Waldroup was right. Innes. He had a sister named Innes. It was as if she had been hiding. He could see her face, and didn’t want to lose her. “Innes,” he said.
“All right, then. We got Innes, your sister. And Baldie, that was Onchu’s friend. That’s good. We’ll figure you out, name the whole of your family before long.” He reached over and gripped Thomas’s shoulder. “Just be careful who you share this with. Fingal.” He gave a nod of his head at the other boys.
“You think someone’s coming after me?”
“I think it’s better that we assume so.”
“Why?” He scratched at his cheek, then set down his bowl, watching Waldroup all the while. “The green fire—it meant something to you, didn’t it?”
“Here, more meat for you, little brother.” He snatched the bowl, got up, and returned to the ceramic pot, ladled more into both Thomas’s and his own bowls and brought them back. “Eat another portion, you worked hard.” He sat down and returned to eating as if they hadn’t been speaking at all.
Thomas waited for an answer. When it didn’t come, he ate the rest of his own food. He’d have tried again, but by the time he’d finished, all he could think of was crawling into the hut. Inside it, he clambered right over Shug, who didn’t even budge but did fart. Falling asleep, he realized that he hadn’t gone to the abbey ruins at day’s end as he’d intended.
In the morning, he hurt everywhere. The taller, more muscular Kerr smiled and told him, “It’ll get better. Few more days, an’ you’ll think ya done this yer whole life.”
“I don’t think I’ll live long enough for that to happen.”
Kerr just laughed.
They cleaved block after block that day. He and Iachan assisted Waldroup and another man, who seemed the best at placing the wedges, while a third man directed the other boys with hauling the cut blocks on the sledges.
Thomas drove one of the carts back to the abbey. Beholding the site in full operation amazed him. Dozens of men crawling about on scaffolding, some—including Lachie—working treadwheels to raise blocks into the air, the stones held in place only by giant calipers—Waldroup told him this was called a lewis—others mixing mortar, climbing up ladders while balancing their hods, working in seeming peril as the shaped blocks were guided over to them and lowered, all of it coordinated with whoever worked the treadwheel. They were ants lifting grains of dirt above them as they swarmed over a mound, raising its height with each grain they placed.
That second night, he still felt as if his joints were being separated. His hand trembled as he lifted the food the monks had prepared to his mouth. He sat with the other boys for most of the meal, but eventually crouched down beside Waldroup, who asked, “How is it for ya, now, Fingal?”
He thought a moment. “I’m an old man today,” he said. Waldroup and the other men nearby all laughed.
Clacher went off. Others turned in. He remained beside Waldroup, not exactly certain as to why.
But at the point where he started to get up, Waldroup abruptly said quietly, “I’ve seen your green fire. Once.”
Thomas eased back down.
“On a battlefield in France. Your spiky knights and queen, alongside people what looked like anyone else.” His food eaten, he set down his bowl. “Believe me when I say your brother had no choice. They picked him for her tribute and that was that. Once picked, you’re done. So stop thinking it should’ve been you. If it had, you wouldn’t be here.”
“But the Queen of Heaven—”
“Not who she is, boy. There’s more heaven in my compass.” He patted his satchel. “Your brother’s took by the Queen of Ailfion as a teind, though don’t ask me what he’s a tenth part of. No one who knows that is still on our side of the veil. But you can be sure they’ll come looking for you next if they want to keep it in the family, cover their traces. All the more reason for you to be Fingal, my apprentice. ’Tis nobody looking for him.”
“Ailfion?”
“Or sometimes Elphame or Elfheim. It has dozens of names, so I been told. Seems anywhere you go, they’ve a name for it.”
Worn out, Thomas sat with his head lowered, his face a mask of confusion.
Waldroup tousled his hair. “Yeah, I know. Too much, isn’t it? I tell ya, your best move is to let it go.”
But he couldn’t let it go. At least once each day, Thomas took the opportunity to visit the ruins. He didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly: some sign of Onchu, or at least an indication that someone else had been there. But there were no such signs. The only footprints in the dirt and mud were his own. Even so, he expanded his search, looking around the piles of rubble, even creeping into the old abbey crypt, which was dark and uninviting and, as a crypt ought to be, lifeless.
Every night he went to bed with a full belly, which was about the only part of his body that didn’t hurt. He would eat whatever meal the monks in their beehive huts had prepared (some were decidedly better cooks than others) and then collapse. That changed only gradually.
Every morning, he and his Selkirk friends walked alongside Waldroup and other quarrymen, beside the ox-drawn carts. He and Waldroup didn’t discuss what Thomas hoped to find, or what he should do if indeed he came upon another group of those elvish knights and their victim.
Days dragged on, became weeks, and he realized one morning that his fits had left him, as if they had taken wing along with his memory. But that didn’t fill in any further, either: He knew only that he’d had a brother and a sister, but no family name nor where he hailed from came to him. As they dared not seek for answers to the mystery of him without possibly endangering everyone working on the abbey, the matter was left for another time, Waldroup saying only that he expected the memories would return—he’d known plenty of soldiers who’d been knocked so hard that they were like chunks of wood, but always sooner or later some of what they’d lost returned. “Or else they died,” he added. Thomas couldn’t tell if it was intended as a joke.
After a while the subject of his past seemed to matter less. The exhausting routine of quarrying became his life and filled up the vague part of him that had been scooped out. His leanness filled out, too. He was shorter than Kerr, but his shoulders were broadening, his arms and thighs thickening with muscle. A light beard softened the sharp line of his jaw.
His daily visits to the abbey ruins might have tapered off, but then came the night Iachan disappeared.
V. Iachan’s Departure
Well past the meal, and everyone had turned in. The boys slept together, and it wasn’t uncommon for various of them to get up in the night for a piss, movement that barely caused Thomas to stir if he heard it at all. That was true for all of them in their exhaustion.
If it hadn’t been for Shug, no one would have noticed the absence before morning. But Shug wasn’t given to assessing a situation before voicing his thoughts, and, returning from pissing, he asked himself aloud, “Where’s Iachan?” as he noticed the empty mat.
The whole hut stirred. Lachie said, “Leave off, Shug,” rolled over, and went back to sleep. Kerr looked up, saw the empty mat, and replied, “Gone for a piss, same’s you,” and lay back down. Kerr said nothing as both of them had covered his opinion.
Thomas nearly did the same, but sitting down beside him, Shug added softly, “Well, ’e were gone when I went out and ain’t at the piss hole neither.” Then he lay down and promptly farted.
Two minutes later, Thomas was still awake and Iachan hadn’t returned. He leaned up on his elbows to stare at the unoccupied mat. There was nowhere to go, and why would Iachan wander off anyway?
He got up and padded out of the hut. If anyone heard, they thought he was also going for a piss after being awakened by Shug. Outside, he put on his shoes. He hesitated to wake Alpin, fully expecting Iachan to reappear momentarily. Still, where would he be? Wandering around the abbey in the dark? Too dangerous, and there were plenty of stones to perch on out here if he needed a think, but nobody was sitting there. Not even Clacher munching on some tansy to cure his gout.
He knew that what he was thinking was a ridiculous leap and that by the time he got back everybody might be looking for him, too. But he argued that if he went to the ruins, at least he would confirm that events there weren’t the reason for Iachan’s absence.
Thomas carefully picked his way past the huts and stones and piles of rubble to the downriver path, then increased his pace until he was quick-marching through the deep darkness. The path had its treacherous tree roots and stones, and he was careful of each.
