"What about Gráinne Ní Mháille?" Walden said after a moment of consideration.
Evey had tasked him with making a list of all the Muggle historical figures he could think of, provided that they had even the thinnest link to the nicknames that the Ancients used – the ones from the book she'd bought him for Christmas, and the few that Tony had accidentally revealed. Not all of them matched. Presumably, several of the older Ancients had changed their epithets over the course of their long lives, or the world had come up with variants for them. In any case, the author had nineteen names in total – more names than there were Ancients.
"Did you just sneeze?" Evey asked with an arched eyebrow.
Walden glanced at her. "Grace O'Malley?" he said, using the woman's anglicised name. Evey's face was blank. "Come on, you've never heard of her? Famous Irish pirate lady?" That was a terrible summary of O'Malley's biography, but he'd learned to remain concise. Evey wasn't the most patient person.
She patted his arm. "Wal, we've been over this. Just because you have heard of someone doesn't mean they're famous." Walden opened his mouth to protest, then clicked it shut. They'd had this argument before; it was pointless to contradict her. His opinion was that she had no historical culture to speak of, but she assured him that she was passionate about history. He could ask Professor Binns for confirmation. But of course, Binns wouldn't know about Grace O'Malley. She was a Muggle, and she'd had no influence on the wizarding world – which made her a perfect candidate for the Ancient who went by the nickname "The Pirate".
"Then again," Evey went on thoughtfully, "there can't be that many lady pirates, so I guess there's a good chance you're right about this...Grace person." She frowned suddenly. "The Pirate could be a man, though, as the author suggests." They simply called him "the author" because Evey couldn't pronounce his name – Wilhelm Vandroogenbroeck, an obscure Dutch historian. Walden had repeated it several times, but she'd given up in frustration. She certainly didn't have Walden's knack for picking up languages. "Didn't Jeanne say that there were two men, other than Tony? Isn't it more likely? There were tons of famous pirate blokes."
"Jeanne did say that," Walden confirmed. "She also said that they were both ugly, but if she finds Tony handsome, I'm not sure we can trust her taste in men."
"Tony already told me that she fancied you, so don't play coy with me now, pretty boy," Evey said with a smirk.
Merlin, would Tony ever learn to keep his bloody mouth shut? Walden flushed, avoiding Evey's amused gaze. "Jeanne only has one eye. Her eyesight's probably impaired," he mumbled. Evey chuckled lightly. "Anyway. Didn't we agree on the fact that one of the men had to be Vlad Țepeș?"
"I refuse to believe that," Evey said stubbornly. "It's just so…predictable. So obvious. It's boring."
"All myths and legends stem from facts, even Muggle legends. Dracula must have been less secretive than the other Ancients, he must have sparked rumours. And there's an Ancient called "The Dragon", which was one of Vlad's nicknames – that's where "Dracula" comes from. Dracul, his father's name, meant dragon in medieval Romanian, and it means devil now. It all fits, V, no matter how disappointing it may be." He tapped on the book, which lay open between them, notes scribbled all over the margins, while scraps of parchment covered a good portion of the mattress. "Vandroogenbroeck agrees with me."
Evey rolled her eyes. "He got the Swindler wrong, so I don't think that we should take everything he writes as the unshakable truth." She returned her attention to the page they'd been reading.
Another problem with this book, they'd noticed right away, was that Vandroogenbroeck didn't know what they already knew: that most of the fourteen Ancients were women. His hypotheses for the Pirate, for example, included Edward Teach and Henry Morgan, but there were no mention of female pirates at all. Whatever Evey believed, there had been several famous ones: Ní Mháille, Jeanne de Clisson, Sayyida al Hurra… Walden had come up with quite a few names on this list.
The larger issue, however, was that there was no chronological order for the nicknames. The only thing they knew for certain was that there were three Ancients between Jeanne and Antonin. This…Ripper that Tony had briefly mentioned was most likely the one before last, and Evey seemed convinced that he must be a man – if she was right, and Walden was right about Dracula, then they knew who the two other men were. Though the exact identity of the Ripper would prove complicated to figure out, of course. Provided that it even was the Ripper, as in the infamous 19th century serial murderer. All in all, they really hadn't made much progress. They couldn't seem to agree on anything, even things that were obvious to Walden. Like Dracula.
Evey studied Walden's list of pirate names again. None of them were in the book, since they were all women. "Anne Bonny!" she exclaimed. "I've actually heard about her, so she must be more famous than the others."
Walden sighed inwardly. "It could be any of them, V. Or maybe you're right, and it's a man. I don't know." Speculating about who the Ancients were was fascinating, but also quite frustrating.
Evey seemed to sense that it was time to move on to the next one. She flipped through the pages, looking for another, hopefully less controversial chapter. "What about the Queen, then? At least we know for certain that she's a woman." She perused the options given by Vandroogenbroeck. "I like his suggestion that it might be Marie-Antoinette."
Walden shook his head. "It's not impossible, but highly improbable. Marie-Antoinette was a contemporary of Jeanne, remember? I find it unlikely that two Ancients would hail from the same time period and the same country. Besides, Marie-Antoinette was decapitated," he reminded her.
Evey narrowed her eyes at him. "I may not have your expertise on Muggle history, but I do know that." She exhaled in annoyance. "I see your point, though. It would be…impractical to turn a headless corpse into a vampire, I suppose."
"Besides," Walden added, "the Queen has been in charge of recruiting for a while, according to Jeanne. So it would be someone older."
Evey grabbed another parchment, this one listing all the queens Walden considered famous, and who had lived before the Middle Ages. "Boudicca?" She looked up at him. "Even I know about her," she said with a crooked smile.
"I certainly like that idea," Walden said approvingly, ignoring her remark.
Evey sighed. "I wish Tony would give us hints, at least."
"He won't. I know he let slip a lot of seemingly major revelations, but he's just messing with us, I know he is."
"Of course I am," Tony said from the doorway. He was clearly holding back laughter. Blast! How long had he been listening and making fun of their assumptions? "You have no idea how entertaining it is, to watch you come up with all these silly ideas. I can't wait to tell the others whom they're being mistaken for."
"You're not likely to do that," Walden said. "They'll kill you if they find out that you've revealed their existence to mere mortals." Tony's good humour dimmed noticeably.
Evey concealed a yawn behind her hand. "So how did we do today? You must have been listening…"
"You did great!" Tony said encouragingly. "Only twelve more to go."
"Twelve? But…" Evey paused and gave him a flat look. "Ha, ha. Very funny."
Tony grinned. "Despair not, my fair maiden! Walden will unmask them all, eventually. He's a history nerd."
Walden frowned at the word. Hearing it felt like being back at Hogwarts. In those days, his classmates had called him nerd more often than Walden. "I'm not a bloody nerd," he grumbled. He simply enjoyed reading about things that other people didn't appreciate.
"You are," Evey said apologetically. "Honestly, when Tony said that only famous people were turned, I assumed it meant people like…well, Marie-Antoinette. Nobody knows who Jeanne is, or was, back in her glory days, except you, Wal."
"But if even one person remembers her, two centuries after her lifetime, then she is famous, no? She's someone. Fame is not only about Hollywood hunks, ye ken."
Evey smiled delightedly. He almost never let his Scottish accent seep into his speech, but he knew that Evey loved it when he did, though he had no idea why. Merlin knew, he'd had enough trouble getting rid of it. Back at Hogwarts, when Walden wasn't being called a nerd, people were usually mimicking his accent – badly so, but it made everyone laugh nonetheless. In his third year, he'd decided to do something about it, and had begun to learn foreign languages over the holidays. By his fifth year, he only had a trace of accent left.
"I ken," Evey acknowledged. Thankfully, she never tried to imitate the accent, though she liked to place the odd Scottish word here and there. "But still. You know I'm right."
Walden groaned in frustration. "It's not my fault if everyone is as uneducated as you two."
"Oi!" Tony protested. "I know exactly who the Ancients are, thank you very much."
"You know their names," Walden said. "But do you know who they were, beyond what their nicknames give away?"
"Of course I bloody well do," he mumbled. "Mandatory history lessons were included in the Ancient package. Jeanne's maker's maker insisted."
"Her maker's maker?" Evey repeated with a scoff. "Seriously, Tony. Names would be a lot easier. Or at least use their nicknames, why don't you? For instance, which one is Jeanne's maker, and which one-"
"Absolutely not," he said firmly. Evey batted her eyelashes at him, and he smiled indulgently. "Brother, your lady love is making eyes at me. But it won't work," he told Evey with mock severity.
"What if I do it?" Walden asked, imitating Evey as best he could, which only resulted in him blinking rapidly like an idiot. How did women do that? Was it an innate ability that men simply weren't meant to master? Tony nearly choked on his laughter.
Evey smiled at him fondly. "A for effort." She turned to Tony. "Alright, here's a question that doesn't pertain to the Ancients' identities, but to which only you may know the answer. If the Ancients are real… Does that mean that the Elders exist, too?" They both frowned at her. "You know, the immortal werewolves, from the same tales as the Ancients?"
"Oh. Well, a year ago, I would have laughed in your face at the idea, but with what we know now…" Tony shrugged. "Anything's possible, I guess."
"There are no books about them," Evey said. "I mean, many historians have speculated about the identity of the Ancients, but I've never heard of an equivalent regarding the werewolves."
"Maybe they've been more discreet than us?" Tony suggested. "The only mention of them is in the kiddie tales, as far as I know. Jeanne didn't say anything on the subject, so maybe they're made-up."
"Or they've infiltrated our world so well that we don't even know that they're amongst us," Walden said.
"You sound like one of those Muggle lunatics who believe that aliens infiltrated society ages ago and are controlling us," Tony said jokingly.
Walden shrugged. "I'm just saying, it's a possibility. I mean, if not for you, we wouldn't know about the Ancients, not for certain, anyway."
"Seriously?" Evey cut in. "Months ago you refused to believe that I'd been bitten by a werewolf, and now you're the one coming up with this?"
He gave her a bashful grin. "A lot has changed since then, V. You've quite thoroughly upended everything I believed in. Which is a good thing," he added quickly. "But Tony's right. Anything's possible."
"Are there 'famous' personalities who could be immortal werewolves in disguise?" Evey wondered thoughtfully. "People like Dracula, but who were rumoured to turn into a wolf instead of a bat?"
"Vlad can turn into a wolf too, or any other-" Tony began to say. He abruptly clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes widening in horror. For once, it didn't appear faked at all. Evey and Walden exchanged a surprised look. They hadn't even been trying to trick him into revealing information!
Walden couldn't help a smug smile. "Told you."
"Fuck's sake," Evey muttered. She brightened a moment later, however, and turned to Tony again, her eyes sparkling mischievously. "Well then. Eleven to go."