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It was too quiet, that was the problem.
Which was a ridiculous thing to be complaining about, of course. It was only a few weeks ago that I’d been quietly bemoaning the necessary evil of the basement construction work and the disruptions it had caused to the Folly’s usual ebb and flow of activity. Now that the basement cells were completed and the various construction crews had taken their leave, I should have been relishing the return to peace and quiet.
And yet, somehow it was now too quiet.
It was in the evenings and at night that I was noticing it the most. It was easier not to notice, or at least not to pay much mind, during the day, what with the many and varied ways I had to keep myself busy. Our various active cases, Peter’s undercover activities, Abigail’s ongoing education, my tuition of the legal group, all the increasingly complicated bureaucracy of being a modern and active part of the Metropolitan Police… There were no shortages of demands on my time and attention during the working day and thus distractions from the niggling sense that something was amiss.
But in the evenings, after the work day had ended and when I found myself taking my supper alone more often than not, that was when it was impossible to ignore. There was a stillness to the Folly in the darker hours now, a stillness that I had once been used to and had not missed in its absence. Not even the ever-raucous presence of Toby or the artistic quirks of Foxglove seemed to disturb that stillness, which had returned like an unwelcome houseguest, one who arrives unexpectedly and makes clear his lack of intentions to leave despite one’s most pointed comments.
It had been easier to deal with in the months following the conclusion of Operation Jennifer, as at that point the return to peace and quiet and my being the sole human occupant of the Folly had been something of a relief. I had welcomed the space to deal with my own feelings on the subject of Lesley and the unfortunate conclusion of the whole Martin Chorley affair, and while Peter’s suspension had been an unwelcome change, it was merely a temporary one. He would be cleared of wrongdoing, return to work and come back to live in the Folly, and our lives would return to what they had been before.
At least, that was what I had told myself at the time, right up until the day when Beverley and Peter had told me over dinner at her house in Richmond that Beverley was expecting.
I was pleased for them, of course. It was obvious that, while unexpected, they both considered this to be a welcome development, and a step forward in their lives together. I had wished them my most heartfelt congratulations, and then driven home to the Folly in a strange mood that I could not quite place.
That feeling had persisted over the following months, although I did my best to ignore it, and had abated somewhat when, in December, Peter had returned to work. The commencement of the long-planned basement renovations had also served as ample distraction, as had planning Peter’s uncover operation at the SCC. Which had brought with it its own anxieties, of course, but ones that I had become somewhat used to after years of worrying about Peter’s safety.
But now, with the turn of the year and more than four months since Peter had moved out of the Folly, it was becoming harder and harder to ignore the fact that once again, a permanent change to our lives had occurred.
The simple truth was that I had become accustomed to Peter’s presence in the Folly, and that now that he was living full time with Beverley, I was… missing him.
And it was no use telling myself that it was only temporary, that once we uncovered what was going on with the SCC everything would go back to normal and the Folly would once again have its resident apprentice wizard setting things on fire every other week. Beverley’s pregnancy and Peter’s resultant ever-nearing fatherhood ensured that things would never go back to the way they were. Even after his time undercover was finished, Peter would doubtless continue living with Beverley and the Folly would become merely his place of employment, not his home. And for the foreseeable future, I would be eating most of my meals alone.
That was the point at which I shook myself out of my maudlin thoughts, or at least attempted to, and put my cutlery down next to my half empty plate with deliberate care. Molly was looking at me from the doorway that led to the kitchen, and eyeing my unfinished meal with judgement.
“I apologise, Molly,” I said. “The pie is lovely as always, but I’m afraid my appetite has deserted me somewhat.” She frowned, as that was the second time that week that I had been unable to clear my plate, and darted over to look at me closely. I suspect that if she had considered it proper, she would have placed the back of her hand against my forehead to check my temperature. “I’m not ill,” I reassured her. “Just… distracted, I suppose.” After a moment or two in which she continued to frown at me, she nodded, and gestured interrogatively to my plate, miming putting away the leftovers. “Please do,” I said. “It may well be that my appetite returns later.”
I suspected that it might. I have never been one to skip meals when I can help it, a consequence of spending one’s teenage years at the mercy of boarding school catering, and one which was accompanied by a familiarity with sneaking down to the kitchen at all hours. It was the empty dining room, not the meal itself, that I had issue with.
As Molly cleared away my plate, I internally remonstrated with myself for being overly dramatic. I had spent a great many years eating alone at that table, or the one in the kitchen. Anticipating a longer term return to that state of affairs should not have been causing quite so much of a reaction.
As I retired to the mundane library to bury myself in work in pursuit of a distraction, I reminded myself once again that I’d had no business assuming that Peter would spend his entire life living in the Folly with Molly and myself in the first place. He was a young man, with a clear interest in the fairer sex and who had on occasion made jokes assuming that one day he would have children of his own. I should have anticipated that his relationship with Beverley would one day lead to this outcome. And I had had four whole months to get used to the idea.
Only, somehow I had managed not to consider that outcome until it was staring me in the face. It wasn’t the first time. I’d often fallen into that trap in the past, forgetting that I was the outlier in my lack of interest in such relationships or a life with that shape. Most people do actively seek out marriage or other forms of partnership, and it is only natural that such relationships should take precedent over others. At least, so I have been repeatedly told.
I remember how it was with the other chaps at Casterbrook and beyond, fielding inquiries about any young woman I happened to pass the time of day with, or God forbid happened to express an interest in getting to know. I remember how my denials occasionally led to inquiries about other boys, although I had no interest in that direction either. I remember how aghast I was when I discovered that the nature of my relationship with Molly had become a subject of gossip. All my life, I have found myself at odds with what people seem to think a life ought to contain.
And now my apprentice is building a life for himself of the sort that I have never truly understood, and despite it making him happy I find myself, in my most morose moments, on the verge of resenting it. It’s an unworthy emotion, but I learned a long time ago that sometimes one must sit with such emotions before one can exorcise them. And exorcise it I would, for I had resolved that by the time the twins were born, I would be nothing but glad for them. They, and Peter, deserved that from me.
Nevertheless, I have lost so many friends in my life. I suppose that of all the ways that has happened, losing them to their happy endings must be counted among the best. But it is still a loss.
Eventually, the evening drew late enough that I could justify taking myself to bed, although I found myself reluctant to do so. Work had hardly proved a distraction at all, so the prospect of being entirely alone with my thoughts held little appeal. But I would be no good to anyone if I neglected my rest, so I forced myself to close the books, return the files to their folders, and start my evening routine. Perhaps routine, a habit built by boarding school and then reinforced by the army and thus deeply entrenched, would provide its own form of distraction. It was better than nothing.
It is a curious thing, being awoken by silence, but when one has become used to background noise its absence can be quite as disruptive as any commotion. Although, with the disorientating consequences of sleep it took me a little while to realise that that was indeed the cause of my sudden wakefulness in the small hours of that night. Unfortunately, broken sleep is something that has long been a feature of my life, and its causes can be many and various.
I lay there for some time, staring at the ceiling as consciousness returned, listening out for any noise that might have prompted my waking. Had there been a knock on my door, or a siren in the square below? Was Toby barking or scratching at the door, demanding my attention? No such cause seemed to present itself, so I made an attempt to sort back through my own recent memories. Had I been awoken by a dream? But the absence of a racing heart or sweat on my brow seemed to preclude that possibility as well.
Eventually, I was forced to conclude that, once again, I had been awoken by nothing more than that pervasive sense that the Folly was too quiet. Not content with simply disrupting my meals, the silence was disrupting my sleep as well. It had happened a few times over the previous weeks, and I had to admit that I was getting a little tired of the occurrence. Especially as there seemed to be little I could do to rectify the situation.
Squinting through the gloom, I sought for my alarm clock and thus a sense of the current time. Near enough 3am. I sighed. Too early to justify starting my day, and too late to continue with the previous one. A thoroughly useless hour to be awake.
It was at times like this that I regretted the fact that both the Folly’s small gym and the basement firing range had been necessary sacrifices to install the new custody suite. Spending some time throwing punches or indeed fireballs had proven in the past to be quite the effective cures for insomnia, but neither of those options now remained available to me. Well, I supposed they could, but only in ways that would cause property damage of the sort that tends to displease Molly.
No, other methods would have to be found, and I’d made a start towards finding a solution that worked on the last occasion that I had found myself unable to sleep through the night. It amounted to quite literally pacing the halls - taking myself on a brisk walk around the Folly’s many corridors and balconies and up and down the stairs until I felt able to sleep again. Not perhaps the most inspired solution, but at least a somewhat effective one thus far.
I briefly experimented with closing my eyes and rolling over, but I knew myself well enough to know when further sleep was a lost cause. And so I got out of bed, located and donned my slippers and dressing gown, and stepped out into the hall.
Unlike my bedroom, which I keep quite dark by preference through the use of heavy curtains, the hall outside had the slightly lighter darkness caused by diffuse moonlight bleeding out from the atrium. Picking a direction essentially at random, I followed the subtle gradient in the light and eventually found myself on one of the upper balconies, looking down into the atrium below. A gibbous moon shone down through the skylight, illuminating the tiled floor. I looked around for Molly or Foxglove, who kept their own hours and could often be found active in the small hours of the night, but saw no sign of either of them for the moment. Perhaps they were saving their energies for the full moon, which was due in less than a week.
I decided that my attempts to tire myself out would be best served by the liberal application of flights of stairs, and started working my way down to the ground floor. The Folly has seven separate staircases, and I have yet to contrive a route that passes up or down each of them only once and returns me to my starting point. I believe Peter once told me that this is a classic mathematical problem called the Chinese Postman’s Problem, and offered to direct me to various methods for solving it, but I turned him down. Mathematical theory has never been one of my primary interests, and besides, it suited my purposes much better to use simple trial and error.
On my last sleepless night, I had started with the back stairs, but that had eventually left me stranded on the third floor with no way to progress and so I had crossed that route off of my list of potential solutions. Deciding to start with one of the hidden servants’ stairs this time, I was crossing the atrium when I realised that I wasn’t alone anymore.
“Hello, Molly,” I said, softly, only turning around after I had spoken. I hadn’t heard her approach, as such, more sensed it as I often did. Molly’s innate vestigium is subtle, difficult to define and harder to sense, but after so many decades I knew it like my own heartbeat.
She was standing on the edge of the moonlight, in the shadows under the balcony, and I’d expected to see her in her day clothes but instead she wore a simple white nightdress and her feet were bare. She stepped forward into the light, rising up onto her toes and falling back down, and under the soft moonlight her pale skin and her white dress both seemed to glow. She tilted her head in inquiry, the light also catching in her dark hair.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said, keeping my voice soft although I couldn’t really have said why. It wasn’t as if there was anyone in the Folly who would be disturbed, what with Foxglove's single-minded focus and Toby's ability to sleep like a log. And Peter's absence. Molly nodded, and I could see sympathy on her face. She had often found me roaming the corridors over the decades of our cohabitation, and I sometimes suspected that she knew more of the reasons behind my insomnia than even I was consciously aware of.
Giving her a rueful half smile, I gestured in the direction of the stairs, indicating my intention to continue walking that way. To my surprise, she raised a hand and shook her head, stopping me from leaving. I raised an eyebrow in inquiry. Curiously, she seemed to square her shoulders, and then she beckoned me towards her.
Thoroughly mystified, I walked towards her, and she crossed the atrium in quick steps until we were face to face. My slippers slapped gently on the marble floor, but her feet were entirely silent.
“What is it?” I asked, barely vocalising. Again, a pause. Again that shift of posture with a sense of a decision being made. And then Molly held out both of her hands towards me.
They almost glowed in the moonlight, white against the backdrop of the shadowy atrium floor as I stared down at them with, I will admit, a moment of hesitation and surprise of my own. But Molly pushed her hands forward slightly, that gesture and the palm-up posture making her invitation clear. I glanced up to meet her dark eyes for a long moment more, and then gently, slowly so that she could still withdraw if she chose, placed my hands in hers.
Her hands were cool and smooth, and the visual contrast made my own look lumpen and inelegant by comparison. In the moonlight, I saw every small scar and hint of calluses, all the minor nicks and scrapes that one picks up from simply living a life, and they were at once familiar and illuminated anew. I know that others have described me as a ‘workmanlike’ wizard, something I choose to take as a compliment, and I supposed like any other workman those blemishes, among others, were the marks of my craft.
Now that she had both of my hands in hers, Molly nodded slightly, and then took first one and then another step backwards, pulling me with her as she did. I followed, deciding that I was going to follow this thoroughly unexpected sequence of events wherever it led. Despite the firmness of her grip, I could tell that she was being deliberately gentle, although she still used enough force to move me across the floor. But Molly's full strength would be enough to pick me up and throw me some distance across the room, so care was clearly being taken.
She took another few steps, this time adding the beginnings of a spin to our movement, and I did my best to continue following her. I've always been a technically proficient dancer, if perhaps not the most enthusiastic or likely to lose myself in the music, so I managed not to trip over my own feet. She was leading despite being the one moving backwards, but what we were doing was not formal dancing so that mattered little. Besides, I learnt to dance at an all boys school, and while my height meant I often led I am not so tall that I didn't get plenty of practice at following.
Now that she seemed to have gained some confidence in my coordination, Molly began to move in earnest, increasing the tempo of our silent dance. We spun gently across the atrium, picking up a little more speed, and her steps were now clearly marking out a rhythm.
It was familiar, somehow, a steady beat, and after a few moments I realised why. We were following my own heartbeat. I looked at Molly in astonishment that quickened my pulse, and the rhythm of our dance shifted to match until it settled again. I'd long suspected that Molly could hear such things, and here was my confirmation, writ large in footsteps across the atrium floor.
Now that I had identified the backbeat, I could almost swear that there was music building behind it, too. Faint, distant, like a vestigium carried on a breeze, but there nonetheless. Molly's hands tightened slightly on mine and as we swept around the atrium I had a sudden urge to close my eyes. I caught Molly's dark eyes again, and she gave me the faintest of nods. Trust me, her steady gaze said. I have something to show you. And so I did.
Moving in step with Molly, letting her lead me in this increasingly less silent dance, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. And as if it had been waiting in the darkness behind my eyelids, now the formerly ghostly music came to me in earnest.
It was a form of vestigium, that much I could identify, but it was all music, and to my usual experience what a live orchestra is to hearing a gramophone playing in the next room. There were layers, melodies intertwined and co-mingling, a harmonious symphony the likes of which I had never experienced before. Somehow, I understood that I was experiencing the world as Molly did, and that this was what she had wanted to show me, although understanding the why and how would have to come later. Like her ability to extend one's sense of vestigium out to a great distance through drinking one's blood, she was sharing a smaller version of her perception with me through less invasive methods. Although the sharp pricking of her nails as she pressed them against my skin suggested that haemomancy was not entirely uninvolved. I couldn’t bring myself to mind.
The main melody of that ethereal music she shared with me was old, grand, instantly recognisable as the sound of the Folly itself. Brick and stone and mortar and age and resilience transmuted into song. And then on top, each like the improvisation of a different jazz musician in an orchestra or the song of an individual bird one can pick out from the clamour in the woods, were dozens of lighter, faster melodies. Somehow I understood that these were traces of the lives who had passed through the great building, each leaving their imprint on what had come before and intertwining with those that had come after.
It was enchanting, entrancing, and I found myself paying very little attention to the movement of my feet. For once, I was letting the music carry me along as much as Molly was, picking out one melody then another in an endless sequence.
Sometimes it was like I could identify an instrument, but this was music beyond the bounds of anything so mundane. It was music as mood, as history, as personality. A plodding but persistent melody marched past somewhere to our left, heavy with age and experience. We moved on and through it and briefly kept pace with a bouncing, good-humoured series of notes I would almost have attributed to a bassoon, before it was replaced by the high, clear notes of something like a flute or a young voice raised in song.
One of the melodies in particular caught my ear and held my attention as it twisted around us in a quick flurry of curious notes, and then darted off again into the symphony. It returned moments later, bright and light and almost laughing, but backed by chords of strength, solidity. I almost felt like I recognised it before it was off again, but I felt no need to chase after it. Somehow, I knew it would circle back to us in time. It sang in harmony with the Folly, with so many of the other melodies. Kept time in compliment to my own heartbeat, still a component of the dance.
After a length of time that could have been seconds or a lifetime, Molly gave my hands a little shake, bringing me back into my body a little. I managed not to stumble as my conscious mind once again took over the placing of my feet, and took the gesture as a suggestion to open my eyes once more.
It took an effort, as I was almost afraid I would lose that music with the return of sight, but what I saw made me gasp out loud.
There were ghosts, all around us. The faint, translucent sort, as monochromatic as Molly in her white nightdress, and nigh on every single one of them a familiar face. Wizards I had gone to school with, those I had later fought alongside, teachers and masters and old sticks, servants and kitchen staff whose names I had made a point of learning. I knew so many of them, and they were all dancing with us.
“Is this how you see the world?” I couldn't help asking, my voice hushed with awe. Molly nodded, and now she smiled as brightly as I had ever seen her do so, clearly delighted at this confirmation that whatever she was doing had worked. She adjusted her grip on my hands and we spun, losing the last vestiges of formal dancing as she swung us around like children dance, loose and free and unconcerned with all outside perceptions. The ghosts danced with us as we whirled among them, and despite myself I laughed aloud.
There is often a melancholy to ghosts, but there was nothing sombre about these, just as they were not true ghosts as I understood them. They were memories, joyful echoes, not reminders that these people had died but evidence that they had lived. I watched a group of young men with cricket bats laugh as they clattered down the stairs together. The women of the typing pool that once occupied part of the basement spun each other around and danced with ribbons streaming through the air. Cooks and maids and valets and grooms paraded across the atrium from the back stairs and the courtyard door. The whole Folly was alive with the ghosts of its past.
Now that my eyes and ears were both open, I could match the melodies to the individuals who danced to them. The plodding steps belonged to an elderly fellow in academic robes, a professor from before my time who I recognised from a portrait in the upstairs reading room. He marched across the room, steady despite his age, and was swept up into the dance by a crowd of young men in evening dress. Their song was comprised of rolling, cascading notes, building on each other and then fading out only to build again. I recognised their faces - Staley, Winthorpe, Metliss, others who had been their contemporaries, and among them Archie Boatwright, not hanging dead from his old school necktie but laughing and dancing with his friends. My friends.
Everywhere I looked, I saw the faces of friends. Long gone but still here as memories. Young men in suits and formalwear and uniforms, so many uniforms. Their faces were smiling, their part in the dance joyful, and though my eyes blurred with tears it wasn’t because I was mourning them. A flourish reminiscent of a jazz trombone accompanied a glimpse of the irrepressible Gussie Berrycloth-Young, his energetic stylings left behind despite the escape he had made to the States. I caught sight of David at one point, in the white coat he wore for experimenting, heard the fluting melody I had caught before and knew it belonged to him. High and youthful, a song of ideas and idealism, and quick and darting like his mind had always been. Like Archie, it was his life that danced around us and as Molly pulled me on I could almost forget the way those lives had ended. How could they have ended, when they were still here as part of the song?
There was one line, however, that I couldn't place, despite looking for it. That bright, laughing one I had heard before, which had seemed so familiar. No ghost trailed it behind them, yet it danced around us all the same, as much a part of the song as any melody I could link to a face. Molly tugged my hands and pulled us on a different path, and I realised we were following it, almost dancing with it. I had a sense she was trying to show it to me.
I focused on that melody, and in amongst the notes that filled my perception I found vestigia of the sorts that I was more used to sensing. That sense of laughing joy persisted, and it was joined by the sensation of running water, a gentle ticking of clockwork, a burning smell of experiments gone awry, and a flash of the dome of St Paul’s, visible over a familiar skyline.
And suddenly, all at once, I recognised who this vestigium belonged to.
It was Peter's.
Woven inextricably through the song of the Folly, lifting up the other dancers, carrying Molly and myself along as we danced, was the melody of Peter’s time in our lives. I found Molly's eyes and caught the exasperated fondness in her expression - I had apparently been rather slow on the uptake.
“This is what you wanted to show me all along, isn’t it?” I asked, as emotions I couldn’t quite put a name to swelled in my chest. Molly nodded, and spun us around faster for a moment to keep pace with a flurry of notes.
I could have kept talking, could have spelled out what it was that Molly had been demonstrating, but there was no need. I understood, and I knew she could see it in my face.
Peter was a part of this place now, that was what she was showing me. As much as any wizard who had come before, he was an indelible, enduring, permanent part of the larger symphony of the Folly, and of our lives, even when he was not physically present. This brief separation while he performed his undercover duties, the looming change as fatherhood reshaped his life, they could do nothing to erase what had come before and what would persist. What was coming was not an ending, simply a transformation, a modulation in key while the melody remained. Much like the change that had brought him into our lives in the first place, and set us dancing to a new improvisation on an old tune.
A small part of me was a little embarrassed that the cause of my melancholy had been so obvious to Molly, but a much larger part was simply grateful to have someone who knew me so well. Who hadn't needed to ask, hadn’t needed me to put into words what I was struggling with admitting even to myself. It is a relief beyond words to have someone with whom words are unnecessary, and Molly has always been that person for me.
I held tighter to her hands as we danced on, dancing with each other and our memories and with Peter, whose joyful vestigium and laughing, curious melody carried us along towards the future.
Eventually, as all things must, our time among the dancers drew towards an end. I felt the music start to retreat, saw the ghosts fading away bit by bit like afterimages on one’s eyes as whatever magic Molly had been using to share her perceptions with me slowly lost its power. Our dance slowed, from whirling to gliding to a last few steps that I’ll admit I stumbled through. It was hard not to feel bereft.
I looked around us, searching for any traces that remained. The atrium was empty again, silent again, but a sense of the music and the dancers still lingered. Vestigia can often fade like a dream does, slipping through one's fingers faster the more effort is made to grasp it, but this wasn't like that. What we had just shared was true memory, and I knew then that it would stay with me for a very long time.
Molly’s hands started to loosen their grip, her sharp nails that I had completely ceased to notice removing themselves from my skin, but I risked an imposition and held on a little longer.
“Thank you,” I said to her, my voice now almost croaking and thick with the emotions that had started in my chest and still leaked from my eyes. Further words failed me, but she held my gaze and I knew she understood everything that I wanted to say, and perhaps even more that I would never have been able to put into words. There really were no words for what her actions had meant to me, or for how grateful I was for the understanding I now felt.
She gave me another smile, bright like before but fleeting this time, so very far from the baring of her teeth she likes to employ, and slid her hands from mine. I let my hands drop to my sides, and watched as she turned to glide away in the direction of the back stairs. There was nothing more to be said.
I stood there in the moonlit atrium for a little longer, just breathing as I recovered from the exertions of the dance. Several full moons ago, I had stood on the upper balcony with Peter and watched Molly and Foxglove dance together across this very floor, and I had said to him then that no matter how old one gets, the world never stops surprising one with its beauty. Once again, Molly had proven me right.
Slowly, I became more and more aware of a pleasant post-exertion heaviness that was settling into my limbs, and I finally took that as my cue to make my way back upstairs and pursue sleep once more. As I walked, I thought of Molly and the dancers, and of Peter and all the other people he had brought so completely into our lives - Abigail, Sahra, Beverley, even Lesley. I thought about Operation Jennifer, and how the Folly’s halls had bustled with personnel, and how they undoubtedly would again. Peter had thrown open the doors and let in the dawn, and with that he had banished the loneliness of the long night that had come before. Banished it for good.
I slept undisturbed through the rest of the night, and woke the next morning in better spirits than I realised I had been in for months. The music may change, modulating in key or shifting in tempo, passing the solo from one musician to another, but it continues on. And the dancers must follow wherever it leads.
After breakfast, I called Peter even though our daily briefing was scheduled for the evening, and asked after Beverley and the twins.