Peter Beagle - Tamsin

“A storm, yes—a storm it was indeed, but not the one we knew to beware.” She put her hands on mine, so that I could see our fingers laced together even if I couldn’t feel it. “There came a man to Lyme Regis. Lyme Regis, the eleventh of June. I could never forget that, not if I had been stopped twice as long as I have. I’d forget Edric’s voice ere I forgot the eleventh ofJune.”

And I knew. Tony hadn’t told me the date, and we hadn’t gotten up to it in British History, but I knew. I said, “Monmouth’s Rebellion.”

“Was that his name? Monmouth?” Tamsin thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Very like. There were folk who followed his banner, crying that he should be king. My father was not of their number.” She laughed a little. “He said to me, ‘Catty, never you go trailing after a Stuart, not one step. The best of them love their dreams, the worst love none but themselves, but no Stuart born cares for you, or for me, or for any of the poor fools who love them. Follow a moontouched zany, follow an ignis fatuus , but never a Stuart. Mind what I say, little one.’ ”

It was making sense, it was even better than my story. I said, “But Edric followed him. Edric went with Monmouth.”

“No, not Edric,” Tamsin said. “Not he, but his pupil, Francis Gollop. For Edric did take students, as does your mother, and Francis was all his pride. A yeoman’s son, nothing more, but he would learn the harpsichord, and Edric told me often that Francis had the same gift of love as his own for the music he played. He said… he said that was better than having clean hands, better than quick, slender fingers. Oh, Jenny, I do remember everything!”

There was joy in her voice, but more pain—even I could tell the difference, even back then. It woke Miss Sophia Brown up, or whatever; anyway, she came and put her paws around Tamsin’s neck, the way Mister Cat does with me. “Right. So this Francis joined Monmouth’s Rebellion. But Edric didn’t go with him.”

“Nay, Edric went after him. Francis’s mother came pleading to him, on her knees, that he would bring her son home—but be sure that Edric would have gone to find him had she never done so. For he was greatly fond of the boy, and had no mind to lose him to such madness. ‘What cares music who’s king?’ he would ask me, expecting no answer, and getting none. ‘Thieves, murderers, the lot of them, crowned and uncrowned alike. Francis’s left hand, Francis’s improvisations—these are worth all the thrones of all the world, all the kings and queens, all the bloody wretched seaports, frontiers, principalities. And the worse for that idiot boy if he doesn’t know it. I’ll fetch him straightway back, for his mother’s sake and my own. The kings shall not have this one.’”

For that moment I could actually see Edric Davies. That can happen with ghosts, when they’re thinking of a person who meant as much in their living days as they did to themselves. Tamsin’s face changed —not a lot, but just enough for me to glimpse a pointed, off-center nose, a chin like a football, and cheekbones you could borrow money on. Long dark hair, not quite shoulder length—eyes much darker than Tamsin’s… a quirky face, sort of lopsided. Not at all handsome, but nice. Then Edric was gone and she was herself again, looking a little lonelier for the memory. She said quietly, “But they did. They did, Jenny.”

I didn’t know my throat was hurting until I tried to talk. “He was killed? Francis?”

“At Sedgemoor, fighting on foot against mounted men with swords. Edric found his body in a ditch, still clutching a broken shepherd’s crook. It was over by then, Monmouth already taken, and rebels ordered left where they fell, for the dogs and the ravens. But Edric would not have it so, and he brought Francis by night to his parents on a handbarrow.” She was smiling now, holding Miss Sophia Brown chose. “I was never so proud of him as I was when we buried Francis in a wheatfield, with his music and that broken stick at his side. Even my father said it was well done.”

It was too much. It was all too much, and it was all coming too fast, and it was too real , at three or whatever in the morning, with a ghost sitting on my bed, petting her ghost-cat and remembering. People running and shouting and falling, horses screaming, armored men battering peasants down into the mud of meadows and pastures I actually knew—and Tamsin’s Edric Davies, Edric the musician, who wanted nothing to do with any of it, struggling in the same rainy Dorset darkness as this, pushing his barrow along lanes lined with bodies just like the one he was lugging home… it was still happening in her voice, everything that had really happened here three hundred years ago. It wasn’t me making up a silly story about Tamsin and Edric for Julian—it was real and right now, and I couldn’t handle it. I started to cry.

Tamsin took my face between her hands. It seemed to me that my hot skin cooled just a bit when she did that, but what do I know? I was busy gulping and coughing and hiccuping, trying to hold it all back, because I was afraid of waking people, and because I can’t stand to cry in front of anybody, even her. She said, “Little one, Jenny, hush, hush, there, never mind,” but I couldn’t stop, and she didn’t know what to do—poor Tamsin, how could she? So finally she went back one more time to that song her sister taught her:

Which gave me time to sniff and burp (I always start burping like mad when I’ve been crying), and wipe my eyes on the sheet, and mutter, “They still wouldn’t let you marry Edric.” Tamsin didn’t answer. I said, “What happened to Edric?”

I think she would have told me right then—no, I know she would have—if Julian hadn’t wandered in, rubbing his eyes and holding a couple of his French comic books. He said, “Jenny? Why are you doing that?”

I didn’t know whether he meant crying or burping, or just being awake—you can’t ever tell with that kid. Tamsin was gone before he was halfway through the door, and my room suddenly felt really dark again, and I almost started bawling again, but I didn’t. I told him, “I can’t get back to sleep, and I’m so tired,” which was true enough. And Julian said, “Me, too. I know what—I’ll make chocolate milk and I’ll read to you!” Julian would sell out the entire British Commonwealth for chocolate milk. I’m just mentioning it now, in case he ever gets into power.

So he went to the kitchen and stirred up chocolate milk for us both, and then he curled up on my bed and read me both of his Asterix books—doing all the different voices, naturally. Mister Cat was pissed at him, because Miss Sophia Brown had vanished with Tamsin the moment Julian showed. But he got into Asterix after a while, and I dozed and woke and dozed until dawn. Julian fell asleep at my feet somewhere along in there.

The rains don’t exactly stop in a Dorset winter—there’s a reason so many places are called Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, and like that—but they do ease up from time to time. Once he could get out to the fields, Evan started mounding up strips of earth straight across the muddy stubble and rotten leftover bits, everywhere there was going to be any planting. “To keep the soil warm,” he told Ellie John and Seth—right, Seth was there by then—and they stared at him, and then told everybody else about it, and they stared, but they went ahead and did what he told them. The fields looked weird when it was done—welted up like an attack of hives—and the Lovells damn near got hives themselves when Evan invited them to come down from Oxford and take a look. But Evan didn’t care. He was as cool as Mister Cat with the Lovells that time.