“Occitania.” She paused. “I wonder if Jemima Ramsay did elope there.”
“Either way, he couldn’t work for Kendricks.”
“No… Except…” She chose her words with care. “That book looked genuine. And if it is, he might have other things she owned. Like books that aren’t illegible. Or secret records, of her hexes, and…”
“Her enchantments!”
“Yes. Things worth a pretty penny, if he sold them. And even if he wasn’t a spy, he might be tempted to take them where they’re wanted. What other option would he have now?”
“You think I turned him down too rashly?”
“Not at all. You’re so perceptive, Conrad, when it comes to character, and you’re exactly right to value loyalty. I simply think this chap requires a watchful eye. That’s easier if he works for you.”
As he reflected, Conrad cupped his chin. “I could employ him, but in a reduced capacity. He’d only be permitted to craft the dolls; not lay enchantments, or be present when the Sorcerers do so. I’d inform the family he can’t be privy to details of how enchantments work.”
“Until he’d earned your trust.”
“Understand, he may never deserve it. But if we hold the magic out as a reward, he’ll stay, and we’ll have him where we can see him. Quickly, catch him up – he can’t have got too far.”
She ran until she’d cleared the bend in the path, then slowed her pace despite her orders. Let Larkin reach the pub, and stew a little; maybe feel the disappointment of his hopes. She wanted him to be grateful for any offer; then he wouldn’t challenge Conrad’s conditions. She strategised this way in Conrad’s interest, anticipating factors he often overlooked. Wealth had made him a poor judge of other people’s motivations and reactions. So often, money had allowed him not to care how other people felt at all.
3
When Persephone Kendrick was six years old, her father built her a dolls’ house. At Kendricks Workshop this was the old, unquestioned way of things; the making of dolls’ houses is always about fathers and daughters.
Persephone had provided him with the rudiments of what she wanted. Two bedrooms – one for a parent; one for a child. A bathroom painted citrine. Real electric lights. He had drawn a sketch, of how the house would look, holding his pencil slightly crooked. His thumbs were misshapen, because he had broken them in fights many times over, and he always endured the fractures without getting them set. Each line on the page had a measurement attached. The shell of the house required seven pieces of wood, and the internal walls would need eight. He cut them from pine, with a hand saw, while Persephone watched, one plait end in her mouth. When the house was assembled he made the stairs, joining the treads and attaching spent matchsticks for balusters. Then he hung doors, swearing at the tiny hinges as he did so.
“Fucking things.”
“It doesn’t matter, Daddy, I don’t need the doors to open,” Persephone said hurriedly.
“If they stand ajar, they look more real.” He persisted, so that every room had a glimpse of the next.
The first thing Persephone did when the house was finished was put her head inside. Her ear rested on the floor of the living room, and her nose was level with the carved mantelpiece. The house smelt of sawdust. Her father always smelt of sawdust, mingled with beer and sweat. She liked the smell, but it made her feel sad in a way she couldn’t name.
“I’ve not got any dolls,” she said. “The house is empty.”
“You can buy some, if you like. I’ll take you.”
She’d never been inside her father’s workplace before. Certainly she’d seen it from the outside; nearly every grown-up on the eyot worked there, and she had witnessed one conversation after another about its goings on. The dolls displayed in the shop were intriguing but her father pulled her swiftly past them, to the door at the back marked Staff Only. On the other side was a strange lift that her father said was called a paternoster. They jumped in, and watched two floors drop past before getting out again.
The sign hanging from the ceiling read Sorcerers. Six men, including Persephone’s cousin Alastair, were seated at small tables, painting dolls’ faces under bright spotlights. The centre of the floor was made from glass. When Persephone looked down she could see right through the building. On the level below, there were men making dolls’ houses – that must be where her father usually did his job – and another window beneath them revealed the women on the first floor, papering small walls and painting furniture. Their movements were busy, reminding Persephone of the ants in the formicarium at school.
Alastair stood up, wiping his hands on his coverall. He had a thick neck and slightly protuberant dark eyes which always put Persephone in mind of a frog.
“Briar,” he greeted Persephone’s father. “Good to see you – and with a visitor, too.”
“She wants some dolls to play with. Nothing fragile, nothing like you make for sale – a strong maquette would do.”
“Let’s see what fits the bill.”
Alastair led them to a windowless storeroom. A single, naked light bulb swung above their heads. Crates of unpainted wooden dolls, more rough hewn than the ones on sale, were piled upon the shelves.
“What kind d’you want?” Alastair asked.
“A little girl,” Persephone said.
Alastair rummaged through one of the crates. He looked at one, shook his head, and put it back.
“A little girl, a little girl,” he muttered, passing over this doll or that. “Here’s a nice one, Sephone. Endearing Candour.”
He placed it in Persephone’s hands. She searched its face, which was marked a dozen times by the whittling knife. The maker had carved large eyes and a sweet mouth. Persephone could feel the Candour welling in her. It was a peculiar sensation.
“She’ll need a mum and dad,” Alastair said, moving his attention to another crate.
“She doesn’t,” Persephone cried out. “Just a mummy, not a daddy doll.”
Alastair looked at her father, a touch embarrassed. But her father only took off his glasses, and rubbed at the lenses with a cuff, as if he hadn’t heard Persephone’s outburst.
“I’ll fetch a daddy anyway,” Alastair said. “In case you change your mind.”
More cursorily than before, he picked a pair of dolls from the nearest box, and handed them to her. Now she had three feelings jostling inside her. The Candour; Desire to Appease; and Cool Detachment. She followed Alastair and her father out of the storeroom, back to where the men were painting faces and looking down on all the other workers, and her cousin said he would wrap the dolls in paper for her. She let go of them with relief. As the foisted emotions ebbed, there was room for resentment to flourish. Alastair, and the men who made these dolls, had put these feelings in her. She wished she could make dolls – and work magic on them – so that the only feelings she felt were of her own making. She tried to imagine herself at one of the tiny tables, painting a porcelain face.
“Why aren’t there any women up here?” she asked.
Her father and Alastair and the other men laughed.
“The candour’s worked,” said Dennis Botham, a stocky man with greying mutton chops, who was also Persephone’s godfather.