The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachman

  “I don’t care,” a second voice interrupted. It was also very low, but in an entirely different way. It was a harsh, dangerous low, and so cold. “Is the changeling what I need, or is it not? I cannot afford any more mistakes. Not from you, not from anyone. I hire you to make sure the changelings are usable, to make sure they are what the Lord Chancellor needs.” The voice rose in anger. “And nine times in a row you give me rubbish! It will be taken from my neck if the child is again unsuitable.”

  “Well, you got so many necks it wouldn’t hardly make a-”

  There was an angry hiss and Bartholomew saw a shadow lash out across the beam. “Shut up. Shut up, I tell you. Too much is at stake now. Did you make certain with the list my master sent you? Did you even get the list? There have been. . interruptions of late with the Lord Chancellor’s messenger birds. He could not be certain it had arrived.”

  “Yeh, I gots the bird. Came just as it always does.”

  Bartholomew edged closer. Through the gap between the beams he could just make out a figure. Bartholomew’s breath caught in his throat. It was the raggedy man. There could be no doubt. The creature matched Hettie’s description exactly. It was small and misshapen, standing very still with its chin against its neck. A broken stovepipe hat was pulled low over its face. A waistcoat and tattered jacket were its only clothes. It wore no trousers. Bartholomew saw why right away. From the waist down the creature was not a raggedy man but a raggedy goat. The fur on its haunches was thick and black, matted with dirt and blood. Two chipped hooves peeped out from under its shaggy fetlocks. The raggedy man was a faun.

  “Very well,” the cold voice said. “I will believe you. I haven’t the time, or I would investigate these matters myself.” Bartholomew couldn’t see who had spoken those words. Whoever it was, he was hidden around the corner of the gable, and Bartholomew didn’t dare go any closer for a better look.

  The voice went on, just barely a whisper. “I warn you, sluagh. If the Lord Chancellor is again displeased with the delivery-if the changeling is again a failure-I will knock more from your head than just a few teeth.”

  The raggedy man shuffled its hooves and said nothing.

  “Is that clear?” The voice was ice.

  Bartholomew didn’t wait to hear the rest. Sliding backward, he made for the trapdoor. Everything was different now. Everything had changed. This wasn’t just about some silly house faery anymore. He didn’t want to think what these creatures would do to him if they caught him listening. He climbed down into the third-story passage and hurried toward the stair.

  His head was reeling. It never worked, then. The invitation. The pitiful house with the cherries twisted into its walls. It has all been for nothing. The raggedy man wasn’t his faery. The raggedy man had been hired. To spy. To make sure Bartholomew would do, be suitable, not a failure like the other nine. Nine. The Buddelbinster boy was one of those. He must be. And now Bartholomew was number ten. The paper in the attic. He pulled up his sleeve and examined the markings on his arms. Bloodred tens in the faery language. At least the raggedy man had told the truth about that.

  He broke into a run, down the stairs, wood splinters pricking his hand from the rickety banister. He didn’t know what they wanted him for. He didn’t know whether he should hide, or tell Mother, or wait quietly until they came for him. The creature-the one he hadn’t seen-had said it was working for the Lord Chancellor. Wasn’t that good? Weren’t only the kindest and wisest people allowed to be Lord Chancellors? But why would a Lord Chancellor employ faeries that sounded like winter and knocked people’s teeth out? Bartholomew didn’t know what to think anymore. He was terrified and excited, both at once, and it felt like a whole cloud of moths were beating their wings inside his stomach. An image flared up in his mind of grand people, of dukes and generals encrusted with medals, of ermine cloaks dragging across marble, and great halls ablaze with candles. A knife tapped, silvery, against a wineglass. A cheer went up. And Bartholomew realized they were cheering for him. Barthy Kettle. Child Number Ten, of Old Crow Alley, seventh faery district, Bath. It was a ridiculous thought. A happy, hopeful, ridiculous thought that had a million cracks running through it.

  He was almost to the flat door when something caught his eye through the passage window. Something was out in the alley, an extra shadow where no shadow belonged. He retraced his steps and brought his face up close against the round leaded panes.

  It was the lady in plum. She was back again in Old Crow Alley, sitting still as death on a rough-hewn bench against the wall of the place known as moss-bucket house. The moldering eaves hung low over her, drowning her in gloom. She was slumped against the wall, her hands in her lap, her chin resting against her neck.

  Bartholomew raised his hand to the glass. The image of the candlelit halls, ermine cloaks, and admiring faces became brighter than ever. Why shouldn’t the lady take him away? Someone-no, not just someone-the Lord Chancellor himself, had gone through a great deal of trouble to find him. That meant he was important. In the faery slums he wasn’t important. In the faery slums he was just another ugly thing to be hidden away and never spoken of. He would die here. Sooner or later.

  But the dreadful faeries in the attic, a voice cried, clanging in his head like a fire-engine bell. The Buddelbinster mother’s warning, that ugly face on the back of the lady’s head, and the hooves, and the voices- Bartholomew silenced it. It didn’t matter. What did any of that matter when all they were doing was taking him to a better place? A place where he belonged. It would be better for everyone if he were gone. It would mean one less mouth to feed for Mother, one less changeling for her to worry about. Hettie would cry, and he would miss her awfully, but surely he could visit. And if the room he had traveled to through the mushroom ring was anything like the place he was going, he knew he wouldn’t mind living there. He could just scrape bits of gilt off the furniture and Mother and Hettie would have pies and duck to eat for months.

  By the time he turned away from the window he had made up his mind. Somewhere in London people were waiting for him, glorious people with clockwork birds, fine rooms, and fireplaces. He was leaving Old Crow Alley behind.

  He laid his head against the door to the flat and whispered, “Good-bye, Mother. Good-bye, Hettie.” He waited several heartbeats, as if listening for a reply. Then he went downstairs. The goblin was asleep on his stool. The face in the door stared out sightlessly, gray wooden eyes over gray wooden cheeks. Silently, Bartholomew said good-bye to them, too. Then he slipped out into the narrow confines of the alley.

  The houses all around were black spikes against the sky. The sun was just starting to rise, and only the early morning red gave the alley any light. Somewhere several streets away, a cart was rattling over the cobbles, echoing.

  Bartholomew crossed the alley and approached the lady cautiously, scraping himself along the wall toward her. She looked even larger up close, even darker and more forbidding, as if the shadows from the recesses and deep doorways were being drawn to her, soaking into her skirts. The last time Bartholomew had seen her he had been in the attic, behind glass. Now he could see her every detail. She was young. Not a great lady at all, but a girl no more than twenty. Her hat still sat askew atop her head, but the jewels were no longer around her throat and one of her night-hued gloves was torn, crisp with something like dried blood. Her red lip paint was somewhat smeared. Bartholomew thought she was the most marvelous and frightening thing he had ever seen.

  He came within three steps of her and then stopped. She sat so still. So very, very still in the shadow of the eaves. He contemplated reaching out and touching her hand. It didn’t seem wise at all.

  He was just about to slip back inside and lie shivering against the door until he could think of something to say, when the lady moved. Her eyelids fluttered open and she said ever so softly, “Oh! Hello, sweet child.”

  Her voice was airy, dreamy, half between waking and sleeping.

  Bartholomew flinched. For a moment he wasn’t sure s
he had been speaking to him, since she hadn’t turned her head or even really looked at him. But the alley was empty. He and the lady were the only ones in it.

  “Did Father send you?” she asked. “Are you the new valet?”

  Bartholomew stood, mouth open, unsure of how to answer. Is this some sort of test? Oh, no. I mustn’t muddle it. Something clever, something clever so she will be impressed. This was still the sorceress who had taken his friend, still the lady with the secret, twisted face. But her eyes were so kind. And she had such a lovely voice. He couldn’t even remember that second face anymore. Perhaps it had belonged to someone else.

  “Tell him I will not relent,” she continued. “Never as long as the hills are green. Jack will be mine, and nothing shall ever come between us. But I am so tired. . What is this hard chair I sit on? Where are my pillows? Where is Mirabel with peches et creme? Sweet child, where am-”

  Suddenly her eyes snapped wide. Her pupils focused on Bartholomew and she sat bolt upright, snatching both his hands. “Oh, no,” she whispered, and her voice shivered at the edges. Desperation wrote itself across her face, and her eyes shone, fearful-bright. “No, no. You must run. Sweet child, they are here to take you. Don’t let them. Run. Run with the wind and never look back.”

  All at once there came a sound, a tapping that drifted down into the alley. It was coming from the rooftops. Bartholomew looked up just in time to see the small round window of his little gable burst outward, shooting a cloud of glass into the air. A shape flew out, a writhing mass of blackness. It plummeted, glass glinting around it, and landed in the alley with a dreadful scuttling sound.

  Bartholomew’s heart lurched. The lady gasped and dropped his hands.

  Everything seemed to move very slowly then. The glass from the window rained down, tinkling like diamonds into the gutter. The writhing shape hurtled toward them over the cobblestones. And the lady’s head turned to Bartholomew, her eyes full of tears.

  “Tell Daddy I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Tell Daddy I’m sorry.” And then the dark shape slammed into her and she doubled over, the breath knocked from her lungs.

  When she raised her head again, her eyes were sharp and black. Faery eyes.

  Bartholomew ran.

  “Vekistra takeshi! Vekistra!” the lady in plum shrieked from behind him. “Take the tenth child!”

  It was the voice of the creature from the attic. The hidden one that Bartholomew hadn’t been able to see. And it wasn’t quiet and cold anymore. It was shrill, desperate.

  Bartholomew burst into the house. The instant before the door slammed shut, he saw the lady in plum swoop down to the pavement, bottle in hand, dribbling black liquid onto the cobbles. Then the door smashed into its frame and he was running up the stairs and into the flat. He pushed that door closed, fingers slipping on the bolt. Footsteps. Someone was in the stairwell, feet booming in the silence. Bartholomew reached for the key, rammed it into the lock. Where can I go? The scream of “Take the tenth child” was still ringing in his ears, awful and final. The lady in plum was not going to lead him gently away, as she had the Buddelbinster boy. She was not whisking him off to some enchanted halls of light and finery. She was going to kidnap him.

  “Hettie?” Bartholomew cried, racing to her bed. “Hettie, wake up. Wake up! They’re going to come in!” He threw open the cupboard door, poking and jabbing at the sheets to wake her.

  Hettie was not there.

  He let out a wail and ran to his mother’s bed. He shook her, beating his fists against her back. “Mother!” he cried, desperate tears biting his eyes. “Mother, wake up!” She didn’t even stir.

  The footsteps had reached the passage. They were approaching the door, slowly, deliberately. Why won’t she wake?

  He would open the window. He would throw it wide and yell until the entire faery district was startled from their beds. But it was too late. A tiny click sounded from the door. The lock. Someone had opened it.

  Bartholomew edged away from his mother’s motionless form. His fingers closed around the iron handle of the coal scuttle. He drew it up, hugging it to himself. It was so heavy. If he had to, he could dash the faery’s brains out with it. Flattening himself against the wall behind the potbellied stove, he waited.

  The door to the flat yawned open. Slowly, slowly, it revealed a figure silhouetted against the dim light from the passage. The figure had goat legs and a ruined hat. Two hot-coal eyes glowed under its brim. They slid across the room, back and forth, back and forth. They paused. They turned back to the potbellied stove. It can’t know, it can’t know. .

  “Hello, leetle boy.”

  With a great raging sob, Bartholomew leaped from behind the stove, brandishing the coal scuttle as high as he could lift it. The raggedy man grinned. A savage bright flash flew from his eyes, sizzled across the room, and struck Bartholomew in some tender spot deep inside his skull. His vision stuttered out. He felt himself standing, blind and clumsy, in the middle of the floor. Somewhere far away he heard wings flapping, dark wings whirling, and the growl of icy wind. His body was so heavy, pulling him down. Hettie, he thought, before he collapsed. Hettie was the one they wanted. And Hettie is gone.

  The scuttle slipped from his hand. It clanged against the floor like a thunderclap. But no one in the whole house woke.

  CHAPTER XII

  The House and the Anger

  Mr. Jelliby was not the sort of man to make hasty decisions. In fact, he wasn’t really the sort of man to make decisions at all. But when the mechanical eye of the faery butler hissed and locked itself onto the bird in Mr. Jelliby’s hand, and when the faery smiled that hungry smile at him and said, “Oh! Fancy seeing you here,” as if they were the oldest of friends, Mr. Jelliby made a very hasty, very rash decision. He ran.

  Plunging the bird into his trouser pocket, he dashed out of the shop and down the narrow corridor toward the stairs. Shouts rang out behind him. The bells above the shop door began to jangle violently. Down the stairs he leaped, four at a time, barely avoiding the decrepit old man who was making his way upward.

  When Mr. Jelliby burst out into the swirling air of Stovepipe Road, he stopped dead.

  Oh, no. A massive black carriage, still as a coffin, was parked across the mouth of the street, blocking his escape. Two mechanical horses stood at its front and pawed the cobblestones. Sparks flew from their metal hooves.

  Mr. Jelliby ran the other direction, hurtling down a lane and into an alley. He made his way through a warren of tiny streets, sleeve-over-mouth to keep from gagging on the fumes, and as soon as he could, doubled back toward the wider thoroughfare. He arrived just as the seven o’ clock bells were tolling the end of a workday. Laborers from the foundries and breweries were pouring out of doorways, clogging the streets. He fought his way through them, up the stairs toward the elevated railway station.

  A steam engine was just pulling away as he mounted the platform, its whistle blowing. He swung onto the wrought-iron porch of the final wagon and collapsed, breathless, against the railing. Sweat dripped into his eyes, but he blinked it away. The streets below were packed, row upon row of weary, grimy bodies trudging toward lodgings or public houses, eyes hooked to the ooze beneath their boots. There was no faery, pale as death and cypress-slender, moving among them.

  The last wagon had just begun to rumble around a bend when Mr. Jelliby caught sight of the black carriage, parting the crowds like a lustrous boat in dirty water. It paused briefly at a crossroad. Then it slid away, disappearing into the city.

  Mr. Jelliby took a long, slow breath. Then another, and another, but nothing could loosen the panic that had fastened itself to his lungs. The faery butler had seen him. He had seen him with Mr. Lickerish’s messenger bird in his hands, no doubt the very bird the faery butler had been sent to inquire about. If they had thought he was a spy before, they would be sure he was now. And a thief, too. And something occurred to Mr. Jelliby, then, that made him feel very ill: He had already decided to save Melusine, and stop the fa
ery politician’s murderous ways, and deliver England from whatever dastardly plans were under way. But he hadn’t wanted to be noticed while he did it. He hadn’t wanted to be frowned at, or laughed at, and he most certainly hadn’t wanted to seem any different from the other gentlemen of Westminster. Only that was not the way things worked. He saw that now. Westminster gentlemen did not chase clockwork birds through city streets. They did not hunt down killers, or help people. Mr. Jelliby had. And there could be no turning back now.

  The faery butler would tell Mr. Lickerish what he had seen. Mr. Lickerish would understand instantly. He would see that Mr. Jelliby knew things no human was supposed to know. He would see that Mr. Jelliby was intent on meddling. And what would he do? Oh, what would that stone-hearted faery do? Mr. Jelliby shivered and hunched into the ash-riddled wind.

  He arrived back at Belgrave Square just before nightfall, bedraggled and besmirched with all the grime that comes from riding at thirty miles per hour among London’s chimneys. Slamming the front door behind him, he barred it, chained it, searched out the key from inside the shade of a gas lamp and locked it. Then he leaned against it and shouted, “Brahms! Brahms! Close the shutters all the way up! And move all the furniture over the windows. Do it now! Ophelia?”

  No one answered.

  “Ophelia!”

  A wide-eyed maid appeared at the top of the stairs. “Good evenin’, sir,” she mumbled. “Cook kept your dinner warm and they’ve got a-”

  Mr. Jelliby spun on her.

  “Jane? Or is it Margaret. No matter. Fetch all the guns from over the mantelpieces, and all the swords and the carving knives, and perhaps a frying pan or two, and anything else that can be used as a weapon, and then lock up the door to the back garden. And tell Cook to go out and buy a good supply of crackers and salted pork, and lock up the attic windows in case they come in through the roof, and don’t forget the guns!”