by Lloyd, Tom
‘It just seems, impious, that’s all,’ I replied, recalling that I had left my wife’s words unanswered.
‘Impious?’ That from anyone else might have sounded mocking, but Cebana was too good a person.
‘That I should see so much potential in them. That I should hope and urge them to so much, when I feel I have not the capability myself. The Gods made me as I am, and I act dissatisfied with my lot. I expect more of them, of all of them – I felt it only natural that Dever would be celebrated within the Kingsguard, but why? My father was a warrior, but not I. Why then do I expect Dever to become champion of the Kingsguard? Have I turned some formless dissatisfaction into a drive to make my children more than they might themselves? To be more than the Gods perhaps intended?’
‘Oh Coran,’ cried my wife. Whether her tone was of frustration or affection I could not tell for at that moment, perhaps in answer to my question, the heavens opened. We had no choice but to run for the shelter of the castle amid monstrous crashes of thunder, laughter and shrieks, while fat raindrops burst like flowers flashing through spring in one dramatic instant.
Clattering through the lower gate and up the steps we bundled into the family room as one, stamping and shaking like our ponies out in the meadow. Even in such a short space of time, the force of the deluge had been enough to fairly soak us. The girls fussed over their hair, the boys their dress-uniforms. Cebana rushed off with Sana to dry her head before she caught a chill and I . . . I stood back to watch with a slight smile. For all my forebodings, my fears and foolish doubts, this simple scene reminded me that life continues and no amo unt of brooding will change that.
There is still laughter in the world after death, no matter how dear the deceased. I had observed at the funeral of Cebana’s cousin that laughter is all the more important when the dead will be sorely missed. There was grief all around that day, the loss of a smiling friend to all had cast such a deep shadow on the assembled family. With one idle comment breaking the gloomy hush, the man’s sister had caused greater healing than the priest’s kind words. The smile of memory was still fixed upon my face when the unmen opened the door, a letter in his hand.
‘My Lord, I hope I’m not intruding . . .’
‘Of course not, please come in.’
He hurried around Daen and pattered up to me with a rather comical urgency, offering the letter up directly. ‘A boy from the village brought this to the house. He said a wool merchant had left it at the inn and then it had been forgotten with your mother’s passing – no one was willing to bring it here. It’s addressed to the countess.’
I looked down at the letter and saw the careful calligraphy that indeed spelt out my mother’s full name – and curiously, her full title too, something that seemed overly formal for a personal correspondent.
Forel offered a knife over. I took it and turned the grubby vellum over to see a blob of wax stamped with a seal I did not recognise. Sliding the dagger underneath the seal I freed the letter and opened it up to read what would again plunge my spirits.
Countess Derenin,
I write to ask you to plague us no longer with your letters, feminine fancies and dangerous talk. ‘Why dangerous?’ you may ask – and I feel sure you will, considering that you have demanded to know everything else from my neighbours and I. Be content that the elderly knight you infected with your talk of monsters and ghosts has been greatly damaged in the mind by such notions. Thus I have been forced to send him to an asylum, in spite of his advanced years and frail condition, because of the danger he now poses to others.
I only hope you are content with the hurt already done and do not pursue this matter any further. The common folk have been mightily disturbed by your agitation and you are certainly no longer welcome in this district. Whatever truths you feel you know about the myth of the ragged man, and be sure it is nothing more of a myth in the minds of sane and Gods-fearing men, I hope you will keep those to yourself lest they infect others with the madness one good and venerable man already bears.
Yours, etc.
Count_________
I read the letter with a trembling hand, then passed it to Cebana who had moved around the unmen. Angling the page to catch the best light, Cebana quickly read it through, her lips moving silently through the words.
‘Such venom,’ she muttered.
‘Strangely so,’ I replied. ‘He states her full name and title; to be so rude to a woman who commands the respect of the king and his court indicates either he is the madman, or that she has frightened him terribly.’
‘An old woman?’
‘Not directly, but I wonder what she said to our good count here to get him so riled.’
Cebana passed the letter to Dever who scanned it hurriedly, leaning slightly to permit Forel to do the same. When he had finished, Forel looked up to me with a spark in his eyes.
‘Well, we don’t have the letters, but we must have a host of replies. We should be able to piece most of it together, surely?’
‘It seems the only way to unravel this mystery. If only there was some order to her papers – you saw the chaos upstairs.’
I sighed. The mystery had taken a wider grip. Now madness followed in its footsteps and I feared what more I might learn. But what choice did I have? Could I forget the events surrounding my own mother’s death? Live with this air of oppression and terror into winter and beyond?
‘But perhaps there is,’ said Cebana slowly. ‘Your mother kept a day book for all the years we have been married. She must have written the most inconsequential things in it, so why not this great mystery that had consumed her days for half a year?’
She was of course right, and even in my delicate state I felt a surge of excitement rush through my body. I started towards the door when a wave of dizziness briefly surrounded me. I had to make a grab of Dever’s solid shoulder to prevent a fall. He immediately dropped the letter and took a firm hold while Forel darted over. Together they urged me back while Cebana cried for a chair to be brought up. For a fraction of a second, stars burst darkly in my mind. The motion of being urged back stirred my wits to return and I struggled against the combined strength of my sons to stay upright.
The moment had passed, it was nothing more than the residue of the earlier episode they knew nothing of and I was sure it heralded no serious illness. The combination of stress and days of travelling to my childhood home had unsettled me to be sure, but I was determined not to be slowed by one brief spell of dizziness. My protests were met with considerable argument, but I would not be swayed and the compromise of my sons escorting me there secured my passage to the jumble room.
Outside, the rain had not abated and black clouds raced in over us, spurred on by a furious wind that grew with every minute. The day had been fresh enough, full of promise but lacking in much of a breeze. It was a strange contrast to the strength that had chased us inside and now whistled down chimneys, rattled our shutters and tore at the slates on the roof.
The cool protected calm of the main stairway muted the sounds of the breaking storm, until we ascended to the upper reaches of the house where ancient timber stood in place of stone. Here draughts pounced from every direction and the wood creaked and groaned under the assault. The boys looked at each other in slight alarm, fearful perhaps that the roof might give or be torn off, but I knew Moorview could stand this. By cautious steps we made our way to the jumble room, picking our way through the scattered shreds of my mother’s recorded life.
Forel immediately went to the window and stared out over the moor, but there was little to see in the deluge that assailed us. He stood there for half a minute, his lip pinched white between his teeth. Dever only let go of my arm when he was convinced of my grip on a desk near the window. My balance and strength had returned as we ascended the stair, but Dever had accepted no word of protest. Only then did he set about lighting the lamps of the room, for the light outside was fading fast with the advancing weather.
Presently, we set about gatheri
ng handfuls of papers. These were collected up into a single pile and deposited into a box Forel had unearthed from the foot-well of a desk. As we tidied, assembled, investigated and rearranged, no trace of the day book was to be found. Her three writing boxes gave up more letters, some faded and cracked missives from my father, some recent, but not the book we sought. In a drawer I found its various incarnations ranging from last year to before my brother’s death. Older ones yet were stacked in no order behind a pile of musty and moth-eaten material. Enough recorded thoughts to piece together much of my mother’s life, but none of the past year, it seemed.
‘Well, it’s not here,’ declared Forel in exasperation.
He looked up at us from the last drawer. Dust had settled on the hazel of his eyebrows and I exchanged a glance of wearied amusement with Dever. Forel saw it and ran a hand back over his head, sneezing violently at the cloud he disturbed. When that abated there was precious little humour in his face, his eyes were bloodshot and his voice muffled as if hampered by a cold.
‘I’ve had enough of being up here. Let’s get these to somewhere with air and see whether they were the effort.’
He gave his brother an irritable nudge and the burly youth stepped out of Forel’s way before turning to pick up the meagre fruits of our labour.
We returned to find the family room in slightly more order than when we had left. The unmen rose nervously as I entered, but of my family only Sana did any more than raise eyebrows at our return. The little girl rushed over to demand attention and I gathered her up in my arms; not trusting my strength to throw her up in the air as she loved, but the affection still brought a sparkling smile to her doll’s face. Her hair was still loose. As she ran to me, Sana shook the beginnings of a plait from her hair and I knew that I had been an excuse to avoid her sister’s attentions.
‘What is all that?’ asked Cebana.
I let Sana back down to the floor, giving her a pat on the backside to send her back to Daen’s reach, and then went to sit beside my wife.
‘We couldn’t find the book, but these are all her recent letters so they should tell us something at least.’ I paused, and looked over to Forel who had yet to sit as he cleared his head at a window. ‘Forel, could you ring for a servant please?’
He nodded and reached over to the bell-pull, which quickly brought the man I’d overheard in the kitchen. He looked more than a little apprehensive and sagged with relief when I just asked him to bring Madam Haparl. The housekeeper hobbled in, determination etched into her face as the servant hovered on her elbow. The unmen again jumped up at the arrival, this time to offer his seat, which, with a glance toward me, was accepted gratefully.
‘My Lord Suzerain?’ she whispered once settled, her voice hardly rising above the crackle of the fire.
‘My mother’s day book,’ I replied. ‘Do you know where it would be?’
‘It isn’t in her jumble room? I thought I’d took all her papers up and locked them in—’
‘You locked the door?’ Forel interjected. ‘It was open when I went up the first time.’
‘But it can’t have been! I had the only key.’
‘It was open, I’m sure of it. Did no one borrow the key at all?’
‘No one, though Emila asked what I had put up there.’
‘Emila?’ said I, not recognising the name.
‘She arrived just after your last visit here my Lord. She’d been in service as a lady’s maid over in Coloch. She’d been put out after bearing the count’s bastard daughter.’ Madam Harpal paused to catch her breath, the trio of sentences enough to tire but not defeat her. ‘She’d been staying with her uncle, Master Tinen of the inn, when your mother decided to take her on. Her baby had died of fever you see, your mother took pity. She said I was growing too weak to help her, and none of the girls here had the training or sense to be a lady’s maid.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Back at the village I suppose. She wasn’t a house-servant so she left when your mother died. Awful upset she was, they were as close as I’d ever seen with your mother.’
The lamps flickered as a renewed burst of wind howled down the chimney and the shutters rattled and clacked on the window frames. I looked over to the doors that led out onto the terrace as bursts of lightning shone through the gaps in the shutters. The companion thunder roared so deep and loud that Moorview itself seemed to reel from the fury. Carana, whose back was to the window, gave a start of alarm at the furious crash. With the strengthened wind blowing in off the moor we could hear the drum of rain against the shutters themselves.
‘So Emila must have stolen the book.’ Daen paused from running a brush through Sana’s hair, looking up first to Madam Haparl and then over at me.
‘Why would she?’ countered the housekeeper. ‘Emila and the countess were as close as can be. If she had wanted some reminder, the whole staff could testify of her devotion. No one would deny she was deserving of some trifle to remember the countess by and a day book is hardly valuable.’
‘I believe it was precisely her devotion that led her to steal the book,’ I declared, rather boldly perhaps but I was sure it was near enough to the truth. ‘I think what is recorded in that book led to my mother’s death, collected from her letters.’
‘Letters?’ questioned Madam Haparl, but as I opened my mouth to answer her Forel jumped in.
‘But what about the original letters? Did she take them too?’
‘Damn the letters!’ I bellowed. Jumping to my feet I felt a renewed vigour rush through my body. ‘I want that day book and I’ll find it in the village!’
As those words hung in the air, time hesitated; suspended in a fearful pose. Then the storm breached Moorview. With an infernal howl the wind tore open the shutters covering the terrace door. The heavy wooden shutters were flung against the stone walls and held fast by the wind, two furious heartbeats of lightning illuminating the paved terrace beyond.
Then with one great head-splitting crash they were slammed back in. The glass they had once protected shattered under the impact and hurled shards across the room as a shadow of darkness leapt into the house. The wind snarled the fire into submission, overturned or extinguished lamps and whipped around my terrified family. An inrush of darkness enveloped the room, flowing thick over the flames from the spilled lamps.
A momentary silence descended as all sound was sucked from the room. Bursts of blinding light seared through my eyelids as I cowered before the gale. A jolt of pain seemed to echo through the house and through my feet I felt it struck, once, twice – the hammer-blows of thunder detonating about my ears.
I crouched lower, then felt the page of a letter slap up into my face and all fear faded. Peering through the sudden gloom of the family room I saw my family similarly huddled. The doors to the terrace had been torn from their hinges and my mother’s papers thrashed in the intruding squall.
I jumped to my feet, running the few paces to where Cebana and Daen had been sitting. My wife was now sprawled over her two daughters, Sana enveloped in a protective cocoon. At my touch Cebana recoiled as if stung, but then the wild look in her eye receded and she ran questing hands over her precious child. Stepping back, I looked for the others. Forel was at his other sister’s side. I could see blood on Carana’s face, a black stain in the weak moonlight. As he raised a hand to touch it she slapped him away. Looking back down, Cebana hugged Sana tight to her chest and I knew there had been no injury to the frailest of us.
As I checked, Dever was up and unhurt, I saw the ruin of the door as the long brass hinge swung in the continuing wind. With each gust, a pattern of raindrops spattered further into the room. I was suddenly struck by the notion that this was no natural occurrence, that some other agency had vented its rage upon us. My thoughts turned to whatever daemon had hunted my mother and the next image in my mind was that of the defenceless village a few miles away.
I ran for the door, unable to brook any delay though my daughter was bleeding and my family in
chaos. I had been taken by some consuming mania: by the thought of that innocent girl, unaware of what monstrous visitation was surging through the night towards her. And perhaps she was not the only one in peril. Perhaps the rage of this unnatural storm would be vented upon them all and I had placed so many lives in danger with that one declaration of intent.
I ran through the house past the terrified faces of the servants and, amid shouts from all directions, barrelled my way to the stable-side door. Throwing back the bolts I tore it open to be greeted by the fullness of night’s fury, a gust of wind driving me back while the sky itself cackled and spat.
As the drapes of the room came alive I readied myself to sally out. Even as I stood there I saw slates fly and smash on the cobbled yard. With painfully slow steps I managed to get a few yards out into the stable courtyard, before an unexpected change in the wind’s direction launched me headlong at the stable. I fought my way inside the door to be greeted with terrified whinnies from the inhabitants. As I slammed it shut again I saw Berin emerge from a stall, as afraid as the horses but still doing his best to calm them.
‘Berin, saddle my horse for me, I must get to the village!’
Berin stood stock still, shaking his head with wild eyes fixed upon me.
‘Do it man! Have you gone deaf?’ It was unfair of me to vent my anger upon him, but at least it seemed to return Berin to his senses.
‘Can’t sir!’ he barked nervously in reply. ‘He’ll throw you.’
I stopped, curses jostling on my tongue but before any could escape I realised the truth in his words.