The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2)

by Prue Batten

  He lowered the harquebus. The animal rolled his eyes, crest arched, the thick tail held high. Luther mused in admiration at the strong back that was broad enough to be that of the unseelie Cabyll Ushtey. Ajax pranced away giving fiery bucks and blowing wildly down his nose.

  Luther rarely dithered. Now a sneaking lust for money warred with his loyalty to Madame. His fingers played with the harquebus trigger and he weighed the weapon as if it were the pros and cons of his dilemma. Checking over his shoulder to ascertain how much could be observed from the manor and realising he was concealed, he took a lanyard from his belt. Ajax stilled, his nervous ears cocked, wither trembling. Murmuring gruff platitudes, Luther walked closer and slid his hand around the thick neck to fasten the lanyard firmly enough to lead the beast. Ajax pulled back but a quick jerk of the tether and a hissing ‘gid up’ had him following after Luther.

  They left the paddock by the far gate and traipsed through a copse to an old barn on the edge of the woods where Luther flung the bars across the opening. The thunder rumbled closer and the sky darkened, ragged sheets of lightning flashing in the distance. He thrust hay in the corner and thought he would organise one of the smuggler lads who owed him a favour to take the beast to one of the horse-markets near Veniche. Madame would be none the wiser and he would be groats richer. He snorted and ran back the way he had come in order to beat the storm because beating the odds was always the best and better still, he had the house to himself and by Behir he would run it his own dark way.

  Darkness appealed to him, a child bully who had tormented the weak, torturing cats and dogs and any less vulnerable than himself. As he grew older, brutality opened doors that to a rough, ill-made individual would have remained closed. Once one door opened, others followed. In time naturally, Severine cast her door wide to him and together they achieved much.

  She made him wealthy when he’d been poor. By working within the Di Accia house he found status and in carrying out her crimes he secured a sexual gratification the like of which only existed in the truly debauched. It made him as content as he could be.

  Until Adelina entered his life.

  Now all his lusts centered on her. Willingly or no, by the time Madame returned he would have split the woman’s thighs apart and taken the treasure he wanted.

  Adelina was opening the small black suede box when Gallivant appeared by the wall. Startled, she looked up. ‘Oh. It’s you.’

  ‘Yes, can you not be a little more excited?’

  This was said to an accompaniment of thunder and lighting, the room brightly lit and just as quickly plunged into murk. She thrust the box on the table amongst a tangle of silk fabric and thread and hastily walked around the room lighting lamps and pulling the window shut. ‘I hate thunderstorms. They make me edgy and give me a foul headache. Besides I can’t shake the thought of all those who may lose their lives as Huon hunts. All for Severine. Gallivant, she says she’s found Lhiannon. I HATE HER.’

  ‘Tush. Never you worry. Many of we eldritch types detest Huon and will contrive to spoil his game. No one will be hurt, I swear. As to Lhiannon, she’s Other so you must not give up yet; she will have ways and means. Anyway, we’ve other things to plan. Your escape for one.’

  She responded under her breath, a tiny snort, and continued to work, sorting thread.

  ‘You surprise me, Adelina.’ Gallivant spoke with pointed irony as he watched her lose herself in a kaleidoscope of hot, angry colours. ‘You seem to accept your situation with more equanimity than any other mortal I have known. You sit here daily - stitching, sorting your threads and taking walks in a pleasant garden.’

  She said nothing but her hands had reached for a hank of threads and she began to unroll them, her fingers trying to tease apart fiery reds, acid yellows, bright oranges. She pulled and yanked and began to wind them with concentrated intent, onto a holder. As she came across knots, she would pick up her scissors, cut with one stroke and then throw the blades down on the table with a clatter. Until she came across a huge tangle. Unable to separate the silk yarn, she grabbed for the scissors, dropped them and then lobbed everything on the table. She threw back her chair and stood leaning over the table, hissing. ‘Equanimity! EQUANIMITY. I have felt myself slipping down the slope to madness as I deal with grief, murder, assault and rape. And ANGER. ANGER THAT MAKES ME WANT TO JUMP OUT THAT WINDOW AND END IT ALL BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF IT.’

  Gallivant rushed across to her. ‘Hush, hush, I’m here now. I can help you. It’s what we Goodfellows do. We can solve this, I swear.’

  Adelina looked at him, tears beginning to trickle. He smiled and put his arm across her shoulder to pull her to him. And because it was the first kind touch, the first understanding she had experienced since Lhiannon had gone, she felt the throttling vein in her heart shrink slightly and she cried even more.

  ‘My dear little needlewoman, it’s time we put some plans in place because you don’t need to stay here any longer.’

  ‘But how? The doors and gates are locked. Even if I should manage the impossible, Luther is always close by. There is Huon, the Ravens, huh, I would be easy game.’ Adelina took a soft linen kerchief and wiped her tears, her eyes red-rimmed and overbright as she felt on the brink of another watery bout.

  She busied her hands with the mess on the table, throwing the knotted threads into the fire and folding the silken cloth. Despite her distrait, she took inordinate care with the hoops of insects and flowers, the components of the last part of the robe; like an artist who washes his brushes with tenderness, to place them in a jug safe from harm’s way but where they will be ready for the next onslaught on the artistic piece.

  Thunder and lightning crashed about outside and she dispiritedly took up Severine’s box as it was revealed under a scrap of fabric. The middle of the black suede lid opened with a tiny gold hook and stud to fold back and reveal its contents lying on white satin lining.

  ‘I am now at my most vulnerable,’ she said in defeated tones as she tipped the pile of delicate charms onto her lap with a jingle that could hardly be heard over the growl and grumble outside. ‘Severine has left me here in the charge of Luther and he has made no bones about his intentions. He touched me intimately and I have a fear Severine wouldn’t care if he has his way, in fact I think she would find it amusing to have me so debased. At the risk of being indelicate, the last man I slept with was the love of my life who is now dead. To have that despoiled, that sensation which I can even now recall,’ she began to cry again. ‘To have that expunged by the rutting of that brute, I would honestly slit my wrists.’

  Gallivant had pulled a coffer next to her and grabbed the kerchief to wipe at the tears. ‘There’s absolutely no need for such action. He can’t harm you while I’m here. I’ll be your armed chaperone.’

  At this Adelina cocked an eyebrow, even in tears. He tapped her arm in his fey way. ‘Just because I don’t carry a weapon, it doesn’t mean I can’t be fearsome. Did you forget I’m Other? Now let’s look at these little oddments.’

  The charms were indeed beautiful; a tiny cuckoo clock with working weights and chains, a diminutive tankard with chaste patterns and an opening lid, a petite pair of working scissors, a minikin cottage with a door that opened and many more. Oh, a Travellers’ van! Adelina sucked in her breath. So many memories. And look, a small Raji oil lamp of the kind Aladdin would be sure to have held.

  Gallivant had been watching her, all the time puzzling how he could remove her from the room. One would think it would be easy for an Other, a mere question of a spell, mesmering her far away. But no, it was much more difficult because he couldn’t manage such large-scale glamour. Somehow he must mesmer the keys and get Adelina to the stable and the horses. But she would have to leave the robe and all her possessions behind. He shifted on the coffer. ‘Adelina, what did you plan as your retribution? How were you planning to avenge Liam and Kholi?’

  She looked up from examining the lamp. ‘On the good days, the naïve days, I hoped t
o somehow take her prisoner, deliver her to the Venichese Courts for judgement.’ Her face had the bleakest expression and the thunder continued outside, a grim accompaniment to her base words. ‘But on the bad days, the mad days which far outnumber anything else, I have visited every kind of rough justice on her that I know. It’s usually bloody and painful and as I think on it, my soul shrinks to a pinhead and I might as well be dead myself. Gallivant, I’m a Traveller, we’re kind folk, we sew. We do not kill and nor are we ever brutal.’ Panic slid across her face as once more he saw her teeter on the balance.

  ‘Hush now, hush.’ He brushed her arm and stood to wipe his hand over the creased forehead, the mesmer a form of calming. ‘What have you there, is it what you need?’

  She glanced down at the tiny lamp lying in her palm. ‘Yes, yes it’s just what I need. A little polish to lift the tarnish and I can sew it on.’

  Chapter Ten

  A stormy dawn light tipped the edges of the sea-swell, casting the dark grey with a damascened edge. Phelim turned the dory slightly and the swift southerly scooped it up on wings and progressed it a goodly distance by the time Adelina had been taken to the garden. Far out on the western ocean the sailor passed Polcarrow, Zennor, Porthcawl and Mevagavinney and he settled into the rhythms of sea. The boat skimmed the surface as if it flew. Dolphins and flying fish kept pace and coastal birds flew in large flocks, colouring the sea even greyer with their shadow. He was coiling extra ropes neatly on the floor of the boat when he heard the faintest grumble. Hoisting himself up on the stern seat, an arm over the tiller, he concentrated his gaze on the starboard horizon.

  On the coastline, storm clouds swirled in an ugly tower. Black rolls layered upward into the cumulus that indicated a storm of malign proportions. Above the swish and sweep of wave and the singing of the southerly in the shrouds of the dory, thunder rumbled from the Styx, Huon’s lair. Phelim’s heartbeat quickened. The Wild Hunt. I have been marked. They know what I am and what I carry.

  He looked to the sails as they began to rattle and flap and hauled harder on the ropes, pulling the sails tighter, turning the boat a little more to try and catch the wind that had begun to die behind him. He cursed in unbidden Faeran. The wind drops out.

  The boat began to lollop. The sails flapped and the boom swung dangerously. Checking the east again, Phelim could see a faint line of shadow on the ocean and guessed that a weather change was about to overhaul with eldritch speed. With equal speed, a feeling of gross impending doom settled in his stomach, sparking a surge of urgency.

  He grabbed the oar and paddled as hard as he could on the starboard side and then pushed and pulled at the tiller, trying to turn the boat away from the oncoming windstorm. If it hit broadside he was finished; thus the mortal inside him reasoned as he struggled to shift the boat. The sails had begun to crackle crisply as the forerunner to the gale licked at them, but Phelim let them out a little more and the tickle of the wind flipped the boat with a snap so it was now facing hard west and the storm would hit dead astern. But he caught himself in mid mortal thought and spoke aloud with disgust. ‘Why do I think like a mortal? I’m Other. Unless it’s my bane, I can’t die.’

  Never cowardly or beaten by obstacles, he jammed his knitted cap down harder over his ears, grasping the tiller and grabbing for the main sheet. Behind him on the shores of Trevallyn, thunder vibrated and a deep black rain band could be seen thrashing the coastline. As the wind hit the sail and filled it with a sharp, ear-splitting crack, the lightning flashed to his rear and a massive swell began to undulate across the ocean. The dory sliced through the water and the wave-cap flew, drenching him and flooding the insides of the boat. He reached down between his feet to the stern and pulled at the bung and it floated free on its fragile string to lie in the bilge, creating a self-emptying drain as the dory made swift passage. Sure enough, the water disappeared out the back but only to be replaced by more and then more still.

  Ferocious winds kicked the waves to threatening heights. If Huon didn’t catch him, he would be blown so far to the west it would take a lifetime to return to the sea-lanes that could get him to Veniche. Oh Ebba, if you have a prayer for me, send it now. He fixed his grasp tighter on the helm.

  In Mevagavinney, the storm beat at its violent peak. Lightning lit the harbour in stripes and thunder rattled whole buildings. Plates and mugs fell off shelves and people taking sanctuary behind locked doors could hear slate tiles crashing off roofs onto the ground as a tumultuous wind swept destruction before it. Had they looked out of the windows instead of cowering by the cold hearths, they would have seen twisted grotesque shapes - horns and antlers and arms wielding whips that cracked. Then again, it could have been the stripped branches of the oaks, the elms and the willows that were flying and distorting. Eyes closed tight and fists grasped talismans, making the protective horn sign, for who could tell what was evil and what was not?

  Adelina perhaps? She might have been able to determine what was malignant and what was merely an avenue of trees. Hearing the sound of bestial baying and feeling goosebumps rise on her skin, she threw the little charm on the table and rushed to the window. Gallivant stood behind her, his hand resting at her elbow. ‘It’s an evil day, Stitchlady, an evil day. For there he goes, the antlered one, with the Hunt.’

  Adelina stared at the sight sweeping across the darkened sky in the scuds of the tormenting wind; the antlers and the muscled torso astride a mount which pawed the air as it reared, the snapping whip and the baying dogs all an intrinsic part of that thunderous blow.

  ‘Aine help Lhiannon, Gallivant.’ It was less than a whisper.

  In the woods behind Mevagavinney, the horse with the back as broad as the unseelie Cabyll Ushtey had added his frantic shrieks to those of the Hunt and the wind. Nobody heard the frightened animal, the one who feigned bravery but who found heights and other things sometimes just too much to bear. Calling for his precious Adelina, he received no response. Fear endemic to the horse, ever the hunted and never the hunter, spread through his body. Like Ana light years ago, the thought was the same - fight or flight? He charged at the yard fence as thunder and lightening exploded all around. Lifting his great body, he half jumped, half crashed through the post and rail timber. And as he attempted to put distance between he and the storm by fleeing northerly, a massive flap of flesh hung from his shoulder where it had been ripped, the muscles and ligaments torn and pouring blood. He pecked in his stride, regained his footing and galloped blindly on.

  ***

  As Hurle’s Ride spread terror across the sky, I cursed the risk Lhiannon had taken in even knowing me. Sometimes I wonder if in an instant, I had selfishly placed her in the space left by Ana. By force of circumstance, by my loneliness and desperation, I viewed her as my sister-friend on this tormented journey, not just some stranger who passed through my life.

  I can tell you, I don’t want her to be a stranger that passes through. Ana passed through and the pain of her passing was terrible. Is that what will happen to Lhiannon?

  Now I think on it, all who have entered my life and whom I have had affection for, even loved, have gone. Ana, Liam, my Kholi. And I couldn’t bear for it to happen again. Not another one. It makes me terrified to make new friends, to open my heart to them. Perhaps I am a poison, a blight... a bane.

  Should I allow the hob into my life or shouldn’t I? Is Gallivant at risk by knowing me? It is important you see the way my mind works.

  Chapter Eleven

  The terrible chase scattered foam and wave before it. At the centre of the swirling cloud mass, at the hub from whence came deafening thunder and crashing lightning, at the source of the gigantic swell that battered the little boat, Huon the Hunter galloped through the skies.

  Phelim sailed with mortal desperation. Whatever might have been Other in his blood was subsumed by twenty-eight years of living as Ebba had raised him - a mortal who feared death. The mainsail had shredded to ribbons and all he could do was hold onto the tiller as hard as possible to k
eep the wind behind. He had laid out most of his ropes in lines at the stern to anchor the vessel to the swell to prevent it yawing. But the waves threatened the craft; mountainous peaks which the doughty boat climbed to view the ocean ahead as if from the top of the Goti Range and then a slippery slide to the trough, where to look up at what was coming was to face death and damnation.

  But crashing now upon him, breaking like a wave from above, was the realization he must let his Other instinct guide him. He must open himself up to it, allow it to take hold, quash anything mortal. For it was Other against Other and he would not be beaten. The tiller ripped in his hands and he yanked with all his strength as the waves conspired to turn the dory broadside and as he pulled, his eyes, wet and stinging, opened wide.

  Looming out of the rain and spray, dark and huge as the waves, was a landmass threatening to smash him against its rocky shores. Waves hit its northern end, crashing the length of shore as if the landmass itself was sliding broadside to the storm. It’s moving, the land is moving! Phelim almost lost hold of the tiller. What is it? His mind reeled until he remembered another of Ebba’s mysterious revelations from his childhood. The twin islets, the Sacred Isles - Hy-Breasil.

  His mind working fast, he reached for a gaff hook from the watery morass in the bottom of the boat and wafted a hand over the helm, the tiller growing, unfurling like the branches of the strongest tree to fix in position and free Phelim’s hands for other life-saving tasks. Tying a rope to the shaft of the gaff, he hefted the whole to his shoulder, mesmering the weapon and swinging back and then forward to loose it like the athletes from the ancient legends. He lost sight of it as the boat sped down into the trough of a wave but knew by the rope’s slack that his glamour was weak. He dragged it in as fast as the storm swell would allow.