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chapter thirteen

RED LION

The Marshal barracks was a small house on the edge of the school site: two storeys, four bedrooms spread over both floors, a communal kitchen and living room, shared bathroom, peeling magnolia paint. This could use some smartening up, Walden thought as she let herself in that evening.

Keeping the school site pleasant and attractive was a roll-the-boulder-up-the-hill task. The grounds and maintenance team that Todd commanded obviously had to prioritise the areas that the students used. No matter how many tidy-up initiatives or environmental awareness days or stern school assemblies you arranged, it was impossible to prevent a large group of teenagers from being, essentially, a mindless hurricane of destruction. They stood on desks and plastic chairs and broke them; they were ungentle with the blinds and broke those; they leaned the wrong way against some ancient piece of plasterwork and broke that too. They made paper aeroplanes and used wind spells to fly them everywhere, and then never got around to collecting them up again. They lost pencil cases and schoolbooks and PE kits. They ate crisps and forgot to put the packets in the bin, they ate apples and chucked cores into bushes. They unbent paper clips and tried to scratch their names into the ancient wood and stone of the school chapel, joining a tradition of bored adolescent vandalism that stretched back six hundred years. Walden’s own initials, interlocked with Charlie’s, were etched secretly somewhere under a pew in there.

The site needed constant development as well. The school buildings were mostly not fit for purpose. Everything was either in need of restoration or in need of a complete rethink. There was always scaffolding somewhere. At the moment it fenced Scrubs, which in the 1960s had been a gloriously modern testament to the power of concrete, and now, more than half a century later, was a depressing lesson about the long-term viability of concrete. Scrubs was not even the biggest problem. Looming five years in the future was the dreadful spectre of the chapel roof. You could not just leave a beautiful, much-loved, constantly used example of fourteenth-century religious architecture to collapse in on itself—especially not when it was listed! But there were only a dozen people in the country with the skills to work on that roof, and they all got booked up years in advance and cost an absolute fortune. The Bursary was already working on building up a fund for it, but sooner or later it was going to come down to another alumni donation drive.

Understandable, then, that the Marshal barracks had fallen off the school development radar. But Laura was in her thirties, and most of her squad were older. Not all of them lived here, of course. A couple had families—there was one who lived in the village, and one who commuted from the nearest town. Still, Walden found it dissatisfying, knowing how very nice her own school-provided lodgings were, to see that Chetwood’s magical security team were living in accommodation that looked like a second-rate undergraduate rental. It could not have helped with that ‘historical culture of carelessness’ Laura had talked about either. If you did not feel like your job took you seriously, why would you ever take your job seriously?

At the very least, all of this needed repainting. And not in magnolia either, even if it was cheap.

Laura had a ground-floor room with a plaque on the door: CHIEF MARSHAL . Walden knocked. “Come in!” she heard.

The room was already half stripped. Laura was packing her life at Chetwood into two big suitcases. She wore a black tank top and faded old jeans. Her silver sword was hung on a bracket on the wall, with her armguards next to it. “Good evening,” Walden said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

Laura said, “Was that meant to be ‘Good evening, Marshal Kenning, I’m here for an informal valedictory interview,’ or ‘Hi, Laura, I don’t have normal conversations very often’?”

Walden snorted. “The second one.”

“Hi, Saffy,” said Laura. “Come in. Do you want a glass of water or anything?”

“We are going to do the valedictory interview,” Walden said. “You gave the outlines of your assessment today, but I want—”

“A full review. I’ll email. I wrote it all down earlier this week. And the consultant guy already spoke to me.” Laura paused, as if she had something else to say about Mark Daubery, but she did not say it. Walden could guess.

There was a moment or two of rather awkward silence.

“Are you all right?” Walden asked.

“I was expecting it,” said Laura, which wasn’t an answer.

“You did your best,” Walden said. “You did absolutely everything you could. You certainly saved my life, when you came back into the incursion for me. I don’t want you to go away thinking you failed here.”

“Saffy,” said Laura, “I’m not in the mood.”

“I apologise,” Walden said. “I’m afraid I don’t have normal conversations very often.”

Laura turned and looked right at her for the first time since Walden had entered the room. “This is depressing,” she said. “I promise I don’t want a shoulder to cry on. I’m not really a crier. But look, it’s half term. The kids aren’t around to see us, and I could really use a beer. Pub?”

“Honestly, it was you or me,” Laura said later. “We both know it.”

She was into her second pint, while Walden was nursing a rather expensive gin cocktail. They were splitting a bowl of pork crackling as they relaxed in a booth in the corner of the Red Lion. They weren’t the only customers, but it was close: the Lion had traditional trappings, but it was really a quiet country gastropub now, the sort of place that served pork crackling in locally sourced artisanal crockery. It had been a long time since this slightly wonky building was the actual social heart of Chetwood village.

“No regulars,” Laura said. “I don’t trust a pub with no regulars.”

“Much too expensive to have regulars,” said Walden. “But they do better in term time—laying in cases and cases of Bacardi Breezers for Year Thirteen on Saturdays. We do ask them to be strict about checking IDs and cutting people off.”

“They would be anyway,” Laura said. “Nothing but a mob of tipsy eighteen-year-olds, alongside the people who can afford houses around here—what a crowd!”

“It was you or me,” said Walden, “but I’m still sorry it was you.”

Laura’s shoulders in her green puffer jacket sagged a little. She sighed. She took another mouthful of her lager. “Had to be me,” she said. “Chetwood needs you more. You’ve got an absolute helljob coming up, I hope you realise. Of course you realise. Old Faithful was scaring off everything else that might want to snack on a teenage magician. There’s a lot of everything else out there and it’s all going to come for you at once.” She laughed, rather grimly. “Worst-case scenario, you haven’t seen the last of me. The DC’s over the moon. I was throwing myself away on school security, you know. Everyone told me.”

“You’re—”

“Back to fieldwork. It’s what I’m really good at. It always was.”

“What is your rank in the Order, exactly?”

“KMVC,” said Laura. “That’s right, four whole letters—Knight Mareschal Venitant Capus. They might take the C off me for a bit, as a slap on the wrist. Makes us look bad when there’s an incursion right under our noses.”

“You couldn’t have prevented what Old Faithful did,” Walden said.

“You think you could?”

Walden said nothing.

“No, you couldn’t,” Laura said. “It was coming. If not Nikki Conway, it would have been someone else. That demon was after you . It was huge and hungry and smart enough to keep quiet when a Marshal might be looking. I had no fucking idea what we were dealing with until the week before it hit. I should have known. It was my job to know. But that means it was planning an incursion all along. It was waiting for the right chance. You think it wouldn’t have found a vulnerability somewhere? Six hundred kids, you think none of them would ever have listened to it?”

“I don’t think I should be crying on your shoulder,” Walden said. “You’re right, you’re right. I admit that you’re right.”

They were quiet for a little while. The gin cocktail, although appallingly pricey, was actually rather good.

“So,” said Laura at last. “About that date.”

“Er,” said Walden.

Laura caught her eye. “We really don’t have to be awkward about this, you know.”

“I just…”

I was punch-drunk on survival and exhaustion, and you had both kissed me and saved my life, and the children were safe when I really didn’t think they would be, Laura, I really didn’t, and—well—

Laura said, “It was two in the morning and we were out of our minds with relief. I’m about to be reassigned to a London chapter house. We could give it a go long distance, if you want.”

“Well,” Walden said.

“That’s what I thought,” said Laura. She gave Walden an awkward smile, and it seemed to be sincere. “Honestly, Saffy, you don’t have to explain it to me. I’m a career girl too.”

“I just don’t know when I’d have time, ” said Walden. “And… I’m thirty-eight. There comes a point, when you’re single and unattached and closing in on forty, that you do stop to ask yourself: ‘Well, am I going to?’ And for some people—certainly, for me—the answer is ‘Actually, I like my life the way it is.’ I know who I am. I’m rather good at being who I am. I won’t say I don’t miss sex occasionally, or never think that it would be nice to wake up with someone. But I also think it’s rather nice to have my space to myself, and never have to worry about anyone’s time but my own. Long distance would mean carving out—”

“—hours of the day, all your free time, all those train journeys,” Laura said, “and phone calls or Zoom calls or emails —”

“God forbid, not more emails!”

Laura laughed. “Just one more thing to plan.”

“I’m not saying it couldn’t be worth it,” Walden said. “Of course these things often turn out to be worth it in the long run, for lots of people. Just… not me. Though I truly would have liked that date, I think.”

“So would I,” Laura said. “Let’s say this one counts. I’ll even walk you home.”

“We live in the same place.”

“No, we don’t,” said Laura. “You live in a cushy Victorian suite. I live in a magnolia box with a shared bathroom.”

“There has to be some money in the estates budget to do up the Marshal barracks,” Walden said. “It matters.”

“I agree,” said Laura. “It’s one of the recommendations in my report.”

Walden finished her gin cocktail and did not order another. The Red Lion had a low front door and a wonky step. “Can’t they fix that?” Laura said, as they emerged slightly uncomfortably into the darkened pub car park.

“Original feature,” said Walden. “Historical charm, you know.”

“I always feel charmed when I fall down the stairs.”

“It’s very authentic,” said Walden. “People have been doing it for centuries.”

Laura snorted. “That’s just Chetwood all over, isn’t it?” she said as they struck out for the country lane that led back from the village towards the school gates. “Like living in a theme park. Acres of countryside—weird little chapel—teachers in fancy dress for assembly—tennis courts, rowing lake, a school golf course for crissakes—and when you visit, once a term, you can take your kids out to lunch in a pub with shitty beer where they charge you extra to hit your head on the doorframe.”

“You won’t miss it?” Walden said. She felt obscurely hurt. Yes, Chetwood was, honestly, a bit silly. She thought of the school’s silliness, its traditions and its poses and its absurd antique formalities, as the same species of fun and games as the annual house point competition. Laura sounded so annoyed.

“Oh—I don’t know,” Laura said. It was a full-moon night, and the moonlight slid across her fair hair and made fantastical spiked shadows out of the hedgerows that lined the lane. “It’s very pretty. Have you ever taught in a real school?”

“Chetwood is a real school.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Real enough to the pupils,” said Walden sharply. “Real enough to Nikki Conway, for example. If you mean, have I taught in a state comprehensive: no. There aren’t many jobs for people like me in the state system.”

“Because learning magic is only for people who can afford the school fees,” said Laura.

“Take it up with the Department for Education,” Walden said. “The only government work I was ever offered, I turned down. And Chetwood is genuinely very committed to its scholarship programme for young sorcerers, you know. I do think it makes a difference. Oh—why are we squabbling about this? It’s not a perfect system. I agree. I’m only a schoolteacher. I like my job. I can’t fix the world.”

Laura gave her a glance and a one-shouldered shrug. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Would you send your children here?”

“I’ve never wanted children. All right, the hypothetical. Yes, I suppose I would. It’s a good school. The magical education it offers is one of the best in the country. Yes, I think I would.”

“Could you afford it?”

Walden considered. “Presumably, if I have children, then I also have a partner. So… with the staff discount… yes. Probably.”

“Mmm,” Laura said.

“Wonderful date chat, thank you,” Walden said.

Laura laughed. “Sorry. You keep it bottled up, I suppose. I’ve been here four years. Nice place to work, pay’s good, colleagues all right—one absolute bitch who thinks she’s my boss, you know, but nowhere’s perfect—”

Now Walden was laughing.

“—but I don’t know, you walk in somewhere like this and you think, ‘Fucking hell, this exists? This is real? All these kids, do they think it’s normal, living in a picture postcard?’ Little bit of bitterness, maybe. ‘Why didn’t I have this?’ And the answer is I didn’t have the sense to be born to parents with more money than God. Not your fault.”

“Not more money than God, ” said Walden.

“School fees are there in black-and-white on the website. Fifty grand a year, not counting, what, uniform, sports kit, events, extras, the annual ski trip— ”

“Yes, yes,” said Walden, “but the Church is one of the largest landowners in the country. I promise you, God has a lot more money than Chetwood.” Trying to be delicate about it, she asked, “So is that why you joined the Marshals? To learn magic?”

Laura laughed. “I joined the Marshals because I was eighteen, it pays all right, and I thought it might impress girls. Then I turned out to be good at it. I wasn’t tragically longing for boarding school the whole time, promise. Once I’m over the sting, most of me will be glad to get out of here.”

“You really won’t miss anything about it?” Walden was embarrassed as soon as she’d spoken. What was she doing? Was there anything more pathetic than fishing for compliments?

Luckily, Laura didn’t even seem to notice. “I will and I won’t,” she said. “How the other half live. Nice kids, as well. In justice you’d want them all to be absolute wankers, but they’re mostly just kids.”

“A few wankers, perhaps,” said Walden demurely, not letting herself feel disappointment. Really, what had she expected? I’ll miss you, Saffy ? They didn’t have that kind of… well. They were colleagues, with an acknowledged little mutual something that wasn’t going to go anywhere. That was all.

“The future Mark Dauberys of the world. Good luck with that,” Laura said, as they turned through the postern gate below the magnificent stone edifice of the Chetwood Gate, past Todd’s neat little house that guarded the road, up along the avenue of lime trees that marked the road through the rolling expanses of sports fields towards the heart of the school. “I’ll take the demons any day.”

They parted where the path for the Marshal barracks turned off—a sad little pebbled path, with no signpost. There was a brief, terrible moment where they were looking at each other and neither of them seemed to know what to do about it. The soft wash of the moonlight scolded them both for their embarrassing inability to manage anything approximating romance. Finally Laura made an awkward little gesture and leaned in, while Walden changed her mind at the last moment about going in for another cheek kiss, so that both of them tipped forward and then pulled back, bobbing hopelessly in place. Laura snorted. “This was fun,” she said. “Thanks for the beer. I’d better finish packing.”

“Good night,” said Walden. The failed kiss lingered in the air between them: dreadful. She turned away. She did not watch Laura disappear down the pebble path. She put her hands in the pockets of her sensible coat and went home and slept in her warm, comfortable, sensible bed, and did not dwell on it.