LITMIR.BIZ

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      Nicholas gave him a hard look. ‘You gave me your word, no questions.’

      He looked so fierce that Tagalong woke up to himself. ‘My apologies, Mr Raspero. It is just —’

      ‘Whatever,’ Nicholas said with a dismissive gesture of his left hand. He led the way across the room they were in to a door at the side. The door was closed and Nicholas gestured to Tagalong to wait.

      Tagalong watched Nicholas. He was using his wand to search the space beyond the door. Nicholas opened the door enough to put his wand through. Tagalong guessed that he was practising macchato. Nicholas waved his wand, there was a yell which shifted in tone as if the person who was yelling was rapidly moving through the air. Nicholas stepped through the door, gesturing for Tagalong to follow him. Above them was a spiral staircase, and Nicholas was up above Tagalong’s head in a moment, and Tagalong suddenly found himself plucked upwards and set down beside Nicholas. Gesturing to Tagalong to crouch down, Nicholas led the way up the staircase. The top of the stairs was cordoned off with a red cord and Nicholas briskly stepped over this cord and Tagalong followed. They were just in time, for as they started walking along the wide corridor they had climbed up to via the stairs, a party of laughing merrymakers came their way, paying them no attention. They made their way along the corridor and down another flight of stairs. Merrymakers were all around them now, laughing and carrying on and talking and having pretend battles. The party was gathering momentum and soon it would be in full swing. They were now guests at the engagement party of Mr Hedley Carver and Lady Sofiya Lachance, in appearance at least, and given the nature of these circumstances, appearances were all that were needed.

      7:00 PM, Thursday 5 May 1544 A.F.

      Isabel was with ‘The Gang’ at the engagement party of Mr Hedley Carver and Lady Sofiya Lachance. They had discussed the matter of Breckenridge’s proposal with varying degrees of agreement and disagreement with Isabel’s refusal of this proposal.

      ‘Really, you are being impossible, Izzy,’ Miss Uliana Newman said briskly. ‘If you are going to turn down a suitor of the calibre of Brecky, who on earth are you ever going to accept?’

      ‘He’s really not bad looking,’ said Miss Penelope “Penny” Earlson reflectively with a far-away look in her eyes. ‘And he’s very rich.’

      ‘So’s Izzy,’ Miss Kora Pryor pointed out. ‘She doesn’t need to marry for money.’

      ‘She does need to marry, though,’ Uliana observed. ‘Or is it your intention to never marry, Izzy?’

      ‘I will marry in my own time,’ Isabel declared. ‘Arabella didn’t marry until she was twenty-five, and look at how many suitors she had.’

      ‘You are not going to wait that long until you marry, surely?’ Mr Berg Irving asked.

      ‘Izzy’s point was that she could wait, not how long she would wait,’ Miss Sophie Nicholson told him.

      ‘But what is it that you are waiting for?’ Uliana wanted to know. ‘True love?’

      Everyone laughed at the way she said this except Penny. ‘Of course she is,’ Penny said, looking at Isabel for support, ‘aren’t you, Izzy?’

      ‘Certainly not!’ Isabel snapped scornfully. ‘Any man who will do will be perfectly satisfactory as a husband. I am waiting for when the time is right, that is all.’

      ‘The time is never right, Izzy, only the man is,’ Sophie said with an air of wisdom. ‘The time will only be right when the right man comes along.’

      ‘First you say the time is never right then you say it is only right when such-and-such has happened,’ Isabel rebuked her. ‘Am I to abandon logic in order to be married?’

      ‘Logic has nothing to do with it,’ Penny decreed. ‘Of course you should abandon logic.’

      ‘Or better still, ignore it from the beginning,’ Uliana suggested, ‘and look only to love.’ The Gang knew Uliana well enough to see that she was in one of her contrary moods, saying the opposite of what she believed.

      ‘Albert was telling me about the Guardians of the Hidden Flame,’ Miss Samantha Clemens told them. Albert was her piano teacher. ‘They believe that only love which is hidden in the depths of the heart is true love. If you declare your feelings then your love is immediately degraded into mere sentiment just as the snow turns to sludge. Your love only remains true if it remains secret and the highest expression of your hidden love is to die from your longing for the beloved who can never be attained.’

      ‘Do these Guardians of the Hidden Flame tend to die off in noticeable numbers themselves?’ Uliana asked sardonically. Her pragmatic soul was offended by this kind of talk. ‘Or do they fail to follow through?’

      Even Penny, always the champion of eternal romance, appeared unconvinced by the philosophy of the Guardians of the Hidden Flame. ‘Where is love if lovers are not united?’ she objected. ‘What is the point of that?’

      ‘Brecky’s feelings were sludge from the beginning,’ Isabel observed, ‘even before he declared them.’ It would be a while before she tired of making anti-Brecky comments whenever possible. ‘The only love that man has is for himself.’

      ‘There is no love but self-love,’ Kora declared grandly. She had taken up reading one of the more pessimistic philosophers lately in order to impress a young man she had recently met. ‘Our motivations in life are two-fold: fear, which is the avoidance of pain, and pleasure, which is to exercise our self-love by the pretence of caring for others.’ Kora paused there as if for further reflection, but, in fact, she was only wondering if she had got it right so far.

      ‘You forget a third motivation, Kora,’ Uliana added, who never passed up a chance to be witty, ‘and that is to acquire the wisdom of a philosopher.’

      The Gang chuckled.

      ‘Yes, the philosophers always overlook themselves, do they not?’ Berg agreed. ‘It is that they are modest, I think.’

      The Gang chuckled again.

      ‘Oh goodness, are we discussing philosophy?’ Sophie complained. ‘At a party?’

      ‘What can we be thinking?’ Uliana agreed. ‘Let us live!’ She said this so loudly that everyone jumped and then giggled with the shock of having been so startled.

      There seemed to be little more to say. Shortly after this, The Gang set out into the depths of the party to seek excitement, diversion, amusement, witty comments and even, perhaps, true love.

      7:00 PM, Thursday 5 May 1544 A.F

      Tagalong had now found out all that he needed to tell Jolly. Nicholas was something else, and that was what Jolly had wanted to know. He realised that he had to ditch Nicholas at the first possible opportunity. Even someone as naïve as Nicholas would wonder why Tagalong knew so few people when he had given the impression that he knew practically everybody who was here. But how could he part company with Nicholas right here and now?

      ‘My friends call me Tagalong,’ Tagalong said.

      ‘How nice for you,’ Nicholas said drily. ‘I will call you Mr Longman.’

      Tagalong decided this wasn’t enough for a quarrel. His ever restless and inventive mind devised a new strategy on the spot.

      ‘Rule Number One: never arrive at a party on time,’ Tagalong then told Nicholas with an air of the superiority particular to “one of those who know”. Tagalong dove straight for a nearby table and acquired drinks for them both. Nicholas had barely sipped his drink before Tagalong had guzzled his down and was off for another.

      He brought another drink for Nicholas, holding one in each hand, but when Nicholas shook his head Tagalong shrugged, downed one drink in three swallows and put down the empty glass. He leaned towards Nicholas and said, ‘Rule Number Two: get drunk as fast as possible.’

      ‘I’m learning so much from you today,’ Nicholas

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