Tamsin

Mrs. Fallowfield said, “You. I know you.” The Dorset sound was still there, but her whole voice was different—deep enough to be a man’s voice, and with that metallic clang to it that I could feel all along my backbone. She said, “I remember.”

Judge Jeffreys didn’t give an inch. He answered her, gentle, almost apologetic, “I will have what is mine.”

“The woman,” Mrs. Fallowfield said. No expression—just those two flat words. Judge Jeffreys nodded. “The woman,” Mrs. Fallowfield repeated, and this time there was something in the voice which would have made me a little nervous. She held her other arm away from her side, and Tamsin was standing beside her, and the first thing she did was to smile at me. And I couldn’t breathe, no more than I could when we were ru

“And the man,” that voice said. Mrs. Fallowfield did something with her arm almost like something I’ve seen Tony do, dancing— and there was Edric Davies standing with Tamsin. As though she had somehow taken them into herself, and given them birth again—not that she could do that, I mean they were still ghosts… never mind. Maybe Meena can help me with that sentence, if I ever figure out what I was trying to say. All that mattered to me then was that Tamsin was smiling at me.

“The man belongs to them,” Judge Jeffreys said, gesturing around at the Wild Hunt in his turn. “The woman to me.” He might have been sharing out the dishes at a Chinese restaurant.

Mrs. Fallowfield’s dog-bat-alligator-sheep thing growled at him, but stopped when she touched its horrid head. She looked at Judge Jeffreys for a long time, not saying anything. The night was clearing—I could see a few stars near the half-moon—but I was drenched and hurting, starting to shiver, starting to be aware of it. Tamsin saw. She started to come to me, but Mrs. Fallowfield shook her head. Edric moved closer to her, and there I was—cold and jealous. I’d have hugged that creature of Mrs. Fallowfield’s just then, if I could have, for comfort as well as warmth. Hell, I’d have hugged a Huntsman.

Mrs. Fallowfield said to Judge Jeffreys, “I remember you. Blood and fire—soldiers in my woods. I remember.”

“Ah, the great work,” he answered, as proud as though he were pointing out those tarred chunks of bodies stuck up on trees, fences, steeples, housetops. “They’ll not soon forget the schooling I gave them, the rabble of Dorset. I felt God’s hand on my shoulder every day in that courtroom, and I knew they all deserved hanging, every last stinking, treacherous Jack Presbyter of them. And I’d have done it—aye, gladly, with my whole heart, I’d have rid King James of all of them but the one. All but her.”

He never stopped looking at Tamsin, even though she wouldn’t look back at him. Edric Davies did, though, and the hatred and horror in his face matched Judge Jeffreys’s pride and maybe went it one better. Feelings like that don’t die; memories like Tamsin’s memory of Edric and her lost sister don’t die. That’s why you have ghosts.

Judge Jeffreys said, “For her I would have betrayed my post, my King and my God—indeed, I did so in my heart, with never a second thought. That makes Tamsin Willoughby mine.”

I know it looks stupid, writing it down like that. But you didn’t hear him, and I still do. He really would have done all that for her, you see, and done it believing he’d burn in hell forever for doing it. He hadn’t done it, and it wouldn’t have made her his anyway, but you see why he’d have figured it did. Or I saw it anyway, at the time. He was a maniac and a monster, but people don’t love like that anymore. Or maybe it’s only the maniacs and monsters who do. I don’t know.

Edric Davies didn’t say anything—he just moved in front of Tamsin, but she stepped past him and turned to face Mrs. Fallowfield. I remember everything she said, because they were the last words—but one—that I ever heard her speak.

“I am Tamsin Elspeth Catherine Maria Dubois Willoughby,” she said. “I knew you when I was small. I was forever wandering and losing myself in your elder bushes, and your friend”—she nodded toward that patchy pink gargoyle—“would always find me.”

Mrs. Fallowfield chuckled then, that coal-chute gargle I remembered from another world. “As your friend was aye rescuing him.” She took her hand off the thing and gestured toward me, telling it, “Run see your deliverer, little ’un.” The pink thing ignored her, thank God. I had enough troubles right then without alligator breath.

Tamsin said, “That one is my true and beloved sister. He”—and she smiled at Edric Davies in a way that squeezed my heart and roiled my stomach—“ he is my love, and was delivered to the mercy of the Wild Hunt through my most grievous fault. Now I’d have him free of their torment, that I may have eternity to do penance. Of your great kindness, do for me what you may.”

Word for word. I couldn’t ever forget. I couldn’t.

She started to say something else, but Judge Jeffreys’s voice drowned her the way his ghost-light had done. “Nay, they’re not yours to dispose of, those two! The Almighty rendered them both into my hands, and you dare not oppose His will!” As loudly as he spoke, he sounded practically serene—that’s the only word I can think of. He was playing his ace, and he knew she couldn’t match it, this old, old lady with her weird, nasty pet. Belief is really something.

Mrs. Fallowfield smiled at him. That was scary, because it was like the desert earth splitting into a deep dry canyon, or like seeing one of those fish that look like flat stones on the ocean bottom suddenly exploding out of the sand to gulp down a mi

I don’t think Judge Jeffreys heard her much better than I did; or if he heard her right, he didn’t take it in. He just gaped at her; but a sort of whimper came from the Wild Huntsmen, waiting where she’d ordered them to stay. Even in the darkness, I could see Mrs. Fallowfield’s eyes: blacker than the Black Dog, black as deepest space. She said, “We was here when your Almighty woon’t but a heap of rocks and a pool of water. We was here when woon’t nothing but rocks and water. We was here when we was all there was.” She smiled at Judge Jeffreys again, and that time I had to look away. I heard her say, “And you’ll tell me who’s to bide with me and who’s to hand back? You’ll tell me?”

And Judge Jeffreys lost it, lost it for good, and I’ll tell you, I don’t blame him. There’s no way I’ll ever again hear the kind of contempt—the size of the contempt—that was in those words. He went straight over the edge, shrieking at her, “You dare not defy, dare not challenge… You’ll be as damned as they, hurled down with the rebel angels—hurled down, hurled down.” There was more, but that’s all I want to write.

He was plain gibbering when he came for Tamsin and Edric Davies that last time, stooping at them like a hawk from tree-top height. I can’t guess what was in his mind—he might have thought his rage would darken them, put them out, the way it had before, this time for good, before Mrs. Fallowfield could protect them. As much as I saw of him, as much as I feared him and hated him and tried to imagine him, finally I don’t have any idea who he was— just what he was. It’ll do.

Mrs. Fallowfield hardly moved, Judge Jeffreys was right over her before she raised her left hand slightly and made a sound like clearing her throat. And he… froze in the air. Or maybe he didn’t freeze; maybe the air condensed or something, thickening around him so he couldn’t move, ghost or no ghost. He stuck there, burning, like a firefly trapped in a spiderweb—although what he really reminded me of was the fruit that Sally cooks into lime-green Jell-O for big di