“Who could?” The two men shared the memory in traded smiles.
“Baggi, now—his death I remember. People claimed he dissolved right in front of them. But the widow—an elf? I mean, she’s the size of Eildon Hill.”
“She probably lives beneath it.” Thomas strode into the room. “It is good to see you, Forbes. I know you cannot say the same for me, and I understand that, I do.”
The miller nodded once, a ruined smile on his face. “You could have been much more convenient.”
“Or less inconvenient? And on more than one occasion, as my wife will remind me later.”
Forbes said, “A captive were you, then, all this time?”
“Was, but that’s done and we should share a meal and talk of things yet to come.”
Forbes responded to the melancholy note in that and rose to his feet. “What things?”
Thomas and Janet traded a look. Her eyes told him to trust this man.
“They aren’t done with me, these elves. They aren’t happy little creatures hiding in amongst leaves and tree boles, as you’ve no doubt concluded. And they have every intention of returning me to a cell forever and letting me rot.”
“They’re coming after you again, then.”
“And anyone dear to me.”
Forbes glanced at Janet. “Morven,” he muttered. “Ah, I understand now.”
Now both men were looking at her. Uncomfortably, she replied, “Do I have any say in this? Or are you two going to plot out everything for me?”
Thomas answered, “None of us has a say. I’m hoping to have delayed them. Still, they’ll come, and we need to be away by then. We thought you might help, Forbes, with the selling of all Cardden’s holdings. We would go abroad, perhaps ride for Italia. In any case, far from here. Safe, if such a thing exists.”
“And if you haven’t gotten away?” Forbes asked.
“If we haven’t, then Janet needs to be elsewhere, as before. Your mill—it seems like a good choice. No one knows to hunt for either of us there. And if they take me again, then . . .” He was about to tell her that she should marry the miller with his blessing, but the words caught in his gorge. While the Yvag knights would never let him go a second time—would more likely kill him outright—he couldn’t yet acknowledge the idea of his wife bound to this other man, however good and kind and reliable. He could even have been ungenerous and complained how the elves’ hunt for him was all to Forbes’s advantage, but he buried that thought like a burning coal under ashes.
Instead, he gestured to the miller. “Come, let’s eat something, Forbes. There is food prepared, yes?” Janet nodded. “And we’re in a feast hall. Let us discuss what needs discussing.” He leaned down and pressed a hand to her cheek. “All of us.”
A flagon of wine stood on the table. At least their guest might enjoy it.
XXXIV. Fortnight
In bed beside Janet, tucked up under the coverlet, surrounded on two sides by hanging tapestries and one small candle lamp on a chain, Thomas lay on his side and watched her sleep. Despite that she was asleep, he maintained the appearance of his older self, matching her years. He hoped she would forget that he hadn’t aged alongside her and accept his older self. Eventually perhaps his appearance would catch up to hers. Give it ten or fifteen years and he would be an old man.
The meal with Forbes had revealed the flaws in their plan to sell off Cardden’s holdings before leaving. As the miller had stated plainly, “A davoch this size is going to catch the attention of all the people you suspect of being elves. I could certainly avoid a widow Mac an Fleisdeir just by not soliciting buyers in Selkirk. But you’re saying we can’t be sure of anyone, including the largest landowner around, that Rimor of Ercildoun. How do we keep the information from him? I fear that you would have to transfer all of your holdings to me or someone else who can be on hand and withstand the scrutiny, while you are long gone.”
It made sense. They needed to draw up papers, to name someone. Thomas considered the Lusk brothers. It was going to take more time than he’d hoped. He doubted he would ever know a good night’s sleep again.
Since his return, he’d slept only in short bursts—a few hours at a time interspersed with periods of keen alertness, his thoughts rattling like stones inside his skull. It was as if his mind was stretching, listening for the distant sizzle of the world splitting open and Yvag knights pouring like beetles out of the opening. Kester or Filib, on watch for the portal, would alert him, but he couldn’t help dwelling upon the idea.
His dreams now seemed to be full of ghosts: of Waldroup teaching him to shoot (no doubt because he was teaching the Lusks and drawing upon every lesson his friend had presented him); of Clacher shouting, “Day’s end!”; of Taliesin whispering from the next cell, “They’re coming!,” a phrase echoed by the ghost of Sìleas, who blew away to dust even as her warning awoke him. These nocturnal foretokens were the company he kept now. Nevertheless, upon awakening from one of these respites, he crawled out from beneath the embroidered coverlet and linens, slipped past the tapestries, and went to the shuttered window, where through the slits he peered across the yard and out the gate until he was shivering with cold. Only then did he give up his vigil and climb naked back into the bed again.
Then, with a stubby candleflame fluttering, he watched his wife sleep, stung by the quiet desperate yearning to insert himself into all the years they had been apart. The yearning never left him; even when he wasn’t thinking about it, he walked in the company of a phantasmal existence that hadn’t happened: a daughter he hadn’t seen grow, a partner who’d endured without him. It was as though he was trying to memorize her life backward, seeking places he might add himself to create a new past. It was not so different from the nights in Ailfion’s prison when he’d strained to imagine what she might be doing at that moment in their house, certain he would never escape confinement nor see her again. Imagination was all he’d had. He was determined that he would never again leave her side. He would die in battle with the elves before he would let any harm befall her or be dragged back through the green fire.
She shifted, winced in her sleep, and changed position again.
Some ailment troubled her, of that he had grown certain. She did not seem to know the cause of the pain, and behaved as if untroubled by its existence most of the time. She had visited the infirmarer among the monks at the Abbey of St. Mary, who had given her a slender pharmacy jar of ointment, of myrrh and cannabis and poppy. It offered her some comfort. Mostly it made her drowsy. The monks had prescribed prayer above all.
Janet assured Thomas that it was a minor affliction—strained muscles, something of that order. It did not keep her from her day’s work, so it couldn’t be too serious. He doubted her reassurances, unable now to escape his own terrible fear that fate intended to take her from him again. And so he watched her sleeping until she stirred at dawn and met his gaze.
She mildly admonished him. “Oh, Tàm, you need to sleep.”
He could only shrug as if to say it was out of his control. They lay together then, touching, kissing. He talked of the plans for when the Yvags came. He knew she didn’t want to discuss it—it was too much like the last time twenty years before when they had planned how she would take Morven and flee. Now it was to Oakmill and Forbes she must go. The servants would be told an altogether different story, of course. This time, afterward they would leave Scotland and not return.
What they did not speak of was Morven. She was a hole in both their lives. He had done his grieving over her in the Yvag prison, and the sadness accompanied him always, the way Onchu’s death remained forever with him. Janet grieved for the child she hadn’t raised, the life she’d sacrificed to make sure their daughter was safe from any retaliation.
His and Janet’s was a frail and insular state of existence. He prayed there would be time to sell off Cardden’s land, to flee to France and resume a life with their daughter. If only Taliesin could keep up the appearance of two prisoners and the Yvags did not become suspicious. Perhaps they might live unchallenged for years.
In the end, they had just over a fortnight.
Filib Lusk watched Alderman Threave of Jedburgh lead three other horsemen up from the Teviot Water to his door. Late sun cut across the landscape, edging the five men in gold and throwing long shadows off them as they approached.
Threave was a tall, somewhat stoop-backed man with a weak chin and a sharp nose that had been broken and badly set at some point in the past. He had humorless hazel eyes. He wore knee-high boots, an embroidered orange wool cloak, and a hat with a padded brim that pushed his hair down over his ears. The three following him all looked like soldiers, but with mismatched helmets, and cloaks of various lengths and colors worn over darker tunics, as if they had been pulled from three different armies to accompany the alderman. What was oddest about them, however, was that the black chargers they rode looked identical, and identical to the one Tàm Lynn had ridden out of the green halo. The light was too low for him to make out the hoofprints, but he knew what he would find.
While he and his brother had practiced their archery up at the shieling, Filib’s eldest son had kept watch at Old Melrose. As the day darkened, a green fire had flared up out of nowhere just as the boy had been told to expect, and nine of the elves had ridden out of the slice in the world.
Now Filib’s boys and wife were packed off to friends in Kelso, safe from harm, so he took a risk and left his bow leaning against the wall inside the door as he went out to meet his visitors. Armed and defensive would be foolish, and proof of complicity. It would give away everything. Besides, two of the soldiers held crossbows. The four of them would finish him long before he could cut down even one. So he stood at his door in a clean tunic and leggings, unarmed, and dissembled that he was surprised by the approaching party, nor recognized the identity of the alderman himself.
Filib nodded respectfully to him as the foursome neared, and said, “What might I help ye with, yer honor?”
