Sixteen

A couple of nights later, half an hour after his bedtime, Julian came padding into my room to say he couldn’t sleep and would I tell him a story? Sally and Evan were in Dorchester for dinner and a movie (no infants wanted, thank you very much), and in those days you’d get a bedtime story out of Mister Cat faster than you would out of Tony. But Julian’s always had my number—and anyway, it wasn’t much payback for a passing grade in maths and a stinky stuffed gorilla when I needed one. I made him get back into bed first, though, and promise he’d go to sleep after one story. He’s as crafty as a boggart about the small print, but he keeps promises when he makes them.

Between Sally and Norris, I know a lot of stories—I even know some Indian fairy tales that Meena’s told me. But that night I couldn’t get started, and I knew why right away. My mind was so full of Tamsin’s shadow world that I’d been dreaming about her and the Pooka almost every night—and about the Other One, too—and I couldn’t get into witches and princesses and dragons, even for Julian. So just on an impulse, I did something really dumb. Even for me.

“Okay,” I said when he got settled in. “Once upon a time there was a girl who lived at Stourhead Farm, right in this house where we live now. Her name was Tamsin Willoughby.”

Because suddenly I wanted to talk about her. Not to tell anyone, exactly, not to try to explain that she was still here with us in the Manor, but more like Tony telling me about James II and Judge Jeffreys—real people, a long time ago, but still real to him. I guess I thought if I made Tamsin someone in a story for a child like Julian, it might be all right.

“Is this a true story?” Julian demanded. “How do you know?” He was big on how-do-you-know? that summer.

“Somebody told me about her,” I said. “You want to hear this or not?” Julian pulled the blankets up over his face, leaving just his eyes peeking out. I said, “Her father was Roger Willoughby, the guy who started this farm. Her mother was called Margaret, and she had an older sister named Maria. Two brothers, too, but I don’t remember their names. But it’s all true, and if you even think ‘How do you know?’ I’ll shove those blankets down your throat and leave you for the vultures. You got that?”

“Mmmph,” Julian said, but he nodded.

“She was the youngest child,” I said. “The farm was too small for her family to be really rich, but they were a lot better off than most people in Dorset three hundred years ago. They had servants, and there were a lot of farm workers, and Tamsin had a tutor and a horse named Elegance. The worst thing that happened was when her sister Maria died of the Black Plague—that was terrible for her, for all of them.” Julian was staring at me, and I realized I’d better slow down, rein in, or there’d be too many questions waiting the moment I stopped for breath. I said, “This was her room, matter of fact.”

Actually, Tamsin couldn’t ever remember which bedroom had been hers, but she thought Evan and Sally’s room might be the one. But it gave Julian something else to think about while I went on. I told him how different the Manor looked in those days, and how the Willoughbys raised lots more sheep than the Lovells do now, and what it was like plowing and irrigating and harvesting with nothing but hand tools. It was all stuff Tamsin had told me, but I could always say I’d gotten it from Evan. That part went fine.

But then Julian had to ask, because he’s Julian, “Did she ever get married? Did she have children?”

“No,” I said. “No, she never did.”

“Why not?” The blanket was all the way down off his face now.

“Because she died very young.”

“Oh, no.” Julian’s eyes actually started to fill up. He took stories absolutely seriously, even at ten, and I kept forgetting that. “Did she get the Black Plague? Like her sister?”

“The Plague was mostly gone by then,” I said. “It was some kind of lung trouble.” I remembered Tamsin talking about “a flux… a catarrh that grew to a pleurisy… pulmonary phthisis” I said, “She was twenty years old. I think she got caught out in a storm, something like that.”

Julian was quiet for a while. I thought he might be falling asleep, and I was just getting ready to sneak out when he asked, “Jenny? Did she at least have a boyfriend?”

He wanted her to have been happy, even a little bit. That damn kid. Before I knew it, I heard myself saying, “Yes, she did, I know that for a fact. His name was Edric Davies.”

I didn’t know a thing about Edric Davies. I made it all up, just because of Julian. Davies is a Welsh name, so I told Julian he was a Welsh fisherman who wandered all the way down to Dorset and fell in love with a wealthy farmer’s daughter. I said that Roger Willoughby wasn’t about to have his only girl marrying a penniless fish-jockey. He wouldn’t let Edric even come to the house. But Tamsin used to slip off and meet him anyway, in a ruined shepherd’s hut on the downs. Use what you’ve got, right?

“You said they didn’t get married.” Julian had turned on his side, head propped on his hand, alert as a damn chipmunk. Not a chance of him dropping off until I finished the story somehow.

“Well, they wanted to,” I said. “They ran away together one night, and Roger Willoughby had dogs out hunting for them.” I hated badmouthing Tamsin’s father, knowing how much she loved him, but I’d gotten myself into this story, and I had to get out of it some way. “It was storming and raining, the way it gets here in the winter, so the dogs lost the trail, but they got lost too, Tamsin and Edric. He wanted to take her home, but she wouldn’t let him. She said she’d rather die than go back.”

Julian was wide-eyed, hardly breathing. I was pretty caught up myself, considering. “Is that how she died? Tamsin?”

I thought about the Other One, about the face in my dreams that I couldn’t ever quite see. I said, “No, not then. There was a man, an older man. He took them into his house, out of the storm, and they thought they could trust him. But he fell in love with Tamsin, too—or anyway he wanted her—and he killed Edric. They fought a duel, but what does a fisherman know about dueling? The man killed him.”

I practically had tears in my own eyes, it had gotten so real, and it explained so much that Tamsin wouldn’t tell me. Julian whispered, “What about her? What happened to her?”

“She ran out into the storm,” I said. “Back into the rain and the wind and everything. They found her body the next day, and old Roger Willoughby died of a broken heart.” I threw that in like an afterthought, something extra. Lost to all shame, as Meena would say.

Julian slid back down in the bed. He asked, “How do you know?” but the question was a shadow of its usual snotty self. I told him I’d heard the story from Ellie John, who’d just come to work part-time for Evan. Ellie John’s very nice, but she’s a big woman with a sort of gruff voice, and Julian was a bit scared of her in those days. I figured he wasn’t likely to check on me.

“That’s a terrible story,” he said, the same way he used to say, “That was a scary movie,” and with just the same satisfaction. “Did they ever get that man—the one who killed poor Edric?”

“No,” I said. “Dueling was legal then, I think. Anyway, who cared about one Welsh fisherman? I guess he got clean away with it, whoever he was. Go to sleep.”

I tucked him in, gave him a quick little nuzzle—he wasn’t eleven yet, you could still get away with it—and headed for the door. Behind me I heard a mumble, “Guess he’s dead by now, that man.”

I turned at the door. “Well, it’s been three hundred years. I’d guess.”

“Too bad. Wish he was still alive, so we could kill him.” And with that childish dream on his childish lips, my adopted baby brother went bye-bye. I tiptoed out and went back to my room.