Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [131]
Afterward we adjourned to the library for a glass of wine. Having taken down the two great mirrors and brought in the eagle-topped looking glass in which I had first glimpsed the reflected death’s head of Edward Saxton, I was prepared for our next effort.
“Help me, Saxton—hold one of the mirrors slanted toward me.”
Looking first at the directions, I tilted the big eagle mirror, rocking it back and forth. “Begone, grave face of reflection; join your kin,” I murmured. The face loosened, flexed, and seemed to float more easily in the depths. When I tried to pour the face into the other mirror, it flew into an unexpected corner.
“What in Heaven’s name are we doing?” Theron Saxton stared at the image quivering faintly in the depths.
“The pouring diminishment. A cheerful little activity for two madmen in a library. Don’t look so revolted; it’s probably as harmless as the rest.”
I rocked the mirror back and forth as though panning for gold. Once again the face wobbled and shot off in a surprising direction as I brought the frame close to the other glass. Then suddenly the image darted from one smooth surface to the other with the slipperiness and celerity of yolk and white sliding from one saucer to another, and, when I checked, the face of Edward Saxton had gone from the eagle-crowned mirror.
We bent over the first glass, unsure whether a tiny mask might not swim up from the depths.
“Victory?” The word was a whisper, barely caught.
The mirrors being weighty, I had begun to sweat from exertion. I stripped off my waistcoat and collar and began the whole procedure again.
“We’ll have to collect the mirrors in the house and move from large to small,” I told him.
“What about dishes? Bowls and porringers and teapots and spoons!” For the first time, excitement seemed to touch Theron’s features and make them gleam. “Should I have Mrs. Molebury polish the silver, burnish the old pewter? What about still water and puddles and pools?”
The mirror wobbled in my grasp and spilled its forbidden content. One face vanished into its twin. I smiled at Theron Saxton, elated at this confirmation of success.
“Mirrors are the king and queen of images and govern reflection, or so the book claims—when the household mirrors are emptied, the final glass will fuse duplicate images as one. One can then bury the last looking glass. Or drop it down a deep well—”
“Or grind it into powder,” Theron murmured, “for the devil’s snuffbox.”
For the next hour, we scoured the house from top to bottom, gathering a few shaving mirrors, a pair of lady’s hand mirrors, an ancient-looking concave mirror framed in wood that we rummaged from a chest in the attic, and another pair of parlor mirrors.
“You certainly have more of the things than most people,” I said to Theron, encountering him on the third floor. He had gone to fetch a tiny bronze mirror that his great-great-grandmother was said to have discovered in a funerary mound somewhere in England.
“I hardly know why,” he said. “Flavel Saxton must have liked the cut of his own mug and pigtail.”
Abruptly he swung a leg over the stair rail and slid whooping to the next floor and on to the wide center hall. Though I laughed to see him lighthearted as I clattered down the steps after him, my mind still ran on the uncanny. “Perhaps it has something to do with the prevalence of twins in your family line. People feared duplication in the Old Country, but plenty of Saxtons could discover their own looks in a twin.”
“People were frightened for good reason. Often enough, the mothers of twins died. Still do,” he added, no doubt thinking of his mother’s death from childbed fever, three days after the birth of the twins.
We bore our treasures into the library, sorting them by size . . .
“Let me ask Mrs. Molebury to bring us tea,” I suggested.
“And a bite to eat,” Theron added, picking up one of the mirrors.
Pausing at the kitchen door, I peered in and spied Patience Hobbs seated at a board table. Mrs. Molebury hunkered by the fire, rocking on her stool and humming