He ignored me. Tsking over the empty cauldron, he said, “Henry, let’s collect water. I noticed a stream out back. Lizzie, perhaps we could gather up the rubbish?”
In the space of a few minutes, Henry had water bubbling over the fire (started with pages of my ruined books), and I had a cup of tea in my hand. The two of them were sweeping and scrubbing up the mess while Wendell leaned back in the other armchair he had dragged over to the fire, offering occasional directives phrased as suggestions. I had changed clothes and done what I could to wash off in the stream out back, which wasn’t much, if I’m being honest. I could still feel the mud clumping in my hair.
“This is quite good,” Bambleby said, helping himself to another piece of toast. It was the faerie’s bread, warmed over the fire. He looked perfectly comfortable slouched in his chair in that gracefully boneless way of his, clad in a fresh cardigan. “You say the creature is a brownie?”
“Yes—tree. Though he also seems to act as a guardian of the spring, which is unusual.” I do not like to admit it, but I was in better spirits, and this was not only due to the tea. Unwelcome as his presence was, Bambleby was a piece of Cambridge, and I felt more myself with him there.
Bambleby stretched, interlacing his hands behind his head. “Dunne noted a similar phenomenon among the Finnish keiju. What did she call it? Elemental decoupling?”
I snorted. “Dunne invents theories to hide her shoddy methodology. You cannot generalize about such things with her sample sizes.”
Bambleby murmured assent. I realized that he was smiling at me sleepily. Lizzie would have been beside herself with blushes at that smile, but I was too used to him. I simply gazed levelly back, waiting for him to explain this latest outrageousness.
“I missed you, Em,” he said. “It was strange not having you across the hall, scowling at me.”
“I wonder at your ability to detect my scowls through the wall. Are your senses heightened in other ways?”
I was needling him. I do this sometimes. I believe Bambleby knows my suspicions about him.
“You alone have the talent of scowling loudly. I’ve often wondered how you manage it.” He turned to Henry. “Summon our host, would you? I’ve a mind to have a hot meal before I retire. And do ask after the possibility of dessert. Nothing elaborate—an apple tart or bread pudding will suit. God in Heaven, but I am tired of fish stew and sailor’s bread.”
I could not imagine such a message eliciting a favourable response from Krystjan Egilson, so naturally I said nothing. Bambleby leaned forward and took my hand. “I suppose you’ve guessed why I’m here. Let me assure you, it’s not what you think.”
“Oh?” I knew exactly why he was here. To take credit for my research.
“I have the utmost respect for your abilities, Emily. Please do not interpret my presence to mean that I think you’ll make a mess of this opportunity. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
I withdrew my hand, shrivelling into a ball of anger. “Oh, wonderful.”
“I’m here to assist,” he assured me, perfectly oblivious.
“And I’m sure that this desire to be helpful has nothing to do with a fear that someone other than yourself might get the credit for conducting the first comprehensive investigation of a yet unproven species of Folk?”
He gave me a wide-eyed look of surprise. “That wouldn’t be very sporting. I like to think that I’ve always been a good friend to you. Why else would I have volunteered to write the foreword to your encyclopaedia?”
I was going to club him over the head with my encyclopaedia when it came out. Was it really necessary for him to always be reminding me that I needed him? “As a matter of fact, my findings are quite advanced,” I said. “So you may discover that whatever research you undertake here only serves to back up my conclusions.”
“Indeed?” To my chagrin, he looked excited rather than resentful, and I realized that he truly did see us as colleagues rather than competitors. The problem with Bambleby, I’ve always found, is that he manages to inspire a strong inclination towards dislike without the satisfaction of empirical evidence to buttress the sentiment. “Will you show me the data you’ve collected thus far?” His eagerness was interrupted by a yawn. “Tomorrow, perhaps?”
I tapped the rim of my mug, watching him. “What form do you anticipate this assistance taking, precisely?”
He gave me a different sort of smile, and I felt a chill creep down my back. There is something that Bambleby does which would be noticeable only to those who spend a great deal of time around the Folk. It is the way in which his emotions seem to slide through him like water, one giving way to another as abruptly as waves on the shore. This changeability would seem disconcerting or false on a human face, but it is just the way the Folk are made.
He leaned forward. “Are you familiar with the International Conference of Dryadology and Experimental Folklore?”
His voice had a teasing edge, for of course I was familiar. ICODEF is the most prestigious conference in our field, held annually in Paris, to which I had not once been invited. Bambleby went every year, damn him.
“I’m a featured speaker this year,” he said. “There is a particular sponsor attending whom I wish to impress. Very deep pockets. It could mean funding for not one but several research expeditions I have been putting off for lack of resources. Few things would be more impressive than a paper presenting even preliminary findings of a heretofore unknown Folk. As you say, these Hidden Ones are regarded with scepticism by even the most open-minded of scholars. But, as I’ve always argued, the fact that the Folk are absent in other regions of Arctic and sub-Arctic Europe cannot be taken as evidence of their absence in every winter country.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’ve not been invited to ICODEF this year. Will you credit me in a footnote?”
“We will present our findings together. I will impress my sponsor. You will make a name for yourself and set the scientific community clamouring for your book, which I understand is out next year.”
He sank back into his slouch, looking merry, utterly convinced that I would be delighted. I kept my expression bland, to deny him that pleasure at least, but of course there was no option besides agreement.
Bambleby was being modest—no doubt an oversight of fatigue. He was not merely a featured speaker at ICODEF this year; he was likely the only one people would be talking about, though I doubted the reasons were entirely to his liking.
“I planned to see through the winter here,” I said. “To attend ICODEF would mean departing Hrafnsvik—”
“February the first,” he said. “At the very latest. The plenary is on the tenth. And, well, we need a day or two to settle in, don’t we? I have already promised half a dozen of our continental colleagues that I would dine with them on the Champs-?lysées—you will come along, of course—among them Leroux and Zielinski. She’s been awarded some sort of medal by the Polish queen and has been rather big-headed about it—snubbed three-quarters of her old circle, though I’ve managed to stay in her good graces…They say even the king of Paris may make an appearance this year; if so, I’m sure I can convince Leroux to make the introductions…”
My heart gave a nervous flutter. That would shorten the duration of my field study drastically. I would have only three months—three months!—to accomplish what took most scholars a year or more. Could I do it?
Instead of answering, I sipped my tea and said, “I’m a little surprised you were invited back this year. But I suppose the furor over the Schwarzwald expedition has died down somewhat.”
He slouched deeper and became preoccupied with his sleeve. “A misunderstanding, that. I’ve no doubt future studies will validate my findings.”
“Of course.” I’d no doubt they would do the opposite. I suspected that Bambleby’s paper concerning the snow-weavings of the trooping faeries of the Schwarzwald was not the first of his to contain exaggerated or patchy evidence, but it was probably the first he had entirely falsified.
Probably. Wendell Bambleby’s research is all flash and dazzle, and he has an uncanny knack for uncovering outlandish new faerie rituals and enchantments that turn much of the related scholarship on its head—a knack I have often found less uncanny than suspicious.