The Complete Twilight Reign Ebook Collection (404 page)

‘The priest will be here in an hour or so. He’ll have morning rituals before he can come to see over the interment.’

A slight inclination of the head acknowledged my words, but it seemed I would have to be more direct.

‘Your words yesterday – afraid of what got my mother – what did you mean by that?’

She flinched and pulled her shawl close about her, fixing her eyes as low as possible, now fearful rather than evasive. I took hold of her arm, then withdrew hurriedly as I remembered her stroke. She flinched at the touch but made no sound.

‘I’m sorry …’ I began. As I did she gave a weak cough to clear her throat and I kept quiet to let her speak.

‘Did the doctor not tell you, sir?’

Our voices were a remarkable contrast – mine loud and urgent, hers weak and incapable of haste. ‘His letter was short and not very helpful. He said her heart gave out, nothing more. This house isn’t the one I left; there’s a stink of fear in everything now. Just what happened?’

‘Her heart gave out, there’s no doubt of that.’

‘But what more?’ I exclaimed impatiently. ‘Had she been ill? Yesterday you near made out that she had been murdered!’

She made no reply at first, just stared out over the desolate moor. I followed her gaze, but instead of losing myself in the gentle curve of the ground my eyes came to rest on a small bird, a speckled wren if I remember my childhood accurately. It hopped a yard or so in our direction, cocked its head slightly and then kept still. For a few seconds I was sure the wren was watching us, its quizzical stance directed toward Madam Haparl as if the creatures of the moor also required an explanation.

With no apparent warning, the bird stabbed downward then took flight, a writhing worm in its beak. The unexpected movement made me flinch, only very slightly but enough to wake Madam Haparl from her reverie. Slowly, and with more than a little difficulty, she turned herself enough to look me straight in the eye. It was a cold face that regarded me, wary eyes made malevolent by the change of the stroke.

‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir, but the look on her face – it was like nothing I’ve ever seen, nor care to again. Your mother had no weakness of the heart, none that I knew. I was fetched when she was found. I stood by while the priest was called and I wrapped the body with her maid. I’ll not forget the look upon her face, not if I live another sixty-four winters. The countess died of fright, terror that stopped her heart cold. What she faced there I don’t know, but …’

‘But it was enough to kill her?’ I breathed, the icy hands of dread clutching at my heart.

She inclined her head again.

‘And no one saw anything? The dogs didn’t … The dogs! Where are they?’ How I had failed to noticed before I could scarcely believe. One reason the house struck me as so empty was the lack of dogs underfoot, something that had escaped me entirely. My mood had been so affected, their absence had just been marked as yet another aspect of Moorview’s gloom.

‘The dogs are gone, sent away a few months back.’

‘But why? What possible reason was there?’ There had always been dogs at home; they were part of every estate and manor in the country. To send them away seemed absurd.

‘They would have been no help. Didn’t guard no more, just hid indoors and kept to the kitchen for the main part. They howled all night every night. None of us could sleep, so the countess sent them away. Only Cook’s little rat-terrier was interested in going out, forever after a scent as the others yammered all night. Whatever afeared them all, Scraps was after. Chased trails all day around the house he did, till he got out one night.’

‘And then?’

‘Then we heard him scream. Never heard a dog scream before. They’ll yelp when you tread on them, howl when they’re lost, but Scraps, he screamed. It set the others off worse than before. That’s when the countess said to take them away, give them to the villagers or the Winsan family.’

‘And Scraps? What about him?’ Gruesome visions swam before my eyes, of a torn little body being tossed through the air, of Cook’s shrieks as a trail of blood led her around the house next morning.

‘We don’t know sir. Never saw hair nor hide again. No trace, no blood or anything. He was just gone. Fearless that dog was, would have chased a lion without thought. Till he screamed.’

I sat back, imagining the eager little terrier as I remembered him, a white bundle of energy and enthusiasm. Pictured him pushing his way out a half closed door, the moons half hidden behind black clouds as they illuminated his quest and he followed a scent that had consumed his days and nights. Racing down the terrace, perhaps following the paths or cutting off into the inky depths of the forest beyond, chasing his prey down.

Until he screamed.

‘But what could have happened?’

‘I don’t know sir, but I’ve no wish to meet whatever your mother saw. Though I’ll not leave here I’ve no wish to die.’

‘Where did you find her?’

‘The countess? On the second-floor landing, the corridor toward your father’s old study. There’d been a storm that night, probably she’d heard the shutter there come loose and couldn’t sleep for the banging.’

‘The window was open?’ I said sharply, but she just shook her head sadly, as if to say that I wasn’t the first to wonder at that.

‘One had slipped its bolt. The sheriff said it couldn’t have been forced from the outside. Anyway, what man could climb that wall?’ She jerked her head that way and I followed the movement. It was enough to remind me that my father’s old study had been in the tower side, the wall sheer and free of creeper.

‘Could someone have entered another way?’

‘Of course sir, we’ve no need for guards in these times. I always locked the house, or someone did if my strength shamed me, but such a large house is impossible to secure completely. The sheriff said he could find half-a-dozen ways to break in, and then there’s the downed tree that broke the window in the long gallery.’

‘Ah yes, I saw that. What happened there? I didn’t see any disease in the stump. It was a good silver birch, was it not?’

‘It was, and none of the groundsmen could say why the storm blew it down.’

‘Could it have been the work of man?’

‘No sir, there was no sign of axe-work, only scratches made by some animal and that must have been seven feet off the ground.’

‘So what has happened here? Tell me straight, I beg of you. Tell me what curse has fallen on my family and home.’

I must have sounded as desperate as I felt, for her sharp gaze softened as I spoke. She loved this place as much as I, perhaps more so, and I knew whatever distress I felt would be shared.

‘I cannot, not for fear but I just don’t know. I know only as much as the others; that some horror walks the moors at night, and the woods and the grounds and the very house too perhaps. I know to be afraid of the shadows. I know not to be alone. I know the spirits of the moor are restless for something. Dogs can feel the unnatural and hounds that wouldn’t hesitate to make for a Brichen boar were so terrified they’d mess their own beds before going outside.’

The honesty in her rasping voice chilled me and I found myself unable to reply. It was Cebana who came to my aid, a comforting hand appearing on my shoulder though I recoiled from the unexpected touch.

‘My dear, are you well?’ she asked, alarmed by my reaction. I managed a weak smile that hardly convinced her, but she understood enough not to press the matter. ‘The sheriff would like to speak to you, to pay his respects.’

My mind was blank for a moment before I returned to reality and struggled to my feet. Cebana ushered me toward the house, saying as she did so, ‘Go on, he’s in the library with Dever. I’ll help Madam Haparl back inside.’

I did as I was told, the murmur of Cebana’s voice receding into the background as I returned to my duties.

The sheriff was a solid, thoughtful man of thirty-odd winters. His bushy, sandy-coloured eyebrows jutted out to cast a shadow over his face, their wild excesses a strange contrast to his neatly trimmed beard. While his face appeared guarded, his manner could not have been more open. Though he was a landowner in his own small right and not my tenant, he was courteous and accommodating in every available aspect.

The maid had admitted stealing some minor trinkets, nothing grand that we would have missed unadvised. Dever had already decided that she simply be released from service and ordered to leave the district. This, the sheriff asked me to confirm – a suzerain has nearly as much legal power as a magistrate and it would save the man a trip if I agreed. I would have preferred her to feel a few stripes on her back but the decision, perhaps rightly, had been taken out of my hands and we moved on to other matters.

The details he gave me of my mother’s death were as Madam Haparl had, lacking the atmosphere perhaps but congruent none the less. When summoned, he had inspected the scene and entire house as best he could. There were several ways a man could enter the house with no hurscals manning the walls, squeezing himself through easily tackled windows and the like, but no evidence that it had been done. Other than the look of fear on my mother’s face, there was no sign of foul play to be found.

Forel and I watched the sheriff leave with the dejected maid trailing on the heels of his mount, then returned to the house to set our minds to the task of assessing my mother’s belongings. Her jumble room had in former times been a painting studio. In summer it was a delightful place to spend the afternoons, light and airy with a bank of shutters on either side of the window to enhance the vista. Unfortunately, these days it lived up to its new title.

From that very room a whole host of paintings had been produced to hang in pride of place wherever they were gifted. Indeed, one great landscape painted there is hung in the great hall of Narkang’s Silver Palace. Secretly, we have always felt it inferior to its sister piece here, but both kings have taken great pleasure in it and the scene is much copied for the nation’s taverns.

Forel pushed open the door and we regarded the mess with a dispirited eye. Antique dressers, an ornate writing desk, stacked and forgotten pictures, all of these merely added surfaces for trinkets, papers of all sorts and ages, hats, scarves, ornaments and much more. For a full thirty seconds we stood there and contemplated how to even enter the room.

‘It looks as if she was looking for something,’ commented my son as he overturned a ribbon-bound packet of papers with his toe. It did indeed, for all the drawers were open and in places, letters had been placed with the individual pages side by side.

‘But what could have persuaded her to create such chaos?’

Forel had no answer to that. He shrugged the question away and stepped carefully through the room. Picking up an official-looking document he brandished it in my direction.

‘A deed. Perhaps she needed to raise some money?’

‘I’d have heard of it surely?’ I replied.

‘Perhaps not. She was a proud woman, and independent. She was happy to live here all alone as the dowager countess rather than give up the estate to you. If she had needed money, would she have asked?’

I nodded at the truth in his words, though I felt for sure our nearest neighbours, the Winsans would have heard of any sale and informed me. Our families had always been close and to not offer any property to some part of the Winsans first would have been extremely strange.

As Forel picked his way about the room, lifting odd things and ‘hmm’ing at what was revealed, I decided that we first needed to collect all the papers together, then they could be sorted and we could investigate what other treasures were here. I suspected that I would find one of the writing boxes on the floor would contain my mother’s favourite jewellery. No doubt an evening would be spent trying to remember the tricks to open the various compartments.

I decided to investigate the box room at the end of the corridor, hoping to find some convenient container there to collect all those papers and then spend a relaxed evening investigating the past. This part of the house had been hardly attended by the servants. Their quarters were all on the other side, in the south wing, and it was the least important area for day-to-day use. Dust lay undisturbed on the long, worn rugs that ran down the centre of the passageway. Only the occasional draught or passing human had disturbed its rest since long before my mother’s passing.

The sight caused me to wonder whether the maids had been forbidden to come up here. This isolated section of the upper floor seemed to have been hardly inhabited from the desiccated remains of some flowers in a dry vase on the landing. I made a mental note to ask Madam Haparl about this as I made for the handle of the box room. Just as I touched one finger to the speckled brass handle, a sudden shout of alarm broke the musty peace.

I ran back to the jumble room, reaching the doorway only to collide with my son as he stormed out, bellowing at the top of his lungs. Forel swung himself sideways to avoid me, but succeeded only in hitting the jamb and rebounding off to slam his shoulder squarely into my chest. As a tangle of generations we flew back across the thin passageway to hit the wall behind. I had no time to collect my thoughts, nor chastise his recklessness and discover the source of the excitement, before he took hold of my arm and dragged me with him.

‘On the moor! Come on, we’ve got to get the horses!’

Forel wouldn’t let go, or pay any heed to my protestations, so on we went in a madcap descent. We clattered down the wooden staircase that led from the attic level, then Moorview echoed with the deep clump of boots on stone as we descended the central stair. Servants scattered before us, panic on their faces at Forel’s incoherent cries. Skidding to negotiate a corner, I caught sight of his face. The youth was flushed with excitement and a manic grin on his lips.

‘Forel! Who’s out there?’ I called as our eyes met momentarily. The boy didn’t stop to speak, but shouted his answer as he darted off into the main hallway.

‘Who knows? But they’re out on the moor!’

As I rounded the corner I saw the ashen face of a maid and it came home to me why he was so excited. Growing up here, I found nothing surprising about a figure on the moor, but who would venture out there now? The road, such as it was, turned north directly after it passed the castle so there was no short-cut to be taken and only a madman travels off the road. I pursued Forel into the hall and caught sight of him taking a small corridor to the right. He was heading for the stables. When I got there, his stock pony was already out of the stable with Forel astride.