Hobgoblin Night: Mask and Dagger 2

by Teresa Edgerton

  Jed dropped Elsie's arm, followed her pointing finger. He took a step nearer, and went down on one knee to more closely examine a tiny figure, thin-limbed and naked, that lay huddled up against a marble slab. It appeared to be a young hobgoblin, and it was fast asleep.

  Jed stood up again and spoke in Elsie's ear, so as not to awaken the hob: "Do you want me to go back and bring a shovel to kill it?"

  "Oh no, I beg you will do nothing of the sort," said Elsie, clutching at his arm, as if to prevent him. "Except for the head, it looks just exactly human, don't you think? I could not bear to have you kill it."

  "It looks," said Jed, "like a little rat-faced imp."

  The hobgoblin, perhaps aroused by their voices, started to make feeble movements. It made a futile attempt to raise its head, crept a few feet, and then collapsed again in a pitiful heap of bony limbs.

  "Someone has injured the poor little thing! Sera . . . Miss Barebones . . . do come and see what we have found," Elsie called softly.

  The two ladies hurried through the tall grass. "May the Powers preserve us!" said Miss Barebones, taking a step backward at the sight of the hob.

  But Sera sat right down in the grass beside the little huddled creature. "We mustn't let the workmen see, or one of them may try to kill it. I've never seen a live hobgoblin before, but I never imagined they would look so . . . pitiful. See how it trembles and moans? It must have been lying here ill or injured for a long time."

  "If we just walk on and leave it here, it will die anyway," said Jed. "Slower and more cruel than a blow to the head with a shovel. And don't—I beg of you—get any wild ideas about taking it home and nursing it back to health. You wouldn't know how to go about it, for one thing. And if word spread—as it certainly would—that you were harboring the creature, half the town would be outraged!"

  Sera's eyes kindled and her bosom heaved. "I am sure we ought not to allow the opinion of 'half the town' (and not the best people either) to prevent us from doing what we know to be right. It would be most horrid cruel to abandon the poor thing . . . and as for killing it!"

  Yet she had to admit that healing the hobgoblin was quite beyond her powers. "After all, one knows so little about them. Why, if we tried to feed it, or give it any medicine, we would poison the poor thing, as likely as not."

  Instinctively, she put a hand on the necklace at her throat, suddenly wishing for Francis Skelbrooke, wanting him there beside her as she had not allowed herself to want him all the long, slow seasons since their last meeting. He might not know how to feed the hobgoblin, either, but at least he knew something of wounds and sickness, and despite what she had told Elsie, he did possess one saving virtue: his compassion for the young, the pitiful, and the helpless, which was apparently boundless.

  "We must do something," said Elsie, wringing her hands.

  "Certainly, we must," agreed Miss Barebones, wringing her own. Everyone, even Jed, looked to Sera for a solution.

  Sera thought hard, cudgeling her brain for the right solution. "Well then . . . there is a hob-hole behind the clocktower. At least, there was one last Sunday, and we must hope that no one has filled it in since. I suppose we could take the creature there, after the workmen go home to supper, lower it down in our picnic basket, and leave it in the tunnel for its own kind to find. It might have some chance of living, that way. At least . . . if hobgoblins do take care of their own."

  By this time, Mr. Jonas and the workmen had returned to their labors. Jed should have joined them, but he could not abandon the ladies in the midst of a dilemma. He took a deep breath, which he released slowly, staring up at the sky.

  "If we pick it up and try to move it," he said at last, "it's more than likely to bite. Have you forgotten their bite is poisonous?"

  "No, they do not bite," said Miss Barebones decidedly. "That is: I never heard that anyone in Hobb's Church or in Moonstone was ever bitten by a hobgoblin."

  "Back home, where my sister and I were born, they did bite: children mostly, but I knew a man who nearly lost his hand," said Jed, with a frown. "These native hobs may be more docile, as you suppose . . . or maybe it's just that no one ever came close enough to be bitten."

  Miss Barebones gave her skirts an impatient twitch. "Uncle Izrael did. That is, he came close enough, many times, but he was never bitten. He always took a great interest in the creatures. It was he, you know, who put forth the idea that they are indeed Rational Beings and ought not to be treated as vermin.

  "That was a long time before the tunneling became so bad and people started putting gunpowder and poison down their holes," she said with a sigh. "The hobs were shy in those days, but not so elusive as they are now, and Uncle Izrael kept several. Not precisely as pets, you know . . . he always called them 'visitors.' He had a theory they had developed a language of their own, and he was still trying to learn that language at the time he died.

  "You don't suppose," she added, on a sudden inspiration, "that all Uncle Izrael's recent activity is because he wishes to communicate something he has learned about the nature of hobgoblins?"

  Sera, for one, did not think anything of the sort. And she was far more concerned, just at the moment, about the plight of the young creature that lay quivering in the grass beside her. "It does not look as if it could do any real damage; it is much too weak and ill. And even if it should bite—well, hob bites are only mildly poisonous, and we know very well how to treat them: rosewater and oil of clove."

  "Aye, easy for you to say—since I'm the one you'll likely expect to pick up the nasty little beast and carry it," Jed grumbled.

  Eventually, they persuaded him to consent to Sera's plan. By that time, the workmen had picked up their tools and were heading down the hill, and Mr. Jonas went along with them to pay their wages.

  Then the little girls came swarming up from the beach, bare-headed and windblown, but looking quite pleased with themselves and the seashells, bits of moss, and brightly colored pebbles that they carried in their hats. "I suppose I ought to go home with Rosabelle, Sophia, and the children," said Miss Barebones. "It will seem very odd if I do not, and I feel sure I can trust the rest of you to do what needs to be done."

  Jed escorted her down the hill and came back a short while later with the empty picnic basket. The hob had apparently fallen asleep, but it woke when Jed wrapped it up in Sera's shawl and shoved it into the basket. The creature struggled in his grasp and clawed at him with its tiny feet, but made no attempt to bite him.

  "Now we must wait a bit; it won't be dark for another hour," said Jed, nursing his scratches. "I hope their claws aren't so poisonous as their bite. Rosewater and oil of clove, you said?"

  Sera, shivering a little in the rising wind without her shawl, nodded wearily. "I'll go down and purchase some now, if you like."

  ***

  At nightfall, they carried the covered basket into town, procured a rope from Mr. Herring's shop (Mr. Jonas, when applied to, had lent them his key), and lowered the basket, hobgoblin and all, down the hole by the clocktower. Then they went off to the Eclipse for a light supper.

  When they returned to the spot an hour later and Jed hauled up the basket, he could immediately tell by the lighter weight that the creature had either succeeded in crawling out or been carried away by other hobgoblins.

  "Anyway," said Sera bleakly, as they gazed down the hole, "we did all that we possibly could."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Which discovers Lord Skelbrooke upon the High Seas.

  The good ship Elephant, two days out of Ilben, plowed through the waves with a strong wind behind her. As the day was fine, most of the passengers were strolling on the deck, taking full advantage of clear weather and the invigorating qualities of salt air.

  Among these passengers were that bold beauty Lady Ursula Vizbeck and her callow young husband. The lady wore a picture hat and carried a parasol; her lord affected a scarlet coat trimmed with gold braid, and a bicorn hat with a striped cockade, which (or so he fondly imagined) lent him
something of the appearance of a visiting admiral. Lady Ursula yawned and glanced around her, with a great affectation of languid boredom . . . until her gaze chanced to rest on a vastly elegant gentleman in mouse-colored velvet, who paced the deck with one arm immobilized in a black silk sling.

  "My dear Lord Skelbrooke," the lady exclaimed. "We had no idea that we should find you on board."

  Lord Skelbrooke favored her with a startled, suspicious glance. But he quickly recovered and smiled urbanely. "There is no way that you could have known," he said, with a bow to her and nod to Lord Vizbeck. "My departure from Marstadtt was, of necessity, attended by a certain degree of secrecy. I am convinced that I need not tell you, Lady Ursula, to what lengths one must go in order to escape the importunities of indignant tradesmen." He bowed again. "I beg you will aid me in this innocent deception, by addressing me hereafter as Mr. Hawkins."

  "But of course," said the lady, fluttering her dark lashes in a fascinating way that she had. "It is shocking, is it not, how dreadfully forward these tradesmen have become? We, ourselves, are not precisely in embarrassed circumstances (though I know too well the humiliations that come of living in reduced circumstances). But it has become advisable, just recently, for Lord Vizbeck and I to leave the Continent and travel to the New World, where, I am told, one may live quite cheaply."

  "Indeed, we have been contemplating that action for some time," added Lord Vizbeck. "But Lady Ursula could not make up her mind to do it. Every time that I broached the subject, she found some reason to delay our departure. And then, quite suddenly, she one day announced that she had already booked our passage."

  The lady smiled coyly, slipped her hand through the crook of Lord Skelbrooke's good arm, and fell into step beside him. "I am, after all, the most capricious creature on the face of the earth."

  Skelbrooke tactfully refrained from any remark. He knew Lady Ursula to be vain, selfish, and governed by her passions, but capricious—never! Past experience had taught him that the lady always knew exactly what she wanted, and went about getting it in the most expeditious, not to say ruthless, manner possible.

  But there followed a great deal more along the same lines: the lady endowing herself with any number of pretty, foolish faults which she did not, in fact, possess, all the while casting languishing glances upon the unresponsive Skelbrooke. He began to suspect that Lady Ursula assumed the butterfly pose for his benefit, under the erroneous assumption that he would find it attractive.

  It was the prelude, no doubt, to a light flirtation or even to an affair, most likely with an eye to making her husband jealous. That it could mean anything other than that never occurred to him. Such things were common enough in the Social Circles they both inhabited.

  ***

  The next days were trying ones, as Lady Ursula continued to endeavor to beguile her journey with an agreeable flirtation, and Lord Skelbrooke endeavored, just as earnestly, to avoid anything of the kind. He did not admire the lady, was on his way (he hoped) to a meeting with the one woman who did excite his love and admiration, and he had no desire to inflict the pleasant, if somewhat gullible, Lord Vizbeck with the pangs of jealousy that Lady Ursula seemed so eager to induce.

  Accordingly, for as much of the next week and a half as he possibly could bear to be confined he spent in his cabin, going up on deck generally in the early morning, before Lady Ursula abandoned her bed, and frequently late at night.

  But when word reached him one afternoon that a herd of whales had been spotted in the distance, he threw caution to the winds and hastened above to try and get a glimpse of these seagoing behemoths.

  But arriving at the rail, all he could see was a haze of darker blue upon the horizon.

  "Here, sir, you'll see better with this," said the boatswain, handing him a spyglass. "They'll never come too close, not they! They're wary of whalers, you see, and wonderful intelligent."

  "I thank you," said Skelbrooke, flashing a smile as he accepted the telescope. "Yes, I know something of their habits and their migrations, but to actually see them . . . that I account a rare privilege!"

  By leveling the spyglass on the horizon and adjusting the lenses (he had lately abandoned his sling), he brought one of the migrating monsters into sharp focus. He drew in a deep breath. Though he had seen woodcuts and tinted prints purporting to be accurate representations, nothing had prepared him for the magnificent reality: the shining metallic plates and jewel-like eye; the ornate fins and tail, like some heraldic beast; and the water sprouting and misting like a fountain from the blowhole, fifteen or twenty feet high.

  "Truly a marvel," said his lordship, passing back the spyglass once he had looked his fill. He stayed a while longer to exchange seastories with the boatswain, and then started back toward his cabin before Lady Ursula should catch wind of him and begin her pursuit again.

  But as he approached the hatch, one of the sailors staggered past, stumbled, and fell in an awkward heap at Skelbrooke's feet.

  "Drunk, I shouldn't wonder," sniffed one of the other passengers, who chanced to be sauntering by.

  But noting the sailor's ragged breathing, Skelbrooke knelt down beside him to feel his pulse, to put a hand on his brow. "Not drunk but dangerously ill, I think. This man has a raging fever and his pulse is tumultuous. Someone should summon the doctor."

  The ship's physician arrived a few minutes later, examined the sailor more carefully, and made a grim diagnosis. "The Yellow Pox, there can be no doubt. As you can see, the pustules already begin to appear." He turned to Skelbrooke, with an anxious frown. "As you have already placed yourself at some risk, Mr. Hawkins, perhaps you will assist me in carrying this man to a private cabin? The disease is highly contagious and, I regret to say, too often fatal."

  "I know something of the disease," said Skelbrooke. With the assistance of two of the stricken sailor's cabin mates, they carried the fellow down below and made him as comfortable as possible in a cabin adjoining the doctor's quarters.

  ***

  The next days were tense ones for all on board. One after another, the closest associates of the first sailor came down with the Yellow Pox; then two passengers contracted the disease. A panic swept through the vessel. The other passengers, with few exceptions, demanded a share of supplies and holed up in their cabins to avoid exposure; the Captain and what remained of his crew (reeking of camphor, which was said to fight contagion) carried on the best that they could; and the doctor and Lord Skelbrooke exhausted themselves tending to those already stricken.

  The doctor, as Skelbrooke soon learned, was an old school physician, firmly convinced of the sovereign virtues of blood-letting and purging, no matter what the disease, and he treated his patients with frogs' spawn and toads' tongues ("most efficacious against a spotted fever") so long as his supply lasted.

  "If I might claim a moment of your time," said his lordship, one day as he watched the physician open a vein. "I believe I told you that I studied at the Hospital of the Holy Powers in Lundy. Mr. Hay was one of my professors. He always contended that, while cupping is certainly effective in ridding the body of poisonous vapors, it is not indicated when the patient has already entered a moribund condition. Moreover, the use of purges in the presence of dehydration brought on by a high fever can be dangerous, even fatal."

  But the doctor, scorning these revolutionary theories, preferred to stick with the tried and true. He continued on with his lancets, his cups, and his leeches; continued to force loathsome potions down the throats of his patients. Skelbrooke, though he wished to help, could not lend himself to either practice, not in good conscience. But barley water, that most ancient of simples, which the doctor had the cook make up in quantity, was soothing, relieved the raging thirst of those stricken, and perhaps provided a modicum of nourishment.

  So Skelbrooke carried on, administering barley water and dispensing pinches of his own Sleep Dust to those in a delirium. He cleaned blood, vomit, and feces from patients the doctor had purged, and made use of an ointment which t
he cook had boiled up for him in a large pot, out of ingredients present in the galley.

  "If you mean to prevent this woman from scarring," said the doctor scornfully, standing blood-stained and weary in a doorway to watch him, "you would have to wrap her in yellow flannel and allow her to sweat the disease out through the pores of her skin. But we haven't the flannel in the necessary quantity, and you would do much better to assist me in saving her life, rather than minister to her vanity."

  "I beg your pardon," Skelbrooke replied with his usual gentle courtesy—unshaven, unwashed, and stinking though he was. "I mean only to spare her the terrible itching, and by relieving that discomfort, perhaps allow her more rest. Even you must agree that sleep is Nature's best medicine."

  The next day, the doctor collapsed in the passageway below the hatch. "The Yellow Pox, it's taken him, too," announced the Captain, not waiting for Skelbrooke's diagnosis. "There's two men died, sir, and two men and a lady near it, and the others just as likely doomed." He ordered a strict quarantine, which was to say: all those who had contracted the disease were herded or carried down to the hold, and left there, with scant food and provisions, to die. Then he gave orders to seal the hold.

  "With your permission," said his lordship, watching these procedures with hollow eyes. "I would like to attend them down in the hold. I may be able to preserve some of them, and if anyone still standing is likely to carry the disease, it is certainly I."

  But the Captain refused. He was not a hard man, not without compassion, but he was exhausted after many sleepless nights, anxious to preserve the lives of his remaining crew, and he knew nothing better to do. "You go down there, you're as good as dead, Mr. Hawkins. Take to your cabin, like the other passengers. That way, if you come down with the disease, there'll be no harm to the rest of us. You've done your best, all this time—though it was no task for a gentleman like you—and I'm not ungrateful. We'll see that you're well provisioned. "