Tamsin

by Peter S. Beagle

  But that evening was pure funky, sticky, breathless asphalt New York. My clothes felt as though they’d been ironed right onto me. Everybody wilted, even Sally, who can look like crisp lettuce in the worst weather. Julian got some kind of prickly rash all over him, and fussed until he had to go to bed. Evan and Tony kept making more lemonade, drinking so much of it that you could almost see it evaporating out of their pores, like a mist. Mister Cat flopped down on his side with his legs out behind him, the way a dog does, looking small and damp. When I sat by him and petted him, he rolled over, away from me, so I stopped. Too damn hot even for that.

  Finally I got up and walked a little away from the Manor by myself. I felt like Mister Cat: too hot to be around people. The moon hadn’t risen yet. I stood still under a tree whose leaves weren’t stirring an inch, and listened to utterly nothing, which was the strangest thing of all. I’ve already said that it’s noisy in the country, once you know how to listen, and a completely silent country night is scary in a special way. No insects, no frogs, no owls, not so much as a creak or a clunk, or a faraway scurry—none of those nameless nightsounds you get used to, living on a farm. And the silence builds and builds, until it becomes a sound by itself, until it’s just like one of those West Eighty-third Street jackhammers, and all you want is for it to stop. As though something were going to fly apart, burst, split wide open, any minute now, but you can’t tell what it’s going to be. Like that.

  Tamsin came toward me through the trees. I hadn’t noticed it up in the hidden room, but outdoors in the darkness there was the faintest sort of glow about her, greeny-violet, the way seawater gets at night sometimes. You can see it a surprising way off, and at first you think it’s fireflies. Miss Sophia Brown didn’t have it—I can’t say if even all human ghosts have it. The three I ever knew did.

  “Good evening to you, Mistress Jenny,” she said. “You see, your name remains.” She was wearing a different gown to come out in, this one puffy at the sides, with something almost like a bustle in back. I didn’t like it as much as the first one, but she’d remembered bunches of ribbons over her ears, and those looked lovely. She dipped me a curtsy, and I actually made her one back, which is tricky in shorts.

  “I didn’t know you ever left the house,” I said. “Your room.” It was different talking to her outside: She seemed more alive, if that makes any sense—dangerous, even, in a way.

  When she smiled at me, I felt her remembering me, just like those ribbons in her hair. “Oh, I may go where I choose, so I remain within the bounds of Stourhead.” Close to, glimmering under those old trees, she looked like a beautiful moth. “But what odds the freedom of a prison?”

  There was a soft bitterness in her voice that I couldn’t have imagined. I said, “I didn’t know you felt that way about… I mean, it’s your home.” I sounded like Julian.

  “Aye, so it is. And will be while it stands—and after.” Tamsin put her hand on my arm, the first time she’d ever touched me. I didn’t feel anything, but I stared at her fingers against my skin the way people stare at newborn babies. “Oh, look at the perfect little nails, the darling little toes!” Tamsin said, “But Jenny, do we not every one leave home when it comes time to find another? A father’s home for a husband’s—is that not so? And that in turn for a third, for the long home where all will meet again at last. All, all… except such as are bound, ensnared, barred away forever from such joy.” The moon was just beginning to rise, and I could see her hand tightening on my forearm, but there was absolutely no sensation.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And I was sorry, because she’d been speaking to me as though we were the same age, even out of the same century, with the same experience, the same understanding. And all I could do was remind her that I was thirteen, from New York, and didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and I hated myself for it. I really expected her to vanish right there—just forget me completely, like one of the pretty girls back at Gaynor—and I wouldn’t have blamed her for a minute.

  But Tamsin… Tamsin only looked at me with such pity in her imaginary eyes as I never saw in my life, before or since. She said, “Child, no, sure I am the blind buzzard here—it’s you must forgive my foolishness. Indeed, how should you know? How should you comprehend what I myself cannot?” She clapped her hands soundlessly. “It’s all mystery anyroad, live or die, leave or stay. Let be—did I not promise to show you the true Stourhead night? Come, so.” And she put her arm through mine.

  No, I didn’t feel that either—I couldn’t have, I know I didn’t—but I thought I did, and I can’t explain it any better than that. She looked so solid, not transparent at all, and her eyes were as bright as Julian’s when he’s got a surprise for you. At the time I’d have sworn up and down that I felt the pull and bump of another human body in the bend of my arm, and when I think back on it now, I remember. Like Tamsin remembering the world.

  I yelled back to the house that I was going for a walk. Sally called that she might want to come with me, but I pretended I hadn’t heard. Tamsin led me down the rutted tractor path that runs to the south fields, but she turned away from it before we got there, toward a row of huge beech trees that the Lovells kept after Evan to cut down because most of them were half-dead. Evan wouldn’t do it. He said they were as old as the Manor, and belonged there as much as we did. By day they looked a mess—all bald and twisted and shedding bark, putting out leaves on one branch in ten—but now they stood up over us like fierce, proud, horrible old men. No, I don’t mean horrible; more like people who’ve suffered so much that it’s made them mean. But Tamsin was so happy to see them she let go of me and ran ahead, floating through the moonlight, not quite touching the ground. When she reached the first tree she swung around it to face me, and if the trees looked like men, she looked as young as Julian.

  “Still here—oh, still here!” she called—halfway singing, really. “Oh, still holding to Stourhead earth, they and I.” She hooked her arm around the tree and swung again, as though she was dancing with it. I knew she couldn’t have touched it, felt the bark or the dry leaves, any more than I could have felt her arm against mine— but nobody looks as beautiful, as joyous, as Tamsin looked right then when they’re feeling nothing. Nobody, ghost or not, I don’t believe it.

  “I saw my father plant these trees,” she said as I came up with her. “Jenny, they were such minikins, hardly saplings—truly, I must bend down to pet them good morning, as I do Miss Sophia Brown. And see them now, grown so great and grim—stripped and battered by the years, yet still here, unyielding.” She wheeled toward the beech trees again, asking them, “Were you waiting for me then, little ones, all this time? Would you ask my sanction before you fall? Well, I do not grant it, do you hear me?” Her voice didn’t change at all; she might just as well have been talking to me. “Nay, if I’m to stay on, so shall you—and I am even older, so you’ll mind what I say. Whiles I remain at Stourhead, you’re to keep me company, as Roger my father bade you. Hear!”

  There was the tiniest flick of a breeze just now beginning to stir, and that’s probably why the trees seemed to be bowing their raggedy heads to her. Tamsin turned back to me. She said, “Beeches are kind, beeches will help if they can. Elders, too, and even ash, if you speak them courtesy. But ware the oak, Jenny, for they love men no whit more than they love the swine who eat their acorns. Ware the oak, always.”

  It sounded as much like a command as when she’d told the beech trees they couldn’t die as long as she was at the Manor. I said I would, and Tamsin took my arm again. “Now, Mistress Jenny,” she said. “Now I will take you to meet another old companion of mine.”

  I tried to find it the next day, that path Tamsin took me by in the hot darkness, but I never could. It had to be on Stourhead Farm, because she couldn’t pass its boundaries, and it had to be somewhere near the barley fields, because they take a lot of water and I could hear the auxiliary pump working. There’s a regular path, of course, that runs
right to the fields, but that’s not the one we were on, I know that. Six years, and I’ve never been able to find it again, no more than I’ve ever found that feeling of utter, absolute, total safety that I had walking with Tamsin that night. I’m as scared of the dark as anyone else—with more reason—but not then, not with Tamsin beside me, glimmering and laughing, teasing me that my family had let the path go to hell. “La, what a shaggy tumble it’s become, where once one saw clear to the high road. What horses then! aye, and how we heard their hoofbeats for miles, as it seemed, before the brave carriages whirled into view. Well, well, never fret, dear Jenny, it must have been long ago, I’ll warrant.” But she wasn’t sure it was long ago—she was still listening for those horses. You could tell.

  I don’t know when it hit me that we weren’t alone. First I looked around for Miss Sophia Brown and Mister Cat, but then I realized someone or something was pacing us, just off to my left. I can’t say how I knew, because I couldn’t see it, whatever it was, and it didn’t make any sound. No crackling brush, no growl—no breathing, even—but the thing was close, and I would have been scared out of my mind if I hadn’t been with Tamsin. She put her arm around my shoulders, which I couldn’t feel any more than I’d felt her hand on my arm, but I was glad of it just the same. She said quietly, “Do not fear. There is no danger.”

  We stood together, waiting. I didn’t know for what, but I wasn’t afraid, because Tamsin had said not to be. We stood there, and after a while the thing that had been walking with us came out into the moonlight.

  It was a dog, the biggest dog I’ve ever seen, the size of a cow. It looked like the Hound of the Baskervilles, except that it was totally black—so black that the moonlight made it look even blacker, as though it was soaking up the light and turning it to darkness inside itself. Its eyes were glowing red, but it didn’t look savage: more like really dignified, almost sad. I whispered to Tamsin, “What is it? What kind of dog is that?”

  “That is the Black Dog,” Tamsin said. I just blinked at her, which seemed to surprise her. “The Black Dog. He appears always as a warning.”

  “Warning about what?” Tamsin didn’t answer me. She moved toward that huge creature, and I thought he wagged his tail the least bit, but maybe not. Her voice was different than when she talked to me. She said, “Why have you come, tell me? What need for such as I am to beware?”

  She beckoned to me without taking her eyes off him, but I couldn’t move. I knew I wasn’t scared, but my legs didn’t. Tamsin turned and saw how I was standing, and called softly, “Jenny, to me! No harm, no harm,” as though she were coaxing a skittery animal. I went to stand beside her, and I made myself look straight into the Black Dog’s red eyes.

  To this day I don’t have any idea what the Black Dog is. Maybe he’s nothing more than a presentiment, a way of telling yourself to watch out for something you already know to watch out for. I could believe that if he hadn’t looked so real—he even smelled like a real dog. I’ve never yet had a presentiment that smelled.

  Tamsin asked him again, “Why have you come?” He didn’t bark or whine, the way dogs do when it’s killing them not to be able to talk. But she listened to his silence, and once she nodded. She glanced sideways at me, and I said, “What? I don’t understand a thing!” and when I looked back again the Black Dog was gone.

  “Well,” Tamsin said. “Passing strange.” Her voice was so soft I could barely hear her. “This is passing strange, Jenny. The Black Dog is come to warn us both, though of what I’m not aware. He came just so to Edric and me, but my understanding failed us then. It must not fail again.”

  “Who’s Edric?” I asked her, but she didn’t answer. The moon was so bright that I could even make out a small frown line between her eyes, and that melted me more than I can write down now. The idea that she could make herself remember something as human as a frown, with everything else she was trying to hold on to… I wondered suddenly if Miss Sophia Brown ever used to paw her eyes open in the morning, three hundred years ago, the way Mister Cat does with me.

  “It’s late,” I said, “Sally’s going to start worrying. I guess we can meet your friend another time.” Tamsin looked at me without answering. There was a moment when I felt like the ultimate idiot, talking about lateness and worry to a ghost. But then she said, “Indeed, my own mother was greatly given to apprehension,” and we started back.

  She didn’t talk much on the way, but she stayed visible and distinct in the darkness, which I took to mean that she was thinking hard about the Black Dog. Which was why I did something I shouldn’t have done, something she’d made me promise I’d never do. I asked her, “Do you suppose the dog was warning us about the Other One? You know, like the boggart?”

  The moment the words were out of my mouth I was desperately hoping she wouldn’t recall what I’d promised. But I just had to look at her, and I knew. I was sure she’d be furious at me—and for a bit she was, which was frightening, because with a ghost you can really see a feeling, all the way down. Somebody who has to remember all the time what feelings are isn’t going to be any good at hiding them. Tamsin looked at me for a long time without saying anything, while I was apologizing and apologizing for mentioning the Other One at all. Finally she smiled, and it was all right, like that, the same way it had been absolutely, horribly wrong a minute before. That’s how it always was with Tamsin.

  “He is gone,” she said. “Long gone, Jenny, long away past returning, even that one. And if he did, be sure that I would know of it. The Black Dog is wrong.”

  “Well, who was he?” I asked, but that was pushing it. Tamsin turned and started on, and although she seemed to be barely drifting through that sludgy air, I had to skip to catch up with her. She said, “Jenny, all that matters is that he is not. Words are dear to me, and he will consume no more of mine. The Black Dog is wrong, and your boggart is wrong—be greatly thankful, and be still.” And I was, the rest of the way, until the lights of the Manor came into view through the branches of Tamsin’s beech trees. They seemed very far away, although they weren’t really. I think that was the first time I was even a little homesick for someplace that wasn’t West Eighty-third and Columbus Avenue—even for the people who had snatched West Eighty-third away from me. It was an uneasy feeling, and I didn’t like it.

  Tamsin stopped before we reached the trees, putting her arm out in front of me. For a moment I thought the Black Dog was with us again; but he never made a sound, and there are too many dead leaves under the beeches for a big animal to move quietly. Tamsin whispered, “Stay” to me; and then, louder, “Will you have forgotten me so soon, old friend? Not you, surely?”

  There was a sudden raspy grunt up ahead, and one loud crash in the undergrowth, and something darker than the night hoped away beyond the line of trees. It looked as big as the Black Dog—bigger—but I couldn’t make out whether it was running on two legs or four. It turned once to look back at us, and its eyes were yellow as gold. Tamsin said softly, “A pity.”

  “What’s a pity?” I asked her. “What was that?” Tamsin pretended not to hear me. She did that a lot when she didn’t want to answer a question, just as I did with Sally. She said, “And yet, one turn around Stourhead Farm in your fair company, and here are folk I’ve not seen since my father died, waiting to welcome me. Not only those two, but others, others… I think you must be my good fortune come to find me, and calling yourself Mistress Jenny.” She made to ruffle my hair, and I will swear to this day that I felt the one little breeze of the night cooling my sweaty neck. I know it had to be a coincidence. I’m not saying it wasn’t.

  “What others?” No chance. Tamsin said, “Child, we will part here, an it please you. Your mother will be waiting, and I… I have affairs left too long untended. Stay on the path, and it will have you home before you can say my name entire, which is Tamsin Elspeth Catherine Maria Dubois Willoughby. I will come for you again.”

  Even this close to the Manor, I wasn’t crazy about being left alone in a night
that was turning out to be practically as inhabited as West Eighty-third Street. But I didn’t have a vote—Tamsin blinked out with her last word, and I made my way home, looking over my shoulder a hot. Sally tried to be angry with me for being gone so long, but it was too hot. Julian was still up, fussy and miserable, so I read him one of his William books until he fell asleep. I took the book to bed with me, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to sleep either, but I was, and I dreamed all night of the Black Dog.

  Fourteen

  Night’s never been the same for me again.

  I’ll never know exactly how wandering over Stourhead Farm with me at night became a habit of Tamsin’s—if ghosts even have habits. She’d be there, waiting by the South Barn or under the chestnut tree behind the dairy, every two or three evenings; and sometimes it felt as though we were two old ladies out for their regular constitutional stroll, the same way they’d been doing for years. But for me, each time had to be the first—I couldn’t ever afford to take our meetings for granted, even if she could. Tamsin might forget me any time at all, just forget forever to come and find me, and that would be that. So whenever I smelled vanilla and caught sight of her, glowing so gently in the twilight, smiling to see me (she was always careful never to pop out of nowhere, like a ghost in a movie), all my insides would jump right up from a standing start, the way crickets leap up out of the grass. I suppose I’ll be that way about a man someday, but it hasn’t happened yet.

  The thing is, we were the only people who knew what moved around the Manor and the farm after nightfall, Tamsin and me. I mean, Julian did see the boggart, and Sally’s always had her suspicions, but nobody knows, not even after everything that happened. Right now it’s about ten o’clock, and I’m writing this in Sally’s music room, which she’s very sneakily turned into the most comfortable place in the whole house. Tony’s dancing in Edinburgh, Julian’s off somewhere with his newest girlfriend, and Sally and Evan are in the North Barn with Lady Caroline Lamb, who’s due to drop a calf tonight, and always needs company. Your typical rural Dorset evening. Nothing much going on that Thomas Hardy wouldn’t recognize.