“Then ... you do not know what it is to have a family ghost!”
“A ghost? No, but there is a will-o-the-wisp that has been our friend for a very long time, and it is rumored that we are long-lived because an ancestor made a friend of Death himself. Nay, there has scarcely been a single Crafter who has not had his own spirit-friend, and they march in a legion to the aid of the present generation when they are needed! Oh, Anthea! That I could be put off by only one ghost? Nay, nay, sweet lady, especially not when the damsel who is ‘haunted’ is a lady of such beauty, intellect, and charm!”
She gazed up into his eyes, blinking. “I ... I don’t know what to say ... .”
“Then say ‘yes,’ “ he pleaded, “and kiss me.”
She did. Both.
A few yards away, Sir Roderick appraised Roman’s technique with a practiced eye. “Not terribly experienced, I’d guess, but I wager he’ll learn.”
“I’d wager he will delight in it,” Aunt Trudy said tartly, “and so will she, though I suspect I’ll be hard put to make them wait for a wedding.”
“Trudy!” Sir Roderick gasped.
“Oh, stuff and nonsense! Did you think William and I had lived as plaster saints all those years? A chaperone must know her duties from the inside, Sir Roderick—and don’t tell me you don’t know that, for I seem to remember you making a few timely interruptions when I was fresh from the schoolroom!”
“I did,” Roderick sighed, “and from the look of these two, I’ll have another generation to attend.”
At Sea
Anno Domini 1812
One of the best known limitations on magic is that of water. Like Cold Iron, flowing water is inimical to most magics, at least those based, upon the powers of land and sky. Vampires are said to be unable to cross flowing water and many spells can be escaped by simply crossing some sea or river. Water, it seems, has it own magic which is powerful and quite alien to men. To those who tap this watery magic, if can mean great power, but a power that often brings with it the burden of an even greater evil. Stand on the beach of any ocean and you call feel the fascination and the strange power emanating from the waves. So all seamen become superstitious, and those who fight among the waves soon learn to respect and fear the power that dwells beneath the waves.
The road that ran from Baltimore through Annapolis was wide and well-tended—fortunately for the young man who walked down its center at an hour when most honest young men were long since asleep. David George Crafter Holywell moved slowly, as much because of near-complete darkness as for the load he carried. There was no light save the few stars that could be seen above the circle of tall trees, scarcely enough to set the road apart from the deep, wet ditches that flanked it. Earlier, when he’d been fresh and walking quickly, he’d stepped offside and nearly tumbled into the brackish, green-slimed standing water he could smell whenever the light breeze died.
“Well,” he murmured to himself, “by now there’ll be no chance of anyone to come after and persuade me home.” The sound of his voice, faint as it was, seemed to echo through the woods all around him—alarmingly, he thought. He swallowed, set his lips together in a firm line, and trudged on, left hand picking carefully at the strap of his heavy canvas bag in an attempt to relieve the pressure against an aching collarbone and now-tender muscle where the weight of the bag was beginning to become a problem. The shift helped for one long moment; after that his arm began to go to sleep and he had to shift it back again.
I should not have brought so much with me, he thought tiredly. What more does a seaman need than himself and his wits—and a hand to set to the papers? But then, after this last argument with his mother and father, his only clear thoughts had been Annapolis, and Go, now!
The road ahead was suddenly much clearer, and moments later he strode into the open. With a sigh, he knelt and shed the sack that held his one decent change of clothing; his winter cloak and the new, heavy stockings his mother had knit him; the tools he’d made for himself the previous summer, when he’d helped build the house for his sister and new brother-in-law. Atop all were the precious sketchpad and crayons, the soft lead sticks that had caused so many arguments with his father the past two years.
Davy flexed his shoulders cautiously, winced and reached back to massage them and his neck. His head ached. “Ah,” he said softly, and turned a little to look back the way he’d come, “but I’ve done nearly half the distance already tonight! By morning, when they find my message, I’ll be already at the docks along the bay, and with any fortune at all have signed my seaman’s papers. Even my father can’t gainsay the Navy Department!”
God knew David Alan Holywell had gainsaid everything else his youngest son wanted for his future. How many times have I heard him say it—bellow it, rather—this past year? “I’m a plain carpenter, no nonsense about me! I’ll not have a gimcrack for a son, fussing about with pretty scribblings; that’s no living for a true man!” He’d been equally adamant in his arguments with Davy’s mother. “And there’ll be none of this other nonsense, plants and candles and odd smells all the day and night! Let your sisters spread this uncleanly family craft to their young, I’ll none of it.” When Amanda had suggested the study of medicine for Davy, her husband had simply laughed at her. “And how shall I find the money for him to learn such a profession? He’ll stay at home, learn a decent, honorable trade, marry a proper girl when the time comes, and care for us in our dotage.”
Davy wiped sweat from his forehead, closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. He could feel his chest tightening, his breath coming short and painful, the headache growing worse. “Leave it be, that’s all behind you now,” he told himself flatly. The tightness remained; finally, he sighed and began repeating his mother’s soothing litany which she’d had from her father and he from his mother right back to his many times great grandfather, Amer. Possibly beyond that; no one really spoke about those beyond many-times Great-grandsire Amer. Odd, though, how simply working his way back through his mother’s family relaxed him a little. Perhaps because Amanda, his mother, had recited it to him so often when he was very small, he’d thought it simply another of her songs to send a little boy to sleep. Amanda, daughter of the explorer Jedediah Crafter Moss, who was twin brother of Jebenzum, both sons of Amelia Ruth Crafter Levy, daughter of Lucinda Amelia Crafter Greene—and so on.
Davy gave his neck one final rub, fumbled out his water bag and drank before climbing reluctantly to his feet and pulling his canvas sack up with him. It felt heavier than ever. He glanced over his shoulder before setting out down the road once more. Toward Annapolis and the Navy shipyards, toward two years aboard an American frigate and a chance to fight the British as his great-uncle Jeb had done.
The woods were closing in and the road began to climb toward a low ridge. His steps slowed; he squared his shoulders then, lowered his head so he wouldn’t have to watch the grade, and forced himself to as strong a pace as he could manage. Just a few more yards, he assured himself at each step; just up to the top, where he would be able to see lights along Chesapeake Bay, and he’d take a proper rest. Eyes fixed just before his toes, he was unaware of the shift in the air near the top—a shift that became a spiral of faint, greenish light. He saw it only as the light spread and touched the road. He stopped short, the sack hitting the ground with a thump as he set both fists on his hips and glared at the whirling mass. There were two sad, reproachful eyes in the very center of it.
“Sprite,” Davy warned, “that had better not be you!”
“Happen that is a very poorly put speech.” A lisping, oddly accented voice came from the swirl of pale green. “Were you not taught how to speak proper gentleman’s English? But—what if it is not me?”
“Are you playing with me?” The young man bared his teeth. “Begone, at once! Leave me in peace!” No answer. The eyes were more visible now and, if possible, even sadder. Davy cleared his throat and set his legs astrad
dle—as much to keep his knees from shaking as anything. For some reason, he had always found it difficult to argue with the little, near-invisible being that was his mother’s friend—or ally—more than he did with either parent. Possibly because of those reproachful eyes—more likely because this was the only one of the three that never won an argument by sheer volume. “If Mother sent you—and if you think,” he went on sharply, once he was certain he could trust his voice, “if you dare think I’ll turn and follow you home like a tamed pup, you’re very much mistaken!”
“Happen I know better than to try and persuade you.” The voice was high and piping, like a reed flute; it never failed to amaze Davy just how much sarcasm such a voice could express. “There is a lead shot somewhere out there which bears your name. Or a salt wave.” Silence. When it became clear Davy intended to outwait it, the sprite fetched a little sigh and went on. “Your mother—”
“Don’t bring my mother into this,” Davy warned.
“—is upset,” it went on, as though he hadn’t spoken. “But she has been upset ever since your brother John argued with your father and left home. It is not possible for any of you to agree and leave the poor woman in peace, so she can concentrate upon her work?”
“I have done as much, can’t you see?” The young man grumbled. “I am gone now. With only herself and Father about, and he off at work so much of the time, perhaps she’ll find that concentration.” It was the sprite’s turn to hold a stubborn silence and the boy’s to sigh then. “All right, that was rude and inexcusable. But why can’t they understand? I can’t take pleasure in building if it’s under my father’s eye; he carps so, no one could do a proper job. Mother’s notion is no better; she’d have me dabble in the family craft and I have no talent for that.”
“That is not so,” the sprite objected.
“I haven’t,” Davy said grimly. “I will not have. I do not want it. And then, to keep me safe from those who’d hang me as a warlock, she’d have me cover craft with medicine! Sprite, does no one ever listen? I do not want to be a doctor! The very thought of mending broken bones or great bleeding cuts makes me ill, and Mother only laughs and says I’ll become used to it once I begin!”
“Happen you might. But I see the matter distresses you—”
“It angers me very much—”
“—and so you’d go to sea instead, to fight the British, where men die in droves,” the sprite said accusingly. “For a lad who does not care to see blood, happen you seek it in plenty.”
“That isn’t necessarily true, you know; after all, my uncle didn’t die, and he sailed clear into the Mediterranean, after the Barbary pirates. He came back wealthy enough to buy a good patch of land west of the Cumberland Mountains, and if he now chooses to dabble in family magic and send a reek of herbs and spells up his chimney, why, he has no neighbors for two days’ ride in any direction to complain of it, has he?” Davy squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath. “Your reasoning is flawed, as always. It’s not all dying, or why would anyone choose to go to sea?”
There was a little silence; the whirl of light became agitated, then stilled again.
Got you, once again, Davy thought, suddenly cheerful. Whatever other talents the sprite might have, its grasp of logic was pitiful, and when it couldn’t respond to his arguments, it invariably gave up at once.
“Ask this of me, who cannot even approach the great water,” the creature replied. “And would not, even if I could,” it added loftily.
Pretending indifference, Davy thought. I’ve won.
“There’s the matter of pride, too,” Davy went on, and somehow kept the triumph he felt from his voice. His mother’s companion was notoriously touchy about losing arguments and it had plenty of ways to make its displeasure felt, literally. This was scarcely the time to find himself covered in an itchy rash. “Those new men in the Congress, those Young War Hawks as they call themselves, they have a good grasp of what is important, you know. Why should we let these arrogant Britishers run the sea as they please, taking our ships, our men, our cargo—telling us what we may and may not sell and buy and in what ports? We fought a war against them and won it in 1783. Was that all for nothing?”
“Happen I know nothing of these politics,” came a rather prim response. “You will not be persuaded, then?”
Davy shook his head so hard, fine brown hair swung free of the confining black ribbon and tickled his nose; he sneezed.
“Knowing that once you board a ship your mother will have no bond with you? That I shall not? Water, you know,” the sprite reminded him as Davy frowned and shook his head in confusion. “Happen that water, especially so much salt water, nullifies power.”
“There isn’t such a bond between me and Mother,” Davy said evenly. “You must think I am my brother John. Don’t tell me there could be such a bond, either; perhaps I am more Father’s son than John is, but there’s no Crafter Talent in me.”
“That is not so, but we will leave it for now.”
“We had better.” Davy ran a hand across his hair, snugging loose ends back into the ribbon as best he could. “Give over, sprite. You’re accomplishing nothing save to make me unhappy; you won’t change my mind. Do you think I haven’t thought it out? I can’t live at home anymore. I feel like a mouse between two cats. I can’t please either parent, so I’ll please neither.”
“And please yourself instead?”
“Perhaps. Is that so wrong? I won’t know for certain if the sea pleases me so much as I believe it will until I’ve tried it, shall I? But it’s more than that, didn’t you listen?”
“Patriotic duty,” the sprite replied sourly. “Happen I heard what you said, and a pretty little speech you made of it, too. Never mind. If I cannot persuade you, will you at least heed a little sense? Your brother John lives not far this side of your destination. Why not talk with him a little, sleep at his hearth, arrive to sign your paper awake and alert?”
Davy opened his mouth to say no, then closed it again.
He picked up his bag, shrugging his shoulders forward in an effort to stretch outraged muscle. He felt a momentary qualm as he set one foot before the other—if this is a trap of Mother’s! —but he rejected the fear as foolish, almost at once. His mother wouldn’t have found that note yet, surely; this wasn’t a trick or a trap on the part of the argumentative little being to ensnare him somehow and keep him from his destination. The sprite wasn’t—dishonest—like that. Nor was Amanda; if she’d discovered her son missing and wanted to bespeak him, the sprite would have said as much. Or his mother would somehow have found a means to communicate with her power-poor son.
And besides, stopping to talk to John, now he thought of it, was a very good notion. John had gone through enough arguments of his own with their father to understand how Davy felt; he’d never try to turn his youngest brother from his present course. And John lived near enough to the shipyards and docks; he might know which of the frigates was in port, or, if there was more than one, which was the best. One couldn’t hope to find a berth with the great Captain Decatur, of course. But a ship, any of the frigates which might take him into the open sea, and perhaps set him upon a course against those arrogant English ... .
There was only one small problem: While he’d heard indirectly from John the past winter—a short note to Davy had been enclosed in a letter to their sister Lucy, congratulations on her marriage—he knew only that John had a small acreage and a furniture shop outside Annapolis. Somewhere outside Annapolis. Davy scowled at the sprite. “I don’t suppose you would know how to find my brother’s front door on a night such as this?” he asked belligerently.
The strap of the heavy bag slid from his arm and rose into the air, began moving uphill in the midst of a faint, greenish light.
“Happen,” came the rather smug response from the center of that light, “that I do.”
* * *
It shouldn�
��t have surprised Davy when he, the spin of green light and his bag—floating at an unnerving knee-height off the road—came to the end of a narrow side lane some time later to discover John sitting on the stoop, the light of a dying fire visible through the open door. John might well have felt my presence, if this—this well-nigh-invisible porter did not simply inform him when he persuaded me to come this way, Davy thought peevishly. I could almost envy them that. Think how wonderful to bespeak anyone else with the Talent, anywhere. Think—to know at once what his uncle Jeb was doing, how his sister Jemmy was settling into her new life in Boston. Of course, it would also mean that, like with Jemmy, there’d be no escape from his mother’s rather high-pitched and near-constant reproaches... . Doesn’t matter; I cannot manage it anyway. They can, and all I can feel is a certain envy and a good deal as though my mind has been invaded against my will.
He had to swallow anger, then; he didn’t want to growl at John, after all, and it wasn’t really the sprite’s fault he was tired, footsore, cross—and suddenly not certain he’d done the right thing, now his goal was so near. Be blessed if he’d let either of his companions know that, though. He dropped onto the stoop with a heartfelt sigh and clasped John’s arms, hard.
“You’ve grown considerably,” John said, and drew him close for a hard embrace before leaning back to eye him critically in the fading red light. “Enough to scramble into a frigate’s sheets, I suppose, but not so tall as to tangle up in them.” Davy opened his mouth and shut it again without saying anything; his elder brother laughed quietly. “Come, now. You can’t be surprised I know why you grace my doorway at such an ungodly hour. But, come in, it’s grown cool this past hour or so and there’s a bucket of hot ale and a loaf on the hearth.” He scooped up the bag the sprite had dropped just inside the room and let Davy precede him. “Here, take the settle close to the fire, doff your outer things and your shoes. So, Mother won’t have a doctor in the family after all?”
The Crafters Book Two Page 19