Goblin Moon (5 page)

Which was all very well and good, Jed countered,
except for one small thing: he knew no trade but the one he’d been
born to—supposing you could dignify it by the name of trade—and he
was years too old, at the age of seventeen, to offer himself as a
‘prentice and learn anything new.

Six weeks later, Jed was still looking for work.
Finding it increasingly difficult to live on the wages the old man
earned at the bookshop, Jed and Caleb had long since been reduced
to a diet of gruel and hard-tack. This morning, Jed headed for
Antimony Lane, where a colony of dwarves had settled and opened up
shop, as glassblowers, potters, and purveyors of fine porcelain. He
had heard that one Master Ule, a prosperous dwarf who owned a
bottle factory, wanted a boy to sweep up and run errands—menial
work, better suited to a lad much younger, but by now Jedidiah was
willing to take any job that would enable him to pay his rent and
buy a little salt pork to go with his morning biscuit—any job that
did not involve a return to his former occupation and his old
disreputable way of life.

The Thornburg Jed knew best was unmistakably a
riverside town: a town of docks and bridges, ships and sailors; of
crooked streets with wet-sounding names, like Dank Street,
Tidewater Lane, and Fisherman’s Alley. But to reach Antimony Lane
on foot, Jed left that Thornburg and ventured into the
“respectable” part of town, where thatched roofs gave way to slate,
stone chimneys to copper chimney pots, and the architecture
revealed a tendency toward antique columns, decorative stonework,
and wrought-iron gates.

Jed followed Tidewater for about a mile, until it
became Church Street and climbed Cathedral Hill. Even at that early
hour, the traffic was dreadful. Jed felt something bump up against
his knees and glanced down to see a self-important gnome, in a tall
black hat adorned with an immense silver buckle, glaring up at
him.

“Beg your pardon,” said Jed, stepping to one
side—gnomes were terribly careful of their dignity, as Jed well
knew, and like to take serious offense when taller folk blundered
into them. But in doing so, he put himself directly in the path of
a stout dowager in a goat-drawn vinaigrette, who pulled up just in
time to avoid running him down.

Jed decided to escape the crowd by ducking down
Mousefoot Alley, but he soon lost himself in a bewildering maze of
narrow streets and tiny squares and courtyards, where the buildings
were all of stone and brick. By this, even though he had lost all
sense of direction, he knew that he was in the dwarf quarter; no
respectable dwarf consented to live inside wooden walls. Jed was
debating whether to stop a passerby and ask for directions, or
enter into a china shop and inquire; when a familiar voice called
out his name.

Glancing back over his shoulder, Jed spotted an open
carriage on the other side of the square, parked outside a
goldsmith’s establishment. There was no driver in evidence, only a
page-boy in a powdered wig and scarlet livery to hold the heads of
the horses. Jed did not know the boy, but he did know the
passengers. One of them, a dark-haired girl of about his own age,
in a gown of dull green poplin and a countrified bonnet tied with
primrose ribbons, nodded at him and gestured imperiously.

Jed heaved a sigh, thrust his hands into the pockets
of his old frieze coat, and walked across the square with dragging
feet and a dim hope that some distraction might present itself and
claim the young lady’s attention before he reached the
carriage.

The hope was a vain one, as Jedidiah might have
known. Sera Vorder’s fingers were doing a brisk, impatient dance on
the side of the carriage when Jed finally arrived.

“Fine morning for a drive,” he said, ducking his head
sheepishly, and studiously avoiding the gaze of Elsie, who looked
prettier and more fragile than ever, in a big leghorn hat and a
gown of white muslin figured with cabbage roses. “You ladies lost
your coachman? Why don’t I scout around and see if I can find
him?”

To his relief, Sera’s frown vanished and she burst
out laughing. “Don’t be nonsensical, Jed—and don’t you bow and
scrape to me! Our ‘coachman’ is Jarl Skogsrå, and he and Cousin
Clothilde are inside the shop. I expect they will return at any
moment, so don’t be difficult—just offer me a hand down, because I
have something particular to discuss with you and I won’t tolerate
interruptions.”

Jed heaved another sigh. Sera had such a decided way
of making a request, it was difficult to resist her. He opened the
door of the carriage and helped her to alight. But he could not
resist a sidelong glance at her companion. Catching Elsie looking
back at him, he blushed to the roots of his hair.

“I hope you know I don’t put her up to this, Miss
Elsie.”

Elsie smiled at him. To Jed’s mind, she was the
prettiest girl in Thornburg, with her fair, almost translucent
skin, and her soft golden curls, but there was always a tentative
quality to her beauty, a kind of delicate expectancy in her smile,
that brought a lump to Jed’s throat.

“I know you don’t, Jed,” said Elsie. “But when did
Sera require encouragement to stand by old friends?”

Sera took his arm and shook it impatiently. “Come
along, Jed, before Cousin Clothilde returns. I’m in no temper for
another lecture on the impropriety of being seen in low
company—either from her or from you. I’ve heard it all too many
times before.”

Even as she spoke, the shop door opened, and Mistress
Vorder stepped out into the street, accompanied by a limping,
foreign-looking dandy in high boots. From the grim look on
Clothilde Vorder’s face as she approached the carriage, it was
plain that Sera was in for a scolding and that Jed himself would
likely come in for more than his share of the blame. Wishing to
avoid a scene (and reckoning that Mistress Vorder, in her grotesque
curled wig and her outsized hoop, was a sight too unwieldy to
effectively pursue them), he turned tail and ran, dragging Sera
with him: around a corner, down a long alley, and into another open
square.

When he thought it was safe, he released her arm.
Pulling off his cap, he used his sleeve to wipe his forehead. “I
ain’t accustomed to all this running about in the heat of the day,”
he said, leaning up against a cool brick wall.

“Really, Jedidiah.” Sera righted her straw hat,
smoothed her skirts, and readjusted the drape of her flowered silk
shawl. “Cousin Clothilde will suspect the worst now. And what of
Jarl Skogsrå? They will imagine an elopement at the very least. I
hope you are prepared to do the honorable thing and make an honest
woman of me.”

Jedidiah glared at her. “When I do marry, she won’t
be a sharp-tongued piece like you, that I promise you. She’ll be
someone sweet and gentle, someone like . . .”

But now Sera was laughing at him again, which brought
such an irresistible alteration to her dark-browed face that Jed
could not help laughing along with her. And over her shoulder he
spotted a canted signpost whose weathered lettering read: Cairngorm
Court / Antimony Lane. If Sera had led him astray in one sense, she
had at least set him straight in another.

“Anyways,” he said, replacing his cap and adjusting
it with a pull and a tug, “your Cousin Clothilde don’t suppose
nothing of the sort, nor Jarl what-you-may-call-‘im, I’ll wager.
But you don’t tell me what this is all about, I might begin to
suspect sommat of the sort myself.”

Sera’s smile faded. She was an attractive girl with a
pink and white complexion and a head of thick dark curls like a
Gyptian, and Jed thought she might have been prettier still were it
not for the lowering brows and a habitual look of discontent, as
though she could never quite forget all she had lost through her
grandfather’s folly and her father’s wickedness.

“I called at the bookshop last week, and I heard—I
heard that Caleb Braun has abandoned his old occupation, to spend
his days minding shop and running errands for my grandfather. As
for Grandfather, he is so secretive about his activities, I can’t
help but wonder if the two of them have embarked on something
ill-considered . . . even dangerous. What does it all mean, do you
know?”

Jed shifted from one foot to the other, cleared his
throat, tugged at his cap, and tried to think of a way to save
himself. Not for the first time, he cursed himself for his promise
to Uncle Caleb.
“All for the young lady’s sake,
not to go aworrying her for naught,”
the old man had said,
swearing him to silence and extracting a particular promise not to
mention the coffin or the books to Sera. Without thinking the
matter over carefully (for that was before his granduncle announced
his decision to abandon the river) Jed had agreed.

“Ask Walther Burgen or Matthias Vogel—I’ve reason to
suppose they might know sommat about it,” Jed temporized.

Sera regarded him with patent disbelief. “I? Ask
Walther Burgen or Matthias Vogel? What an idea!”

Jed heaved a profound sigh and rolled his eyes
heavenward; he had not really expected any other reply. “You know
your own business best—or always say you do, anyways. I tell you
what I can do,” he said, wiping his sweating hands on his coat and
trying another tack. “I’Il keep a close eye on Uncle Caleb—and your
grandfather, too. I see or hear anything different from what I
already . . . that is . . . I see or hear anything I reckon you
ought to
know
about, I’ll send word.”

From the way Sera bit her lip and tapped her
slippered foot on the cobblestone street, it was ominously evident
that she suspected him of withholding information. She looked like
a young woman who was going to speak her mind in no uncertain
terms. Jed braced himself to weather the storm.

But an unexpected diversion rescued him: a little
gilded carriage, so small it might have been meant to carry a
child, which came down the street at a sedate, not to say dignified
pace, pulled by six fat beribboned sheep. The passenger was a
dainty blonde woman, as exquisitely formed as a fairy, in a gown of
pearl-grey satin and fluttering cobweb lace, and her coachman was a
rotund gnome, no more than three feet high, with exceptionally
large taloned feet and a fine pair of curving horns. Chained to the
seat beside him was a sad-faced miniature indigo ape with a jeweled
collar. As she passed by, the lady in the carriage nodded at Sera
and raised a tiny hand in greeting.

“Better than a circus,” said Jed, goggling
appreciatively.

“Don’t be impertinent,” replied Sera. “That is the
Duchess of Zar-Wildungen, if you please, and a most particular
friend of Cousin Clothilde’s. Her tastes are somewhat eccentric, I
grant you, but she is known for her wit and intelligence as much as
her fashionable affectations, and is equally well known, I should
tell you, as the patron of many prominent doctors and
philosophers.

“Which reminds me,” Sera added, with a sigh, “that I
really ought to go back to poor Elsie. She is to see Dr. Mirabolo
this afternoon—the Duchess’s current favorite—and I am determined
to support her during that ordeal.”

Jed drew his breath in sharply. “Has Miss Elsie been
ill again?”

“Oh, Jed, she is practically never well.” Sera’s
expression turned suddenly tragic, and she made a little convulsive
movement with one hand, clutching her shawl. “Her symptoms are so
many and so varied, you would almost suppose she was
shamming—though I am convinced she is
not
—and with every new physician who attends her,
poor Elsie develops a new complaint.”

Jed stuck his hands back into his pockets and made a
rude but expressive noise at the back of his throat. “Every new
quack, it sounds like to me.”

Sera nodded sadly. “Yes, I fear you are right. And I
have tried to convince Cousin Clothilde—however, you know how
stubborn she can be! She says . . . well, she says a good many
cruel and condescending things about my birth and my prospects
which do not seem to address the subject at all. I haven’t
convinced her yet, Jedidiah, but I assure you that I mean to keep
on trying until I do.”

Jed took his hands out of his pockets, folded his
arms, and scowled most horribly. “Seems to me your Cousin Clothilde
takes a considerable pleasure in quacking Miss Elsie. Seems to me
there must be some doctors in Thornburg who know what they’re
about.

“I believe there must be, but Cousin Clothilde will
have nothing to do with them,” Sera admitted. “She only seems to
care for stupid fads and promised miracles. And the Duchess of
Zar-Wildungen encourages her.

“I can only suppose that the Duchess means well—so
sweet and generous as she is,” Sera added, with another sigh. “But
from what I have heard of him, I can’t help thinking that this new
doctor of hers—this Dr. Mirabolo—is bound to be immeasurably worse
than any of the rest.”

Chapter
5

In which Elsie Vorder suffers in Mind and Body.

Dr. Mirabolo was a fashionable physician who had
gained a reputation treating fashionable women for fashionable
complaints, by soaking them in tubs of saltwater, applying leeches
to the soles of their feet, and by exposing them to the “healing
influences” of large chunks of magnetized iron. In order to receive
those treatments, it was necessary to seek the doctor at his
consulting rooms in a narrow building on Venary Lane, an
establishment he had modestly dubbed the Temple of the Healing
Arts. The “temple,” as Sera soon discovered, was really a
second-story suite, sandwiched in between a music school and a
fencing academy. It could only be reached by climbing a long flight
of steep stairs.

“If Dr. Mirabolo were in the habit of treating the
truly ill and not an assortment of hypochondriacs and hysterics—it
seems likely he would rent other rooms, no matter what the
expense,” Sera whispered in Elsie’s ear, as she supported her up
the stairs.