by Jenn Thorson
“Mother, don’t worry about me. What do you need?” Sir Rufus asked, taking her hand. “Fan, dry dressing gown … canoe?”
“Oh no, dear. Very sweet of you. Just maybe a little rest …”
Mary Ann moved to the pitcher on the not-so-dry dry sink and poured a glass of water. She handed it to Lady Carmine. “Drink this now,” she said. “It should help.”
Rufus scowled at her. “Water? Whatever is wrong with you? Wouldn’t you say she’s had enough?”
“She has a fever. She needs fluids. On the inside.” Mary Ann added before he could object. “And a cold compress. And plenty of rest.”
After the lady drank it down, Mary Ann poured Lady Carmine a second glass. “I know you might not want it, but do try drinking another one shortly. I’ll just set it here.” She left the glass on a nearby tray and attended to the compress.
But Rufus’ expression was all incredulity. “Shall I just get her a straw for the floors?”
“Do I detect some humor there, Sir Rufus?” Mary Ann was dabbing at the woman’s face with a cold wet cloth. At least the remaining snow had some good use.
“I’m perfectly serious.”
“If you want to seriously help then,” she said, “go find Douglas Divot. Bring him here.”
Rufus raised an eyebrow. “Divot? What’ll he do?”
“He’s a digger and a builder. He’s the one who built the mote around the Manor. He understands water flow. He might have some idea for stemming the damages indoors.”
Sir Rufus stood there blinking.
“Well? It’s not getting any drier, is it?” Mary Ann said.
He muttered something about if it weren’t a crisis and it weren’t his mum, he wouldn’t stand for anyone talking to him like that. But all said, he did stand and he did leave the room in search of Divot.
“Will you drink just a little more water?” Mary Ann asked, helping the Lady, as the rain beat down. Her own clothes and hair were soaked to their limit and she mopped water from her eyes.
“I understand you’ve been helping my son with his Vorpal sword training,” said Lady Carmine as Mary Ann set the glass down.
Mary Ann gave a start. The news had certainly gotten around quickly. “Er, yes, My Lady. At his request.”
“I appreciate your support of him,” Lady Carmine continued. “We all do. Remarkable girl you are, knowing what to do with everything from ill weather, to cleaning, to Jabberwock fighting. How did you learn the sword work?”
Mary Ann wrung out a blanket at the base of the bed. “I wish I knew, My Lady.”
Pity came over her face. “Ah, you’ve forgotten it, haven’t you? Along with your name.” She shook her head. “So sad.”
“No, My Lady, I believe it’s backwards training I’ve gotten. I’ll likely learn its origins in the future.” She dodged a lightning bolt as she moved to open the window a crack.
“And do you enjoy it? The swords, horses and everything?”
It was a question Mary Ann had not expected. She’d never had an employer who asked her opinion on anything. And she surprised herself with her own answer. “I do, My Lady. Very much.”
A nod. “Then: Cornelius Clashammer,” said the woman.
“Beg pardon, Lady Carmine?” It was hard to hear over the rain.
“Oh, yes, people do beg him. Why, they come for miles to beg! But if it’s right, simply asking Mr. Cornelius Clashammer to train you should do the trick well enough.” Lady Carmine spied the confusion on Mary Ann’s face. She gave a light, tired chuckle. “Clashammer is the trainer you should seek when the right time comes for your own sword study. All the way out in Hillandale or possibly Yon, I can’t quite recall the locale at the moment. Nonetheless, it’s well worth the trip, I hear. He trains all the best knights, the keenest adventurers. Frankly, we’d expected he’d be the one to show up and train Rufus. But I’m glad it was you. I’m sure you’re much nicer.” And she patted Mary Ann’s hand.
Mary Ann suppressed a laugh at the absurdity of the idea, as she wrung out a table runner. “Can a housemaid be an adventurer?”
Lady Carmine smiled a sweet, weary smile. “Can a caterpillar fly, my dear?”
Mary Ann left Lady Carmine sleeping and slogged to the servants’ bedchamber for a dry set of clothes. By the time she was done, Douglas Divot had arrived and was standing with the knight, Lord Carmine, and half the staff at the bottom of the staircase. They were discussing run-off and fluid dynamics and how they might rig a makeshift gutter feature to, at least, funnel the water somewhere sensible until the fever broke.
It was progress.
Mary Ann went about her chores reflecting on her morning’s activities. So the mirror that was in Mr. Rabbit’s hands — er, paws — contained a portal set to go to Thither. The question remained: how to trigger it. Also interesting were the preliminary plans for a whole network of transporting mirrors to be done, with frames crafted by her very own father. If it went forth, it would change much about the way one moved from place to place in Turvy, and Turvy did enjoy its traditions. But was that reason enough to dispose of the woodworker? It wouldn’t sideline a project such as that, since they could always get another craftsman for the frames. The mirror was the key element there and Gilda Plaine was alive and well.
It was a puzzlement.
By evening, Mary Ann felt like she was standing in a bog of ideas and motive. Why would anyone kill her father? Especially when everyone knew of him and yet no one seemed to know him at all. In a way, she found this comforting. She wasn’t an ignored daughter, trivial to his life. She was part of a great lively community of people he made efforts to avoid completely. She slipped her father’s accounts book from under the mattress on her side of the bed and reexamined the details there. The money owed to her father by Mr. Banks was not insignificant. Why hadn’t it been paid? Had it been collected? And if it had, where did the money go? That was something worth finding out. She had the client names there. She would just have to go to the source.
If Mr. Banks were skimming off the top, that might explain his abrupt departure. But was it reason enough to hire an assassin? There was no indication that John Sanford Banks knew Jacob Morningstar at all. And she knew that Morningstar was responsible because she saw it with her own eyes.
Yes, the only person who seemed to actually interact with her father had fled.
Unless …
Who do you talk to when you want to know more about a person who rarely leaves home?
You talk to his neighbors. And Mary Ann had a few candidates for that.
12
Hope sprung early the next morning. For one, Lady Carmine seemed to have taken a turn for the better overnight. The rainfall was down to a mist now, the temperature in her room had evened out with the rest of the manor and that pesky storm cloud had gone from charcoal to pearl grey. What’s more, the patient was in good spirits. “So kind of you to check on me, dear,” she said. “I feel like this front will clear any time now. And when it does, I will not forget your kindness.”
“Just doing my job, My Lady,” Mary Ann said.
“Ah, but you see, you aren’t. Tending to me is not your job at all.”
It’s Celeste’s, thought Mary Ann. That was the unspoken truth there. But Celeste was unhelpful in a crisis situation. She’d spent most of yesterday wringing her hands and having a bitter row with her beau, the carriage driver. She simply wasn’t inclined toward wringing towels or readying rowboats.
“I’m glad you’re on the mend, My Lady,” Mary Ann said. She mopped the floor, wiped down the tables and stoked the fire, then went about the rest of her chores.
Her training session with Sir Rufus was hopeful too, but in an entirely different way. It was not jovial exactly, since he was incapable of that, but upbeat, perhaps. “Mother’s doing better, you know,” he said, swinging the Vorpal sword at what she knew was half-power. For some reason, he was holding back.
“I do,” she said. As the swords
made contact, she gave it all she had. CLANG!
“She credits you for her returning health,” he continued. He put more energy into the blow, she noticed. SWWOOP —WHACK!
“She’s the one who’s healing.” Mary Ann dodged and gave it an upper thrust.
“She likes you.” WONNG!
“And I her.” CRACK!
“It would be a shame to disappoint her, then.” WHUMMM!
“I don’t plan to.” CHINNNG!
“And did you plan to disappoint Warren Rabbit?” A parry.
She moved to higher ground for a better angle.
Sir Rufus followed. “That’s some strange business worth discussing, I think. That and why you keep vanishing during the day.”
“Okay, that’s it.” Mary Ann dropped her sword arm. “You’re doing it all wrong.”
He blinked and lowered his weapon, too. “The sword work?”
“Not the sword work. Forget the sword work,” she said. “You are the master of the house. I am a housemaid. I do my job properly, so you need never notice me. That’s a tradition that’s worked nicely for everyone for years and years and years. But you people — why, I’ve never met such a family and their habit of noticing housemaids!”
“Look, it’s not that you’re there and I see you, but shouldn’t. It’s that you’re not there and I see you not being there.”
“My work is there, completed. That is all that matters. My presence is irrelevant. You shouldn’t notice me to notice when I’m not there,” she said and then considered it more. “Has anyone else noticed my absence?”
“Not as I’m aware,” he said. “But I can make that happen, if you don’t come clean.”
“Coming clean is what I do.” But she felt a twinge of worry over the comment that rippled across her expression.
He latched onto that swiftly enough. “Did you hear the news? There was a girl with golden hair who grew twenty times her size right in the middle of Queen Valentina’s tart trial the other day.”
She set her jaw. “Oh, was there?”
“Scared the jury to bits, I heard,” he said. “What’s more, they seem to think it was the same girl with the same modus operandi at Warren Rabbit’s house. They said she called herself Alice, but alas, they’re not sure if Alice isn’t an alias.”
“Indeed,” Mary Ann said sourly.
“But you’re right,” he said, “she’s not you.”
“Excuse me?” She hadn’t seen this part coming.
“She looks nothing like you. She’s got different hair. And different eyes. And unlike you, she is just a child.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because I saw the finished poster,” he said. “And I see you.” His gaze now was very direct and full of weight. And was that … a hint of a smile?
She had to admit, she did rather like his face in this light. It wasn’t a handsome one — it was too long, with too many angles, the mouth too wide and the eyes too small — but it was a good one, an interesting one. And he was flushed, so the freckles weren’t quite so intense.
She felt herself flush, too.
“Also,” he said, “because I was with you when that tart trial was happening. Can’t be in two places at once, you know.”
“You’re right,” she said, feeling like there wasn’t quite enough air in this outdoors at the moment. “And I need to go.”
“What?”
“Lunch,” she said.
“I can give you an excuse for lunch,” he called.
But Mary Ann was already down the path.
Lunch was the same as always — helping in the dining room, watching that tray go up to the Tower and an old one return empty. So it wasn’t until after clean-up and a few pre-tea chores that Mary Ann got a chance to scarper off. This time, she made good and certain Sir Rufus was not following her; after this morning, there was no predicting where that would lead.
She’d been thinking a lot about her childhood during the past day and it had occurred to her that the people who knew the most about her father and his goings on were the ones planted closest to home. So Mary Ann headed to Rowan Carpenter’s cottage and called out to some of the locals.
“Pardon me? Hello? Do you have time for a few questions?” Mary Ann asked.
She looked up at the towering trees lining the house. One tree stretched its branches. “Time?” The voice was creaky and echoing. “Young lady, we have rings and rings of it. What would you like to discuss? Weather? Deciduous and conifer politics? Music perhaps?”
“I’d call it history,” said Mary Ann.
“Well, we have seen peace and battle, we’ve seen sunrises and sunsets, we’ve seen kings rise and crowns fall. What would you like to know?”
“More recent history, I think. About this area, the owner of this property. I used to live here. I don’t expect you to remember me specifically.”
“Let’s get a good look at you, girl,” and the tree bent low, held up a pair of pince-nez in one branch before its gnarled face and squinted.
“I’m Mary Ann Carpenter. I lived here when I was, er, a seedling.”
The squint continued a moment further, then the eyes, which looked like knotholes to the casual observer, went wide. “Ohhh, Mary Ann,” said the voice. “Indeed! You climbed my branches.”
“You played games with my dropped seedlings,” said a second tree.
“You made beautiful fans with my fallen leaves,” said a third.
“Yes,” she smiled, “that was me.”
“How many rings do you have now?” a Maple asked.
The visual was very unpleasant when applied to people, she thought, and she got a new insight into how trees must feel about it. But she had an answer. “Eighteen rings,” she said.
“Not such a long time,” said the Maple.
“A pittance,” said a Tumtum.
“Hardly a dent in the universe,” said the Oak.
Mary Ann nodded. “And it’s because you all have been here and have observed so much, I was wondering if you had seen anything unusual lately?”
“We saw you and that tove put your father to mulch, if that’s what you mean,” said the Oak.
“Well, yes,” she said, hoping not to dwell on that point, “but I was rather wondering whether you’ve seen anyone else show up here?”
“There was a Royal from Neath that came by. The one we assume cut down your father in the first place. But you were here for that.”
Yes, she was here. They had seen some of it. She hoped that wouldn’t cause her problems in the future. “And before that?”
“That walrus friend of his.”
“Yes,” said the Tumtum tree, “that walrus fellow came by perhaps once a week for over a decade.”
Mary Ann said, “And did you ever overhear any of their discussions? Were they … friendly?”
“One time not long ago it got a bit heated,” said the Maple. “I could hear the argument through the open windows. Your father said something ‘would not do’ and had to be rectified. I specifically remember that: ‘rectified.’ And then that walrus fellow said it was not to worry and things got quieter. Things must have been resolved because we smelled human food not long after that.”
“I heard some laughter,” said the Tumtum.
“And the walrus fellow came out looking jolly, picking at a tusk with a bit of wood, a spring in his step and his belly round,” said the Oak.
“And you never saw my father with anyone but Mr. Banks? — Er, the walrus fellow,” she clarified.
“Not in a number of rings, no. The walrus would come sometimes with some helpers to move a new piece of furniture. But there was always that walrus.”
The Oak said, “Your father came and went himself, usually returning with a bag of supplies. Food or wood. But he was alone. He seemed to like it that way. He would whistle to himself. Oh, how he could whistle!”
Mary Ann had forgotten about that. The one fond memory she had of her father.
The warbling whistle that could make the birds take notes on technique.
“He was all right, you know,” said the Tumtum tree. “For a human. He never cut us. He always used only fallen trees to make his work. He gave them new life. Nobility. He helped them live on.”
“Well …” creaked the Maple, “he could have left them to return to the earth, could he not? He could have refrained from mangling our friends’ dead bodies for art … That might have made him better …”
The Tumtum tree leaned down and whispered, “Ignore Clarence. Nobody likes him.”
Hm, Mary Ann thought. The things one learns. All this time, she’d no idea the Maple’s name was Clarence.
Mary Ann thanked them for their time and headed down the path to her next stop.
“Hello?” Mary Ann called into the nest from the coop’s stoop. “Hello?”
“Hello?” called a voice in return. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Nightwing? I don’t know if you’ll remember me. It’s Mary Ann Carpenter, your neighbor Rowan Carpenter’s daughter. I knew you and your husband when I was young.”
“Oh, come in, child, come in! So nice of you to cawwwwl.”
It had not been easy getting up into the giant Pine, even with the Pine’s kind assistance, and Mary Ann entered the raven’s abode now a bit strained, full of DwindleAde and out of breath. “Mrs. Nightwing, a pleasure to see you again.” In fact, Mary Ann wasn’t seeing much of anything yet as her eyes adjusted to the light in the place. “I was wondering if you had a moment?”
She was almost able to discern detail now. The bird was at a writing desk — an ornate one quite obviously designed by Rowan Carpenter. The bird’s jet feathers looked glossy in the light of a candle. The candle was, in fact, the nub of a taper candlestick. At Mary Ann’s new reduced size, it looked like a pillar. The bird wore a collection of assorted gems, glass and fragments of shell on strings around her neck. This glinted in the light, too.
“I always have a moment for an old friend,” said Mrs. Nightwing. “Besides, I wasn’t getting on much with this scene, anyway.”