The bridge ahead was large enough for a stone-laden ox cart to cross, rutted and slushy from someone’s recent cart wheels.
“The alderman called this a corpse road. I remember my father calling it that, too.”
Waldroup nodded. “For the bodies carried straight from Ercildoun to the graveyard. Likely why the bridge was built. And in time it becomes the main road, to the abbey, then to Roxburgh and Selkirk. Everything passes this way. Didn’t give it a moment’s thought when we set off to buy your bow, did we? It’s just the way to town.”
“We should have taken Onchu’s fishing path instead.”
“To avoid them? But who’s to say they’ll ride to Ercildoun first? You don’t know where they’ll catch up to you, only that they will. Me, I’d rather choose where. It’s that much advantage, a luxury that may yet save your life.”
Thomas shook his head. “I’m not very good at strategies.”
“And yet, you’re the reason we know we’re expected.” He nodded at the way ahead as they descended to the bridge. “The half-melted snow doesn’t help. Hides any tracks a full snowfall might have revealed.” He stared off in silence awhile. “You notice anything peculiar?”
Thomas squinted, shook his head again.
“What animals you see? Hear any birds?”
Silence and stillness. “But there are always birds.”
“Mmm-hmm. And when’s the last time you crossed that plot of graves without spying a hare or two?”
“When Onchu . . .”
Waldroup patted his shoulder. “Come on. Pretend you suspect nothing, and let’s try and get set in amongst the graves at least before they reveal themselves.”
They walked over the bridge without incident.
“Your alderman’s not much of a strategist, either,” he muttered. “Too certain of his cleverness.”
Across, they walked through river sedge and soon reached the outer ring of graves. Thomas continued to find his attention drawn to the spot where the hole between worlds had burned in the air. Maybe a corpse road arrived on purpose at a place where the wall between worlds was thin. Maybe it had led here before there was an abbey. Before there were even monks. He’d thought that about Old Melrose itself before—that it had been a sacred, maybe haunted, site long before the monks had come. Onchu would be just on the other side, seemingly only a few steps and three years away.
A premonition settled upon him like a chill. He held the strung bow straight down against his hip, but with his other hand he drew three arrows from his quiver one by one and fitted the fletches between the knuckles of his bow hand. He hadn’t yet mastered holding them in his drawing hand the way Waldroup did.
By now they should have turned and been heading along the path to the new abbey, but instead they continued in amongst the graves. By now anyone watching would have recognized the deviation.
The riders emerged from behind the old abbey. Two rode out from behind the monks’ huts, three around the ruin itself, past where the stones had fallen in. Alderman Stroud and Baldie rode together. The other three men seemed like regular soldiers, like . . . Alpin Waldroup.
Thomas kept the bow down, though they would have seen it, knew he had it, but perhaps he would not seem much of a threat to them. He’d never been much of a threat to anyone ever. Fear burned sharp in his belly. He would fail. He should hand the bow to Waldroup now while there was time. But when he offered it, he realized that Waldroup had moved off to the side, putting distance and several gravestones between them. The alderman guided his horse as if to intersect Waldroup’s path. Thomas threaded his way between the skull-headed stones.
One of the five men on horseback had a bow, too. The other two soldiers were armed with swords.
The alderman called to him. “Squire Fingal Coutts, we arrest you and your companion for the theft of that bow, which by all rights belongs to Balthair MacGillean, for whom it was made.”
It was the accusation they had rehearsed the night before. He answered it directly. “I paid for this. Ask the bowyer in Ercildoun. He sold me it and the arrows.”
The alderman smirked, clearly amused that Thomas even bothered to offer a defense against the pretense of a legal charge. In the face of such dismissal, Thomas’s fear of him turned hot. “Take them, then.” He held the bow above his arm, as if offering it to the trio of soldiers. They came ahead faster, arriving at the graves.
The one bowman among them had to guide his horse around a large broken marker. For a moment he looked down to navigate as he tugged at the reins.
Remember all you’ve learned.
Thomas turned his bow and fired. No doubt the movement made the soldier glance up, but he was only in time to take the arrow in his breastbone and not his skull. His head snapped back. His arms, guided by some instinct, fired his own nocked arrow. It skidded wide, in among the graves. The soldier fell from his horse.
With drawn swords, the other two kicked their horses to a gallop. Thomas had already nocked his second arrow, and he shot the nearest soldier from his horse. But his third passed over the horse’s mane and under the soldier’s hand gripping the reins, and sword raised he rode Thomas down.
Instinct deserted him. He froze, unable to do anything but watch his death arrive.
Then from nowhere a knife caught the soldier in the temple, embedded to the hilt, and he seemed to spring from his mount, losing hold of his sword as he fell. His panicked horse hauled him straight into the horse in front of him, and he fell under its hooves, though it was doubtful by then he noticed.
The alderman and Baldie sat their mounts side by side, chestnut and skewbald, and made no move to attack. The alderman was animated, but Baldie’s dull expression never changed, like a mask over his real face. Thomas nocked another arrow.
Alderman Stroud considered the bodies around him, as if none of the deaths meant anything. He raised one hand in acquiescence. “Very well. Further shooting is unnecessary. We sought you gentlemen of the road and we found you. Answer our questions and you can leave. You can even keep the bow. We will not seek retribution for the loss of these . . . deputies.”
“You might’ve said that first instead of threatening us with arrest for the theft of something you well knew we didn’t steal. Then your deputies would yet live,” said Waldroup.
The alderman looked between them as if uncertain where to start, who to address.
Waldroup grunted. “Have ye any real questions at all?”
Baldie interjected, demanding of Thomas, “Tell me how you know my good wife.”
Thomas opened his mouth but made no answer. Inside his head lightning sizzled. Not now, please, not now! He began to choke, and doubled over. He glimpsed Waldroup turning toward him, then looking at the other two as if they’d provoked the fit with their magic, but this had come like all the others before it. He dropped to his knees. The new arrow he’d drawn spilled from his useless, twitching fingers. He gasped raggedly, heard himself stammer:
“N-no union is sacred,
no couple be bound,
when a wake be their joining,
