Goblin Moon (21 page)

Sera tried not to stare, for she knew that was rude,
yet she could scarcely help doing so. “Impossible,” she exclaimed.
“Or rather . . . I knew, of course, that you must be considerably
older than you appear—for you scarcely look older than I—but fifty
years . . .”

The Duchess dismissed the compliment with a careless
wave of her hand. “Indeed, you flatter me, Miss Vorder. But yes, I
passed my fiftieth birthday some time since. It is not a fact that
I am able to conceal, alas, for I have so many old acquaintances in
Thornburg.

“Yes, at one time, your grandfather and I were very
well acquainted,” she continued reminiscently. “And now that I
know, I believe I perceive a resemblance: the stubborn set of the
brows, the proud tilt of the head. I hope you will not be offended
when I tell you that he was considered to be the most arrogant
young man! But of course he had reason, for he was also a brilliant
one. As you see, I am acquainted with the whole of his unfortunate
history—and it explains a good deal. “

The Duchess smiled at her. “Oh, yes, I understand you
far better now, my very dear Miss Vorder.” She linked her arm
companionably through Sera’s as they turned back toward the house.
“But how pleased I am that we had this conversation. Do you know,
Sera—I may call you Sera, may I not? And you must learn to call me
Marella—I feel that I have sadly neglected you in the past! Our
precious Elsie has consumed so much of my time and attention, I
believe I never had the opportunity to get to know you as I
ought.

“But now that I do know you and something of your
family history,” she said sweetly, “I think—yes, I am entirely
convinced—that you and I are going to be the greatest of
friends!”

Chapter
17

Containing a Message which was eagerly Awaited.

In the cold hour before daybreak, the people of
Thornburg were already up and astir, preparing for the festival,
which would begin in earnest at first light. The streets and lanes
were filled with early-rising revelers—or those who had not seen
their beds the night before—either making their way down to the
river, or jostling and shoving for a good position along one of the
wider streets, the better to observe the pageants and processions
as they passed by.

Among the crowd surging toward the river was one
stoop-shouldered old man in a rusty black coat, a somber figure in
stark contrast to the gaily dressed revelers surrounding him.
Gottfried Jenk moved as in a dream, in a state bordering on
preternatural exaltation. All around him he felt the ebb and flow
of mental force as the excitement of the crowd pulsed and faded.
But above and beyond the energy of the crowd, there were greater
forces at work, the powers of light and darkness raging in awesome
eternal struggle—Jenk knew the battle for men’s souls continued at
all times and in all seasons, but it was only possible for a man
like himself, on an occasion such as this, when his intuitive
faculties could feed on the excitement around him, to receive a
faint intimation of the contending cosmic forces, an imperfect
impression of their terrifying power and splendor.

With the first rosy light of dawn, the air filled
with raucous music: the tootling of silver horns, the clatter of
rattles and wooden clappers; from somewhere off to the east, in the
vicinity of Cathedral Hill, came the thud of bass drums and the
deep moan of a bull-roarer, as the people of Thornburg welcomed in
the new day, the new season, and the advent of the Harvest
Triad.

Moving as swiftly as he could through the press of
bodies, Jenk followed Tidewater Lane, turned down Dank Street,
pushed past a party of drunken dwarves, and emerged on Oyster Walk.
A sudden movement of the crowd pressed him up against one of the
buildings. Jenk knew, by the rhythmic stamp of feet moving steadily
his way, that a procession was coming. He stood with his back
against a damp brick wall, made himself as tall as possible in
order to see over the heads in front of him, and watched the
Clockmakers Guild march by.

The Masters of the Guild came first, splendid in
purple robes, glittering with medals and orders. Behind them walked
twelve journeymen and ‘prentices robed in rainbow colors ranging
from pale rose, through gold, to midnight blue, representing the
hours from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. Last of all came a
hunched old greybeard in tattered brown: Father Time, with his
flail and his winnowing sieve, and a golden sickle tucked into his
belt.

No sooner had the Clockmakers passed than a burst of
melody announced the approach of the Spinners, Weavers, and Fullers
Guild, a lodge consisting mainly of women. Strumming on harps they
came, or jingling silver sistrums, or bearing the tools of their
trade: a spindle, a teasel, and a hand loom. At the end of the
procession came four who represented the phases of the moon as
worshipped by the Ancients: a slender girl wearing a gown of starry
black and a wreath of delicate night-blooming flowers, symbolizing
the frail new moon . . . two stately women in trailing court gowns
of ivory silk embroidered in intricate patterns of seed pearls and
tiny seashells, symbolizing the crescent and gibbous moons . . .
and waddling along, considerably behind the others, in a garish
gown of orange and yellow satin extending over a hoop of enormous
proportions, a grotesquely fat woman, as ugly as a troll,
representing the moon in her goblin phase.

Jenk gave a gasp of dismay as the fat woman walked
by, for behind her like a shadow, or a drift of mist, he could just
make out the form of another: a hag with a wide mouth and a
distended belly that jiggled as she walked—the old Goblin herself,
come to join the revels, and no one but Jenk any the wiser.

He passed a hand over his brow. He was a civilized
man, he told himself, an educated man—he did not believe in these
heathen superstitions. Like other educated men, he worshipped the
Father, the Nine Seasons, and the Planetary Intelligences, Iune
among them. He knew her true aspect—had he not seen her image in
the cathedral a thousand times at the center of one of the glorious
rose windows? Serene and beautiful, she hovered on outstretched
snowy wings, like the wings of a great white swan; according to the
Scriptures, she was a being formed of pure light. This grotesque
thing was only a figment of his imagination. If he did not believe
in her, she would cease to be. And yet—and yet—the harder he tried
to will her away, the solider, the more convincingly real the Hag
became.

As the procession disappeared in the distance, Jenk
slowly recovered his mental equilibrium. Then he began to move
again, heading for the river. Once, a party of masked revelers,
going in the opposite direction, hailed him by name, invited him to
join them; recognizing none of them, he did not respond and
continued on his course with single-minded determination.

Jenk arrived on the banks of the Lunn just in time to
observe the approach of the Glassmakers and the Gravediggers. The
two guilds came in from opposite directions carrying gargantuan
wicker effigies with them. Jenk felt another surge of excitement,
for this was the one event he had come to see: the Drowning of the
Giants, a ritual symbolizing the destruction of the two great
island empires, Panterra and Evanthum.

The Glassmakers reached the river bank first—as had
doubtless been arranged in advance—and tipped their ribbon-clad and
flower-bedecked wicker man into the water. The wicker giant hit the
surface with a loud splash, then slowly sank. But the Gravediggers
brought a monstrous figure with curling ram’s horns in on a wagon.
Sooty rags and tufts of dried grass had been tied to the wicker
frame-work. At close quarters, the wagon in which it rode proved to
be no ordinary cart, but a wheeled catapult, which launched the
monster into the air and over the river. The horned giant landed
with a mighty splash, sent up a fountain of white water twenty feet
high, and promptly disappeared below the murky surface. With one
voice, the crowd let out a roar of approval. Shouting as loudly as
any of the others, Jenk felt the excitement around him rising to an
almost unbearable crescendo.

Jenk returned to the bookshop in the mid-afternoon,
drained of all emotion and in a subdued frame of mind. The shop
windows were shuttered, the door locked, but he let himself in with
a key and bolted the door behind him.

Inside, the lanthorns hanging from the beamed ceiling
were dark; the air was as thick and black as ink. But a single ray
of light pierced the gloom, and the door to the room at the back
stood open.

Jenk found Caleb in the laboratory, seated on a high
stool, staring intently into the crystal egg, which now contained a
new homunculus. The old bookseller shook his head. Following the
death of the first mannikin, he had made two further attempts using
sperma viri
obtained in the same manner as
before. Both attempts failed. In a moment of weakness, he had
finally yielded to his old friend’s repeated importunities and
allowed Caleb to provide the seed for a fourth homunculus. Much to
his surprise, this new creation thrived. Since the day they had
first detected signs of change and growth, Caleb had hovered over
the developing mandrake root like a doting nursemaid. This habit
inspired in Jenk a profound uneasiness; he feared that Caleb’s
increasing obsession was not a healthy one.

“It’s growing fast—faster nor the first ‘un,” said
Caleb, by way of greeting. “I see it change a little, day by
day.”

“It is growing fast,” Jenk acknowledged, as he hung
up his coat, took his spectacles out of his waistcoat pocket, and
placed them at the end of his nose. “And it will continue to grow
whether you are on hand to observe or not.”

“That may be,” said Caleb, rubbing his hands
together, like a miser contemplating his gold, “nor again it may
not be. I just don’t want nothing to go wrong with this one, that’s
all,”

“We decanted the other one much too early,” sighed
Jenk. “Its heart and its lungs were imperfectly developed. And we
were both on hand when the unfortunate creature died; there was
nothing that either of us could have done to save it.’”

Caleb set his jaw and folded his arms. “I ain’t
inclined to argue the point—we been through that afore. What’s done
is done, and there’s no going back. I just want you to come over
here and take a look. When you carved the mandrake root, you was at
some pains—wasn’t you—to make it into a proper little man? You
didn’t consider any changes . . . by way of variety?”

Jenk moved closer; he bent forward to peer into the
egg. “No, Caleb, I made no changes. I made every effort to form
this one as like the other as I possibly could. Why do you
ask?”

“Because,” said Caleb, “I guess this little ‘son’ of
mine has a fancy to become my daughter instead.”

Jenk adjusted his spectacles; gazed intently at the
tiny creature in the glass vessel. “It is too soon to be certain,”
he said at last, “but I believe you are right: the homunculus seems
to be taking on female characteristics. But this is most
interesting, Caleb. I wonder how and why such a variation would
happen to occur.”

Caleb ran a work-roughened hand over his unshaven
chin: “It come about the same way girl babbies always do—how else
would it happen? I don’t see nothing mysterious about it.”

Jenk shook his head. “Ah, but you see, nobody knows
how female babies come about—or male ones either. It has always
been assumed, though without any proof, that sexual characteristics
were the gift of the mother, the result of some condition existing
in the womb at the moment of conception. But here we have no
mother, no living womb, only a vessel of glass, and all conditions
exactly correspond to those which existed at the time I created the
other homunculi. With our failed attempts it was impossible to be
certain, but surely there is no doubt that the first homunculus was
a little man.”

Caleb passed that off with another careless shrug.
“Then they was all wrong, your doctors and your natural
philosophers,” he said. “As simple as that. It must of been
something in the
sperma viri
, Gottfried,
and I done fathered a dainty little daughter, without the aid of
any woman.”

Caleb stood up and walked across the room. He went
over to the table where the coffin rested. “I reckon I forgot to
tell you, when you first come in: there was a letter and a package
arrived while you was out.”

Jenk raised an eyebrow, mildly surprised. “A letter
and a package . . . today? I had thought the coaches were not
running.”

“It come by private messenger: a gnome in
Zar-Wildungen livery.” Caleb came back, carrying a long parchment
envelope and a velvet bag tied shut with a satin cord. By the
weight and the feel of it, when Jenk took it in his hands, the bag
contained a considerable sum of money, all in coins.

The letter consisted of several sheets of thin paper,
written over in a small but clear hand. “Not in the Duke’s hand,
nor in his style; it appears to be the work of some confidential
secretary. It does, however, bear his seal,” said Jenk.

“’
I
turned the body of the homunculus over to my personal
physician,’”
he read out loud,
“’a man of
the utmost integrity and asked him to perform a dissection.’
I
am sorry, Caleb, but the creature
was
already dead.”

Caleb hunched his shoulders, gave his grizzled
pigtail a meditative tug. “Dead and past helping. But nothing like
that is agoing to happen to the new one. We’ll make precious
certain of that.”

“We shall indeed,” said Jenk, thinking of two little
graves in the walled garden behind the bookshop, the pitifully
small body of the homunculus he had sent to the Duke. “We have
learned our lesson and will proceed more cautiously this time. It
may be,” he added thoughtfully, “that others who tried the
experiment before us also fell victim to their own impatience and
brought forth their mannikins prematurely. That would explain why
so many previous attempts failed.