Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  He heaved a great sigh, and nodded. "That is as true a thing as I think you have ever said," he told her. "You're quite right, and right to remind me. No, we mustn't lose hope; if we do that—"

  He looked off into the distance again, but this time as if he was actually looking for something, and not to avoid her gaze.

  Perhaps—hope?

  "If we do that," he repeated, quietly, as if he was telling himself a great truth "We really shall be utterly lost, and there will be no turning back for any of us."

  She shivered. Because that had sounded altogether less like an aphorism, and far more like a prophecy.

  19

  May 2, 1917

  Broom, Warwickshire

  LITTLE ELEANOR DID HER DISAPPEARING act not long after the quarrel had foundered and crashed, leaving Reggie alone in the meadow, staring glumly after her. The stupid words he'd said, the bitter ones she had responded with, still hung in the air. Nothing was resolved, except, perhaps, she seemed genuinely sorry she had thrown him into a mental funk, and he was genuinely sorry he hadn't thought before he'd spoken.

  In fact, in retrospect, he hadn't been at all observant. He'd been so preoccupied with his own thoughts—well, that was a kind way of saying he'd been paying no attention to anything outside of himself. It should have been obvious that her circumstances were changed, drastically, from the last time he had seen her, before the war—her clothing alone should have told him that.

  He gulped, as something else occurred to him. Oh, hell. I've put my foot in it, well and truly. She had every intention, the last time he saw her, of going to Oxford, and her father had clearly had the means to send her. Her clothing had been good, she had mentioned tutors and special studies in order to pass the entrance qualifications, so although all Reggie knew about her father was that he was a well-off manufacturer, there was certainly money to spare in their household. But her father had been an early casualty of the war, and where had that left her? Had his businesses gone to pieces? So many businesses had—either wrecked without a supervisory hand on the tiller, or collapsed because the war effort siphoned off more and more in the way of manpower and resources until there was no way to keep going.

  So—now she was poor. Having to work for a living—that much was obvious from her clothing and her hands. Probably she was a maid somewhere in the village or the surrounding farms—the servant of one of those shopkeepers' or farmers' daughters whose intelligence and expectations he had so maligned.

  And he had babbled on about scholarships for the boys, when she, so quick, so intelligent, with all of her dreams and expectations blighted, had sat there and let him blather fatuously about what he was going to do for boys he didn't even know—

  And he had thought that he was being her friend. She assuredly was his—and look how he had treated her! Oh, very clever, Reg. Take a juicy chop and dangle it in front of someone who's been dining on crusts, then tell her she can't have it. He felt sick, absolutely sick as a cat. No wonder she'd blown up at him. He could not possibly have managed anything more cruel if he'd set out to torture her on purpose.

  And now, of course, he had set things up so that if he offered her a scholarship, he would look as if he was humoring her, patronizing her. Throwing her crumbs out of misplaced pity, even though he didn't think she had any future other than as the wife of a menial laborer and that any education given her would be wasted. Or worse, as if it didn't matter if he offered her a scholarship because he didn't expect her to last out the first term.

  You really are a prize idiot.

  She would probably never come back here again after this. And he wouldn't blame her. Why would she care to continue to befriend someone who treated her so shabbily?

  But then, guilt turned to irritation. Hang it all, this was at least her fault in parti Why hadn't she simply said something about her current straitened circumstances? She didn't have to ask for help, but if she had just said something about not having the money to go to Oxford, well, of course he would have jumped in with an offer to help her out! Why did females have to be so confounded complicated! He was in hearty sympathy with Bernard Shaw's Henry Higgins. . . .

  Except that he was also in hearty sympathy with Bernard Shaw's Eliza Doolittle. Actually, more so than with Higgins, if it came down to cases. Guilt resurfaced. Why should she say anything about her current state? It wasn't as if he had any right to know—and it must be profoundly shaming to her.

  Torn between guilt and exasperation, he did the only thing a man of sense would do at such a time. He went in search of his motorcar and a drink.

  The first was easy enough to find, as it was parked just off the road where he had left it. The second lay no further away than Broom, and his haven of the Broom Pub.

  By now, he was one of the regulars; he was well aware that three years ago, he would never have been accepted as a regular in here if he had been coming for ten years straight. The class differences between himself and the men who made this their refuge would have been too much of a chasm to bridge. But the war made more than strange bedfellows, it made comrades of strangers sharing the same suffering, and moreover, he had, from the beginning, tried to leave the lord of the manor at the door. So he was welcomed for himself, as well as for the fact he could be counted on to buy more than his share of rounds, and in that haven of resolute masculinity, he felt his spirit soothed and his guilt eased the moment he crossed the threshold.

  Good beer was balm for the soul, and a good barman has, by convivial nature and training in his trade, as great a fund of wisdom as any counselor and often quite a bit more than most clerics. Tom Brennan was such a barman, and his "gents" felt completely at ease in unloading their woes within his walls.

  It is as probable as the sun rising that when fellow sufferers meet together over drinks, before the evening is out, one of them will say "Women!" in that particular suffering tone that makes his fellow creatures shake their heads and murmur sympathetically until the particular grievance emerges.

  Reggie had every intention of being the sufferer that evening, but one of the others beat him to it.

  Joseph Atherton's hour of discontent was made evident by his heavy footsteps as he pushed open the door. He ordered his pint, took a long draught of it, and as the rest waited and listened in expectation, the cause of his unhappiness was revealed.

  "Women!" said Farmer Joe, with unusual vehemence.

  Murmurs of sympathy all around, intended to encourage more revelation.

  "I mean!" he continued, aggrieved, "A fellow's got enough to do in his day, don't he? And when she says that May Day is all stuff and nonsense, and that she don't hold with sech childish farradiddle, a fellow's got a right to take her at her word, don't he? I mean! Cows need milkin', stock needs feedin', and there's enough to do without muckin' about gettin' a lot of silly flowers, and on the day of fair and school treat, no less, and all them tents and kiddies to be hauled up t'manor!"

  With those words, it all came clear to every man in the pub. Clearly, Mrs. Tina had been expecting to get her May Day tribute, no matter what she had said to the contrary. Clearly, what with young Adam being the sort to "volunteer" his father's services—Joseph having one of the few farm horses old enough to have escaped being "conscripted," but young enough to do his work—Joseph had found himself dragooned unwilling into helping out on top of an already heavy workload.

  And clearly, when the aforementioned May Day tribute did not materialize, Mrs. Tina had made her displeasure known. Which was probably why Joe was here, and not sitting down to his dinner.

  "Unfair, that's what it is," replied another farmer, Albert Norman. "How's a man to guess, when they say one thing, and mean the opposite?"

  "Or when they don't say anything at all," Reggie put in, with feeling. "And they expect you to somehow understand what's going on in their heads without any clue! And then when you blunder into some hideous mistake, they turn on you!"

  "That's a fact," Joseph sighed. Albert nodded glumly.


  "Dunno why they can't just say straight out what they want." A new country heard from: Michael Van, off in the corner with Mad Ross. "I mean! Tha's logical, ain't it? Do we go around sayin' one thing and meanin' the contrariwise?"

  Reggie nodded along with the others, and signaled for another pint.

  "You say to a girl," said young Albert, to no one in particular, "You say, 'a feller I know was wonderin' if you're seein' anyone in particaler,' an' she says, 'no, not in particaler,' and you get all set to—to see if she'd like to be seein' anyone in particaler, and then you turns around, and whup, there she is, at fair, with another feller, with all the parish t'see! So if she ain't with 'im, then why's she actin' like she's with 'im, is what I want to know!"

  More shaking of heads. "Can't account for it," said Michael Van. "And you'd think, wouldn't you, if you'd offended some 'un, they'd tell you, wouldn't you?" He appealed to Ross. "If I said something that made you mad, you'd say!"

  "I'd say," Mad Ross replied, with a glint in his eye. "Or I'd punch your nose. Either way, you'd know."

  "So there's no call to be mad at a body if he's said summat you didn't like, and you didn't tell him, is there?" Michael continued, sounded aggrieved. "And 'specially if it was months and months ago, and you never said, till it's too late for him to remember what he did say, much less why you should be mad about it!"

  "That's a fact," replied Albert.

  "My round, I think," Reggie said.

  Reggie would have liked to air his own grievance—but with his nerves rawly sensitive, he didn't want to put his standing in jeopardy with the other Broom regulars. He ran it over in his mind. No matter what I say, it's going to offend someone. If I tell them what I told her, surely they'll think I was being patronizing too. It's that lord of the manor business—and it wouldn't matter that not one of them has ever given thought to his daughter doing anything other than marrying another farmer or laborer—the moment I say anything about it, they're going to think the worse of me.

  So instead, he just shook his head and murmured, "Women! There's no pleasing them."

  The others nodded sagely.

  The barmaid, Jessamine Heggins, glanced sideways at young Albert with compressed lips as she passed him, collecting glasses, delivering fresh pints. Reggie wondered if she was the one that Albert was referring to, and felt a distinct touch of annoyance at her. That was a cruel thing, stringing the poor fellow along!

  "Well," he said looking into his glass, "Seems to me pretty unfair of them to expect us to know things without being told them. Seems to me it's pretty unfair to expect us to figure things out from a couple of hints not even King Solomon could guess at."

  "Aye," Michael grumbled, tossing back his pint.

  That was about as close as he dared come to his own grievance, and eventually someone ventured an oblique guess as to the likelihood of rabbitting come fall.

  Now Reggie felt a bit more comfortable. "You know," he said, thoughtfully, and with an artfully casual manner, "My manager says that the rabbits are multiplying something awful this year. Three years now, no one's been thinning them out with shooting. I think a few snares wouldn't come amiss." He looked around the pub, as if he didn't know very well that every one of these men had been poaching "his" rabbits for generations. "Any of you fellows know someone that might be willing to put out some snares in the Longacre woods? Proper rabbit snares now, not something to catch a pheasant by accident."

  Slight smiles. "Might," Ross offered.

  After all, everyone poached. Especially now. But no one wanted to admit he knew how to.

  "Now mind," Reggie went on, carefully not meeting anyone's eye, "He'd have to be careful of the season. We wouldn't want any orphaned bunnies. Not unless there were youngsters who knew how to catch them and raise them on goat's milk or something of the sort."

  "Orphaned beasties is a sad thing," Michael Van agreed. "But the kiddies do like to make pets of 'em. Wouldn't hurt for 'em to go looking, now and again, just to make sure. No one'd set a snare this early, or at least, I misdoubt, but there's other things that make orphan bunnies. Dogs."

  "Cats," put in Albert.

  "Stoats," offered Ross, who Reggie knew for a fact kept ferrets. "Even badgers, can they catch "em."

  Reggie had a long pull on his beer, hiding his smile. That was settled, then. They knew that he would tell his gamekeeper not to pull up proper rabbit snares, and he knew that anyone that caught a doe out-of-season would send his children, or a neighbor's to look for the nest. And he'd probably lose a pheasant or two; some temptations were too strong to resist.

  But he'd have lost a pheasant or two anyway, probably more than one or two. When you worked vigilantly to keep someone from doing something he felt he had a right to do, he often felt justified in taking a little revenge.

  Giving tacit permission, on the other hand, was likely to make them more honest.

  He'd never felt very comfortable about telling people they couldn't snare rabbits on Longacre property, anyway. After all, what did he ever do with them except in that they kept foxes fed for the autumn hunts? And smart foxes would steal the caught rabbits from the snares anyway. Oh, there was some rabbit shooting in the fall, or there had been before the war, but most gentlemen felt that rabbits were poor sport compared to birds. When meat was getting hard to come by, and hideously expensive, even with the illicit pigs in the woods, a rabbit was a welcome addition to the table.

  Besides, you have to wonder how many of my generation are going to be particularly interested in shooting things for span, when all this is over. . . .

  He sighed, and signalled another round, while the talk drifted amiably to other shifts for keeping food on the table. Pigeons were being considered, though with some doubt. As Ross said, "Once you get the feathers off, hardly seems worth the time." With the river so near, and plenty of free grazing at the road's edge, geese were popular, but the problem was sorting out whose belonged to whom. Goats were not highly regarded. Having eaten goat on occasion in France, Reggie fully understood why.

  Tonight there had been no bad news from across the Channel to stir up melancholy, good spring weather here and summer coming, and the school treat and fair so fresh in everyone's mind, the conversation stayed relatively light. "Relatively," since no one really had the heart for games of darts or shove-ha'penny in this pub. When Reggie left, it was in an even temper, and not the same unsettled state he'd arrived in.

  So when, just past the last house in the village, a black mood descended on him—it made no sense.

  It came down on him like a palpable weight, and it wasn't grief. It was bleak, despairing anger. It made him shift gears with a harsh disregard for the complaining clatter his motorcar made in protest. It made him want to strangle his grandfather—or hang himself, just to show the old man. Or both. It made him want to find that baggage of a girl and—

  And that was where his good sense finally overpowered his mood, because the images that began to form in his mind at the thought of Eleanor were so vicious that they shook him, shook him right out of his mood. He looked sharply around, having even lost track of where he was, only to find that he was on the driveway of the manor and didn't recall actually turning in through the gates.

  What is wrong with me? he thought, aghast. And, now with a frisson of fear, Am I going mad?

  Because he could not imagine a sane man thinking those things that had just come into his head.

  Now feeling both depressed and afraid, he parked the motor and went straight up to his room, not wanting to encounter either his mother or his grandfather.

  His valet wasn't about, and he didn't ring for him; in this mood, he wanted to be completely alone—was this some new phase to his shellshock? Or was this something else altogether, the sign that he was truly coming to pieces in a way that would make him dangerous to those around him as well as himself?

  If that were the case—

  Then, he thought, grimly, as he got himself ready to sleep without the aid
of his valet I had better keep away from Eleanor. For her sake. At least until I know—

  And that was his last thought as he drifted off into a fully drugged sleep. —at least until I know. One way or another. And if I am—I am going to have to make sure that there is nothing I can do to harm her.

  Alison and the girls did not put in an appearance that evening, and Eleanor took herself to Sarah's cottage in a mood of prickly determination. As she had hoped, Sarah had anticipated her coming, and had laid out her mother's workbook and the few bits of paraphernalia that a Fire magician deemed necessary.

  But her mind wouldn't settle, and even the Salamanders that now always appeared whenever she was around an open fire and either alone or with Sarah, could not be calmed. Reflecting her restlessness, they wreathed around her like agitated ferrets, never pausing long, twining around wrists, arms and neck. They were a distraction, and she welcomed it.