Flora bobbed a curtsey, looking awkward for the first time since she’d begun dropping them. ‘My name is Flora, ma’am, my father was Aymer the baker and my mother was Orletta Heywood.’
The woman cried, ‘Oh!’ and swept Flora into a warm embrace.
Jimmy grinned to see Flora’s startled eyes over the woman’s plump shoulder. Was this her grandmother? If so there wasn’t going to be a problem.
‘I’m your Aunt Cleora,’ the woman said, holding Flora at arm’s length. ‘Oh, I thought I would never, ever see you, child.’
She swept Flora back into her arms and Jimmy had all he could do not to laugh at the expression on his friend’s face; half thrilled, half horrified.
‘Where have you come from?’ Cleora cried.
‘K-Krondor,’ her niece stuttered, completely overwhelmed.
‘Oh, you poor child! You must be exhausted! Come with me and we’ll get you settled. Oh!’ she said and turned with a smile to Jimmy. ‘And who is this?’
‘Jimmy is a friend,’ Flora said nervously. ‘Practically a brother, he’s escorted me.’
‘Then you must come, too! I’ll find you something good to eat. Boys always like a little something to eat,’ Cleora confided to her niece. She started off down the lane, her arm around Flora’s thin shoulders. ‘I think you might require some feeding up as well, my dear,’ she said and laughed.
Jimmy blinked, startled, then picked up the bags at his feet and ran after then.
‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ he said. ‘But isn’t that where you live?’ He pointed back at the house behind them.
‘No, no, that’s my dear papa’s house. He’s napping now, my dear. You’ll meet him later. In any case, dear Flora, I want you all to myself for the time being. No, my dear husband and I live nearby. Our home is not quite so grand as my father’s but it’s more than large enough to fit us all quite comfortably. You’ll see!’
With that she bustled off, a happily astonished Flora in tow, and an equally nonplussed Jimmy following with the baggage.
Jimmy lay upon the soft, clean bed he’d been assigned and contentedly patted his rounded stomach. Aunt Cleora’s cook was wonderful, and her employer had hardly needed to press Jimmy to eat and eat; his only regret was that he’d had to stop. He looked about the room, it was small, but neat and in the main part of the house, with a small fireplace and patterns pressed into the cream-coloured plaster of the walls.
He’d expected to be relegated to the servants’ quarters but it apparently hadn’t even crossed Cleora’s mind.
‘It’s a little one,’ she’d said when she’d brought him up to show it to him. ‘But boys don’t mind such things, do they?’ And she’d stood smiling at him, just a touch of anxiety in her kind brown eyes as though wondering what she’d do if he didn’t like his accommodations.
‘It’s just fine!’ he’d assured her.
And still thought so. This was, without doubt, the softest berth he’d ever known. If he didn’t watch out, under Aunt Cleora’s influence he’d soon be looking for honest work. He grimaced; that was a thought to give one the cold grue.
Uncle Karl, Cleora’s husband, was a sea captain currently visiting Krondor. Flora’s aunt had assured them both that he would be absolutely thrilled to have them here. Jimmy was going to have to take her word for it since Cleora had no idea when he’d be back. He frowned thoughtfully; if it was longer than two weeks Jimmy was pretty sure he would have moved on by then. By then, Flora would be completely settled in.
Yardley Heywood was no longer practising law. Flora’s grandfather had fallen ill earlier in the year and was recovering slowly. He convalesced at home, with Aunt Cleora looking in on him daily. She promised Flora she could come along in a day or two, after breaking the news to the old man the girl had returned to the family. Jimmy frowned. There was a great deal of bother with relations and keeping stories straight, he thought. Still, Flora seemed up for the job, and after only a few hours in this house it was hard to remember being on the streets of Krondor.
Still, Jimmy knew the role he played would come apart under close inspection. Flora had lived in a nice home for her first nine years, and many of her customers had been swells; she could talk like a proper girl, and Jimmy, while able to keep up appearances if he didn’t have to talk too much, had only listened to people of rank for a few weeks, while with the Prince and Princess.
No, he’d keep his mouth shut and answer as few questions as he could get away with, and suffer a warm bed and good meals while he planned out what to do next in his exile. Land’s End might not be Krondor, but it was a town of size, and there was booty to boost for a lad with nimble fingers.
Then his smile returned and he folded his arms beneath his head. This would be a fine place from which to work: no one would suspect sweet Aunt Cleora of harbouring a thief and there was no Night-or Daymaster to govern his movements. Poor old Land’s End wasn’t going to know what had hit it. He chuckled evilly.
‘What are you laughing about?’ Flora asked.
Jimmy nearly levitated off the mattress. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?’ he demanded.
She frowned at him and came in, shutting the door behind her. ‘Keep your voice down,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not supposed to be in here.’
‘Did your aunt say that?’ he asked, surprised. From the way Cleora had been behaving Jimmy had expected her to give Flora the key to the front door at any moment.
Flora gave him an exasperated look. ‘No, of course not. She would expect me to know how a young lady should act.’
Jimmy raised his eyebrows as her face fell. Flora sat on the bed and slumped dejectedly. ‘I have to tell her the truth, Jimmy,’ she said.
He sat up and tipped his head toward her. ‘Come again?’
‘She deserves to know the truth.’ Flora looked up at him from under her lashes and gestured toward herself awkwardly. ‘About how I’ve…made my living.’
Jimmy swung his legs off the bed and put his hand on her shoulder, looking her earnestly in the eyes. No wonder she made such a bad thief, he thought, she’s bone-honest!
‘You can’t do that, Flora.’
‘I have to, Jimmy. She deserves the truth.’
‘You can’t be that selfish, Flora, I know you can’t.’
Flora’s mouth dropped open. ‘What?’
‘Think how hurt she’d be,’ Jimmy pointed out. ‘You’ve told her your father died when you were just a little girl. You saw her face. Then when you told her that you’d been living with an elderly lady as her companion she looked so relieved! If you tell her the truth she’ll suffer agonies of guilt. You know she will! How could you put her through that?’
Flora still looked shocked, her mouth opened and closed but nothing came out and her eyes filled with tears.
‘B-but how can I keep lying to her? She’s so nice, Jimmy, I really like her. I don’t want to build our lives on a lie.’
‘Then maybe we should just go,’ he said, standing up. ‘If you haven’t got the strength to protect your relatives from the truth, then,’ he shook his head, ‘just go. It’s kinder.’
Flora started to cry and Jimmy rolled his eyes: now he was the villain. He looked down at her. Well, maybe I am the villain. The young thief sat down and put his arm around Flora’s quaking shoulders. And if you do the gods-cursed sensible thing and lie like a sailor, I get to stay in this pleasant room and eat Cleora’s wonderful food.
Maybe confessing everything right at the beginning was the best, most noble, most honest thing to do. But in his heart, Jimmy was convinced it was also the best way to get them kicked out of the house and out of the life that Flora so obviously was meant for. And it would break her aunt’s heart. He shook his head. I’m being totally selfish and totally helpful at the same time. Damn, there’s no doubt about it: I was born for greatness.
‘Sometimes, Flora, the right thing isn’t always the best thing to do. I see a lot more heartache and loss coming out of an honest confession of the
hard facts than out of your very plausible fib. My advice is to sleep on it: things may be clearer in the morning. All I ask is that you tell me first if you’re going to tell her about being a Mocker. All right?’
She sniffed and looked at him solemnly, then gave him a brief hug and rose. ‘You’re right,’ she said and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘And I will think it over. I’ll tell you my decision tomorrow, I promise.’ Leaning down, she kissed him lightly on the cheek and then, in a swirl of skirts, she was gone.
Jimmy’s mouth twisted wryly. Suddenly all that good cooking was sitting in his stomach like a lead weight. Why couldn’t women think things through? It was always the emotional side of things with them, never the logical. He gave an exasperated sigh. He’d never sleep with his belly in this kind of torment; perhaps a nice evening stroll was in order.
NINE
Encounter
A lone figure trudged down the road.
Bram had left the merchant caravan–if that wasn’t too grand a name for two wagons and two pack mules, where the road branched off toward the village of Relling–just before sunset the night before.
There was a good inn in Relling; they had a first-rate shepherd’s pie, and they brewed a noble ale. Not as good as his mother’s cooking or his father’s home-brew, though. The young man had squared his shoulders, swung his pack over his shoulder on the tip of his bowstave, and set off down the road once he’d made his goodbyes.
By avoiding the loop in the King’s Highway where the road headed off to Relling, and by walking most of the night–he usually slept for four hours–he would see his home just before sunrise, just in time for his mother’s breakfast. There was little danger along the trail he hiked, few animals that would trouble a grown man, and no robber was likely to be lurking along such a byway in the dead of night.
Every hill that challenged his legs was a step nearer to home. He recognized trees he’d climbed as a lad, fields he’d worked in or tended stock through, jumped over a creek that crossed the roadway and grinned at the memory of the first time he’d been able to do that dry-shod. He was already man-tall in his seventeenth year, with a little soft yellow fuzz on his cheeks and a shock of rough-cropped gold hair, broad-shouldered and long-legged, his open blue eyes friendly. A lifetime’s hard work had put muscle on his shoulders and arms, but it was stalking deer that had given him grace, and made his soft boots fall lightly on the dirt of the road.
And thinking of which, he thought, his head coming up. Something fairly large crashed off through the roadside brush. Pig? he wondered, then stooped. The false dawn gave him light enough for tracking. No, deer, right enough. The cloven print was a little too big and a little too splayed for swine.
Bram chuckled. ‘Run off and get chased by a nobleman,’ he said.
Nobles hunted deer on horseback, with dogs; which was rather like killing chickens with a battle axe to his way of thinking–easily done and not much sport in it–but there was no accounting for tastes. The joy was in tracking and stalking, not the kill. After the kill came the hard part, dressing out the carcass and lugging it back home. But then nobles had servants to do the hard work, he conceded.
He took a deep breath of the musty-cool air and continued down the roadway, whistling. A brisk four-mile walk had brought him almost to his own door and he paused with a smile on his face to look at the old place.
The lane to the farmhouse looked so welcoming in the early morning that the sight of it lifted his heart. There were lanterns on the fence posts on the way up to the house and one beside the door, while the downstairs windows of the house were aglow with candlelight, the flame blurred to a warm yellow through the scraped sheep-gut or thin-sliced horn that made the panes. There was a lantern by the barn door as well, he saw.
That’s a real welcome! he thought; beeswax candles were expensive, and tallow dips weren’t free either.
Then he remembered that they would have had no way of knowing that today would be his homecoming. Which meant that all this extravagant light was for some other cause. A wedding? But there hadn’t been any in prospect when he left. Besides, it wasn’t Sixth-day afternoon, when most weddings were held. That meant a wake was the mostly likely explanation, since nobody stinted in honouring the dead. And many of the men would drink through the night until their wives said enough and took them home.
Everyone had been healthy when he left, but that meant little: illness or accident could take a healthy man or woman suddenly enough, and farmers knew that as well as any.
Bram hastened up the drive, pausing when he noticed Farmer Glidden’s wagon, which had been hidden by his mother’s lilacs. Then he glanced into the barn, where another lantern was lit, and he noted several horses belonging to the neighbours and a few beasts that belonged to Lorrie Merford’s family, including their dairy-cow Tessie.
Something was most definitely going on and it probably wasn’t good. Why was the Merford stock in his father’s barn? Bram knew that his family couldn’t possibly afford to buy them; nor would the Merfords sell them.
Bram hurried to the house. Hearing voices raised inside, he entered quietly through the rear door, the better to hear the fast and furious discussion that was going on. The big, single room that held the main hearth was filled with neighbours, many seated on the benches around the kitchen table, others on stools around the room, the rest standing or squatting against the wall.
‘It was animals! Wild dogs or something like that!’ said Tucker Holsworth, smacking the table for emphasis as he waved his pipe in the air. His face was black with soot and dirt.
‘But what about what Lorrie said?’ asked Bram’s father.
‘Y’mean about men doing it with some sort of tool?’ Holsworth puffed on his pipe as he sought to keep it lit.
‘Well, she was there. If that’s what she said she saw should we be doubting her?’
‘But those marks were made by some animal’s teeth! No knife did that to them,’ offered Rafe Kimble, who stood by the kitchen hearth. He was also black from soot.
‘And little Rip? Where did he go to if someone didn’t kidnap him, then?’ asked his wife, Elma.
‘He could have perished in the fire, and the girl just didn’t see it,’ insisted Allet.
‘If the animal was big enough then it could have dragged him off to its den.’ That came from Jacob Reese, who sat at the table with the other two men.
‘But how could an animal like that or even a pack of animals, be in the area and us not notice?’ asked Ossrey. ‘Where have they gone then? I’ve heard no rumours of such as happened to the Merfords happening anywhere else.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Bram exclaimed. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Bram!’ his mother cried. Allet jumped up from her seat and made her way through the crowd to embrace him.
‘Son!’ Ossrey said. ‘Good to see you, boy!’ He offered his hand across the kitchen table and Bram leaned through the crowd of neighbours to take it with a brief smile. From the leftover food on the table and the open jugs, it was clear the women had been in the kitchen all night, cooking breakfast for the men, who had just finished eating.
‘You must be starving,’ Allet said. ‘Sit down, Bram,’ she pushed him toward her place at the table, ‘and I’ll get you something.’
‘I’m fine, Mother,’ Bram said, but he did take her seat after he’d unslung his bundle and propped the bow and quiver against the wall beside the door. ‘What’s happened? It sounds bad.’ He looked around at his neighbours, then turned expectantly to his father.
Ossrey bowed his head and looked at Bram from under his shaggy eyebrows. He was a dark hairy man except for a thinning patch on top of his head, and broader-built than his son would ever be. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve come home to such bad news, son,’ he began. ‘The Merfords have suffered a terrible tragedy.’
‘Lorrie?’ Bram asked immediately.
His mother’s lips thinned and she frowned slightly, her eyes shifting to Farmer
Glidden to see how he took Bram’s singular interest in Lorrie Merford.
‘She was fine the last time we saw her,’ Allet said, crossing her arms.
‘What do you mean the last time you saw her?’ Bram demanded. When no answer was forthcoming, he gripped his mother by the arms and asked, ‘Mother, what happened?’
‘Lorrie’s parents were both killed,’ Farmer Glidden told him quickly. ‘Their house and barn were burned down and we spent the night over there putting out fires in the fields. Just got back here an hour ago.’ He was silent a moment, then added, ‘Her brother’s gone missing. I’m told Lorrie took her horse and rode out. Probably gone after the boy.’
There was a flurry of ‘tsks!’ both sympathetic and condemning, accompanied by nods and shaking heads.
Bram released his mother’s arms. ‘So Lorrie and Rip are both missing?’
‘Didn’t I just say so?’ Glidden said.
‘Has anyone gone after them?’
From the glances exchanged around the room, Bram could tell no one had.
‘When did all this happen?’ Bram ran a desperate hand through his hair, looking around in confusion.
‘The marks on Melda and Sam’s bodies looked like they’d been made by an animal of some kind,’ Ossrey said. ‘We think the boy must have been dragged away by whatever killed them.’
‘Animals!’ Bram said. ‘Here?’ He looked around again. ‘Has anyone tracked the beasts? Are you saying they…had they eaten Melda and Sam?’ Then it struck him. ‘Do you mean to tell me that Lorrie has gone alone, tracking some animal big enough and dangerous enough to kill two adults? When did she go?’
‘Lorrie said something about men doing it,’ Dora Commer said, looking defiantly at Allet and Ossrey. ‘Said they tore up the bodies with some sort of tool to make it look like a beast did it, then headed down the road toward Land’s End. She wanted to follow them at once, but of course we couldn’t let her do that. We thought she was in a panic.’ The woman shrugged, looking guilty. ‘And there was the fire, we had to take care of that. For all we knew the boy had been in the house or the barn and she just couldn’t take the idea. Besides,’ she continued into his silence, ‘if there were men and they’d killed both her parents what could one girl do against them?’
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