Chapter 1 #2
“That’s not—” Charles started.
“Yes, please,” James cut in around another puff of the cigarette.
“Have some tea, and I’ll start.”
James hummed, pressing the thermos to his lips, and Mouse began, closing her eyes as she fell into the familiar rhythm of the words.
“Once, when the road between the mortal world and Faerie was still clear, the Faerie King would grant gifts to his most valued mortal servants. This was partially to reward them, but it was also to keep them within his power. From Faerie beasts and enchanted gowns to crowns made from Faerie silver and flowers that only grew under Faerie stars, the gifts of the Faerie King were known for their beauty and impossibility. The most coveted of his gifts was a Faerie-blessed house. Such a house would guarantee prosperity, good fortune, and protection from political enemies.”
She heard the map crinkle beneath their shoes as her listeners leaned closer.
“Thistlemarsh Hall was one such house. The Faerie King granted it to the Dewhurst family, a pack of his best warriors and most talented liars. For many years, the Faerie King and the Dewhursts lived peacefully, with the King visiting twice a year and the Dewhursts paying him their tithe of mortal servants and gold.”
“Hence the village’s name?” Dorothy chimed in. Mouse nodded.
“Still, the Dewhursts knew that the Faerie King was a fickle creature. They feared he would take back their Faerie-blessed house, filled with their Faerie treasure, so they came up with a plan to keep it from him forever.
“Like all Faeries, the King loved games, and his greatest love of all was creating impossible riddles.
Knowing this, the Dewhursts proposed a deal.
If they could solve his hardest riddle, they could keep Thistlemarsh without paying the tithe.
If not, they would return everything to him and remain under his control.
“A rather shocking deal, you might think. The odds seemed stacked against them. But you forget, although Faeries cannot lie, mortals can. They cheated the Faerie King, using a network of spies to discover the answer to the Faerie King’s riddle.
“In his eyes, they answered correctly, and he granted them their reward. By the time he discovered their betrayal, it was too late. The magic was done.
“Furious, the Faerie King laid a curse on Thistlemarsh.
He could not have it while the Dewhurst line continued, but the family would suffer for as long as they remained within the walls.
Then, when they were laid low and the last of the Dewhursts was defeated, he would reclaim his Faerie-blessed treasure.
“And the family did suffer. There were beheadings and murders, disgraces and scandals. Despite this, somehow, a Dewhurst has always remained at Thistlemarsh Hall.
“Yet, Faerie lives are long and Faerie Kings can wait.”
Mouse opened her eyes, blinking against the brightness of the carriage. James’s breath had steadied, although his fingers still shook. No one spoke.
The train slowed, approaching Tithe station in a flurry of steam.
“Enjoy your trip,” Mouse said as she collected her things. Dorothy plucked the map off the floor and folded it away.
“Thank you,” Charles said, attempting cheer. “That will be a useful addition to James’s story collection, even if it was a bit ominous. How can we repay you?”
Despite his light tone, his words were weighted.
“Consider it a gift, if you are willing to accept such a thing from the scandalous daughter of an Irish gardener,” she said with a smile.
She stepped out into the corridor before Charles’s confusion could fully transform into mortification. The sharp burst of James’s laughter punctuated the snap of the compartment door closing.
The sun came to meet Mouse as she hopped from the train step to the platform. Despite herself, energy sprang up while she was in midair, buzzing in her belly like a hive of bees. It was the first time she had been in the country when Lord Dewhurst was not there.
She waited, but the sky did not shatter overhead, and whistles did not ring out, warning the villagers that she was loose and alone.
Of course, her logical mind did not expect any of that, but the child within her who still visualized Thistlemarsh Hall as a remote dungeon could not reconcile reality and fantasy.
Absently, she rubbed the little silver key that hung around her neck.
She collected her trunk from where the porter deposited it at the end of the platform.
In the vaulted station, the overwhelming scent of coffee washed over Mouse. The man in the ticket booth stared at her as she walked by. Did he recognize her?
Mouse could not tell, but she glanced away. She was not ready to know what the villagers might think of her, the unwanted Dewhurst cousin, back from the Front. Would they pity her? Or would they think she was a greedy, ungrateful social climber, benefiting from the devastation of the war?
Mouse shook away her thoughts, commanding herself to focus on the present.
The station walls boasted an intricate mosaic. A string of figures walked across it, some Faerie, some human. Roses wrapped around their feet, the petals caressing them while the thorns bit into their clothes.
The Faeries’ painted forms were elevated, every feature exaggerated into something divine.
Mouse doubted that the famed first mortal king of England, Alfred, looked quite so handsome as he did on the station wall.
Next to him stood a tall, dark-haired Faerie with a billowing black cloak.
He was a figure familiar to every child in England: Oberon, the former king of the Faeries.
Further down the line, Queen Elizabeth Tudor exuded graceful beauty, her face framed by a striking white frill and her clothing contrasting that of the Faerie King at her side, adorned with her crown of gold. Her skin was as pale and flawless as his, a sun to his moon.
Oberon walked beside another two English monarchs before another Faerie took his place: a golden-haired Faerie woman with a gown as white as a dove.
This pattern of Faerie and mortal monarchs continued until it ended in a final tableau of a befuddled George III pushed behind a young George IV, both gazing after the Faerie man striding out in front of them.
That was where the mosaic ended, with the final Faerie King’s face cut in half at the arched doorway.
On the other side of the doorway, an image of Queen Victoria stood alone, looking back at the parade of mortal rulers and Faerie monarchs behind her.
Nothing had changed in the hundred years since the Faeries disappeared, winking out of their powerful stations in courts throughout Europe.
The English blamed the French Revolution and then Napoleon, while the French blamed the English prince regent, a slovenly spendthrift, but no one knew exactly what happened to the Faeries. Or if they would ever come back.
Although Mouse knew that the artwork was highly Victorian in its self-righteousness, it had fascinated her since she first arrived in Tithe as a child.
Back then she was fresh from the city smog, and the mosaic framed by the rolling hills beyond the station doors made her feel as if she’d just stepped into a story from Blakeney’s.
Outside the station, Mouse hiked her trunk up on her hip, frowning at the grim prospect of the long, muddy walk into town laid out before her.
Someone dressed in black coming up the path caught her eye.
The man waved at her, and his familiar broad shoulders and broader smile sent Mouse stumbling toward him, joy fizzling through her chest into her fingertips.
“John, I wasn’t expecting you to meet me here!” she cried, dropping the trunk and throwing her arms around his neck. He grunted, leaning sideways under her weight.
“God, Mouse. You weigh more than lead.”
“Nonsense,” she said, pulling back and chucking him under the chin. “Besides, you must not take the Lord’s name in vain. Didn’t you pay attention in Sunday school?”
John straightened, nose in the air, and adjusted his white dog collar.
“More than you, I’m sure,” he said, lifting her luggage with an authoritative glare as she tried to wrestle it from him. He won their match, and she looped her arm through his.
John was apple-cheeked, with a strong chin and bright blue eyes that shone whenever he spoke, whether it was about a sermon or an excellent book.
Instead of washing him out, the black of his suit made him more robust. Too tall for his own good, he had the endearing habit of ducking in sympathy whenever speaking.
Almost as soon as he arrived in Tithe to take over the vicarage when she was fifteen, Mouse felt a connection with him that defied all her other experiences with the people near Thistlemarsh Hall.
Bertie and Roger felt it, too, and soon the four of them made a little band of ramblers, braving the forest between John’s cottage and Thistlemarsh nearly every day of the week.
“I brought my bicycle, of course, but you will have to walk it back to the village since you saddled me with this millstone you call a trunk.”
“You’ll be lucky if I don’t ride off without you if you keep that up,” Mouse teased, snatching the bike from its resting place against a tumbledown wall.
Tithe was the kind of village depicted on postcards, with square patches of exuberant greens decorating the hills.
A fine church sat comfortably in the crook of the village, the centerpiece among a delectable array of stone houses.
Even a mile away from the bakery, the smell of fresh bread hung in the air, and the hedges chattered with birdsong.
The road forked at a squat Faerie temple, a foot high, its roof thick with pennies. Mouse fished one from her pocket and placed it on a bare tile. It glinted copper, a splash of sunlight against the muted colors of the hedgerow.
“Heathen,” John teased before laying down a penny of his own. He caught her raised eyebrow and shrugged. “The funds go to the school.”
Tithe’s market square streamed with white, yellow, and pink bunting, already dressed for Easter and the Spring Festival. Villagers rushed by, balancing their shopping as they wove between one another.
Although Mouse recognized most of the faces that passed them, there were a few strangers. And a glaring hole in the young male population, an entire lost generation.
All those they passed tipped their hats to John.
After looking at her for a few seconds with furrowed brows, they moved on to their errands.
Would anyone recognize her? she wondered.
She had left at age eighteen, and Mouse was rarely seen beyond the grounds of Thistlemarsh before the war.
Intent on enraging Lord Dewhurst as much as possible, she’d worn pinafores until they were ragged and then opted for hand-me-down trousers from Roger and Bertie.
Only when she was dressed in an itchy woolen nursing uniform every day could she admit that wearing soft, beautiful clothes was a luxury she might enjoy.
She did not spend her nursing salary on silk dresses, but she might shell out a few more coins for satin underwear or a nice coat.
Slowly, her style morphed into something more her own, rather than retaliation against Lord Dewhurst’s wishes.
Pale greens, dark reds, and silver bled slowly into her everyday clothes, accented with flower prints in honor of her father’s trade.
She was proud of her new image. The fact that she was not recognizable in passing proved that the daughter of an Irish gardener could appear respectable, despite what her uncle believed.
Or at least respectable when she wanted to be. A pair of Bertie’s trousers still lay at the bottom of her trunk for workdays.
The changes were not confined to her wardrobe.
Her hair had darkened from muddy blond to a deep brown, and her face had filled out and sharpened to a true heart.
She still had her mother’s famous “Dewhurst eyes,” chestnut brown and threaded with traces of green and gold, but the rest of her features had muddled into something barely traceable to either of her parents’ families.
She saw Mrs. Colt, the baker’s wife, ordering her five daughters around their stall.
Mrs. Colt had three sons as well, but they were all chewed up by the war.
Seeing the woman, Mouse could not help but think of her brother.
He seemed lucky in comparison, she supposed.
After all, Roger could come back, unlike Mrs. Colt’s sons.
But he would never be the same. He could not even remember Mouse most days, let alone the village or Thistlemarsh.
She could make out the beginnings of Thistlemarsh Wood and slivers of the Hall beyond. John pressed into her shoulder as they walked toward it.
“Are you ready?”
“As ready as I can be, I suppose.”