Chapter 11
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 10
Still completely overwhelmed, Darcy does the one thing she knows, trust in her fairy tales. Which, after all, normally tell of the low-class man pining for the princess, so she stammers that sometimes people change their station. Realising how approving that sounds, she quickly adds that he needs better etiquette and she, of course, can’t have anything but traditional and appropriate courting and… that was too far already, he grabs onto it full-force, clearly deciding he’s the rightful hero of the story and the hero always gets the lady in the end, no matter how reluctant she might seem.
At this point so overwhelmed with the situation she’ll do anything to get away from this topic, Darcy starts talking about etiquette rules, only for him to declare that nobles break all the rules anyway when nobody’s looking. There’s a weird tone to it and as much as she isn’t sure she wants to know, she’d rather ask about that than dwell one more moment on him getting ideas about her. When she tries to find out what is behind those words really, he grows tight lipped but does a terrible job at hiding that there’s something weighing on him.
Alright, this she can do. Heroines are there to heal the broken male protagonists, aren’t they? She’s not happy with him being a protagonist in her story, but it’s starting to be difficult to believe he is only one of those background characters with little personality and no life past their involvement in the heroes’ story. Composing herself into the picture of a caring woman, she hopes she’s doing this right, she really doesn’t as such care about or for him, but he helped her earlier, this is only fair, anyway, sitting down on a sofa, she allows him to sit on the other side and tells him he may talk to her about his troubles.
“Arthur can never know,” is the first thing he relays, head hung but obediently, like before, starts talking, only to break into tears before she can even figure out anything. Reluctantly, but that’s how the stories have taught her the heroine often is in the beginning, she puts a hand on his arm, ends up with him throwing himself at her to cry. She wants to recoil, to slap him, to shove him away, but that’s not her role, isn’t it? She has to be a good woman, so she awkwardly pats his shoulder and lets him cry.
After a while, he finally manages to hiccup his way through his sob story, sorry, she means his prologue, in which he was forced to prostitute himself after his parents died and then he kept doing it to support Arthur when they were alone in the house after his father got arrested. Once he got his demonic powers, he took revenge on the worst customers and he’s not sure what Arthur would object more to. He is close to tears again, but Darcy, meanwhile, is having a hard time understanding what the problem is. What is prostitution? In any case, he got money and that helped them, so she tells him that Arthur has nothing to be angry over, clearly he did something painful that was painful to him in the name of friendship and in the end persevered, like a hero is meant to.
The stories and etiquette books all say men care about being strong and want women to tell them so, she guesses she found the right way to get him to stop sobbing and clinging to her. Thank god, he’s finally leaning away from her, although that expression on his face is worrying. Right, he’s back to fawning about how amazing she is. She supposes that is preferable to him touching her.
That perception of this being an improvement holds exactly until he jumps up, gives her a hand kiss and vows he really will court her to the very best of his ability, but now needs to run to bring Arthur the new orders from the lady.
Staring after him open-mouthed, Darcy groans and sinks deep into the sofa. Are all heroines so overwhelmed when their unexpected hero arrives? She can’t help but wonder if there somewhere was a mishap, this feels as if he should be called Darcy, not her. Then again, Mister Darcy was socially awkward, not… whatever is she even going to call Gregory? It can’t be helped, she wouldn’t be the first heroine to suffer an inept courtship, she just hopes this is one of those stories where her true knight is still about to arrive on the scene.
Please let her real knight still be out there and she’s not stuck with this one.
~~~~
Arthur spends the rest of the afternoon in the common room of the inn, talking to the locals, taking notes, and marking the locations of the attacks on the map.
Whatever it is, it’s gotten bolder, he thinks. The locals aren’t even sure when it started, because sometimes livestock goes missing. Wolves or foxes, they say, can sneak under fences and grab a lamb or a calf and drag it off with no one the wiser. Sometimes animals break out and one or two can get lost despite your best efforts.
But it is a fact that an unusual amount of livestock has gone missing since the early summer, and not just young or small or weak animals that would usually be targeted. Bullocks, dairy cows, and adult sheep are missing, animals that weigh dozens and hundreds of pounds. Animals that aren’t likely to have slipped under fences or through hedges. And everyone has been more diligent than usual in making sure all of those fences and hedges are in good repair, stock-proof.
Arthur decides these people know what they’re talking about, this is their livelihood and they’ve been doing it all their lives, so he doesn’t doubt their assessment.
But the last attack is the first with such a blatantly broken fence. Before that, it was the numbers, the unlikelihood that alerted them- and how they found some of those missing animals in the forest, mutilated, heads or limbs or organs missing. But not the whole animal, not the way an especially clever wolf pack would leave their kills.
Which is another reason for the villager’s conviction that it’s some sort of monster doing it- uncanny, one wizened, grouchy old farmer calls it, how none of the usual predators will touch those kills if they find them. They will be swarming with flies and maggots and ants, but the larger scavengers don’t go near them, to hear him tell it.
Arthur lets them show him on the map where they think they found the kills that they found, and it’s never terribly far from the village.
The majority, though, has never been found.
Arthur… isn’t sure what to make of this information, what it signifies. And the two people who say they actually saw the monster didn’t see much of it- a big shadow in the trees, the size of a dray horse, they claim. It was just sunrise and they were getting the cows for milking, noticed one missing and went to search. They were at the edge of the forest, and saw something move, and when they realized how big it was, they ran back to the farm to get help- figuring maybe it was a bear. Or a monster.
In hindsight, they’ve decided it was definitely a monster, because they went back to the forest where they saw it with half a dozen people, and there were no tracks, definitely no bear ones, and they found the cow nearby, mutilated like the others.
This was a week ago, and after that they all got together and totalled up the missing livestock between everyone, and found it was far more than could be explained by some normal reason. So the mayor decided to ask for help.
On Arthur’s question where in the area a large monster might hide, there are shrugs- not in the forests right next to the villages, people walk in those frequently enough, but there are more extensive woods towards old Mulgrave castle.
Further inquiries turn up that old Mulgrave castle is some thousand-year-old ruin surrounded by forest- not a place people go often, because why would they?, but no, it has no reputation as a monster lair, or even any ghost stories associated with it.
Studying the map, Arthur sees footpaths marked, through the woods, linking the villages, and reaching into those forests around the ruin.
It’s the only significant local landmark in the forest he can see, so… probably they should at least check it and rule it out?
That’s what he says to Gregory when he finds him again. Where he’s been, Arthur doesn’t know and doesn’t want to ask in front of the villagers mingling around, short of establishing that no, he hasn’t found anything special in the forest.
Hearing about the ruin, Gregory says he’ll inform the Lady Darcy, and dashes off again before Arthur can get another word in.
~~~~
He dares to return informing her that they’ll have to check a nearby ruin. That’s out in the forest, is she sure she shouldn’t ditch her corset for such an arduous trek? She can’t believe her ears, he dares mention her underwear?! Well, then she dares march right past him as if he was air.
Glad to have done that and to get away from the village, Darcy relaxes when Gregory doesn’t again try to talk to her.
~~~~
Arthur isn’t sure why he’s walking into a twilight forest, hunting monsters. What’s he going to do when they find it- run away screaming? But whatever it is, it’s probably magical, so having the one person there who knows a little bit about magic is probably a good thing, he doesn’t want to stay behind and not help, either.
Still, he’d be a lot more comfortable if he knew more of what they’re getting into. Or if he had some kind of weapon- that he knew how to use, that is.
Also, he’s never been in a real forest before. Parks and churchyards and such, yes, but a real forest is a lot more… disorderly. The path is covered in leaflitter and twigs and roots, soft and moist and treacherous. There’s nettles and bracken and brambles here and there, leaning into the path, thorns snagging at his clothes and poking through to his skin that he has to pick off carefully if he doesn’t want to get stuck or rip his trousers.
The sinking sun turns the forest into gold and green, and it’s beautiful, and there’s birds singing, but then it gets darker and the birds go quiet and everything turns grayer and creepier as he can see less and less far between the trees, as they start merging into a murky mass.
It isn’t even a big forest, he tells himself. It’s just a band of trees, he’s seen it on the map. It’s very long and joined to other patches of forest towards the ruin of old Mulgrave Castle, but it isn’t very wide. There are fields around the neighbouring village, Dunsley. That’s just a mile or so away.
But it still is getting darker and darker among the trees, and of course it also occurs to him what a perfect way of travelling under cover all these bands of forest along the streams, or becks, as the locals call them, are.
And they can bring any monsters right up against the villages and their surrounding fields. Maybe they’re only an hour’s walk from Whitby, but the land feels much wilder already. The gaslights of London seem very, very far away.
And sure, London can be creepy at night, when the fog is so thick that you can barely see the glow of those lights. And it’s dangerous.
But the dangerous things on London’s streets are people, not monsters. Ruthless people, but at least he knows how fast he can expect them to run, what kind of weapons they might have.
Okay, unless you come across an aberration, of course.
In any case, the streets he grew up on might be famous for Jack the Ripper, and he’s run and hid from gangs and thugs and creeps plenty of times, but they’ve never made the neck of his nape crawl like this.
He wishes the others were quieter. Gregory just strolls along like this is a fun evening walk, and Darcy… Her feet scuff and rustle in the leaves, twigs break with a crackle, mud squelches. Unless this monster is deaf, there’s no way they’re sneaking up on it.
A ghostly shape swoops down on them from above, in total silence, and the only reason Arthur doesn’t scream in fright is that his heart jumps into his throat so hard the sound gets stuck.
It’s coming down on Darcy, who… lifts an arm, and Arthur realizes it’s an owl, a big, white barn owl that Darcy pets and then nudges onto her shoulder before she continues walking like there’s nothing weird about owls landing on you.