Mercedes Lackey - Phoenix and Ashes

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Jacket art by Jody A. Lee DAW Books Collectors No. 1306

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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is

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First Printing, October 2004 123456789

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

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—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

To Janis Ian; amazing grace

Acknowledgments

When I needed to populate the village of Broom and Longacre Park, the denizens of the Dixon's Vixen

bulletin board sprang to my aid by volunteering to be scullery maids, war-heroes, or villains as I chose.

So if the names of the inhabitants are not consistent with the conventions of 1917, that is why.

And

Thanks to Richard and Marion van der Voort (www.atthesignofthe dragon.co.uk), who vetted my

historical and colloquial accuracy.

And

To Melanie Dymond Harper, who, when I lost my map and pictures of Broom, went out into wretched

weather to recreate them for me.

1

December 18,1914

Broom, Warwickshire

HER EYES WERE SO SORE and swollen from weeping that she thought by right she should have no

tears left at all. She was so tired that she couldn't keep her mind focused on anything; it flitted from one

thought to another, no matter how she tried to concentrate.

One kept recurring, in a never-ending refrain of lament. What am I doing here? I should be at Oxford.

Eleanor Robinson rested her aching head against the cold, wet glass of the tiny window in the twilight

gloom of her attic bedroom. With an effort, she closed her sore, tired eyes, as her shoulders hunched

inside an old woolen shawl. The bleak December weather had turned rotten and rainy, utterly

un-Christmas-like. Not that she cared about Christmas.

It was worse in Flanders, or so the boys home on leave said, though the papers pretended otherwise.

She knew better. The boys on leave told the truth when the papers lied. But surely Papa wouldn't be

there, up to his knees in the freezing water of the trenches of the Western Front. He wasn't a young man.

Surely they wouldn't put him there.

Beastly weather. Beastly war. Beastly Germans.

Surely Papa was somewhere warm, in the Rear; surely they were using his clever, organized mind at

some clerking job for some big officer. She was the one who should be pitied. The worst that would

happen to Papa was that he wouldn't get leave for Christmas. She wasn't likely to see anything of

Christmas at all.

And she should be at Oxford, right this minute! Papa had promised, promised faithfully, that she should

go to Oxford this year, and his betrayal of that promise ate like bitter acid into her heart and soul. She'd

done everything that had been asked of her. She had passed every examination, even the Latin, even the

Greek, and no one else had ever wanted to learn Greek in the entire village of Broom, except for little

Jimmy Grimsley. The boys' schoolmaster, Michael Stone, had had to tutor her especially. She had

passed her interview with the principal of Somerville College. She'd been accepted. All that had been

needed was to pay the fees and go.

Well, go meant making all sorts of arrangements, but the important part had been done! Why hadn't he

made the arrangements before he'd volunteered? Why hadn't he done so after?

Hadn't she had known from the time she could read, almost, that she all she really wanted was to go to

Oxford to study literature? Hadn't she told Papa that, over and over, until he finally agreed? Never mind

that they didn't award degrees to women now, it was the going there that was the important

part—there, where you would spend all day learning amazing things, and half the night talking

about them! And it wasn't as if this was a new thing. There was more than one women's college now, and

someday they would give degrees, and on that day, Eleanor meant to be right there to receive hers. It

wasn't as if she would be going for nothing. . . .

And it wouldn't be here. Not this closed-in place, where nothing mattered except that you somehow

managed to marry a man of a higher station than yours. Or, indeed (past a certain age) married any man

at all.

"Oxford? Well, it's—it's another world . . . maybe a better one."

Reggie Fenyx's eyes had shone when he'd said that. She'd seen the reflection of that world in his eyes,

and she wanted it, she wanted it. ...

Even this beastly weather wouldn't be so bad if she was looking at it from inside her study in Somerville

... or perhaps going to listen to a distinguished speaker at the debating society, as Reggie Fenyx had

described.

But her tired mind drifted away from the imagined delights of rooms at Somerville College or the

stimulation of an erudite speaker, and obstinately towards Reggie Fenyx. Not that she should call him

Reggie, or at least, not outside the walls of Oxford, where learning made all men (and women!) equals.

Not that she had ever called him Reggie, except in her own mind. But there, in her mind and her memory,

he was Reggie, hero-worshipped by all the boys in Broom, and probably half the grown men as well,

whenever the drone of his aeroplane drew eyes involuntarily upward.

And off her mind flitted, to halcyon skies of June above a green, green field. She could still hear his

drawling, cheerful voice above the howl and clatter of his aeroplane engine, out there in the fallow field

he'd claimed for his own, where he "stabled" his "bird" in an old hay-barn and used to land and take off.

He'd looked down at her from his superior height with a smile, but it wasn't a patronizing smile. She'd

seen the aeroplane land, known that in this weather he was only going to refuel before taking off again,

and pelted off to Longacre like a tomboy. She found him pouring a can of petrol into the plane, and

breathlessly asked him about Oxford. He was the only person she knew who was a student there, or

ever had been a student there—well, hardly a surprise that he was a student there, since he was

the son of Sir Devlin Fenyx, and the field, the aeroplane, and everything as far as she could see where

she stood belonged to Lord Devlin and Longacre Park. Where else but Oxford was good enough for

Reggie Fenyx? Perhaps Cambridge, but—no. Not for someone from Warwickshire and

Shakespeare country. "I want to go to university," she had told him, when he'd asked her why she

wanted to know, as she stood looking up at him, breathless at her own daring. "I want to go to Oxford!"

"Oxford! Well, I don't know why not," he'd said, the first person to sound encouraging about her dream

since her governess first put the notion in her head, and nearly the only one since, other than the Head of

Somerville College. There'd been no teasing about "lady dons" or "girl-graduates." "No, I don't know

why not. One of these days they'll be giving out women's degrees, you mark my words. Ought to be

ashamed that they aren't, if you ask me. The girls I know—" (he pronounced it "gels," which she

found fascinating) "—work harder than most of my mates. I say! If your parents think it's all bunk

for a gel to go to university, you tell 'em I said it's a deuced good plan, and in ten years a gel'd be

ashamed not to have gone if she's got the chance. Here," he'd said then, shoving a rope at her. "D'ye

think you can take this rope-end, run over to there, and haul the chocks away when I shout?"

He hadn't waited for an answer; he'd simply assumed she would, treating her just as he would have

treated any of the hero-worshipping boys who'd come to see him fly. And she hadn't acted like a silly

girl, either; she'd run a little to a safe distance, waited for his signal after he swung himself up into the seat

of his frail ship of canvas and sticks, and hauled on the rope with all her might, pulling the blocks of wood

that kept the plane from rolling forward out from under the wheels. And the contraption had roared into

life and bounced along the field, making one final leap into the air and climbing, until he was out of sight,

among the white puffy clouds. And from that moment on, she'd hero-worshipped him as much as any

boy.

That wasn't the only time she'd helped him; before Alison had come, she had been more out of the house

than in it when she wasn't reading and studying, and she went where she wanted and did pretty much as

she liked. If her mother had been alive, she'd likely have earned a scolding for such hoydenish behavior,

but her mother had died too long ago for her to remember clearly, her father scarcely seemed to notice

what she did, and she had only herself to please. Reggie had been amused. He'd ruffled her hair, called

her a "jolly little thing," and treated her like the boys who came to help.

In fact, once after that breathless query about Oxford, he had given her papers about Somerville College,

and magazines and articles about the lady dons and lecturers, and even a clipping about women who

were flying aeroplanes—"aviatrixes" he called them—with the unspoken, but clearly

understood implication that if anyone gave her trouble about wanting to go to Oxford, she should show

them the clipping as well as give them his endorsement of the plan to show that "nice girls" did all sorts of

things these days. "Women are doing great things, great things!" he'd said with enthusiasm. "Why, women

are doctors—I know one, a grand gel, married to a friend of mine, works in London! Women

should go exercising their brains! Makes 'em interesting! These gels that Mater keeps dragging

round—" He'd made a face and hadn't finished the sentence, but Eleanor could guess at it. Not

that she had any broad acquaintance with "ladies of Society," but she could read about them. And the

London newspapers were full of stories about Society and the women who ornamented it. To her way of

thinking, they didn't seem like the sorts that would be terribly interesting to someone like Reggie. No

doubt, they could keep up a sparkling conversation on nothing whatsoever, and select a cigar, and hold a

dinner party without offending anyone, and organize a country weekend to great acclaim, but as for being

interesting to someone like Reggie—not likely. Even she, an insignificant village tomboy, was more

interesting to him than they were ever likely to be.

Not that she was all that interesting to someone like Reggie. For all that she looked up to him, and

even—yes, she admitted it—was a bit in love with him, he was as out-of-reach as Oxford

was now. . . .

In fact, everything was out of reach now, and the remembered sun and warmth faded from her thoughts,

replaced by the chill gloom of the drafty attic room, and the emptiness of her life.

Nothing much mattered now. The war had swallowed up Reggie, as it had swallowed up her father, as it

had smothered her hopes. The bright and confident declarations of "Home by Christmas" had died in the

rout at Mons, and were buried in the trenches at Ypres, as buried as her dreams.

She had thought she was through with weeping, but sobs rose in her throat again. Papa, Papa! she cried,

silently, as her eyes burned anew. Papa, why did you leave me? Why did you leave me with Her?

For it wasn't the war that was keeping her from Oxford, anyway. Oh, no—her current misery was

due to another cause. Surely Papa would have remembered his promise, if it hadn't been for the

manipulations of Alison Robinson, Eleanor's stepmother.

Two more tears oozed out from under her closed lids, to etch their way down her sore cheeks.

She wouldn't be able to treat me like this if Papa hadn't gone. Would she?

Horrible, horrible woman. She'd stolen Papa from her, then stole her very life from her. And no one else

could or would see it. Even people that should know better, who could see how Alison treated her

stepdaughter, seemed to think there was nothing amiss. I’ll hear one more time how lucky I am that

Papa married her and left her to care for me while he's gone, I think I shall be sick. . . .

The day she first appeared had been, had Eleanor only known it, the blackest day of Eleanor's life.

She pounded an impotent fist against her thigh as she stifled her sobs, lest She should hear. . . .

Papa had gone on business; it had seemed just like any other of dozens of such absences. Eleanor was

accustomed to Father being absent to tend to his business from time to time; most fathers in Broom didn't

do that, but Charles Robinson was different, for he was in trade, and his business interests all lay outside

Broom, even outside of Warwickshire. He was a man of business, he often told her when she was old

enough to understand, and business didn't tend to itself.

Although her father never flaunted the fact, she had always known that they lived well. She'd had a

governess, when most children in the village just went to the local school. Miss Severn had been a good

governess, one, in fact, who had put the idea of Oxford into her head in the first place, and good, highly

educated governesses were (she knew now) quite difficult to find, and expensive.

Besides that, they had maids and a cook—well, there were others in Broom who had "help," but

not many had maids that lived in, or a cook at all. And they lived in one of the nicest houses in Broom.

"The Arrows," a Tudor building, was supposed to have been there at the time Shakespeare passed

through the village after a poaching expedition, got drunk and fell asleep under the oak tree in front of the

tavern.

But her papa hadn't made much of their prosperity, so neither had she. He socialized with the village, not

the gentry, and other than visits to Longacre to see Reggie fly, so had she. They weren't members of the

hunt, they weren't invited to dinners or balls or even to tea as the vicar was. The governess, the special

tutoring later—this was, to her, not much different from the piano lessons the butcher's and baker's

daughters got.

In fact, she hadn't really known how prosperous they were. Papa's business was hardly

glamorous—he made sacks, or rather, his factories made sacks. All sorts of sacks, from

grain-bags to the rough sailcloth duffels that sailors hauled their personal gear in. Well, someone had to

make them, she supposed. And from time to time, Papa would visit one or another of his factories,

making sure that everything was operating properly, and look over the books. His trips always happened

the same way; he'd tell her and Cook when he was going and when he would be back and they'd plan on

simple meals till he returned. He would drive their automobile, chugging and rattling, to catch the train,

and at the appointed time, drive home again.

But last June something different had happened.

He'd gone off—then sent a telegram that something had happened, not to worry, and he would be

back a week later than he had planned and he'd be bringing a grand surprise.

She, more fool, hadn't thought any more of it—except, perhaps, that he was buying a new

automobile. That was what he had done when he'd gotten the first one, after all, come back a week later,

driving it, all bundled up in goggles and hat and driving-coat, and full of the adventure of bringing it all the

way from London.

And he came back, as she had half expected, not in the old rattle-bang auto, but in a sleek,

long-bonneted thing that purred up the street.

The problem was, he hadn't been alone.

She had been with him. And right behind them, in their own car, They had come.

She had come arrayed in an enormous scarlet hat with yards and yards of scarlet scarves and veils, and a

startling scarlet coat of dramatic cut. Father had handed her out as if she was a queen, and as she raised

a scarlet-gloved hand to remove her goggles, he had said, beaming with pride, "And here's my surprise!

This is your new mother—" he hadn't said "stepmother," but Eleanor would never, ever call that

horrible woman "Mother" "—Alison, this is my daughter. And look, Eleanor, here are two new

sisters to keep you company! Lauralee, Carolyn, this is your sister Eleanor! I'm sure you're going to be

the best of friends in no time!"

Two elegant, languid creatures descended from the rear of the second automobile, wearing pastel blue

and lavender versions of her getup, and removed their goggles to regard her with stares as blank and

unreadable as the goggles had been.

Broom had never seen anything quite like them. They looked as if they had come directly from the pages

of some London quarterly. Only she smiled, a knowing little smile, a condescending smile that

immediately made Eleanor aware of her untidy hair that was loosely tied with a ribbon like a child's, her

very plain linen day-dress, not in vogue and not new, of her uncorseted figure, and her thick, clumsy

walking shoes. The two girls raised their heads just a trifle, and gave her little patronizing smirks of their

own. Then all three had sailed into the house without so much as a word spoken.

And with a shock, Eleanor had found herself sharing the house and her papa with a stepmother and two

stepsisters.

Except—from the moment they entered the door, there wasn't a great deal of "sharing" going on.

The first sign of trouble came immediately, when the girls inspected the house and the elder, Lauralee,

claimed the second-best bedroom—Eleanor's room—as her own. And before Eleanor

could protest, she found herself and her things bundled up the stairs to an untenanted attic room that had

been used until that moment as a lumber room, with the excuse, "Well, you'll be at Oxford in the autumn,

and you won't need such a big room, now, will you?" Followed by a whispered "Don't be ungracious,

Eleanor—jealousy is a very ugly thing!" and a frown on her papa's face that shocked her into

silence.

The thing that still baffled her was the speed with which it had all happened. There'd been not a hint of

any such thing as a romance, much less a marriage, ever! Papa had always said that after Mama, no

woman could ever claim his heart—he'd gone a dozen times to Stoke-on-Trent before, and he'd

never said a word about anything but the factory, and she thought that surely she would have noticed

something about a woman before this.

Especially a woman like this one.

Oh, she was beautiful, no question about that: lean and elegant as a greyhound, sleek dark hair, a

red-lipped face to rival anything Eleanor had seen in the newspapers and magazines, and the grace of a

cat. The daughters, Lauralee and Carolyn, were like her in every regard, lacking only the depth of

experience in Alison's eyes and her ability to keep their facade of graciousness intact in private.

Eleanor only noticed that later. At first, they were all bright smiles and simpers.

Alison and her daughters turned the house upside down within a week. They wore gowns—no

simple "dresses" for them—like nothing anyone in Broom had seen, except in glimpses of the

country weekends held up at Longacre. They changed two and three times a day, for no other occasion

than a meal or a walk. They made incessant demands on the maids that those poor country-bred girls

didn't understand, and had them in tears at least once a day. They made equally incredible demands on

Cook, who threw up her hands and gave notice after being ordered to produce a dinner full of things she

couldn't even pronounce, much less make. A new cook, one Mrs. Bennet, and maids, including a lady's

maid just for Alison called Howse, came from London, at length, brought in a charabanc with all their

boxes and trunks. Money poured out of the house and returned in the form of tea-gowns from London

and enormous hats with elegantly scrolled names on the boxes, delicate shoes from Italy, and gloves from

France.

And amid all of this upheaval and confusion, Papa beamed and beamed on "his elegant fillies" and

seemed to have forgotten Eleanor even existed. There were no tea-gowns from London for Eleanor. . . .

Not that she made any great show against them. She looked like a maid herself, in her plain dresses and

sensible walking shoes. They didn't have to bully her, not then, when they could simply overawe her and

bewilder her and drown her out with their incessant chattering and tinkling laughter. And when she tried

to get Papa alone to voice a timid protest, he would just pat her cheek, ask if she wasn't being a jealous

little wench, and advise her that she would get on better if she was more like them!

She might have been able to rally herself after the first shock— might have been able to fight back.

Except that all those far-off things in the newspapers about assassinations and Balkan uprisings that could

never possibly have anything to do with the British Empire and England and Broom—suddenly

did.

In August, the world suddenly went mad. In some incomprehensible way, Austria declared war on

Serbia, and Prussia joined in, and so did Germany, which apparently declared war on everybody. There

were Austrian and Prussian and German troops overrunning France and England was at war too, rushing

to send men to stop the flood. And though among the country-folk in Broom there was a certain level of

skepticism about all this "foreign nonsense," according to the papers, there was a sudden patriotic rush of

volunteers signing up to go to France to fight.

And Papa, who was certainly old enough to know better, and never mind that he already had been in the

army as a young man, volunteered to go with his regiment. And the next thing she knew, he was a

sergeant again, and was gone.

Somehow Oxford never materialized. "Your dear father didn't make any arrangements, child,"

Stepmother said, sounding surprised, her eyes glittering. "But never mind! This will all be over by

Christmas, and surely you would rather be here to greet him when he comes home, wouldn't you? You

can go to Oxford in the Hilary term."

But it wasn't over by Christmas, and somehow Papa didn't manage to make arrangements for the Hilary

term, either. And now here she was, feeling and being treated as a stranger, an interloper in her own

house, subtly bullied by glamour and not understanding how it had happened, sent around on errands like

a servant, scarcely an hour she could call her own, and at the end of the day, retreating to this cold,

cheerless closet that scarcely had room for her bed and her wardrobe and desk. And Papa never wrote,

and every day the papers were full of horrible things covered over with patriotic bombast, and everything

was wrong with the world and she couldn't see an end to it.

Two more tears burned their way down her cheeks. Her head pounded, she felt ill and feverish, she was

exhausted, but somehow too tired to sleep.

Today had been the day of the Red Cross bazaar and tea dance. Organized by Stepmother, of

course—"You have such a genius for such things, Alison!"—at the behest of the

Colonel's wife. Though what that meant was that Eleanor and the maids got the dubious privilege of doing

Mercedes Lackey - Phoenix and Ashes

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