Earnest Whisper
Earnest Whisper was a young man who took life seriously. His job as a clerk at Arbuthnot and Thring suited him entirely; the discipline of numbers and words with precisely defined meanings thrilled him. He loved a world where everything had its place, and did not change. And Messrs Arbuthnot and Thring loved him, for they had no more dedicated or talented an employee than Earnest Whisper; he was both punctual and punctilious, yet never demanded the higher salary he undoubtedly deserved.
Earnest was a solitary man. He shunned friendship, something that was not difficult to achieve, for his work colleagues were not much disposed to befriend someone as lacking in emotion as he. His relationship with them was not a bad one; it simply lacked any warmth, or even, some might say, humanity. When he had first been apprenticed to Arbuthnot and Thring straight out of school, they had been inclined to mock him and his disposition, and his name which so accurately reflected it: their behaviour had not continued for long, however, for he was completely impervious to their teasing. Besides, they were somewhat unnerved by the way he met their taunts with an utterly blank stare, as if he hadn’t just failed to understand them, but wasn’t even fully aware of their presence. In the end they put his self-absorption down to his upbringing in an orphanage; they decided it must have affected him to know that he had been abandoned by his mother as an infant. Who could blame him, given such circumstances?
It was not entirely true to say that he had no friends at Arbuthnot and Thring. A few months earlier, a girl named Tamlyn had joined the company, straight out of school, as he had done a few years before her. Now Tamlyn was an attractive girl; slim, dark-eyed, and with long black hair that fell in a smooth sweep as far as her waist, and she naturally became the object of attention of the male workers in the office, which is to say almost all of them, for Arbuthnot and Thring was a stern, old-fashioned, male-dominated establishment. Being merely a girl, her job was simply to fetch and carry, to deliver messages and make cups of tea, which meant she came into contact with almost everyone there in a very short time: the older men shook their heads, smiled sadly, and wished they were younger, while the younger men vied for her attention, flirting with her blatantly, as would be expected of them. But Tamlyn was nobody’s fool; despite her tender years she knew the power over men that her looks gave her, and was happy to exploit it. She played up to them in return: she knew she could take her pick from among them whenever she felt like it.
Curiously enough, it was Earnest who had gained her particular interest, despite his taciturnity, for she found him enigmatic – as well as, she would have to concede, being drawn by his looks. Silent and unapproachable though he was, she thought him attractive, with his short black hair and ice-blue eyes, which fascinated her, and his pale skin, which lent him – in her active imagination at least – an almost other-worldly look. He must, she felt, have some hidden, exciting qualities, and she wanted to draw them out of him; he was a challenge to her. His colleagues felt somewhat put out that one so pretty should devote her attention to Earnest rather than to them, but they took it in good grace, assured that she would soon lose her curiosity in him, and they continued to flirt with her anyway.
Not that Earnest was entirely dismissive of her notice, for, silent though he was, he was unfailingly courteous, and always responded politely to her attempts to engage him in conversation. Slowly but surely she succeeded in breaking through his cold reserve and making him aware of her, and eventually they not only began to speak freely together, but Earnest even smiled at her, a sight no one in the offices of Arbuthnot and Thring had seen before.
He told her of his origins, at least such as he knew. As a baby he had been left on the steps of the orphanage with a note tucked into the single sheet of cloth that had wrapped him, and with a polished wooden box beside him. The note had simply read ‘His name is Whisper. The contents of the box are his.’ The slightly perplexed staff had given their mysterious guest the first name of Earnest, for even at that tender age he had a serious demeanour, and had stored the box on his behalf for the time he was in their care. They would doubtless have liked to open it, but could not, for it had no visible lock, nor indeed hinges, so they left it; and Earnest, no wiser than they, had taken it with him on his departure. The rather spartan rooms that his meagre salary from Arbuthnot and Thring had provided him with now held it: it lay under his bed, the sole link to his unknown mother.
Tamlyn had been captivated by his story, and had wanted to know more, so he had taken her back to his rooms and shown her the box, and she had held it, fascinated, stroking its smooth, fine grain, seeking a seam or crack in its surface, but had no more been able to open it than had anyone else.
Their familiarity had grown to a degree that no one would hitherto have imagined possible, but then, as summer had turned to autumn, and the final days of October had arrived with mornings whitened by frost, Tamlyn had curiously and inexplicably become quiet and withdrawn, and no longer responded to the efforts of the staff to engage her in banter. Even her new-found friend Earnest could evoke little from her except a look of distraction, and vague words of strange dreams she had been experiencing.
Then, one day, she had not arrived at work. Low-ranking though she was, her services and her presence were immediately missed, and an office boy of even lower rank than she had been sent to her house, only to find she was not there either, and had not slept in her bed that night. Her parents had already told the local constable of her disappearance, of how she had gone to her room on the previous night, and while they slept had slipped out of the house, leaving a brief and cryptic note saying that she was going off to be with her lover. What lover? No one, not her parents, nor her fellow workers, knew whom she could have been referring to. The constable had been careful and diplomatic, but had pointed out as tactfully as he could that girls of her age were apt to run away from home in such circumstances; it would not have been the first time it had happened during his many years in the force, and would not be the last. He had expressed his regret, but there was nothing to suggest she had left unwillingly, so there was little he could do, not least because no one had any idea where she had gone, or who her mysterious lover was.
At Arbuthnot and Thring, Earnest Whisper sat at his desk, silent and unapproachable, and his colleagues trod carefully around him. Even Mr Arbuthnot and Mr Thring had not dared to berate him for not getting on with his work, so coldly intense was his expression.
Until recently, the outside world and the affairs of others rarely impinged on Earnest’s consciousness; he arrived at work, completed the tasks he was given, then he returned to his small and scrupulously clean lodgings, where he sat in silence and listened to his thoughts before retiring to bed to sleep the sleep of a man with an untroubled conscience. But that night he dreamed. He dreamed of his mother, and of what she had planned when she had given him the box, of what had happened to Tamlyn, and of what he must do.
So it was that he woke the next morning with his mind utterly clear: he took out the box from under his bed, and opened it with a gentle touch of his fingers, wondering how it could ever have seemed impossible. Inside, wrapped in cloth, lay a belt and scabbard, as black as night, and in the scabbard a sword, which he knew was called Xing!, and which was his, given to him by his mother, and which was once his father’s. And he knew his father was the one who had taken Tamlyn, and his mother before her, and countless other girls before that.
He left the house promptly: the sun was barely up when he stood staring across the fields nearest the side of town where he and Tamlyn lived: a pale yellow light shone across the foliage that was rimed with a thick layer of frost after a cold, clear night. He was looking towards a long, low mound with trees dotted along its back, a mound called Knight’s Low, though no one was sure why.
As if he were still in his dream he walked across to the mound’s end, and he was not in the least surprised to see the dark entrance to a passageway there, though nothing but turf had been there the last time he or anyone else had looked. He hesitated not an instant, but stepped inside.
The passage was lined with stone slabs, golden sandstone that had not felt the light of the sun for years beyond measure, and were now dimly illuminated by irregular clusters of opalescent globes that clung to the roof and walls, looking like grotesque, bulbous fungi. Earnest walked grimly onwards, his pace not breaking, until the passage opened out into a large, high chamber: he stepped into it, and looked around him.
Tamlyn was there. She was lying quite still in a huge, soft bed whose four elegantly slim, ebony-black corner posts reached almost to the ceiling, and between which was hung an elaborate canopy of fine cloth of the purest white, looking like the most delicate of cobwebs. Her long, silky hair was spread across the pillows in a tousled mass, surrounding her small, pale face; her eyes were closed, and at first she seemed lifeless, but Earnest, approaching more closely, could see the slight rise and fall of her chest beneath the covers. He stared at her, his own chest tight with feelings he could not explain, when he heard a sound from the far side of the chamber.
There was another entrance: a dark aperture in the wall capped with a stone lintel, and through it a figure stepped. It was a man, or what looked like a man, seeming much as he did; pale-skinned and black-haired, though his hair was long, and instead of ice-blue eyes his were entirely black: he calmly and silently approached across the fine white sand of the floor to stand on the opposite side of the bed, and the sleeping form of Tamlyn.
‘Welcome home, Whisper,’ he said, though with a cruel smile that belied his courteous words. ‘You know my latest conquest, I think,’ he reached out an arm to Tamlyn, and touched the smooth skin of her cheek. ‘I was expecting you to arrive: I thought you might wish to witness the consummation of our mutual passion.’ His smile was now wolfish, and he continued to toy with Tamlyn, now running his fingers through her hair, apparently casually, but never taking his eyes from Earnest. ‘But firstly, do you intend to return my old sword to me? Your mother took it from me, and I would have it back.’
Then Earnest drew the sword Xing! from its sky-black scabbard and held it before him; he stared at the silver flames that danced along its narrow blade, and prepared himself. His father laughed, and likewise drew a sword, though with far more assurance than Earnest. ‘She is very dear to you; how touching,’ his father observed. ‘Tamlyn,’ he said, waking the girl with the mere mention of her name. ‘It seems you have a champion who is prepared to die to for you; you must watch.’
Earnest and his father both stepped sideways to be clear of the bed, to gain room to manoeuvre, as Tamlyn woke, her eyes blurred with sleep and confusion. She slithered from under the covers to stand uncertainly beside the bed, in her white nightdress and bare feet, obviously not properly aware of her surroundings, looking from one man to the other for guidance.
‘Get out of here, Tamlyn,’ said Earnest, his voice low but steady, gesturing to the entrance he had come in by. ‘Go back home, and I will join you shortly. Go quickly.’ And after the briefest of hesitations she turned and did as he said, not seeing the spark of anger in the eyes of Earnest’s father, or the swift lunge he made, taking advantage of Earnest’s divided attention, or the nick his sword made in Earnest’s pale skin, or the spots of blood that started to appear on the fine white sand of the floor. For Earnest, despite his patrimony, was no match for his father, who was old beyond imagining, and the fight did not last very long.
There was considerable relief when Tamlyn arrived home, shivering with cold and unable to give any coherent account of where she had been, but apparently unharmed: no one was ever able to provide a satisfactory explanation as to what had happened to her, or to Earnest Whisper, who had vanished just as mysteriously as she, but who, unlike Tamlyn, never returned.
Tamlyn was sad at her friend’s disappearance, but a girl as attractive as she would never be neglected, and before winter had passed another young man had taken Earnest’s place, and he gave her the attention she wanted, and was kind to her, and made her forget.
So, Earnest Whisper remained beneath the cold, hard earth, and no one wept for him, though Messrs Arbuthnot and Thring missed him greatly, for they never found another quite like him.
I wrote this story for Emily’s nineteenth birthday, which is why it takes the tone it does: those who have read any of my other pieces will be aware it is not my typical style, and I should like to reassure them it is not truly representative of me or my feelings, which are generally devoid of sentimentality or other deplorable human weaknesses.
Those of you who are familiar with the more famous ballads of the north of England and the Scottish Borders may recognise some elements: Childe Roland and Tam Lyn being the most obvious, for both involve a human being abducted to become the lover of one of the fairy-folk (a girl, Burd Ellen, in the first example, a man, the Tam Lin of the title, in the second). Tam Lin was of course the source of Tamlyn’s name; I liked the name enough for me to justify the change in sex, not least since Emily’s middle name is ‘Lynn’.
The illustration for Childe Roland that made the frontispiece by JD Batten to the first edition of Joseph Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales provided much of the inspiration for the scene in the mound, where Earnest discovers Tamlyn and faces his father (and indeed for the story itself).
The pedantic writing style was in imitation of such writers as Lord Dunsany in his The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller, and of the Doom that Befell Him, and of Jack Vance in his Lyonesse trilogy (which I greatly admire). The choice of Earnest’s employers, Arbuthnot and Thring, and more importantly the Victorian nature of their establishment, seemed to me to fit the mood of the story, despite its otherwise modern setting.
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