Legends of Australian Fantasy

by Jack

  ‘Mistress Blythe,’ Hawkmoor said. With his other hand he swept off his hat. She noticed that his heavy hair was working loose from its band at the back of his head. The wind, stronger now, was whipping strands about his face. Her skirts billowed in the gusts, and coloured leaves came showering around them both, like a carnival.

  ‘I wish to speak with you,’ she stammered.

  ‘I am at your service.’

  ‘A little more privacy would be fitting ...’

  ‘Certainly.’ Hawkmoor dismissed the groom, who bowed and trotted away. Together Hawkmoor and Mazarine walked towards the stables. The horse was eager to get to his haybox, and tugged on the reins; Hawkmoor caressed the steaming arch of the animal’s neck and soothed him with gentle words.

  Diffidently, Mazarine endeavoured to order in her mind the best way to broach the subject she dreaded. Presently she drew breath and opened her mouth, but once again she had left it too late. The keening of the wind and the low mutter of thunder running back and forth across the horizon had masked the sound of boots crunching on gravel.

  ‘What?’ bellowed the well-known voice of the earl, and in another few strides he was with them, Ripley close at his shoulder, and a couple of bodyguards loitering ominously in the background.

  ‘What passes here? Do my eyes deceive me, or do I see my own heir consorting with my ward, behind my very back? Do I deserve such thanklessness as this, that as soon as I look the other way the two of you are colluding secretly together? Mazarine, I hold you not responsible, for you are but a child, but you sir, have you no respect for your sire, no sense of filial devotion?’

  The earl’s flabby face was empurpled with emotion. Mazarine felt the heat of shock and indignation burn her own cheeks. Her companion, however, remained cool.

  ‘I may converse with whomsoever I wish,’ Hawkmoor said icily. ‘Your view is unreasonable.’

  ‘Do you dare defy me, you halting ingrate?’ the earl’s voice rose in pitch until it became a squeak. ‘Insubordinate pup! You itch only to take my place and inherit my money and title. ‘Tis true is it not? Eh?’

  Hawkmoor regarded his sire expressionlessly without deigning to reply, which attitude provoked the earl to greater wrath. He clenched his fists, quivering as if he longed to smite the calm and self-contained young gentleman who confronted him.

  Placing her hand beseechingly on her guardian’s arm Mazarine said, ‘I beg you sir, do not be angry with Fleetwood! He has done nothing amiss. I only asked to speak with him, that is all.’

  ‘Oh, so that is how it stands between you two, eh?’ The earl rounded on her. ‘She tries to protect her favourite, while he hides behind her skirts like some cringing cur!’ Pushing his face close to Hawkmoor’s, the earl snarled, ‘Go, sir! Get out! From this hour forth you are banished from my house. I disinherit you, as I ought to have done at your birth, for your slut of a mother was faithless. All that is yours will be thrown out upon the sward — let your servants pick up the pieces if they will.’

  Mazarine uttered a gasping cry.

  ‘Gladly will I go,’ said Hawkmoor. He bowed curtly to Mazarine, leaped upon his steed with extraordinary agility, and galloped away.

  As if to emphasize the drama of the moment a clap of thunder split open the skies overhead, and rain came sluicing down in torrents.

  Desolation enfolded Mazarine.

  * * * *

  The skies wept all night, as did the earl’s ward, alone in a deep armchair in the library. She was barely aware of the occasional noises of energetic housework emanating from different parts of the building, generated by Thrimby attending to his tasks. Before sunrise next morning the servant popped in and said without preamble, “E were somewhat envious o’ the bookish chap, were the young master.’

  ‘Fleetwood? Envious of Master Squires?’ Mazarine looked up and dabbed at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief.

  Thrimby, obsessively whisking a bunch of feathers in a cloud of dust over by the bookshelves, said, ‘Aye.’

  ‘Surely not!’

  ‘Aye, but ‘e woz, mark ye. Thought ye liked Squires more’n ‘im.’

  ‘I had no idea! In that case I must send him a message assuring him of my truest affection!’

  Immediately Mazarine fetched paper, ink and quill, and penned a note which she sealed with red wax and gave to her loyal lady’s-maid, with instructions to have it delivered swiftly and in utmost discretion to Southdale Farm. The reply came back that afternoon — Lord Fleetwood had not rested the previous night at the farmstead but had tarried there only for long enough to change horses. Declaring that he would catch the next post-chaise heading for the west coast, he had galloped away to town. Whither he had gone, no one could say — out of Amershire, certainly; possibly out of the country. The household at Southdale knew of no way to contact him and had no notion of when he would return.

  After this precipitate departure the earl’s behaviour towards Mazarine became conciliatory in the extreme, as if he wished to curry favour with her, to make amends for his outburst.

  ‘Let us dine together more often, my dear,’ he would say, ‘without the intrusion of any of these young pups. Let us ride out together in my coach! Poor creature — you do look downcast. Allow me to cheer you up! Come to town with me and I shall buy you a new hat, or a lap dog!’

  For Mazarine the only consolation for these trials was that the earl, aware that Lord Fleetwood had gone far away, allowed his ward to make daytime excursions without him at her side. It appeared, too, that he had got wind of Master Squires’s attachment to Laurelia Wilton, and felt reassured that there could be no intrigue between Mazarine and the clerk. Often, Mazarine and her maid, escorted by one of the Kelmscott equerries, would ride over to Clover Cottage. Filled with foreboding, she unburdened herself to her most trusted confidantes.

  ‘Soon, I am certain,’ she said to Laurelia Wilton on one such visit when they were alone together, ‘my guardian will ask me to be his wife. I shall refuse — but I fear what will happen next, for he is a ruthless man!’

  ‘Surely he would not use violence against you!’ Mazarine’s friend was horrified. Pinned loops of light brown hair, straight as corn silk, framed her heart-shaped face as she sat in the parlour working at her embroidery. Her gown was pale blue, her favourite colour.

  ‘I am not certain ...’ said Mazarine.

  ‘Thrimby bides in Kelmscott Hall. He will see that you come to no harm.’

  ‘Ah yes, the illustrious, industrious Thrimby. But I do not know the extent of his powers.’

  ‘He is an eldritch wight, is he not? A faerie-creature of the seelie kind?’

  ‘Perhaps. Who knows? Even if he is of that race, he is not of the powerful ones. Domestic wights may be lightning fast and expert at cleaning — also good at eavesdropping and spying — but I would not wager on their winning a battle with the master or any of his hired thugs.’

  ‘My dear Squires tells me your guardian’s finances are in disarray,’ said Laurelia. ‘He is close to ruin! If he can no longer pay these hirelings, he will have to let them go.’

  ‘I do not believe he is quite that desperate, yet.’ Mazarine sighed and added, ‘He professes affection for me, but I fear he is only after my inheritance.’

  ‘Nobody is in any doubt of that,’ Laurelia retorted tartly, ‘which is no insult to you. I only mean that the earl is incapable of love for any creature other than himself.’

  ‘He shall not lay his hands on any more of my parents’ money!’ cried Mazarine. ‘Already the executors pay him a sizeable pension for my upkeep. Oh, it has been odious beyond belief, this misunderstanding with Fleetwood. I only wish he would return swiftly! Where can he be? How I long to undeceive him! How I long for his support!’

  Hawkmoor, nonetheless, did not return.

  Weeks passed. During Nethilmis, the first month of Winter, itinerant strangers were glimpsed on several occasions, roaming in Kelmscott Park. On each occasion when Ripley and his henchmen got up a posse to thr
ow the ‘gypsies’ off the property, they had already disappeared.

  ‘Not gypsies, I am certain of it,’ Wakefield said to Mazarine and Laurelia one evening as they took their ease by the parlour fire at Clover Cottage. ‘As sure as Thrimby is a brownie, they are trow-folk — or hilltings, or Grey Neighbours as they are sometimes called. Trows, roaming abroad from their hidden lands beneath the hills.’

  ‘People around here believe that trows seldom stray into these parts,’ said Laurelia.

  ‘Then they had best be careful,’ said Wakefield, ‘for he who remains ignorant of the ways of wights puts himself at risk.’

  ‘Why?’ Mazarine asked. ‘I do not know much about trow-folk myself. Though other kinds of wights aplenty haunt Reveswall, trows are rare. Are they so unseelie?’

  ‘Not unseelie in the way the fuathan are unseelie,’ Wakefield replied, ‘for they are not destroyers of humankind, but neither are they always seelie. For the most part they neither help nor hinder human beings. Sometimes the trow-wives enter people’s homes by night, in search of a basin of clean water in which to bathe their babies.’

  ‘I thought wights had to be invited to cross the thresholds of humankind,’ said Laurelia.

  ‘At some time in the past,’ Wakefield answered, ‘a householder must have given them permission to enter that particular abode, and being immortal, they may keep that permission for generations of men until someone revokes it. The trow-wives depart by cock-crow, without doing harm, and might even leave a silver sixpence behind if they are pleased with the cleanliness of the establishment. They must be gone to Trowland before sunrise, else they will become Erithbund and forced to roam aboveground until sunset. On occasion whole tribes dance by moonlight, and on other occasions they take it into their heads to steal.’

  ‘Steal what?’

  ‘Silver ornaments. They love silver. And milch-cows, sometimes, for the cream. Or people.’

  ‘People ?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Wakefield, ‘and when they carry people off to live with them in Trowland, they leave a replica in their victim’s stead — a crudely carved post or log, which for a few hours remains wrapped in Glamour’s illusion. When the enchantment wears off, it can easily be seen that the replica is nothing more than a piece of wood.’

  ‘Do the trows hurt the stolen ones?’

  ‘No. They keep them as servants, bound by invisible, intangible chains. Those who are thus enchanted may never return to the lands of the sun.’ After a solemn hiatus he amended, ‘In almost all cases.’

  ‘What do you mean almost all cases?’ asked Mazarine, leaning her elbows on her knees. ‘Is there any chance people who are trow-bound can escape?’

  “Tis not impossible,’ said Wakefield, ‘though ‘tis unlikely.’ And he told the story of Katherine Fordyce, a woman who had died at the birth of her first child. ‘At least, folk thought she had died,’ said the storyteller, ‘but she had, in fact, been taken by the trows, and an effigy left in her place. You see, her family and friends had forgotten to sain her when her child was born, which was how she fell into the power of the trows. She dwelled quite comfortably among the Grey Neighbours but the enchanted cannot escape Trowland unless some human creature chances to see them and has presence of mind enough to repeat the phrase, Glide be aboot wis. The only mortal man ever to spy Katherine again was a man named William Nisbet, who was walking up a slope near her old home when it seemed as if a hole opened in the side of the hill. He looked in and saw Katherine sitting in what he described as a queer-shaped armchair, and she was nursing a baby. There was a bar of metal stretched across in front to keep her a prisoner. She was dressed in a white gown which folk later knew, by William’s account of it, to be her wedding dress. Nisbet thought she said to him, “Oh, Willie! What’s sent you here?” and he answered, “And what keeps you here?” to which she replied, “Well, I am hale and happy, but I cannot get out, for I have eaten their food!” William Nisbet was so taken aback that, alas, he forgot to say “Glide be aboot wis”. Katherine, being enchanted, was unable to give him any hint, and in a moment the entire scene disappeared.’

  ‘And has no one glimpsed her since?’ enquired Mazarine.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How long ago was she stolen?’

  ‘About five hundred years.’

  This sobering fact reduced the company to silence. They sat pondering the story’s significance while in the hearth, a log went up in sparks and collapsed in cinders.

  * * * *

  Nethilmis, the Cloudmonth, ushered in the Winter of 1038. Bands of ‘gypsies’ were seen more frequently in the district as the cold weather deepened. Across Severnesse, and indeed across the whole of Erith, the populace was preparing for the midwinter Imbrol Festival with traditional celebrations that would farewell the old year and welcome in the new. Plum puddings wrapped in calico were boiled in cauldrons. Choirs rehearsed the old songs that told of holly and ivy and sleigh rides, and huge logs burning in hearths.

  Three months remained until Mazarine’s twenty-first birthday, and the earl dedicated the first weeks of Winter to paying court to his ward. She remained adamant in her rebuffs. Perceiving that she was not to be convinced he appeared to become increasingly desperate, particularly when the bailiffs came knocking on his door brandishing letters of demand. It was highly embarrassing for a gentleman in his position, he cried indignantly, not to mention insulting, to be subjected to petty demands from commoners. Nonetheless the bailiffs would not be dissuaded, and put him on notice to pay his dues or suffer the consequences.

  Soon afterwards a liveried messenger rode out from Kelmscott Hall under escort by a heavily armed guard. He carried a sealed package containing a letter of utmost importance. No one save the earl and his chief steward knew to whom this significant missive was addressed, or what instructions it conveyed. Even Thrimby had not managed to discover anything about it.

  Mazarine continued to avoid her guardian, desiring only that time would swiftly bring her the day of freedom. She bade her lady’s-maid tie Hawkmoor’s purple ribbons in her hair every morning, and every evening she laid them out carefully on her dressing table. At nights she lay awake for hours.

  Two days later, her fragile equanimity was once again shattered.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Let those who would their loved ones keep

  Sain them, and be well-planned,

  Lest they be taken while you sleep,

  To that Enchanted Land.

  Early one bleak morning when snow-clouds were gathering in the skies, a new messenger came cantering with brisk determination along the avenue of cypress trees flanking the driveway. The rider was arrayed in the livery of the District Court. He bore a notice, addressed to Mistress Mazarine Blythe of Kelmscott Hall, and insisted on being present in the front drawing-room when she unrolled the scroll, which had been tied with official red ribbon and imprinted with the waxen seal of the Judiciary of Severnesse. After deciphering the contents, Mazarine let fall the parchment, swaying as if she, too, were about to drop to the floor. Her face blanched like paper. Master Squires, hovering concernedly at her side, supported her, helping her onto a nearby stool.

  ‘May I presume to look at this dispatch, Mistress Blythe?’ he murmured.

  Too faint to utter a word, Mazarine nodded weakly. Master Squires picked up the scroll and read it to himself.

  ‘Severnesse Shire Court, East Riding, Amershire.

  21st Nethilmis 1038.

  To Mistress Mazarine Blythe,

  Kelmscott Hall,

  Borough, of Breckmouth.

  East Riding, Amershire.

  Regarding Your Agreement with The Right Honourable The Earl of Rivenhall.

  Madam,

  The Purpose of this Letter is to give formal Notice of the Breach of your Verbal Promise of Marriage to The Right Honourable The Earl of Rivenhall, dated 1st Nethilmis 1038.

  Please be advised that due to your Failure to honour this Agreement, the Plaintif
f is entitled to claim Damages and asserts he is left with no choice but to refer this Matter to the Court of Severnesse. You are required to attend a Hearing at the Somerhampton Law Courts on 14th Dorchamis, 1031.

  Signed: A. C. Sotheby,

  Clerk, of Courts.’

  ‘By the Powers!’ Wakefield exclaimed, throwing down the scroll, ‘There must be some mistake!’

  ‘No mistake,’ said the earl peremptorily, bursting into the room with his usual entourage in tow. The court messenger bowed politely; the earl returned the salute with a nod. ‘Mistress Blythe made her vow of marriage to me before witnesses, and on that premise I based the planning of my finances. Now that she has gone back on her word I face ruin. I would forgive her, soft-hearted fool that I am, were she to honour her vow, but should she fail to return to her senses, I must demand recompense, as anyone in my position has a right to do.’