The Case of the Spellbound Child

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Do you know why their mother was schooling them herself?” Sarah asked.

  The reverend shrugged. “We only have a day school in one of the cottages for the handful of village children, and between the two of us, the teacher isn’t very good. In fact, she’s only three years older than the oldest of the children in the school. I assume Maryanne thought she could make a better job of it and have the children right there to be useful at the same time. I cannot find it in my heart to blame her. We’re poor, and she wouldn’t be the first person in the village to keep her children out of school in order to get some useful work out of them.”

  This was painting a very familiar picture to Nan—things weren’t that different here in Sheepstor than in the poorer neighborhoods of London. Plenty of children got no further than 1-2-3 A-B-C before their parents found them work or employed them in their own labors, or kept them home to mind the younger ones while the mother worked.

  “One offers what help one can, but . . . Maryanne did not precisely rebuff me, but she did make it very clear that help was not wanted, and charity forced on someone is no charity at all.” Reverend Shaw sighed. “So that was all I really knew until, three weeks ago, Roger came tearing into the village just at dawn with a story of how the children had gone out on the moors and hadn’t come home at sunset.”

  “And the village went looking for them?” John asked.

  “Well, of course! Everyone who could be spared, and a few who couldn’t, but left their duties anyway. But it’s Dartmoor. There are mires, I’ve heard of feral dogs, there are rumors of wildcats, and there are certainly old mines to fall into, and if you get lost, it’s not easy to find your way again, you see, because there isn’t much in the way of landmarks. We all went out and searched. Even the old squire forgot his feud and brought out his hounds, but . . . nothing. There had been storms sweeping through all afternoon and evening, and the rain just washed out any scent there was.” The priest sighed. “We kept it up for three days, but after that . . . there really was no point. Maryanne evidently decided she was going to write to Holmes, apparently, but the first I knew of it, she had traded a little glass bead necklace to my housekeeper for a penny stamp, she’d sent Roger all the way into Yelverton to talk to the chief constable there and mail it, and it was too late to stop her.”

  Nan sipped her water, then spoke. “If that’s truly all you can tell us, then we should interview the Byerlys ourselves.”

  “That would probably be best, although to be honest I really don’t know that there is anything you can do that we haven’t already done. . . .” Once again, Father Shaw seemed undecided about something. “I should probably show you the way, but I haven’t a horse or a pony myself—”

  “No need, padre,” John replied, pulling an Ordinance Survey map out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “This and a compass is all an old hand like me needs.”

  “Oh, of course, you were an old campaigner, I recall from your stories. Afghanistan, wasn’t it?” Father Shaw said with relief. “Let me get my own map. I promise you it’s accurate to the foot, and I can mark yours to match.”

  He hurried away and returned quickly with an Ordinance Survey map of his own. “This parish has few people. Some of them are very scattered abroad, not just the Byerlys—my predecessor thought it prudent to mark every cottage on a proper map in case he had to direct someone else or guide a visitor. Here, let’s take them both to the table. I’ve brought a pencil for you as well.”

  Maps compared, all the houses of Sheepstor parish laid out (including the Byerly cottage), there was nothing left but to get on their way. As they filed out the door, Neville flew up from the garden and landed on Nan’s shoulder. “All clear, guv’nor!” he announced, looking straight at Reverend Shaw, radiating satisfaction.

  “My word! He talks as well!” the priest said, eyes wide with astonishment.

  “Yes, and he was telling you he’s cleared out your cabbage caterpillars,” Nan replied, and took Neville’s beak in two fingers to turn his head to face hers. “Did you steal any strawberries while you were there?”

  “Maaaaaaaaybe,” Neville replied cagily.

  Reverend Shaw smiled.

  “If he has cleared out those pesky caterpillars and saved my old knees, he is welcome to strawberries as well as my thanks,” the good father said with gratitude. Neville laughed, sounding very like Nan.

  Map in hand, horses collected, they were soon on their way, leaving the plain track at the second—barely visible—trace, a deviation marked only by a small cairn of stones at the side of the track.

  “Do us a favor, and scout ahead for a cottage, will you?” Nan asked of Neville once they were off the track.

  “Arm,” Neville demanded, and obligingly she held out her arm for him to walk down. With a heave, she threw him into the air, and he labored upward and forward, becoming a small black silhouette in the sky. There he hung, keeping just ahead of them, for about three quarters of an hour. And about the time Nan would have hoped they would spot the cottage, he came winging back and landed again on her shoulder.

  “House,” he said.

  “I’m happy to hear that,” John called from the front of the group. “That tallies with my navigation.”

  They crested a hill, and spotted a small, thatched, gray stone cottage, with a lean-to shed against one wall, and a matching stone wall around it. There was a garden within the wall, and a woman working in it. There was a goat tethered to a post by a long rope, well out of reach of the garden. Their movement caught her attention; she stood up, shading her eyes with her hand, and waited for their approach.

  “Mrs. Byerly?” John called out as soon as they were within hailing distance.

  She made her way to the gate in the wall, but did not open it. “I’m Maryanne Byerly,” she called back. “How may I assist you, sir?”

  The very first thing that Nan noticed was that Maryanne Byerly did not speak with the “countrified” drawl that everyone else around here but Father Shaw had used. In fact, she would have taken Mrs. Byerly for a graduate of the Harton School, so well-spoken was she. The second thing that she noticed was that the woman’s skirt, apron, and blouse, though threadbare and visibly patched, were painfully clean. And the last thing was that Maryanne Byerly was a beauty.

  Beneath the cloth kerchief she wore, her hair was the same blue-black as Neville’s neck-feathers. Her finely sculpted face would have prompted the artists Nan knew to beg her to let them draw her. And her cornflower-blue eyes, though they were puffy with weeping, were like a pair of blue stars.

  No wonder the little brown hens of Sheepstor hate her, she thought, and looked back at Sarah, who nodded. Clearly they had had the same thought.

  “I’m Doctor John Watson—” Watson began, in answer to her question.

  Maryanne Byerly gasped, and clasped her hands together under her chin. “Sherlock Holmes’ great friend! Did he get my letter? Is he coming?”

  John dismounted and handed the reins to Mary, before walking to Mrs. Byerly and reaching for her hand. She gave it to him without hesitation, and he held it carefully. “Mrs. Byerly, I am here, because he cannot be. I lost my great friend in Germany at the hands of that evil fiend, Professor Moriarty. But when I read your letter to him, I knew he would have wanted to help you, and so I and my friends came in his stead.”

  Maryanne’s eyes began to gleam wetly and a moment later two tears trickled down her cheeks.

  She even cries beautifully.

  “I’m so—” she stammered.

  “My dear lady, do not be concerned for me. Your children are gone, and yours is the greater grief. May we come in, and see what we may do about this dire situation?”

  As ever, Watson’s “bedside manner” won the day.

  When the horses were seen to (bits slipped, reins tied to posts alongside the wall, but outside it, so they could graze without getting into th
e garden), they all crowded into the main room of the little cottage. This room, with its stone walls, flagstoned floor, wooden shutters over glassless windows, held a wooden table, two benches, three stools, a cupboard and a kitchen counter under one of the windows, and not much more. There was a loft above, and a boxed-in area beneath it just big enough to hold a bed and perhaps a clothes chest. Nan, Sarah, and Suki mostly just got as far out of the way as possible to allow John and Mary Watson to take the lead. And shortly after they had all found something to sit on, as if by magic, Roger Byerly appeared at the door.

  “Es bain’t found nawt, m’love,” he said wearily, as he appeared on the threshold. He looked terrible, as if he had not slept in weeks, which probably accounted for why he hadn’t noticed four horses and a pony tied up along his wall. “Es—” And then he stopped, and stared at all of them.

  Roger was just as handsome, in the moor manner, as his wife was beautiful. He had brown hair, cut roughly, and wore the usual canvas smock and canvas trousers. In him, the usual features of the locals were refined, and his dark brown eyes were particularly fine. Not even the fact that his right arm ended in a stub detracted from his looks. Once again, Nan completely understood some of the attitude of the locals—particularly the women—some of whom had probably had hopes of catching this fine fellow for themselves.

  “’Oo’s this, then?” he asked, bewildered.

  “This is John Watson and his helpers,” Maryanne replied. “You remember, I read you his stories about Sherlock Holmes. Master Holmes has met with a terrible accident, but the doctor is here to help us in his stead.”

  “Thank God!” the man replied, and sat down heavily, just staring at them all. He was either too worn to speak, or too dumbfounded by the company he found himself in, or both, but after that, Maryanne spoke for both of them.

  And the first thing she said, tears pouring down her face, was, “Oh, Doctor—I am afraid I have murdered my babies!”

  14

  “. . . AND I was so furious I drove them out of the house and onto the moor, and told them not to come back until they had foraged enough for all of us to have a feast,” Maryanne said between clenched teeth, with tears streaming down her cheeks. She was too self-controlled to wail, but Nan sensed that if she had been alone, she would have. There was complete silence in the little room as she spoke; it was quiet enough that the steady munching as the horses cropped grass was clearly audible. “I drove them out, because I knew if they stood there with that gormless expression on their faces, I would completely lose my sanity and beat them until they were black and blue. I should have known better. I should have been better. I taught school for four years before I met Roger. I should have been able to handle my own children better.”

  John Watson reached out and took her hand and patted it, as her husband put his arm awkwardly around her shoulders and held her. “You were weary, and very hungry, and Reverend Shaw told me he considered your Simon to be a little monkey of a mischief-maker. You only taught girls, am I correct?”

  She did not withdraw her hand, though she used her free hand to wipe the tears away as she nodded.

  “Then you were ill-prepared to handle a boy, particularly a lively one with a penchant for deviltry,” John soothed. “You let your hunger and your own temper get the best of you for a single moment, but you did not beat them black and blue, and you sent them out where, unless I am wrong, you thought them safe and where they really wanted to be in the first place.” He paused, perhaps waiting to see if she would stop weeping, then went on. “As it happens, I have just come from a discussion with the chief constable at Yelverton about this very situation of yours.”

  “Naowt ’elp that pinswell’s been,” mumbled Roger, flushing with anger.

  “Actually, more help than you think,” John corrected. “He has been seriously alarmed at the number of children who have gone missing on the moor this past four years, and has been begging his superiors to give him the men to attempt to do something about it. It is those superiors in Tavistock who have been no help at all.”

  “What?” sputtered Roger, and “There are more?” gasped his wife.

  “Many more. Mostly the children of Travelers and casual laborers,” John told them. “A few were employed by farmers, and it was presumed they ran away to avoid hard work. Most of the rest were orphans left on the parish, about to be sent to the workhouse, who left their villages on their own—but never arrived elsewhere. No one bothered to look for any of them to discover they, too, were missing, except the chief constable.” John nodded at their shocked faces; Maryanne’s tears had dried right up, and Roger had gone white as bleached linen. “There is a very dark pattern there. And Roger, I am going to ask you something that is very pertinent to these disappearances. How long have you known that you can—err—” he glanced at Nan.

  “Eh lad, ’ow long has ’ee knowed ’ee can see futher into a millstone than most?” Nan asked.

  Roger turned startled eyes on her, as if he had forgotten she was even there, and was shocked to see her sitting next to his hearth with a raven perched on her shoulder. With that question, she could tell without reading his mind that she had gone from “inconsequential girl with the Important Man” to “Oh dear Heavens, she’s witchy!”

  “Me Grammar an’ me Ma—” he choked out, and shook his head. “Cham not much better nor a bee-boy. Grammar, she had the Sight and Ma, she were herb-wise—”

  “And there it is,” said John, and nodded. “We all know certain things run in Travelers’ blood. At least one, possibly more, of the orphans came from families with known wise women in the past. We think now the missing children all have this in common. They have the Sight and the Blood and they were lured away because of it.”

  “But ’ow—”

  Mary Watson whistled, and a trio of Air Elementals, as pretty as butterflies and naked as babies whisked in the open window to dance expectantly before her at eye level. A certain shimmer about them told Nan that Mary Watson had ordered her Elementals to reveal themselves to any magician.

  Roger gasped and crossed himself. His wife looked at his shocked face, then to the Watsons, bewildered. Clearly Roger could see them, but she could not.

  “We have the Blood and the Sight too,” John Watson explained to Roger. “We sensed that you had it before we came here thanks to the letter you carried to the Post Office. That is why we are here.”

  Roger fainted.

  * * *

  It took some convincing of Maryanne Byerly, once Roger had been revived, that magic really did exist, and the five of them were magicians, but it turned out the easiest way was for Nan to read Maryanne’s mind—with her permission, of course. Once Nan recited a list of things that only Maryanne—not even her husband—knew, she was convinced.

  “But this doesn’t help anything!” the poor woman finally cried, helplessly. “You know why, but not how, or who, or where they are, or if they are even still alive!”

  “Actually . . . I should be able to tell you right now if they are still alive,” Sarah spoke up for the first time. “My special gift is to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Do you have some plaything or possession that Simon, Helen, or both were attached to?”

  The parents looked at each other. “We bain’t got much, an’ none t’ spare fer trupperies,” Roger said, a flush of shame spreading over his face, as if the fact that he could not afford a single toy for his children gave him great guilt. “Playthin’s they made from sticks an’ grass an’ suchlike. On’y clathers wuz on they backs. But—’ould a piller do?”

  Something they laid their heads on every single night? Nan had no doubt that would do, and neither did Sarah. They both nodded. Roger got up and made his way awkwardly up the ladder to the loft, coming down with two little grass-stuffed squares of flour sack.

  Sarah took them on her lap. “Need me?” Nan asked. Sarah shook her head.

  “With th
is, I can even tell if they’ve passed the Portal to the Other Side,” she said quietly. “Just give me a moment.”

  Grey huddled into Sarah’s neck, and Sarah placed one hand on each pillow on her lap, closed her eyes, and slightly bowed her head.

  Nan didn’t think she’d need to join her friend in the spirit realm, but she held herself ready, just in case. If the children were dead . . . well, she thought it unlikely they’d be haunting anything but this house. While some spirits clung to the place of their deaths, most clung to the places where they had lived, and here inside this cottage they would be safe from the ravages of sunlight. So if they were on this side of the Portal, chances were they would be here. Which would be why she and Sarah would never have found them, since they had not known where to look, and had been asking other spirits about wandering child-ghosts on the moor itself.

  Once again silence reigned in the little cottage, and a lark singing outside made an ironic counterpoint to the solemn quiet.

  It took longer than Nan had hoped, but less than she’d feared, for Sarah to open her eyes again. “They’re not dead,” she said with absolute conviction, leading Maryanne to let out a cry of pained relief, and fall weeping onto her husband’s neck.

  “Cans’t tha’ cast a findin’ spell, like me Grammar?” Roger asked, both his arms around his crying wife.

  All of them shook their heads. It wasn’t entirely true—they all could, in one way or another, but if the children were being held in one of those places Robin had told the girls about, a spot that had been enchanted so that it literally could not be seen magically, then there was no way for any of them to find the youngsters.

  No point in confusing the Byerlys with that information. John was right to keep things simple. They were just lucky that Roger Byerly already was aware that magic existed and believed in it—that, with Nan’s demonstration, had been enough to convince his wife. That made things ever so much easier when it came to speaking openly about all of this.