Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  Corwen’s hand was still out. He gave Hingston a look which had something of the wolf about it.

  Hingston stepped back, turned, and ran to the door, yelling loudly as he dashed into the yard. I didn’t know whether he was calling out for his dogs or his farmhands, or both.

  Corwen raced after him and tackled him to the floor. They both landed in a puddle from the earlier rain, Hingston facedown. Corwen rolled away and leaped to his feet. Hingston was no slouch in the fisticuffs department, and he came up swinging. His fist clonked on the point of Corwen’s jaw, causing Corwen to reel back. I saw the wolf looking out from behind Corwen’s eyes as he surged forward.

  Oh, no. Please don’t change. Not here, not now.

  A shriek from the farmhouse door drew my attention. A woman—Mrs. Hingston, I guessed—rushed at the pair of them, broom in hand. She got in a couple of good whacks before I reached her and shoved her away, wrapping my arms around her and pinning her arms to her sides to keep her from swinging the broom.

  “Leave them to it,” I said as she wriggled in my grip.

  She tried to kick backward, so I swept her feet from under her, pushed her to the ground, twisted one arm up behind her back, and knelt with one knee across her spine. The other hand, still clutching the broom, was beneath her.

  By the time I had the opportunity to look, Corwen and Farmer Hingston were slugging it out. They looked pretty evenly matched. The farmer’s outdoor work had built muscles and stamina, but Corwen was fit and determined. I had my pistols in my pocket, but I hoped it wouldn’t come down to needing them.

  Hingston almost got away from Corwen, but Timpani stepped forward and the farmer, half-blind from a bleeding cut over one eye, cannoned into the horse’s shoulder. Corwen caught him on the rebound and, with a fist to his nose, punched his lights out.

  “You can get up.” I eased my weight off Mrs. Hingston’s back.

  “Arthur? What have you done to him? Is he dead?”

  “No, he’s not dead.” Corwen wiped away blood from his split lip. “Only finishing what he started.” Corwen bent over the unconscious farmer and checked his pockets for keys, coming up with a bunch that looked likely.

  “What’s all this about? We’ve got no money.” Mrs. Hingston said, kneeling at her husband’s head.

  “We don’t want your money,” I said. “Just giving your hobs a choice of whether to stay or go.”

  “You leave ’em be.”

  Corwen went into the dairy. I heard him climbing the ladder to the loft and the scrape of metal on metal as he tried a couple of keys. There was a clang as he found the right one and dropped the lock to the floor.

  “They asked about the road to Bristol. We couldn’t risk it.” Mrs. Hingston whined. “Their cheese making is good, and we’re starting to get known for it.”

  “What do the hobs get out of it?”

  “We keep ’em in comfort. What have they got to grumble about?”

  “She’s right about the comfort,” Corwen shouted down. “They’ve got chairs, a table, and a box bed, all hob-sized, though their window has a broken pane.”

  “What about the baby?” I asked.

  “Safe and sound in his crib.”

  I heard both hobs clamber up the ladder, and soon there were cooing noises coming from above.

  “We never hurt ’em, only made sure they didn’t leave.”

  “That’s hurt enough,” I said.

  “The hobs are coming with us,” said Corwen as he climbed down with a bundle in one arm.

  “You can’t take them. They’re ours.”

  “They belong entirely to themselves,” I said. “You can’t own a person. Slavery is illegal in this country, even though, God help us, we allow the Africa trade to continue.”

  Mrs. Hingston’s eyes widened. “But they are hobs. They aren’t people,” she said with all sincerity.

  “I’m sure those who trade in dark-skinned men and women think they aren’t people, either,” I said. “Let the hobs go, Mrs. Hingston.”

  “You really don’t have much choice,” Corwen said, as he emerged from the dairy with a baby hob in his arms. “We’d rather have settled this amicably, without anyone getting hurt, but whatever you say or do, we’re not leaving without the hobs—all of them.”

  The hobs followed him, each with a small bundle of possessions. Corwen handed the baby to the female hob, and turned to where Farmer Hingston, still on the floor, was starting to groan as he came to his senses. Mrs. Hingston knelt and dabbed the cut above his eye with the corner of her apron.

  “Well? How is it to be?” Corwen loomed over the pair of them.

  The female hob tugged at my sleeve and beckoned. I bent so she could whisper in my ear. I came back upright, smiling at what she said.

  “Mrs. Hingston. Your cheese may not be so popular when people discover there’s ground glass in it. Remember that broken windowpane in the loft?”

  “What?” Her face fell. “All of it?”

  The hobs both nodded.

  “But hobs are helpers,” Mr. Hingston said. “It’s not in their nature to—”

  “You credit them with human kindness and industry, but deny them their rights as people,” I said. “I suggest you throw away all the cheese you have maturing and start to make your own. Who knows, you may have learned something.”

  We left them there, in the farmyard.

  Corwen boosted me into Dancer’s saddle and handed me the child to carry in my arms. Looking at his tiny sleeping face, I wondered how I would feel carrying my own children. We took one hob up behind each of us, where they quickly faded to invisibility for the duration of the journey.

  As we rode back down the lane toward Vobster, I asked the hob whether she really had put ground glass into the cheese.

  “No-no-no,” she said, “Would never.”

  “But they will never know one way or the other,” I said. “They’re not going to try it to find out, are they?”

  She chuckled. It served the Hingstons right.

  8

  Richmond

  ON THE TWENTIETH of February we had another letter from Lily. This time Corwen let Aileen Reynard through the barrier, and Freddie let her pass unhindered apart from a low growl, which was a marked improvement. I know Corwen took it as a good sign.

  I wasn’t convinced.

  Lily’s letter, however, brought bad news. Mysterium hangings had taken place in eight towns with a total of thirty-one more rowankind dead, so far, on little or no pretext. Apparently, the Earl of Stratford, George Pomeroy’s grandfather, had raised questions in the Upper House but had received little support, and an inquiry sent to Mysterium headquarters received a reply which contained a list of names of the dead, but no charges or reasons for the summary executions.

  We could only wait for the twenty-eighth day of February. Our letter had said the sender would meet the king alone and unarmed, and he would, but there was no reason to be stupid about this. The king, or any of his underlings, could easily decide we meant harm, so the whole place could be crawling with redcoats, Mysterium officers, and militia.

  And there was the question of which of us would meet the king. Corwen and I argued back and forth over this. I argued that a woman meeting the king would not be seen as threatening. He said a woman would not be as credible, and I might not be taken seriously. Sadly, I agreed that my gender might count against me in this, but I could easily meet the king dressed as a man. Besides, Corwen would make a much better watcher because, in wolf form, he could sniff out a trap in seconds.

  In the end I prevailed. I would meet the king in my man’s clothing—presuming the king kept the appointment.

  We’d chosen that spot in Richmond Park because it was close to a Fae gate which could provide a fast escape for us if anything went wrong. If the king did as we asked and left his followers a hundred pac
es away, we could easily reach the gate before any of them could reach us. This presumed they didn’t have a good marksman with a rifle. One hundred paces was no distance for a sharpshooter, and the new rifles were much more accurate than muskets.

  Early in the morning of the last day of February I dressed as a young gentleman in my breeches, linen shirt, and cutaway jacket. I pulled on my boots and wriggled my toes. I loved the familiar feel of this outfit. It brought back the days I’d spent as a privateer captain on my ship, the Heart of Oak. After Will, my first husband, died, it had taken me a while to slip into the role, but my crew, who might easily have taken the ship for themselves, left without a captain, stood by me. I’d led the men in skirmishes many times, and we’d done well chasing down French merchantmen for the king. This king whom I was about to meet.

  I felt a little naked without my sword at my hip and my sash with three loaded pistols, but old habits die hard, so I did have a knife concealed in my boot.

  We rode through the Fae gate into Richmond Park’s trees; from Iaru’s warm summer night to Britain’s dank dampness, barely above freezing. It was still dark, but dawn came late in February. By my pocket watch it was close to six in the morning. It had been raining, but beneath the trees it was relatively dry. The leaf bed under our feet felt soft, but not wet enough to mire us down. Corwen’s eyesight was much better than mine in the dark, so I left it up to him to do an initial assessment. I could have put up a witchlight to illuminate the area, but it would be too easy to spot.

  “The ground isn’t disturbed,” he said. “But the wet weather isn’t good for my nose. The scents are all mixed up. I might have to strip and go wolf to reconnoiter thoroughly.”

  “Let me listen.”

  My witch hearing is very acute. I picked up the sounds of an owl hunting, a badger grumbling quietly to itself as it waddled sleepily toward its sett, and crows cawing to the coming morning.

  “Hear anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing unusual. Smell anything?”

  “Nothing unusual.”

  “I think we’re in the clear.”

  We settled down to wait, confident that we’d spot a trap. We’d done all we could to prepare for the worst; now we had to hope for the best.

  Dawn arrived reluctantly, the leaden sky slow to admit the possibility of day. As soon as there was light enough to see, a steward came and paced out the distance from the White Lodge, but he was a short-legged man and the meeting point was closer to the house and farther from the gate to Iaru than we had hoped. The man drove a stake into the ground and returned to the lodge. Four footmen arrived next and set up a canopy with a chair beneath it.

  “The king must have his throne,” Corwen muttered.

  “If it makes him feel better, I don’t mind kneeling in front of it.”

  “See how it’s placed. If you stand in front of the throne, you are between the king and the White Lodge with your back a ready target for a sharpshooter.”

  Corwen was right. Damn.

  For the next hour nothing happened. The sun clawed its way into the sky, appearing as nothing more than an occasional lighter patch of cloud.

  “I’m going to check the rest of the park,” Corwen said. “It looks as though they’re doing as we ask, but if I were the king, even if I intended to keep this appointment, I would have a plan, and that plan would involve a perimeter guard at the very least. They don’t know we have our own way into and out of the park. They are likely to be watching for us on the approach roads.”

  Corwen slipped out of his clothes and shoved them into the little bag that held them all despite appearing far too small. He slung it across one shoulder, shivering in the February air. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. If you need to get out quickly, take both horses with you and I’ll follow on foot.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. Corwen often put others before himself.

  “I love you.”

  He smiled. “And I love you.”

  With that, he changed from naked man to wolf, his silver mane tipped with black and his eyes a clear luminous gray. There was beauty in both his forms. I blew a kiss as he streaked between the trees, nose to the ground.

  I checked my pocket watch as the hands ticked toward noon and still no sign of Corwen. Four retainers came out of the house carrying a canopy, the king walking beneath it. He wasn’t a young man. Compared to the retainers, he was portly around the middle though he walked with reasonable vigor. I’d brought a small spyglass, not as powerful as the one I used to have aboard the Heart of Oak, but good enough to help me pick out details. The king had a fleshy face with full lips. His hair was hidden beneath a white periwig and a hat. His suit was a fine cut, but light, and I wondered that he was not wearing a coat in this weather.

  I straightened my hair and resettled my tricorn hat firmly upon my head. I was ready to step out of the trees, when I heard Corwen approaching at a flat-out run. He flowed smoothly from wolf to man, though his breath came in gasps.

  “It’s a trap. There are redcoats on the roads, and more in the park, closing in.”

  “But I can see the king down there already.”

  Corwen screwed up his eyes to focus on the man beneath the canopy. “Do you have your spyglass?”

  I handed it to him.

  “I saw the king once, and that’s not him,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He boosted me into Dancer’s saddle and slapped Timpani on the rump before dropping to all fours and running alongside in wolf form.

  I heard horses behind us, the Blues, the king’s bodyguard, no doubt.

  Someone shouted, “Stop them,” as we raced toward the Fae gate.

  There was a moment of disorientation as we crashed through into the green of Iaru’s summer. The sounds of pursuit fell away. I screwed up my eyes against the sun and eased Dancer to a stop. Timpani slowed with us and snorted as the silver wolf became human again.

  Corwen dressed quickly. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, fine though disappointed. I hoped the mention of Walsingham in the letter would work.”

  “Ah, who knows why it didn’t, but the direct approach was worth a try. Let’s go and tell the Fae their plan is nonsensical.”

  9

  Failure

  “ROSSALINDE.”

  “And.”

  “Corwen.”

  “You.”

  “Have.”

  “Failed.”

  “Us.”

  The Fae Council of Seven, who sat in judgment upon us, delivered their verdict, one word each as though they shared a brain. Then, Larien, David’s father, with whom I had a somewhat strange and strained relationship, stood as if ready to mete out a sentence.

  This wasn’t a trial. We’d not been allowed to say anything yet, and I sure as all hell was not going to stand here meekly and take what they were saying without a spirited response even though we were in Iaru, their heartland.

  I looked along the line of Fae, sitting on their thronelike chairs. I knew them all by sight, but the only ones I’d ever had direct dealings with were Larien and his brother Dantin. Larien was imperious but fair-minded. Dantin didn’t like humanity and made no effort to hide the fact. The oldest Fae on the council, Lord Dax, looked ancient in the same way as a stately tree shows its age. His skin drooped down his face, and his eyes were almost lost in folds. His white hair, fluffy as swansdown, exploded from beneath a close-fitting headdress of what appeared to be flexible gold. Fae were not immortal, but since they aged so slowly, I thought he might be thousands of years old. I couldn’t even begin to guess the ages of the others. They looked to range from their sixties down to a youthful thirty, which meant they were centuries old, not decades.

  Out of the seven, only two of them were female, the elderly Lady Iphransia and t
he middle-aged Lady Coralie. I didn’t know much about Lord Tarius except he seemed inclined to agree with Dantin, and I knew even less about Lord Eduran, who listened a lot but said little.

  I knew some of the youthful Fae who stood behind their parents’ chairs as cupbearers were two centuries old, and had the appearance of being barely twenty. David was the youngest. He stood behind Larien’s chair, his face impassive. He was the only one I knew to be genuinely the age he appeared to be.

  “You asked us to do the impossible, and you gave us no help to do it.” Corwen stood close by my side, the back of his hand brushing the back of mine.

  “This country doesn’t work the way it did the last time you came out of your hallowed halls and spoke with a monarch.” I directed my reply to Larien who, in my opinion, had been responsible for causing the whole problem in the first place—over two hundred years ago. “If you had given your help against the Armada when Good Queen Bess first requested it, the rowankind would never have been summoned to do your job for you and would never have been trapped as bondservants waiting for someone from my family to free them. Also, it’s likely that without the knowledge you gave to the Crown, the queen would never have created the Mysterium to limit the use of magic and would never have appointed the first Walsingham to hunt down my ancestors.”

  I knew I was oversimplifying, but—broadly speaking—I was right.

  Larien went frighteningly still. Maybe he was sharing thoughts with the rest of the council. “May I remind you, Rossalinde, it was your ancestor who had the idea of summoning the rowankind to use their weather magic.”

  “But he wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t been so damned standoffish.” I glared at him. “You, Larien, in person. You spoke for the Fae, then as now.”

  Larien’s decision to keep the Fae out of the Spanish war had prompted my many-times great-grandfather, Martyn the Summoner, to do what he did. I wasn’t sure how it had been achieved. I believe Martyn had some help initially from Dr. John Dee who thereafter kept out of the whole mess and, when Martyn had begged his help to send the rowankind home, had skipped off to Europe on a mission for the queen. Very useful.