Chapter 17

WILLIAM FELT LIKE HE’D been through a butter churner.

It was as if his head had been split open, and – God, had the leak spread to his bedroom?

Water pelted off his face, and he wondered if the quick fix he and Martin had done to the roof had finally given way. Reluctantly, William slowly opened his eyes and – was he outside?

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but ... yes ... that was definitely the moon that was disappearing behind a cloud.

Why was he outside?

And ... was someone pulling on his leg?

“Just bloody move you bloody bullock of a man!” came a voice from somewhere by his feet. “What are you made of? Bloody bricks?”

“I c-can’t,” huffed a decidedly more timid voice. “I keep slipping.”

“Tilly ... we must ... keep ... going ...” said the angry voice, yanking William’s leg violently between every word.

The angry voice let out a growl of frustration and unceremoniously threw William’s leg to the floor. “This isn’t working. We’ve barely moved them a few feet.”

“We’ll all die out here,” said the timid voice .

“I think you ought to go back to the house, Tilly. I’ll wait here with them and simply scream until the guards find me.”

“They might not hear you over the storm,” said the timid voice. Tilly, was it?

William unconsciously moved his hand to his head and let out a groan.

Tilly shrieked, and the angry one, what little William could make out of her in the darkness, took a defensive step in front of Tilly.

“What on God’s green earth were you doing out here in a storm?” the angry one demanded.

William wanted to say: “I could ask the same of you.” What came out instead was: “I same you ask me.”

“You b-broke him, Mab,” came Tilly’s faint voice from behind her.

The angry one, Mab, bent down until she was mere inches away from his face. William could just about see the finger she was slowly moving from side to side in front of his face.

“I think he’ll be fine,” Mab said.

Why was that name so familiar to William?

“Can you g-get up?” Tilly asked.

With a groan, William managed to twist his body, flopping himself onto his front. His fingers squelched in the soft mud, and it took all his energy to push himself onto his knees. That was about all he could manage for now. His brain rattled in its ivory dome, and if he moved too quickly, he was sure to faint again.

“What ... happened?”

“You and your friend decided to stand still like a pair of lemons right in the middle of a hill that my friend and I were descending,” said Mab. William resisted the urge to giggle uncontrollably, for she was streaked with mud that covered most of her face. “Neither of us saw you. It felt like walking into a brick wall. You grabbed me as you fell, taking me with you.”

A vivid flash of his fairy sitting astride him flickered in his mind’s eye.

“I’m sorry,” William said. Suddenly remembering, he added, “I thought I saw a ghost.”

Mab tsk ed. “Why is every man here obsessed with ghosts—”

“Benedict!” William shouted, suddenly remembering that he hadn’t been on his own. The two women stepped aside, and William saw a figure lying on his back behind them. “Oh God!” William said, clawing his way to the boy.

“He’s not dead,” said Mab. “Just unconscious.”

Relief washed over William.

“Are you well enough to help us drag him back?” asked Mab.

William really was not feeling well enough to do much at all. But the rain was thundering down, and he’d never forgive himself if the boy got ill.

“Can you hold him in a sitting position?” William asked the women.

William thought it strange that Mab looked at Tilly as if asking for her consent. He couldn’t be certain, but Tilly’s face – almost featureless as it was in the dark – seemed to change. Dark eyebrows, about the only feature he could make out, knitted into a look of resolve as she bobbed her head. William flitted his eyes towards Mab, careful not to move his head too quickly lest a wave of dizziness fall over him. She was much taller than Tilly and, despite being just as featureless as the small girl, had an overwhelming authority about her. William had an odd, giddy notion that if at this very moment Mab were to ask him to jump, without a second thought, he would ask “How high?”

In answer to her friend’s nod, Mab walked around to the other side of Benedict. The women kneeled down, each looping an arm under Benedict’s armpit, and, sliding a little in the mud, pushed him into a sitting position. William scrambled to his feet, his knees feeling gelatinous as he stood.

“Unloop your arms and support his back for me,” William said. Normally, he would have asked as politely as he could, but the less words he spoke, the less likely he was to vomit everywhere.

Mab glared up at William. “Are we not to carry him by the arms and you by the legs?”

“We’d not make it two meters before one of us stumbled or lost our grip,” said William, each word riling nausea inside him. “I’ll carry him if you two go in front and make sure there are no obstacles.” As an afterthought, he added, “Please.”

William wasn’t much accustomed to saying please and thank you as it was just a given that his two servants had his eternal thanks for everything they did for him.

Mab and Tilly did what they were asked, though William could feel Mab’s sceptical eyes on him. Taking a deep breath, he swooped down. In one smooth movement, he hooked an arm around Benedict’s knee and elbow and hoisted the boy around his shoulders.

William hoped it was too dark for the women to see the strain on his face as he shifted Benedict’s dead weight on his shoulders to a more comfortable position.

“Ladies, if you could walk on ahead and let me know of any upcoming obstacles, I would be very grateful,” William repeated, eager to get moving.

The rain had finally subsided to a drizzle, and the moon had managed to fight its way between the clouds once more, offering just enough light for William to see the silvery wet stones that jutted out of the earth around him. He swallowed a lump in his throat – hitting his head off any one of them could have killed him. There was a coppery smell of blood in the air, and he tried not to think of Benedict’s unconscious body wrapped around his shoulders. He needed to get the boy to the house as quickly as was humanly possible. How long would it take to summon a physician?

Mab took the first step towards the house, but Tilly stuck a hand out to stop her. “There’s a p-pond that way,” Tilly said, pointing at the most direct route to the manor. “We need to go around it.”

Mab nodded and gestured for Tilly to take the lead.

The women walked ahead of him silently. Occasionally, Mab would cast a concerned glance at Tilly, then over her shoulder at William to ensure he was still following them. The walk felt like it took forever, and on two occasions, a wave of severe dizziness crashed over William. It was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To keep himself from fainting, he tried to focus his still-addled mind on anything. He counted the lit windows of the house – he managed to count twelve the first time and nineteen on the second count. He tried counting how many steps he was taking but couldn’t remember what number came after thirty-four. He then switched to reciting the only nursery rhyme he knew but couldn’t recall what happened to Humpty-Dumpty after he sat on the wall. Reluctantly, William focused on the women in front of him.

Tilly seemed like a timid creature, quiet and flighty.

Mab – damn it! Why is that name so familiar? – seemed confident and self-assured. She walked through the darkness of an unknown and unforgiving landscape with the same poise and sereneness as if she was merely strolling through a meadow full of wildflowers.

The sound of gravel beneath William’s feet was like music to his ears. A moment later, they finally – gloriously – stepped into the light of the glowing manor.

Mab ran up the steps and violently thumped the door with her fists. “Let us in!”

Within seconds, the door opened, and a wide-eyed guard looked confusedly between them all. William instantly understood why. William, Mab and Benedict were covered in a coating of mud, with only small patches of unblemished clothing and skin. Tilly, on the other hand, being the only one to have not tumbled down a hill, was decidedly more recognisable.

Indeed, the instant the guard’s eyes fell on her, he spun on his heel and announced to the empty hallway, “I’ve found them! They’re all here!”

Within moments, people poured from every room and stairway, each wearing a relieved expression on their face. Angus and Aunt áine bustled to the front, the crowd parting like the Red Sea.

“Thank goodness!” Aunt áine cried, pulling Tilly into an embrace. While the fog in his mind had begun to lift, enough of it remained that William had to fight the urge to giggle again. Aunt áine had appeared ferocious and lioness-like when he’d first met her, but she was as gentle with Tilly as a house cat with her kitten.

Angus immediately strode over to William and, after ensuring the young lad was still alive, relieved him of Benedict. Angus didn’t wear Benedict like a scarf as William had done but slung him easily over one shoulder as if he were a strip of plaid.

“Right, lads and lassies,” Angus’ booming voice called to the small crowd, “thank ye all for yer help, but I think we should call it a night. You three,” he said, turning to William and the ladies, “follow me. We’ll get yis looked over in the infirmary, aye?”

THE INFIRMARY WAS QUITE a distance away, somewhere close to the kitchens, William wagered, given the lingering smells of delicious food in the hallway. Mab and Tilly quickly filled Aunt áine and Angus in on how the events had unfolded, from their perspective at least, allowing William to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

William didn’t have the brainpower to take in much about the room, except that it was long, dappled in soft candlelight and lined with a handful of beds that he wanted nothing more than to crawl into. He chanced a glance at Mab – who looked like a mythical mud creature from a lake – who also seemed to be eying the soft, plump mattresses.

Angus, with more grace than William had thought possible, dropped the unconscious form of his friend onto one of the beds.

“Good God, man!”

William snapped his head towards the source of the commotion. He hadn’t noticed the doorway at the other end of the room. In it stood a small figure, a leather gladstone bag in one hand and an odd metal trumpet-like contraption in the other. He supposed this was the doctor. The doctor wore a simple, though expensive-looking, tweed suit, which had the discolouration of heavy rainfall on his shoulders. A neat bowler hat covered his hair, but his wiry blond sideburns poked out beneath the hat and ran across his face, joining with his thick whiskers, both sides waxed into sharp points.

“That bedding is fresh on! What happened to him?” His voice was an octave or two higher than William had expected. There was the slightest twang to his accent that William couldn’t quite place. Perhaps he was from Yorkshire?

“Sam, dear,” Aunt áine said. “He’s had a bit of a tumble and hit his head.”

The doctor hurried over to Benedict and silently performed a number of tests that William couldn’t make head nor tail of. Finally, the doctor said, “He’ll be fine. Bad bump to the occipital, but he seems to be responsive to everything else. He’ll have a sore head when he wakes, mind. And I’d like to keep him here for the night, just to be on the safe side.”

William let out a sigh of relief, as did Tilly.

“I thought I’d k-killed him,” she squeaked.

“No, dear,” the doctor said, gently putting his hand on Tilly and directing her to a chair for her examination. William vaguely recalled Emily’s story of Tilly and had expected the young girl to baulk at the physical contact of the doctor, but Tilly didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

“W-why are you in your clothes at this time of night?” Tilly asked as the doctor tilted her head from side to side .

“There was an emergency in the village,” the doctor, Sam, said.

“They have their own physician,” Aunt áine said, her arms crossed and lips puckering in disdain.

“That was precisely the problem,” Sam answered, his ear now pressed upon the trumpet-like contraption, the wide end of which was resting on Tilly’s chest. William hadn’t realised when the doctor had moved on to a more intimate test and averted his eyes, which landed upon Mab once more. Would a mud monster make a good wife? As if she could read his mind, her eyes flicked towards him and narrowed as if to say “hell would freeze over before I share my life with the likes of you”. William, somewhat dejected, let his eyes drift towards Aunt áine.

Aunt áine’s thin lips twitched. “Don’t tell me—”

Sam nodded, and Aunt áine’s face broke into a smug grin. It seemed that Sam was trying to remain professional and not mirror Aunt áine’s smugness, but the corner of his lip kept twitching upwards as he said, “It was the physician who had got himself into a bit of bother. Slipped in the mud, he did. Nasty break to his leg. The bone had come through the flesh. I had to endure a lecture on why I was a fool to think I could save his leg and was cursed every word under the sun for not just amputating it. He is convinced that I have handed him a death sentence and that his leg will fester. No amount of me explaining that I’d cleaned the wound and set the bone would do. So, I left him with his own dirty bone saw and told him to have at it if he wishes, otherwise I would be back in the morning to change his bandages.”

“He always was a fool,” Aunt áine said.

“That he is,” Sam replied, his tone laced with contempt. He turned back to Tilly and, in a decidedly softer voice, said, “You’re absolutely fine, dear. A bit of a chill is all. You’ll need to get yourself immediately into some dry clothes, and make sure you keep the fire going in your room to keep yourself warm. And no more strolls in the middle of a storm. ”

Tilly nodded.

“I’ll see you back to your room, dear,” Aunt áine said to the young girl. Aunt áine wrapped her arm around Tilly and guided her towards the exit. She threw William and Mab a nod over her shoulder, and a smile which seemed to say “You’re in safe hands”, before disappearing into the darkened hallway. William heard Aunt áine say, “That was a massive breakthrough for you, Tilly,” before their voices disappeared too.

“Angus, would you be a dear and wash and change that boy while I inspect these two?”

Angus nodded and pulled a dressing screen across to save Benedict his dignity.

“Now, you,” Sam said, pointing at William and then at a chair.

William obliged and almost groaned as his back rested against the soft leather back of the chair. He closed his eyes and barely felt the doctor’s feather-light fingers as he inspected William. Within a few moments, he shooed William off the chair and gestured for Mab to take his place.

William couldn’t help but stare as the doctor tilted her head from side to side. What few strands of hair weren’t coated with the stubborn sludge appeared to be fire-red. On the half of her face that he could see, there was a dusting of light freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Violent green eyes met his, and he immediately looked away, feigning interest in the domed ceilings of the infirmary, which he hadn’t noticed before.

The image of his fairy flashed again in his mind’s eye.

No, thought William, she couldn’t be ...