The Wind Through The Keyhole (20 page)

“Of course. Come out on the porch. I’ll stay here tonight, by your leave. Will you have me? And will you stable Sunshine, if so?”

“Aye,” Tim said. In his relief, he actually managed a smile. “And say thankya.”

The air was even warmer.
Sitting in the rocker that had been Big Ross’s favorite roost on summer nights, the Widow said, “It feels like starkblast weather. Call me crazy—you wouldn’t be the first—but so it does.”

“What’s that, sai?”

“Never mind, it’s probably nothing . . . unless you see Sir Throcken dancing in the starlight or looking north with his muzzle upraised, that is. There hasn’t been a starkblast in these parts since I was a weebee, and that’s many and many-a year a-gone. We’ve other things to talk about. Is it only what that beast did to your mother that troubles you so, or is there more?”

Tim sighed, not sure how to start.

“I see a coin around your neck that I believe I’ve seen around your father’s. Perhaps that’s where you’ll begin. But there’s one other thing we have to speak of first, and that’s protecting your ma. I’d send you to Constable Howard’s, no matter it’s late, but his house is dark and shuttered. I saw that for myself on my way here. No surprise, either. Everyone knows that when the Covenant Man comes to Tree, Howard Tasley finds some reason to make himself scarce. I’m an old woman and you’re but a child. What will we do if Bern Kells comes back to finish what he started?”

Tim, who no longer felt like a child, reached down to his belt. “My father’s coin isn’t all I found tonight.” He pulled Big Ross’s hand-ax and showed it to her. “This was also my da’s, and if he dares to come back, I’ll put it in his head, where it belongs.”

The Widow Smack began to remonstrate, but saw a look in his eyes that made her change direction. “Tell me your tale,” said she. “Leave out not a word.”

When Tim had finished
—minding the Widow’s command to leave nothing out, he made sure to tell what his mother had said about the peculiar changelessness of the man with the silver basin—his old teacher sat quietly for a moment . . . although the night breeze caused her veil to flutter eerily and made her look as though she were nodding.

“She’s right, you know,” she said at last. “Yon chary man hasn’t aged a day. And tax collecting’s not his job. I think it’s his hobby. He’s a man with
hobbies,
aye. He has his little
pastimes.
” She raised her fingers in front of her veil, appeared to study them, then returned them to her lap.

“You’re not shaking,” Tim ventured.

“No, not tonight, and that’s a good thing if I’m to sit vigil at your mother’s bedside. Which I mean to do. You, Tim, will make yourself a pallet behind the door. ’Twill be uncomfortable, but if your steppa comes back, and if you’re to have a chance against him, you’ll have to come at him from behind. Not much like Brave Bill in the stories, is it?”

Tim’s hands rolled shut, the fingernails digging into his palms. “It’s how the bastard did for my da’, and all he deserves.”

She took one of his hands in her own and soothed it open. “He’ll probably not come back, anyway. Certainly not if he thinks he’s done for her, and he may. There was so much blood.”

“Bastard,”
Tim said in a low and choking voice.

“He’s probably lying up drunk somewhere. Tomorrow you must go to Square Peter Cosington and Slow Ernie Marchly, for it’s their patch where your da’ now lies. Show them the coin you wear, and tell how you found it in Kells’s trunk. They can round up a posse and search until Kells is found and locked up tight in the jailhouse. It won’t take them long to run him down, I warrant, and when he comes back sober, he’ll claim he has no idea of what he’s done. He may even be telling the truth, for when it gets in some men, strong drink draws down a curtain.”

“I’ll go with them.”

“Nay, it’s no work for a boy. Bad enough you have to watch for him tonight with your da’s hand-ax. Tonight you need to be a man. Tomorrow you can be a boy again, and a boy’s place when his mother has been badly hurt is by her side.”

“The Covenant Man said he might bide along the Ironwood Trail for another night or two. Maybe I should—”

The hand that had soothed moments before now grasped Tim’s wrist where the flesh was thin, and hard enough to hurt. “Never think it! Hasn’t he done damage enough?”

“What are you saying? That he made all this happen? It was Kells who killed my da’, and it was Kells who beat my mama!”

“But ’twas the Covenant Man who gave you the key, and there’s no telling what else he may have done. Or
will
do, if he gets the chance, for he leaves ruin and weeping in his wake, and has for time out of mind. Do you think people only fear him because he has the power to turn them out on the land if they can’t pay the barony taxes? No, Tim, no.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Nay, nor need to, for I know what he
is
—pestilence with a heartbeat. Once upon a bye, after he’d done a foul business here I’d not talk about to a boy, I determined to find out what I could. I wrote a letter to a great lady I knew long ago in Gilead—a woman of discretion as well as beauty, a rare combination—and paid good silver for a messenger to take it and bring a reply . . . which my correspondent in the great city begged me to burn. She said that when Gilead’s Covenant Man is not at his
hobby
of collecting taxes—a job that comes down to licking the tears from the faces of poor working folk—he’s an advisor to the palace lords who call themselves the Council of Eld. Although it’s only themselves who claim they have any blood connection to the Eld. ’Tis said he’s a great mage, and there may be at least some truth in that, for you’ve seen his magic at work.”

“So I have,” Tim said, thinking of the basin. And of the way sai Covenant Man seemed to grow taller when he was wroth.

“My correspondent said there are even some who claim he’s Maerlyn, he who was court mage to Arthur Eld himself, for Maerlyn was said to be eternal, a creature who lives backward in time.” From behind the veil came a snorting sound. “Just thinking of it makes my head hurt, for such an idea makes no earthly sense.”

“But Maerlyn was a white magician, or so the stories do say.”

“Those who claim the Covenant Man’s Maerlyn in disguise say he was turned evil by the glam of the Wizard’s Rainbow, for he was given the keeping of it in the days before the Elden Kingdom fell. Others say that, during his wanderings after the fall, he discovered certain artyfax of the Old People, became fascinated by them, and was blackened by them to the bottom of his soul. This happened in the Endless Forest, they say, where he still keeps in a magic house where time stands still.”

“Doesn’t seem too likely,” Tim said . . . although he was fascinated by the idea of a magic house where clock hands never moved and sand never fell in the glass.

“Bullshit is what it is!” And, noting his shocked look: “Cry your pardon, but sometimes only vulgarity will serve. Even Maerlyn couldn’t be two places at the same time, mooning around the Endless Forest at one end of the North’rd Barony and serving the lords and gunslingers of Gilead at the other. Nay, the tax man’s no Maerlyn, but he is a magician—a black one. So said the lady I once taught, and so I believe. That’s why you must never go near him again. Any good he offers to do you will be a lie.”

Tim considered this, then asked: “Do you know what a sighe is, sai?”

“Of course. The sighe are the fairy-folk, who supposedly live in the deep woods. Did the dark man speak of them?”

“No, ’twas just some story Straw Willem told me one day at the sawmill.”

Now why did I lie?

But deep in his heart, Tim knew.

Bern Kells didn’t come back
that night, which was for the best. Tim meant to stay on guard, but he was just a boy, and exhausted.
I’ll close my eyes for a few seconds, to rest them,
was what he told himself when he lay down on the straw pallet he made for himself behind the door, and it
felt
like no more than a few seconds, but when he opened them again, the cottage was filled with morning light. His father’s ax lay on the floor beside him, where his relaxing hand had dropped it. He picked it up, put it back in his belt, and hurried into the bedroom to see his mother.

The Widow Smack was fast asleep in the Tavares rocker, which she had drawn up close to Nell’s bed, her veil fluttering with her snores. Nell’s eyes were wide open, and they turned toward the sound of Tim’s steps. “Who comes?”

“Tim, Mama.” He sat beside her on the bed. “Has your sight come back? Even a little?”

She tried to smile, but her swollen mouth could do little more than twitch. “Still dark, I’m afraid.”

“It’s all right.” He raised the hand that wasn’t splinted and kissed the back of it. “Probably still too early.”

Their voices had roused the Widow. “He says true, Nell.”

“Blind or not, next year we’ll be turned out for sure, and then what?”

Nell turned her face to the wall and began to cry. Tim looked at the Widow, not sure what to do. She motioned for him to leave. “I’ll give her something to calm her—’tis in my bag. You have men to see, Tim. Go at once, or they’ll be off to the woods.”

He might have missed
Peter Cosington and Ernie Marchly anyway, if Baldy Anderson, one of Tree’s big farmers, hadn’t stopped by the pair’s storing shed to chat as they hitched their mules and prepared for the day. The three men listened to his story in grim silence, and when Tim finally stumbled to a halt, telling them his mother was still blind this morning, Square Peter gripped Tim by the upper arms and said, “Count on us, boy. We’ll rouse every ax-man in town, those who work the blossies as well as those who go up the Ironwood. There’ll be no cutting in the forest today.”

Anderson said, “And I’ll send my boys around to the farmers. To Destry and to the sawmill, as well.”

“What about the constable?” Slow Ernie asked, a trifle nervously.

Anderson dipped his head, spat between his boots, and wiped his chin with the heel of his hand. “Gone up Tavares way, I hear, either looking for poachers or visiting the woman he keeps up there. Makes no difference. Howard Tasley en’t never been worth a fart in a high wind. We’ll do the job ourselves, and have Kells jugged by the time he comes back.”

“With a pair of broken arms, if he kicks up rough,” Cosington added. “He’s never been able to hold his drink or his temper. He was all right when he had Jack Ross to rein ’im in, but look what it’s come to! Nell Ross beaten blind! Big Kells always kept a warm eye for her, and the only one who didn’t know it was—”

Anderson hushed him with an elbow, then turned to Tim, bending forward with his hands on his knees, for he was tallish. “’Twas the Covenant Man who found your da’s corse?”

“Aye.”

“And you saw the body yourself.”

Tim’s eyes filled, but his voice was steady enough. “Aye, so I did.”

“On our stake,” Slow Ernie said. “T’back of one of our stubs. The one where the pooky’s set up housekeeping.”

“Aye.”

“I could kill him just for that,” Cosington said, “but we’ll bring him alive if we can. Ernie, you n me’d best ride up there and bring back the . . . you know, remains . . . before we get in on the search. Baldy, can you get the word around on your own?”

“Aye. We’ll gather at the mercantile. Keep a good eye out along the Ironwood Trail as you go, boys, but my best guess is that we’ll find the booger in town, laid up drunk.” And, more to himself than to the others: “I
never
believed that dragon story.”

“Start behind Gitty’s,” Slow Ernie said. “He’s slept it off there more than once.”

“So we will.” Baldy Anderson looked up at the sky. “I don’t care much for this weather, tell ya true. It’s too warm for Wide Earth. I hope it don’t bring a storm, and I hope to gods it don’t bring a starkblast. That’d cap everything. Wouldn’t be none of us able to pay the Covenant Man when he comes next year. Although if it’s true what the boy says, he’s turned a bad apple out of the basket and done us a service.”

He didn’t do my mama one,
Tim thought.
If he hadn’t given me that key, and if I hadn’t used it, she’d still have her sight.

“Go on home now,” Marchly said to Tim. He spoke kindly, but in a tone that brooked no argument. “Stop by my house on the way, do ya, and tell my wife there’s ladies wanted at yours. Widow Smack must need to go home and rest, for she’s neither young nor well. Also . . .” He sighed. “Tell her they’ll be wanted at Stokes’s burying parlor later on.”

This time Tim had taken Misty,
and she was the one who had to stop and nibble at every bush. By the time he got home, two wagons and a pony-trap had passed him, each carrying a pair of women eager to help his mother in her time of hurt and trouble.

He had no more than stabled Misty next to Bitsy before Ada Cosington was on the porch, telling him he was needed to drive the Widow Smack home. “You can use my pony-trap. Go gentle where there’s ruts, for the poor woman’s fair done up.”

“Has she got her shakes, sai?”

“Nay, I think the poor thing’s too tired to shake. She was here when she was most needed, and may have saved your mama’s life. Never forget that.”

“Can my mother see again? Even a little?”

Tim knew the answer from sai Cosington’s face before she opened her mouth. “Not yet, son. You must pray.”

Tim thought of telling her what his father had sometimes said:
Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it.
In the end, he kept silent.

It was a slow trip
to the Widow’s house with her little burro tied to the back of Ada Cosington’s pony-trap. The unseasonable heat continued, and the sweet-sour breezes that usually blew from the Endless Forest had fallen still. The Widow tried to say cheerful things about Nell, but soon gave up; Tim supposed they sounded as false to her ears as they did to his own. Halfway up the high street, he heard a thick gurgling sound from his right. He looked around, startled, then relaxed. The Widow had fallen asleep with her chin resting on her birdlike chest. The hem of her veil lay in her lap.