Bedtime Story

by Robert J. Wiersema

  “No, that’s fine.” The thought of standing in Took’s office, of looking through his last papers, filled me with conflicting emotions. Despite everything he had done, the suffering he had inflicted on David and Matthew and who knows how many other children, part of me was thrilled at the prospect of being in his office. “When can I come?”

  She glanced at her watch. “How about right now?”

  I thought of David and Jacqui, probably waiting for me back in the hotel room. “What about tomorrow? First thing?”

  Her face pinched. “Actually, tomorrow’s bad. Is there a problem with going now? I can drive.”

  I nodded slowly. “Sure,” I said. “That sounds fine.”

  She squeezed my hand and smiled, clearly pleased with my agreement. “You can call your wife, let her know what’s going on. That you’ve been taken home by a ravishing young woman.”

  Her eyes were laughing, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  Sitting in the shadows under the window ledge, David and Loren waited. The sound of the Mermaid, a muted burble of voices that reminded David of the river, washed over them.

  Time passed sluggishly, and it was all David could do to resist the potent force of Dafyd’s emotions, his almost irresistible desire to rush into the tavern and find his mother and Arian, no matter the guardsmen, no matter the cost.

  He’s getting stronger, isn’t he? Matt asked.

  David didn’t answer. He was keeping his attention focused firmly on the pool of light that the window cast on the stone yard, the small spray of broken crockery from Tamas’s mug, the way the sharp edges and spilled ale caught the light.

  “My mother would have his hide for that,” he said quietly. David hadn’t known that he was going to say the words, could only listen as they came, unexpectedly, out of his own mouth.

  “What?” the magus asked.

  He gestured at the shattered crockery “Bad enough that he was out here sneaking a drink when he was working, but to break one of the mugs …” He shook his head. “Better it be broken by someone with money enough to pay for its replacement. He’ll be hearing about that.”

  “I expect she’ll be quite understanding about the loss of a single flagon, under the circumstances.”

  It wasn’t much longer before there was a change in the sounds coming from the tavern, the laughter replaced with a slightly stronger, louder muttering and a loud, collective cry.

  “That’ll be last bell, then,” David said. “My mother will be standing on a bar stool, telling the men it’s time to drink up and get back to their wives, and the women back to their husbands, and that they should try to get it right this time.”

  “Your mother is a formidable woman.”

  “She had to be, to come so far on her own. One of the only taverns inside the walls …”

  “And now a son who will either be a hero or be hanged in the square at dawn, depending upon how events unfold.”

  David glanced at the magus, hoping he was joking. He wasn’t.

  “We’ll give it a little longer,” David said. “Give Tamas a chance to deal with any stragglers.”

  Some time later the kitchen door creaked partway open and Tamas looked out into the darkness. As he scanned the yard without seeing them, his face fell, as if his worst fears had come to pass. When David reached over and touched his leg, Tamas jumped.

  “Gods, Dafyd,” he muttered. “You’d scare me to death if you could.”

  “It’s a good thing you weren’t carrying a flagon this time,” David said as he stood up. “She’d have your hide for sure.”

  He squeezed his friend’s shoulder as he slipped in through the kitchen doorway. The magus followed closely.

  “Is everyone gone?” the magus asked, as Tamas closed and bolted the door behind them.

  “Yes,” Tamas said. “It was agony waiting for last bell and rounding them up, but there was no way to suggest to your mother that she might want to close early.”

  “And the guardsmen?” the magus asked.

  “I checked out front as I was locking up. No sign of anyone lurking around.”

  “Still,” the magus said. “We should probably stay back here.”

  Tamas nodded. “I’ll get them,” he said, stepping into the tavern.

  David could hear his friend’s voice faintly through the wall as the magus lowered himself slowly onto a stool. Tamas’s voice grew louder, more insistent, and then he heard his mother’s voice, gaining in volume as she neared the door.

  “… swear to the gods, Tamas, this had better be something bloody important to interrupt me when I’m counting out. I’m going to have to start all over—”

  She gasped as she entered the kitchen. She was wiping her hands on her apron, and when she saw her son she froze, her expression one of stunned disbelief that dissolved into tears as she whispered, “Dafyd?”

  He nodded, unable to speak, his eyes brimming. And then she was across the room, her arms around him tight, pulling him close into the yeasty, beery, sweet smell of her.

  “Oh, Dafyd,” she gasped. “I knew you’d come home. I just knew it.”

  And Dafyd cried, because he had been convinced that he would never see her again.

  And David cried, certain now that this was as close as he himself would ever come to being home.

  Jacqui was practically dragging David up the street, clutching at his hand, urging him to walk faster than he usually did. She kept glancing between him, a half-step behind her, and the intersection in the distance, the corner where the restaurant was.

  “Come on,” she muttered, trying not to take out her frustration on her son, but wanting nothing more than to break into a run.

  Tony Markus had been the last one to have that book, and now he was dead. And now Chris was with Cat Took, probably the “unidentified woman” that Markus had been seen with before he died.

  She cursed herself as she tugged at David’s hand: he was shambling along beside her as fast as he could.

  She tried to think of what she would say, how she could interrupt their meeting without alerting Cat Took.

  It would be easy, she thought. She’d introduce herself and David. She’d linger until she was invited to sit down, and she’d smile and join them, and then at the earliest opportunity she’d tell Chris that they had to go.

  She was breathing heavily with the effort of pulling David along, but it was just a block away. A half-block …

  She pushed open the door, and felt her knees buckle.

  The booth where Chris had been sitting with Cat Took was empty, a few bills tucked under one of the abandoned coffee cups.

  Mareigh clung to him tightly, squeezing him so he couldn’t breathe, then leaned him back to take a look, still holding his arms. “You look awful,” she said, reaching up to touch the lump at the side of his mostly bare head. “What have they done to you?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said, embarrassed by her attention.

  “You look like you haven’t eaten in a week, for starters,” she said.

  “It’s close to that.”

  “Well,” she said, stepping away from him. “We’ll see to that. Arian,” she called, turning.

  But the girl was already standing in the doorway. She was so pale, so delicate, she seemed almost like an apparition, like an errant breeze might blow her away. When their eyes met, she appeared to solidify, a tearful smile breaking on her face.

  He stepped toward her as she moved toward him, and they met in the middle of the room. They didn’t touch, the very air between them alive with things yet unsaid. They stood like that for a long moment, just looking at each other, not speaking, not needing to speak.

  “Well,” said Mareigh—and the spell was broken. “I was going to ask you to prepare some food.”

  David started, as if he had been caught in a dream, looking out through someone else’s eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Arian said crisply, turning away.

  “You, sit.” She gestured toward the t
able, then stopped, as if noticing the old man for the first time.

  “Hello, Loren,” she said slowly, unsteadily.

  The magus smiled and rose slowly to his feet. “Well met again, Mareigh,” he said, bowing his head slightly, his voice full and formal. “It has been a long time.”

  Mareigh glanced at David, then back at the magus, looking puzzled to find the old man in her kitchen. “Very near a lifetime,” she said hesitatingly.

  “Indeed.”

  “So do I have you to thank for drawing my son into this?” Her voice wasn’t angry, but there was a cutting edge to it, an undertone of warning.

  “My apologies, Mareigh,” he said, lowering his head again. “I am but a humble servant.”

  She snorted out a disbelieving laugh. “So you’ve always said.” She looked at him for a long moment, as if expecting him to speak. When he didn’t she gestured at the table. “Sit, sit. Everyone sit.” She looked at her son. “Practically starving to death, you must be,” she said.

  “Actually, I wonder if I might impose upon your girl,” the magus said, as David was pulling out a chair for Arian. “For a small favour.”

  David glanced at him sharply.

  “Do you know the abbey?” the magus asked Arian.

  The girl looked at him curiously. “Of course,” she said cautiously.

  Everyone knew where the abbey was.

  “Might I impose upon you to deliver a message there? Neither Dafyd nor I can be seen delivering it, and I’m afraid Tamas is also too familiar a face.” He reached into his robes and withdrew a folded piece of vellum, sealed with a dot of red wax. “Which, unfortunately, leaves only you.” He extended the note toward her. “If you would be so kind?”

  Her hand was shaking slightly as she took the message from the magus. “Who should I deliver it to?”

  “Ask at the gates for Brother Maximus,” he said, smiling encouragingly. “Tell them that you have been sent by Brother Loren, and that you bear a message of the utmost importance.”

  She looked down uncertainly at the note in her hand.

  “When did you find time to write that?” David asked. The only time the magus had been out of his sight in the past few days had been while he slept and the old man rowed.

  The magus half turned to him. “I’ve carried that with me since the day we left,” he explained.

  “You knew?” David gasped. “All along you knew that Captain Bream—”

  The magus cut him off with a glare.

  “What about Captain Bream?” his mother asked, setting mugs of ale in front of them.

  “It’s nothing,” the magus said placatingly.

  His tone was so smooth, so comforting, that David knew his mother would see through it immediately. To his surprise, though, she said nothing, only turning back to the counter for mugs for Tamas and herself.

  “I’ll keep yours waiting,” she said to Arian. “For when you get back.”

  Arian took another look at the note in her hands, at the red wax seal. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, the decision to accept the errand made for her.

  As she passed behind David’s chair, he felt her fingers brush against the back of his neck.

  “I think I’m just about done with that girl,” his mother said as the door shut behind Arian. “I’m not even sure why I keep her around.” She was still at the counter, cutting meat from a large joint. “I’m fully capable of running the place myself. Did it for years …”

  She seemed to be talking to herself, but David could feel every word twisting his belly. Dafyd wasn’t liking this.

  “And it’s not as if she’s a great help,” she continued as she carried a tray of meat and cheese to the table. “With all the mooning over the shore boys that she does.”

  She set the tray on the table, then looked at David. The air hung heavy for a moment, then everyone began to laugh. Everyone except David.

  She ran her hand gingerly over his bare head. “Best not to make jokes,” she said. “Someone takes that one a little seriously.”

  Cat Took drove with both hands on the wheel, her gaze fixed ahead on a series of increasingly narrower roads. She kept off the highway altogether, her route taking us first through several small, weather-beaten subdivisions outside the gaudy heart of Seaside, then onto a winding country road that offered occasional glimpses of the ocean as the car steadily climbed along the coast.

  “So you grew up around here?” I asked.

  “I’ve been here my whole life,” she said, watching the road.

  The trees, dark and lush from the fine mist that clung to them, pressed in on both sides, as if someone had cut the smallest possible path through the forest.

  “Did you go to school in Seaside?”

  “My mother taught me at home, actually,” she said.

  “All the way out here?”

  “It’s not that far,” she said, turning onto a gravel path barely wide enough to accommodate even her little Volkswagen. It rumbled and shuddered on the rough surface.

  “So it was just you and your mother?”

  “Lazarus chose this house because of this forest,” she said, ignoring my question. “I think he liked the fact that it was so secluded, so surrounded by nature. And I think he liked the irony of it.”

  “The irony?”

  “The man who owned it before, who built it, owned one of the biggest lumber companies in the state.”

  “A logger baron.”

  “Right. Only he refused to allow any logging within sight of his house. He said that he valued nature too much to have it decimated around him.”

  That struck me as precisely the sort of irony Lazarus Took would have appreciated.

  As she spoke, the road widened and the shuddering of the car ceased as the tires gripped paving stones. The house itself appeared with a breathtaking suddenness—with a flash of unexpected sunlight, we emerged into a huge circular driveway.

  “Wow,” I muttered, unable to help myself.

  “Yeah,” she said, pulling close to the front steps of the house. “That’s what everyone says.”

  It wasn’t the stately manor that I imagined Took owning in England, but it seemed a close cousin. The brown stone walls stretched three stories high, broken with mullioned windows, grown over in places with ivy. The windows were dark. The building seemed wilfully imposed upon the landscape.

  “You can’t see it from here,” Cat said, turning off the engine. “But there’s a tower around the front, overlooking the ocean.”

  “Let me guess.”

  “Yes, that’s where Lazarus’s study is.” Of course.

  As I climbed out of the car, I was shocked by the sudden cold in the shadow of the house. The ocean rumbled nearby.

  I followed her up the wide staircase and through the heavy front doors, noticing only as I passed under them the words etched above the entry:

  RAVEN’S MOOR.

  “So,” his mother said, in a tone he recognized well. “Is one of you going to tell me just what in the name of the gods happened? You’re taken by the King’s Men, then you stumble back in here a month later in the dead of night, no word—”

  “A month?” David gasped. “That’s how long we’ve been gone?

  His mother looked at him as if he might be an idiot. “Almost five weeks.”

  He knew that she must be right, but all the days and all the nights, the riding, the rowing—they had all blended together.

  “Where have you been in that time?” she asked, first glaring at the magus, then setting her eyes on David, as if daring one of them to answer her.

  David was about to speak, but the magus shook his head slightly as he raised his ale to his lips, a tiny gesture that Mareigh missed.

  “That, dear Mareigh,” said the magus, wiping his mouth, “is a very long story, and one which we’ll have time to tell soon. But right now—”

  “Don’t you try to work that gilded tongue on me again, Loren,” she said, her voice icy, threatening. “It worked once.
It won’t again.”

  “You don’t seem to have suffered,” he said, his voice now matching hers in strength.

  “You would be best not to tell me what I have or have not suffered.”

  Tamas glanced at David, looking for some explanation. David had none.

  Clearly there’s some history, Matt said.

  David was startled. With the flood of Dafyd’s memories and emotions, it was almost as if Matthew had been swept away, or drowned out, for most of the day. David found it comforting to hear his voice.

  Clearly, David thought.

  “And now you’re back here and I find it’s you who is responsible for taking my son, bringing him back home half-dead—”

  “Mareigh, I’m—”

  “I’ve a mind to—”

  “Mareigh—”

  “Mother,” David said sharply, his voice cutting into the air between them. “It wasn’t his fault. It was the—”

  The magus slammed his mug on the table, but the word was already spoken.

  “—Queen.”

  Mareigh pulled her lips between her teeth, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the magus.

  “The Queen?” she asked, her voice dripping with venom.

  At that moment, there was a loud whistle from just outside the back door, and an answering whistle from the front of the tavern.

  “Dafyd,” the magus cried out, jumping up from his chair.

  A large log bashed the back door open. Two guardsmen dropped it to the floor and drew their swords. Another crash from the next room as more guardsmen came through the tavern’s front door.

  “They’re back here!” one of the men in the kitchen called.

  Guardsmen rushed in from the tavern, dispersing around the edges of the kitchen, swords drawn, encircling them like fish in a net.

  David reached carefully toward the knife in his boot, but the magus warned him off with a glance.

  “Well,” said a voice approaching through the tavern. “What have we here?”

  As Captain Bream stepped into the kitchen, David marvelled at the change that had come over the man. When he had first seen him in the tavern yard the captain had been a towering figure of strength and command. Powerful in everything he said and did.