Ravensby Od

Book : The Wonder Tales

by Charlotte E. English

Genres: Gaslamp; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

From the author of Gloaming and Wyrde and Wayward comes a sparkling wonder tale about a gentle widow, an eccentric wizard, and a wardrobe of magical hats…

Meg Lavender has been alone since her husband died – well, mostly. There’s a trio of widows in Ravensby Od; you can find them every Wednesday at Foxley’s, absorbing syllabub, and tea.

It’s a quiet life in a quiet town; a sensible town, where tea is always at three o’clock sharp, and the trains arrive precisely when they’re supposed to.

But the past is an odd sort of place, and it won’t always stay where it’s meant to. Magic is coming back to Ravensby Od – and Meg Lavender’s in the thick of it. It begins with a strange bequest, sped on the wings of ravens…

“The world is full of strange things: it doesn’t do to object, when they get a little stranger.”

Bursting with Charlotte E. English’s unique charm, Ravensby Odis a wild, whimsical Wonder Tale to warm the heart and leave you smiling.

Contains: dauntless leading ladies; weird and wonderful wizards; magical dresses, and hats; an unkindness of ravens; labyrinths; unlikely friendships; and entirely too much syllabub.

“Large helpings of wit and whimsy...” Publishers Weekly on Faerie Fruit

“Her faultless prose… sparkles with eye-bedazzling wonder.” NYT Bestselling author Mercedes Lackey on Gloaming

 

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Release date: July 4, 2023

Print pages: 178

Sample

Chapter One

IT HAS OFTEN BEEN observed, by minds commonly accounted wise, that extraordinary events come about in threes. There is a kind of magic to that number; something compelling, satisfying on some instinctive level no one can quite describe.

Consider. Were you to be offered a crisp butter biscuit by a kind hostess — the sort designed for elegant tea-tables, and therefore, the approximate size of a six-penny coin — you might feel that to consume one merely whets your hunger. A second improves upon the impression — but it is the third, the magical third, that has the power to satisfy you. Having devoured three such delicacies, then you may return to the contents of your tea cup, and the patter of your hostess’s conversation, and put thoughts of butter biscuits and sugar behind you.

Well, then. I do not know how extraordinary the events of this tale may prove to be, but the preponderance of threes must be considered a fortunate beginning. Let’s proceed.

The island kingdom of Anglatora was once among the most magical places in the world, steeped to its very eyebrows in strangeness and wonder. This happy state of being persisted until the old wizard Tamlin unaccountably disappeared, taking most of the magic away with him. Since that day, Anglatora has declined steadily in oddities, but whatever it may have lost in the way of magic, it has gained significantly in what one might term the comfortingly ordinary. Were you to visit Anglatora now, you would find everything happens more or less as you might expect it to.

With, perhaps, one or two exceptions.

At the present time (that being three hundred and twenty-three years since the disappearance of Tamlin) there are three Ravensbys in Anglatora, varying in size and importance. The first in both qualities is of course Ravensby Magna, a grand place situated on the westerly coast. Its distance from the capital might once have retarded its prospects, but since the advent of the railways it has enjoyed so steady a succession of gentlemen and fine ladies from the city as to transform it entirely. Many a grand seafront mansion has since sprung up to accommodate this holidaying elite, and in the seasons of finer weather (admittedly of limited duration in Anglatora), the place might fairly be said to bustle.

The least in size and importance is Nether Ravensby. Trailing some twenty miles south of its grander cousin, Nether Ravensby possesses nothing whatsoever to recommend it. A scant, meagre, muddy little place, its residents console themselves for this dearth of finer features by affecting a settled dislike of everything to do with Ravensby Magna — especially the gentlemen and fine ladies.

A little farther inland lies Ravensby Od. Nestled between three grand hills and sheltered, thus, from wilder weather, Od is a mild, mellow place with a palpable air of eternal tea-time. Lacking the grandeur of Magna, it lacks also the dreariness of Nether, and therefore might be considered Exactly Right.

In this last of the Ravensbys live three widowed ladies. Finding themselves alike in situation (devoid of either husband or child, and therefore free from all restraint), they had long since formed a confederacy, and saw each other every day of their lives (or near enough).

We concern ourselves first with Meg Lavender, middling as to age and meagre as to fortune, who lives in a dilapidated cottage at the end of Nettle Lane. And it is here we find her, upon one drowningly wet morning at the end of November, down on her hands and knees in her cramped little hallway, wielding a collection of old rags against a steady stream of water leaking down from the roof. It could not contrive to be a neat, simple leak, the sort that results from a neat, simple hole in one’s roof, and descends in distinct droplets into a conveniently-placed bucket. This particular leak came in at the lintel over the door, and ran in glistening rivers down the length of the frame, and thence over the cold stone tiles of her floor. Whereupon, either she or the one, stout maid her dwindling fortune permitted her to employ, strove to soak it up in cloth, before it could flood the house as far as the stairs.

It was in this ignominious situation a visitor discovered her, sometime after sunset. This visitor had not the sense to wait, when no one came immediately to the door. He opened it himself, and came striding in, adding a quantity of mud to the swirling waters, and turning them brackish. ‘Oh!’ said he, receiving an unaccustomed view of his unwitting hostess’s raven-coloured hair, ordinarily neatly arranged, but falling just now out of its pins. Her face being turned to the floor, he saw nothing of her countenance, and her annoyance, therefore, passed him by. ‘This is a poor moment to receive guests, perhaps,’ observed he wisely.

Meg muttered a choice syllable or two under her breath, and contrived to heave herself halfway up off the floor. Her back groaned in protest; when had she grown old enough to suffer such indignities as an aching back, and after what was, really, only a very little labour? ‘Edmund,’ she sighed upon identifying her interloper. ‘I am, as you can see, urgently employed.’

‘Let me help,’ said the gentleman, to his credit, and though Meg (in all the futile pride characteristic of a poor and half-forgotten widow) protested, he was soon down on the floor with her, mopping up rain with uncommon energy. ‘The rain was lessening, as I rode,’ he informed her. ‘I do believe it may stop entirely by the morning.’

‘Let us hope and pray that it will,’ answered Meg fervently. ‘Then I may sleep in peace again.’

Edmund regained his feet, and stood a moment in unhappy contemplation of the damp and chilly cottage. He was too big for the place, a tall man, and bulky about the shoulders; the cramped proportions of the limestone building seemed smaller than ever, when he was in it. ‘I wish you would permit me to—’

Meg cut him off; she never could bear it when he offered her charity. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?’ she said crisply, dropping soaked rags into her old wooden bucket, and tangling her half-frozen hands in the thick, woollen folds of her shawl. ‘It’s rather late to be visiting, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I am just come back from town, and I brought one or two articles for you. I thought you would rather have them tonight, than wait for the morning.’ From a pocket of his dark great-coat he produced a parcel wrapped in brown paper: from its shape and proportions it plainly held a book, either a very fat one, or two or three wrapped up together.

Pride notwithstanding, Meg felt a flush of pleasure as she took it. Books were, indeed, always welcome with her, and how rarely was she able to purchase any herself! ‘Thank you, Edmund,’ she said, awarding him a smile. ‘This is very kind of you.’

‘Blythe’s thought, as well as my own,’ he admitted. ‘She sends her love, and will see you tomorrow. The rain was too much for her to venture into these parts at night.’

Blythe Parnell, nee Hartley, was (as the astute reader may already have guessed) the second of these three widowed ladies, rather older than Meg, and as rich as Meg was poor. She and her brother lived at the manor house of Cloudsley, among the grandest dwellings Ravensby Od could boast.

‘Do tell her how terribly I have missed her,’ Meg replied. ‘I shall delight in hearing every detail of her doings in town, but consider myself very fortunate that she has returned.’

‘Next time, perhaps you will come with us,’ he said, with a little severity; neither he nor Blythe had been able to prevail upon Meg to accompany them,

 though both had tried.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, and the subject dropped, Edmund immediately afterwards going back out into the rain, and away.

Meg tore open her parcel in a fever of eagerness, and found it to contain no fewer than three recently published novels, all of the most romantic in nature. Edmund was perfectly right: she needed just such a distraction after the labours and frustrations of the day. Abandoning the bucket and its dripping load of rags (for now), she set Bett to the business of brewing up a little hot wine for the two of them — ‘With the spices Mrs. Parnell gave us, Bett, just a dash—’ and retired into her parlour to read. With a pair of blankets placed over her lap and an ancient oil lamp at her elbow, she contrived to make herself comfortable enough without a fire; and when Bett brought in the wine, she began to think it not so very bad a day, after all.

‘What’s this, then?’ said Bett, stooping to collect the discarded brown paper from Meg’s parcel, and finding a letter tucked into it.

‘Oh, I had not observed it,’ said Meg, her mind already occupied with her novel. ‘I daresay it is from Blythe, or perhaps Mr. Hartley collected my post for me.’ Bett set the letter upon the parlour table, but Meg had already forgotten about it. It remained there, unread, when at last she retired to bed, and was not thought about again until the following morning.

Very late the following morning, for upon waking, Meg discovered the day to be dreary beyond belief (though mercifully the rain had largely ceased to drum away upon her beleaguered roof). The pervasive chill combined with the leaden grey atmosphere conspired to keep her abed; she chose to consider her novel of greater importance than anything else that awaited her, and remained beneath her blankets until she had devoured every last page. Dear Bett being so good as to bring her a roll and a cup of tea someway through this process, she was very well pleased.

Duty got her out of her bed eventually, however, though she cast a longing, hungry glance at the two remaining books upon her bedside table as she did so. Edmund and Blythe had been so generous as to bring her three, but the remaining two must wait.

So absorbed had she been in the tale of Miranda and Sir Gundrun, an excessively

 dashing knight at the Court of King Felix the Grand, she had all but forgotten the day. It was Wednesday, and the rain being very much lessened, that meant she was overdue at Foxley’s.

If a novel could keep her out of her bed until the latest hours of the night, a cake from Foxley’s could get her out of it again, in spite of all that cold and damp could do. Meg was dressed in a trice, in all her warmest layers; grey woollen skirts feathered with petticoats swirled about her legs as she dashed downstairs, and a thick, slate-grey pelisse covered her indigo-blue blouse. ‘It’s Wednesday, Bett!’ she called as she barrelled out of doors, receiving a distant grunt of acknowledgement as she set off towards the centre of the town. Only by the merest accident did she happen to catch sight of the letter on her way past, still sulking in lonesome state upon the parlour table. She snatched it up, and stuffed it into one of the capacious pockets of her skirt.

RAVENSBY OD HAS AN untidy, straggling shape to it, composed of several meandering streets which do not appear to hold each other in any very great esteem. They wander in their disparate directions, meeting only occasionally, and as if by accident. The town being by no means large, one is still hard-pressed to avoid becoming lost in its peculiar maze of streets, pathways and lanes — unless one has lived there for most of one’s life, as Meg has, and knows its every nook and corner intimately. Meg, then, strode with perfect confidence up to the top of Nettle lane, skirted the Temple of the Firmament that marked the top of Lower Seawell (a mere, insignificant country construct, of no great size, but its pale marble pillars and domed roof made no small impression upon visitors, nonetheless); and fair sprinting up Mallow Street, arrived at Foxley’s Confectioner’s with two minutes to spare.

Blythe was already inside, ensconced at their favourite table in front of the pretty bow window. Arimathae, of course, was late.

‘You are out of breath, Meg,’ observed Blythe, frowning at her. ‘Do not tell me you ran here.’

Blythe, perfectly poised and immaculate, looked quite as though she had never run anywhere in her life, and very likely hadn’t. She had an icy kind of beauty, and though her pale blond locks were turning, by slow degrees, silver, nothing could do away with the severe handsomeness of her face and figure. She resembled a mislaid goddess, toiling about among the mere mortals of Ravensby Od by some curious oversight, and she had a reputation abroad for being a most intimidating female. She poured fragrant amber tea into a cup painted with violets, and set it before Meg.

‘I did,’ gasped Meg. ‘I was so deep in a book I almost forgot our appointment.’

‘Forgot! When we have met with the strictest regularity this past year at least?’

‘I know. But you must blame Edmund, if you please, for bringing me your most generous gift last night. I hardly slept a wink, and I regret nothing.’ Meg, finding the several-times forgotten letter rustling in her skirt, fetched it out, and put it down upon the table before she took up her tea. A sip informed her that Blythe had ordered persimmon green, flavoured additionally with something flowery: most agreeable. What’s more, an ornate cake stand stood already in the centre of the table, invitingly laden with tiny, pastel-coloured fancies. Perfect.

‘We are both very contrite, I assure you, but what is it you have there—’ Blythe’s gaze had moved to the mysterious letter, but her query was interrupted by the door being flung open with most improper fervour, and Arimathae appeared.

‘Sorry!’ she trilled, by no means out of breath, despite her evident disorganisation. ‘Miss Lemon kept me longer than usual today, she says I must master the new scales by Saturday or she shall wash her hands of me. But she may do so with my goodwill if she proposes to come between me and a single one of those cakes. ...