by Emma Jameson
After the tadpole-swallower, Ben had seen Mr. Jeffers. A red-faced, big-bellied man with a ginger mustache and a gap-toothed smile, he’d come in whistling, but made the same complaint as he’d made two weeks before: indigestion.
“It’s always there, Doc,” he’d said, buttoning his shirt up over his vest after Ben finished listening to his heart and lungs. “This must be how dragons feel, priming to belch fire. Bloody sprouts.”
“As I said before,” Ben had said, striving for patience, “however much you dislike rabbit food, as you call it, a spoonful of greenery doesn’t trigger protracted indigestion.”
“And now we have it,” Mr. Jeffers had muttered. “‘Cut down on beef. Cut down on starch. Take exercise. No fags, no pints, and no excitement.’ Bloody Bolsheviks and vegetarians put about that rubbish to make us weak.” He’d patted his midsection. “Doc Egan told me this lot pushes my choler into my windpipe. Hence my choleric nature,” he’d said wisely. “So the real trouble is an imbalance of humors. That’s what’s wanted, for you to equalize my humors.”
“I see.” Ben hadn’t taken offense. It wouldn’t have been Monday if at least one patient hadn’t lectured him on some medical theory, even one that had been abandoned around the Battle of Trafalgar.
“All this rot about twigs for breakfast and blades of grass for lunch is unscientific,” Mr. Jeffers had said. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to reduce. Last year, a pub stool collapsed when I sat on it. That wounded my pride, it did. But you can’t fight nature. My old dad was stout, too.”
“Remind me. What did your father die of?” Ben had asked, knowing the answer.
“Heart attack.”
“How old was he?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Rather young. How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.” Mr. Jeffers’s eyes had widened. “Come now, Doc, you can’t draw a comparison. My old dad never cracked a smile. My mum died bringing me into this world, and I think part of him went out with her. A good man, mind you, but grim. His heart attack was brought on by overwork. The girl I walk out with says—” Mr. Jeffers had stopped there. “That is, the girl I used to walk out with, the one who fed me the bleeding sprouts, used to say I like a good time and that’s my saving grace. Always one for a laugh, that’s me. I may be the spit and image of my old dad, but I whistle while I work, and he ground his teeth.”
“You’re lucky to have a saving grace,” Ben had said. “Not to mention a girl who cooks for you. Don’t tell me you two went your separate ways over a dish of sprouts.”
“She poisoned me.” Mr. Jeffers had said unconvincingly.
Ben had folded his arms and waited.
“She knows my feelings on the green stuff, but she insisted. And what’s the good of cooking a man a meal if you’re going to harp on what he eats like he’s a boy in short trousers? And for months she’s been at me to….”
“To what?”
At that point, Mr. Jeffers had become interested in examining the tops of his shoes. “I suppose I do have something in common with my old dad. He swallowed his words along with his breath, as the saying goes. Don’t get me wrong. I know I was dear to him. It was me and him against the world. But he never got round to saying so. Maybe he was waiting for the right moment. But one day we were mincing the silverside and he drew up short. Opened his mouth and stared at me like I was a stranger. Then the black swallowed the blue — in his eyes, I mean—and he fell on his face like a calf struck with a ball peen hammer.”
“Thirty-eight,” Ben had repeated. “It seems too young.”
“As for Ernestine… it’s not that I don’t have something to say to her,” Mr. Jeffers had continued as if Ben hadn’t spoken. “One day I’ll say it. But she pushes too hard. Do this, eat that, tell me this, promise me that. If I tell you something, Doc, will you promise not to laugh?”
“Of course.”
“I know what she wants me to say. A man would have to be daft to miss the hints she’s dropped. But I get a little speech ready, and it sticks in my craw. Next thing I know, I’ve got a cauldron in my belly and I’m up all night, belching fire. It wasn’t swallowing the sprouts that gave me this indigestion. It was swallowing my own words.”
“I can’t laugh at that. As Englishmen go, it’s practically an epidemic.”
Mr. Jeffers’s face had split into a boyish grin. “See, now, we understand one another.”
“So take my advice. Spit those words out,” Ben had said firmly. “Go round to Ernestine’s, ask her to the pub, buy her a drink and tell her.”
“But Doc, I told you, it burns right here,” Mr. Jeffers had insisted, tapping the middle of his chest. “Isn’t there a tonic or a salve you could give me first?”
“No, but there’s a regimen. Cut down on beef, cut down on starch, take exercise—”
Mr. Jeffers’s reply had been something he’d never say in front of Father Cotterill, much less a lady. They’d laughed, and he’d gone away saying, “Perhaps I will take your advice,” in the reassuring tone of a patient who had no intention of doing any such thing.
Ben hadn’t been surprised. He had a better chance of curing the common cold than of inducing the average man to voluntarily cut down on meat or starch. Perhaps the ration would accomplish what the scoldings of dietitians could not.
The special bell rang, jarring him back to the present moment. Rising, he went to answer the door, but his last patient had already let herself in.
Mrs. Richwine, Barking’s oldest resident, was reputedly ninety. A widow of long-standing, she liked to dress in lavender from head to toe. In the nineteenth century, that shade had indicated “quarter-mourning.” A quintessentially Victorian designation, it sought to express one’s degree of bereavement mathematically, as a fraction of discontent. Those in mourning were also supposed to avoid personal embellishments, so Mrs. Richwine wore no jewelry apart from her gold wedding band and a tiny chip of jet in each ear. Ben, who like most men his age thought Victorian customs like lifelong mourning to be on par with medieval witch dunking, thought it was a strange choice for a woman as full of life as Mrs. Richwine. Despite the rumors, and the fact one never asked a lady her age, he estimated her to be no more than sixty-five.
A very short woman, she had a penchant for high heels and vertical hairstyles. Even so, the top of her towering white bun, secured with gleaming metal hairpins, barely came up to Ben’s shoulder. “My dear Dr. Bones! How wonderful to see you again. If only it were under better circumstances.”
“What sort of trouble is it?”
“At this time of year? On the very cusp of spring?” She chuckled. “What trouble can it possibly be, but heart?”
2
“Your heart?” Ben asked.
Her laugh sounded like the ringing of a crystal bell. “Oh, no, dear. My people are born sickly, but strengthen with age. I’ve never felt better. I mean the heart of a man whose letter went awry in the Fairy Post.”
“I see,” Ben said. After six months in Birdswing, he was losing his ability to be taken aback by curious statements. “Come through to my desk, please, and have a seat, won’t you?”
She did so, looking around Ben’s office, which was still decorated with late nineteenth-century relics inherited from Dr. Egan. “Well! Isn’t this modern? Proves how long it’s been since I’ve seen the inside of a physician’s office. What’s that?” She pointed at the phrenology bust. It depicted a surprised-looking man with his skull missing and various character traits like “Loyalty” and “Avarice” labeling sections of his exposed brain.
“Proof medical science can get it wrong,” Ben said. “But what do you mean by ‘Fairy Post?’”
“I’m surprised no one’s told you,” Mrs. Richwine said. “The Fairy Post has been in operation as long as I’ve been here, and I came ages back. But surely you’ve seen it. Before the snow fell, I used to watch you go rambling through Pate’s Field, all the way to the boundary between Birdswing and Barking. Didn’t you notice the
hollow tree?”
“No. Wait. Yes, now I think of it. More of a tall stump, really.”
“That’s right. A storm tore off the crown and limbs. That was the autumn of 1916, when despair turned even the winds vengeful. But the Fairy Post has continued unabated,” Mrs. Richwine said, “serving the lovelorn, the grieving, the hopeless, and the hopeful. Those last tend to be children, naturally.”
Ben had steeled himself for nonsense, but this was exceeding his expectations. How long before he could shutter his office and go up to the attic? Trying not to sound as impatient as he felt, he said, “Forgive me, Mrs. Richwine. But I’d be lying if I said I understood where this is going, or what it has to do with me.”
She issued that tinkling laugh again. “I do apologize. How is Lady Juliet?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Lady Juliet Linton. Well, Linton-Bolivar, I suppose. I’m devoted to Barking, having dwelt there so long, but the few times I’ve been privileged to have a word with Lady Juliet, her spirit has impressed me. I sense a worthy bloodline there.”
For a moment, Ben felt as if Mrs. Richwine had read his mind. Then he remembered that Juliet’s Crossley was parked outside Fenton House.
“Yes, well, by all accounts, Sir Thaddeus Linton was a remarkable man.”
“Not him.” Her eyes sparkled. “But never mind that. You asked about the Fairy Post. It isn’t meant to replace the Royal Mail, but to work beside it, along the channels of magic and destiny. Children pen letters to Father Christmas, or Robinson Crusoe, or even a loved one they will never see again. Any destination they hope to reach that the Royal Mail does not serve. They drop their letter into the hollow tree and commend it into the hands of the fair folk.”
“To be delivered into the pages of a storybook? Or the afterlife?”
“Who can say? The young possess such remarkable powers of hope,” Mrs. Richwine said. “If such belief could be distilled into an elixir, a single golden spoonful would cure us all. Alas, that is not the way of things. So relatively few adults employ the Fairy Post. The destinations they intend aren’t always impossible, strictly speaking, but they may be improbable, or ill-advised.”
“Lonely hearts letters, you mean? How extraordinary.” Extraordinarily foolish, Ben added privately, though he tried not to look surprised.
“Yes, or letters requesting help from the Shining Ones,” Mrs. Richwine said happily. “That was the original function of the hollow tree: a repository for wishes and offerings. Few could write in the old days, so a learned man once sat under the tree, taking down petitions on scraps of paper. Into the tree they went, along with a coin or trinket for the Fairy Queen, whom the Romans called Diana.”
“I suppose when no help came, the people blamed themselves instead of the scribe? Who must have lived rather well, I should think, if he emptied the tree each night.” Ben spoke lightly, and Mrs. Richwine took no offense.
“Ah, but remember, the hollow tree was once a thing of beauty, with lofty boughs and masses of green leaves. The knothole for petitions and offerings was no bigger than my fist. Time and weather may have wounded it, but whatever is dropped into the trunk still disappears.”
“Has anyone looked under the Archer twins’ mattresses?”
She laughed. “I shan’t pretend those boys haven’t tried to interrupt the Fairy Post. But ask them how well they succeeded.”
“Let me see if I understand. People drop letters into the tree,” Ben said. “Some are delivered, some aren’t. And no one is troubled by the idea that one of their neighbors is removing the letters, reading them over, and choosing which to distribute and which to burn? Or save for future blackmail, more like.”
“For shame, Dr. Bones,” said Mrs. Richwine, again with the tinkling laugh. “Your experience with murder in Cornwall has made you think the worst of us. The fair folk would never permit that, even if one of our friends and neighbors decided to commit such a sin against the community. The petitions for a healthy baby, or a bank loan, or a soldier to come back safe and sound, are whisked away to the other realm. The letters than cannot or should not be delivered in our world disappear to somewhere else. Once in a while, a letter comes through someone’s post slot in the dead of night, or is found on their front step, tucked between the milk bottles. And once in a very great while, something goes wrong, and mortals must finish what the fair folk began.”
Ben nodded vaguely, still wondering what all this bucolic superstition had to do with him.
“As I mentioned, spring is upon us,” Mrs. Richwine said. “The vernal equinox won’t arrive until the twenty-second of March, but the Green Man is already afoot. Just this morning I spied tender shoots, buds bursting, and hellebores poking through the snow. Soon the chiffchaffs will take wing! As I searched the trees for signs of life, what did I spy but this, stuck in a tangle of ivy.”
Opening her bag, she withdrew a letter in a blank envelope. The seal, a bit of Sellotape, had been broken.
“I’m afraid I did have a look,” she admitted. “By custom, letters deposited into the Fairy Post have no direction, nor any names, either in the salutation or the signature. What good is magic if such mundanities are required? At any rate, I thought if the letter was written by one of my fellow Barkers, I might recognize the penmanship. Alas, I did not. Therefore, the letter must have been written by a Birdswinger. That’s why I’ve brought it to you.”
“Me?” Ben stared at her. “I won’t be able to guess who wrote it. I haven’t lived here long enough to suss out villagers by handwriting alone.”
“No, of course not,” Mrs. Richwine said. “But in this case, it doesn’t matter. The letter is dated 10 February 1913. Today’s date, but for the year. Isn’t that a marvelous coincidence?”
Ben had the uncomfortable suspicion it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Did Mrs. Richwine’s obvious passion for the Fairy Post signal that she was the anonymous force behind which letters were delivered, and which disappeared? Had she been collecting and reading them throughout her life?
Don’t get carried away, he told himself. Not many sweet little old ladies are capable of clambering into hollow trees, at least without being caught.
“Take it,” Mrs. Richwine said, passing the letter across his desk. “It’s a love letter, and due to be delivered, either to the recipient or back to the author. Don’t look so appalled, Dr. Bones. The Fairy Post goes awry from time to time, but it never fails. The fair folk dropped this into my path for good reason. And because you’re one of Birdswing’s most distinguished citizens, I’m dropping it into yours.”
“Why not Lady Victoria? Or Lady Juliet?”
“Either would do an admirable job, I have no doubt,” Mrs. Richwine said. “And you may consult them, of course, or anyone you wish. But you are a physician, and therefore best equipped to navigate uncertain waters. Particularly if the letter is destined to return to the writer rather than the recipient. A physician can address matters that gentlefolk, or even a man of the cloth, like Father Cotterill, cannot.”
“If I accept this,” Ben said, tapping the envelope in front of him, “I’ll quite likely burn it. That strikes me as the wisest course. Not to mention kinder than reading someone’s private business from thirty years ago and then showing it around the village, opening up old wounds.”
He expected Mrs. Richwine, who had maintained unshakable sunniness throughout the interview, to take offense at last, snatch up the letter, and look for someone else to be her catspaw. It still seemed only logical that she’d nicked the letter ages ago and carried it into Birdswing simply to start trouble.
Once again, the little woman’s eyes sparkled as if she read his thoughts and found them amusing. “My dear Dr. Bones, if upon reflection you choose to burn this letter, then that is the end the fair folk desire. They’re very wise, you know, and rarely seek mortal aid except when they feel certain that mortal is up to the task. Like the Lady of the Lake bestowing Excalibur on the king,” she continued, rising. “It wasn’t every dark age
chieftain who was so favored, but Arthur Pendragon, and from Dozmary Pool in Bodmin. He was chosen. Now, so are you.”
Ben used his cane to climb Fenton House’s steep stairs. Although he still resented the necessity of carrying it, winter had taught him a thing or two about post-traumatic arthritis, specifically of the knee. Pride was all very well, but it didn’t cushion a man’s arse when a joint froze up and he toppled over.
A cul-de-sac at the end of the upstairs landing contained four steps and a rather curious door. It seemed to have been reincarnated from a prior existence. For one thing, it was unusually thick, even after being cut down to fit the frame. For another, its deep linear scars suggested it had once been iron-banded, like the door of a cathedral or fortress.
The first time Ben encountered the door, it had been mysteriously jammed, prompting Juliet to open it by force. After that, it became prone to slamming, usually in the dead of night. Lately it had begun opening on its own.
Rather like a Venus flytrap, Ben thought, but without foreboding. He looked forward to these attic meetings too much to be put off by the eccentricities of an old door.
The broader footpath made walking with a cane easier. The attic landscape, though still chaotic, was improved: half-sorted heaps, a few sealed boxes, and a makeshift nook at the attic’s far end, under the dormer window. And on a pouf beneath that window sat Juliet, nose in a book.
“Reading on the job?” Ben asked.
“Reading is the job. Fully half of it, at any rate, while I’m waiting for you,” she retorted without looking at him. “What took so long?”
“Mrs. Richwine, from Barking.”
Juliet’s eyes flicked up. Like any naturally inquisitive person, she was curious about the lives of her fellow villagers, particularly when they visited Ben’s office. But when it came to Barkers, for whom she generally maintained a true Birdswinger’s antipathy, the desire to hear about their medical woes nearly overwhelmed her good manners. She knew Ben wouldn’t discuss it, not with her or anyone else. Nevertheless, he heard the narrowly repressed curiosity in her voice as she murmured, “I do hope she’s well.”