Ingrid Woodhouse

Ingrid Woodhouse is the executive assistant to Myfanwy Thomas, serving as her organizer, interpreter of Checquy business, and trusted presence through crises that expose both the institution’s dangers and the history hidden behind Myfanwy’s identity. Her role changes from discreet office support to confidante and survivor: she knows how the former Rook disappeared, helps Myfanwy navigate a suspected traitor within the Court, and is injured during the confrontation that precipitates an emergency lockdown.

Identity and Work

Ingrid is introduced as a distinguished woman in purple whose appearance matches the photograph in Myfanwy’s binder. She greets the newly arrived Rook formally, identifies herself through the ordinary routines of executive work, and quickly helps Myfanwy manage a visitor who wants to discuss a plague-related proposal. The exchange establishes Ingrid as the person who can turn Myfanwy’s improvised instructions into a scheduled meeting, even while Myfanwy is still learning where her own office is.

Her administrative work also carries substantive intelligence. Ingrid hands Myfanwy a leather folder containing the current situation précis, then offers to fetch coffee. The briefing records three incidents over the weekend, surveillance of seven people in the greater London area and thirty-four across the British Isles, preparations for an annual review, and a planned assault on an antler cult. Ingrid’s position therefore places her between the Rook’s private workspace and the organization’s ongoing operations: she supplies the documents through which Myfanwy begins to understand the scope of her office.

Ingrid is not presented only as a scheduler. When Myfanwy examines Dr. Crisp after Peter Van Syoc’s death, she identifies possible traces on his gloves and fingers, orders the gloves and hands analyzed, and calls for a thorough examination of Van Syoc. Ingrid is present as the scene’s immediate colleague, and Myfanwy explicitly asks her to leave with her. The subsequent private conversation gives Ingrid room to offer an assessment of Myfanwy’s command style, a professional judgment that carries weight precisely because she has long observed the Rook at work.

Knowledge of the Former Rook

Ingrid’s deepest personal knowledge concerns the transition between the original Rook and the amnesiac Myfanwy. She later explains that she learned of the former Myfanwy’s condition one evening when she entered her office and found her curled on the floor, weeping and saying that she could feel her memories evaporating. The revelation makes Ingrid a witness to the moment when the identity Myfanwy inherited was already coming apart.

The account is not merely an explanation of what Ingrid knew. It clarifies how much she withheld after the previous Rook vanished. Ingrid says she left the office immediately, went down the fire stairs to the parking garage, and drove to collect her daughter from the station. She spent the weekend with doors and windows locked, waiting for a phone call that never came. When she returned to the Rookery on Monday and met the new Myfanwy, she did not know what to think; when asked why she had said nothing, she answers that she had not.

That silence leaves a genuine tension in their relationship. Ingrid had seen the former Myfanwy in distress and then encountered a successor who did not remember her, yet she continued serving in the same office without openly explaining the earlier encounter. The evidence gives her fear and uncertainty through her actions, but does not establish every reason for her silence. What it does establish is that Ingrid carries a private history that the new Rook must eventually ask her to disclose.

Counsel and Companionship

Ingrid’s professional candor becomes visible when she tells Myfanwy that, despite holding her abilities in high regard, she has never taken a dominant role in commanding the Checquy. The remark is carefully framed as a difficult assessment rather than a dismissal. It gives Myfanwy a view of how she appeared to the organization before her memory loss, and it helps distinguish competence from command: Ingrid respects the Rook’s professional abilities while identifying a specific weakness in her leadership.

The new Myfanwy responds by asking Ingrid to discuss what they have just witnessed at an interrogation. She proposes afternoon tea and expects Ingrid to give her critique, treating the meeting as both a work debrief and a chance to learn from her assistant. The exchange marks a change in their working pattern: Ingrid is not only expected to arrange the Rook’s day but invited to interpret events and speak directly about them.

That openness recurs in practical moments. During an operational report, Myfanwy quietly asks Ingrid where the loo is, then listens from a cubicle through the intercom. Later, as the investigation into the attacks raises the possibility that Checquy personnel have been compromised, Myfanwy asks Ingrid how far the Court’s medical testing has progressed. Ingrid turns away to check by phone, and relays Security Chief Clovis’s update that Chevalier Eckhart has passed his tests, while Clovis will not say who is being tested next. Her ordinary communications work becomes part of Myfanwy’s effort to establish whom she can trust.

Crisis, Loyalty, and the Ending

When Myfanwy works out the identity of the infiltrator in the Court, she reminds Ingrid of their earlier discussion in Scotland. Ingrid initially looks blank, then understands when Myfanwy clarifies that she means the infiltrator. Myfanwy whispers a name to her rather than saying it in front of the other people present; Ingrid visibly recoils at the news as Myfanwy leaves with her security detail. The exchange shows their closeness operating under pressure: Ingrid is trusted with the accusation, but the danger requires discretion.

Ingrid is later found unconscious and bleeding after a security confrontation. A Rookery graphic designer working overtime had come upon an adolescent Pawn fighting a security guard and Ingrid injured on the floor. Unable to tell which side was in the right, the designer incapacitated both combatants with her electricity-casting ability and called security. The intervention saved Ingrid from being left in the middle of the conflict, though the exact circumstances that led to her injuries are not fully set out in this account.

Despite her injury, Ingrid recovers quickly enough to attend part of the Court meeting. She explains that a medic sealed the bullet wound with resin produced from his glands, an episode that underscores the strange procedures of Checquy medical care without making her recovery the end of the danger. When Myfanwy tells her she is glad she is all right and that hearing Ingrid had survived was the best moment of her life, Ingrid thanks her. They clasp hands before parting. The gesture gives the relationship an emotional clarity not present in their first formal exchanges: the assistant who once encountered the former Rook at the point of memory loss has become someone whose survival matters profoundly to the new one.

Their farewell takes place as the organization prepares to lock down. A security guard tells Myfanwy that the watch office has established a command center in Apex House, and that the Rook will be alone with security staff once she gives the word. Ingrid’s injury and recovery thus fall at the threshold of another institutional emergency. Her arc is not resolved by leaving the Checquy’s dangers behind; instead, the closing exchange confirms personal loyalty amid continuing uncertainty, as Myfanwy faces the lockdown after explicitly expressing relief that Ingrid is alive.