Tamsin

by Peter S. Beagle

  I slapped the bed hard, and a moment later I felt him landing, heavy and light at the same time, down by my ankles. But instead of walking up to me, the way he always does, he went prrrp?, and in another moment something else landed on the bed. And I can’t describe this properly, because there wasn’t any weight to it—not a thump, not a rustle, not the smallest stir of the blankets. But there was something beside Mister Cat on my bed, and I almost knocked the lamp over turning it on. And the only reason I didn’t scream the whole damn Manor down was that I couldn’t get my breath. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get my breath again.

  It was another cat. A long-haired, short-legged, blue-gray cat with deep-green eyes and a wide, pushed-in sort of face—a Persian, for God’s sake. I don’t like Persian cats much, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I could see through it.

  Okay, not quite through—it wasn’t really transparent, but almost. Its outlines were a little fuzzy, but Persians look like that anyway. It looked darker beside Mister Cat, lighter when it moved and had my blanket behind it; and when it sat down for a moment to scratch, I lost it altogether in the moonlight shining on the white wall. When Mister Cat nudged it with his shoulder, it opened its mouth and this tiny, tiny, faraway meow came out. Not a real meow. More like an old yellowing memory of a meow.

  I was cold. I was so cold that I could feel it in my fingernails. Mister Cat kept prodding that thing toward me, and I kept scooting away, till I was as flat up against those fancy brass spindles as I could get. But it came on, making that little distant cry that didn’t get any louder close to. It had really pretty eyes, but I couldn’t see the lamplight in them, or me, or anything but deep, deep green.

  It was a female—anybody could tell that watching Mister Cat fussing and nudging and carrying on around her. I didn’t stop being scared, not with the way her shape wouldn’t stay quite in focus, and the way her… her texture kept shifting, so you couldn’t ever get a real fix on just what color she really was. But I was starting to get curious at the same time I was scared. I didn’t try to touch her, even though she was solid enough for Mister Cat to rub up against. I didn’t want to know what she felt like.

  When I finally got my voice, I said to her, “So it was you, huh? You’re the one he chased all over the east wing and up the stairway. Well, you sure must have shown him a good time, that’s all I can say.” She looked straight back at me, and if the rest of her was a little undecided, those eyes weren’t. I didn’t doubt for a minute that she understood what I was saying—better than Mister Cat, even. You tend to think like that when you’ve just been waked up in the middle of the night by two cats, and one of them’s a ghost.

  Because that’s what she was, that green-eyed Persian—I never doubted that, either, though I hadn’t ever seen a ghost, or believed in them, or even thought about believing in them. Or thought about cats having ghosts. But it was the only thing she could be—it’s like Sherlock Holmes saying that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever’s left has to be the answer, no matter how weird it is. I almost forgot to be scared, I was so anxious for it to be morning, so I could tell Meena.

  Ghost or no ghost, Mister Cat obviously thought his new girlfriend was the greatest thing since the can-opener. He was showing her off to me, purring and crooning like an idiot, waltzing around her on the bed, practically turning somersaults. She seemed to be enjoying it, but I didn’t like seeing him that way—it reminded me too much of the changes in Sally. I said, “Okay, okay, I get the picture, settle down already. I just hope the Siamese Hussy never hears about this, that’s all.”

  The Persian came up close to me then, without any prompting from Mister Cat, and she looked right into my eyes. Mister Cat does that all the time, but this was different. Those green eyes were like those stairs to the third floor, but without the boards blocking the way. You could feel yourself leaning, tilting toward them, beginning to climb… only I didn’t want to. No temptation, no hesitation. I shook my head, and I said, “Forget it. I’m tired and I’m going back to sleep. You can stay if you want, I don’t care. Just be quiet, don’t mess around. We’ll talk in the morning, whenever.”

  And I did pull the covers up and wrap the pillow around my head and fall asleep again, with a ghost-cat on my bed, and my own cat fussing over her to make a complete fool of himself. I think I was more disgusted with him than I was scared of her. Mister Cat in love is not a pretty sight.

  She was gone when I woke, and Mister Cat was snuggled under my arm, just as though he hadn’t spent the night doing God knows what with God knows what. When he saw I was awake, he started running through his usual cool-cat-in-the-morning routine: the long stretch, the tongue-curling yawn, the serious scratch, the careful touch-up wash, and then, finally, it’s the big bright eyes and what’s for breakfast? I just looked at him, the way he looks at me sometimes. I said, “It’s no good, give it up. I know everything.”

  But I didn’t, and he knew I didn’t. He came over and bumped his head against my hand, once only, and I said, “All right, but don’t think I’m forgetting,” and we went to see about breakfast.

  Ten

  I haven’t worked on this for a few days now. Tony’s dance company made it as far west as Salisbury for once, so we all spent the weekend there and caught every performance, even though he only danced in a couple of numbers. And then he came home with us and stayed until Sally and Evan took him back to London, leaving Julian and me in charge of each other. Julian wants to see what I’ve written in the worst way, and I keep moving it around, hiding it from him, stashing it at Meena’s sometimes. Even Meena’s just seen a few pages, because it’s not ready. I’m stuck between who I think I was and who I think I am, between what happened to me and what I think really happened. All I wanted was to get it all down and done with, and now I don’t know. Maybe I’m the one who’s not ready.

  Trying to write about seeing the ghost of a Persian cat doesn’t exactly clear the mind, either. As I’ve already said, if ghosts were possible, maybe it was all possible, everything—boggarts, Hedley Kows, UFOs, alligators in the sewers. Mrs. Chari, Meena’s mother, was in an earthquake once, and she said it felt as though the ground under her feet had all turned into water. That was how I felt after Mister Cat brought his new girlfriend around. I didn’t tell Meena after all, or Sally, or anybody. Not because I thought about whether they’d believe me or not. I just did not want to deal with it. I didn’t want to tell myself, even.

  But I did come within that much of telling Tony. A few days after all this happened, he found me in a back pasture getting a cricket lesson from Julian. I can hit—I don’t see how you could not hit, with a flat bat—but I can’t pitch worth a damn. Bowl, I mean. Julian was showing me how to turn my wrist so the ball bounces away from the batter, when I looked around and saw Tony watching us. That made me nervous, but he wasn’t interested in making fun of me. He waited until Julian asked him if he wanted to play, and then he said, “Not right now, but I’d like to borrow Jenny for a bit. I’m trying to work something out, and I need a partner. Just for a few minutes, I promise.”

  “I can’t dance,” I said. My heart started pounding, and I was running with sweat, that fast—not because of Tony, but because of the whole idea of dancing. “Take Julian, take Wilf—take Albert. You don’t want me, believe me.”

  Both of them ignored me. Julian said, “You can have her, but only if I get to watch. I want to see Jenny dance.”

  “Not a chance,” I said, just as Tony said, “Done, it’s a deal. But you have to be quiet.”

  They were still arguing about whether it would be all right for Julian to giggle if he didn’t actually say anything, while I was being hustled off to Tony’s studio. I didn’t put up much of a fight, mainly because I was curious about what Tony actually did when he was pacing around in front of all his mirrors, mumbling to himself and slamming doors. And there was one stupid little part of me that kept wondering if maybe I could dance—if maybe panicking twice on the
gym floor at Gaynor and running to the girls’ john both times to have dry heaves and cry in Marta’s lap didn’t mean I couldn’t learn a few moves. Maybe I wasn’t born to boogie, but to float; maybe the moment Tony took my hand I’d know. I wondered if he’d try to lift me, and that was scarier than ghosts or the third floor.

  It didn’t work that way, of course. He just needed a body, something to take up space in his imagination while he paced and mumbled. All I did was stand in one place, and Tony moved me or moved around me, depending. Julian would have done just as well, only Julian got bored early on and went to practice his googlies. Tony didn’t notice. Every once in a while he’d spin away from me, or he’d suddenly leap straight up and turn in the air, and come shivering down like a butterfly, and you could see the whole shiny floor turning into some kind of flower for him to land on. Then he’d be Tony again, shaking his head, really mad at himself for some reason I couldn’t imagine. It took a lot longer than a few minutes, and he hardly said one word to me, but I didn’t mind. I liked him like this.

  Once, when he was either taking a break or trying to work something out—anyway, he was just sitting and staring—I asked him, more or less the way Sally had asked me, “Is it better for you here?” He blinked at me. “Better than London, I mean. Would you still rather be living in London?”

  Tony can look at you sometimes as though he hadn’t quite realized just how stupid you were until right now. “For God’s sake, I could be studying in London. Studying with real dancers, watching real groups every night. Meeting people—learning all the things I’m never going to learn here.” He stalked away from me across the room, and then he turned around and came back to stand really close. “Of course, I’d never have a room like this in London, so whatever I learned wouldn’t do me a bloody bit of good, because I couldn’t take it home and practice. So it’s six of one, half a dozen of another, I suppose. Why do you want to know?”

  “No special reason.” I took a deep breath. “About the Manor—I was wondering, just out of curiosity—” God, I’d make a terrible spy. “Do you ever hear any noises at night? I mean, you know—noises?”

  Tony practically smiled, which he was not doing a lot of in those days. “The Manor’s a very old house. They make noises.”

  “I don’t mean those,” I said. “I mean… I mean feet, damn it! Giggles.”

  I was expecting him to laugh at me, but all he did was sit down on the floor and start doing stretching exercises. He said, “When I knew we were positively coming here, no way out of it, I went to the library and got out a lot of books on Dorset. History, agriculture, folklore, the lot. Do you know that there are two whole books on Dorset ghosts alone? The county’s up to its neck in hauntings, revenants—everybody who’s anybody has a Phantom Monk, or a screaming skull, or a White Lady. Noises? I think if this house doesn’t have a ghost, Dad ought to sue the Lovells for breach of contract. Or something like that.”

  It was the most he’d ever said to me since we’d been at Stourhead, except for when he was throwing Mister Cat out of the studio. He realized it at the same time I did, and went back to stretching. I was getting up to leave quietly when he added, “A lot of them date from 1685, the Dorset ghosts. Because of the Bloody Assizes, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” I said. “What’s an Assizes, and why were these so bloody?”

  Tony sighed. “They really don’t teach you anything in those American schools, do they? I thought it was just British chauvinism. You wouldn’t know about Monmouth’s Rebellion, then?” I just shook my head. “Okay. Charles Stuart—that’s King Charles II—had an illegitimate son named James. No big deal, as you’d say—quite common with kings, especially Charles. He acknowledges him, brings him to court, makes him the Duke of Monmouth, all very civil. Not that he’s got a chance of succeeding to the throne—that’s for Charles’s brother, the Duke of York, also named James. You are following this so far?”

  “James II,” I said. “The Glorious Revolution, 1688. They teach us a few things.”

  “Oh, very good,” Tony said. I couldn’t tell whether he meant it, or was being sarcastic. I can now, usually. “Right. James II becomes king in 1685, over any number of objections—mainly because of his being a Roman Catholic, but also because he was always a nasty, treacherous piece of work. Charming, though, when he wanted, like all the Stuarts—they lived on charm. Anyway, Monmouth— that’s James’s half-brother, the other James—has been hiding out in Holland, because of maybe being involved in the Rye House Plot, but we can skip that part. Well, James II hasn’t been James II for ten minutes before Monmouth’s landed in Lyme Regis and starts raising an army to overthrow him.”

  I said, “Wait a minute. Lyme Regis? The tourist place, where we went for Easter?” We spent a weekend, and it rained, and Sally caught cold showing me where they’d filmed The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

  “They hadn’t invented tourists then,” Tony said impatiently. “It was a port, they built ships, and Monmouth was big in the West Country, don’t ask me why. He went up to Taunton, in Somerset, and declared himself king, but his real following was right here, the Dorset people who met him on the beach. Farmers, miners, fishermen, a bunch of Dorchester artisans and shopkeepers—they were all mad about Monmouth. That old Stuart charm.”

  Most people get flushed and red when they’re telling you something they’re really excited about. Tony always gets very pale, even sort of shaky sometimes. He said, “They really did start a rebellion, Jenny, right here. They were sure the upper classes hated James as much as they did, and they thought the gentry would join them, you see, with their horses and guns and their money and their private armies, and they’d all sweep on to London together. But it didn’t happen.”

  He got up again and began moving—turning, stooping, swinging around, not quite dancing, but almost. “It didn’t happen. Most of the noble types just never showed up, and Monmouth scarpered, did a bunk, headed for the border, the way the Stuarts always did. Left his little low-class believers out there, high and dry, and the king’s soldiers came down and crushed them, ate them alive. But James II wasn’t finished with Dorset. He was going to show Dorset, once and for all, why you do not ever, ever mess with a king. He sent them Judge Jeffreys. Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys.” A fast spin, not a pirouette, but close to the floor, like a top, pointing at me as he came up out of it. “And that’s your Bloody Assizes.”

  When you grow up in New York, and your mother’s absolutely crazy about old movies… Something clicked, and I said, “Captain Blood. Errol Flynn’s a doctor, and he helps someone who’s been hurt—”

  “In Monmouth’s Rebellion—”

  “And there’s a Judge Jeffreys in a wig, who sends him off to be a slave on a plantation. That Judge Jeffreys?”

  “The very same. He set up shop in Dorchester, at the Antelope Hotel, and he had hundreds of people hanged, drawn and quartered—” He stopped, and he looked even paler than before. “You know what that was?”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. I didn’t know, not then, but from his face I knew I didn’t want to.

  “No. All right. But he had their bodies boiled and tarred, and their heads stuck up on poles, and there were hundreds more whipped and transported to the West Indies. Oh, he had a grand time in Dorset, Judge Jeffreys did.” Tony leaned against the wall and started putting his shoes on.

  “What happened? Afterwards, I mean.” I remember I felt dazed, giddy—maybe from what he’d been telling me, maybe more from the way he told it, the way he looked and sounded. He grinned at me, and this time he definitely was being sarcastic.

  “Right, I forgot, you’re an American—there has to be a happy ending around here somewhere. Well, in another three years, here came the old Glorious Revolution, and James II left town hastily, and went into business as a public nuisance, which was the family trade, you might say. Judge Jeffreys suffered agonies from kidney stones, and died in the Tower.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s a happy
ending, anyway.”

  Tony shrugged. “Didn’t stick any heads back on any necks.” He picked up a towel, mopped his face with it, and turned the light out. As we walked to the door, he said, “But I’d think it left a deal of angry ghosts around this part of Dorset. Noises would be the least of it.”

  Locking the studio—he did that to keep Julian out, and me, too, probably—he said, “Thank you for working with me,” which was nice, as if we actually had been dancing together. I thought he might ask me again, but he never did.

  Mister Cat didn’t bring his Persian lady around to my room again. We sort of didn’t talk to each other for a while—just came and went on our own business, me as much as him. We’ve had secrets together since I was little, but this wasn’t like that. It’s lonely when you know something nobody else knows, but it’s exciting, too. That’s the other side of the ground turning to water under you. Stourhead Farm felt like a completely new place, where every sound might mean something different than I’d thought—where suddenly every thing, not just cats or people, might be some kind of ghost from three hundred years ago. I really did want to tell people about it, and I really didn’t. If that makes any sense at all.

  One thing was certain—whatever it was that was playing games with us, wasn’t likely to get bored any time soon. During the winter it had been an on-and-off kind of thing—stuff in the kitchen spilled and slopped or just vanished, a few mornings running, then nothing for a whole week or two. But come the warmer weather— about the time Mister Cat got sprung from quarantine—the boggart started expanding its horizons. Fuel lines breaking in the tractors and balers all the time, irrigation pipes coming apart, just where they were the hardest to get to, whole sections of Evan’s fences collapsing for no good reason, Sally having apples drop on her head when she wasn’t anywhere near the apple trees, something terrorizing Albert, the sheepdog, so on some days he wouldn’t come out of his kennel, let alone go back to the pasture. As for the marshy upper meadow that Evan kept trying to drain… well, never mind, you get the idea. Julian said to me once, “I’m glad we know it’s just a boggart. Otherwise I’d start worrying.”