Elmwood
“No. I’ll follow after you in a day or two.”
“I hope you haven’t done anything foolish to get me out of there. If this puts your career in danger…”
Winthrop had grinned, and the lantern danced shadows across his dark skin.
“This, my friend, is the beginning of a scheme that will make my career. Now, get some sleep, and do try not to wallow.”
Thus, he had forced Elmwood to flee to Merewyth—his tiniest, most backwater estate.
Elmwood had only ever been to Merewyth a single time, when he was seven, ostensibly to hunt with his father. It had the dubious distinction of being the place where he had discovered his Charm, quite by accident.
It was on the third day of the hunt. His father took it into his head to spend the day hunting woodcocks, which seemed like a pointless endeavor to Elmwood, as he didn’t enjoy crunching up tiny bones between his teeth.
That evening, when Elmwood came down to the kitchen in search of a treat, he found twenty little woodcocks laid out on a board, waiting to be prepared for supper.
Whatever wounds had killed them were covered by the fluff of their feathers, and it looked for all the world like they were sleeping.
Without any intention, he reached out and touched each of them in turn, running his fingers across their soft feathers.
The cook discovered him, surrounded by woodcocks flying every which way about the kitchen as he tried to catch them. Elmwood had been delighted, laughing as the silly little birds fluttered in haphazard circles around him. His happiness had faded precipitously when the cook began screaming.
Then his father came to see what the ruckus was, and there was a long, terrible pause where Elmwood watched him realize what the scene before him must mean.
There was only one way for a fall of dead woodcocks to suddenly live again, and it meant that his son was possessed of a trait far more shameful than the worst fears he could have conjured.
It was only then, watching his father’s face crumple into horror and disappointment, that it occurred to Elmwood that what he had done might have something to do with the forbidden magic of Charming.
The only Charmer Elmwood had ever encountered up to that point was a miserable wretch who had been brought before his father for justice, accused of using his Charm to steal horses from the Elmhouse stables.
The man had technically been hanged for the theft, not the Charming, but it was clear that everyone involved thought it was a job well done.
All of that seemed quite incompatible with the joy Elmwood had experienced watching the birds revive.
His father confirmed the reality of the situation with a smack to Elmwood’s head that was so hard he couldn’t hear properly out of one ear for a month.
You disgust me. Never do this again.
Elmwood had done it again, of course. What good was having eyes if you couldn’t rest them on something beautiful?
What good was having a tongue if you couldn’t taste something delicious?
What good was having a heart if you didn’t give it away to every other person you met?
And what good was having the ability to raise the dead if you always let nature take its course?
That had been his philosophy when he was young.
Things were different now.
Now when he thought of dead woodcocks, they shifted in his mind from sad little feathered lumps into the twisted limbs of men.
No, he would not think about that. No amount of pastoral quietude was dull enough to make entertaining such thoughts tenable—and he would never use his Charm again.
Elmwood arrived at his tiniest—in truth, his only—estate resembling a vagrant.
The carriage driver deposited him at the bottom of the muddy lane, so Elmwood hobbled his way up to the house with the help of a garish cane that Winthrop had tossed after him into the carriage.
It was gold, with a handle shaped like some sort of bear-creature with ram’s horns.
Elmwood reached the house coated in mud from the knees down and with no earthly possessions aside from the cane, the clothes on his back, and whatever Merewyth held. Gazing up at it, he wasn’t hopeful about his prospects.
In the near dark, Merewyth looked atmospheric, in the sense that there were likely so many holes in the roof that whatever atmospheric events happened above it would soon also happen within.
When Winthrop had told Elmwood that this was where he was headed, he’d mentioned that the account books showed a man was being paid to keep the place running and tidy.
From what Elmwood could see, he was overpaid.
He limped up the drive. There were no lights in the windows, and when he tried the front door, it was locked.
He knocked. Nothing. The place had the air of an abandoned ruin, full of ghouls and ghosts—though, Elmwood supposed, that had been just as true of it back when he was a boy.
Some houses were just built on a foundation of gloom and dreariness.
Making his way to the back of the house, he saw a dim light shining in what must be the kitchen. A short flight of steps led from the mudhole of a garden down to a door. Finding it unlocked, Elmwood let himself in.
There, with his unshod feet propped up on the long kitchen table, was a tall, steely sort of fellow. He had on a rather nice waistcoat, but there were holes in his stockings.
“Who the fuck are you?” said the man.
Elmwood drew himself up from his pained slouch.
“It’s ‘Who the fuck are you, my lord,’ ” he said. “Now, what do I have to do to get a hot bath?”
As far as Elmwood was concerned, the kitchen was a fine place to bathe.
There was a time when he would have recoiled from the mere suggestion of bathing in a tin tub in front of the oven like a peasant, but years of fussy bucket-splashing on the front followed by months of languishing in the barracks prison had washed away all such pretension.
As heat soaked from the water into his aching hip, he sighed.
He managed to pry a cup of mulled wine out of the man in his kitchen, followed by his name, which was Nimsby.
The fellow accepted the sudden arrival of his master with fairly stoic grace, given that no one of note had turned up at Merewyth for a good ten years.
Certainly not since Elmwood’s father’s health had declined.
He decided to think of Nimsby as his steward and wondered how long the man would continue to receive his salary.
According to Winthrop, all of Elmwood’s assets had been seized, aside from Merewyth.
Did the funds that kept Merewyth running stay with Merewyth, or would they be funneled off to whomever the courts decided to award with Elmwood’s fortune?
What a terrible bother, having to think about money.
As he brought the cup to his lips, he noticed his hands were shaking. A bit of the red wine splashed out and fell into his bathwater, swirling like blood before dissipating. The tremors came and went. They seemed to happen when he was tired, or if he overtaxed himself. Perhaps it was time to sleep.
Getting out of the bath was a bit of trouble, and in the end, he called in Nimsby to help. He was grateful that if Nimsby had any thoughts about the tremors or his lameness, he kept them to himself.
“I say, Nimsby?”
“Aye?”
“When was the last time you were paid?”
“I’m paid yearly, at Wintertide.”
“Oh, good.” That was only three or so months past. “Are there many folk about the house? A chambermaid or cook? Your wife, perhaps? Nosy neighbors?”
“Haven’t got a wife,” said Nimsby. “No maid nor cook. I do for myself. Nearest neighbors are at Croftholde and the village.” He jerked his chin, as if Elmwood could tell the direction from that alone. “Most folk hereabouts keep to themselves.”
Well, that was a bit of luck. Elmwood finished his wine, then asked Nimsby to show him to the Lord’s bedchamber.
When Elmwood’s father died, Elmwood was given a week’s leave to attend to the funeral.
He’d spent it drunk, making a tour of his father’s favorite beds, offices, carriages, and chairs, fucking a selection of the kingdom’s prettiest people in all of them, out of both spite and the futile hope of feeling something pleasant for a moment.
He managed to remember to attend the actual burial, also drunk, where he contemplated using his Charm to resurrect his father just so he could brag about all the fucking and perhaps shout at him a bit, but fortunately the casket had been closed.
Looking at his father’s massive canopy bed at Merewyth, he was rather sorry there wasn’t anyone handy to defile it with.
It had been a very long while since he’d been inclined to defile, and he wasn’t even remotely inspired now; the thought was more of a matter of principle, as it would have irritated his father enormously.
He cast a sideways glance at Nimsby, who did not, after all, have a wife, but decided that was a complication he didn’t need.
Besides, Elmwood did have some morals. He made it a policy to never bed anyone on his payroll.
There was no way of knowing if they actually wanted to or if they were doing it only because they felt obliged.
It was probably just as well. He doubted he currently had the wherewithal to perform in the style on which he prided himself.
The bed was not comfortable, but it was a good deal better than the rented carriage or anywhere else that he’d slept in recent memory. As soon as he closed his eyes, he was asleep.
Everything hurt when Elmwood woke up the following day, partway through the afternoon. Light pounded in past the curtains that no one had thought to close, and somewhere outside, a dog was barking.
Elmwood climbed painfully to his feet and went over to the window.