Tamsin

Sixteen

A couple of nights later, half an hour after his bedtime, Julian came padding into my room to say he couldn’t sleep and would I tell him a story? Sally and Evan were in Dorchester for dinner and a movie (no infants wanted, thank you very much), and in those days you’d get a bedtime story out of Mister Cat faster than you would out of Tony. But Julian’s always had my number—and anyway, it wasn’t much payback for a passing grade in maths and a stinky stuffed gorilla when I needed one. I made him get back into bed first, though, and promise he’d go to sleep after one story. He’s as crafty as a boggart about the small print, but he keeps promises when he makes them.

Between Sally and Norris, I know a lot of stories—I even know some Indian fairy tales that Meena’s told me. But that night I couldn’t get started, and I knew why right away. My mind was so full of Tamsin’s shadow world that I’d been dreaming about her and the Pooka almost every night—and about the Other One, too—and I couldn’t get into witches and princesses and dragons, even for Julian. So just on an impulse, I did something really dumb. Even for me.

“Okay,” I said when he got settled in. “Once upon a time there was a girl who lived at Stourhead Farm, right in this house where we live now. Her name was Tamsin Willoughby.”

Because suddenly I wanted to talk about her. Not to tell anyone, exactly, not to try to explain that she was still here with us in the Manor, but more like Tony telling me about James II and Judge Jeffreys—real people, a long time ago, but still real to him. I guess I thought if I made Tamsin someone in a story for a child like Julian, it might be all right.

“Is this a true story?” Julian demanded. “How do you know?” He was big on how-do-you-know? that summer.

“Somebody told me about her,” I said. “You want to hear this or not?” Julian pulled the blankets up over his face, leaving just his eyes peeking out. I said, “Her father was Roger Willoughby, the guy who started this farm. Her mother was called Margaret, and she had an older sister named Maria. Two brothers, too, but I don’t remember their names. But it’s all true, and if you even think ‘How do you know?’ I’ll shove those blankets down your throat and leave you for the vultures. You got that?”

“Mmmph,” Julian said, but he nodded.

“She was the youngest child,” I said. “The farm was too small for her family to be really rich, but they were a lot better off than most people in Dorset three hundred years ago. They had servants, and there were a lot of farm workers, and Tamsin had a tutor and a horse named Elegance. The worst thing that happened was when her sister Maria died of the Black Plague—that was terrible for her, for all of them.” Julian was staring at me, and I realized I’d better slow down, rein in, or there’d be too many questions waiting the moment I stopped for breath. I said, “This was her room, matter of fact.”

Actually, Tamsin couldn’t ever remember which bedroom had been hers, but she thought Evan and Sally’s room might be the one. But it gave Julian something else to think about while I went on. I told him how different the Manor looked in those days, and how the Willoughbys raised lots more sheep than the Lovells do now, and what it was like plowing and irrigating and harvesting with nothing but hand tools. It was all stuff Tamsin had told me, but I could always say I’d gotten it from Evan. That part went fine.

But then Julian had to ask, because he’s Julian, “Did she ever get married? Did she have children?”

“No,” I said. “No, she never did.”

“Why not?” The blanket was all the way down off his face now.

“Because she died very young.”

“Oh, no.” Julian’s eyes actually started to fill up. He took stories absolutely seriously, even at ten, and I kept forgetting that. “Did she get the Black Plague? Like her sister?”

“The Plague was mostly gone by then,” I said. “It was some kind of lung trouble.” I remembered Tamsin talking about “a flux… a catarrh that grew to a pleurisy… pulmonary phthisis” I said, “She was twenty years old. I think she got caught out in a storm, something like that.”

Julian was quiet for a while. I thought he might be falling asleep, and I was just getting ready to sneak out when he asked, “Jenny? Did she at least have a boyfriend?”

He wanted her to have been happy, even a little bit. That damn kid. Before I knew it, I heard myself saying, “Yes, she did, I know that for a fact. His name was Edric Davies.”

I didn’t know a thing about Edric Davies. I made it all up, just because of Julian. Davies is a Welsh name, so I told Julian he was a Welsh fisherman who wandered all the way down to Dorset and fell in love with a wealthy farmer’s daughter. I said that Roger Willoughby wasn’t about to have his only girl marrying a penniless fish-jockey. He wouldn’t let Edric even come to the house. But Tamsin used to slip off and meet him anyway, in a ruined shepherd’s hut on the downs. Use what you’ve got, right?

“You said they didn’t get married.” Julian had turned on his side, head propped on his hand, alert as a damn chipmunk. Not a chance of him dropping off until I finished the story somehow.

“Well, they wanted to,” I said. “They ran away together one night, and Roger Willoughby had dogs out hunting for them.” I hated badmouthing Tamsin’s father, knowing how much she loved him, but I’d gotten myself into this story, and I had to get out of it some way. “It was storming and raining, the way it gets here in the winter, so the dogs lost the trail, but they got lost too, Tamsin and Edric. He wanted to take her home, but she wouldn’t let him. She said she’d rather die than go back.”

Julian was wide-eyed, hardly breathing. I was pretty caught up myself, considering. “Is that how she died? Tamsin?”

I thought about the Other One, about the face in my dreams that I couldn’t ever quite see. I said, “No, not then. There was a man, an older man. He took them into his house, out of the storm, and they thought they could trust him. But he fell in love with Tamsin, too—or anyway he wanted her—and he killed Edric. They fought a duel, but what does a fisherman know about dueling? The man killed him.”

I practically had tears in my own eyes, it had gotten so real, and it explained so much that Tamsin wouldn’t tell me. Julian whispered, “What about her? What happened to her?”

“She ran out into the storm,” I said. “Back into the rain and the wind and everything. They found her body the next day, and old Roger Willoughby died of a broken heart.” I threw that in like an afterthought, something extra. Lost to all shame, as Meena would say.

Julian slid back down in the bed. He asked, “How do you know?” but the question was a shadow of its usual snotty self. I told him I’d heard the story from Ellie John, who’d just come to work part-time for Evan. Ellie John’s very nice, but she’s a big woman with a sort of gruff voice, and Julian was a bit scared of her in those days. I figured he wasn’t likely to check on me.

“That’s a terrible story,” he said, the same way he used to say, “That was a scary movie,” and with just the same satisfaction. “Did they ever get that man—the one who killed poor Edric?”

“No,” I said. “Dueling was legal then, I think. Anyway, who cared about one Welsh fisherman? I guess he got clean away with it, whoever he was. Go to sleep.”

I tucked him in, gave him a quick little nuzzle—he wasn’t eleven yet, you could still get away with it—and headed for the door. Behind me I heard a mumble, “Guess he’s dead by now, that man.”

I turned at the door. “Well, it’s been three hundred years. I’d guess.”

“Too bad. Wish he was still alive, so we could kill him.” And with that childish dream on his childish lips, my adopted baby brother went bye-bye. I tiptoed out and went back to my room.

But now I couldn’t sheep. I’d made that whole story up, like I said, just to occupy Julian, and told him it was true without turning a hair. But thinking about it I started wondering if it could be at all near the truth of what really happened with Tamsin and Edric Davies. What was she doing out on a night wild enough to cause her death? And who was Edric if he wasn’t her lover? And if the Other One wasn’t his rival for Tamsin… but I didn’t want to think about the Other One any more than I had to. He was all right in a story, but not out of it.

Sally and Evan weren’t back yet, and Tony was in his studio. I gave sleep half an hour, and then I got up and dressed again and went outside to hunt up the billy-blind.

We’d met him in the North Barn, but I didn’t imagine him living there like the boggart in our house. I figured he’d have a place of his own—a burrow or a den, or even a treehouse—somewhere near the Manor. I didn’t know how to find him—I hoped maybe I’d get lucky and have him come looking for me. Dogs like Albert don’t feel right if there isn’t at least one sheep around to herd somewhere. Maybe it was the same with billy-blinds and people.

It was a mild night, with an apple-smelling breeze making the new metal sheds squeak and grumble; but there was autumn way down under it, like a little cold current nibbling your ankles when you’re swimming. I didn’t go beyond the main buildings. I just wandered more or less aimlessly, trying to look like someone in huge need of advice, which wasn’t difficult. Dairy, nothing—North and South Barns, farmworkers’ parking lot, tractor shed, nothing—workshop, nothing—nameless shed where you stash the stuff that doesn’t belong in any other shed, nothing. Mister Cat kept me company for a while, pouncing at shadows like a kitten, but then he got bored and just never came back out of one shadow or another. I was watching out for the Pooka, and for whatever it was Mister Cat had gone a few rounds with the same night I met the billy-blind; but there didn’t seem to be anybody but me prowling around Stourhead Farm that night. Today that would tell me something.

He was the one who found me. I was trudging back to the South Barn, thinking that I hadn’t checked the loft, when he actually tugged on my pants leg. “You’ll be looking for me, no doubt,” he said, when I got back from wherever I’d jumped to. “Come, I’ve been expecting you.”

Waistcoat, fluffed-up cravat, and this time a long coat, like the kind gunfighters wear in Westerns. I have never found out where he lives, by the way, or who does his laundry. He led me, very importantly—your average billy-blind can strut sitting down—over to a stack of scrap lumber, hopped up onto it so he could look down at me, put his hands on his hips, and announced, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, child, and that’s not two—nowt but porter and an egg will help that hair. Porter and a brown egg, there’s your ticket. I use it meself, and look at me, would you?”

He did have a great head of curly hair, about the color of stonewashed jeans. I said, really carefully, “I’ll try it, the billy-blind, I promise I will. But that’s not what I was wanting to ask you about.”

“Aye, well, it should have been,” the billy-blind growled, just like Robert Newton. “It’s as well you sought me out, mind, for I’ve meant and meant to speak sharply to you about your friend. The Willoughby.”

“Yes!” I said. “Yes, that’s it, that’s what I wanted to ask!” The billy-bhind grinned like a magician who’s just shown you the card that he couldn’t possibly have guessed you chose. I said, “There’s so much I want to know about her, and she won’t… I mean, like how she died, or why she keeps saying she’s supposed to be somewhere else—or where the Other One fits into all this. And Edric Davies.” I was talking so fast I ran out of breath, while the billyblind stood on that pile of wood, not moving, not saying a word. “And why did you tell her twice to sit still, and what place is it I should stay away from? You’re the billy-blind around here—you tell me.”

The billy-blind wasn’t smiling anymore. If you just looked at his face like anybody else’s, he could have been twenty-five, fifty, sixty. I’m terrible at guessing ages, anyway. But when you stared into those jewelled eyes—I couldn’t have told you what color they were, then or now—you had to realize that he was older than Tamsin, way older. He said, “I give advice, lass. I don’t explain. There’s different.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, couldn’t you just once make an exception? I mean, she’s your friend, and it’s very important.”

Snort. “My friend, oh aye—yet she’ll not heed the billy-blind’s counsel, never, not she! Sit still? Don’t I see her traipsing the night with you, showing herself to any who’d wish her ill? Don’t I, then?”

Snort. Stamp. Billy-blinds don’t just hand out advice, it matters like mad to them if you take it or not. I said, “Who is it who wishes her ill? If I knew that, maybe I could do something, get her to stay out of sight the way you want. What would it hurt you to tell?”

I was starting to snort a little myself, and the billy-blind was looking almost amused. “Always so, always so. The ones I fancy, they never know how to behave with the billy-blind. Not her, not you, always so.” When he scratched his head with both hands, I still think I maybe saw a pair of bumpy horns, the same color as his hair, but maybe not. “Well, I’ll say this much to you, for that’s a good girl, Tamsin Willoughby, manners or no. But you’ve roused her, that’s your doing, and that shifts things, that makes things to move, d’ye see? And I can’t signify what’s to come of it, indeed I can’t, but there’s looking now, there’s waking and hunting besides hers, beyond hers. Do you see, girl?”

His eyes had hold of me the way the Pooka’s yellow eyes had done, except that these eyes were almost pleading, almost human for that moment. I said, “That’s the Other One.” The billy-blind didn’t answer me. “But he’s gone,” I said. “She told me—Tamsin told me. He’s gone, and he can’t come back.”

The billy-blind said, “You’ll remember to drink eight full glasses of water a day. Grand for the system, that is.”

“I could have gotten that off a damn cereal box!” I yelled at him. “What about the Other One?” But the billy-blind was looking past me, he was listening to something I hadn’t heard yet. When I did hear it, I first thought it was Evan and Sally driving in, and I went on telling myself it was them as long as I could, because I didn’t want it to be what I already knew it was. I’m going to come back and fix that sentence later.

Most times, like I’ve said, it had to be a really fierce night for you to hear the Wild Hunt in the sky. But this night was as calm as calm, even with that bit of a breeze, and that’s what made it so terrible. Because suddenly they were up there, right overhead, the horses and the dogs, the howling and the horns and the rattling hoofbeats, the screechy laughter that didn’t sound like wild geese for a damn minute—all of it, all of it. And I wasn’t safe in the house, behind walls and a window with Julian holding my hand too tight, but out on the open ground, where they could see me— and they saw me, I felt it—that was the storm, their awareness bursting over me. I stood where I was, not because I was brave, but because there wasn’t any room under the woodpile, with the billyblind already there. I just stood alone in the storm, like Tamsin, looking up.

Anyway, I was alone until Mister Cat landed on my shoulder. I hardly felt him, I was so paralyzed, until he dug in his claws and shoved in close to my neck and yowled like a banshee at the Wild Hunt. His fangs were bare to the gums, and his fur and tail were fluffed up so he looked twice his normal size; and if those Huntsmen had understood Siamese, they’d have turned and come for us in a flash. But Mister Cat didn’t care if they did—he was ready to take them all on, and the horses, too. Maybe he was just showing off for Miss Sophia Brown, but I’ve never been so proud of him.

They didn’t turn. They passed over. Probably it didn’t take more than ten or fifteen seconds, which I read somewhere is all the time dreams are supposed to take, at most. They passed over, and the rage of their passage faded off toward Sherborne, and I stood still, straining after them, listening for a sound I’d never heard before when the Hunt went by. It was a voice, a man’s voice, but shrieking in such awful terror that I almost couldn’t tell it was human. We don’t have pigs at Stourhead, but the Colfaxes do—they’re the next farm over—and you can hear pigs screaming all that way when they know they’re about to be slaughtered. It’s horrible, it’s the most horrible thing I know, but it sounds more human than that voice, that night, flying just ahead of the Wild Hunt.

They were gone. Mister Cat quieted down to the kind of growl he’d use for some idiot dog, and the billy-blind crawled out of hiding, looking scared, but not the least embarrassed at having grabbed the one bit of shelter for himself. He cleared his throat. “Aye, so, advice you want, advice you’ll have. Stay clear of them, stay away from that place I’ve told you about—”

“You never did, you never said what place—”

“—and you’ll stop rousing the Willoughby, stop walking out with her! There’s no good can come of it, nowt but danger for you and worse for her. Let be, girl, there’s the billy-blind’s advice for you—she was well enough till you came worreting at her—”

“No, she wasn’t, and I didn’t—”

“—and what’s moving, what’s waiting, it can’t come into that little secret place of hers. It didn’t know then, it can’t know now—”

“It? What, the Wild Hunt? No, you mean the Other One, that’s it, right?” Mister Cat hissed in my ear, because I was losing my cool again, but I was miles past listening even to him. “What then? What then are we talking about? What can’t it know? What’s waiting for Tamsin?” I was reaching for him, I was actually going to grab him and shake him. I wonder what would have happened if I had.

Headlights bouncing off the sky; the sound of a truck engine climbing the hill. Evan and Sally. The billy-blind and I stared at each other in absolute silence for a moment. I couldn’t read his eyes at all, but he didn’t seem angry at me. He said, “You go back to school, don’t be asking that big Whidbey girl for help—she don’t like you above half. And sit near the window in that Spanish class.” He had to yell that last bit after me, because I was already heading for the house, with Mister Cat bounding along beside me. We were in bed—me still in my jeans, but with my eyes tight shut— by the time Evan and Sally came in.

Neither of us slept that night, not me and not Mister Cat. He knew a lot better than I what he’d been challenging, and now he crept under the blankets with me and snuggled into my armpit, and stayed there. But every time I looked at him, his eyes were open, and all night he kept moaning really softly to himself, no matter how much I petted him and told him what a hero he was. He only stopped doing it after Miss Sophia Brown showed up toward morning—she just appeared, popping into sight like a silent movie projected on a bedsheet. I almost jumped out of bed when she got under the covers, too, and curled herself right next to Mister Cat. But I didn’t, and that’s the way the three of us stayed until the first cocks went at it before dawn. I remembered a snatch of an old, old ballad Evan sings with Sally sometimes:

I don’t know what a channering worm is, or what it’s chiding about, but the song’s about ghosts. Miss Sophia Brown stood up and stretched herself, just like a real cat, and she gave Mister Cat’s nose one quick lick and disappeared. And I fell straight off to sleep, and got a good five or ten minutes before Julian barged in to tell me it was stupid canteloupes for breakfast (Julian hates fruit), and he wanted to go visit Albert and the sheep afterward. There are days, even now, when I’m quite proud of myself for letting Julian live. Because there were options.