by Prue Batten
‘You’ve an answer for everything haven’t you?’ He clapped the Hob on the back and received a grin in return. ‘I’ll wager you don’t feel like a walk after the distance you’ve come? I should like to talk with you.’
Gallivant shook his head. ‘I dare say my legs are shaped like a kettle spout. Give me a day and some of Jasper’s liniments and I shall take you up on it.’ Finnian held out his hand and Gallivant shook it and with a half-look in Lalita’s direction, he left the arbor in a sprinkle of wisteria petals.
‘How did you do it? You are the first to get a smile from him in days, let alone a civil word.’ Lalita touched the Hob on the arm.
‘He is a man who hurts. All that blackness comes from pain, probably the pain of rejection. For all his darkness there is desperation there. And quite severe desperation at that. I have seen it before and would not wish to mindfully add to it. Are you in love with him?’
Lalita’s eyebrows rose and she coughed into her cup of tea. ‘Love? Indeed not. He has done nothing to cause me to love him.’ Except save me from death by the Strigoi, protect me from Isolde, prevent me being raped by Kurdeesh. And kiss me and love me as if there was no other in his life. She shook her head at the voice that persisted in her head. ‘You say he is desperate?’
‘Indeed. It is obvious.’ Gallivant yawned, stretching his arms above his head. ‘Jasper implied in his note that he is quite the valorous chap. Should get on well with his brother. Sink me but I’m tired. Lady of the Desert, you’ll have to excuse me but I shall see you anon,’ he gave a quaint little bow and departed, forever seeming as though he must race to every appointment.
Lalita remained under the arbor. As Finnian had laughed, Lalita found her stomach turned upside down. Now a slight queasiness hovered, delivering a faint flavour of half digested breakfast onto her tongue. Love him? She had thought she might before he had stolen the paperweights. But now?
She imagined the afrit.
‘Well, Desert Flower, did he not have the same purpose – to retrieve the charms and deliver them to Jasper? And without involving you in the inevitable danger?’
‘Yes but if he hadn’t stolen them, I wouldn’t have chased him and been caught by the Strigoi.’
‘It was not his fault that you put yourself in such an invidious position, Lalita. You acted without thought.’
‘Stop this! I will not take the blame for my hurts.’
‘You will not but you should. You should also remember that you would be dead if it was not for Finnian. Like I have always said, you are a Disaster Damsel.’
She put her hands to her ears and groaned. ‘I shall not listen. Go away.’
She jumped up and walked over the close clipped lawns to the other side of the garden. One of Jasper’s dogs, a lithe hound with the body of a gazelle, rosebud ears and a coat of whipped cream lay stretched out and as she sank beside him, he lifted his head with its pointed muzzle and his tail slapped the ground in a friendly thump.
‘I miss Phaeton, Dog. He was not unlike you – calm and elegant. And so loyal. Huh, loyalty – such a commodity and so hard to come by.’
‘You think?’ Jasper had walked quietly over the grass, his footsteps cushioned by the dense nap of the lawn. ‘My belief is that if you let people into your life, they will inevitably reward you with friendship, love and loyalty. But I think we are not talking of loyalty at large here, are we, Lalita? Do you use the term in relation to Finnian?’
Lalita buried her face in the dog’s smooth neck as Jasper folded his ascetic frame beside her.
‘Lalita, his has been the hardest life and he has had to make the most burdensome decisions. But then I am not telling you anything you don’t already know. And to be honest, you should feel some empathy. Just remember that he has in fact done nothing truly wrong. He brought the charms to me.’
Lalita sat up straight, laying the dog’s relaxed head across her lap. ‘Jasper, it’s not what I am, this bitter person. But so much has happened in recent times. I find I look through a window into a fog where there are shapes and I can’t decide if they wait to beleaguer me or befriend me. I can trust no one.’
‘My dear,’ Jasper picked up Lalita’s fingers. ‘Here in the Ymp Tree Orchard at my home, you can trust everyone. Even Finnian.’
She lifted her eyes then and was struck by the indigo blue gaze that met her. She could think of nothing but reassurance, as if Jasper contrived to rebuild her confidence block by block. And despite her tilting stomach, she smiled.
‘Perhaps I can. Even Finnian. Jasper, can you destroy the charms? It was my purpose to bring them to you. I believed if you destroyed the soul-syphon, that you could destroy these abominations. My niece’s life is at stake.’ She felt a prickling in her eyes again – Isabella, the last of her line. ‘I can’t lose her.’
‘Dear girl, it’s a terrible waiting game we play, isn’t it? And it isn’t just the child’s life; it’s all our lives. Tito there, my hound – his life. Bottom the donkey’s life. The fish in the lake, the birds in the sky.’ He hesitated and took a breath. ‘Lalita, I had a vision and it seems I’m not the one who will destroy them. It is to be another.’
‘No. Who?’ Lalita’s face collapsed. ‘Do we have to take them somewhere else? I shall do whatever must be done.’ The malaise in her gut expanded and she threatened to retch on the lawn.
‘No, they stay here. I’m not yet privy to what shall eventuate, but mark my words I shall be. Lalita, are you well? You’re very pale.’
‘No, I feel quite nauseous to be frank. Perhaps just fatigue.’
‘Come with me now and I shall give you some ginger tea. We must have you well for our guests. I planned to get Finnian and ride out to meet them. If you rest for an hour, would you like to join us?’
Finnian. Could I? But then to see Isabella so soon. ‘Yes, I should like that.’
Jasper took her hand and led her away, her spirits rising just a little despite the nausea.
Chapter Twenty Two
Finnian had never felt as nervous, as sure of rejection as at any other time in his life. The protective mists moved with the household as they rode out and he began to have confidence in Jasper’s ability to best his grandmother for a while longer. But he could hear the weather building on the other side of the fog and occasionally a welkin wind would buffet through the cobwebs of vapour and snake around his neck. This welkin wind spoke of worry and strife and he knew he had time only to meet his brother before he must go.
He listened to Gallivant’s lively banter, praying for it to release his tension. They began to climb the Barrow Hill closest to Jasper’s home and from where they could wait for the oncoming assemblage, little Bottom trotting bravely up an incline that would have the larger horses snorting with effort. Finnian lagged behind, needing time to adjust to the thought that a brother, unknown for so long, was about to enter his life.
‘Finnian.’ Lalita turned her horse toward him. ‘Finnian, before they arrive I must speak with you.’ Intensity coloured her skin and a ghost of a smile trembled on the corner of her lips. Without waiting for a reaction she launched into a speech that was like salt on Finnian’s already raw sensibilities. ‘It seems I owe you gratitude for my life.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Again. I tell you, I think I shall have to employ you as my bodyguard.’
He sighed as he gathered up the reins. ‘And I tell you Lalita, I could save your life a hundred times and you’d still thank me like an ingrate. It’s of no significance. I did what I had to.’ He touched his horse with his heels and tried to pass her but she held the upper side of the hill with her own mount.
‘Finnian, please, I’m…’
‘I can hear them but I can’t see them! Something’s wrong!’ Gallivant’s voice shrilled down the hill towards the two laggards and they could see his hand waving a kerchief like a flag in the air. Bottom’s wheezing bellow joined in the fracas and Finnian drove his horse into a canter, Lalita following behind.
‘Phelim, here! Look here!�
� Gallivant shouted as he shook his kerchief with effort and looked to Jasper as they watch the mists roil and tumble, the weather dark and distressing behind. ‘Help them, Jasper!’
Thunder rumbled behind the protective fog and a moaning wind dragged its finger down spines. From the crest of the hill, they could see cruel shapes dipping and diving.
‘I have done all I can do.’ Jasper had to shout above the moaning wind, his horse’s mane flying in the teeth of a gust from nowhere. ‘The mists are as strong as I can make them. ‘Phelim’, he yelled. ‘Come on!’
The sounds of horses’ hooves pounded and the bray of an ass, voices shouting, a man’s and then a woman’s and a babe’s thin cry.
Finnian heard Lalita’s breath suck in. ‘No, oh no,’ she kicked her horse and tried to move down the hill toward whomever came on but Finnian reached and grabbed her reins.
‘Stay,’ he ordered. ‘Don’t move. You go through the mist, you are dead.’
Her eyes rested on him, wide and frightened.
‘Look,’ he added.
She turned back as a posse burst through the soupy fog as if Hurle’s Rade were behind them. The baby cried as the horses pelted up the hill, dragging to a snorting stop, skidding on the damp grass.
Finnian, a grown man who had confronted suffering on any number of levels, could not believe a heart could beat so powerfully within a chest without bursting as he examined the disparate group of arrivals. Vaguely he heard Jasper say, ‘It’s alright, you’re safe for the moment. We have time. Did you see anything?’
A woman’s voice replied, ‘No, but it suffocates and drags you down and it feels like Death.’
He wondered what the woman had felt in a past life to be so sure that Death stalked like his grandmother. Beside him, he saw a blur as Lalita leaped off her horse and when he looked she had crouched down and held her arms open to a tear-stained little being who toddled, fell, picked herself up and toddled again into the waiting clasp and was swung around and smothered in kisses. He lifted his eyes and searched the party.
A woman of astonishing madonna-like beauty stared back at him, breathing hard, her fingers pressed to her lips, her fiery hair flowing around her in ripples and tumbles. An elderly woman whose hair was concealed under a coif of bleached linen dismounted from her side-saddled jenny with the aid of Gallivant, staring at Finnian as she did so.
His gaze traveled, seeking, as his desire to turn away from rejection grew stronger. Then he saw him.
They dismounted together and stood an arm-span from each other, a silence loaded with a lifetime of longed-for feelings bridging the gap as a kinder welkin wind whispered and hissed around them both.
Then Phelim’s hand clasped his arm. ‘Finnian’, he said.
The timbre of the voice was like a master key. Finnian, damaged and dark as he was, could not help the warmth that reached every part of his body, a sign of relief at the welcome to a family so longed for. Neither said another word to each other but the silence between them was not uncomfortable.
‘Adelina,’ Phelim drew the russet woman of sunrises and sunsets to his side and placed an arm around her waist. ‘This is Finnian, my brother. Liam’s brother.’
My brother. I want you to say it again and again as I can’t believe you speak of me.
Adelina reached for his hand and held it, covering it with the other palm, staring at him as if to carve his likeness into her memory. ‘Aine but you are identical. Except for the hair. He had a red tint, titian, a wine-coloured shade. But for that, you could be him.’
It was all Finnian needed to hear.
Finnian and Phelim walked to the edge of the orchard later in the evening and the moon tried valiantly to shine amongst the threads of dampness still winding round about. ‘The mist serves. But our grandmother’s wrath builds,’ said Finnian.
‘Our grandmother.’ Phelim’s deep tones ground the words beneath his heel. ‘We shall deal with her but not at this moment.’
I will deal with her, brother. She is mine. ‘I feel our family is cursed.’ Finnian leaned on a drystone wall. ‘Even as a child I felt I was cursed and that my twin was equally doomed.
‘You knew you had a twin?’ Phelim hoisted himself onto the wall and sat, indicating his brother do the same.
‘Not directly until later in my life. But I felt it, felt everything,’ he said as he hefted himself up by his brother’s side, noticing with naïve satisfaction that they were an even height. ‘His life was as damned as mine almost to the end.’
‘I don’t know that our family is any more cursed than any other. I think it’s just the dark vein that runs through any of Færan blood.’
‘Which you successfully rejected.’
‘Indeed, but it wasn’t easy. I did things of which I’m not at all proud. I hate the savage presumption of Færan, the arrogant ignorance of other people’s sensitivities… it’s more than I could ever reconcile nor would ever want to. When you have something like that to remind you of Færan,’ he gestured with his thumb over his shoulder past the fog to the savage skies, ‘it makes my decision even more sensible.’
‘Indeed. But surely it is impossible to quell that which comes naturally – the mesmer for one, or the invisibility. And as you say, the confounded arrogance that seems part of the air we breathe.’
‘Difficult but not impossible. How long was it before you made use of inherent traits.’
Finnian smiled wryly. ‘Not completely until I escaped from Isolde.’
‘Exactly. I only became truly familiar after I left Ebba’s care. In your case, Isolde dominated your skills by overpowering your will. For me, Ebba’s life and her love for me acted as a very powerful filter. And eventually it was that which I wanted to recapture and for a certainty I didn’t believe Færan would give it to me. Curse you say? In the end what is a curse but someone’s deliberate effort to control and bully another?’
Control and bully. Nothing changes.
‘What you did was a good thing, Finnian,’ Phelim continued.
‘What do you mean?’ Does he know of the attempt to murder Isolde? That the size of her wrath outside of Jasper’s protective walls is due almost entirely to me denying her?
‘I mean the paperweights. But I dare say you think I mean Isolde. And we should talk of her. She will hold the world to ransom.
Finnian shifted uneasily. Not if I have my way, brother. ‘Jasper can’t destroy the charms – the old man is inept. Better Lalita and I had run to the Goti Range and found some endless and secret abyss.’
Phelim punched him gently on the arm. ‘You should show Jasper respect. He’s a wise man and cautious, but as fallible as you or I. Fate represents a force to be reckoned with, he would say. He complains the enigma of the charms is like trying to shift mists aside to find an answer.’
Something prickled… that elusive feeling as if a fingernail traced itself round Finnian’s neck. Shifting mists. ‘Well, he would know of mists,’ he derided.
Phelim laughed softly.
‘Phelim, do you know of the Lake of Mists?’
‘Of course. It’s a sacred place close by. Our brother’s body was taken there. The Isle of the Dead is there, the place where souls go. Even Ana, a mortal, may be there for all I know, and for myself I hope so as our brother loved her.’
Urgency made Finnian’s heartbeat race. ‘Have you seen it, this island, this place?’
‘For a few seconds and only from the shore. It was unearthly and quite magnificent.’
The brothers lapsed into silence and Finnian thought how alike he, Phelim and Liam really must be and what a night it would have been if the three could stand together. He searched the shadows, as if a shape might approach. He grasped Phelim’s arm. ‘Do you feel anything?’
‘Yes,’ Phelim whispered. The sound of an owl filled the night as the creature beat the air with its wings. ‘Liam?’ He called out into the perfumed shadows and Finnian wished it didn’t seem ridiculous and out of place. Predictably the two received no
response and became quiet, their thoughts wistful.
The lake filled Finnian’s mind – a puzzle that wouldn’t go away. He reached into his breeches pocket and drew out the paperweight he had stolen from Curiosa, observing in the weak evening light how the folds of night drifted inside the glass and how the moon hung suspended with its guardian stars.
‘An unusual piece,’ Phelim reached for it and turned it. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I stole it,’ Finnian gave his brother a dark grin, ‘from the antiquarian thief who had the others. I thought to give it to…’
‘Ah, Lalita. Adelina said there is something between you and her intuition is rarely wrong.’
‘Something between us? Disgust, disquiet, maybe even hate.’
‘You think?’ Phelim laughed, a merry sound that cut across the sensations of earlier. ‘Brother, open your eyes. The woman is mad for you.’
‘Huh. Mad indeed.’ He shivered as the welkin wind persisted at his neck. ‘Let’s go back. There is family who must be cared for.’
He knew he would be quizzed over the future that waited on the other side of the mists. He knew as well that he could not and would not talk with them about what should be done. This was a battle he must fight alone. A battle that he must fight and win. He glanced at Phelim as he walked alongside. I wish a third had passed through our two shadows and touched us tonight.
He looked back but only their own dissolving footprints marked the descending dawn dew.
***
‘This is the most unbelievable night.’ Adelina spoke softly to Lalita as they sat in the corner of Jasper’s large drawing room after Phelim and Finnian had left earlier. ‘I feel as though I have fallen into my past or that my past, present and future have collided. So many likenesses. You, muirnin – you are the embodiment of my Kholi and thus the image of Isabella. It’s as if he could walk through that door right now with one of his glorious poems.’
