The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall (Sherbrooke Brides 11.50)

“He can move very quickly when properly motivated,” Rosalind said.

*******************

Grayson found the two of them clapping their hands along with the crowd of people standing in a circle around a giant of a man who was juggling five ale bottles. Every few minutes he snagged one of the bottles out of the circle and drank it down even as he continued to juggle. By the time every bottle was empty, he was staggering. Still, he never dropped a single bottle.

It was Grayson who had to pull out the rest of his coins to place in the giant’s huge boot. Rosalind noticed Grayson’s eyes were shining with excitement as he pulled them aside. “Just look what I found in a stall leaning against an old oak tree, set completely apart from the other bookstalls. I don’t know why, but I went there like a homing pigeon.” He held out an ancient and tattered bloodred leather-bound book set gently on his palm, but didn’t let them touch it. “An old man was sitting on a rickety stool surrounded by piles of old books, whistling. But this one--the old man held it out to me and smiled.” He added, his voice more reverent than a vicar’s, “I couldn’t believe it. It’s an ancient copy of Sarimund’s Rules of the Pale. I didn’t believe any of them had survived.”

“Who is Sarimund? What is a pale?” Rosalind stuck out her hand, but Grayson simply pulled the book to his chest, cradling it.

“No, it is too fragile. The Pale, Rosalind, is a place that’s beyond us, on the other side, mayhap in a different time. An otherworld, I suppose you could call it--it’s where all sorts of strange beings exist and stranger things occur, frightening things, things we mortals cannot understand. At least that’s what an ancient don at Oxford told me about it. Mr. Oakby didn’t believe any more copies existed either, but here it is. I found it.” Grayson was trembling with excitement. He said, “It’s incredible, I cannot believe this old whistling man had a copy of it, that he actually handed it to me, as if he knew I would give most anything to have it. Do you know what? He refused to take any more than a single sovereign. My lord, you are looking strange. Do you happen to know of Sarimund? The Rules of the Pale?”

Nicholas nodded. “I know that the Rules of the Pale is about the exploits of a wizard who visited the Bulgar and somehow managed to penetrate into the Pale, and wrote down rules he discovered in order to survive there. He found his way back out and there the book stops. As for Magnus Sarimund, I understand his home was near York. He was a Viking descendant, claimed one of his ancestors had once ruled Danelaw. A marvelous fiction.”

“Fiction? Oh, no,” Grayson said. “Surely not.”

Nicholas said nothing.

“I did not know Sarimund’s history,” Grayson said. “A Viking descendant--you must tell me everything you know, my lord. I must write to Mr. Oakby at Oxford. He will be very excited. What luck for me. Imagine finding the Rules of the Pale here in a bookstall in Hyde Park.”

Rosalind grabbed his arm. “Wait a moment, Grayson. I remember now. A pale isn’t some sort of otherworldy place, it’s nothing more than a commonplace stockade, a protective barrier of some sort. I remember reading of an English pale that encompassed some twenty miles around Dublin--a long time ago, built as a defense against marauding tribes. To be safe, you stayed within the pale, or the stockade. If you were outside of the stockade, or beyond the pale, as the phrase goes, then it meant back then that you were in real danger.”

Nicholas nodded, saying, “I recall there was also a pale built by Catherine the Great to keep the Jews safe. But this place by Sarimund, it is another kind of pale entirely.”

Rosalind said, “Grayson, let’s go to that bookstall. Would you take us there?”

“Well, all right, but it was the only copy, you know. There’ll be no more there. I asked the old man. He shook his head at me, never stopped his whistling.”

Nicholas nodded, then stuck out his hand. Rosalind didn’t hesitate; she took his hand and stayed close to his side as they weaved through the crowds. When Grayson spotted the decrepit old stall leaning against an oak tree, set a goodly distance away from the other bookstalls, he broke into a trot, calling over his shoulder, “I don’t remember that it looked quite this bad when I was here just minutes ago. Something must be wrong.”

They stood in front of the dilapidated stall. There were no piles of books on the rough plank counter, and no whistling old man. There was nothing at all except a collection of very old boards looking ready to collapse.

Grayson said, “Where could he have gone? And the books? There’s not a single one. Do you think he sold all his books and simply left?”

Nicholas was silent.

Rosalind said, “Are you certain this is the right stall, Grayson?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Let’s ask the other vendors. I would like you to meet this old man.”

Nicholas and Rosalind helped him make inquiries at all the nearest bookstalls. Two of the booksellers remembered, vaguely, seeing an old man--Yes, yes, he was whistling, wouldn’t stop, the old bugger--And he set up away from the rest of us, and why did he do that? the next thing there was this raddled old stall with all these dusty old books piled around. The other booksellers didn’t remember the old man or his dilapidated bookstall set against the oak tree. At Nicholas’s suggestion, they spoke once more to the first two booksellers, the two who had seen the old man--now all they remembered was seeing some ancient boards nailed together, but no books, nothing but those dilapidated boards.

Nicholas said, “I wager if we speak to them again in an hour, they will have no memory of anything.”

“But--”

Nicholas merely shook his head at Grayson. “I don’t understand it, but there you have it. You have the book, Grayson, and that is enough.”

“But this makes no sense,” Rosalind said. “Why did the booksellers remember him, then ten minutes later, forget him entirely?”

There was no reply from either Grayson or Nicholas.

“Why do you remember the old man and the stall if the others don’t, Grayson?”

“I don’t know, Rosalind, I don’t know.”

When they turned back to the decrepit old bookstall, it was to see several rough boards littering the ground.

Grayson felt a quiver of something scary deep inside. “This is passing strange.”