Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  Since Hartington was the only one of us not riding a Fae horse, we let him set the pace. The three miles took us less than an hour. We rode past Sandal’s substantial church and a ruined castle on a hill before drawing near to Wakefield and the ancient bridge over the Calder. There was a smaller bridge over a new canal before we reached the main bridge. A navigation channel, cut to carry boats past a shallow, rocky stretch of the Calder, meant we were now on a man-made island, long and narrow between the river and the cut. The Calder was navigable from the west as far as an industrial basin that was hemmed in by warehouses. Beyond it, the section that ran under the bridge was wide, but shallow and rocky, with a natural run of rapids below a weir. It might once have been a ford, but it would have been a dangerous crossing when the water ran high, which it did now.

  We paused by the river and studied the situation. The bridge itself was old, one of only a few in Britain to accommodate a chantry chapel in the middle of its nine, pointed arches. The ancient building had stood there for four centuries according to Hartington, and though it was now a reading room and library, its ecclesiastical origins were obvious. Some of the windows had been blocked from the inside, but the delicate stone tracery was still in evidence. It must have once been very beautiful. It was two stories tall, part of the bridge’s structure. Its foundations rested on an island not much bigger than the chapel itself. The upper level had five impressive arches, four of which were windows, and the fifth, on the north side, a doorway to the bridge’s roadway. The frontage was a riot of fantastical carving and tracery, though some of the carvings were badly eroded and the leaded glass showed black where holes had been punched out.

  The bridge itself was in good order, even though the old chapel looked rough. I counted five arches on this side of the chapel, and another four on the other. At the far end, again built into the bridge, was a stone house that might once have been the home of the incumbent clergy. It was, however, comparatively plain with none of the glorious carvings that adorned the chapel.

  The bank on this side of the river showed signs of having been trampled by cattle coming to drink, but there were none there now. In fact the road was quite deserted. News traveled fast.

  Danger. Do not cross.

  “No one’s using the library now, then,” I said.

  Hartington shook his head. “The troll has taken up residence in there, though I’m not sure how he fits. The librarian hasn’t been seen for a sennight. There was some speculation as to whether he’d died and the terror haunting the bridge was his spirit.”

  “The locals don’t know it’s a troll?” I asked.

  “They won’t let themselves say it out loud.”

  “Is there another bridge?” Corwen asked.

  “To the west where the road to Bretton crosses the new navigation point and the river. The locals have taken to going the long way round.”

  “I don’t blame them.” I shuddered. The trolls we’d brought safely off the Guillaume Tell alongside the other captured magicals had been almost affable. This troll might prove so intransigent that he provoked a fight. If that happened, he’d lose—I’d seen David’s use of fire magic—but the Lady wanted us to give him, or her, the chance to leave the bridge peacefully and migrate to Iaru.

  There was a rumble. The stones of the roadbed shook. A lumpen form climbed over the parapet of the bridge and stood to his full height, which made him as tall as the front of the old chapel.

  “What will you pay to cross my bridge?”

  16

  A Mob for a Shilling

  “WHY WOULD WE pay to cross your bridge?” Corwen said. “We can cross upriver.”

  “This is a better bridge,” the troll said slowly, his voice rumbling so much that the ground vibrated with it.

  “But it has a troll,” Corwen said.

  “It has books. I like books.”

  “Do you?” Corwen half-turned and raised one eyebrow at me. A troll that liked books was somewhat unusual.

  “Can you read?” I asked.

  It shook its head. “Don’t need to. Books talk. Words talk. Tell stories.”

  Did he mean the library was enchanted? I thought enchanted libraries were the stuff of fairy tales.

  “Have you got books?” the troll asked.

  “Not here,” Corwen said. “We have books at home. And there are plenty of books in Iaru.”

  “Are there?” I asked softly.

  “There could be if we needed them,” David said. “There are scrolls and histories and records, of course, but not novels.”

  “He seems like a troll of unusual tastes. Perhaps we could tempt him out with the promise of a library.”

  The troll waved a hand in dismissal. “Cross upstream if you will. I can feel anyone who steps on my bridge, so don’t cross here without you pay a toll.”

  “What would a suitable toll be?” I asked.

  “Books. More books.” He turned toward the door. I held my breath, unsure of whether he could squeeze himself through it, but it seemed he could if he hunched down and wriggled sideways. A shape moved behind the glass windows and I thought I could hear something inside.

  “Can you hear that?” I asked Corwen. “I thought I heard someone speaking. Has he got someone in there?”

  “I didn’t hear anything, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was wondering whether it might be possible to scale the building. The tower at the northeast corner looks like it has a doorway opening onto the roof.”

  “If he can feel the vibration from one pair of feet on the bridge, he’ll surely feel someone climbing the chapel wall.”

  “Maybe,” was all Corwen would say.

  “He doesn’t seem particularly violent,” David said, “at least not without being provoked. Should we go up into the town and see what the gossip is?”

  The other bridge was much farther than we expected because of the river’s meanders. We followed the riverbank, with the ruined castle high up on our left, until we came to a pair of new bridges, one over the cut by a lock, and another over the Calder, which was not as wide at this point, but no doubt a lot deeper. We entered Wakefield from the west, along a narrow dirt track, worn wider, we suspected, by the extra pairs of feet walking the long way around. The closer we got to the town, the more David’s otherness faded until he looked like a normal young man with no hint of the Fae about him.

  We rode past a steep hill which might once have supported a fortification and been a twin to the castle on the other side of the river, though nothing remained now except the shape of it. Wakefield itself, dominated by the somewhat dilapidated spire of All Saints Church, was a town noted for its cloth industry, its market and cattle market, and as a transport hub thanks to the new navigation which linked it not only to Leeds, but also to the Humber and thence to the sea. We’d seen specially built coal wharfs on the river, fed by a wagonway with strong horses drawing tub after tub of coal to fill the barges waiting patiently alongside.

  The parish church, hemmed in by a jumble of houses and shops, stood at the high point of the town close to the central bull ring where the three principal streets, Westgate, Kirkgate, and Northgate, converged. Had we been able to cross Chantry Bridge, we would have entered Wakefield town via Kirkgate, so thinking the hostelries closest to the river might be the richest source of gossip, we turned down the hill.

  The Old Red Lion looked fairly respectable, or, at least, it didn’t look like an inn where we might get ourselves into trouble or start a fight or, worse still, finish one. It didn’t smell too stale. All we wanted was a quiet drink and to check the mood of the town, find out what they knew and whether anyone had any plans we should know about. The landlord acknowledged us and served us politely with ale and a bowl of whatever was in the pot, mutton most likely, though it was heavy with potatoes and light on the meat.

  We ate in silence, not so much because the food was good, t
hough in truth it wasn’t bad, but because Corwen and I were listening to conversations that would have been far too quiet for normal human ears. David and Hartington spoke in hushed tones to give the appearance of normal interaction. If the four of us had eaten in total silence, it might have looked odd.

  I focused on a lively group by the doorway. They looked like apprentices, but they’d already been sitting over their ale for way too long, given that this was a working day. Picking up scraps from conversation, I deduced they were normally employed at the Soke Corn Mill, which was on the town side of the bridge, its wheel powered by a mill stream which took water from the Calder above the weir. They were talking about an enterprise with a boat while their hands were idle. From what they said, I took it that Soke Mill was closed until whatever was on the bridge—and even the garrulous apprentices didn’t call it a troll—had been chased away. But until then, there was profit to be had by taking foot passengers across by boat from Chalk Mill to Smithson’s Coal Staithes. From there it was only a short walk into the town.

  The young woman who brought another jug of ale to their table shook her head. “Fine plans, lads, but you should have thought of it a few days ago, Mr. Arnott says the vicar is organizing some of the townsfolk to drive it out, whatever it is.” She slapped the jug on the table, slopping its contents over the side. “I don’t reckon it’s a real man. I ain’t never seen a man that tall and with arms as wide as tree trunks.”

  “What else could it be?” the youngest looking apprentice asked.

  “It’s the bogie man, my lad.” One of the older apprentices loomed over him, waggling his fingers at shoulder height.

  “Aww, Benjie, quit teasing. There’s no such thing as the bogie man.”

  He was right, but there were many things worse. I wondered what the vicar was organizing. Maybe it was time to pay a visit to the church.

  Corwen didn’t have much to add from the conversations he was listening to, except the vicar was proposing to pay a shilling to every man who joined his deputation.

  “Not so much a deputation, more of a mob,” Corwen said as we left the alehouse and gave a penny to the urchin we’d employed to stay with the horses. They wouldn’t have strayed, but it looked more normal to have someone watching them.

  It was only a short walk up Kirkgate to the vicarage, an imposing residence built in the old style, which stood in its own grounds at the junction of Wrengate and Vicarage Lane.

  “He’s not at home,” the vicar’s housekeeper said. “He’s at the church, gathering stout fellows to see to the monster on the bridge. Are you from the Mysterium?” Without giving us the opportunity to reply, she turned all her Yorkshire outspokenness upon us. “It’s about time they sent someone. The vicar’s been near out of his mind with that ungodly thing threatening the town. If only you’d turned up yesterday, he wouldn’t have had to deal with it himself. He’s not a young man, you know. He’s been vicar here for thirty-eight years.”

  David stepped forward. “We’re not from the Mysterium, Mrs. . . . ”

  “Bates,” she said. “Martha Bates.”

  “Mrs. Bates.” David was using a glamour now. Mrs. Bates’ eyes had gone glassy, and the scowl she’d saved up for the Mysterium had mutated into a vacant smile. “You’ve been the vicar’s housekeeper for a long time.”

  “Twenty-four of his thirty-eight years, ever since I was widowed. My mother was his housekeeper before me.”

  “So you don’t want to see the vicar harmed.”

  “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”

  “Then we’re here to help, but I need you to let us into the vicar’s library. We need to borrow some books.”

  “Books?”

  “It will help to keep him safe, believe me.”

  She stepped back from the door and waved us into a cozy room at the back of the house which looked as if it served as both library and study. A large breakfront bookcase occupied the center of one wall. David opened the glazed doors and quickly studied the spines.

  “Hmm, sermons, sermons, and more sermons. Not many stories here. Oh, wait.” He reached up. “Stories from the Old Testament. That will do for starters, ah, and this and this.” He quickly assembled three piles of books, one for each of us.

  “What about you?” I asked him.

  “I’m going to collect a shilling from the vicar and join his deputation. You go and reason with the troll.”

  He turned to the lady before we left. “Thank you, Mrs. Bates. You’ve done us a great service today. One more thing . . . I don’t suppose you have any lighter reading, maybe a novel or two?”

  She was about to shake her head when David smiled at her with all the brightness of the Fae.

  “Well, if you don’t tell the vicar it was me what gave ’em to you.”

  “Not a word.”

  She hurried up the stairs, and I heard her footsteps as she reached the top and then began a second flight to the attic, presumably, to her own room. Then the footsteps in reverse until she arrived, gasping for breath, back down into the hallway. She had five books, quite a collection for a housekeeper.

  “Mr. Rackham lets me borrow five at a time on account of me being such a quick reader,” she said.

  I took the books from her, added them to my own pile, and glanced at the titles quickly: Ben Jonson’s Volpone and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress were two I’d read, but right on top of the pile was a Book of Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault, translated.

  “I know what it is,” she said. “I tried to tell the vicar, but he wouldn’t believe me. It’s a troll, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “It is.”

  “Will you look out for Mr. Rackham, the librarian? No one’s seen him since the troll arrived. He’s a kindly man, if a little too quiet for his own good.”

  “I’ll do what I can, Mrs. Bates. Thank you.”

  * * *

  We took David’s horse while he ran up to the church, and the three of us walked back down to the bridge where a crowd had gathered, some carrying cudgels, others with pitchforks. A couple of enterprising women had gathered an arsenal of kitchen implements, one with a skillet, another a rolling pin. Both looked as if they knew how to wield them in anger.

  “You don’t want to go across there,” one man said. “You won’t make it all the way. There’s a monster.”

  “T’vicar’s coming to see him off.” The woman with the rolling pin said.

  “I think we’ll be all right,” Hartington said. “We’ve brought him a gift.”

  “Don’t blame us when you get yourself eaten,” the first man said.

  If we got ourselves eaten, we’d hardly be blaming anyone.

  We stepped out onto the bridge to a number of other comments and a general murmur of warning from the crowd. From a distance I could hear the mob on the move in the high part of the town. They were singing a hymn to the tune of “God Save the King.”

  Come, Thou Almighty King

  Help us Thy Name to sing

  Help us to praise!

  Father all glorious

  O’er all victorious

  Come and reign over us

  Ancient of Days

  The speed of their footsteps had changed it into a march.

  That couldn’t be good. I had to make an effort not to look behind me. They probably weren’t even in sight yet. I judged they might still be at the top of Kirkgate, but it wouldn’t take them long to march down the hill.

  I stepped out in front of Corwen and Hartington. “Come on. We haven’t got much time.”

  Right on cue the troll squeezed himself out of the door of the old chapel and confronted us on the road.

  “What will you pay to cross my bridge?”

  “Books,” I said. “Stories. Lots of stories.”

  He gave a puzzled grunt and reached out.

  I put m
y whole pile of books, that I’d been carrying in two arms, into the palm of his outstretched, somewhat green-hued, hand.

  “You can cross,” he said.

  “We don’t want to cross. We want to talk. We’re here to offer you a suggestion. Will you talk with us?”

  “Talk?”

  “There’s a mob on the way.”

  “I’m stronger than humans.”

  “Are you stronger than a hundred humans?”

  That gave him pause.

  From inside the chapel I heard a voice. “Sir Roderick, I think we should reconsider our position.”

  “Would that be Mr. Rackham?” I dodged around the troll’s long reach and made it to the chantry door, then slipped inside, knowing it would take the troll a few minutes to squeeze himself through.

  “Mr. Rackham?” I called into the gloom.

  “Here I am, and who might you be?”

  “Mrs. Bates asked us to look out for you.”

  “Ah, the vicar’s housekeeper. How is she?”

  “Worried the troll has eaten you.”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s . . . unusual, but beneath that odd exterior there’s a gentle soul. He likes books.” This last statement seemed to say that if the troll liked books, then nothing else mattered; he was a good person.

  “He’s imprisoned you.”

  “Not really . . . well . . . yes, in a way. I chose to stay. He likes books, you see, but he can’t read, so I read them to him. He promised me while ever there were new stories, he wouldn’t harm any travelers. That’s why I told him to ask for books as a fee for crossing the bridge.”

  “So you’re his magic talking book.”

  “In a way. I’m also teaching him to read for himself.”