Vile

by Keith Crawford

  “My apologies, my lady,” Nathaniel said.

  He passed his reins to the Sergeant and knelt in the dirt by her horse. She put her right foot in his hands and steadied herself on the saddle as he boosted her. The horse remained calm throughout. First the nightdress, now this, thought Elianor. They seem determined to immobilise me. Nathaniel was turning back to recover his own horse when Anton, propelling himself back out from the smithy with a hunk of bread in his hand, came over and took his arm.

  “Anton?” Nathaniel’s smile didn’t falter.

  “Don’t let this blow out of proportion,” Anton said, his tone low and urgent. “The Garn family are important to us.”

  “Important to you, brother. Don’t worry. I’m in complete control.”

  Anton let go of Nathaniel’s arm. He stepped back and looked his brother in the face. Then he blinked and spoke to Elianor.

  “My lady, Derec is a good boy. Please don’t judge him harshly.”

  “The law will deal with Citizen Garn, as is appropriate, once I have gathered the facts.”

  “That’s all I ask,” Anton replied, and took a bite out of his bread.

  Chapter 19

  Spats of rain splashed the small window for a long time after the portcullis closed and the remaining guards returned to their daily routine. This was Arbalest Vile’s secret room above the Manor hall: not secret in the sense that no-one knew where it was, but secret in that none of the children dared come in. Secrets of content not of location. Just like Demon’s Pass Monastery. Arbalest stood looking out the window. He tried straightening his back, stretched old muscle that crunched and groaned but fell back into a curve the moment he stopped pushing. He was strong. He knew he was still strong. But why did it have to hurt so much? Why did everything have to hurt? He lowered his chin to his chest until his stubble rubbed against his collarbone. He rather liked that. He rubbed some more. He noticed that he was tapping his foot. He wondered for how long.

  “What do you want first? Your lesson, or your injection?” Lena said from behind him.

  “It’s good that Nathaniel went with Anton, even after I told him not to,” Arbalest said, without looking around.

  “Are you trying to get him killed?”

  “At least it gets him out from amongst all those bloody books.”

  “Anton. Are you trying to get Anton killed?”

  He stopped rubbing his chin on his chest and lifted back his head to scratch his throat. Not nearly so satisfying.

  “No, I don’t want to kill him. He may still be useful.”

  “Then why do you keep telling him to bring you…to bring you a body?”

  “Because it’s impossible,” he snapped. “They can’t find it, they can’t fight it, and then, even if they killed it, they won’t know what that means.”

  “They could still get hurt.”

  “Stop mothering them, Abacus.”

  “I can’t stop mothering them. That’s not how it works.”

  He put both his hands on his head and stretched his elbows behind him. For just a moment, the pain eased between his shoulder blades.

  “He’s been so damned passive since the war. I suppose I can tolerate him coming back crippled, but passive? Lazy?”

  Lena snorted. “Lazy? What about the mines? Hot water in the castle?”

  “The brothel? Yes, he’s being lazy. I remember when he was a baby, holding him in my arms and thinking ‘this is it. We’ve done it. This is the one.’ And now…Maybe if he found the truth, if he fought the Black Dog, he might wake up.”

  Lena said nothing for a while, then, “Do you think he…it…is dead? Do you think the Magistrate succeeded?”

  “No,” Arbalest sighed. “After all this time, I would know if it had died.”

  She had stopped moving things on the table.

  “Persephone is just as bad,” he said. “No matter how I bait her, she stays hiding behind Anton. None of them have what it takes. I thought, maybe, but in the end she’s just a girl.”

  “Do you hear yourself when you say that sort of thing?”

  “Not really. I’m getting old.”

  She came and stood behind him, resting her hand on the exact sore spot between his shoulders. He didn’t dare move in case he scared the hand away.

  “You were worse when we were young. Do you remember telling Dalard his wife looked like a horse?”

  “He agreed with me,” Arbalest said, but it was bravado, a guess. He couldn’t remember at all.

  “It was his wedding day,” Lena said. “Come and sit.”

  On the table was a thin book with a colourful cover, depicting a knight riding a dragon. The knight held a lance on which a red flag fluttered. Arbalest liked the picture, although he preferred when she kept the book in her bag. Next to the book was an open wooden case. Sheer purple material lined the inside, and in its base sat a glass hypodermic needle with a metal frame and a long pull. A coiled rubber tube was alongside a large bottle of a thick black liquid.

  “You saw the helmet,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He tapped the book cover.

  “Tales of Chivalry and Adventure,” he articulated, like a child, as if he hadn’t read the title a hundred times before. Was that reading or remembering? “It should be tales of who pays what for whom. Nathaniel understands. Pity he’s a…”

  Lena tutted and shook her head. He took a seat at the table. It was only once he sat that he realised she had placed a cushion for him.

  “I’m too tired to read. Read to me instead.”

  “You’ll never learn if you keep giving up.”

  “I’m not giving up.” He sighed. “Maybe we should, though. It feels too late to start over.”

  She pulled up the chair next to him. With the index finger of her left hand, she pushed the book in front of him.

  “Will you come to me, tonight?” he said.

  “You’re too tired, old man. And I’m too old.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “Best give me the injection then. I won’t get anything else done this morning.”

  He was looking out of the window again.

  “I keep having the same dream. That I’ve turned into the spider they call me behind my back. But it’s me that’s trapped in the webs. They swarm out of their eggs, and they start eating me, only I’ve too many legs and there’s too many children and I can’t tell where I stop and they begin, until it’s just eating and eating and broken legs. I shouldn’t have to belong to them. Not forever. Isn’t there a point when they start being responsible for their own mistakes?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. Keep still.”

  “How much longer must we keep doing this?”

  “The injections? You know how long. Abbot Bayard told you, way back before we made him Abbot.”

  “No, not the injections.”

  “Oh.” She rested her free hand on his upper arm, just above the needle point. “We keep going until it works. Or we find out it has already worked.”

  Chapter 20

  Elianor glowered at Tannyr Brek. He was fat, slow, and she could hear him breathing over the horses’ hoofbeats. The mayor had come puffing after them at the end of the Shadowgate span and pled for an escort home.

  “Roads aren’t safe as they used to be. If you stop by the farm, we can find you something good to eat in the kitchen. You’ll be on your way by the time the boys have watered your horses.”

  “Derec could be at Garn’s tavern, The Last Chance, and Tannyr’s farm is on the way.” Nathaniel had said. “Gwyion has a second establishment, but it’s on the opposite side of town, and his mine is farther down the mountain. It makes sense to take The Last Chance first.”

  Elianor couldn’t understand Nathaniel’s attitude. Yesterday, in his chambers, he had rejected her, denied he wrote the message asking for help, and decried the notion of a Republic. Last night he had led her on a moonlit chase across the rooftops of Shadowgate to help her uncover a kidnapping and con
spiracy involving Sergeant Rees, Lena the Steward, and the monks of Demon’s Pass. Today he was acting like they were all on a day trip for a picnic. What did he want? What game was he playing?

  As for Tannyr, it wasn’t uncommon for civilians to be obsequious to Magistrates. Her mentor Genevieve would have encouraged her to keep her mind open to all avenues of investigation (her mentor Genevieve who was dead, dead under the Bridge of Headless Women, dead because Elianor shut up shut up shut up). So Elianor acquiesced, and they had set off together to Brek’s farm. Nathaniel chatted with Tannyr about names and events Elianor didn’t recognise. Rees kept his hands tight on the reins during the entire journey and often looked over his shoulder.

  As the farm spread into view across the shallowing land, the mountain turned into hills, and the trees gave way to fields. They rode around the stables to find a long wooden shed topped by a slate roof, and by the shed a three-storey house, painted white, with bay windows along the front and flower boxes beneath the first-floor windows, waiting for the spring to break. The glass must have cost a fortune to transport and install. From the river behind the house came the steady clacking sound of wood on water.

  “It’s a watermill,” Nathaniel said. “We had to repair it from the waterside after my brother Anton came back from the war. He couldn’t row the boat, so he let me.”

  “When you were little,” Tannyr said, “you only had to get near to water to fall in.”

  “Ifanna makes hot cakes if you get wet. It’s the second-best part.”

  “What’s the best part?” Elianor said.

  “Falling in the first place.”

  Tannyr harrumphed and waved to a young woman on a bench by the farmhouse. The girl picked up whatever she had been looking at in her lap and darted indoors.

  “Where’s my wife?” Tannyr shouted after her. “Why isn’t she here to meet us?”

  Elianor had come here for clues, for evidence, something to draw the dots between the Black Dog, Arbalest Vile, and the exchange between Lena and the monks she had witnessed from the rooftops last night. Listening to the locals wittering was an important part of gaining their trust, the part of her brain she labelled the “Genevieve” part whispered, but patience was hard when all she wanted was to get Nathaniel on his own.

  “Will we be staying long?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Nathaniel said. “Something is wrong.”

  The young woman who had run inside earlier came back out through the front door.

  “Da, you had better come inside.” She had been crying, streaks of dirt muddying her freckles, and she had a bucket in her hands. Tannyr paid her no attention as she scurried off to the nearby river.

  “I appreciate you taking the time out to see me home,” Tannyr said to Elianor, but whatever else he had been going to say was stopped short.

  There were too many people in the house.

  Men gathered in a front room to the right, stood about as if at a wake, conversation suspended the moment Tannyr entered. More waited on the stairs at the end of the entrance hall, still more along the first-floor balcony. They were labourers and farmers and hands, dressed in outdoor garments, leather breaches, woollen overcoats, and thick socks, their twenty pairs of boots lined up just inside the door. The only woman was in the kitchen, to the left: a rotund bumblebee buzzing around a figure laid out on the table. She was the only person not looking at Tannyr.

  “What is going on here?” Tannyr shouted.

  “Dale was attacked,” said the woman in the kitchen.

  “Did he…” Tannyr started, then stopped and looked back at Elianor. She slipped by and strode straight up to the table. Nathaniel, Tannyr and Rees filtered in behind her. The kitchen was framed by an enormous hearth at one end and open windows at the other. Warm light danced between the worn lines on the work surfaces, teased the shadows from between sacks of flour, garlands of herbs, and bags of potatoes, blinked, glimmered, and reflected against enough utensils, contraptions, and implements to cook for and feed the horde gathered outside the kitchen.

  The rotund woman, sweat sticking strands of brown hair escaped from her bun to her gleaming forehead, leaned over the table without looking up. On the table was a slender young man. He was unconscious, his right eye swollen shut, and blood swamped the sheets gathered up over his chest. He had close cropped brown hair, a thin beard that did little to hide his freckles, and a nose that might have been transplanted from the woman lingering over him.

  Elianor turned her hand so that her thumbnail touched her lips. He had been in a fight. He was wearing a scabbard but there was no sword. There was mud on his boots, up his trousers, and in his hair. Tannyr’s cheeks had mottled and his lips pinched.

  “Ifanna,” Tannyr said. “This is the honourable Elianor Paine, come from Lutense to help us with the Black Dog.”

  Ifanna curtseyed, a buoy bobbing on the ocean as her hands continued to work. Tannyr spoke in her place.

  “Lady Elianor, this here on the table is Dale, one of our sons.”

  Elianor lifted the sheet that stemmed Dale’s blood.

  “The Dog did not do this,” Elianor said. “That first cut, the one you’ve dressed, is from a sword blow. A follow through, after he’s been disarmed. The cut on his shoulder is from when he turned to run. Both are shallow. Is the arm broken?”

  “Below the elbow,” Ifanna said. “Nathaniel, is Eira outside? I sent her to fetch water.”

  “I’ll go get her.”

  “Dale ran?” Tannyr folded his arms and snorted.

  “He survived,” Elianor said. “Do you normally use serrated sword blades? Locally?”

  “No,” Nathaniel said. With him came the young woman, Eira, carrying a bucket of water with both hands. Evidently, she had been hiding in the corridor just outside.

  “You can tell the sword type from the wound? I’m impressed.” Nathaniel said. “Will Dale live?”

  Elianor reached into the bucket and rinsed her hands. She pressed along the wounded man’s side. Blood oozed up from around the wound, but the dressing was helping it clot. Ifanna was trying to step forward and shrink back at the same time, but something there, an intelligence in her eyes, made Elianor feel the boy might survive. Why was this woman trying so hard to hide? Dale groaned but did not wake.

  “Citizeness, help me sit him up.”

  The sword thrust had not gone through his chest. Most likely it had just glanced off his ribs.

  “It was Garn’s men,” Tannyr said.

  “Why?” Elianor said, running her hand up Dale’s back and probing the edges of the wound. “Give me facts.”

  “His mine brought in outsiders. He’s been putting together a police force, trying to hire foreign thugs. He says to improve security.”

  “His son Derec contacted a mercenary group in Durançon,” Nathaniel said.

  “It’s a powerplay and an affront to your father’s authority,” Tannyr added. “Only Lord Vile has the right to form an army.”

  Elianor thought of the horde standing outside the kitchen but said nothing. She ran her hand around the back of Dale’s neck and across his scalp, then she, Ifanna and Eira lowered him back to the table.

  “Did you give him something for the pain?” Elianor said to Ifanna.

  “Laudanum.”

  “Don’t give him more.”

  Ifanna flinched but could not look away.

  “Do you know what you are doing?” Elianor said.

  “Yes.” The sweat escaped Ifanna’s hair and fled towards her nose.

  “Let him sleep for now, but I’ll expect him to be awake and alert when I get back.”

  “Get back?” Nathaniel said.

  “Boil that water,” Elianor said to Eira, then turned her back on the scene and squared up to Tannyr.

  “I must speak to whoever found him.”

  “I’ll gather the boys,” Tannyr said.

  Chapter 21

  Tannyr Brek stood on the porch and ground his teeth. The moment the Magistrat
e, Nathaniel Vile, and Sergeant Rees reached the road and turned south out of sight, he swivelled on his heel and marched back into the house. All conversation stopped. The men in the front room got to their feet. A mug fell from a table.

  “Get Uwen down here,” Tannyr shouted, not bothering to note who ran to obey.

  One finger at a time, Tannyr unclenched his fist and went into the kitchen. His youngest son still lay unconscious on the table.

  “You sent Dale? When you got my message, you sent Dale instead of Uwen?”

  “I sent them both,” Ifanna said, eyes down. “Dale was the one who found something.”

  “And?”

  “He’ll tell us when he wakes.”

  Tannyr advanced into the kitchen, driving Eira before him like wreckage before the bow of a ship.

  “Wake him. Now.”

  “The Magistrate said we shouldn’t,” Eira said, having tumbled to one side in his wake. “We should let him sleep.”

  With neither pretence of restraint nor desire to do no lasting harm, Tannyr gathered his fist, turned his back on his daughter, and punched his wife in the face. Ifanna crumpled and fell against the rim of the workspace along the far wall. A stack of forks and spoons caught on her arm and scattered. Down she went, under the table. The cutlery danced on the stone floor about her.

  “Eira,” Tannyr said. “Wake up your brother.”

  His daughter scurried backwards, trying to get out of his arm’s reach, then collapsed sobbing to the kitchen floor. Tannyr raised his hand.

  “Get out of here, useless girl.”

  Ifanna climbed up from beneath the table as she spoke, a harpooned whale breaching the waves. Eira slipped beneath her father’s arm and fled. Tannyr’s fingers clawed to grab her hair, but before he could get hold, a new figure emerged at the door. A huge black-bearded man clasped Eira in his arms. It was Uwen. Tannyr breathed relief out through his nose and dropped his arm.

  Before any of them could speak, Ifanna snatched up the bucket of bloody water and tipped it over Dale’s head. Water gushed and flooded. Tannyr stepped back to allow it to run clear, then rushed in when Dale spluttered.