After urgent instruction was given, the coach took them straight to the Belfry Theater, where they asked him to slow-walk the horses so they could peer down every dark lane and question each face they passed. Twice Ian hopped out of the coach to get a better look at a man sleeping rough in a doorway. Each time he shook his head and jumped back in, taking Edwina’s hand in his on the seat beside him, locking fingers and holding on to her and hope in the same gesture. And each time, at the touch of her skin next to his, he wanted to ask about the remarkable magic he’d seen in the courtyard. His mind churned with curiosity about it, but first they had to find George.
“Perhaps it was a fool’s errand from the start,” Sir Elvanfoot said when they’d reached the end of the lane where the Wilshire Music Hall stood. A small crowd mingled outside, a mix of audience members and performers still relishing the buzz of the performance. Intoxicated on spirits and the aura of camaraderie, a few young men sang out bawdy tunes, then tossed their semi-empty brown bottles of ale into the alley, where they splashed and broke in a void of darkness.
The alley. Damn his stupidity!
Ian jumped out of the coach. Dodging the young men in their frock coats, he ran into the alley to where he remembered a stairwell had led to a belowground entrance. He squinted in the low light, walking softly so his tackety boots wouldn’t scrape on the pavement and startle anyone to rash action. He glanced over his shoulder at the streetlight where Hob had hidden himself before, but the glass was still broken, the light not working. There were too many people around to fix it with magic, so he took the risk of snapping a flame on his fingertips to illuminate the stairwell. There in the gloom, curled up on the landing at the bottom, was a man sleeping rough in a dirty gray coat, with three weeks’ worth of beard and a smell on him strong enough to raise the dead.
Ian shone the light closer to get a better look at his face. The man groaned and held his hand up defensively to shield his eyes from the light. “George!” Ian called out, but of course the man didn’t recognize his name.
“Ian?” Edwina and Sir Elvanfoot caught up to him in the alley. “Have you found him?” she asked. “Is it George?”
Elvanfoot, overtaken by eagerness, pressed in beside Ian on the stairs. “My boy,” he said and walked to the bottom for a better look.
Ian shook his head in regret as he looked up at Edwina. “He’s been here the whole time. I saw him yesterday and didn’t recognize him.”
But below it was no happy reunion between father and son. The man who’d been sleeping in his coat on the street in the rain for weeks rebelled at the invasion of his space.
“Get off!” he yelled. “Help! Murder!”
For all George knew, Ian and Elvanfoot were the ones who’d been killing men on the streets. He kicked and clawed at them, screaming bloody murder. Edwina warned the gents from outside the theater had grown suspicious enough to venture into the alley, so Ian ran up the steps to meet them halfway, leaving the father to calm his son. Were it not for the Constabulary, which he wished to keep away from Edwina and her magic for as long as he could, he’d have stunned the gents with a bright flash of white light so all they could see were spots. Instead he took a milder, disarming approach. Before their curiosity brought them too near, he picked up one of the partially broken bottles the young men had tossed and stumbled forward pretending to be as drunk as they were.
“The moon has a face like the clock in the hall,” he shouted to the sky. “She shines on thieves on the garden wall. On streets and fields and harbor quays. And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.” He feigned taking a drink while they lost their threatening postures, too bemused at his performance to quarrel. He continued with his poem, growing more animated as the words cloaked his spell. “The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse. The howling dog by the door of the house. The bat that lies in bed at noon. All love to be out by the light of the moon.” He and the lads had a laugh as he pointed to the crescent moon slipping in and out of clouds. Then he hit them with the thrust of his incantation incognito. “But all the things that belong to the day, cuddle to sleep to be out of her way. And flowers and children close their eyes, till up in the morning the sun shall arise.”
The young men laughed nervously at the change the spell made to their mood before turning around and wandering back to the lane, stretching and yawning and calling for an early night. Ian watched them walk out of sight, then tossed the bottle aside and hurried back to help with George.