Where she had stood for the last five minutes, staring down White Lion Street at the innocent facade of No. 9, trying and failing to convince herself to knock on the door.
The problem was that she still didn’t know what to expect inside. How many people would there be, and of what sort? Her skill at lying went as far as pretending to be English, but she’d never masqueraded as anything other than the lower-class woman she was. She did not know how to be a housewife, or a bookish bluestocking—would there even be women in there? Yes, there must; last time there had been Miss Kittering and her unknown friend. But she didn’t have the first notion what would go on at such a meeting, whether they would discuss books, or poetry…
Or personal encounters with faerie-kind.
She heard a church bell ring the hour. Seven o’clock. The time had come either to go in, or to admit that she was a coward.
For Owen’s sake, she could not be a coward. Eliza squared her shoulders, marched down White Lion Street, and rapped the knocker on the door.
It opened almost immediately. No footmen here, and Eliza recognized the signs about the maid’s appearance that said she’d hurriedly cleaned herself up for door-opening duties, and would go back to dirtier work as soon as the meeting was underway. Which put Eliza slightly more at ease. Any family that could possibly afford a manservant to answer the door had one; that meant the people here were not so high above her as she’d feared.
The maid prompted her, “Yes?”
She’d been so busy thinking that she hadn’t said anything. “Oh! I’m, ah—Elizabeth Baker. I’m here for the meeting?”
“Yes, of course. They’re just getting started. If you’ll follow me?”
Eliza stood aside in the narrow front hall so the maid could close the door, then followed her up the stairs. I’m late. I should have known it; nobody went in while I was standing there, like an indecisive fool.
The house was old and a little shabby, the linoleum scratched in places, the stair railing well worn by countless hands. Voices came muffled through a door on the first floor, which stopped when the maid tapped on it. She waited until she heard a reply, then opened the door. Warm gaslight flooded out, and Eliza had her first proper sight of the members of the London Fairy Society.
There were only seven, but that was enough to crowd the small drawing room, taking up most of the seating. The gentlemen—three of them—stood as she came in, and Eliza dropped into a curtsy before realizing it made her look like a servant. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve come late—is this the Fairy Society?”
She straightened, and found herself staring at Louisa Kittering.
The young woman was seated on a chair by the windows, looking like the very picture of horrified surprise. Eliza feared she mirrored that expression, but her months of lying had been good practice; when she wrenched her gaze away, she saw only mild curiosity in the others’ faces, and nobody was looking between the two of them as if waiting for an explanation.
The remainder were a trio of gentlemen; a pair of middle-aged women who were very obviously sisters; and an elderly woman by the hearth, who answered Eliza. “Yes, do come in—it’s no trouble; we haven’t yet stopped ourselves chattering long enough to do anything like business. What is your name, child?”
Doubt paralyzed her tongue for an instant. Miss Kittering would expect her to say White; the maid had already heard Baker. You’ll already have to do something about Miss Kittering. Don’t connect yourself to Cromwell Road. “Elizabeth Baker,” she said, and made herself lift her eyes to the woman’s face. It was a friendly countenance, wrinkled by many smiles—entirely unlike Mrs. Kittering or Mrs. Fowler, whose forbidding expressions had trained her very thoroughly to keep her gaze cast down.
“Welcome, Mrs. Baker—or is it Miss? Miss Baker. I am Mrs. Chase, and as this is my house, so far I have been the de facto president of our little society, though we have not yet gone so far as to establish rules or any kind of official leadership. We are quite informal here, you see.”
Eliza was profoundly grateful for that informality; she’d already had enough of a fright. Mrs. Chase introduced her to the three gentlemen—Mr. Myers, Mr. Graff, and a Scostman named Macgregor—and to Miss Kittering and the sisters, a pair of spinsters named Goodemeade. “Please, have a seat,” the woman said, after all the greetings were done.
The furniture was mismatched in a way no elegant woman would ever have permitted, a mix of heavy new chairs with thick padding and older, sticklike pieces. Mr. Myers surrendered one of the former to Eliza, startling her; she was more accustomed to gentlemen ignoring or making crude suggestions to her. She settled into it, trying not to fidget with the skirt of Ann Wick’s dress. Mrs. Chase said, “You have an interest in fairies?”
“Oh, yes,” Eliza answered. She glanced around as she said it, partly to see if the others read her heartfelt tone as enthusiasm, but mostly to see what Louisa Kittering was doing. The young woman’s face had settled like stone. It didn’t look like anger, though, or the self-righteous indignation of a girl who had caught her maid in a lie; it looked more like confusion and dread.
Then understanding came, and Eliza fought not to laugh. I’m not the one who’s been caught out—she is!
Mrs. Kittering had forbidden her daughter to go out tonight, because of the dinner party. She was utterly inflexible upon that point. It therefore followed that Miss Kittering must have sneaked out of the house. Her supposed plan for the evening had been to attend a theatrical performance with a friend… but Eliza’s presence made it seem as if the truth had been discovered. In which case she had to be wondering where her mother was, and why Eliza had not seized her by the ear to drag her home.
Let her chew upon that for a while. A plan was taking shape in Eliza’s mind, but it could not be put in motion until the meeting ended.
Which left her with her original purpose in coming. She was disappointed not to see the other woman, Miss Kittering’s friend, who had claimed to know more of faeries than the others here. Still, there might be something of value to learn.
Mrs. Chase had gone on talking, words Eliza only half heard; something about there being a great diversity of interests present. “Mr. Graff, you had indicated that you wished to speak upon—anthropology, was it?”
He rose at her words, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. “Yes, anthropology. Ladies, gentlemen—I recently returned from missionary work in Africa, and as a result have taken quite an interest in the superstitions of primitive peoples. As some of you may be aware, this often takes the form of animism, totemism, and similar beliefs. Well, the chaps I was dealing with were full of such things, always talking about lion-men or what have you, and it occurred to me that what they were describing were not so different from our own English fairies. More primitive, of course—a reflection of their own lesser development—but the kinship can be seen.
“Visiting places of that sort… it’s like looking back into our own, less civilized past. And so I have begun to wonder whether the fairy beliefs we have here might not be a relic of similar practices back in pagan days.”
Eliza did not like him in the slightest. He did not look at anyone as he spoke, but rather directed his gaze above their heads, which had the effect of lifting his nose to an arrogant angle. She liked him even less when he chose an example to illustrate his point. “Take the legends—very common in the north of England, but found elsewhere as well—of supernatural black dogs. We know that the dog was an object of veneration for ancient Celtic peoples; think of Cú Chulainn, the Hound of Culann. Might there not have been a dog cult in northern England? Perhaps a funerary cult, given the association of such phantasms with death; or perhaps they were warriors, garbing themselves as dogs before going into battle. Then we might very easily explain the legends as folk memory, preserving a faint, distorted echo of past truths.”