“It’s claimed he encountered her last summer upon a path to the abbey and was smitten by her beauty. Perhaps he walked through the town and down to the river? No one would have noticed.”
Baldie shook his head. “I think it improbable he could have met her. We’d bound her to us before summer—before even we dispatched the last MacGillean brother.”
“But she did pass from here to her family home on occasion. She did travel through Ercildoun.”
“Twice, but since the arrival of the changeling, the glamouring, she’s remained spellbound to her chamber. No, I think we do not believe this story as it’s being presented.”
“I thought as much, too, Elgadorn.”
“So it must be he, else he’s a puppeteer.”
“If not one of these cutters, might he have sent them to test our vigilance? It seems—”
Baldie shook his head. “You’d give him the wits for subterfuge. He’s hardly any wits at all. The Balthair knew him very well.”
The alderman made a gesture of bewilderment. “Then, we are confounded. A boy too young to be him, asking after your wife, probing. Mayhap someone from this household has said something—one of those you dismissed? And, yes, we know you dismissed them early, but still, if even one gleaned some hint of the changeling before we placed the nurse . . . Thinks me we’ve no choice but to meet these two before they return to the abbey and share their story further.” He made a gripping gesture with his fists. “We must twist the truth from them.”
Baldie considered a moment before asking, “Where and when?”
“The bowyer says they intend to go south tomorrow. And here’s an irony—it’s your bow they’re collecting.”
Baldie smirked lopsidedly, as if one side of his mouth was not working. “We believe the Balthair wants it back. Clearly, they’re thieves.”
“Clearly. They’ll certainly take the corpse road across the river to the old abbey ruin. They brought nothing with them—no provisions or travelers’ packs—so they must be returning to the new abbey site. They’ll have to pass our spot.”
“We shall bring reinforcements,” said Baldie. “Whatever their story, well, it won’t matter once they’re on the other side. Just two travelers waylaid by the road. Who will even notice? Come spring, they’ll be forgot.”
The alderman closed his eyes as if imagining it. Then the two of them rose and left the hall.
A minute later, the rusty groans and thunder of the main door closing below echoed up the circling stairwell. Thomas waited behind the tapestry until Baldie had walked past the hall again and up the stone steps to the third floor. The servant did not reappear to stoke the fire, which burned brightly now in the empty, smoky room, giving off some measure of heat. Overhead, footsteps clumped about once more, and then there was silence.
For a moment he relived the experience of creeping up the hidden passage to the corridors of the upper floor and going from chamber to chamber in search of his brother and Baldie. Directly overhead was the patriarch’s dwelling, a large room comprising great beams and uprights and a huge curtained bed. His wife maintained a separate, smaller chamber—or rather, she had—across the hall. He knew the secret way up, through the wall, but all would be pitch black in the passage and he had no torch to guide him. Besides, it would dump him in the patriarch’s chamber with Baldie. That was not where he wanted to go.
Thomas stole out from the tapestry and across the gallery. He watched down below for any sign of the servant, but there was no one. He guessed the servant might have exited with the alderman. He climbed the stone steps fast, bent low, slowing as he reached the second floor, his eyes at the level of the narrow corridor floor. The doors hung closed on each side.
He stepped into the corridor, waited, then crept along it until he arrived at the point where the patriarch’s door was to his left, the uxorial chamber to his right. There was nothing for it. If Innes was spellbound to her room as Baldie had described, then she must be in there and not with her husband.
Pressed to the door, he tried to hear over the roar of his own heartbeat in his ears. Nothing. If she screamed or was possessed, then in a moment he would be running for his life. But he had to know.
Cautiously, he pushed down the handle of the door and eased it open. Firelight played upon the walls of the room as it had the great hall, though in a far smaller, shallower fire pit. The narrow windows were covered in parchment, but the smoke was drawn out through them, leaving the upper part of the room thick with it, like a fog.
Although the alderman had mentioned a nurse, he hadn’t counted upon her sleeping at the foot of the bed.
Was it Innes under the bedclothes and furs? It must be. Still—this nurse was an unanticipated problem, surely another enemy.
He cast about for something to subdue her. He had brought nothing, no weapon.
A small log stood upright beside the little hearth, ready to be added to the fire if needed. He crept to it and took it with him to the bed. At the foot, he stood, hefting the log, but unable to strike the sleeping servant, a thick-bodied girl of perhaps twenty. She might have been the second woman in the group that visited the abbey—he couldn’t be sure. What sort of misplaced chivalry kept him from striking this creature? He did not know, and had no time to consider it. He leaned in close and whispered to the nurse.
Before she was entirely conscious, she sat straight up, saying “M’lady?” and Thomas clubbed her with the log. She fell against the footboard and slid back into her own small berth. One arm dangled out of the bed, and he gingerly laid it back across her, then set down the log.
When he turned, his sister was sitting up and staring wide-eyed. She hadn’t screamed yet, but she looked about to.
“Innes,” he said. He moved slowly, unthreateningly along the bed, and had the presence of mind now to remove his cap. His shaggy dark hair spilled out around his face. He reached toward her. “Sweet sister.”
He knew his voice was changing, deepening, but she replied with “Thomas?” A question, yet she seemed to know—her expression wondrous—and he hurried to embrace her then and let her see his face clearly.
She reached out, and he took one of her thin hands, pressed it to his lips, looked into her darkly sunken eyes. The smell off her was unwashed and sickly. Her cheeks that had been full and flushed were tight upon her bones and waxy pale. Her dark, matted hair hung lank. It was as if she were being kept in a pigsty.
Innes studied him just as intently, no doubt seeking the signs of her brother, who ought to be older than she, not to mention simple-minded, unlikely to sneak successfully into any room or move with any grace or skill. Yet in the end she broke into a wide smile and said, “It is you, isn’t it? Oh, my dear Tommy.” She clutched him to her and he embraced her. His fingers counted her ribs. “Where have you been? Is Onchu alive, too?”
He sat upon the fur. “He’s been taken.”
“Taken?” Her expression shifted in confusion. “Then he is with God?”
“No. The elven took him while he was fishing.”
Her expression flowed then from doubt to judgment: He was still her mad brother, who spoke in riddles that rarely made sense. He could not let her settle upon that conclusion.
“I know that Baldie claims he saw us drowned, but it’s not true. He was the one who drowned; I saw him, Innes. Onchu was taken by the elves’ queen. When I tried to chase them—I would have brought him back!—something happened to me, and three years passed me by as if I didn’t exist. I can’t explain it.”
“Balthair drowned?”
He nodded furiously. “I know how it sounds. Men in Ercildoun told me how he came back alone with his story of both of us dead.” Her glimmering gaze held his, rapt. “I’m not a ghost, Innes. And I didn’t drown Onchu.”
“But how is—how is he alive, then?” She gestured at the door.
“I don’t know. But he is in league with Alderman Stroud, who helps the elven select their victims. He was on hand the day they took Onchu. I saw him plain.”
