Chapter Ten
They took dinner at the Hoppy Hare and agreed to rest prior to their sojourn out to the priory at the strike of twelve, each taking to their separate rooms until such a time as the clock struck eleven.
Mr. Cagney had offered to wake up with them and drive them down to the ruined priory, provided they find their own way back, but Rhys had declined, and thank God for that.
He’d thought he’d save a coin or two by sharing the room with Mr. Cagney, but he was sorely mistaken.
Once the man had fallen asleep, waking him would have been downright impossible.
He snored so loudly that Rhys feared the innkeeper would demand additional pay come morning. After all, their bodies were only taking one room, but the noise was occupying all of them.
When finally he had been driven from the ruckus back down to the dining hall to beg for a third room, he’d been told smugly that none were to be had. He could either sleep with the lion’s roar or make a cot out in the stables.
So, Rhys just stayed awake and regretted having packed the books he’d bought into the coach already.
Actually, maybe he could sleep in there.
It was a thought.
“Rhys Caradoc, you are early,” came Seph’s voice, somewhere into his third pint. “And not dressed at all for the cold.”
He turned, giving her a wobbly, little smile as he took in her cloaked dress; prim, little gloves; and fur-lined collar. Plum and navy today, he noted. Always two colors.
“Why do you call me by my full name all the time?” he asked, rather than acknowledging her observations. “Like I’m Tom bloody Thumb?”
She hesitated, a flicker of self-conscious amusement flashing over her face. “‘Tom Thumb’? Surely you mean Rumpelstiltskin?”
“Never met him,” Rhys told her, motioning to the barman for another pint. “Sit down. We’ve still a little time.”
“Surely, some people at King Arthur’s court called him simply ‘Tom.’ ‘Sir Tom’? ‘Mr. Thumb.’”
Rhys laughed, sliding the bubbling cider over to her, still warm from the cauldron. “He was a knight, wasn’t he? I always forget that part.”
“Because it is ridiculous,” Seph agreed. “Do you really not know Rumpelstiltskin? Haven’t you read the Grimm anthology? It was all anyone could talk about for an entire year. Maybe two.”
“Sounds foreign,” he observed, sipping his own cider and watching her through the steam. “But you can lend me your copy.”
“I could,” she agreed, taking up her own glass. “But will I?”
“Oh, I think so,” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to peek at what you bought at the bookstore, by the by.”
“I peeked at yours,” she told him, raising those tawny brows. “Southern Mycelia of Britain, Illustrated Royal Mistresses,” she listed off, counting off her gloved fingers, “and Scota, African Queen of the Scots, Mother of Gauls. None of which I’d have pegged as interesting to you.”
“Not even Scota?” he said, affronted. “A pharaoh’s daughter, an exiled prince, a swarthy Scottish motherhead?”
She frowned. “All right,” she said. “Maybe Scota.”
“They’re gifts,” he told her, leaning back to tip the cinnamon-dusted dregs of his cider into his mouth.
“Errol keeps confusing Artist’s Conks for Wild Beef and he’s going to get himself killed if I’m not there to check the mushroom logs with him someday.
Monica wanted some inspiration beyond queens and duchesses, and I made a joke about Nell Gwyn that seemed to pique her more than pester her.
And the last one is for Malcolm. He never remembers to be Scottish enough, on account of his complexion. ”
She blinked a few times. “Oh.”
He grinned at her.
“‘Wild Beef’?” she said, still blinking.
“Aye, I learned to forage before I learned to read,” Rhys told her. “And that particular mushroom is a gem. You can fry it up like the beefsteak it’s named for and it even bleeds a little. Delicious. Don’t tell me your people don’t find food from the soil as they travel.”
“I’m certain they do,” she said. “But you have to remember, until recently, we’ve been stranded in Brighton since I was fourteen.
If there was to come a time for lessons on gathering things that wouldn’t poison the whole caravan, I think it likely would have happened during those missed trips to the Continent. ”
“I can teach you,” he said, shrugging. “Saves on trips to the market. And there’re all sorts of edible shelled things along the beach come winter too.”
She wrinkled her nose, her lips pursing together.
“You cook them first, Seph,” he assured her. “Another pint?”
She looked at his empty glass and frowned. “How many have you had?”
“This is my first,” he lied, immediately giggling at her flat reaction. “It’ll keep me warm on the walk.”
“A coat would keep you warm,” she said. “You ought to go change so you don’t lose all your toes while we’re out there.”
“Fine, fine,” he told her with a sigh, pushing back from the bar. “I’ve a scarf in the room.”
“‘A scarf’?! That isn’t enough.”
“It’s made of fluffy rabbit,” he told her, his tone somber. “Angor…Angelic? How many did I have?”
She kicked the back of his knee, making him scuttle in amusement and reappear as quickly as he could manage, bundled to the best of his ability.
“Don’t fret,” he told her as soon as she’d opened her mouth. “I’ve always run hot, anyhow.”
“Did you hear that awful snoring upstairs?” she asked, dropping off her stool and tightening her cloak around her shoulders. “It was rattling the doorknob to my room from across the hall.”
“I didn’t notice it,” he told her, watching her lift her hood up over her hair. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she agreed, taking a bracing, little breath. “God help me.”
*
The fog had thickened in the absence of the sun, coating the walkways and grassy curbs with a murky wading pool of white smoke.
Rhys imagined that if one were viewing the city from above, the fog likely encompassed all of it, but for the highest spires.
It was an odd thought, he acknowledged, swinging the lantern a little to watch the reflection of the firelight inside dance in the walls of oxygen around him. It was strange to realize that one’s own self was in the midst of a cloud.
“I wish we could see the stars,” Seph muttered. “Or the moon, at the very least. Are you certain this is the right direction?”
“I’m certain,” he told her. “I learned my north from my south before I learned my right from my left.”
She did not respond, but he imagined she was skeptical.
It was true, however.
Rhys had not known until coming to Starling’s Rest that there were directions other than the ones on a compass. He had not realized for another year that everyone did not inherently know which way was north.
And it still baffled him that people thought he was lying when he insisted he always did, even blindfolded and dizzy in a dark pit. Privately, he had always thought that the only reason others could not sense direction was only because they did not think they should be able to.
If he hadn’t learned before someone had told him about right and left, he might have agreed with them.
So, thank goodness for rough beginnings, as far as Rhys was concerned.
“Fire,” he told her, holding the lantern up in the direction of the dim, flickering light. “A brazier or two, I think.”
“Maybe a campfire?” she agreed, squinting into the night. “Is that the priory?”
He nodded. “Stay close.”
“Oh, I was about to dart off into the night,” she snapped. “Thank goodness you’ve told me to do otherwise.”
He grinned to himself, feeling the mist separate around his knuckles as he moved their lantern forward. The mist settled on their shoulders, in their hair, on their eyelashes. It changed from floating, ethereal white to beaded crystal if one had the audacity to engage it.
He liked that.
The cold and moisture of the encompassing air had batted away his tipple without stealing the warmth the cider still provided inside his chest and belly. And now, mercifully, there was a fire ahead.
They drew closer, stepping over toppled stones from an eon ago, picking over the piles of dead leaves that had amassed between the path stones, fallen from the trees above in a rainbow of gem-like colors that all looked gray and black here in the deep night.
Once they had passed the low, stone gate, he started to see the shapes of people.
People who were not huddled together against the cold, but instead spread out like sentries around a large bonfire lit in what had once been the sanctuary of this place.
Against the old, stone walls, smaller, ember-thick fires glowed in the old, iron braziers.
They had both been right, he realized.
He glanced down at Seph to see if she had realized it too, only to find her face open and awestruck the closer they got. The wind pulled her hood away from her face, sending all the loose golden strands of her hair up in a wild flail about her cheeks.
She did not move to put it back in place.
There was a table next to the bonfire, arranged with food and drink, all of it glowing eerily in the queasy flux of the firelight and fog.
Some of their fellow guests were holding glasses or nibbling at the fare, but none of them spoke as Rhys and Seph joined their company, sparing only quiet, sidelong glances and polite movement to allow them to approach the table.
“Good evening,” Seph said to a plump woman wrapped in fur that looked to be purple. “I’m Persephone Boswell.”
Rhys wondered what sort of creature was covered in purple fur.
He hoped it was a bear.
“I am Madame Ivanova,” the woman said, pursing her lips and offering her fingers. “Charmed.”
Rhys pricked up at that, stepping closer as Seph gave an awkward shake of just the woman’s index and middle fingers in what, at any other time, would have been utterly deserving of comedic commentary.
“The medium?” he asked, accepting the swivel of her offered fingers and kissing them, as was clearly expected. “I’ve seen you perform!”
“‘Perform’ is such an ugly word,” the lady replied with a sniff. “Where did you encounter me, young man?”
“London,” he replied, squinting at her. “Many years ago.”
She certainly had gotten older. Had she always had that bizarre accent?
“Certainly not that many,” Madame Ivanova responded with a flutter of her lashes and a lift of her chin. “I am still only just entering my prime. And I often visit Londres.”
Seph watched this exchange impatiently. “Do you know why we’re here?” she cut in, her voice flat and sharp. “Do you know who invited us?”
“Mais non,” the woman replied with a heavy sigh. “We are all waiting.”
Rhys reached for his waistcoat, pulling out the dented brass timepiece he wore when he did not have the silver one. “We still have four minutes,” he told the ladies. “Until midnight.”
Madame Ivanova frowned, examining both of them a little closer. “You are also of the second sight?” she asked, as though she could not imagine they were. “You see the dead?”
“I try to avoid it,” Rhys replied jovially. “We are illusionists.”
“Ah,” she said with a little frown and recoil. “I see.”
Seph rolled her eyes and stomped off toward the table, leaving Rhys alone while she went about sloshing and slamming drinks into place.
He grinned at the lady. “I’ve seen a ghost, though.”
“Have you?” she answered, looking a little mollified. “Many people say so. I do not see ghosts. I only speak to them.”
“I saw one,” he said again, firmly. “Foot of my bed when I was twelve. It was my uncle. But it also wasn’t.”
She tilted her head to the side, toying with the long strands of amethyst fur at her collar. “Indeed?”
He nodded. “I’ve seen other things too. Fae things. Do you talk to them alongside your ghosts? The fair folk, I mean.”
She gave him a tight, little smile. “I try to avoid it.”
“Wise,” he said, nodding and turning to accept the beverage thrust at him by an irritated Seph. “Thank you, cariad.”
This time, neither of them commented upon or attempted to rectify the slip of his tongue. There was no time.
The braziers by the old stone wall flared and their attention was taken by a newcomer.
A man in a mask made of stars.
Their host had arrived.