The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  “Sir?”

  The response was almost immediate, crisp and alert, even though the recipient of the call had undoubtedly been asleep when it came to his room on the ground floor of the building.

  “I’d like to see you, Michael,” Madden said.

  “I’ll be right up.”

  Madden leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes.

  Thirty-five years ago he’d matched wits with one of his own countrymen, and lost. That loss rankled still, not the losing itself‌—even then Madden was long past such negligible concerns‌—but for the irreplaceable prize that had been forfeit.

  He’d almost had it in his hands‌—a secret that couldn’t be measured in secular terms‌—and it had slipped away, as vague and untouchable as mist burned off by the morning sun. It continued to exist, but his adversary had concealed it too well. It slept in some hidden place, the knowledge of which his rival had taken with him to his watery grave.

  Madden had sent agents in pursuit of it, time and again, but sleeping, the secret was invisible. Impenetrable. Lost. He’d been through the house and the surrounding area himself‌—he, with his knowledge and understanding of what he sought, if not the configuration that it presently inhabited‌—and found nothing, so how could he hope that others would succeed?

  Still he had them keep watch.

  And he waited.

  Because one day, he knew, it would wake again.

  And then the secret would be his.

  And he would take it into forever.

  A knock at the oak door of his bedroom roused him from his reverie. He opened his eyes.

  “Come in, Michael,” he said.

  The man who entered was another secret‌—suspected, perhaps, only to the world’s hermetic community, but its importance went beyond occult concerns. Michael Bett was‌—Madden had proved it to his own satisfaction, irrefutably and beyond any doubt‌—a reincarnation of one of the early twentieth century’s greatest sorcerers. Born December 5, 1947, his existence was proof, not only that reincarnation was possible, but that a sorcerer’s will was strong enough to give him more than one opportunity to walk the world in corporeal form.

  Madden had known Bett well in the man’s previous life, so well that he could not fail to recognize him when he met him again in his new identity.

  The resemblance was not physical. Bett was a wiry, thin man‌—unlike the man he’d been. He wore his dark hair fashionably long, his features were angular, his cheekbones pronounced, his forehead high, his too bright eyes somewhat sunken. But he had the same powerful will, the tendency towards excess, the incapacity for natural affection, the egotism, and the brilliant mind.

  He had been misunderstood in previous lives, and he was misunderstood now. But not by Madden. Madden had nurtured that brilliance.

  He’d found Bett ten years ago, stumbled across him as he stood over the corpse of his latest victim in a windy Chicago alleyway, and had known with a flash of insight whose troubled spirit lay behind the man’s bright gaze.

  Before Bett could turn on him, Madden invoked the Dove‌—whose symbol both he and now Bett wore on their wrists‌—and he took Bett away. Groomed him and quelled his insatiable appetite for the suffering of others. Channeled the man’s incredible will towards the doctrines of the Order where‌—given an intellectual outlet for his excesses‌—he was weaned from the need to wreak havoc on the flesh of others and surpassed all of Madden’s already high expectations.

  But knowing who Bett was, how could he truly have been surprised?

  There were secrets, and there were secrets. This one belonged to Madden and Michael Bett, and to no one else. It was ten years old, but it still brought a glint of satisfaction to Madden’s eyes every time he looked on his colleague.

  He waved Bett over to his bedside. Crossing the room, Bett sat on the end of Madden’s bed.

  “You’ve felt it again?” he asked.

  Madden nodded. “Twice in one day. I think it’s time you joined Lena.”

  Bett frowned.

  “I know,” Madden added. “If she becomes unreliable, or difficult to manage‌—”

  “I’ll rein her in.”

  “But gently. Her father stands high in the Order.”

  Bett nodded and rose from the end of the bed.

  “I’d best go pack my bags,” he said.

  He turned to go, pausing in the doorway.

  “You can count on me,” he told Madden, and then he was gone.

  Madden nodded to himself. Count on you to bring it to me, he thought. But once the secret is pried from its present configuration and available for our use? Will I still be able to count on you then?

  Madden was wise enough to not let his affection for Bett cloud his awareness of the man’s avaricious nature. For all that Madden had done for Bett, his colleague’s first loyalty would always be to himself.

  But then, Madden thought as he gazed across the room, we’re not so different in that, are we?

  It was what set them apart from the sheep.

  What the Devil Ails You?

  It’s always good when you come into contact with other players and you discover you’re not this freak, that there are others . . . playing this strange instrument.

  ‌—KATHRYN TICKELL, on playing the Northumbrian pipes; from an interview in Folk Roots No. 41, November 1986

  It was Manus Boyd‌—Charlie Boyd’s grandfather, a Kerryman from Ballyduff near the Mouth of the Shannon‌—who first brought the Irish custom of a rambling house to the Penwith Peninsula at the turn of the century. Janey had heard the story so often that, like Charlie’s children, she only rolled her eyes and thought about other things when Charlie decided to tell it again.

  Manus had crossed the Celtic Sea with his wife Anne in 1902 and, one way or another, found himself in Cornwall where he became a dairyman on a farm near Sennen that belonged to one of the great Cornish estates. In those days the estates had trouble finding tenants for their farms so an established middleman farmer would rent the unwanted land, stock it with cattle, and lease the holding to a dairyman of his own choosing. This dairyman had no responsibility to the estate; the responsibility of upkeep lay in the hands of the absentee farmer.

  By the time Charlie took over the farm, he no longer dealt with the middleman farmer, but leased the farm directly from the estate through a land agent. He was the third generation of Boyds to work that land, and by the beginning of the Second World War, their taciturn neighbours eventually allowed that it was the Boyd Farm, rather than the Dobson Farm, the Dobsons being the tenants before Manus Boyd.

  Manus and Anne had passed on, as had Charlie’s own father and mother, but there were still Boyds in plenty on that land, what with Charlie, his wife and three children, and his brother Pat. And the music sessions that had made it a rambling house in his grandparents’ time were as popular as ever with those who had an ear for a proper old tune or song.

  About the only thing that Janey didn’t like about the sessions was that there were so many people smoking; she always came away with her clothes and hair smelling of smoke. It was the same when she played in most folk clubs, but while it was irritating, it was only a minor annoyance considering the grand time she invariably had.

  A good crowd was already present by the time she and the Gaffer arrived.

  Chalkie was there with his melodeon, sitting next to Jim Rafferty who hadn’t taken his tin whistle from the inside pocket of his jacket yet. A couple of members of the Newlyn Reelers‌—a local barn dance band‌—had come, as well as Bobbie Wright and Lesley Peake, a professional duo who lived on the other side of Penzance and played guitar and fiddle, respectively.

  There were others from the surrounding farms, some with instruments, others with simply their voices, and, of course, the Boyds: Uncle Pat on tenor banjo, Charlie on fiddle, and his wife Molly on piano and Anglo concertina; their daughter Bridget on concert flute and whistle, and their sons, Sean also on fiddle and Dinny who played both
the Irish Uillean pipes and the Northumbrian.

  It was Dinny who’d tracked down Janey’s first set of pipes when she started to talk about wanting to take them up. He taught her both the basics and encouraged her whenever the complexities of the instrument got to be so much that she just wanted to pitch them into Mount’s Bay.

  Also there that night, sitting beside the two chairs that were waiting for Janey and her grandfather, was Janey’s best friend, Clare Mabley. Clare was a dark-haired girl, slender and pale, who worked in a bookstore in Penzance. A blackthorn cane lay on the floor beside her chair. She pulled a small tin whistle from her purse as Janey sat down.

  “I got that F whistle,” she said. “It came with the post today.”

  Janey smiled. “And?”

  “I’m still getting used to the pitch.”

  Clare had a good singing voice, but she had always wanted to play an instrument. The trouble was, she couldn’t seem to concentrate on learning any one she tried. Finally she took up the whistle and stuck with it when Jim Rafferty assured her it was simple to learn and offered to teach her to play. She was much happier at the sessions now, though whenever her turn came around, she always picked a tune that everyone knew so that she wouldn’t have to play it on her own.

  As they did every Friday night, they were all gathered in the Boyds’ huge kitchen, chairs and stools and crates pulled up into a kind of rough circle around the gas stove and the big kitchen table where was laid out the vast array of cakes, biscuits, and cookies that had been brought along by the various guests. There was always tea steeping in a big ceramic teapot by the stove, though many brought stronger drink, as the Gaffer had with his brown ales, one of which stood under his own chair, the other under Janey’s.

  The music went ’round the circle. When their turn came up, each person had to offer up something: a tune, a song, a story, a joke‌—it didn’t matter what. If you knew the piece, and it seemed appropriate to do so, you joined in; if you didn’t, you merely sat back and enjoyed it.

  As always seemed to happen when they arrived, no sooner had Janey sat down than the turn had come ’round to her. Complaining good-humouredly, she lifted her pipes out of their carrying box and buckled the bellows above the elbow of her left arm. Then she attached the air bag with its drones to it, laying the drones across her body so that they rested on her right arm, and connected the tiny chanter. After a few moments of tuning the drones to the chanter, she gave Dinny a grin and launched into a sprightly version of “Billy Pigg’s Hornpipe.” The tune was a favorite of hers, having been written by Pigg himself.

  Playing in the key of F as she was, most of the other musicians couldn’t join in. A peculiarity of the Northumbrian pipes was that they couldn’t play in the keys of most standard dance tunes. But Dinny, after letting her go through it once on her own, joined her the next time around on his own pipes, as did Clare on her tiny new F whistle, its high sweet tones cutting pleasantly across the bee-buzz of the pipes’ drones and the mellower sound of their chanters.

  They ended the tune with a flourish to a round of applause, Clare blushing furiously, and then it was the Gaffer’s turn to tell one of his improbable tales. After that Chalkie started up a version of “Johnny Cope” on his melodeon and Janey swapped her pipes for her fiddle. By the time Chalkie switched to “Tipsy Sailor”‌—an Irish variant of the same tune‌—everyone with an instrument in hand was playing, those who didn’t have one were clapping their hands, and the kitchen rang with the sound of the music.

  And so the evening went, with tunes and songs and poetry recitations. Whenever her turn or Dinny’s came up, they’d both take up their pipes, enjoying the opportunity of playing together. It was what Janey liked best about the sessions.

  It was too bad she couldn’t get Dinny to come with her on this upcoming tour, she thought as they were in the middle of a particularly sensitive version of the slow air, “The Flowers of the Forest.” They played with the melody line, first one, then the other chanter taking up the lead, harmonizing beautifully against the sweet burring of their drones.

  But Dinny had no interest in touring. He loved music, but like all his family preferred sessions to organized gigging. It was only after weeks of persuasion that she’d ever gotten them to play on a few tracks of either one of her albums.

  At one point the turn in the circle came ’round to Frank Wool-nough who had a farm just outside St. Buryan. He didn’t play an instrument or sing, but he loved to spin a tale, the more exaggerated the better. Every so often, he and the Gaffer would spend the night seeing who could outdo the other, and since the Gaffer had told his story about the pair of ghostly hummocks he’d seen one night on a country lane near Sennen, didn’t Frank have to top him?

  “Well,” he said. “I got this from my father and it happened down your way, Gaffer, in Mousehole harbour it was. There was a boat from the Lizard docked there and my father was reeling his way from The Ship after a pint too many‌—wasn’t his habit, understand, but he’d had a bit of luck that day and didn’t everyone have to stand him a drink?

  “Still, drunk he might have been, but ‘ark to what he told me. There he was, standing at the rail and looking at the boats all tipping one side or another, it being low tide, and what does he see but a little man come out of that boat from the Lizard. No bigger than a mouse, he were, stepping his way along the mooring line, balanced just as easy as you please.

  “Well, my old dad blinks, then blinks again, and somewhere between the two blinks, didn’t that little man just vanish?”

  By the stove, Uncle Pat gave a laugh. “Back into the bottle he came from, why!”

  “Laugh as you will,” Frank said, “but my old dad he went down into the harbour to have himself a closer look and what do you think he saw? Tiny footprints leading away from the mooring line across the sand and away to a great heap of netting that was lying there on the stairs.”

  Frank nodded sagely, one eye turned gravely to the Gaffer.

  “Hummocks is one thing,” he said. “But could have been was nothing but a mist you saw, Gaffer. No offense, but that’s how I see it. But this little man‌—it was a piskie my old dad saw and that’s God’s own truth. The footprints there were proof plain for all to see.”

  “And who else saw them?” Chalkie asked.

  “Oh, well,” Frank replied. “Tide came up, didn’t it, and washed them away. But he saw them plain and, drunk or sober, my old dad wasn’t one to make up a tale like that.”

  Janey had to smile at the story. It reminded her of Dunthorn’s work, and of the new book she’d discovered this afternoon that she’d only barely started. But before she could think too much about it, Bridget Boyd, sitting beside Frank, struck up a tune and the music took them all away again.

  ‘Round about midnight, the music wound down and people began to drift off to their homes. Janey and the Gaffer were among the last to leave, the Gaffer having an earnest conversation with Uncle Pat about the door-to-door wet fish business that the Gaffer ran from his home, making his deliveries in a beat-up old Austin stationwagon that was painted a bright yellow with the legend “Fresh Local Fish” painted on each side.

  Dinny and Janey were caught up in their own discussion, sitting almost head to head, as they discussed the peculiarities of reeds, particular turns of odd tunes, and other piper talk that had Clare and the others‌—who’d heard this sort of thing all too often when the pair got together‌—ignoring them for less esoteric conversation.

  When finally it was time to leave, Clare joined Janey and the Gaffer so that they could give her a lift home. Janey packed her instruments in the back of her tiny three-wheeled Reliant Robin‌—which prompted Dinny to make his usual comment about when was she going to get a real car?‌—and they set off for Mousehole along the winding lanes that ran from Lamorna to the village, the hedgerows rising tall on either side of the narrow roads.

  They dropped Clare off at the door of the cottage she shared with her mother on Raginnis Hill, jus
t a few doors down from the Mouse-hole Wild Bird Hospital. After a promise of getting together tomorrow because it was Clare’s day off, Janey gave her friend a wave, the Gaffer adding a “Sleep well, now, my blossom,” and they headed on down the hill for home.

  2.

  Felix heard the small Reliant before its lights flickered in the Gaffer’s living room as it came ’round the corner from Mousehole Lane and parked beside the Gaffer’s stationwagon. He set aside the rescued book he’d been reading and leaned forward in the chair, pulse quickening in anticipation.

  It’s been three years, he thought.

  Had she changed? Had he? Would it be awkward?

  He ran a hand across the stubble of his hair, listening to their voices outside. He started to rise from the chair, but then the door was flung open and Janey burst into the room in her usual enthusiastic manner.

  And stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him sitting there in the Gaffer’s chair.

  The Gaffer came in behind her more slowly. He was first to speak.

  “Felix, my fortune. How are you?”

  Felix rose from the chair, but before he could speak, Janey had dumped her instruments onto the couch and literally flew across the room to embrace him.

  “Felix!” she cried as she hugged him, small arms tight around his body.

  Felix’s pulse doubled its tempo again. He put his arms around her, touched the familiar shape of her shoulder blades under her jumper, smelled the cigarette smoke that clung to her clothes and hair, but under it the sweet scent that was her.

  He couldn’t say a word.

  Janey leaned a bit back from him so that she could look up into his face.

  “This is such a wonderful surprise,” she said. “It’s been ages.”

  A surprise? Felix thought.

  The Gaffer closed the door to the cottage.

  “You should have told us you were coming,” he said. “We would have come by and picked you up at the station.”