37

LE MAÎTRE DES
CHAMPIGNONS

The small limestone cave we used for a stable was home at the moment only to a nanny goat with two brand-new kids. All the animals born in the spring were now large enough to be turned out to forage in the wood with their mothers. The goat was still getting room service, though, in the form of kitchen scraps and a little cracked corn.

It had been raining for several days, and the morning broke cloudy and damp, every leaf dripping and the air thick with the scents of resin and soggy leaf mulch. Luckily, the cloudiness kept the birds subdued; the jays and mockingbirds were quick to learn, and kept a beady eye on the comings and goings of people with food—they dive-bombed me regularly as I made my way up the hill with my basin.

I was on my guard, but even so, a bold jay dropped from a branch in a flash of blue and landed in the basin, startling me. Before I could react, it had seized a fragment of corn muffin and darted off, so quickly that I could scarcely believe I’d seen it, save for the racing of my heart. Luckily I hadn’t dropped the basin; I heard a triumphant screech from the trees, and hurried to get inside the stable before the jay’s friends should try the same tactic.

I was surprised to find that the Dutch door was unbolted at the top and stood an inch or two ajar. There was no danger of the goats escaping, of course, but foxes and raccoons were more than capable of climbing over the lower door, and so both doors were normally bolted at night. Perhaps Mr. Wemyss had forgotten; it was his job to muck out the used straw and settle the stock for the night.

As soon as I pushed open the door, though, I saw that Mr. Wemyss was not to blame. There was a tremendous rustle of straw at my feet, and something big moved in the darkness.

I uttered a sharp yelp of alarm, and this time did drop the basin, which fell with a clang, scattering food across the floor and rousing the nanny goat, who started blatting her head off.

“Pardon, milady!”

Hand to my thumping heart, I stepped out of the doorway, so the light fell on Fergus, crouched on the floor, with straws sticking out of his hair like the Madwoman of Chaillot.

“Oh, so there you are,” I said quite coldly.

He blinked and swallowed, rubbing his hand over a face dark with sprouting whiskers.

“I—yes,” he said. He seemed to have nothing further to add to this. I stood glaring down at him for a moment, then shook my head and stooped to retrieve the potato peelings and other fragments that had fallen from the basin. He moved as though to help me, but I stopped him with a shooing gesture.

He sat still, watching me, hands around his knees. It was dim inside the stable, and water dripped steadily from the plants growing out of the cliffside above, making a curtain of falling drops across the open door.

The goat had stopped making noise, having recognized me, but was now stretching her neck through the railing of her pen, blueberry-colored tongue extended like an anteater’s, in an effort to reach an apple core that had rolled near the pen. I picked it up and handed it to her, trying to think where to start, and what to say when I did.

“Henri-Christian’s doing well,” I said, for lack of anything else. “Putting on weight.”

I let the remark trail off, bending over the rail to pour corn and scraps into the wooden feed trough.

Dead silence. I waited a moment, then turned round, one hand on my hip.

“He’s a very sweet little baby,” I said.

I could hear him breathing, but he said nothing. With an audible snort, I went and pushed the bottom half of the door open wide, so that the cloudy light outside streamed in, exposing Fergus. He sat with his face turned stubbornly away. I could smell him at a goodly distance; he reeked of bitter sweat and hunger.

I sighed.

“Dwarves of this sort have got quite normal intelligence. I’ve checked him thoroughly, and he has all the usual reflexes and responses that he should have. There’s no reason why he can’t be educated, be able to work—at something.”

“Something,” Fergus echoed, the word holding both despair and derision. “Something.” At last, he turned his face toward me, and I saw the hollowness of his eyes. “With respect, milady—you have never seen the life of a dwarf.”

“And you have?” I asked, not so much in challenge as curiosity.

He closed his eyes against the morning light, nodding.

“Yes,” he whispered, and swallowed. “In Paris.”

The brothel where he had grown up in Paris was a large one, with a varied clientele, famous for being able to offer something for almost any taste.

“The house itself had les filles, naturellement, and les enfants. They are of course the bread and butter of the establishment. But there are always those who desire … the exotic, and will pay. And so now and then the madame would send for those who dealt in such things. La Maîtresse des Scorpions—avec les flagellantes, tu comprends? Ou Le Maître des Champignons.”

“The Master of Mushrooms?” I blurted.

“Oui. The Dwarf Master.”

His eyes had sunk into his head, his gaze turned inward and his face haggard. He was seeing in memory sights and people who had been absent from his thoughts for many years—and was not enjoying the recollection.

“Les chanterelles, we called them,” he said softly. “The females. The males, they were les morels.” Exotic fungi, valued for the rarity of their twisted shapes, the strange savor of their flesh.

“They were not badly treated, les champignons,” he said, abstracted. “They were of value, you see. Le Maître would buy such infants from their parents—there was one born in the brothel, once, and the madame was delighted at her good fortune—or collect them from the streets.”

He looked down at his hand, the long, delicate fingers moving restlessly, pleating the cloth of his breeches.

“The streets,” he repeated. “Those who escaped the brothels—they were beggars. I knew one of them quite well—Luc, he was called. We would sometimes assist each other—” The shadow of a smile touched his mouth, and he waved his intact hand in the deft gesture of one picking pockets.

“But he was alone, Luc,” he continued matter-of-factly. “He had no protector. I found him one day in the alley, with his throat cut. I told the madame, and she sent the doorkeep out at once to seize the body, and sold it to a doctor in the next arondissement.”

I didn’t ask what the doctor had wanted with Luc’s body. I’d seen the broad, dried hands of dwarves, sold for divination and protection. And other parts.

“I begin to see why a brothel might seem safe,” I said, swallowing heavily. “But still …”

Fergus had been sitting with his head braced on his hand, staring at the straw. At this, he looked up at me.

“I have parted my buttocks for money, milady,” he said simply. “And thought nothing of it, save when it hurt. But then I met milord, and found a world beyond the brothel and the streets. That my son might return to such places …” He stopped abruptly, unable to speak. He closed his eyes again, and shook his head, slowly.

“Fergus. Fergus, dear. You can’t think that Jamie—that we—would ever let such a thing happen,” I said, distressed beyond measure.

He drew a deep, trembling breath, and thumbed away the tears that hung on his lashes. He opened his eyes and gave me a smile of infinite sadness.

“No, you would not, milady. But you will not live forever, nor will milord. Nor I. But the child will be a dwarf forever. And les petits, they cannot well defend themselves. They will be plucked up by those who seek them, taken and consumed.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and sat up a little.

“If, that is, they should be so fortunate,” he added, his voice hardening. “They are not valued, outside the cities. Peasants, they believe the birth of such a child is at best a judgment on the sins of his parents.” A deeper shadow crossed his face, his lips drawing tight. “It may be so. My sins—” But he broke off abruptly, turning away.

“At worst—” His voice was soft, head turned away, as though he whispered secrets to the shadows of the cave. “At worst, they are seen as monstrous, children born of some demon who has lain with the woman. People stone them, burn them—sometimes the woman, too. In the mountain villages of France, a dwarf child would be left for the wolves. But do you not know these things, milady?” he asked, suddenly turning back to face me.

“I—I suppose so,” I said, and put out a hand to the wall, suddenly feeling the need of some support. I had known such things, in the abstract way one thinks of the customs of aborigines and savages—people whom one will never meet, safely distant in the pages of geography books, of ancient histories.

He was right; I knew it. Mrs. Bug had crossed herself, seeing the child, and then made the sign of the horns as protection from evil, pale horror on her face.

Shocked as we had all been, and then concerned with Marsali, and with Fergus’s absence, I hadn’t been away from the house for a week or more. I had no idea what people might be saying, on the Ridge. Fergus plainly did.

“They’ll … get used to him,” I said as bravely as I could. “People will see that he isn’t a monster. It may take some time, but I promise you, they’ll see.”

“Will they? And if they let him live, what then will he do?” He rose to his feet quite suddenly. He stretched out his left arm, and with a jerk, freed the leather strip that held his hook. It fell with a soft thump into the straw, and left the narrow stump of his wrist bare, the pale skin creased with red from the tightness of the wrappings.

“Me, I cannot hunt, cannot do a proper man’s work. I am fit for nothing but to pull the plow, like a mule!” His voice shook with anger and self-loathing. “If I cannot work as a man does, how shall a dwarf?”

“Fergus, it isn’t—”

“I cannot keep my family! My wife must labor day and night to feed the children, must put herself in the way of scum and filth who misuse her, who—Even if I was in Paris, I am too old and crippled to whore!” He shook the stump at me, face convulsed, then whirled and swung his maimed arm, smashing it against the wall, over and over.

“Fergus!” I seized his other arm, but he jerked away.

“What work will he do?” he cried, tears streaming down his face. “How shall he live? Mon Dieu! Il est aussi inutile que moi!”

He bent and seized the hook from the ground, and hurled it as hard as he could at the limestone wall. It made a small chiming sound as it struck, and fell into the straw, startling the nanny and her kids.

Fergus was gone, the Dutch door left swinging. The goat called after him, a long maaaah! of disapproval.

I held on to the railing of the pen, feeling as though it was the only solid thing in a slowly tilting world. When I could, I bent and felt carefully in the straw until I touched the metal of the hook, still warm from Fergus’s body. I drew it out and wiped bits of straw and manure carefully off it with my apron, still hearing Fergus’s last words.

“My God! He is as useless as I am!”