Chapter 12 – Finding Mabel [An Invitation]

There is always a certain serendipity to life that cannot be predicted or harnessed, but when it presents itself it can fortuitous.

Months back Mabel had been sent an invitation to a lecture by the British Embassy in Berlin. Due to her connections to many countries, and her patronage of many antiquarian studies. she routinely got many of these every month. It was hard to accept all and in some cases like this invitation, too risky to accept. But it gave them the chance to be in Germany at exactly the right time.

The lecture was entitled “Der Heiligtümer des Lebens” (The Sanctuaries of Life) and presented by the Herman Wirth, an academic charlatan who weaponized forged history into Nazi gospel. Though dismissed by real scholars as a crank, the Dutch musicologist used his fanatical charisma and wild runes-and-Atlantis myths to capture Heinrich Himmler’s imagination. By validating dangerous racial fantasies, Wirth’s delusions helped birth the SS Ahnenerbe and institutionalize Nazi pseudo-science.

Quite why she had kept this particular invitation when so many others had found their way into the wastepaper basket, Mabel couldn’t remember.

But that was usually how these things began.

This one was ideal.

──✿──

The invitation had been accepted. The British Embassy had arranged Mabel’s transport and accommodation at the Ambassador’s residence, providing not only convenience, but somewhere relatively secure to stay without attracting unnecessary attention from the German authorities.

Department Seven had raised the obvious question. Why not simply use magic to retrieve the artefacts and the scholar?

Mabel’s answer had been equally obvious.

Why raise suspicion?

The Germans might possess Feld’s papers and the fragment of mirror, but possession was one thing. Understanding what they represented was quite another. To use magic openly would confirm that the forces described in those papers were real, and worse, demonstrate that Britain knew how to employ them.

Mabel had already been through all of this with Feld during the Great War. She had no intention of making the same mistake twice.

She would therefore travel to Berlin openly, that week, and conduct herself as exactly what the Germans expected to see: Lady Hazelgrove, an English aristocrat with an established interest in antiquarian studies, attending a lecture to which she had been formally invited.

As a precaution, Lieutenant Caldwell would accompany her.

His presence required very little explanation. A British naval officer, fluent in German, attached to an English aristocrat as her official translator and liaison was entirely plausible. He would ensure Lady Hazelgrove navigated the academic functions, diplomatic engagements and German high society without inadvertently causing offence.

At least, that was the official explanation.

The fact that Caldwell now understood precisely what sort of world he was walking into made him considerably more useful.

──✿──

The three BMW radial engines of the Junkers Ju 52 finally cut out, leaving a ringing silence inside the corrugated metal cabin.

Stepping off the metal stairs onto the tarmac at Tempelhof Airport, the crisp Berlin air hits first, thick with the smell of aviation fuel and coal smoke. The sheer scale of the airport was impressive, but for a visitor arriving from London, the immediate sensation is visual overload and profound disquiet.

The rain had begun as a fine, greasy drizzle, smearing the glass of the Austin’s windows as it rattled along the cobbles of Wilhelmstraße. Inside, the air smelled of wet wool, tobacco, and the faint, sweet trace of lavender water from her handkerchief.

Lieutenant Caldwell was chatting briskly about protocol and the Ambassador’s dinner schedule. Mabel was barely listening. Her hand rested on the leather strap above the door, her gloved fingers tight enough to turn the kidskin white.

Mabel didn’t need to look out at the red banners bearing swastikas snapping like wet canvas against the stone facades to know what was out there. The pressure had started the moment the Ju 52 cleared the cloud bank over the city—a low, rhythmic thrumming at the base of her skull, like the vibration of a heavy engine idling three rooms away.

It was not a collection of individual thoughts or private cruelties. What she felt was a collective, dreadful coherence.

In England, human malice was localised—a dark knot in an alleyway, the cold spite of an unfaithful lover, a isolated flash of greed. It had edges; it broke apart against the ordinary, indifferent tide of daily life.

Here, the malice had been organised. It had been given a channel, an architecture, and a rhythm.

As the car slowed near the Reich Chancellery, her breath caught. Through the glass, a young man in the black tunic of the SS was stepping off the curb. He looked barely twenty, with light hair and clear eyes, his boots gleaming from the rain. But as the car passed him, a wave of cold nauseating static rolled through her mind—not an intention to kill, but something far worse: a complete, serene absence of doubt. A quiet, righteous certainty that had swallowed his conscience whole.

The city itself felt like an iron plate being heated from underneath. Beneath the surface chatter of streetcars, coal deliveries, and polite greetings, there was a vast, low frequency humming—a dark consensus taking shape, cold, deliberate, and gathering weight with every passing hour.

“Are you quite alright, Mabel?” the William asked, turning from the window. “You look rather pale. Airsickness, perhaps?”

“No,” she said softly, pulling her gaze away from the glass as the car swung through the gates of the British Embassy. “Just the air. It feels very heavy.”

──✿──

Sir Eric Phipps had made his feelings towards the Nazi regime clear soon after Mabel arrived at the embassy. He had also made clear the dangers of what she intended to do.

That hadn’t prevented him from welcoming Mabel and Will warmly, and the three had enjoyed a very pleasant luncheon together.

Afterwards, Mabel and Will returned to their rooms to prepare for the lecture that evening.

Before dressing for the occasion, Mabel had something more important to attend to.

On the table in her room lay a package. Inside was a fountain pen and a card.

“As requested, Mrs Rosenfeld has supplied his favourite pen. It comes from the study in their house. Mazel tov.”

Just enough information not to incriminate anyone, and more than enough to help locate the Professor.

Her scrying bowl had travelled to Berlin inside her vanity case. Getting it into Germany through ordinary customs would have raised awkward questions about why Lady Hazelgrove needed to travel with an ancient wooden bowl, so the protection afforded by the diplomatic arrangements had been useful.

She placed it on a table beside the window and filled it with water.

Information from her German contacts had finally placed Professor Rosenfeld at Columbia-Haus, a detention prison on the northern edge of Tempelhof airfield. A map of the area lay beside the bowl.

Mabel settled into the chair and placed one hand over the marked location and the pen in the other. One to locate the prison and the other to pin point the man.

The pen gave off a pulse, as though it remembered his touch.

For several minutes nothing happened.

She concentrated on the name.

Gabriel Rosenfeld.

The water remained still.

Mabel closed her eyes and tried again, allowing everything around her to fall away. The embassy, the traffic beyond the window and the preparations for that evening ceased to matter.

Somewhere within that marked patch of Berlin was a man she had never met.

She only had to find him.

──✿──

The lecture hall was a crowded cross-section of Berlin society: academics in threadbare tweed, wealthy industrialists in fine wool, high-ranking NSDAP officials in tailored black, and Wehrmacht officers alongside ordinary clerks. All of them sat spellbound in the dim, warm glare of the lantern projector.

To Mabel, Wirth’s grand theory was pure, unadulterated madness—a absurd fairytale of Arctic super-races and sacred runes, wrapped in pseudo-academic theatre. Yet looking around the room, she saw only sheep, wide-eyed and eager to swallow the delusion if it promised them a divine heritage.

As the polite applause died down, the hall spilled out into the marble foyer. Mabel and Will moved towards the exit, only to have her path blocked by a tall, immaculate SS Obersturmbannführer holding a glass of champagne. His uniform was spotless, his eyes sharp and analytical.

“An extraordinary presentation, wouldn’t you say Lady Hazelgrove?” he asked in smooth, measured German accent, his gaze lingering on her. “I always find it fascinating to observe how foreign visitors digest our deeper cultural heritage. What were your thoughts on Professor Wirth’s findings, your ladyship?”

She had never seen him before.

Mabel maintained a polite, composure, keeping her voice light and mildly intrigued.

“Fascinating indeed,” she replied smoothly, offering a tight, diplomatic smile. “The sheer volume of comparative philology Professor Wirth has assembled is certainly… remarkable. It gives one a great deal to ponder regarding how ancient cultures interpreted solar symbolism.”

The officer’s eyes narrowed slightly, searching her face for any trace of irony. “A thoughtful assessment,” he murmured, taking a slow sip of his drink. “Though perhaps a little clinical for such a profound revelation of blood and soil, wouldn’t you agree?”

“History, I find, is best appreciated with a cool head,” Mabel said mildly, inclining her head in a gesture of polite deferment before stepping past him. “Good evening, Dr. Hoffmann.”

Hoffmann turned surprised, he watched as Will escorted her out of the building.

“Do you know that man?” Will asked once they were outside.

“No.”

Will stopped walking.

“But you called him by name.”

Mabel carried on towards the waiting car.

“Yes.”

──✿──

Mabel’s scrying session had located Rosenfeld, right down to the cell in which he was being held.

A low, red-brick administrative annex stood in the northern corner of the compound, forty yards of dark gravel separating it from the main cell block. Built in the 1890s as Prussian garrison offices, its damp, limewashed basement contained a single cell with an iron bed bolted to the floor and a high barred window opening into a light well. Beneath a solitary electric bulb stood the wooden table where Professor Gabriel Rosenfeld was forced to decipher the runic texts.

Outside the heavy oak door, an SS sentry kept watch, while beyond the walls the distant rumble of traffic on Columbiastraße was the only sound to break the silence.

In the remaining hours of the day, Rosenfeld prayed.

He had asked God for many things in forty years, for wisdom, forgiveness, patience and the health of those he loved. Tonight he asked for something much simpler.

Let me see the morning.

He waited in the darkness. There were other prayers he could have said, he knew hundreds, but instead he closed his eyes and said nothing more.

God already knew.

The silence was the prayer.

There was a pull on the air as he sat in silence, but he thought nothing of it. The opening and closing of the main door of the annex always altered the air pressure in the cell. Then a muffled voice interrupted his meditation and the turning of a key in the lock chilled him.

Perhaps God had not answered his prayer?

Into the room walked a woman in black silk pyjamas and a matching dressing gown, upon her feet flat oriental-style slippers.

“Who are you?” he asked, shaken.

“Someone you argued with over a disagreeable dinner in Oxford.” Mabel held out a fountain pen. “Here’s the pen you waved at me across the table.”

Gabriel stared at the pen, then at her. How had she got it?

“Lady Hazelgrove?”

“Under the circumstances, Mabel will do,” she said with a smile, handing him the pen. “By the way, your wife says hello.”

──✿──

Lieutenant Caldwell had been monitoring movement within the Embassy and outside. He would remain on duty until Mabel returned with Rosenfeld.

It had been decided that she would not phase-step him directly to Easterwich. Professor Rosenfeld’s services had been contracted by the British Government months earlier and all the necessary arrangements for him and his family to leave Germany had already been completed. His subsequent detention by the regime had been the only thing preventing their departure.

His wife and children were now safely inside the Embassy. Everything the family wished to take with them had been magically removed from their home without attracting attention and was already beyond German reach. There would be nothing left for the authorities to delay, inventory or confiscate.

Once Mabel returned with Rosenfeld, the family would leave the Embassy compound in an official car and be driven directly to the waiting aircraft. Their departure had been cleared through diplomatic channels months ago, leaving the SS little room to interfere without explaining why they had detained him in the first place.

Whatever questions followed could be dealt with by diplomats once the Rosenfelds were safely in Britain.

Will had been given a small silver bell to ring if there was any sign of trouble. Its magic would alert Mabel instantly.

* * *

“How did you get in here?”

“Do you remember our argument in Oxford?”

“The ancient text revealed the possibility of occupying one place and then another without traversing the space between,” he recalled.

“Yes.”

Gabriel stared at her.

“You said it was possible,” he reminded her.

“I did.”

“I was spectacularly wrong.”

“About more than you realise.” Mabel smiled. “My community and I are living validation of that, and countless other ancient records. I think you would find Easterwich rather interesting.”

Gabriel looked at her.

“I would like you and your family to join us. You could continue your work there in safety, with everything you need.”

“But how? We can’t just walk out of here. What about the guard?”

“All taken care of. Sleeping like a baby, and he will remain so until I wake him. We will both leave the same way I arrived.”

He stared at her, trying to work out whether he was dreaming. The air in the cell smelt the same. The floor was still solid beneath his feet. The only difference was the faint smell of a woman’s perfume.

“Yes,” he said, trusting the same God who had sent her. “I would like that.”

“Good,” she said, with a kindness Gabriel could feel. “But first, let us sort out this codex. There is something in there that has eluded me since I wrangled these documents from Feld’s grasp. The Mirror of Vesta, the shard of which is in that map case.”

They gathered at the small table. Three sheets of paper were laid out in parallel on its surface. The map case was above them, his journal laid upon it. At the top of each sheet was a line of Germanic runes written in age-old dried ink.

“Each page holds a title, Bond, Blood, Soil. I’m struggling to understand why there is nothing else. The Nazis are insisting it is an enchantment. I know runes, ancient rituals, but magic spells? You can only imagine that, it’s not the accepted study of an academic, it is considered an act of whimsy.”

Mabel smiled. “Yet here I am, the fairy in the room.”

Rosenfeld chuckled at the irony. “Yes, and we bear that in mind now.”

Mabel looked again at the papers. “Hoffmann said something tonight,” she said idly.

Gabriel barely looked up. “Hoffmann?”

“An SS officer at Wirth’s lecture. Lorenz Hoffmann. I attended it as cover for being in Berlin, we were invited by the British Embassy.”

That got his attention. “You met Hoffmann?”

“He rather made a point of meeting me.”

Gabriel’s eyes returned to the papers, thinking it was irrelevant. “What did he say?” he asked casually.

“He was talking about Wirth. Something about a profound revelation of blood and soil.”

Gabriel stopped. “Blood and soil?”

“Those were his words.”

For several seconds he did nothing. Then he pulled the three sheets towards him. His finger traced between them. “Path… knowledge… understanding…” he murmured. He moved one page, frowned, and moved it back. “Path first.”

Another sheet changed places. “Knowledge…” His finger rested on the remaining rune. “Understanding.”

He rearranged the sheets once more so the words were now in order.

Mabel leant closer. “Have you found something?”

Gabriel did not answer. He was staring at the runes. “Path, knowledge, understanding.”

“I heard you the first time.”

He glanced at her, apparently remembering she was there. “Contents. The work itself. Glossary.”

“Why didn’t you say that?”

“Because that isn’t what Feld called them.”

He turned back to the exposed line, his finger moving slowly across the runes. “Blood… soil…”

Mabel waited.

“No.” He went back to the beginning. “Blood… soil. Blood with soil…” His finger traced the space between them. “Joined… tied…”

He shook his head. “Bound. Blood bound to soil.”

Something in his expression changed. “No. Simpler.”

He stared at the runes for another moment.

“Blood and soil.”

His head came up and he looked at Mabel. “Hoffmann.”

Now the penny dropped for her too. For a moment she was back in the foyer, Hoffmann standing before her with a glass of champagne in his hand. His words rang out again.

“A little clinical for such a profound revelation of blood and soil.”

She looked down at Feld’s papers and understood that they should combine to unlock the secrets. She moved the sheets one on top of the other, so only the text showed in order. They started to glow and shuddered with a ripple of magic. She laid her hand on them and evoked the enchantment.

“Blut und Boden.”

The pages moved, revealing the hidden text.

Gabriel’s head came up in shock.

“Professor, we now need to look up the Mirror of Vesta. Feld knew how to use it, the spell to awaken it has eluded me for decades.”

──✿──

It took Gabriel some time to work through Feld’s notes. Much of what he found Mabel already knew. The Mirror had contained the eternal flame of Vesta, preserved within it so that the sacred fire might never be extinguished. Rekindled by the midday sun, it sustained and protected. But reflected in the morning star, the same flame could consume.

What Mabel had never known was how Feld had changed it.

He had replaced the morning star with the first light of the rising sun, using the darker meaning of Lucifer, the light-bringer, to pervert the ancient invocation. The destruction Mabel had witnessed all those years ago had not been the true purpose of the Mirror at all. Feld had made it into a weapon.

She looked at the shard in the map case.

“Now I know.”

They gathered Feld’s papers and the shard before Mabel took Gabriel’s hand.

“Whatever happens, don’t let go.”

The cell disappeared.

Gabriel found himself standing on a rooftop overlooking the compound, the cold morning air catching in his throat. Below them lay the administrative annex he had occupied only moments before.

Mabel held the shard towards the approaching dawn.

“Are there other prisoners in that building?”

“No. Just me.”

“Guards?”

“Two at night.”

“One’s asleep.”

Mabel watched the second man leave his post and cross the yard.

“Time for him to wake and go to the toilet.”

A few moments later the other guard appeared from the annex, disorientated and still fastening his tunic. Mabel waited until he had followed his companion away from the building.

The first light of the morning sun caught the shard.

Gabriel saw something move within the glass. Not a reflection, but a flame, impossibly small and impossibly bright.

Mabel spoke Feld’s invocation.

For an instant the annex remained exactly as it was.

Then the eternal flame consumed it.

There was no explosion. The red brick, oak doors, iron bed, table and everything Feld’s people had left within simply collapsed into ash.

The guard turned from the wall.

The building was gone.

──✿──

Mabel and Gabriel phase-stepped back to the Embassy, appearing in her room. His wife and children had been placed in the adjoining room, connected to hers by a private door, and warned not to make a sound until he entered. The risk of alerting the German authorities was such that, for now at least, they dared not trust even the Embassy staff with the truth.

Gabriel opened the connecting door.

Early that morning, two Embassy cars were waiting inside the compound. Mabel and Caldwell travelled in one, the Rosenfeld family in the other, their next stop Berlin airport.

Arrangements had already been made for the cars to drive directly onto the airfield and pull up beside the waiting private aircraft. The Rosenfelds boarded first. Mabel and Caldwell remained in their car for a few minutes before getting out, allowing the family to disappear aboard without giving the appearance that they had all arrived as one party.

As Mabel stepped from the car, something made her look towards the airport buildings.

A man in a long leather coat stood beside a black car, small swastika flags mounted on its front wings.

Hoffmann.

He made no attempt to approach her. Instead, he raised one hand and waved goodbye.

Mabel looked at him for a moment before turning towards the aircraft.

She knew it would not be the last time she saw him.