Winterwood, page 23
part #1 of Rowankind Series
“Oh, sorry, miss.” She pulled herself together. “We don’t get many . . .”
“Rowankind?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, miss. R-rowankind. This is a quiet town, and godly.”
“Why should rowankind be considered ungodly?”
“We’re only twelve miles from the Old Maizy, miss,” she said, as if that explained everything. “There’s ’umble pie tonight, miss, and a sheep’s tongue, and buttered parsnips.”
She must have seen the look on my face at the mention of ’umble pie. “Or I can get you tripes?”
“Pie will be fine.” I looked at David and he nodded. “For me, too.”
The pie was surprisingly tasty, as long as you avoided the suspicious rubbery bits inside it. It had a rich, dark gravy under a dense, suety crust, crisp on the top and spongy on the underside. David cleared his plate quickly with obvious relish. I was a bit more picky and left various unidentifiable scraps of animal on the side of my plate, but I enjoyed the buttered parsnips and a slab of the tongue, which had been salted in brine.
“That was good pie, Dimity,” David said as the girl cleared our plates away.
She said nothing, but watched him suspiciously out of the corner of her eye.
“I’ve come here looking for the Sumner family,” I said, and saw her start at the name. “Are there any Sumners in town?”
She paused a little too long before she said, “No, miss.”
“Well then, tell me about the Old Maizy Forest, if you would.”
She looked at me as though I’d asked her to tell me why we breathe air.
“I’m not from around here,” I said apologetically.
“Reverend Cleveleys says we’re not to speak of it or even think of it, lest we draw down things from the old world.”
“Things?”
“Things.” She looked at David. “And suchlike.” Then she scurried out of the room so fast that she almost ran.
“This is going to be an interesting visit,” David said.
After the maid’s reaction, I decided not to antagonize Mr. Pratten and ask about the Sumner family here at the inn. Instead I called him over and asked if there was a Mysterium office in town.
“No!” By the look of his face he realized that his answer was too sharp. He gave me an ingratiating smile. “Witchkind aren’t well liked in these parts, ma’am, so the Mysterium leaves us alone, and that’s the way we like it.”
There was no public record office either, so it seemed that the only register of births, marriages, and deaths was in the church.
“That wouldn’t happen to be Reverend Cleveleys, would it?” I asked.
I looked at David and saw him pull a face behind the innkeeper’s back. My feelings precisely.
“Would you be leaving tomorrow, ma’am?” Mr. Pratten asked with unmistakable hope in his voice.
“We’ll be staying for as long as it takes to conclude our business. I wasn’t aware when you took my coin that there was a time limit on our stay.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought you only wanted the room for one night, else I’d have mentioned it.” He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “Only the coach from Axminster to Bridgwater stops here on a Thursday night and all our rooms are gen’rally taken.” His eyes flicked to David.
So that’s what it’s all about.
“So do you plan to evict us forcibly from our room, Mr. Pratten? Or would it be prudent to see if your colleague across the road could manage to find a few vacant rooms for coach passengers who are not accompanied by rowankind?”
“Err, yes, of course.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“What’s wrong with this town?” David kept hold of his temper until we reached the safety of our room, then he slammed the door and kicked it hard. “I might as well have dragon wings the way folks are treating me. And did you hear that girl, Dimity Dimwit? Does she think I’m dangerous or something?” David’s voice had risen.
“Shh! These walls are thin. I know it’s hard, and I know I don’t really understand what you’ve been through, but you wanted to follow the mystery of the box. It was never going to be easy.”
I heard feet on the stairs. “Is everything all right in there?” Mr. Pratten bellowed through the door paneling.
“Yes, fine,” I called back.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, perfectly sure.”
“Only I heard a disturbance. Is the young gentleman all right?”
I sighed and opened the door wide enough to show myself and David behind me. “Thank you for your concern. We are both truly fine.”
“Oh, right, only I heard shouting and I didn’t want the young gentleman to get upset, not with him being, you know.”
“I do know.” I started to shut the door in his face, but David grabbed the edge of it.
“Just what do you think I might do if I get upset?”
“N-n-nothing, your worship, sir.” Pratten turned and almost ran down the stairs.
“Interesting reaction,” David said. He folded his arms across his chest and frowned.
“Look, David, I know you must itch for action, but I have to go and see Reverend Cleveleys, and you have to stay here and keep out of sight.”
He glared at me and took a deep breath. “You’re right. This town has something strange going on, and it involves the rowankind.”
Pratten’s words came back to me: “I didn’t want the young gentleman to get upset.” Pratten had been truly worried about what David might do. He didn’t think that rowankind were socially inferior; he thought they were dangerous.
Reverend Cleveleys’ study was in the front room of his modest house, the whole edifice built next to the church out of plain, undecorated stone. His housekeeper, a hatchet-nosed woman wearing a dress twenty years out of date and corseted to within an inch of her life, showed me in and asked me to wait.
Cleveleys strode into the room, tall and somber, dressed in simple gray and black with not a hint of extra decoration. The natural state of his face was a deep frown with furrows between his eyebrows. His mouth was pursed in permanent compression. He might have been anywhere between sixty and seventy, and still wore a periwig.
He inclined his upper body, not exactly a bow, but a polite acknowledgment. I could tell from his attitude that, though we’d never met, he’d already heard of me.
“Mrs. Webster, how can I be of assistance?”
“I’m new to town, Reverend Cleveleys, here on a brief visit to search for any members of my late husband’s family. There’s a will that needs resolving, and I need to establish the existence—or otherwise—of any family members. He wasn’t a man for keeping in touch with family, but he did once tell me that he had cousins inland in Chard, or maybe near Chard.”
“Webster, you say? There are a few Websters in these parts.”
“Actually, no. His mother was a Sumner.”
Reverend Cleveleys’ face glazed over. “I don’t believe I can be of any help. Good day, madam.” He began to turn away.
“I’ve come a long way, Reverend!” I snapped out the words in an effort to stop him in his tracks. It worked, and I softened my voice. “I’d be grateful if I could check your register of baptisms, marriages, and burials for the parish.”
He took a deep breath.
“You’ll not find any Sumner there, nor any Sumner living in this parish.”
“You’re sure? What about before you came to Chard?”
“None in my congregation, nor any in the church record books. Not now, not ever.”
I wasn’t sure I could have memorized over two hundred years of parish records, but I didn’t argue any further. It looked like I’d need to do a little light burglary to get what I wanted.
“Well, thank you for your time, Reverend Cleveleys. I shall return disappointed.”
“I’m sorry for that, and sorry for the loss of your husband.”
“Thank you.”
As I left the vicarage, I walked through the churchyard, checking for accessible doors and windows in the church itself.
22
Mischief
“ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS?” David whispered as we crept up to the church in the dead of night. “The last time we tried breaking and entering we nearly got roasted alive.”
“I know. I feel bad about burgling a House of God, I really do, but it’s either that or go home again and learn nothing.”
He shrugged. “It’s not my god. I’ve never been able to understand a god who’s supposed to be good, but allows such injustices as happen in the world.”
“You’re not supposed to be able to understand God. He’s ineffable.”
David sniggered. “Don’t you think that the clergy made that up to cover all those questions they can’t answer?”
“I can’t believe we’re standing outside a church, ready to rob it, while debating the existence of the Almighty. I was brought up to say my prayers and it’s a hard habit to break, even though I’ve seen such things as the Church would deny existed.”
“The Church would deny you in an eyeblink.”
I sighed. “True enough, I’m sorry to say.”
“Look!” David put out one arm to stop me and pointed to a small window. Inside the church, in the vestry, a single lantern burned.
“Quick, this way. If that’s what I think it is, we need to hurry.” With a cold dread filling my belly I crouched low and ran for the narrow vestry door. Finding it unbolted, I flung it wide. I’d been correct. Outlined against the flickering flame of his own light, Reverend Cleveleys hunched over a table ripping pages from a heavy parish register.
He looked up at me and froze as the oak door smashed back on its hinges. Recognition didn’t light his features immediately, probably because I was dressed as a man.
“I see you’ve saved me a job, Reverend. I presume you’ve presented me with all the entries for Sumner from your church records. I should thank you. How far back have you gone?”
He recovered his voice and began to bluster, backing away from me, and reaching sideways for whatever came to hand first. He gripped the shaft of a hefty brass cross, holding it up as if I might flinch from it.
“Don’t come any closer! What do you want?”
“Exactly the same as I did this afternoon, the records of the Sumners of this parish. Only I would have taken the information in a less destructive manner.”
“The Sumners are all dead. The whole Devil’s brood of them. Dead!”
“Not all of them.” David stepped out from my shadow.
The reverend’s grip failed him and the cross clattered to the ground. “Fae!”
His knees gave way and he sank to the floor. By the stink, his bowels had let him down as well. What could terrify this stern man of God in his own church? Wrinkling my nose against the stench, I sat at the table and looked at the torn pages in the flickering lantern light.
“Keep an eye on him, David. Let me see what he’s given us.”
David dragged the reverend out into the corridor, leaving a wet smear on the stone floor and a lingering smell. Once he was out of the door, I put up a witchlight to give a cool steady light to read by.
The first page I held was the oldest, and so I quickly rearranged them to start with the most recently dated. It was hardly recent, dating back to before I was born.
September thirteenth, 1771. I skimmed the page noting a list of burials. A lot of burials for one day, but no Sumners amongst them: William Dando of Chard; James Dando of Chard; Robert Lockyer of Draybridge; Daniel Latchem of Lopen; Simon Catley of Chard; Frederick Hancock of Chard. All men and no women. I looked at a small note scratched in the margin: Unlawfully killed by Devilry in the explosion at Summoner’s Well.
Summoner’s Well? Summoner? Sumner?
I looked at the reverend through the open doorway, but he wasn’t watching me. He continued to stare at David as though the Devil himself had come to call.
I picked up the second sheet and glanced down it. Banns for the wedding of Rossalinde Sumner and someone whose name had been obliterated by the tearing of the sheet of paper. The date was also 1771, but in August, a few weeks before the explosion.
Rossalinde Sumner. Had I been named for a family member? Could this be my mother’s sister, Rosie?
On the next torn-out sheet, back in 1765, I found a Sumner baptism and a burial within a few days of each other, the same child, John, the son of Francis and Emma Sumner, dead before he’d had the chance to live. It was a common enough theme. Children died all too easily, were buried and mourned, but life went on. I found earlier baptisms and burials. Francis and Emma had lost more than one child. Before John, there had been Mary in 1762, Annie in 1760 and Mark in 1758. What sadness. My own little lost soul who had been born on the rolling ocean with only Will for a midwife had had neither baptism nor burial. He rested with the fishes, now, stitched neatly into a tiny, weighted shroud, but mourned no less than a child lying in a churchyard. Would I find any living children for this couple? I hoped so.
In 1757 there was a John Sumner buried, aged seventy-seven years. After all the children it was a relief to find a Sumner who had lived out his allotted three score years and ten, plus a little more besides.
Finally, in 1751, I found a baptism that was not accompanied by an immediate burial—a twin baptism for—I guessed—my mother and her twin sister. Margery and Rossalinde Sumner, daughters of Francis Sumner and Emma, of Summoner’s Well.
“David, I’ve found something.”
David stepped into the doorway, and I kept my voice low so as not to let the reverend hear. “Our mother’s baptism, I think, and her twin. The Sumners lived at Summoner’s Well. I wonder if they’re there still? Their parents, our grandparents, are Francis and Emma Sumner. We have family.”
“If they still live.”
“Indeed, but the reverend seems to have done a very thorough job of tearing out all references to the Sumners, and I’ve found no records of burials for either Francis, Emma or Rossalinde.”
“How about we ask the Reverend?”
I hastily snuffed the witchlight as David dragged Cleveleys back into the room and hoisted him into a sitting position by his coat lapels. The smell was no better. The man whimpered and shrank away despite being almost twice David’s weight.
“I’m not sure you’ll get anything coherent from him,” I said. “He seems to have lost his wits. I’ve heard tell fear can do that to a man, but I’ve never seen it before, though maybe it’s something to do with . . .” I snuffed out the lantern. A definite soft light came from David’s exposed skin. “You’re glowing.”
“What?”
“Whatever we’re seeing now is by David-light. Can you stop doing that? I think it may be difficult for us to vanish into the night with you illuminated.”
He held out his hands, turned them over and back again. “Ha, look, I’m a Shining One!”
Cleveleys whimpered again.
“He certainly thinks so.”
David concentrated hard on his hands and the glow began to fade.
“Good, but we need to keep him quiet so we can get away.” I thought for a moment, then stepped outside the door. Will, are you here?
No answer. There was never a ghost around when you needed one. I never normally had to do this, but I could if I had to.
William Tremayne, I call you to appear.
Will’s ghostly form, much brighter than usual and dripping ectoplasm, popped into being.
“You call and I must obey.” Will spoke audibly, which was unusual.
No need to be formal, Will. I replied in my head.
“You summoned me formally. It’s obligatory.”
How is this different from usual?
“It’s stronger. Even normal mortals will be able to see and hear me.”
Good. I was hoping to persuade you to that. I didn’t know I could cause it.
“Ah, Ross, one day you and I will have a talk on the proper summoning of spirits. For now, what do you command me to do?”
Can you keep Cleveleys pinned down for us until morning?
Will nodded solemnly. I stepped back into the vestry and Will ghosted in through the wall. The reverend whimpered again, obviously able to see the specter.
Pshaw. He’s shitten himself. Will wrinkled his nose.
Sorry about that. You’ve suffered worse aromas at sea.
What about the morning? Would the good reverend rush out and tell anyone who would listen that a Shining One visited him in the night and a ghost kept him company until morning? If so he’d likely end up in Bedlam. As long as he didn’t set a hue and cry on us I didn’t much care. We could have found all the information peacefully this afternoon without anyone getting hurt. Why did this whole town have a flea in its ear about rowankind, and why did the reverend want to cover up whatever had happened to the Sumners? It must be all connected, especially taking his reaction to David into account.
I didn’t want anyone following us and weighed the potential results of Will’s haunting against what Hookey would advise, which would be to make sure Reverend Cleveleys was silenced permanently. Do whatever you need to do to keep him silent, Will, but no more than that. He obviously has his own beliefs and can’t be blamed for that, however much I disagree with them.
“You command and I obey.”
Again there was that odd formality, but I didn’t have time to think about it now. I gathered up the torn sheets from the parish register and folded them into my satchel along with the box. I was much relieved to see that David had stopped glowing like a will o’ the wisp.
I nodded. “We’re finished here. Let’s go.”
We hurried back to the inn and retrieved all our possessions. I contemplated taking a couple of horses from the inn’s stables, but the stone mile-marker on the road indicated that Summoner’s Well wasn’t too far to walk in a night, and missing horses might cause Mr. Patten to call for a magistrate to have us apprehended. If we simply disappeared, leaving a fat gold coin in our room, he would just pocket the money and be glad we were gone.
