by Vicki Grove
“You’ll do what?” Rhia was completely lost. “Search for an opening? But why?”
Ignoring her question, Jonah leaned toward her across the hermit, his eyes flashing. “Rhiannon, Thaddeus has told me that the earl’s son and his friends desire to come up to the bluff, to visit the chapel some dark evening to see if it may hold haunts. Is this true?”
Rhia’s breath came faster. “Well, yes, it’s an outrageous wish of Maddy’s, and now it seems the new friends she’s made at the manor are taken with the idea as well. She gave me a choice of celebrating Beltane Eve at Wythicopse or here upon the bluff, and I of course told that I’d meet her at Wythicopse. The day Mam allowed such a thing as a party in this sanctified chapel would be the day it rained down frogs upon us all.”
Jonah nodded, grinning ear to ear. “But they want to come here, is the thing. And if something fearsome should happen at Wythicopse to spoil the party, they’d welcome your suggestion that the festivities simply be moved to the bluff, am I right?”
Rhia tore at her hair. “I’ve just told—you—Mam would never hear of it! And nothing fearsome will spoil things at Wythicopse. The boys squiring here have heard the moans and hisses that Maddy and I heard and do not fear dragons one whit!”
“They do not fear air pipes one whit is more like it, Rhia,” Thaddeus told her. “Likely they have traveled and seen the same type of Roman ruins Jonah and I have seen. As they have decided to use this secret knowledge to their own advantage, we might be forgiven for playing a similar game.”
“They’d use it for their own advantage?” Rhia whispered, puzzled.
“To lure young girls, Rhiannon,” Jonah was bold to explain, snickering. “It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. Invite a young lady upon a dangerous adventure, then wait for the ooglie-wooglies you’ve contrived to frighten her into your protective arms!”
Rhiannon, embarrassed nigh to tears, thought of protesting that Maddy would never be so innocently susceptible to such low tricks, nor would she herself. But the truth was, Maddy had probably hoped just that would happen, and she herself had been too innocent to expect it. Maddy, then, was willing victim. But worse——she, Rhia, was gullible dupe!
She put her face in her hands, but Thaddeus took her arm and lightly shook it. “Rhia, though we’ve painted an honest picture of the company you’ll be keeping, do you still have the nerve to meet them at this Wythicopse place? Our plan allows for Jonah and me to be nearby when things come to a boil, but no matter how we try to contrive it otherwise, you must still be at the center if our plan’s to work.”
She drew a breath and held out her open hand to Jonah. “Give me Leonard’s scarf.”
Jonah drew up his knee and quickly pulled the silken fabric from within one side of his tall boot. He held it toward Rhia, but kept it within his own tightly clenched fingers. He looked her solemnly in the eye for a long moment, as if trying to see the depth of her bravery. Then he yielded the silk, let it drop softly across Rhiannon’s sweating palm.
She tucked it quickly away into her waist pouch, murmuring, “One of you must now tell me our plan, and do it stepwise, for this willy-nilly accounting makes my head reel.”
“All right, then,” Thaddeus pronounced. “You will go with your friend as you’d planned tomorrow eve, Rhia, and meet this Leonard and his mates at Wythicopse Ring. If you can, you’ll wheedle or tease them into speaking of their recent, uh . . . exploits.”
Jonah interrupted, darkly “Get them speaking of their crimes, he means.”
Thaddeus sighed. “All right, their crimes. Meanwhile, my good friend Brother Silas and I will be hidden just beneath your feet, under the mosaic floor. After we’ve heard what we expect we’ll hear, we will proceed to give them a scare they certainly won’t be expecting. After that you will suggest that the party move away from such wretched turf and up to the, well, the romantic privacy of the bluff.” Thaddeus said this last quickly, then dropped his eyes.
“You’re blushing, Brother!” Rhia teased.
Thaddeus looked straight ahead and cleared his throat. “So be it. Now, continuing, if I may, I’d tell you that even if the company of young men makes no brag and confesses no misdeed, still Brother Silas and I will raise a commotion, as neither Jonah nor I want you lingering in that place with them for long. Upon the bluff, you’ll be on home turf, and better protected. I shall follow at a distance, providing some guard from behind as you make your way up the bluff pathway with them. Should there be any mischief on their part, I would not be a match for them physically, of course, but the authority of my robe oft puts an end to unseemly and, well, lewd behaviors.”
Jonah raised his eyebrows. “Now you do blush, Thaddeus.” Grinning, he turned to Rhia. “Then comes my part in the thing. When you’ve got them to this chapel, Thaddeus will lock the door from outside, and I will then proceed to compound their fear in the way you’ve already witnessed tonight. In the moldering guise of this venerable hermit, I will demand a full confession from them as the price of a live exit from this church, which will have gone mysteriously sealed tight at my unearthly bidding.”
Caught up in the thing, he pulled on the worm-woven headdress and pointed a quivering finger first at Thaddeus, then at Rhia. “Murderous villains!” he intoned in a macabre voice holding great and awful power. “Fall now to your wretched knees and seek full confession, else I’ll see you spun down into fiery damnation this very midnight! Now, I say, get upon your knees, ere with my own knuckle bones I break your foul necks so as to make you bend them low!”
Thaddeus and Rhia, impressed, gave him a small applause.
Rhiannon then took a deep breath. “So my part is to get them bragging. Jonah’s is to bring their brags to full confession when they’ve come to this chapel. And in the middle, your part, Thaddeus, is to scare them witless from beneath the mosaic floor so they’re eager to flee Wythicopse for the bluff. But how may you bring about such a scare?”
Thaddeus looked at her. “I mentioned that Brother Silas will be with me, did I not? That is, I hope to speak with him in secret when Jonah and I go down to Woethersly tomorrow morn, and he will doubtless join me, once he’s asked. Did I mention he plays bagpipe? Quite badly, too. When he begins it, the dormitory instantly clears. Some brothers have been known to jump into rough waters and swim quite some ways to get clear of Brother Silas’s talents. Others that he’s asked to listen have hidden in high trees for entire days until he’s given them up as audience.” He cleared his throat. “I confess, I’ve done my share of hiding, too. Rhia, you might want to be well braced when it begins, if you startle easily. Or even if you don’t. Have some cover for your ears, as well.”
Jonah began to chuckle, and Rhia could not keep back a smile. “Poor Silas,” she mused, “to love his music so much he’d creep upon his stomach beneath the mossy ground to find ears above for it. Will you confess to him that you want him not for the beauty he may bring to the evening but only for a fright, Thaddeus?”
Thaddeus shrugged, looking both amused and some shamefaced. “Indeed. He’s a good-spirited fellow and will not mind. I’m sure he’ll think that to be a fright is better than to be shunned completely. He’ll be thrilled to play in any circumstances, and will gladly take whatever compliment he may get, including that he’s frightful.”
It had been in Rhia’s mind that one sky-high obstacle towered above all the many other little obstacles inherent in this daring, though helter-skelter, plan. She hated to bring it up again as it would spoil things, but it was high time, before this went further.
“You’ve both ignored the thing I told you that will certainly break this, and that is, Mam will not hear of it! I’m sorry to foil your designs, but that’s just how it is. You may find your hidden passages and fill them with dreadful noise, Thaddeus. And you, Jonah, may become a saintly hermit. But indeed, if you bring any of this up with Mam tomorrow, she will refuse to let me take any part in Beltane Eve at all! And if you try to go ahead with it without letting her kno
w, she’ll come raging when she sees that troupe entering the clearing, as she will not allow the chapel to be used for a Beltane party, ever. And don’t hope she will not notice, because nothing gets past her up here. Nothing.”
Jonah and Thaddeus were quiet for a bit, though Jonah murmured, “You said it will rain frogs when she allows it.”
Rhia gave a sharp nod. “Exactly. You do remember, then.”
Thaddeus cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Rhia, there may be someone who could talk to your mother about this more persuasively than you yourself are able to. I speak of Reeve Clap, and we have reason to think he may throw in with our plan when we tell him of it tomorrow.”
Rhia’s eyes widened but she waited to hear more.
“Rhiannon, today we learned there was indeed a witness to Aleron’s bloody murder,” Jonah said gravely, and the sudden grit in his voice sent a chill up Rhia’s spine.
Thaddeus whispered, “The poor child Ingrid. I fear she saw it all.”
Rhiannon gasped, then froze with her hands over her mouth.
“Something she heard you saying as you gathered seeds this afternoon made her know that Jim stood accused, Rhia,” Thaddeus continued. “When I came upon her here in the chapel, it was much on her mind, enough so that she came to me straightaway, took my hand, and said, ‘I saw it done.’ It took me a while to realize what she’d seen done, though by her trembling and her fearful aspect I might have figured it out quicker. And then I ran our suspects past—her—Arnold Mopp, Jim himself, the pirate gang, the others that make the woods their present home. To all of these she solemnly shook her head.”
Jonah covered his face with his hands, as this was opening his grief anew. “She must have linked with Charlemagne that awful night,” he whispered. “It comforts me to imagine her giving Aleron’s steed solace after he had witnessed such . . . butchery.”
“And then I asked if the murder was done by horsed riders,” Thaddeus went on, squinting with the effort of remembering each detail precisely. “Ingrid nodded! I asked if the riders were nobility. Now, most children might not know of what I spoke, of course, but I thought she would, having lived in a noble house. Again, without a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. Finally, I asked if she would recognize them if she saw them again. A third time, she answered me with a firm nod.”
Rhiannon closed her eyes. “And so our strong hunch is proved with a witness.”
“And you see now why we must let the reeve know straightaway, and tell him also of the plans we’ve got in place!” Jonah interjected, pounding one fist repeatedly into the other hand as he spoke. “The eyewitness testimony of a simple woodland child will never be enough to bring accusation against the earl’s house. Since no one of higher rank was witness to the thing being done, the murderers themselves must make confession within hearing of the law.”
“We think Reeve Clap will endorse our plan and will conceal himself nearby when the party of suspects comes to your chapel,” Thaddeus concluded, more mildly. “We also believe your mother will wish to help him, now that a witness has given us true hope.”
Jonah had a tease in his eye. “In other words, get set, Rhia, as it may soon rain frogs.”
Rhiannon swallowed, and she must have looked some shaky because Thaddeus leaned close and took her shoulders in his hands, as though to steady her.
“Rhia?” he said, speaking near her face. “You are at the heart of this, and there are dangers at every turn. If Leonard and the others sense our suspicions and feel a trap closing, well, the blade of a concealed knife is quicker than any of us may be able to move to stop it. If this doesn’t sit well, you must now say it.”
Rhia looked back at Thaddeus, but she was thinking of Jim, of his brave smile and laughing eyes, and of the downy hair of his unmet little grandson.
“I can do it,” she whispered, extending her hand above the hermit’s concealed heart.
Jonah and Thaddeus reached to place their hands upon hers and they bobbed them once, twice, thrice to set a seal upon the thing.
Chapter 24
Beltane Eve is a time of no time, when the earth holds its breath and the seven sister stars called Pleiades rise just before dawn to dance on the red horizon. Things shimmer in the distance and dissolve when you run close. Things call to you from behind your back, and when you whirl around quick to hear, they turn out to be memory voices of those long gone. The veils are thin at Beltane between the world of men and the world of faeries, and the faeries oft bend human things their way.
After she’d left Jonah and Thaddeus the night before, Rhia had crept exhausted to her bed and immediately begun dreaming a deep and birdy dream. In it she flew above churning waters and was blown about by the updrafts of spouting whales. Her feathers were shiny black and her wingspan wide. She was free and happy, but right before dawn, as the Pleiades began their Beltane dance, Rhia’s dream took a sudden dark turn. For then her birdy self looked down upon the green sea just as a boat capsized and went under with its crew. She heard screams melt away to the fearful silence of still water. She saw the bubbles of those last breaths arise into the air, and when they burst they splattered salt water that burned her feathers.
Rhia woke at that and sat straight up, her breath coming fast. She pushed her damp hair from her face, for she’d found that in her sleep she’d been weeping tears that only humans, never birds, may weep.
With more effort she pushed the haunting shreds of the dream back as well, trying not to dwell upon it as she hurried into her clothes to gather seeds. She bent to kiss Daisy as she left, noting how Daisy snored a miniature version of the hardy snores of Granna’s, then she moved the sleeping tortoise aside with her foot and slipped down the ladder.
The pallet Granna and Mam shared was still lumpy with shapes, so Rhia grabbed the seed pouch and hustled quietly outside to splash her face. She then awaited Gramp, though after some moments, there was still no sign of him. Strange, his tardiness.
“Will you come along, Gramp?” she groused, tapping Mam’s cross upon her chin. “I am nervous enough without a game of hide-and-seek to begin this fraught day!”
No Gramp, though, so her best course was to go on, leaving him to catch up.
There was dewy mist, a strange and flickering sort that comes when flowers open themselves wide and let their essences, their flowery souls, fly out to change places with another’s for the day. Granna said that on dawn of Beltane Eve a lily might fly to a peach blossom and trade essentials with it, and the lowly dandelion may become essentially a red rose for a day, with the rose essence clothed in humble dandelion garb. By May Day, all would have swapped back, ready for the picking, having learned a thing or two from living in another’s skin. If flowers may learn, or remember what they learn. Granna didn’t claim to know, and Rhiannon certainly wouldn’t claim to know, either.
“I don’t know much about anything, in fact,” she mused as she walked to bluff’s edge.
For years she’d longed to be grown and treated as such. But this morning she was homesick for her childish days, when Beltane was a time of watching costumed revelers dance the streets, led by the town’s massive, rollicking hobbyhorse with his yellow corn teeth. That hobbyhorse was merely a costume for three folk to wear, but she’d believed he was real and enchanted, then. And she’d looked forward for weeks to seeing the beautiful white-clothed Queen of the May ride upon her snowy horse from the faery kingdom, and to watching the glowing bonfires grow higher and higher and wondering if they’d eat up the very sky.
She’d wanted to be grown, and got her wish. And now she knew the Queen of the May was a local girl with a glittering white wig upon her head. What knowledge was that? What use was there for it?
She knew as well about the tricks boys will play upon girls at Beltane, or knew it as hearsay anyhow, from Thaddeus and Jonah. She supposed girls might play tricks upon boys just as readily when they got a chance, but she wasn’t thinking of that as she walked to the bluff to gather seeds. She was stewing th
e evening’s plans through her head, wishing she might be that saggy hobbyhorse, or Lucy the cat. Wishing she might be a child again, with only light, childish thoughts.
She would avoid Mam today, that was one thing for sure. Let the reeve come up and handle Mam if he could, but Rhia herself would just lie low ere Mam sensed what was afoot and confronted her with it. She’d get the seeds now, then stay with Sally until time to go down. She gulped hard at that thought, for the time to go through with this thing approached so very quickly!
Then all of a sudden, something shifted. Whether of light or whether of sound she couldn’t quite tell, but it was enough to make Rhia stop in her tracks near the windbent and scrawny orchard trees, holding her breath. “Gramp?” she dared to whisper.
The mist flickered, the little white buds of the scrawny trees quivered. The rising sun went loop-de-loop with cloud so that shadows chased across the pathway. The grasses crackled as small animals awoke, or mayhaps it was faeries running rampant.
Then Rhia heard someone singing with the sad and haunting voice of a mermaid. The sound came from the very edge of the bluff, or mayhaps from the sea beach far below it. That sweet voice was filled with such longing that it drew Rhia nearer, against her better judgment. She’d all her life longed to see a mermaid, and Beltane was the likely time for one to come ashore, but she felt the strings of her nerves might plain snap today if this most enchanted of voices issued from some unheard of monster. Who’d truly seen a mermaid to know? Not even Granna.
And so she crept along the last of the pathway on tiptoe, holding her breath. The song was in an olden language Rhiannon did not know, or elsewise a mermaid language. Her hands felt numb as she pushed aside the branches of willow that hung low over the pathway’s end.
But it was Mam that stood at the very edge of the lip of high stone that overhung the bluff! The sea wind made a sail of her green cloak. Her arms were filled with woodland flowers, which she threw, one by one, to the waters. The wind tossed each of them for a while, then let them fall to the waves, abandoned playthings.
