The Wizard in the Tree by Llyod Alexander

  "It must have been one such vagabond," replied Scrupnor. "There was a ladder against the wall, the window broken open. A heinous crime, sir, not to mention purloinment of valuables. I'm not ashamed to admit I was so sick at heart I could hardly swallow my breakfast; and lone and lorn as if I was an orphan."

  "A sad loss," the notary agreed, in a dry voice. "Yet not without its compensations, wouldn't you say, Squire? For you did come into the manor house, tenant farms; in fine, all Sorrel Holdings-rather, Scrupnor Holdings, as you call it now."

  Scrupnor reddened and for the instant it seemed he might have some hard words for the notary, who continued puffing on his pipe. However, he recovered himself and said:

  "Yes, Rowan, I did shoulder that burden, as he had always insisted I do. How many times did he beg me to take possession of the Holdings after he was gone, as his reward to a good and faithful steward? And how many times did I tell him the privilege of his association was reward enough for me? But no, he must have his own way and set it down in his will. I pleaded with him not to lay such a responsibility on me; but there was no one else, not an offspring, not kith nor kin did he have in all the world. So, for his sake, I mean to make the Holdings prosper, no matter what the toil and labor it may cost me. It's my duty, nothing less will answer."

  "Squire," said Mrs. Parsel, "you're one of nature's noblemen. It's a pleasure to hear you talk of duty, that's a word seldom spoken in these times. But have a care; you're too unselfish for your own good."

  "I know it," sighed Scrupnor. "I know it, but I can't help it. That's my nature. I've already offered a thousand gold sovereigns for the apprehension of that coldblooded murderer. Well, Mrs. Parsel, I say this to you and let Rowan here bear witness to it, I'll pledge more than that. Whoever puts the old squire's killer into my hands, in pure gratitude I'd give him the Holdings, every bit of them, and never grudge an acre."

  Mr. Parsel blinked at the magnitude of such an offer, and Mrs. Parsel shook her head in admiration: "There speaks a full heart, Squire. There's generosity, pure as gold."

  "No, ma'am," said Scrupnor, "only a devotion to justice. The Holdings? Mere worldly goods. They count not a snap, Mrs. P, compared with avenging the demise of my dearest friend and master."

  "You can't be serious, Squire," said Rowan. "The reward is ample as it stands. No need to let yourself be carried away by your grief."

  "Do you question my sincerity?" Scrupnor angrily retorted. "I'd give up the Holdings without a second thought, and give still more, if it could only resuscitate the dear departed and have him walk among us once again."

  "For shame, Mr. Rowan," said Mrs. Parsel. "Shame on yon for doubting Squire's word."

  "Ma'am, I don't doubt it for a moment," answered Rowan. "I simply point out that we say things in the grip of strong emotions that we should be wiser to forget about in later calm reflection."

  "That's not the way of it with Squire," declared Mrs. Parsel. "When he says a thing, he means it, permanent and for all times. When he says he'd give the Holdings as a reward-why, so he would, there's no question in my mind. You could set that down on paper, signed and sealed." She turned to Scrupnor. "Isn't that so, Squire?"

  "Eh?" said Scrupnor, a little uncomfortably. "Why, yes, naturally, so I would. But a man's word is his bond, there's no need for anything else.".

  Rowan shook his head. "In point of law, there should indeed be a formal document."

  "And Squire would put his name to it as quick as he could take pen in hand," Mrs. Parsel declared. "This very instant, if he had the occasion."

  "True, Mrs. Parsel absolutely," said Scrupnor, shifting in his chair. "And now, alas, I must be on my way. Business presses, you understand."

  "There, Mr. Rowan, there you hear him," Mrs. Parsel triumphantly cried. "You could draw up whatever document you choose, even as you sit here. You see, notary, how you've misjudged the size of Squire's heart! A greater spirit than any of us."

  Rowan shrugged. "Well, the matter is simple enough. I have my seal and stamp with me. I can draw up a formal statement easily enough-if the Squire's inclined to have me do it."

  "No cause for precipitative haste," said Scrupnor. "Moderation and measure in all things. I'll get around to it in due course."

  "Ah, Squire, do it now," urged Mrs. Parsel. "Allow me the joy of seeing you give the lie to any man who'd cast such a doubt on your nature."

  Scrupnor drew a heavy breath, then nodded briskly at Mrs. Parsel and at the notary, who had already taken a sheet of legal paper from his writing case. "Very well. It will be a pleasure. A further gesture of my esteem for the dear departed Yes, by all means, write it down. Get one with it, Rowan," he muttered through his teeth. "I've better things to do than waste time on lawyer's quibbling."

  CHAPTER 4

  Scrupnor had put the last flourish to his signature when Mallory brought in the tray. Mrs. Parsel was beaming, enraptured at this new evidence of the Squire's selflessness, but her expression instantly changed at sight of her kitchen maid and she rapped angrily on the table:

  "The cakes, girl! What have you done with them?"

  Mallory Hew to the kitchen and hurried back with the forgotten plate. Mrs. Parsel, meanwhile, had picked up the wine bottle to fill the squire's glass; but she halted in mid course:

  "Stupid wench! Where's your head this morning? You've not drawn the cork!"

  Mallory again sped to the kitchen, returned with the corkscrew, and tried as fast as she could to open the bottle. The harder she pulled and twisted, however, the tighter the cork wedged itself in the neck; until at last it suddenly came loose, the bottle slipped from her hands and shattered on the floor, splashing wine over Mrs. Parsel's slippers and the hem of her gown.

  "That girl will ruin us!" cried Mrs. Parsel, as Mallory scurried for the mop and dustpan. "She'll destroy us with her idiocy! Clean up the mess you've made this instant! Fetch another bottle!"

  Scrupnor, however, rose to his feet. "No, no thank you, Mrs. P. I should not have indulged myself in your hospitality so long to begin with."

  While Rowan put the document into his writing case, the squire strode to the kitchen doorway and ordered Bolt to bring around the horses. Mrs. Parsel smiled and curtsied after the departing Scrupnor, so deeply moved by this morning's business he could scarcely wait to put it behind him. No sooner were the visitors out of sight than Mrs. Parsel turned furiously to Mallory, hastily mopping up the puddle:

  "You've put us out the price of a bottle of wine, and who's to pay for it? If you had wages, I'd stop them this moment!"

  Mallory braced herself for another box on the ear, clenched her teeth, and fortified herself by adding a seven-year itch to the other afflictions she wished for her benefactress. But Mrs. Parsel had settled on a longer method of correction.

  "You'll launder my gown and clean my slippers, though you're spoiled them past wearing. And have it done by midday. You'll scrub that floor, too, and don't let me find speck nor spot. When you've finished that-"

  The more Mrs. Parsel added to the list of tasks, the more Mallory despaired, seeing herself trapped for hours in the cookshop. Arbican, she was sure, had already begun to worry about her ever coming back.

  "Don't stand there like a dumb ox," cried Mrs. Parsel. "You've already idled away the morning. Get to work straightaway. I'll have my eye on you."

  Meanwhile, Mr. Parsel, still holding his unfilled glass, had been wistfully looking at the wreckage of the wine bottle, sure his wife would never agree to open another merely for his personal refreshment now the squire had gone. To console himself for lost opportunity, Mr. Parsel ventured to nibble at the rejected cakes.

  "Look here," he said, taking a pair of yellow gloves from the table. "Squire's forgotten these."

  "Couldn't you have seen that before he went?" replied Mrs. Parsel, shifting her attention from Mallory to her husband. "You're as harebrained as the girl, I swear you are. Squire will be wanting those gloves."

  "He'll no doubt send for them once he remembers
where he left them," said Mr. Parsel. "He won't freeze in the meantime."

  Mrs. Parsel turned to Mallory. "You run to the Holdings. Give those gloves to Squire with our compliments and tell him as we're sorry for his inconvenience."

  "My dear," put in Mr. Parsel, "that's a dreadful way to go on foot. She'll be fairly worn out by the time she's back. I can saddle the horse and ride there-"

  "Horse?" exclaimed Mrs. Parsel. "And have the beast work up more appetite? Is that how you mean to waste your fortune? On oats for that lazy, spavined creature? He'll go to the boneyard as soon as the inn turns a profit. Horse, indeed! The girl has stronger legs and sounder wind."

  Mr. Parsel gave Mallory a rueful glance and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. Mrs. Parsel, as an afterthought, took the cakes out of her husband's reach. Wrapping the dainties in a napkin, she set them carefully in a wicker hamper and, from the pantry shelf, added a fresh-baked pork pie and a pot of strawberry jam.

  "You'll give Squire this, too," she told Mallory. "Poor man, he's so busy seeing to others' welfare, he scarcely has a moment to enjoy the better things in life. He'll appreciate a little thoughtfulness; and it should put him in mind to give us a cheaper price on vegetables."

  She thrust the hamper into Mallory's arms. "Be off, now, and quick. I want to see you back here within the hour."

  After a parting shove from her benefactress to set her on the way, Mallory hurried from the shop. Mrs. Parsel, she realized furiously, had given her an impossible task. "And she's done it on purpose, too," Mallory told herself. "There's no way in the world I can get to the Holdings and back in an hour, not even if I run every step. Oh, blast Scrupnor and his stupid gloves!"

  Nevertheless, she also realized Mrs. Parsel had unwittingly provided her with food of better quality and quantity than she herself could have scraped together from leftovers; and she had no intention of putting this windfall into the hands of Scrupnor. Arbican, she decided, needed nourishment far more urgently than the squire. What Mrs. Parsel would do to her, once she learned the tidbits had never reached their proper destination, Mallory could easily imagine. "I don't care," she told herself defiantly. "Arbican's my enchanter."

  Still, she had been delayed longer than she had foreseen, and her concern for the enchanter gave fresh speed to her steps. She passed quickly through the village, fearful of being further hindered; but soon saw she had nothing to worry about on that score. The streets were empty and silent, as if the cottagers' misfortune had spread its gloom to all the other houses.

  Beyond the village, instead of following the lane to the Holdings, Mallory turned and ran into the trees. However, at last reaching the cave, she halted in alarm at the loud rasping and snorting noises. With a cry, ready to defend the helpless wizard against whatever monstrous attack, she plunged inside and nearly tripped over Arbican, who lay flat on his back. She flung down the hamper and dropped to her knees beside him. Only then did she realize he was merely fast asleep and snoring at the top of his lungs.

  She gave a sob of relief. Arbican stirred, opened one eye, then the other, and sat up: "So there you are. I must say you took your time about it."

  Mallory had been so certain Arbican would be as worried about her as she was about him that his casual remark stung more sharply than Mrs. Parsel's box on the ear. For the instant, forgetting he was an enchanter, she retorted:

  "I've only just run my legs off. And torn my dress. It was all I could do to get back to you, and I shouldn't even be here but on my way to the Holdings, and I'll be punished for that. And you, snoring away as if nothing else mattered!"

  "First, I do not snore," answered Arbican, drawing himself up, "and second-"

  "You do!" insisted Mallory. "I heard you. It was terrible."

  "I was thinking," said Arbican. "Loudly, perhaps. But thinking, nonetheless. And second, much as I regret your difficulties I must regard them as rather less distressing than my own. A torn dress can easily be mended, hardly a matter of life and death."

  "I'm sorry," said Mallory, though disappointed at Arbican's response. He was right, as she admitted; but she still wished he had given her a warmer welcome. "It wasn't only on my account. There was bad news in the village. Scrupnor's tearing down all the cottages and he's going to start a coal pit. I doubt that means much to you, either. I don't suppose you know or even care what coal is."

  "I know perfectly well," said Arbican. "We enchanters were quite aware of it. And in our considered opinion, it was best left where it was. If you mortals happened to stumble on it, well, then, the responsibility was yours. But we surely weren't going to encourage it. What happened, with coal or anything else, was altogether up to you."

  "How could that be? You were the ones to decide things, weren't you? With all you knew, and all your magical powers-why, the greatest kings and queens had to obey your commands."

  "Another of your peculiar notions," Arbican said.

  "No, not at all. You humans were free to do as you chose and take the consequences. Of course we had power; but we weren't about to use it at every whip stitch, to pull you out of messes you made for yourselves. Of course we had wisdom-if anyone chose to seek it from us; needless to say, few did. But we weren't going to cram it down people's throats. That, in itself, would hardly be very wise."

  "If that's so," began Mallory, frowning, "it sounds as if magic didn't make much difference to anybody."

  The enchanter nodded. "That's the first flicker of true intelligence I've observed in you since we met. Much difference? None at all. Why do you think our age ended? Because our magic failed. I told you before, magic can't work miracles; you humans have to work your own. There was no enchantment to make you the least bit kinder, gentler, or happier. Without that, there was no point in it."

  "Do you mean you never changed pumpkins into coaches? Or spun straw into gold?"

  "Oh, I don't say never," admitted Arbican. "It would depend on the situation. We were perfectly capable of doing so; but hardly for the sake of satisfying the greed of some lout who wanted to enrich himself. Or a king who wanted the upper hand on his neighbors.. They managed that quite well on their own. Shape changing, transmutation, and the rest-we did that only to help you understand: the world is all one place, life is life, whatever form it happens to be in. A simple proposition, but one you mortals found equally simple to ignore. Our efforts turned out to be useless."

  "Useless?" said Mallory. "If I had your powers, you'd see if they were useless. For one thing, I'd soon put an end to Scrupnor's coal pits. I'd turn the coal to dust; or the picks and shovels to glass, so they'd always break. You didn't have the coal mines in your day, you said so yourself. But Emmet, the harness maker, saw one in King's Mickle, when he went visiting his cousin. The town's filthy, you can hardly breathe. Most of the people work in the shafts, but they're poorer than before, and worse off than ever. And there was a man had his arm torn off when the steam engine exploded-"

  "The what-engine?"

  "Steam engine," said Mallory, and tried to describe it as well as she could, without understanding much of it herself. "It's a new invention, Emmet says. It boils water and turns wheels."

  "And, apparently, explodes from time to time."

  "It's very dangerous," Mallory said. "It's supposed to save work, but Emmet says the folk in King's Mickle work twice as hard just to keep in running. He says it does more harm than good. The steam engine-yes, that's something you wouldn't know about."

  "Luckily," said Arbican. "It would have given me nightmares. This engine of yours, it doesn't have a mind of its own, does it? Of course not. You mortals thought it up. You built it. Therefore, if it does any harm, blame yourselves, not the machine. Instead of complaining, do something about it."

  "That's easy for you to say," Mallory answered. "You have magical powers. We don't. Nobody can do anything about Scrupnor. I certainly can't. But I could, if you'd show me how to use magic on him; cast a spell and put him to sleep for a thousand years-"

  "You've understood n
othing at all of what I've been telling you," said Arbican. "Magic doesn't touch the real center of things, only the outside edges. Suppose, indeed, you put this fellow Scrupnor out of the way? What's the good, if you keep on making the same mistakes over and over again? You don't cure an itch merely by scratching it."

  "I don't care," said Mallory. "I still wish I could change him into a toad, or send him flying to the moon."

  "Nonsense," replied Arbican. "No need for that. You have power enough already to do anything you want, if you really want to do it."

  "But you just finished telling me that magic was useless," Mallory protested.

  "I said 'magic' not 'power," corrected Arbican. "As far as power is concerned, you mortals have precisely the same powers as the greatest enchanter. Only yours take a different shape. And most of the time, you don't even realize you have them. You're so busy wishing for good fortune you don't have time to find it for yourselves."

  Mallory, still puzzled and unconvinced, would have asked Arbican to tell her more. The enchanter, however, had discovered the provisions in the hamper and was cramming bits of pie into his mouth.

  "You deal with your problems in your way," mumbled the enchanter, trying to chew and talk at the same time, "and I shall deal with mine. While you insisted I was snoring, I was devising a plan for getting myself to Vale Innis."

  "You found a way?"

  "Of course," replied Arbican. "Very simple should have thought of it immediately. I shall sail there by boat, as I should have done in the first place."

  "No one in the village has a sailboat," said Mallory. "There's a barge at the timber yard by the river. Hodge uses it to ferry logs. There's a couple of rowboats, and that's all."

  "No common craft will take me to Vale Innis," the enchanter said. "I shall build my own, and build it from the wood of my oak tree. As it was my prison, it shall be my vessel of freedom. During all those years, no doubt some of my own magic seeped into the wood, and that should make it all the better."