Goblin Moon (33 page)

“He’ll think what I tell him to think, believe
anything I say,” insisted Caleb. “He’s just a boy, Gottfried, for
all he’s growed so big.”

As they spoke, the homunculus closed her eyes,
apparently went dormant again. Caleb left his stool and began to
move restlessly around the laboratory. His eyes chanced to fall on
the crudely made garments, the tiny shirt, breeches, and
full-skirted coat Jenk had stitched together for the first
homunculus. “When the time does come . . . she can’t wear these.
‘Twouldn’t be fitting nor proper.”

Jenk felt a surge of annoyance. “I do not see why
not. I wish you would not fidget so, Caleb. It makes me uneasy. Oh,
very well—“ Eager to get his henchman out of the shop and out of
his sight, if only for a quarter of an hour, he reached into a
pocket in his breeches and extracted one of the Duke’s gold coins.
“There is a shop at the foot of the hill. Purchase a doll, to
forestall any questions, and have it dressed. One or two gowns at
the very most, Caleb. There is no need to provide the little
creature with an entire wardrobe.”

The doll shop was a low white-washed building with
bay windows, a thatched roof, and a red door. According to a sign
nailed up over that door, Jenny Sattinflower was the
proprietor.

Caleb knew her by sight: a stout young dwarf with a
shrewd face and a sharp manner. He had encountered her moving
briskly through the streets of the town, greeting her neighbors
with a clipped word or a curt nod of her head. Something of an
anomaly she was: a solitary dwarf, living alone and owning nothing
of great value, an independent, bustling little person who cared
more for her work than the money it might bring her. Nor had she
any time for idle chatter. Six days a week she could be found in
her shop, morning to night, sitting at her low work table, sewing
gowns for dolls, or painting uniforms on toy soldiers, by the light
of a single oil lamp.

When Caleb walked into the shop, a wooden rattle
suspended from the door frame clattered to announce his entry. The
dwarf immediately put aside her bits and pieces of sewing and came
to meet him, lamp in hand.

“I give ye good day, Mistress Sattinflower, and I
come to buy a poppet—nigh about this size.” Caleb dipped his head
sheepishly and indicated a span of perhaps eight inches with his
hands.

“Hmmmmph!” replied the gruff little thing—and that
was all the greeting that he got from her. “Cloth or kidskin?
China, bisque, or porcelain? Composition, paper-paste, wood, or
wax? We’ve a good many dolls here, Mr. Braun, made of just about
any material you might care to name. You’ll have to be more
specific.”

Caleb removed his hat and scratched his head; he was
new to this business of buying dolls and had never imagined he
would be offered such a bewildering array of choices. “Wax’ll do, I
reckon.”

Holding the lamp before her, she led him to the back
of the shop, and a glassed-in cabinet filled with dainty wax
figures dressed in the latest fashions. “They are rather dear, I am
afraid,” said Jenny.

“It don’t matter. I can pay,” said Caleb. He had
already set his heart on a delicate little lady in a gown of
flowered silk. “I’ll take that one—the lass with the flaxen
curls.”

Without comment, the dwarf opened the glass case,
removed the doll, and placed her in Caleb’s unsteady hands. Then
she escorted him to the counter where she kept her cashbox.

“Three days,” said Jenny Sattinflower, after he paid
for the doll, described the kind of garments that he wanted for
her, and paid for those, too. “I’ve a number of other commissions
to perform first. She indicated the scraps of shimmering silk, the
bits of lace and ribbon on her workbench.

“Three days it is, then,” said Caleb, bobbing his
head. With the wax doll in his hands, he felt easier in his mind,
more settled in spirit. It no longer seemed such a long time to
wait.

Chapter
27

Containing scenes of Travel. Also, a “blessed”
event.

It was noon on the last day of the season when the
Duchess’s heavy berlin rumbled down Thorn Hill, followed by Jarl
Skogsrå’s light cabriolet and a humbler conveyance carrying baggage
and servants.

Out through the Great North Gate lurched the coach
and the two smaller carriages, with outriders escorting them before
and behind. Along the Prince’s highway they traveled, bowling along
at a great rate, farther into the green countryside than Sera and
Elsie had ever gone before.

The country just north of Thornburg was a pleasant,
settled region, sprinkled with neat little farms and picturesque
ancient villages. Late wildflowers, goldenrod, milkweed, and
fennel, bloomed in all the fields; sheep and cattle grazed in large
peaceful herds. The land was gently rolling, and mostly open
country, with an occasional short stretch of forest—mixed beech,
oak, and pine, or willow and alder where a stream ran through—so
that the journey progressed as a series of pleasant vistas viewed
from the top of one hill after another, with every now and then a
fleeting glimpse of the river Lunn shining in the distance.

The Duchess had entered the coach in a state of ill
humor, but the enthusiasm of the two girls was contagious. They
kept her tolerably well amused for most of the afternoon, with
their questions, their innocent observations, and their continued
exclamations of wonder and delight.

As they had started late, they could not expect to
reach the hotel at Mittleheim (where rooms had been reserved for
them) before nightfall; therefore, they stopped for an early supper
at a country inn. They rumbled into the innyard at about five
o’clock, with the Jarl’s cabriolet right behind them. Meanwhile the
carriage with the servants and the baggage, which had been
delegated to go on ahead to Mittleheim, continued down the broad
highway and was soon lost to view.

The Jarl was out of his carriage in an instant, and
on hand to assist the ladies as they emerged from the berlin. His
traveling companion—the Duchess’s other guest, Mr. Hermes
Budge—stood quietly at his elbow, courteous and gentleman-like.
Jarl Skogsrå claimed the honor of escorting the Duchess into the
inn. Much to his relief, she left Sebastian the ape behind in the
coach. But it was not Sebastian who had incurred the Jarl’s
displeasure today.

“This companion you have saddled me with, so solemn,
so virtuous. Why do we bring him? Is this your idea of a joke?” he
asked in a low voice.

The Duchess glanced up at him, through the cobwebby
veil of her enchanting bonnet. “I don’t deny that Mr. Budge is
decidedly lacking when it comes to
amusing
conversation, but I do not regard that—for he has an interesting
mind and speaks quite well on any
serious
topic. And no,” she added, with an impatient gesture, “I did not
invite him for the purpose of tormenting you! I bring him along as
a favor to the Duke, who will, I believe, find his company
stimulating.”

After they had eaten, the Duchess and the young
ladies decided on an after-supper stroll through the tiny village
surrounding the inn. There was a feeble attempt at a country fair
on the village green: a juggler, a handful of ramshackle booths
selling tawdry half-penny trinkets, and a man hawking gingerbread.
The girls were eager to look over the booths, and Mr. Budge offered
to accompany them, but the Duchess was troubled by the late
afternoon heat and had left her fan and her parasol back in the
coach. Jarl Skogsrå declared that he would be delighted to escort
her down the High Street and into a pleasant little wood bordering
the village.

“The Gracious Lady is rather pale and low in
spirits,” said the Jarl, as they entered the shade of the trees and
the Duchess lifted her veil. “Is it possible that this journey does
not agree with her?”

“I thrive on travel, “ said the Duchess. “No, it is
not the journey that afflicts me, but something I learned quite
recently, which has depressed my spirits. Something shocking . . .
incredible. I have been robbed, my dear Skogsrå, deprived of
something valuable and irreplaceable. And what is immeasurably
worse: I cannot escape the conclusion that it was almost certainly
stolen by somebody close to me.”

The Jarl was the picture of sympathetic curiosity.
“But who could have betrayed you in this infamous fashion? And what
exactly was it they took?”

“I do not know
who
or even
when,”
said the Duchess, sitting down on
the mossy trunk of a fallen oak and spreading out the skirt of her
grey satin polanaise. “You wonder how that might be? Well, I will
tell you. I had hidden this valuable object in my bedchamber, in
what I supposed a very good hiding place. Indeed, it had rested
there unmolested for more years than I care to count. And I had
grown complacent, I suppose, and had fallen out of the habit of
checking to make certain that I still kept it safe. It must have
been half a year since I last handled it—perhaps even longer—and I
only thought to examine it again, two days ago, when I meant to
pack it along with my other personal effects and carry it with me
to Zar-Wildungen.”

The Jarl took out his fan—it was nearly as pretty as
the one the Duchess had left in her coach. Made of chickenskin, it
was painted with a delicate design of funerary urns, cypress
wreaths, and drooping willow trees. He opened the fan and began to
wave it idly. “You say, then, that this valuable object may have
disappeared anytime in the last half a year—and therefore, might
have been carried away by any of the people who had access to your
private chambers during that time? But of course you are
distressed; how could you not be? It is a terrible thing, not
knowing whom you may trust.

“I must suppose,” the Jarl added, after another
moment of thought, “that I, also, am among those suspected.”

The Duchess favored him with an irritable glance. “If
you were, do you suppose that I would be confiding in you now?”

“I cannot be certain,” said Skogsrå, with a low bow.
He looked particularly dandified today. He wore a tiny,
dagger-shaped patch at the corner of one eye, and another, shaped
like a crescent moon, on the opposite cheek. “For the subtlety and
wit of the Gracious Lady are so often beyond my poor
comprehension.”

“Yes,” said the Duchess, still a bit snappishly, “you
are exceedingly single-minded. But it is just that narrowness of
vision that absolves you now. I cannot think you would have the
necessary knowledge to recognize the value of the object if you
stumbled on it, or to understand its potential uses.” She removed
her white net gloves and dropped them in her lap, then untied the
ribbons of her bonnet. “It is a magic parchment, inscribed with
secret signs and figures, created under extraordinary
circumstances. One would have to know something of its history to
realize that it was anything more than an ordinary charm of
protection.

“Now, if your friend Vodni had visited me during that
time . . . him I should surely suspect,” said the Duchess, removing
her hat and placing it carefully on the log beside her. “For
he
would know its value in an
instant.”

“Please, he is no friend of mine, this Vodni,” the
Jarl protested. “My compatriot, if you will, but never my
friend!”

“Of course,” said the Duchess, with her sweetest
smile. “It is natural, I suppose, that you should envy Vodni for
his youth and his energy if for nothing else.”

This was, undoubtedly, a provocative remark, when
spoken by a woman of nearly two centuries, to a forty-year-old
dandy. But the Jarl knew he was still a fine figure of a man, and
that women still sighed over his handsome face and his golden
lovelocks. He was willing to let the remark pass.

“I dislike Baron Vodni for his inflated self-opinion,
his insufferable—Ah, well, it is an old grudge, and has nothing to
do with the matter at hand,” said Skogsrå, snapping shut his
funereal little fan. “And so I am absolved by virtue of my
dullness, and Vodni by his absence during the time in question.
Whom does that leave?” The Jarl started counting the fingers of one
hand. “Lord Vizbeck—Mr. von Eichstatt—Dr. Mirabolo—the good Mr.
Budge—Lord Skelbrooke—“

“It need not have been a man,” the Duchess
interrupted sharply. “I have women friends as well, you know. What
makes you so certain that it was not one of them?”

The Jarl took her soft little hand and kissed it.
“The Gracious Lady is so very formidable a personality, it would
take extraordinary nerve to contemplate crossing her in such a
manner. Surely a woman would lack—“

“You are forgetting,” the Duchess said, with a frosty
glare, “that I, also, am a woman.”

“But no ordinary woman,” the Jarl replied
smoothly.

“Nevertheless,” said the Duchess, withdrawing her
hand, “you cannot flatter me by denigrating my own sex. It might
have been a woman, just as easily as a man. It might have been . .
. Ursula Bowker, for instance. I am sure that
she
has effrontery enough for anything!”

“That is true,” said the Jarl. “Well then, say that
it was a female. Why not as soon suspect Miss Sera Vorder—Miss
Seramarias
Vorder—the granddaughter of the
alchemist, who (we may safely assume) has the very knowledge I
lack, and would recognize your artifact on sight.”

“And would wish to avoid it, on that very account,”
said the Duchess, with a little gurgle of laughter. “Or have you
forgotten Miss Vorder’s well-known distaste for anything which
smacks of mysticism?”

“I have not forgotten,” replied Skogsrå. “I am merely
wondering if I actually believe in this . . . distaste, as you call
it. Perhaps it has only been a pose, all along. “

The Duchess stared at him in patent disbelief. “My
dear Jarl, what an imagination you do have! I had not thought you
capable of such a flight of fancy. My felicitations! But do you
actually mean to suggest that Sera Vorder could possibly be so—so
clever and so bold as to maintain this incredible pose for all of
these years, merely in order to spy on me and to rob me?”