by Guy Antibes
“Six months. We’ll do as you say, Miss Featherwood.” He noticed her bandage for the first time. “You’re injured. We’ve got a man with some healer training. You can continue on after you tell us the whole story. We’ll take care of the rest.” The sergeant gave Harrol a dirty look. “I wish I could string all of them up, but it looks like you’ve saved us some trouble. I’ll send Harrol and the other bodies down to the Lieutenant in the morning.”
After seeing to the captured soldier, the man who had some training put some stitches in Sara’s arm. “If you leave now, you can make it over the pass and to a suitable camp before nightfall,” the healer said.
She looked over at her erstwhile attacker, laying down on a cot, with his back to her.
“Your friend said something interesting while we fought. You were paid to kill us—this wasn’t just a robbery.”
He grunted.
“Who paid you?” Sara said.
The man rolled over. “If we were paid to do something it would have come out of Parth. A man would have come and given us some money with the promise of more once we proved we had done it.”
He didn’t want to commit himself to the act, but he continued. “He would have said he came from ‘his lady’ who had access to more money than we would ever see. Now that conversation might never have happened.” The wounded man looked at his fellow soldier, and then back at Sara. “Don’t ask me any more questions.”
Sara handed out the last of the ale bottles and, after they had eaten, set off towards Shattuk Downs. “Give one to the last of the robbers with my compliments,” Sara said to the doubtful looking sergeant. “No, really. I want you to.” Millis Shields had Sara in her sights and now that the robbers were taken care of, she considered herself warned.
The sergeant nodded and wished them well in Shattuk Downs.
~
As they crossed the pass, they stopped to look both ways. The weather had remained clear, but clouds bubbled up from the Downs. Beneath the billowing clouds, tendrils of rain touched the ground. Looking back to Parth, they barely could make out Seven Trees in the hazy distance. The two views were spectacular, but Sara didn’t think the scenery was worth the peril they had just faced.
They found an oft-used campsite and set up shelter from the coming storm. They didn’t carry a tent, but they had oilcloth that they tied between four convenient trees. Willa found a long branch that she poked up through the middle creating a peak.
The horses were fed and they removed the saddles and their bags, putting them under their shelter. After another cold meal and a bandage change for Sara, they rolled out their blankets and slept. Sometime in the middle of the night, lightning lit up the camp. The horses whinnied and both Sara and Willa sat in the storm.
“Welcome to Shattuk Downs,” Sara said as she realized a little stream began to run through their shelter. She quickly got out her knife and began to dig a ditch. Soon Willa joined in and they soon observed the water run past them rather than through them.
“I wish I could walk naked in the rain to wash away last night’s memories.” Willa shivered. “I don’t know how you can keep it all together.”
“Keep what together? I’m a wreck inside. It’s all I can do to tell myself to look ahead without the past overcoming me. I don’t regret what we had to do back there, but the one I followed would have killed me if he were just a little stronger. The wound in his leg had weakened him. He knocked the gun from my hand and you could see that I used my arm as a very ineffective shield against a poorly thrown knife. I conjured a flame to distract him while I was on the ground and he stood above me swinging. It was enough to let me stab him. If it was daylight, I’d be dead.”
“I didn’t know the details. Your magic saved you again,” Willa said.
Sara lifted one eyebrow and cocked her head. “Barely. This time I didn’t have to burn him up.” She shook her head and took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to worry you, but I was afraid for my life.”
Willa put her arm around Sara as another bolt of lightning lit up the woods. “We made it through another harrowing mountain trip.”
“The first with Choster and Klark wasn’t so bad.”
“No, I suppose not,” Willa said, “but I think I’m getting too old for this.”
“I’m feeling pretty old myself and my arm is really hurting.” Sara put her head on her friend’s shoulder. “And now we’ll have to watch out for more assassins from Millis Shield. I’m sure she paid the soldiers to kill us.” What would Sara have done if she had made the trip by herself? She wouldn’t have made it. “Thank you for being here with me.”
“You’re welcome, however I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. I’d be in a nice warm bed in Parth.”
Sara felt a little guilt. “You agreed to come.”
“I wouldn’t desert you. I must say, my life is much fuller following you in your travels.” Willa laid back and rolled over. Sara soon heard snoring.
They woke in the midst of a heavy fog. The rain had saturated the ground. Sara’s arm continued to ache and the rest of her body complained as she rose.
“Not the kind of the day I envisioned for my homecoming,” Sara said as she took down their shelter.
“Nor I. Do you think there is a sun above, after this fog burns off?”
They didn’t see the sunlight until they descended to the Shattuk Downs foothills, and then Sara started a fire at the side of the road at the crossroads leading to Belting Hollow. She didn’t have to get angry to call up a flame, now. Sara remembered coming this way with Klark and Choster and she missed them both.
“Are you ready?” Willa said as she held the hot tin cup with her gloves on.
“No.” Sara put her hand on her arm. “I’ll have Nona look at this in Belting Hollow.” She flexed her hand and could feel the stitches in her arm stretch. “I’m not so sure a Duchess should have so many scars.”
Willa laughed. “A Duchess can have as many scars as she pleases.” She gave Sara a bit of a bow with her head and they had tea and rolls in silence. She got to her feet. “It’s time to leave if we want to get to Brightlings by dark, as I recall.”
“You’re right. I’m not looking forward to this, but I don’t want to take possession of Goldfields until I put Brightlings behind me.” Sara lifted her chin. She could do this. Her mother would want her to, especially now that her daughter would inherit the estate that was rightfully Sythea Goldagle’s. The thought gave her the motivation she needed to push aside her fears.
As they approached Brightlings, Sara felt the anxiety build. What would the new house look like? In minutes they would turn into the lane that led to Belting Hollow going west and Brightlings going east. She almost wanted to close her eyes until she could open them.
“Oh no.” Sara said. She saw the blackened timbers. Weeds had grown among the debris. Not a thing had been done to restore her home. “What has he done?”
“What has he not done?” Willa said. “The whole estate is quiet.”
The barn doors were open. She rode past empty outbuildings so she could see the start of their fields. No plowing, no activity. The estate stood idle in the spring sun when men should be plowing. Sara dismounted and walked around the house.
By the ruins of the Ballroom, she found an area that hadn’t been totally burned. Willa had fallen to the basement a year ago and the stability of the ruin hadn’t improved. The thought made Sara pause. The basement stairway was cut into the earth so she carefully descended. The floor that had collapsed from above permitted shafts of light to penetrate the gloom of the subterranean part of the house.
Sara didn’t see any fresh footprints in the dust and debris. Did no one care about Brightlings? She didn’t even see evidence of looters, but she could see little to loot. She made her way through the debris. More had survived the fire in the basement than she had thought a year ago, but she walked down to the cellar that had been dug even further into the earth. Her mother’s metal cabinets had eviden
tly been moved into the room before the fire. The casings had rusted, but the history of Brightlings survived likely due to Vesty not wanting to be reminded of the estate’s books. She struggled with the drawers, as much as the pain in her arm would permit, until one opened. The papers were edged with black, but they were mostly intact.
“Are you in the basement?” Willa called from above.
“I came down the stairs into the cellar. They held me up, so you can come down here. The fire didn’t burn everything.” Sara felt her mother’s presence as she examined her neat handwriting. Even though these were account sheets, holding them in her hand moved her to tears.
“Are you hurt?” Willa said as she made it to the bottom.
“Only my heart. Look, my mother’s handwriting,” Sara could barely get the words out. “I shouldn’t be crying over our household accounts, but I can’t help it.” She shuffled through the papers and pulled all of them out of the cabinets. She came across bundles with her own handwriting. Those that she prepared when she was, for the briefest of moments, the lady of the house and others that she wrote under the stern gaze of her mother.
Willa helped empty them. “I suppose they’re useless now.”
Sara could only nod. She went to close a bottom drawer and found it stuck. “Something’s…” She reached in and pulled out a journal, of all things. What kind of unexpected treasure was this?
“Your mother’s?”
“Not mine,” Sara said. The leather binding had a flap that was secured by a ball-shaped metal button. Sara couldn’t see any damage, other than the effects of old age and dust. The edges looked like a mouse had nibbled them. The leather had dried out so Sara’s hands were covered with tan powder.
“Parchment. Is the writing clear?”
Sara could barely read the writing. The ink had faded along with the general deterioration. “I can’t make out many of her words in the dark. I’ll need a magnifying glass or something. Perhaps I can recreate the words, but maybe in Stonebridge. The first date I see is right after she arrived in Brightlings.” She clutched the journal and rummaged around for a few minutes.
“Maybe this is still potable,” Willa said, holding two bottles of wine. Brightlings’s wine cellar now consisted of ten or fifteen bottles. Two years ago, there would have been two hundred or more. Barrels of shriveled fruit scented the air with the sweet smell of rot mixed with the wet charcoal smell that still permeated everything.
Sara put the journal in her pocket and chose two other bottles and they ascended the steps up to the basement level. She spied the pile of her old bedroom furniture half-charred in a corner of the basement. Mildew covered the spines of her books. She would ask Enos retrieve the metal cabinets before renovations started.
Natti’s and June’s rooms were open to the sky, as the floor had collapsed into this corner of the basement in the past year. Nothing remained but mildewed walls and charcoal.
They slowly climbed the stairs in the oppressive atmosphere of the charred bones of Brightlings. They both took deep breaths once they reached the edge of the derelict manor house.
“It wasn’t large by any standard of the nobility, but Brightlings didn’t deserve this.” Sara looked over the remains, not quite recovered from her emotions in the basement. She held her mother’s journal tightly to her as she walked to her horse. “I don’t know where Ben Featherwood is, but I now wish my squad of men were behind me.” Sara felt her sorrow replaced by anger at the blatant neglect of her childhood home. What must Seb and Enos think? Of course they’ve been to school most of the time.
She shook her head in dismay as she continued to examine the journal. Even in the sun, she couldn’t make out much of the writing. Sara took out a silk undergarment and wrapped the journal up within its softness, feeling like she wrapped her memories up in a burial shroud, but she would raise them from the dead, soon enough.
They rode into Belting Hollow in the late afternoon, avoiding the main road. She could see that the Council Chambers had been repaired. It looked like it always did—so her father could repair the hall, but leave his family’s home untouched? She couldn’t help but shake her head in dismay while they took a side street to Nona’s cottage.
“Sara!” Nona’s face lit up in the shock of seeing her. “Come in.”
“I really didn’t expect to see you here, ” Sara said.
“I’m not allowed to serve in the village anymore. I’ve decided to move away. Going up to the mines, every other week, isn’t enough to keep me fed.”
“I thought Peppen tolerated you well enough.”
“The new Head Councilman wants me to leave.” She was obviously distressed.
“Ben?”
Nona nodded. “I had hoped you had gotten my letter that I sent before Winter’s Rise. He’s a tyrant—as bad as West ever was.” Her eyes reddened. “He returned from Stonebridge and his first act was to end my work helping the village recover.” She shook her head. “It still hasn’t, you know. He can’t get away with keeping taxes so high for very much longer, but as the Squire, he’s strong-arming the Council to make rules and more rules. It’s smothering the village’s ability to function.”
“I did get your letter but I’ve actually been out of the country and only recently have been able to return to Shattuk Downs. We rode past Brightlings. I thought he would have at least cleared the remains out by now.”
“It costs money. I believe he’s back to amassing a hoard of cash, just like Vesty and he had tried to do before. The merchants must pay him bribes. I refused and that’s what ended my healing career in the village.”
“Who gives him the authority?”
“He’s the Squire.” Nona shrugged.
Sara’s anger blossomed. “No he’s not. There isn’t a Squire of Brightlings at present.”
“Tell him that.” Nona looked at the bump on her arm. “Are you hurt?”
“She is,” Willa said. “We were attacked in the mountains. An army man who had some healer training sewed it up.”
“Let me take a look at it.” Nona took them both into her kitchen. “You can stay here as long as you want. I doubt if you’d be welcome anyplace else. Ben would find a way to punish whoever took you in. He’s an awful, petty man.”
“I’ve had my fill of those and some not so petty,” Sara said as she winced while Nona unwrapped the wound.
“It’s begun to fester. I need to work on it right now. If you give me permission, I’d like to deep cleanse the wound and stitch it back up. You could lose your arm if you wait a few days.”
Sara felt a tinge of fear. “You won’t pour alcohol over the wound?”
“That’s a battlefield technique at cleaning a wound and it’s better than nothing, but no substitute for a number of better treatments.”
Willa shrugged her shoulders, but remained quiet.
Nona looked up at Willa. “In the field, you do what you have to.” She gave the older woman a little smile. “This is still going to hurt a bit, but instead of some alcohol on the wound, a little inside might relax you a bit.” Nona took a bottle of liquor out of her cupboard and filled up a cup. “Drink it all.”
A few minutes later, Sara looked away and grimaced as Nona painted the wound with a salve and wiped it off. “This will numb the cut a bit.”
“I’m a bit numb all over,” Sara said with a little giggle that just bubbled up.
Nona continued to work, removing the stitches, cleaning the cut and sewing it back up. Waves of aching pain shot up Sara’s arm as Willa stood over the chair with her hands gripping Sara’s shoulders.
Nona stood up after finishing her work by applying a fresh bandage. “It shouldn’t bother you as much. How long will you stay in Belting Hollow?”
Sara squeezed her eyes shut. The liquor still clouded her mind. “I need to talk to Ben.”
“Come with me. You need some sleep.” Nona and Willa helped Sara to a small bedroom with two narrow beds. “Your room for the night.” She laid Sara down. “You’
ll feel better in the morning.”
~~~
Chapter Twenty-Two
Confrontation
Sunlight streamed through the window as Sara sat up in bed, alarmed about a dream she instantly forgot. She struggled to remember the events, but the scenes melted away in her mind.
Willa walked in the room. “You’ve risen. It’s ten o’clock and time for you to get up. How do you feel?”
“Headache.” Sara put her hand to her head. “Is Nona still here?”
“I am,” Nona said, sticking her head through the door. “You need a good breakfast and a little concoction I have for hangovers.”
“I…” Sara paused. “I guess I did get inebriated, didn’t I?”
“You did, but for a good reason. Willa will help you wash up. By the time you’re done, we’ll catch up over breakfast.”
Sara rose from her bed a little unsteadily. By the time she entered Nona’s kitchen, she felt much better. When she flexed her wrist, the stitches didn’t pull as before. She sat down and her head began to pound again.
Nona put a tiny spoon of white powder in a glass filled with a tan liquid. “Drink this, all of it. You won’t like it now, but you’ll be glad you took it in half an hour.”
Sara followed her instructions, nearly gagging on the gooey texture. “I need something else,” she croaked, making a face. ‘You know they make mixed powders. I had a pain killer, sleeping powder concoction.”
“Never heard of such a thing,” Nona said as she put a plate of fried eggs, bacon and fried mushrooms in front of her with a slice of buttered bread. “This should support you this morning.”
The breakfast might look appealing if her head didn’t pound away, but she needed the nourishment. This would be a rough day—an important day. Her happier childhood days were gone forever. So were the dark thoughts after her mother mercilessly dressed her down for this or for that. Sythea Featherwood hadn’t been a happy mother. Now, perhaps, the journal might fill in gaps that her letters to Banna never did.
Natti Strongarm entered the kitchen, wrapping her arms around Sara. “Sara Featherwood!”