Stefan Bachman - The Peculiar

After a moment she lifted Hettie up in her arms and carried her out.

No sooner had the door closed than Bartholomew was moving, crouching on the cold floor next to the wall. He mustn’t drift off. He mustn’t be too comfortable. He had a faery to catch. Wrapping his arms around his knees, he waited for everything to go quiet in the other room.

It took an age. The bells of Bath tolled five minutes after five minutes, shouts echoed in the alleys nearby, and still he heard Mother in the kitchen, creaking over the floorboards, stowing the blackberry cordial in its cobwebby corner, wiping the tea mugs, and crushing leaves and flower petals for tomorrow’s washing. Sometime later he heard her blow out the lamp. Then her first soft snores. Bartholomew pulled himself up and crept into the kitchen.

The weather was good, but Mother still had to build fires in the potbellied stove to boil water for washing. There was always a good heap of ashes in the coal scuttle. Bartholomew tiptoed across the room and heaved up the scuttle, careful not to make a sound. It was too heavy for him. He only managed a few steps before he had to set it down again. He took a handful of the fine ash and began tossing it on the floor. He put a lot in front of Hettie’s cupboard. Then he wrestled the scuttle back to his room and did the same around his own cot. When there was a heavy layer of ash on the floor, he filled the dipper from the drinking bucket, and walking backward, dribbled water over it all. He heard it splash in the darkness, and trickle, and when he leaned down to touch the mixture it stuck firmly to his fingers. That would do. Leaving the dipper by the door so that he would not have to disturb the carpet of sludge, he climbed into bed.

He was fast asleep when the lock to the flat clicked open.

The light from the windows was dull as an old pot when Bartholomew woke. The house was quiet.

He sat up straight. The ash. If Mother saw the mess it would mean more than just a box to the ears. It would mean an immediate trip to the hack doctor in the court behind the Bag o’ Nails public house, and any number of prods and nasty ingestions. There mustn’t be a flake left by the time she woke up.

He threw off his blanket and leaned over the edge of the bed, squinting. The water and the ash had dried together overnight, mixing into a sort of gray caked mud. And all through it, pockmarking it like scatterings of acorns, were tracks.

Now I’ve got you, Bartholomew thought. The tracks were small, two-pronged, with a cleft in the middle. They were all around his bed, all over the floor, hundreds of them going this way and that. They led away in a dirty trail under the door.

Bartholomew was a city boy through and through. He had never climbed a tree or run in a field. He had never seen a farm, besides the ones on the coffee tins. But Mother had taken him to markets when he was small, and he knew the bottom of an animal’s foot. These were the tracks of a goat. Hooves.

He saw the sheets again, curling across the Buddelbinsters’ yard, the sky turning to iron, and the faery mother’s face gaping against the attic window.

You won’t hear a thing, she had cried, and her voice echoed inside his head, aching, heart-rending. The cloven hooves on the floorboards. The voices in the dark. It’ll come for you and you won’t hear a thing.

Trembling, he got up and followed the tracks into the other room.

“Ah, Melusine, Melusine.” Aunt Dorcas shook her head, clasped her hands over the cheap pewter brooch at her bosom, and looked ever so wistful and pitying. She spoke the name of the mysterious lady as if referring to the dearest of old friends.

Ophelia looked up from the dining room table where she was sorting through the bolts of cloth that Aunt Dorcas had brought with her in the steam-carriage. It was not so far to walk from Curzon Street to Belgrave Square, and the draper always supplied runners for larger purchases, but as Aunt Dorcas had said, “It is so terribly low to go by foot.” Never mind that she’d had to beg the fare from the Jellibys’ cook.

Mr. Jelliby, who up until this point had been slumped glumly in his paisley armchair, sat up straight. Aunt Dorcas knew. She knew of the lady in plum.

He cleared his throat. He fiddled with his shirt cuffs. Trying not to sound too interested, he asked, “And? Aunty, who is she?”

“Yes, who is she?” Ophelia echoed, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

Aunt Dorcas smiled benevolently. “Melusine Aiofe O Baollagh,” she said, flapping her fan at her red cheeks. The fan was supposed to look like that stylish sort where a tiny pisky is mounted on a stick and forced to stir the air with its gossamer wings. But hers was not alive. It was a poor copy made from sculpted wax and cotton, and one would have to be somewhat blind to mistake it for a live faery. Aunt Dorcas didn’t seem to realize it, though, and no one could ever be so hard-hearted as to tell her. “From Ireland,” she added quickly, noticing their blank looks. “The poor dear. I mean, she was only a merchant’s daughter-tradespeople, you know-but such a wealthy merchant!”

Mr. Jelliby blinked. “Was?”

“She has fallen from favor.” Aunt Dorcas sighed. “It was because of her sweetheart, I think. He was the most handsome person in all the world, if the stories are to be believed. They were engaged to be married. But there was an incident. Very mysterious. No one knows any details. At any rate the family grew suspicious of him, and the two little dears eloped! She was disowned, and they were never heard from again. It’s just terribly romantic.”

“Yes, terribly. .,” Mr. Jelliby said, leaning back in his chair thoughtfully.

Ophelia set aside a particularly fine bolt of Venetian lace, and asked, “Might I ask where you know this passionate creature from, Arthur?”

“Oh, I don’t know her,” Mr. Jelliby said, shrugging somewhat sheepishly. “I’ve just heard of her. From some gentlemen at Westminster. Aunty, how long ago did all this happen?”

“Oh, not long. Let me see.” She bowed her head and closed her eyes. Two seconds later they popped open again and she said, “Last month! Last month I overheard Lady Swinton speaking about it whilst I was hemming up her pettico- that is, while I was visiting. ” She stole a sharp look at them both. “And then again two weeks ago from Madam Claremont, and last Tuesday at the Baroness d’Erezaby’s. It’s been all over the place, really. I can’t imagine you haven’t heard of it.”

“Yes, how strange. Well, thank you, Aunty.” Mr. Jelliby got up and bowed to her, then turned and did the same to his wife. “And good day, my dears. I’m afraid I must be off.”

With that, he hurried out of the room.

The other day, as soon as the old woman had sent Mr. Jelliby on his way with the mechanical bird held gingerly in a dustpan and his wounded hand well bound in a piece of Herald’s pajamas, he had hurried straight back to the coffeehouse on the corner of Trafalgar Square.

Tossing the waiter a shilling so that he could sit without having to order any more unnaturally colored drinks, he laid the broken creature on the wobbly wrought-iron table and looked it over. A spring popped out from between its breastplates as it touched the tabletop. Mr. Jelliby swore silently. The bird was in ruins. Its wings hung in shards, and the black eyes, only a few hours before so keen and watchful, were now dull as coal. Shooting it out of the sky might have been an improvement.

He unclipped the capsule from around its leg and twirled it in his fingers. There would be a hidden clasp here somewhere. . He ran his nail across the surface, found it. The capsule clicked open and a loop of paper popped out. It was crisp, fine quality, an even unblemished white. He unrolled it carefully.