“I do.”
“Describe it for me,” he said. “What sort of price would it fetch? We might be able to make a trade.”
“It’s gold, with a bit of filigree and a serpent symbol,” I told him. The ale was loosening my tongue now and dampening my wits. Even with a hazy mind, the inscription felt too strange to share. What would this old shepherd think of a lone, wandering girl with I am Wrath emblazoned on her one possession of value?
“Is that all, Louisa?”
“That is the pin exactly,” I lied more or less steadily. “But I cannot and will not give it to you.”
The shepherd let out a short bark of a laugh. “You think me greedy.”
“Not at all,” I replied. I touched the pin again, holding it, feeling its unnatural inner warmth. “You may love Joanna, but she is a burden. So am I. All young women of no fortune and no family are. Doubly so the poor, family-less girl who is changeable and ill-humored.”
“Heavens, my dear, you are too harsh on yourself,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down slowly.
I set my jaw, resentful of his pity. “The harshness of a thing does not change its veracity.”
“Something weighs heavily upon you,” he said, closing his eyes. Again his face was soft and appealing, like a sun-kissed apple. With surprising deftness, he poured himself ale and then more for me. Gradually, I sat, too. The sound of Joanna’s voice and the flock’s bleating bled pleasantly through the walls. “Once, I had a mind to be a man of the clergy. Could always tell when a soul needed lifting. ’Tis not a gift any man should covet—sensing so much pain takes a heavy toll. A sheep far from the flock is vulnerable, and this loneliness has made you cold.”
We were both quiet for a long time, and I could feel the ale muddling my thoughts, making my tongue even bolder than usual. “It was careless parents and hard-hearted teachers that made me cold, and I’ll be Queen of England before I shoulder the blame for their cruelty.”
The shepherd nodded, adjusting his woolen cap. “You mentioned a friend, and someone gave you that fine gold pin. Sentimental value. You have folk, I think. Even if you don’t want them, might they want you?”
Being wanted. It was not a feeling I was at all familiar with. I knew in my marrow that I did not care to be wanted by Mr. Morningside, but Lee had been kind. He had believed me. Mary, too, had accepted me, as had the rest of the house. Just because they want me does not mean I must return the sentiment.
He waited patiently for an answer, which was good, because it took me quite a while to conjure one. When I escaped Pitney, my one and only friend there, Jenny, had been the one to create the diversion while I slipped out the window and fled into the night. She had faked a spasm, and I had convinced her to do it with a promise that I would find a way to rescue her, too.
There would be no rescue. Pitney was far behind me now. But Coldthistle . . .
“My friend . . . I think he might be in danger. He needs my help. It’s not the loneliness that irks me, shepherd, it is knowing I might have aided him somehow and instead did nothing.”
“Ah.” He sipped his ale and touched his cap again. “Faith without works is dead,” he then said. “Will you stay the night with us, dear?”
I put down my cup, feeling the weight of my worries crush down harder and then, unexpectedly, abate. “No, shepherd. Thank you for your hospitality, for saving me, but I believe I’m needed elsewhere.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Ferryman of Calabar
Few have had the extreme pleasure of watching an authentic Ferryman at work. Well, few are willing to pay the exorbitant price such practitioners charge for a glimpse of their craft. There are untold variations on the name, but “Ferryman” has always struck me as both the most descriptive and poetic of the bunch.
There is a natural ability necessary to do the work, of course, though the average charlatan or boastful shaman will claim they are capable of similar magicks. The Ferryman must work in darkness and secrecy, and only by the light of a blood moon. I was never given the woman’s name—I found her through discreet inquiry in the outer markets of Calabar, and then only through a young Nigerian adventurer I had met some years ago on a voyage to study the canis infernalis in distant Zanzibar. Olaseni scrounged up our Ferryman through a complicated system of symbols left on doors, then papers slipped to market runners and urchins, and then at last, after two weeks of idleness in Calabar, we received a message from the Ferryman herself. We were to find the water’s edge just before midnight and follow the calls of the red-necked nightjars.
It was a hot night, the shoreline thick with flies and swarms of bats diving for them. Tall ships swayed in the harbor, sails tied, their naked masts jutting out of the water like the skeletons of giant beasts. The sandy earth sank beneath our feet as we waited for each nightjar call, then went a little farther, then waited, then farther. . . . It was a rare and coveted blood moon, the light of which dyed the sands and the bay a deep, rusted vermillion. Olaseni was a slight young man and moved with amazing speed and silence. I struggled to keep pace, following the flash of a blue scarf tied around his waist. To our left, the water; to our right, the foreboding sprawl of so many tall and interlocked trees. We must have waited for a dozen ringing calls of ta-tweet ta-tweet ta-tweet before we stumbled upon a dirt path that cut into the expansive coastal forest.
Her name was Idaramfon. She complimented my Efik, and I complimented her English. She worked out in the open, sheltered by a few low-hanging fronds. A small fire had been stoked at the edge of the clearing and a child tended it, his back to us. Idaramfon wore a simple white tunic, clean and pure, a red-and-black sash twisted into a kind of rope she let hang loose around her neck. Her clean-shaven head glowed like a ruby under the blood moon.
The dead body of a young boy was laid out in front of her on a bed of grass. He was washed and naked, his expression one of peace. There were no visible marks upon the body, and I could surmise only that some unseen illness had taken his life.
“Not afraid of death or bats, I hope, stranger,” she said with a smile.
“I have seen my share of death, Ferryman. And as for bats? Fascinating creatures” came my reply. I checked my notes, which were shockingly easy to read in the bright moonlight. “They are not to be feared. Are they your chosen . . . vessel? Is that the word you prefer to use?”
She nodded, and as she did, a few of those very bats swooped down to join us. They landed on one of the low fronds, two dark brown creatures that were, quite frankly, grotesquely ugly. Their faces were wrinkled and their lower jaws pronounced, giving them a hungry, feral look. Still, I smiled to see them. They were part of the ritual, after all, and that was what I had come to witness. Perhaps the hideous things were a poetic choice, given that they would serve as waypoint between life and death for the soul, until someone or something chose to set them free.
A dense, cold miasma surrounded us, emanating from the young woman. Whispers chased around us, a soft tornado of voices that vanished the instant you tried to decipher the words. Chilled beads of sweat traced down my temples, the transition from hot to cold air so sudden it left me breathless and numb.
Her brown eyes glowed scarlet, then redder than that, hot coals that pulsed white in the moonlight. Next to me, Olaseni whimpered. I looked into Idaramfon’s burning eyes and a hundred lost souls stared back at me, challenging and provoking me to gaze on and on, to stay fixed in that spot and perish there so I might join them. Later, when we returned to his home, I asked Olaseni what he thought of the experience. He described it thus and with haunted eyes: it was like I could feel where my soul and body met, I could feel the seam, and then I felt that seam begin to give and tear.
In the clearing, her eyes red rimmed with silver, Idaramfon the Ferryman whispered, “When I tell you to close your mouth and eyes, strange one, do so. I intend to ferry away only one soul this night, and it should not be yours.”
Rare Myths and Legends: The Collected Findings of H. I. Morn
ingside, page 233
Chijioke and Mary worked side by side on the lawn, both of them filling in holes as the orange glow of dusk grew all around us. A passel of crows had apparently survived the chase and now sat grouped on the manor’s roof, preening and fidgeting. By the time I left the shepherd’s hut, Joanna had cleared the dead birds from the stoop, though their feathers had gathered like black snow.
It was Chijioke who saw me first, jamming his shovel into the soft earth and leaning on it. He shielded his eyes and then waved, gesturing me over. I had taken the road back to Coldthistle, deeming it safer than the fields, where more of those ravens might be hovering. Two wagons waited in the circle drive outside the manse, and one was being loaded by Foster and George Bremerton, a long wooden slat with a draped figure balanced between them. Mrs. Eames. Somehow it made me slightly gratified to think she wouldn’t be buried right there on the grounds.
“Where are they taking her?” I asked, stopping near them and watching the somber men hoist the corpse into the wagon.
“Derridon,” Chijioke answered. “It’s a village just north of here. I expect her family will have the body sent overseas, or maybe to London.” He didn’t seem interested in watching the loading, instead keeping his eye fixed on me. “I heard they took a wee bit of umbrage at you finding the lady. Did you think to flee?”
Glancing between him and Mary, noticing their slumped shoulders and hooded eyes, their collective sheepishness became utterly apparent. They thought I had run because I was being blamed for the murder. It seemed simultaneously ridiculous and endearing, but I was in no mood to tease.
And even if I did not trust them, I had no intention of treating them like buffoons. “No, I ran because this place frightens me. I don’t want any part in your . . . whatever it is you think you’re doing.”
I saw Mary’s eyes settle on the pin on my apron. “Then why did you come back? You were gone for hours, lass. We thought you gone for good.”
“A quite literal murder of crows chased me into a shepherd’s cottage,” I said tartly. “And there I had a sit and a think, and I decided to come back for Rawleigh Brimble.”
“He does seem like a nice boy,” Mary said, hugging her shovel and leaning on it. “Only Mr. Morningside doesn’t make mistakes, Louisa; he must be here for a reason. I know it’s hard to accept, but even nice people can be rotten on the inside. Haven’t you ever bitten into an apple you thought looked delicious only to find out it was sour? It’s horrible, and folk are tricky like that all the time.”
“Rawleigh isn’t a rotten apple,” I snapped. “He’s just . . . confused. And he’s my friend.”
They shared a look, one I couldn’t quite interpret. Chijioke ran a hand over his square jaw and frowned, an expression that foretold yet more scolding. “Right, then.”
“I’m sorry?” Where was the fervent devotion to Mr. Morningside’s word?
He shrugged and went back to filling holes. “Stranger things’ve happened. If you’re right, I’m sure Mr. Morningside will find out in the end. What’s the boy supposed to have done?”
“Killed his guardian,” I said, waiting for Mary to interject with support for her master. But she, too, looked thoughtful, even receptive. “The whole thing was an accident. Some violent reaction to a nut or some such. The important part is that Rawleigh didn’t mean for anything bad to happen to his guardian. I think he truly loved and respected the man.”
“Then maybe he belongs in the Unworld!”
I nearly leapt out of my skin, spinning to find Poppy and her hound right behind me. She did a tiny wave and then pointed at Chijioke. “You’re ruining all of Bartholomew’s hard work!”
“The holes are unsightly, Poppy,” he muttered with a roll of his eyes. “And dangerous. I’ve nearly broken a leg twice this week!”
“He’s practicing!” she pouted.
“What do you mean?” I asked, leaning down a little to address the pigtailed girl.
Poppy stuck her lip out and crossed her arms over her light blue frock. “He’s just a little one, but he needs to practice now or he’ll never get better and never get back to the hot place! I don’t want him to go away, but it’s what all his kind must do. And so he needs to practice, Chijioke.”
And then she stuck her tongue out and blew.
“Not the dog,” I said with a sigh. “About the Unworld. What did you mean precisely?”
“Oh!” She gurgled with laughter and patted her pup’s head. “Lee could be one of us. Never had it turn out that way before, but Mary and Chijioke are very, very smart, and if they believe you, then it could just be a twisty-twisty sort of thing.”
“He seems perfectly normal,” I said, then winced. “Meaning . . . just . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Mary murmured charitably, but her cheeks were red. “We know what you meant.”
“Normal is a funny word. I like the way it sounds.” Poppy giggled again and swatted at Mary’s shovel, then kicked at Chijioke’s. “He could be . . . a dark Fae or a wraith or a dead caller or a Ferryman or the thing Mary is that I’m still convinced isn’t real words at all or a shadow drinker or, or . . .”
“We get the idea, Poppy,” Chijioke said, moving his shovel out of her reach.
“He’s just a boy.” This was another absurdity in an ever growing list. “A boring, human boy just like I’m a boring, human girl.” They stared in oddly tense silence at me, silence that was broken only when I noticed the front door of the manse opening behind them. Lee himself emerged, hurrying over to his uncle and the wagon. Then he stopped, finding us clustered not far away on the lawn.
Nobody spoke as he loped up to us, dressed in a patched traveling coat with a light gray piping and leather gloves. He beamed at me, clapping his hands together as he all but hopped into the spot next to me. “What a delight. The housekeeper said you had departed but didn’t specify a length of absence. I hadn’t thought to see you again so soon.”
“Hello, boring human boy,” Poppy said, waving.
“Oh, um, hello,” he replied, chuckling nervously. “We’re headed into town briefly. Somewhere called Derridon. I don’t know it, but apparently there’s a rather good undertaker there. I thought you might want to come along, Louisa. I’ve been desirous of your company.”
Softly, Mary cleared her throat, tugging the others away to give us privacy. I blushed, knowing exactly how foolish this all looked. Desirous of your company. If I admitted to myself what that sounded like, then I would have to accept that Lee was not just trying to befriend me but court me.
“I can’t do that,” I whispered. “How would it look? I’m just a servant here.”
He leaned in and winked, and the proximity made that wink more potent and deadly. “For me? Can’t you make something up? I know! You’re helping with the delivery, or, I don’t know, you’re the clever one.”
The others were watching us, and I couldn’t tell if he or the audience made me more uncomfortable. Regardless, I knew what had to be done. Had I not come back to help him? He must be warned. And maybe I could go. Maybe we could get on that wagon and leave and never look back.
I took his sleeve and pulled him toward me, lowering my voice to a tense whisper. “I’ll find a way to go with you, but if I cannot or they stop me, promise me that you won’t come back here. Go to Derridon if you must, but then hire a coach and leave. Leave, Lee, and get as far away from Coldthistle House as you can.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Enduring Mystery of the Lost Order
In the vastness of my travels, in Syria, in Jerusalem, in Venice, Rome, and the catacombs of Paris, I have come across an unnamed sect that perturbs me more than murderous banshees or hounds from hell. I say unnamed, but I know that to be untrue—they have a name, and indeed it must be of great import, because at each site of their worship, the name of their order has been scrubbed. If it is not burned or painted over it is laboriously chipped out of the stone, leaving behind just the stray glimpse of a letter here and there.
This strikes one as a senseless waste of time and effort, to chisel the name and spells of your order into a wall or floor, only to deface it immediately upon completion.
So wrote the bard, “What’s in a name?”
Beyond erasing the name itself, they take no pains to erase the evidence of their being there—misshapen skulls used for ritual purposes, withered corpses of red-and-white-striped serpents knotted up and mutilated. Even fragments of their incantations are left behind, almost brazenly, as if to taunt. They praise Mixcoatl, Gurzil, Maahes, Laran . . . Gods of destruction and war, but to what end?
Other demonologists have suggested that these cultists are nothing more than random amateurs, unorganized rabble playing at spell work and magicks, that they have no larger purpose in the study of the strange. I must disagree. There is order to their madness, and order signifies purpose. Purpose signifies a goal.
Rare Myths and Legends: The Collected Findings of H. I. Morningside, page 98
They finished loading the wagons as the sun dipped below the horizon. Lanterns glowed on the lawn of Coldthistle, the grim-streaked glass dousing their lights until they were nothing but weak puddles in the coming darkness.
I took advantage of the shadows, volunteering to help Mary and Chijioke with filling holes until the wagons looked ready to depart. Then I offered to take the shovels back to the barn, a kindness which they accepted happily. Chijioke would be going with the men to Derridon, and Mary was needed in the kitchen. I might have simply strode off to the wagons with Lee, but I had tried a brazen approach once and had a flock of crows after me, sent by Mr. Morningside or whoever else, either as warning or punishment. This time a quiet, subtle approach suited better.