In the Ruins (62 page)

“No, I did not. I saw him.”

“Then you saw more than I did! I looked, but I saw nothing. Or maybe that’s just how it goes when a girl is young and stupid. I married a good man who works hard and can feed me and my younger sisters and our child. There are only shadows in those ruins now.”

“Have you walked there since?”

“I went there at midwinter, just a few months back. Because I thought of you, in truth. Because we saw you in the cage. I didn’t think that was right. It was Heric done it, and I cursed him for it.”

She paused, waiting.

“What do you want?” he asked her. “You did no wrong to me, and I none to you, I think.”

“I just wanted to see you in the dusk,” she said, “to see if the shadows made you look like they say that prince did.
To see if you might be his by-blow, as some whispered. Shadow-born. Demon’s get.”

“Do you think I am?” She puzzled him. She was cleaner and prettier than she had been before, better cared for in both dress and manner, and while she did not seem precisely friendly, neither did she seem spiteful.

“You’re not what you seem,” she said, turning away. She took three steps before turning back to look at him. “There was nothing in those ruins, not even shadows, because there was no moon to make shades. But if you want to hear the weeping of ghosts, go to Ravnholt Manor.”

Because of the cool weather and the clouds, the abandoned path leading to Ravnholt Manor was not at all overgrown or difficult to pass except for some fallen branches and a thick cushion of leaf litter. He came into the clearing at midday two days after his departure from Lavas. He discovered eight graves dug beside a chapel that was just big enough to seat a half dozen worshipers beside its miniature Hearth. From a distance, the mounded graves still looked fresh, but that was only because so few weeds had grown in the dirt. It wasn’t until he came up close that he saw how the earth had settled and compacted. A deer’s track, its sides crumbling, marked the corner of one mound. A rat sprinted away through the ruined main house, whip tail vanishing into a hole in the rubble. Otherwise it was silent.

No. There. He heard a faint honking and, looking up, saw a straggling “v” of geese headed north, not more than a dozen. He put a hand to his face, feeling tears of joy welling there, and he smiled. Rage and Sorrow snuffled around the fallen outbuildings. There was a weaving shed, a privy, two low storage huts, and a trio of cottages. The byre hadn’t burned, but its thatched roof had fallen in. Alain poked through the rubble of the longhouse with his staff, but he found nothing except broken pots, a pair of half eaten baskets, and the remains of two straw beds dissolving into the ash-covered ground.

A twig snapped.

“What do you want?” asked a voice from the woods, a
man hidden among the trees. The voice seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“Just looking for the four women who were taken from this place by bandits.”

He felt a breath, an intake of air, and threw himself flat. An arrow passed over his head and thunked into a charred post behind him. Barking wildly, the hounds charged into the trees. By the time Alain scrambled to his feet, he heard a man shrieking in terror.

“Nay! Nay! Call them off! I beg you! Anything! Anything!”

Alain pushed through the brush to find Sorrow standing on top of a man. His right wrist bled where Rage had bitten him. A bow carved of oak lay on the ground atop a fallen arrow. The man writhed, moaning and whimpering, as Sorrow nosed his throat.

A ragged wool tunic covered his torso. It had been patched with the overlarge stitches that betray an inexperienced hand. His hands were red from cold. He was also barefoot; his feet were chapped, heavily and recently callused, and the big toe of his right foot was swollen, cracked, and oozing pus and blood.

Alain picked up the arrow and broke it over his knee, then unstrung the bow and tied it onto his pack.

“Mercy! Mercy! It was my sin! I am the guilty one!”

“Sorrow! Sit!”

Sorrow sat on the man’s left arm, pinning him, and panted, drooling a little, as Alain stepped forward to look the man in the face.

“I know you. You’re called Heric. You were a man-at-arms in Lavas Holding seven or eight years back.”

The pungent smell of urine flooded as the man wet himself.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I pray you, forgive me!”

“For trying to kill me just now?”

Heric kept babbling. “It was my sin! Mine!”

Although it made his head ache a little, Alain remembered. “You were the one who put me in the cage.”

“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

“What of the reward you received for bringing me in
to Geoffrey? Surely he gave you something? How after all that do you come to be hiding in the woods wearing such rags?”

“Don’t let them chop off my hand! I didn’t steal anything!”

“Only my freedom!”

Heric screamed and jerked his leg, but Rage was only licking at the swollen toe. “I had to! You were an outlaw! You were a thief, the worst of all! You took what wasn’t yours to have. So they all said!”

“Roll over onto your stomach.”

“The beast’ll bite me!” But he did so, easing his arm out from under Sorrow as the hound looked up at Alain for direction.

Heric had been a big man once, but hunger had worn him down. He hadn’t a belt for the tunic, and a crude cord woven out of reeds tied back his unruly hair. This man had betrayed him. But Alain could find no indignation on his own behalf for this pathetic creature who had no shoes, no gloves, and only two arrows, one now broken, with which to kill himself some supper. He hadn’t even a knife.

“Why are you here at Ravnholt Manor?”

“Heard deer and rats seen roundabout,” Heric replied, head twisted to one side so he could speak without choking on dirt. “I’m hungry.”

“Do you know what happened to those four women?”

“No.”

“Ah.” Centuries ago, as humankind measured time, Alain had been bitten by a blind snake hiding in the lair of a phoenix. The effects of that venom still coursed through his blood, and where the poison burned, he burned with outrage. “You’re lying, Heric. I pray you, do not lie. God know the truth. How can you hide from Them?”

“I didn’t kill anyone! It was the others. It was them who are guilty! Even here at Ravnholt. I just stood watch, I never hurt anyone! After you escaped the cage, after that storm and that monster—ai, God! Then all those who were so friendly to me before, all them turned on me and cast me out! What was I to do? The woodsmen—that’s what they call themselves—they’re not so particular!”

“Although an honest woodsman might object to a pack of bandits calling themselves by an honest name.”

“We was hungry, just like others. Did what we had to do to get a scrap to eat.”

“Murdered folk here at Ravnholt Manor? Where are the four girls who were taken?”

He sobbed helplessly into the dirt, nose running. He stank with fear. “I left them after they done it. I wasn’t guilty. I didn’t do it!”

“After they done what?”

“
Killed
them! Raped them and killed them. Said they might try to escape. I said they ought to spare ’em. But no.”

“You touched none of those girls?”

“I didn’t kill them!”

“But you raped them! Isn’t that harm enough? And stood by and let them die after! Doesn’t that stain your hands with their blood? The one who refuses to act to save the innocent is as guilty as the one whose hand strikes the blow!”

These words set Heric caterwauling and writhing on the earth like a man having a fit.

“Roll over and sit up.”

Heric’s sobs ceased and, cautiously, he rolled onto his back, then sat, not even brushing off the leaf litter and dirt and twigs that smeared his rags. He eyed first Rage, who wanted to get back to licking the infected toe, then Sorrow, who yawned hugely to display his teeth.

Alain took a few breaths to clear his anger. “I believe you are telling the truth about those poor girls, but I’ll see those graves.”

“There aren’t no graves! The others slit their throats and cast them into the brush, that’s all.”

“Then you’ll bury their corpses. Lead me there.”

“Won’t! It’s close by the hidey-hole. We’ll be killed, you and me. Twenty of them agin’ two of us. I have no weapon, not now you took mine … unless you want to give me back my bow.”

“No, I don’t want to. Come, then.”

“We’re not going there, are we?” His voice rose in panic. “I don’t want to die.”

“Did those girls want to die? Did they cry and plead, Heric? Did you hear them begging while you stood by and watched?”

“I turned my back!” he said indignantly. “I’m not a monster, to watch murder done!”

“If turning your back is not a monstrous deed, then what is?” He signaled with a hand. Tails lashing, the hounds waited for his command.

“Where are we going?”

“To Lavas Holding.”

“Not there, I beg you! They’ll hang me! They’ll chop off my hands and then my head.”

“If you’re not guilty, why do you fear their justice?”

Heric spat into the dirt. Rage growled.

“Are you so wise?” he sneered. “What justice is there for a man like me? I served the old count faithfully, and what did I get for my good service? I got turned out by the new lord without even a thanks! An old hunting dog is treated better than I was! Lord Geoffrey will hang me just to be rid of another mouth to feed. He was happy enough to offer boots and clothes and a handful of sceattas when I brought you to him, for him to parade around the county. Because he thought folk would stop their whispering. And after—hsst!” He spat again. “After that storm, after you escaped, those who cheered most to see you mad and chained slapped me and spat on me and called me an evil man. Because they feared it was God sent the storm to free you. Why should I not fear their justice? They’ll be glad to hang me to make the shame pass from their own sinful hearts.”

“I’ll see you get justice.”

Heric laughed hysterically. “How can you do that? How can you? What are you? Where are you come from? What happened to the madness that ate at you?”

After all, Alain found that spite still lived in his heart. “A little late to ask those questions, isn’t it?” he said with a sour grin. He turned his back and began walking.

After a sharp rustle came a thump and a yelp of pain. Alain turned to see Sorrow sitting on Heric’s chest again. With a growl the hound opened his mouth and gently closed his jaws right over Heric’s face.

“Come,” said Alain firmly. Sorrow eased back, scratched an ear as though he didn’t know what for, and padded after Alain.

Blubbering, Heric rose and limped after, Rage bringing up the rear.

“One will always be awake,” said Alain. “One, or the other.”

“I’ll come! I’ll come!” He staggered along like a man walking to his death.

And, Alain reflected, it must seem so to him. It might even be true. Yet, however little Heric deserved mercy for his cowardice and his rapine, he must at least be judged only for the sins he had committed, not made into a sacrificial beast by those who wished to assuage their own shame with the blood of someone else.

They walked in a silence broken only by the wind’s passage through branches still bare of spring buds. Except where evergreens gave cover, it was possible to glimpse vistas into the forest, a place of muted colors and a profound solitude. Now and again a clearing opened up; here and there coppices filled a well-husbanded section of woodland. They passed an old charcoal pit, two or three seasons in disuse, with leaves and dirt scattered in damp mounds and a half burned log laced with clinging vine. Human hands had teased a streamside clearing into an orchard made proud by a dozen trees, not yet far gone in neglect. Farther on, a wide meadow boasted a sturdy shelter suitable for a flock of sheep on summer pasture.

“This was a peaceful place once,” said Alain. “Well tended and well loved.”

“Maybe so,” muttered Heric, “but they still kept a girl from Salia to serve the steward’s son in whatever manner he wished.”

“How do you know?”

“She got free and come to the bandits, that’s why. It was she made the plan, and give the signal. She knew the ways and times of the household, that’s why. The others said she killed that one herself, the one who used her, but I didn’t see it.”

“Made she no protest when four girls were taken to be
used in the same rough manner she was? And worse, for they were killed after?”

“What did she care for them? She wanted revenge, and took it. It was she argued loudest that they were a nuisance and ought to go. I think it was for that she was jealous of the attention they got. She liked keeping the men on a string, you know how it is. That girl at Lavas, called Withi, I liked her well, but she did do that to me, curse her. Went off in the end with a man who could keep her fed.” His tone was self-pitying. “The Salian girl, she said also those other girls cursed her ill with words and slaps, back when she was only a concubine. So it was revenge twice over.”

“Might she have been lying?”

“About what? Being taken to bed each night by a man she hated? The other girls slapping her and calling her a Salian whore? How would I know?”

Alain tramped on, unable to speak for the bitterness lodged in his throat. It seemed that injustice was woven through the world in inexplicable patterns, impossible to tease apart without unraveling the entire web.

“Seems like God are blind and deaf and mute,” continued Heric, having gotten a good wind to fill the sails of his complaining. “But I heard a story about a phoenix. You heard it? They say a phoenix descended from heaven and tore the heart out of the blessed Daisan to make him suffer just like the rest of us. I wonder if it’s true.”

“I think that story was twisted in the telling.”

“Huh. ‘Truth flies with the phoenix.’ That’s what one of those girls cried out as they was cutting her throat. Well, she flew, anyway, right up to the light, or into the Pit.”

“Don’t mock!”

Rage barked and Sorrow growled. Heric fell into a sullen muttering that was not audible enough to fashion into words.

They went on, and soon a second murmuring noise caught Alain’s hearing. He lifted a hand and halted on the path just before it curved left. He recognized this place from his morning’s passage along this way. In another twoscore or so steps they would come to the main road. As they listened, they heard the sound of a cavalcade moving
along the as-yet-unseen track: harness jingling, wheels scraping along dirt, voices chattering, and a dog’s bark. Sorrow whined but did not answer.