“Sir, are ye sure ye’re feeling well enough—”
“I’m fine.” I turned back to the closet, fighting the drowsiness that washed around me like thick fog. I got out the clothes, donned underwear, a loose-sleeved silk shirt and tight black pants of heavy cavalry twill, eased my feet into the slippers. Out in the narrow not-quite-straight passage papered in woodland scenes and decorated with framed tintypes, I followed the sounds of clattering crockery, pushed through a swinging door into a low-ceilinged, tile-floored room with a big black coal range, stainless steel sinks where a teen-age girl soaped dishes before a window with a flower box just outside, a glass-paneled door, a display of copper pots on the wall, and a big scrubbed-looking wooden table where Gunvor stood, working over the goose.
“Why, it’s Mr. Bayard!” She blew a feather off her nose, looking flustered.
I leaned on the table for support, trying not to think about the buzzing in my head.
“Gunvor, did the doctor give you any medicine for me?”
“He did indeed, sir. The little drops for yer soup, and the white powders for yer other dishes—though since ye’ve taken no solid food as yet—”
“No more medicine, Gunvor.” Everything was blacking out around me. I planted my feet, tried to will away the dizziness.
“Mr. Bayard, yer not strong enough yet—ye shouldn’t be on yer feet!”
“Not… going back to bed. Need to… walk.” I got out. “Get me outside…”
I felt Gunvor’s arm under mine, heard her excited voice. I was vaguely aware of stumbling up steps, then the coolness of out-of-doors. I tried again, drew a couple of deep breaths, blinked away the fog.
“Better,” I said. “Just walk me…”
Gunvor kept a running string of clucks and suggestions that I lie down right away. I ignored her, kept walking. It was a nice garden, with brick walls curving and meandering among the vegetable plots, past a rose bed along the side, under fruit trees at the far end, by a tempting bench under a thick-boled oak, and back to the kitchen door.
“Let’s go around again.” I tried not to lean on Gunvor this time. I was stronger; I could feel faint stirrings of appetite. The sun was sinking fast, throwing long, cool evening shadows across the grass. After the third lap, I waited by the kitchen door while Gunvor fetched a pitcher from the brown wooden icebox and poured me a glass of cool cider.
“Now ye’ll sit and wait for yer dinner, Mr. Bayard,” Gunvor suggested anxiously.
“I’m all right now.” I patted the hand she had laid on my arm.
She watched me anxiously as I started off. I breathed deep and tried to sort out my thoughts. Someone had brought me here, drugged, arranged to keep me that way—for how long I didn’t know, but I could check that by examining Gunvor’s medicine supply. Someone had also been tinkering with my memory. The question of who—and why—needed answering.
I made an effort to cut through the fog, place an authentic recollection. It was June here, I judged, from the tender leaves and the budding roses. Where had I been in May, or last winter?…
Icy streets, tall buildings grim in the winter night, but inside, warmth, cheer, color, the laughing faces of friendly people and the smile of a beautiful redhead, named… named…
I couldn’t remember. The almost-recollection slipped away like a wisp of smoke in a sudden breeze. Someone had done a good job—using deep hypnotics, no doubt—of burying my recollections under a layer of false memories. Still, they hadn’t done as well as they thought. It had taken me only a few hours to throw off the nebulous impressions of a dubious past. Perhaps—
I turned, hurried back to the house. Gunvor was hesitating over a plate of fresh-baked pastries. She ducked something under her apron as I stepped into the room.
“Oh! Ye startled me, sir…”
I went across and removed a saltshaker half-filled with a coarse white powder from her hand, tossed it into the wastebasket.
“No more medicine, I skid, Gunvor,” I patted her reassuringly. “I know the doctor gave you instructions, but I don’t need it any more. But tell me, is there a…” I groped for a word. I didn’t want to alarm her by asking for a brain doctor, and she wouldn’t understand “psychiatrist.”
“A hypnotist?” I waited for signs of comprehension. “Someone who talks to troubled people, soothes them—”
“Ah, ye mean a mesmerist! But there’s none here in the village, alas… Only Mother Goodwill,” she added doubtfully.
“Mother Goodwill ?” I prompted.
“I’ve nothing against her, mind ye, sir—but there’s those that talk of witchcraft. And I was reading just the other day in the Paris Match that ye can develop serious neuroses by letting unqualified practitioners meddle with yer psyche.”
“You’re so right, Gunvor,” I agreed. “But it’s only a little matter of a faulty memory—”
“Are ye troubled with that too, sir?” Her face lit up. “I’m that forgetful meself, sometimes I think I should have something done—but then a regular mesmerist’s so dear, and as for these quacks—”
“What about Mother Goodwill? Does she live near here?”
“At the other end of the village, sir. But I wouldn’t recommend her—not for a cultured gentleman like yerself. Her cottage is very plain, and the old woman herself is something less than a credit to our village. Dowdy, she is, sir—no sense of style at all. And as for clothes—”
“I won’t be overly critical, Gunvor. Will you take me to her?”
“I’ll summon her here, sir, if ye’re determined—but there’s a licensed master mesmerist in Ealing, just an hour by coach—”
“Mother Goodwill will do, I think. How soon can you get her here?”
“I’ll send Ingalill—but if it’s all the same to ye, sir, let me have her up after dinner. I’ve just popped me goose in, and the pies are browning even now—”
“After dinner will be fine. I’ll take a few more turns around the garden and develop an appetite worthy of your cooking.”
After a second slab of blackberry pie buried in cream too thick to pour, a final mug of ground-at-the-table coffee, and a healthy snort of brandy with the flavor of a century in a dark cellar safely under my belt, I lit up a New Orleans cigar and watched as Hilda and Gunvor lit the oil lamps in the sitting room. There was a timid tap at the door, and Ingalill, the kitchen slavey, poked her face in.
“The old witch is here,” she piped. “Gunvor, she’s smoking a pipe. I think it’s got ground-up salamander innards in it—”
“She’ll hear ye, ye wretch,” Hilda said. “Tell her to wait until her betters summon her—”
Ingalill yelped and jumped aside, and a bent-backed ancient in a poke bonnet pushed in past her, one gnarled hand gripping a crooked stick on which she leaned. Bright black eyes darted about the room, lit on me. I stared back, taking in the warty nose, toothless gums, out-thrust chin, and wisp of white hair hanging beside one hollow cheek. I didn’t see a pipe, but as I watched she snorted a last wisp of smoke from her nostrils.
“Who has need of Mother Goodwill’s healing touch?” she quavered. “But, of course, it’d be ye, sir, who’s come such a strange, long way—and with a stranger, longer path still ahead…”
“Phooie, I told you it was the new gentleman,” Ingalill said. “What’s in the basket?” She reached to lift a corner of the red and white checked cloth covering the container, yelped as the stick cracked across her knuckles.
“Mind yer manners, dearie,” Mother Goodwill said sweetly. She shuffled to a chair, sank down, put the basket on the floor at her feet.
“Now, Mother Goodwill,” Gunvor said, sounding agitated. “The gentleman only wants a little help with—”
“He’d draw aside the veil of the past, the future to read more clearly,” the crone piped. “Ah, he did well to call on old Mother Gee. Now…” her tone became more brisk. “If ye’ll pour me a dram, Gunvor, to restore me strength a mite—and then ye’ll all have to clear out—except m’lord, the new gentleman, o’ course.” She grinned at me like a meat-eating bird.