An Antic Disposition (28 page)

“And some of us have none at all,” I said.

“I can pray for the dead,” he said. “My principal concern is for those still alive. I want to keep them that way.”

“Not all of them,” I said.

“There’s one in particular I need kept alive,” he said. “Amleth is back.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “He escaped transport to England?”

“Your sister sent a warning to him in Ribe,” he said. “He got word to Kanard, the local fool. Kanard arranged with a group of mercenaries to take him off the ship after it left port.”

“But if he’s in Slesvig, then Fengi might have him killed.”

“The blood debt is to you as Gorm’s son, not to Fengi,” said Father Gerald. “If you assert the right to collect it, then Amleth stays alive at your will. His mother will still try and protect him, and he has one other trick up his sleeve, but in order for him to stay alive, we need you to play a scene of forbearance.”

“When?”

“When you go to the cemetery. He’s waiting there with Horace.”

I wanted to put my fist through the lattice separating us.

“This is my sister’s funeral,” I said. “How can you ask me to do this?”

“The time may come when I will ask you to do something far worse,” he said. “Are you with us or not?”

“God have mercy on my soul,” I said.

“I’ll take care of that as well,” he said wryly.

P
laying
that scene at my sister’s grave site was the hardest thing I have ever done. Looking back, I wonder now if it was yet another test on the part of the Guild. I wouldn’t put it past Father Gerald.

In any event, we convinced Fengi, and that was my way in. When I reported back to Father Gerald about Fengi’s plans, he was practically gleeful.

“But that’s perfect,” he said. “He’s given us the means of his own death and your escape. All you have to do is cut Amleth with your sword, then let him get it from you and return the favor. He can kill Fengi, and you will both die in front of a room full of drunken witnesses.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “I thought we were escaping Slesvig, not the burdens of existence. If we are cut with a poisoned blade, then don’t we sort of die?”

“You won’t be using his poison,” said Father Gerald impatiently. “There is a potent brew known to the Guild as the Sleep of Death. Very powerful. One drop will have you splayed out on the floor inside a minute.”

“But won’t I only look like I’m asleep?”

“Not from a distance, and not if a priest gets to you first and pronounces you dead.”

“Know any priests?” I asked him.

Amleth and I worked out the details of our duel by messages passed through Horace and Father Gerald. On the day of the feast, Horace slipped me a stoppered flask no bigger than my pinkie.

“Don’t take it until you are down and ready to die,” he said. “I recommend sewing it into your collar just below your chin.”

“Have you ever used this?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But Gerald tested it on himself after he made it. He woke up eventually.”

And so it was that I found myself on the clay floor, pig’s blood oozing from under my tunic, sucking an unknown potion from a flask and hoping as I fell into the blackness that I would emerge from the other side.

I woke on a stone slab with Father Gerald hovering over me, shoving something from another flask into my mouth. I coughed, and resolved to give up flasks of any kind. I sat up, saw Amleth looking at me, and then the bodies of Fengi and Gerutha. The next few minutes were like a fever dream—unlike the others, 1 had no idea that Father Gerald could wield a staff like that. I had never seen a man killed before. It wasn’t pretty.

Before I knew it, I found myself standing outside the cathedral in cloak, makeup, and motley, ready to run through the night. Then Amleth plucked at my sleeve.

“I want to go to the cemetery,” he said. “I want to say good-bye.

“Me, too,” I replied, and we ran silently north, vaulting the fence and locating our families in the faint moonlight.

Alfhild’s grave was by that of my parents. I sat at its foot. With no scene to play, no Lother to act, I was suddenly at a loss for words, and could only offer her my silence.

Amleth came back from visiting his father’s unmarked grave and sat by me.

“I would have given my life to save her,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “Yet she is dead, and you live on.”

He said nothing.

“There was a moment in our duel when I thought you might really kill me,” I said.

“Why would I do that?” he asked.

“Because I let your mother die,” I said. “I saw Fengi poison the cup after it was refilled.”

“Ah,” he said. “I wondered about that. Why did you let her die?

“Because she killed my sister,” I said.

He leaned forward and rested his body on her grave.

“How do you know this?” he asked.

“I saw the bruises on Alfhild’s shoulders when they brought her back,” I said. “They were made by the hands of whoever drowned her. They were not large hands from the spacing. When Gerutha came back to the stockade, supposedly from the market, I noticed that her sleeves were damp, and her basket was light. I searched the meadow near the pond that day.”

“What did you find?” he asked.

“Alfhild’s clothing had vanished, but she still had it on when she escaped from the forest—there were scraps of it caught on the brush. I found our father’s dagger in the clearing..

“The clearing,” he echoed, rolling onto his back and covering his face. “That accursed clearing.”

“I came back and went into the kitchen,” I continued. “I learned from a thrall that Gerutha had brought nothing back from the market to contribute to that day’s meals. Her basket lay empty by the fire. There was a crushed flower stuck to it, one that had come from by the pond where Alfhild had died. And there was a charred scrap from Alfhild’s gown in the fireplace.

“I think that Gerutha suspected that Fengi had cast his eye on Alfhild, and could not let her live. She killed my sister, Amleth. I did not take vengeance upon Gerutha, but when I saw the cup rise to her lips, I said nothing. I let her die.”

“You had just cause,” he said. “More than you know. But I have no quarrel with you for it. I had reason to want my mother dead as well.”

“Because she married your father’s murderer,” I said.

“Because she helped my father’s murderer,” he said. He sat up and looked at the moon. “It’s going to snow tonight.”

“You said I had more cause than I know,” I said. “Tell me.”

“You see things as a child that you don’t understand, that have no meaning until you look at them from the vantage that the passage of time can give you,” he said. “My mother was a wildly ambitious woman. She wanted to rise, and rise, and rise until she was mistress of all. My father was no match for her ambition. I saw things, heard things, learned more from Yorick and Gerald. When my father refused to kill Valdemar, she knew that he was not the one who would take her where she wanted to go. She needed an ambition worthy of hers. She needed Fengi. And he needed her. It’s hard to say who seduced who.

“But Fengi was no equal of my father when it came to swordplay. On the day my father rode to the Sacred Hill for the Slesvig
thing,
my mother gave him a libation of mead that she prepared herself. She drank from it as well, and soon after felt the need to retire to her room to sleep. So early, I thought, but it gave me the chance to slip out to watch, so I paid it no more mind. Then I saw my father fight like a man weighed down by chains. She had drugged him, and that allowed Fengi’s poisoned blade to do its work.”

“And my cause?” I asked.

“’Vou said she was jealous of Alfhild,” he said. “You were right, but it was not just of Alfhild. She despised any woman who she thought might supplant her, who would deny her supremacy within her tiny realm. I think if you live too much of your life inside walls, you go mad. I think she did. I think that I get some of my madness from her. I saw you born, did you know that?”

“I know that you were here …”

“You misunderstand,” he said impatiently. “I was actually in the room when you came out of that mysterious place between your mother’s legs. And before the midwife came, my mother attended your mother. My mother, who knew how she was hated on our island, and how Signe was loved and praised. Every word was wormwood to her. Even their gardens mocked her. She attended your mother at your birth, and gave her something to drink. For the pain, she said. Then your mother died, and when I brought flowers to place by Signe, my mother threw them away and I saw the mask drop for a moment. She hated her from the depths of her soul. And then the midwife was murdered, and it was never discovered by whom. I think that she must have noticed something, and my mother killed her to prevent it from coming out.”

“Alfhild was behaving so oddly this last month,” I said. “She told me that Gerutha fed her special meals and took her personally in hand. Gerutha must have been giving her something that was slowly sapping her life. But something must have happened to make her want to kill her quickly.”

“My mother was quite the connoisseuse of poisons, it seems,” he said. “Did she recognize the one that killed her as it passed her tongue? I hope so. Ydu see, Lother, you had ample cause to want her dead.”

I struggled to my feet and looked down at him.

“It ends here,” I said. “We are the last. The blood feud between us ends now.”

“Why should there be one?” he asked.

“You did kill my father,” I reminded him.

“Actually, I didn’t,” he replied.

“Do you deny killing him?” I said in amazement. “All of Slesvig knows that Amleth is Gorm’s killer.”

“Oh, I killed Gorm,” he said easily, getting to his feet. “I admit it, and I am glad of it. But Gorm was not your father.”

“What?” I shouted. I felt as if the earth itself were moving under me, preparing to split asunder and pull me down to join Alfhild.

“You have to know this,” he said urgently. “We may never see each other again after tonight, and I am the only one who can tell you this. I saw it happen, the love between them grow, the attraction pulling them together in spite of all sense and logic. I saw how they looked at each other, how they talked to each other, how they talked of each other when they were apart.”

“Who?” I begged him. “My mother and who?”

“Yorick,” he said, taking me gently by the shoulders. “You are his image on earth, Lother. No one knew him better than I. No one saw him without his whiteface on except me. Look at you, you’re thirteen and already nearly my height. You’ll be tall and slender like he was, not the tree stump that was Gorm. Alfhild was Signe reborn, but you are your father’s son.”

“But I didn’t know him,” I whispered. “I thought I still had a parent, and now you’ve taken him away and given me this phantom.”

“And when I killed Gorm, I killed your father’s murderer,” he said. “No, no more,” I said. “I cannot take it all in. Father Gerald said that Reynaldo …”

“Father Gerald thinks Yorick was killed because he discovered Fengi’s plans,” said Amleth. “But the memory that kept coming back when I was older was the day before Yorick disappeared forever.”

“What happened?”

“We were swimming,” he said, almost dreamily. “When we came out of the water, Gorm approached us. He was looking at Yorick so oddly. ‘I have never seen you without your whiteface on, Fool,’ he said. I understand now why you wear it. Your face is quite hideous without it. And that night, Yorick vanished.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Yau were four,” he said. “Your features had settled into your face. And Gorm saw them for the first time on Yorick’s face, cleansed of its mask by the waters of the fjord. In that instant, Gorm knew Signe had betrayed him, and Yorick’s very existence would mock his every waking moment.

“It took me so long to understand all of this, but I’ve had plenty of time to sit and think behind my wall of stakes. There was a time when Yorick could have run from Slesvig. I begged him to go, to take me with him, but he said he had to return, even if it meant his life. ‘I have my reasons,’ he told me. I thought then that it had something to do with his Guild mission, but later on I realized that there was something more powerful binding him here. Something worth dying for.”

“What?” I asked.

“You,” he said. “He stayed because you were here, and even though he had fallen out of favor and was rarely allowed in your presence, those few times were enough. You were his son, even if he couldn’t be your father.”

“Did you ever find him?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “In the last place any of us thought of looking.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Here,” he said, leading me over to a patch of ground strewn with dead weeds. “I was chatting with the gravedigger once a few years ago while visiting my father’s grave. He’s a simple man who asks few questions about anything. The subject of Yorick came up, I cannot say why, and he mentioned burying him. I asked him when, and he scratched his head, and said he had been roused from his sleep by none other than the Duke’s drost, who ordered him to prepare a grave posthaste. He had Yorick covered in a cart, and did not want to distress young Amleth, meaning me, begging your pardon, good sir, over the news, for we all know how sensitive and prone to fits the boy has been since his poor father’s death, alas.”

I looked down at the spot, which had no stone or marker of any kind.

“It ends here,” I said. “Here and now.”

“It ends tonight,” he agreed. “But not quite yet.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I have told you all of this because I may not live out the night,” he said. “There is one more task I need to accomplish. As the heir to Slesvig, it will be my first and last official act.”

“What is it?”

“Father Gerald is optimistic if he thinks that Valdemar will come here straightaway,” he said. “And even if he does send the army, it will be two weeks before it arrives. A band of mercenaries this large and this organized can do quite a lot of harm in two weeks.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“Kill their leaders,” he said. “That should send the rest of them packing.”