Still it must have been true that Reave and Jillet were related. When Reave was summoned in Jillet’s name, he came.
By the time Reave arrived, however, Jillet was beyond knowing whether anyone valued him enough to tell his kinsman what had become of him.
How he first began to make his way along the road to Kelven’s enmity was never clearly known. Very well, he was a fool, as all men knew—but how had he become enmeshed in folly on this scale? A few bad bargains with usurers were conceivable. A few visits to the alchemists and mages who fed on the fringes of towns like Forebridge throughout the North Counties were conceivable, in fact hardly to be wondered at, especially when Jillet was at the painful age where he was old enough. to want a woman’s love but too young to know how to get it. A few minor and ultimately forgettable feuds born of competition for trade or passion were not only conceivable but normal. Had not men and women been such small and harmless fools always? The folk of Forebridge might talk of such matters endlessly, seeking to persuade themselves that they were wiser. But who among them would have hazarded himself against Kelven Divestulata? Indeed, who among them had not at one time or another suspected that Kelven was Satan Himself, thinly disguised by swarthy flesh and knotted muscle and wiry beard?
What in the name of all the saints had possessed Jillet to fling himself into such deep waters?
The truth—which no one in Forebridge ever divined—was that Jillet brought his doom down on his own head by the simple expedient of naming himself Reave’s kinsman.
It came about in this fashion. In his early manhood, Jillet fell victim to an amiable, foolish, and quite understandable passion for the widow Huchette. Before his death, Rudolph Huchette had brought his new bride—foreign, succulent, and young—to live in the manor-house now occupied by Kelven Divestulata, thinking that by keeping her far from the taints and sophistication of the cities he could keep her pure. Sadly for him, he did not live long enough after settling in Forebridge to learn that his wife was pure by nature and needed no special protection. And of course the young men of the town knew nothing of her purity. They only knew that she was foreign, young, and bereaved, imponderably delicious. Jillet’s passion was only one among many, ardent and doomed. The widow Huchette asked only of the God who watched over innocence that she be left alone.
Needless to say, she was not.
Realistically considered, the only one of her admirers truly capable of disturbing her was dour Kelven. When she spurned his advances, he laid siege to her with all the cunning bitterness of his nature. Over the course of many months, he contrived to install himself in the manor-house which Rudolph had intended as her lifelong home; he cut off her avenues of escape so that her only recourse was to accept the drudgery of being his housekeeper since she steadfastly refused the grim honor of being his wife. And even there he probably had the best of her, since he was no doubt perfectly capable of binding and raping her to satisfy his admiration.
However, Jillet and the other men enamored of the widow did not consider her circumstances—and their own—realistically. As men in passion will, they chose to believe that they themselves were the gravest threat to her detachment. Blind to Kelven’s intentions, Jillet and his fellow fools went about in a fog of schemes, dreaming of ways to persuade her to reveal her inevitable preference for themselves.
However, Jillet carried this scheming further than most—but by no means all—of his peers.
Perhaps because of his amiability—or perhaps because he was foolish—he was not ordinarily successful in competitions over women. His face and form were goodly enough, and his brown eyes showed pleasure as openly as any man’s. His kindness and cheery temper endeared him throughout Forebridge. But he lacked forthrightness, self-assertion; he lacked the qualities which inspired passion. As with women everywhere, those of Forebridge valued kindness; they were fond of it; but they did not surrender their virtue to it. They preferred heroes—or rogues.
So when Jillet first conceived his passion for the widow Huchette, he was already accustomed to the likelihood that he would not succeed.
Like Kelven Divestulata after the first year or so of the widow’s bereavement—although no one in Forebridge knew at the time what Kelven was doing—Jillet prepared a siege. He was not wise enough to ask himself, Why am I not favored in the beds of women? What must I learn in order to make myself desirable? How may I rise above the limitations which nature has placed upon me? Instead, he asked, Who can help me with this woman?
His answer had already occurred to a handful of his brighter, but no less foolish, fellows. In consequence, he was no better than the fifth or sixth man of Forebridge to approach the best-known hedgerow alchemist in the County, seeking a love-potion.
According to some authorities, the chief distinction between alchemists and mages was that the former had more opportunities for charlatanism, at less hazard. Squires and earls consulted mages: plowmen and cotters, alchemists. Certainly, the man whom Jillet approached was a charlatan. He admitted as much freely in the company of folk who were wise enough not to want anything from him. But he would never have revealed the truth about himself to one such as Jillet.
Charlatan or not, however, he was growing weary of this seemingly endless sequence of men demanding love-potions against the widow Huchette. One heartsick swain by the six-month or so may be profitably bilked. Three may be a source of amusement. But five or six in a season was plainly tedious. And worrisome as welclass="underline" even Forebridge was capable of recognizing charlatanism when five or six love-potions failed consecutively.
“Go home,” the alchemist snapped when he had been told what Jillet wanted. “The ingredients for the magick you require are arduous and expensive to obtain. I cannot satisfy you.”
But Jillet, who could not have put his hand on five farthings at that moment, replied, “I care nothing for the price. I will pay whatever is needed.” The dilemma of cost had never entered his head, but he was certain it could be resolved. The widow Huchette had gold enough, after all.
His confidence presented an entirely different dilemma to the alchemist. It was not in the nature of charlatans to refuse money. And yet too many love-potions had already been dispensed. If Providence did not inspire the widow to favor one of the first four or five men, the alchemist’s reputation—and therefore his income—would be endangered. Perhaps even his person would be endangered.
Seeking to protect himself, the alchemist named a sum which should have stunned any son of a cotter.
Jillet was not stunned. Any sum was acceptable, since he had no prospect of ever paying it himself. “Very well,” he said comfortably. Then, because he wished to believe in his own cleverness, he added, “But if the potion does not succeed, you will return that sum with interest.”
“Oh, assuredly,” replied the alchemist, who found that he could not after all refuse money. “All of my magicks succeed, or I will know the reason why. Return tomorrow. Bring your gold then.”
He closed his door so that Jillet would not have a chance to change his mind.
Jillet walked home musing to himself. Now that he had time to consider the matter, he found that he had placed himself in an awkward position. True, the love of the widow Huchette promised to be a valuable investment—but it was an investment only, not coin. The alchemist would require coin. In fact, the coin was required in order to obtain the investment. And Jillet had no coin, not on the scale the alchemist had mentioned. The truth was that he had never laid mortal eyes on that scale of coin.
And he had no prospects which might be stretched to that scale, no skills which could earn it, no property which could be sold for it.