Edvane Stories

Curate Ralph Travers had not meant to make the Devil famous.

He served St Olave’s in Exeter with a hard conscience and a sharper tongue, and in those years there were many things for such a man to hate. There were charms pinned under cradles, muttered blessings over milk, old women who knew which saints to name and which names to avoid, and children who went through dark passages whispering nonsense their grandmothers should have forgotten.

“Puck is no plaything,” Ralph told them from the pulpit. “Robin Goodfellow is no friend to Christian souls. And Bucky, whom you call in your childish rhymes, is the Devil with his face washed.”

The children listened, agog, while their mothers lowered their eyes. Geoffrey Wooton approved from the churchwarden’s place, though Mother Frideswide, bent near the back, clicked her tongue.

After that, the rhyme changed in the parish. It had once been half a game, spoken to steady small hearts in the dark. Now it was repeated under blankets, behind doors, and in frightened dares outside the water passages.

Bucky, Bucky, biddy Bene.

Ralph thought he had named an enemy. He had, unknowingly, given one a congregation.

The first time Bucky answered, Ralph was crossing the churchyard after evening prayers with his cloak drawn close and his sermon still warm in his mouth. The night had settled over St Olave’s. Rain clung to the grave-stones, and the yew stood black against the wall. Ralph had almost reached the gate when a childlike voice spoke from among the dead.

“Bucky, Bucky, biddy Bene.”

He turned, angry before he was afraid. “Come out,” he said. “Mockery in God’s acre is a poor choice for any soul.”

The voice came again, nearer this time. “Is the way now fair and clean?”

A shape crouched on John Browne’s grave, small as a child at first glance, but strange in the holding of itself. Its wings were folded tight about it like a wet cloak. When it lifted its head, Ralph saw a pale face, and wet, black eyes that caught the moonlight.

“In Christ’s name,” Ralph whispered.

The wings opened. They seemed to fill the churchyard. Ralph tried to cry out, but the thing was already upon him, cold hands at his throat, dragging him toward home. Bucky hauled Ralph through the door without lifting the latch.

Inside, the house was warm. The fire had sunk to red. Agnes slept with one hand beneath her cheek. Thomas lay curled near the wall, Elizabeth close beside him, both children breathing softly under the same blanket. Ralph saw them and found his voice at last.

“No,” he said. “Not them.”

Bucky stood between the bed and the hearth, his wings folded small again, his wet feet leaving no mark.

“You named me,” he said.

“I named evil.”

“You fed me.”

Ralph shook his head, but the denial had no strength in it. “Take silver,” he pleaded. “Take blood from me. Take years. Take my voice, if it pleases you. Only please, leave them.”

Bucky looked at Agnes and the children and smiled. “Three lives are owed. I cannot take these.”

Ralph’s knees weakened. “Then what would you have?”

“Three who come unbidden. Three who ask the dark with their own mouths.”

Ralph knew then why the old rhyme had been waiting in the parish, passed from child to child like a key.

“No,” he said again.

Bucky bent close. “Then wake them.”

“And if I will not?” Ralph asked.

Bucky looked toward the bed. Elizabeth stirred under the blanket, and Thomas murmured in his sleep.

Ralph shut his eyes. “How?”

“You know how.”

“No.”

“You have put my name in every child’s mouth already,” Bucky said. “Now choose three, and teach them the rest.”

♦ ♦ ♦

William Ackland had been dying for so long that half the parish had mistaken it for living.

He was nine years old, and narrow in the chest, with wrists so slight his mother could close finger and thumb about them. In winter, he coughed until his lips darkened. In summer, he tired after crossing the yard, while other children ran the lanes until dusk. Yet he smiled easily, thanked anyone who carried coal or broth to the house, and spoke of next year with a child’s plain faith, while Mary looked away.

Mary Ackland kept him alive by labour, prayer and refusal. She sat up through fevers. She warmed linen at the hearth. She measured every draught White Annie brought and watched the wise-woman’s face for hope before she dared look at her son.

John Ackland said less. He mended, fetched, paid, pawned and stood outside when William was at his worst, his hands braced on the door frame while the coughing shook the room behind him. Once, Ralph Travers found him there before dawn.

“Will he see morning?” Ralph asked.

John looked at the floor. “He always has before.”

That was how the parish spoke of William. Not well, not cured, not safe. Still here.

White Annie came with draughts and salves wrapped in a blue cloth and would not be hurried by Ralph’s disapproval. “Some children are held by more hands than the mother’s,” she told him, laying a palm on William’s brow.

“By God’s hands only,” Ralph said.

White Annie did not argue. She tied the blue cloth and tucked it under her arm. “God may claim him when He likes,” she said. “Until then, his mother is doing the work.”

Ralph did not choose William Ackland at once.

For three days, he named no child, and for three nights he slept beside Agnes with his eyes open, listening for wings on the roof and small voices at the door. Thomas asked why he no longer blessed him before sleep. Elizabeth climbed into his lap, and he sat so still that she soon climbed down again. Agnes tried to touch his hand across the table, and he pulled away before he knew he had done it.

On the fourth day, he went to the Acklands’ house because Mary had sent for prayers. William lay propped on folded blankets, his breath shallow but stubborn. Mary had combed his hair, and John had scrubbed the floor. White Annie’s blue cloth rested on the stool, tied tight, waiting for her return. The room held that miserable order found in houses where illness has taught everyone never to relax.

Ralph prayed, while William watched him with tired trust. “Will God make me well?” the boy asked.

Mary turned her face, unable to bear it.

Ralph should have said what he had said before. That God’s mercy was not always the same as man’s wanting. Instead, he thought of Thomas asleep with his mouth open, Elizabeth’s fingers curled around Agnes’s thumb, and Bucky standing between bed and hearth. “God knows the road prepared for every child,” he said.

William nodded, taking comfort, though none had been offered.

On the walk back to St Olave’s, Ralph told himself he had not chosen. He had merely seen what was plain. William’s life was already a fading ember. Mary had cupped her hands around it for years, and John had gone without to keep him fed and warm. White Annie had coaxed it back whenever Ralph thought it must surely fail.

But an ember was not a flame, and Ralph let himself call that mercy.

Ralph returned to the Acklands’ house two evenings later. Mary was mending by William’s bed. John had gone to fetch water. The boy was awake, propped high, watching the ceiling with the fixed patience of the ill. He smiled when Ralph entered, and Ralph felt the smile strike him hard.

“Are you frightened at night?” Ralph asked.

William shrugged. “Only when I hear the passages under the street.”

“There are no passages beneath this house.”

“No, sir. But I hear them all the same.”

Mary’s needle stopped.

Ralph had meant to speak of heaven, but heaven seemed too far away and too pure for what he had come to do. “Devon children have old words for dark places,” he said. “Foolish words, mostly. Yet words can steady the heart.”

Mary looked up. “What words?”

“Only a rhyme. Not a prayer.”

He should have stopped there. Instead, he bent closer, and William listened with solemn care while Ralph taught him line by line.

“Bucky, Bucky, biddy Bene,
Is the way now fair and clean?
Is the goosey gone to nest?
Is the foxy gone to rest?
Shall I come away?”

William repeated it softly. His voice grew surer at the final line.

Mary crossed herself, then seemed ashamed of the gesture. “I thought you hated such things.”

“I hate fear,” Ralph said. “If a rhyme helps a child master it, God may forgive my old foolishness.”

That night, when the coughing took him and would not let go, William remembered the words. Near dawn, while Mary slept upright in her chair, he climbed from his bed and went looking for the fair and clean way.

The street was wet and empty, and every step hurt. Twice he stopped, coughing into his sleeve, and twice the sound of water seemed to beckon him. He followed it past shuttered houses and down toward the place where men spoke of the passages under Exeter, those dank, black ways cut for the city’s pipes, leaks and men with lamps. Not for children whispering rhymes into the dark.

At the entrance, William hesitated. The dark beyond it did not move, but he felt something. He said the rhyme aloud because Ralph had taught him to.

“Bucky, Bucky, biddy Bene,
Is the way now fair and clean?
Is the goosey gone to nest?
Is the foxy gone to rest?”

His voice weakened on the last line. “Shall I come away?”

For a moment, there was only water, stone and rain. Then, from inside the passage, a small voice answered him by name. “The way is fair, Will Ackland.”

William stepped into the dark.

Mary woke because the room had gone quiet. For a moment, she thought the fever had broken. The chair had stiffened her back, and the candle had died beside the bed, leaving only the dull grey before morning at the shutter. She listened for William’s breathing, for the small catch and drag that had measured every night of his life.

There was nothing.

She stood too quickly and struck her knee against the stool. The blanket lay folded back. The pillow still held the print of his head. His shirt was gone from the peg, and the door stood open by the width of a hand.

John found her in the lane, barefoot in the rain, calling William’s name with no care for who heard. By sunrise, half the parish was searching. Geoffrey Wooton sent men toward the river. Richard Adams questioned boys who had dared one another near the passages. Christian Smeath looked among the graves, though Mary screamed at him for it.

Ralph came last.

White Annie was already in the Acklands’ room, one hand on the empty bed and the other closed around the blue cloth at her waist. She did not ask Ralph what he knew. That was worse than an accusation.

“He could not have walked far,” John said. His voice was raw with the effort of staying useful. “Not in this weather. Not our Will.”

Mary sat on the floor with William’s blanket in her lap, rocking silently.

Ralph tried to pray, but the words would not settle. Every sentence seemed to turn aside before reaching God.

Outside, in the wet street, a child whispered the rhyme before being hushed by his mother. Ralph heard only the final line.

Shall I come away?

♦ ♦ ♦

Thomasin Hellier had not been born for service, but poverty rarely asked what a child was born for.

She was twelve when Alice placed her at the house of Robert Smales, who traded in cloth, kept his accounts neat, and spoke of duty with the satisfaction of a man who had never lacked bread. He was not cruel in the open way of drunkards or fools. He was worse for Thomasin, because his hardness was tidy. He noticed missing pins, bread cut too thick, water carried too slowly, and ash left too long in the grate. Each fault was entered into the day’s measure of her.

Joan Smales did not keep accounts. She kept memory. If Thomasin broke a cup, Joan remembered it when the girl was hungry. If Thomasin coughed while laying linen, Joan remembered it when the truckle bed near the kitchen door was left without a blanket. If Thomasin looked too long through the window when girls passed laughing in the street, Joan found more work for her hands.

Margaret Adams, the older servant, had learned the house before Thomasin came and moved through it with her eyes lowered. She gave warnings when she could. A crust tucked under a cloth, a whisper that Mistress Smales had counted the candles, a nudge before Robert’s step sounded in the passage. She was not unkind. She was only afraid, and fear had made a shrew of her.

Thomasin kept one comfort. Alice had promised she would not leave her there forever. Her sister came when she could, bringing mended stockings, apples wrapped in linen, and other kindnesses. “Hold fast,” Alice whispered at the yard gate. “I am finding a way.”

Thomasin believed her because her belief was the only thing the Smales had not yet taken.

Alice Hellier had been saving in secret since the day Thomasin entered the Smales’ house. She took in mending after her own work was done, stitched torn sleeves by candle-end, carried bundles across Exeter in weather that soaked her shoes through, and kept every spare coin wrapped in rag beneath a loose brick at her lodging. It was never much. A farthing here, a halfpenny there, a promise from a woman who knew a cousin in service near the West Gate. But Alice had learned that rescue was not one great act. It was a hundred small acts kept hidden until they made a road.

By late autumn, she had nearly made one.

Mistress Joan had grown tired of Thomasin, though she would not admit it. The girl was too thin, too slow from hunger, too often ill, and not broken enough to be useful without watching. Robert Smales cared less for Thomasin than for the agreement that had brought her there, but he cared a great deal for wages owed, cloth damaged, and the loss of anything before its full worth had been squeezed out.

Alice came to the yard gate on a wet afternoon and waited until Margaret Adams crossed with the pail. Margaret did not stop, but she slowed enough to hear. “Tell her I have a place,” Alice whispered. “Widow Durnell near the West Gate. Kitchen work, but kinder than here. I will come when her wages are settled. Tell her to hold one more week.”

Margaret frowned. “One week is long in this house.”

She told Thomasin before nightfall, but not quietly enough, for Margery Quick heard it through the scullery wall and carried the tale to Ralph Travers as parish business before the next rain came. Thomasin had cried at the news, without making a sound, but Joan Smales saw the wet on her cheeks and gave her the back kitchen to scrub.

Ralph found Thomasin Hellier at St Olave’s two mornings later, kneeling with a pail beside the porch while Joan Smales spoke to Geoffrey Wooton about a torn altar cloth.

The girl kept her head down. One side of her face was reddened where a hand had caught her, and the skin across her knuckles had split from scrubbing. Ralph had seen such marks before and told himself, as men like him often did, that another household’s discipline was not his to judge. This time he did not look away. He studied the hurt, the lowered head, the wasted arms beneath her sleeves, and felt the same ugly thought rise in him.

Here was one who already needed a door.

When Joan Smales went inside, Ralph stepped closer. “Your sister has been asking after you,” he said.

Thomasin looked up. Hope frightened her more than pain.

“She has found you a better place,” Ralph continued. “Near the West Gate. But such matters must be handled carefully. Robert Smales will not thank her for taking what he thinks is owed.”

Thomasin swallowed. “Alice is coming?”

“In a week, perhaps. Sooner, if need presses.”

The girl’s eyes moved toward the house, where Joan’s voice carried sharp through the open door.

“There are ways through Exeter,” Ralph said, quieter now. “Ways a child might take if she feared being stopped in the street. Old passages, dark ones, known to workmen and boys with more courage than sense.”

Thomasin shook her head. “I would be afraid.”

“Then steady your heart.”

He gave her the rhyme softly, line by line, until she could repeat it without mistake. When she repeated the final question, her voice caught. “Shall I come away?”

Ralph felt his hands close. “Only if you must,” he said.

Thomasin lasted four more days. On the fifth, Joan Smales accused her of stealing a length of thread that later turned up beneath Joan’s own workbasket. The apology never came, though. Thomasin was sent to the back kitchen without supper and told she would learn honesty in the dark. Margaret Adams found her there after the house had settled, shivering on the flags with her arms wrapped around herself.

“She is coming,” Margaret whispered. “Alice said one more week.”

Thomasin shook her head. “I cannot.”

Margaret knew better than to promise what the house would not allow. She pressed a crust into Thomasin’s hand and said nothing when the girl rose before dawn, took her cloak from the peg, and slipped out by the yard gate.

The streets were not yet awake. Thomasin kept to the walls, expecting every shutter to open, and every step behind her to be Robert Smales come to drag her back. At the turn toward the passages, she stopped and nearly ran for Alice instead, but fear had already made the shorter road seem kinder. Ralph’s voice returned, teaching her courage one line at a time.

She said the rhyme with her hand against the wet stone.

“Bucky, Bucky, biddy Bene,
Is the way now fair and clean?
Is the goosey gone to nest?
Is the foxy gone to rest?”

She held her breath a moment and then finished. “Shall I come away?”

A small voice answered from below. “The way is fair, Thomasin Hellier.”

Thomasin went in.

Alice came that afternoon with her coins tied in rag and Widow Durnell waiting near the West Gate. Robert Smales said Thomasin had run, Joan said wicked girls always did, and Margaret Adams would not raise her eyes.

Only Ralph, standing in the yard with rain on his shoulders, looked toward the passages when Alice began to cry.

♦ ♦ ♦

Nicholas Davy was eleven years old and already useful in ways no child should have needed to be.

Roger Davy, his father, worked when work could be found, and came home with his shoulders down when it could not. Jane took in washing, patched shirts, stretched pottage, bargained hard in the market and harder with herself. Between them stood Nicholas, slight for his age but quick, carrying what the house could not quite carry without him.

He fetched water before Peter woke. He took Eleanor on his hip when Jane’s hands were raw from lye. He ran messages for his father, watched the fire, minded the pot, and quieted quarrels before they grew large enough to trouble the neighbours. If bread was short, he said he had eaten elsewhere. If Peter cried for more, Nicholas broke his own piece in two and pretended he did not see Jane watching.

No one praised him for it as much as they should have.

Peter followed him everywhere, solemn and adoring, with his fists full of whatever Nicholas had just put down. Eleanor called for him before she called for either parent when she woke frightened in the night. Jane would sometimes look at her eldest across the hearth and seem about to say something tender, then turn back to the pot because tenderness did not mend shoes, pay rent or fetch water.

Nicholas did not think himself burdened. He liked being trusted. He liked knowing which neighbour would lend kindling, which baker gave yesterday’s loaf cheapest, and which alleys stayed passable after rain. He knew Exeter in small practical pieces, as children tended to when adults depended on them.

That was why, when trouble came near someone else’s door, people believed Nicholas Davy would know what to do.

Constance Fulford was not missing when Ralph first used her name. She was fourteen, bright, sharp-tongued, and better dressed than most girls Nicholas knew. Her father kept accounts for men who had more goods than learning, and her mother believed clean cuffs could save a child from half the sins of Exeter. Constance had once laughed at Nicholas for carrying Eleanor on his back with a market basket in each hand, then followed him two streets later to give the little girl a sugared plum wrapped in paper. Nicholas had never decided whether he liked her or disliked her, which meant he thought of her more often than he meant to.

She was also careless in the way of children who had not yet learned what fear costs. She slipped away from errands, lingered near the passage mouths with other girls, and once asked John Smith whether the old waterways truly ran beneath half the city. He told her they ran where they were made to run, and where they were not, and crossed himself when he thought no one saw.

Ralph heard enough of this from Geoffrey Wooton, who disliked loose talk around the passages now that two children had gone. He heard more from Margery Quick, who had seen Constance near Paris Street at dusk, arguing with a boy over whether Bucky was Puck, Robin, or the Devil himself.

That was all Ralph needed. When he found Nicholas outside St Olave’s with Peter asleep against his shoulder, he spoke as a man troubled by what he ought not to share. Constance Fulford had been seen near the passages again, he said. Her mother did not know. Her father would raise half the city if it proved true.

Nicholas tightened his hold on Peter.

“Someone should fetch her before dark,” Ralph said, and let the words lie between them.

Nicholas did not go at once. He carried Peter home first, because Peter had woken cross and hungry against his shoulder, and because Jane would worry if the boy was late. He set Eleanor’s cup where she could reach it, stirred the pot before it caught, and told his mother he had an errand near St Olave’s.

Jane heard something in his voice and turned from the hearth. “What errand?”

Nicholas could have told her then. He could have said Ralph Travers had spoken of Constance Fulford, of passages, of dark ways under the city where two children had already vanished. But Peter was rubbing his eyes on the bench, Eleanor had begun to nod into her cup, and Roger had come home with no work again. The room was full of needs already, and Nicholas had no wish to add another.

“Only a message,” he said.

Jane reached out and smoothed his hair back with damp fingers. “Come straight home, Nick.”

He promised he would, and meant it.

At the corner near Paris Street, he nearly turned back. Constance was not his sister. She had laughed at him more than once. Her father had men enough to search if searching was needed. But Nicholas thought of Eleanor waking frightened, of Peter following any older child who sounded sure, and of Constance standing at a passage mouth too proud to admit she wanted help.

Ralph was waiting near the church wall, though he pretended to be surprised. “If you find her,” he said, “do not follow too far. Call first. There are old words for such places.”

Nicholas looked at him then, wary but listening. Ralph gave him the rhyme, and with every line Nicholas’s face darkened, because he understood enough to be afraid.

“Only call,” Ralph said. “If she answers, bring her home.”

Nicholas nodded and went to do what decent children do before they learn what decency costs. He found no sign of Constance Fulford near the passage mouth, only rain on the stones and the stink of wet earth from below. He called her name several times, and each time the sound went down farther than it should have. He thought of Ralph’s warning not to follow, but warnings were poor tools against the thought of someone frightened and alone. So, at last, he put one hand on the wall and said the rhyme because there was nothing else to say.

“Bucky, Bucky, biddy Bene,
Is the way now fair and clean?
Is the goosey gone to nest?
Is the foxy gone to rest?”

His voice was trembling by the end. “Shall I come away?”

The dark answered in a small voice that sounded pleased to have been remembered. “The way is fair, Nicholas Davy.”

He stepped inside, meaning only to call again from the first turn.

By supper, Jane had sent Peter to the door six times. By dark, Roger had gone looking with a lantern and returned without Nicholas, without Constance, and without enough breath to comfort anyone. Peter kept asking what errand took so long. Eleanor would not sleep because Nicholas had not lifted her into bed himself.

The search began before the rain stopped. Richard Adams questioned Ralph, Geoffrey Wooton shouted orders he could not make useful, and John Smith went down as far as the first bend before coming back white-faced and swearing there were no fresh marks in the mud.

Jane did not cry at first. She stood in the doorway holding Nicholas’s cap, listening to Peter sob behind her and Eleanor calling her brother’s name in her sleep. Only then did the house understand how much of itself had been resting on one child.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ralph told Agnes after Nicholas Davy was gone. He did not mean to, though. He came home with rain in his hair and mud on the hem of his cassock, found her mending Thomas’s sleeve by the fire, and tried to speak of the search. Agnes listened until he said Nicholas had gone near the passages, then set the sleeve down with the needle still threaded.

“You knew he would,” she said.

Ralph’s mouth opened, but no prayer came to fill it.

The truth came out badly, in pieces. The churchyard. Bucky. The room where she and the children had slept. The bargain. William Ackland first, because he was already close to death. Thomasin Hellier next, because she needed a way out. Nicholas Davy last, because he would go where a frightened child might be. Ralph did not say he had chosen them. He said he had seen no other road until Agnes stood and struck him across the face.

After that, she did not shout. Shouting would have given him something human to answer.

“You saved Thomas and Elizabeth,” she said, “by teaching other children how to lose their families instead? How can we live with ourselves, knowing that?”

Ralph reached for her hand, and she stepped back before he touched her.

Margery Quick saw Agnes Travers leave the house with Thomas wrapped in his cloak and Elizabeth held tight against her side. Agnes carried no chest. She had taken only the children and enough bread for the road.

Ralph watched from the doorway, but Agnes did not look back. He followed her no farther than the end of the street, and watched her turn with Thomas and Elizabeth into the grey before morning. Something in him understood that to call after her would be another theft. She had taken the children from him while there were still children to take. He stood until soaked with rain, then hurried back to St Olave’s.

The churchyard was empty. Smeath’s spade leaned against the wall. The graves were dark with rain. Ralph crossed between them without prayer, without caution, without any hope that consecrated ground would refuse what he had invited once already. “Bucky,” he said. Nothing answered, so Ralph said it again, louder, and then again, until his voice broke on the third calling. “I have done what you asked. William Ackland. Thomasin Hellier. Nicholas Davy. Three came unbidden. Three asked the dark with their own mouths.”

A shape unfolded from the lower branches of the yew, wings opening just enough to show themselves before closing around the small, pale body.

Ralph stepped toward him. “It is finished.”

Bucky dropped lightly among the graves, his bare feet making no sound in the wet grass. “Is it?” he asked.

“Leave Agnes. Leave Thomas and Elizabeth. I gave you three lives.”

Bucky smiled with genuine courtesy, as though Ralph had at last spoken correctly. “Yes,” he said. “You did.”

Ralph heard the bells before he understood them. They began badly, in broken bursts from hands too frantic to keep measure. A shout rose beyond the churchyard wall. Then another. Somewhere, a woman cried out with such force that Ralph thought grief had found a fourth house.

Bucky turned his head, listening.

“What have you done?” Ralph asked.

“Kept our bargain, Curate.”

The first name reached him through the rain. William Ackland. Found near his own door, wet through, shivering, with no memory beyond a road under the earth and a voice telling him home was not yet done with him. Then Thomasin Hellier, standing at Alice’s lodging near the West Gate, clutching the crust Margaret Adams had given her. Then Nicholas Davy, knocking at his mother’s door while Peter screamed his name and Eleanor woke laughing before she knew why.

All three alive.

Ralph stared at Bucky, unable to make sense of it. “You said three lives were owed.”

“And three lives were given.”

“They are returned?”

Bucky smiled. “The lives of those children were never yours to give.”

Before Ralph could answer, Christian Smeath came stumbling through the churchyard gate, pale beneath the rain. He had run from the road, from the men who had come up from the coast with news no bell had yet learned how to carry. Agnes Travers had been seen at Orcombe Point before dawn with Thomas and Elizabeth. There had been no struggle. No cry heard above the wind of the storm. Only a woman walking with a child held to either side, down toward the black edge where the land ended.

Bucky folded his wings close. “I asked for three lives,” he said. “And your wife brought them to me herself.” Then he vanished, his laughter echoing all around.

Ralph could only sink among the graves and sob, while Exeter rejoiced for the children who had come home.

I welcome polite comments. If you enjoyed this story, you might also enjoy The Magpies of Hagley Stile