‘One I’ve never heard of? I’ll be fascinated to discover it.’ Her tone was acid; if Cuthag was wasting her time, she’d flay his chest for him. Publicly, in the Great Hall. It would be practice for Murlainn, whose clann had so considerately flayed his back already.
~ I’ll not speak it aloud. The man’s eyes, as they slewed to Laszlo, were sheened with contempt. ~ Some might think it blasphemy; some already told me so, and they’re dead now. You may want to explain it to your clann in your own sweet way and time.
Kate sat back, almost shocked. Laszlo, well aware he was shut out, looked perplexed and angry. Still, she tapped her cheek thoughtfully with her fingers.
‘Very well. You’ve piqued my interest. Tell me.’
Kate almost felt sorry for Laszlo. To walk out of here would be the ultimate humiliation, so he had to stand there like a fool, deaf to everything Cuthag and Alasdair were saying, deaf to all her own replies. Poor full-mortal. Just as well he made up for that deficiency with his other undeniable qualities. As the two men before her fell silent in her head, she touched his hand gently, and felt his fingers curl into a fist.
‘You’ve a way with people,’ she observed of the kneeling man. ‘Rather an unpleasant way, but effective.’
‘I’m a people person,’ he said, his bright smile devoid of apparent irony.
He’d always been able to make her laugh, that was the thing. It was why forgiveness had always come so readily to her, where he was concerned. Murlainn, of course, had made her laugh too; but he was far beyond redemption, and she had the means to punish him now, if this tale was true. Her heart was certainly lighter than it had been in months.
‘Get up,’ she said.
‘Does that mean–’
‘Yes. Now get up off your knees.’ She rose as he did, and came down the steps to stand close to him, watching his black eyes. ‘I’ll require proof.’
‘Of course. You have prisoners of one family?’
‘Several I’d be happy to provide. Laszlo will bring them to me here.’ She gave her lover a smile to include him. ‘The two MacFarquhars please, Nils, and – let me see – Muillear and her son. Two successes will be enough to convince me.’ Kate stood up and paced the length of the dais to a candelabra. She touched a finger thoughtfully to its silver flame. ‘Now it’s only Rory who needs to play his part.’
‘Ha. Murlainn’s got that son of his in a stranglehold; it’s only a matter of time till the boy wriggles loose. He’s already kicking. You know what he can do to the Veil?’
She toyed with a strand of copper hair, watching his eyes follow her fingers. Oh, he was hers, all right. ‘Yes. It makes perfect sense, of course, in light of the prophecy. The Bloodstone will determine the fate of the Veil.’
And Destroy the Veil, and the NicNiven will have all she desires; let it die or survive, and nothing will be hers.
No. She must not dwell on that. She flung it from her head. ‘Murlainn disciplines the boy. He knows all about the Veil; he’s always been able to touch it himself. If the boy’s been taught anything, it’s to keep his hands off the Veil and my hands off him. Well, he’s managed the latter so far.’
‘A boy will do what a boy can do. He’s careful and he’s elusive, but he’ll slip up one day. You could just wait.’
‘I have been waiting,’ she snapped. ‘He has that damned shield stone of Leonora’s; it protects his mind. And if he can rip the Veil at will, it’s none too easy to predict where he’ll do it.’
‘Except that he can’t do it close to a dun. The Veil’s too tough near fortresses. You know that, I know it, his father knows it. If he wants to use the talents the gods gave him, Rory has to leave his father’s protection.’ He risked a devilish wink. ‘And that he’ll do. Willingly.’
‘How certain you are.’ She gave him a chilled glance in return for the wink.
‘I’ve got good reason. Trust me.’ He winked again. Damn him for his insolence, she thought, half-admiringly. ‘The boy’s growing, as boys will. The bait I found? He’ll take it. Wouldn’t be his father’s son if he didn’t.’
‘All right.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘He has to leave the dun. But he can’t be so far from it that he can elude us just by slipping through the Veil.’
‘He’s evaded two patrols that way,’ remarked Laszlo. ‘Probably more who are scared to admit it. Yes, the boy wanders, and he plays with the Veil, but since he can escape straight through it, he’s hard to lay hands on.’
I don’t need to hear those excuses again, she thought irritably.
‘I’ll have him observed,’ said Cuthag, watching her face. ‘All we have to do is get him in a place where he’s beyond Murlainn’s sword, but he can’t get through the Veil.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s a cocky brat, by all accounts.’
‘And in further good news,’ said the bearded man, ‘Reultan is on her otherworld deathbed.’
That brought Kate up short. She turned on her heel, the hot spark of rage almost hurting her eyes. Robbed again, she thought bitterly. ‘Good news, did you say? That deathbed should have been made by me.’
The three men watched her in silence. They must know, she realised. They all knew that if they waited for the flare of fury to die, she’d see the potential soon enough; and they were right. Kate laid a hand against a cool pillar, rested her forehead on her hand. Breathing deeply and softly, she let herself smile at last.
‘And when Reultan dies,’ said Cuthag, ‘you know what will happen.’
There was something more than soldierly duty in that slippery voice of his. She knew exactly what hunger had been building in him, and she approved. ‘Yes,’ she said. She turned to lean against the pillar and study his face, never as impassive as he thought it was.
‘You want Murlainn destroyed,’ said Alasdair softly. ‘Destroyed, not dead.’
That earned him a savage glare from Laszlo. It was so blatant that Kate almost laughed out loud. She couldn’t help but twist the blade in Nils’s gut.
‘You understand so much, Alasdair.’
‘You can rip out his heart and leave him breathing,’ pointed out Cuthag, ‘and punish Reultan in her grave.’ He coughed delicately. ‘Through her own misbegotten spawn.’
It was almost more than she could bear. Kate clasped her hands over her mouth, eyes brimming with tears of sheer happiness. They were clever enough to stay silent. She liked that. Laszlo started forward, alarmed, but she waved him impatiently back. It was long seconds before she recovered enough to know she wouldn’t laugh hysterically.
‘I like this plan of yours,’ she said when she felt regal again, when she could maintain a straight face, a gimlet eye, and a tone like vinegar. ‘I especially like the fact that it seems workable. But I haven’t been idle, Alasdair dear. I haven’t been waiting for you to ride to my rescue.’
‘I never thought you would,’ he said humbly.
Oh, he’s good. ‘I’ve someone in Murlainn’s dun primed to do my bidding: someone he trusts with his life, foolishly enough. I think we can weave two strategies together most effectively.’
‘Even better,’ said Cuthag.
‘And I thank you, my queen.’ Alasdair quirked an eyebrow. ‘Yet again.’
‘Have I ever been able to resist you when you begged?’ Kate showed her teeth in a smile. ‘All I ask of my captains is loyalty. As for my people, is peace too much to ask?’
‘For some of them,’ growled Cuthag. ‘The rest – the true ones? They’ll have it soon enough.’
‘I’m indebted to you, Cuthag. Please go with Nils to bring the MacFarquhars. Wait, Alasdair.’ She held up a hand till the other two had left the room, till the heavy carved door had swung shut with a final clunk behind them. Then she softened her voice.
‘So. Why me and not Murlainn?’
He twisted a strand of dirty beard. ‘The otherworld. There were so many places I fitted in, so many governments that valued me. It’s ripe for us, it’s panting for us, it’ll spread its global legs for us.’
�
�Such a charming way with words.’
He let that fly over his head. ‘MacGregor is as wrong and stupid as his brother was before him. I want the otherworld as much as you do. Keep me at your side, and I’ll give it to you.’
‘An entire world?’ This time, his cheek pleased her. ‘That’s an arrogant promise.’
‘You have an arrogant enemy.’ He kissed her extended hand. ‘You need me.’
She laughed. ‘I do believe I’ve always needed you. Very well.’ She tilted her head flirtatiously. ‘Bring me a boy, Alasdair. A boy, and a girl, and a world.’
HANNAH
I gazed into the black eyes of a man who’d gambled with the Devil and lost, a man who’d been dead for more than four hundred years, and I thought: I want to stay with you.
It was unlikely he’d help me out, since he was nothing but flaking paint on a canvas, but talking to him always helped. We both understood about fates worse than death. Beelzebub had dragged him screaming from his horse down to hell; I’d been dumped by my feckless mother on Aunt Sheena and Groper Marty.
I’d had no intention of going straight back to the house after school. I’d dearly have loved to have no intention of going back, ever, but I had to sleep somewhere, even if a bench in the park with the local jakies often seemed like a more attractive option. Even a whisky-breathing jakey wouldn’t massage my arse quite as often as Uncle Marty did.
But I could sleep at the castle instead, if I wanted. I could get a four poster bed with a sixteenth century embroidered coverlet at the castle. One of these nights I’d do exactly that. Well, apart from the four poster bed bit, obviously, because of the security doors and the locks and the burglar alarms. I could easily bunk down in the stables, though. It wasn’t as if I’d smell of horse afterwards, since there weren’t any.
Castle Cantray wasn’t the hangout I’d have foreseen for myself: all pickled history and plaid carpets and pan-piped Celtic music. The one time I’d been dragged there on a school visit I’d nearly expired from boredom, but on my own, I liked it. The atmosphere of the place – once you disregarded the sweating tourists and the tartan – suited me. It was just outside town so it was handy; it cost me nothing, since I knew exactly where to climb over the fence out of view; and nobody ever asked me what I was doing there once I was in. They didn’t take a blind bit of notice of me. I carried a notebook, looked studious, and did as I liked. It wasn’t even that difficult to swipe a bottle of Budweiser from the café fridge.
I took gulps from one as I listened in to the tour guide, who kept shooting me evil glares as if he knew I hadn’t paid but couldn’t quite prove it. He needn’t have thought I was interested in his turgid lecture; it was just that he was telling his practically-dead bus party about my favourite painting and I never tired of that.
I’m not geekishly keen on mediaeval art, but the man in that painting enchanted me. Old portraits always have a bland psychopathic look, but the Wolf of Kilrevin looked as if he meant it, and his black eyes held a spark, as if he was laughing inwardly at some cruel joke. He fascinated me; more than that, he was my ally, my imaginary friend. I felt at home around him. That probably said more about me than I’d like to hear, but at least it was a bit of cultural self-education.
I wondered what the Wolf would think of his castle museum. I always thought he’d have preferred it pre-renovation, like in the old photo on the interactive display: a heap of sinister stones around a courtyard of shadows, the loch beyond it a dark brooding menace. He’d have liked it in ruins, the way he’d left half the towns of the county. An anarchist, I thought. A rebel. Fun to hang out with.
‘If the girl with the red hair could step back from the painting please?’
Riled, I blew a slightly beery circle onto the painting’s glass, then scrubbed off the mist and the nonexistent dirt with a forefinger. ‘Do you mind? It’s strawberry blonde.’
Ostentatiously he turned his back on me. ‘While the current owner continues to hold Castle Cantray and its lands for his lifetime, he has placed it in trust for the nation and the enjoyment of future generations. His desire is—’
‘A knighthood,’ I muttered.
‘—THAT THE FINE ART COLLECTION be seen by as many people as possible. On the west wall of the library, the massive triptych depicts the expulsion of the rebel angels from Paradise and the creation of Hell and Purgatory, and has been attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, though most experts agree it is a particularly clever fake. Here we see a mortal man taking too much interest in matters that do not concern him, so he is being dragged by one of Lucifer’s acolytes into Hell. In two pieces.’ He gave me a thin unpleasant smirk. ‘To the left of the triptych you see the only surviving portrait of the castle’s original owner, the Wolf of Kilrevin.’
Finally. I didn’t care how often I heard this story.
‘Younger brother of the depraved Bishop of Kilrevin, the Wolf’s depredations of the area were legendary, but his evil doings came to an abrupt end on an April night in 1594, when he and his men set out from a night’s drinking in a local tavern to return to this castle. They never reached home.’ His voice hushed. ‘His men, burnt to charcoal, were found next morning by a local farmer. The body of the Wolf was never found, only the skeletal carcass of his horse. Local legend says the Devil himself dragged him screaming down to Hell.’
See, that was what I called a spectacular exit. I liked the Wolf more and more each time. Still, the guide was far too fond of the sound of his own voice, so I hung back while the party moved on. I should go home soon. Back to the house, I mean. I should grit my teeth and face Marty’s wandering eyes and fingers once again.
I should. But I didn’t want to.
I fantasised, as I always did, about the painting coming to life. The Wolf striding silently home behind me, sword on his back. Marty opening the door. His eyes and his mouth widening. The sword hacking down and–
One day, I thought: one day I’d be big and ugly and evil enough to get my revenge personally, and not in my head. One day. Not that it helped right now. When I was ten I’d been physically terrified of Marty, but oddly enough, with four more years under my belt, I found him more of a threat. The danger he posed seemed less obvious. Subtler. Nastier.
Two can play at nasty, of course.
True, I shouldn’t have tried to tear cousin Lauren’s face off with my teeth; but Lauren shouldn’t have called my father ‘the Dead Drunk, Literally’ within a thousand miles of my hearing. Not only was he not a drunk, he wasn’t dead, and I knew it with all the desperate intensity of someone who didn’t have a clue if that was true, or who he was, or why he’d gone and left me with such a useless un-maternal tramp.
He had his reasons. He did. Bloody hell, one of my parents had to have a decent excuse. One day our eyes would meet across a crowded room and I’d know him, I was convinced of that. And after I hugged him, and after I slapped his face hard, I’d be asking for a few answers. I shouldn’t have confided all this in my diary, but then Lauren shouldn’t have broken the padlock with a screwdriver and read it.
The bite marks on Lauren’s face were red and savage and magnificent, and I wasn’t planning to deny it anyway, so Marty had cornered me in my room on the pretext of giving me a talking-to; it was more than clear – and this is how close he got – that he’d have preferred a seeing-to. I was big, mean and vicious enough now to call his bluff and scare him off, but I knew one day he’d call my bluff right back, and I’d lose my nerve. I didn’t want to lose it at a bad moment, like when I was alone with him in the house. Like next Friday.
I scratched the back of my neck, and turned again to look at my friend with the psychopathic eyes. It wasn’t that they made me uneasy, however hard they burned into mine. He looked positively understanding. He was more a father figure than the real one.
And that was quite enough soul-searching for today. I shook myself and decided that what I really wanted now was to go to the stables.
Funny how much I wanted to get there. So much, I nearl
y ran.
They’d rebuilt the stone walls and the stalls, they’d put on a timber-and-turf roof and laid some hygienic-looking straw on the old cobbles, and they’d installed a couple of ropey life-size figures in sixteenth-century fancy dress – I suspected old department store dummies – together with an unrealistic carthorse, its mane all plucked and moth-eaten.
I thought: if I do a runner, I could bunk down here. The place wouldn’t be too spooky; it wouldn’t even be that cold. And it would certainly beat The Paddocks (I ask you – in the middle of suburbia) during Aunt Sheena’s forthcoming Girls’ Weekend Away, which would inevitably also be Groper Marty’s Boy’s Night In.
The elderly tourists were trailing into the stables now. There was no getting away from them, or indeed from the imperious little guide, who looked very much as if he was going to ask to see my entry ticket. I sidled behind a fat man chewing a Mars bar, so that even when the guide bounced on his heels, he couldn’t catch my eye. He soon forgot about me – it was a talent of mine, making myself unobtrusive – and launched into a long-winded drone about conditions for rural workers in the eighteenth century.
Time to go.
I wriggled through the throng towards the last row of stalls, which I happened to know backed onto the toilets, that led to the café, that was home to the fridge, that held the beers. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I backed into a guy with wild eyes and hair like a bogbrush, until he swayed and I grabbed him and realised he was a dummy. All the same, he unnerved me, and I suddenly needed fresh air. I steadied Bogbrush Man, put my finger solemnly to my lips, and turned towards the toilets.
I halted, amazed.
‘Shit,’ I couldn’t help exclaiming. ‘That one’s good!’
Silence fell. The guide’s jaw opened, then shut, and the tourists stared at me. With grudging admiration, I pointed at the life-size horse in the end stall.
‘Now that is clever,’ I said. ‘That is really clever.’
Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels) Page 3
