Torsade Literary Space Story: Fellyans (part eleven)
Fellyans
(part eleven)
“You must learn to better plan for what’s to be predicted, Mr. Dwale. You are keeping him under a spell? Otherwise, I can’t guess why you’d let a known border-jumper wander the premises.”
“Well, you’re not the professional,” said Coral. “Mr. Dwale and I can’t bump the charges up, if the prisoner has no chance to make a run for it.”
“Ah! Very good. Very very good.” The elf bit the end of his quill, stifling not all of his giggles, and took some minutes to jot on his questionnaire.
“I’ve only come to get my pay. Then I’m off.”
Bede gave a convincing start. “It will have to be in coin, out of that cachepot with the broken dragon’s-wing handle. What did we agree on?”
He moved to the shelf; the chair said sadly, “Goodbye.” His mother’s voice said: “How many times have I mentioned these things are delicate?”
He rummaged, clinking, and Coral said finally, “Four hundred.”
“My!” said the elf. “By the week? The Queen’s Green Gaiters go for less.”
“I’m advancing a certain amount. Coral has one or two purchases to make.” Bede pressed the money into her hands
Alma shot in. “A man is at the gate, wanting to know…”
“Is it Farmer Langham?” Bede asked. “Did he give you that name?”
“Me? Never a word.”
“Did you happen to notice him exchange a greeting with Jorinda, at all?”
Alma was from the capital, he understood. Her ways were different. Her way of scratching her head—in thought as it were—was to knuckle it with an extended finger, tilted towards the staircase.
Langham’s voice came from the kitchen. “I was cross, I can’t say other. Her face came over odd, and she said, I won’t need to take that from you much longer. And I’m afraid, ma’am.”
Jorinda, as Bede well pictured, had her back to Langham’s excuses, her sympathies wholly with Coral.
“I’m afraid,” Langham said louder, “she’s making home to her people. Is Dwale here? I’d like him knowing…”
“Wilf Langham!” the elf called. “Will you step into the parlor?”
Jorinda stepped into the parlor, and bustled Alma out of it. “Look after that pot. Have it off the fire if it’s bubbling. Bede, here’s our neighbor. He wants to know if his wife is here, and as he can clearly see, she is not.”
“Langham, we’ve taken a prisoner from the Fells, I’m afraid. A very distracting morning!”
“You were expecting your wife to be home at an earlier hour?” the elf said, narrow-eyed. “From her employment with Mr. Dwale? You approve of this, you don’t object? You have arrived with Mr. Dwale upon amicable terms of remuneration? For it is not unknown to the Queen’s intelligence, that one Coral Langham, aged thirty, born Coral Ballow, who hails from that salient of scrubland which thrusts into the Fells at the Queen’s midnorthern border, and which had once been permitted the courtesy of calling itself a kingdom, was eight years past entered into a contract of marriage, negotiated between her parents Tilmy and Tallow Ballow, and a Mr. Wilf Langham, owner of Lumpstone Farm, with the nine surrounding hills, in this portion of Her Majesty’s Realm called the Pocketlands, where presently Vincent, the former king of the former land of the Hutterers, is prisoner, in this house belonging to Mr. Bede Dwale, and under the keeping of his, Vincent’s, countrywoman. Your wife, sir!”
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This Elfin speech left its hearers parsing its several elements, though prepared to feel taken aback by the totting-up. Coral was a Hutterer. Her people were shunned, and she expected herself to be. Langham, off each summer with his wagonload of spring fleeces, had been getting places.
Getting places, and striking bargains.
“I’ve got a wife up at the house. Don’t have Jorinda call. Mrs. Langham’s not up to it.”
Bede and Jorinda had offered sober nods, astonished that Langham had news, had visited his neighbors specially to tell it; astonished most of all for what it was.
They had thought Mrs. Langham sickly.
“Well, of course I’ll call.”
“Best not. He’ll take it as interfering. When I go up, now and again, I’ll carry a basket, let her know it’s from you.”
He had carried, in the course of years, dozens of baskets—of yarns, honeys, and tonics; of ducks’ eggs, apples, and braided herbs to freshen a sickroom—which Langham accepted with a thawing demeanor. At length, Bede caught a glimpse of Coral, and was surprised by her youth.
“She seems blooming,” he reported to Jorinda.
“Did she speak?”
“No.”
Jorinda flung up her hands. “Leave them to each other, I guess.”
“Mr. Dwale,” said the elf, “may well have been cozened out of a sum…”
“There are no more Hutterers? Is that what you said?”
“I did not, madam. I made reference to a land the Hutterers are no longer allowed to occupy. I am told that among the Fells population are quite a few. Certainly, a good hundred were put across the border just this autumn, and the scouts inform us that multiple huts have been seen constructed.”
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Fellyans
Fellyans (part twelve)
(2021, Stephanie Foster)