Every year, the Griffin family gives a Yule party sometime during the Season of Yule. In 2023, it is on Twelfth Night, which is still January 6th, even though Yule is three days earlier than Christmas—clearly another “orphaned” term, like friar and steeple.
Ordinarily, Rachel looks forward to this party during which she gets to spend time with her two friends from home, Taddy the Cook’s grandson and Ben Bridges, as well as, in previous years, to spend a little time with the young man whom she fancied, John Darling, son of the world-famous James Darling, Agent.
This year, however, Rachel skips the party, pretending not to be feeling well, in order to sneak into her parents’ room and discover the truth of a theory of hers.
This year, the famous Griffin Family Yule Party was on Twelfth Night. As with Saturnalia, Rachel feigned illness and begged off, partially because she had no desire to come face to face with John Darling, but mainly because it was her only opportunity to slip into her parents’ room without fear of discovery. She would miss spending time with her friend Benjamin Bridges, but maybe she could make it up to him over the summer.
In the week leading up to the party, Rachel had sought out some of the silver pieces that her Great-Aunt Nimue had given the family. In one room, she found an antique candle snuffer that looked like a griffin, a Vesta case to hold friction matches—it had been Grandmother’s, but the imperious late duchess had once mentioned to Rachel that it had been given to her by her sister-in-law, Nimue— and a small silver muffineer for sprinkling sugar or cinnamon. She also snuck a good look at the griffin-headed chatelaine her mother often wore at her hip, upon which hung some of her mother’s favorite alchemical charms: a thimble imbued with protection cantrips; a whistle that summoned the household fey; a tiny key that opened any unwarded locks; an acorn-shaped vinaigrette containing a healing elixir for cuts and scrapes; a watch set with jasper; and a pincushion holding a needle that sewed on its own.
The silver pieces all bore the same series of hallmarks, except that next to last mark in each series differed. None of the encyclopedias Rachel had memorized explained these marks, so she had in g to search in the house’s main library until she found a book specifically on British hallmarks. Apparently, the lion passant indicated the piece was sterling silver. The three towers meant it had been made in the nearby town of Exeter.
The next stamp was a date stamp, but date stamps were issued in a strange way. A new letter was assigned each May, but every twenty years the font changed to distinguish one set of letters from another. There was no way to figure out which font corresponded to which dates without a legend, which Rachel did not have. It was this stamp that differed from piece to piece.
The final stamp, the maker’s mark, was two letters, JA. According to the book, this would be the initials of the silversmith. Rachel checked two or three dozen other pieces of the household silver, pieces that did not come from Great-Aunt Nimue. A few were from Exeter, but not a single one bore the initials JA.
The next day her friend Taddy, the cook’s grandson, came to visit. Rachel was excused from preparing for the party to spend the day in the kitchens with him. The two had a wonderful time together, reminiscing, swapping tales, and sampling Cook’s pies. When Cook headed out on a shopping trip, Rachel convinced her to take the two of them to Exeter, where they visited the boutiques, went skating, and saw a pantomime. While there, Rachel stopped at Johannes Ashley’s Silversmith Shoppe and asked the clerk about the stamps on their wares. Sure enough, he confirmed that silverwork from this shop was marked with the initials JA. The clerk also showed her a chart on the wall that displayed the date stamps for the last four hundred years.
The night of the Yule Party, she slipped out of bed, where she was pretending to be sick with an all-too-real stomachache, brought on most likely by nerves. She tiptoed down to the floor below, to her parents’ bedroom. Her mother’s jewelry case sat upon the vanity. It was a black-lacquered Oriental antique inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the shape of roses and butterflies.
Rachel crept over and opened the jewelry box. The top of the case lifted, revealing three little drawers. The first two drawers contained fine pieces of jewelry. Odds and ends filled the bottom drawer: charm bracelets, long dangly earrings, old medals, and commemorative coins. Gently, disturbing as little as possible, she felt her way to the back of the bottom drawer and found what she had been seeking, a silver baby’s rattle engraved with an A. Turning it over, she checked the hallmark. Sure enough, three of the four marks were familiar: the sterling mark, the Exeter mark, and the JA.
Rachel stared at the rattle. The JA confirmed that the piece was most likely a gift from her great-aunt, whom the clerk at Johannes Ashley’s claimed as a long-time client. However, this alone did not tell Rachel when the piece had been commissioned. Perhaps her great-aunt had bought it over a hundred years ago, for the birth of one of Myrddin’s siblings—her father’s dead brothers and sisters— three of whose names Rachel did not even know, and it had only been given to Rachel’s mother more recently.
Rachel listened, but she could hear no noise in this wing of the house. Closing her eyes, she recalled in perfect photographic detail the chart on the silversmith’s wall. She compared the third mark on the silver rattle with the date stamp letters and fonts on the chart. A cold shiver ran up her spine. According to the silversmith’s chart, the hallmark on the delicate silver rattle had been stamped two years before Sandra’s birth.
Shutting the jewelry box with a snap, Rachel ran upstairs and crawled back into bed; however, even the warmth of her blankets could not stop her shivering. Safe under her pink and white quilt, inside the curtains of her pale rose canopy bed, she called Gaius on the bracelet and told him all that she had found.