How Marisa had found a map showing the secret Sentinel complex and how she had managed to orientate Beforetime maps to the world that existed now, I could not guess, but eventually she had destroyed the map and all of her own maps and notes identifying its location in relation to the Land. But she had been too much of a scholar to destroy knowledge utterly. She had cunningly concealed the directions to Sentinel in a pattern, which she arranged to have carved into the border of a set of heavy wooden doors being made for the front entrance of the newly built Obernewtyn.

Her son’s ward, the brilliant but defective Alexi, had got wind of Marisa’s discoveries and had very likely killed her in his efforts to get his hands on the map references that would lead him to Sentinel, believing it to be a weaponmachine. Marisa never revealed her secrets to him but eventually he had hit upon the idea of exposing Misfits with forbidden defects – futuretelling or empathic Talents – to Marisa’s books and possessions in the hope that they would be able to tell him the whereabouts of the map. There were plenty of Misfits at his disposal because the original master of Obernewtyn, Lukas Seraphim, had made some arrangement with the Councilmen who ruled the Land to take over the care and keep of convicted Misfits in exchange for labour.

After the death of his foster father, Alexi’s adoptive brother Stephen Seraphim had become master of Obernewtyn. Alexi and his accomplice Madam Vega had contrived to prevent anyone knowing that Stephen Seraphim was mentally defective since this would cause Obernewtyn to revert to Council ownership. Stephen Seraphim had been completely under the sway of the pair, and they had done as they chose. Ariel had joined them at this time. There had been a rumour that he was Alexi’s son, but Rushton had told me that the rumours had originated with Ariel, who had not liked anyone mentioning the fact that he had been a Misfit. Rushton said he had started out by making himself useful to Alexi and Madam Vega by spying on the other Misfits and reporting those who might be concealing useful Talents.