Uncertain Magic

by Laura Kinsale

  Her mouth thinned and quivered, and the blurring in her eyes was not all smoke. She hefted the scrabbling animal and turned away, slipping a little as her skirts trailed in the mud just outside the low front door. She reached her horse and stood there, unable to mount, unable to cry, unable to do anything but stand helplessly and clutch the filthy, unhappy piglet to her breast.

  She heard Faelan behind her. He took the little animal under one arm in a grip that made it squeal even louder, and with the other hand boosted Roddy into her saddle. He handed up the piglet and left her. Without a word, he began to rummage in his saddlebag.

  He brought out a half loaf of hard-crusted bread and some oatcakes. He tore the bread, and Roddy saw him slip a gold coin deep into the soft interior. When the woman came out of the hut to watch, he offered her a portion of the bread and oatcake, and leaned against a tree to eat the rest.

  Roddy sat on her horse with the piglet and watched. Somehow, it seemed, she had gotten to be the villain of this piece: here she sat like some aloof princess with her royal booty while the two of them shared a companionable meal. Faelan ate all of his, but the peasant woman only nibbled at her oatcake. When she had eaten part, she nodded toward the hut and spoke. Roddy understood that she meant to ask Faelan if he would be pleased for her to share the bread with her baby.

  He nodded assent. As soon as she disappeared inside the hut, he swung up onto his horse and nudged it toward Roddy. Grabbing her reins, he led her at a rapid trot down the brushy path and out of sight of the cottage.

  Roddy had her hands too full of piglet to make any complaints or demands at the bouncing gait. They splashed across a deep, wide stream, and began rising steadily. When the path flowed into an overgrown road and took a switchback, she realized suddenly where they were.

  Above them loomed the burned-out mansion, rising dark gray and skeletal against the hill. Faelan’s horse broke into a canter and hers followed, demanding every ounce of skill she had as a horsewoman to hang on to the squirming pig and keep her seat. Faelan didn’t seem particularly worried that she’d lose it, she thought grimly, and could not decide whether that was a compliment or an insult. Or just forgetfulness…although how he could forget this pig when it squealed as if it were being eaten alive she could not imagine.

  They drew up before the great house, the horses blowing and the piglet kicking and complaining. Roddy could see the far hillside through the barren windows. Like a dead hand, a piece of rotting silk waved gloomily from the closest one.

  “Will you shut that damned thing up?” Faelan snarled as the piglet’s squalling echoed off the ruined walls.

  Roddy was angry; she was exhausted from fighting the piglet and trying to stay on her horse; her ribs ached from the baby animal’s thumpings; she was hungry, and she had the strong suspicion that it was her own lunch that had gone to feed the cottier woman while Faelan had stood calmly by and eaten all of his own.

  “Oh, yes, my lord,” she snapped. “Immediately!” She held the piglet out straight in her trembling arms and gave it a shake. “Silence, please! Or His Most High and Mighty Royal Highness will have you summarily evicted!”

  He dragged her horse up and twisted around, his mouth tight and dangerous. “Don’t tread on me, Roddy. You’ve damn well done enough today.”

  “What have I done? Sat by and watched you throw a man out of his living. Taken the food out of a babe’s mouth because of some nonsense about fairies—”

  “Get down.” He swept the piglet out of her hands and dismounted with it under one arm. She watched him stride over toward the house and deposit the animal in one of the empty ornamental urns that guarded the broad, moss-covered steps. The piglet shrieked pathetically, its cries interspersed with the scrabbling sounds of its small feet on the stone. “God,” he said. “Will it never be silent?”

  “It’s hungry.” Roddy dismounted alone, though it was no easy task in her hampering skirts. “Like some others I could mention.” From the cantle of her saddle hung a leather wine flask. She untied it and peered over the top of the stone vase, holding the mouth of the flask pinched closed until the piglet’s anxious lips found a shape that promised nourishment.

  The commotion in the urn quieted suddenly. The piglet took to the “imported” Spanish wine as if it were ambrosia.

  Faelan swore. “Will you waste all our drink on that squalling beast?”

  “I’ve gone hungry. I suppose you can go thirsty.”

  He paced over to where she stood looking down into the urn and pulled up her chin. “Hungry, are you? Surely such mortal weaknesses don’t touch your charitable soul.”

  She jerked away. “The only food I begrudge is that you ate. You might have given her it all.”

  “She wouldn’t have taken it that way.”

  “No? How convenient, to think so.”

  His frown grew black and deep. “I know these people,” he said. “She wouldn’t have taken it.”

  “If you know them so well, why did you tarry there at all? Could you not predict what would happen?” She lifted her eyes and stared hotly into his. “Behold—” she sneered. “A fairy, my lord. Come to steal a babe, or a swine, or whatever she can filch. I know what people think of me; how they dread to look at me, and turn away as soon as they can. ’Tis no different here, but only more honest.” Her voice broke slightly, and she clenched her teeth and looked down to hide it. “Banshee,” she said to the wine flask and the suckling pig. “Is that how they’ll call me? Well, I understand the meaning of that, too, my lord. It takes no great knowledge of the people to guess.”

  A silence followed her bitter words, filled only by the sniffling sounds of the piglet. Faelan turned away and crossed the steps; sat down heavily in the center.

  “Yes.” His voice sounded suddenly hollow and tired. “I shouldn’t have stopped there. I was angry. I wanted to show you—” He broke off, frowning down at his boots. “Damn you. Why did you cross me with Willis?”

  “I should think that was obvious. It’s wrong, to put him out with nothing. I won’t live in that house, and I won’t live in this Mr. Farrissy’s house when you put him out. I couldn’t, knowing—” She bit her lip, and then said carefully, “imagining what it would feel like, to lose one’s home so suddenly.”

  “And how do you suppose that woman felt,” he snapped, “when her husband died and Willis evicted her because she couldn’t meet the rent?”

  A furious response died on Roddy’s tongue as the significance of his words dawned on her. “He put her out?” she repeated stupidly.

  “Oh, aye—that he did, my dear. Along with a hundred others.” Faelan rubbed his hands across his face. Then suddenly, harshly, he laughed. He took off his hat, leaning with one elbow on the highest step with his black hair curling and blowing softly in the wind. “So,” he said. “What do you think of your new abode?”

  Roddy blinked.

  He waved his hat, taking in the ruined mansion in one sweep. “You’ve made your bed, little girl. This seems to be the only place now that we have to lie in it.”

  Faelan, Roddy mused with a sigh, was most definitely not quite sane. From her position on the hill above the house, she looked down into the biting west wind on five weeks of progress. The structure had taken on a strange, comical appearance—half hairy, half bald—where the hastily erected roof framework had been covered temporarily with thatch that was now being removed to make way for the blue slates that had arrived by ship from Wales.

  She drew her cloak up around her chin, holding MacLassar under the warm folds. He gave a comfortable little series of grunts and settled down to sleep after his lunch of cow’s milk and Spanish wine.

  It was Faelan who had named the piglet. MacLassar—Son of Flame, for the way it had emerged from its first tumultuous bathing to follow doggedly at Roddy’s heels and curl up at her feet on their bed of straw in the abandoned stable.

  Roddy could see Faelan now on the roof with the other workers; he was easy to pick out, taller and broader
of shoulder than the rest, his voice clipped and impatient as he issued orders and then moved to do the job himself if the laborer didn’t respond fast enough for him.

  He had absolutely no tact.

  She remembered with wrenching clarity the day the tenants and cottiers had gathered at his invitation in front of the big house. They were all sorts, some plain and warmly dressed, but many in threadbare wool. A surprising number sat on good hunters, decked out in clothes as fine as any country squire’s. They stood in a straggling half-circle facing the terrace and the house, with their hats in their hands so that the chill wind off the sea blew their hair in their eyes, waiting for Faelan to speak.

  They were afraid of him. All of them. In some it was a conscious thing, as the cottier woman’s fear had been—a peasant’s belief in fairies and the creatures of the night. In others, mainly the ones on horseback, the fear was clothed in belligerent anger, in mental scorn and enmity. There were patterns there, secrets and self-interest, but the fear hung over it all like black smoke. They had expected an Englishman and a stiff and proper lady, but to a man what they saw was something else entirely. The devil and his fallen angel. A bad dream come to life.

  Faelan just stood, watching the uneasy crowd in silence. He seemed to be looking at each man at his leisure, immune to the cold that made everyone else shiver and curl their toes in their boots and MacLassar huddle completely under Roddy’s skirt. At length a rider kicked his horse forward and reined up in front of the weed-grown terrace steps.

  “Will you be speakin’, my lord,” he demanded, “or keepin’ us stamping our feet all the day long?”

  Faelan raised his eyes to the man on the horse, a man whose sparse-haired pate wouldn’t even have topped his lord’s shoulders if the rider had been standing on the ground.

  “Rupert,” Faelan said pleasantly. “Rupert Mullane. I remember.”

  His pure, unaccented intonation rang out like a clear warning bell. Rupert Mullane gave a stiff nod in return for the recognition. He was secretly a little gratified to be remembered, but he knew better than to show it. “You’ve a marvelous head for names,” he said ungraciously. “You might have come back and used it a few years past.” He paused, and then added, “My lord,” as if it were an after-thought, hoping his comrades appreciated his daring incivility.

  “I was prevented.”

  Rupert would have snorted in disbelief, but even from a slight advantage of height, he did not quite have the nerve.

  “Mr. Mullane,” Faelan said. “If you would be so kind as to remove your mount…”

  Roddy turned curiously toward the crowd, surprised to find that several were pleased to see Mullane dismissed so coolly. The approvers stood at the back, a knot of three, two strapping young men and an older one dressed in muddy shoes and worn leggings. Roddy focused on the oldest, who was half listening and half fretting about a milk cow that had dried up and the charge Mullane planned to make for a replacement. But Faelan’s next words caught the man’s full attention.

  “Gentlemen,” Faelan said, when Mullane had reluctantly backed his horse aside. “My intentions are simple. I plan to put this estate into full productivity. I have no interest whatsoever in your religious beliefs, your political affiliations, or the way you’ve always done things. In all matters concerning my land, I demand your unreserved cooperation. If you or your families are ill fed or clothed, you will come to me. In return for short-term assistance, you will plant what I tell you, when and where. Those who wish to participate with me in improvements to the estate may lease cattle from me at five shillings a head per annum. You will do things in my way, or you may expect that your lease will not be renewed. Are there any questions?”

  Faelan, Roddy thought ruefully, could give his own mother lessons on insensitivity. Only the trio Roddy had noticed before, and a few others, turned to look at one another in disbelief at the astonishing generosity of the five-shilling offer. The rest were bridling visibly at Faelan’s blunt demands.

  Mullane was quick to capitalize on the fantastical sound of the scheme. “Five shillings, my lord!” He flung a grin over his shoulder toward his fellow riders. “He’ll be runnin’ us out of business, now!”

  “Yes,” Faelan said calmly. “I will.”

  Oh, God, Roddy thought, closing her eyes in despair.

  “And just where would these cattle be hidin’?” a horseman at the far end of the gathering called. “Faith, I’ve no five-shillin’ cattle for sale.”

  “Nor I!” cried another, and a round cheer of agreement went up.

  Faelan shrugged. “Not yet, perhaps.” He surveyed the muttering crowd. “Any other questions?”

  “Aye! Will ye be upholdin’ the tithe?” someone shouted, from far back and unseen.

  Everyone quieted. That sudden silence was warning enough, but Roddy received the full force of feeling on the subject. The tenants might be divided over the five-shilling cattle, but here was an issue they would unite and kill for.

  “What tithe?” Faelan asked, in that carefully emotionless voice Roddy had learned to recognize.

  A babble broke out, shouts, and Mullane urged his horse forward. “To the damned Church of Ireland!” he yelled, dragging on his horse’s reins until the poor animal danced and half reared in protest.

  Roddy took a step backward, intimidated by the rising emotion. But Faelan’s hand on her elbow stopped her as he faced the crowd. “I don’t give a damn if you pay the Church of Ireland or the Church of Rome or if all your souls go to bloody hell,” he shouted. “But don’t look to the Devil Earl for salvation when you’re starving to death. Not if you cross me now.”

  In the disconcerted silence that followed this speech, Faelan began to look to his tenants like the devil indeed. To hear him call himself by the title they’d used to vilify him for twenty-five years seemed to make the illusion concrete. Roddy realized that the Devil Earl had been something of an entertainment at a distance, like a child’s shiver of pleasure over tales of ghosts, but in the flesh he appeared all too satanic for comfort. And his bride…

  They wouldn’t even look at Roddy, except from the corners of their eyes. Abruptly, they all wanted to leave. Further discussion of leases and cattle and even tithes seemed to lose its appeal. When they came up one by one to tug their forelocks and make their awkward bows, there was an agitation that bordered on panic in the simplest of them, and a struggle to hold back superstitious uneasiness even in the more sophisticated. Roddy smiled in her friendliest manner and got nothing but grunts and monosyllables in return.

  Rupert Mullane hung back until last, and dismounted in stiff dignity. He kissed Roddy’s hand with a flourish. For the briefest moment he held her gaze, and her talent reacted, going down levels and levels of thought in an instant, past the pride and the despair of being too small to physically intimidate, past the anger at Faelan’s highhandedness, past the wild schemes of retaliation down to the fear, real and deep, that Faelan could do what he promised—destroy Mullane’s livelihood. And underneath that fear was animal instinct: the will to survive and prosper at any cost.

  Faelan turned away and started back for the house as the gathering broke up into little knots of men who hurried off in pregnant silence. Roddy called softly to him. When he turned, she nodded toward the cottier and his two sons, who were lingering under the pretense of adjusting their leggings.

  Faelan appeared to recognize the situation in an instant. “Send Martha,” was all he said before walking on. “Meet me in the study.”

  Roddy nodded, glad that in this, at least, he had realized the delicacy of human psychology. The cottier and his sons were in a difficult position. They wanted to investigate Faelan’s offer, but to be the first to do so openly would place them firmly in his camp, where they were not at all certain that they wanted to be.

  With MacLassar at her heels, she hurried into the house where the maid Martha had begun a furious attack on the impossible job of sweeping out decades of accumulated rubble. “Those men—”
Roddy almost shoved Martha out the terrace door. “Ask them in for tea, and then bring them to the study. Hurry!”

  Martha gave her mistress a look which was as expressive as the astonishment in her mind before she gathered her skirts and rushed after the cottier family, who had begun to walk away.

  Roddy pulled her shawl around her and headed for the “study,” which was in fact only a room in the old servants’ quarters which still had a dry roof. In the two days since Martha had arrived with their baggage, she and Roddy had been able to clear and arrange a makeshift desk out of two overturned cookpots and an old stall partition. It was so cold in the room that Roddy could see her breath frost when she pushed open the door. She found Faelan on his knees making up the fire.

  “They’ll be here in a moment, my lord,” she said, crossing to the window. With the corner of her shawl, she wiped at the accumulated dust on the broken pane, trying to add more light to the dismal scene. She heard Faelan come up behind her and turned, brushing at her hands.

  He caught one wrist and raised it, kissing a smudgy palm with a hard, brief pressure. His fingers were warm against her icy skin, but she felt the tension in them, saw the taut look about his eyes that had been there the night of the fairy ball. It was important to him, this meeting with three rough country peasants. It was life or death to the dreams he cherished.

  Martha ushered the trio into the room with an air that would have been casual in London, but which seemed quite regal in this dingy place.

  “Mister Donald O’Sullivan. Mister Evan and Mister Fe…Fac…” Martha bit her unruly tongue and took a breath.

  “Fachtnan,” said the tallest of the two sons, with a shy, sideways grin on his freckled face. “Ye make it pretty, miss, however ye speak it.”

  Martha curtsied quickly, blushing to the roots of her hair with pleasure at the small personal attention. She looked with shining eyes at Fachtnan. Oh, la, she thought, he likes me, and hurried to pump the ancient bellows and set the teapot on the hob. Roddy had planned to send the maid off and make the tea herself, but she hadn’t the heart to cut Martha’s little romance so short.