Tamsin

by Peter S. Beagle

  As for Sally… Sally just watched me and didn’t say much. It’s taken a long time for me to realize that I’d probably never have learned how smart that woman is if we hadn’t moved to England. She knew something was going on, and she knew me, and she almost felt the connection somewhere. She’d have understood Tamsin better than I ever did, my mother.

  One flukey warm evening in May, I spotted Tamsin from a distance, whisking across a cornfield like a scrap of laundry blown off a clothesline. When I ran to catch up with her and she turned to face me, for a moment I was more frightened than the Oakmen could have made me. She was tattered, as though dogs had been tearing at her, ripping away her memories of herself. There were holes between shoulder and breast, I remember, and another one gaping below her waist… and you couldn’t see through them—there was nothing on the other side. I read about black holes now, where comets and planets and all the light in the universe get sucked in forever, and I think of those holes in Tamsin.

  “Who are you?” Her voice was like a wind over my own grave.

  “It’s me,” I said. Squeaked. “Tamsin, it’s me, it’s Jenny. Don’t you remember?”

  She didn’t, not at all, not at first. Her eyes were still Tamsin’s bluegreen eyes, practically the one undamaged thing about her, but I wasn’t there. And I was twice as scared then, feeling myself being drawn into those black holes, and all I could think of was to squeak out those first lines of the song her sister Maria had taught her:

  “Oranges and cherries,

  sweetest candleberries—

  who will come and buy?

  who will come and buy…?”

  Nothing… and then—very, very slowly—she came back. It’s hard to describe now. It isn’t that she became clear and whole and solid, recognizing me, because she didn’t; what happened was that the old transparency returned, little by little, until you could see irrigation pipes and skinny young cornstalks through her, and I was as overjoyed as if she’d come back to me in the flesh. The holes—or whatever they really were—faded as her memories knitted themselves back together; when she looked at me again, her eyes took me in, and she smiled.

  “Mistress Jenny,” she said. “I’faith, but how much older you’ve grown since last we met.” It hadn’t been that long at all, though I surely felt a deal older than I had when I’d run after her. “Jenny, did I know you at first? You must tell me truly.”

  “No,” I said. “Not right away.” Tamsin was already nodding. I said, “What is this? What’s happening to you?”

  She wouldn’t quite look at me, and that was just about more than I could bear. I held my hands out to her, which was something we’d gradually begun to use as sign language for a hug. I didn’t think she’d remember, but she put her own hands out, slowly. She whispered, “I do not know. It comes on me often now.”

  “There’s a reason,” I said. “There has to be. Something’s happening, and maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe it means you’re breaking loose, about to get out of here at last. To go wherever you’re supposed to be.” But I said it pretty lamely, because I was afraid it was true, and it’s hard to sound encouraging about something you hope isn’t going to happen. Even if you’re ashamed of yourself.

  Tamsin shook her head. “I would know if that were so. This is far other, this is a rending such as I have not known, and each time there’s less of me comes back able to say where I have been.” It was turning chilly: A little wind blew through her, and I smelled her vanilla and the musty scent of the green corn together. Tamsin said, “Jenny, I am afraid.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said. “I will. We’ll stay together, I’ll watch you every minute, some way, so any time it starts coming over you, I’ll be there, I’ll remind you.” But it was crazy, and we both knew it. Tamsin didn’t say anything. I said, “It’s my turn to make dinner,” and we started back toward the Manor, but she vanished before we were out of the cornfield. I called her name, and I thought she answered me in the wind, but if she did, I never caught a word.

  The cornfield was pretty near the Manor—I could see the lights and both chimneys from where I stood—but with Tamsin gone the house seemed as far away as New York, and with a deeper, colder sea between me and it. I wasn’t scared, but I was afraid that I was going to be, so I walked fast—not running—and I kept telling myself that I’d be home in a minute, in a warm kitchen with people all around me and Sally pissed because I was late. And I was practically on top of the Black Dog before I saw him.

  I can feel him now, most of the time, the way Tamsin could. It’s a little like smelling rain a whole day away, or like knowing the phone’s going to ring. But then he was just there in front of me, where he hadn’t been a second before: big as a Harley-Davidson, and so black there has to be another word for it; people just call him the Black Dog because they don’t know the real word. Nothing—not a cave, a mine, not the bottom of the ocean, not even deep space—is the color of the Black Dog.

  “Get away,” I said. “No hard feelings, but the last thing I need right now is one more bad omen. Excuse me, okay?”

  He moved aside to let me by, but when I started on, he walked along with me, pacing me exactly as he’d done at the Hundred-Acre Wood. I was really losing patience fast with mythical creatures, and I told him that as he padded beside me. “What the hell use are you, for God’s sake? Go around predicting all kinds of trouble and danger without ever telling people what to look out for—what good’s that? I’d rather not know, you know that? You wouldn’t be any damn help if trouble showed up right now, anyway.” The Black Dog watched me out of his red eyes as I bitched at him, and he seemed to be listening, but he never made a sound.

  He stayed with me past the front gate, past Evan’s swing and Sally’s garden. That did shut me up in time, because whatever he was supposed to be warning me against, it had to be near. When he stopped, I mumbled, “Sorry about the Oakmen,” and he gave me one last fiery stare before he stepped away into the shadow of a shed. Mister Cat shot out of it in a hurry, turned, and hissed at him, then stalked over to me to complain about the company I was keeping these days. I picked him up and started toward the house.

  I was close enough to hear dishes clattering and Julian singing “I’m ’Ennery the Eighth, I am, I am”—which is my fault, because I taught it to him—when somebody said my name, and I turned.

  He was standing almost exactly where the Black Dog had vanished. He wore the same robes and wig that he had on in his portrait, the one upstairs from the Restaurant. I could see his face clearly in the light from the kitchen—pale and handsome and young—and he was smiling at me. His voice was dry and whispery, just the way Tamsin had said—it sounded like tissue paper burning. I shouldn’t have been able to hear it from that distance, but I could. He said, “I am here. Tell her.” Then he bowed to me and snapped off—you could practically hear the switch click—and Sally called for me, and I went on into the house and did the best I could to help get dinner together.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night. Sometime between moonset and dawn, Mister Cat woke up on my bed, stretched, growled, went to the window, made his prepare-to-meet-your-Maker-however-you-conceive-him noise, and launched himself. I said a word I’d learned from Tamsin and threw on my bathrobe.

  It was a good thing I was awake, because what Mister Cat had backed up against the right front tire of Evan’s car was Mrs. Fallowfield’s repulsive little pink dog-thing. It was whimpering and showing its fishy teeth, while Mister Cat lashed his tail, deciding whether he wanted steaks or filets. I grabbed him up, tossed him in the house, grabbed Mrs. Fallowfield’s dog, slapped its nose when it tried to bite me, and sat down on the front step to wait for Mrs. Fallowfield. I figured she’d be along any time now.

  Twenty-three

  Actually, she showed up just around dawn, when I was about to throw her pink beast into one of the sheds for safekeeping and try to salvage a couple of hours’ sleep. But I heard those army boots on the gravel before I even saw her, and I got
up and went to meet her. The dog squirmed so much in my arms as she got nearer that I had to let go, and the thing hurled itself through the air—a lot farther than it should have been able to—to plop into the pocket of her duffel coat like a slam dunk. Mrs. Fallowfield bent her neck and said something sharp to him, but I didn’t catch the words.

  “I can’t figure why he comes over here,” I said. “I mean, he doesn’t know anybody.” The moment it was out I realized how dumb it sounded, but Mrs. Fallowfield made that funny, painful looking almost-smile again.

  “Happen he might,” she grunted. “A chicken, mebbe, a sheep. Nivver know with that one—he’s got some strange friends, he has.” She was looking at me when she said that, and you could have cut yourself on those blue eyes. She said, “Second time you’ve delivered him.”

  It seemed a strange word to use. I hadn’t told her about snatching her pet practically out of Mister Cat’s claws, but I was too tired to wonder how she knew. Probably happened all the time with that creature. I mumbled, “No trouble,” and started back toward the Manor. Mrs. Fallowfield walked along beside me.

  “Evan’s up, if you want to see him,” I said. “I heard him moving around a while back.” She hardly ever said a word to Sally, but she seemed to like talking to Evan about drainage and manure. Mrs. Fallowfield shook her head. She didn’t say anything more until we reached the door and I said good-bye and started to go in.

  Abruptly she said, “Coom over to my house sometime. Scones.” She didn’t wait for me to answer—just turned around and tramped off. I watched her all the way out of sight. She never looked back, but that dog stuck its head out of her coat pocket and snarled at me.

  I didn’t tell Tamsin that I’d seen Judge Jeffreys. I didn’t have to. She felt him, the way Mister Cat had sensed the pink dog’s presence on his premises. But where Mister Cat’s natural feline response was to remove every trace of the intruder from the planet, Tamsin fled. She was less and less to be found in her secret room, less and less in the house at all. When we first met, she’d told me that she could go anywhere within the boundaries of Stourhead Farm; now she caromed around the place like a pinball, or like a hamster on a very big wheel. Some days I tracked her down, and most of the time she knew me when I did, but not always. The black holes didn’t come back, or anyway I never saw them. Generally, she looked like the Tamsin she remembered, only a bit more… tentative. I can’t think of another word.

  But she was frightened almost literally out of her mind, and she couldn’t tell me why. You have to try to understand what that might be like for a ghost, the way I had to. That’s all she was, after all, as I’ve been saying—memory, recollection, mind—and here she was, so terrified of another ghost, or of the person he’d been, that she couldn’t even remember the cause of her fear. I kept pushing and pushing her, whenever I had the chance. “It’s nothing he did to you—it’s Edric, something about Edric.” Tamsin would shake her head vaguely, wearily. “Something he said, then. Whatever he said to you when you were sick, when you stopped. The last thing you heard him say—it’ll come back, think about it.”

  But she couldn’t think about it, that was exactly it. I learned even to avoid speaking that man’s name, because each time it would blow straight through her, scattering her like clouds before a Dorset gale, and then I wouldn’t see her for days at a time. I think it took her that long to gather Tamsin again, and each time was harder.

  I told Meena what there was to tell about my seeing Judge Jeffreys, including what he’d said about having come for Tamsin. She didn’t agree with me that Edric had to be at the center of the trouble. “Jenny, have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor? My father always talks about Occam’s Razor—he can drive you crazy with it. It’s a philosophical idea that says, look first for the simplest solution—don’t make anything more complicated than it has to be. I think you are doing that with Tamsin. It’s that horrible man she is frightened of, and well she should be. He is the one you saw, not Edric. This is nothing to do with Edric.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. I keep wondering—how come he’s back, anyway? The Pooka says ghosts don’t return, once they’re really gone—how did he manage it? It’s important, Meena, some way. I know it is.”

  Meena put her hands on my arms. “Either way, you are to stay out of it. Understand me, Jenny.”

  She sounded so totally unlike herself—so much older, so tense and bleak—that I gaped at her for a moment. “I have to help her. Nobody else can help her but me.”

  Meena gripped my arms tighter. “How will you help her? What plans do you have? You don’t have any plans.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “I can’t be with her every minute—it’s all I can do to keep up with her, the way she’s zigging and zagging around the place. But if I can keep a watch on him, if there’s some way I can stay on his trail—”

  “No!” Either Meena actually shook me a little or else she was trembling so hard that I felt it myself. “Jenny, this is like me and the Hundred-Acre Wood—I really will drag you away by the hair this time, if I have to. I don’t care about your Tamsin, whatever happens to her—I’m sorry, but I don’t. I care about you.”

  For one really crazy minute I almost imagined Meena actually being jealous of Tamsin and me, the way I’d been so wildly jealous about Tamsin’s fascination with Tony. That notion passed in a hurry, and I was just me, flushed and clumsy as always, trying to say something that wouldn’t sound too stupid. “I know you do,” I said. “I mean, I really do know.” Not much, but that’s me, every time. “But he’s dead, and I’m alive—what can he do to me? I’ve never understood people being scared of ghosts. Poor Tamsin can’t even touch me.”

  “Tamsin doesn’t wish you harm,” Meena said stubbornly. “You will not go near him, Jenny. You have to promise me.”

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  We looked at each other. Meena finally sighed, and laughed a very little bit, and stood back from me. “Well,” she said. “In that case.”

  If it hadn’t been for Mister Cat, I don’t know what might have happened. He’d plainly been having the same sort of problem with Miss Sophia Brown that I was having with Tamsin. I’d see them together once in a while, and sometimes get a glimpse of her by herself, trotting off on one of those important cat errands that even ghost-cats have. But she didn’t sleep on my bed with Mister Cat anymore, or materialize to join us when we were hunting through the Manor for Tamsin. Mister Cat was distressed about it, too, and kept saying so, loudly and constantly. I told him I couldn’t do a damn thing about it, and he said he already knew that, but still.

  Meena and I had started with some notion that the two of us could somehow keep track of Judge Jeffreys’s comings and goings, and stay close to Tamsin that way. Not a chance, not even with school out. Meena spent as much time at Stourhead Farm as she could get away with, but her family had Cotswold-vacation plans, no way out of it; and anyway, she wouldn’t have been able to see Judge Jeffreys—she was just determined to be there when I did. When I look back at us, all I can do is laugh. Now that I can.

  One thing that helped was the fact that Judge Jeffreys wasn’t nearly as easy moving around the farm as I’d expected he would be. Tamsin had lived her whole short life there: three centuries dead or not, there wasn’t anything she didn’t remember about Stourhead—at least, when she wasn’t panicky. But Judge Jeffreys stuck pretty close to the Manor when he appeared—maybe because he was afraid of getting lost, maybe just because he knew she’d have to return sooner or later. I still don’t know how it really works with ghosts.

  Mister Cat knew. He began to come looking for me, day or night—not even bothering to stay cool, but bursting in with a fullthroated, full-tilt, red-alert Siamese yowl—and I learned to drop whatever I was doing, make whatever excuse I could get away with, and follow him down to the cellar, up to the Arctic Circle, out to one of the barns—the North Barn, usually—or even to Sally’s garden. For his own personal reasons,
Mister Cat had taken the case.

  And he was always there, wherever Mister Cat led me: tall and still, looking much more like a living person than Tamsin did. Maybe that was because of the robes and the wig (wigs, really—he remembered three or four styles); or maybe it was that he knew what he wanted, dead or alive, so being dead didn’t make any difference to him, the way it did to Tamsin. Meena thought he didn’t know he was dead. She said there were a lot of ghosts like that in India. “They come marching in to dinner and expect to sit down with everyone. Or they get into bed with their wives or husbands, because that’s where they always slept. It’s very sad.”

  Nothing sad about Judge Jeffreys, not in his own time and not now. He hung around, pacing a bit now and then, murmuring to himself sometimes, but never the least bit impatient, never anything but waiting. I don’t think he knew for a minute whether he was standing in Albert’s water dish or Sally’s tomato patch, and I know he didn’t see the farm workers as they passed him by, or Evan, Sally, Tony, or Julian, even if he was in the kitchen when we sat down to dinner. Nobody else ever saw him, of course—although Julian kept looking right at him and shaking his head a little, as though there were some insect buzzing around him. But of everyone and everything on the whole damn farm, Judge Jeffreys only saw me.