The Cottage in the Woods (35 page)

I pointed the musket into the air and fired, the recoil of the gun knocking me off my feet. Realizing that that was my only shot, and that I had no idea how to reload the weapon, I prayed that Harry would be swift in coming. The musket had fallen to the ground, and I left it there as I struggled to my feet again and turned to Goldilocks and Teddy. I found them in tears and clinging to each other for comfort. Kneeling down, I held the two of them close, and felt them trembling as much as I was. Though I tried to keep my voice calm and soothing, its pitch went up an octave as I told them how brave they had been, and that the danger seemed to be past.

“I want to go home,” cried Teddy, his courage dissipating now that the crisis was over, and Goldilocks nodded her assent. I wondered with a pang whether we would ever hear her voice again, or whether Gabriel’s threats had once more frightened her out of the power of speech. I paused to collect the gun, and Gabriel’s knife, so that it would not be there if he came back for it. Keeping the children close to me, I set off with them in the direction of the manor, traveling along the Giant’s Walk, where Harry could find us.

At first Teddy peppered me with questions—the questions of an innocent having first discovered evil in the world. Who was that bad man? Why was he so cruel to Goldilocks? Why did all those nasty children tease her so? I had no answers, except to point out how terrible it must be to carry all that meanness within oneself all the time, that perhaps they were jealous that she had found a home among gentle and loving bears. He accepted this idea with a thoughtful expression beyond his years.

The two little ones soldiered bravely on, though Goldilocks sometimes staggered, her nerves having suffered a terrible blow. Teddy kept one arm about her, looking over his shoulder uneasily from time to time as if checking to be sure we were not being followed. When we heard something large crashing through the forest, I halted, placing myself in front of the children and raising the musket, but it turned out to be Harry.

“I heard your shot!” he cried. “Are you all right?”

I assured him that we were all unharmed as I gratefully turned the gun and the knife over to his care, and took the drooping Goldilocks’s hand. As briefly as possible, I related to him all that had happened in his absence, in response to which he hit himself repeatedly on the forehead with self-reproach, until I bade him stop. Again and again he lamented that he had allowed himself to be played for a fool, and endangered those he was dedicated to protect.

On the long walk home, I found myself going over the encounter in my mind, trying to make sense of it. Surely Gabriel hadn’t devised that whole plan just to avenge himself on me? He had wanted something badly enough to put quite a bit of thought and effort into organizing the trap, for certainly this meeting had been no accident. I could not help but see the cleverness of sending a gang of children to find us. Though I did not
understand it all, the scheme implied more intelligence than I would have attributed to the flat-browed Gabriel. Where adult trespassers could be kept off the property with gamekeepers and guns, no gamekeeper would shoot at children, let alone suspect them of anything sinister, and there were too many of them to catch. I thought they must have been watching our movements for some time; they waited for us on what had been our regular route of late, along the Giant’s Walk, and chose an area with enough massive tree trunks to hide an army, then lured Harry away, all evidently in order to settle a score with me, and to find a child they didn’t seem to actually care about or want. Gabriel’s only concern with the child was to see to it that she wouldn’t talk. What did she know, what might she say, that was so dangerous?

At least now I recognized the source of the fear behind Goldilocks’s muteness. Perhaps it would be possible, with time and care, to help her overcome it. So much made sense now. If that herd of barbarians really was Goldilocks’s family, it would explain the savage tendencies she displayed when she first came to the Cottage in the Woods. Gabriel had called her a liar and a thief, and I could see perfectly plainly how she might have learned such habits, or even been trained in them by such a tutor as himself, for there was no doubt in my mind that it was he who had sent her into the Vaughns’ house to steal. It was his own culpability that had kept him from simply coming to the front door and claiming her, had he really wanted to do so. How utterly sanguine was he in his supposition that she’d been arrested and sent to jail! And if she had been, how content he’d seemed to leave her there to rot. Clearly, his only concern was to terrify her into keeping silent about it all, or to convince me that anything she might say would be a lie.

And what of the terrible “Mother” Gabriel threatened Goldilocks with as his parting shot? Was that violent shrew who had come after him in town the one who had spawned him and this whole gang of miscreants? Could she be the brains behind today’s ambuscade? And the most horrifying question of all: Would she really come for Goldilocks? I held tightly to the exhausted child at my side, and prayed.

When we reached the Cottage, I called for the mistress and explained to her that the children, especially Goldilocks, had had a terrible shock. She hugged them both closely, saying, “Oh, my dears!” then sent me to report matters to Mr. Vaughn while she took care of the little ones.

Harry had already given Mr. Vaughn his own account up to the point where he had handed me the gun and chased after the children, so I went on to describe the details of what followed. Mr. Vaughn listened with a cool self-control that seemed more dangerous than rage. Yet, as I came to the end of my story, he shook his head in wonder. “To think that she spoke,” he marveled, his voice heavy with emotion, “that she spoke up in order to save you.” I was astonished to observe that he was struggling to retain his composure. He turned away for a minute, collecting himself. Harry and I watched silently as he paced about the room, thinking, for several minutes, then he began to speak.

“We must give thought to reporting this thug to the police. We could press charges against this ‘Gabriel’ for trespassing and menacing. And yet whom do we report him to? Not Constable Murdley! That toad! The minute he hears there is a human family claiming young Goldilocks as their own, he and the whole Anthropological Society will be tripping over themselves to offer
them
the best legal counsel. No, I will summon my own team of lawyers. I think we must find out everything we can about this
entire clan, and the mother, then determine how to proceed.” He rang for Fairchild, who was, as usual, waiting just outside the door. The master did not bother with the polite fiction that he needed to repeat the story to the butler, but simply assumed that he had been listening.

“Fairchild, I have a task for you. I wish you to go among the servants, each and every one of them, and find out if any of them have knowledge of this brute Gabriel, or the band of wild children he claims as siblings, or their mother. These people must have a name. They must go somewhere to sleep at night. Tell the servants to ask everyone they know. Ask everyone
you
know, even the members of the men’s choir. Consider this your sole duty until further notice.”

“Yes, sir,” Fairchild said grimly. “Immediately, sir.”

“Miss Brown, you have done well today, acquitted yourself very bravely. Now, do you think you can coax the child into speaking again? She must have much information that would condemn this so-called mother, or they wouldn’t be so intent on keeping her silent.”

“I doubt that Goldilocks will put much faith in anything I say, sir. I’m the one who convinced her that it was safe to go outdoors, and yet Gabriel got to her in spite of all my reassurances. I wonder if she will ever trust me again. I will talk to her, sir. All I can do is try.”

“Very good. You may retire. Now I wish to speak to Harry privately.”

I retraced my steps to the nursery and found Mrs. Vaughn with the weeping Goldilocks on her lap. Teddy sat beside her on the bed, with Nurse standing behind him, patting his back solicitously. I marveled, not for the first time, that the merciless
harridan seemed capable of genuine tenderness toward Teddy. I quickly assessed that Goldilocks was too overwrought as yet to even try to speak, and, feeling the strain of the day’s adventure on my own nerves, I begged Mrs. Vaughn to be excused and retreated to the solace of my own room.

That night I was visited again by my old nightmare. Once more I found myself wandering dark passageways, following a child’s heartrending cry. Nearly beside myself to find the suffering child, I rushed headlong to look for it around the next corner, and the next, deeper and deeper into the darkness and obscuring mist, until I was overcome. I awoke, as I had so many times before, inconsolable. But this time calling out a name:
“Goldilocks!”

My nighttime candle had gone out. Only the smallest glow remained in the fireplace from the banked coals of last night’s fire, and I lay in the darkness remembering the night I discovered the child in my room, bundled up in that ridiculous bear suit. How far she had come since then! How I treasured the girl’s trust, for which I had worked so hard and so long. And yet how much the worse for her now, if she should be forced back into the clutches of this family of savages, to have been denuded of the hard veneer of insensitivity and distrust that her former life engendered. What would be the value, in such a life, of a few golden moments? Would their light survive the ugliness? Would it live to flower, on some future date, in her own acts of kindness? Or would it only serve to illuminate her misery?

Morning brought its own sense of dread, reinforced by a somber, oppressive sky. A heavy pall seemed to hang over the manor, drifting down the chimneys and seeping over doorsills like a pestilential fog. Afraid of what the day might bring, I nevertheless put on a cheerful face for Teddy and Goldilocks, who were out of sorts and preoccupied after yesterday’s encounter. Since Goldilocks had moved into the nursery, I had assumed the responsibility for rousing both children each morning and preparing them for school while Nurse snored blithely on. Taking the opportunity to try to coax Goldilocks into speaking, I gathered her onto my lap and praised her for her courage the day before, in speaking up to Gabriel in order to protect me. I told her in all earnestness that I would never forget what she had done, and that I was in her debt.

She seemed not to want to be reminded of the confrontation. She shook her head and covered her face with her hands. I rocked her gently for a while. Teddy, who had been listening carefully
all this time, leaned in close and whispered a long, secret message in her ear. Whatever it was, it brought the barest hint of a smile. By the time we left for breakfast, her self-possession was restored, and we continued on to the schoolroom, though both youngsters remained moody and distracted, and I was not much better.

While I was struggling to focus the children’s attention on counting exercises, a message was delivered from Mr. Vaughn requesting my presence. I considered rousing Nurse to mind the children while I was downstairs, but quickly reasoned that they spent quite a bit of time in the nursery minding themselves while Nurse slept or was otherwise incapacitated, and that they were probably better off that way. I assigned them some simple tasks to do in my absence, and left them busily working together.

Entering Mr. Vaughn’s den, I was met with a small gathering of individuals, some unknown to me, some familiar—among them, Reverend Snover, and some other humans; a handful of the Enchanted; and a group of bears, badgers, and weasels in fine suits whom I took to be the Vaughns’ lawyers. It was soon made clear to me that each of these persons, besides the lawyers, had come here in response to Fairchild’s quest for information about Gabriel and the gang of children, all having some knowledge of them to report to Mr. Vaughn.

Mr. Vaughn called for silence, explained the situation briefly, and said that Goldilocks’s alleged mother might actually show up at any moment to claim her. He then called on each of the group to say their piece, and asked me to tell whether their descriptions fit the characters I had encountered. Several had tales to tell very similar to the Vaughns’ story, of having caught some hungry-looking, ragged child in the act of burgling their
homes, and having had no heart to prosecute. Mr. Wiggins, the greengrocer, told of having his store nearly picked clean by a gang of dirty children operating in concert while two of them created a diversion with a fistfight. One woman with a kindly face said she had often noticed such a gang of children lurking about in her neighborhood, where many of her neighbors had fallen prey to the little thieves in one way or another. Owning a large dog, she had escaped their pilferage, but out of pity she left occasional bundles of food and her own children’s old outgrown clothing sitting on a tree stump, beyond the reach of the dog’s leash, and these disappeared quickly. Even she did not know their name, or where they lived. Reverend Snover only knew of the children through stories he had been told. He had come in the hope of finding information so that he might offer some charity to the family, though we all begged him not to venture after them alone.