Discreet Young Gentleman (5 page)

"Two shakes of a rat's tail is more like it," Dean murmured, fascinated at the sight of one of those creatures strolling boldly across the floor, stopping to examine promising bits of refuse at leisure. "Look, we don't actually have to eat here. We can have a drink, hear the story, then go across the street for something more appetizing."

Rob's mouth twisted. "That would be a shabby thing to do, after such a warm welcome."

"After such a desperate welcome, you mean. I'd say this place has gone downhill, but from what I remember, it hasn't. But it was a nice, quiet place for a couple of lads to get drunk, and Peter was utterly smitten with the serving girl." Dean held his tongue at the return of Mr. Wickett, who placed two foaming mugs in front of them. Only a little sloshing occurred as the table adjusted to the weight of the vessels, good solid pewter but blackened with age.

"I'd rather stay," Rob said, as the man hurried eagerly to the kitchen to prepare their meal. "We'll be at your friend's house in a few hours. We won't starve before then."

Dean looked at him curiously. "All to save the feelings of a man you've never met before in your life, and will likely never see again? That's more soft-hearted than practical."

"So what's wrong with that? Aren't we supposed to treat people as we'd like to be treated?" Rob smiled and raised his mug. "And the ale is uncommonly good."

Dean lifted his and clanked it against the other mug. "Even if the casks also date back to Elizabeth, and probably haven't been cleaned since." With a fatalistic shrug, he took a swallow. The ale smelted of plums and hay, and tasted like summer itself.

"Damn. It is good, isn't it?"

Mr. Wickett, carrying their plates, positively beamed at the overheard compliment.

"Yes sir, yes sir, indeed! The technique is a secret, a secret passed down through the generations, or I'd tell

you. I would tell you! May I bring you anything else, anything else at all?"

"Thank you, this looks fine," Dean said. And it did, much to his surprise. The black-glazed earthenware plates were still damp from a vigorous scrubbing, the food arranged carefully, and even garnished with radishes cut into the shape of roses. He blinked as the landlord scurried back into the dark reaches of the inn. "I still wouldn't try the stew, though."

They ate in a comfortable silence, broken only once when Mrs. Smart ran out of gin and screeched to be furnished with a second glass. When he had supplied her, Wickett returned to their table and inquired anxiously whether he could fetch them anything, anything at all.

"Please, Mr. Wickett," Rob said, pulling out the chair next to him. "Sit down and talk to us."

"I don't think I could, sir. No, I couldn't. So much to do before the supper crowd arrives, so much to do, sir."

This was accompanied by such a hangdog look that Dean nearly laughed. "Surely you have time for a quick ale? We'll take another round, as long as you let us buy you one as well."

"That was a brilliant ploy, brilliant ploy indeed, sir," Rob's impersonation of Wickett's speech made Dean smile as their host rushed to draw them more ale. "He can't afford not to join us."

It was no great task to persuade Wickett to talk about the resident witch. "Mistress Ann's cottage was right on this spot, right on this spot, it was. The Red Lion was built on the very same foundation, back in 1407. They burned it, you see, the townspeople burned the cottage after she died. Hoping to lift the curse."

"How did Mistress Ann die? Was she executed?" Rob's dark eyes danced with enjoyment.

"I want to hear about the curse," Dean leaned forward, intrigued. "Something to do with food, isn't it?"

"You'd be right. Oh, you'd be right, sir. And I can satisfy you both together, I can.

They locked her up—no jail back then, didn't need such a thing as a jail back then. The world was a much better place."

"Except for the witches, of course," Dean said soberly. "You don't see so many of those nowadays." A foot, coming from Rob's direction, nudged his in silent reproof under the table. Or, of course, it could have been a particularly bold rat.

Rob, looking innocent, asked, "Locked her up where, then?"

The publican waved a vague hand. "Shed. Dovecote. Yes, dovecote, it was, an empty dovecote about to be pulled down. They locked her in and wouldn't give her food nor drink, no food at all until she revealed the names of her coven. Thirteen of them, there would have been, thirteen dancing widdershins around the fires at Beltane, All Hallows. Midsummer and Solstice, too. Dancing merrily around the fire." He shook his head wistfully, and Dean was forced to wonder where the man's sympathies lay.

"Did Mistress Ann starve, then?" Dean's eyes strayed to the crone at her table near the bar, tossing back another gulp of gin from the steadily-diminishing glass. One could fancy it was the witch herself, making up for the drink denied so long ago.

"Oh, aye, she starved rather than give them up, starved. And it's a painful way to go, right painful it is, sir. So she cursed them, cursed them all, the members of the town, saying they'd damned well—pardon me, sirs, it's what she said. If they wouldn't give her meat nor drink when alive, they'd damned well give it to her when she was dead, or they'd suffer her agonies many fold. Manyfold, indeed."

"I'd have felt like cursing them myself," Rob said, twirling his half-empty mug between his hands. "There probably was no coven. No names to give that would have saved her."

"Oh, no sir! No sir, there were names. They were seen, seen by the priest of the village himself, led to the glade by a young girl they'd failed to convert. Failed to convert and she turned on them. Brought the priest to the glade by the standing stone, and they watched the white bodies dance widdershins around the May Eve fire.

Beltane, in the old ways, and naked, they were. When they knew they were discovered, they fled into the woods, fled into the woods and the priest caught the ankle of just one witch. One witch, and that was Mistress Ann."

Dean shuddered. "Poor old lady."

"Old?" Mr. Wickett looked surprised. "I never said she was old, oh, she wasn't old, sir. Flower of her maidenhood—well, let's say flower of her youth, if it's true what they say about witches. She was young, sir, young as a spring morning and just as beautiful." His mouth trembled with what looked like grief.

Rob laid a hand on the man's arm. "It was over four hundred years ago."

"But people don't change, do they? They don't change."

"She was beautiful, then," Dean mused. "I suppose I picture the Anne Boleyn type for a young witch. Utterly fascinating, with jet black hair and eyes like sloes." It occurred to him that there was a masculine version of the species sitting just opposite, and Dean, flushing, was careful not to look at him.

"Oh, they said Anne Boleyn was a witch, too, bewitched the king, didn't she?

Beautiful as she was, Queen Anne was nothing like our Mistress Ann. Nothing like, sir. Mistress Ann had hair as yellow as the narcissus by the river, eyes as blue as robin's eggs.

Lips like the blush of dawn, and when they curved into a smile there was a half-moon dimple appeared in her left cheek. Right here," he said, indicating the spot, "here in her left cheek." A tear spilled out of one eye, rolling unashamed down his broad face.

The description jarred a memory, and Dean realized it wasn't Mistress Ann that the landlord was grieving for. "Patsy. She sounds exactly like Patsy, who used to serve here."

Mr. Wickett wiped his face with his towel. "Aye. Patsy's gone now, isn't she? The witch is still here, though, still here, you can mark my words upon it. Those who don't want bad luck offer her a drop of ale or a bite of victuals now and again, now and again. Townspeople, of course, she'd have no ill-will to traveling men like yourselves, sirs. Oh, no ill-will toward you."

"But still..." Dean remembered the ritual, although the flirtatious Patsy had never told them the tale behind it. He lifted his mug and poured the dregs onto the floor, then scattered the remaining crumbs of cheese from his plate on top of it. Rob was quick to follow his example, and the publican looked pathetically pleased.

"Right kind of you gentlemen, right kind. And may Mistress Ann bless you with good fortune for your kindness."

Mr. Wickett excused himself, going back to his kitchen to prepare for the evening customers who would never come. "Is it a good thing or a bad thing," Rob wondered when he was gone, "to be blessed by a witch?"

"I'll take whatever luck I can get," Dean said, rising. "I wish I could ask what became of Patsy."

Rob remained seated at the table, straightening his dishes uselessly. '"People don't change,' Wickett said. Perhaps the townspeople..."

"Killed her for practicing the dark arts?" Dean shook his head. "Hardly possible in this day and age."

"No," Rob agreed. He rose to follow Dean from the Red Lion, not forgetting a courteous bow in Mrs. Smart's direction. "But if she did something they disapproved of, they could have made her life hellish enough to have tempted her into leaving it.

Poor Patsy," he said softly.

"Wickett might not have meant anything at all. She might have died in childbed, or of influenza. I suppose we could..." Dean hesitated with his hand on the door, looking back toward the kitchen.

"Ask?" Rob shook his head. "I wouldn't. Ancient tragedy is fair game, but one can't inquire about recent troubles just out of sheer curiosity. Was Mr. Wickett her father?

From what remains of his hair, he appears to have been fair himself."

They exited onto the street, both of them squinting at the bright sunlight after the dimness inside. "I remember Patsy's father," Dean said, raising a hand to shade his eyes, "and he was nothing like Wickett. Husband, perhaps, or brother, if he were a few years older or didn't age well. Patsy would have just turned twenty-eight this spring—I seem to recall that she, Peter and I were all born within a week of each other in May of 1787."

"I'm the elder, then," Rob said, leaning against the sun-warmed stone facade of the Red Lion. "I was born that April."

Dean looked at him with surprise. "I'd have thought you were younger."

Rob grinned. "No, the flower of my maiden youth is well behind me, I'm afraid.

And I'm very unlikely to retire before I'm thirty, as you once suggested. Thirty-five, if I'm lucky." His smile faded. "Although if I get desperate, I could always reconsider a few commissions I've refused in the past."

Dean rolled his eyes. "This from a man who sleeps with the elderly? I can't imagine anything less attractive."

"Can't you?" Rob's voice was unaccustomedly cool. "Perhaps you lack imagination."

"What, then?"

"Don't you remember? Recent troubles are not subjects for idle curiosity. Look, here's Erich with the coach."

Chapter Five

Abel Wickett looked up from the table he was clearing when the door opened, spilling a rectangular shaft of sunshine into the Red Lion's taproom. He blinked against the unaccustomed light. "Back so soon, sir? Decide on a little eel pie to take with you, or another drink for the road?"

But the figure that emerged from the shaft of sunlight was not that of either of the young men who had just exited his establishment. It was a woman, wearing a traveling dress of dove grey, with a veil of the same color to protect her equally against the dust of the road and the eyes of curious strangers. The dress was not of the finest quality, but there was something about the way its wearer held herself that commanded respect. "A drink would be most welcome indeed." Her voice was that of someone trying hard to overcome a country accent, and very nearly succeeding. "I'll have...I'll have..."

Wickett, a kind man at heart, thought he divined the problem and hurried to help her out. "Ladies here often enjoy a small glass of ratafia, they do. Just the thing for a lady." He emphasized the last word.

"That would be excellent." She sat at the table the gentlemen had recently vacated, which was the sturdiest the Red Lion could offer, and removed her gloves. The hands beneath were clean, well-tended, and seemed to belong to a woman not yet above thirty, but the signs of years of hard work were unmistakable.

Left over from the days when trade was busier were a few cordial glasses, which Wickett fancied were small and delicate enough. He blew the dust off a bottle and filled one of them with amber liquid, then dug in a box of odds and ends beneath the counter. "Ah," he said with satisfaction, retrieving an item. Returning to the table, he placed a yellowed square of lace on its surface before setting the glass upon it with care. "Here you are, mistress, here you are. Perhaps a bite of luncheon to go with it?"

"I thank you, good sir, but no." His guest stared at the liqueur, making no effort to remove the veil that separated her from it. "I.. .I was hoping you might be able to provide some information about the gentlemen what were—who were just here." Her hand reached into her reticule, emerging with a gold coin.

Wickett blinked in consternation. He had little compunction about sharing what he knew, since he couldn't think of any way such innocent doings could be used against his visitors. But a guinea? Far too large for the meager information he could provide, far too large indeed. The woman's spine stiffened at his hesitation, and he sensed it would be an insult to refuse it: a suggestion that she couldn't afford the loss, or worse—that she didn't know what she was doing. And there hadn't been coin of that color in the Lion for many a year. "Mighty generous of you," he said, stretching out his hand for the blunt.

When Wickett had told all he could, the woman thanked him and left, the ratafia untouched on the table. Wickett picked up the glass, intending to drink it himself, but his hand paused halfway to his mouth. "Here you go, Mistress Ann." He held the glass over the floor and overturned it, spilling the sticky sweet cordial onto the floor. "And whatever her goal is, if there's any help you can give that poor lady, I think she could use it." He shook his head. "Could use some help, indeed."

And old Mrs. Smart raised a shaky arm and screeched for another glass of gin.