Favoring her damaged shoulder, Jesse sits in a chair across from the tomb and scans the brochure. It says here you were known to be cheerful, Rahere. That you liked helping people. She stares at the effigy. So, can I ask you for that—just to be cheerful while I sort this mess out? I don’t want to be bitter. I don’t want to be angry. I just want to know.
Jesse’s eyes fill. She sniffs; manages to rub one eye and then the other. As if she’s got something stuck.
She’s avoided grief for some time now, pushed it down, closed the lid on that box and locked it up. Now, like an idiot, she’s allowed misery to jump out and sock her right in the eye.
There’s only one thing to do; she knows it. Reaching into her bag, she takes the envelope out, rips the top, and unfolds the birth certificate.
The details.
Child: female. Name: Jesse Mary. Date of Birth: 1st August 1956.
She stares at Rahere. Does this feel like betrayal to you? It does to me. Her birthday’s always been celebrated on October 3.
Jesse keeps reading. Place of Birth: Jedburgh, Berwickshire.
Mother’s Name: Eva Green.
Date of Birth: 13th March 1940.
Occupation: blank.
Father: unknown.
Something hits in Jesse’s chest, hard as a fist.
No father?
In that moment she’s certain she will choke. But. She doesn’t.
There’s a word, Informant, with a signature beside it.
Jesse makes herself look at it. Anything to avoid the other information. Peering, she can see a woman’s name—it’s hard to read—and there’s an abbreviation at the front of it: Sr. Her finger traces the name. Mary Joseph. And beside the last name—Magdalene?—there’s a cross inscribed.
At least the address is clear: Holly House, Priorsgate, Jedburgh, Berwickshire, Scotland.
Jesse stares. She’s Scottish? She’s been told she was born in Durham.
Date of registration: 23rd October 1956.
In Sydney, when she went to apply for her passport, that registration date was the first clue that something was wrong. She’d handed over what she thought was her birth certificate, the one she’d found in her mother’s—no, her adoptive mother’s—desk in their house in Crows Nest, and they’d queried the date her birth had been registered; turned out, October 1956 was months after she’d actually been born, according to British records. That happened, sometimes, in cases of informal adoption between family members. It was a way of fudging the actual date of birth.
Conclusion? She’d handed over a falsified birth certificate.
The irony was, Jesse was getting her first adult passport as a surprise for her parents. A nice one. She’d saved for two years after university earning crap money and working two jobs—typing for a solicitor during the day, cleaning at night—because she so, so wanted to go to England in the summer and see the place she was born for real. And then Charles and Di got engaged.
Her friends all laughed, but Jesse didn’t care. She just wanted to stand on a London street and see them pass by. Be a part of living history, part of their fairy tale—the prince and his virgin bride.
Her parents had never been keen on Jesse’s traveling by herself, and she thought she’d understood the reason—a girl, all alone, out in the big world. So she’d meant to get her passport and say to Janet and Malcolm, “Come with me! Let’s all go home together and be there for the wedding. My treat.”
But there’d been no ticket for her mum and dad. Because they weren’t her mum and dad.
In Sydney, the woman Jesse called Mum had slammed her bedroom door and cried all day behind it when Jesse even tried to ask that loaded question: Who am I?
Malcolm, her father, shook his head when she trapped him in the kitchen. “I knew this day would come. I warned your mother so.”
And he’d walked out of the house. Jesse knew he’d gone to the pub; a nearly silent man, he always went there when her mum asked too much of him. Which was often, in his terms.
When she was past teenage sulking, Jesse had wondered sometimes if her parents’ marriage was actually happy. They organized their lives in the length of the pauses between the careful words they spoke to each other, and in what was not said in Jesse’s hearing. After she was about nine years old, Jesse knew that something was being managed between the two—between all three of them—in that quiet house. And she’d not understood what it was.
Now she does.
And here it is. Her real birth certificate, picked up fresh today on this far side of the world. The actual object. The thing that proves who she is. A bastard child. Jesse stares at the paper in her hand. It feels as if she can see right through to the other side, as if her eyes were scalpels slicing truth to strips of nothing.
She touches the letters on the page.
This is her mother’s name. Her actual mother. Eva Green.
Why did you give me away, Mum?
That does it. Tears drip, and when Jesse bends her head, they’re a torrent she can’t stop.
She tries to stifle the sound but she can’t bear this. The pain. All kinds of pain.
It’s a while before she wipes her face one-handed. Stand up. Come on. Sitting here will solve nothing.
Cruel, but fair. “You’re right.”
Holding to the back of the chair in front, Jesse stands. She’s done sniveling, she’s done feeling sorry for herself, and she’ll ignore the shoulder too. But she chews her bottom lip. That’s a habit when she worries.
Is it something you do, Mum?
Maybe she’ll skip the hospital, go to a pharmacist and get a painkiller. Then she’ll go back to the hostel and sleep; tomorrow will be better. She’ll make it better because she’ll find a library and scour what they have about Jedburgh. And libraries have telephone books. She can look up everyone called Green in Scotland. And she’ll ring them all.
That’s a decision. And a plan.
“There you are.”
Jesse has her hand on the door to the outer porch of St. Bartholomew.
“You left this?” The waitress holds out Jesse’s jacket. “Too pretty to lose, but I didn’t want to disturb you in the church.” Alicia smiles warmly.
“Thanks.” Half turned away, Jesse’s hiding her face. But she fumbles the handover and her bag drops to the floor. Out spill far too many things, including the birth certificate.
“Let me.” The waitress bobs down. Jesse drops too, just as Alicia stands. Their skulls connect.
Jesse’s knocked back on her shoulder as she falls. She can’t breathe and the vault reels above her head.
“What a day you’re having.” The other girl reaches out a hand.
Sobbing a breath, Jesse takes it. But she can’t control her face, and she can’t stand.
“Up you come.” Alicia, this surprising girl, helps Jesse to her feet. Alicia’s touch is gentle but her arms are strong. “I think you need to rest for a while.”
“I couldn’t, really. I have to—that is . . .”
There’s a door marked STAFF ONLY, and it’s easily opened. Beyond is a room filled with mismatched furniture, but there’s a couch. Alicia fluffs a cushion, places it invitingly. “It’s quite comfortable. Why not sleep for a little while?”
Jesse stutters, “N-no. That is, I do need to go. You’ve been so kind and . . .” But she sits anyway. She can’t fall down again. Three times in one morning? Too much.
“Put your feet up.” Alicia tucks an old picnic rug around Jesse’s legs.
Jesse wants to reply, wants to say thank you, but the rug does it. She just can’t speak.
Pressing a box of tissues into the girl’s hand, Alicia opens the door soundlessly as she leaves.
Jesse’s alone. She cries until her eyes swell shut, head ringing like a bell.
Jesse shifts in her sleep, twitches and sighs. Her eyes open. She struggles to sit up. Pain bites her shoulder like a dog. She screams out, “Christ!” Shaking, she tries to look at the watch on her rig
ht wrist. Past one o’clock!
Jesse fumbles the rug off. She stands. Too fast. Feeling sick, she grasps at a table as Alicia opens the door.
“Got it.” The waitress catches the lamp before it hits the floor. Somewhere, through the open door, people sing Gregorian plainchant. Calm as a distant sea.
Jesse mutters, “What are you, patron saint of people who fall over?” She’s trying to keep it light.
“That would be the social worker. Comes Mondays and Wednesdays.” Alicia picks up the rug and shakes it out, folds it in three. And again. A neat shape. “I heard you stir.”
Where “stirring” is blasphemy. In a church. “Sorry to have been a nuisance.” Jesse picks up her jacket as she tries to flex her shoulder. Gasps.
“Sore?”
Sweating, Jesse sort of nods. Her head doesn’t want to help. It’s blazing in there; red, black, white—pain of many colors given form.
“Um, a friend of mine sings in the choir here.” Alicia gestures through the door. “They practice at lunchtime. He’s a doctor at Barts and . . .”
“Please don’t think me rude, Alicia, but I do really have to go. I feel much better. Honestly.” Jesse tries not to flinch as she picks up her bag. “Must do this again sometime.” She makes it to the door. Forgetting, she pushes it open. Her right hand.
Did someone just remove a hunk of bone? Pain explodes and Jesse cannons into the doorjamb, slides to the floor. Four, today. A record.
“Alicia?” A man’s voice. Legs in the doorway, knees level with Jesse’s nose. A startled pause. “Hello. No. Stay put. Don’t try to get up.”
She knows she can’t move, not now, but Jesse seems to see the voice that comes out of the man’s face as it looms closer to hers. The sound distorts, slows down, as her eyes drift closed because she’s very, very tired.
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
A rustle. Jesse hears breathing close by. A large hand covers her forehead completely. Feels cool.
“Can you tell me your name?” The male voice, speaking each word really, really slowly.
She manages, “Jesse.” It’s thick-sounding. What’s her mouth doing?
“I think you might be concussed, Jesse.”
She winches her eyes open—who knew eyelids weighed so much?—and murmurs, “Okay.”
He’s smiling at her. Faint, but genuine. So’s Alicia.
Jesse tries to sit up. That doesn’t go well.
“We need to get you to the hospital.” He’s kneeling beside her. Quite close. Red hair. No. Chestnut. Pale eyes—water-green, water-blue. That English skin. Looks good, even on a man.
A deep breath. If she talks on the out, the pain isn’t as bad. “Don’t have insurance.” She’d shrug if she could. Her eyelids droop.
Jesse hears two voices. Him. Her. Him again. Then another rustle as Alicia squats down.
Jesse knows Alicia’s smell now. Soap from a morning bath—wouldn’t be a shower—and clean hair.
“Jesse, you don’t have to pay.”
Then him. “You’ll be admitted into emergency. I think you need to be.”
Magic words, You don’t have to pay.
Jesse surrenders to the dark.
2
THE SCOTTISH BORDERLANDS, JUNE 1321
MAUGRIS GAVE me the signal, a hand swept across the throat. Death.
I turned in the saddle, repeated my brother’s gesture. Rauf nodded, passed the message to Tamas and John and the others massed behind.
It was the dark of the moon before dawn, and there was nothing to show that we lay so close to our enemies. Maugris, my brother, was a careful leader; he had ordered mud rubbed on each cuirass, so that no surface shone.
Our family knew the worth of fighting men and always had. These past weeks had been blood-soaked as we did what was asked of us, but Rauf and the others understood we would not waste even a single life—not theirs and not ours. The core of our band had survived three years in the service of our overlords, the Percys, and their overlord, Edward, the king in London. But Scotland was a flint-hard country then, and while Robert Bruce had beaten Edward Plantagenet seven years ago at Bannockburn, the Scots were foolish to think us crushed. Their contempt was our best weapon.
Snorting, a horse flung up its head. Maugris glared at the rider. Sound travels at night.
I kneed Helios close to my brother’s roan and pointed at the breach in the high wall. It was hard to see, but it was there—I had found it scouting ahead of the others. The earth ramparts of the fort were not well maintained. Perhaps that spoke of few men and fewer supplies, or poor leaders; perhaps it spoke of arrogance. This place lay far inside Scottish lands. And if the brigands there thought themselves safe, that only friends would approach these walls, they were wrong.
Maugris nodded. Helios had the strength to charge the slope and jump the gap in the wall. The others? We would find out. But we had cut our way into such places before and would not linger. The reivers of the Scots borders used this fort as a base for raids into our English lands. We would destroy it, and them, and run.
I beckoned Rauf, a veteran of the wars of the East March, and the man nudged his horse forward. I made the sign of a bow being drawn and held up two fingers. He nodded and scanned the men. Tamas and John, one young, one old, both steady, had bows slung across their chests; Rauf waved them close. Two to ride, two to cover.
I trusted our lieutenant. Rauf was good with a sword, better with a dirk. And pitiless.
Maugris offered his sword to me and I touched it with my own, blade to blade; Dame Fortune be our friend. All soldiers are superstitious. We were no different.
Do not think.
I pulled the reins short, spurred Helios, and set him running at the breach. I heard Rauf behind, only a pace away, and I could not falter or his horse would run us down.
It was the day of the solstice, and yet the air was bitter; it numbed my face as the stallion sprang the gap. But Fortune kept us safe. Mist had settled inside the walls, a covering as we ran for the gate.
At full gallop, a heavy horse will shake the earth. Perhaps this woke the sentry to his death. The man startled awake as Rauf’s knife slashed a mouth in his throat; he made no sound as he dropped. I flung from the stallion’s back and we heaved aside the bar that held the gate.
And so it began.
Arrows skinned the air, and Maugris, howling, our men behind him, charged the shelters of heather and stone that hid the raiders. Half naked, half armed, they boiled from the doorways, still warm from their last mortal sleep. Faces, open mouths, and women in the shadows, screaming as blood flew from the swords that bit and sliced; we had the force of surprise and would soon be gone.
“Burn the huts!” Slashing forward, cutting down, I slung the words away. A misplaced slice and a man’s hand fountained through the air—it still held a sword—as I booted Helios through the heaving, howling melee to Rauf’s side; at its center, he cut as neatly as a tailor, eyes no brighter than his blade.
A panicked woman screamed; she had a baby in her arms. I saw a man run to the girl. He stood above her, and his blade dealt death in a red and silver wheel. He fought well for her life, for the child; some men’s faces, in battle, are not easily forgotten.
“None to live!” My brother had a voice that was always heard. He scythed men like barley as flame bloomed and jumped from thatch to thatch and light flared across bodies, piled in heaps.
Flank beside flank, Rauf and I slashed on, pushing the few defenders away from the open gate, away from freedom. Our horses were scarlet to the hocks, but we, and they, were used to that.
A bellow from Maugris—“Fall back. Back!”—and the band, man by man, obeyed.
I was the last away. Inside the ring fort, there was no movement, and the only sound was the spit and crack of fire. The man and the girl and the child were nowhere I could see.
“Bayard!” Rauf lingered by the gate to see I was safe away.
And then we fled to the
east, toward the rising light.
Fog moved over the face of the Pentland Hills, a shawl of rags flung across bracken and moor; it slowed us as we rode. But if it hid the track, there was this advantage: sound is trapped by mist. And snow. Though that was yet to come.
I nudged Helios to a trot and rode up beside Maugris. “Nothing moved as we left.”
My brother grunted. It was my role to search for survivors and dispatch them.
This raid had always been a gamble—a foray to stanch a running wound. Yet Maugris led us and we followed, for his orders came from Henry Percy. And if they were never easy commands and some of the Scots raiders in the fort had lived to pursue us, what was different in that? The Scots believed they had won their country back from the English, yet these small wars still swung across the border, out of England into Scotland, and back again. Territory was bought by death, theirs and ours, as it had always been.
And our own troop? They were accustomed to this work, but their hearts had likely shriveled since the morning. Some will deny it, but to kill a child stays with you. Women also. Those faces, those fragile bodies, were too much like their own babies, their own wives.
It was dangerous to think too much. I hunched deeper in my riding cloak and allowed Helios to fall back until I was in my proper place at the rear of the column.
For some time we rode at a league-eating amble until, ahead, Maugris threw up an arm and stopped. “Rauf!”
Our lieutenant cantered up the line, and I, along with the others, watched as the two conferred. We all respected my brother’s instincts.
Rauf touched a hand to his helmet. We saw him ride into the mist behind us, saw it swallow him whole. Soon, there was nothing to hear, not even his horse, though the track was wet.
Maugris held up one hand, palm out. Wait.
Time passed—long or short I am not sure. Should I speak to him? His face held no expression, though he inspected the mist as if quartering ground. And he had drawn his sword.
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