Son of the Shadows (71 page)

have seen men like this before—"

"Stop it!" I cried. "Stop it! If you have only defeat and death to tell, you might as well not have come here at all! I need your help, not your words of doom. Now tell us your tale." I took up Bran's patterned hand in mine and held it against my cheek.

Father was staring at me, his blue eyes very bright. "I've noticed," he said, "the way men move to obey you without question here in his encampment of outlaws. Indeed, they speak your name with a respect verging on awe. Yet the situation perplexes me. No man wants to see his daughter hi such circumstances.

You must forgive my plain words. I speak thus because I hate to see you hurt. Your mother's judgment was without fault. I never told her what to do. Your own choices are—difficult for me to accept. But I

made you a promise once, and I intend to keep it though it's costing me dear to see you thus."

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"Tell the tale."

"Very well. It's a tale of ill chance, of lost opportunities; a tale that does indeed give strength to this man's argument that I myself bear some respon sibility for what he has become. For that, I can make amends.

The past I cannot alter; that tale is already written. It began in the year when Margery's son was three years old, and she traveled with friends to Elvington for the winter fair."

I listened to his quiet, measured voice. Outside, Gull had returned to keep vigil by the fire, a dark figure in the deeper blackness of the moonless night. Beyond the circle of light, shadows gathered under the tall beech trees and between the ancient stones and across the unruffled surface of the dark pool.

Somewhere out there, a hooded presence waited, silent and still as if she were herself no more than shadow.

"You know already," said my father, "how my friend and kinsman John was killed in my service, crushed in a rock fall, while guarding your mother. I set him that task, but it was Richard of Northwoods who ordered the killing. Margery took her husband's loss very hard. They were devoted to each other, and to be robbed of her man when their son was still no more than an infant was cruel indeed. She became

withdrawn and quiet, and it was only her small Johnny who gave her the strength to carry on. In him she saw the future John had been denied; in him she saw her own purpose.

"Her child was the focus of all her attention, for a time, while the wound of her loss was still fresh. As you know, I left Harrowfield myself within a year of John's death, while Margery was still in mourning. In time she was persuaded by her friends that it would be good for her to venture forth a little and be seen. So in the winter when Johnny was three years old, she traveled with a small party from Harrowfield to

Elvington for the Yule-tide fair. Not such a very long ride. It can be done quite easily in a day, or more gradually with a stop overnight. That was what they did, since the child traveled with them and tired more easily.

"It is here that the story begins to grow confused. My brother told me the party was ambushed by raiders somewhere in the hills above Elvington. Who these attackers were, or what their purpose, remains unsure. Perhaps they were Pictish tribesmen from over the border, come for sheep. When a group of well-dressed folk rode across their path, it must have seemed an opportunity too good to miss. Later that day, a shepherd found the travelers' bodies lying by the track, near one of the isolated cottages; every man and woman slaughtered. But not the child. He was not accounted for, although they did search. It was odd. The notion that the Picts might have taken him, as slave or hostage, was soon dismissed. He was simply too young, too much trouble for men on the move. But no small body was found. Wild dogs, they decided eventually.

Wild dogs had carried him off somewhere, as they might a rabbit or fawn. There was no point in looking any farther. The news came back to my brother, and with regret he accepted it.

It was a sad end for Margery, who had come to Harrowfield as a new bride with such hopes.

"That might, indeed, have been the end of the tale. Six years passed. John's and Margery's names faded into the history of Harrowfield, as did indeed my own: Lord Hugh, who had once been master of the estate and who had abandoned them for a green-eyed sorceress from over the water, a witch whose brothers were half man, half beast. So the years went by. My brother married. The work of Harrowfield continued. Edwin laid claim to Northwoods and began to build its strength again.

"And then, at the folkmoot, where a leader passes judgment in matters of dispute or wrongdoing, my brother Simon was presented with a bizarre case. There was, at first, no reason to believe it part of the same tale. A man had been murdered at an isolated cottage in the hills above Elvington, a cruel and vicious fellow loathed and feared by neighbors and village folk
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alike. It was like an execution, neatly done with a small, precisely placed wound straight to the heart, the instrument of death a narrow, toothed knife, an implement more commonly used for boning fowl. It had been awhile before anyone found the body. Nobody liked to go out there.

Rory could be a monster when he'd a drop of ale in him, prone to violent rages, and with altogether too much of an eye for the young girls. When Simon told me the man's name, I remembered him well enough. He'd been up before me on serious charges, accused of raping the daughter of a local miller and getting her with child. He didn't care for the penalty I set him; I never heard such an ugly tirade of threats and curses. I ordered substantial reparation paid to the girl's family, and I

banished him from my lands for five years. It seems he chose to return as soon as he heard I was gone.

And now he was dead. He'd no wife; not by that time. She'd simply disappeared, and folk said, no wonder. He used to beat her, and the theory was, one time he'd gone too far and had to dispose of her quietly. Nobody asked. Nobody dared. So who killed him? Who'd attempt such a thing, let alone carry it out so efficiently? Many wished him dead, but all feared to do it. There was nobody; nobody but the child."

I should have guessed this was the next part of it, for Bran had told me.

I

will do what has to be done here and move on

. "Tell me about the child," I said.

"There was a boy," said my father. "Some folk said he was Rory's son and some that he was a foundling,

somebody's bastard, a brat nobody wanted, who had wandered into the cottage one day and been allowed to stay. An extra pair of hands. Nobody could remember when he came there.

They couldn't recall Rory's woman with a baby, not her. They just spoke of seeing this scrawny little wretch of a boy, all over bruises. Like a ghost he was, but no weakling. The lads would tease him, and he'd turn on them like some feral creature; and in time they learned to fear him and to leave him alone.

"So here was Rory with a tidy little wound to the heart and not a trace of the boy to be found.

The people of Elvington presented it to my brother in the formal setting of the moot. What was to be done?

Was the murderer to be pursued? And what about Rory's cottage, and his chickens? Who would get those?

"Simon ordered inquiries to be made. He had never been close to John, himself, and had hardly known

Margery. But they were kin; and if the boy lived, he should be found. It was not so much a matter of bringing him to justice, for Rory's loss was a blessing to the folk of Elvington. It was more a matter of seeking out the truth and righting past wrongs. There was a search, and they turned Rory's cottage and outhouses upside down doing it. Not much there. The man drank away any profit he made on his chickens. But they did find something odd, and it began to awaken more memories among the locals.

Under the floor of the outhouse there was a little root cellar, dug into the earth and shored up roughly with boards. And when one or two of the village folk saw that, they began to recall things from the odd time they'd been up there for a laying hen or a few eggs."

I nodded. "They used to shut him in there for punishment," I said.

My father stared at me. "How could you know that?"

"He told me. Not in words. He showed me. You said he was beyond any awareness of the world. But you're wrong. His mind still races. It is flooded with evil memories. He was imprisoned, not so long ago, in a small, dark space. Now he seems trapped there forever if I
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cannot lead him out. I have used my ability to see what he sees, to link my thoughts with his own.

This way I hope to reach him before it is too late. Now tell me, what did folk say about this discovery?"

"You take my breath away, Liadan. This, surely, is a gift far greater than even Conor can summon, a perilous gift."

"Tell me, Father."

"They started to remember. Times when the lad was nowhere to be seen, and Rory had told them a mongrel was best kept in his box until he learned to obey. Times when they'd been at the door and heard small sounds from beneath the floor, a slight movement, a tiny scratching. A rat, said Rory. One of them had seen it, had seen Rory's woman get the child out of there, shaking, shivering, silent, his clothing soiled from where he'd relieved himself. Filthy pig, she'd said, and slapped his face. The strange thing was, he didn't utter a word. No tears. No attempt to protect himself either. Just stood there and waited until she'd finished. That made her angry, and she hit harder. People didn't like going up there; they didn't like what they saw. But nobody would protest. Terrified of Rory. Besides, they said, what happened in a man's own home was nobody else's business."

"How did they find out who the child was?"

"Ah, the search revealed that. Hidden away within the cottage was an item that made it quite plain." He reached into his pocket and took out something small and soft, made of a fine strong fabric with a silky finish to it. He unfolded it on the blankets between us, so that it lay across Bran's heart. There was not much light, but I could see traces of fine embroidery, leaves, flowers, little winged insects. "There's no doubt who this belonged to," said my father. "She'd a fine hand with the needle, had Margery. You'll

have seen such patterns on the blue gown your mother wore . . ." His voice trailed off, for that wound was still fresh.

"Indeed," I said softly.

"Margery's people were beekeepers in the south," he said. "This was her small pouch, where she kept her valuables. She'd have had a little silver for the fair. That was gone, of course; Rory squandered whatever came his way. He couldn't sell this, nor its contents; they were a clear sign of her identity, and all knew she had met her end in those parts. It's unbelievable that Rory knew who the boy was and chose to keep it secret. He would have known as soon as the search took place; perhaps he himself joined in, alongside my brother's men. Why didn't he bring the child out and have him conveyed home to

Harrowfield? But Rory chose to let them believe the tale about wild dogs. For some reason he decided to keep the boy. Such men relish what power they have. I suppose he found this small slave amusing.

Rory knew the child was my kin, and he had nothing but hatred and resentment for me after what I had done to him. That, no doubt, is the source of this man's bitterness toward me. He'd have grown up hearing nothing but ill of me and mine.

"What was in the pouch?" I asked him.

My father passed me a small metal object, on a fine chain. I held it in my hand, feeling rather than seeing the locket, silver I thought, chased with delicate patterns around an enamelled center.

"What's inside this?"

"Two locks of hair. One brown and curling, the other fair and silk fine. The first is John's; the second belonged to their daughter who died soon after birth. The locket was a gift from John when they first knew she was with child—a gift of hope. Margery wore it always. They little imagined it would become a symbol of death and loss. How it came to be in Rory's cottage, nobody knows."

"Ah," I said, "but he remembers, and so I know."

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"How can he remember? He was barely three years old."

"Her voice. Her hands. She hid him in the root cellar. I suppose they were close by this cottage that stands alone in the hills when they came under attack. To go inside, to try to hide, would be pointless; the

Picts are no respecters of property, and would have flushed them out by fire or simply hacked their way in. But she could conceal the child for long enough. She bade him be still and quiet as she lowered him down into the tiny, dark space under the floor. He did as she told him, though he didn't like the dark or the strange sounds coming from outside. I suppose she tucked her precious things in with him—the purse, the silver pieces, the locket that held the love of those she had lost. Then she went outside and ran to divert their attention, the way a mother bird flutters and dips her wing and draws the hunting beast away from the nest where her young wait helpless. So she died, and the child kept silent. Kept faith, though the time stretched on and on.

He waited and waited, and at length his small prison was opened.

But the hands that came to release him were not his mother's. They were the hands of a monster; and it was then the darkness truly engulfed him."

My father nodded gravely. "I cannot but believe you, for this fits neatly with the tale folk tell. I asked my brother why did people not question the appearance of a child so suddenly, where another had disappeared. But there were no good answers to be had in Elvington. It seemed the child was kept hidden for a considerable time. Folk heard crying, sometimes. Instead of arousing their curiosity; it had the opposite effect. They're a superstitious breed in those parts.

Said it was a ghost, the ghost of the child taken by wild beasts. That kept people away. Later, when the boy came to be seen around the cottage and in the village, nobody thought it might be the same lad. They said the brat didn't seem like the son of gentlefolk."

"They let him be beaten and abused all those years, and nobody did a thing about it."