He never stopped looking at Tamsin, even though she wouldn’t look back at him. Edric Davies did, though, and the hatred and horror in his face matched Judge Jeffreys’s pride and maybe went it one better. Feelings like that don’t die; memories like Tamsin’s memory of Edric and her lost sister don’t die. That’s why you have ghosts.
Judge Jeffreys said, “For her I would have betrayed my post, my King and my God—indeed, I did so in my heart, with never a second thought. That makes Tamsin Willoughby mine.”
I know it looks stupid, writing it down like that. But you didn’t hear him, and I still do. He really would have done all that for her, you see, and done it believing he’d burn in hell forever for doing it. He hadn’t done it, and it wouldn’t have made her his anyway, but you see why he’d have figured it did. Or I saw it anyway, at the time. He was a maniac and a monster, but people don’t love like that anymore. Or maybe it’s only the maniacs and monsters who do. I don’t know.
Edric Davies didn’t say anything—he just moved in front of Tamsin, but she stepped past him and turned to face Mrs. Fallowfield. I remember everything she said, because they were the last words—but one—that I ever heard her speak.
“I am Tamsin Elspeth Catherine Maria Dubois Willoughby,” she said. “I knew you when I was small. I was forever wandering and losing myself in your elder bushes, and your friend”—she nodded toward that patchy pink gargoyle—“would always find me.”
Mrs. Fallowfield chuckled then, that coal-chute gargle I remembered from another world. “As your friend was aye rescuing him.” She took her hand off the thing and gestured toward me, telling it, “Run see your deliverer, little ’un.” The pink thing ignored her, thank God. I had enough troubles right then without alligator breath.
Tamsin said, “That one is my true and beloved sister. He”—and she smiled at Edric Davies in a way that squeezed my heart and roiled my stomach—“ he is my love, and was delivered to the mercy of the Wild Hunt through my most grievous fault. Now I’d have him free of their torment, that I may have eternity to do penance. Of your great kindness, do for me what you may.”
Word for word. I couldn’t ever forget. I couldn’t.
She started to say something else, but Judge Jeffreys’s voice drowned her the way his ghost-light had done. “Nay, they’re not yours to dispose of, those two! The Almighty rendered them both into my hands, and you dare not oppose His will!” As loudly as he spoke, he sounded practically serene—that’s the only word I can think of. He was playing his ace, and he knew she couldn’t match it, this old, old lady with her weird, nasty pet. Belief is really something.
Mrs. Fallowfield smiled at him. That was scary, because it was like the desert earth splitting into a deep dry canyon, or like seeing one of those fish that look like flat stones on the ocean bottom suddenly exploding out of the sand to gulp down a minnow and fall right back to being a stone. When she spoke, the Dorset was so thick in her voice I hardly understood a word. “Take good heed, zonny. We was here first.”
I don’t think Judge Jeffreys heard her much better than I did; or if he heard her right, he didn’t take it in. He just gaped at her; but a sort of whimper came from the Wild Huntsmen, waiting where she’d ordered them to stay. Even in the darkness, I could see Mrs. Fallowfield’s eyes: blacker than the Black Dog, black as deepest space. She said, “We was here when your Almighty woon’t but a heap of rocks and a pool of water. We was here when woon’t nothing but rocks and water. We was here when we was all there was.” She smiled at Judge Jeffreys again, and that time I had to look away. I heard her say, “And you’ll tell me who’s to bide with me and who’s to hand back? You’ll tell me?”
And Judge Jeffreys lost it, lost it for good, and I’ll tell you, I don’t blame him. There’s no way I’ll ever again hear the kind of contempt—the size of the contempt—that was in those words. He went straight over the edge, shrieking at her, “You dare not defy, dare not challenge… You’ll be as damned as they, hurled down with the rebel angels—hurled down, hurled down.” There was more, but that’s all I want to write.
He was plain gibbering when he came for Tamsin and Edric Davies that last time, stooping at them like a hawk from tree-top height. I can’t guess what was in his mind—he might have thought his rage would darken them, put them out, the way it had before, this time for good, before Mrs. Fallowfield could protect them. As much as I saw of him, as much as I feared him and hated him and tried to imagine him, finally I don’t have any idea who he was— just what he was. It’ll do.
Mrs. Fallowfield hardly moved, Judge Jeffreys was right over her before she raised her left hand slightly and made a sound like clearing her throat. And he… froze in the air. Or maybe he didn’t freeze; maybe the air condensed or something, thickening around him so he couldn’t move, ghost or no ghost. He stuck there, burning, like a firefly trapped in a spiderweb—although what he really reminded me of was the fruit that Sally cooks into lime-green Jell-O for big dinner desserts. It’s always lime—I don’t know why—and the bits of peaches and pears always look like tropical fish hanging motionless in the deep green sea. Except that the fish are silent, and Judge Jeffreys was still screaming his head off, though we couldn’t hear him anymore.
Mrs. Fallowfield said, “I’m wearied of ye. Dudn’t like ye then, wi’ your soldiers—dun’t like ye no better now. Off wi’ ye, and dun’t ye plague me and mine nivver no more. Hear.”
I thought she was letting him go with a warning—not even a speeding ticket—and I was getting ready to mind, because it wasn’t right, it wasn’t justice, no matter who she was. But she hadn’t been saying, “Hear,” the way I heard it—what she really said was, “Here.” The way you call your dog.
And the Wild Huntsmen came to her. Their monstrous beasts were actually trembling under them, actually having to be kicked and goaded toward Mrs. Fallowfield and that animal of hers, and even the most horrendous of the Huntsmen themselves were looking small and rained on. I still dream about them, like I said; but when I get awakened by the pounding of my heart, I can put myself back to sleep by remembering them then, as terrified of Mrs. Fallowfield as I was of them. And me not scared of her at all, but pissed because I thought she was going to let Judge Jeffreys off way too lightly. I can’t believe it. I was really pissed at her.
Mrs. Fallowfield looked up at Judge Jeffreys for a long time without saying anything. He’d stopped his yelling and was watching her, poised helpless just above her in the flypaper night, his own ghost-light flickering like a bad bulb. I couldn’t help wondering if he might be imagining what those people dragged up before him at the Bloody Assizes must have felt, waiting for him to sentence them… hoping, crying, praying—looking into that gentle, handsome face of his and hoping. Probably not. I don’t think he had much imagination that way.
“Off wi’ ye, then,” Mrs. Fallowfield said again. “Till mebbe zomeone cares to come for ye.”
She didn’t seem to make any gesture this time, and I didn’t hear her say anything else, but Judge Jeffreys was ready when the air turned him loose. He shot crazily backward like a toy balloon when you let go of the pinched end, growing so small so fast that it seemed as though we were racing in terror away from him. Maybe we were, in a way, Tamsin and Edric Davies and me. Not Mrs. Fallowfield.