by Ken Altabef
His father seemed upbeat. Through the good graces of the archbishop, he had finally gained an audience with King George to plead his case for the faeries. “I haven’t the foggiest idea. But I am determined at least to try.”
“I hope you’re not sailing headlong into another disappointment. Why should the King be sensitive to our cause now?”
“I’m fairly certain he won’t be. Not at first. But I’ve a surprise planned that may just do the trick.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“No, I’m not. Or rather I should say not yet. Better you don’t know, James. If this one last scheme doesn’t find success, there will be consequences. And I’d rather none of the mud fall down upon your head. Either way, you’ll read all about it in the news sheets. I’m certain of that. Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?”
James hesitated. He didn’t want to ruin his father’s good mood on the brink of his trip.
Eric clicked his tongue. “Come on. I can’t very well leave you with that look on your face, can I? If it’s bad news I’d best hear it now.”
James smirked. “There’s no fooling you, is there? I’m afraid I’ve seen a ghost.”
“Yes. I can readily believe that. It seems I encountered him myself just yesterday.”
“Him? No. It’s about Marjorie Hightower. The niece of the Earl of Kent—”
“I know who she was.” Eric shot back a hard look. “The grand-daughter. The grand-daughter of the Earl. But that was a long time ago. What’s this all about?”
“She didn’t just fall into the lake as everyone supposed. She was murdered.”
“And this information came from?”
“The child’s own cold, dead lips.”
A faraway look crossed his father’s eyes. “Show me.”
Marjorie Hightower. Truth be told, Eric had a hard time remembering the girl at all. A vague flash of shoulder-length brown hair and a pretty smile. That’s all. Whenever he tried to think about her, some cross-current in his brain redirected him to memories of the day he had first met Theodora at the fresh well in town. And that bothered him. During those early years he’d had no idea Theodora was an agent of the faeries. She had posed as human. The faeries had made quite a delicate trap of the whole thing with Theodora playing the shy waif and Meadowlark posing as her father Finnegan Stump, a wretched little man pretending opposition to the marriage in order to drive Eric even deeper.
In time he’d discovered his wife’s secrets and forgiven her deceptions. But if everything was out in the open now, why couldn’t he remember Marjorie Hightower still?
The girl had drowned in the lake on the Grayson estate. It had been regarded by everyone as a terrible accident. A generous recompense had been made to the family at Kent and the Earl had consented to let the matter drop. There had never been an inquest regarding the possibility of foul play. But if what James had said was true, and it had been an act of murder, then there must also be a murderer running free. Someone on the Grayson staff? Eric would not allow that.
It was a grim November morning, an overcast sky threatening rain. The woods at the western end of the property were wild and dark. Eric would have counted the whole tale as nonsense if he hadn’t himself encountered a ghost just one day earlier. First Griffin Grayson and now Marjorie Hightower. Griffin revealing that the faeries had murdered him and Theodora among their number. It seemed to him this could not be a coincidence. He dismounted from the mare and walked to the water’s edge.
“And just how did you come by this ghost, James?”
“I was meditating here by the lake. She called out to me. Father, she seemed so pathetic and sad but she was dangerous.”
“You went in the water?”
“I did.”
The water was still and dark. Clumps of kelp resembled snakes waving from the bottom. Eric searched his son’s eyes. “You didn’t just imagine the whole thing?”
“She’s there. She thinks it was you killed her. She thinks she saw you push her in.”
“That’s ridiculous.” As soon as the words flew from his mouth Eric realized that it was not ridiculous at all. Considering the faeries’ powers of illusion, a list of suspects formed in his mind: Redthorne, Meadowlark, any one of a dozen others. Even Black Annis.
Eric would waste no more time. He removed his riding coat, folded it and placed it atop a flat rock by the lake. His waistcoat and shirt lay down beside the coat. Leaving his boots and trousers on, he marched into the water.
Cold. It sure was cold. He brushed away the kelp and a few lily pads with late blooming yellow surface flowers and stepped out until he was neck deep. Nothing happened. He felt a little bit ridiculous. The ooze beneath his feet shifted slightly and he kicked off, moving deeper into the lake, treading water. When he glanced back at the shore he noticed he could no longer see his son or their horses. In fact the entire shoreline was obscured by a thick gray mist. The fog rolled in toward the center of the lake until Eric was surrounded by it. He kicked gently to stay afloat, his boots heavy in the water. He felt a weird foreboding and a hint of fear. This was definitely not how he had imagined spending his morning.
Suddenly he smelled hyacinth. A particularly syrupy smell. It was perfume. The scent unlocked a hidden memory bringing back a vision of Marjorie Hightower. Eric could see her face in his mind—long chestnut hair straight and falling to the shoulder with a cute curl at the end, plump cheeks, rosy with health and vigor, and a beautiful smile. She was just a girl of fifteen. Now, so many years later, she seemed to him like a cute child, though at the time, on both occasions they had met, there had definitely been a youthful attraction. Such a beautiful smile…
Something grabbed his ankles and yanked him under. He did not fight it.
The icy hands released his ankles and he remained submerged. She appeared before him. Marjorie Hightower, bloated and drowned, her face pale and swollen with water. A hideous sight.
“Eric?”
Her puffy eyes squinted at him, her distorted cheeks shifting like dough.
“Eric?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
Her face transformed, the blush of life drawing across it like a painting. Yes, this was how he remembered her, so young, so full of life. But the beautiful smile twisted into a sneer.
“Why did you kill me? Why did you betray me?”
“I didn’t kill you. It was a faery, disguised as me.”
Her face softened, her mouth making a round moue. “Oh.”
Their faces were close enough to touch, with only a few inches of cold water between them. Though he was completely submerged, Eric did not feel the urge to inhale, did not feel the rising panic of a drowning man. It was as if time stood still.
Marjorie still looked perplexed. “Not you? Not you.”
“They’re tricky, some of them. They pretend. And sometimes they kill.”
“Filthy blights,” she muttered.
Eric murmured in halfhearted agreement. No longer the advocate. Not just this moment.
“I loved you,” she said. “We were going to get married.”
“I know. But… we were just children.”
She seemed confused. To her it was as if no time had passed at all. “I loved you.”
Eric hardly knew her. Whatever he’d felt for this girl had passed long ago. What to say? Could he tell her he loved her even though it was a lie? Would that send her off to rest peacefully? Or break her heart? Or cause her to become an angry revenant stalking the grounds forever. He wasn’t going to do that.
“That was a long time ago. Can’t you tell? Look at me. I’m old enough to be your father now.”
She shook her head, her hair gently rippling against the resistance of the stilled water. “You were so handsome. And tall. We had a picnic lunch on a summer day, with our parents. The manor house in the background, and you smiled at me.”
“We were barely thirteen.”
“And you… you sent me a letter. They told me we were to be
wed and they gave me a letter. You wrote it. You signed it ‘with kindest regards.’ I remember that. I could never forget that. I read that letter so many times, imagining what it would be like, what our life together would be like. I kissed the paper it was written on.”
“I cried that day,” he said, “when you fell in. When you drowned. We didn’t even know you were murdered. The faeries kept it from us.”
He felt the girl’s confusion pelting him in a wave. She was unsettled by the memory of Eric’s hands at her throat, holding her down.
“It wasn’t me,” he said.
“I see. It wasn’t you. I knew it couldn’t be you. I loved you. I had so many plans. Tell me you felt the same.”
Her face had a hard edge. She couldn’t have really loved him, they hadn’t known each other well enough for that. Kissing a letter. This was nothing more than a young girl’s crush on the lord and heir, an imagined life in the big manor house. That’s all it was certainly. Just hopes and dreams.
He must tell her the truth. That’s the only way to end this, he thought, even if it risks my own life by drowning.
One wrong word and he imagined water filling his mouth, his lungs choking the life from him, condemning him to a tortured existence under the lake with her forever. Or perhaps the reverse was true. If he declared love she might force him to stay in the murky depths. Forever.
“I’m sorry, Marjorie. I hardly knew you. I thought you were a pleasant girl, but it wasn’t love. Not for me. Not yet. It might have been, given time, if we had married. I can’t know what would have happed. It might have been, but now it can never be.”
“It was real. I loved you.”
“It was real,” he said. “And that’s why you won’t let me drown here today. You have to let me go.”
And because she loved him she did let him go.
She didn’t smile as she melded away into the lake. Is she finally at peace? he wondered. Who can know?
As soon as she had gone the burning in his lungs began. Eric didn’t know how far he’d drifted from the shore. He kicked upward until his head breached the surface. The fog parted, slowly drifting off, and he paddled to his son at the shore.
“Father?”
“I’m all right.”
He stepped out of the lake. The ghost had been laid to rest, but now his doubts were fueled to the fire. Who had impersonated him? Who had killed the girl? Had it been Theodora?
He remembered what Griffin had told him. ‘You don’t know what she’s done. She’s a killer. A murderer!’
Chapter 41
Threadneedle stood with his back to her, leaning on his walking stick, watching the children play. It was good to see them outside, laughing and frolicking in a natural depression in the field, with the great ash tree on a rise in the distance. In this secluded area they were safe for the moment from prying eyes, but their laughter carried far across the crisp Autumn air. It’s a sad day, she thought, when one has to fear the sound of children’s laughter.
Nora drew the small oil cloth-wrapped bundle from her pocket. She had not yet looked inside, but now…
This thing that Threadneedle had sent her to fetch had cost a man his life. More than that, it had cost Nora her soul. She didn’t know what place the faeries held in the grand scheme of things but she had been raised a Catholic. Thou shalt not kill. That was the rule. She hoped the damn thing was worth it. She had to see.
As Nora peeled away the wrapping she got the sense the object inside was shaped somewhat like a gnarled twig. It weighed very little. When she drew aside the final layer and saw the thing she jerked her hands away, letting it fall to the grass. It was a human finger, so old and withered it was practically mummified.
For this? This thing was what Threadneedle needed with such urgency? She felt sick to her stomach but in the end there was nothing else for it but to deliver the item. She picked it up, using the oil cloth to avoid any further contact and wrapped it all over again.
She glanced further down the heath at Threadneedle, still with his back turned as he watched the children laugh and play.
She approached the faery spy as silently as she could but he heard her all the same. He turned around and his face lit up.
“Nora!”
His faery form had a pleasant smile and a healthy, she supposed, green color to his cheeks. He looked remarkably well, though she noticed he still leaned heavily on his walking stick.
“You’re back!” He stepped toward her but she lowered her head, halting his advance immediately.
“I can’t stay,” she said. “I’ve just come to bring you this.”
He seemed confused as he looked down at the thing in her hand, the small parcel wrapped in oil cloth. He took it from her but wasn’t interested in it at all. He seemed genuinely concerned. “What’s wrong?”
Nora couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. And she did let him take her in his arms for a moment.
But she couldn’t let it stay like that. She pushed him away.
“Cavendish had a boy watching your house. He surprised me there.”
“What happened?”
“I killed him. You’ll find his body on your drawing room floor. I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t… I killed him!”
“That’s no great loss to the world, Nora. But how did it happen? How did you do it?”
“I did what you taught me. The faery stroke. It was horrible. I had no choice. He was going to kill me. You know, for revenge. And I couldn’t think of anything else to do. But I remembered what you said. I got him to trust me, just for a second. And then… I created the bond. You have to, in order to do it. And then I burst his heart.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I had no idea he would be there.”
“In the bond I knew him for a minute. Our souls touched. I felt what he felt.”
“He was a loathsome piece of slime.”
“He was a person. He had feelings and ideas and, yes, he was a loathsome piece of slime but he had hopes and dreams and pain, so much pain and anguish and—and I killed him. And that’s why I can’t stay. I’m not cut out for this.”
“I don’t know about that. You are intelligent, resourceful, and very brave. I think you’re perfect for this type of work.”
She shook her head. “I lived my whole life trying to avoid faeries. I didn’t want to know them, I didn’t want to think about them, and I didn’t want to be one. And then you came along. You had the perfect pitch, didn’t you? Help my father. Just play a role—a role no one else was suited for. That got to me, didn’t it?”
She saw his face take on an expression she had never seen on it before. He looked like a schoolboy receiving a right scolding.
“And then you brought me along. The training exercises, the dinners in fancy places. You knew just what to do, just what to say. Of course you did. The next thing I knew I was running around town, pretending this and that, scuffling with outlaws, even playing the role of the Green Man. And I almost fell for it, I almost fell right into those beautiful green eyes of yours and so help me I would never have wanted anything more than that. But I looked in his eyes—Cavendish—when he died. When I killed him. I felt his pain. I don’t want this kind of life.”
“Everything has two sides, Nora. Nothing is all good or all bad.”
“Two sides I can understand but not two faces. I can’t do this anymore.”
She glanced at the children in the hollow. The morning mist lay heavily in the depression and they were playing lights across the dew, making a rainbow of colors in the field. They held up banners of light, red and green and yellow and danced, waving streamers of colored mist around and around. Laughing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t stay here a moment longer.”
“I understand,” he said. “I’m on my way back to the city. I have to… clean a few things up. We can go together. If you don’t want to stay at my place I can set something up—”
“No.�
�
“You could return to the Menagerie…?”
“I can’t go back. My career is in shambles. I would act again but I don’t want to be Horace Wilde anymore. He’s a fraud, a cheat. Just like the faeries.”
“Then act as yourself—as Anne Meadows or Nora Grayson.”
She shook her head. “How long before Thurston lets my secret out? No. I don’t want that. I need some time to think. To return home to Grayson Hall. I just want to walk on the beach. Let the seashore talk to me. The ocean always settles my mind.”
“And us?”
“Is there an us? Who are you? Richard Templeton? Jacob Schroeder, the King’s groomsman? The Count d’Argent? The lamplighter?”
“Threadneedle,” he said. “I am Threadneedle the faery.”
She turned away. “I’ve had enough of faeries.”
“I see. Going back to Thurston?”
“No. I can’t do that either.”
“All right. You’ll go home. I understand.”
“One more thing,” she said, indicating the oil cloth parcel he held in his hand. “Can you tell me what that thing is?”
Threadneedle did not hesitate. “It is the index finger of Saint Alphonso Unitarius. A holy relic of the Catholic Church.”
“Oh.”
He was not fooled. “You peeked?”
“I did.”
“I expected you would.”
“A holy relic? Are you becoming a Christian now?”
“Not hardly. Mother Moon and the Lord of the Forest serve me too well for that. But the Wild Hunt is about and none of us are safe.”
Chapter 42
November 7, 1761
St. James’s, London
George shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He felt unusually on edge this morning. Despite the comfort of his deep leather wing chair, he could not sit still. It felt as if he were sitting on a bed of sharp tacks.
Bright morning sunlight streamed down from a tall lead-glass window behind him, striking his desk. The polished surface, a great battleship of a desk piled with ledgers and journals all in perfect order, sent back an annoying glare. He tried to look away from the desk, but there was something there, inside the small round orb of glare, something that should not be there. He wasn’t sure what it could be. To his left stood a glass-and-patina oak cabinet and a small round mahogany table with a silk-shaded reading lamp. To his right, Secretary of State Sir William Pitt and his chief advisor Lord Bute. At the far side of the study, Queen Charlotte sat silently on a red velvet settee.