I found that there was still a shuttered loading door at the courtyard end of the room and mounted above it, a hoisting beam. Presumably to serve a hayloft for the coach horses. […] This, I thought, will do nicely. At one time or other most of my mum’s relatives had cleaned offices for a living. For a certain generation of African immigrants cleaning offices became part of the culture like male circumcision and supporting Arsenal. My mum had done a stint herself and had often taken me with her to save on babysitting. When an African mum takes her son to work she expects her son to work so I quickly learnt how to handle a broom and a window cloth. So the next day after practice, I returned to the coach house with a packet of Marigold gloves and my Uncle Tito’s Numatic vacuum cleaner. Let me tell you, 1,000 watts of suckage makes a big difference when cleaning a room. The only thing I had to worry about was causing a rift in the space-time fabric of the universe. I found the window cleaners online and a pair of bickering Romanians scrubbed up the skylight while I rigged up a pulley to the hoisting beam, just in time for the TV to be delivered along with the fridge. […] To inaugurate my re-entry into the twenty-first century I ordered some pizza and invited Lesley round to see my etchings. I had a long soak in the claw-footed porcelain tub that dominated the communal bathroom on my floor and swore, not for the first time, that I was definitely going to install a shower. I’m not a peacock but on occasion I like to dress to impress, although like most coppers I don’t wear much in the way of bling, the rule being never wear something round your neck that you don’t want to be strangled with. […] Among the many other modern innovations that I’d introduced to the coach house was an entryphone installed on the garage’s side door, so that when Lesley arrived all I had to do was buzz her in. I opened the door and met her at the top of the spiral staircase – she’d brought company. […]
---
The cupboards in the lab were full of the scent of sandalwood and the most amazing range of antique equipment, including the Charles Perry microscope, all put away with such precision and tidiness that I knew no student had been involved.
---
The Folly has three libraries: one, I didn’t know about back then, number two was a magical library where the direct treatise on spells, forma and alchemy were kept, all of them written in Latin and so all Greek to me, and number three was the general library on the first flood next to the reading room. The division of labour was clear from the start: Nightingale checked the magic library, and I hit the books in the Queen’s English. The general library was lined with enough mahogany to reforest the Amazon basin. On one wall the stacks went all the way to the ceiling, and you reached the top shelves by using a ladder that slid along on shining brass rails. A row of beautiful walnut cabinets held the index cards, which were the closest thing the library had to a search engine. I caught a whiff of old cardboard and mildew when I opened the drawers, and it comforted me to think that Molly didn’t fo so far as to open them up regularly and clean inside. The cards were arranged by subject, with a master index arranged by title. […]
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Just because I had an active case didn’t mean I was excused practice. I’d persuaded Nightingale to show me the fireball spell, which was, not surprisingly, a variation on Lux, with Iactus to move it about. Once Nightingale was convinced I could do the first part without burning my hand off, we went down to the firing range in the basement to practice. Not that I had known we had a firing range until then. At the bottom of the back stairs you turned left instead of right, through a set of reinforced doors that I’d always assumed was a coal store, and into a room fifty metres long with a wall of sandbags at one end and a line of metal lockers at the other. A row of vintage Brodie helmets hung from pegs above a line of khaki gasmask cases. There was a poster, white lettering on a blood-red background, that said: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, which I thought was good advice. There was a stack of cardboard silhouettes at the target end, brittle with age but still discernable as German soldiers with coal-scuttle helmets and fixed bayonets.
---
It was as if the solid black and white tiles had been rendered transparent, and through them I could glimpse a terrible abyss – dark, bottomless and cold. I tried to move faster but it was like walking into a violent headwind. I had to lean forward and push hard to make progress. It wasn’t until I’d carefully steered myself through the narrow servants’ quarters under the east stairs that I wondered whether, this being the realm of ghosts, after all, I might just walk through the walls.
---
The Folly, according to Nightingale, is secured by an interlocking series of magical protections. They were last renewed in 1940, to allow the Post Office to run in a then cutting-edge coaxial telephone cable to the main building, and the installation of a modern switchboard. I’d found that under a dust sheet in an alcove off the main entrance lobby, a beautiful glass and mahogany cabinet with brass fittings kept shiny by Molly’s obsessive need to polish. Nightingale says that these protections are vital, although he won’t say why, and that he, acting on his own, is not capable of renewing them. Running a broadband cable into the building was out of the question, and it looked for a while like I was going to be firmly mired in the dark ages. Fortunately, the Folly had been built in the Regency style, when it had become fashionable to build a separate mews at the back of a grand house so that the horses and the smellier servants could be housed down-wind of their masters. This meant a coach house at the back, now used as a garage, and above that an attic conversion that had once accommodated servants and then served as a party space for the young bucks, back when the Folly had young bucks. Or at least, more than one. The magical ‘protections’ – Nightingale was not happy when I called them ‘forcefields’ – used to scare the horses, so they don’t extend to the coach house. Which means I get to run in a broadband cable, and at last there is a corner of the Folly that is forever in the twenty-first century. The coach house attic has a studio skylight at one end, an ottoman couch, a chaise lounge, a plasma TV and an Ikea kitchen table that once took me and Molly three bloody hours to assemble. I’d used the Folly’s status as an Operational Command Unit to get the Directorate of Information to cough up half a dozen Airwave handsets with charging rack, and a dedicated HOLMES2 terminal. I also had my laptop and my back-up laptop and my PlayStation – which I hadn’t had a chance to get out of the box yet. Because of this, there is a big sign on the front door that says NO MAGIC ON PAIN OF PAIN. This is what I call the tech cave.
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Molly shot me a reproachful look and went gliding off towards the kitchen. Dr Walid led me over to a collection of overstuffed red armchairs and mahogany occasional tables that nestled under the overhand of the eastern balcony. […]
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We were eating dinner in the so-called Private Dining Room, which adjoined the English library on the first floor. Since the main dining room could sit sixty, we never used it in case Molly got it into her head to lay all the tables. Nevertheless me and Nightingale had dressed for dinner – we both have standards, and one of us had been exerting himself that afternoon.
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The Folly sits on the south side of Russel Square, the centre of which is occupied by a park with fixed gravel paths, big trees which I didn’t know the names of, a fountain that was specifically designed to get children and small dogs soaking wet and on the north side, a café which does a decent double sausage, bacon, black pudding, egg and chips. It was actually quite sunny, so I sat on the terrace outside the café and mechanically shovelled the food into my face. It really didn’t taste of anything, and in the end I put my plate on the floor and let Toby finish it off. I walked back to the Folly and in through the main door, where there was a drift of junk mail. I scooped it up. It was mostly flyers for local pizza joints and kebab houses, although there was one crudely designed leaflet from a Ghanian fortune-teller who felt we could only benefit from his insight into future events. I dropped the lot into the magazine rack that Molly leaves in the atrium for that purpose. […]
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musetrash2012-06-05 01:36 am
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The address was on the south side of the square where a row of Georgian terraces had survived. They were five storeys high, counting the dormer conversions, with wrought-iron railings defending steep drops into basement flats. The address I wanted had a noticeably grander flight of stairs than its neighbours, leading to double mahogany doors with brass fittings. Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST.
Science points East, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?
I hauled my rucksack and two suitcases up to the landing. I pressed the brass doorbell but I couldn’t hear it ring through the thick doors. After a moment, they opened on their own. It might have been the traffic noise, but I swear I didn’t hear a motor or any kind of mechanism at all. Toby whined and hid behind my legs.
‘That’s not creepy,’ I said. ‘Not even in the slightest.’
I pulled my suitcase through the doors.
The entrance lobby had a mosaic floor in the Roman manner and a wooden and glass booth that, while in no way resembling a ticket booth, indicated that there was an inside and an outside to the building, and that one had better have permission if one wanted to proceed inside. Whatever this place was, it certainly wasn’t Nightingale’s private residence.
Beyond the booth, flanked by two neoclassical pillars, was a marble statue of a man dressed in an academic gown and breeches. He cradled a mighty tome in one arm and a sextant in the other. His square face held an expression of implacable curiosity, and I knew his name even before I saw the plinth, which read:
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light.
Nightingale was waiting for me by the statue. ‘Welcome to the Folly,’ he said, ‘the official home of English magic since 1775.’
‘And your patron saint is Sir Isaac Newton?’ I asked.
Nightingale grinned. ‘He was our founder, and the first man to systematise the practice of magic.’
‘I was taught he invented modern science,’ I said.
‘He did both,’ said Nightingale. ‘That’s the nature of genius.’
Nightingale took me through a door into a rectangular atrium that dominated the centre of the building. Above me there were two rows of balconies, and an iron and glass Victorian dome formed the roof. Toby’s claws clicked on a floor of polished cream-coloured marble. It was very quiet, and for all that the place was spotless I got a strong sense of abandonment.
‘Through there is the big dining room which we don’t use any more, the lounge and smoking room, which we also don’t use.’ Nightingale pointed to doors on the other side of the atrium. ‘General library, lecture hall. Downstairs are the kitchens, sculleries and wine cellar. The back stairs, which are actually at the front, are over there. Coach house and mews are through the rear doors.’
‘How many people live here?’ I asked.
‘Just the two of us. And Molly,’ said Nightingale.
Toby suddenly crouched down at my feet and growled, a proper rat-in-the-kitchen growl that was all business. I looked over and saw a woman gliding towards us across the polished marble. She was slender and dressed like an Edwardian maid, complete with a starched white bib apron over a full black skirt and white cotton blouse. Her face didn’t fit her outfit, being too long and sharp-boned with black, almond-shaped eyed. Despite her mob cap she wore her hair loose, a black curtain that fell to her waist. She instantly gave me the creeps, and not just because I’ve seen too many Japanese horror films.
‘This is Molly,’ said Nightingale. ‘She does for us.’
‘Does what?’
‘Whatever needs doing,’ said Nightingale.
Molly lowered her eyes and did an awkward little dip that might have been a curtsey or a bow. When Toby growled again Molly snarled back, showing disturbingly sharp teeth.
‘Molly,’ said Nightingale sharply.
Molly demurely covered her mouth with her hand, turned and went gliding back the way she came. Toby gave a little self-satisfied snort that didn’t fool anyone but himself.
‘And she is…?’ I asked.
‘Indispensable,’ said Nightingale.
Before we went up, Nightingale led me over to an alcove set into the north wall. There, resting on a pedestal like a household god, was a sealed museum case containing a copy of a leather-bound book. It was open to the title page. I leaned over and read: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis, Autore: I. S. Newton.
‘So not content with kicking off the scientific revolution, our boy Isaac invented magic?’ I asked.
‘Not invented,’ said Nightingale. ‘But he did codify its basic principles, made it somewhat less hit and miss.’
‘Magic and science,’ I said. ‘What did he do for an encore?’
‘Reformed the Royal Mint and saved the country from bankruptcy,’ said Nightingale.
Apparently there were two main staircases; we took the eastern one up toe the first of the colonnaded balconies and a confusion of wood panelling and white dust sheets. Two more flights of stairs led us to a second-storey hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. He opened one, seemingly at random, and ushered me in.
‘This is yours,’ he said.
It was twice the size of my room at the section house, with good proportions and a high ceiling. A brass double bed was shoved into one corner, a Narnia wardrobe in the other and a writing desk was between them, where it could catch the light from one of the two sash windows. Bookshelves covered two entire walls, empty except for what turned out on later inspection to be a complete set of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1913, a battered first edition of Brave New World and a Bible. What had obviously once been an open fireplace had been replaced with a gas fire surrounded by green ceramic tiles. The reading lamp on the desk had a faux-Japanese print shade and beside it was a Bakelite phone that had to be older than my father. There was a smell of dust and freshly applied furniture polish, and I guessed that this room had dreamed the last fifty years away under the white dust sheets.
‘When you’re ready, meet me downstairs,’ said Nightingale. ‘And make sure you’re presentable.’
I knew what that was about so I tried to stretch it, but it didn’t take me long to unpack.
---
You know you’re staying somewhere posh when the breakfast room is a completely different room and not the same place where you had dinner, only dressed up with different china. It faced south-east to catch the thin January light, and looked out over the coach house and mews. Despite the fact that only Nightingale and I were eating, all the tables had been laid and bore laundry-white tablecloths. You could have seated fifty people in there. Likewise the service table sported a line of silver-plated salvers with kippers, eggs, bacon, black pudding and a bowl full of rice, peas and flaked haddock that Nightingale identified as kedgeree. He seemed as taken aback by the amount of food as I was.
‘I think Molly may have become a little overenthusiastic,’ he said and helped himself to the kedgeree. I had a bit of everything and Toby got some sausages, some black pudding and a bowl of water.
‘There’s no way we can eat all this,’ I said. ‘What’s she going to do with all the leftovers?’
‘I’ve learned not to ask those questions,’ said Nightingale.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I’m not sure I want to know the answers,’ he said.
---
My first proper lesson in magic took place in one of the labs at the back of the first floor. The other labs had once been used for research projects but this one was for teaching, and indeed it looked just like a school chemistry lab. There were waist-high benches with gas taps for Bunsen burners placed at regular intervals and white porcelain basins sunk into the varnished wooden tops. There was even a poster of the periodic table on the wall missing, I noticed, all the elements discovered after World War Two.
‘First we need to fill up a sink,’ said Nightingale. He selected one and turned the tap at the base of its long, swan-necked spout. There was a distant knocking sound, the black swan neck shook, gurgled and then coughed up a gout of brown water.
We both took a step backwards.
‘How long since you used this place?’ I asked.
The knocking grew louder, faster and then water poured from the spout, dirty at fist but then clear. The knocking faded away. Nightingale put the plug in and let the basin fill three-quarters before closing the tap.
‘When you’re attempting this spell,’ he said, ‘always have a basin of water ready as a safety precaution.’
‘Are we going to make fire?’
‘Only if you do it wrong,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m going to make a demonstration and you must pay close attention – as you did when searching for vestigia. Do you understand?’
‘Vestigia,’ I said. ‘Got it.’
Nightingale held out his right hand palm upwards and made a fist. ‘Watch my hand,’ he said and opened his fingers. Suddenly, floating a few centimetres above his palm was a ball of light. Bright, but not so bright that I couldn’t stare right at it.
Nightingale closed his fingers and the globe vanished. ‘Again?’ he asked.
Up until then I think a bit of me had been waiting for the rational explanation, but when I saw how casually Nightingale produced that werelight I realised that I had the rational explanation – magic worked. The next question of course was – how did it work?
‘Again,’ I said.
He opened his hand and the light appeared. The source seemed to be the size of a golf ball with a smooth pearlescent surface. I leaned forward but I couldn’t tell whether the light emanated from inside the globe or from its skin.
Nightingale closed his palm. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to damage your eyes.’
I blinked and saw purple blotches. He was right – I’d been fooled by the soft quality of the light into staring too long. I splashed some water in my eyes.
‘Ready to go again?’ asked Nightingale. ‘Try and focus on the sensation as I do it – you should feel something.’
‘Something?’ I asked.
‘Magic is like music,’ said Nightingale. ‘Everyone hears it differently. The technical term we use is forma, but that’s no more helpful than “something”, is it?’
‘Can I close my eyes?’ I asked.
‘By all means,’ said Nightingale.
I did feel a ‘something’, like a catch in the silence at the moment of creation. We repeated the exercise until I was sure I wasn’t imagining it. Nightingale asked me if I had any questions. I asked him what the spell was called.
‘Colloquially it’s known as a werelight,’ he said.
‘Can you do it underwater?’ I asked.
Nightingale plunged his hand into the sink and, despite the awkward angle, demonstrated forming a werelight without any apparent difficulty.
‘So it’s not a process of oxidisation, is it,’ I said.
‘Focus,’ said Nightingale. ‘Magic first, science later.’
I tried to focus, but on what?
‘In a minute,’ said Nightingale, ‘I’m going to ask you to open your hand in the same manner as I have demonstrated. As you open your hand I want you to make a shape in your mind that conforms to what you sensed when I created my werelight. Think of it as a key that opens a door. Do you understand?’
‘Hand,’ I said. ‘Shape, key, lock, door.’
‘Precisely,’ said Nightingale. ‘Start now.’
I took a deep breath, extended my arm and opened my fist – nothing happened. Nightingale didn’t laugh but I would have preferred it if he had. I took another breath, tried to ‘shape’ my mind, whatever that meant, and opened my hand again.
[…]
---
When I got back to the Folly I found Nightingale in the reading room on the first floor. This was a scattering of upholstered green leather armchairs, footstools and side tables. Glass-fronted mahogany bookcases lined two walls, but Nightingale had admitted to me that in the old days people had generally come here for a nap after lunch. He was doing the Telegraph crossword.
---
There’s nothing like excruciating pain for waking you up, so once it was clear I wasn’t going back to sleep I left my room and went looking for a snack. The basement of the Folly was a warren of rooms left over from when it boasted dozens of staff but I knew that the back stairs bottomed out next to the kitchen. Not wanting to disturb Molly, I padded down the steps as quietly as I could but as I reached the basement, I saw that the kitchen lights were on. As I got closer I heard Toby growl, then bark and then there was a strange rhythmic hissing sound. A good copper knows when not to announce his presence, so I crept to the kitchen door and peered in.
Molly, still dressed in her maid’s outfit, was perched on the edge of the scarred oak table that dominated one side of the kitchen. Beside her on the table was a beige ceramic mixing bowl and sitting, some three metres in front of her, was Toby. Since the door was behind her shoulder Molly didn’t see me watching as she dipped her hand into the mixing bowl and lifted out a cube of chopped meat – raw enough to be dripping.
[…]
---
You don’t tell your governor that you need a broadband connection, cable for preference, because you want to watch football. You tell him that you need the internet so you can access HOLMES directly instead of having contstantly to rely on Lesley May. The football coverage, movies on demand and multiplayer console games are all merely serendipitous extras.
‘Would this involve physically running a cable into the Folly?’ asked Nightingale when I tackled him during practice in the lab.
‘That’s why they call it cable,’ I said.
‘Left hand,’ said Nightingale, and I dutifully produced a werelight with my left hand.
‘Sustain it,’ said Nightingale. ‘We can’t have anything physically entering the building.’
I’d got to the point where I could talk while sustaining a werelight, although it was a strain to make it look as casual as I did. ‘Why not?’
‘There’s a series of protections woven around the building,’ said Nightingale. ‘They were last set up after the new phone lines were put in in 1941. If we introduce a new physical connection with the outside, it would create a weak spot.’
I stopped trying to be casual and concentrated on maintaining the werelight. It was a relief when Nightingale told me to stop.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I think you’re almost ready to move on to the next form.’
I dropped the werelight and caught my breath. Nightingale wandered over to the adjoining bench, where I’d dismantled my old mobile phone and set up a microscope I’d found in a mahogany case in one of the storage cupboards.
[…]
‘You’re about to suggest the coach house,’ said Nightingale.
‘Sir?’
‘For this cable connection,’ said Nightingale. ‘The heavy defences tended to disturb the horses, so they skirt the coach house. I’m sure this cable connection of yours will be very useful.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘For all manner of entertainments,’ continued Nightingale.
‘Sir.’
‘Now,’ said Nightingale. ‘The next form – Impello.’
no subject
If the chaise lounge, Chinese screen, mismatched side tables and collection of ceramic fruit bowls that I found under the sheets weren’t enough of a clue, I also found an easel and a box full of squirrel-hair paint brushes gone rigid with disuse. Somebody had used the rooms as a studio, judging from the empty beer bottles neatly lined up against the south wall. Probably apprentices like me – that, or a wizard with a serious alcohol problem.
Stacked in the corner and carefully wrapped in brown paper and string were a series of canvases, painted in oils. These included a number of still lives, a rather amateurish portrait of a young woman whose discomfort was palpable, despite the sloppy execution. The next was much more professional – an Edwardian gentleman reclining in the same wickerwork chair I’d found under a dust sheet earlier. The man was holding a silver-topped cane and for a moment I thought he might be Nightingale, but the man was older and his eyes were an intense blue. Nightingale senior, perhaps? The next, probably by the same painter, was a nude with a subject that so shocked me I took it to the skylight to get a better look. I hadn’t made a mistake. There was Molly, reclining pale and naked on the chaise lounge, staring out of the canvas with heavy-lidded eyes, one hand dipping into a bowl of cherries placed on a table by her side. At least, I hope they were cherries. The painting was in the impressionist style so the brush strokes were bold, making it hard to tell: they were definitely small and red, the same colour as Molly’s lips.
I carefully rewrapped the paintings and put them back where I’d found them. I did a cursory check of the room for damp, dry rot and whatever it is that makes wooden beams crumbly and dangerous. I found that there was still a shuttered loading door at the courtyard end of the room and mounted above it, a hoisting beam. Presumably to serve a hayloft for the coach horses.
[…]
This, I thought, will do nicely.
At one time or other most of my mum’s relatives had cleaned offices for a living. For a certain generation of African immigrants cleaning offices became part of the culture like male circumcision and supporting Arsenal. My mum had done a stint herself and had often taken me with her to save on babysitting. When an African mum takes her son to work she expects her son to work so I quickly learnt how to handle a broom and a window cloth. So the next day after practice, I returned to the coach house with a packet of Marigold gloves and my Uncle Tito’s Numatic vacuum cleaner. Let me tell you, 1,000 watts of suckage makes a big difference when cleaning a room. The only thing I had to worry about was causing a rift in the space-time fabric of the universe. I found the window cleaners online and a pair of bickering Romanians scrubbed up the skylight while I rigged up a pulley to the hoisting beam, just in time for the TV to be delivered along with the fridge.
[…]
To inaugurate my re-entry into the twenty-first century I ordered some pizza and invited Lesley round to see my etchings. I had a long soak in the claw-footed porcelain tub that dominated the communal bathroom on my floor and swore, not for the first time, that I was definitely going to install a shower. I’m not a peacock but on occasion I like to dress to impress, although like most coppers I don’t wear much in the way of bling, the rule being never wear something round your neck that you don’t want to be strangled with.
[…]
Among the many other modern innovations that I’d introduced to the coach house was an entryphone installed on the garage’s side door, so that when Lesley arrived all I had to do was buzz her in.
I opened the door and met her at the top of the spiral staircase – she’d brought company.
[…]
---
The cupboards in the lab were full of the scent of sandalwood and the most amazing range of antique equipment, including the Charles Perry microscope, all put away with such precision and tidiness that I knew no student had been involved.
---
The Folly has three libraries: one, I didn’t know about back then, number two was a magical library where the direct treatise on spells, forma and alchemy were kept, all of them written in Latin and so all Greek to me, and number three was the general library on the first flood next to the reading room. The division of labour was clear from the start: Nightingale checked the magic library, and I hit the books in the Queen’s English.
The general library was lined with enough mahogany to reforest the Amazon basin. On one wall the stacks went all the way to the ceiling, and you reached the top shelves by using a ladder that slid along on shining brass rails. A row of beautiful walnut cabinets held the index cards, which were the closest thing the library had to a search engine. I caught a whiff of old cardboard and mildew when I opened the drawers, and it comforted me to think that Molly didn’t fo so far as to open them up regularly and clean inside. The cards were arranged by subject, with a master index arranged by title.
[…]
---
Just because I had an active case didn’t mean I was excused practice. I’d persuaded Nightingale to show me the fireball spell, which was, not surprisingly, a variation on Lux, with Iactus to move it about. Once Nightingale was convinced I could do the first part without burning my hand off, we went down to the firing range in the basement to practice. Not that I had known we had a firing range until then. At the bottom of the back stairs you turned left instead of right, through a set of reinforced doors that I’d always assumed was a coal store, and into a room fifty metres long with a wall of sandbags at one end and a line of metal lockers at the other. A row of vintage Brodie helmets hung from pegs above a line of khaki gasmask cases. There was a poster, white lettering on a blood-red background, that said: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, which I thought was good advice. There was a stack of cardboard silhouettes at the target end, brittle with age but still discernable as German soldiers with coal-scuttle helmets and fixed bayonets.
---
It was as if the solid black and white tiles had been rendered transparent, and through them I could glimpse a terrible abyss – dark, bottomless and cold. I tried to move faster but it was like walking into a violent headwind. I had to lean forward and push hard to make progress. It wasn’t until I’d carefully steered myself through the narrow servants’ quarters under the east stairs that I wondered whether, this being the realm of ghosts, after all, I might just walk through the walls.
---
The Folly, according to Nightingale, is secured by an interlocking series of magical protections. They were last renewed in 1940, to allow the Post Office to run in a then cutting-edge coaxial telephone cable to the main building, and the installation of a modern switchboard. I’d found that under a dust sheet in an alcove off the main entrance lobby, a beautiful glass and mahogany cabinet with brass fittings kept shiny by Molly’s obsessive need to polish.
Nightingale says that these protections are vital, although he won’t say why, and that he, acting on his own, is not capable of renewing them. Running a broadband cable into the building was out of the question, and it looked for a while like I was going to be firmly mired in the dark ages.
Fortunately, the Folly had been built in the Regency style, when it had become fashionable to build a separate mews at the back of a grand house so that the horses and the smellier servants could be housed down-wind of their masters. This meant a coach house at the back, now used as a garage, and above that an attic conversion that had once accommodated servants and then served as a party space for the young bucks, back when the Folly had young bucks. Or at least, more than one. The magical ‘protections’ – Nightingale was not happy when I called them ‘forcefields’ – used to scare the horses, so they don’t extend to the coach house. Which means I get to run in a broadband cable, and at last there is a corner of the Folly that is forever in the twenty-first century.
The coach house attic has a studio skylight at one end, an ottoman couch, a chaise lounge, a plasma TV and an Ikea kitchen table that once took me and Molly three bloody hours to assemble. I’d used the Folly’s status as an Operational Command Unit to get the Directorate of Information to cough up half a dozen Airwave handsets with charging rack, and a dedicated HOLMES2 terminal. I also had my laptop and my back-up laptop and my PlayStation – which I hadn’t had a chance to get out of the box yet. Because of this, there is a big sign on the front door that says NO MAGIC ON PAIN OF PAIN. This is what I call the tech cave.
---
Molly shot me a reproachful look and went gliding off towards the kitchen. Dr Walid led me over to a collection of overstuffed red armchairs and mahogany occasional tables that nestled under the overhand of the eastern balcony.
[…]
---
We were eating dinner in the so-called Private Dining Room, which adjoined the English library on the first floor. Since the main dining room could sit sixty, we never used it in case Molly got it into her head to lay all the tables. Nevertheless me and Nightingale had dressed for dinner – we both have standards, and one of us had been exerting himself that afternoon.
---
The Folly sits on the south side of Russel Square, the centre of which is occupied by a park with fixed gravel paths, big trees which I didn’t know the names of, a fountain that was specifically designed to get children and small dogs soaking wet and on the north side, a café which does a decent double sausage, bacon, black pudding, egg and chips. It was actually quite sunny, so I sat on the terrace outside the café and mechanically shovelled the food into my face. It really didn’t taste of anything, and in the end I put my plate on the floor and let Toby finish it off.
I walked back to the Folly and in through the main door, where there was a drift of junk mail. I scooped it up. It was mostly flyers for local pizza joints and kebab houses, although there was one crudely designed leaflet from a Ghanian fortune-teller who felt we could only benefit from his insight into future events. I dropped the lot into the magazine rack that Molly leaves in the atrium for that purpose.
[…]