Dair Devil (41 page)

She confessed that the tapestries held more meaning for her having listened to Geoffrey the Hermit’s fairytale. No, not here in this room, she quickly reassured Dair. It was on her first visit to the island, when the hermit had found her trespassing in the round temple. In exchange for allowing her to come and go on the island whenever she pleased, he made her promise not to set foot in the small temple until her seventeenth summer. Despite her overwhelming curiosity she promised, and he took her at her word, though he warned her he would be watching to make sure she kept true.

And because he could see she was a good girl with a kind heart, he offered to tell her a fairytale connected with this island, about a dark-haired sprite and his golden-haired fairy nymph, and three magic carpets. How could she resist? It was only years later, when she finally viewed the tapestries (what he called magic carpets) that she realized the fairytale was true, woven in silken thread into the three large tapestries. It made the hermit’s simplistic telling of the couple’s life story that much more poignant.

Geoffrey the Hermit had been living on the island for ten years or more when one day a couple appeared at the round temple, as if by magic. They stayed two nights, and then disappeared. He had watched them from the safety of the forest, fearing they might be evil sprites, come to do him mischief. But as he watched them splashing in the bathing pool, chasing each other through the round temple, and all the while laughing and being playful with each other, he knew they would never do him a harm. Every year for the next twenty-three years they returned to the island, for two nights, to splash in the bathing pool and to chase each other through the temple.

He could tell that they loved each other beyond reason.

A week before the couple’s second visit, workmen came to prune the trees and bushes about the temples, to clean the pool of leaves, and to dust and rid the small temple of cobwebs. And so it was that the hermit knew precisely when the sprites would return to the island each year.

Just before their seventh visit, the workmen brought with them a magic carpet. This they hung on a wall of the small temple. When the men left, Geoffrey went to gaze at it, and it was truly magical, woven with brightly colored silks and gold thread and as dazzling as a sunny spring day. Woven into the carpet were his two friendly sprites, and he saw that there was a small sprite, a son. He also recognized the palace across the lake from the island, and now knew where his sprites lived for most of the year, and who they were. They were in truth the king and queen of this domain, and when they set foot on this island, magic turned them into sprites. He knew this because they wore no gold coronets, brought no servants to serve them, and cooked their own food. Their clothes, however, were of silk and velvet, when they chose to wear clothes, which, being sprites, was not often at all.

From that day forward, every year he gathered flowers and vines and wove them into crowns for the sprites to wear on this their fairy island kingdom. He left them as offerings in the small temple just before they arrived. He knew his flower crowns pleased the sprites because he saw them frolicking about in them.

The second magic carpet arrived just before the couple’s fifteenth visit to the island. This carpet was as brightly colored as the first, and was all about families. There were four panels to the carpet. The first showed the sprites being as friendly as ever with each other. In the second they were with their son who had grown tall. The third panel showed the sprite family with another couple, who also had a son, and finally, in the fourth panel a third family with a mother but no father and three children, two boys and a girl had joined the sprites and their friends with the one son. Everyone was happy and holding hands.

And on this fifteenth visit, Geoffrey was surprised to see that the female sprite was heavy with child. The couple went swimming as they always did, but they did not run about the colonnades of the round temple, but spent most of their time shut away in the little temple. He could see the smoke from the temple chimney from his cottage. And when there was no more smoke, he knew they had left the island to return to their palace.

Two days before the couple’s twenty-third visit to the island, a third magic carpet appeared on the wall of the temple. The male sprite no longer had dark hair, but a mane of pure white, and he walked with the aid of a stick. But the female sprite was just as beautiful and as full of life as the first day he had fallen under the spell of her beauty. This visit was to be different from all the others, and the most memorable for Geoffrey. On dusk of the second night, there was a knock on the door of his tiny cottage. There standing before him, much shorter than his estimation but more beautiful than he thought possible, was the fairy queen. She had the most mesmerizing green eyes, and was wearing his crown of flowers on her long golden hair that flowed past her waist.

She asked if she might enter his cottage, and he gave her his only wooden chair to sit upon near the warmth of the fireplace. He set a mug of dandelion tea before her, which she drank in tiny sips. She thanked him for the flower crowns, which were always so welcoming upon their arrival. She thanked him, too, for being the guardian of their island paradise. She was smiling, but he could see she was inconsolable. Her green eyes told him so. He asked her what he could do to stop her sadness. She said there was nothing to be done; it was in God’s hands. She told him in a brave but halting voice that this would be the last visit to the island by her and her one true love. She told him not to concern himself, that he would always have a home on the island. And when his time came, he could be buried on the island, and she would see to it he had a headstone and his name would be carved over the mantel of his fireplace, so that he, the guardian of Swan Island, would never be forgotten.

With no smoke from the temple chimney, Geoffrey knew the sprites had returned to their kingdom and he would never see them again. Rory had asked him to describe what was on the third and last magic carpet. It was a map of the island, and it was filled with all the wondrous things to be found there, and the wonderful times enjoyed by the two sprites. They were there, the king with his white hair, the fairy queen with her flowing golden hair, both wearing his crowns made of flowers, and they were being as friendly as ever with each other. But what pleased Geoffrey the Hermit, what brought tears to his eyes in the telling of it to Rory, was that woven into the island map was his little cottage, and looking out of the only window, there he was, smiling with his long beard and whiskers and a flower behind his ear.

Dair had then gone over to stand before the third tapestry, to study it and to find the cottage. There it was, on the other side of the clearing from the temples, in a bed of wildflowers, and woven into the flowers was the hermit’s name: Geoffrey Swan. Still gazing at the tapestry, he then quietly asked about the fate of the hermit. She told him. Two years ago she visited the island as usual, but could not find Geoffrey anywhere. He often found her. She went to his cottage. It was empty, and by the cobwebs and dust it had not been lived in for some time. She found his grave not far from the cottage, in a sunny, open spot. It was marked by a fine headstone and covered with wildflowers. By the headstone was a large urn filled with beautiful, exquisitely-wrought porcelain flowers of every color and variety. Rory imagined it had been placed there so that every day Geoffrey the Hermit, guardian of Swan Island, would have flowers on his grave, whatever the weather.

T
HE
COUPLE
WERE
discovered asleep in each other’s arms, under the coverlet before the fireplace in the temple; the irony not lost on Dair. If figures woven in tapestry had the ability to mock him for being a hypocritical prig, they were doing just that as he pulled on his drawers and followed Farrier through to the cool of the circular temple and into the afternoon light.

“Beggin’ your lordship’s pardon for wakin’—”

“Why are you here, Mr. Farrier?”

“There’s a cottage over yonder. Neat and tidy and with a comfortable bed. I reckon it belonged to the guardian of Swan Island, Geoffrey the Hermit, cause that’s what’s carved into the mantel over the fire.”

Dair raked the unruly hair out of his eyes and accepted the cheroot his batman offered him.

“I don’t mean here, here on the island. Here, bothering me. Don’t you have a few days left to your angling holiday?”

Farrier gazed out through the temple columns to the forest that ringed the clearing, the leaves against the sky now tipped with the orange glow of an afternoon sun. A curl of smoke rose into the clouds and seemed to touch a flock of ducks as they flew past in formation. The batman kept his profile to his master and puffed on his cheroot. He didn’t answer the question and he couldn’t hide his smirk.

“This little glade is a paradise, ain’t it? Private and out of the way… No one would know y’here… Thing is, today of all days, a gamekeeper and his two thumpin’ great lads came ashore. They heard what they thought was a wild beast, but instead of headin’ straight here, as luck would have it, they saw smoke and came to reconnoiter the cottage first. Got me to state m’business. And then we got to smokin’ and havin’ a nice mug o’ tea, and I kept ’em occupied until—well, until it went quiet again. Don’t reckon your lordship would be interested in knowin’ that every bird song, every snapped twig, echoes out into the forest—”

“I’m not,” Dair retorted. He drew back deeply on the cheroot, as if he hadn’t smoked one in a week, and with a lift of his heavy chin blew the smoke into the air. “What do you want?”

Farrier came straight to the point.

“There’s a flotilla out lookin’ for your golden-haired mermaid. Seems she left her shoes and somethin’ else on a jetty that she can’t do without, and that’s made ’em think there’s been a misadventure—”

“Damn!”

“—and so the gamekeeper and the lads were sent to see if she was here.”

“What did you tell them?”

Farrier glanced at his master and said smugly, “Told ’em squat, like I always do. Not my business, is it, if yesterday’s dish was breast of opera singer and today’s is rump of mermaid. Your tastes are anythin’ but pedestrian. But y’beard has me flummoxed. Though, in this woodland setting, and making the beast with two—”

“Stow it, Mr. Farrier!” Dair growled, the ferocity of the order making the batman recoil, stunned. “This isn’t one of my brainless pranks, and I’m not here on some idiotic wager, or lust driven whim! Got it? She’s—Frankly, she’s none of your God-damn business!”

“Very good, Major,” Farrier stated, saluting his superior officer. “Consider m’self cautioned, m’lord.”

Dair flicked the cheroot to the ground and the batman instantly extinguished it underfoot. Dair sighed heavily, and lifted a hand in resignation.

“Look, Mr. Farrier, I don’t want—”

“My stick,” Rory interrupted, coming forward. “I left my shoes and my walking stick on the jetty. Silly of me to forget them. That’s what they must have discovered. I don’t remember putting either in the boat…”

Rory had been standing a little way off, the coverlet wrapped around her as best she could manage it, held closed at her breasts, the excess material gathered up over an arm so she did not trip. Her fair hair fell around her face and about her shoulders down to her waist like a curtain. She had heard most of the conversation between master and trusted servant, waking just after Farrier had gingerly poked Dair out of a light sleep.

To Farrier, she appeared less the mermaid and more the ethereal medieval maiden he’d seen in stained glass church windows. She was prettier than he had expected of a fair-haired beauty, with dark lashes framing deep blue eyes, and she had a lovely dark pink mouth. But she was not as beautiful nor as voluptuous as the Major’s usual preference in female bedfellows. And she was a good many years younger, which instantly made the batman wonder at the arrangement between his bearded master and this girl. He did not have to wonder long because he had his answer when Dair turned at the sound of Rory’s voice. A light came into his dark eyes, his features softened, all anger and annoyance extinguished. Farrier knew then the significance of this female in his master’s life and he mentally gave a low whistle and dropped his gaze to the dusty toes of his boots, where they remained.

The couple smiled shyly at each other and when Dair went over to Rory and gave her his hand, she took it and he drew her to him. He kissed her forehead, saying gently,

“I had best get you back before your grandfather works himself into an apoplexy, and your maid is compelled to divulge her fear something far more distressing has happened to you.”

“Than drowning? Surely not.” She smiled and leaned against his bare chest with chin tilted up. “He may think my loss of virtue a fate worse than drowning,” she continued in a whisper. “But I do not. I was never more happy of such a circumstance in my life.”

He brushed the hair from her cheek. “Let’s get married here, at Treat, this week. I’ll have Roxton get us a special license.”

“Oh? Will it take a week?”

He laughed and pinched her chin. “If I had my way we’d marry tomorrow. But archbishops require some notice, to ponder and to be important… But Cornwallis is a congenial fellow. Roxton won’t have any problem there.”

“A week will be time enough to have a gown fetched from home… And Grasby must be in attendance—”

“Yes. I’d like Grasby there, too. Then it’s settled.” He gently kissed her mouth. “I can’t wait.”

“Nor I… Now I must dress so you can return me to the dower house… But first I need to-to bathe—”

“Of course,” he interrupted quickly, to save her any embarrassment. “I took the liberty of setting out your stockings and clothes down by the steps of the pool, in readiness.”

“Oh! How-how thoughtful. Thank you,” she replied, heat intensifying in her cheeks. “I-I don’t know when you-you found the time or the energy—”

“I’ve packed up most of the nuncheon things, too, but left out the strawberries and there is a peach…”