by Ross Turner
“Your father founded the village, in exactly the way I told everyone in my Service. And, also, just as I said, after some time, your mother was drawn here too.”
Johnathan’s eyes were focused so intently on the Vicar by this point that he barely even blinked.
“Arthur was a good man, a great man in fact. And he was very wealthy, but your mother didn’t marry him for his money. She married him because she loved him; she loved him dearly, and he loved her so too.”
Father Peter paused then, though his breath was drawn, and it was as if his next words would deliver such a terrible blow that he almost dared not say them. But regardless, he was committed now, and the answer next to leave his lips was the one Johnathan so desperately sought above all others.
“Your father was killed, Johnathan.” The old Vicar said then, exhaling deeply and with fretful eyes.
Johnathan’s fists clenched. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood perfectly straight, and his whole body pimpled with goose bumps, but still he neither moved nor spoke. His eyes continued to bore into the old man, their dark gaze hard and cold as stone.
“Your mother was devastated.” The old Vicar continued cautiously, though that much at least was obvious. “But I cared for her as much as I could. She came here often: every day to begin with, for her grief was awful. I honestly at one point even thought it might be endless. I had never seen such a thing.”
Still Johnathan’s gaze remained unchanged and Father Peter swallowed nervously, but he continued.
“Of course then all of your father’s wealth became hers, but she didn’t care about that. She had you and your sister. You were both too young to remember I imagine. And all the money in the world wouldn’t replace your father.”
He smiled then, as if remembering all the good things about this man whom Johnathan had never known.
The thought of it hurt the young boy deeply, but he knew it wasn’t the old man’s fault. He had done everything he possibly could.
“He was a brave man, Johnathan.” Father Peter continued. “A great man. A kind man. A Knight in fact, just as you are. A Knight, both in the way you protect your family, and in the goodness of your heart.”
“Who killed him?” The young boy suddenly asked, finding enough voice from deep inside of him to ask that single burning question.
But Father Peter’s lips tightened and his eyes dropped. Johnathan sighed and simply accepted what he had expected.
“We never found out…” The old man finally admitted, though his words came in barely even a whisper. “His body was found dumped by the river. I tried to be there for your mother, like I said. But it wasn’t enough. She became very ill.”
“Ill?” Johnathan questioned, concern in his voice.
“It wasn’t her body that was sick.” The Vicar tried to explain. “It was her mind.”
“How can that be?” The young boy asked, worried for his mother.
“Her sadness became too much. It overwhelmed her. I tried desperately to help her. But it seemed that it didn’t matter what I did, she just kept getting worse.”
“How did you make her better?”
“I didn’t.” Father Peter admitted again then.
“What do you mean you didn’t? She got better, didn’t she?” Johnathan’s concern was building more quickly than he could control it, but Father’s Peter next words knocked him yet again.
“I didn’t make her better. Richard did…”
“What…?” Johnathan breathed, his voice dripping with undisguised venom.
“He appeared one day, from the far south, drawn to Riverbrook I imagine like most people here have been. I wasn’t entirely happy; he was a stranger after all. But he cared for your mother, and seemed to heal her, even if only slightly. So I didn’t intervene. It wasn’t my place to.”
The Vicar’s voice dropped as he explained what had happened, as if somehow he was ashamed of his actions.
“Soon enough your mother stopped coming to see me so regularly, and not long after they approached me and asked me to wed them. I still wasn’t sure, and such a thing is almost unheard of, but they both seemed to be happy, so of course I did.”
“That was it?” Johnathan blurted out then, stubbornness and resentment in his tone. “They just got married and forgot about my father!?” But Father Peter cut him short very quickly.
“No, Johnathan.” His voice was firm and steadfast, reproachful even. “Richard did not replace your father. Your mother has never been the same again. He was just there when she needed someone.”
“And what about now!?” Johnathan demanded, and of course they both knew to what he was referring.
The old man sighed deeply and his shoulders seemed to weigh down with a burden that had lasted for many long, hard years.
“No one knows who killed your real father.” He said then, sorrowfully. “Many believed that he was simply mugged…”
“But you don’t…” Johnathan perceived.
“No.” The Vicar agreed. “You’re right. I don’t. Arthur was a strong man. And he was well versed in, well, pretty much everything. He built Riverbrook from the ground up, not alone, admittedly, but he had a hand in it all. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do, and that included being able to fight…”
“So what do you believe?” The young boy asked, almost pleading, leaning closer, gripping the edge of the wooden pew upon which he sat so hard that his knuckles faded white.
“As time has gone on, and especially now more recently, I fear perhaps that the mugging myth may not be true.”
“Why?” Johnathan urged him to continue, and the old man looked deep in thought. His eyes narrowed as if even what he was thinking was absurd, even though he knew it was the truth.
“I have felt the presence of your father for some time now, more strongly than I ever have done since he was killed. But I didn’t know what it meant…”
Johnathan said nothing, but the look in his eyes and the cold expression on his face begged the Vicar for more information.
“Arthur’s presence worries me. If there was ever trouble, or danger, or worry, he was never far away. He always seemed to know, somehow, regardless of who it was affecting. He was just that kind of person. He was a protector. And I see no reason why his death would have changed that fact.”
“But he’s dead.” Johnathan declared. “How could he possibly know?”
“He’s dead Johnathan, not gone.” The old Vicar corrected him.
“They’re the same thing.” Johnathan disagreed, and for not the first time in that conversation.
But Father Peter shook his head and smiled ruefully.
“They’re not.” He said gently. “And that’s the problem…”
“What do you mean?” Johnathan asked, confused again.
This was all getting too much for him now.
“After what’s happened to your mother…The things Richard has done…I fear he may never have loved her…” The old man sighed and rubbed his weary eyes, for they were heavy from burden and from lack of sleep.
The very early light of morning was slowly creeping its way over the horizon, for they had been there for hours by now, and it was slowly beginning to flood the vast hall with streams of light coloured by the tall windows.
“I fear he may only have married her for your father’s money…” He continued. “He took advantage of her when she was most vulnerable…”
Johnathan did not reply.
“No one in the village knew of your family's wealth. Arthur never flaunted it, and I know he would have gladly given much of it away over seeing others suffer or struggle. But then, unfortunately, such acts of generosity rarely go unnoticed, for they are in themselves a rarity…”
“But if no one in the village knew about my father’s money, and if Richard didn’t even live in the village, how on Earth did he know? He wouldn’t even have known my mother had been married.” Johnathan reasoned, and indeed his logic was sound.
�
�Hmm…” Came Father Peter’s only reply, contemplating, considering the boy’s words, though there was obvious distraught in his eyes, as if he had asked himself the same questions a thousand times.
And then the terrible truth struck Johnathan full force, for he was not stupid, and the great blow knocked the wind from his lungs and his stomach felt as though it had turned inside out.
“He didn’t…He can’t have…He…No…” The young boy gasped, clutching at the pew, at his stomach, at his chest, anything to make the pain stop.
But there was nothing.
He reeled over, collapsing to his hands and knees upon the floor, and simply screamed and roared until his throat was raw and his voice croaked, unable to scream any longer.
And then, finally, when there was no more sound to be had, and the blind, furious anger seemed to have passed, he simply sat and shook and sobbed upon the cold, harsh floor.
Long through the early hours of the morning until well past the sunrise that had already begun, Johnathan grieved, and there was absolutely nothing Father Peter could do to comfort him, besides let the young boy’s anguish run its course.
But then, as the old man sadly knew, all too well, the grief would slowly fade, and the anger would return, fouled evermore so by bitterness and hatred.
Just as Arthur had once been, Father Peter could see in Johnathan his father’s desperate desire to protect his family: to keep them from harm.
Johnathan left the church that new morning much less of a boy, and much more of a man.
And not just any man at that, but indeed truly a Knight, brave and strong and determined.
Chapter Ten
Everything seemed normal. Or, at least, anyone on the outside looking in may have at first mistaken that morning for an ordinary one.
On second glance however, it was painfully obvious that that was most certainly not the case.
Johnathan had not slept, for he had not long arrived back, and he had told no one about his visit with Father Peter. In fact, no one had spoken at all. The house was filled with an eerie silence as the four of them shuffled about in a manner most unnatural.
The young boy’s tired eyes were everywhere as he sat at the table in the kitchen, but most of all they bore fiercely into the man he had for almost his entire life known as his father.
But Richard Davies was a father to him no more.
Glancing across for a brief second at his mother and sister, Johnathan’s heart skipped a beat, as it did every time, as his gaze came to rest ever so briefly on their faces.
His sister looked terrified, almost completely beyond belief, and his mother’s face was bruised and purpled from the night previous. Though, hidden amidst that bruising, as she looked up briefly and caught her son’s gaze, her eyes were not entirely lost, and they seemed to be searching for something in Johnathan’s expression that he didn’t quite understand.
He snapped his eyes back to Richard as the dreadful man rose from the table, having finished his breakfast, going about his morning as per usual, totally ignoring the three of them.
It did bring a slight, sly smile to Johnathan lips however as he noted that the terrible man moved stiffly, grunting as he bent and twisted even slightly, his hands reaching involuntarily to clutch here and there at his leg, his ribs, his neck. Clearly he was suffering, and that satisfied Johnathan somewhat, but it was nowhere near enough.
What his so-called father had done was unforgivable.
Nonetheless, the frightful man gathered his things and prepared to leave for work, not once looking at any of them.
Johnathan felt sick to the stomach as he watched him go, realising all of a sudden that he had believed, for all these years, with such naïve trust, that the man he had called father, Richard Davies, had been working so as to provide for his family.
Their lives: their safety and their happiness and their security, had all been so because of him, because he loved them.
But no.
All this time he had been stealing from Johnathan’s mother. And he had killed his father to do it.
Johnathan seethed silently.
Of course the young boy, so full of rage, had no evidence to prove this either way, but the dreadful feeling in his gut, in his very core, was all the evidence he needed.
It was not the first time he had gone on gut instinct alone, and he had yet to be proven wrong.
Sometimes that deep, gut feeling can be a mixed blessing or a disguised sin however, and unfortunately the young boy Johnathan Knight was, at that moment in time, far too young to even begin to know the difference.
Maddie walked closer by Johnathan’s side than ever that morning it seemed, and her eyes were cast down to the ground and almost perpetually brimmed with tears. Occasionally Johnathan put his arm gently around his little sister’s shoulder, as if to reassure her that everything would be alright, but they did not speak.
There was nothing to say.
Johnathan’s eyes were still everywhere at once, and he felt strangely alert, as if he knew he was watching for something, anything. He was silent and focused, thinking only of Richard and his poor mother.
They filtered into school with the other children of Riverbrook, and instinctively, as is often the way, everyone seemed to realise that something was amiss, but no one said a word.
Their lessons for the day began and Johnathan sat oblivious to them all. He couldn’t even have said what lesson it was, for his mind wandered far and wide over years of memories of his family, now tinted an entirely different colour.
His eyes had been opened, it seemed, to the true nature of the beast, and whether that was for better or for worse, still remained to be seen.
It was perhaps halfway through the day, during another lesson that Johnathan was paying no attention to, when something tweaked in the young boy’s mind.
He didn’t know exactly what it was, or why it was only then that he came to realise it, but it was much less of an idea and much more of an inclination, and one that he simply couldn’t ignore at that.
Midway through the lesson, acting apparently on sheer impulse rather than anything else, for his body seemed to move without command, Johnathan simply got up and left.
Miss Falcon and his peers alike were so stunned by his sudden departure that they didn’t even say anything as he rose to his feet and made for the door. His teacher’s eyes followed him, but her words failed her for a few moments before she eventually found her tongue.
“Johnathan…?” She started, shocked, but he was already at the door and on his way out.
She followed him and caught the door before it closed behind him, her eyes hardening.
“Johnathan!” She demanded, more firmly this time, following him out into the corridor. “Johnathan! What do you think you’re…!?” Her words trailed off as she stared after him as he walked away down the corridor.
The determination and the presence radiating all about him had never been so strong, and even Miss Falcon could feel it, and as she looked on after him as he exited the building, she simply let him walk away.
She wasn’t sure exactly why she didn’t stop him. She only knew that something was terribly wrong, and she sent immediately for Father Peter.
The world seemed eerily silent all about him as Johnathan walked back towards the house he called home. His pace was not slow, but then nor was it rushed. If anything, it was the measured stride of someone moving with purpose, with intent. Though, he knew not entirely what that intent was.
After an immeasurable amount of time, Johnathan walked in the front door and closed it gently behind him. He glanced briefly around and found his mother sat in the kitchen, exactly where she had been first thing that morning. Her arms were folded on the table and her head was rested upon them.
She slept fitfully and had awoken a dozen times and more since Maddie and Johnathan had left, only to doze back off again, drained and exhausted. How exactly Johnathan knew all of this, he didn’t know, but nonetheless he left her be
and ascended the stairs up towards his room.
The stairs creaked slightly as he climbed, but he moved swiftly and within seemingly moments found himself stood before the mirror in his bedroom.
He did not need to wait or look away. His father was already there, waiting for him.
Up until this point, Johnathan had not known who the man he saw in his reflection was. It was only now that Father Peter had told him about Arthur Knight, his true father, that the resemblance and the similarities made sense.
Still, the whole idea seemed insane.
How could he be seeing his dead father in his bedroom mirror?
But then, saying that, it wasn’t the strangest thing to happen of late, Johnathan thought, and he let it go, as young minds are often inclined to do.
“Are you?” Johnathan breathed, his breath fogging the mirror slightly as he spoke, for he found now that his face was so close to it that he was mere inches from his father’s reflection.
The man in his reflection only smiled and nodded at Johnathan’s final realisation, and perhaps at least part of the deep void that Johnathan felt within him was slightly filled, even if only a tiny, remote corner.
That night, as Johnathan and Maddie and their mother sat around the table eating dinner, silence hung still, and they were all exhausted.
It was late, later than the time Richard would usually return home from work, and in their anxious silence they all clung to the same hopeful thought.
Finally, as dusk crept over the terrified household, it was Maddie who eventually voiced what they were all thinking.
“Maybe he isn’t coming home…?” The tiny young girl half asked and half suggested, her voice admittedly a little shaky.
Emily looked across at her and smiled as best she could. Maddie immediately went to her mother and they folded into an embrace, each of them taking comfort in the other.
“Everything will be alright.” Emily assured her, though the words were perhaps also to try to reassure herself. “Don’t worry. It will all be just fine…”