Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  In the meantime, Aunt Rosie had fled to the Fae where she’d raised a child, Margann, fathered by Dantin. I still had a hard time imagining Dantin as someone my jolly aunt would take to her bed, but I supposed there must be another side to him.

  Reuniting with Leo, her childhood sweetheart, had changed Rosie’s life again. He was a blacksmith, tall and white-haired, but still vigorous. She’d become the village midwife and wisewoman. Indeed, during her years in this cottage, Rosie had grown into the use of magic, while my mother had been busy rejecting hers. Rosie had lent me some of her notebooks so that I could learn more.

  “Have you finished with the notebooks I left you?” Rosie dropped a small package wrapped in brown paper onto the table. “I sense darkness gathering. I don’t know what or where, but there’s something. I’ve been dreaming.”

  Aunt Rosie’s dreams were much more reliable than mine.

  “Anything we should know about?”

  She shrugged. “Are you sure Walsingham ended up in a French prison?”

  I shuddered. “As sure as I can be without actually being there. The French took the Guillaume Tell, and he was on board.”

  I wondered whether to tell her about my Walsingham dream, but I was pretty sure that it had simply been the result of what had passed earlier in the day with Pomeroy. Aunt Rosie had a degree of prescience which I’d never aspired to.

  “Ah, it’s probably nothing, but you shouldn’t let up on your studies. Read the notebooks. Make your own.” She patted the package. “Here are the next ones.” She untied the string and slid one notebook out, then thumbed through it to one of the middle pages. “And here’s a spell you need to learn.”

  I looked at the page. “A protection spell.”

  “It’s difficult to put a protection spell on anything animate. People and creatures are too fluid in their movements. Besides, a protection spell might protect them from certain kinds of intimate contact they don’t want to be protected from, or from useful magic, such as a glamour. This spell is really for things like the roof over your head, or the carriage you are driving in, or maybe that ship of yours. It won’t necessarily save you from a cannonball or a gunshot, but it will help protect against magical attack.”

  I nodded, already absorbed in reading the spell until Aunt Rosie tapped the book again and turned to Corwen. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to study these, too.”

  “Me? I’m a shapechanger, not a witch.”

  “The Lady gave you some power over illusion, didn’t she?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “If you mastered that, you can master some of these. You have the potential.” She didn’t give him the opportunity to contradict, instead turning back to me. “I think you might be interested in some of the passages about magical creatures, too.”

  The Fae, together with the Lady’s trusted agents from the Okewood, had been hurrying hither and thither trying to round up some of the magical creatures, both dangerous and benign, who had escaped Iaru and the woodland realm. Corwen and I had dealt with a particularly nasty kelpie last year.

  “Is there anything in particular I should study?” I asked.

  “You might take a look at the passage on hobs.”

  “They’re not dangerous, are they? I thought hobs were helpful to humans.”

  “Not dangerous in themselves, but if a human were to bind them, they could defend themselves.”

  “Is there such a thing happening?”

  “I heard a rumor of a hob near Radstock, a village called Vobster. Things have gone quiet, now, but I have an uncomfortable feeling about it.”

  Aunt Rosie’s feelings, like her dreams, were not to be taken lightly. If she thought I should study the next set of notebooks, then I would.

  “Vobster?” Corwen asked. “You think someone should take a look?”

  “Would you? Oh, yes, please.”

  Her relief was so evident that even though I guessed Corwen hadn’t been intending to volunteer personally, he immediately relented. He looked at me.

  “Why not?” he said. “We can’t do anything much until the last day of February. Let’s take a trip to Vobster.”

  7

  The Vobster Hob

  I READ AUNT Rosie’s notes on hobs before we set off for Vobster. Then I read them out loud to Corwen. “Hobs are smaller than the average human, and largely benign. They often use their magical abilities to help humans, usually around the house or farm. Though they don’t expect payment, putting out a bowl of milk and even a cake now and then, keeps them sweet and encourages them to stay. They are excellent at persuading crops to grow and yield, but also good with cattle in the dairy.”

  Corwen absorbed that and then held out his hand for the book, reading the passage again. Good, he was taking Aunt Rosie’s encouragement to heart.

  We’d met a pair of hobs when we’d rescued the magicals from the Guillaume Tell and found them to be strange-looking, but pleasant-natured.

  We made our peace with Freddie again before leaving him within David’s enclosure. He didn’t seem to mind, but since he couldn’t change and talk to us, we really had no idea how he felt about things.

  The nearest Fae gate to Vobster was a patch of woodland south of Radstock. Mining had encroached into the trees, and I wondered how long it would be before the gate itself was exposed.

  “Do they ever close gates?” I asked Corwen.

  “I believe they do if the gate is compromised,” he said. “I understand there used to be several gates in the Sheffield area, but the industrial blight spread too far and too fast. There’s only one left now.”

  On this February day, it didn’t so much rain as drizzle water over us until we were clammy and damp. We each wore an oiled cotton cape that slicked the rain off, but it still chapped my cheeks and a persistent rivulet trickled down my neck and inside my shirt.

  We asked directions from a passing pack man leading four scrawny horses, each carrying a sack of coal that looked to be approximately the weight of a man. He pointed out the way but warned us the road was particularly bad at this time of year, full of ruts and mud.

  And so it proved. Timpani and Dancer, being Fae bred, managed to avoid the worst of it, but twice we passed small carts mired in the mud, the second one with a donkey collapsed between the shafts, and the owner smacking its back with a stick to get it on its feet again.

  “Ho, there,” Corwen called. “Give Jack a chance, man.”

  I dismounted from Dancer, glad I’d chosen to wear breeches and boots. Dancer followed me to the donkey’s head and nuzzled its ears. The donkey raised its head from the ground, gave a groan, and dropped back into the mud. By the gray around its eyes and muzzle this was an old beast, and the burden was too much for him.

  “He’s lazy. Allus has been, allus will be. Just needs a crack or two to get him moving again.” The man thwacked his stick across the donkey’s rump.

  “That’s no way to treat him,” I said.

  “Mind yer own business and I’ll mind mine.”

  I looked into the donkey’s eyes and saw hopelessness. Right then and there I wanted to free him and take him with us, even if Corwen called me soft for it. I glanced up. Corwen hadn’t dismounted, but he’d ridden Timpani closer to the man, hampering the movement of the stick.

  “Poor Jack.” I stroked the donkey’s furry cheek. What should have been soft was matted with wet mud. The donkey flicked an ear, but otherwise didn’t react. I sensed life hanging by no more than a thread.

  I’m a summoner. I can call a spirit to me. Sometimes, if that spirit is still in its body, I can call it out. On occasions like this, it was a mercy. I latched onto the donkey’s spirit and gently invited it out of the wrecked body. It came gladly. As the donkey’s ear stopped twitching, I had the ghost of a pretty, brown-eyed jack donkey standing by my side. The owner couldn’t see it, but Corwen could. H
e touched fingertips to temple in salute while I gave the donkey permission to move on. I saw the apparition wobble forward like a new colt on unsteady legs, then he began to trot. As he faded, the ghost-donkey kicked up his heels in a joyous buck and brayed loudly. Dancer whickered in reply.

  “You’re not going to be able to beat any life into the poor thing,” I stood. “He’s gone, and you’re on your own with the cart. I suggest you pull it yourself.”

  I mounted Dancer as the man began to ask for assistance, but neither Corwen nor I had any inclination to help, so we left him alternately cursing the dead donkey and shouting after us.

  “That was well done,” Corwen said.

  “The poor thing was a whisker away from death anyway. He certainly couldn’t have drawn that cart any farther.”

  “It’s a bad husbandman who uses up his animals instead of treating them well. Setting all kindness aside, he’d get more out of his beasts if he looked after them better. It’s common sense.”

  “Sometimes I think we live in sad times.”

  We rode on in silence.

  Vobster was a few miles south of Radstock on the River Mells, a haphazard collection of houses with an inn and a bridge. The village was surrounded by outlying farms and the whole area was pitted with small coal mines and the occasional stone quarry. The bridge over the River Mells had four stone arches which carried the road over the swollen river. The date on the bridge was 1794, so it was recently built, probably to replace an older structure. Right then I wasn’t so much interested in the bridge as the inn, tempted by the idea of a hot meal and a roof over my head.

  The inn’s ostler came out at the sound of our arrival and offered to take our horses, but we asked him to show us the stable and led Timpani and Dancer there ourselves. The building was dry and smelled sweet, with fresh straw in the stalls and hay in the racks.

  “This will do nicely,” Corwen said as we unsaddled the horses and arranged for a feed of oats.

  “Do you know a carter with an elderly jack donkey?” I asked.

  “Oh, aye, that’d be Clem Weatherall.” The ostler’s expression told me what I wanted to know.

  “We passed him on the road. Looked as though he’d worked the poor beast to death.”

  “Aye, I’ve been waiting for that to ’appen.”

  “So you’ll not be sending out anyone to help him, then?”

  “I reckon he can fend for hisself. He’s always the last to offer when anyone needs a hand.”

  We left the horses in the capable care of the ostler and ran across the yard into the inn to get out of the drizzle which was steadily turning to something more closely akin to actual rain.

  The landlady was a jovial, round-faced woman who kept a clean house. Her ale was good, and she quickly served us with a pork pie still warm from the oven, together with pickles and crusty bread and butter.

  We couldn’t ask after a hob, but we did engage her in conversation. Like many landlords, she was an inveterate gossip. We soon discovered who’d said what to whom, and which lady in the village was no better than she should be. One tale which caught my attention was about a farmer named Hingston whose wife came from Cheddar, and who had had sudden success with his cheeses, producing creamy pale cheese that quite matched the best Cheddar could offer.

  I raised my eyebrow at Corwen. He was obviously thinking there might be some hob involvement.

  “Do you think he might sell us a wheel of cheese?” Corwen asked. “We’re on our way to see an old friend in Holcombe who likes his cheese. He thinks he’s a bit of an expert, and I’d like to surprise him with something new.”

  “You’ll pass Hingston’s place on the way to Holcombe. Nutbush Farm.”

  * * *

  By the time we finished our meal, the rain had cleared. Nutbush Farm on the Holcombe Road was not difficult to find. The farmyard was neat with the cottage, painted a creamy yellow, and the barn and a range of buildings forming three sides of a square. A black-and-white dog barked twice as we turned in off the road, but quieted as the farmer, a tall and big-boned man, emerged from the barn to see who’d come. Corwen gave him the story about visiting a friend who fancied himself an expert cheese taster. Hingston’s chest puffed up like a pigeon when we told him his cheese had been recommended as being better than anything from Cheddar.

  “My missis will be right proud. She comes from Cheddar, and her folks were cheesemakers, though she don’t take after either of ’em.”

  “It’s not your wife who makes the cheese, then?” Corwen asked.

  “Lord love yer, no, it ain’t. She bakes a fair loaf, and her pastry is as good as any, but she doesn’t have the hands for dairy, or the heart. No patience, you know. Butter and cheese need loving patience.”

  “Do you make it yourself, or have you got a dairy maid?”

  I didn’t catch the farmer’s reply because I dismounted and looked around for anything out of the ordinary while Corwen engaged him in affable conversation. If anything, the yard was too tidy. I doubted the farmer could afford an army of servants, so perhaps that was an indication that there was a hob about the place.

  I saw a shadow move inside the lean-to at the end of a range of buildings, and for a moment a strange face looked out at me. It was a small person the height of a nine or ten-year-old child, but that was no child’s face. The eyebrows didn’t so much meet in the middle as combine to make one heavy ridged eyebrow covered in dark tufted hair. The eyes were heavily shaded, and the nose turned up way beyond retroussé. I’d found my hob.

  “Is that your dairy?” I cut across the conversation that Corwen was conducting and glanced at him briefly. He got my meaning straight away.

  “I’d be fascinated to see where this perfect cheese is made,” Corwen said, “and to hear any secrets you deem able to share.”

  The farmer seemed reluctant to move, but Corwen dismounted and began to walk toward the door I’d pointed out.

  Farmer Hingston scurried to get ahead of us and made a great fuss about opening the door, but he also did it extremely slowly, which might give any hob the opportunity to either find a hiding place or, more likely, turn invisible.

  The walls were thick and the window small, keeping the inside cool in hot weather, but protected from frosts in the winter. The walls were covered in blue-and-white Dutch tiles and the floor with plain glazed tiles.

  Corwen’s nose twitched as we followed Hingston inside. I raised one eyebrow, and he nodded imperceptibly. Yes, he could smell that there was a hob in residence. It wasn’t a large dairy, but it was as clean and neat as any I’d seen, with a good-sized stone table in the center and a watertight ledge all around it. Water surrounded wide, shallow milk dishes, cooling the contents. A butter churn stood ready. Shelves held terra-cotta bowls and jugs of varying sizes and shapes.

  A door led through to a second room, and when Hingston opened it up, we could see a third room beyond that. Corwen distracted Hingston with more conversation while I hung back.

  “I know you’re here,” I said. “How can I help?”

  I didn’t get an answer, but I felt the hob stir.

  “The Lady of the Forests can offer sanctuary,” I said. I hoped her name would help.

  I heard a fast chittering kind of sound and could have sworn there were two voices rather than one. They were talking to each other faster than would have been humanly possible.

  “Are there two of you? Are you being held here against your will?”

  I wondered whether Aunt Rosie had been mistaken and the hob, or maybe hobs, were here voluntarily. Farmer Hingston seemed a jovial fellow, not at all the kind to imprison hobs.

  “Why don’t you simply leave?” I asked.

  I heard a shuddering sound and a hob began to appear from the crown of his head downward. It was disconcerting to have hair appear first and then the fearsome brow ridge, eyes, turned-up nose, an
d then mouth and chin.

  A second hob appeared in a similar manner, but this one I thought might be female.

  “Baby,” she said and pointed upward.

  The ceiling, made of close-fitting boards, painted white, had a small trapdoor in it next to the far wall. An access ladder, also painted white, fastened to the wall below it.

  “Is your baby up there?” I asked.

  They both nodded.

  “Mr. Hingston!” I followed Corwen into the next room and crashed into the conversation. “Is it true you have hobs on the premises?”

  He tried to look surprised. “What are hobs?”

  “Dear, sweet, gentle people who like to help, but they don’t like being forced to help.”

  “Come now, they’re not like people.”

  “So you do know what hobs are, or you think you do. Corwen, there are two of them, and they say Farmer Hingston is keeping their baby in the loft.” I jerked my head toward the ladder. “Up there. I’ll let you do the honors.”

  There was a large padlock holding the trapdoor closed. It wasn’t difficult to pick, or even to smash, but I surmised the problem was that the lock was made of cold iron. It was a myth that all magical creatures were afraid of iron and running water, but some were, and it seemed the hobs fell into that category.

  “The key, please, Mr. Hingston.” Corwen held his hand out.

  “You can’t come up here and set my cattle free. Or do you intend to take them for yourself? This farm has always had hobs, as far back as I can recall in my father’s time, and my grandfather’s, too.”

  “I bet your father and grandfather didn’t have to lock up the hobs’ children to keep them here.”