She looked away from him then, her brows drawn together. “The alderman . . . He took an interest in the family after—after you and Onchu were gone. He consoled Mother, gave her a potion to calm her. He’s been advising Father ever since. It was he who made this union with Balthair. And they meet often, the two of them. I hear them.”
“They’ve met just now below. The alderman intends to take me on the road this morning, as he did Onchu. You mustn’t tell Baldie that I was here.”
“But Thomas, Mother and Father need to know you’re alive!”
He shook his head. “No. You can’t—” he began, but lightning shot through his head and he pitched against her. Heard his own voice recite: “Who am I, brings calamity like weather? Best you don’t know me, else drown in the torrent, your blood or theirs.”
In the spangled darkness that followed, the pressure retreated slowly, until he became aware of his body again. The words stayed with him for once. It was himself he’d described, he was sure. He brought calamity: on Alpin, on Innes if anyone knew he’d been here, on the masons at the abbey if the alderman thought for a moment he’d shared any stories with them. He smelled Innes in the linens pressed to his face. Her hand was stroking his head and she was shush-shushing him as if he was her child.
He pushed up onto his elbows. Had he shouted the words? He twisted about to watch the door, but nobody opened it, and Innes said, “It’s all right, Tommy.”
“No, it’s not. I imperil everyone here. If Baldie learns you’ve spoken with me . . . You can’t tell him. Nor Father and Mother, not yet. It would put you all at risk now.”
She dropped her fingers from his hair. “Sweet brother.”
The servant at the foot of the bed moaned vaguely.
“I need to be gone. I don’t want to hit her again.”
Innes held his forearm tightly in her small and bony hand. “When will I see you next, then?”
“Let’s learn first what the alderman has in mind for me.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, whispered in her ear, “I’m so very sorry for the loss of your child, but promise me you won’t die because of it. Live to make another.”
Her eyes filled with tears. She said, “But what are you saying? He’s not lost. He’s there, Thomas.” She pointed to a cradle across the room past the nurse’s bed. “Little Dougal.”
He rose and looked at her, at the cradle, at the nurse, who did not stir. Uneasily, he crossed the room.
“Is he sleeping?” Innes called softly. “He’s so good and never cries at night.”
Thomas bent over the cradle. In the firelight he saw it quite clearly and it saw him as well. The changeling.
He gasped and drew back.
One green-black creeper emerged from the misshapen bundle of sticks and twigs, and slid up over the edge of the cradle as if to reach him. The eyes were holes between the woven twigs.
The nurse groaned and her head lolled.
Thomas backed away from the cradle, turned to his sister.
Spellbound to her chamber. Was it the room itself, glamoured for her? She had no way to know and could not tell him. No doubt Baldie had put it about that her baby had withered and died, and that she was mad in her grief. People would give a madwoman a wide berth. But his parents? How were they kept away?
If the room was glamoured for anyone who entered . . . then how was it that he saw true? He could not fathom the magic, but knew without doubt that the thing would shortly alert the elven servant when she came to her senses, and Baldie as well.
He could not remain another moment. “I will come back,” he told Innes. “I promise.”
He ran to the door. Innes reached for him, called to him. He shushed her and opened her door. For an instant the flames in the hearth fluttered, painting her drawn, wet face fearfully against the darkness. He took with him that final image of her and of the vegetative thing beyond her rising up out of its crib.
Something thumped in the patriarch’s chamber, and he flew down the corridor, the many steps, and out the ancient door. If anyone saw him scurry across the yard and set off at a dead run for the dark distant myth of Ercildoun, they didn’t raise an alarm or race after him. His sister wasn’t mad, but she would be if Baldie and Stroud had their way. Whereas, he, a ghost, could do nothing here but escape.
IX. Corpse Road
Early in the morning, at the bowyer’s they collected Thomas’s bow and a belt quiver filled with a mix of both target and war arrows, fourteen in all. Waldroup bought two knives. His own bow he’d left back at the abbey, a decision he now regretted.
They paid the bowyer and headed south out of the town. Beyond the snow-topped trees and grasses, the Leader Water wove in and out of view on their left.
They had no sense of being followed along the road, but then they knew already where their enemy intended to confront them.
As they walked, Waldroup commented, “If it were me, I’d choose the bridge over the Tweed.”
“Why there?”
“We have to cross it, and once we’re on the bridge they have only to arrive at both ends to trap us. No choice then but to capitulate or jump into the river and drown.”
“But the alderman said they want to take us at their spot.”
“And we think that’s where they carried off your brother, where I found you,” Waldroup said. “Well, it does have convenient ruins to hide among, and we’d best make use of them ourselves if we do get across that bridge. If they haven’t arrived first. Our only advantage right now is that we know they’re coming. And if they’ve opened that ring of theirs, let those spinose knights in, I fear we’re finished.”
They trudged on through the muddy snow awhile before he added, “Remember all you’ve learned.”
Near where the Leader fed into the Tweed, the woods grew thicker, offering plenty of cover for anyone to waylay the passing traveler. The area had a reputation for occasional thievery, but usually in better weather. Heavy branches here would spill snow on anyone trying to sneak among the trees this morning.
They soon reached the top of the final hill descending to the Tweed bridge, and paused to study the landscape all the way to the far side. Even though between them they had come to the old abbey many times, from this side of the river everything looked different to Thomas.
The scattered graves looked like a cut-down young forest, like stumps poking out of the snow, dotting the way, eighty-two of them. The abbey’s thatch roof was itself half-rotted. The stones of the nearest corner were fallen in, leaving a dark, gaping emptiness. He’d looked in there the once, into the crypt, not a place he cared for; then again, that hole amidst the rubble might make an excellent defensive position if the two of them could reach it. Beyond the ruin, the remains of the round monks’ huts stood like close-pressed hillocks across the rocky landscape. Most of them stood roofless, a few half-collapsed. It all seemed exactly as abandoned as the evening Waldroup had found him. Maybe with their early start they were ahead of the alderman and Baldie.
Thomas stared at the spot where Onchu had ridden out of the world—no burning green fire on display. Not yet.
