The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  “What we need is a plan,” he said, his voice pitched so low that they all had to lean in close to hear him, “and I’ve got just the one to leave that bloody witch’s mind reeling in confusion. And it won’t”‌—he glanced at Lizzie‌—“get us in trouble with the law, either.”

  “And this plan is?” Denzil asked in a voice that made it apparent that he’d just as soon not know.

  “Consider Tatters children on their bicycles,” Henkie began. “A whole pack of them, wheeling about like so many hornets. . . .”

  The Conundrum

  Now o’er the one half-world

  Nature seems dead; and wicked dreams abuse

  The curtained sleep. . . .

  ‌—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, from Macbeth

  If the Order of the Grey Dove was a pool of secret water, hidden deep in the forest of the world, then John Madden could be likened to the dropped stone that causes waves of consequence to flow in concentric circles from the center of its influence.

  The line of authority was simple to follow to its source, if one knew how and where to look: There was the world, there was the Order, there were the various branches of the Order’s Council of Elder Adepts, there was the Inner Circle, and finally, at the center of it all, there was Madden himself, tugging the strands of his spider-webbed will to govern them all. Like the dropped stone in water, his influence caused a ripple effect that spread, first through the various levels of the Order, then out into the world of the sheep that he knew he had been born to rule.

  What he wanted, he invariably got. And he was patient.

  He had only known one failure‌—one absolute failure‌—and the ripples of its effect were still being felt. Such as tonight, when the Inner Circle of the Order met and he was reminded of it yet again.

  The theatrics invoked for other aspects of the Order were not present in this suite where they had gathered. There were no masks nor robes nor candles nor rituals. It was a Spartan yet tastefully furnished boardroom, thirty stories above the streets of Manhattan. It gleamed of glass and steel, teak and burnished leather. Five seats, each occupied, were set at one end of a long wooden table. There were no notepads, nor pens with which to write upon them; no recording devices, nor secretaries to transcribe the proceedings. The walls were unadorned, except for a tapestry depicting the grey dove of the Order that hung behind Madden’s chair at the head of the table.

  To Madden’s right sat Roland Grant who Forbes, the American business weekly, said was the world’s seventh richest non-monarch. He was a large, burly man, a Paul Bunyan of the North American business world, tamed in a three-piece tailored suit, still dark-haired for his years, and trim for all his weight. His assets were a who’s who of major corporations and he sat on more boards than a Monopoly game had squares.

  If he had one weakness, it was his daughter, Lena.

  Beside Grant was James Kelly “J. K.” Hale, a slender, tanned man with the lean features of a hawk who was the Hong Kong legal counsel for a number of Western corporations. Madden was presently grooming Hale to enter the American political arena in an advisory capacity, though if Hale had been asked about his planned career change, he would have thought the idea to be his own.

  To Madden’s left sat Eva Diesel, the West German author and political rights activist who used her considerable reputation as one of Europe’s great humanitarians to influence public and government to the aims of the Order. She was a formidable woman, both in appearance and temperament, and Madden had yet to decide how much of her propaganda was actual conviction and how much was simple rhetoric to further the Order’s aims when it required the nature of public and state support that she could gain for them.

  Beside her, completing the inner circle, was Armand Monette, the French business magnate whose head offices were based in Paris. Like Grant, his world-scale corporate holdings were centered primarily in the fields of shipping, transport, fuels, and various media. Giving lie to the image of a suave Frenchman, he invariably appeared in rumpled suits, tie askew and hair mussed, red-eyed and in need of a shave, but his mind was as sharp as his appearance was disheveled and if his businesses were not as prosperous as Grant’s, it was only because Madden didn’t trust the man as much and therefore kept a careful‌—if surreptitious‌—curb on his successes.

  Of the five, not one was under sixty, though that information would have surprised more than one gossip columnist.

  They met once a month to assess the viability of the Order’s ongoing strategies and ventures, and to discuss private projects‌—undertakings that only they were privy to in their entirety. General endeavors were reported, in turn, to the branch leaders of the Council of Elder Adepts by the member of the Inner Circle responsible for that particular branch, but the Adepts were told only enough to keep them compliant. The Order as a whole knew little or nothing of the Inner Circle’s long-term goals, except in the vaguest of terms.

  That was how it should be, Madden had realized long ago, because for all their dedication to his doctrines, the general members of the Order were still just another kind of sheep, subject, in the end, to his will, not their own.

  And sometimes he thought‌—especially on a night like tonight‌—that the Inner Circle also required a lesson in who ruled and who was ruled. It was important, at least in terms of their continued usefulness to him, to allow them a sense of free will, so he was subtle in his manipulations, but the bottom line remained: He was in charge.

  No other.

  The Order of the Grey Dove had been created through his vision and perseverance. All the others‌—members of the Inner Circle and of the Council of Elder Adepts alike‌—were Johnny-come-latelies. Without him, the Order simply would not exist.

  So he let them question him tonight; he let them bring him to task for his failure to acquire Dunthorn’s secret. But he waited until the end of the meeting to give them their opportunity, and he allowed them only a few moments before he broke the discussion off.

  He ruled them.

  The underlying vision of the Order was his vision.

  “Bien,” Armand Monette began‌—and of course it would be him, Madden thought. “We have yet to discuss the matter of this secret of yours, John. Le mystère in Cornwall. How is it progressing?”

  “We have two of our best agents working on it now.”

  Madden was aware of Grant’s grateful look for his including Lena in such a positive light, but he gave no indication of his observation.

  “But it has been the better part of two weeks,” Monette continued. “Surely you have some results?”

  “Yes,” Eva Diesel said in her clipped, formal English. “You have tantalized us with it for years. Has anything new been learned?”

  How to explain that there was a bond between himself and the hidden power that Dunthorn had guarded, that he knew each time it woke and stretched its influence, but that he could gain no sense of what shape it wore, or what it actually was, only that it was a power beyond imagining.

  Better yet, he thought, why should he explain?

  He had long ago regretted ever mentioning its existence in the first place.

  “We know only that it has finally surfaced again,” he said. “And that we are very close to acquiring it.”

  J. K. Hale straightened in his seat. “I have to ask you again, John: Why all this pussyfooting around? Why don’t we just walk in and take it?”

  “We had Dunthorn for two days,” Madden said. “He told us nothing. If we move too soon, we’re just as liable to lose it for another thirty-five years.”

  “We have better interrogation methods now,” Hale said. “The tongs have been developing some very interesting drugs over the past few years‌—”

  “Not to mention your own government,” Monette broke in.

  Hale shot him an irritated look. “We could make them talk,” he said. “Give my people just one day with them.”

  “I’m well aware of the pharmaceutical advances made in both America‌—which is n
ot my country, Armand‌—and abroad,” Madden said. “But I know these people. They have a stubborn streak that goes beyond the reach of the most sophisticated methods of interrogation that we could bring to bear on them. And remember, they might well not even be aware of what we are looking for.”

  “But you said the secret has been woken,” Diesel said. “Surely, then, someone must have woken it?”

  All Madden needed to do was still that inner conversation that all men and women carry on inside themselves and he could feel Dunthorn’s hidden legacy, awake and powerful, reaching out across the vast range of the Atlantic to speak to him. And this time, more than ever before, he was realizing a sense of the thing that offered him a far clearer understanding of just exactly what it was that he had pursued for so long.

  “It might even not be an object,” he said softly. “It might be a . . . place. All we need is the key that will unlock its secret. And soon. . . .”

  “A place?” Monette asked.

  Madden frowned, annoyed with himself for having said as much as he had, and with Monette for pressing him. But he couldn’t help himself. More and more he found Dunthorn’s legacy whispering to him, waking odd longings, undermining the usual clarity of his thought process.

  “What do you mean?” Diesel asked as well, her eyes bright with interest.

  Hale nodded, his own eagerness apparent. “You’ve learned something?”

  Only Grant remained silent and for that Madden was grateful.

  Madden stood up. “If you can’t feel what I feel,” he said, falling back on the mystical to end the probing questions, “then perhaps you aren’t yet ready for the secret’s gift. It will be a gift, yes, but one that must be earned.”

  He held up a hand to forestall any further conversation.

  “Think about it,” he added, then left the boardroom.

  2.

  Madden was sitting in his private office when Grant joined him a little later. Here thick shag carpeting lay underfoot and the leather furniture was thickly padded, built more for comfort than appearance. A ceiling-to-floor bookcase lined one wall; another was completely given over to one enormous window. The drapes were open and the New York skyline lay outside, dark and lit with jeweled lights. His desk was an antique rolltop, polished until the wood glowed. Original paintings by three different Impressionists hung on another wall. In one corner was a small bar; in another a computer system tied by modem into Madden’s own commercial empire.

  He looked out the window to the Manhattan skyline, but was seeing past it, away beyond the man-made mountains and their constant hurly-burly of lights and glitter; away beyond the dark reaches of the Atlantic to a small peninsula, its shores rocked by waves, its land cloaked in a darkness that New York City might once have known, but would never know again; away to that place where Dunthorn’s legacy hummed and throbbed with a power that Madden yearned to hold in his grip and that had never seemed so close within his reach as it did now.

  Grant said nothing when he entered the office. He poured himself a neat whiskey, added two ice cubes from the small bar fridge, then sat down on the leather sofa by the bar and sipped thoughtfully at his drink, patiently waiting until Madden finally turned to face him.

  “They don’t understand, Rollie,” he said.

  “I don’t understand either.”

  Madden nodded. “I know. But you’re willing to wait for enlightenment and that’s what sets you apart from the rest of them. If we didn’t need them . . .”

  Grant set his drink down on the glass table in front of the sofa.

  “They could be replaced,” he began.

  Madden smiled. “And then we’d have to train a new group and that’s something neither of us has the time to do. Nor do we have the time to assume their responsibilities. Besides, at least we know these wolves.”

  “Too true.”

  Grant picked up his drink again and took another sip before replacing the glass exactly on the outlined ring of condensation it had made earlier on the table’s clear surface.

  “What do you see, John?” he asked. “When you look out at the night, what is it that you see that we can’t?”

  From another, Madden might consider this prying. But Rollie Grant wasn’t only his oldest business partner: He was also the closest Madden had to what others might call a friend.

  “More than power and glory,” Madden said. “I see a mystery, a kind of mystical purpose that grows more obscure the further you follow it, but each step you take, the more your spirit grows. Swells. Enlarges until one day, you feel as though it will encompass the whole of the world. But best of all, even then you know the mystery will go on, unexplained, and you can keep following it forever. Past life. Past death. Past whatever lies beyond death.”

  He looked out the window again, a half smile touching his lips, the distance thrumming in his eyes when he turned to Grant once more. Wild energy and a monumental peace, commingled, played there in Madden’s gaze until he blinked.

  “True immortality,” he said, his voice soft.

  “In Dunthorn’s legacy?” Grant asked.

  Madden nodded. “Enough for us all, but it will only be offered to those we know are worthy. To those who earn it.”

  He saw anxiety rest fleetingly in Grant’s eyes, then it fled before his searching gaze.

  “I wouldn’t worry, Rollie,” he said. “You’re on the right road. You’ve earned the right to taste the secret.”

  “That’s not what’s important,” Grant said. “Not so much as your achieving it.”

  If it had been anyone else, Madden would have considered the man to be just toadying up to him, but he knew Grant well enough to know that he sincerely meant what he said. If history was to prove Madden an avatar‌—as eventually Madden knew it must‌—then Grant would be ranked foremost among his disciples. Even above Michael Bett, for Bett’s present body housed the soul of the Beast, and the Beast, for all his expertise and wisdom, could never be trusted. Not in his past incarnations; not in his present one.

  Grant was his John. Simple and steadfast, and he would remain true to the last.

  “Whatever Dunthorn’s legacy is,” Madden said, “it has finally broken free of its constraints once more. Now I can feel its presence in the air, wherever I turn. There isn’t a moment when it isn’t present.”

  “Could you track it down?”

  “I think so,” Madden said with a nod. Then, firmer: “Yes. I’m sure I can.”

  Grant rubbed his hands together. “So when do we leave for Cornwall?”

  Madden laughed. “Just like that?”

  His laughter died when Grant didn’t join in with it.

  “What’s wrong, Rollie?”

  Grant hesitated.

  “No secrets between us,” Madden lied. “Remember?”

  Grant nodded. “It’s Michael,” he said. “I spoke to Lena earlier this evening. From what she tells me, I think Bett is losing it.”

  “Ah, Lena. . . .”

  “I know what you think of her, John, but she can be competent when she sets her mind to the task.”

  “She’s just so easily detoured,” Madden said.

  He held up a placating hand before Grant could defend his daughter.

  “I spoke to Michael before the Circle met,” he said. “He seemed . . . distraught. I think, that in this case, Lena is very close to the mark. I don’t think Michael’s out of control‌—not yet, at any rate. But if we leave him there on his own, he soon will be.”

  “So we are going?”

  Madden smiled. “Of course we are, Rollie. This close to finally putting our hands on Dunthorn’s legacy, how could we not?”

  “I sent one of my security people over to look after Lena,” Grant added. “I was worried about her. Bett‌—apparently he threatened her. The trouble is, Gazo won’t get there until morning at the earliest.”

  “You did the right thing,” Madden said, “if only to set your own mind at ease. But Michael won’t trouble her again ton
ight. Tonight he discovered that not only do sheep have teeth, but sometimes they bite with them as well.”

  “He’s been hurt?”

  “Bruised,” Madden replied. “And mostly just his pride.” He looked out the window again; felt the mystery calling to him, whispering. . . .

  “See about our flight, would you, Rollie?” he said, his voice gone soft once more.

  He didn’t hear Grant’s reply, nor did he hear the man leave. His head thrummed with the promise hidden in Dunthorn’s lost legacy: lost once, and now awake again. Almost found. Calling to him; calling and calling. . . .

  Madden had never heard such a sweet sound before.

  3.

  Madden wasn’t alone in feeling the presence of William Dunthorn’s legacy. Like a fog creeping up from the sea, that same presence touched those sleeping in Mousehole and Paul, in Lamorna and Newlyn, and as far as Penzance.

  To some it was merely a feeling of something brighter or darker in their dreams. It called up memories of those who had emigrated or moved up country, or merely to another part of the West Division of the Hundred of Penwith; called up those who had died and gone on‌—a beloved wife, a missed friend, a cherished child, a husband or brother or cousin stolen by the sea; called up hopes and fears and all the tangled emotions in between; called up the absent and the dead and walked them through the sleepers’ dreams.

  Some greeted their spectral visitors with awe and joy and love.

  Some were merely confused.

  Others could know nothing but dread. . . .

  Clare Mabley relived her experience from earlier in the evening, only this time there was no Davie Rowe present to help her.

  In a heavy rain, she crawled down Mousehole’s narrow, twisting streets, relentlessly pursued by her masked assailant, his switchblade transformed into a butcher’s knife that would have done Jack the Ripper proud. Its blade glowed with its own inner fire and sparked and sizzled when the raindrops hit its polished steel. He finally caught her up by the Millpool, his blade lifting high, his face behind its goggles and scarf more than ever like some monstrous bug, but before the knife could plunge down, she clawed away his mask to find‌—