Chapter Text
Leonie Barrow sat in the wood-panelled room and arranged her notes on the table for the third time. She had arrived half an hour early for her Advanced Abnormal Psychology seminar. She was debating arranging them again when Cartwright entered and sat next to her with a smile. “Morning.’ He motioned at her books with his chin. "Admit it, Leonie, they make half of this balderdash up. And I could have written my thesis in the time it took to track all of this mess down.” The subject had been difficult to research, covered in papers and obsolete books spread throughout the university’s libraries and archives.
“It would have taken you far less time if you knew your way around the index card system, George.”
“Lies and calumnies, Leonie."
She couldn’t commiserate. She had already owned the relevant texts. They all dealt with English necromancy: the Bayeux tapestry skeletons; the Puritans' suspicions of John Dee and Francis Bacon; the “undeath” conceits of the metaphysical poets; the debated presence of raised soldiers at Culloden; and, finally, modern necromancers.
Leonie had come to understand that her own interest in the criminal psychology of necromancers was... tolerated. A young woman interested in tabloid criminology, said the older professors with a paternal smile. Well, it would do until she left academia and settled down, they thought. A woman who reads about dead bodies and the freaks who play with them, whispered her fellow-students. Well, some girls love a dangerous man, they laughed.
She could only thank heaven that her own acquaintence with Cabal and the Princess Hortense disaster remained very quiet; the Senzan authorities were sitting on it for some reason of their own. Being “the necromancy girl” was enough notoriety for her.
If she had interested herself in something more practical or more feminine - kleptomania, maybe, or juvenile delinquency - she might have found support, but her choice of subject had isolated her more than she had expected. She unconsciously raised her chin. She was a Barrow, and she wouldn’t let them see her fret. She started to mentally review the texts.
Some few of the articles touched on the topic of Johannes Cabal. Cabal was an obscure figure, seemingly ageless (or simply unusually young, suggested a more pragmatic scholar; he couldn't have been active for even ten years). He was suspected of theft, murder, and raising the dead. The last was mostly conjecture based upon the nature of the thefts, as Cabal was not, so far, associated with the classic mass raising of revenants to assault the living. Leonie had learned in Senza what the scholars only assumed; Johannes Cabal was a necromancer, if not the kind they expected to find.
The young don came in with a group of students, dropped his notes on the table, smiled at Leonie, and pinned a wanted poster to the wall, beaming. Leonie flinched. It was Cabal, more or less; blond, slim, pronounced features - perhaps too pronounced; Cabal’s nose was long, but not a beak, and while he was given to glaring, she couldn’t picture this hot-eyed glower. It struck her again how normal he really appeared: a priggish banker waiting for his mother-in-law, not an arcane master of the undead. This was, she thought wearily, going to be a long class.
Conversation was safely factual at first but warmed as private theories were aired and trust established. Leonie said little initially, but watched to see how the others spoke until she received a direct invitation. “I hope you don’t mind, Miss Barrow, but I believe you have an interest in necromancers. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on how Cabal fits the classic psychological profile?"
She marshalled her thoughts. “Not at all. First, I’d repeat Faulkner’s idea that necromancy is an attempt by a deranged man to gain some control over his world. This theory is a sound one, and there is nothing in the information on Cabal to contradict it.'
"Gardener added his own observation that a corpse is a passive and unthreatening subject for those, like necromancers, who are frightened by the living. There isn't enough information to comment on Cabal here." Though she could write a paper based on her personal experience, if she dared to publish it.
"A raised revenant is a tool the necromancer can use to create fear and chaos, making his presence felt and showing his power to the world. Cabal, however, has avoided the grand gesture” except for the explosions on the Princess Hortense, she thought, "and attempted to disguise his activities when possible.”
The young don was confused. “Are you suggesting that Cabal is not a necromancer?”
“No; I think the assumption is a fair one, based on the books he has stolen," and the corpses he has raised, she added silently. "I would suggest that he is more intelligent and controlled than the classical necromancer and better at covering his tracks. He may plan to raise an undead army, but I doubt it.” She leaned forward, speaking with intensity, caught up in the argument she had made mentally many times. "Perhaps he practices necromancy towards another goal?”
The young don smiled. “You may be right, Miss Barrow. Unfortunately, the data is so sparse that it is difficult to form any kind of well-supported theory.”
She sat back, internally stung by the implied criticism. “Yes, of course.”
The seminar moved on from Cabal after that, and Leonie contributed little, not wanting to make a spectacle of herself twice. When it was over, she left grimly amused. She particularly wished that Cabal had heard Cartwright's speculation on the practice's correlation with impotence and sexual deviance, and Dobbs' suggestion that it demonstrated a premodern understanding of the world.
After class the don approached her in the quad; “Miss Barrow. I’m sorry if I was abrupt. Have you ever thought of writing on modern necromancy?”
“I have thought of it, sir, but I can’t say I’ve been encouraged to do it.”
"It isn’t a subject favoured by the old guard, but that’s all the more reason for a reappraisal of the evidence. I don’t think there’s been a proper survey of the latest cases from an academic perspective."
Leonie thought of the set, desperate face seen over a gun barrel; her father’s head bloodied from a tire iron; the astonishing letter saying that her soul had been “surplus to requirements” with a postmark from not so very far away. “I’ll consider it, sir. It’s a sensational subject, and if one wishes to be taken seriously there are professional risks in entering that field.” She had even turned down a few opportunities to write on necromancers in her coursework lately; a few dull papers on kleptomania, etc., wouldn’t kill her, and perhaps she could stay in the running for a scholarship.
He nodded. "Look, the Sir E-R-F is allowing interviews with Arthur Twiccian and some other high-profile patients on an upcoming day; a few select scholars and journalists will be allowed in. We’ve no faculty who are interested, so I could put in a good word for you, if you liked."
“Yes... yes, thank you! That would be a very attractive opportunity. Please do.” Finally! She had wanted to interview the imprisoned necromancer since the news of his arrest. Necromancers were rare, necromancers alive in custody were doubly so, and access to them was strictly controlled.
The young don was dazzled by her broad smile as she took her leave. Miss Barrow had become reserved since her interests were discovered, and this glow of interest and gratitude was rather stunning. He had hoped to see it when he persuaded the professor to allow the seminar. He sighed dolefully; he couldn't keep pulling necromancers out of his hat for her.
***
Two weeks later Leonie walked down a hall at the Sir Eldon Ritz-Fitzon Asylum. She wore soft brown tweed, a cream blouse, flat shoes, and immaculate but minimal makeup; her “city” clothes, bought in the summer. Her hair was restrained but not scraped back. She carried a soft notecase with leather handles containing a clipboard with questions (was there a triggering event that interested you in necromancy?), pencils, and pens for notes. She was a lady, and she was here to work.
This was the third time she had been permitted to interview a necromancer, if one excluded her conversations with Cabal, which she did. Permission had never been given, and she had never asked any questions, unless one considered a "how did you get to be so very fucked up" uttered behind a barrel in an alley an interview. She could have tried harder on the Hortense, she supposed, but between the murders and the way they invariably got bogged down in sniping at each other, she had learned very little of his work and his attitude towards it. Except that one day: and her professional detachment failed every time she thought of writing about it.
The building was a Victorian edifice with high ceilings, rounded corners, and heavy metal fittings. A frieze of maenads (really, thought Leonie) crowned the walls at the entrance. The superintendent had sent an orderly to guide her to the correct department where a desk-clerk took her name and showed her to a half-full waiting-room. "Tea, miss?”
“Thank you.”
Leonie sat down and opened her case to review her questions for the dozenth time. She knew them by heart. She had originally planned to collect enough interview data to base her thesis upon it some day, though she was becoming discouraged. She was reviewing question #3 (what is your motivation for engaging in the raising of the dead?) when something penetrated her absorption and her blood ran hot and cold.
She had heard a voice from the clerk’s desk. “I am here from the Evening Mail to interview Arthur Twiccian.” Her hand stiffened around her pencil, and she fought conflicting desires to look over her clipboard and to sink down behind it in counterfeit absorption. She stayed very still.
“My interview is to begin immediately.” A blond man stood at the other end of the room, plaguing the desk clerk. There was no sign that he had seen her. Apparently he had survived the wreck of the Hortense. She couldn’t say she was surprised. She rather hoped he had been inconvenienced on his journey home, but he appeared much as ever: black suit, Gladstone bag, blond, subtly uncivil. What the hell did he want with Twiccian?