“How can you be so doubtful? She is—”
“Your arm—”
“My arm is immaterial.”
“It is precisely not, and that’s the problem!” I sneezed violently several times in a row, and gasped out the rest, angry and humiliated and frustrated with my sneezing, with a sudden wash of exhaustion, and with helplessness at what to do. “And if I didn’t have this bloody stupid sneezing—”
“It was my fault for taking you in the first place.”
“I told you you would regret it!”
“Don’t start in again on how inferior you feel—”
“It’s not a feeling, it’s the truth.”
“Mr. Greenwing! Mr. Dart!”
Mrs. Etaris’ sharp voice recollected me to my surroundings. Mr. Dart was breathing hard, his colour up and his left hand raised as if to hit me. He dropped it slowly, rubbing his other hand where it was weighing down his waistcoat.
As soon as I stopped shouting I started to sneeze again. I walked a few yards away, regretting the loss of my handkerchiefs. There was a rag in the borrowed coat’s pocket, but it was not very big and not much use. No one said anything, so far as I could tell, until I composed myself and returned to the group.
Mrs. Etaris looked hard at me as if to make certain I wouldn’t start arguing again. “Now,” she said briskly. “We should go in before you and Miss Redshank catch cold, but we cannot leave Miss Shipston to fend for herself. You seemed to have a suggestion as to what to do, Mr. Dart?”
He didn’t say anything, glaring instead at me. I swallowed a sigh. “We believe we encountered the Lady at the Lady’s Pools, Miss Shipston. Mr. Dart thinks she might, er, return for a petitioner.”
“I am a monster. What are these pools?”
“Hot springs,” Mrs. Etaris said. “They were where the Astandalan rites took place, and are sacred to the Lady of Summer and Winter.”
There was a long pause. I looked around cautiously. Violet was gazing at the fishermen, who were listening to all this with an air of polite incredulity; Mr. Calloun looked as if he wanted desperately to leave and be doing something else; and Mr. Shipston seemed about to faint. Only Mrs. Etaris smiled when she caught my eye. I did my best to smile back, but wavered in the face of Mr. Dart’s scowl.
“How would I get there?” Miss Shipston said from her hiding-space. “In a wagon?”
“No, no,” said Mr. Shipston. “We can’t risk it, Miranda.”
Mr. Clegger cleared his throat, and then flushed in embarrassment when we all looked at him. Mrs. Etaris smiled kindly. “Have you an idea, Mr. Clegger?”
“This here river’s the Raggle,” he said. “The South Rag what runs through the Coombe joins it north of the city, and there’s a weir, but if Miss Shipston was able to swim the distance, she could go down to the confluence and then up the South Rag, and from the Talgarths’ there’s the Ladybeck to the Pools. There’s been rain enough she should be able to swim the beck, even, if she’s willing. It must be five or six miles by the rivers, but.”
“I’ve never swum very far,” said Miss Shipston.
“I could walk along the shore with you,” Mr. Clegger said. “Show you where to go. Make sure you don’t get swept anywhere. The area around Littlegarth can be confusing, what with the old clay pits and the new embankments.”
“Corindel,” she said plaintively, and we all looked around until Mr. Shipston heaved himself to his feet, grabbing Mr. Clegger’s shoulder for balance, and said, “Miranda, dearest, of course I’ll come along with you.”
***
Back inside the Ragglebridge, Mr. Calloun deposited us in the side parlour, where a fire was burning hot and cheerful. He left us with mutterings about more hot wine and food. I managed to bring my sneezes into quieter sniffles, and sat down across the table from Mrs. Etaris, next to Mr. Dart.
Mr. Dart’s stone hand fell out of his pocket and thumped uncannily against the table. I shuddered, and of course started sneezing again, and was still recovering over by the fireplace when the door burst open to reveal Mr. Calloun with his promised and long-delayed pot of mulled wine, accompanied by the rather well-dressed and certainly well-lit-up figure of the Honourable Rag.
“Hulloo-oo-oo,” he called, flinging himself into the room and my vacated chair with all assurance. “Glad to see the reports of floods and fire and wild magic are completely wrong!—Although, I say, Mr. Greenwing, what’s this I hear about you charging into burning—Gadsbrook! Miss Indrilline!”
We all turned to look at Violet. She gazed at the Honourable Rag with a composed expression. “I’m sorry, sir, but you are mistaken. I am Violet Redshank, lately of Morrowlea.”
The Honourable Rag seemed to have read Aurora recently enough to recognize the name, for he choked. Mr. Calloun busied himself passing out cups of hot wine and didn’t betray any illegal reading. I tried to remember where I’d heard the name Indrilline before. Something I’d read in History of Magic? Or perhaps Architecture? Was there an architect named Indrilline ... ?
The Honourable Rag grinned, his initial surprise fading now into a luxurious and exquisitely presented boredom. “Are you now? Come to see our Mr. Greenwing, have you?”
She gave me a cool glance. I took a gulp of wine, still feeling shivery and snivelly, which was infuriating, and stepped a bit closer to the fireplace.
“No. I am seeking my cousin.”
“Alone? A lady of your quality should hardly be travelling on her own.”
Violet ran her hands down her borrowed dress and raised her eyebrows at the Honourable Rag. “You are very free with your assumptions, given that we have never met before.”
“Oh, that’s what we learned at Tara. Assumptions, assurance, asininity, you name it. I’m the baron’s son. Roald Ragnor.”
She curtsied with devastating calculation. He smiled fatuously while she removed a golden ring I realized belatedly was the one from the pie. Dropping my gaze, I saw he wore none. Violet spoke seriously. “Do you know this, sir?”
I had known the Honourable Rag well, four years before. I knew where to look when he told a lie, how the corners of his eyes would crinkle at the inner joke (prevarication always was a joke for him, no matter how serious the circumstances were to Mr. Dart or me or anyone else), how he would flick his fingers off his thumb when he was about to tell a whopper.
He didn’t flick his fingers, but his eyes crinkled before he tipped his head back and roared with laughter.
“Gadsbrook, I thought you’d ask me some impossible thing out of the old riddle-books of Morrowlea. Do they keep them still? At Tara we always laughed about ‘the old riddle-books of Morrowlea, kept under strictest lock and key, that none but the proctors see, in case of truth and verity …’”
He tossed the ring up in the air, caught it, and slid it easily onto his signet finger. “Of course I recognize it, it’s my very own ring, and I didn’t think to see it again. I lost it at a—” He aimed a grin in Mrs. Etaris’ direction. “I lost it at the Green Dragon, where I’d gone for a pint on my way out catching worms. But stay! How did you come by it?”
“That is my own business, Master Ragnor. When did you lose it?”
“Does it matter so to you?” He frowned at her, looked up her up and down twice with something between appreciation and a connoisseur’s disinterestedness. One finger flicked, then another, down his right hand. “This Monday past, Miss Redshank. Now, I have answered you, tell me true how it came to you?”
I’d forgotten his penchant for doggerel verse. I gritted my teeth and drank my wine and was relieved only a bit to see that Violet seemed immune to his charm—though perhaps that was because she seemed to suspect he’d been involved in the disappearance of her cousin. “I found it in a herring pie.”
I would have sworn his astonishment was genuine, for the moment before he flung himself back into the chair again and laughed even more heartily.
“Not that fish pie of Mr. Greenwing’s! By th’ Emperor, the town is gone mad for fish
! I had my dear father demanding herring and only north coastal herring for his new cat, which is a persnickety beast from the coastlands, and turns up her nose at a good piece of rabbit that any other cat would be glad of. Give me a dog any day,” he added expansively, “a grey courser, a setter, a pointer, an otter hound—” he grinned at me, eyes crinkling—“a falcon and a boar-spear, and I am happy. Cats! Only good for mice. Fish pie, indeed. Were you at the Green Dragon on your night off, Mr. Greenwing?”
“Master Ragnor,” Mrs. Etaris said calmly, as I twisted my hands firmly in the too-long sleeves of my borrowed shirt, and did not lunge across the intervening space to punch the baron’s son, however dearly I wanted to. “You say you lost this ring on Monday past?”
“Did I say that? I think it was Monday. It might have been Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Not a lot going on,” he added to Violet. “What with the weather as foul as it was this week, the good boys were at work and the bad boys at play—inside. Albeit—Mr. Dart—where were you this Tuesday past?”
“Threshing grain in my brother’s barn.”
“Another good boy.” He laughed again, pushed himself back, ready to leave. “Any more interrogations for me, Miss Redshank? Mrs. Etaris? Mr. Greenwing? Now that you’re finally back to scandalize the good gentry, life should be much more interesting. Fire, mermaids, herring pies, gossip, and half the town jammed with fools debating the folly of the rest, and all of them talking about you. I’m delighted you’re back.”
I decided I had best not say anything. Mr. Dart pursed his lips, but said nothing, either. Violet said, “Do you know anything of the Legendarium, Master Roald?”
There was a pause, which I thought suspicious, before he grinned. “No, why? Yon mad rumours of mermaids?”
“The Knockermen,” she said evenly.
He gave another great shout of laughter. I thought it made him look a right ass indeed. “You’ll be asking about goblins and ghouls in the Woods Noirell next, won’t you? Keep to the coast, Miss Redshank, and leave Mr. Greenwing to his family bugbears. Lady wot he has enough of ’em.” He stood up, with a careless nod to Mrs. Etaris, and bounced out the door.
“Well,” Mrs. Etaris began, but the Honourable Rag bounded back in the door and interrupted her.
“I say, Miss Redshank, tomorrow evening Dame Talgarth’s having a do, and Dominus Alvestone’s invited. He’s studying botanical folklore of south Fiellan, he might well know something of your Knockermen. Do come with me. Dame Talgarth won’t mind in the least.”
Mrs. Etaris coughed; Violet gave him a cool frown. “Thank you for the invitation, Master Roald, but I’m afraid I have other plans for tomorrow.”
“Suit yourself, but you’ll miss out,” he said cheerfully, then winked at me. “It bodes to be full of gossip this week.”
When the door shut behind him Mr. Dart said, “Miss Indrilline?”
“I have no idea what he was talking about,” said Violet, and I wondered again where I’d heard the name before.
I tried to rally my thoughts, rubbing my throat absently. It felt raw from all the shouting. “We should have asked Miss Shipston about these Knockermen.”
Mrs. Etaris raised her eyebrows at me. “That would hardly have been either kind or discreet.”
Mr. Dart frowned at his arm. “I’m going to the Talgarths tomorrow. I could ask Dominus Alvestone.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked, the silver light and the howling cultists coming violently to mind. I shuddered and reached for more wine to cover up the movement. “If he is the Silver Priest …”
“Good point,” Mr. Dart said, with suspicious haste.
Violet fiddled with a dangling thread on her sleeve. “Jemis—Mr. Greenwing, that is, do you know anything about the Knockermen from when you read History of Magic?”
I sat down again, shivering harder than ever, but determined not to show it. “It sounds a bit familiar, but I can’t think exactly. They might be one of the kinds of Good Neighbours. But I didn’t read much about them.”
Mrs. Etaris said, “The person who would know about the Good Neighbours is Dominus Gleason.”
“He bought some herring, too,” I said, sneezing. “Ugh. This is worse than last winter.”
“I think I’d rather have a stone arm than your perpetual cold,” Mr. Dart said. “Though of course it would be preferable to have neither.”
“Perhaps we should make a sling for your arm, Mr. Dart, before we go,” Mrs. Etaris said. “Miss Redshank, Dominus Gleason—properly he would be Magister Gleason, but he chooses not to parade his talents—is a professor emeritus from Fiella-by-the-Sea. The university there once had a fair school of magic, but they closed that faculty after the Interim and Dominus Gleason retired here. It occurs to me, Mr. Greenwing, that Dominus Gleason might be able to determine whether my suspicions about your sensitivity are correct.”
It would have to be Dominus Gleason, I thought, but was hesitant to try to put my deep reluctance to become obligated to him into words. It wasn’t as if I had anything besides him being disturbing to accuse him of. I swallowed a few gulps of wine, and tried to come up with a better excuse.
“I’d rather wait till we find out if he’s in league with Knockermen, whatever they are, before asking him if I have an undeveloped talent for sniffing out magic.”
“I love how emphatic your sneezes can be,” said Violet, with a sudden bright smile, and for a brief deceptive moment I felt warm.
***
The Honourable Rag’s comment about the difficulty of getting through town was spot-on. We started up the main street from the Ragglebridge towards the square, only to be blocked by a crush of wagons and carts coming down both the main street and the first northern crossroads. One of the out-of-town farmers hailed Mr. Dart.
“Mr. Linkett,” Mr. Dart said. “Whatever has caused the jumble here? And why are you trying to get out of town this way?”
Mr. Linkett, who was in his mid-forties, it looked like (and dressed rather like I was, in a rough green wool tunic and leather leggings, with the addition of a flat woollen cap), rolled his eyes. “Well, Mr. Dart, it’s like this. The market-bell rang the fire alarm a couple of hours ago, so all the marketers between the fountain and the easter side moved their stalls to help with the water chain. Then just as that seemed to be calming down and we’re wondering if we might get some custom after all, the hue and cry sets off from the souther side that someone’s herd of pigs has gotten loose and is heading for the river through the poulterers, and by the time we’d caught the hens back—well, it’s just as well you hadn’t brought any of your ducks in, Mr. Dart.”
Mr. Dart declined to comment. I tried not to laugh. Mr. Linkett chortled.
“I decided it was about time to head home, and was blessing my stars that I was heading north, given that the easter and the souther sides were such a jumble. But when I got towards the gate I found the north road blocked something wicked. It seems Justice Talgarth’s man was coming back ahead with the luggage when something went awry with the carriage and it lost a wheel coming over the bridge, then the horses freaked out because of that and the smoke coming up, and the carriage turned over at the bridge, and of course they was bringing all the Justice’s books from a summer away, and there were a bunch of people crowding round asking the carter for the news—so you can think what a mess that was. So I got my wagon turned around and decided to go the long route round by the Ragglebridge and up the old highway, but so did half the market, and not to mention that all the townsfolk are worried about the fire catching, and want gossip of the Justice’s travels, and in the middle of all this—”
“There’s more?”
“Aye! In the middle of all this, the Chief Constable,” and Mr. Linkett bobbed his head awkwardly at Mrs. Etaris, “the Chief Constable came out all in a pother from the constable-house—the rest of the constables were helping with the market crowd already, o’ course—to find Lady Flora rushing up to him, and they bumped into each other, and then just
as they were starting to talk the Baron’s son comes riding up on that red-bay hunter of his, with Dominus Gleason in tow behind him, and says that the Scholar said his house had been burgled while he was away. So the Chief Constable asks what had been taken, and the Scholar won’t say, because it’s magic most like, and they’re having an argument about what to do, and the Chief Constable says there’ve been a whole lot of strangers in town, and wants to go looking for them, and Lady Flora mentions Mr. Jemis, because o’ course she’s got a nose for gossip. But then—”
“Yet more?”
“Oh, aye, Mr. Dart, what a market-day it’s been in town! So they’re talking, and the Baron’s son is all over the place blocking everyone from moving with his horse fidgeting. I stood where I was, a cause I’d been shoved up under the stairs of the Court House while everyone was to-ing and fro-ing in the square. And then this woman I don’t know came out of the Court House, looking like she’d seen a ghost, and she went up to Lady Flora and slapped her on the face, and then when we were all still staring, walked off.”
“Someone slapped Lady Flora?”
“Oh, aye! The Chief Constable about had apoplexy. We market-folk were all staring, and then what should happen but one of the constables comes running up, yelling his head off that he’s seen a mermaid in the Raggle, and welladay was he ever going to follow her to kingdom come—and half the town with him. So I thought I’d best come home before something else happened and my cart ended up catching fire or something, and here I am. But I’d be sure cautious goin’ into town today, Mr. Dart, it’s half mad. Come along with me, if you like.”
“Thank you, Mr. Linkett, but I’d better … I’d best find Cartwright and, well, we have some other things to do. Will you send a message to my brother once you’re back in Dartington telling him that I think I’ll be in town another night?”
Mr. Linkett nodded slowly, and took up the reins of his big draught horse, which had been waiting with its eyes closed and a hoof cocked up as if all these troubles and trials were nothing to it. “Aye, Mr. Dart, I’m sure all the county’ll be at the Broken Arrow lookin’ to hear the news from town tonight, and Master Dart with them.” The farmer geed his horse and set off at a slow clop in the wake of the other marketers, who had cleared out somewhat while we’d been talking.
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