The Falconer’s Daughter: Book I

by Liz Lyles

  He reined his horse in at the muddy road running into Buxton. “So much smoke! It burns my eyes.”

  Her eyes were already watering as large ashes drifted down, dusting their cloaks and horses’ manes. “Look,” she coughed and pointed, “Mary waits for us there.”

  It was a long afternoon as Lady Eton and Cordaella tended the surviving children while Philip painstakingly recorded all of the details gathered from interviewing the neighbors and describing the particulars. Inside one of the cottages that had escaped the fire, Lady Eton worked, her skirts knotted out of the way. Ash marked her forehead and chin, sweat dampening the front of her plain brown gown. “I doubt any of them shall last the night,” she said, standing slowly up, rubbing her back where it ached.

  Cordaella finished swathing one child’s spine, gently applying the smelly poultice to puckered skin. “Infection is already setting in.”

  “Elisabeth never did come down.” Mary found a stool and sat down on it, rinsing her hands in the bucket of water. “I wish his lordship were here to see this. He doesn’t understand these people. He doesn’t know how they suffer.” She struggled to dry her hands, fighting the trembling in them. “It makes me so angry,” she said, “but how can you blame them? They are poor—they work hard. They do not deserve what they get, or should I say, they do not get what they deserve?” She stared at one of the pallets. “God help me,” she murmured. “That one has already died.”

  “I would like to say it was carelessness that killed them. But they were left because the mothers had no other option. So different from the castle, isn’t it?”

  “Someone other than a five-year old should have been with them. A five-year-old! She was still just a baby herself.” Lady Eton’s voice thinned with frustration. “Yet I grew up in Bakewell, eleven miles down the road. I know how it is, Cordaella, I was once like them.” The sky cracked with thunder, followed by splinters of yellow-white lightning. “The system…” she said, shaking her head, “it doesn’t want to change. I ought to know that. I was lucky to have married out of Bakewell, to have been considered by the Earl. If my father had not had money of his own…” she said with a shrug. “What good does talk do? It would be better to find Philip. He will need the name and age of the child for the castle’s report.”

  The room felt oppressively close after Mary had gone; storm clouds turning the afternoon prematurely dark, the odor of burned wood and skin lingering in the croft. Elisabeth crossed over the threshold, the hem of her riding houppelande lifted high from the dirty floor. “It smells terrible in here,” she said.

  Cordaella had no patience left. “Then go back outside.”

  Elisabeth ignored her, bending over to inspect one of the pallets. “How did the fire start? And who is this?”

  “Hainey’s little boy. And he just died. Mary went to tell your brother.”

  “He’s dead?” Elisabeth said, pulling back in horror. She moved quickly to the next pallet. “And whose little girl is this?”

  “I think she is the blacksmith’s daughter. Cecily.”

  Elisabeth glanced at Cordaella. “Is this typical of the cottages?”

  “For the most part.”

  “Was your croft like this?”

  “No, ours was smaller.”

  “Smaller?”

  “Aye.” Cordaella intentionally answered with the Scottish word. She didn’t like Elisabeth’s questions. This wasn’t an appropriate time. “Our croft only had one room.”

  “But what about your animals?” Elisabeth held her velvet burgundy sleeves and carefully sat down on the stool Lady Eton had earlier used.

  “At first we only had a goat. Later Papa traded furs for a cow.”

  “But in the winter, you didn’t leave the cow outside, did you?”

  Softly, Cordaella said, “No, they came inside.”

  “With you?”

  “With us.”

  Elisabeth rose again, saying nothing else. She stepped across the bucket to a third pallet near the corner. “This child does not breathe easily.” She leaned over the boy to listen more closely. “You had better come see for yourself, Cordy. I think he is ailing.”

  Cordaella knelt opposite her, putting her ear to Bobby Purcell’s chest. She heard a faint rattle, air moving in little fits through his lungs. He sounded like a bird, trilling unsteadily. There was nothing she could do. He had only turned two last week. “Elisabeth, fetch his mother.” For once her cousin did as she was asked and Mrs. Purcell ran into the room, her eyes red-rimmed, her mouth pinched.

  “No, miss, not my baby!” She stretched out her hands to Cordaella, pleading, “Can’t you do something else? Don’t you see, the twins were in the cradle? I have no more.”

  “I am so sorry,” Cordaella whispered, her mouth dry, her eyes dry. She felt so helpless. “We have sent for the doctor but he hasn’t come.”

  “But I have nothing now,” the poor woman sobbed, covering her face with her hands.

  Cordaella sat back on her heels. The meanness of the small room overwhelmed her. She tried to shut out the old thatched roof smelling of mildew and the walls of smoke and urine, hay and sweat. Her stomach cramped, queasy. The rush of nausea was unexpected and tendrils of hair clung to her damp brow. She covered her mouth, afraid of betraying herself in front of Mrs. Purcell.

  Mrs. Purcell’s wailing, the stench, the darkness of the croft all set her nerves on edge, keenly stirring memory, a physical reflex to death. She fought the unexpected terror, reminding herself that this was not her cottage, not her home. If only she could get outside; the fresh air would help clear her head. But she was loath to leave the weeping mother by herself, and waited indecisively while ghosts of the past climbed on her shoulder. She felt like a child again, and she could see her own cottage, hear her own terrified screams. “Aiee, Papa!”

  His right arm was nearly severed free, blood pooling below his armpit, staining the straw a summer pink.

  They had come near midnight, the sky was black—starless—and it had been hard, so hard to drag him in. She stared at the knife protruding from his stomach, wondering who was still out there, wondering when they’d come get her. Inside the cottage, the heifer’s bell clanked dully as the cow lowered her head.

  Cordaella wrapped her skirts tightly around her legs, her fingers kneading the nubby woolen fabric as she stared at her father. What was she to do first? He was not a bird with a broken wing. Nothing would stop the blood from flowing. Did that mean she could not save him? She stiffened at the sound of footsteps close to the door. Her mouth was dry, too dry for her even to swallow.

  Moaning, the falconer stirred. His eyelids fluttered, but it took him a moment to open them. He stared at her hard, pupils black, a peculiar expression in his eyes. As he said her name, red dribbled from his nose, mingling with the red at his mouth. She watched red bubble with his breath. There was too much red. Blood spilled everywhere. She leaned closer. “Papa!” She couldn’t feel anything, nothing but pain where her heart had once been.

  “Listen, my girl,” he said, his mouth working. “You must get to the village. Your grandfather—from Aberdeen—has left you money—” His jaw went slack.

  Her grandfather. The money. Aberdeen. Her grandfather. Money.

  Cordaella lunged at the door, groping with the handle to get outside. The old terror was back, reminding her of the six hours she had spent, huddling near his dead body, waiting for the light of morning.

  In the last six years she had not let herself dwell on it, steering her mind from the horror. Outside the cottage she gulped in air with great breaths, her face pale, perspiring. She leaned against the door frame, shuddering from the cold and pain. Those were the longest hours of her life. Even after he died, she still heard the voices and the heavy footsteps outside. There were at least two of them, their conversation rising and falling, once peaking in argument. “You take her, then!”

  “Why me?”

  “Well, I don’t want her—if you want to try your luck with her,
that is your affair.”

  “There is no money in it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would we stand to lose any?”

  “I don’t know. She wasn’t mentioned in the agreement.”

  She listened to their voices, not understanding. For some reason they had come to kill the falconer, but then, why not her? Aberdeen. Her grandfather. Money.

  Did it have to do with the inheritance? They had come to rob her, they wanted the money. They were angry because she didn’t have it here. As it all became clearer to her, the fear dissipated, replaced by rage. They killed her father over nothing.

  Cordaella ran to the door and flung it open. “May God curse you,” she screamed, lunging out the cottage door. The men had been dozing and now jumped up. Dazed, they scrambled with their coats, reaching for weapons. “Kill me too!” she cried, “if you had to kill him, why not kill me too?”

  She sounded mad, her heavy accent, the wild grief unsettling the men. They swore, exchanging few words before two dashed off, heading down the mountain. The third one, the one that remained, was young, seventeen, maybe eighteen, and thin. “It wasn’t you we wanted,” he said.

  “But why him?” she cried. “He was good.” And the boy broke into a run, following hard and fast on the others.

  The sky forked with lightning and the thunder crashed. Again lightning streaked the twilight with crooked fingers of white, the distant hills of the Derbyshire Peaks deep green against the dark horizon. Cordaella slowly tipped her head back until she stared straight up into the fury of the sky. There was nothing but clouds and a play of light.

  *

  The rain began to fall steadily after dinner, and by half past eight, it came in pelting streaks, pinging against the lead windows and sizzling in the fireplaces. With the Earl gone, Lady Eton excused herself early. Philip made one final trip to the stables, and Edward was nowhere to be found. Only Elisabeth and Cordaella shared the solar’s fire.

  A half hour passed with Elisabeth stitching and Cordaella reading. As the rain continued its steady stream, the drumming pulled Elisabeth from her piece. “Philip said the coroner’s inquest determined today’s fire was caused by one of the farm animals.” She plucked at a loose thread, pulling it completely through the fabric with a dexterous needle. “Is that common?”

  Cordaella had been reading the same paragraph for the last several minutes, too wearied to make sense of the archaic prose. She was good at Latin, but Greek was more difficult, especially when she was tired. “Common enough.”

  “How? Oxen cannot lay a fire.”

  She closed the volume of Plato, fingering the padded leather cover. She looked at her cousin. Why did Elisabeth want to know? “Oxen are not kept near the hearth. Generally, accidents are created by pigs. Or chickens.” She ignored her cousin’s incredulous expression. “This fire could have been touched off by a chicken dropping a bit of burning straw into the cradle, or a pig knocking the fire out of the hearth. Sometimes pigs knock a cradle too near the fire. Since most cottage floors are covered by straw, it only takes an ember and breath of wind to ignite the entire croft.”

  “Did your croft ever catch fire?”

  “No, it did not.”

  “Do you miss it? Your croft?”

  “It’s not the building I miss. It’s the mountains.”

  “Nobody else lives there. That’s what Father says.”

  “It is harder to survive high up. You can’t grow much and the winters are longer, harsher. It’s not much of a life.”

  “If it is so hard to survive, how did you?”

  Cordaella rubbed the book’s binding. “Papa did it all—found the means to keep us fed and warm. He worked at things, whittling, fur, building odds and ends to trade in the village. Papa always said—”

  “Why do you say his name like that?” Elisabeth said, interrupting her. “You always say it the same way.”

  “How do I say it?”

  “Reverently.” Elisabeth kicked one foot out from beneath her chair, the full burgundy and brown skirts rustling, revealing the lace of her ivory chemise. “Perhaps you aren’t like the wild thing they brought here years ago, but you still talk about him as if he were—” Her mouth pursed. “God.” She stared so hard at her cousin that Cordaella shivered. “He was just a poor falconer. A man with nothing. No work. No home. No name.” There was a minute of silence. Maybe two. “I can’t think why you want to remember him like that, as if he was the very best thing, or very best person, you have ever known. People die, Cordy,” Elisabeth said, sounding almost angry. “They die all the time.”

  Cordaella looked to the fire. The wood had burned low, the grate a pile of red coals. “It’s late,” she said at last. “It has been a difficult day.”

  “Yes, it has.” Elisabeth rose, taking the candle from the lip in the wall. “Are you coming, then?”

  *

  Across the English Channel, far down the continent’s coast, guests had arrived at the palacio in Santiago to meet with the Duke, Pedro Fernando. The brothers, Enrique and Carlas de la Torre, glanced at each other as the door opened. Duke Fernando extended his hands to them. The Castilian brothers bowed low, the velvet of their elegantly cut jupons a glow of purple and black in the candlelight. “I am interested in knowing more,” the Duke began without preamble. “What property does this Cordaella of Aberdeen bring?”

  Enrique smoothed his slim black mustache. “Nearly forty thousand acres, Your Grace.”

  “And do not forget the harbor—” added Carlas.

  Pedro Fernando unrolled his ivory-colored map, pressing it flat on the desk. “Yes, just a fishing port now, isn’t it?”

  Enrique, known as the ‘handsome twin’, sketched the opportunities, “But Aberdeen would give you your own port in Scotland, effectively avoiding the high tariffs imposed by the English crown. By trading directly with the merchants of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, you would have no need for Southampton, London or even Hull.”

  “It would open up the seas,” agreed Fernando thoughtfully, considering the potential routes on the map, up and around the coast of Portugal, the ports of France and across the English Channel to the frigid North Sea. “How much gold is the Earl of Derby asking?”

  “He wants more than gold. He wants to negotiate new trade agreements.” Don Carlas de la Torre answered, his voice unusually smooth, disarmingly soft.

  The Duke sat. “What kind?”

  “Exclusive supplier in some cases.”

  “What? A monopoly on services?”

  Enrique shrugged noncommittally. “She brings all of Aberdeen with her, not to mention the annual income from the lands.”

  “And I would own Aberdeen?”

  Carlas and Enrique exchanged glances again. “Not own,” corrected Carlas, “but control.”

  “Your heir would inherit, of course.” Enrique concluded.

  “Tempting,” the Duke murmured, his attention returning to the map. “The proposal has merit.” He tapped the table, engrossed in the idea.

  Carlas relaxed, his pensive expression disappearing into the merest hint of pleasure, lines crinkling about his eyes and mouth. “Shall we send a counteroffer?”

  “Write up a contract.” The Duke raised the map and placed a kiss on the coast of Scotland, his dark eyes over bright. “If Aberdeen comes to Santiago, I have no intention of giving Aberdeen back.”

  *

  Lady Eton slowly brushed her hair, watching her husband from the corner of her eye. She wondered what he was planning now. For the last two days he had been immersed with papers and charts and maps, chewing on the quill of the pen, ink staining the edges of his mouth. What was it about Grey that made her feel like this? It wasn’t the silence; she was used to his inattentiveness. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but in his company she felt empty. Her life was neither better nor worse than she imagined it to be. It was simply different. Empty. There was that word again.

  The fire crackled, orange fingers of light, woo
d popping amid a shower of sparks. “Damn!” The Earl swore, stomping out a swirl of hot embers. He yanked in annoyance on the robe, stirring the papers. Again he swore, his jaw peppered with a graying beard.

  “Were you burned?” Mary asked.

  “No.” He answered irritably.

  But Mary, being lonely, needed to hear her own voice and hear him answer her. “What do you read?”

  “A proposed contract.”

  “For?” She tried to sound interested; she wanted to understand his business. He had become more involved with his trade in the last two years.

  “Cordaella.”

  Mary stilled, the brush limp in her hand. “The girl’s fifteen.”

  “Almost sixteen.”

  “Is it a good offer?”

  “I doubt there could be better.” He drew the papers together, sorting them into two neat stacks. “But it need not concern you, nothing has been decided. Not yet.” Seven years ago he hadn’t minded her plain face, but then she still had some youth. The years had not been kind to her and he was irritated by her expression and her simplicity. He forced down his revulsion and went to her, drawing her up to kiss her on the right cheek and then the left. “It is late, Mary, and I still have work to do.” He gathered his papers. “Do not wait up. It may be hours before I join you.”

  *

  It rained during the night and in the morning the mist raised thick from the wet earth, hanging low over the Derby forest. The old trees pierced the mist with their gnarled branches, clinging tightly to the gray clouds. Philip overtook Cordaella in the stairwell. “Where are you going, Cordy?”

  “For a walk.”

  “Come up on the parapet, will you?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve some new books. I don’t want Eddie to see. He has been following me everywhere lately.”

  She shook her head. “I think I’d rather not, Philip. I’ve had a terrible headache for the last two days.” She rubbed her temple with a regretful smile. “Perhaps tomorrow?”

  He dropped down a step and touched her shoulder. His voice lowered, “Cordy, the books are a pretense. I have something else to tell you.”