Chapter 6
In the bright sunshine of the street outside, Ruben dragged his carpet slippers across the dusty road, trying to de-stickify them. Ahead of him, Mrs. Chrysler and Katherine marveled at all the new buildings and storefronts.
“This is Low Street?” Katherine said. “In our day, it was dark and brooding and… homey.”
“Looks pretty tidy to me,” said Ruben.
“I liked it untidy,” said Katherine, shaking her head at the shiny new window displays and unfamiliar signs.
Sweetshops and dentists’ offices, vegetable stalls and apothecaries, and doctors of all sorts.
The occasional old facade advertising a smithy or metallurgist stuck out like a crooked tooth in a shiny row of veneers.
“That map’s not much use now, is it?” said Mrs. Chrysler.
“I suppose not,” Katherine admitted. “It has been a long time. Clearly, a lot has changed.”
“I wonder, though, how much has changed at the abbey. The nuns.” Mrs. Chrysler shuddered again. “The sum they were willing to pay us to get their land back wasn’t small. You reckon they’re still mad?”
“How much, exactly?” Ruben broke in, having now caught up with an accelerated shuffle. “How much were they going to pay you?”
Katherine glanced at him over her shoulder. “That is privileged information,” she said.
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Chrysler.
“Well, the bigger the sum, the more angry they’re still likely to be. Was it two hundred?” Ruben sidled up to Mrs. Chrysler.
“Hah! Small potatoes.”
“Five hundred?”
“No.”
“Couldn’t have been more’n a thousand… Was it?”
“Hush,” Katherine said.
Ruben seemed not to hear and prodded Mrs. Chrysler. “Was it?”
“Ruben Hoode, I shall knit you a gag next.”
He pursed his lips, but raised his brows.
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, it was more.”
He whistled through his few remaining teeth.
“All right, all right,” Katherine said. “But we didn’t collect the whole amount in the end, just the upfront fee, plus expenses, for all the planning we did and the attempt we made.
Because we came back empty-handed, didn’t we?
” She gave Ruben a piercing look, and he at least had the grace to appear apologetic.
“Anyway, the price just goes to show how serious they were. Religious people are supposed to be forgiving, though, aren’t they?
” She and Mrs. Chrysler shuddered again.
“At any rate, Sister Agatha probably isn’t even around anymore.
Let’s just expect Saint Percival’s Sisters to be…
still a bit cross… and we’ll be prepared to face them. ”
An uncomfortable silence nudged its way into the conversation as Katherine and her companions considered this. Katherine cleared her throat.
“Now.” She drew the map out of her bag and prodded it vaguely. “I know a lot is different, but if we keep walking”—she rotated the map and checked their heading from the Gilded Midden—“that way, it shouldn’t be too bad a stroll to the convent.”
Mrs. Chrysler double-checked the map and agreed with her assessment.
Ruben looked over their shoulders. “Easy for you to say. You’re wearing Elvish boots, and I don’t even know what those are.” He indicated Mrs. Chrysler’s footwear.
“There’s no other safe way, Ruben,” Mrs. Chrysler told him, “unless you’d like to chance becoming intimately acquainted with a forty-year-old tree?”
Ruben’s eyes narrowed in confusion, but after a while he admitted: “No.”
“Well, then.”
Katherine walked on, leaving Mrs. Chrysler with Ruben, and found a bench to sit on.
She pulled the map’s tissue paper wrapping out of her bag, along with a pencil and her pincushion.
With the sun streaming over her shoulder, she delicately pinned one thin sheet over the map and carefully sketched the locations of the new shops on Low Street and the new buildings of Eagle Heights.
When Mrs. Chrysler and Ruben finally joined her, she was already rising from her seat and tucking everything back into her bag. “I don’t have any designs on suddenly meeting new trees or buildings, Imogene,” she said. “I’m resolved to keep that map up to date now.”
Mrs. Chrysler nodded, and away they went.
The cats sauntered alongside them, entertaining themselves by chasing dust motes in the air.
The smell was less abrasive here in town than it had been near Eagle Heights.
Undertones of bog were masked by pleasant floral and nutty scents from the shops and street vendors.
Soon, the storefronts thinned to neighborhoods of scattered cottages, which also presently disappeared, and they found themselves treading on windswept piles of fallen leaves through some tangled undergrowth up a narrow path.
“Are we sure this is the way, Katty?” Mrs. Chrysler called from behind her after a while.
“I really don’t remember it being this overgrown. ”
“You brought up the forty-year-old trees, Imogene,” Katherine said over her shoulder.
She proceeded a few more paces before adding, “At least we didn’t bump into them—oof!
” Rubbing her shins, Katherine examined the sturdy post she’d just walked into, and above her head in the gnarled canopy, a large wooden sign arched over the untidy path.
In precise and boxy letters, it read, “Welcome to Saint Percival’s: Watch for Dragon Droppings. ”
Dragons dropping! Mr. Scruffles exclaimed. Do you see any? He searched the sky eagerly through the gaps in the branches.
I’d watch the ground more than anything else, Tilly said, avoiding the mud by stepping only on fallen leaves and giving Ember some serious side-eye. Ember had the good sense to look embarrassed.
The lane beyond the sign widened through an arbor of poplars and willows, and Katherine found herself saying, with a modicum of embarrassment, “Excuse me… tree people… do any of you know Tin-Whistle Todd? We’re his friends from Ipswich.”
The trees swayed and creaked in the light breeze, their yellow leaves rustling, but they otherwise gave no indication that they understood, and so Katherine and her pets marched on.
After a short while they stood gazing at the imposing spired abbey of the convent.
It looked… tilted. Katherine turned to Mrs. Chrysler and Ruben, who by now had caught up with her and were standing with their heads cocked to one side.
“All right, it’s not just me then.”
“This is it?” Ruben asked, pulling his head back upright. “It looks like it’s… sinking.”
“Yes, it does,” Mrs. Chrysler said, scrutinizing the scene critically.
They marched onward past the poplars and willows onto a wide elevated embankment, which gently sloped away on either side to a veritable wetland garden.
As far as her eyes could see, Katherine spied winterberry bushes laden with fruit, wispy cat-o’-nine-tails and fuzzy pussy willows, and tall waving grasses with feathery seed heads.
Amidst the plants, she also noticed scattered trails of stepping stones, tucked unobtrusively into the ground cover.
“Looks like the land’s gone all soggy,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “It’s a beautiful marsh, though, if I’m any judge.”
“It smells a heck of a lot nicer than the bog near… near the other place,” said Ruben, taking a deep breath that threatened to crack his spindly ribs. “I think it’s rather pretty, actually.”
You hear that? said Tilly.
What, that he thinks it’s pretty? Mr. Scruffles took a seat and demurely wrapped his tail around himself. A man is entitled to some aesthetical appreciation.
No, no, no, the purple cat replied, blinking out of sight. Someone’s coming. Her bushy tail darted under Katherine’s skirt and hunkered there.
Mr. Scruffles hopped to his feet and rushed off the path in the direction of a quiet rustling, with Ember trotting behind.
Just watch your step, dear, Ember said. Remember the dragon droppings!
As the two pets disappeared into the foliage, a familiar, hopeful-sounding whistle emanated from their direction.
“What was that?” Ruben started and fiddled a finger in his ear. “Did you hear it?”
Katherine clapped her hands in delight. “There he is! Oh, Todd! I’d know that slide anywhere.” The whistle sounded again, this time accompanied by a cheerful mewing.
“Tin-Whistle Todd?” Mrs. Chrysler called.
The bushes along the path parted and it was he, beaming eagerly, with Ember and Mr. Scruffles weaving among his tall, willowy legs. His long hair streamed behind him, sporting the occasional bud. Tilly emerged from under Katherine’s skirt and eagerly approached him, sniffing the finger he offered.
“Todd!” Mrs. Chrysler cried happily. “We got your message, dear.”
“Yes,” said Katherine. “We looked for you at the Giddy Horseman, dear, and were quite disappointed to learn you’d gone. When did you leave? What do you do here?”
The tree nymph enveloped the two women in a gentle, twiggy hug and then indicated his hoe and wheelbarrow. A cottonwood sapling was sitting jauntily inside, its roots wrapped in burlap.
“You’re the groundskeeper! Oh, how lovely.”
His large shoulders shrugged, and the whistle descended slightly.
“Well, it’s Ipswich’s loss. You’re doing a splendid job,” Katherine said, looking around again at their environs. “I’d say you’d really found your calling.”
His knotty cheeks seemed to flush. Modest crescendo.
“It’s magnificent,” Mrs. Chrysler agreed. “Do they treat you well?”
The up-and-down slide suggested, “So, so.”
Ruben was gawping, and Ember trod on his foot. Don’t be rude, she said.
“Erm, I don’t believe I know your friend?” the old man managed, looking up into the large face of the towering tree nymph.
“Ah, yes, Tin-Whistle Todd—this is our new acquaintance, Ruben,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “Ruben, we’ve known Todd for positively ages.”
The whistle ascended cheerfully.
“Likewise, I’m sure.”
Then it rose higher in pitch, inquisitive.
“I’m not sure what we can do, Todd,” Katherine said. “But, you’re right, we do have a bit of unfinished business with the nuns, I’m afraid.”