The Tides of Avarice (11 page)

He glanced up at Doctor Nettletree, who was showing all the signs of anxiousness to get back to his other patients.

“Would you do me a favor, Docko—er, Doc I mean, a-beggin' your parding. Would you let me see the body of me ol' sea buddy, Levantes, so that that I might be a-biddin' him a tearful farewell one last, tragic time?”

“I don't see why not. He's still in the cool-room at the side of the cottage waiting for someone to bury him.”

“And who would that someone be?”

“The town authorities, of course,” replied Doctor Nettletree, drawing himself up. “We're not one of those barbaric communities who throw the cost of burial onto the grieving survivors at a time when they can least afford it. But Mayor Hairbell has been so busy of late that he's not yet found the time to drop by and sign the necessary documentation.”

“Then let me see him,” said the fox.

Using Sylvester's arm for leverage, Fourfeathers managed to get himself to his feet. Once again, squinting up at the fox's face against the brightness of the sky, Sylvester was reminded of how much larger the newcomer was than any lemming.

How much larger, and how much better equipped for a fight.

Sylvester decided not to enter Doctor Nettletree's little morgue alongside the doctor and Fourfeathers. Levantes hadn't exactly been a friend, and they hadn't really talked together long enough for Sylvester to even count him as an acquaintance. Nevertheless, the prospect of seeing the ferret laid out cold and dead made something go kerflop in Sylvester's stomach. Instead, he leaned against the fence at the bottom of Doctor Nettletree's front garden and watched as a pair of bright yellow butterflies danced their courtship dance. Sylvester wondered if he ought to learn to dance like that for Viola.

A cry of distress from the cool-room made him turn to look.

“Oh, cruel, cruel world!” cried the fox.

Moments later, Fourfeathers burst into the open weeping histrionically, and threw himself down on the little patch of grass at the center of the doctor's front garden. It was only just big enough to hold his outstretched form. As he pummeled his fists in woe he was crushing Doctor Nettletree's prize petunias flat.

More slowly, Doctor Nettletree followed him out through the door, looking worried. He pulled Sylvester aside, not that there was much aside to be pulled to with the garden almost filled by the sprawled and writhing fox.

“Sylvester,” muttered the doctor, “something funny happened in there.”

“Funny?”

“Funny as in peculiar. Not enough for me to call the constables or anything like that, but … Look, Sylvester, just how well do you know this friend of yours?”

“I told you, Doctor Nettletree. I just met him on the road an hour ago, maybe less.”

“So he could be anyone?”

“All I know about him is what he's told me.”

“He could be lying?”

Sylvester remembered the occasional little tickle of suspicion that had disturbed the hairs at the back of his neck.

“I suppose so,” he said reluctantly. He didn't like thinking ill of people. Yet it was true, for all he actually knew, Robin Fourfeathers could be the vilest cutthroat in the whole of Sagaria.

Doctor Nettletree let a few meaningful seconds pass.

“Keep a very careful eye on him, if you'd be so good,” he said at last.

“Why do you say that?”

The doctor gestured behind him toward the cool-room. “When I first showed him the body of the ferret he was like any other grieving friend, but more so, if you know what I mean. There were too many tears, I thought. Still, who am I to be a judge of these things? Some people are just more demonstrative than others, you know. I simply thought the fox was what we call in the medical biz a, ahem, ‘weeper.' I pretended to look out the window and let him get on with it.

“When I turned around to see how he was getting on he was, well, he was running his paws up and down the body like he was searching for something. Checking the pockets, the whole routine. He was still sobbing loudly like a bereaved friend, mind you, but it was as if his arms belonged to a different person than the rest of him. I 'stinctly heard him muttering, ‘Where is it? Where in tarnation is the thing?' So then I said to him, ‘Mr. Fourfeathers, are you all right?' And he stepped back from the remains of his supposed friend, looking quite calm, and said he was all right. Then he burst into buckets again and came running out here.”

“Making a stage entrance,” said Sylvester. “For my benefit.”

“That was what it looked like to me, yes,” said Doctor Nettletree. “Someone overacting their role.”

“Thanks for telling me this.”

“The least I could do. As I say, keep a wary eye on him, will you?”

“I'll do my best.”

“There should be a spare room for him at the Snowbanks Inn where he can get a couple of days' bed rest. Then, with luck, he'll be on his way and leaving Foxglove far behind him. I'll be a happier lemming when that happens. If he doesn't have any money for the room, tell that old crook Artie Snowbanks I'll settle his bill so long as he doesn't try to gouge me like he did the last time.”

Sylvester couldn't imagine delivering this message to Mr. Snowbanks word for word, but he promised to convey its meaning.

“And drop in to see him from time to time, Sylvester,” continued the doctor. “I'll do the same. All in the guise of being solicitous about his good health, of course.”

“But really to make sure he's up to no mischief,” murmured Sylvester, looking askance at the prone form of the stranger. Not for the first time he wished he'd decided to do something else after temple other than go for a stroll. Then Robin Fourfeathers would have been someone else's problem.

“You take my point exactly,” said Doctor Nettletree. “Why are people always so insistent that the young are irremediably stupid?”

Because they're stupid themselves, thought Sylvester, but said nothing.

Doctor Nettletree crouched beside Fourfeathers and jabbed his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

The gray fox dredged up one last long, low, racking moan and then pulled himself up on all fours. The expression of tormented grief seemed to drain from his face as he did so.

“I'll survive,” he admitted.

“Glad to hear it,” said Doctor Nettletree, unimpressed. “Your young friend Sylvester here is going to escort you to the Snowbanks Inn in town, where I want you to spend the next two days in bed. That should be enough time to allow that leg of yours to heal. Before you go, I'll have Nurse O'Reilly, assuming the damned silly woman has recovered from that swoon of hers, prepare a tincture for you which I want you to apply three times a day after meals. There'll be instructions on the bottle. Perhaps you would like a sedative in case you have difficulty sleeping, what with all the memories you'll be having of your deceased friend.”

Behind Fourfeathers's back, Doctor Nettletree gave Sylvester a wink, the meaning of which the young lemming for a moment couldn't decipher. Then he guessed it. The sedative wasn't to prevent against bad dreams or sleeplessness. It was to knock the stranger out at night so that Sylvester and Doctor Nettletree could rest secure in their own beds, knowing the fox wasn't out and about and up to mischief.

“That be being very kind of you, Mister Doctor Nettletree,” said the fox unctuously as he stood up to his full height.

A few minutes later Sylvester and Fourfeathers were back on the road.

“I'm so sorry about your friend, Mr. Fourfeathers,” said Sylvester to fill up a silence that had been growing between them as they walked. The fox's leg seemed to have improved remarkably already, thanks to Doctor Nettletree's ministrations. He was able to walk largely unaided, a great blessing so far as Sylvester was concerned. His shoulders still ached from the burden they'd been forced to bear earlier.

“Alas, poor Levantes,” said Fourfeathers.

“I didn't know him well, but—”

“Did any of us?” interrupted Fourfeathers dolefully.

“Did any of us what?”

“Know him well.”

“I assumed you did.”

“I'd have said so before today, him having been me billy-cuddy shipmate and closest pal for many a long year, but now … now I'm forced to be asking of meself if perhaps all I saw was the face he was a-bein' prepared of to show the world. If mebbe he . . .”

Sylvester tuned it out. Back at Doctor Nettletree's house he'd begun to suspect that all of Fourfeathers's ostentatious sorrowing was just a sham, and he was becoming more and more convinced of it with every pace they took. He'd rather spend the time thinking about Viola, so that was exactly what he did.

He waited until he sensed the fox's stream of words had run dry before yanking himself back to the real world. Viola blew him a last kiss saucily over her shoulder before, with a wink of her eye, she evaporated like steam.

“I knew him only for a short while …” Sylvester began.

“Yes, and I been a-meanin' to ask thee about that, my little sporran of a lemming. Like I said back at the sawbones', did me dear, dear, dear old chum, Levantes, tell you any secrets before death snuffed out the candle of his soul for the very final time?”

“Secrets?”

“Yes. Con-fid-ensh-ial-it-i-ays.”

Caution, Sylvester reminded himself. You already know this fellow's not as straightforward as he seems. Levantes was very emphatic that you should be careful to whom you blabbed.

“What sort of secrets would they be?” he said innocently. “Stuff about the loves of his life, you mean?”

The fox growled, but the expression of anger that crossed his face was gone almost before it had arrived. “No, lad. It be more to being do with an object he mighta had with him.”

“An object? What sort of object?”

“You be better off not a-knowin'.” Fourfeathers put a big arm around Sylvester's shoulders again. “Suffice it to be saying that, when a great wave threw me dear boon companion, Levantes, off the little ship we were both a-sailin' in, he was a-holdin' in his darling little paw something that was mighty important to yours truly, swelp me … swelp me, Lhaeminguas. It's something I'd been a-searchin' for for many a long year, and a-somethin' I'd be almighty glad to be having back.” He lowered his brows and looked around him as if the cottages they were passing might be full of spies. “'Less, of course,” he added, “it's gone to the bottom of the deep, blue briny.”

Sylvester became uncomfortably aware that in the nethermost depths of his right-hand jacket pocket there was a crumpled piece of parchment. The ferret, Keelhaul Levantes, had stuffed it in there that night down at the river, but with all that had happened immediately afterward Sylvester had forgotten its existence until now. What on Sagaria could it be? The almost uncontrollable urge came over him to drag the scrap of paper out right in front of the gray fox to find out.

“Levantes didn't tell me anything about that,” he said, hoping that for once it wouldn't be obvious he was lying.

“You didn't see him be a-hidin' anything?” The fox's tone was becoming inquisitorial, and at the same time losing some of its accent. “Perhaps digging a hole and stuffing a-somethin' into it?”

“No, I don't remember anything like that at all.” It was a relief to be telling the truth again. Sylvester didn't like lying. It wasn't just that he was lousy at it. It was that it went against the grain, however honorable the motive for the deception.

The fox stopped dead in his tracks, and automatically Sylvester stopped along with him. For a long moment Fourfeathers held Sylvester's gaze. At last, he appeared satisfied by whatever he thought he could read behind the lemming's eyes, and resumed walking. His limp, Sylvester noticed, was almost gone now.

“I wish I could tell where this … this thing is.” The fox seemed to be talking as much to himself as to Sylvester. “There's another after it, you see. Someone who'd kill to get it – kill without nary a second thought. A terrible fellow he is. It's of crucial significance that he not be a-gettin' his greedy paws on it. You understand me, young Master Lemmington?”

Sylvester shivered. “I think I do, yes.”

“Well, don't just think it, make sure. You been good to me, and I'd not like to see any harm befalling you. And if perchance you haps to remember a-somethin' after all that dear Levantes might have been concealing, don't trust anyone with the news – not no one but me, and even when I'm no longer here in Foxglove, not no one at all. You be a-hearing that?”

“I be a-hearing that,” Sylvester confirmed, feeling a sense of déjà vu.

The fox grinned suddenly. “You be a-mocking of me, young shaver.”

Sylvester put his forepaws up in front of him. “No, not at all. I assure you. It's just that your way of speaking, it's, well, it's a bit infectious, that's all.”

“Nivver thee mind.” Fourfeathers gave a barking laugh. His tone changed yet again as he continued to speak, becoming both superficially lighthearted and yet confiding, like Sylvester's mother when she was pretending she didn't really want to know how things were going between Sylvester and Viola.

“Do you have a special friend?” the fox asked.

Sylvester was flustered by the abrupt change in subject. “I, ah . . .”

“I suppose you still be being of an age when you live with your parents, is that not so?”

“Well, ah, yes. Not with parents, though. Just with my mother.”

Sylvester told the story of how his father had gone away on an Exodus to the Great Wet Without End and had never been seen again.

As Sylvester spoke, a tear trickled down the fox's cheek and he sniffled loudly, “Ah, that be being sad, so sad.”

It was obvious, even to Sylvester, that the display was false but nonetheless, without really intending to, Sylvester told the fox about his mother. About how she was widely regarded as the prettiest widow in the town and how it was a nuisance for her that Mayor Hairbell seemed to have set his sights on her. Yet there were other times when it seemed as if the mayor was simply putting on a show of yearning after the pretty widow, when his fancy turned instead in the direction of someone far younger than himself.