Starmaker Stella (Dica Series Book 6)

by Clive S. Johnson

  When she recognised deer standing just off, likewise staring down at her, Stella pushed herself to her elbows and stared back. At that, they all started and scattered – all but the crows.

  “What is this place?” she asked them but they only ruffled their feathers and cawed, looked one to the other and flew up to the treetops.

  “How strange,” Stella whispered.

  She eventually sat up, wincing, and felt her head, finding dried blood matted to her hair. “What happened?” but she noticed a steep flight of steps beside the cascade, vanishing into the trees high above. Her bag hung some way up, snagged on a low hawthorn branch.

  She groaned herself onto all fours, leant out over the bank and stared at her reflection in the water of the lake. A blue bruise, tender to the touch, bloomed on her cheek, a graze above her eye. She tried to pull leaves and twigs from her hair but most were glued to the dirty brown mat of blood tousling one side.

  Carefully, Stella explored herself, relieved to find nothing more than grazes and scratches, and a bruise to her knee. When she stood, a little dizzily, she peered through the woods. It seemed she was all alone.

  She stripped off and gingerly slipped from the bank into the crystal clear water, yelping and stiffening at the cold. Her breath froze and she gasped as her teeth chattered, but lay back and floated in the shallow water for some lengthening minutes. She slowly relaxed, numbed to the cold, and finally dunked her head, taking time to tease out her hair.

  Once back on the soft grass of the bank, Stella shivered herself dry enough to get dressed. She felt more invigorated, her aches and pains now largely eased. A smear of fresh blood stained her finger when she again felt her head. The cut, though, didn’t seem large.

  She looked back up the steps she’d clearly stumbled down, and her eyes slowly narrowed.

  “You bastard, Leiyatel. You utter shit,” she ground out and went to retrieve her bag. As she did so, something stirred within her, something that remembered the look in the stare of the crows.

  “You’ve not won yet, you abomination. Do you hear me?” she called out after she’d picked up her bag. “I’m not dead yet, you bitch,” and her voice echoed about the lake-filled hollow, beneath its indifferent wooded slopes.

  “All I have to do now, damn you, is find my way out,” she grumbled, eyeing the steps above with distrust.

  She could see the slope opposite gently rose through the woods, clear of undergrowth, and towards a hint of open sky at the top. A last look up the steps and she dropped back down to the lake, around it and into the easy climb through the trees.

  By the time she came to the top and found a wide gateway, her hair had dried and showed no signs of any more blood. She passed through the gate and out onto a broad terrace, making her way across to a parapet where she stood and looked down. As her eyes steadied, she recognised the Royal College far below, a couple of miles away to the east.

  When she looked along the parapet towards the north, she realised the wall of the Upper Reaches continued on from here. She knew the road alongside it would lead to the Outer Courts, below which ran the old Cambray Road. For a moment, the promise of an easier way home lifted her spirits, but the memory of her encounter with Leiyatel soon beat them down.

  Before fear had a chance to follow on, a resolve – like Stella had never felt before – boiled to the surface. It threatened to carry her away until something else within checked its heat.

  “No,” she gritted out, clenching her fists, “I won’t destroy you, Leiyatel,” and she wheeled about and stared towards the south. “I will replace you. I’ll give up my own freedom to see your vassals torn free of your unnatural grasp; to know, even if I don’t long remember it, that thereafter all Dicans will be as free as nature’s own.”

  A crow cawed in the woodland behind her and Stella waved her fist towards an unseen Baradcar. She shouted, “That, Leiyatel, is the certain promise of a certain resolve, my resolve, do you hear? The resolve of Stella Sodbuster – your Nemesis.”

  She stormed off along the terrace, for the first time feeling she belonged, that Dica had now truly become her rightful home.

  32 A Last Bequest

  Stella reached Blisteraising Farm not long before they were about to start preparing their evening meal. Their concern over her injuries – just what Nephril had warned against – naturally delayed things. She’d hidden all but the evident bruise and graze to her face, explaining them away against an innocent trip over a kerb.

  “You do seem to be getting into the wars lately,” Falmeard said.

  “It happens,” Stella dismissed, but now knew from where his odd turns of phrase had long ago come.

  Much against her wishes, they fussed over her until convinced she was all right. Finally, her mother sighed and said, “Oh well, suppose I’d better get started on dinner,” at which their attention finally drifted to other things.

  Prescinda sealed the change when she told Stella, “Old man Ditchwater’s daughter came over earlier. Seems he’s just about at the end now.”

  “Aw, that’s a shame,” Stella said. “I suppose it’s good of his daughter to let us know, though.”

  “I don’t think it was her idea,” and Prescinda’s eyes narrowed a touch. “Apparently, he’d like to see you.”

  “Me?”

  “She didn’t say why, but I’d suggest you get over there before we eat, while it’s still light.”

  Stella put her coat back on and shouldered her bag. “Won’t be long then.”

  “Stella? What have you done to your bag?” Geran said, fingering a long tear in its outer layer, revealing its stark white lining.

  “Oh,” and Stella remembered she’d forgotten to hide the damage, “I caught it on a hawthorn branch.”

  “Well, if you’ll let me have it tonight, after dinner, I’ll mend it for you.”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  As she made her way out of the house and into the yard, she wondered what the old man wanted. She’d hardly had much to do with him over the years.

  As she passed the piggery, she looked in quickly on Bertha who seemed more interested in grubbing than socialising, and so Stella soon passed through the gate and onto Ditchwater’s lane. It curved into the premature twilight of a copse, much of its canopy already burnt red by the Autumn.

  Beyond, between small scrubby fields, the lane pointed at the old man’s farmhouse, nestled, like Blisteraising, against the hillside behind. Although of a similar size, it seemed smaller and more secret somehow, dominated by a press of ancient oaks. A hint of encroaching dusk revealed a flicker of lamplight, dancing at an upstairs window.

  Stella’s knock at the front door proved fruitless so she wandered around the side, in search of a kitchen door she vaguely remembered. Again, her knock went unanswered and so she eased the door open and called in, “Hello? Is anybody home?”

  An indignant frown popped its face through a doorway on the opposite side of the kitchen. “Well? And who are you?” a gaunt looking broom-of-a-woman demanded.

  “I’m Stella Sodbuster. My aunt told me...”

  “Oh, are you indeed? Then I suppose you better come in. He’s upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Front bedroom, on t’right. Can’t miss it. And don’t be long. He ain’t at all strong now,” at which she retreated down a dimly lit hallway beyond.

  Stella followed but the woman had vanished from sight. Boxes and bags reduced the hallway to a treacherous passage between recently packed vases, bottles, folds of linen and innumerable knickknacks. Part way down, just beyond a stack of framed paintings leaning against the wall, Stella saw the bottom step of a steep flight.

  When she got to the top, she found two doors facing one another across a small, dark landing. Stella tapped lightly on the one to the right.

  “Just go on in,” startled her from the foot of the stairs, the old man’s daughter again nowhere to be seen when Stella turned to look. Gently, she pushed the door open.

&nbs
p; Inside, a large metal-framed bed faced her, a rickety table on one side, on which stood a decorative wooden box and a tall, elegant and brightly flickering paraffin lamp. A thin tail of oily-black smoke streamed from its chimney.

  A dressing table, its drawers sagging open and empty, stood at the other side of the bed, the window she’d seen from outside rising behind. The distant Gray Mountains scribed a jagged white line across the view through its small panes.

  “Is that thee, Tabatha?” a reedy voice whispered from beyond a stack of eiderdowns and coverlets draped across the bed.

  “It’s me, Mr. Ditchwater. Stella Sodbuster. You wanted to see me.”

  The breath Stella now took reminded her of Blisteraising’s shambles, although ameliorated here not by sawdust but house dust, unaired clothing and long damp plaster.

  She tiptoed between the bed and the dressing table, to where a spindly upright chair suggested she draw near.

  “Oh, aye. So it is,” he muttered from within a waxen and shrunken face, peering at her from sallow eyes, as sunk into their head as that head was into its stained pillows. “Well, sit thesen darn,” and the eyes glinted for a moment towards the chair.

  “How ... how are you?” Stella ventured.

  “Finally been caught up b’ t’ale, lass, if truth be told,” and he tried to laugh but it came out as a gurgle. “Not long now,” he managed in a thinner but brighter voice, “and maybe I’ll be able to take a sup wi’ thee grandfather again, eh?”

  Stella sat down, hitched her bag up onto her shoulder and waited, unnerved by the old man’s eyes, their pearlescent glaze a sidelong stare. She coughed, politely.

  “Thee’s a fine specimen,” he eventually said, “though I know there’s some who’d argue. Not sure...” and he stared at the ceiling, as though now worn out, “...not sure ... how thee grandfather would’ve taken to thee, though.”

  “I never knew him, Mr. Ditchwater, he...”

  “Call me Stanwell, Stella. It’s t’only form of intimacy I can manage now,” and he cackled until he coughed.

  “Can I get you some water?”

  “Nay, lass. No longer o’ much use to me. Thinking o’ which, I need to give thee summat.”

  “Me? I don’t...”

  “Summat o’ thee grandfather’s, but first I ought to tell thee a bit about him thee likely as not don’t know.”

  Stanwell clearly took a few moments to gather his thoughts and his thin breath, but then grinned. “Grub, thee late grandfather, were a reet dour old bugger, but still prone to romancing. Did thee know that?”

  Stella shook her head.

  “He had some strange notions at times. He were a bit wary o’ life thee see. He were a good friend to me, though. All told. Aye, I do miss ‘im an’ all.” He closed his eyes for so long Stella thought he’d gone to sleep – or worse.

  “My ole mate Grub,” he continued, as though he’d only paused, “were real suspicious about thee father. Reckoned he weren’t reet somehow. Al’ays said he were more than he made out.” Stanwell barked a quiet laugh. “All stuff and nonsense no doubt. He did seem convinced of it, though.”

  “What ... what made him think that way do you reckon?”

  His sallow eyes glinted again as they turned her a distant gaze. “He told me it were his first meeting wi’ thee father,” Stanwell now said more firmly, “which must be errant nonsense ‘cos Falmeard’s always lived hereabouts. Any road, he said he first saw him pass by Down Barrow field, when Grub were hoeing there one day, about ten years afore thee were born. Said Falmeard were a complete stranger to him. That was ... until he met ‘im shortly after at thee farmhouse door, talking wi’ thee mother. Grub told me that that were when he remembered, just like that, that thee father were a longstanding acquaintance o’ t’family, suddenly knew where he lived and all sorts of other stuff about ‘im.”

  “You sure he wasn’t just pulling your...”

  “Hang on, lass,” Stanwell gasped before taking a few deep breaths, “wait on t’ending, if thee would? Thee see, it perplexed thee grandfather that he then had – as he put it – two very disparate memories of Falmeard.”

  “But, why are you telling me all this? Why not my aunt Prescinda?”

  “I thought about it, but thee see, thee’s one wi’ t’college education, so thee might make more o’ what I’ve decided to give thee.”

  “Something of granddad’s?”

  “Summat he found,” and Stanwell glanced at the box on the bedside table. “He told me he’d seen Falmeard burning papers one day, out in t’yard, and being a suspicious old sod, Grub had rummaged through to see what Falmeard had been getting rid of.”

  Stanwell fumbled his arms free of the bedclothes and reached out to the table, clawing the box towards him. Stella was about to get up and get it for him when it fell into his feeble grasp. Shakily, he lifted its lid and poured out some clay pipes and an old tobacco tin.

  “Here thee are,” he said, his trembling hand offering the tin. She took it, and Stanwell groaned as he put the pipes away and clumsily slid the box back onto the table.

  Stella was about to prise the lid off the tin when she saw the box nudge up against the lamp. It toppled and fell to the floor where it smashed, a great whoosh of flames engulfing the table.

  Beginning to choke on the smell of paraffin, she watched in shock as the flames slid beneath the bed, the sheets straightaway catching alight.

  She shot to her feet, the tin slipping to her pocket as her backside came against the dressing table. It bent her over, away from the pyre the bed was fast becoming, its heat already barring escape through the door.

  “Stanwell?” she yelped, soon staring through a rising curtain of flames.

  “Nay, lass,” he croaked back, feebly waving her away. “Don’t mither over me. Save thesen.”

  Without thinking, she reached forward but recoiled at the heat, pain searing her scalp as her hair caught light. By the time she’d smothered it with her arms, Stanwell had already become lost amidst a growling mass of flames.

  Frantically, she turned and heaved the dressing table aside, pressing herself against the window, fumbling for a catch, her back starting to scorch in the heat. As a furnace roar filled her ears, the handle gave way, the window cracked opened and she dared a glance back.

  Black, ash-filled smoke curled from the ceiling, reaching down to choke her. Its heat crackled about her head as she turned and pushed at the window. It gave easily, a great inrush of air blowing back the heat and smoke for a precious few moments as she clambered out onto the windowsill.

  Below, as black as midnight against the inferno within, the flagged yard seemed so remote, so unreal. From behind her, an intake of breath gathered an almighty roar as the flames gulped in the fresh air. With a deafening bellow of heat, it blew Stella clear off the windowsill, all the way down to the yard.

  33 Hue and Cry

  “Wherever has Stella got to?” Prescinda said, looking out through the kitchen window at the dusk light. “She should have been back by now.”

  “Well, I’m not far off serving,” Geran told her.

  “I don’t think she took a lamp either. I’ll make my way over with one. Probably meet her on her way back,” and Prescinda slipped off her apron.

  “There’s one just outside the door,” Falmeard said. “Should be full.”

  Prescinda took a spill from beside the fire, lit it and went out to find the lamp. Once she’d got it settled and glowing, she reached back in to take her coat down, and called out, “Won’t be long,” and was soon out into the side yard. Passing the end of the potting shed, she noticed smoke drifting in from beyond the copse on the far side of Bertha’s piggery.

  Slowing, she peered into the failing light and watched an orange glow briefly outline its trees, followed by a rising cloud of sparks. She stopped and stared, mouth agape.

  Her hue and cry quickly raised the others, soon had them out, lit lamps in hand, racing down the lane towards Ditchwater’s farm. Grog’s yo
uthful stamina outstripped them all and so, as they came out from the copse, his silhouette led them towards their first full sight of the blaze.

  He set his lamp aside to make more haste, for Ditchwater’s farmhouse lit the fields about like sunlight, great flames leaping high above its absent roof.

  “Stella!” Prescinda gasped. “Oh, by Leiyatel, Stella, my love!” and she set her own lamp down and hared after Grog.

  The intense heat stopped her at the entrance to the yard, although Grog was edging his way nearer, his arm before his face. Prescinda now saw what made him so reckless. Only a few yards from the front of the farmhouse, a body lay on the flags; its clothes smoking, its head at a sickening angle, a blackened leg poking from its skirt, an arm outthrust.

  “Stella!” Geran screamed, close by Prescinda’s ear, and darted past, staggering against the heat until Prescinda grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back.

  “No, Sis, come away,” Prescinda yelled into her ear, against the roar of the blaze. “That might be the old man’s daughter. Maybe Stella got clear before it started.”

  Geran’s tortured features speared Prescinda’s hopes, her heart lanced by Geran’s shrill words. “Of course it’s Stella. Look!” she shrieked and pointed. “That’s her bag!”

  Prescinda turned back to the body and stared. Sure enough, there it lay, beside the outstretched arm, the edges of the tear Geran had promised to mend now curling, the frayed fabric beginning to burn.

  Grog’s shocked face then loomed out of the glare, his hair and clothes smoking, blisters blossoming across his brow as his mouth tried to form words that refused to come.

  “It’s ... it’s useless,” he at last croaked out. “Useless,” he shouted above the growl of the flames and gathered the two women in his huge arms, pressing them back. “I can’t get near,” he choked, and white lines coursed down through the soot beneath his eyes. “There’s nothing I can...”

  The farmhouse groaned pitifully, drawing them to watch its stark frontage bow out, to craze with fiery light before thundering down onto the body beneath. Smoke and dust billowed into the draw of the fire, blackening its flames for an instant.