“You’ve heard nothing more concerning Foyrr?”
“Nothing,” said Lord Bress, “since I saw the King and his advisors plotting over their maps. The Mirror showed no more than that, though I’ve asked it every day. And my spies along the border say only that there is work being done to repair the roads that lead from High Foyrr to the border. The highways have all but disappeared in places.”
“Perhaps that’s all you saw,” Crorliss put in mildly, “a long-overdue plan to improve the public transportation system.”
An impatient sigh. “And the King of Foyrr and his barons interest themselves in that? No. Talk to this boy - oh, and he’s lame. Fix his leg, would you?”
“Pity? For one you think may be your enemy? You grow soft, my friend.”
“And you grow insolent.” The door moved. I stepped back, quickly, and turned to gaze back down the stairs as if lost in thought.
“Come here,” Lord Bress commanded, and still addressing the occupant of the room, “I have things to do. Send the boy to Poli when you finish with him. He’s to take Loosestrife’s place.” He half-shoved me through the door.
“What? But -”
But Lord Bress was already footsteps descending the stone stairs. The sound faded, and I turned.
I stood in the centre of a room larger that I would have thought. I had time only to take in its clutter, the stuffed animals, the cats that wandered about at will, the shelves with the jars and vials of odd and unspeakable things - and then the man Crorliss had stepped forward and bent to peer into my face. So I was forced to study his.
It was a face of contrasts. The eyes were dark and round, but there was a light within them that made me afraid. His jowls were fleshy and his mouth small, but it was firm and the chin prominent, his forehead was broad, but his nose was small, the nostrils were pinched. It was a face that did not smile a lot.
Nervous, I was about to say that really, I had lived with my lame leg for so long that he should not bother about fixing it, truly he shouldn’t - but I felt, suddenly, incapable of speech. The sweat popped out on my forehead, on my upper lip, for I realised that I could not move at all. My eyes remained focused on Crorliss’s eyes, and my mind, for all that it rebelled against the pull of his will, felt half-strangled by the intentness of his scrutiny.
And then he said an odd thing. “Why you?” A murmur as if he spoke as much to himself as to me. I found I could move, but - “Of all the boys in Geeragh, how did he find you?” He reached out a hand and placed it at the back of my head, holding it firm, though I squirmed back away from him. “Hold still,” he commanded. “Do you want to be cured, or not?”
My fear could not have been much greater, and beyond the fear a small grain of hope began to grow. This was an alchemist, and a great wise man, trusted and respected by the Dark Lord of Geeragh himself; if anyone could cure my leg, would it not be he?
I stood still, then, and held my breath, and prayed to the Old God, as Mam had once shown me.
And my leg tingled, as if with nerves asleep, and my knee, dully aching these long hours last, gave a sudden twinge - and all pain was gone from it.
I gave a cry, and moved my leg.
No. It did not bend. The pain was gone, but my knee was as stiff as it ever had been. I kept my eyes lowered to it, afraid to look up, afraid to have the man before me see that I was struggling with tears of disappointment. What a baby I was! What a child to believe that I could be cured so easily! I felt a fool.
The magician Crorliss had moved away, muttering to himself. I looked up at him. He smiled a little, shaking his head. “I did my best,” he said. “Tell that to Lord Bress. Tell him… it was not time.”
“Not time!”
“No.” He walked away, to a large desk, covered in papers and books and old parchment.
“You may go, now.”
I did not immediately move.
“Go, go!” He waved a negligent hand. He had already placed round spectacles on his nose and did not even bother to look up at me.
“You don’t know how to cure me.” I should not have said it, but I was hurt and angry and bitterly disappointed. All afternoon, since Speedwell had first mentioned Crorliss’s name, there had been the possibility - and the grown-ups had believed, they had! - that this man might cure me. Now he had failed, and I hurled the words, “I don’t think you even tried!” at him.
Crorliss got up from the desk and removed his spectacles; he walked towards me, and such was the silent intent upon his face that I inched backwards before him. He took the front of my jerkin and pulled me forward and upwards with a sudden violence that made me gasp, and he held me there, very close to a face that was suffused with rage.
“Oh, I can see that we are going to deal very well with each other, Fen, son of Fenvar the Fair-haired. I can see a relationship growing from these inauspicious beginnings - we will both get what we want. What do you think of that, eh? You don’t trust me - no matter. You believe me to be incompetent, eh? A charlatan who has duped the Lord of Geeragh, but who cannot dupe you, you brainless little dollop of seagull dung.” The voice was like velvet, but his hands on my jerkin were hard fists, and the dark eyes gazed back at me with venom. “Of course I can cure you. But… do I want to cure you? Perhaps… it depends if I find you to be of use to me, if I feel you deserve it. At the moment… I don’t.” He let me go, abruptly, and I stumbled back a little.
“You may run and tell Lord Bress about this if you like,” he said, straightening, his demeanour more calm, “but it will be your word against mine. I have need of you, Fen the Fair-haired. Even the great Lord of Geeragh has his blind spots. He doesn’t know what we know, does he? For if he did, I’m sure that fair head of yours would, at this moment, be high above the barbican gate - on a pike!”
I found the impetus at this, to turn and flee. The man was more powerful than I had thought: he had seen the black thoughts inside me. And yet… he was mad, I was sure of it. So I ran, as fast as my accursed, rigid leg would allow, out of that room and away from that malevolent presence.
CHAPTER FOUR
I had not realised how immense the castle of Geeragh was until I attempted to escape from it. At the foot of the twisted staircase that had led me to Crorliss’s eyrie I found a corridor that led into a grand reception room. Beyond that was a long gallery, with walls lined with paintings of stiff, proud men on stiffer, prouder horses. The riders became a kind of stationary army, staring at me with accusing hostility as I limped quickly by. I could not run - that is to say, I could not try to run - for courtiers and servants and guards were everywhere, and my rustic clothes and my stiff gate made me conspicuous enough. If someone came after me - would they bother to come after me? - enough people would remember me without the added ignominy of seeming to flee in terror.
So I walked quickly, as if I were about My Lord’s business, and prayed for a door that would lead outside; and prayed, at the same time, that no one who knew of my presence here in the castle would find me missing.
Another great hall, leading to another…
Panic was rising within me. My good leg was beginning to ache once more, and my breath was becoming laboured - worse, here was the set of armour, here the narrow stairs going upwards - I was back at the foot of Crorliss’s staircase!
Close, so close to tears in that moment, and despising myself thoroughly for my weakness, I paused, to find breath and to look about me…
There! A small door set near the staircase. I had not noticed it before. I opened it, and a warm draft of air dried the sweat on my face, and the rich smells of many kinds of foods cooking came strongly, tantalisingly, on that hot wind. Here were the kitchens, surely. And from the kitchens a door would lead to the vegetable gardens and orchards and stable yards and fields… I leaned against the outer wall of the staircase, to help ease my way, and submerged myself deeper and deeper into the darkness and the beckoning scents of that spiralling well.
I hurried through the kitchen, that giant, stea
ming chamber, passing amongst cooks and assistants and scullery staff, along a corridor and - blessedly - out into the night.
The night. I had not thought of that. How would I find my way home? How would I find a gate that would lead me out of this place? I wandered in the dark for hours, scurrying behind walls and into doorways whenever anyone approached - but it was no use, I was lost. Finally I found a kind of barn: there was hay, and a loft, and I climbed the ladder and slept there all that night.
“Fen.”
I was dreaming my father had returned home, was running along the jetty and waving to me. “Fen!” he called, with great joy.
And then he was shaking me by the arm, and he turned into Burdock.
“Fen! Wake up, you young gurrier!” It was Burdock, on his knees beside me in the straw. I scuttled back, away from him, and my back collided with the shins of Speedwell; we both went down in the hay.
Only briefly did I think of making a run for it - but the ladder leading down from the loft was at some distance. I sat stubbornly, instead, with my one knee drawn up and waited while the two men stood and dusted themselves off.
“You disappoint me, young Fen,” said Burdock. “I wouldn’t have thought you were a quitter.”
I did not speak.
“A mammy’s boy who runs home at the first sign of trouble.”
“I’m not,” I glared upwards at the burly knight, “I’d just rather be home than here, that’s all.”
There was a pause; I felt, rather than saw, the two knights exchange a glance. In the brief silence I realised it was much later than I would have thought; bright daylight outside, and the sounds of High Geeragh going about its business. How long had I slept, that the men had had time to return from the hunt and mount a search?
“Fen,” Speedwell said, as he sat down in the hay. Sighing, his brother followed. “Fen, we’ve been told by Lord Bress to take you home to your mother, if that’s what you wish. But is it what you really want? I know that Crorliss must have seemed frightening at first -”
“I wasn’t afraid! He was just horrible! Everyone here is horrible! I hate you all!”
They stared at me. “Us?” Burdock asked with some indignity. “You hate us?”
“Yes! No! I don’t know! You’re part of it! Your brother Loosestrife died in the Forest of Lirr, and still you went back there with Lord Bress! Still you remain loyal to him, when I heard Crorliss say that no one should hunt in the Forest of Lirr -!”
“Fen… Fen!” Speedwell was forced to raise his voice. “Loosestrife was a lad of sixteen, rash and high-spirited as they come. He was soon to be squire to Loch - one of the other knights - but he died a few weeks before that was to come to pass. Fen, the court of Geeragh has always hunted in the Forest of Lirr - deer and rabbit and wildfowl make their way there and grow plump on the sweet grasses and seeds. We never take more than we need, and then, not often. Last year, Loosestrife saw something -”
“Aye,” from Burdock, suddenly intense, “he gave a cry, the boy did, and raced off on his horse, and we followed. We never knew what it was he saw.”
“The hounds had noticed nothing - not all the field came with us,” continued Speedwell. “They were used to Loosestrife’s pranks - it would have been like him to lead us all a merry chase and then say he’d seen a particularly interesting butterfly. He had a wicked sense of humour, our little brother.” He lowered his head suddenly.
Burdock continued, “We found his horse, and found him some half-a-mile distant. He’d followed something on foot, it seemed. He’d fallen, Fen. Down a steep embankment to a rocky stream bed. He… he said…”
“He said, as I lifted him, ‘The bells… did you hear the bells?’ and then he died, Fen. It was not Lord Bress’s doing.” Speedwell gazed at me. I looked from him to Burdock and I knew that both of them spoke the truth.
“Fen?” Speedwell prompted, “yesterday in the clearing, you mentioned bells. What did you see in that tree?”
I wondered what to say. But I could see no reason not to tell these men the truth. “The bells belong to the Shee. It was a silver deer, then a… a sort of fairy-shape. It… it told Lord Bress that great changes were coming to Geeragh.”
Both knights sat very still, and stared at me, then looked at each other for another long moment.
They asked no more questions, and while that was perhaps odd, I knew only that I was relieved at their lack of curiosity.
Their horses were tethered outside the barn; they had only just arrived back from the hunt, to find that Lord Bress had sent soldiers and servants out in search of me.
“He’s taken a liking to you, Fen,” Burdock said. “In a few years maybe you’ll find yourself his squire.”
“Lord Bress’s squire?” this thought filled me with dread. Why would he want to keep me here? Did the man admire me because I could speak with the spirits of the woods? The Shee were notoriously temperamental, and the Dark Lord was a man who admired power in other people - if only because he would like to know how to possess it - or so I had heard rumours say.
“Wouldn’t you like that? To be his squire?” prompted Speedwell.
“It means an apprenticeship, Fen. He would teach you how to become a knight. Like us!” Burdock said this with enormous pride.
I did not know what to say. How could this possibly happen, when I was charged with the job of killing the man?
And a knight was supposed to teach his squire the art of being a knight? Warfare and drinking and horsemanship - that I could imagine Lord Bress teaching - but courtly pursuits, such as I had read in my mother’s books - chivalry? Honour? These were not words that I had ever heard connected with the Dark Lord of Geeragh.
So I did not answer Speedwell’s question. Nor did I decide to go home to Clonmara, afraid of my other’s disappointment in me. In silence and misery, I rode behind Burdock, back to the castle.
This time we did not enter through the main doors, but, after leaving the horses at the stable, went through the orchards and gardens and into the great, busy kitchen through which I had fled the night before.
“I’m starving,” Burdock patted his stomach, and waved above everyone’s heads to get the attention of one of the cooks. “And you, young Fen - when did you eat last?”
It had been breakfast, with my mother, the day before. Suddenly my stomach rumbled, reminding me how very long ago and far away that bowl of porridge and milk had been.
We ate at a table in a corner of the kitchen, Burdock, Speedwell and I, and the food kept coming to us as fast as we could eat it. Not only porridge - and this time with thick clotted cream and sugar syrup - but mutton, and bacon, and hot bread rolls that we piled with butter.
“So - some benefits to living at High Geeragh, eh, young Fen?” Burdock reached over and slapped me hard on the back, so that I spilled my tankard of buttermilk.
I was reluctant to leave the table, slowed my eating and carefully watched the knights - but too soon they had had enough and stood, pushing back the bench so that I, too, was forced to rise, and follow the knights through ever-widening passages, back through the castle. What now?
Lord Bress, I was glad to find, was nowhere to be seen. But standing at the doors and looking down worriedly over the bailey, as if waiting for something, was a plump, well-dressed woman with greying, honey-gold hair. She turned and saw us and raced towards - me. It had been myself that she had been waiting for, and she made it abundantly clear by grabbing me and pulling me to her ample, yielding bosom and holding me tight. “So this is the wee lamb. Poor lad, scooped up and away from your mam…”
Speedwell said, with some amusement at my stunned expression, “Mother, this is Fen. Fen, this is our mother, Poli - she’s chatelaine here.”
She let me go to turn to two boys who had been lounging in the shadows of the great staircase. Speedwell ruffled the hair of one as he passed, and was greeted with a snarl. The two knights laughed and went on up the stairs, without looking back, so I did not know if I was to follow.
“And these,” Poli said with pride, “are my two youngest sons, Scabious and Seablite.”
They were both older and taller than I, heavy-shouldered and heavy browed. They stood - a habit each of them had, I was to find out - with their heads thrust forward, which gave them an aggressive look. The elder of them, Seablite, had a dark, curling fuzz around his chin; the other, Scabious, had a narrower face, and a problem with breathing through his nose, so his mouth was always slightly ajar. This, with the rather protruding green eyes that both brothers had inherited, gave Scabious a look of perpetual surprise.
Poli had said, My youngest sons.
I said, “You’re brothers to Burdock and Speedwell and -”
“Half-brothers,” Seablite corrected. “Our father was a merchant from the city. He owned -”
“Now, don’t be boasting, boys,” scolded their mother. She turned to explain to me, “My first husband was a knight. I had the four boys to him before his death in the War.”
“Our father choked to death on a lark’s wing,” Scabious informed me soberly.
“Now that’s enough of our family history…” Poli began to usher myself and the boys up the stairs.
“You all have foreign names,” I said to Scabious, by way of making conversation.
They both turned their belligerent faces towards their mother. “She found a book in the castle library - named us all like we was aristocracy. How would you like to be named after a pink flower?” Scabious growled.
“Your father - may his soul rest gently - approved of my continuing the practice,” Poli announced, one of her large, plump hands on each of her sons’ shoulders, rather as if she were arresting them; she turned to me. “I’ll show you the book in the library one day - the finest illustrations, so real you feel you could pick the flowers right up - it came off a wreck from a country called Bristol.”
“Lady Poli?” A young, female voice came from below, “You up there, Lady Poli, ma’am?”
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