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“You know, he is kind of cute when he’s like this,” said Canterbury, as Alois Trancy—boy Earl, loud and obnoxious—laid to rest against him, bundled in both bed sheets and extravagantly thick bedclothes for the winter.
“Not screaming, you mean?” Thompson asked. He, too, bore the brunt of their master’s slumber, although not as heavily as his other third, Canterbury, who sat upright on the side of the bed with the boy directly against him. Thompson was sitting just opposite, on his own ankles, with Alois’ blanketed feet on his lap.
“Yeah, he’s knocked right out,” agreed Timber who, fortunately—or unfortunately, as fate was yet decided—sat free-of-child at the foot of the bed, askew, facing the other two.
“Comfortable?” Thompson turned to Canterbury once more.
“Not very, no,” came the reply.
“Perhaps we should find a pillow to support him,” he proposed, “like this one.” He picked up the enormous, puffy pillow from beside him, ready to hand across the bed’s width to his other third, until Alois’ brow furrowed and he rolled his shoulder with a groan as Canterbury went to move his arms up to take it.
The sudden noise provoked an audience—three sets of identical red eyes each widened on the boy, who easily resumed his life in the realm of the unconscious and unaware.
Lifting his free hand, his left, Canterbury touched Alois’ right shoulder to see if he was awake. “Heavy sleeper as of late, isn’t he?”
“He never used to be,” Thompson assented as he repositioned the pillow next to its twin just beside him. He let his right hand rest back on Alois’ legs, and kept himself held up by the other.
“Can’t blame him, now with Faustus gone,” Timber stated roughly, and as Alois then stirred, Thompson silently shushed him.
“Quiet,” he advised, almost diligently, “if he wakes up, who’s to say what he’ll do?”
“Dealing with most of it was always Faustus’ job.”
“Well, you said it yourself: he isn’t here, so quiet .”
Timber furrowed his brow in turn and pulled himself back, straightening his back and wordlessly bristling.
Alois babbled lowly and incoherently, and the three watched the scene whilst the boy nestled back into Canterbury’s right arm and side. Canterbury went to roll his shoulder instinctively, as the weight bore back down into his current flesh, but found himself pinned together like a ragdoll, inanimate, as Alois’ pricky little needles penetrated the spaces between his phantomous ribs—into the void of whatever would be.
“Good riddance, I say,” Timber added, severely lacking in their past-built social interim.
“Funny how they both went so mad just for this one,” Canterbury—softer, now—briefly looked back down to Alois, whose breathing grew louder and more focussed. A strand of hair fell misplaced towards one of his eyes.
“Yes,” said Thompson, quietly, “quite odd.”
“Yeah,” grunted Timber in confirmation. “Personally, I don’t see the appeal.”
Canterbury almost missed a beat in the conversation, as he took a second to look Alois’ sleeping face over—porcelain skin, soft features but a scrunching brow, and pallid hair, thick and sprawled—before properly replying: “I think it’s something to do with his soul,” he said, and his free hand was lifted, running a hand through the boy’s fringe to move it away from tickling his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “But I can’t see the appeal, either.”
“Faustus said he lacked spice,” Thompson said, in addition, “I heard him muttering.”
“He talked to himself a lot—a real odd one, him.”
Canterbury looked to his other thirds with an equally indecisive expression as them, “Exactly.”
“I think he’s the most unlikable fellow I’ve ever met.”
“He had as many screws knocked loose as he does,” Timber acknowledged Alois with a subtle tilt of his head, and the boy moaned fleetingly in reply, reangling himself against Canterbury.
“Personally, I couldn’t imagine anyone spicier,” Canterbury averted his gaze back to the child burrowing his angular body into his own thin flesh. “You’ve seen what he can do to Miss Hannah when even we least expect it.”
“I think that’s more scary than spicy,” Timber interjected. “He ain’t sneaky, but he’s still surprising.”
“Like a chilli pepper,” agreed Thompson.
“I still don’t get it, though,” Timber’s impassive expression shifted slightly, the right corner of his lip bowing. “Miss Hannah’s nuts for him.”
“I think it’s something to do with that Luka character,” Canterbury clarified. “Luka Macken. Remember?”
Then, Timber and Thompson nodded as one, sounding their agreement in unison. “Oh, yeah.” — “Yes, I remember.”
“I’m glad I ain’t contracted to him,” Timber then commented before silence could rest. “I don’t wanna turn as nutty as they’ve been.”
“We must be more careful,” Canterbury advised, “Miss Hannah may hear—and he might wake up and silence us, again.”
“I hate when he does that.”
“I’m just glad Claude’s no longer around to get us to do all of his chores,” Canterbury said, in a farther-hushed tone, thankfully.
“He sure did boss us around a lot.” Thompson replaced his hand from Alois’ jerking ankle to his own knee.
“Sure did.”
“At least Miss Hannah does the cooking now,” Canterbury stated.
“If Miss Hannah wasn’t here, we’d see this place in ashes,” Thompson declared, astray from the previously said, brandishing a dustily pocketed chip of assertion.
“Like Fasutus’ toast,” Timber remarked, well-timed, and the three exchanged minute grins.
“Or his eggs,” Thompson bounced back.
“He couldn’t make them without them ever being sunny side up,” Canterbury kept his voice lowered, although he’d almost faltered, and Alois shrugged his shoulders in an almost unprompted disturbance.
“Yeah; too close,” Timber said.
“He didn’t find it as funny as we did,” said Thompson.
“He didn’t like us laughing about it.”
“I don’t think he liked anybody laughing about it,” Canterbury countered, “or anything else, for that matter.”
“Miss Hannah says laughter is good.”
“Yeah, especially to humans.”
“That must have been why Faustus lost,” Thompson said, like the comment was a piece of wool on his tongue that he was fumbling to tie into a knot.
Neither Timber or Canterbury responded—silence then fell, save for the soft, near-even breaths of the child nested amongst them, hot breath against Canterbury’s vest. The three’s attention soon landed on Alois, and then Canterbury absently picked at a thread of flaxen hair that had pricked up astray from the rest of its brethren, smoothing it back down so gingerly, that Alois barely reacted besides another nuzzle with his cheek—Canterbury could have easily bruised from this hard weight, if he were human himself.
“He’s a mite cute like this, isn’t he?” he asked, looking down to Alois with a dull look.
“Almost as cute as when he’s crying,” Thompson assented.
“All bundled up and harmless,” Timber stated. “Like a baby.”
“Perhaps even more than that,” Canterbury disagreed as, amidst the room’s darkness, a miniscule threat of silver drifted from the oak frame of the human nest. All attention was snapped onto it immediately, eyes wide as they each followed the thread as it slowly drifted down, and down, and down...
“Is that him?” asked Thompson with a worry shared between each of them, evenly.
“Can’t be,” Timber said. “Miss Hannah said he’s dead.”
Alois tensed, and down from the canopy frame travelled a common house spider, with thin, thready legs, and a tiny, whimsical body, expertly grappling his way downwards. Timber, Thompson and Canterbury each sighed in great relief, quietly, and Alois tensed against Canterbury yet again.
“I suppose one of us will have to get rid of it,” said Canterbury, eventually. “Didn’t Miss Hannah say she no longer wanted spiders on the premises?”
“Just the manor, I think,” Thompson said. The three turned back to one another, finally prying their eyes off of the small creature long enough to confer.
“Who’s gonna deal with it?”
“I think you should,” said Canterbury, with a shred of immediacy. “After all, you are the one still free.”
“That’s right, you are,” added Thompson.
“Why don’t you?” Timber retorted, in turn.
He and Canterbury met each other’s eyes for a moment, before Canterbury went to stand. At the marginalised shift in his eyrie, Alois grumbled harshly and his once relaxed arms tightened around Canterbury’s waist—he nuzzled into him and gripped onto his clothes, and then Canterbury was immediately brought back to his previous position in the dent his own weight had pressed into the covers.
Alois seemed to ease a bit at the resumed embrace, like a lob of margarine in a warm bowl. Then, as Canterbury repositioned his own right arm over the boy’s huddled form, he’d completely softened, and the room felt at ease once again.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” he said, then, turning his head back towards Timber.
“You’re just jealous because you’re his least favourite,” Thompson jibed.
Timber groaned quietly—so quietly, that Alois didn’t pick up on it—and then, slowly rising to his feet on the foot of the bed, he cupped the tiny urchin in his svelte, pallid hands, inspecting it curiously. “It’s so harmless,” he commented, pinching one of its legs gingerly.
“Faustus made spiders seem so scary,” Canterbury said.
“He kept so many of them around.”
“Never dusted.”
“He never did most of his chores,” Canterbury pointed out, skilfully.
“Not unless he was ordered to.”
“He was a glory-hog,” grunted Timber as he traversed the room, to the tall double-casement window opposite the room, and unlatched the window after standing up on the plushy window-seat.
A chill filled the dimly red-lit room, and the unreactive Thompson and Canterbury immediately watched as Alois groaned highly and balled up—Thompson was now free of the boy’s legs, but Canterbury was now close to being entirely enveloped, with the boy’s heavy head now pulled down to his hip rather than his ribs, face mashed into both blanket and trousers as he attempted to hide from the cold.
“I think you should close that, immediately,” said Canterbury as Thomspon hummed at the sight of Alois Trancy’s cowering, lips pressing together in a carriage of thought with square wheels which was shared by his other third, who bore the brunt of it.
“Miss Hannah reckons he’ll catch his death if he stays with the windows open for too long,” added Thompson, thoughtfully.
Quickly brushing the spider out of his soft palms, Timber looked back at the human’s nest from over his shoulder and closed the window back up. There was a rigid moment shared between the three as they awaited Alois’ returning comfort. Even Timber, who remained stood next to the window-seat, observing the human with his own keen red eyes.
“Right you are,” he said, begrudgingly.
“I’m always right when it comes to Miss Hannah.”
Then, after the window’d been tightly shut, Alois relaxed again and, sighing in a manner indecipherably wedged between irritated and complacent, twisted until he was half-on his back and still half-on his side, right arm still loyally crossed over his chest and softly gripping part of Canterbury’s vest between his palm and fingertips.
“I think you’d better check for cobwebs,” Canterbury advised, warily, looking up at the nest’s framework. “I’d hate for Miss Hannah to find any evidence of the spider being so close to the master.”
Thompson stood up on the bed and took off his vest, winding it around his hand and using it to dust down the frame, diligently toeing his way around atop the mattress so as not to disrupt the boy was now, suspiciously, resting lightly against their other third. But, when Alois shifted and made another disturbed, but slight, sound, he resorted to leaping up and holding himself in the rectangular frame by all four—just four, each boringly and slenderly proportioned, just like his others’ own—of his limbs.
Timber was busy managing the rest of the high-ceilinged room, patting and swiping down every corner and crease cattily, by springing his legs and pouncing.
Alois shifted onto his back.
“Careful,” said Canterbury, adamantly, as he watched the boy intently. “We might wake him.”
“He’s sleeping fast,” Thompson objected from the framework before slinging himself down as though he were on a tree branch, like an orangutan.
“You said so yourself,” agreed Timber, from the curtain rack, “he’s a heavy sleeper.”
“Out, the both of you,” Alois said, with his eyes closed, taking the three by surprise. His voice was soft, and half-full from sleep. One of his feet from under the covers pressed weakly, but sharply, against Thompson’s nearest leg. His fist tightened around the fabric of Canterbury’s vest, again, which assured the three that he was to once again remain.
A floorboard quietly creaked with purpose outside, in the hallway.
“Alright,” Thompson said, as he and Timber briskly started for the door.
“Fine by me.”
Thompson shut the bedroom door behind them, dutifully, his wrinkled vest now over his arm. Looking up, they were immediately met with Miss Hannah, who stood patiently with her hands clasped in front of her stomach.
“I see you three’ve spent most of the night with our young master,” she said, winter’s frost on her tongue.
“Yeah, we have,” Thompson replied.
“What of it?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” she stated. “Just that I realise the three of you’ve spent an awful lot more time with him, recently.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Suppose that’s true.”
“He’s not that bad,” Thompson added.
“Not without Faustus no longer around.”
“I thought we weren’t to speak of him, anymore,” Miss Hannah reminded, steadfastly, “ especially in front of the master.”
“We weren’t?” asked Thompson.
“I don’t remember that,” said Timber, rubbing the side of his head.
“Well, now you’ve been reminded,” she snapped. “Now, as for you three ...” a flitter of silence as she slitted her eyes, and then asked with a hiss: “Where’s Canterbury?”
“Still in there,” Thompson said.
“The master didn’t ask him to leave.”
“Only us.”
“Yeah. That’s how it often is.”
“I’ve never seen the three of you so separated since Claude’s extermination,” said Miss Hannah, setting her jaw. “I just don’t understand why he still prefers to oppose me. What must I do to compete with the likes of you three?”
Hannah looked to the side and peered through the thin crack between the bedroom doors, watching the treacherous Canterbury in her spot on the throne, idle and undeserving. She saw Alois draped over him so deplorably, and her fingers coiled into a fist.
“Hey, cut us some slack,” said Thompson.
“You know Canterbury’s his favourite,” added Timber, insistently.
“Hush, the pair of you,” Hannah hissed.
Timber and Thompson smacked their hands over their own mouths and then cupped them over the sides to turn to one another, incessant little whispers now filling the hall.
“Honestly,” Hannah stepped between the two, and they’d parted immediately for her to do so, watching the back of her with an intense shrewdness, evenly distributed between the both of them. “It was so much better before there were three of you.”
And so the two watched as she left, long purple braid swishing like a serpent with every step she took. Then, Timber turned to Thompson, and the two started to whisper again from outside the bedroom door, where they’d stay until morning, when their master arose.