Dimanche Diller at Sea

“I doubt that, Miss Dimanche. There’s been Dillers at the Hall these many hundred years, and Fettlers in the Hollow. What’s got you flustered?”

Dimanche sat down, gulped a mug of blackberry leaf tea, and told Papa Fettler, as quickly as she could, about the letter from Bludgeon & Bludgeon, and the break-in, and the thin man in the garden, and lastly about the theft of the Diller Deed and Title from the Rockford Market bank.

“What are we going to do, Papa Fettler? What are we going to do?”

Papa Fettler emptied out his pipe, unblocked the stem with a quill, scraped out the bowl with a little brass scraper, recharged it with tobacco from his leather pouch, and lit it with a spill from the fire. When at last he replied, it was with a question.

“Do you know the story of Benedicta, Miss Dimanche?”

Dimanche shook her head.

“Then I’ll tell it to you. It’s a good story, and if you’re in trouble, you’d best know it. Listen.”

Dimanche settled herself beside the fire, and tried not to fidget.

“Benedicta was a wise woman,” Papa Fettler began. “Lived in Monks Wood five hundred years ago. She used to cure sick people, when she could. The villagers brought her bread and eggs and ale and suchlike, in return.

“One afternoon, just on Midsummer – hot it was, like now, with the bees buzzing, and the Fenny splash-splashing, and the birds a-dozing on the twig – a woman brought her child to Benedicta to be cured of a fever.”

Papa Fettler shook his head, as though remembering. He looked at Dimanche from under the brim of his wide hat, and his grey eyes seemed to see again all that he described to her. His battered brown face took on a sad and sorrowful fold of feature as he gazed into the little fire glow.

“It was hot, like I said. Hot, and still, with the trees hanging over the Fenny like great green cabbages, and the air a-shimmer, and the fish down deep.”

The sound of Papa Fettler’s voice grew faint and distant. Behind and underneath it, Dimanche could hear water lap-lapping, and heavy foliage rustling to a summer breeze, and a tired baby crying.

“The woman put her child on Benedicta’s lap and stole away. Everyone knew that Benedicta liked to do her healing alone. She used to say the healing power flowed strongest that way, but it’s my belief that people’s conversation bored her, so she sent ’em packing. Babies was what she liked. Ought to have had a bundle of her own, but that’s another story. She loved a monk, you see, name of Betony. A poor choice from Benedicta’s point of view, because he was sworn to celibacy, and could never marry. He was a good man, see, and would not break his vows.

“Well, the child dropped into sweet sleep in an instant. And there’s nothing makes a body feel more somnolent than to have a baby fall asleep on ’em, Miss Dimanche. Nothing. It’s the little wheeze and snuffle that they make, and the weight of their limbs as they give their body up to restfulness. Well. Benedicta smiled down at the child. ‘You’re cured already, you are,’ she said. ‘You must have been just on the turn.’

“And with that, she shut her eyes, and fell asleep herself. And there they was, wise woman and wise baby, asleep in the shade by the banks of the Fenny.”

Dimanche found her own eyes closing. Against her eyelids, patterns of green leaves danced, splashed by trembling river light.

“Well. That was long ago.” Papa Fettler sighed, a sad and sorrowful sigh.

“What was? What happened, Papa Fettler?”

“The woman slept. The baby slept. A wolf came out of the wood. When the woman awoke, the baby was gone. There was nothing but a paw print in the damp margin of the Fenny to say where it had gone.”

Dimanche opened her eyes and sat up. The sound of running and crying, of weeping and anger and lamentation, filled her ears, then faded.

“How horrible. How absolutely horrible.”

Papa Fettler nodded.

“And there was worse to follow, nearly. Nearly, but not quite. The baby’s mother wanted Benedicta burned for a witch. Fetched up the faggots herself. But the village people wouldn’t have it. In the end, that poor mother came to her senses – revenge is nothing but a poison, Miss Dimanche, and when once the worse of her despair was past, she knew it. But Benedicta never forgave herself. Not properly. She took to living all alone in a cave and ate nothing but fish, to which she was powerfully averse, until her dying day.”

Silence filled the little quarry. Dimanche felt as though she’d just returned to it from somewhere else entirely.