“Oh!” Mr Grigsby replied from the other side of the door. The tapping ceased. “Good morning, Lofthouse! Not ill, I hope?”
As always, no trace of sarcasm or ill-humour entered into Mr Grigsby’s speech—though, considering his useless clerk had overslept by several hours and forced him to open up his own office, Wren thought him well entitled to a hint of exasperation, at least. Wren withheld a sigh and recited the falsehood Mr Grigsby had so obligingly laid out for him. “A touch out of sorts, sir, but I shall be downstairs shortly.”
“And I’m very glad to hear it!” said Mr Grigsby, the only man in all of London who could utter the phrase with sincerity and conviction. “Though of course if you are feeling poorly, perhaps you’d better stay and rest. Should I send for a physician?”
“No need, sir,” Wren hurried to dissuade him before the notion could take root. “I’m feeling much better already, thank you.”
“Splendid! But don’t over-exert yourself in rushing down, Lofthouse. I can manage well enough for the moment. Good morning!”
And with that, Mr Grigsby finally retreated downstairs.
Wren waited until the last audible footstep had echoed away into the muffled silence of Staple Inn. Only then did he collapse with his forehead against the door and give voice to a long-suffering groan. His dream had exhilarated him in the moment. Now, when it had all faded into bitter dregs that served only to remind him of his tedious, ceaseless, inescapable reality, the memory exhausted him.
Still, self-pity would change nothing. He forced himself upright from the door and staggered over to his wash-stand.
Running his hand through his hair as he went, his fingers caught on the strands. Puzzled, he tried to pull his hand away. It stuck fast, and took two attempts to free himself, taking more than a few hairs with it as it went. They clung to his palm along with the unknown sticky substance—some kind of resin, he thought as he squinted down at it. He saw not only his own chestnut hairs stuck there, but a few green needles as well.
Pine pitch.
Wren stared at his hand. There were no pines in London. Much less in his garret.
His dream was real.
The wild hunt was real.
Butcher was real.
Wren sat down hard on his bed and spent entirely too many minutes staring at his hand.
All Butcher spake of had been real, and furthermore, he had promised to meet with Wren again on the morrow.
And that morrow was today.
This thought, moreso than any thought about clerking or his duties towards Mr Grigsby, spurred Wren to action. It took some time to wash all the pine pitch out of his hair. To say nothing of combing out the multitude of tangles.
Fairy knots, Wren couldn’t help thinking. Nor could he keep from smiling at the thought. He felt giddy as a schoolboy, his mood today as ebullient as his master’s everyday—almost. It made him something of a dandy, for while he put on the same old black waistcoat, black frock coat, black trousers, and black neck-cloth (having surrendered his white cravat to the werewolves, and wasn’t that something to consider), he did so with more care, smoothing out creases and wrinkles and picking out pine needles as he went.
All of which did make him arrive downstairs rather later than he’d promised Mr Grigsby. Late enough, in fact, for Mr Grigsby to have already put his own kettle on and set a cup of tea cool enough to drink on Wren’s desk. Despite this, Mr Grigsby expressed only relief at Wren’s entry.
Wren thanked his employer for his concern and sat down at his desk. Actually buckling down to work, however, proved nigh on impossible. After the exhilaration of the wild hunt, and with the promise of Butcher’s return, Wren found it more difficult than ever before to settle into the mundane world of moving figures from one column to the next. A good man would strive to repay Mr Grigsby for his consideration and lenience by accomplishing more in the work day. As Wren filled the margins of his memorandum book with scribblings of pine trees and satyrs, he supposed he’d never been a particularly good man.
No sooner had Wren reached this conclusion than the downstairs bell rang.
Wren leapt up from his desk before Mr Grigsby could do more than open his mouth to request it of him. Mr Grigsby’s mouth remained open in astonishment as Wren dashed past his desk for the door. And well might Mr Grigsby look astonished, for Wren didn’t think he’d ever moved so rapidly in all his ten years of service to the man.
Wren paused at the door to catch his breath and give his nervous fingers one last dash through his hair. Then he took hold of the latch and swung the door inward with a very amiable and professional, “Good morning.”
The figure on the stair was tall, dark, and broad-shouldered—but not Butcher. No feathered cap, no furred cloak, no highwayman’s boots, no Venetian mask of black leather. Just a practical pair of laced shoes, trousers, waistcoat, and morning coat, all in sober brown, with a modest blue neck-tie the only spot of colour, and a soft crop of brown hair beneath a plain and practical beaver hat. The gentleman appeared to be in his early forties, with a solid build beneath his suit and a strong jaw beneath his sideburns, and as he swept the beaver from his head, the eyes he turned up at Wren precisely matched the shade of his blue neck-tie.
Wren caught himself before he let his face fall in disappointment—it wasn’t the gentleman’s fault he wasn’t Butcher, after all—and as the gentleman reached the upper landing, Wren added, “How may I be of service, sir?”
A modest smile lit up the gentleman’s features. Sober he might be, but by no means grave. “Mr John Tolhurst to see Mr Grigsby, if he’s in.”
Wren didn’t have to glance back to know Mr Grigsby was, in both the literal sense and in the polite society definition of the phrase, “in” for the purpose of seeing visitors. Unlike some gentlemen of his profession, Mr Grigsby delighted in entertaining strangers. And while Wren kept a wary eye out for temperance campaigners and tract-leavers, this Tolhurst seemed like neither.
Besides, the name Tolhurst had a familiar ring to it.
Wren stepped back to allow the gentleman into the office, announcing as he did so, “Mr Tolhurst, sir.”
