Page 10 of Apt to be Suspicious
He hoped, when he permitted himself to consider specifics, for the sort of partnership that Mama and Papa had. Where they had skills the other didn’t, and trusted those skills as readily as they trusted their own. Uncle Alexander too, in both cases.
“And not Lowenna Ritt, either.” He did not need Ros’s warning there. Lowenna was absolutely not the sort he’d bring home. The Ritts were snobs, and Lowenna had been awful to Jasper. Not anyone he’d bring into the heart of their demesne estate, even without that. “Don’t give me that look.”
Ros had been peering at him, sharp and determined, but then she relaxed, and laughed a little. “You might ask Giselle Hallow for a dance, and see what you think?” She’d also left school that summer, but Edmund waited to see if Ros would say anything else. “I worked with her on some of the house magics. She’s clever. Leo says Professor Knox thinks extremely well of her alchemical skills. She’s apprenticing in it. And she’s kind.”
“I will be glad to dance with her, then, and see what I think. Kindness being a deciding factor.” At that point, their current waltz ended, and Edmund brought the two of them to a tidy stop at the edge of the dancers. He then escorted Ros first to collect something to drink, and then to join her friends.
He made a slow circuit of the Great Hall, speaking here and there to a wide range of people, repeating the same half-dozen pleasantries over and over again. University was excellent. Edmund was spending his hols doing a lot of reading, yes. He expected to catch the demonstration pavo matches, yes. And of course there were the expected questions about which parties he was planning to be at. Edmund might not be interested in making a choice of marriage partner, but the rest of the world certainly seemed to have an interest in introducing him to all sorts of women, many of whom he already knew.
He and his family did not get home until nearly two. Despite that, Edmund was awake and staring at the ceiling before seven. No one else in the household would be up and about, unless Papa went out to see the horses. Edmund got up, washed, dressed, and by quarter after, he was downstairs in the library, making a plausible breakfast from what Cook had left out for the early risers. He spent a solid two hours working on translating portions of Telemachus visiting Menelaus, before he needed to take a break. The thing about the Odyssey was that it expanded to fill all the available time and space for thought if he allowed it to.
The music room was well-insulated by charms. Also, since the house had been sensibly laid out, it was not under the bedrooms, even with all of them home except Merry right now. He settled into playing, his fingers still a little rusty. He was not formally studying music. It made reserving a practice room when he was up at Oxford a particular trial. The harpsichord was in excellent tune, resonant and charming. He suspected Papa had been playing more recently.
The Scarlatti kept him occupied and focused for some minutes, working through a series of pieces, turning the page on the sheet music he’d selected. Long enough, in fact, that he had not even noticed Mama’s arrival. He turned the last page of the score over to suddenly see her through the music holder, as he automatically lowered his hands into his lap. “Mama, good morning. I hope you weren’t bothered?”
“Never, by your playing. Any of you.” Mama gave a brief nod toward the far end of the room. “Great-Aunt Mathilde was listening when I came in. You may properly calibrate your musicality and skill.” Great-Aunt Mathilde was the family ghost, or at least the most noticeable of them. The music room was her particular home, though only when she approved of the music.
Edmund let out a breath he had not entirely realised he was holding. “Oh.”
“You have been thinking about something. Also, you’ve been up for a while.” It was very hard to get much past Mama. Of course, she’d come in through the library and would have seen how he’d left his desk.
“I have. I woke up early, and then I was translating and thinking.” Other men his age, Edmund thought, did not talk to their mothers about their thoughts. It would be imprecise to say that he found it easy, but he found it rewarding. “I’m up to the part where Telemachus is in Sparta, speaking with Menelaus. And the end of book four, where Penelope finds out where he is.”
“Ah. Your self-assigned reading.” That part was true. The Iliad was the assigned Homer for Honour Mods next term. But his tutor agreed that— so long as it did not affect his other work— they might also discuss the Odyssey.
It helped that he’d come in with rather more and better Latin than even most of the public school boys. And he had the sort of fluency in translation that came from working with Uncle Alexander’s eye for ritual texts, where every word mattered. “What were you thinking about? Will you tell me?”
Put like that, Edmund would not refuse. Mama had a reason for asking. And while Edmund had learned during the last few years to be independent, there was a part of him that always wanted her advice and help. He would never have snuck away from home at dawn, telling the servants to lie about where he’d gone, as Telemachus had done to his mother Penelope. Now, he took a breath. “I suppose it’s a book that makes me think about the relationship between fathers and sons. Or, more particularly, the lore people know, the public face of the father, and the public face of the son.”
It made his mother chuckle. “Complicated in your case because your father hides his skills behind several layers, yes. Geoffrey is committed to that. He has been since he was younger than you are, from all I’ve heard. That does not mean you need to take the same path.”
“Except of course that I have, if not in the same way. You and Papa both still do Intelligence work, in your own forms. And Major Manse is very glad of it.”
“We will probably give it up when he retires,” Mama said, adding promptly, “Oh, he knows that. You can speak with him about it.”
“You would mark out something I couldn’t tell him, I know that,” Edmund agreed solemnly. “This morning, I was looking at some notes from book three, where there’s a ritual. Uncle Alexander wanted me to translate it with that in mind, with several approaches to the focus. It’s an interesting challenge. But then I did the same thing with— you remember, toward the end of book four, where Penelope is talking to Medon?”
“Ah. The bit about— it’s been a while, I will forget something— that Odysseus was always fair and did no wrong? Now, that is certainly not your father, though I agree he has done far less wrong than many people over his life. And he certainly has his biases. How did you translate it in the end?”
Edmund gestured toward the library. “I can show you my notes. In private, among those of Albion, there is a part of me that wants to lean into the distinction between those anchored by and tending the land magic, and those who act without that. But I haven’t made it go into words well yet.”
“And it is both a foreign concept to the Greeks, and not, at the same time. Odysseus certainly seems tightly tied to Ithaca, and Telemachus and Penelope as well.”
Edmund nodded. “And the Trojans, for that matter. The way the gods play into it as well.” He spread one hand out, palm up. “The interrelationship between Odysseus and Athena, too. Papa’s inclinations to Mercury are and are not like that. My own, too.”
“Well,” Mama said judiciously, “your father has never gone in for larger military strategy, either. Mind, his experience of it in the Great War was limited, being a Captain and fulfilling other people’s ideas of what to do.” And there were reasons, besides the ones about preservation of life, that Papa had got out of it when given the chance and gone into work for Major Manse. Those had been more like the raid on the Trojan camp, small, well-defined, with clear objectives and a great deal of control over implementation, aside from being more of Mercury than Minerva.
“Not my skill either,” Edmund agreed. “Nor one I much want to acquire.” His magic and his other skills were very much focused on the directly interpersonal, at a conversational level. War, especially the most recent one, was anything but.
His mother nodded. “I’m glad of it, honestly. It seems an uncomfortable skill to have. As to the classical idea of relationship to the land, you might ask Alexander about that. I’m sure he has a bibliography somewhere, or can produce one given a little time.”
“I am certain he can,” Edmund said, mock-solemn. “I am, however, not entirely confident I can bear up under more of his bibliographies at the moment. He set me some reading for one of the lectures next term. Inscriptions of the Eighteenth Dynasty ‘Abnormal’ Hieratic. I am sure he is arming me to have a series of arguments with Professor Gunn, but I have not yet figured out all of why.” His mother almost said something, and Edmund added, “I’m quite clear there are multiple reasons, of course. It is Uncle Alexander we’re talking about.”
“It is.” His mother shook her head. “Your father went out a little while ago with Benton. Something about a fence and a pig. We don’t expect Alexander to appear until at least lunch time. Shall we go out for a ride? With Ros, if she’s about. The weather’s not horrid, the skies have been clearing.”
“I’d like that. I’ll go change and knock and see if Ros wants to come with us.” Edmund stood, taking a moment to put the score back in its proper place on the shelf. He paused again in the library to tidy his desk. With those things done, he went off to change into riding gear and see if Ros wanted some time outside.
Chapter 8
