The Hickory Staff

by Rob Scott

  ‘I’m about through here as well, sir. I have the account established. Here is your account number, and you have a current balance of $17,802. You brought in approximately nine hundred and twelve pounds of refined silver, Mr Higgins.’ O’Reilly watched the miner for his reaction: that was an enormous amount of money; when the man failed to respond, he went on cautiously, ‘If you don’t mind my asking, sir, how did you manage it? How did you get it all here by yourself, across those passes – or do you live in Oro City and work the mines here in the canyon?’

  Seconds passed in silence. Setting his jaw, O’Reilly continued with business. ‘On the first of each month, we will draw two dollars from the account to cover the rent on your safe deposit drawer. Now, can I get you any cash this evening?’

  ‘No. I’ll be back when I need cash,’ Higgins said, and his spurs sounded with a rhythmic chime as he turned, left the bank and walked into the coming darkness.

  The bank manager sat alone in his rented room above Millie’s Tavern. He had money saved, but he was alone. This way he had Millie and Jake Harmon to provide pleasant company in the evening. Women were numerous in Idaho Springs, but most made their living as prostitutes, several right here at Millie’s. O’Reilly had not fallen in love with a woman since he moved from out east; unless and until he did, he felt no need to build himself a home.

  He generally dined downstairs in the bar, but this evening he had asked Millie to bring a plate to his room so he could finish reading the paper before going to sleep. As he reviewed the news, he came across the linotype of the malevolent beast that was supposedly stalking the mines of Oro City.

  Oro City. O’Reilly paused, his hand frozen above a smudged listing of Denver’s upcoming social events. There had been something about Oro City. Quickly he turned back to the story of the killings in Empire Gulch two weeks earlier. A large cache of silver had disappeared. Could Higgins have made it all the way to Idaho Springs in two weeks? Perhaps he was not alone. He had worn spurs today; O’Reilly had seen them. He must have ridden, and had a partner, or partners, driving the wagon. And he’d been too quiet. He had not talked like most mine workers did when they finally had some time in town – especially those with a large deposit, they always liked to pass the time while he washed and weighed their strike. Jesus, was Higgins that killer? He slowly ran his finger across the raised letters of his new belt buckle. Refined silver. Why keep it in Colorado? Why not head for California, Santa Fe or Kansas City? Why try to sell it here, where it would be under suspicion? And what was in that safe deposit box?

  Checking his watch, he saw it was already 10.15 p.m. Late. The silver was locked up and the key to the deposit box was hanging safely on the rack near his office. O’Reilly decided he would contact the sheriff in the morning; tomorrow was time enough to get to the bottom of these strange events. He rubbed his aching thigh and looked out of the window at the falling snow. Tomorrow he could deal with William Higgins.

  Just after midnight, Millie Harmon carried whiskey shots to a group of miners squashed around the table. One of them made a joke and she forced herself to laugh, though she did not find the young man particularly funny. He tried to engage her in conversation but she excused herself to get back to the kitchen. As she turned, she saw Gabriel O’Reilly, still in his suit, heading out the front door.

  ‘Gabe,’ she called, but he didn’t answer. Millie hustled to the door and pushed it open. The snow was coming down hard now; over a foot had fallen in the past three hours, and the gusting wind made the night time seem as though it had a nefarious purpose. Without thinking, she pulled her shawl more closely around her shoulders. O’Reilly was already halfway across the street.

  ‘Gabe,’ she called, louder this time, but again he ignored her. Light from the fireplace illuminated snowdrifts through the tavern windows. Millie could see that O’Reilly was wearing gloves, but had no coat or hat. ‘You ought to have a coat on, young man,’ she yelled after him. ‘I’ll not be playing nursemaid to one so ignorant as to be out walking out on a night like this.’

  Gabriel O’Reilly didn’t acknowledge her as he disappeared into the darkness. Funny, Millie thought as she turned back into the smoky heat of the room, but O’Reilly’s pronounced limp appeared to have been cured.

  RIVEREND PALACE

  980 Twinmoons Ago

  Tenner Wynne rested his eyes, leaning his head back against the velvet-lined padding of his desk chair. ‘Just a short rest,’ he promised the empty room. ‘I’ll get back to work in just a few moments.’ It was the middle of the night and he had just come from Prince Danmark’s royal apartment on the upper floor of the palace. A barge captain had found the prince wandering along the Estrad River two days after the Grayslip family summit last Twinmoon. Danmark had been struck blind and deaf and driven mad – by what or whom, no one knew. Tenner guessed it had happened on the same day Danmark’s father had been felled while addressing his guests in the palace dining hall. Markon’s death was believed to have been caused by a virus, although no one, not even the royal physician, had seen its like before. His son’s state of health was another matter entirely.

  Danmark Grayslip – now Prince Danmark III – had been found stumbling along the river’s edge, babbling unintelligibly and waving at invisible demons. He was an unkempt, insane version of his former self, and Tenner could prescribe nothing to bring the young prince relief.

  Princess Danae had not left her chambers since her husband’s funeral rites. There had been no royal ceremony, no gathering of the Ronan people to bid farewell to their visionary leader. With rumours of imminent war coursing through the Eastlands, Tenner felt a state funeral would be too obvious a target for terrorists hoping to capitalise on any perceived weakness in the royal family.

  He had paid the barge captain well to remain silent about Danmark’s condition, but the new monarch’s failure to surface at any time over the last sixty days hadn’t helped. Danae did nothing but sit in her room, her hands folded in her lap, staring out of her window across the palace grounds towards the sea. She was eating barely enough to keep herself alive; at this rate she would soon fall into a coma. Tenner feared she had given up; she might even take her own life. He posted a guard outside her rooms, but Danae had forbidden anyone from entering.

  The physician knew he could not remain in Rona much longer. Political stability in Falkan was weakening as well, and he, by default, was now Falkan’s prince. Helmat, his nephew, had been found dead with Anis Ferlasa, the Pragan heir, and it was pretty clear to those who found them that Anis had murdered her cousin after an incestuous sexual act and then fallen prey to the same virus that had claimed Markon earlier that evening. The discovery brought additional tension to the already shaky peace between Falkan and Praga. Helmat’s mother, Princess Anaria, had committed suicide three days after arriving back in Orindale. She had grieved when Harkan had been killed at sea, but the loss of Helmat as well was too great for Tenner’s sister to bear. Now Tenner was left with the Falkan crown, a charge he had never wanted.

  He wept silently as he thought of Anaria. If he had gone home with her rather than staying at Riverend to attend to the crisis in Rona she might have found the resilience to hold on, maybe even to take up the reins of government again. Instead he had allowed her to ride north with her dead son in a coffin. She had been a good leader; better, she had been a wonderful mother to his nephews. Tenner realised he had never told her that.

  How far had she travelled, alone in her royal coach, before deciding to end her life? Had she crossed the border? Had she seen the Blackstones one last time? Or perhaps she kept the carriage curtains closed for the entire trip. Tenner hoped Anaria had made her decision quickly; he could not bear to think that his sister had spent days contemplating her suicide, days when he could have been with her – when he should have been with her. He would never know.

  Tenner had not returned to Falkan for Anaria’s funeral; his current responsibilities in Rona were far too pressing. He planned to leave within a
few days. Then he would make peace with his sister and beg forgiveness from her departed spirit.

  *

  Some days after the tragic deaths of Princes Markon and Helmat and Princess Anis, Tenner had received word of a massacre at Sandcliff Palace in Gorsk. The details were sketchy, but it appeared there were few – if any – Larion Senators left alive. He had dispatched riders to gather more comprehensive information, but even the swiftest Ronan horsemen would take many days to reach Gorsk. The entire political structure of Praga and the Eastlands was in ruins. The descendants of King Remond I, rulers of four Eldani nations, had been killed off; all that remained of Eldarn’s royal family were the Whitwards: Prince Draven, his wife Mernam and their son Marek in Malakasia.

  Mistrust was rampant. Border raids had been reported between Rona and Falkan, and several Pragan trade ships had been taken by Falkan battle cruisers on the Ravenian Sea. War was coming, and there were few leaders left to arbitrate in the pending conflict. These circumstances would have been unthinkable a Twinmoon ago; they were why he had elected to stay in Rona until tonight. He had to ensure the continuity of Danmark’s family line before the prince succumbed further to his madness.

  Tenner needed a commoner so no one would expect her to be carrying Rona’s heir. A daughter of one of Rona’s wealthy families would never do; her pregnancy would arouse too much suspicion. But he’d been lucky: he had found Regona Carvic, a beautiful sepia-skinned serving girl from Rona’s South Coast. He had taken the time to tell her how very important her task was, that she would be the mother of the next Ronan prince, but though obviously intelligent, the young woman was still frightened. He could hardly blame her: there was no way he’d been able to conceal the prince’s condition. When he revealed the madness that made it impossible for Danmark III to choose his own wife, the girl began to cry, ‘Please, Doctor Tenner, please don’t make me do this.’

  ‘I can’t make you do it, dear,’ he had told her calmly, ‘but I need you to help me. We all need you to help us.’

  ‘Is he violent?’ she asked, still shaking.

  ‘No. There’s no danger. He’ll be very gentle,’ Tenner assured her, a little unconvinced himself. He repeated, quietly, ‘Regona, my dear, this is for the sake of Rona. We need you.’

  Regona wiped the tears away and nodded her agreement; she couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  Tenner had chosen Regona less for her undoubted beauty than for her intelligence. She was remarkably gifted; unlike most of the menial labourers in Estrad, who could neither read nor write, even the common tongue, Regona could do both and, even better, showed an affinity for creative and engaging education. During her infrequent avens away from the kitchens, she told stories, taught writing and made up maths games for the palace children. The offspring of servants and gentry alike regularly begged permission to work with the doe-eyed scullery-maid rather than their classroom teachers. Regona Carvic was special, and Tenner was delighted that she had agreed to participate in his monumental undertaking. He could have ordered her to bear Rona’s heir, but Regona’s decision not only to conceive, but also to love and care for the infant, would ensure the child’s welfare.

  As they walked together up the grand staircase to the royal residence, Tenner said, ‘I know you would rather not have it happen this way. I know this is a terrible thing to ask of you: it violates one of your most basic freedoms.’ She tried to appear brave, forcing a smile at the older man as he continued, ‘However, if Danmark dies, Rona’s future will be desperately uncertain.’ Tenner felt his heart breaking as Regona gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said calmly. She had made her choice and would give herself willingly to the creature – no, the man, her prince – waiting upstairs.

  Tenner, still guilty, hugged her briefly. ‘You are astonishingly brave, Regona, and I am very proud to know you.’

  The first time she entered Danmark’s chamber, Regona was trembling, her self-assurance draining away. But the prince was not as scary as she had imagined and after their initial coupling, the girl was no longer frightened. He was physically capable of intercourse with her, but apart from a loud, sickening cry with each climax, she did not believe the young monarch knew what was happening.

  Every other evening for the next thirty days Tenner led Regona to Danmark’s chambers; now, a Moon later, he was confident she carried Danmark’s child. He arranged comfortable accommodation for her away from the palace in Estrad. There was too much unrest, too many political machinations and assassination plots, even imminent all-out war; it would not be safe for the child to be born in the palace. Seeing a servant, even one with Regona’s talents, being singled out for attention by one of the world’s most powerful and influential men would arouse suspicion. No matter how many precautions he took, servants and guards could be bribed. Eventually word would leak out that the South Coast scullery-maid was carrying a Grayslip, King Remond’s descendant.

  Tenner intended eventually to return from Falkan to share the education of the child. He had remained at Riverend Palace to see his self-appointed task – the continuation of the Ronan line – completed. It might have cost him his sister, but now it was done, and he could go home to attend to the rising unrest in Falkan.

  Shaking thoughts of Anaria from his mind, Tenner wrote several lines on a sheet of parchment. Re-reading his notes, he wiped an errant tear from his face and nodded once to himself, grimly determined. He rose, crossed to the fireplace and pulled back and forth on a protruding stone until it came free from the wall. Placing it on the floor near his feet, he folded the parchment into quarters and secreted it in the gap. Groaning a little as he bent down to retrieve the stone, Tenner pushed it back into place until the parchment was completely hidden from view. If you didn’t know, it was impossible to see which stone had moved.

  A knock on his chamber door woke the doctor from his reverie and he stepped away from the hearth. ‘Yes?’

  A palace servant entered carrying a tray with a goblet of wine and a small loaf of bread, still warm from the kitchen.

  ‘I thought you might fancy something, sir.’ The young man, seeing the physician upset, spoke quickly, shuffling and staring at his feet. ‘I mean, I saw you were still awake, sir.’

  ‘Thank you. That was thoughtful of you,’ said Tenner, suddenly conscious that he hadn’t eaten in a while. ‘Would you have some fruit left in the kitchen?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We got some lovely peaches in this morning, sir. Right off the ship and into the scullery,’ the man replied. ‘I’ll get some at once,’ he said and hurried from the room.

  When he returned, just a short while later, the young servant knocked quietly and, hearing no sound from within, risked opening the door slightly, calling to the doctor as he did, ‘I got three of the best for you, sir.’ When no answer came, he pushed the door open and stood in the entryway.

  The dim glow from two candles and a low fire burning in the fireplace cast a half-light across the doctor’s chamber and illuminated Tenner, who had his back to the door. The doctor was on the opposite side of the room, tearing violently at a large tapestry hanging on the wall of his study.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ the boy asked, stepping forward.

  ‘Get out.’ Tenner’s voice had changed.

  ‘It just seems like you’re struggling with that, sir.’ The servant took another step forward.

  ‘Get out, now,’ the doctor commanded harshly as the tapestry came loose from the wall and fell across his shoulder. The young servant retreated, failing to notice the doctor igniting the corner of the enormous fabric roll in the fireplace. As flames quickly engulfed the cloth, Tenner threw the burning tapestry towards a shelf of books and watched impassively as they caught fire; he appeared oblivious to the tongues of flame licking their way along one of his sleeves. As he stood in the centre of his room, the fire spread rapidly to the floorboards and ceiling supports. Without uttering a sound, the physician, Falkan’s ruling prince, was consumed
by fire on the floor of his study.

  Outside Riverend Palace a lone rider sat astride a dark horse under the sparse dogwood trees growing along the edge of the palace’s neatly manicured grounds. Cloaked in heavy robes, the figure watched as flames spread through the upper floors. Beside him a young couple waited quietly. The man tried to look brave, holding his chin high and his eyes fixed on the fiery devastation. The young woman could not disguise her own nervousness. Wringing a lace kerchief in her hands, she glanced repeatedly over her shoulder into the forest behind them.

  Men and women ran from the building, some screaming for help as they worked to extinguish the blaze. The horseman’s attention was diverted from those fleeing the palace to an upper-level apartment in which a well-dressed man, coughing and waving violently at the smoke billowing around him threw open the casement of a stained-glass window. One of the windows shattered against the outer wall of the palace and slammed back into place, hitting the man in the forearm and lacerating him deeply. The screaming victim appeared not to notice as he babbled, frightened: the rider could not understand a word. Seeing no rescue in sight, the horseman raised one hand towards the broken window and whispered, ‘Rest now, Prince Danmark.’

  A sudden change came over the trapped madman. As flames leapt up behind him, Prince Danmark III, monarch of Rona, ran a bloody hand through his hair, pulling the wild, unkempt strands from his pallid face. For just a moment his eyes seemed to focus on the Estrad River in the distance and he appeared to see clearly once again. He took a long, deep breath and stood tall, then he jumped from his window, awkwardly turning in the air until he crashed headlong through the burning roof of the livery below.

  Turning to the couple, the horseman said, ‘Come. We haven’t much time.’

  The young woman moved towards him as she pleaded, ‘Sir, won’t you come with us? I would feel so much—’