"I know exactly where we can stow Edmond for the short term," Cecil remarks. "Floor closet by the front door. Key ought to be in the top drawer of the writing-desk."

---

[[11:23, Today: Reverend Palmer rolled 75 using 1d100.  Listen 50]]

[[GM edit: noticeable anachronism removal: Josiah Davenport is at most a couple of weeks old at this point, and has not commissioned any desks, being otherwise occupied.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:23, Thu 30 Mar 2023.

"Ye set a soaked towel down an' hold the door broad ajar, then, and I'll carry him over," Widow Sexton agrees after a moment's consideration.

There's a shifting and scuffling outside as the arrangements are carried out, the heavy tread of the stag following parallel to the bucket's course: human steps within, deer steps without. When Temperance has scooted the bucket and those weights that will fit into the little cloak-closet, the pair catch a worried murmur of femminine voices outside.


"-oh no, it is..."

                           "...is he there?"

             "He ought to be, there's lights burning - lessee if shouting drives it off...Vicar! Hey, Vicar, are y'in?"


The shout sounds like Bethany Collins. Her elder sister Hester, conscientious if far less inclined to raising her voice for any reason, manages to join in at volume:


"Sir! Vicar! There's the stag outside your house! Only you're needed at the inn!"

Cecil glances at the front door. "We may have to move our guest here somewhere toward the back of the house if we're to give ourselves the best head-start when we leave. Or perhaps upstairs, locked in my trunk." He shouts back a reply. "I am in, yes, and we're well aware of the stag. Not certain he'll let us out, so we're preparing to run for it."

"Well, Vicar, you tell me where you do want 'im and I'll carry this Master Fox there," Tempe says, leaning on the cupboard doorframe. "Only do decide, for it makes me nervous, not knowing when he might get himself together."

"Should we throw things at it?" Beth asks from without. Her sister seems less keen on the idea, but her comments don't quite make it through door and distance.

"Salt," Cecil mutters mostly to himself. "We're going to need lots of salt."

"Don't rile him up! Can y'hear bells out there?" the widow responds to the gaggle of girls outside.

"Bells?"

"We...oh! Yes, we can hear bells! Is it well to hear them?"

Something inaudible from Lucy follows. The older woman listens to the stag moving in the darkness outside with anxiety, calling back:

"Ay, bells are good - stay ye all together unless that stag turns for a charge, all right?"

Some confused noises of assent sound without. Tempe takes a deep breath and considers the bucket and its weights to be moved again.

"Well, we might sweep some off the floor and there's what was out afore, but otherwise we've to be out before we get a lot of salt." She hefts up their visitor's unholy reliquary once more. "Where's this going, then?"

Outside, Long Tom had reached the church gate, but seen the building shut up at a glance and passed onward, heading for the vicarage. Everything is very dim now the sun has left and the birds quieted, the stars and lagging light doing little to show him where his footsteps fall.

There is a light within the vicarage, but the girls - young women, really, tall enough to be picked out above the low garden wall and higher hedging - seem to be all huddled together looking at something. Running into shouting distance, Tom catches a movement in the direction stared at. It's a very large movement, indeed too large to be a human being, and of a sudden Tom realises he's looking at antlers.

The black stag stands beside the vicarage door, head up and alert. There's a slight rippling of the nearby shrubbery and faint jingling sound as the great beast turns his ears towards the newcomer and takes a deep breath, letting it out in a barking sigh of warning.

*HOUGH*

"To me girls, to me..." Thomas kept his position while watching the stag and its posture trying to work out what it was going to do. Given his previous experience he hoped he could to just that.


-

Cecil frowns and rubs his chin in response to Temperance's query. "If we take it upstairs, that might provoke the stag into trying to bust down the door," he quietly opines. "But it might just confuse the beast as well, the farther our guest is from the ground. We have to try it."

"Upstairs it is, then," Tempe responds, hauling the burdened bucket away in the direction of the stairs.

---

Outside, Lucy and Hessie look at the long dark outline of the man that's joined them, Beth watching the stag. At length Lucy draws them over nearer Tom, but holds her hand out whilst largely watching the animal. "Hand me your token, Tom," she says quietly, not keen to be stolen away whilst the intrusion of the Wood's power is writ so clear within the village bounds.

The stag, meanwhile, turns his ear and then his head towards the closed door, then steps forward around the house as though following something. He takes another step, then another, head raised as though watching something inside the house ascending, then abruptly trots around the back of the dwelling. A quiet falls.

Before anyone outside can call in to report this development, however, the stag shows up again from the other side of the house, then doubles back. Gravel crunches and small sticks break under the great circling weight, antlers occasionally scraping trees or brick.

---

Inside, the Widow Sexton pauses at the top of the stairs, listening to the faint restless pacing that hems them about like the grand hunt played out in reverse. She throws a glance to Cecil that asks where to next? but does not speak aloud. As yet there is no final bursting through the broken timber at the back door, nor any shattering of glass and leading below, but the stag goes around and around the house, seeking to be as near the bucket as he might be, and that is no permanently certain thing.

Cecil heads into the guest room across the landing from his, opening the trunk at the foot of the bed and hauling out the blankets stored therein. "In he goes," he tells Temperance. He then packs blankets around the bucket so there is as little space around it as possible. "A moment," he says, dashing downstairs to his desk in the study. He returns with the key to the trunk and locks it after packing as much other material around the bucket to make the trunk difficult to close. He sits on the lid and turns the key once he is able, removing it after the lock catches. "Let's hope that will suffice."

"Mm...well, the woollens won't burn, at least," Widow Sexton says, still wary for all their guest is locked away and sat on. "Perhaps sport the room door as well, as precaution."

---

Outside, the collected youths see the stag come around the front once more, then around the left-hand side of the house, where he seems to stay for a bit. There is the sound of turning and trampling on the spot, then an odd sound like hard objects scattered on slate. The jingling sound makes its way around the bulding.

Cecil nods and waves Temperance out of the room. He exits close behind, closing and locking the door to the guest room before returning downstairs. "We should lock the doors when we leave, just in case. I don't know whether the back door can be, half off its hinges as 'tis."
This message was last edited by the player at 04:36, Wed 12 Apr 2023.

Thomas removes his token and then turns to Lucy "Go to the church and wait by the door, I will come collect you and do not go with anyone else. Do you know who is inside the house ?"


-

Lucy takes the token and feels it over to be sure it's genuine before handing it back. She looks over at the dark church, the approaching lanterns, and all the shadowy places for crouching men and beasts with teeth to hide between here and there. "...no? No." She takes a deep breath against a sudden ache that surprises even her and makes her complaint with all the eloquence she can manage: "I'm not huge like you, Tom. This is...probably as big's I get, 'less I find out how to get tall, or fat, and I'm a girl...y'don't know what it's like, being told you're being hunted to be killed or worse, an' being small. I'm staying with someone - with Hessie and Beth if ye won't have me."

"Ay, Master Bees, y'can't just leave her tied up places like an ass," Beth puts in, definitely meaning the pun because this is Beth, heir to her mother's ferocity and father's wit. The strange sounds around the house resume, like a group of men hammering on tile.

"It's the Vicar and...sounds like the Widow Sexton, though she's not said," Hessie says, bringing them back to the practical question. "I don't think there's anyone else. They've been quiet awhile, though."

---

"If one of us goes out the back, we might wedge the table against the kitchen door, keep anything inside from getting into that room and out, at least," Tempe suggests. She cocks her head to listen. "Hm. I don't hear the stag trotting about the house any more."

The Vicar is just downstairs and Widow Sexton stepping off the last step when there comes a tremendous shattering crash from the room they've just left.


           -'. ,, " {.  {{ {CRSHKDKWHUDWHUDKTNKRTNKL} }}.  },' " ,  -

There's a further scattering of small, hard shards, a scrabbling and the heavy sound of deer hooves overhead: they step, and step, and stop. A quiet descends that sounds thicker for the preceding bedlam of breakage.

---

Outside, Hessie gives a little cry of alarm at the sudden crash around the corner of the house. "Oh!"

"Must've jumped up on the privy," Beth observes, concerned but unsure what to do about it. She cups her hands about her mouth to shout at the closed door. "Hoi! He's gone in upstairs!"

---

"Well...he's no way to get into the chest..." Widow Sexton says, her figure tense as she looks back up the stairs. "I say we get out whilst gettin's good."


This message was last edited by the player at 07:27, Wed 12 Apr 2023.

Cecil cannot help but concur with Temperance's assessment. "Unlikely to batter its way through the door onto the landing either, so the window may be its sole choice of exit henceforth. Let us make haste," he says, heading for the front door.

"You see that stag over there Beth, well that animal has been possessed by who knows what and it will not blink an eye before goring you with all it worth, so keep making you silly little jokes."

"Yes I meant all three of you to leave and wait for me on holy ground as close to the church door as possible, is that acceptable ? I will try and see if we can get those in the house out."

Tom looks for any sign of life within the building, not up to shouting his arrival to any occupants not now the stag seems to have gained entry.


-

"Oooh, we're in your service now, are we?" Beth catches her skirts to swing them in a mocking half-curtsey.

"The Vicar was needed at the inn..." Hessie adds uncertainly, though the eldest Collins seems most easily persuaded to take herself out of danger.

"What're you going to do about a great stag like that?" Lucy asks, standing her ground now she has backup.

"Maybe he plans to throw his head at the stag, it being a block of wood an' all," Beth suggests, then more seriously: "Widow Sexton was right, if y'get charged y'ought to have someone by to run tother way and be distraction. I'll come, if no-one else will."

She steps forward, fearless and ready to help. "Whatever Herself in the Wood's done to the beast, it can't be worse than the post boy's horrible horse."
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:31, Thu 13 Apr 2023.

"I'll meet ye round front with the lantern, Vicar," Widow Sexton assents, and grabs her skirts in her fist to make a dash for the kitchen.


[[feel free to make your exit/entrance outside, Vicar.

Looks like we're finally in touching distance of getting everyone together on a new church thread, huzzah!]]

Cecil has his keyring in hand when he exits the vicarage's front door. Closing the door behind him, he nods to those outside and pauses to lock the door. "Whateever guides the stag presumably hopes to liberate the warlock Edmond Fox, who killed the Widow Sawyer before the Widow Sexton and I managed to constrain him with cold iron.," he tells Thomas and the girls. "Now... what news? I've had quite an evening already. Why am I needed at the inn?" He glances toward the rookery as if to remind himself of something, and does not start toward the inn until Temperance arrives, with or without Trugred. "I've a hunch there may have been something important buried 'neath the rookery. Whether 'tis there still we'll only know if we look, and it most certainly will not be there if we don't look now."

The Vicar's words draw a great deal of consternation from his little audience: cries of "Who?" "...what?" and "warlock?" follow. Hessie takes the lead whilst everyone else struggles to find mental balance, gradually becoming more visible as Widow Sexton rounds the house and comes to light them with gentle yellow illumination, like a genius of the hearth on some outdoor stage.

"Well, first that Polzeath came in, an' he says the Doctor needed silver water as the Squire and someone had been in a bad fight, with weapons, and the fellow that attacked Master Fox was taken prisoner but they both needed stitching," she explains in a rush. "Then wild Maggie came in and showed Polzeath as she had blood all over her hands, right red like her palms were bleeding, an' he went to look, only when he tried to straighten her fingers to find the injury he started screaming and cast her away from him, getting up on the table. Then the kitchen pump broke and all in the water and up from the ground come this dark bog stuff, an' Maggie screams out fetch the Vicar, and Mum gives me the nod I should go, so I fetched Beth for witness and Lucy that was with her, and came here, sir."

She gives the Vicar an anxious look. "What you're to do about it I don't know. Everyone started off to running away." Indeed, if not exactly running, there seems to be a large portion of the village heading for or collected about the door of the church, the key to which sanctuary lies in Cecil's hand.

"Hold up, hold up," Beth says, annoyed, "-you said someone else was murdered? By one of the Squire's relatives? Who's a-" even Beth doesn't quite dare say "fairy" "-a one of Them or some like? Or just locked in with iron locks? Will the stag get him free? What powers does he have to him? What's that to do with treasure in the rookery?"
This message was last edited by the player at 09:47, Sat 15 Apr 2023.

Cecil answers Beth first. "One of the Squire's ancestors, to be precise. Whether the stag can free him I truly don't know. I suspect he'll be quite cross with me should he somehow escape. Either that or I've put the fear of God into him and he won't trouble me again." He eyes her curiously. "Who said anything about treasure? I'd seen signs of some disturbance 'neath the rookery, which seemed odd to me. Village history being on the colourful side, I thought it worth investigating. The night's events incline me to haste in this instance."

"Looks to be the musings of a fox, Reverend, and there was need of you at the Church to bless some saltwater if I heard correctly, someone has been injured and I believe the request was urgent as people need to be let in as well."


[[GM edit: post un-hidden, assuming it fixed enough with player forgetting to PM me.]]
-
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:07, Mon 17 Apr 2023.

Cecil wonders at Tom's words. "Let us make our way to the church, then, and on to the inn once all is settled." He mostly mutters to himself. "Saltwater? This far from the sea? At this hour? Busy night, hmm Lord?"

It seems that God would have His servant be prepared for many trials, even if it might be hoped they should not all fall upon the same night. The Vicar strides churchwards, the upset murmuring of anxious girls and reassurance of Temperance's able hands about him and faint jingling following - after some hesitation - a way behind.