Текст книги "The Wind Through the Keyhole"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

The Covenant Man laid a hand on his breast and spoke in wounded tones. “You wrong me! ’Twasn’t taxes that kept Big Kells burning in his bed all these years, aye, even when he still had a woman next to him to quench his torch.”

He went on, but the stuff he called nen was wearing off, and Tim lost the sense of the words. Suddenly he was no longer cold but hot, burning up, and his stomach was a churning bag. He staggered toward the remains of the campfire, fell on his knees, and vomited his supper into the hole the Covenant Man had been digging with his bootheel.

“There!” the man in the black cloak said in a tone of hearty self-congratulation. “I thought that might come in handy.”

“You’ll want to go and see your mother now,” said the Covenant Man when Tim had finished puking and was sitting beside the dying campfire with his head down and his hair hanging in his eyes. “Good son that you are. But I have something you may want. One more minute. It’ll make no difference to Nell Kells; she is as she is.”

“Don’t call her so!” Tim spat.

“How can I not? Is she not wed? Marry in haste, repent at leisure, the old folken say.” The Covenant Man squatted once more in front of his heaped gunna, his cloak billowing around him like the wings of an awful bird. “They also say what’s slipped cannot be unslipped, and they say true. An amusing concept called divorce exists on some levels of the Tower, but not in our charming little corner of Mid-World. Now let me see . . . it’s here somewhere . . .”

“I don’t understand why Square Peter and Slow Ernie didn’t find him,” Tim said dully. He felt deflated, empty. Some emotion still pulsed deep in his heart, but he didn’t know what it was. “This is their plot . . . their stake . . . and they’ve been back cutting ever since Cosington was well enough to work again.”

“Aye, they cut the iron, but not here. They’ve plenty of other stubs. They’ve left this one fallow for a bit. Does thee not know why?”

Tim supposed he did. Square Peter and Slow Ernie were good and kindly, but not the bravest men ever to log the iron, which was why they didn’t go much deeper into the forest than this. “They’ve been waiting for the pooky to move on, I wot.”

“It’s a wise child,” the Covenant Man said approvingly. “He wots well. And how does thee think thy steppa felt, knowing yon treeworm might move on at any time, and those two come back? Come back and find his crime, unless he screws up enough gut to come himself and move the body deeper into the woods?”

The new emotion in Tim’s heart was pulsing more strongly now. He was glad. Anything was better than the helpless terror he felt for his mother. “I hope he feels bad. I hope he can’t sleep.” And then, with dawning understanding: “It’s why he went back to the drink.”

“A wise child indeed, wise beyond his– Ah! Here it is!”

The Covenant Man turned toward Tim, who was now untying Bitsy and preparing to mount up. He approached the boy, holding something beneath his cloak. “He did it on impulse, sure, and afterward he must have been in a panic. Why else would he concoct such a ridiculous story? The other woodsmen doubt it, of that you may be sure. He built a fire and leaned into it as far as he dared and for as long as he could take it, scorching his clothes and blistering his skin. I know, because I built my fire on the bones of his. But first he threw his dead pard’s gunna across yon stream, as far into the woods as his strength would allow. Did it with your da’s blood not yet dry on his hands, I warrant. I waded across and found it. Most of it’s useless mickle, but I saved thee one thing. It was rusty, but my pumice stone and honing bar have cleaned it up very well.”

From beneath his cloak he produced Big Ross’s hand-ax. Its freshly sharpened edge glittered. Tim, now astride Bitsy, took it, brought it to his lips, and kissed the cold steel. Then he shoved the handle into his belt, blade turned out from his body, just as Big Ross had taught him, once upon a bye.

“I see you wear a rhodite double around your neck. Was it your da’s?”

Mounted, Tim was almost eye-to-eye with the Covenant Man. “It was in that murdering bastard’s trunk.”

“You have his coin; now you have his ax, as well. Where will you put it, I wonder, if ka offers you the chance?”

“In his head.” The emotion—pure rage—had broken free of his heart like a bird with its wings on fire. “Back or front, either will do me fine.”

“Admirable! I like a boy with a plan! Go with all the gods you know, and the Man Jesus for good measure.” Then, having wound the boy to his fullest stop, he turned to build up his fire. “I may bide along the Iron for another night or two. I find Tree strangely interesting this Wide Earth. Watch for the green sighe, my boy! She glows, so she does!”

Tim made no reply, but the Covenant Man felt sure he had heard.

Once they were wound to the fullest stop, they always did.

The Widow Smack must have been watching from the window, for Tim had just led a footsore Bitsy up to the porch (in spite of his growing anxiety he had walked the last half-mile to spare her) when she came rushing out.

“Thank gods, thank gods. Your mother was three quarters to believing you were dead. Come in. Hurry. Let her hear and touch you.”

The import of these words didn’t strike Tim fully until later. He tied Bitsy beside Sunshine and hurried up the steps. “How did you know to come to her, sai?”

The Widow turned her face to him (which, given her veil, was hardly a face at all). “Has thee gone soft in the head, Timothy? You rode past my house, pushing that mule for all she was worth. I couldn’t think why you’d be out so late, and headed in the direction of the forest, so I came here to ask your mother. But come, come. And keep a cheery voice, if you love her.”

The Widow led him across the living room, where two ’seners burned low. In his mother’s room another ’sener burned on the bed table, and by its light he saw Nell lying in bed with much of her face wrapped in bandages and another—this one badly bloodstained—around her neck like a collar.

At the sound of their footsteps, she sat up with a wild look upon her face. “If it’s Kells, stay away! You’ve done enough!”

“It’s Tim, Mama.”

She turned toward him and held out her arms. “Tim! To me, to me!”

He knelt beside the bed, and the part of her face not covered by bandages he covered with kisses, crying as he did so. She was still wearing her nightgown, but now the neck and bosom were stiff with rusty blood. Tim had seen his steppa fetch her a terrible lick with the ceramic jug, and then commence with his fists. How many blows had he seen? He didn’t know. And how many had fallen on his hapless mother after the vision in the silver basin had disappeared? Enough so he knew she was very fortunate to be alive, but one of those blows—likely the one dealt with the ceramic jug—had struck his mother blind.

“’Twas a concussive blow,” the Widow Smack said. She sat in Nell’s bedroom rocker; Tim sat on the bed, holding his mother’s left hand. Two fingers of the right were broken. The Widow, who must have been very busy since her fortuitous arrival, had splinted them with pieces of kindling and flannel strips torn from another of Nell’s nightgowns. “I’ve seen it before. There’s swelling to the brain. When it goes down, her sight may return.”

“May,” Tim said bleakly.

“There will be water if God wills it, Timothy.”

Our water is poisoned now, Tim thought, and it was none of any god’s doing. He opened his mouth to say just that, but the Widow shook her head. “She’s asleep. I gave her an herb drink—not strong, I didn’t dare give her strong after he cuffed her so around the head—but it’s taken hold. I wasn’t sure ’twould.”

Tim looked down at his mother’s face—terribly pale, with freckles of blood still drying on the little exposed skin the Widow’s bandagements had left—and then back up at his teacher. “She’ll wake again, won’t she?”

The Widow repeated, “There will be water if God wills it.” Then the ghost-mouth beneath the veil lifted in what might have been a smile. “In this case, I think there will be. She’s strong, your ma.”

“Can I talk to you, sai? For if I don’t talk to someone, I’ll explode.”

“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.

When they reached her house on the outskirts of the village, he offered to see her inside. “Nay, only help me up the steps and after that I’ll be fine-o. I want tea with honey and then my bed, for I’m that tired. You need to be with your mother now, Tim. I know half the ladies in town will be there by the time you get back, but it’s you she needs.”

For the first time in the five years he’d had her as a schoolteacher, she gave Tim a hug. It was dry and fierce. He could feel her body thrumming beneath her dress. She wasn’t too tired to shake after all, it seemed. Nor too tired to give comfort to a boy—a tired, angry, deeply confused boy—who badly needed it.

“Go to her. And stay away from that dark man, should he appear to thee. He’s made of lies from boots to crown, and his gospels bring nothing but tears.”

On his way back down the high street, he encountered Straw Willem and his brother, Hunter (known as Spot Hunter for his freckles), riding to meet the posse, which had gone out Tree Road. “They mean to search every stake and stub on the Ironwood,” Spot Hunter said excitedly. “We’ll find him.”

The posse hadn’t found Kells in town after all, it seemed. Tim had a feeling they’d not find him along the Iron, either. There was no basis for the feeling, but it was strong. So was his feeling that the Covenant Man hadn’t finished with him yet. The man in the black cloak had had some of his fun . . . but not all of it.

His mother was sleeping, but woke when Ada Cosington ushered him in. The other ladies sat about in the main room, but they had not been idle while Tim was away. The pantry had been mysteriously stocked—every shelf groaned with bottles and sacks—and although Nell was a fine country housekeeper, Tim had never seen the place looking so snick. Even the overhead beams had been scrubbed clean of woodsmoke.

Every trace of Bern Kells had been removed. The awful trunk had been banished to beneath the back porch stoop, to keep company with the spiders, fieldmice, and moortoads.

“Tim?” And when he put his hands in Nell’s, which were reaching out, she sighed with relief. “All right?”

“Aye, Mama, passing fine.” This was a lie, and they both knew it.

“We knew he was dead, didn’t we? But it’s no comfort. It’s as if he’s been killed all over again.” Tears began to spill from her sightless eyes. Tim cried, himself, but managed to do it silently. Hearing him sob would do her no good. “They’ll bring him to the little burying parlor Stokes keeps out behind his smithy. Most of these kind ladies will go to him there, to do the fitting things, but will you go to him first, Timmy? Will you take him your love and all of mine? For I can’t. The man I was fool enough to marry has lamed me so badly I can hardly walk . . . and of course I can’t see anything. What a ka-mai I turned out to be, and what a price we’ve paid!”

“Hush. I love you, Mama. Of course I’ll go.”

But because there was time, he went first to the barn (there were far too many women in the cottage for his taste) and made a jackleg bed with hay and an old mule blanket. He fell asleep almost at once. He was awakened around three of the clock by Square Peter, who held his hat clasped to his breast and wore an expression of sad solemnity.

Tim sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Have you found Kells?”

“Nay, lad, but we’ve found your father, and brought him back to town. Your mother says you’ll pay respects for the both of you. Does she say true?”

“Aye, yes.” Tim stood up, brushing hay from his pants and shirt. He felt ashamed to have been caught sleeping, but his rest the previous night had been thin, and haunted by bad dreams.

“Come, then. We’ll take my wagon.”

The burying parlor behind the smithy was the closest thing the town had to a mortuary in a time when most country folk preferred to see to their own dead, interring them on their own land with a wooden cross or a slab of roughly carved stone to mark the grave. Dustin Stokes—inevitably known as Hot Stokes—stood outside the door, wearing white cotton pants instead of his usual leathers. Over them billowed a vast white shirt, falling all the way to the knees so it looked almost like a dress.

Looking at him, Tim remembered it was customary to wear white for the dead. He understood everything in that moment, realizing the truth in a way that not even looking at his father’s open-eyed corse in running water had been able to make him realize it, and his knees loosened.

Square Peter bore him up with a strong hand. “Can’ee do it, lad? If’ee can’t, there’s no shame. He was your da’, and I know you loved him well. We all did.”

“I’ll be all right,” Tim said. He couldn’t seem to get enough air into his lungs, and the words came out in a whisper.

Hot Stokes put a fist to his forehead and bowed. It was the first time in his life that Tim had been saluted as a man. “Hile, Tim, son of Jack. His ka’s gone into the clearing, but what’s left is here. Will’ee come and see?”

“Yes, please.”

Square Peter stayed behind, and now it was Stokes who took Tim’s arm, Stokes not dressed in his leather breeches and cursing as he fanned an open furnace-hole with his bellows, but clad in ceremonial white; Stokes who led him into the little room with forest scenes painted on the walls all around; Stokes who took him to the ironwood bier in the center—that open space that had ever represented the clearing at the end of the path.

Big Jack Ross also wore white, although his was a fine linen shroud. His lidless eyes stared raptly at the ceiling. Against one painted wall leaned his coffin, and the room was filled with the sour yet somehow pleasant smell of it, for the coffin was also of ironwood, and would keep this poor remnant very well for a thousand years and more.

Stokes let go of his arm, and Tim went forward on his own. He knelt. He slipped one hand into the linen shroud’s overlap and found his da’s hand. It was cold, but Tim did not hesitate to entwine his warm and living fingers with the dead ones. This was the way the two of them had held hands when Tim was only a sma’ one, and barely able to toddle. In those days, the man walking beside him had seemed twelve feet tall, and immortal.

Tim knelt by the bier and beheld the face of his father.

When he came out, Tim was startled by the declining angle of the sun, which told him more than an hour had passed. Cosington and Stokes stood near the man-high ash heap at the rear of the smithy, smoking roll-ups. There was no news of Big Kells.

“P’raps he’s thow’d hisself in the river and drownded,” Stokes speculated.

“Hop up in the wagon, son,” Cosington said. “I’ll drive’ee back to yer ma’s.”

But Tim shook his head. “Thankee, I’ll walk, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Need time to think, is it? Well, that’s fine. I’ll go on to my own place. It’ll be a cold dinner, but I’ll eat it gladly. No one begrudges your ma at a time like this, Tim. Never in life.”

Tim smiled wanly.

Cosington put his feet on the splashboard of his wagon, seized the reins, then had a thought and bent down to Tim. “Have an eye out for Kells as ye walk, is all. Not that I think ye’ll see ’im, not in daylight. And there’ll be two or three strong fellas posted around yer homeplace tonight.”

“Thankee-sai.”

“Nar, none of that. Call me Peter, lad. You’re old enough, and I’d have it.” He reached down and gave Tim’s hand a brief squeeze. “So sorry about yer da’. Dreadful sorry.”

Tim set out along Tree Road with the sun declining red on his right side. He felt hollow, scooped out, and perhaps it was better so, at least for the time being. With his mother blind and no man in the house to bring a living, what future was there for them? Big Ross’s fellow woodcutters would help as much as they could, and for as long as they could, but they had their own burdens. His da’ had always called the homeplace a freehold, but Tim now saw that no cottage, farm, or bit of land in Tree Village was truly free. Not when the Covenant Man would come again next year, and all the years after that, with his scroll of names. Suddenly Tim hated far-off Gilead, which for him had always seemed (when he thought of it at all, which was seldom) a place of wonders and dreams. If there were no Gilead, there would be no taxes. Then they would be truly free.