Fiddler's Green, Or a Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss

by Van Reid

  Sundry moved the branch to one side and back again. His heart beat faster, and he took long breaths, experiencing a heavy sensation—a full, purposeful intuition of success even before the tip of the forked bough gave a tug, like the end of a pole when a fish takes the bait. “It is a relative matter,” said Uncle Cedric. “Probe about, first to be sure you felt something and then to be sure of the exact place.” Sundry felt the strain leave the bough, and then he had to lean out to locate the source of tension again, sweeping over that portion of the pond. The branch gave a distinct pull, and he eased it back. Mr. Normell dipped the oars to bring them closer. Sundry went up on his knees and waved the bough, feeling the strain pull and let go, pull and let go, as if something were jerking a line.

  Then he remembered what was pulling at the bough, and he let it drop in the water. They were in the shadow, if not the reflection of the elm, but the sky in the unobscured surface of the pond was a striking blue. A robin laughed from the trees, and the sun was up.

  “That’s what you’re looking for, I guess,” said Sundry to his escorts. “Unless you people make a habit of dropping bodies in here.”

  “I wouldn’t be joking, Mr. Moss,” said the man in the stern.

  “I wouldn’t put it past you, so don’t take it for granted that I am.”

  “You’ll have to cast the net,” said Mr. Normell.

  “And let a stranger drag it up?” Sundry looked back at the man and was unpleasantly surprised (when he thought there had been more than enough unpleasant surprises of late) to see that Mr. Normell and Mr. Droone both held revolvers, the muzzles of which were generally trained on their conscripted dowser. He had the nasty impression that they meant to exchange bodies with the pond—that is, his with the one that was purportedly down there already.

  “You will cast the net, Mr. Moss,” said the man in the thwart. “You will pull what you find into the boat and leave it in the net at your feet. We will shoot you if you attempt either trick or levity, I promise.”

  Sundry turned himself about and planted his feet firmly on the nets. He folded his arms, and with a racing heart he set his somewhat oversquare jaw and said, “Then you had better shoot me now and get it over with—the idiot pair of you! I guess I won’t bother to dig my own grave first!”

  Mr. Normell blinked at Sundry and then at the gun in his hand. “We have no intention of harming you if you simply do what we say.”

  Sundry folded his arms. “I have no intention of believing you until you toss those guns.”

  “We will drag the pond ourselves then,” stated Mr. Droone flatly.

  “No, you won’t, or you would have done it already. You wouldn’t have needed me in the first place.”

  “What is the matter?” came a voice, startlingly close. Sundry and the two men had not observed the pair of boats coming out to join them, manned one by Droones and the other by Normells. Charles Normell sat in the bow of the nearest boat, and Sundry took note that the man in the stern carried a rifle. There was a similarly armed fellow in the second boat, seated behind Mrs. Droone. “What has happened?” said Charles.

  “He refuses to bring it up?”

  “You found it?”

  “Yes, I found her,” said Sundry.

  “Then what’s the trouble?”

  “I’m not keen on being shot for my pains,” said Sundry.

  “This is Jeffrey’s doing!” said Bridey Droone angrily.

  “Yes,” admitted Sundry, “it’s too bad he didn’t trick someone into coming here that you could walk all over.”

  “Mr. Moss,” said Charles, “we have no intention of shooting anyone. It is each other,” he added, “that we guard against.”

  “You’ve given me a lot of reason, of course, to accept your word.”

  “We can find someone else, Mr. Moss.”

  “I have the impression that the people on shore aren’t going to like waiting for someone else.” He nodded in that direction, but Bridey Droone and Charles Normell did not look back. “Whatever it is you want down there, I’m wondering if they’ll have much more patience with the lot of you if you come back without it. Maybe you can bully them all at once, or maybe there’s one or two of them who aren’t cowards and will fight back.”

  “You are talking through your hat, Mr. Moss. You have no idea what is at stake here.”

  “I’m beginning to get the general idea,” ventured Sundry. “There is no body, is there?”

  “Whatever gave you that notion?” said Charles.

  “And no one was dragging the pond last night, or you wouldn’t need me to do it now. It was just a show to make your story plausible.”

  “You’re putting yourself in the badger den, Mr. Moss,” said Mrs. Droone. “If you like clever arguments, try this one. You can force us to shoot you now and search for someone else to drag for the body. You can jump overboard and try to escape, which I am sure you are considering, and similarly force our hands. Or you can do what we ask and take your chances. I myself, who didn’t trick you into coming here, give you my word, however much you cherish it, that we will not shoot you if you only do as we request.”

  Sundry sat with his arms crossed and watched the woman as she spoke. When she was done and he had thought for a moment, he said, “I had a great aunt, Mrs. Droone, and when we were young and she meant to scold us or curb bad behavior, she’d always say, ‘Do you want me to look right over the top of your head!’ It sounded like an awful threat when we were kids, and we never quite dared find out what it meant.”

  “I never threaten, Mr. Moss,” said the woman.

  Sundry disliked her about as much as he disliked any of them but thought he might trust her a little further. The robin sounded in the elm, and he saw the splash of a fish or a frog beyond the Droones’ boat and closer to shore. It was turning into another beautiful June day. The Waltons were probably in Halifax by now. Miss Morningside was in Ellsworth and separated from Sundry by more than miles. He turned to the men in the boat with him and relaxed his posture. He nodded slowly. “But you fellows might point those in another direction,” he said.

  51. The Knight on the Road

  When Melanie Ring first saw the two figures standing in the gaining light, she thought they might be two knights, and indeed, one of them appeared to be carrying a lance over his shoulder, though otherwise they did not entirely resemble the few pictures she had ever seen of knights and squires and chargers.

  It was not till she had considerably divided the distance between them that she realized what the one man was carrying, and then she knew him for the giant fellow with the great long oar at the Grand Trunk Station in Portland and the very man Mr. Moss had been telling her about—the sailor looking for Fiddler’s Green. She was not even astonished to see him there, nor could she imagine how astonishing it was to see a little girl, neady dressed, walking down the road with the promise of dawn behind her. To Melanie, the important thing was to find someone who might help rescue her father and Mr. Moss and Mr. Flyce, and if the sailor and his companion were no knights, they certainly looked large enough to lend a hand.

  The men gaped at her as she approached them, and even the horses seemed at a loss for words. Melanie liked the big old fellow that the man with the oar was riding, and she reached up to stroke his soft nose. Then she turned to the man with the oar and quite astonished him (and rather delighted herself with her cleverness) by asking what he was carrying.

  The man with the oar gaped and leaned down to see her more closely, then straightened in his saddle and closed his mouth, then looked at his companion, who gaped and did not close his mouth. The sailor turned back to Melanie and opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. (Folk from Fiddler’s Green will surely vanish if you tell them what the oar is.)

  “What did you say?” asked the sailor.

  “What’s that you have there?” she asked again.

  “It’s a great long spoon,” he said, and this was considered a standard reply to such a query.

>   Melanie laughed, which did her good but startled the two men. “Am I to follow you?” asked the man with the oar.

  Melanie nodded. “Down there,” she said, pointing to Dutten Pond.

  “Down to Dutten?” said the other man.

  “You have to help rescue my father and Mr. Moss,” said the little girl. She wondered, in the next moment, if she had said too much.

  “Mr. Moss?” said the sailor. “I have to rescue someone?” Clearly he had not understood that a deed was part of the transaction.

  “Down to Dutten?” said the other man again.

  “It’s got to be quick,” she said. “They’ve been kidnapped.” She offered no more on this subject but turned and led the way.

  “Kidnapped?” said the sailor. It all made an odd sort of sense if he had to rescue Mr. Moss. Hadn’t he been following the man from the start? And who knew but what Mr. Moss might be from Fiddler’s Green himself?

  Robin Oig looked to Ab, and Ab, who was still gaping, said, “I don’t know about rescuing someone from all those Droones and Normells.”

  “Sometimes you don’t really have to do a deed,” said Robin. “You just have to look like you’re willing.”

  “Should we get help first?” said Ab.

  “Should we get help?” Robin shouted after the girl.

  “That would be fine!” she said, stopping for a moment in the road. “But you’d better come with me,” she said to Robin.

  “Go for help,” said Robin, “but I have to follow her!”

  Ab hesitated. “Take Cram, in case you have to get out of there.”

  Robin didn’t know if he was getting out of there. He had begun to meld Dutten, in his mind, with Fiddler’s Green. Robin watched Ab and Bolt charge down the western slope of the hill, and he realized that the sun was just at the rim of the earth and that the sky was light all the way to the pond. He could see a dab of activity on the water. He could see the little girl, some distance away, waving him on.

  Robin gave Cram a jolt or two, shook the reins, and bounced off after the little elf ahead of him. She waited at the bottom of the next short slope, and he slowed only long enough to pull her up behind him.

  52. Body of Lies

  Cautiously Mr. Normell and Mr. Droone put their revolvers back in their coats, but Sundry was aware that other barrels were still pointed in his general direction. Mr. Normell rowed them back, a little beyond the place where the object of their search had betrayed its presence.

  Deliberately, Sundry took up the net from the bottom of the boat, shook the weights out forward, and cast it over the water. The sinkers disappeared, and the further end of the net dissolved from sight. He had never used a net in this fashion, and he was sure he wasn’t manning it the way a fisherman would, but he braced himself against the bow seat and dragged it by the lines as Mr. Normell rowed them through the shadow of the elm.

  “That was a very clever thing,” conceded Charles from his remove, “guessing where to find it.”

  It, thought Sundry, but he said nothing. On the fourth haul the net took a sudden snag, and they all sat a little straighter, craning their necks.

  “Do I come forward?” asked Mr. Normell, confused in his excitement.

  “No, no,” said Sundry. “Back off, but slowly.”

  “Yes, back off!” demanded Charles. “Slowly, though!”

  It was apparent to everyone that Sundry had something. The oars dipped and splashed, and with the ropes he drew the corners of the net in as the boat drifted back. Ripples circled from the boat, and the upper knots of the net made stirrings in the water. Sundry had an eerie sensation, not unlike the initial tug upon the apple branch that came several times, as if someone were indeed down there, tugging back at his grip.

  He had been convinced minutes ago that there was no body down there, but the strange force yearning back to the water almost startled him into dropping the net as he had the apple bough. The beautiful drowned girl had disappeared from his imagination, and in her place was what small knowledge he had of bodies thus recovered. But the force against him became less erratic, smoother and more willing, and soon he was pulling something weighty, but consenting, to the surface. A pale flash below the surface of the pond renewed his qualms, till a metallic box, about a foot or so long and several inches deep, rose in the folds of the net.

  Those with him held their breath, and even Sundry steeled himself for the next surprise, unpleasant or otherwise. He was considering his chances if he leaped overboard when the boat rocked a little, and he heard a double click just behind him. In the periphery of his vision, Sundry could see Mr. Normell standing just ahead of the thwart.

  “You hadn’t ought to make a fellow nervous like that,” said Sundry. “He might drop something.”

  “Just pull it up,” said the man.

  “Jules,” said Charles cautiously, “let him be.”

  Jules Normell glanced briefly at the other boat, torn between his own desperation for whatever was in that box and fear of his chief.

  “Jules!” snapped Charles.

  Sundry had the box out of the water, and with every ounce of balance, weight, and strength that he possessed he swung the net around and clubbed Jules in the head with his catch. It was not a very heavy blow, but Jules went down like a fallen tree, and with an alarming explosion the pistol discharged a bullet into the upper gunnel before it bounced from the man’s hand and plipped into the water. Jules crashed into his Droone counterpart, whose own pistol was thus pinned against the stern.

  There were shouts and curses, and Sundry, who had nearly thrown himself overboard with his effort, leaped to the back of the boat and scrambled for possession of the second revolver. The Droone man was struggling beneath Jules, whose arms and legs kicked and swung. A shot was fired from one of the other boats, and Sundry thought he was going to have to push Jules overboard to get at the pistol. Jules caught him in the side of the face with a flailing hand, and he was about to return the same when the butt end of a rifle connected with the back of Sundry’s head.

  Not unconscious, but momentarily dazed, Sundry went down. A fist or two or a foot or two struck him in several places. His head was pressed to the bottom of the boat, and while shouts and curses rang in his one ear, the wooden hull and the water beyond it did strange things to sound in his other. Amid orders to “leave the box alone” and to “hold him down,” Sundry rose from his brief stupor.

  “That was a very foolish thing to do, Mr. Moss,” said Charles, who was still in his own boat, but clinging to the gunnel of Sundry’s. There was some scrambling as Jules staggered back to the bow, and Mr. Droone stepped on Sundry’s hand as he shifted to the place between the oars, one of which had to be retrieved from the water.

  “If you think that was foolish, you should consider the alternatives,” returned Sundry.

  Charles actually chuckled, but it was not a congenial sound.

  “One of those girls didn’t kill the other, did she?” said Sundry. “They ran away, the both of them.” It was strange and almost frightening how he could see the young women in white dresses by the old cellar hole that he and Maven had passed the day before.

  Charles was quiet now. Sundry had his face pressed against the bottom of the boat, and he had to blow to keep the water out of his mouth and nose. Charles reached out and jerked him up. With surprising power, even from so big a man, Sundry was set down in the space between the thwart and the stern. Sundry spent the next moments taking in air while he glared at Charles Normell, with an occasional voluble glance at Mrs. Droone, who was passing a rifle and possibly the rifle butt back to one of the men in her boat.

  Mrs. Droone stared back. Charles said nothing.

  “But first,” said Sundry when he had half caught his breath, “they had to concoct some cockeyed spell to keep you from finding them. Or at least they had to convince you they had. I guess there’s more than a pair of idiots in this neck of the woods.”

  “Do be quiet, Mr. Moss,” said Bridey Droone.


  “And this Burnham you’ve been waiting for,” said Sundry. “I expect he’s joined your two missing women.”

  This was not a possibility that anyone else had considered, and Charles and Bridey looked at one another with renewed concern.

  “I really do mean it, Mr. Moss,” said the woman. “Be quiet.”

  Sundry fell to catching his breath and said no more, but only because his anger had risen above the point where words would suffice. At least they were being rowed ashore—in tandem, as it were, with Charles at the bow of his own boat grasping the gunnel of Sundry’s by the stern as if he were pushing them all by the force of his own not so very insignificant will. Bridey Droone’s boat ventured almost as close, and it was instructive to see that the man in the stern still had his rifle at the ready but that he seemed to have it trained on Charles Normell.

  53. Cruxes and Cranks

  Sundry wondered what people back on shore had made of the excitement out on the water. There did appear to be a little more hope in their faces as the boats drew near but, to Sundry, the tableau they made was silent and unsettling—the attention of the crowd, unwavering and direct. It was this lack of sound that seemed so strange; it put Sundry in mind of that other silence, and as the boats drew near the landing, he scanned the shoreline trees and their macabre decorations. “Not a lot of song on this side of the pond,” he said to no one in particular.

  “You wouldn’t understand, of course, why we had to do that,” said Charles.

  “I can guess why you thought you had to do it,” said Sundry, “but you are right, I wouldn’t understand. Is that to keep everyone else from running away?” he said with a note of irony in his voice.