The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1)

by Prue Batten

  But they passed unseen before her eyes, lost as she was in the confrontation with Severine. To the woman, she barely offered a thought. But Liam's mood was a revelation. Stupendous rage had been evident in his manner and the foundation of her trust in him had developed an infinitesimal crack. Trust had been implicit in her love for him. Trust that he would protect and love, that he was undeniably perfect in every facet. It made her realise she had been sweeping along on a tide of infatuation, blissfully unaware of any other side to him.

  How stupid, how infantile and naïve. She pounded the table with her fist and Violet, who had been asleep at her feet curled in a sunbeam, shot out spitting.

  Ana’s awakening to the vagaries of Liam’s nature had been harsh and sudden. Rage had rarely been a part of her life. Pa had been a happy fellow, sailing with the tide and accepting circumstance. When things were awry and frustration abounded, he would quote his favourite saying. 'Don’t bend the river, Ana love. Let it flow round the obstacles. You'll see, all will be well.' He had found that by such easy and amenable actions the tide often turned his way. He had a pleasant sense of humour, a belief in his fellow man and was known for his kindness and charity. Of course this was not to say he didn’t have his moments. But he dealt with it by throwing down the implement he was using, by stalking around and swearing... for a minute. Then he would laugh at himself and begin again. Even after her father's death, she had never observed rage within her home. The atmosphere altered to be sure, but it was a general withdrawal of one from the other. Her mother isolated herself, busy with nothing but the farm and the running of the household. Anything deeper and more profound seemed beyond her. And Peter? There were moments where he was almost approachable, where she had almost felt she could sit at the end of his bed at night and talk about her pain. But then he would walk away from her, lost in his own thoughts and she would sink back into her carapace of grief.

  But rage?

  No, rage was what she had seen in Bellingham’s face as he pulled and pummelled her. He personified the emotion and it was rage at her indifference to him that prompted his attack on her. Ana couldn’t bear to think Liam, the man she was to marry, was tarred with that same battered brush.

  Liam left Kholi at the mews grooming Ajax and Mogu and whispering sweet nothings in their ears. He walked in dark lanes and alleys, blending himself with shadow, casting himself invisible, all the time knowing that Severine had merely to raise her ring to her eye in a crowd and he would be revealed like a black deer in snow. He climbed upward to the inn, his breath coming in sharp spurts, the thin air slicing and cleaving. Thoughts crowded from the corners of his mind. In the darkest corner murder paced, heavy with intent. Liam could never allow such an act as Severine’s to go un-avenged, nor the ring not removed and destroyed. Rough justice, summary justice! He wanted to kidnap her, hear the Barguest portending her doom; call the Cwn Annwn, the whole pack of them, so they could hunt her to exhaustion and death. Or maybe leave her where the Baoban Sith could devour her alive. A murderer deserved nothing less.

  But Jasper’s words so recently uttered came from the corner of reason. ‘No Faeran would willingly cause a mortal’s death.’ He recalled Jasper on the Barrow Hills, his whip tapping the ground rhythmically as he sat with his black coat pooled around him like a shadow. His words were akin to a father’s lecture. It followed that he remembered the rantings of his own father - always the same. Ridicule and disgust accompanied by beatings until he began to defend himself. He looked back on that constant emasculation and thought that pain came in many forms. Did it matter that he himself was Other and was intent on rough justice? Wouldn’t his peers do the same thing if they knew a mortal had the means to destroy any Faeran they met? One soul here, one soul there. Have you not heard of a massacre, Jasper?

  But an unfamiliar warmth welled, brightening the shadowy thoughts and he looked up as the sensation tugged and pulled at his soul. There in the window of the inn sat Ana, to all intents and purposes framed in Jasper’s dream mirror. She gazed into space and he was reminded of the first time he had seen her at ‘Rotherwood’. A beautiful and bothered girl who with her lack of artifice and her naïve spirit had attracted his attention and won his heart.

  My heart…

  Again the clapper of a great bell chimed in his chest. In that instant he knew the game was over; that he hadn’t won. He watched the woman who so charmed him, her hand supporting her chin, a troubled frown creasing her brow. Would Ana care if Severine killed me? Perhaps she would. The only person in his whole empty life who would, he thought, as the resonance of the now familiar bell echoed. And what would she think of my plans for death and revenge? He stared at her as she sat lost in contemplation. Everything about her glistened and he wondered yet again how a mortal should appear so. It was alchemy, an enchantment, glamour that had him gasping with its audacity and breadth. What would you think of me Ana, if you knew of my subterfuge, of such vengeful plans?

  Far off he could imagine Jasper and Adelina shaking their heads. Their voices underlining each other’s thoughts. ‘She would shrink from you as if you were Belial himself.’ He grunted in frustration as he thought of the battle of wits he had waged with Adelina. Had she not lost the game as well? Had not both she and he been beaten by Jasper’s infernal Fates? Adelina. He hurried across the street to the back of the inn, loaded his arms with wood and began to climb to the attic. He needed to talk.

  Adelina pulled open the door and Liam felt her eyes on him as he emptied his arms and stacked the wood by the stove. Brushing himself down and washing his hands, he walked to the hanging garment and examined it. ‘It’s perfect. You have done it just as I thought you would.’ He tried not to look at her because something about her manner as he’d walked in reminded him of a duelist and he wished to soften the atmosphere. No more games, no more goading.

  ‘I was sorely tempted to try it on.’ Peremptory and offhand, she hardly invited his company.

  ‘But you didn’t, did you?’ Civilized talk, Adelina, smooth your hackles.

  ‘No. It is Ana’s wedding gown. It belongs to none but her.’ Adelina began to wind a skein of green silk onto a carved wooden thread holder.

  ‘I admire your honesty, Adelina. Maybe other women would have tried it on and hidden the fact.’

  She snorted. ‘You should know me by now.’

  ‘Indeed I should. May I sit?’

  Adelina gestured to a chair and put the threadholder down and something began to change in the air.

  ‘Honesty Adelina, is a rare commodity in Others as well as mortals. And so while we speak of honesty, let me say I think we need to speak. Clear the air that seems as rank as a bog-mist. For too long we have bickered with each other and I think the time has come to stop.’

  She sat back in her chair, her hands dropping to her lap. ‘Really. And what has brought on this sudden urge to seek peace. I confess I am surprised. After all, it is you that created the conflict, not I.’

  He picked up the threadholder and ran it through his fingers. Not strictly true. You never gave me a chance. However… ‘Maybe, maybe not, perhaps we were both to blame. But it matters little. Suffice to say I had a revelation. For Ana’s sake I need to do this.’

  He looked so intent, so desperate, that Adelina almost reached out to touch him, to forgive him the games and the barbs. But she still needed answers before she could move forward on her own path... She still wondered if this ‘talking’ was one more of his strategies, another to blast their lives apart from the comfortable existence in the craggy little town. But I shall listen to you, Liam. Because of Ana and because of a man I love and who would leave me if I did not. ‘You talk about honesty. Then I shall be honest with you,’ she barely paused for breath. ‘You would have been a dullard not to know how much I have been wary of you but having said that, you have surprised me. The lengths to which you have gone to prove your devotion to Ana have been quite awe-inspiring. My knowledge of Others has revealed far less loyalty and dedication.�
� She felt a warmth in her cheeks at the baldness of such a statement but carried on. ‘It is why I have been circumspect. I wondered why you would want to marry her. You could have anyone.’

  Liam smiled and the softness of that expression began to undermine the defences Adelina had built. ‘I could,’ he agreed, ‘but it is her I want. Haven’t you ever seen something you wanted so badly you would almost make a pact with Beezlebub to get it?’

  Adelina didn’t answer immediately, just moved the threads on the table, an image of Kholi in her mind. Of course, but I will not tell you that. She cleared her throat, knowing this next comment could fracture the tentative peace that existed. ‘Then it must be that you love her. It would be the very least I could hope for. And if you love her I am thinking that may be why you did what you did in Trevallyn.’ Aine help us, am I right? She watched ice etch itself over his face.

  ‘And what do you think I did?’ he asked.

  For a moment there was silence, broken only by the creaking of the door as Violet pushed her way in and padded over to the fire, the door swinging half shut behind her.

  ‘Ah,’ Adelina paused as Kholi’s request to her grew large in her mind. She had said she would drop the witch-hunt last night. It was implicit in her urge that he forgive her. Forgive me, Kholi.

  ‘You were saying?’ Liam stood and walked to the dormer windows where he gazed at the cantilevered rooftops climbing up the slopes.

  Adelina demurred. How could she break her promise to Kholi? It had mattered enough for her to beg him to excuse her outspoken ‘rhetoric’ as he had called it. Besides she did not, under any single circumstance, want to lose him. He was everything and all to her – the air she breathed, the glue that held her together. One such as he came to one’s own side once in a lifetime.

  But there was just this one question and here was the means to an answer dangling in front of her like a carrot in front of a mule. She took a huge breath as if gasping for air. ‘Jonty Bellingham. You were in Orford when he attacked Ana. Did you hear about it there? Truth now, Liam.’

  He stayed with his back to her and she admired his broad shoulders swooping in a breathless V-shape to his waist and hips. ‘Yes.’ The response was barely audible.

  ‘And tell me, did you feel rage on Ana’s behalf?’

  He swung round, the handsome face filled with furious loathing. ‘Rage? Of course I was wrathful! Weren’t you, when you found out?’

  ‘Need you ask? By Aine, Kholi and I went head to head trying to think of appropriate punishment. But this is not about us. I’m asking you - how angry? Adelina almost wished she had not begun to question Liam. What was she to do with the result? Would it make any difference? Ana was besotted, she wouldn’t go backward. She’d weigh it up against Bellingham’s crime, add in the way Liam had rescued her from the Others that had crossed her path and subsequently pronounce him worthy of her devotion. Kholi on the other hand would look at Adelina. His expression would be criss-crossed with disappointment… She jerked from her thoughts as Liam answered.

  ‘Livid, Adelina. I wanted to...’ his voice trailed away.

  ‘Kill him?’ Adelina spoke softly. Stop now, Adelina. Stop. There is too much at stake.

  A more prolonged silence followed. An uneasy quiet.

  ‘Yes.’ Liam spoke to the window. Outside, the sun shone unbearably bright. The glare off the white rooftops filled the little room with an achingly bright light and Adelina closed her eyes.

  In the small little room at the front of the inn, Ana sat lost in the discord that disappointment wreaks. Her confidence, so newly shaped, folded like clay on a potter’s wheel and she felt awry, confused. She needed Liam to be perfect. She had thought her father was and he had become ill and died. And if he had not been perfect, what would happen to her life if Liam wasn’t either? She felt a tiny tug as the crinkle in her soul curled a tiny bit more. His hidden rage terrified her, bringing to mind the smell, the touch, the sight of the rabid Bellingham. She backed away from that insidious moment; the moment when she had finally lost all she held dear. The moment when she found out that even her mother and brother had deserted her, selling her off like meat… Is Liam like Bellingham? Is this what Adelina meant when she asked if I really knew him? She jumped up from the table, needing to talk to her friend. Leaving her boots lying under the table, she opened the door and hurried up the stair to the attic.

  ‘Liam, did you kill him?’ Something perverse in Adelina kept her pushing, interrogating, casting caution to the wind.

  ‘Actually no.’ Liam shifted as he continued to stare out the window.

  ‘What do you mean, actually?’

  He turned and sat in front of Adelina, looking her straight in the eye. ‘‘The Cabyll Ushtey killed him. Not me.’

  ‘But Liam, honesty again, did you contrive the moment?’ Please say no. Let it be mere circumstance, an accident.

  He shifted uneasily, dropping his gaze. ‘Yes. But in the way of the Others, what I did was right. I enacted punishment.

  Adelina’s heart sank. All along she had been right. This Other was as dark and dangerous as the Lakes at night. ‘Better you had just let mortals deal with Bellingham’s action in their own way.’

  ‘That’s as may be. Jasper was of a mind to say the same thing. But your justice is weak, Adelina. Your courts might merely have imprisoned him.’

  ‘Yes they might. But it is not for any one individual to decide in such a dictatorial fashion.’ She moved in her seat, thinking she might as well have sat on prickles. ‘Think about Ana, she...’ Momentarily she heard Ana’s voice, ‘I would have killed him myself.’ In the campfire that night, Adelina had seen a hoar- frost freeze Ana’s face. Had been aghast that such a gentle young woman could think to do such a terrible thing. No, she wouldn’t do it. Kill him? Never. That was spoken in the heat of a very bad moment. Anyone who knew her could see she would flee from brutality.

  ‘You were saying?’ The crispness had returned to Liam’s voice in the face of a pointing finger.

  ‘Ana is terribly gentle, Liam, and would despise violence of any sort. It follows she would despise the perpetrator of violence. Better as I said, that you allowed mortals to deal with Bellingham.’

  ‘I dealt with it the Other way. Whatever else you may think I am, I am Other. We have a code.’

  ‘Indeed. An odd, cruel one it is.’

  Ana had rounded the last curve and froze on stockinged feet as she heard Adelina’s stern voice through the half open door. Then Liam’s…

  ‘An eye for an eye, Adelina.’

  ‘Liam, no matter what, you cannot justify the murder of Bellingham. The Cabyll Ushtey... by Aine!’

  ‘He didn’t deserve to live, Adelina. He had already raped Tara at the inn and if Kholi Khatoun had not arrived, he would have raped Ana. He deserved the Cabyll Ushtey. I merely facilitated the event.’

  Ana’s hand crept to her mouth and she jammed it in to stop the cry that wanted to burst out. In her mind she saw the bloody mess at Buck’s Passing and bile rose, choking her. Her Liam, her lover, the hands that had fondled her, the lips that had kissed her, those lips had uttered persuasive words to Bellingham, drawing him mindfully to his death. Her eyes ached with unshed tears. Turning, she fled down the staircase, leaving the fractured pieces of trust she had invested in her lover to lie with a loose ribbon that fluttered from her hair to lie on the floorboards.

  ‘I would never ever hurt Ana or allow her to be hurt. You understand that, don’t you? If I did,’ Liam’s eyes pleaded with Adelina, ‘then I don’t know what I should do. I feel that I have found the nearest thing to happiness I shall ever have, Adelina. No don’t smirk, please! Jasper would say it is my destiny to have this before I die. Please try and understand. I am still Other, immortal or not, and it is hard to reconcile myself with mortal codes. Aine, I can hardly understand why I feel the way I do, it’s all so different. You must give me time.’

  ‘Oh, Liam.’ Adelina bent forward and brushed his hand with her own, w
ondering why she did so after such a revelation. ‘What you did was so, so wrong. I could never condone it, ever. I understand how different we are but if you are to fit into our world, into Ana’s world, then I ask you to think twice about Other retribution, I really do. You must heed what I say.’ She felt as if the weight of the world sat on her shoulders. So much for wanting to be vindicated. ‘In the meantime, I will keep this secret. We must never tell Ana or Kholi, yes?’

  Liam nodded, relief showing in the loosening of his fingers and hands. ‘I suppose in a perverse way I am glad you know what happened. I need you to accept my differences and accept my word. In the end, it is all I have to offer any of you.’

  There was another silence, punctuated only by the crackle of wood in the stove and the purring of Violet as she lay blissfully stretched out.

  ‘Now,’ he stood. ‘I must find Ana because I need to hold her, Adelina, I need to tell her I love her.’ As he reached the door, he turned a face that was almost haunted Adelina’s way. ‘Because not once yet have I actually told her that I do.’

  Ana had reached the door of the inn. Pausing to pull on her riding boots, she dashed tears from her cheeks and stepped into the bright light. The thought of rage, murder and death crushed her as she dragged the door shut. She began walking fast and then broke into a run, acknowledging no one as she sped down the mountainside to the mews.