Peter Beagle - Tamsin

Actually, Tamsin couldn’t ever remember which bedroom had been hers, but she thought Evan and Sally’s room might be the one. But it gave Julian something else to think about while I went on. I told him how different the Manor looked in those days, and how the Willoughbys raised lots more sheep than the Lovells do now, and what it was like plowing and irrigating and harvesting with nothing but hand tools. It was all stuff Tamsin had told me , but I could always say I’d gotten it from Evan. That part went fine.

But then Julian had to ask, because he’s Julian, “Did she ever get married? Did she have children?”

“No,” I said. “No, she never did.”

“Why not?” The blanket was all the way down off his face now.

“Because she died very young.”

“Oh, no .” Julian’s eyes actually started to fill up. He took stories absolutely seriously, even at ten, and I kept forgetting that. “Did she get the Black Plague? Like her sister?”

“The Plague was mostly gone by then,” I said. “It was some kind of lung trouble.” I remembered Tamsin talking about “ a flux… a catarrh that grew to a pleurisy… pulmonary phthisis ” I said, “She was twenty years old. I think she got caught out in a storm, something like that.”

Julian was quiet for a while. I thought he might be falling asleep, and I was just getting ready to sneak out when he asked, “Jenny? Did she at least have a boyfriend?”

He wanted her to have been happy, even a little bit. That damn kid. Before I knew it, I heard myself saying, “Yes, she did, I know that for a fact. His name was Edric Davies.”

I didn’t know a thing about Edric Davies. I made it all up, just because of Julian. Davies is a Welsh name, so I told Julian he was a Welsh fisherman who wandered all the way down to Dorset and fell in love with a wealthy farmer’s daughter. I said that Roger Willoughby wasn’t about to have his only girl marrying a penniless fish-jockey. He wouldn’t let Edric even come to the house. But Tamsin used to slip off and meet him anyway, in a ruined shepherd’s hut on the downs. Use what you’ve got, right?

“You said they didn’t get married.” Julian had turned on his side, head propped on his hand, alert as a damn chipmunk. Not a chance of him dropping off until I finished the story somehow.

“Well, they wanted to,” I said. “They ran away together one night, and Roger Willoughby had dogs out hunting for them.” I hated badmouthing Tamsin’s father, knowing how much she loved him, but I’d gotten myself into this story, and I had to get out of it some way. “It was storming and raining, the way it gets here in the winter, so the dogs lost the trail, but they got lost too, Tamsin and Edric. He wanted to take her home, but she wouldn’t let him. She said she’d rather die than go back.”

Julian was wide-eyed, hardly breathing. I was pretty caught up myself, considering. “Is that how she died? Tamsin?”

I thought about the Other One, about the face in my dreams that I couldn’t ever quite see. I said, “No, not then. There was a man, an older man. He took them into his house, out of the storm, and they thought they could trust him. But he fell in love with Tamsin, too—or anyway he wanted her—and he killed Edric. They fought a duel, but what does a fisherman know about dueling? The man killed him.”

I practically had tears in my own eyes, it had gotten so real, and it explained so much that Tamsin wouldn’t tell me. Julian whispered, “What about her ? What happened to her?”

“She ran out into the storm,” I said. “Back into the rain and the wind and everything. They found her body the next day, and old Roger Willoughby died of a broken heart.” I threw that in like an afterthought, something extra. Lost to all shame, as Meena would say.

Julian slid back down in the bed. He asked, “How do you know?” but the question was a shadow of its usual snotty self. I told him I’d heard the story from Ellie John, who’d just come to work part-time for Evan. Ellie John’s very nice, but she’s a big woman with a sort of gruff voice, and Julian was a bit scared of her in those days. I figured he wasn’t likely to check on me.

“That’s a terrible story,” he said, the same way he used to say, “That was a scary movie,” and with just the same satisfaction. “Did they ever get that man—the one who killed poor Edric?”

“No,” I said. “Dueling was legal then, I think. Anyway, who cared about one Welsh fisherman? I guess he got clean away with it, whoever he was. Go to sleep.”

I tucked him in, gave him a quick little nuzzle—he wasn’t eleven yet, you could still get away with it—and headed for the door. Behind me I heard a mumble, “Guess he’s dead by now, that man.”

I turned at the door. “Well, it’s been three hundred years. I’d guess.”

“Too bad. Wish he was still alive, so we could kill him.” And with that childish dream on his childish lips, my adopted baby brother went bye-bye. I tiptoed out and went back to my room.

But now I couldn’t sheep. I’d made that whole story up, like I said, just to occupy Julian, and told him it was true without turning a hair. But thinking about it I started wondering if it could be at all near the truth of what really happened with Tamsin and Edric Davies. What was she doing out on a night wild enough to cause her death? And who was Edric if he wasn’t her lover? And if the Other One wasn’t his rival for Tamsin… but I didn’t want to think about the Other One any more than I had to. He was all right in a story, but not out of it.

Sally and Evan weren’t back yet, and Tony was in his studio. I gave sleep half an hour, and then I got up and dressed again and went outside to hunt up the billy-blind.

We’d met him in the North Barn, but I didn’t imagine him living there like the boggart in our house. I figured he’d have a place of his own—a burrow or a den, or even a treehouse—somewhere near the Manor. I didn’t know how to find him—I hoped maybe I’d get lucky and have him come looking for me. Dogs like Albert don’t feel right if there isn’t at least one sheep around to herd somewhere. Maybe it was the same with billy-blinds and people.

It was a mild night, with an apple-smelling breeze making the new metal sheds squeak and grumble; but there was autumn way down under it, like a little cold current nibbling your ankles when you’re swimming. I didn’t go beyond the main buildings. I just wandered more or less aimlessly, trying to look like someone in huge need of advice, which wasn’t difficult. Dairy, nothing—North and South Barns, farmworkers’ parking lot, tractor shed, nothing—workshop, nothing—nameless shed where you stash the stuff that doesn’t belong in any other shed, nothing. Mister Cat kept me company for a while, pouncing at shadows like a kitten, but then he got bored and just never came back out of one shadow or another. I was watching out for the Pooka, and for whatever it was Mister Cat had gone a few rounds with the same night I met the billy-blind; but there didn’t seem to be anybody but me prowling around Stourhead Farm that night. Today that would tell me something.

He was the one who found me. I was trudging back to the South Barn, thinking that I hadn’t checked the loft, when he actually tugged on my pants leg. “You’ll be looking for me, no doubt,” he said, when I got back from wherever I’d jumped to. “Come, I’ve been expecting you.”

Waistcoat, fluffed-up cravat, and this time a long coat, like the kind gunfighters wear in Westerns. I have never found out where he lives, by the way, or who does his laundry. He led me, very importantly—your average billy-blind can strut sitting down—over to a stack of scrap lumber, hopped up onto it so he could look down at me, put his hands on his hips, and announced, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, child, and that’s not two—nowt but porter and an egg will help that hair. Porter and a brown egg, there’s your ticket. I use it meself, and look at me, would you?”