by Jane M. R.
“Ye art okay?”
“No!” I’m scared and confused and Zadicayn is a major offender of the second. “No I’m not okay! How are you here? Why was that gypsy trying to kidnap me again? How did we end up on the top of the bloody train? How… why… why?” Naked anxiety is tearing through me and Zadicayn remains silent while I stress myself out to the point where I’m exhausted and I finally go silent.
“Ye art okay now?”
“… I’m a little better.”
“That tis well. I shalt answer thy questions now.”
“Please.”
He reclines back and clasps his hands in front of him. Yes. He most definitely looks out of place in those clothes. I wonder if anyone else will notice. Probably not.
“Recalleth back to whence ye telleth me about thy kidnap by the gypsy and the monkey.”
“Okay.”
“And everything ye said about believing Aklen Whaerin dost nary like thee, and the odd death fallen upon thy cousin.”
“Okay.”
“Well…” Here he appears ashamed because his white cheeks crimson. “Hate me if ye want, but when I heareth ye wert traveling alone, and after all these suspicions ye telleth me concerning Aklen and the gypsy and thy cousin’s death… I wast scared for ye and wanted to maketh sure ye traveled well. Turns out my suspicions wert right.”
“Why would I hate you?”
His look reminds me what I said about him “showing up like you did at the ball.”
“I don’t hate you. You… you saved my life.” This pulls a smile out of him and I must look away before my heart hitches. “What suspicions did you have? I don’t know how I missed something like this.”
“Listen upon… Durain dieth of a heart attack, ye say. Ye believe thyself this wast an oddity. Aklen dost nary like thee. Ye thinks ye heardest his name pass betwixt the gypsies during thy capture. I dost nary like the Whaerins meself and I hath proof they art nefarious fiends, but I dost nary think ye wast wrong in hearing his name. For certain they art alerted to thy cousin acquiring one of three pieces of Binding. Of which they killed him for.”
I suck in a breath at such harsh, naked words.
“Given what ye hath told me and what I hath already assumed, tis those three families hath done the unsavory in order to keepeth me secret. If you wert the only person associating with Durain, and Durain stealeth the Binding, what dost ye think those three families art going to believe? Methinks Aklen sent that gypsy on ye both times to get ye out of Valemorren – dead or otherwise – where ye can nary do anymore damage.”
No. No I am not in this that deep. Not deep enough to where Aklen Whaerin would order my death because he believes I had something to do with the wizard. Have they notice their Bindings are fake? They saw the Faewraiths in the lumber house. Do they think I freed the wizard?
If I hadn’t already emotionally exhausted myself with my panic and confusion over the events of the last ten minutes, I would have proceeded to freak out right now. But I don’t. Which allows my new reality to slid in easily and rest as a hard nub in my chest.
“So they know you are free?”
“It wouldst be safer to assume thus.”
This sparks a whole other reality for me. “Do you think Jaicom is involved?” But before I’m finished asking that question I’ve already answered it. If Jaicom wanted me dead he’s had ample opportunity to do so, and getting rid of me – dead or otherwise – after we are married would only look more suspicious on Jaicom. No. I feel confident Jaicom is not involved.
“I shalt leave that question up to thee, for ye knoweth him better than I.”
“I don’t think he’s involved. But I definitely need to let the constables know what Aklen has done.” Righteous anger fills me, but Zadicayn tears it to pieces with,
“Dost ye hast proof of him being involved?”
My nerves are still jittery so I walk about the small booth, my canvassing dress brushing Zadicayn’s knees where he sits. “No. But what do I do? If I hadn’t told you about me being kidnapped, you wouldn’t have been here today. I could be dead or worse right now!”
“Methinks ye shouldst refuse to go anywhere on thy own for a while. Ye shouldst be safe upon thy marriage, but that shalt be up to thee to determine.”
I slump back down. My neatly curled and pinned up hair has come loose and my bonnet hangs sideways. “Were we really on top of the train?”
“Yea.”
“How?”
“Relocation spell. I can relocate anything I hast in my hand to any place where I can see, though I can nary dost that over great distance because it wilt spike the blood in the body.”
I don’t know what “spiking blood” means, but I’m comfortable not finding out. “I don’t know how to pay you back for saving me. I literally owe you my life.”
“Ye already hath paid me back, Brine.”
I know what he’s referring to but I still don’t feel satisfied.
Zadicayn lays on his back on the bench, tucking both hands behind his head and stares at the ceiling. “So this be a train?”
“What do you think?”
“Methinks it be magic to move without obvious aid. How does it work?”
“Something about people shoveling coals into a furnace that produces steam and the steam powers the engine to move forward… I really don’t know. I just ride it.” I wonder if Zadicayn yearns for the time he is familiar with, where you only went as fast as a horse could take you and shirts were called tunics. “What do you think about wearing eighteen forty-two English fashion?”
“This trousers hath blessed upon me a merry-gall and the rest tis a plague I fear might induce an excrement of yellow bile. Given how ye wert eyeing me a moment ago, I see that ye agree.”
“I wasn’t eyeing you.”
“A’right. If ye insist.”
“I’m going to be in Bristol for two days. I’ll be staying with my grandparents so I have no idea where to put you. Now that I’m betrothed I cannot be seen alone with another man. Naturally, I make the exception for you for obvious reasons.” I say that in present tense because Monday was the last I heard from him with the intent to never see him again. “Please tell me you aren’t going to lock yourself in the vale like you threatened to do two days ago.”
“I dost nary wit, Brine. Give me a better reason why I nary shouldst.”
I can think of a ton of them, but all of which would only benefit me.
The train whistles its arrival into the Bristol station. “I need my bag from my booth.”
“Which booth?”
“Car eight, booth twelve.” Even if he didn’t have trains back in his time, it’s pretty self-explanatory.
He stands up and exits the booth via the hallway. I lock the door behind him, already afraid Jesaro is on the prowl for me because he is likely still on the train.
The train lurches to a stop and I step outside into the station so even if Jesaro is still on the train, he won’t dare touch me while I’m in such a crowded place.
I don’t know how Zadicayn is going to find me again so I stay where I am, but I see his black spiked hair coming toward me, my bag in his hand. He must have lost his fedora when we relocated on top of the train. The men around look oddly at him.
He stops beside me. “Thank you. I suppose you could spell your way back home,” I say wistfully, reaching for my bag. “I thank you again for being smarter than me and coming to my aid.”
“And so I shalt dost for thy return trip. Dost nary worry about me. Show me whence ye shalt be staying and I shall meet ye back here in two days.”
I can’t argue that his presence on the way back satisfies me greatly. Keeping my luggage in his hand, he walks beside me as I look for a hired coach to take us to my grandparent’s house.
Despite the last time I was in Bristol when I almost drowned in the river at a young age, I find my interest is not held looking out the window of the coach nearly as intense as Zadicayn’s. His eyes remain wide and his he
ad zipping all about as he takes in all that the Middle Ages, even some things in Valemorren, did not have. I did much of the same thing in the Fae Realm.
Taller buildings of stone and glass windows, steamboats belching from their stacks from the canal as we cross the bridge into Castle Park. Even our enclosed coach driven by two horses and a driver in a top hat and nice black suite. Hopefully Zadicayn never sees indoor plumbing. He might have a fit like I did when he spelled me on top of the train.
The coach wheels around through the tight streets and houses pressing shoulder to shoulder until we turn down the dead end way of Wickham Street. The houses open up more with enough space for a lawn to surround each house. The coach stops three houses down from number three ninety-six as I had instructed the driver to do. I can’t have my grandparents spying Zadicayn leaving the coach with me.
“Number three ninety-six,” I say to him as the wizard pulls down my luggage from the top of the coach. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? Do you have money?”
He casts his arms down the front of his black frock coat. “Dost ye thinketh I stole these?”
“Sorry. I just… I know currency has changed over the past…”
“But they art still pounds, even if a different monarch tis stamped upon them. But I thank thee for thy concern. I shalt be a’right.”
“Don’t get lost. I know the streets can be confusing. Where will you be staying?”
He shrugs. “Some place strong enough to holdeth my body weight, likely.”
“You don’t have to wait on me. If you… if you get bored you can head back.”
“Nary, Miss Frondaren. Nary.”
“Well… at least come back tonight and tomorrow night on the ninth toll of the cathedral bell so I know you are okay. I’ll keep a look out my window. I’ll see you if you come into the yard.” If he’s going to be protective of me it’s only fair I return it. After all I sacrificed to free him – still sacrificing – I don’t want him damaged.
“I shall. Now, art ye going to let me goest now?”
“Oh. Yes. I guess. Just be safe.”
He nods his assent and I watch him stuff his hands in his pockets as his long stride takes him down the street and around the corner.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
ZADICAYN
I still can’t sleep on beds. Not only because I have nightmares where I’m sinking through the floor but because I find the fluctuating surface uncomfortable and would only end up sleeping on the floor anyway. Aside from that, I still don’t understand how society functions when it comes to the exchange of money and services and I really don’t want to look more awkward than I already am, so renting a room to an inn is useless. Or, rather, hotel because, I guess, that’s what they call them now.
I eat at a rather lavish place called a restaurant where I’m handed something the female hostess calls a menu and I think I spend more time bewildered over all the foreign choices than I do actually eating it when it finally arrives.
I don’t know how Brine thought I was going to get bored. I don’t think two days is nearly long enough to learn everything I can about this century. I lost my hat during my skirmish with relocating to the top of the train. Or maybe I lost it on purpose before that. They seem harmless enough, but I can’t get over the sensation that it is a sack just waiting to slip over my face just before I’m thrown into a vault. So they can pretend it’s not a human they are locking away.
But people are looking at me oddly and, for the sake of drawing as little attention to me as possible, I purchase another on my way to these ships without sails that the captain of the vessel says is powered by steam.
I suppose time is told by devices called clocks or pocket watches because while I’m still a’sail on the steamboat a female turns to her male companion and asks what time it is, to which he flips something gold and circular out of his vest pocket and declares the time. I consider buying one except I have no idea how to work the thing and the only person I feel safe in asking is Brine. So I leave it alone for now.
Castle Park where sits the church and the bell which will declare the hour is where I conclude to end my evening while I tarry for the ninth toll. Whereupon I shall return to sleep after Brine declares me well. It keeps me warm knowing someone cares about my wellbeing. Well… it keeps me warm knowing Brine cares about my wellbeing. I’ll eat that selfishly until I close myself in my vale upon our return.
A corner of Castle Park is daggered with campfires. A few glimpses of colored canvass among the trees hint on the guess that it’s a gypsy camp. Brine said that man with the monkey was a gypsy, but I’ve had gypsy’s in my days too and they traveled in packs and stayed away from rich men’s money. I also knew plenty of assassins who would maraud as gypsies because what better way to push the blame on someone else than to dress in their culture?
I don’t mind gypsies myself except they were the ones who tended to dabble most in Devil Magic and consider themselves our equals.
The church bell tolls nine times. I begin my walk between the looming buildings which give me the unsettling feeling that they are going to fall on me. There was a reason why shops and houses never went higher than two levels back in my day and because dragons sometimes swooped down really low wasn’t one of them.
Brine called the glowing orbs of light affixed to the top of poles on both sides of the streets gas lamps. I have a sneaking suspicion there is still one wizard alive who has sold his services to the public, because this can’t be anything but magic.
Wickham Street has a few of these magic lamps but it’s mostly dark, covering me as I slip into the yard of house number three ninety-six and sit on the bench. Brine must have been watching because the door to the house opens and she exits. She whispers down the wooden porch barefoot with a silk night robe tied around her white nightgown beneath. With her hair down and scattered around her shoulders in the dark, she looks a bit older. I remove my hat and put it on my knee.
“Praise the Pope, you are safe!”
“Me?” She sits next to me on the bench. “Ye art the one who wast almost taken by assassins today.”
“Assassins? You really think so?”
“I dost.”
She shivers at this new possibility and I have to distract my hands with fumbling unnecessarily at my chaffing clothes so I don’t use my hands to pull her closer to me.
“What did you do today? Did you find a hotel?”
“I found one,” I say, because I don’t want to banter back and forth my reason why I’ve chosen to sleep on the ground in Castle Park. “I also taketh a ride on a steamboat and ate at a place called a restaurant. Stop laughing me.” She covers her mouth as if that would erase the giggle that escaped her. “I shalt take thee back in time three hundred years and let thee guess to whence ye empty thy bowels and how to get comfortable in a pillory.”
“Sorry. It just sounds so odd hearing it said like that. You were put in a pillory?”
“I walked behind Manchester Williams’ son as he pulleth his handcart to the village. I keepeth relocating rocks into the back so it wast mighty heavy by the time he arrived. I got caught and he wast nary happy.”
“Why did you do that?”
“He asketh me to put a spell on him to maketh him strong.”
She starts to laugh again, though keeping her hand over her lips to muffle it. “Like what your father did to Henry Tudor and King Richard? Do nothing and take their money as payment?”
“I warneth him there wast nary a spell for that. He didst nary believe meself. So I taketh his money and provided a solution to maketh him strong. Nary my concern if he nary liketh it. But how dost thy visit with grandparents suit thee?”
“Well… about as well as the energy of a turtle and the memory of a gold fish. But… so you are clearly aware of women being tied into their dresses.”
“Yea.”
“That really only started about five years ago when Queen Victory decreed it. So my grandmother is still latched onto the
era when King George was monarch who hated pretension and didn’t care about the propriety of women. So my grandmother only has a macramist to keep up appearances and for when family comes to visit. But my grandmother refuses to be tied, even in public. She’s older so people don’t fret as much.”
“And a macramist is…”
“Oh! Sorry. They are females who are skilled in tying the knots on our dresses. Tomorrow she’s taking me shopping for some wedding gifts.” Her face betrays how excited she is not about that.
Movement behind Brine turns my eyes toward the porch of the house. An older woman is staring at me curiously, clutching her robe closed with one hand.
“Widdershins,” I whisper. “Brine…”
She follows my eyes and turns around to see the woman walking toward us. “Brinella!”
“No. No. Bloody hell no. Quick! Turn invisible or something!”
“I dost nary wit how.”
“And you call yourself a wizard?”
I narrow my glance on her, tempted to pick her right off this bench like I picked up the assassin and then promptly threw at the group of men running at me back on the train.
“Hide or something!”
“Too late.”
Grandma stops beside the bench, her face flushed with delight.
“Oh, grandma. I…”
“Brinella sweety, you didn’t tell me you brought Jaicom along with you!”
I look at Brine. Her glance on me is just as steady. “Yeeeees. Grandmother. I’d like you to meet Jaicom Whaerin.”
Donning a new name and persona, I gain my feet and take grandma’s hand, bending at the waist with lips hovering over her knuckles like I have seen every man in this century doing so far.
“I am pleased to meet yew, Misses Frondaren.”
Brine makes a little noise. Likely because she was afraid I’d slather her grandma with Old English slang. I know Brine’s dialect. I just don’t like it.
“Oh, Jaicom! Your fiancé has slighted me by not introducing me to you. Be sure to scold her for me, will you?”
“I would, but really it twas for my protection, because I should not be here. I am feeling rather protective of her and did not want her traveling alone so I accompanied her. Though, I understand doing something like that is mostly frowned upon because we art not married yet.” So I slipped a few times, but I thought I did pretty well. “Yew were not supposed to know. I just came to tell her goodnight before I go back to the hotel.”