Nobody’s Son Read online

  “I think Richard had his own reasons for not coming to the wedding,” Lissa said.

  Valerian took another sip of his mulled wine. “Last moon, the innwife started having her strange dreams…About the time that you, friend Mark, your mighty deed all done, strode forth from out the Ghostwood eaves to claim the prize you had by heroism won.”

  Mark nodded. “You said it would change things, didn’t you?…You know, of all of it, t’Awd Man is the thing that bothers me,” Mark said softly. “All the rest was like a dream. But I’ll bet he lives there still, sitting in the kitchen, stirring in his ashes, looking for some horrible secret.”

  “Don’t!” Gail cried. “You’re just trying to scare us now.” She shivered. “You told me you took that old dagger you wear from the Red Keep—I asked because I wondered why he kept a knife so dull—” she explained to Lissa. “But why didn’t you tell anyone what it was?”

  “The man who’s robbed at the door, leaves by the window,” Mark said drily.

  “Oh. I guess you’re still mad about Sweetness, hunh?”

  Mark grunted.

  “Dearly would I love to look upon Queen Lerelil’s gift,” Valerian said. “I have a passion for all ancient things.”

  Mark took the medallion from around his neck and passed it to Valerian.

  “It’s a magic charm,” Gail said decisively.

  Mark scowled. “Don’t play the peasant, Gail. We don’t believe in charms nor magic spells nor t’evil eye neither, even in the country.”

  “You don’t believe in magic! How do you explain everything that happened to you!”

  “I think there was magic once,” Mark said slowly. “But I’ve never felt it, outside the Ghostwood. And I think…I think you’d know, somehow, if there were any in the world. I guess I wrecked the last magic left in the kingdom,” he said with a little laugh. But inside Mark’s heart was pierced with longing, and great grief. What if that were true? What if you broke the last spell there was? Now no sunset will ever be so beautiful, no song so sweet, no story so grand as it bad been once.

  He felt again the great, dry, empty drift of years behind him. What if you’ve broken the last bridge there was between the present and the past?

  Lissa said, “I don’t believe in magic either.”

  “Lissa!” Gail cried, hurt. “You used to believe.”

  Lissa raised her cup and sipped her wine. “Yes I did. Once.”

  “Do you believe in magic?” Mark asked Val.

  Val looked up from the medallion. Carefully, he said, “I believe in poetry, and I believe in God. Is magic something different from these two?”

  “You’re the only man I’ve met that truly believed in God,” Mark said, wondering and strangely envious. For the first time in his life he wanted to believe, but that well within himself was dry, empty as the Red Keep’s ruins.

  “Nobody believes in God,” Lissa said. “Not even Bishop Cirdon.”

  Valerian shrugged and handed back Queen Lerelil’s charm. “I know it’s not in fashion, lady. But years of peering through these spectacles have made me marvel at the confluence of things, and left me with a wonder that will not go away. There is a little bit of everything in all. At certain moments, staring through my scrying glass, or looking at a sunset, or listening to the brook that runs behind my father’s house, for an instant I forget myself, and lose the thing I’m thinking on, and catch a tiny glimpse of everything instead. There is a place the soul goes, between one thought, one time, one heartbeat and the next…” He faltered, as if embarrassed to have said too much.

  Lissa said, “You are eloquent.”

  Mark cut himself a thick slice of bread and covered it in butter. When they had first stepped into the Ram, with its embering fire, its low chat and beery smoky smell, he thought he’d left the wind and rain behind.

  But now the night came creeping back into his heart; a darkness of rain falling on abandoned fields, forgotten houses. Things lost, or buried, or left behind. He could feel it pressing against the tavern’s thin walls.

  After a time he said, “I’ve felt it. The memories.” Washing down a piece of bread with a gulp of wine. “Like she said. All my life I’ve pointed straight as a signpost: Ghostwood, 3 miles. And after I went, it would just be, you know,”—he smiled at Gail—“happily ever after.”

  “Hah! I am no man’s happily ever after!”

  Lissa coughed.

  Gail scowled at her. “What I mean is, this is just the beginning! I expected I should be married to some dull Duke and keep house and practise needlepoint and be generally dead from the moment I married. But you! You rescued me from that.” She shrugged and laid three strips of bacon across a slice of buttered bread. “But I know what you mean. You never thought of life after your trip. For a woman, it’s marriage you can’t see to the other side of.”

  Valerian fluffed himself, and a quick smile flashed within his beard. “I fear no woman’s vision extends even to this side of the nuptial river: not with me standing on the bank, that is.”

  “You were a great disappointment to us,” Lissa suddenly remarked.

  “Eh?” Val looked up, a square of bacon impaled on the end of his fork. Mark, caught sucking his fingers, glanced around at the others. A sick feeling roiled in his belly. They eat bacon wi’ knife and fork?

  Shite.

  A strange expression was on Lissa’s face, mixed from memory and mischief. “It is not permitted for young ladies of the Court to mingle with young gentlemen, of course. But no father’s word, nor wizard’s hand, ever yet has stopped determined maids. We used to watch you very closely. You and all the other gamecocks strutting through the Palace.”

  “I confess I don’t remember you,” Val said, colouring slightly.

  “We were children,” Lissa said. “Little girls are by young men infallibly ignored, if there are bigger girls around. But my tale was saying you surprised us when you fell in love.”

  Gail grinned, licking her greasy fingers. “I’d forgotten that. He had a crush on Teris, didn’t he?”

  Lissa ignored Val’s strangled squeak. “We were disappointed, sir. Every coxcomb’s heart was tangled in the lime she placed so artfully on her cheeks, or caught in that crevasse of bosom Master Bolt’s dresses kept showing off. We guessed that you would fall for Willan, who had a finer mind, though smaller breasts. But you were dull and loved her not; we thought you very stupid, and swore to think of menfolk nevermore.”

  Gail giggled. “Oh, that was awful. Even then I knew I wouldn’t have big, uh, that I…” She trailed off into silence.

  Valerian bobbed and peered and huffed. “I trust…I trust my taste improved with time, and with it my discretion.”

  Mercifully, Carter’s Kev chose this moment to come downstairs and approach their table, hands clasped respectfully before him. “Is everything to your satisfaction?”

  Gail and Lissa burst out laughing. Steady on, lad: no smirking. Stand by Val as he’s stood by you, Mark thought, desperately crushing down a snigger.

  “Everything is wonderful,” Valerian sulked. “Marvellous, Couldn’t be better.”

  Mark nodded gravely. “I think we’ll tipple a little more of t’awd grape-juice, Kev.”

  “Oh yes.” Valerian stuck out his glass like a beggar’s cup. “Yes please. A great deal more wine.”

  “Jane!” the innkeeper yelled. “Wine! You’ve left their glasses empty.”

  “I’ve been cooking, dear, and we do have other trade, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Jane said, appearing from the kitchen with a copper kettle in hand.

  “Half your ‘trade’ is drinking on credit,” Kev snapped. “They can wait.” He turned and shrugged, looking at Mark. “She’s a good cook, as I think you’ll agree, but she hasn’t much head for business. There’s women for you: no sense for money.”

  “Oh?” Lissa’s fine eyebrows arched.

  The innkeeper blanched. Of course Lissa’s wearing the price of the Ram on her back, poor bastard. “Women,
uh, women like our Jane, that is…”

  “I’m not greedy,” Jane said imperturbably, pouring mulled wine from the kettle into Val’s glass. “Is that what you meant, dear? It’s your worst fault, Kev: being greedy. You needn’t be proud of it.”

  The innkeeper managed a sick smile. “Just trying to keep a roof ower your head, and dresses on our daughters,” he said. “Nowt wrong wi’ that.”

  Jane smiled and pecked him on the cheek. “No. There’s nowt wrong wi’ that at all.”

  “There is a school,” Valerian remarked as their hosts retreated, “to which all women go, where they learn to outwit men.”

  “Oh sir, let me assure you,” Lissa said, smiling sweetly, “the feat is not so difficult that it requires lessons!”

  The fried potatoes, when they came, were garnished with mushrooms and altogether excellent. They ate and drank as only people out walking all day can.

  But however much they drank, they did not grow merry with it. They had spent much of the day thinking ahead to Mark’s new Keep at Borders and chatting about what they would find there. But now they were no longer on the road, and their thoughts, like their feet, went no farther forward, but back, back, always back. Valerian told a funny story of a grasshopper collection and his father’s armour. Looking back with shining eyes, Lissa told of scrapes and scamps that she and Gail had shared.

  “By the Devil’s big black hat, you two were a pair of vixens in the henhouse,” Mark said at last. “Is there no end to these stories? I’m surprised t’awd King didn’t sew you up in bags and toss you i’ the moat like kittens.”

  Lissa gave Mark a curious look. “Many were the lives you changed, when you took Gail to be your wife. She used…she used to tell me she would marry one like you. Some day. A dashing prince would ride up to the palace and carry her off. And I always knew she would be right.”

  “But I can’t even ride! What a disappointment I must have been.”

  “Not for Gail,” Lissa said. She looked into her cup of wine, as if she saw a day long past, drowned there in the dregs. “We were mad for horses. We used to run about the garden screaming, pretending to be stallions. Perhaps we did not sound like horses, but that is what we said we were. Once Gail fell, and twisted her ankle, and I ran to fetch her nurse. When we got back Gail wouldn’t tell us what was wrong, but only neighed instead.”

  “Until nurse cuffed you.”

  “She was so scared she had to hit someone, and she didn’t dare touch you.”

  Gail nodded slowly, shaking her head in wonder. “I’d forgotten that.”

  Lissa took a long slow sip of wine. “You forget things,” she said.

  Aye: a lot of water gone by between those two…

  Mark signalled the innwife for more wine. “All girls are mad for horses. In my village the grandmothers sang the boys to sleep this way:

  Hush little soldier,

  Time to go to sleep

  In your dreams gran will give you

  A silver sword to keep.”

  “My nurse sang that too!” Val laughed, holding up his cup so Jane could fill it with more wine.

  Mark held out his goblet. “But if it was a girl, they sang:

  Hush little Princess

  Time to go to sleep.

  In your dreams gran will give you

  A silver mare to keep.”

  A second voice had joined him. Looking up Mark saw the innwife standing by their table. She was still as a statue, except for her hands, which pulled and twisted on her apron hem. She sang so softly they could barely hear. Her eyes were full of rain and darkness.

  “You shall have a bridle

  And saddle of gold,

  And your little mare will take you

  Wherever it’s told.

  Hush little Princess,

  And always be good

  Or Aron will take you

  Down into the Wood.

  Hush little Princess,

  Ghosts are all gone,

  Your Troubles are over

  Until the next dawn…”

  She fell silent; one tear tracked down her cheek like a bead of rain.

  The whole inn had fallen whisper-still. Carter’s Kev came slowly out from behind the bar. “All right, our Jane, all right,” he murmured. “It’s ower now, long long ago.” He reached, awkward as a scarecrow, to put his arm around her shoulders.

  She whirled and slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me,” she hissed.

  “There weren’t nowt to be done for her, J—”

  “All these years I’ve let you touch me.” She untied her apron and put it on the bar. “You’ll have to finish up, Kev.”

  Stick thin and brittle, he watched her walk back through the kitchen, and away.

  Gail and Lissa slept in one room, Mark and Val in the other. The long day and the mulled wine had Val snoring softly the instant his head touched the pillow.

  Mark was not so lucky.

  Hush little soldier…

  Like a mill-wheel the lullaby turned and turned within his heart, each turn bringing up a new wash of grief.

  Part of it was Janey the innwife, of course: singing for some daughter lost or sick or fallen. Many a mother had such a ghost to haunt her.

  But the grief ran deeper still.

  It was his mother’s voice that sang the song, Mark realized. His mother singing that song to him…while in the background his father made to go.

  A silver sword to keep…

  He couldn’t find his father’s face.

  This memory was like all the rest: angry footsteps, a clattering shield, part of a leg walking by, a man with his back to Mark’s bed, bending over to stow something in his pack.

  Tension like a wire round his heart.

  And in the air his mother’s song, trying to soothe him, trying to make him go to sleep.

  Make him go to sleep so they could fight. And it was rage that stiffened your dad’s back, rage that made your mother’s voice tremble as she sang.

  And you always knew it. You never told yourself before. But you’ve always known, haven’t you?

  Always.

  His mother was willing him to sleep and he was a good boy and he tried to do what she wanted. But after he closed his eyes the voices would go outside; hers mostly, rising and falling outside their cottage walls like a bitter wind.

  …time to go to sleep.

  So sad. So sad a song.

  He lay on his back and stared up at the darkness. “What’s happening to me?” he whispered.

  For something moved inside of him. All his life he’d been leather-tough, stone patient, fierce as fire. He took pride in knowing every warp and grain of his own character. He thought he knew his heart like a house he’d made himself: the good and the bad together.

  But something had changed.

  He’d barely been scratched at the Red Keep, but he was bleeding to death inside. T’awd Mark’s dying, dying. It’s like when you think you’ve woken in your own bed, but you’re still asleep: everything you thought you knew is strange and witched wi’ shadows. The house he’d made of himself was full of long, empty passages he could not remember, and dark corners that had never seen the light. A wild, dark wind blew in his heart.

  When had he forgotten that terrible lullaby? How long had he known that his mother was biting back her fury and willing him to sleep? How many years had wire been cutting into his heart?

  How did you forget everything that mattered?

  Lissa’s blue eyes aglint with anger as she looked at Gail: “You forget things.”

  And all these things he thought, half-asleep with weariness and wine, while in the next room Gail and Lissa talked late, late into the night, and their womanvoices rose and fell, fell and rose, and still the long cloud stretched out from the Ghostwood like a weeping shadow.

  * * *

  A crisp rap on the wall woke him up.

  “Rise and shine!” Gail cried. “Rise and—”

  Mark groaned and thumped the wall w
ith his fist.

  Tucked under his blankets like a tubby brown-bearded cat, Valerian barely twitched.

  Mark blinked and bleared. “Ower much wine, not enow…water!” Ah! This is why Lissa ordered water for our rooms! He stumbled over to the red clay basin and drank deep, then ran his wet hands over his face until his skin woke up.

  Rise and shine, he thought, blinking. Ugh.

  It took almost half an hour for him to dress, and he needed some help from Valerian in managing the complicated lacings on his white shirt. “Oh, leave it,” he grunted at last. “A man in such a hat as this pink one o’ mine can’t worry ower much on fashion.” He plodded from the room, leaving Val behind: another hour to trim his beard and brush his pants and polish his bum, no doubt. Now you know what the rich people do instead of working, he thought sourly.

  He knocked on the women’s door.

  “It’s open,” Gail yelled. “Fifty-seven.”

  “Val’s to be a bit longer,” Mark said, letting himself in. “He still has his eyelashes to curl, and toes to powder. Are the brace of you ready for breakfast?”

  “Fifty-eight. Almost.” Gail knelt on the bed with her back to him, brushing Lissa’s hair. Lissa sat looking out the window at the grey sky. With her left hand Gail would gather up a stream of golden hair, and then pull the brush slowly through it with her right. The sight of his wife, kneeling like a servant and slowly stroking Lissa’s thick, heavy golden hair, affected Mark strangely.

  “Fifty-nine.” The women did not look at him.

  Mark gathered his wits together. “‘Almost’ as in soon, or almost by Court time?”

  “Forty more strokes,” Gail said. “Sixty.” She gathered Lissa’s golden hair and brushed it, serious as a nun at prayer.

  You’re not wanted.

  She’s my wife!

  You’re not wanted all the same. This is private, here: private to these two, and you’ve no business watching them.

  He left the women’s chambers.

  Downstairs the common room was empty. Carter’s Kev sat at one of the tables, head bowed. He did not rise as Mark came down the stairs.