by Alison Adare
Perhaps it was that thought that guided her steps, because she found herself approaching the graveyard laid out at its decent distance from village and fort. Many of the graves had more than one stone, old ones so weathered the names could not be read accompanied by newer, descendants laid with the bones of their ancestors.
She found Davith’s, Davith’s and his wife’s, and stood for a moment offering her own hopes for their peaceful rest, though the good Lord, in her experience, went His own way heedless of the prayers of Janet Cooper, no matter how fervently offered. She walked a little further through the long grass, reading what names she could. Gwyn ap Eurion, Mair ferch Eurion. Siblings. Ifan ap Glynn, Llew ap Cyffin. Idwal ap Bryn. Sara ferch Dai.
Idwal ap Bryn. Edwal ap Bryn.
She retraced her steps. Someone had been keeping Emlyn’s father’s headstone clean — probably Braelyn — and the dates below the names were easy to read. He’d been just twenty eight when he died, which surprised her. She had not thought he’d have been so young, not much more than Tom’s age. Braelyn, then, was not as old as she’d thought, either, which made sense when she remembered that the woman was young enough to have a child Emlyn’s age.
Just twenty eight when he died, seven years ago this month.
She wondered if Braelyn had loved him as she herself loved Tom, and thought that perhaps she had, to keep his headstone clean after all these years. Poor woman. She must have felt her heart crack in her chest when they brought her word, to have lost him, to have lost him in such a way.
There were flowers, too, laid in the grass by the stone. Janet stooped and touched them, and the faint smell of wild roses stirred in the night air. Yes, she loved him, to scramble through those woods to find flowers for his grave and it being nearly seven years on. Would she herself bring flowers to Tom’s grave after seven years?
After seventy.
She shivered, and stood, drawing her cloak more tightly around her. There was no need to think of Tom dying. He’s getting married, and you’ll lose him, yes, but he’ll have a good, rich life, with a beautiful wife and doubtless children, sons to make him proud when they first take a practice sword in their little chubby hands, daughters to make him smile with their beauty. For they would be beautiful children, with those parents.
And herself, elsewhere, trying to make a life for herself that didn’t have Thomas Lynhurst in it.
And when that life ended, she very much doubted anyone would bring flowers to her grave.
Well, there’s a cheerful thought. Janet turned firmly away from the graves and back towards the fort.
When she had reached it, though, and identified herself to Paul and been let in again, she found she could not face the great hall, with Lady Modron smiling at Tom, or Tom’s chamber without him, or the silence of her own. Instead, she crossed the courtyard to the church and slipped inside.
It was empty. Father Donnic’s sought his bed like all sensible people. Janet stood a while looking around, not really seeing the scenes from scripture painted on the walls, or the altar with the great Brinday bible on it, or the wooden Christ upon the wall. Then, supposing she must after all have come in here to pray, she made her way to the front of the church and knelt.
The familiar words brought no comfort, and after a while she found herself simply kneeling in silence, looking up at the carving of Christ on the cross. It was fine work, finer than she’d remembered, and then she realized that it was not in fact the crucifix she remembered but a new one. The wood was paler, and a slight discoloration on the wall showed that it was not the exact dimensions of the one it had replaced. Janet stood and moved closer, studying the hands curled in agony, the body twisted in pain: the reminder that God’s own son had suffered, as much or more than any suffered. That he knew, as they all knew, the fear of death and the terror of doubt; that the Heavenly Father knew the helpless, hopeless grief of any mortal parent whose child is in pain.
For some reason, the artist had made the crown of thorns around Christ’s brow a circlet of roses, delicate flowers among the savage thorns. Looking at them, Janet was suddenly certain that it had been Lew who had whittled this figure: they were the same buds and blooms as on the hairpin Tom had bought from him for Lady Modron.
Then her gaze fell from the roses to the face beneath.
“Christ’s cod!” she said involuntarily, and recoiled.
For Lew had chosen to give Christ Thomas Lynhurst’s face.
Stumbling back, she knocked against the altar and, to complete her sacrilege, sent the bible on it tumbling to the floor.
Definitely going to hell. “Sorry,” she said aloud, and bent to pick it up, brushing it off carefully. “I, uh, you startled me. I mean, not you —”
He knows what you mean, idiot. God knows everything.
She set the bible back on the altar and opened it to check she hadn’t loosened the bindings. None of the pages seemed loose when she thumbed gently through them, even at the very back —
Where someone had written on the fly-leaf in a careful, spidery hand.
Names, they were, names linked by lines, with dates below them. Of course. Her own father did the same, in the prayerbook that had belonged to his grandfather. This being the Brinday Bible … yes. She found the name she was looking for, Modron ferch Bryn, on a line with two others — one joined by a dotted line, that she knew.
Idwal ap Bryn.
Modron was older than she’d thought, near to Tom’s age. Not too old to give him a son, at least. She’d been the youngest child, one legitimate brother and one bastard before her. Her mother had died eleven years ago, by the dates, her father just this year. Old Robat Bryn reached a great age, it seems.
His sons had not been so lucky. There was Idwal, and there the son, Dyfan, who’d fallen from the walls so unfortunately —
Twenty one years ago this month.
And there, written in beside Modron’s name, that of her first husband, Ifan … Ifan Bryn. A cousin? And the date of his death.
Fourteen years ago this month.
Not just a local carelessness with dates, as Tom suggested.
“God’s blood,” Janet said aloud, cold to the bone, and for once it was absolutely not a blasphemy. What odds his body was also found in the woods below?
She looked to Robat Bryn’s kin and was surprised to see that his name was linked only to his children until she looked across the line to his wife and saw that her name was Rhiannon ferch Bryn. Robat married in, and changed his name … as Ifan did.
As Tom will.
She frowned. That explained the lack of a patronymic identifier in his name, but shouldn’t his children have been ap Robat? But no, Modron was ferch Bryn, her mother was ferch Bryn … and her grandmother, too, was ferch Bryn, and so on, all the way back to the top of the page.
Rhiannon ferch Bryn had had brothers, too, brothers who’d died in October, fourteen years apart. She’d had uncles, and those uncles had also died, also in October, also —
Janet shut the bible, hands shaking. What odds, too, that if I go back up to the graveyard I’ll find stones marking the resting place of young men who died on years to fill those gaps?
Every seven years, the dragon takes a life, in the woods below the fort.
I have to get Tom out of here. It was no accident that Lew set his face on the man on the cross, crowned with roses and thorns. It was no accident that Davith sang that song at the shearing festival.
They know. They know, and won’t — or can’t — tell me, not outright, but they have tried to warn me.
Janet raked trembling fingers through her hair. Should she take the bible straight to Tom? Would that make him believe her? Would he be sober enough to even hear her? Could she persuade Lew to speak plainly? Christ’s holy name, what if he won’t listen — do I knock him senseless and haul him out of here face down over Nightfoot’s back?
She was still debating her best next step when she heard the noise outside.
Chapter 17
It was the creak of a door, but it was closer than any door should be. It seemed to come from the side of the church where the blacksmith sat aslant.
Janet had not even considered that it had also been a full moon when she had seen that muffled figure disappear before her eyes.
She drew her sword and to hell with the fact I’m in church. No God Janet could imagine would have a problem with a soldier choosing to face danger prepared. Trying to be both quick and quiet, she slipped out the door. The moon was bright enough that she didn’t bother taking the lantern from the front of the church, just cat-footed her way through the shadows to peer around the corner.
The silver wash of moonlight showed her the cul-de-sac clearly, and showed her clearly it was empty.
She sheathed her sword and made her way slowly along the wall. This time, she did not limit her search to places large enough to conceal someone hiding. She moved every piece of rubble, every broken pot, every length of discarded wood, looking for a trapdoor beneath it or a door behind it.
And, half-way up, when she tried to heave aside a broken trestle propped against the wall, it did not yield.
Janet tugged it again, testing the points of resistance. It was fastened to something at the top and along one side, and her questing fingers found the cold heads of nails. She pried at the other side, peering and then feeling beneath it.
Her fingers touched wood, then metal. She traced the shape and knew it to be a keyhole.
The door would not yield, either inward or outward. Locked. It had been opened, just moments ago, of that she was sure — there were slippery traces on her fingers of whatever had been used to keep the lock oiled and in good order.
Wait here, and catch her red-handed when she comes back? But what if she was not alone, this time? And if this witch is part of what’s been happening here for half-a-hundred years or longer, she must have either enough help or the Devil has given her enough powers to strike down young men in the prime of their life. She’d make short work of me.
Rouse the guard, then? Would they help me — or her? If men like Lew, like Davith, could be prevented somehow from simply saying outright to her Listen, Jack, the young lord is in danger here, what else could the people of Brinday be compelled to do?
Janet backed out of the cramped space slowly. If there was somewhere she could hide, a vantage point to see clearly who came out of there …
None presented itself to her frantic gaze.
“Declare yourself!” a voice behind her demanded.
She was strung so tight that she barely stopped herself from drawing her sword as she spun around at the night guard’s challenge. Christ’s cod, that’s all I need, drawing on the Brinday guard. “Steward Cooper,” she said, letting him see her face.
“You’re up late tonight, then,” he said. Alan, Janet thought. Alan ap Derfel.
“No sleep,” Janet said.
“Better not to wander around,” Alan said. “In the dark, at night.”
For a second Janet thought she heard an unmistakable threat in his voice, and then the next she was sure she was imagining it, her fears running away with her. “The moon’s full,” she said. “There’s plenty of light.”
“Even better not to be out, then,” he said.
And yes, that was a threat. “Right,” she said, and forced herself to turn casually to the stairs. He knows. He knows what happens on the full of the moon, he knows about the woman slipping cloaked through the night.
Her back itched in expectation of a knife all the way across the courtyard, and not until she was in the tower with the door shut behind her did she draw an easier breath.
Then she ran up the stairs two at a time and flung Tom’s door open.
The fire smoldered on the hearth and a candle still burned on the table, but Tom was sprawled on his back on his bed, still dressed but fast asleep.
“Tom!” Janet strode to the bed. “Tom, wake up!” He muttered, but did not stir. Stooping, she smelled wine on his breath. “Christ’s cod!” Crossing to the basin, she seized the ewer, returned to the bed and flung the contents over him.
He sat bolt upright, spluttering. “What —”
“Wake up, Tom, there’s a door, I don’t know where it goes, but it’s into the fort wall so it’s either some secret room or it’s a way in and out of the fort, probably to the woods given that’s where they leave the bodies, or kill them there probably —”
Tom pushed his wet hair out of his face. “What by Gog’s hat are you talking about?” he demanded.
“It’s the door the witch uses, she doesn’t turn into a bird and fly away, she just unlocks the door and goes through. And we don’t have much time, it’ll be soon, it’s always this month, all of them, every seven years —”
“Jack, you’re making no sense,” Tom said. “A witch? What door?”
Janet took a deep breath. “There’s a secret door in the fort wall beside the church,” she said slowly and clearly. “I’ve seen a witch go in there and disappear on two full moons now. She must be going through that door.”
“Oh, that door,” Tom said, and Janet’s mouth fell open in shock.
“You knew?”
“My lady told me,” he said, pulling his wet shirt away from his chest. “Gog’s mercy, you’ve chosen a cold night to baptize me. It’s long boarded up, but there was a time when it was a way out, for the lord’s family, if the fort fell — or a way in, if it was held against them.”
“But that’s not true. The door’s been used.” Christ’s cod, used by Lady Modron. She’s the second witch of Brinday. “She’s used it recently. The lock was well oiled, and —”
“I’ll not hear a word against my betrothed,” Tom said sharply.
“Tom, wake up! How could she be mistaken on such a thing? Such a close-held family secret? I felt the oil on that keyhole, Tom, I swear on my life I did —”
“No, Jack,” Tom snapped, the cords of his neck standing out in anger, sweat glittering on his forehead in the candlelight.
Janet tried a different tack. “Well, perhaps someone could have found it, searching for something in that rubbish. They could have picked the lock. Which I’d not think a skill to find in the wilds, but never mind. I’ll keep watch and catch them —”
“No,” Tom said. “You’ll leave it, Jack. It’s no business of yours.”
“You made me steward,” Janet said. “I can’t think of anything more my business than people making their way in and out of the castle secretly.” And laying hold of that witch you’ve fallen for and giving proof you can’t deny. Tom turned away from her and she grabbed his arm. “Tom! What is wrong with you?”
He seized her by the wrist, grip hard enough to bruise. Her fingers opened involuntarily as he found the pressure points and compressed them mercilessly “I said leave it. I am the lord here, and I will be obeyed, do you understand?” When she only stared at him, he shook her. “Enough,” he growled.
“Tom.” Janet tried to keep her voice even. “Tom. You’re hurting me.”
For several seconds he seemed not to understand, and then he looked down at his hand as if it belonged to a stranger. “Christ,” he said harshly, and let her go.
His fingers had left her flesh bloodless and he stared at the white imprint of his grip, his face blanched to almost the same color. A long moment passed.
“I —” Tom said. “I —” He sank down on the bed, head in his hands. “Jack.”
“Nothing broken,” she said.
“Not for lack of trying,” Tom said on a single hard breath, and then: “Salve. In the chest. Let me —” He flung himself to his knees at the foot of the bed, hands shaking so badly it took him two tries at the latch. “Sit down. I’ll find it. I know it’s here.” He dug furiously through the contents, finally producing the pot he sought and bringing it back to her, fumbling to open the lid. “Let me —”
“I can do it,” Janet said.
“Let me,” Tom pleaded. Janet held out her wrist and he took it s
o gently she could barely feel his touch, scooping out the salve with his other hand and spreading it tenderly over her skin, and then again, and again, as if he could erase the marks he’d left. Finally the pot was empty, and he released her arm and turned away.
“Tom,” Janet said. “Will you listen to me now? The names and dates are all in the Brinday bible, in the church. Men, young men, dying in October, seven years, or fourteen years, or twenty eight years apart. Do you see?”
“Stop,” Tom said very low.
“There’s something very evil here, and I think you’re in danger from it. And I think Modron knows about it. She lied to you about the door —”
Tom’s fists clenched. “I will not hear a word against my betrothed.”
“God’s blood, Tom, stop thinking with your cod!”
He laughed without humor. “Oh, I am not, Jack, I am very much not, believe me. But do not talk ill of her, I warn you.” He looked straight at her, utterly serious. “I very truly warn you, Jack, do not speak ill of Lady Modron to me.”
“All right,” she said, a little shaken by his intensity. “I won’t. But we must get out of here, out of Brinday. I won’t mention reasons, since you won’t hear them, but we must go. Tomorrow. We’ll say we’re going hunting, and just keep going. We can be well away before anyone realizes, they’ll never catch our horses with theirs.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You must.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and took his hand. “You’re not thinking clearly, so let me think for you. You used to trust me to do that, didn’t you? Winnow down the choices?”
“I did. I — perhaps you’re …” He paused. “The dreams are … worse than … before.”
“You’re drinking the wine poured by Modron,” Janet said. His mouth opened, and she sighed. “You’ll not hear a word against her, I know.”