Master of the Books

by James Moloney

‘Clemenza lies in an unmarked grave. Belch can show you where it is, for he was the one who buried her the next day, when there was no one to see him do it.’

  ‘My mother swore you both to secrecy.’

  Gammer Bodie and Old Belch shared a solemn glance; they both looked uneasy. ‘More than that,’ the midwife said. ‘She asked us both to leave the capital, so I came here and Belch went to live in the high country.’

  From his place behind Marcel’s chair, Old Belch took up the explanation. ‘When you three were brought to Mrs Timmins’ home in Fallside, I didn’t know who you were. By the time I found out, you had discovered the truth for yourselves. Then, after you defeated Damon and Eleanor and your brother ran off with that crazy grey mare, I came here to see Gammer. We were the only two who knew the truth and we decided that —’

  ‘That if you caught wind of the truth, then you should know it all,’ said Gammer Bodie, finding Marcel’s eyes again at last.

  ‘Thank you. You don’t know how important it is that I do know,’ said Marcel, reaching forward to grasp Gammer Bodie’s withered hands. ‘A woman has been trying to tell me these things in my dreams. I thought it was my mother at first, but now I know the truth. It was Lady Clemenza, warning what my own magic will do to her son.’

  He stood up and walked out into the dappled light that surrounded the cottage, knowing without the need to ask that Old Belch and Gammer Bodie would give him time alone.

  So Fergus wasn’t his twin, not even his brother. He didn’t feel any sense of loss, nor even any shock. To be honest, he’d never felt as close to Fergus as twins were supposed to be. He liked him, of course he did, and he still wanted him home, safe in the palace so they could grow up side by side, but it was a relief more than anything to know the truth.

  So much could be explained now. No wonder the chamber’s door hadn’t opened when Fergus tried the handle. Only a rightful heir could open it — the king himself or one of his children — and Fergus wasn’t Pelham’s son at all. What a surprise that would be for the chancellor. Marcel almost laughed out loud as he thought about it. The chancellor was afraid Fergus would kill his father, so afraid that Marcel had invoked that terrible curse in the hope that he would forget such fears.

  Marcel spoke aloud to himself. ‘It was all a waste of time. Fergus has a different father altogether and so the curse …’

  He stopped mid-sentence. A different father! His mind raced back to the night the first dream had visited him. Nicola had come to his room and together they had remembered how the Book of Lies had behaved when they tried to draw Fergus away from Zadenwolf’s camp. He and Nicola had claimed Pelham as their father and the book had shown it was the truth, but when Fergus tried, the Book had fanned its pages as though it was a lie. Yes, of course it would do that, because Fergus wasn’t Pelham’s son at all.

  But there was more he remembered from that night. In his anger, Fergus had picked up the Book of Lies and cried out who his father truly was and the Book of Lies had glowed reddish-gold to show that he was right.

  Marcel hurried back into the cottage. ‘The father of Clemenza’s child. Did she say who it was? Did she give any hint at all?’

  ‘Only that he was a cruel and ambitious man who had tricked her terribly,’ answered Gammer Bodie.

  Marcel collapsed into the chair and buried his head in his hands. ‘What have I done, what have I done?’ he moaned, rocking back and forth.

  ‘What is it, Marcel? Do you know who the man is?’ asked Old Belch, moving to stand beside the midwife’s chair.

  Marcel stopped his frantic rocking and looked up at them both. ‘Yes, I know who he is. The Book of Lies showed it was true, so there can’t be any doubt. Fergus’s real father is Damon.’

  CHAPTER 8

  The Marshes

  THE SHARP CLASH OF steel against steel echoed across the farmyard, drawing grunts from the pigsty and a flutter of wings from the frightened chickens. The early summer sun had hardened the ground, making it easier for Fergus to keep his footing as Stig came at him with his own weapon raised.

  ‘Keep your guard up, that’s it,’ the farmer cried.

  Fergus parried the thrust above his head and quickly shifted position to get an advantage. Stig was expecting him to do just that and moved his own feet almost as nimbly, but Fergus feinted cleverly to his right and swept in with a vicious swipe that Stig caught just in time.

  ‘Excellent, you nearly had me there!’

  Both blades had been filed blunt, but if Stig hadn’t been fast enough he’d be sporting a nasty bruise tomorrow. ‘You’re as good as anyone I’ve seen,’ he said, letting his sword drop by his side. ‘There’s not much more I can teach you, Fergus. Once you have a man’s strength, I wouldn’t like to take you on.’

  Fergus glanced at the rusty steel in his hand and imagined in its place the gleaming weapon he’d brought back from the forest. That sword was hidden in the barn. Each day, after Gadfly had finished her turn in front of the plough or pulled Stig’s wagon back from the village, Fergus would rub her down and then, once she was comfortable, spend a few minutes honing the enchanted sword to a razor’s sharpness.

  ‘Would I survive in a battle?’ he asked Stig when they sat, panting, side by side with their backs against the barn.

  ‘A battle! Who can tell? You have courage and skill, there’s no doubt about that, Fergus, but in a war it’s mostly luck that keeps you alive.’

  ‘Luck! I don’t believe it.’

  Stig didn’t take offence but began a story instead. ‘Years ago, I fought against the wild men who invaded the Mortal Kingdoms from the north. The greatest battle in a hundred years, they say. Thousands upon thousands charged into one another across a grassy field.

  ‘I was caught in a mêlée with friend and enemy jammed tight around me and barely a way to tell the difference. A mêlée is the worst, Fergus, because the killing blow can come from any direction; it might even come from one of your own. Once the smell of blood is in the air, even the best of men become beasts with little care for who they kill, as long as they can stay alive.’

  ‘Is that what battle is like?’

  ‘As much as words can describe it, but there’s no word for the fear you smell on your own skin, or the screams of the wounded men, especially the ones you’ve cut down yourself.

  ‘The fighting is bad enough, but when it’s over and you walk among the dead, wondering why you survived and the poor souls around you didn’t, that’s when you know what battle is like. I’ve looked down at the faces, into the startled, staring eyes, and do you know what I saw most often, Fergus? I saw men no different from me. I’ve worked ten years on this farm to get the smell of blood off my hands and the sight of those staring eyes out of my mind.’

  This wasn’t what Fergus had expected from the former soldier. To him, the battlefield was a place of glory, of victory and heroes.

  ‘Sometimes you have to fight,’ he said, to stay ahead of his own confusion.

  ‘True enough. Sometimes a man fights to save himself and sometimes he’ll fight to take back what’s been stolen from him.’

  He was leading up to something, but before he could make his point, they were interrupted by Stig’s wife who came from the cottage carrying two cups of water.

  ‘Thank you, Marla,’ said Fergus as he accepted the first cup. This was the woman’s name and ever since he’d returned little Hein to the family she’d insisted that he use it.

  ‘The stew is ready when you’re finished out here,’ Marla said as she took the emptied cups from them both. ‘And there’s spiced apples for afterwards, Fergus. I know how much you like them.’

  ‘She doesn’t want you to leave,’ Stig confided to Fergus when his wife was back in the cottage. ‘I’d be happy for you to stay as well, and not just for the help you give me.’

  Silence fell between them until Stig spoke again. ‘You’re going though, aren’t you?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Fergus.

  ‘That’s no surpris
e really. The look is back in your eye. I saw it when I first put the shackle around your ankle and I’ve seen it many times since. Something’s driving you from inside. Marla told me of the way you questioned the tinker. You’re searching for a man, aren’t you, and when you find him, you’re going to kill him?’

  ‘I can’t go back to where I come from until I do. There’s … it’s a kind of ache that won’t go away until he’s dead.’

  ‘Remember what I said of killing, Fergus. You may surrender one ache only to find a worse one in its place.’

  ‘Are you sorry you taught me to use a sword?’

  ‘No, what you’ve learned will keep you alive. Whether you use your skills to kill this man is something you must choose for yourself, but I’ll tell you this much, Fergus, if you kill a man you could otherwise leave alive, you won’t be welcome in my house.’

  These last words hung in the air, tying Fergus’s tongue while he thought through their meaning. He was leaving tomorrow, that was certain, but he hadn’t realised until now how much Stig’s farmhouse had become his home.

  ‘I might never find him anyway,’ he said, avoiding the matter. ‘He’s had half a year to disappear.’

  ‘And half a year to grow complacent. If I were him, I’d have found an out-of-the-way place where people are easily fooled into helping him. Try the marshes, on the northern border of Grenvey. It has everything a fugitive wants,’ and in the minutes that remained before they went in together to the stew and the spiced apples, Stig drew a map in the earth at their feet.

  IN THE MORNING THERE were tears, mostly from Marla. Arabella and Hein were too young to understand, but they cried along with their mother as she pressed gifts into Fergus’s arms. There was a rabbit pie, two loaves of bread, the last of the spiced apples and the very blanket he had tried to steal six months before. So much, in fact, that Stig had to find a sack for Fergus to carry it all in.

  ‘You must have your own family somewhere. Will you go home to them now?’ said Marla as Fergus climbed onto Gadfly’s back.

  ‘Not yet,’ Fergus answered and, after a glance towards Stig, ‘There’s something I have to do first, someone I have to find.’

  Once he was out of sight, Fergus took the leather pouch from his pocket and dangled it before Gadfly’s eyes. ‘Pulling a plough has made you slow, most likely. Well, if you can’t fly, I suppose we’ll have to walk.’

  The mare snorted in disgust and, once the pouch was around her neck, quickly made him eat his words along with the whipping wind as they rose together towards the clouds. As far as Fergus could see, the countryside of Grenvey fulfilled the promise of its name: a green and fertile valley. Crops planted weeks before were beginning to emerge above ground, and beside every sheep in the pastures below played a newborn lamb. Melted snow swelled the streams as they traced their erratic paths towards a wide river in the distance. Stig had told him of the great river that fed the marshlands, and if the farmer was right, that was where he’d find Damon.

  The Marshes were well named, Fergus soon discovered. Instead of growing wider and mightier as it surged towards the distant ocean, the river seemed to lose its way, branching out into a splayed hand of rivulets that cut through the dry ground and made a swamp out of the rest. He was fortunate to get even this view of the land beneath him, because a thick fog soon rolled in from the sea, forcing Gadfly to earth.

  ‘Just as well,’ Fergus told her. ‘It’s time you became an ordinary horse again.’

  At the first village they came across, Fergus’s questions were met with a shake of the head. They moved on, which wasn’t easy in this part of the world where the waterways that crisscrossed the region were really the roads. In the Marshes, it seemed, boats were more valuable than horses. The isolation of the villages and the difficulty of getting around would suit a fugitive, as Stig had suggested. Gadfly could always fly across each expanse of water if needed, but Fergus couldn’t risk being seen on a winged horse. If Damon heard of such a wonder, he’d escape before he could be found. So Fergus travelled laboriously from village to village, swimming Gadfly through the bitterly cold waters when he had to.

  Finally, his diligence paid off. On the outskirts of a modest village, a woman answered his questions brightly.

  ‘His Lordship, oh yes, you described him perfectly. Such a gentleman.’

  ‘Where is he living? I have something for him and I’m eager to deliver it,’ Fergus said, touching his sword.

  ‘He’s the guest of Miss Appleyard and her widowed sister,’ came the cheerful reply.

  Unfortunately, the sisters lived on an island some distance away through the Marshes. At the next cottage he came to, Fergus asked if he could borrow the small rowing boat he saw tied to a pier at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘What! In this fog. You’ll get yourself lost, that’s all.’

  ‘But I have to reach Miss Appleyard’s house by tonight.’

  ‘Then Bent Dalid’s the one you need. Knows the Marshes like the back of his hand.’

  Once the man saw Fergus’s determination, he became more helpful, although his help came at a price.

  ‘I can smell a pie in that sack you’ve got tied to your waist. Give me the pie and I’ll stable that nag of yours in my barn.’

  Gadfly snorted and shook her head, but the offer suited Fergus, especially when the man called his ten-year-old son from inside the cottage. ‘Take this fellow to Bent Dalid and see he don’t get lost.’

  The boy wasn’t particularly willing but he obeyed his father. When a miserable hovel came into view through the mist, he stopped and said, ‘That’s the place. I’m not going any closer. Nobody round here likes Bent Dalid very much.’

  Fergus soon discovered why when his knock was answered by a man who would have been no taller than him if he stood up straight. Leaning forward as though his shoulders were permanently hunched, he was considerably shorter. His clothes were grimy rags and only a scattering of teeth survived in his jaws.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I have to reach Miss Appleyard’s house before dark. They say you’re the only one who can find his way in the fog.’

  ‘What can you pay?’

  Stig had given Fergus a small purse with some coins inside, but when he loosened the string to take one out, a bony hand snatched the purse from him.

  ‘Hey, that’s mine,’ said Fergus, drawing his sword.

  Bent Dalid looked unconcerned. ‘It’s mine now, if you want a guide through this fog.’

  Fergus had no choice and he knew it. He followed the man to a landing behind the hovel and stepped onto a peculiar craft, twice as long as a person and flat-bottomed with strangely low sides. Bent Dalid took a long pole and pushed them away from the bank. The mist swirled gently around them, neither friendly nor sinister. It seemed to absorb all sound from afar, leaving the rhythmic working of the pole and the dripping of water from its shaft as the only backdrop to their movement.

  Bent Dalid asked no questions and made no comments on the route he chose. How a man could find his way along the hidden waterways seemed unnatural, but soon after the last of the day’s light faded, the strange vessel nosed into the shore. Finally, the man spoke.

  ‘This is the island. The two old bats live in a house thirty paces straight ahead, but it’s not them you’ve come for, is it? A fancy lord has convinced the fools to take him in. He’s the one you’re after. Oh, don’t look so surprised,’ he said when Fergus stared at him, bewildered, though the swirling fog. ‘You’ve touched that sword of yours too many times to have anything but murder in mind. I might even stay to watch the fun.’

  ‘For the money I paid you, I expect you to carry me back when … when my business is done.’

  ‘You might not be going back,’ said Bent Dalid.

  Fergus strode away silently through the fog, glad to be free of the nasty creature. A blurred light guided him to a cabin with walls made from logs laid one on top of the other. As he crept closer, the light grew edges and became an
open doorway and in that doorway stood a man.

  Still hidden by the fog and the darkness, Fergus took a moment to observe his foe. Damon was as strongly built as any man he had seen, his arms and legs and formidable shoulders in perfect proportion. No wonder he’d easily overpowered Fergus at the inn. His chin was clean-shaven and his black hair neatly clipped, by the devoted sisters, no doubt. It was plain to see why he charmed them — his clothes were immaculate and every movement gracefully self-assured. Not so long ago, Fergus had been charmed by him too. More than that, he’d felt a son’s love for the man, admired him, wanted his praise.

  ‘My father,’ he seethed under his breath. ‘How could I have believed it?’

  Still unaware that he was being watched, Damon turned to answer a woman’s voice from inside the cabin. It would be so easy to kill him now, thought Fergus, to run him through so that he died staring down in horror at the point of a sword protruding from his belly. Tilwith would applaud such tactics, but just as surely, Stig would be ashamed.

  Am I ready, Fergus asked himself. Even if the sword works its magic, can I finish what I’ve come here to do? And as quickly as he asked the question, he drew the sword from his belt and stepped forward so that the light from the house picked him out.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Damon demanded when he spotted a shape emerging from the mist. ‘Miss Appleyard, bring my sword,’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘Why, what is it?’ said a worried voice from behind him, but as soon as the weapon was passed into his hand, he slammed the door shut and advanced down the steps towards the intruder. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here with a sword in your hand?’

  He stopped only when he could make out Fergus’s face. ‘You again.’ Damon was surprised, but there was no fear in his voice. ‘The innkeeper saved your neck last time, boy. Nothing will save you tonight,’ and before those last words had died on his lips, he swung viciously at Fergus’s legs.

  From inside the house came muffled screams, but Fergus didn’t hear them. He hurried his sword into place, taking the full force of the blow with ease, and, as Stig had taught him, moved quickly into attack, keeping his body balanced on the balls of both feet. His own strike was parried just in time and each of the fighters stepped back, glaring at the other.