Carola Dunn (7 page)

 She scarcely noticed. After curtsying as ordered, she stood rooted to the ground, unable to summon up the energy to think what she ought to do next. The only thing she actually wanted to do was sleep.

 The youngest of the young ladies suddenly dashed to the window. “Reggie is leaving already, Mama!” she cried. “He must have ordered his carriage brought round before he told us.”

 At a gallop, the four black horses pulled the elegant royal-blue carriage past the window, and Martha’s betrothed was gone.

 Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing?

 But the duchess patted the place at her side on the sofa. “Martha, my dear, do come and sit down,” she said, kind though still flustered. “I must confess, this has come as quite a sh...surprise. I assume the duke—Reginald—acquainted you with his intentions long since, but it is quite new to me.”

 “He told me yesterday, your Grace.”

 “Told? Oh dear, not asked? How very like Reggie, to be sure. But of course you would have accepted had he troubled to request your hand.”

 “Oh yes, your Grace,” Martha said fervently.

 “I suppose there is nothing to be done. Once Reggie has made up his mind, nothing will shake him, and it is excessively uncomfortable to cross him. He grows more and more like his father, I fear.”

 Martha could think of no polite answer to that, so she held her tongue.

 “Well, well, it will take us all some time to grow accustomed to the idea. Perhaps you would like to go home and acquaint your family with your good fortune?”

 “Oh yes, please, your Grace.”

 “Stay a few days, my dear, while we...while we settle matters,” said the duchess vaguely. “I must decide which rooms you are to have—I daresay Reggie will not wish you to stay at the mill until you are married. Oh dear, I simply cannot think straight!”

 “Do not stay away too long, Martha,” said Lady Elizabeth. “Remember Reggie told you to make my pelisses and spencers before he returns to take me to London.”

 “Yes, my lady.”

 “Oh dear, this is all most irregular, not to say improper,” the duchess sighed. She patted Martha’s hand. “Not your fault, my dear. What can Reggie have been thinking of? I must talk to Edward.”

 Recalling the fateful riddle Lord Tarnholm had set her, Martha ventured to ask the duchess, “If you please, ma’am, has Lord Tarnholm any other name?”

 “His Christian names are Edward James Frederick,” her Grace said. “However, when you are Reggie’s wife, it will be proper for you to call him Tarnholm, or Cousin.”

 “Those are all the names he has?”

 The duchess shuddered. “I cannot think what you mean,” she said with uneasy evasiveness. “I daresay his nurse may have called him Ned as a child.”

 Martha did not dare press her.

 No one thought to call out a carriage for the future duchess, nor did it cross her mind to ask for one, so she trudged wearily back across the park to the mill. As she walked, the crisp air revived her mind if not her body, and she tried to recollect the names of all the men and boys she knew.

 Most had ordinary names, like Edward, James, Frederick; like Pa, Thomas, and her brothers, Peter, Michael, Harry, and John; like Albert the footman and Will the cobbler. Will’s dad was Obadiah; Tad at the inn was Thaddeus; and Mr. Stewart, the vicar, was Swithin, all odd to be sure, but not quite odd enough to be faerie names.

 Then Martha recalled a play she had read to old Mrs. Stewart. The faeries in that had been called Cobweb and Mustardseed and Moth. Had William Shakespeare made them up, or did he really know? If Edward’s name was something like that, she would never guess in a hundred years.

 Reaching home, she fell into bed. Not rousing even when her sisters joined her, she slept the clock around and half way round again.

* * * *

 When she awoke at last, Martha knew what she must do. One person was bound to know the answer: Edward’s mother.

 Lady Tarnholm was a nixie, Edward had said, a water sprite who could undoubtedly turn Martha into a frog, a toad, or a newt if she so chose. Yet a faerie given to turning people into frogs was not likely to bring up her son to be kind and gentle and chivalrous.

 That day, Martha could not get away from her family. She swore them to secrecy and told them, all but the littlest ones, everything that had happened at the great house, except her promise to Lord Tarnholm. They were incredulous, excited, doubtful.

 Mam frowned and said forebodingly, “I don’t know as I wants my daughter being a duchess up at the great house. They’re not our sorts of folks. You won’t know how to go on among ‘em, our Martha.”

 “I’ll learn, Mam.”

 “Then you’ll be getting so high and mighty you won’t want to speak to the likes o’ your family.”

 “I won’t, Mam, I promise.”

 “How’re we to know they’ll treat you right? His Grace ain’t done too well so far.”

 “It’ll be different once we’re wed,” Martha said hopefully, though not without a tiny twinge of doubt, quickly suppressed. “Just wait and see.”

 “O’ course it will,” roared Pa. He was ecstatic, his round, red face beaming so wide it was like to split in two. “My girl a duchess! Don’t that beat all?”

 “Ye’re a fool, Thomas Miller,” Mam snorted. “Never could see past the end o’ your nose.”

 Pa paid her no mind. “What the fellows’ll say when I tell ‘em our Martha’s to be her Grace! I’m off to the Pig.”

 “That you’re not!” said Mam sharply. “Not but what they’d only think ‘twas more o’ your braggery, but look where your tongue nearly got us—out on the street if we was lucky, or mebbe in gaol.”

 Pa sobered. “Oh, ar,” he said with a sheepish look.

 “‘Tis thanks to Lord Tarnholm we’re not left wi’out a roof over our heads, him and our Martha. And you swore to her you’d not tell a soul.”

 “Eh, then, your mam’s right, I did that, our Martha. I just forgot a bit, but your pa don’t break his promises. I won’t breathe a word till the banns be read.”

 “Course you won’t, Pa.” Martha kissed him and Mam, then spent the rest of the day helping with all the chores left undone because of her absence.

 As she worked, the question nagged at her brain: What was Lord Tarnholm’s faerie name?

 And what would the duke do if Lady Tarnholm refused to tell Martha, and she failed to guess, and she had to give up his son and heir to his cousin?

Chapter VII

 On the third day, early in the morning, Martha set out for Lady Tarnholm’s lake.

 She knew roughly where to find it, though no one ever went there. It was tucked away in an isolated corner of the Tarnholm Manor park, surrounded by overgrown woods full of brambles and bracken.

 Though the sun shone in a cloudless pale blue sky, frosted leaves crunched underfoot as she made her way beneath the bare birches. She came to the end of the trees. Pushing between green laurels and leafless hazel bushes hung with swelling catkins, she came out on the bank of the lake. Only a bed of withered reeds separated her from the silent, enigmatic waters where dwelt the nixie.

 “Lady Tarnholm?” she called uncertainly, feeling foolish. “My lady? Are you there?”

 A plop startled her. A growing circle of ripples showed where a fish had jumped or a small water beast had dived. Martha hoped she would not have to follow it into the depths to speak to the baroness.

 At the far end of the lake, mallards were scavenging head down in the shallows while a moorhen bobbed along nearby. Watching them, Martha was taken by surprise when a voice quite close to her said, “Oh, it’s you, Martha dear.”

 “M-my lady,” she stammered, curtsying as she stared, her fears banished by fascination.

 The head emerging from the water looked much too young to be Lord Tarnholm’s mother. The nixie’s sleek green-gold hair was bound with a fillet of gold set with aquamarines that sparkled in the sun, no more brilliant than her slanted green eyes. Her smooth white shoulders were bare, the extreme décolleté of her watered-silk gown displaying a superb necklace of aquamarines and pearls.

 “Oh dear, I do feel overdressed,” she said with a friendly smile. “But why did you call me Lady... Oops, I’ve got in a muddle over time again. Never mind all that nonsense, then, we shall start afresh. Do tell me, pray, what I can do for you, young lady?”

 “You are Lady Tarnholm?” Martha enquired doubtfully. “Edward’s...his lordship’s mama?”

 “I am indeed. You think it odd of me, I daresay, to reside in the lake when there is a perfectly good house. I find it quite comfortable, I assure you, though it is a bit cramped after the Norfolk Broads—that’s where I met James, Edward’s father. I could go back to the Broads now. The queen confined me to the estate only for James’s lifetime. But as you can imagine, I stay on because I prefer to be near Edward.”

 “Surely not Queen Charlotte? No, of course not. Does your ladyship mean Queen Titania?”

 “That’s what she calls herself,” said Lady Tarnholm tartly. “Plain Mab it was till she was elected queen, back around 1550. And to make sure everyone realizes how superior she is now, she gives her courtiers perfectly beastly names like Peasepudding and Beetle.”

 “Shakespeare had it nearly right! Queen Titania confined you to the estate?” Martha asked, enthralled, her vital errand half forgotten.

 “She doesn’t approve of marriage between faerie and mortal, dear. Though carrying-on is all right, and she does plenty of it, let me tell you. However, she made a law against proper church weddings. She didn’t hear about James and me until too late to stop us, but that made her madder than a hornet, so at my poor dear Edward’s christening...”

 The woodland lake faded before Martha’s eyes.

 She found herself drifting through french doors, open to a flower-filled garden, into an elegant drawing room. Facing her, Lady Tarnholm reclined on a green brocade chaise longue. She was now demurely clad in blue cloud muslin like the reflection of a summer sky in the surface of her lake, but otherwise she was unchanged.

 She winked at Martha.

 Behind her, holding her hand, stood a tall, well-built young man, with an attractive, amiable face, his hair tied back in a queue in the fashion of the last century. Martha recognized him as the late James, Baron Tarnholm.

 His sister, the Duchess of Diss, young and pretty but with a familiar tentative air, perched on the edge of a chair. On her lap she held a bonny baby swathed in a long lace christening gown and cap. Her husband, but for his powdered hair the very image of his son Reginald, the present duke, stood beside her, looking bored. Two or three older people Martha did not know sat in a group.

 Over this gathering presided a youthful Swithin Stewart, Vicar of Willow Cross, in his clerical bands. As Martha watched, he picked up a silver chalice of holy water and took a step towards where the baby lay gurgling placidly in his godmother’s arms.

 A small, lithe mannikin dressed all in Lincoln green with a red cap darted in through the french doors, crying out, “Daphne, ‘ware the queen! ‘Ware Mab!”

 Lady Tarnholm sprang to her feet and ran towards her child. Half way there she stopped, rooted to the Wilton carpet, as a swarm of slender sprites rushed into the room in a smoky swirl of gossamer draperies.

 Their leader, tall and beautiful, crowned with a garland of rare orchids, laughed a silvery laugh with a spiteful undertone. “Aha, the baby in the duchess’s arms. This is a task for you, Peppercorn.”

 One of her followers moved forward, her grin revealing pointed teeth. She began to recite an incantation, and as she spoke, Martha saw to her horror the baby’s little face melting and changing.

“‘I speak severely to my boy,

“‘I beat him when he sneezes;

“‘For he can thoroughly enjoy

“‘The pepper when he...’

Aa...aaa...atchooo.”

 Lady Tarnholm was vigorously shaking a tiny, lace-edged handkerchief at her, shouting “Off with her head! Off with her head!”

 Except for Martha, who was not really there, all the humans in the room started to sneeze helplessly, including the baby. His nose had turned into a pig’s snout, his tiny hands into pointed trotters.

 “Stickleback!” shouted the queen.

 Peppercorn retreated, still sneezing, but the rest of the faerie court were unaffected by Lady Tarnholm’s counter-spell. Another came forward, hands slowly waving like a fish’s fins. The baby’s eyes grew fishy and silvery scales covered his piggy ears.

 Perhaps Queen Mab had forgotten that her rebellious subject was a water sprite. Lady Tarnholm had considerable power over aquatic creatures, and as she fought back with words and gestures, her son’s features distorted again, changing back towards humanity.

 “Toadstool!” Mab shrieked.

 Again a water creature: In the battle, the baby’s skin shifted between pink and muddy greenish-brown, warts erupted and vanished, eyes protruded and subsided. But Toadstool had no real connection with toads. Lady Tarnholm was winning.

 “Foxglove!” The queen’s last follower.

 As rust-red fur sprouted on the baby’s head, the Reverend Stewart made a heroic effort to overcome his sneezes. Gabbling the words of the baptismal service, he sloshed the contents of the chalice over the infant and marked a cross on his forehead. The faeries fell silent.

 Though Edward James Frederick was undeniably human, he was no longer a bonny babe, but quite the plainest child Martha had ever seen. Tears rose to her eyes as she realized that the dreadful contortions his poor little body had suffered had marked him for life.

 Lord Tarnholm caught his wife as she slumped.

 Queen Mab laughed again, mocking. “Edward James Frederick? He needs a faerie name, too,” she observed.

 “Stumblebumpkin,” suggested Stickleback sycophantically.

 “Fumblepipkin,” cried Foxglove.

 “Tumblewiltshin,” croaked Toadstool.

 “Piglet.” Peppercorn blew her nose on a cobweb and cast a malevolent glance at Lady Tarnholm.

 “He shall be Rumplestiltskin,” the queen decreed. “I wish you joy of him, Daphne dear.”

 As she led her followers out, the drawing room faded. Martha found herself again on the bank of the lake.