Vellum and Green Vitriol
Copyright © 2007, S. Y. Affolee
The Second Conjuration
Seal XX
The smoke from the old farmer's pipe drifted and curled towards the ceiling. He squinted at me as if I had grown a third hand. I tried to ignore his weird stare by concentrating on the soup that I had ordered from Barney's management.
"There's something strange about you."
I paused. "Strange?"
"Strange." He nodded. "Something about your eyes."
"It's the trick of the light." Old farmers weren't supposed to notice eyes. Particularly not this farmer who I had originally pegged as Tabitha's admirer. Or maybe, since he could not get me worried enough about Tabitha's interest in Rhys, perhaps he was trying to frighten me with something else. Or at least attempt to make me paranoid.
There were people like that--people who were only happy when other people weren't. The best thing, I suppose, was to ignore them.
The farmer gave another puff of smoke and his mouth curved downward, but he didn't say anything else.
Rhys had abandoned his dinner--mostly due to the fact that Tabitha had forced him onto the dancing floor. The Flying Dutchmen were playing a jig. The fiddler bowed furiously to the fierce tempo that the bodhran player had set, looking as if the hounds of hell were after him.
Rhys and I had come back from the cottage at the lake and had arrived back in Fairmont proper in the late afternoon. The Widow Fitzgerald had not been home so I had to return the key to the post master--who also happened to be the owner of the grocer next to the widow's home. The post master had been a rather short-middle aged man, rather non-descript and oblivious. He had no idea where the widow had gone to, although he had hinted that she often had taken trips up north to visit a lover. And if that were true, her maudlin reminisces about her dead husband had been a farce.
Tonight, Barney's seemed bare. Few of the locals loitered in the main room besides the old farmer. There were two other men at a corner table having a private conversation. Another group--three housewives on a girls' night out--were seated next the a window having a light supper. Tabitha had somehow tagged along as Rhys and I had headed to the pub in hopes of finding a gossip who might tell us the whereabouts of Archibald Chesterfield. Her brother had instead decided to stay back at the inn.
In the middle of the musicians' ditty, the front door to the pub banged open, revealing a heavy looking figure in a thick dark gray coat, a roughly knitted scarf and a dirty cap. A hand with fingerless gloves took off the hat revealing a red faced older man. He immediately sauntered up to the bar to order himself a drink. I noticed the old farmer's eyes tracking this newcomer. I didn't think much of it, until Tabitha abruptly abandoned Rhys on the floor to make a beeline towards this new man.
When she reached a couple paces from this new stranger, the old farmer declared, "Excuse me." His chair scraped along the floor as he got up and headed toward the two.
Fascinated, I put my spoon back into my soup bowl and pushed it away as I watched. The three of them were talking. None of them seemed pleased by what the others said. In my absorption, I did not even notice that the Flying Dutchmen were finished playing until Rhys tapped me on the shoulder.
"Ana. Come on."
I tore my attention away from the two men and one woman and looked up at Rhys. "I'm not dancing."
He smiled. "I'm not asking you to. Come on. There's someone you might like to speak with."
"Oh?" I finally got up and followed him across the dance floor, heading towards the Flying Dutchmen. The musicians, on a brief break, had taken seats on some low three-legged stools and were downing pints of beer.
"Joe mentioned that he worked for Archibald Chesterfield last summer."
"Joe?" I frowned glancing at each of the musicians.
"I'm Joe." The bodhran player set his lager on the floor and tipped his cap, revealing brown locks. His instrument was on his lap, skin down, revealing the inner framework. "As I was telling Rhys, I did indeed work for Mr. Chesterfield. Mostly it was just muscle work, you know. I helped him move some of his things to the cottage he rented from the Widow Fitzgerald."
Sensing a lead, I asked, "What was Mr. Chesterfield like?"
Joe shrugged. "He was a rather average sort of fellow, I suppose. He looked a bit like Tabitha's brother, Edgar, except with more hair. He also wore rather thick glasses--probably from reading all those books of his."
"So he was a book collector."
The bodhran player grimaced. "Too many books, if you ask me. No one needs to read or own that many. It's as if he had carted the entire Royal Society library with him. And when I told him that, he just laughed in my face and said that it was just a mere fraction of his actual collection."
"I see." I glanced at Rhys when he suddenly put an arm around my shoulder. He wasn't really looking at me though. I saw him focused on something past my head. But to Joe, I said, "Did he say where he came from? Or at least where he stored the rest of his collection? Mrs. Fitzgerald mentioned that he may be from the south."
Joe shook his head. "No, miss. I remember Mr. Chesterfield distinctly telling me that his permanent home was in Haven. He was quick to point out that the city afforded better access to places that sold books. And he had rich friends there who also happened to be book collectors."
"Did he say who his friends were?"
"Sorry." But then the bodhran player also looked in the direction the Rhys had looked at. He grinned and flipped his instrument over and tapped out a quick rhythm. "Well, Rhys, if you take the initiative, I'll get the others."
"Perhaps I will," Rhys replied. "So Ana, are you up to some country dancing?"
Suspicious, I said, "Not very."
"Well, too bad."
At that, Joe called out to the fiddler and the tin whistle player. They put down their pints and took up their instruments. On the first note, Rhys jerked me into the lively reel.
When I whirled around, I caught a glimpse of the bar. Tabitha was staring at the farmer and the stranger with her hands on her hips. The men looked like they were about to go to blows with the angry words they were exchanging.
"What's that about?" I managed to ask, after a turn.
"Ever been in a three-way fight?"
"No. It sounds painful."
"Perhaps. But it's also sort of fascinating. I think it's a love triangle."
I thought about it. "Fascinating? Er, well, I suppose so."
"You haven't been in a love triangle before either, have you?"
"No." I found myself smiling in self-deprecation. "I'm not the sort of girl who inspires men to vie for her hand. I don't really understand why humans would want to get into that sort of complication."
"I agree. It's terribly messy."
"Hm. It would be messy if one of them manages to draw blood."
"That's not what I was thinking of. It's emotionally messy."
"I try to steer clear of that."
The reel was coming to a close. Rhys stopped, his hands on my upper arms. He looked down at me. "Of course that's why you don't understand why humans would get into such a complication. You deliberately avoid emotional entanglements."
I looked away, focusing my gaze on a nearby chair. "It's getting late. We have a drive tomorrow back to Greenglass before catching a train to Haven."
His hands tightened on my arms. "Ana."
Something in his voice caused me to look back. Then I stepped back, shaking him off. "Does it really matter if I understand or not?"
He was silent.
"I'm sorry."
Rhys sighed. "There's nothing to be sorry about. Sometimes, I forget that you're not really a person at all."
"Well, you're not a person either."
"Sometimes, I wonder." His expression seemed pensive, and strangely enough, if I was reading it correctly, a little sad.
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