Goblin Moon (34 page)

“Most assuredly I do,” said the Jarl. “For I am
convinced that the young woman, like your friend Lady Ursula, has
sufficient effrontery for any enterprise she might choose to
undertake.”

Three days to the very hour, and Caleb reappeared at
Jenny Sattinflower’s shop to claim his purchases. The dwarf wrapped
up the dresses in brown paper, and the old man returned to the
bookshop with the package under his arm.

As Caleb entered the laboratory, his eyes went
immediately to the crystal egg on the iron tripod. But the tripod
was empty for the first time in many weeks. The egg lay in two
empty halves upon the table. The homunculus was gone.

In a panic, Caleb looked around him. Then he spotted
a doll-like figure lying under a ragged scrap of blanket in a
basket on the floor, tucked away between the furnace and the
still.

He looked at Jenk reproachfully. “You give birth to
her while I was out!”

Jenk, who was much occupied with his flasks and his
vials and his evil-smelling tinctures, barely glanced up from his
work. “My dear Caleb, her transition from the liquid element to the
aerial seemed likely to be a traumatic one. Indeed, she screeched
and struggled so when I removed her from the egg: she sounded like
a blackbird in the jaws of a cat. It would have done you no good to
witness her distress, and your own apprehension would only have
served to increase hers.

“She is resting now,” he added calmly. “I fear she
exhausted herself, reacting so strongly, but she appears to be
slumbering naturally. There is no doubt that she possesses a fully
developed set of lungs.”

With an angry sense that he had been cheated, Caleb
limped over to the basket to take a closer look at his tiny
sleeping “daughter.” Her grey-green hair was still damp—it had an
odd, feathery appearance, like moss or fern—and her skin was pale,
with a creamy tint. The gills on the side of her neck had closed,
and she appeared to be breathing easily. And suddenly—suddenly,
Caleb did not feel cheated any longer, but humble and grateful, and
slightly in awe of the miracle that he and Jenk had created between
them.

He cleared his throat. “She’s real pretty, ain’t she?
Daintier than a little wax doll.”

“Indeed,” said Jenk, with an indulgent smile. “And
that reminds me; you might as well show me the garments you had
made for her.”

But when he saw the elegant little gowns Caleb had
commissioned, the smile changed to a frown. “I perceive that you
mean to spoil her. You will turn her head with all this finery!” He
turned back to his flasks and his chemicals. “Never mind, you can
hardly return them. You may dress her when she awakes.”

“Dress her . . . me?” said Caleb. He lifted the
little blanket, looked doubtfully down at the tiny female creature.
Neither child nor woman, as yet, she appeared to be something in
between, her figure immature but developing.

“We can hardly bring a woman in here to do it,” said
Jenk. “Yes, of course, you are the one to dress her. Have you not
already promised to play the role of nursemaid?

“She must be perfect in every respect before I
publish her existence abroad. She must know how to speak—to read
and to write—she must have elegant manners. There must be no doubt
in anyone’s mind that she is indeed intelligent and self-aware,
not
a brute beast to perform a series of
actions on command or to parrot certain phrases. Were she anything
less than perfect, so, too, would my triumph be less than
perfect.

“I shall supervise her education, when the time
comes,” the book-seller went on, with mounting enthusiasm. “But for
now she must learn what every other infant learns: to walk about,
to feed herself, and to communicate her needs. I leave her in your
hands, Caleb, for the time being. When you have taught her to
behave tolerably well, we shall send word to the Duke, and he will
undoubtedly send his man out to observe her.” Caleb experienced a
sharp pang of apprehension. “The Duke . . . he won’t be expecting
us to hand her over, will he? She’s ours, Gottfried; she don’t
belong to him. You promised we’d be able to keep her for
ourselfs.”

“But of course,” said Jenk. “I would not think of
parting with her, my miraculous creation. The Duke must be
satisfied with the formula. He
will
be
satisfied with the formula—you need have no fear on that
account.”

“And later on, if you should be offered money—a
circus or a traveling exhibition—what then?” Caleb persisted.

“She is not for sale; she is positively not for sale.
I grieve, my dear Caleb, that you should think me capable of any
such thing,” replied Jenk, with his hand on his heart.

“That’s all right, then,” said Caleb. “That’s as it
should be. Because I tell you straight out: there ain’t no one
going to part us, my little daughter and me . . . not while I’m
alive and breathing!”

Chapter
28

In which Francis Skelbrooke experiences a
Revelation.

Not far from Capricorn Street was another dark and
narrow lane, where the sun did not shine until mid-day and evening
shadows came early. Yet Blue Phoenix Lane was a street less dirty
and degraded in character, being the abode of the “working” poor,
and lined with old houses and humble businesses: chandlers,
printers, ropemakers, and coopers; old-clothes men, cobblers, and
rag merchants; purveyors of ink, quills, paper, pins, and
needles.

Along Blue Phoenix Lane, one evening, slouched a
sinister figure in a frieze coat. He wore his dirty blond hair in a
greasy pigtail and a battered tricorn pulled low to shadow his
features. Just where the lane began to climb Fishwife Hill, a
lanthorn suspended from an overhang cast a beam of light on the
door of a neat little apothecary shop.

After a moment of hesitation, he entered the shop. It
was a typical apothecary shop, cluttered and homely, smelling of
herbs and unguents, soaps, perfumes, and essential oils. The walls
were lined with shelves and cabinets crowded with china jars and
earthen pots, bottles, bags, and boxes, containing pills, powders,
syrups, elixirs, cordials, drops, essences, and tonics. A stuffed
fish hung suspended from the ceiling, among strings of poppy-heads
and strings of rose-hips, and bunches of catnip, fennel, and madder
hung up to dry. There was a fire burning on a little hearth at the
back, a pot of boiling lye, to be made into soap, and a hypocaust
brewing hydromel for drops and confections.

The proprietor was a little white-haired lady, who
sat in a rocking chair behind the counter, writing labels for
bottles in a thin spidery hand. Finding that he and the woman were
alone in the shop, the man—he appeared to be either a gaoler or a
particularly low sort of bargeman—closed and barred the door behind
him.

He removed his hat and executed a low bow. “Your most
obedient servant, Mistress Sancreedi.”

“Francis Skelbrooke, what a turn you gave me,” said
the little apothecary, but a mischievous twinkle indicated that she
had seen through his disguise immediately. “Might one ask what this
. . . astounding costume . . . is supposed to portend?”

“Bad men, ill deeds, and (if I am successful)
vengeance of no mean order,” said Skelbrooke. Evidently much at
home, he perched on the counter and set his battered tricorn down
beside him. “I had your note, yesterday, promising extraordinary
revelations. And I should have come last evening, but I was
otherwise engaged.”

Mistress Sancreedi shook her head.
“Unexpected
information, I believe that was the
sense of my message. I must say, it was quite a puzzle you set me.
It has taken me these many days to determine the contents of that
vial you brought me.”

“And . . . ?” asked Skelbrooke, swinging his
legs.

Mistress Sancreedi put down her pen. “It contains,
principally, the essence of a rare plant which grows only in the
mountains on the continent of Orania. You were correct in supposing
this medicine is the cause of Elsie Vorder’s panics and visions—but
I must tell you it is often used as a tonic to strengthen the
blood, and may have been innocently prescribed with that purpose in
mind. You told me—did you not?—that Dr. Mirabolo had diagnosed a
distemper of the blood.”

“That is true,” agreed Skelbrooke. “But my own
observations—“

“Your own observations agree with mine. At least when
I knew her, Elsie Vorder was suffering from a poor circulation of
the blood due to insufficient exercise, irregular hours, and an
improper diet. Her
original
problem, as I
believe, was nothing more than the growing pains and dizzy spells
which are so common among young girls of twelve or thirteen years.
Had she been left alone to recover naturally, she would be as
healthy as her cousin Sera is today. But that is quite beside the
point,” said Mistress Sancreedi. “We both know that it is not
uncommon for physicians to disagree—and indeed, Dr. Mirabolo was
not the first of Elsie’s doctors to diagnose a disease of the
blood. Even I must admit that a girl who regularly breakfasts on
vinegar and biscuits might well benefit from a blood-building
tonic. As for the other unfortunate side-effects, they are less
well known, and indeed may be easily avoided. The visions and the
rising sense of panic only occur when a large dose of the tonic is
followed soon after by the ingestion of sugar and alcohol, as in a
cordial, or when taking a combination of cakes and sweet wine,
or—“

“—or cherry ratafia,” said Lord Skelbrooke.

“Did Elsie drink ratafia at Count Xebo’s ball? Yes,
that would certainly have brought on an attack, if she had taken
her medicine earlier that same evening.” Mistress Sancreedi went
back to labeling her bottles. “It is altogether possible that
Elsie’s problems are only the result of honest ignorance on the
part of Dr. Mirabolo and Jarl Skogsrå, who perhaps did not know to
warn her against these undesirable effects of the medication.”

Skelbrooke slipped off the counter. “A convenient
mistake for Jarl Skogsrå, who uses these fits of Elsie’s, and his
ability to bring her out of them, in order to heighten her regard
and press his suit. The entire situation seems so very contrived,
his methods so sinister—“

“His methods do not seem altogether sinister to me.”
The apothecary dipped her pen in an inkwell on a shelf beside her.
“This animal magnetism, it is not so very different from a method
that I employ to soothe my own patients, to calm unquiet minds.
Fairy glamour, they used to call it in the old days, for it comes
quite naturally to those of us with a hint of the blood.”

She looked up from her work. “It is, I believe, a
very important part of the Duchess’s famous charm, and may also be
closely akin to those spells
you
employ in
creating your illusions. The face you wore when you came in the
door, for instance, that was very convincing.”

“With all due respect, dear lady, I do not think so,”
said Skelbrooke. He began to pace around the shop. “The ability of
which you speak is (I take it) a natural talent. Whereas the magic
I practice is a discipline of the mind, the application of a
trained will, the—“

“Yes, yes,” said Mistress Sancreedi, with a humorous
sigh. “We have discussed this before. No doubt it is just as you
say. Yet this applied will may also be aided by a natural aptitude
on your part. I have often wondered, dear Francis, if you might not
be one of us, and never know it.”

Lord Skelbrooke stiffened. “I can assure you that my
ancestry is solidly human on both sides of the family. The
genealogies I was taught to recite as a boy, at my grandfather’s
behest—“

“Not a recent ancestor, certainly,” said the lady.
“Else you would certainly know. Fairy gifts do not always take an
attractive form, but they are virtually unmistakable.
Do
stop and gaze at yourself in a mirror some time,
Francis.

“But I stray from the point. I know that you are
ready and more than ready to suspect evil motives on the part of
the Duchess, yet you have no idea what those motives might be. My
dear boy,” she asked, with a look of pain, “how long must all women
suffer in your regard, for the wickedness of the one?”

“I believe,” said Skelbrooke, beginning again to move
restlessly around the shop, “that in my more lucid moments I can
tell the difference between a good woman like yourself and . . .
the other sort. Nevertheless, I do not consider the Duchess a
virtuous woman. You will tell me, no doubt, that she is
generous—that she endows hospitals, schools, and other charitable
institutions—all with the Duke’s money. But I will tell you that
her private habits are perverse, and her knowledge of the Black
Arts varied and extensive.”

Mistress Sancreedi corked her inkwell and her
gluepot. “Yet to study these arts is not necessarily to practice
them—else how would good folk like you and I know to recognize
them? No, I should not go so far as to term the Duchess a woman of
virtue, but I can assure you of this: Marella Carleon is not one to
act out of
idle
malice. It is not in her
nature; it is not in any fairy’s nature, be she Fee or Farisee.
That being so, and under the circumstances, I cannot believe that
she means Elsie any harm.

“It would be different,” she added, “if we knew of
anything that Elsie had done to offend the Duchess. They are an
unforgiving lot, the Fees, and their vengeance can be . . .
exaggerated. It would not even have to be something that Elsie had
done intentionally. But indeed, the girl is so very inoffensive, I
find it hard to imagine even an unintended insult.”

“As do I,” said Skelbrooke, with a slight shake of
his head.

It was a very different Francis Skelbrooke who ate
supper at the Guildhall with his lodge brothers, later that same
evening: freshly bathed and barbered; powdered, scented, and
patched; in pastel satin and snowy point lace, and a waistcoat
embroidered with roses and pansies. The members of the guild ate a
very good meal and lingered long over their brandy.