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corainne · 1 year ago

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Because I am still fighting for my life when it comes to this fic, and I have given up all hope that I will finish it on this side of the great beyond, have Part 2 of Chapter 1 of Nightingale at Casterbrook

Part 1 can be found here

Thomas had, in abstract, known that Mellenby was richer than he was. In terms of the Folly most were better situated than the Nightingales, though they’d never had reason to struggle financially, despite raising seven children. But Thomas hadn’t realised quite how rich the Mellenbys were, until Mellenby gave him a tour of the grounds upon his arrival.

“Alexander and Constantine belong to Hal and me, but we don’t have much use for them now that we’re off at Casterbrook,” Mellenby told him as he showed Thomas the stable and the three horses grazing nearby, “but I think father’s been riding them instead of Marc Anthony from time to time”

When Thomas had been ten his sister, four years older, had desperately wanted a horse. It had been a topic of discussion at the dinner table for several months, as Victoria had waged her first war against their father in a battle of wills that had frankly frightened Thomas. It wouldn't be the last, and certainly not the most devastating of their quarrels, but he still clearly remembered how much it would have cost them to keep even one horse, with how much the numbers had been shouted by their father. That the Mellenbys had enough money to keep two that they rarely had use for was startling. But considering the size of the sprawling grounds and house that Thomas had seen briefly in passing, four times as big as the one in which he had been raised at least, that shouldn’t have been surprising in the least.

“Did you bring new magazines?” Mellenby asked as they made their way towards the house at last. His luggage had been taken from him upon his arrival by a page and brought to the house that could only be reached by a steep footpath.

“Yes,” Thomas said, and added, “is your father home?” They would have to be careful if he was, since Thomas didn’t particularly fancy his magazines being taken from him or even destroyed.

“No, he’s in London for the rest of the month. It’s just Hal and us,” Mellenby said cheerfully. From what little Mellenby had told him about his father Thomas had gathered the impression that the two didn’t particularly get on at the best of times, and that the older Mellenby son was the only person capable of diffusing the situation.

Thomas had never officially met Henry Mellenby, but he had spotted him at Casterbrook in passing. The resemblance between the two brothers was strong enough for Thomas to have recognised him without actively looking out for him. Henry, two years older than them, was certainly more popular and better looking than his brother, with a lean face and easy smile, although the brothers shared their blond curls and bright blue eyes. Still Thomas was certain that of the two David was the smarter.

“Your father just left you two alone?” he asked, surprised. His parents certainly wouldn’t have, no matter how urgent the matter that compelled them away. Dick and Jos, the two oldest, were both up at Oxford, but if both of their parents had needed to leave Tavistock at the same time they would have convinced one of them, if not both, to come down and look after their younger siblings for the duration of their absence.

“I’m not sure father would really much care if something happened to either of us. Or to me at least”

Unable to think of a response Thomas watched Mellenby open the large doors that led inside his home for the next few days.

“So, you are Davey’s little friend then,” Henry Mellenby said when he finally emerged from his bedroom around midday. His tie was loose, the top button of his shirt undone, and it looked as if he had slept in it. He certainly appeared as if he had just gotten up, after a night spent drinking well into the early hours of the morning, “Nightingale, right?”

“Yes,” he said, unsure how to react. He had thought Mellenby’s brother would be more like him, bookish and proper. “I am”

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, and laughed, “I’m not going to eat you. Where is Davey, anyway?”

“He wanted to get something from the library,” he’d left Thomas out on the patio, where they’d spent the last few hours, talking and reading some of the magazines Thomas had brought along.

“Of course he did, why do I even ask. Only my brother would abandon a guest in favour of the library.”

And abandon Thomas Mellenby did more often than not. It seemed that, just like at school, there was something pulling Mellenby to the library when there was nothing physically holding him back. So it was not a surprise that they ended up spending most of their time in there, apart from the few hours every day that Thomas managed to drag him outside.

“You never said that you were landed,” Thomas said one evening, as they shared some scones and tea in the library. At Casterbrook they would have been forced to do so in secret, at the risk of drawing the wrath of the librarian upon them, who had strictly forbidden food and liquids in his hallowed halls.

As if it was nothing out of the ordinary Mellenby shrugged. “My grandfather bought the land around the time my father was born. Our family had an arms factory and he made quite a lot of money with it, he even collaborated with the Folly to make rifles that could also be used as a staff. That’s how my father earned a spot at Casterbrook even though no one in the family had attended before”

Thomas, who’d never heard about any of this, leaned forward, intruiged. “Your father was a novus homo?”

Mellenby nodded, “Not that he likes to hear it mentioned. If he could he’d pretend that our family has been a part of the Folly since Newton’s time”

The Nightingale’s hadn’t been part of the Folly for that long either, but it was rare nowadays that someone was permitted into the closed shop that was the Society of the Wise. “Is that why you have all of these books on magic here?”

“In part. Father doesn’t like to rely on the Folly for his literature, so whenever he can he buys copies for our library” And his son took advantage of it whenever he could. It was no wonder then, that Mellenby was so obsessed with the workings of magic. While for Thomas and his family magic had become a part of life, with some uncle or brother in every generation being a wizard, it was still new for the Mellenbys, and much more exciting for any child born into the family.

Time at Mellenby’s passed quicker than he had thought imaginable, and before he knew it he was on a train back home, and in some ways his stay felt as if it had been a dream, and not reality. He returned to Tavistock, and with it to the madness his family exuded, in high spirits that even Andrew and his proclivity for arson could not put a damper on.

“Do you think he has a wife?” Ballentine asked during the first physics lesson of the new term.

They’d secured seats in the last row, at the cost of several sharp elbows to the ribs. It had been worth it, though, because Coombs - the physics master - never left his desk, which meant they could do as they pleased without him noticing a thing.

“He doesn’t wear a ring,” Thomas said quietly. In fact, as far as he had observed, none of their teachers were married. “Why?”

“Imagine having to wake up next to that face every day of your life. I think I would kill myself”

Coombs truly wasn’t a particularly pleasant sight, with a deep frown that never left his face, but his appearance was trumped by an even more unpleasant demeanour.

“But I bet Mellenby would love it,” Ballentine said as Mellenby, sat in the first row next to Cholmondeley, raised his hand in answer to a question Coombs hadn’t even gotten around to asking yet.

“I think Mellenby is blinded by his love for the subject. There could be anyone else standing there and he probably wouldn’t even notice the difference,” Thomas said, although he felt bad talking about Mellenby behind his back. Somehow - Thomas still wasn’t sure when it had happened - they had become friends.

“How can anyone enjoy this?” Ballentine grumbled as Coombs wrote some indecipherable equation on the board, “this is torture”

Thomas shrugged. He couldn’t understand it either, after all.

After class they pushed through the stream of students trying to get outside, and wandered off to the small group of trees that had become their usual spot. Ballentine dropped his bag on the grass and flopped down beside it, Thomas following suit just moments later, bedding his head on his book bag. He closed his eyes, and did his best to soak up the remaining sun before it disappeared for the winter. It was still unusually warm, and all of them - except for Mellenby, perpetual resident of the library - were spending as much time outside as possible.

“Did you do the Latin translation for tomorrow?” asked Horace Greenway, who hadn’t been with them just a few moments before.

Thomas cracked open an eye to make sure Greenway was talking to him and not somebody else who had joined them without Thomas noticing and was one of the three students in their class who actually did the translation - highly improbable but one had to hold on to hope in order to remain sane at times.

“Yes,” he said, “it was rather involved and complicated”

He enjoyed Latin and Ancient Greek, but there were some texts that were simply unpleasant to translate. German and French were more enjoyable in that way, and having students in their class who already spoke the language fluently certainly was a great help - even if Mellenby spoke German in a dialect no one could understand and most of the French Champers knew couldn’t be repeated in polite company. Still he preferred Latin and Greek. There was something about the distance in time, the mysticism, that made them rather enticing to him.

“Not Seneca again, surely,” Greenway said.

“Afraid so”

Greenway and Ballentine groaned in unison.

“You can copy my translation,” Thomas, who’d known what Greenway wanted from the beginning, said, “but change the wording a bit, otherwise it’ll be obvious half the class didn’t do it and copied mine instead”

Mellenby had copied it as soon as Thomas had been finished, in exchange for his physics and chemistry work, and Cholmondeley had undoubtedly asked Mellenby. Pascal and Champers had both asked for it earlier than morning, and Sanders was likely going to do so as well, shortly before Lights. That the Latin master - Timmins - hadn’t noticed yet was a miracle.

He had to sit up to pull the translation out of his bag, which was rather a shame considering how the sun had felt on his face, and he leaned back as soon he had handed the pages over to Greenway.

“You’re a saint, Nightingale”

“I know”

“If Timmins notices something we can just say we did it together,” Ballentine said as he moved closer to Greenway, so he could get a better look”

“Ten people doing a translation together is very believable. You could, of course, try to do it on your own,” Thomas suggested, “then you wouldn’t have to lie about it”

“With weather like this? It should be a crime to make us do this the first week back”

Thomas moved his head so he could watch the other students spread out across the lawn while his friends wrote as quickly as they could. Most of the boys were gathered in small groups of three or four, but there were a few larger groups as well. What looked like the Upper Sixth Formers had started an impromptu rugby game, and a few of the younger students had gathered around them to watch.

“Sanders said the Lower Sixth has smuggled in beer for the campfires tomorrow,” Ballentine said, “and apparently we are getting some as well”

“Really?” Thomas asked, interest piqued. He’d tried alcohol for the first time that summer, sneaked out of the kitchen by Pip, while everyone else had been distracted by their grandfather’s birthday celebration. They’d shared it late that night, Pip, Thomas and Stephen, in the bedroom that Thomas had been sharing with Spud since he had been old enough to move out of the nursery, and sometimes with Pip as well, whenever he was forced to surrender his bedroom to Aunt Anthea’s brood when they came to visit.

It had been wine then, not beer, but at the thought of the buzz that had settled over him after the first few sips Thomas didn’t much care what he had to drink to feel it again.

“Don’t tell the swots, though,” Ballentine said, “I wouldn’t put it past them to go to Marriott with it”

Thomas had helped him down, once he had found out about it, but to this day he wasn’t sure how long Cholmondeley had been in that tree. The Masters had been livid, of course, but Cholmondeley had refused to say anything about what had happened, so they couldn’t prove that it had been Ballentine.

Greenway shook his head. “I don’t think so. Mellenby sneaks out of the dorms almost every night, which I am sure he doesn’t want to get to Marriott, and Cholmondeley won’t do something like that on his own. He knows what is going to happen if he does”

Everyone knew what was going to happen, they’d seen it before. Early into their second year Cholmoneley had corrected something Ballentine had said in class and, not five hours later, had found himself in one of the trees farthest away from the buildings, dangling upside down from one of the lower branches.

Everyone knew, though. And everyone had understood that they shouldn’t get into his way, unless they were confident that they could hold their own against him.

“If we asked them they might even join us this time,” Thomas suggested, “no point in ratting us out if they’re benefitting from the contraband as well”

“Invite Mellenby and Cholmondeley to our bonfire? The only thing they talk about is science - and in a frightfully boring way at that”

“They’re not that bad, once you get to know them”

“You have been spending an awful lot of time with Mellenby,” said Greenway, “but I had thought that was under duress”

“It was at first, but he’s gotten easier so get along with, over time. He even let’s me copy his homework at times”

“And why is this the first we hear about that? Last term Dudders made me do his filing because I hadn’t done my exercises”

“Mellenby doesn’t want me to pass on his work. Apparently we are never going to learn if we just copy from him”

“I can live a happy and fulfilled life without understanding physics or chemistry,” said Greenway, “in fact my life would vastly improve if I never had to bother with it again”

“I’ve told him the same,” said Thomas, “he doesn’t believe me. And I am sure he will try to argue with you about it”

Beer, Thomas decided, was his new favourite thing in the world. He’d managed to secure a second bottle before the lower sixth formers had run out of their stock to pass around, and he cradled it to his chest as if it was made out of solid gold.

Although it was autumn the night was still warm, and most of the students were out in the woods, for what would be the last campfires of the year. Thomas had settled on a log close to the fire and watched Mellenby and Cholmondeley, both bent over a book listing the most common spirits in England, discussing which one they should try to summon later.

“Are we in the lead up to Ballentine and Mellenby bashing each others heads in where the Masters won’t see?” Danny Shanks asked, sitting next to Thomas, alas sans beer, “or what is happening here, exactly”

“Mellenby is going to try and summon a spirit - not sure which one”

“You put him up to that, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about”

Shanks raised an eyebrow. “Why would Mellenby choose to do that here, in front of all of us”

“He does like to show off, in case you hadn’t noticed”

“But he hasn’t actually summoned a demon before, has he? The way I see it he is setting himself up for failure”

“Ballentine might have, ahem, suggested the same last night at dinner,” Thomas said and took a sip of his beer, “in front of everyone” Shanks hadn’t been there, instead serving detention once again.

Shanks scoffed. “Do you think he can do it?”

Thomas shrugged. “I think if he doesn’t succeed now he’ll spent every waking hour trying until he does. So I hope he’ll manage it, for the sake of our sanity”

#rivers of london #this fic has gotten slightly out of hand and it just gets longer and longer #there is only one more part for ch 1 #but I am going to finish all three chapters before posting the whole thing on ao3

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