The Folk Keeper (6 page)

I would have to ask Finian, barter away another Conviction.

It was time to tell Mrs. Bains I was well enough to join the family for supper.

Mrs. Bains has made me a suit! It is very fine, of watered gray silk, with embroidered bands on the breeches. There are seventeen buttons to the waistcoat, and each of them a pearl. Not that I care; I am no dandy like Sir Edward.

Sir Edward and Lady Alicia were glad I was well enough to come to supper for the first time, but Finian teased me about how handsome I looked.

“Don’t mind him,” said Lady Alicia, very handsome herself in claret silk over an embroidered underskirt. “Finian’s still a little boy who likes to be out poking worms onto hooks and never washing his hands.”

Supper was a waste of time; there was no chance to speak to Finian alone. The dining room was scarlet and gold, with yard of table bursting with candelabra. Identical footmen in striped livery and powdered hair served us. They must all be brothers to the Valet, or cousins at least, their lips all pursed like respectable prunes.

Old Francis was the only one who didn’t match, now stumbling against a chair, now struggling with a platter of dumplings, now chilling me with his frozen eye.

I understood why Finian was so bored. It was all talk about the weather and the estate, and to an estate, weather is everything.

“Well, Corin,” said Lady Alicia. “How do you like this rain of ours?”

“I like it very well,” I said, which is perhaps the first true thing I’ve ever told her. I like rain and mist. I’ve never understood why people exclaim over bright skies and bushels of glaring sunshine.

“It will help our crops,” said Sir Edward.

Then it was all crops until the end of dinner. Lady Alicia asking questions of Sir Edward, trying very hard to learn about the estate, and Finian making faces at me, but I never laugh when I don’t choose.

We retired to the Music Room after supper. From weather to crops to music; and still no chance to speak to Finian. The Music Room was small by Manor standards (not big enough to hold more than fifty elephants), and all white and gold, with huge marble fireplaces that yawned into the room with tongues of flame.

The music was not too bad, really.

Lady Alicia sat at a spinet in an alcove; Finian raised his little whistle. The room gradually reduced itself to a golden bubble, just big enough to hold a candle, Lady Alicia’s shining hair, and Finian’s big fingers dancing over a scrap of tin. The silver thread of Finian’s whistle wove itself into a rainbow of arpeggios as Lady Alicia spiraled to the final chord. She kissed Finian’s cheek before she left the alcove. She did love him best of all, anyone could see that.

“Look at Corin’s eyes shining!” said Finian. He took Lady Alicia’s place, perching his big body on the delicate stool. I stood beside him. We were private enough; Lady Alicia had moved three or four leagues away to stand before the fire.

“I owe you a Conviction,” I said.

“I’ve been waiting for it.”

“This must be your business,” I said. “Discover what those around you love best. Then, if they forbid you from doing as you choose, you have a hold on them. You can threaten their dearest treasures.”

“I don’t think I’d be very good at that.” Finian and I were much of a height, now that he was seated. “Is that how you get what you like?”

“I’ll tell you more in exchange for another Secret.”

“Another Conviction?” He took off his spectacles and stared as though he could see better without them. There was a blue vein running from the corner of his eye into the bridge of his nose. You sometimes see it in babies. “Very well, what do you want to know?”

“Who is the Lady Rona?”

“Who was she, you mean. She was Lord Merton’s first wife. She went mad, which I can understand, being married to him!”

“Did she die fewer than twenty-one years ago?” I said.

“Oh, yes,” he said, “although she died young. Mrs. Bains says she’ll never forget how Her Ladyship was terrified of the sea — screamed if she even looked at it — but otherwise never spoke a word.”

“Poor Lady,” I said.

“Poor Lady,” said Finian. “Mrs. Bains says she used to walk round and round, her hair streaming all about. She says the Lady could glide through crowds of furniture and people with her eyes closed!”

Until then I’d felt a certain kinship with the solitary Lady Rona, set apart from everyone else, but here we parted ways. I could walk through nothingness and stumble every time.

“She’d spend hours in the Cellar, too,” said Finian, “and never bring a candle.”

“She must have had a candle!” I said.

“To hold off the Folk, you mean?” said Finian. “I have always wondered how she survived them.”

I nodded, but there was more to it than that. Without a light, how could she have chiseled her name into the walls?

“I love to gossip with Mrs. Bains,” said Finian. “I tell her she’s my sweetheart, and she gossips all the more.”

“I thought the
Windcuffer
was your sweetheart.”

“I lie sometimes,” he said. “You do as well, don’t you, to get what you want?”

I had a very nasty feeling that Finian could see more without his spectacles than most people could who needed none.

Finian spoke over my silence. “I’ll have my Conviction now.”

“You must avenge yourself on people who mistreat you,” I said. “You must destroy what they love.” I thought of the Valet, of his love for himself, and how I’d squashed it.

“So bloodthirsty, Corin!” said Finian. “Perhaps I’m too weak for your Convictions.” He unfolded his body from the stool. “There’s Mrs. Bains with the cakes, and I’ve always been partial to pink icing.”

“Wait!” I said. “I have another Conviction, and I need another Secret.” I knew now that Lady Rona was a proper descendant of the owners of Marblehaugh Park, but what of the unnamed person beneath the tiny gravestone?

“But I can’t digest your Convictions,” said Finian. “Give me something gentler next time. Just remind me it’s worth fighting for my dream of building ships and having a life with the sea.”

Have I ever felt so dreadful in my life? So squirmy inside, so like an insect or a worm?

“Think on it, Corin. Come sailing with me and give me a new sort of Conviction then.”

“I haven’t time for sailing.” The more time I spent in the Cellar, the more likely it was I’d catch the Folk in a moment of mischief and draw off their anger.

“But you want to know the Secret?” said Finian.

He knew I did. He had his own way of getting what he wanted. “Very well,” I muttered. “I’ll come sailing.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” I offered my fingertip, so we could swear on blood, but he said he’d believe me without.

Why does he insist so on my promise? They are inconvenient things, promises. I rarely keep them, myself.

I didn’t tell Mrs. Bains why I wanted the pins. No one saw me last night when I slipped off to the Cellar, hundreds of pins stuck crosswise in my clothes. No one, that is, except the mournful old dog, Taffy, who followed me to the Kitchens, where I filled a bucket with very fresh and bloody meat.

“It’s not for you!” I shut the Cellar door in his face and heard him sink to the floor, wheezing like an ancient bellows.

The pins held the Folk off only a moment. Their cob-webbed energy paused, then struck. My bones echoed with their screams; the pins burned with cold.

There came a howling from the world above. I fastened on the sound to suspend myself above the tightening round my muscles, the cramping that pulled every nerve to the outside.

Think of nothing but the time, Corinna, the passing of the hours. A quarter past midnight. Twenty-three minutes past two. Eight minutes past three.

It was half past four when I opened my eyes. My cheek lay pressed to the floor. The pins were stuck into my flesh, and at all angles. I was twenty-five minutes picking them out.

As for the meat, the Folk had eaten it, every scrap. Only bones remained, and even those were marked with shapes that looked like nothing so much as a legion of large square teeth. The Folk in Rhysbridge were never so fiercely ravenous.

I came up the Cellar stairs into the smell of baking bread. I’d forgotten about the old dog, with his watery yellow eyes, who flapped his feeble tail at me. He hauled himself up from his station beneath the ever-burning candle.

“Go away!” Those blunted teeth were nothing to me now. I’d seen what real teeth could do. But Taffy’s toenails clicked behind me, down the corridor, up the stairs. If I could, I’d turn him back with the power of The Last Word. I heard from the pattern of his toenails that he was winding up the treads, side to side, to soften the angle of his climb.

I stopped at a rattling from above. Old Francis, coming down with a coal scuttle.

He stopped too, and there we were, the three of us on the stairs: Taffy below, stiff and arthritic; Old Francis above, stiff and paralyzed; and me in the middle, stiff and silent. There was only the sound of Taffy wheezing.

“I heard the dogs howling,” said Old Francis presently.

“Dogs will howl at anything.” But it was too late for bluffing.

“I know how it is,” he said. “They howl when the Folk scream. You tried the pins, I see. Try scissors, opened to a cross. It worked for me many times.”

He bowed, then passed without another look. I will accept any advice he chooses to offer, but if he knows I need advice, he also knows I haven’t the power of The Last Word. He’d best not tell anyone. My revenge would be swift and terrible.

I made sure I was the first one at breakfast. But instead of filling my Folk Bag, I found myself staring at the platters of bacon and poppy cakes, the bowls of sardines in oil, the tankards of honey ale. I peered into a chaffing dish. Steam rose from a mound of eggs in cream, misting the silver lid. It all of a sudden seemed terribly futile. I had lost control of the Folk. What was the point in saving anything for them?

I reached for the sardines. The smell raised a hungry sea beneath my tongue. I dropped them into my mouth, one by one, dunking bread in the oil to soften it, then catching up the last drops with my fingers. My hands still smell of fish.

And I am still famished.

The Folk have been quiet. Today they ate:

Two small lambs

One tub of butter

One vat of kidney stew.

I’ve taken to stringing an open scissors about my neck, as Old Francis suggested, where it hangs in a crude sign of the cross. I will save the churchyard mold for the next major feast day. The dark energy seeps out the Folk Door in the same way, and the Folk batter the lamb bones in the same way, but they’ve not yet again battered Corinna.

The old dog, Taffy, has joined me in the Cellar. Oh, the smell of him — a combination of unwashed fur and advanced age, rather like sharp cheese. He scratched so at the Cellar door I could not endure it. Neither could Cook who opened the door and sent him down.

You have been forced upon me, Taffy, make no mistake about it. What gives you the confidence to rest your chin on my boot? Go away! Why do you wag your tail when I look at you? I cannot promise you will not be hurt. But the Folk are quiet, for now.

I am learning the ways of the Northern Isles. The Folk here grow very fierce during the Storms of the Equinox, which occur once in the autumn and once in the spring. The spring Storms are fewer than three weeks away. I must be prudent. These Folk have injured me more on one minor feast day and two very ordinary days than the Folk in Rhysbridge ever did in four entire years.

I must find out who’s buried beneath that little headstone.

Finian made me promise to go sailing; perhaps then I could learn the secret. In Rhysbridge, after all, I used to haunt the market, picking up scraps of charms and spells. No, one cannot spend all one’s time in the Cellar. One must be prudent.

I sit on the cliff top, looking at a jar of amber beads. Finian gave them to me this morning. The clean Cliffsend sun slices through, irradiating them with light. There must be dozens, each a key to an exquisite freedom, and Finian says I may have as many as I like!

I stepped outside this morning into shredded streamers of mist. Saturated air hung from my eyebrows, from the fine hairs on the back of my neck. I tumbled down the cliff path into the smell of tar. “What, no Folk Bag!” said Finian.

I tapped my forehead. “Everything I need is right here.”

I did not like to think of losing the Bag overboard in a careless moment, and so I left it in the Cellar, where the Lady Rona will watch over it with her pleas for pity. It will be safe there.

“Perhaps,” said Finian, “you can untangle this line with those little fingers of yours.”

I have vowed never again to be anybody’s drudge. But while we waited for the mist to burn off, it seemed foolish not to help Finian with his repairs on the
Windcuffer.
How different this was — even stirring the pitch! — from the work I’d left behind, the endless scrubbing and hauling and humiliations before I became a Folk Keeper. Finian spoke of replacing the floor with new mahogany boards shipped all the way from the Mainland. I will help him, with a hammer, even if it means losing two thumbs, or even three.

I could not, however, untangle the line. The mist lifted itself gradually from my hair, and by the time we set sail in
The Lady Rona,
the day had turned brilliant. The air had a special dazzle, the clouds scrubbed very white, hung out to dry against a bowl of blue.
The Lady Rona.
Strange to name a boat for a lady who would have nothing to do with the sea.