The Little Country by Charles de Lint
“Did you get much of a look at the man?” Felix asked.
“Not really. It’s all sort of blurry, and then he was wearing those goggles and the scarf. . . .” She paused as though remembering something. “But there was something. He had this tattoo, right about here—” She lifted her wrist and pointed.
“What kind of a tattoo?” Felix asked.
Janey gave him an odd look. His tone had been sharp, almost cross. He’d raised himself up on one elbow and was staring at Clare with an intensity that was disturbing.
“A dove,” Clare said.
Felix sank back against the sofa, seeming to shrink like a deflating balloon.
“A dove,” he repeated slowly.
Clare nodded. “Well, it was a stylized kind of a thing. I thought of a dove when I saw it, but I only saw it for a moment. It was definitely a bird.”
“Do you have a pencil and some paper?” Felix asked Janey.
The Gaffer got up and fetched some. He started to hand them to Clare, but Felix shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Let me see them.”
He lay on his side when he had them and made a quick drawing that he held up to show to Clare.
“Did it look like that?” he asked.
Clare went white. “How did you . . . ?”
“I’ve seen that tattoo before.”
“You know the man who attacked Clare?” Janey asked.
Felix shook his head. “Lena Grant has a tattoo just like it on her own wrist.”
Janey’s eyes widened. If Lena and the man who had attacked Clare last night were connected . . .
“It’s the book,” she said.
The Gaffer picked up The Little Country, three pairs of eyes tracking the movement.
“Lena Grant was after the book,” Janey went on. “There was the burglary, then she tried to drug Felix while her friend went after Clare. . . .”
She closed her eyes, trying to follow it all through, but her train of thought ran up into a tangled knot that wouldn’t unravel.
“Why?” she said. “What could drugging Felix or trying to hurt Clare have to do with that book?”
“Better yet,” Felix said, “what is it about the book that’s so important?”
Janey nodded. “They can’t just want to publish it.”
“There’ll be more to it than that, my queen,” the Gaffer said. “There’s something odd about this book of Billy’s.”
Clare held up a hand. “Everybody wait a minute. You’ve lost me. I know that there are people trying to get hold of some of Dunthorn’s unpublished writings, but what is this book you’re all talking about? You don’t mean to tell me that there’s an unpublished novel . . . ?”
The Gaffer handed it over to her. Clare read the spine, gave Janey a questioning glance, then turned back and opened the book before anyone could speak. She read the title page, flipped to the copyright page. Janey could see her fingers trembling.
“An edition of one,” Clare said wonderingly.
She flipped a few pages, read a few lines, flipped a few more pages. As though she was back in her dream, Janey heard a faint trace of music that was abruptly cut off when Clare closed the book. She blinked to find Clare regarding her with an unfamiliar look in her eyes. It took Janey a few moments to realize that it was anger. A sad kind of anger, but anger all the same.
“You know how much I love Dunthorn’s work,” Clare said. Disappointment lay heavy in her voice. “I’m as mad for it as you are, Janey—maybe more. How could you keep this from me?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends,” Janey said. “But I only just found it and—and . . .”
“And what? You couldn’t trust me to keep the secret?” Clare shook her head. “I don’t understand any of this. Why is it a secret?”
“You can’t blame Janey, my robin,” the Gaffer said. “She was only keeping a promise that I made to Billy when he first gave me the book.”
“But. . .” Clare was holding the book close to her, one hand lying possessively over it, the fingers of the other running along the top of the binding. She looked at Felix.
“You knew?”
“Only since yesterday,” he replied. “I found it when I was waiting for Janey and Tom to come home from the session. Then they told me it was a secret—their secret. It wasn’t mine to tell.”
“It was my secret to keep,” the Gaffer said. “The book’s been hidden for years, but recently I had to store it in the attic and then Janey found it. . . .”
He looked as uncomfortable as Janey was feeling. She’d been so caught up in finding the book, and then there’d been all those curious events since she’d found it, that she’d never thought about how much Clare loved Billy’s writing. It hadn’t been her secret to share, but she felt awful for not asking her grandfather to let Clare in on it. They both knew that Clare would never break a trust.
“Everything’s been so mad lately,” Janey said. “I never thought to ask Gramps if you could see it.”
“I made a promise to Billy,” the Gaffer repeated.
“A promise?” Clare asked.
Janey glanced at her grandfather, who nodded.
“It’s in the letter there that I’m using for a bookmark,” she said. “Go ahead—read it.”
Clare took out the letter, leaving a finger to mark the place, and read Dunthorn’s brief note.
“This only makes things more mysterious,” she said when she’d read it.
Janey nodded. “That’s exactly what I felt when I read it.”
“Did Dunthorn really have any paranormal abilities?” Clare asked, looking over at the Gaffer.
The Gaffer blinked. “What do you mean?”
“ ‘That famous Mad Bill Dunthorn Gypsy prescience strikes again,’ ” she read from the letter. “That makes it sound as though he had foretold the future on more than one occasion, and foretold it correctly, I’d assume, or why bring it up at all?”
“Well, Billy had a way about him,” the Gaffer began.
Janey glanced at him. He was obviously feeling uneasy discussing this sort of thing. She shot him an encouraging look when he turned her way for a moment.
“What sort of a way?” Clare asked.
“Well, my flower, he seemed to know things, that’s all. Not the marvels he wrote about in his stories, but odd things all the same. Unlucky ships, good times coming, and bad. He didn’t talk about it much—for who’d listen to a young lad like he was, spouting off that sort of nonsense?—but he talked to me, and I listened.”
The Gaffer hesitated again.
“And?” Janey asked.
The Gaffer sighed. “And he was right more often than not.”
“And the book?” Clare asked. “What is it about the book that makes it so important?”
The Gaffer shook his head. “Billy never said, my flower. But things—odd things—seem to just happen whenever it’s not hidden away. I can’t rightly explain what I mean. It’s not so much that the book makes these things happen as that it gives them a push to get them started.”
“You mean it’s like a catalyst?” Clare asked.
“That’s the word.”
“But why? What could possibly be the purpose in that?”
“Does it need a purpose?” Felix asked. “Maybe it’s just enough to know that there’s something marvelous still in the world, that all the mystery hasn’t been drained out of it by those who like to take a thing apart to understand it, then stand back all surprised because it doesn’t work anymore.”
That made Janey think for a moment—both about what Felix had said and the fact that he’d said it. She’d always considered Felix to be a very practical, down-to-earth sort of a person—but then that’s how her grandfather described Dunthorn as well. She supposed a person could be practical and still have a fey streak.
That was what music was like, she’d always though
You didn’t try to understand it. You just appreciated it.
Music.
Magic.
The tape loop of her memories brought up that moment in her dream when the book lay open and the music first started to spill out of it. A music so similar to what she’d thought she’d heard when Clare had been flipping through its pages. . . .
“What kind of things happen?” Clare asked, bringing Janey’s concentration back to the conversation at hand.
The Gaffer shrugged. “Just. . . odd things, my gold. Sounds and noises where there shouldn’t be any. Movement caught from the corner of your eye when there’s nothing there. Everyone filled with a certain unexplained restlessness. The village getting a . . . haunted feeling to it. And then the dreams. . . .”
Janey thought she heard a catch in his voice as his words trailed off, but then she was remembering her own odd dreams of the previous night. When she looked about the room, everyone appeared thoughtful, and she wondered what kind of dreams they’d had. If theirs had been anything like her own. . . .
The Gaffer shifted in his chair and cleared his throat.
“But that’s neither here nor there,” he said.
Felix nodded. “We’ve got a more basic problem to deal with.”
“But where do we begin with it?” Janey asked.
“I think it’s time we called in the constables, my love,” the Gaffer said.
Janey nodded.
“And tell them what?” Clare asked.
“That you were attacked for one thing,” Janey said. “And the house was burgled.”
“And that we believe it’s all part of some conspiracy by a secret society that’s looking for a hidden talisman that just happens to be this old book?” Clare tapped The Little Country with a short fingernail. “They’d think we’d all gone bonkers.”
Janey leaned forward. “That’s it, isn’t it?” she said. “That dove tattoo—it must be the symbol of a secret society, like the Freemasons or something like that.”
“Could be,” Felix said. “Though it seems a little farfetched.”
Janey ignored him. “So how do we find out what society uses that symbol?”
“Would it even be possible to find out?” the Gaffer asked.
“What do you mean?” Janey asked.
“Well, if they’re known, my treasure, then they wouldn’t be very secret, would they?”
“There’s people that study that kind of thing,” Felix said. “I’ve got a friend in California who’s made a life’s study of the weird and the wonderful. The odder the better; the more secret, the more he wants to know about it.”
“We have someone like that right around here,” Clare said. “Peter Goninan. He’s forever putting the strangest books on order—all kinds of obscure historical and hermetic texts—and I don’t doubt that he does as much or more by private mail order.”
“I know him,” the Gaffer said. “He still lives on the family farm out by St. Levan. Billy and I went to school with him when we were all boys and he was an odd bird then.”
Janey shivered. “I’ve run into him along the coast path a few times,” she said. “He gives me the creeps.”
“I’ve never met him,” Clare said. “He usually makes his orders by phone, then has a neighbour fetch the books for him. At least I suppose she’s his neighbour—she’s a tall, gangly woman who always rides about on an old boy’s bike.”
“I’ve seen her about,” Janey said.
The Gaffer nodded. “Chalkie’s met her. Her name’s Helen something or other and I think she rents a cottage from Goninan.”
“Then she’s been doing it for a few years,” Clare said, “because Tommy knew her from when he worked at W. H. Smith’s—before he opened his own shop.”
“Do you really think Peter Goninan could help?” Janey asked.
She was reluctant about going out to Goninan’s place, but then she realized that just as Davie Rowe’s looks gave her one impression, Peter Goninan’s gave her another. He was tall and ungainly, skeletal thin and bald, with a way of looking at a person that a medieval peasant would have put down as the evil eye. He dressed in tattered clothing, usually black, so that he looked like some odd sort of crane hopping about the fields whenever she’d seen him.
But since looks weren’t everything, as Clare had so recently reminded her, he was probably the kindest of souls.
She smiled to herself. Right. And bloody Davie Rowe had never been to prison. . . .
“It’s worth a try,” Clare said.
“There’s this to think about if you go to talk to him,” Felix said. “If there is some secret society that uses a dove as their symbol, who’s to say he’s not one of their members?”
Clare grinned. “Well, we’ll just have to have ourselves a quick look at his wrist before we tell him anything, then won’t we?”
Felix smiled back. “Fair enough. So let’s go talk to him.”
He started to sit up, but immediately lay back down again, his face pale.
“Felix?” Janey began.
He shook his head, then grimaced at the movement.
“I can’t go,” he said. “Not unless you promise to stop every few feet along the way so that I can throw up. I’m fine when I lie down, but as soon as I sit up, or move at all . . .”
“Janey and I’ll go,” Clare said.
Janey nodded. She wasn’t enamoured with the idea, but Clare couldn’t go on her own.
“Will you stay with Felix, Gramps?” she asked.
“I don’t like it,” the Gaffer said.
“We’ll be fine,” Clare assured him.
“Fine,” the Gaffer replied in a voice that plainly said he thought they’d be anything but. “With madmen running about, attacking people with knives, and who knows what other mischief brewing? Who’s to say you won’t be attacked on the way? Come ‘pon that, who’s to say that when you get there, it won’t be as Felix said and you’ll find Goninan himself in the thick of it?”
“We’ll be very careful,” Clare said.
“Unless you want to drive Clare over and I’ll stay with Felix,” Janey said.
She could see her grandfather weighing the danger between the two. The house was in the village, but that hadn’t stopped the enemy before. Here, they knew where to find her. Down the coast, they might not be able to find her as quickly. . . .
“Go on, then,” he said. “But don’t be too long about it.”
Janey leaned down to give Felix a kiss.
“You’ll be careful?” he asked.
“Very,” she promised.
“Can I take this?” Clare asked, picking up the rough drawing of the dove that Felix had made.
Felix nodded.
Janey fetched her jacket and just got to the door where Clare was waiting for her when the phone rang.
“It’s for you, my gold,” the Gaffer said, holding it out towards her.
Janey sighed, and went back into the room to take the call.
5.
Michael Bett’s lack of sleep the previous night left him clearheaded and alert when morning finally came.
The deprivation made little difference to him. He hated sleep anyway, normally allowing himself only the bare minimum amount that his body required. To his mind, sleep bred complacency. It took you away from the edge where everything was clear-cut and precise; that edge where you could make an instantaneous decision and not have to second-guess the consequences. The mind automatically correlated all available data and spat it up so that you could concentrate on getting the job done, not worrying about whether or not you could pull it off or if it was the right thing to do.
On the edge, you just knew.
And that was something that Madden’s sheep
With a man like him, the sheep didn’t stand a chance.
Take Janey Little and whatever secret of Dunthorn’s it was that she and her grandfather were hiding from the world.
He’d been approaching the problem like a sheep would, soft-stepping around them, playing by the rules. Madden’s orders: Don’t make waves. But there were no rules—not on the edge—and standing there, with the world in sharp focus all around him, his mind honed as keen as the cutting edge of a razor, he knew exactly how to handle her now.
Madden was still important to him. Bett hadn’t finished with the Order and Madden remained his link to it. So he’d accommodate Madden’s wishes for the moment. He wouldn’t take the knife to either of the Littles. He wouldn’t even hurt their friends. There were other ways to cut their world off from under them.
Leaving his room, Bett went downstairs. He’d heard the owner of the B and B go out a few minutes ago, then watched him head off down the street from his window. With the place to himself, he sat down in the man’s sitting room and pulled the phone over onto the fat arm of his chair. It took a few minutes before the operator could make his overseas connection, but finally he could hear the phone ringing on the other end of the line in New York.
“Dennison Investigations,” a voice answered.
“Sam? Michael Bett here.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Bett?”
“I’m in Cornwall and things are winding up to a head. It’s time for you to work off the final part of our contract.”
“Let me get a pen. Okay, shoot.”
“First thing you do is contact a man named Ted Grimes.” He gave Dennison the particulars of an Upper West Side address and the phone number of Grimes’s office there. “Then you’re to pick up the woman and the three of you are going to take the first flight over here. I want you all in Penzance, ASAP.”
“The woman’s coming voluntarily?”