Unnatural Issue (27 page)

He was reflecting on this when he spotted a girl in a white apron and blue gown coming up the path toward him, and it didn’t take being a Master to make a shrewd guess at who it was. He finished with his business as she approached and put the cleaned and lubricated gun just inside the door as she got to within a few feet of the cottage.

“Good evening, Miss Susanne,” he said, genially. “Bit late for huntin’ strawberries, isn’t it?”

“Strawberries aren’t what I came hunting, Mister Devlin,” the girl said politely. “’Tis the instruction that tha’ made known tha’ could be givin’.”

Ah, Yorkshire!
he thought fondly.
Blunt and straight to the point.
In other places—like London!—the girl would have danced around the subject for hours before getting down to her request. But in Yorkshire everyone spoke his or her mind, straight out. It saved a tremendous amount of time.

“And ready I am to do so,” he said. “Would tha’ be comin’ inside, or would tha’ prefer to speak out here?” He had dropped some of his accent. She didn’t seem to have noticed, perhaps because she was a bit nervous already. As she hesitated, he added, “My scholarly brother Garrick is inside also.”

“Inside, then,” she said, as the tacit offer of a chaperone decided her.

He waved her inside. Garrick was tidying the last of the supper things away, but he immediately offered their visitor a cup of tea.

“Not now, thank thee,” she replied politely. “I’m Susanne, from Hall. I work in dairy.”

“And I am Garrick, and I collect songs,” Garrick replied just as politely. “It might not seem very important, but the songs are disappearing as old people die and young people only listen to the gramophone. And if I go on any longer on the subject, my brother will be cross with me.”

“Eh, haven’t I heard it every time tha’ meets some’un?” Peter said good-naturedly. “Have seat, Miss Susanne, an’ we shall see what we shall see. Now, first thing, us must find out what tha’ knows, Miss Susanne from Hall.”

He began to question her closely, starting with the simplest things that her mentor had taught her and ending with the most complicated. Could she
see
the power? Could she see other peoples’ ? Did she know what Elemental Magic was?

It took quite some time, and before too long she was glad to accept that cup of tea after all. He watched as she came to realize that she knew much more than she had thought she did; however she had gotten her teaching, it had been quite thorough, though it had been much more on the order of the practical rather than the theoretical. Garrick placed an oil lamp on the table between them, and the soft light gilded her features. He wondered, inconsequentially, if she had any idea how pretty she was.

Peter sat back in his chair when he came to the end of his questions. “Well!” he exclaimed. “That be a no-nonsense course of learnin’ if ever I saw one, if a bit bare, and lackin’ here an’ there. Who taught thee?”

She pondered the question for quite some time. Long enough that he wondered if she was going to tell him it had been the apocryphal old man she had supposedly served. Peter hoped she wouldn’t. She had been taught by a Master, and the Master magicians all knew each other, or at least knew
of
each other. It simply was not possible that this unknown Master had been carrying on his work without so much as causing a ripple in Alderscroft’s network. And he really did not want to start all of this with proving she was a liar. The truth was best.

“Robin,” she replied.

“Robin?” he repeated, and rubbed the back of his head, feeling puzzled. “I never heard o’ any Robin Earth Master hereabouts.”

“Robin Goodfellow,” she elaborated. “The Land Ward.”

It took him a moment to catch on, but when he did, his eyes widened.
Good Lord. Robin Goodfellow? The Puck? He’s more than an Elemental, he’s a godlet!
“Eh-h-h!” he exclaimed. “An’ why?”

“Why did
he
teach me?” she hazarded. “Because I was strong an’ a child, and that is a bad mortal thing in magic. Because I hadn’t anybody to teach me. Because our land needed an Earth Master. And because it amused him?”

“That last be more likely,” Peter muttered. But then he smiled at her. “Eh, he made good teachin’ of tha’, that’s plain to see. But now it’s late, time you were getting’ back. Come ev’ry night after supper, or at least, ev’ry night thee can. First thing I teach thee, ’twill be how to defend tha’self. Robin never did teach thee that, and is more than time tha’ learned it.”

When she was gone, Garrick brought out stronger stuff than tea, a glass of single malt, neat. “I fancy you might need this, m’lord,” he said.

“You fancy correctly, estimable one,” Peter replied, and downed his drink with indecent haste. “So, Robin Goodfellow, aka the Puck, aka the oldest Earth Spirit to walk our fair fields that
I
know of, undertook to train this girl.”

Garrick pursed his lips. “That is on a par with the Chancellor of the Exchequer deciding he needed to train some shopgirl how to keep her books, if you don’t mind my saying so. Extraordinary!”

“Not if the shopgirl in question was a mathematical genius, my lad,” Peter replied absently. “But there are great gaping holes in that education. Nothing offensive, very little defensive, all geared toward land service. Well at least I know how to fill
those
gaps.”

“I should think so, m’lord,” Garrick replied with no irony at all.

“And speaking of which, get your skulking gear. I’m going down to the local pub, where I anticipate I am gong to find the laddy I chased off today.” Peter stood up and jammed his hat down onto his head. “I fully expect him to try to beat me into pulp, and I intend to put him in his place.”

Garrick’s eyes lit up. He didn’t often get to see this more aggressive side of his master, and Peter was well aware his normally pacific man got great pleasure from such demonstrations. “Very good, m’lord,” was all he said, however. “I’ll get the car. We can park it outside the village, and walk in.”

It was an unusual night at the
Stag and Crown.
To begin with, Harry Dobbs, the barkeeper, had gotten an earful from old Dan Bennet, on the subject of the one man everyone in Branwell Village treated with extreme caution.

That was Rod Cooper, a fellow who’d been big and strong and a bully as a lad and had grown up to be big and strong and a bully of a man. He’d always gotten his way by shoving others about, his father had encouraged that sort of behavior, and he’d never grown out of it. He was a ne’er-do-well and lazy too. He lived in his dad’s little tumbledown cottage, subsisting on poaching and doing as little work as possible. If you had asked Harry, he would have said stoutly that a stint in the army would do Rod Cooper a world of good. But there were enough people willing to pay Rod to move this, or haul that, no matter what sort of a man he was, more was the pity. That, and what he got for what he poached over and above what he ate, gave him the cash money he needed for what he couldn’t snare or trap. Which was mostly drink, so far as Harry could tell; he wore the same clothing year in, year out, and the same patched boots. He didn’t smell bad enough to make Harry throw him out of the bar, but that was probably because he smelled so strongly of woodsmoke that nothing else registered. The chimney at that cottage hadn’t been swept—except by the crude expedient of discharging a shotgun up it once a year—since Rod’s father died. How the man breathed in all the smoke that must ensue was a mystery.

According to old Dan, the new gamekeeper up at the Hall had given Rod his comeuppance, destroyed his traps, and sent him packing. Now that was worth a round in any man’s estimation, but Harry did worry a bit what would happen when Rod screwed up his courage and went after the gamekeeper prepared, or caught him off the estate and unarmed.

But then, even as he was polishing glasses and pondering this question, two strangers came in and introduced themselves, and Harry found himself looking into the mild blue eyes of the very fellow old Dan had been talking about.

As the fellow got his pint and made idle talk, introducing himself to the regulars and endearing himself to them in the proper manner by buying the house a round, Harry found himself worrying about the chap. Because he was a little rabbity fellow who looked as if he’d break in two in a storm.

And his manner was completely inoffensive. He quickly laid down hints about the acceptable amount and kind of poaching he would accept—he called it “wastage” and “culling” and went on about how a certain amount had to be done to keep the park, fields, and forests healthy. And everyone nodded sagely and agreed. The more Harry listened, the less he wondered why the fellow had been hired in the first place. He knew his business.

“An’, of course, us don’t cull out of season,” the man continued, “No one could object to takin’ fish now, for instance, but shootin’ a rabbit that might be nursin’ or a pheasant that might have chicks or eggs?” He shook his head. “That’s bad, an’ no good gamekeeper’ll stand for that. I be as partial to a jugged hare as next man, but not till the kits are on their own. Now as for fox—”

Harry braced himself. Foxes were a sore point with farmers, because the gentry liked their fox hunts and didn’t want anyone else to ruin their game.

“Marster Michael don’t ride to hunt, no more do Marster Charles. Tha’ got fox comin’ for hens, and it happens tha’ canna get he, come be tellin’ me. We’ll lay a cunnin’ trap for he that won’t trap dog nor child.”

Everyone perked up at that.

So there it was, laid out nice and proper. It appeared this fellow was the right sort of gamekeeper for these parts. Everything was settled and the good-fellowship spreading, when the door was shoved open, and Rod Cooper loomed up in the doorway.

Harry went cold. This could not be good.

The talking stopped. Rod strode deliberately to the bar and just as deliberately shoved the gamekeeper aside so roughly that he spilled the man’s pint clean over. There was no doubt at all what would follow.

“Pint,” said Rod, his glare challenging Harry to say anything, anything at all. He shoved his money across the bar. Harry filled a glass and shoved it back at him, while the gamekeeper reached over and helped himself to Harry’s towel to mop up the spilled lager.

Absolute silence fell. All eyes were on Rod and the gamekeeper. Harry braced himself and thought about the stout cricket bat he had behind the bar. Would he dare to use it on Rod?

“Think tha’ owes me a pint, laddie,” said the gamekeeper calmly and fearlessly.

There was a collective intake of breath. Rod whirled on the gamekeeper.

“I warned thee!” he growled. “I warned thee! Now tha’ hasn’t thy gun, and what’re tha’ t’ do about it, wee man?”

“Put my pint on tha’ account,” the gamekeeper replied, not shrinking back a bit. “An’ waitin’ for tha’ apology. Tha’rt in the wrong now, an’ tha were in the wrong then. Be a man, an’ step up like one.”

Rod swung a fist that had laid out many a man before this. Rod might be big, but he was also fast, something that had caused men before this to underestimate him. But the fist swung through empty air, the gamekeeper wasn’t where he should have been. Rod was off-balance for a moment, spun halfway around, and the gamekeeper landed a hard blow to the back of his head that sent him reeling half across the bar.

Those anywhere near them cleared off and away, but to his relief, Harry saw that a few of them were carefully putting their pints somewhere safe, cracking their knuckles, and looking determined. There would be no beating of the gamekeeper at least; if he couldn’t hold his own against Rod, the others would pull the local off.

Then again, the gamekeeper was beginning to look as if he could hold his own.

Rod caught his balance and turned, looking all around for the gamekeeper. He spotted the man and, more cautious now, moved in on him.

Afraid for his tavern, Harry was about to put a stop to this himself when he saw the man’s brother standing at the door. The brother put his finger to his lips and motioned him back. Before Harry could react, Rod charged.

“Tha’s not very polite,” the gamekeeper chided. “Tha’rt actin’ like a wee spoilt boy.” He ducked out of the way at the last moment, then spun about like a top as Rod passed him off-balance again, and planted a foot in Rod’s backside, sending him flying out the door that the brother was now holding open.

That was a deep relief, and Harry began to feel more optimistic. There would be no breakage in the bar from whatever fighting ensued, and it looked as though the gamekeeper knew exactly what he was doing.

He followed. So did Harry and the rest of the regulars.

And there, in the light of the lamps outside the tavern door, Harry and the rest were treated to as neat an exhibition of scientific boxing as he had ever seen. For all that the man was little, he must have been whipcord tough. He was cool, collected, knew exactly where to land his blows and exactly how hard they should be. Within five minutes, Harry knew that he could have ended it at any time, but he was not going to. He was going to beat Rod so completely that no one in this village would ever be afraid of Rod again. He had to give Rod this much—he always came straight at a man he was going to beat up. There was no sneaking about and lying in wait and no filthy tricks. Possibly that was because Rod was too dim to think up any filthy tricks or plan an ambush, but at least this meant the gamekeeper wouldn’t have to keep watching his back.