The Wizard of London (6 page)

Originally,
they had resolved that the children of their friends back in the Punjab, at
least, would not have to face that kind of traumatic separation. Then, as their
reputation spread, especially among those with a bent for the arcane, other
children were sent to them. Now there was a mix of purely ordinary children,
and those, like Nan and Sarah, with more senses than five.

Here,
the children sent away in bewilderment by anxious parents fearing that they
would sicken in the hot foreign lands found, not a cold and alien place with
nothing they recognized, but the familiar sounds of Hindustani, the comfort and
coddling of a native nanny, and the familiar curries and rice to eat. Their new
home, if a little shabby, held furniture made familiar from their years in the
bungalows. But most of all, they were not told coldly to “be a man”
or “stop being a crybaby”—for here they found friendly
shoulders to weep out their homesickness on. If there were no French dancing
Masters and cricket teams here, there was a great deal of love and care; if the
furniture was unfashionable and shabby, the children were well-fed and rosy.

And
for a few—those with what the Hartons called
“Talents”—there were lessons of another sort, and their
parents would not dream of sending them anywhere but here.

It
never ceased to amaze Nan that more parents didn’t send their children to
the Harton School, but some folks mistakenly trusted relatives to take better
care of their precious ones than strangers, and some thought that a school
owned and operated by someone with a lofty reputation or a title was a wiser
choice for a boy child who would likely join the Civil Service when he came of
age. And as for the girls, there would always be those who felt that lessons by
French dancing masters and language teachers, lessons on the harp and in
watercolor painting, were more valuable than a sound education in the same
basics given to a boy.

Sometimes
these parents learned of their errors in judgment the hard way.

***

“Ready
for m’lesson, Mem’sab,” Nan called into the second-best
parlor, which was Mem’sab’s private domain. It was commonly
understood that sometimes Mem’sab had to do odd
things—“Important things that we don’t need to know
about,” Sarah said wisely—and she might have to do them at a
moment’s notice. So it was better to announce oneself at the door before
venturing over the threshold.

But
today Mem’sab was only reading a book, and looked up at Nan with a smile
that transformed her plain face and made her eyes bright and beautiful.

By
now Nan had seen plenty of ladies who dressed in finer stuffs than
Mem’sab’s simple Artistic gown of common fabric, made bright with
embroidery courtesy of Maya. Nan had seen the pictures of ladies who were
acknowledged Beauties like Mrs.Lillie Langtry, ladies who obviously spent many
hours in the hands of their dressers and hairdressers rather than pulling their
hair up into a simple chignon from which little curling strands of brown-gold were
always escaping. Mem’sab’s jewelry was not of diamonds and gold,
but odd, heavy pieces in silver and semiprecious gems. But in Nan’s eyes,
not one of those other ladies was worth wasting a single glance upon.

Then
again, Nan was a little prejudiced.

“Come
in, Nan,” the headmistress said, patting the flowered sofa beside her
invitingly. “You’re doing much better already, you know. You have a
quick ear.”

“Thankee,
Mem’sab,” Nan replied, flushing with pleasure. She, like any of the
servants, would gladly have laid down her life for Mem’sab Harton; they
all worshipped her blatantly, and a word of praise from their idol was worth
more than a pocketful of sovereigns. Nan sat gingerly down on the
chintz-covered sofa and smoothed her clean pinafore with an unconscious gesture
of pride.

Mem’sab
took a book of etiquette from the table beside her, and opened it, looking at
Nan expectantly. “Go ahead, dear.”

“Good
morning, ma’am. How do you do? I am quite well. I trust your family is
fine,” Nan began, and waited for Mem’sab’s response, which
would be her cue for the next polite phrase. The point here was not that Nan
needed to learn manners and mannerly speech, but that she needed to lose the
dreadful cadence of the streets which would doom her to poverty forever, quite
literally. Nan spoke the commonplace phrases slowly and with great care, as
much care as Sarah took over her French. An accurate analogy, since the
King’s English, as spoken by the middle and upper classes, was nearly as
much a foreign language to Nan as French and Latin were to Sarah.

She
had gotten the knack of it by thinking of it exactly as a foreign language,
once Mem’sab had proven to her how much better others would treat her if
she didn’t speak like a guttersnipe. She was still fluent in the language
of the streets, and often went out with Karamjit as a translator when he went
on errands that took him into the slums or the street markets. But gradually
her tongue became accustomed to the new cadences, and her habitual speech
marked her less as “untouchable.”

“Beautifully
done,” Mem’sab said warmly when Nan finished her recitation.
“Your new assignment will be to pick a poem and recite it to me, properly
spoken, and memorized.”

“I
think I’d loike—like—to do one uv Mr.Kipling’s,
Mem’sab,” Nan said shyly.

Mem’sab
laughed. “I hope you aren’t thinking of ‘Gunga Din,’
you naughty girl!” the woman mock-chided. “It had better be one
from the
Jungle Book
, or
Just So Stories
, not something
written in Cockney dialect!”

“Yes,
Mem’sab, I mean, no, Mem’sab,” Nan replied quickly.
“I’ll pick a right’un. Mebbe the lullaby for the White Seal?
You
mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old, or your head will be sunk
by your heels
—?” Ever since discovering Rudyard
Kipling’s stories, Nan had been completely enthralled; Mem’sab
often read them to the children as a go-to-bed treat, for the stories often
evoked memories of India for the children sent away.

“That
will do very well. Are you ready for the other lesson?” Mem’sab
asked, so casually that no one but Nan would have known that the “other
lesson” was one not taught in any other school in this part of the world.

“I—think
so.” Nan got up and closed the parlor door, signaling to all the world
that she and Mem’sab were not to be disturbed unless someone was dying or
the house was burning down.

For
the next half hour, Mem’sab turned over cards, and Nan called out the
next card before she turned it over. When the last of the fifty-two lay in the
face-up pile before her, Nan waited expectantly for the results.

“Not
at all bad; you had almost half of them, and all the colors right,”
Mem’sab said with content. Nan was disappointed; she knew that
Mem’sab could call out all fifty-two without an error, though Sarah could
only get the colors correctly.

“Sahib
brought me some things from the warehouse for you to try your
‘feeling’ on,” Mem’sab continued. “I truly think
that is where one of your true Talents lies, dear.”

Nan
sighed mournfully. “But knowin’ the cards would be a lot more
useful,” she complained.

“What,
so you can grow up to cheat foolish young men out of their inheritances?”
Now Mem’sab actually laughed out loud. “Try it, dear, and the Gift
will desert you at the time you need it most! No, be content with what you have
and learn to use it wisely, to help yourself and others.”

“But
card-sharpin’ would help me, an’ I could use the takin’s to
help others,” Nan couldn’t resist protesting, but she held out her
hand for the first object anyway.

It
was a carved beetle; very interesting, Nan thought, as she waited to
“feel” what it would tell her. It felt like pottery or stone, and
it was of a turquoise blue, shaded with pale brown. “It’s
old.” she said finally. Then, “Really old. Old as—Methusalum!
It was made for an important man, but not a king or anything.”

She
tried for more, but couldn’t sense anything else. “That’s
all,” she said, and handed it back to Mem’sab.

“Now
this.” The carved beetle that Mem’sab gave her was, for all intents
and purposes, identical to the one she’d just held, but immediately Nan
sensed the difference.

“Piff!
That ‘un’s new!” She also felt something else, something of
intent, a sensation she readily identified since it was one of the driving
forces behind commerce in Whitechapel. “Feller as made it figgers
he’s put one over on somebody.”

“Excellent,
dear!” Mem’sab nodded. “They are both scarabs, a kind of
good-luck carving found with mummies—which are, indeed, often as old as
Methuselah. The first one I knew was real, as I helped unwrap the mummy myself,
to make sure there was no unrest about the spirit. The second, however, was
from a shipment that Sahib suspected were fakes.”

Nan
nodded, interested to learn that this Gift of hers had some practical
application after all. “So could be I could tell people when they been
gammoned?”

“Very
likely, and quite likely that they would pay you for the knowledge, as long as
they don’t think that you are trying to fool them as well. Here, try
this.” The next object placed in Nan’s hand was a bit of jewelry, a
simple silver brooch with “gems” of cut iron. Nan dropped it as
soon as it touched her hand, overwhelmed by fear and horror.

“Lummy!”
she cried, without thinking. “He killed her!” She stared at the
horrible thing as it lay on the floor at her feet.

Who
“he” and “her” were, she had no sense of; that would
require more contact, which she did not want to have. But Mem’sab
didn’t seem at all surprised; she just shook her head very sadly and put
the brooch back in a little box which she closed without a word.

She
held out a child’s locket on a worn ribbon. “Don’t be afraid,
Nan,” she coaxed, when Nan was reluctant to accept it, “This one
isn’t bad, I promise you.” Nan took the locket gingerly, but broke
out into a smile when she got a feeling of warmth, contentment, and happiness.
She waited for other images to come, and sensed a tired, but exceedingly happy
woman, a proud man, and one—no, two strong and lively mites with the
woman.

Slyly,
Nan glanced up at her mentor. “She’s ‘ad twins,
’asn’t she?” Nan asked. “When was it?”

“I
just got the letter and the locket today, but it was about two months
ago,” Mem’sab replied. “The lady is my best friend in
India’s daughter, who was given that locket by her mother for luck just
before the birth of her children. She sent it to me to have it duplicated, as
she would like to present one to each little girl.”

“I’d
‘ave it taken apart, an’ put half of th‘ old ’un with
half of the new ‘un,” Nan suggested, and Mem’sab brightened
at the idea.

“An
excellent idea, and I will do just that. Now, dear, are you feeling tired? Have
you a headache? We’ve gone on longer than we did at your last
lesson.”

Nan
nodded, quite ready to admit to both.

Mem’sab
gave her still-thin shoulders a little hug, and sent her off to her afternoon
lessons. Nan had finally learned to relax and enjoy hugs; she’d never gotten
one from her mother and her gran had not been inclined to physical
demonstrations either. Her cheeks flushed with pleasure as she went off to her
lesson.

Figuring
came harder to Nan than reading; she’d already had some letters before
she had arrived, enough to spell out the signs on shops and stalls and the like
and make out a word here and there on a discarded broadsheet. When the full
mystery of letters had been disclosed to her, mastery had come as naturally as
breathing, and she was already able to read her beloved Kipling stories with
minimal prompting. But numbers were a mystery arcane, and she struggled with
the youngest of the children to comprehend what they meant. Anything past one
hundred baffled her for the moment, and Sarah did her best to help her friend.

After
Arithmetic came Geography, but for a child to whom Kensington Palace was the
end of the universe, it was harder to believe in the existence of Arabia than
of Fairyland, and heaven was quite as real and solid as South America, for she
reckoned that she had an equal chance of seeing either. As for how all those
odd names and shapes fit together… well!

History
came easier, although she didn’t yet grasp that it was as real as
yesterday, for to Nan it was just a chain of linking stories. Perhaps that was
why she loved the Kipling stories so much, for she often felt as out of place
as Mowgli when the human tribe tried to reclaim him.

At
the end of lessons Nan usually went to help Nadra and Mala in the nursery; the
children there, ranging in age from two to five, were a handful when it came to
getting them bathed and put to bed. They tried to put off bedtime as long as
possible; there were half a dozen of them, which was just enough that when
Nadra and Mala had finally gotten two of them into a bathtub, the other four
had slithered out, and were running about the nursery like dripping, naked
apes, screaming joyfully at their escape.

But
tonight, Karamjit came for Nan and Sarah as soon as the history lesson was
over, summoning them with a look and a gesture. As always, the African parrot
Grey sat on Sarah’s shoulder; she was so well-behaved, even to the point
of being housebroken, that she was allowed to be with her mistress from morning
to night. The handsome bird with the bright red tail had adapted very well to
this new sort of jungle when Sarah’s mother brought her to her daughter;
Sarah was very careful to keep her warm and out of drafts, and she ate
virtually the same food that the children did. Mem’sab seemed to
understand the kind of diet that let her thrive; she allowed her only a little
of the chicken and beef, and made certain that she filled up on carrots and
other vegetables before she got any of the curried rice she loved so much. In
fact, she often pointed to Grey as an example to the other children who would
rather have had sweets than green stuffs, telling them that Grey was smarter
than they were, for she knew what would make her grow big and strong. Being
unfavorably compared to a bird often made the difference with the little boys
in particular, who were behaving better at table since the parrot came to live
at the school.