The monk shuddered. “I have no stomach,” he said, “for such an operation. I have informed you; that should be enough.”
“You think that I am better equipped and would have a better stomach.”
“That had been my thought. That’s why I came to you.”
“How come you knew us to be in town?”
“This town has ears. There is little happening that goes unknown.”
“And I take it you listen very carefully.”
Said the monk, “I’ve made it a habit.”
“Very well,” said Beckett. “So it is agreed. If the missing item can be found and proves to have some value, I’ll speak a word for you. That was your proposal?”
The monk nodded, saying nothing.
“To speak for you, I must know your name.”
“I am Brother Oswald,” said the monk.
“I shall mark it well,” said Beckett. “Finish off your wine and we shall get to work. King and Broad, you said?”
The monk nodded and reached for the wine. Beckett rose and walked forward to his men, then came back again.
“You will not regret,” he said, “that you came to me.”
“I had that hope,” said Brother Oswald.
He finished off the wine and set the cup back on the table. “Shall I see you again?” he asked.
“Not unless you seek me out.”
The monk wrapped his habit close about himself and went out the door. Outside the moon had sunk beneath the roof trees of the buildings that hemmed in the narrow alley, and the place was dark. He went carefully, feeling his way along the rough, slick cobblestones.
A shadow stepped out of a doorway as he passed. A knife gleamed briefly in the dark. The monk dropped, gurgling, hands clawing at the stones, a sudden rush of blood bubbling in his throat. Then he grew quiet. His body was not found until morning light.
4
Gib of the Marshes was up before the sun. He was always up before the sun, but on this day there was much to do. This was the day the gnomes had named when the new ax would be ready. He needed the new ax, for the blade of the old one, worn down and blunted, would no longer take a proper edge, no matter how much whetstone might be used.
Ordinarily at this season of the year the marsh would have been wrapped in low-hanging fog early of a morning, but this morning it was clear. A few wisps of layered fog hung above the island where the wood was gotten, but otherwise there was no sign of it. To the east and south, the marsh lay flat and far, brown and silver, with its reeds and grasses. Ducks gabbled in nearby ponds and a muskrat swam through a channel, creating a neat V of an aftermath as he moved along. Somewhere far off a heron croaked. West and north, the forested hills rose against the sky—oaks, maples, hickories, some of them already touched with the first colors of the autumn.
Gib stood and looked toward the hills. Up there, somewhere in that tangled woodland, was the home of his good friend, Hal of the Hollow Tree. Almost every morning, when there was no fog and the hills stood in view, he stood and tried to pick out the home tree, but he never had been able to, for from this distance no one tree could be told from any of the others. He would not, he knew, have time to visit Hal today, for once he had picked up the ax, he must pay his respects to the lonely old hermit who lived in the cave of the limestone capping of one of the distant hills. It had been a month or more since he’d gone calling on the hermit.
He rolled up the goose-down pad and the woolen blanket he had used for sleeping and stored them away in the hut in the center of the raft. Except when the weather was cold or it happened to be raining, he always slept outdoors. On the iron plate on the forward part of the raft he kindled a fire, using dry grass and punk from a rotting log, which he kept in one corner of the woodbox, as kindling, and flint and steel to produce the spark.
When the fire was going, he reached a hand into the live-box sunk beside the raft and brought out a flapping fish. He killed it with a blow of his belt knife and quickly cleaned it, putting the fillets into a pan, which he set on the grill above the fire, squatting to superintend the cooking.
Except for the soft talking of the ducks and the occasional plop of a jumping fish, the marsh was quiet. But, then, he thought, at this time of day it was always quiet. Later in the day there would be blackbirds quarreling in the reeds, the whistling wings of water fowl passing overhead, the harsh cries of shore birds and of gulls.
The east brightened and the marsh, earlier an indistinctness of brown and silver, began to take on new definition. Far off stood the line of willows that edged the narrow height of ground that stood between the distant river and the marsh. The patch of cattails closer to the wooded hill shore could now be seen, waving their full brown clubs in the vagrant wind.
The craft bobbed gently as he ate from the pan, not bothering with a plate. He wondered what life might be like on solid ground, without the bobbing of the raft. He had lived all his years on a bobbing raft, which was only stilled when cold weather froze it in.
Thinking of cold weather, he ran through his mind all that remained to do to get ready for the winter. He would need to smoke more fish, must gather roots and seeds, try to pick up a few muskrats for a winter robe. And get in wood. But the wood gathering would go faster once he had the new ax from the gnomes.
He washed out the pan in which he’d fried the fish, then put into the boat, tied alongside the raft, the bundles that he had gotten together before he went to sleep. In them were dried fish and packets of wild rice, gifts for the gnomes and the hermit. At the last moment he put his old ax in the craft; the gnomes could make use of the metal to fashion something else.
He paddled quietly down the channel, unwilling to break the morning hush. The sun came up into the east and on the opposite hills, the first autumn colors flamed with brilliance.
He was nearing the shore when he rounded a bend and saw the raft, the forepart of it thrust into the grass, the rest of it projecting out into the channel. An old marshman was sitting at the stern of the raft, mending a net. As soon as Gib came into view, the old man looked up and raised a solemn hand in greeting. It was Old Drood and Gib wondered what he was doing here. The last time he had heard of Drood, he had his raft over near the willow bank close to the river.
Gib pulled his boat against the raft, thrust out a paddle, and held it there.
“Long time since I saw you,” he said. “When did you move over here?”
“A few days ago,” said Drood. He left his net mending and came over to squat close beside the boat. He was getting old, Gib saw. As long as he could remember, he had been called Old Drood, even when he’d not been old, but now the years were catching up with the name. He was getting gray.
“Figured I’d try for some wood over on the shore,” he said. “Not much but willow left over there against the river and willow makes poor burning.”
Mrs. Drood came waddling around the hut. She spoke in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. “I thought I heard someone. It’s young Gib, isn’t it?” She squinted at him with weak eyes.
“Hello, Mrs. Drood,” said Gib. “I’m glad you are my neighbors.”
“We may not stop here for long,” said Drood. “Only long enough to get a load of wood.”
“You got any so far?”
“Some,” said Drood. “It goes slow. No one to help. The children all are gone. Struck off on their own. I can’t work as hard as I once could.”
“I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Drood. “There are all them wolves.”
“I got my ax,” said Drood. “There ain’t no wolf going to bother me long as I have the ax.”
“All the children gone,” said Gib. “Last time I saw you, there still was Dave and Alice.”
“Alice got married three, four months ago,” said Drood. “Young fellow down at the south end of the marsh. Dave built himself a raft. Good job he did with it. Wouldn’t let me help him much. Said he had to build his own. He built himself a nice raft. Moved over to the east. We see him and Alice every n
ow and then.”
“We got some ale,” said Mrs. Drood. “Would you like a mug of ale? And I forgot to ask you, have you had your breakfast? It would only take a minute.”
“I’ve had breakfast, Mrs. Drood, and thank you. But I’d like a mug of ale.”
“Bring me one, too,” said Drood. “Can’t let Gib here drink alone.”
Mrs. Drood waddled back to the hut.
“Yes, sir,” said Drood, “it ain’t easy getting in the wood. But if I take my time, I can manage it. Good wood, too. Oak and maple, mostly. All dried out and ready for the fire. Lots of down stuff. No one has touched it for years. Once in a while a pack train camps near here, if they’re caught at night, and have to rustle up some camp wood. But they don’t make a dent in it. Up the hill a ways there’s a down shagbark hickory and it’s the best wood that there is. You don’t find one of them down too often. It’s a far ways to go to reach it, though.…”
“I’m busy today,” said Gib, “but tomorrow and the next day I can help you with the wood.”
“There ain’t no need to, Gib. I can manage it.”
“I’d like some of that hickory myself.”
“Well, now, if that’s the way of it, I’d go partners with you. And thanks an awful lot.”
“Glad to.”
Mrs. Drood came back with three mugs of ale. “I brought one for myself,” she said. “Land sakes, it ain’t often we get visitors. I’ll just sit down while we drink the ale.”
“Gib is going to help me with the wood tomorrow,” said Drood. “We’ll go after that big hickory.”
“Hickory is good wood,” said Mrs. Drood.
“I am getting me a new ax,” said Gib. “The old one is almost worn out. It was one my father gave me.”
“Your folks are up near Coon Hollow, so I hear,” said Mrs. Drood.
Gib nodded. “Been there for quite a while. Good place to be. Good wood, good fishing, plenty of muskrat, one little slough with a lot of wild rice in it. I think they will stay on.”
“You’re getting your new ax from the gnomes?” asked Drood.
“That’s right,” said Gib. “Had to wait awhile. Spoke to them about it way last summer.”
“Fine workmen, them gnomes,” said Drood judiciously. “Good iron, too. That vein they’re working is high-grade ore. Pack trains stop every now and then and take everything they have. Good reputation, no trouble selling it. I sometimes wonder. You hear terrible things of gnomes, and maybe they are sort of scaly things. But these gnomes of ours are all right. I don’t know how we’d get along without them. They been here for years, as long as anyone can remember.”
“Things can get along together,” said Mrs. Drood, “if they have good hearts.”
“The gnomes ain’t people, Mother,” Drood reminded her.
“Well, I don’t care,” said Mrs. Drood. “They’re creatures, and they ain’t so much different from us. In a lot of ways they are less different from us than we are from humans. The Hill People are a lot like us.”
“The main thing,” said Drood, “is that all of us manage to get along together. Take us and humans. Humans are twice as big as we are and they have smooth skins where we have fur. Humans can write and we can’t. Humans have money and we don’t. We trade for what we want. Humans got lots of things we haven’t, but we don’t begrudge them it and they don’t look down on us. Just so long as we get along together, everything’s all right.”
Gib finished his ale. “I have to go,” he said, “I have a long day ahead of me. I have to get my ax, then go calling on the hermit.”
“I hear the hermit is right poorly,” said Drood. “He is getting on in years. He is half as old as them there hills.”
“You’re going calling on the hermit?” asked Mrs. Drood.
“That is what he said,” Drood told her.
“Well, you just wait a minute. I got something I want to send him. A chunk of that wild honey the Hill People gave me.”
“He’d like that,” said Gib.
She scurried off.
“I’ve often wondered,” said Drood, “what the hermit has gotten out of life, sitting up there on top of the hill in that cave of his, never going anywhere, never doing nothing.”
“Folks come to him,” said Gib. “He’s got all sorts of cures. Stomach cures, throat cures, teeth cures. But they don’t always come for cures. Some just come to talk.”
“Yes, I suppose he does see a lot of people.”
Mrs. Drood came back with a package that she gave to Gib.
“You stop by for supper,” she said. “No matter if you’re late, I’ll save some supper for you.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Drood,” said Gib. He pushed away from the raft and paddled down the winding channel. Squawling blackbirds rose in clouds before him, wheeling in dark-winged flight above his head, lighting on distant reeds with volleys of profanity.
He reached the shore, the ground rising abruptly from the margin of the marsh. Giant trees close to the marsh’s margin reached great limbs far above the grass and water. A great oak grew so close to the water’s edge that some of its roots, once enclosed in earth that had washed away, stuck out like clawing fingers from the bank.
Gib tied the boat to one of the roots, heaved his bundles and the old ax ashore, then scrambled up the bank. He shouldered the bundles and picked his way along a faint path that ran up a hollow between two of the towering hills. He reached and crossed a better-defined path, a trail used by the infrequent pack trains that were either passing through or coming to trade with the gnomes.
The marsh had been noisy with blackbirds, but as Gib walked deeper into the wooded hills a hushed silence closed in about him. Leaves rustled in the wind, and occasionally he could hear the tiny thud of a falling acorn as it hit the ground. Earlier in the morning squirrels would have done some chattering to greet the morning sun, but now they were going quietly about their business of foraging for food, slipping like darting shadows through the woods.
The climb was steep, and Gib stopped for a moment to lean against a lichen-grown boulder. He didn’t like the woods, he told himself. Gone from it for only a short time, he already missed the marsh. The woods had a secretive grimness and the marsh was open. In the marsh one knew where he was, but here one could easily become confused and lost.
5
Sniveley, the gnome, said, “So you have come for your ax.”
“If it is ready,” Gib said.
“Oh, it is ready well enough,” Sniveley grumbled. “It was ready yesterday, but come on in and sit. It is a tiring climb up here, even for a young one.”
The cave opened out from the hillside, and beyond its mouth, half filling the deep ravine that ran below it, was a heap of earth and slag, a huge hog’s back, along which ran a wheelbarrow track to reach the dump of mine tailings at its end. So ancient was the earth and slag heap that along its sloping sides trees had sprung up and reached a respectable size, some of them canted out of line so that they hung above the ravine at eccentric angles. Back from the mouth of the cave, extending deep into the hill, forge-flames flared, and there was the sound of heavy hammering.
Sniveley led the way into a small side cave that connected obliquely with the main one that led into the mine. “Here,” he said, “we can sit in peace and have some surcease from noise. More than that, we’ll be out of the way of the wheelbarrows that come charging from the mine.”
Gib laid one of the bundles on the counter that ran against one wall. “Smoked fish,” he said, “and some other things. The other bundle’s for the hermit.”
“I have not seen the hermit for years,” said Sniveley. “Here, take this chair. I just recently covered it with a new sheepskin. It is very comfortable.”
Gib sat down in the indicated chair, and the gnome took another, hitching it around so he could face his visitor. “Actually,” he said, “I only called on the hermit once. A neighborly act, I thought. I took him, as a gift, a fine pair of silver candlesticks. I never went again. I fe
ar that I embarrassed him. I felt an unease in him. He said nothing, of course.…”
“He wouldn’t,” said Gib. “He is a kindly man.”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” said the gnome. “It came from living so long in the land of humans and dealing so much with them that I began to lose the distinction between myself and man. But to the hermit, and I suppose to many other men, I am a reminder of that other world in which I properly belong, against which men still must have a sense of loathing and disgust, and I suppose for a reason. For ages man and the many people of my world fought very hard and viciously against one another, with no mercy, and I suppose, at most times, without a sense of honor. In consequence of this, the hermit, who is, as you say, the kindliest of men, did not quite know how to handle me. He must have known that I was harmless and carried no threat to him or any of his race, and yet he was uneasy. If I had been a devil, say, or any sort of demon, he would have known how to act. Out with the holy water and the sacred spells. But I wasn’t a devil, and yet in some obscure way I was somehow connected with the idea of the devil. All these years I have regretted that I called on him.”
“And yet he took the candlesticks.”
“Yes, he did. Most graciously, and he thanked me kindly for them. He was too much a gentleman to throw them back in my face. He gave me, in return, a length of cloth of gold. Someone, I suppose, perhaps some noble visitor, had given it to him, for the hermit would have had no money to buy so princely a gift. I have often thought, however, that he should have kept it and given me a much more lowly gift. I’ve wondered all these years what I possibly could do with a length of cloth of gold. I keep it in a chest and I take it out now and then and have a look at it, but that is all I ever do with it. I suppose I could trade it off for something more utilitarian, but I hesitate to do that, for it was the hermit’s gift and for that reason seems to me to have a certain sentimental value. One does not sell gifts, particularly a gift from so good a man.”