A Study in Sable Read online

  Her vision literally misted red with rage. Screaming a war cry her civilized self didn’t understand, she charged him, hand holding the kukri raised high. Or was it a bronze-hilted sword? She couldn’t tell, all she felt was white-hot anger, and all she could see was her enemy, her hated and despised enemy, that she must slay or die herself. For if she did not, he would lay waste to everything she cared about.

  At the last possible minute, he grasped the handle of the shovel in both hands and raised it above his head, catching and holding the kukri on it as she slashed it down on him in the move that was known to Gurkha warriors to cut their enemies’ torsos in half. They struggled together, as Neville screamed and beat at Cedric with his wings and slashed at him with his beak, their faces close enough together to have kissed—but they were snarling, both of them with an absolutely feral rage. And there was nothing in Nan but rage and the driving need to kill this man, until suddenly—

  “STOP!”

  The word rang in Nan’s head and drove the rage completely out, leaving her suddenly empty and stunned. She found herself looking into the face of Cedric, who looked equally stunned—and no longer painted in bloody symbols. Just a farmer, red with exertion, his face streaked with his own blood from the slashes Neville had put on his left ear and the side of his head.

  Between them was Suki, with one hand on each of them as if she could hold them apart with her own tiny little body.

  “Nan! Yew haveter stop, ’cause ’e ain’t doin’ whatcher think!” Suki said firmly. “Look!”

  Somehow Suki had been able to read Cedric’s thoughts, clearly, and now she poured them into Nan’s head, so much and so fast that Nan staggered back a single pace, and then another, and finally dropped the kukri to the ground and stared at the man she had attacked in stunned horror.

  • • •

  “. . . and I am the latest in the line of priests of Tyr that goes back to when my people came across the water, and fought . . . yours, I suppose,” Cedric said, looking deep into Nan’s eyes. He shook his head heavily. “Which will likely be where your anger comes from. ’Tisn’t blood magic that I am doing, not in the way you take the meaning of it. The—life-force, I reckon ye’d say, of my sacrifices goes to the land, as it allus has been an’ allus will be. ’Tis Land Magic. I take none of the magic for meself, nor my own family.”

  They were sitting in the shade of one of the bigger trees growing up out of the hedgerow, on the edge of a field of, of all things, lavender. Cedric had his hand up to the side of his head, putting pressure on the wounds Neville had inflicted on him. “But the altar—” said John. “The vision Nan had—”

  “’Twas a true one. But that there stag was an old friend of mine. I slay no beast that is not willin’; most of them come to me when they are old and sick and longin’ for peace, and they lay down their blood in the service of the land.” Cedric smiled crookedly. “’Twas not always so,” he acknowledged. “My grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather sacrificed the young and prime, not the old and weary. But the deeper our ties grew to the land and the beasts here, the less we wished to choose the young and strong, in the full prime o’ life. The blood of the old feeds the land as well as theirs, and ’tis kinder to send them to an easy rest.”

  “But why did—” John chewed the ends of his moustache. “This does not match with what Nan saw.”

  “Because Miss Nan and I met and fought in another time, I think,” Cedric replied. “And she saw not what was before her, but her ancient enemy. And I will confess, in that dark time we did slay men on that altar, and many of them.”

  Neville flew down out of the tree and landed at Cedric’s feet, striding ponderously up to him. The raven looked up into Cedric’s face, then looked down at the ground. “Sorry,” he croaked miserably.

  Cedric reached out and scratched the nape of Neville’s neck, in the vulnerable spot Neville had offered him. “You were defending your mistress. Tain’t no dishonor in that.”

  Considering that Cedric’s ear and the left side of his face had been brutally savaged, that was gracious indeed. Nan winced. John had put a rough bandage on him made of all of their handkerchiefs together, but there was no doubt it needed better tending than that.

  “You must let me do something about those wounds,” John Watson insisted. “I am a doctor, you know.”

  Cedric got up, heavily. “We will tell my wife that I fell when the earth gave way beneath me, and the hedge slashed my face, and you came to my rescue,” he said. “I do not want her worried. She knows what I am—she is my fellow priest—but there is no reason for her to be clucking an’ fussing o’er this misunderstanding.”

  Nan gulped and got clumsily to her own feet. “I don’t have enough words to say how sorry I am,” she said, for what must have been the hundredth time.

  “But I was fair as much to blame as you,” he replied. “Even as you rushed me, I saw in you my ancient enemy. Had I anythin’ in my hand but a shovel, had I one of my hounds with me as you have your bird, it might be I who was apologizing for wounding you.” He offered his hand to John Watson, who took it and was pulled to his feet. John helped Mary stand. Suki hopped down off the branch she’d been sitting on.

  “We’ll go up to the cottage,” Cedric said, pointing at the distant cottage with its oast house behind it. “There should be everything you need there.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not screaming in pain,” Nan replied, still blushing with shame, as Neville flew on ahead of them.

  Finally Cedric laughed. “I be a farmer,” he pointed out. “I been worse injured than this all the time. This is one of the few times there has been a doctor to see to it; usually it is my wife.”

  “You have a brave wife,” Mary put in, and shuddered. “I can’t bear it when John does surgery.”

  “She is out of as many generations of healing priest as I am land priest.” Cedric continued to tell them of his background and his wife’s quite as easily as if blood had not been soaking through the bandages on his face and ear. Listening to his voice, you would never have known the pain he must have been in. I can’t imagine how he’s bearing it—

  “I feel nothing,” Cedric said abruptly to Nan, as if he had been listening to her thoughts, instead of the other way around. “’Tis the gift of the land. When I am in need, it gives, and now, it takes the pain.”

  Nan glanced at John, who shrugged. “If he says so, Nan, it’s probably true. This is older magic than anything I am familiar with. It’s definitely Earth, and I suspect Cedric qualifies as an Earth Master, but what he does—it’s ancient, and I don’t think any of the White Lodge would understand it.”

  “Oh, how we could have used your help with the Shadow Beast!” exclaimed Mary, which then led to the story of the Shadow Beast and how they had rid the house at 10 Berkeley Square of it. They were moving slowly to spare Cedric, so there was plenty of time to tell all of it. Several times Cedric made muffled exclamations, but he did not interrupt them, and when they were done, he was silent for a long time.

  “I know this Beast. ’Tis is an old thing, a kind of dark servant my people brought with us, and thought to use against yours,” he said, finally. “There were many such; some were slain—yes, they can be slain, but ’tisn’t easy, and it calls for that the slayer also be willing to die. Some were sent back to where they came from; they were as like to turn against the one that planned to use them as to attack the enemy. This, I do not know how to do. And some were lost. I be thinkin’ your’n was one of the ones lost.” He pondered a little more as they finally reached the farmyard of the “cottage,” which was a substantial black-timbered Tudor building that probably had at least twenty rooms in it. The farmyard was full of hens scratching in the dust. A dog laying in the door to the barn looked up and laid his head back down again when he saw who it was. “I will look among the things passed down to me and see if there is something in them. If you find ano
ther such, mayhap I will be of help.” He turned his head to give Nan a glance. “But if the you-that-was blamed the me-that-was for the Shadow Beast, that there is reason enough for you to come at me like a wolf protectin’ her cubs.”

  Before he could say more, a blond, buxom woman in a brown skirt, linen blouse, and very white apron came out of the cottage and, seeing his head bandaged, ran toward them, scolding anxiously. Cedric put her off easily with the lie he had made up. “And enough clucking, Agatha, my pretty brown hen. This man is a doctor, he helped me in the field, and he will mend me so you will not sigh and say I have lost my beauty. Let us go inside, and give him what he needs so he can patch me.”

  Now the woman shooed them all before her, getting them settled around the great plank table in her spacious and spotless kitchen. John asked for needle and thread, whiskey, clean cloths and boiling water. The boiling water was already on the stove; she ran and fetched the rest, and at John’s direction, boiled the needle and thread and the cloths, laying them to dry on a clean towel.

  Nan didn’t really want to watch either; while John worked, she paid more attention to the kitchen, with its black beams and whitewashed plaster walls, the huge fireplace quite literally big enough to roast an ox, the wooden sink with its very own pump, the spotless counters, and the big iron stove that had been installed in the fireplace. Evidently Cedric was a prosperous man.

  Cedric’s ear was half off, but John said he was certain it would heal cleanly once it was stitched up. Half the whiskey went into Cedric, and the rest went to clean the wounds before John stitched them up. When John had done everything he could, he bandaged Cedric with the boiled cloths and called it done.

  “Bread mold,” said Agatha. “We should bandage him with bread mold.”

  “I’ve no objection, so long as the cloth you bandage him with is boiled well,” John replied, and shrugged. “Cedric says that you are a healing priest, so—bread mold it is.”

  Agatha sighed and beamed at him. “Then you’re the sensibilest doctor I e’er come acrost,” she said, her accent much thicker than Cedric’s. She patted her husband’s head—the side that Neville had not savaged—with sympathy. “Don’t let him tell you the land’s taking all his pain. I’ve a wee bit of laudanum put by for times like this. I just thank the good gods that he’s never chopped off a hand or put a tine through a foot, and may he never do. Farmin’ is more dangerous work than most townsfolk e’re guess.”

  “Amen to that,” Mary replied heartily, and with the deep sympathy of one woman whose husband regularly runs into danger to another.

  “I’ll go and get the laudanum,” Agatha said, gathering up the bloody handkerchiefs and the rest of the mess and carrying it off, leaving them alone with Cedric.

  “So,” Cedric said at last. “About this ‘White Lodge’ of your’n. Happens I should hear more of it, I’m thinking.”

  “Then you’ll all be havin’ dinner with us, I’m thinkin’,” said Agatha firmly, poking her head back into the kitchen.

  • • •

  On a farm, Nan learned, the two biggest meals of the day were breakfast and “dinner”—which she would have called luncheon. Agatha and her cook and one of the “girls” produced two kinds of pie, heaps of bread and butter, slabs of cheese, several different kinds of pickle, a saddle of mutton, roast potatoes and new peas, roast onions and turnips, three kinds of jam, honey, and pots of tea. Everyone gathered for it in the big kitchen; with four guests at the table, four of the younger farmhands were given loaded plates and told to “take themselves outside.”

  And everyone at this farm, it seemed, knew what Cedric and Agatha were, for the Land Magic was discussed over the table with everyone listening, although none of the farmworkers actually said anything. It was pretty clear that although Cedric didn’t have the title of “Squire,” he was the squire hereabouts in all but name. Not only did he own Sennoke Farm, he owned two more that were worked by two of his brothers, a third brother was a carpenter, and a fourth brother was the blacksmith down in Sevenoaks.

  The farmhands might not have contributed to the conversation out of deference to Cedric, but from the way they were shoveling food into their mouths, it might just have been because eating was of far more interest to them than talking. They finished much sooner than the guests; Cedric intercepted one of them as he left, a grizzled, muscular fellow, and set him to finishing the ditch that Cedric had started.

  “How is it even possible that your family managed to keep this farm when the Normans came?” Mary finally asked, as the last plate was cleared away.

  “’Tis a short enough tale,” Cedric replied, indicating with gestures that they should all move to the “parlor,” where he stretched out his body on a sofa with a little groan. “The Edmondson of the day saw what was goin’ to happen, and lay in wait for the Knight who’d been granted the hall where Knole is now. Caught him out alone, huntin’, and used the Land Magic to surround him with stags and boars. And he said to the feller that there were two ways this could go; he, Edmondson, could keep his freehold and farm in peace, and grant a third of the surplus to the hall. Or the stags and boars could kill the knight. ‘An’ it don’t matter a whit to me that yon Willie of Normandy will send another,’ he told the knight. ‘Because I’ll just wait and catch him and make him the same offer, and on and on till Willie sends a lord with sense.’ Happens the first one had sense.” Cedric chuckled, and winced. Agatha bustled over to him with a brown bottle and made him take a teaspoon of what was in it. Agatha had made it very clear that she intended to stick right with her man, and Cedric had just rolled his eyes when she wasn’t looking and made the best of it. “So it went, with every Edmondson confirmed in the freehold, until Great Harry came in and the Edmondson of that time looked ahead himself, as the other had done, saw trouble coming, and got a proper deed all sealed and signed afore Great Harry even thought of breakin’ up the monasteries and takin’ away the estates t’give t’others.”

  “That was a good—” John stopped, and stared at Cedric. “Did you say what I think you said?”

  Cedric chuckled. “That the Edmondson of Great Harry’s day scried a bit? Aye.”

  “But . . . but . . .” John spluttered. Cedric held up a hand.

  “I do a bit too. Sometimes I scries, sometimes I just knows what’s comin’. ’Tisn’t certain. Further ahead ye look, less certain ’tis. Further afield ye look, less certain ’tis. Ye can change things, a bit, avoid trouble sometimes. Bigger the change coming, more certain ’tis.” He shrugged. “But ’tis good for tellin’ best days for hayin’ and hoppin’.”

  John could only shake his head.

  There were no more such enormous revelations, though Nan was fascinated and horrified at the same time by the idea that you could peer into the future at all. On the one hand, it would be grand not to ever have any unpleasant surprises. On the other . . . you’d know bad things were coming, and you’d have plenty of time to fret about them.

  I think I would rather not know.

  After a while, Nan just settled back in her comfortable chair, and examined the parlor without really listening to the conversation, which had gotten on to how . . . and in some cases, “if” . . . Cedric’s Land Magic differed from Earth Magic. Mary and John were taking copious notes.

  Cedric was much more educated than Nan would ever have guessed. Although he hadn’t gotten a formal education beyond his teens, he was a great reader; the local vicar had taught him Latin and Greek, and his library of books here in the parlor was quite impressive.

  Somewhat to Nan’s surprise, along with the tea table and chairs, the sofa and armchairs, there was a piano. Cedric must be very prosperous to have that—but it probably meant that more than one person in his household played it, which would make winter evenings ever so much more entertaining for everyone on the farm.

  The parlor was not ornamented with as much bric-a-brac as most parlors seemed to
be, which was something of a relief so far as Nan was concerned. Anything that was in here appeared to have been chosen to serve a purpose. It was nice not to have to worry about knocking something over every time you moved. She wondered if Agatha was the one behind this relatively simple decor, or if she lamented not having stuffed birds, wax flowers, china statues, vases, and other fashionable impedimenta crowding her parlor.

  The parlor did, however, have another patent stove in the enormous fireplace . . . and two inglenooks. Nan had read about inglenooks, but until now she had never seen one. She reflected that they must be the coziest places in the whole house, except perhaps in the kitchen, when winter winds roared.

  Eventually, about teatime, John and Mary ran out of things to ask, and it was obvious that Cedric’s wounds were paining him again.

  “You are going to bed, my man,” Agatha said firmly. “Sooner to bed, sooner to mend, I say.”

  Cedric chuckled. “Aye, little hen,” he replied, obediently. “Just a few more things. If ye’d be so kind, I’ll be havin’ the address of yon Lord Alderscroft. Happen I think a letter from me would not come amiss.”

  “That’s easy enough,” said John, who began to write it out on a blank leaf in his notebook.

  “Also, nearest Earth Master,” Cedric prompted. “Seems he and I should be havin’ a bit of a talk, so there’s no more misunderstandin’s.”

  John consulted his pocket address book and added the same.

  “An’ one last thing.” Cedric turned to Nan, somewhat to her surprise. “Ye’ve got the blessin’ of the Old Ones on you, miss. That don’t come often. I’ve got a bit of a feelin’ that there’s a patch of rough ahead of you. You remember, you cleave to them as shares that blessin’ with you, come sun, come storm. Do that, and all will come right.”