Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  But the smile didn’t leave his face. “I won’t put you in danger. Let’s keep our options open. We need to be able to find out whenever the king leaves London for the country, or maybe even when he’s at Windsor. Do we know anyone who might know an insider in the palace?”

  “I’ll bet the goblins know someone. We could pay a visit in the morning.”

  “You already owe them a debt. Is it wise to involve them? It might remind them to try and collect.”

  “Oh, I doubt Mr. Tingle has forgotten. He’s an astute businessman.”

  “Don’t tell him about the child.”

  “I won’t tell anyone about the child, at least not until my belly tells them for me.”

  “Not even my mother?”

  “Think how I’d feel if I lost it. I might, you know. It’s still very early days. I know how pleased you are, but it’s not a sure thing, not yet.”

  He reached out and took my hand. “You’re pleased, too, aren’t you?”

  I squeezed his fingers. “You know I am.”

  “Should you see a physician?”

  “It’s not an illness.”

  “Talk to the Lady, then.”

  I smiled at him. “Of course. She probably knows already, and I’ll tell Aunt Rosie, too. It’s good to have a midwife in the family.”

  “Even if she’s a witch?”

  “Especially if she’s a witch.”

  11

  Goblins

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, after I’d thrown up again, we took a coach to Whitechapel, to the tailoring establishment of Mr. Tingle, the goblin to whom I was in debt. Not financial debt—that I could have coped with—but a debt of honor, a favor owed for a favor done. It was always dangerous to owe magical creatures a favor, and I’d promised a very open-ended one—unspecified and at the time of Mr. Tingle’s own choosing. When I’d rescued Mr. Twomax and a bevy of young goblins, I’d hoped Mr. Tingle would call the debt even, but he said the debt was Twomax’s, and that my debt to him was still ongoing.

  It was Good Friday, but I guessed it would be business as usual in the clothing trade. Going to church on a working day was a luxury seamstresses couldn’t afford. The goblin workshop was in George Yard, a passage connecting Spitalfields and Whitechapel. The dilapidated building looked as if it might come crashing down at any moment if it weren’t for the tall buildings on either side of it.

  Corwen could see through the glamour, but even though I knew the building was not nearly as bad as it looked, I still felt slightly queasy. We approached what appeared to be a boarded-up doorway. This time I found it easier to link my arm through Corwen’s and let him guide me.

  He rang the bell and pushed open the door. “Step up,” he said.

  The toe of my half-boot clicked on the edge of the step and then I was through the doorway and the dizziness faded. Off to the right was a long window into Tingle’s workroom where his ladies sat stitching red coats for the army, a very profitable contract for which Deverell’s Mill, under the guiding hand of Corwen’s sister, Lily, supplied the woolen cloth.

  To the right were three doors, one of which was to Mr. Tingle’s office.

  At the sound of the door, young Barnaby Tingle, Mr. Tingle’s grandson, and half-goblin—or maybe even a quarter, I didn’t like to ask—appeared from the nearest door and pulled it closed behind him. I thought I heard a girlish giggle in there. When he saw us, he blushed and grinned a somewhat toothy smile. Barnaby had no glamour, so his pale skin, overcrowded teeth, and hawkish nose with slit nostrils was the appearance with which he faced the world. In truth, he wasn’t unhandsome when he kept his teeth behind his lips, but I’d stopped thinking of goblins as unusual. What they did was more important than the way they looked, and Mr. Tingle managed his business well, even feeding his workers, both human and goblin, before and during their twelve-hour shifts with needle and thread. I could only wish more manufactory owners would do the same. It would surely help to alleviate some of the poverty in places like Whitechapel.

  “Ah, you’ll be here to see Uncle Twomax,” Barnaby said.

  “Actually, we came to see Mr. Tingle,” Corwen said.

  “Is Mr. Twomax here?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him since he left the Okewood. Is he well?”

  “Aye, he’s very well. Uncle Twomax often pops in for tea.”

  Twomax was the elderly leader of the goblins we’d rescued from the Guillaume Tell alongside Corwen and Freddie. I’d known he was Tingle’s cousin, but I hadn’t realized they were on regular visiting terms.

  “This way,” Barnaby said. “I’ll bring more cups.”

  Eating and drinking in a magical creature’s lair could put you in their debt, and for this purpose Tingle’s place of business counted.

  The office was exactly as I remembered it, green walls and a dark wood wainscoting with a rich rug and a merry fire in the hearth. It looked more like a gentleman’s den than a place of business. A pair of armchairs were drawn up around the fire.

  Mr. Tingle and Mr. Twomax looked more alike than I remembered. I’d never seen them together before. Twomax, under the stress of the escape from the Guillaume Tell, had not kept up his glamour consistently. Today, the two goblins looked like a pair of beaming grandfathers, stout of girth, with snowy white periwigs, rosy cheeks, and twinkling eyes. Both goblins stood to greet us.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Deverell, as I live and breathe.” Mr. Twomax’s grin exposed all his pointy teeth. “We were talking about you the other day. I’m glad to see you looking so well, aren’t you, Tingle?”

  “I am. Come in and welcome.” Mr. Tingle’s smile was more questioning.

  Barnaby carried in more cups, then drew up another pair of chairs. He waved to us to sit and began to pour tea.

  I hesitated when he offered me a cup.

  “Please, drink without obligation,” Mr. Tingle said.

  “Thank you.” I didn’t mention the obligation I already had, and neither did he.

  “What can I do for you, today?” Mr. Tingle asked.

  “Can’t we visit without wanting something?” Corwen asked.

  “You can,” Mr. Tingle raised an eyebrow, “but I find that generally you don’t.”

  “Then we’ll certainly rectify our omission another time,” Corwen said.

  “Ah, so you do want something.”

  “Information,” I said. “You once told us that since Roman times there were tunnels and cellars under all of this city, and where there are tunnels there are goblins.”

  He frowned. “I also said we’re not sewer goblins anymore.”

  “You did, and I know you are not, but you have contacts. I’d be very surprised if anything happened in this city without you getting word of it.”

  “That may be.”

  “Do you have any contacts within the royal household?”

  “I know what’s good for me. I steer clear of the royals as much as I steer clear of the Mysterium.”

  “Ah, a pity,” Corwen said.

  “What exactly do you want?”

  “To know when the king is next likely to venture out of London, maybe to Windsor or Kew, or maybe to Bognor or Weymouth.”

  Mr. Tingle waved both hands, palm out. “I want nothing to do with spying on the king.” But then he looked thoughtful. “Would this be something to do with the Fae and the rowankind, and the Fae’s command that you present their ultimatum to the king?”

  “Is it common knowledge?”

  “Maybe not common. More like uncommon knowledge. Goblins are studious collectors of information that might one day prove useful. We hear things.”

  “I hope you might hear about the king’s excursions.”

  “In this case . . . no,” Tingle said.

  “Hold on, Tingle.” Twomax turned to us. “I may know someone who knows someone who serves Dr. Cholmondeley, one of t
he king’s physicians. It may be possible to get this information, though . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “What might it be worth?”

  I was about to ask what he wanted in return, but he didn’t leave me time. “Might it cancel out the debt I owe you?”

  I was about to say I didn’t consider him in debt to me, but I remembered my debt to Tingle. I took a deep breath and tried to look as though I was good at negotiating.

  “It might go some way toward canceling it, certainly, though possibly not the whole way.” I hedged, waiting to see his reaction before going any further. “It is your life you owe us, and the lives of your young goblins. How many of them were there?”

  He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

  “Perhaps if your young goblins would be so good as to help get the information to us post-haste, we might also cancel their debt. Receiving the information too late to do anything about it would be as bad as not receiving it at all.”

  He nodded and held out his hand to seal the bargain, dropping the glamour and appearing as his real self, skinny and pale. The hand he held out had an extra joint on each digit. I took his hand without hesitation, feeling his grasp cool, but as firm as any human hand.

  Corwen shook in his turn. “Our thanks to you.”

  “We hear the king’s first minister is in negotiation with Bonaparte to bring about a peace,” Tingle said. “Have you any knowledge of what this might entail?”

  “There were rumors as far back as Christmas,” Corwen said. “Bonaparte is greedy. He wants Europe in his pocket. Peace isn’t in his best interests. If Mr. Addington is negotiating a peace, the terms won’t be in Britain’s favor.”

  “But even a temporary truce might result in an exchange of prisoners. You know what that would mean.”

  “Walsingham freed,” I breathed.

  “If he still lives,” Corwen said. “When we sent him unprotected into French waters, he was blind and maimed. He’ll not see the low side of fifty again. Surviving in a French prison is not easy even for those who are young and healthy.”

  “This is Walsingham, we’re talking about.” I felt as though my throat had knotted beyond my ability to swallow. “He’d survive on pure willpower if only for the chance to destroy us.”

  And now that I was carrying Corwen’s child, I had another life to protect. Would I have been this afraid if I’d only had myself to look after?

  “He is no friend to any magical being,” Mr. Tingle said. “I propose we keep each other informed, should the worst happen.”

  The goblins were in danger now that the Mysterium knew they existed—even though they fitted so well into the city that they were hard to find.

  “In addition, the favor you owe me . . . ”

  I’d been hoping to avoid my debt to Mr. Tingle and the goblins for a little longer, but I’d made a promise and must stick to it.

  I saw Corwen start to say something, but I gave a quick shake of my head.

  “What is it you need, Mr. Tingle?”

  “Nothing onerous. Something that’s in your best interests as much as ours. I want the persecution of magical beings ended.”

  “You’re as unrealistic as the Fae if you think we can bring that about.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. If you are making a case for the protection of the rowankind, it’s but a small step to include all magicals.”

  “And what if it’s a step too far?”

  “Then my second request is that you put an end to Walsingham. He’s a very bad man, with a lot of deaths on his conscience, or he would have if he had a conscience.”

  I nodded sharply.

  “Agreed.” Corwen and I said it together, and all four of us shook on it.

  * * *

  Our horses were stabled at an inn on the south bank of the Thames.

  Corwen secured a coach to take us from Whitechapel to our inn room to collect our few belongings, and thence to London Bridge, where the traffic was so thick that we abandoned our coach and made better time on foot.

  Dancer whickered when we entered the stable, but Timpani stood aloof as if to ask why we’d left him in this awful place. The Fae couldn’t enter big cities because of the stench in the streets and the choking coal smoke. The Fae horses obviously preferred to be out in the countryside, too.

  “I’m sorry, boy,” Corwen rubbed Timpani’s nose gently. “Blame Larien and the Council of Seven for giving us an impossible task.”

  “I suppose we could simply refuse to do it,” I said.

  Corwen huffed out a breath. “The Fae would find some way to force us into it. Delivering an ultimatum to the king isn’t going to go down well, however we do it. Larien could do it himself, of course.”

  Larien had proved he could withstand the closeness of towns. He’d spent time in Plymouth in my mother’s household. I remembered him, but not well; somehow his presence in the household had made little impact, and that, too, was part of his disguise. He’d been glamoured as a rowankind bondservant, his skin silvered and marked with grain patterns like any rowankind, and his demeanor mild and helpful. Hiding his haughtiness must have been the most difficult part of the whole deception. Surely, if any of the Fae could demand an audience with the king, it was Larien.

  Damn the Fae and all their twisted logic. They remembered when my many-times great-grandfather had had the ear of Good Queen Bess, but the family had fallen far since then.

  We saddled up and took the road to Richmond, to the gateway into Iaru in the park. From Iaru we could cross through to the Old Maizy Forest.

  We kept to an easy pace so as not to attract attention through the Kennington toll gate and along the turnpike, but once through the gate to Iaru, we let the horses have their heads. Corwen was eager to get back. He didn’t like leaving Freddie for long, even though the grounds around the cottage were protected by David’s barrier.

  Corwen had become his brother’s keeper.

  We traversed the warm green glades of Iaru and emerged through another gate a hundred yards from our cottage.

  “Freddie!” Corwen called.

  No answer.

  “Perhaps he’s off hunting,” I suggested.

  “Or perhaps he’s simply sulking.”

  The latter proved to be the case. Freddie slunk out of the cottage and sat in the middle of the garden path with a where-have-you-been look on his face.

  “You know where we’ve been.” Corwen tended to carry on a one-sided conversation, hoping Freddie would understand and at least give a yes or no answer. “We saw the king, and Ross thinks he’s magical, or at least he has potential to be so. That’s a situation and a half, isn’t it? The king having magical powers and not being able to admit it. No wonder the poor fellow’s mad.”

  Freddie growled softly.

  “Yes, I know I called you mad once, and I’m sorry for it. But you must admit I had reason. You’ve been in an impossible situation, but staying in wolf form won’t enable you to heal from it. I can petition the Lady to allow you to turn back.”

  Freddie rose and crossed the garden where he slumped beneath the low branches of the willow, just beginning to burst forth with catkins.

  “See.” Corwen turned to me. “Sulking.”

  12

  Peace

  AFTER NINE YEARS of war against France, the church bells rang out across Britain to mark the peace afforded by the Treaty of Amiens, signed only a few days before. Even here, on the borders of the Old Maizy Forest and Iaru, we could hear them.

  I should have been overjoyed, but I could only think of the trouble it might bring. Mr. Tingle had reminded us that in the event of peace and the exchange of prisoners, there was every possibility Walsingham might return. He’d been the most secret of secret agents for the Crown, his life dedicated to preventing the release of the rowankind. He took his failure personally and had become
my most bitter enemy. I’d had the opportunity to kill him, but I’d not taken it—something I now bitterly regretted. Instead, I’d consigned him to the mercy of a French prison, hoping he’d die without being directly on my conscience, not thinking that less than a year later he might be freed by circumstance.

  I sighed.

  If Walsingham was freed, it was likely he would make his way to London, to the Mysterium offices, or even straight to the king. I’d have to trust that the goblins would keep a sharp watch. It was in their best interests to let us know. I couldn’t live my life looking over my shoulder to see if Walsingham was behind me. I had a sudden vision of having to protect a baby from Walsingham. Maybe our temporary home in Aunt Rosie’s cottage might have to become permanent. How would it be for the child, raised with love, but with no companions her own age? I’d taken to calling our baby “she,” but to Corwen, the baby was always a boy. I didn’t let myself wonder if he or she would be a wolf or some other kind of shapechanger or if he or she would be a witch. Maybe the child would inherit both capabilities. We’d have our hands full if that was the case, with or without Walsingham.

  The cessation of hostilities brought another pressing problem, that of my ship, the Heart of Oak, captained by my good friend Hookey Garrity, who had been my family in the days when I had been a lonely widow clinging to the ghost of my dead husband.

  The Heart was a privateer ship preying on French merchantmen, operating under Letters of Marque from the Crown. She wasn’t huge, less than ninety feet from stem to stern, but she was fast, a two-masted tops’l schooner with a fearsome reputation due to the speed of her closing and the ferocity of her crew.

  Now the peace had stolen her livelihood, and I wondered whether Hookey, Mr. Sharpner, and Mr. Rafiq could turn their hands, hearts, and minds to the tame trade of cargoes and passengers.

  The transition would be difficult.

  “We must go to London,” I told Corwen.

  He was whittling a palm-sized chunk of pine, sitting on an upended log outside the back door of our cottage. It was a peaceful spot with the late afternoon sun shining down. Freddie was lying a few yards away, stretched out in the shade of his favorite willow.