Franny Billingsley - The Folk Keeper

“Perhaps your sweetheart will buy it for you!” called an unknown voice. A rush of laughter blew up from a knot of men. Blushing, and laughing too, I walked on. “A drink to the harvest!” Pewter tankards met with thuds of fellowship, warm ale sloshed over cold hands. “To the harvest!”

The crowd grew thin behind the Cathedral, the tents a little rumpled and shabby. “Who’ll put his silver on this glossy fellow!” called a gloomy voice beneath a canvas, and a bright smell stained the air. It was a cockfight. I’d never find Finian there.

I was looking for Finian, only for Finian, confident my disguise made me invisible to anyone else. But when I turned away, I found a great beast with red ears blocking my way, asking politely for attention.

“Liquorice! Let me pass!”

“Liquorice!” Sir Edward called from the tent, not twenty feet behind.

“Go!” I pushed at Liquorice, felt the bony lumps of skull. “Your master’s calling.” If only my hair were loose, I could call upon the power of The Last Word and send him howling away.

“Who’s your friend, Liquorice?” Sir Edward’s voice brought back memories of fresh earth and mildew.

I stamped on Liquorice’s foot; he yelped and slunk aside.

I imagined elegant Sir Edward at the fringe of that shabby company, staring as I disappeared round the other side of the Cathedral. Small growling shivers ran up my spine. I was splashed with mud to my knees and wet all over, straining myself back into the crowd. The stalls no longer tempted me, not the scented candles, the supple leathers, the crimson stitching in a lady’s glove.

Sir Edward could not recognize me, I told myself. Not in a dress, not from the back. My Folk Bag — could he recognize my Folk Bag? But there are many leather bags in the world, and only one Corinna, whom he presumed to be dead.

The crowd flowed round a pretty bright-faced girl and her sweetheart, stopped in the middle of the lane. The man swung her close and kissed her full on the mouth. A most peculiar feeling overcame me; I was lightheaded as though I might have a fever. When the couple moved on again, I saw it was the Valet, and in a red leather vest!

Now the crowd flowed around me, the crowd, together with flowing seconds and flowing thoughts and flowing hands, hands tightening round my waist, squeezing me through an alley between two stalls. Very delicately then, as though I were a waxen doll, the hands propped me against the Cathedral wall.

It was dark in there, but when I looked up, I still saw the familiar blue vein at the corner of Finian’s eye. His voice was a shredded whisper. “You didn’t run away to the Mainland!”

I felt none of the amazement I heard in my own voice. “How did you recognize me?” I felt nothing much at all. The perfect doll, dress-up clothes over a waxen heart.

Finian reached for his handkerchief and peeled off his spectacles, which were foggy and beaded with rain. “I always recognized you.” He swallowed hard, as though he’d bitten off too many words.

The wax doll was startled into life. A secret heart jumped at the dip of my throat; and all the lacings of my bodice couldn’t stop a wild warmth rising from beneath.

“Have the Folk made mischief while I’ve been gone?” Oh, that I could simply melt away, like wax. Whatever I’d meant to say, it wasn’t that.

“Rather a lot,” said Finian. “Four cows died, and the hay wouldn’t cure, just moldered away. But the oats and barley are safe, and that’s something. The Folk have been quiet since the first week in August.”

He shoved the spectacles back on his nose. “Your hair! How could it have grown so?”

“You forgot to wipe off the glass,” I said.

“I can still see your hair. Oh, Corinna, where did you go?”

“Where did you go, that day on the pier?” I hadn’t meant to say that, either, but the words had been swelling inside a long time, and now came bursting out.

Finian knew at once what I was speaking of. “I’m ashamed to say what I thought. But when I saw the Windcuffer, saw that she’d been tampered with . . .”

“Tampered?” I remembered sailing the Windcuffer in the storm, the inexplicable burst of water through the floorboards, fitting my fingers between them. “You thought I did it!”

“For revenge,” said Finian. “Although I didn’t know what I’d done to make you so angry.”

“I would never harm the Windcuffer. ”

“Never?” said Finian, and I felt myself go red. “But when you set off after me, in the Windcuffer, I knew of course it wasn’t you.”

“Sir Edward!” The probability of this burst on me in a cold wave. He’d been worried about what Finian knew, worried he might not make a complacent stepson. “Trying to do away with you, just as he tried Midsummer Eve, pushing you from the cliffs.”

I could say no more. My throat swelled with the notion that Finian thought I’d avenge myself on him; worse still, it could have been true. A silent rainfall of weeping overcame me.

Finian pressed a square of cambric into my hand. “I’ve gone back to saying my prayers every night like a good boy, praying for the chance to explain. To apologize.”

I waited until I could speak. “I never use a handkerchief.”

“Perhaps you never needed one until now.”

“No, not much like Corin to need a handkerchief.”

“You were never much like Corin,” said Finian. “Lucky me, not to have been wearing my spectacles that first day we met. I missed the fine points of your appearance, but I wasn’t fooled by them, either. I saw from the way you carried yourself that you were no boy.”

“Even Sir Edward never guessed,” I said. “People never think a Folk Keeper could be a girl.”

“Not even Edward, and he’s so clever, too!” Finian said this so seriously, I was sure he must be laughing.

“Why did you never tell?” I said. “All these months, and you knew there was no Corin.”

“Boredom, I suppose. If I told, all the excitement would be over at once. But I never thought it would be this exciting.”

“It’s more exciting than you know,” I said. “It’s my turn now to tell you Secrets. Did you know the Lady Rona was a Sealmaiden? That I’m her daughter?”

There was no room for a large person to be surprised; to start, or step back. Finian only whispered, as I had that night in the graveyard, “But the baby died at birth!”

“Lord Merton didn’t want one of the Sealfolk as his heir and gave out that I’d died.”

“I hear what you say,” said Finian. “I even believe it. But I can’t digest it.” He pressed his fist to his middle as though he might have a bellyache. “How do you know this?”

“Sir Edward told me. He didn’t want me as heir, either, so he dropped me through the Graveyard Shaft.”

“The Graveyard Shaft! Yes, let’s return to Edward. Tell me enough to hang him.”

“He means to marry your mother.”

“Ha!” said Finian. “He might have, six weeks ago. But now she disagrees with him on almost everything. It started when you vanished, which thoroughly upset our ways of thinking. I am to have a whole shipyard if I like!”

I have read and reread my account of that night in the churchyard. It was easy to remember and recount what Sir Edward had said during those long minutes I lay pressed into my own grave.

“Hanging’s too easy,” said Finian. “An axe might do better.”

“Only if it’s blunt,” I said, thinking of my breathless fall through the Shaft.

“You’re right,” said Finian. “The old-fashioned ways have their charms. What do you say to drawing and quartering?”

I was a long time describing my days in the Twilight Cavern, my discovery of Old Francis, my starless night with the Folk.