Master of the Books Page 16

  It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that a servant arrived at their door. ‘The king commands your presence in the Gilded Hall.’

  They were led to the same large room where the banquet had taken place two nights earlier. There were no lavish dishes this time, the long tables were gone, and the only chair was the throne that King Osward lounged upon like an overfed cat. A dozen figures lingered nearby, some of them lords, some servants awaiting orders. On one side of the throne stood Demiter, on the other, Damon.

  As soon as Damon saw them his eyes narrowed, but he was too clever to give himself away. ‘Who are these three, Your Majesty?’ he asked as though he had never seen them before.

  ‘Visitors from Elster. My daughter wants me to hear them out,’ said the king in a tone that suggested the request was nothing but a bore.

  ‘They look like spies to me,’ Damon said.

  Even King Osward couldn’t be convinced of this so easily. ‘No, the boy and girl are Pelham’s children. They’re harmless enough. Came here needing repairs to their ship.’ Raising his voice he called to Finn, ‘I thought you’d have sailed off by now, like the Grand Master. There are plenty who’d leave with you if I let them.’

  ‘We are keen to be gone as well, Your Majesty, but we need your permission to take an extra passenger with us,’ Finn replied.

  ‘Oh, and who’s that? I need all my subjects to fight off Ismar’s rebels.’

  ‘Actually, he’s not one of your subjects at all. I’m talking about the boy you have locked away in the prison beneath the keep.’

  ‘The young firebrand who tried to kill my new general? What’s your interest in him?’

  ‘We can vouch for him,’ said Nicola, stepping forward. ‘He’s our brother.’

  ‘Your brother!’ said Demiter from her place beside the throne. ‘Marcel told me he was your cousin.’

  The king latched his watery eyes onto Marcel and frowned. ‘One minute a cousin, the next a brother. Should I trust you in this, young man?’

  Beside him Damon smiled in devious delight and stayed silent. Why say a word when his enemies had scuttled their own argument?

  Marcel cringed at the misunderstanding and then made matters even worse. ‘I’m sorry, Your Majesty. You see, we’ve always thought of Fergus as our brother, but only recently I found out he’s really my cousin. An old midwife told me how Fergus’s mother had come to Elstenwyck —’

  ‘No, Marcel, don’t say any more,’ said Nicola.

  What was wrong? He was only trying to make the king understand. He turned and saw the fury in his sister’s face as she flicked her eyes towards Damon. Only then did he realise what he’d done. The arrogant sneer was gone from the man’s face, replaced by a studied frown.

  I’ve said too much, Marcel groaned to himself. Has Damon remembered the prophecy? Has he guessed that Fergus is the son who will try to kill him?

  ‘Father, whether the boy is their brother or their cousin, you should let them see him,’ said Demiter, trying her best to salvage something from the confusion.

  Osward nodded and dismissed the visitors with a wave of his hand.

  They barely spoke on the way to the dungeons, although Nicola’s eyes said more than her tongue could have done.

  ‘Why do I always mess things up?’ said Marcel, then realised this sounded like self-pity. He clamped his jaws shut to avoid more embarrassment and consoled himself with a different thought. In just a few minutes Fergus would know about the curse, and once he understood the danger he would give up his quest to kill Damon. That was something, after all.

  The three visitors were bundled roughly down a series of stairwells into the less comfortable parts of the keep. The passageways here were narrow and the walls grabbed rudely at their shoulders when they brushed against them. Only Marcel had been this way before, but at a junction on the servants’ level, where Demiter had led him to the left, they were marched to the right instead. At the bottom of more dingy stairs, the gaoler was waiting for them.

  ‘Leave ’em with me,’ he said, looking them over with the eyes of a hungry rat. His narrow shoulders hunched under a coat of moth-ravaged fur made him seem even more vermin-like.

  In the poor light from a single torch, the gaoler led them past his tiny guardhouse to a stout door with a glassless window just large enough to push a hand through.

  A dark figure rose from the straw when the door swung open. Marcel had already seen Fergus from a distance, but he was still startled by how much taller he had grown, and how much thinner too.

  ‘Marcel, is that you? I don’t believe it. And Nicola! What are you doing here?’ Fergus hurried across the cell and hugged them both at the same time. ‘I’m so glad to see you. There’ve been so many times I wished you were with me.’

  With me, Marcel repeated silently. There was no longing for home in those words, no regret at leaving the palace, just a deep loneliness.

  They released each other and stood back, a little bashful that they’d acted so affectionately with the grim-faced gaoler looking on. The man grunted, then backed out and locked the door behind him. Marcel was relieved to see that Fergus had some light in his cell, at least, from a barred window in the far wall.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘Father sent messengers all over Elster and to other kingdoms.’

  ‘For a while I was slave to a farmer,’ Fergus began to explain.

  ‘A slave!’ Nicola said, horrified.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said through an easy laugh. ‘The farmer treated me better than most people I met.’

  His eyes fell on Finn and, as Nicola introduced them, each of the young men sized up the other. They seemed to like what they saw. Fergus told them his story, quickly, bluntly, and Marcel realised he was leaving out details of the hardships he’d endured to spare them distress. He became excited though when he spoke about a giant and the enchanted sword that had helped him kill the brute.

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to get that sword back for me, I suppose?’

  ‘We were lucky the king even allowed us to see you,’ Nicola said. ‘As for the sword, perhaps when they let you go …’

  Fergus went on with his tale. ‘I came across the same witch again, by accident, and she gave me the diviner that led me here,’ he said, and from that moment their two stories had come together.

  ‘What happened to Gadfly?’ was his next question.

  ‘She’s safe in the stables with the rest of the horses,’ Marcel told him. ‘No one can quite believe she arrived with a pair of wings sprouting from her sides. Cadell’s Master of the Books has been down to check her over, but he can’t find the magic.’

  Fergus took the pouch from his pocket, bringing a shudder from Marcel. Inside lay part of the Book of Lies, which he had no wish to see again.

  ‘I stole this from you, I suppose, just as I stole Gadfly,’ Fergus said. ‘You’d better have it back. It’s no use to me in here.’

  Marcel took the pouch and slipped it into his pocket. The story had been a brief distraction but he couldn’t delay any longer. Finn was staring at him solemnly and now Nicola had fallen silent too.

  ‘Fergus, there’s something we have to tell you, something I found out about the day you were born.’

  ‘The day I was born! You were born the same day, don’t forget.’

  ‘Yes, I was, but it didn’t happen the way we’ve always thought.’ This clearly added to Fergus’s confusion so Marcel hurried into his story. ‘Do you remember how the Book of Lies acted so strangely, how it denied that you were King Pelham’s son?’

  ‘That was just a trick. It was full of evil by then, I remember that much. It knew what I wanted to believe and it fed the lie back to me.’

  ‘That you were —’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ Fergus snapped. ‘It makes me sick just to think about it.’

  Marcel’s mouth became so dry he could hardly speak. Fergus wouldn’t even let him say the words, yet this was where the story would end.

&nbs
p; ‘There’s more than just the Book of Lies, Fergus. When we helped Damon and Eleanor escape there was a verse carved into the door of the chamber.’

  ‘Only a true and rightful heir,’ said Fergus, quoting the vital line. ‘That was why Starkey needed us there with him. We opened the door for him.’

  ‘Nicola and I did,’ said Marcel, nodding towards his sister who had come to stand at his shoulder. ‘But not you, Fergus. When you tried on your own, the handle wouldn’t budge, as though you weren’t an heir to the throne at all.’

  Fergus’s first impulse was to argue, but then he recalled those desperate moments in the rose garden and his silence betrayed the uncertainty that was creeping into his thoughts.

  ‘Those were just the clues we didn’t understand,’ Marcel went on. ‘I know much more now. I’ve spoken to the midwife who was there at our birth — she’s called Gammer Bodie …’ And now that he’d uttered that name, Marcel repeated everything that the old woman had told him.

  Through it all Fergus stood still and silent, as though each word was a blow of a chisel that chipped away stone from around him, leaving a statue where his body had been. The tale of Gammer Bodie came to an end, with only the cruellest words of all still to be said. Marcel took a deep breath.

  ‘The verse carved on the door, the Book of Lies — it all makes sense now. You and I aren’t twins, and Nicola isn’t your sister. King Pelham is our father, but he isn’t yours. Your mother was Lady Clemenza … and Damon is your father.’

  Fergus stood motionless and unnaturally silent in the centre of the cell, his jaw tighter than a vice and his fists clenched at his sides. Marcel wished he could ease the anguish that showed on his cousin’s face, but there was no magic for such a thing, even if he dared conjure the spell.

  ‘This can’t be true,’ Fergus said finally. ‘I don’t want it to be true.’

  ‘Come home with us to Elster and you can hear for yourself from Gammer Bodie,’ said Marcel.

  ‘That old witch only knows about my mother!’ Fergus shouted. ‘It’s my father I won’t accept!’

  The last thing Marcel wanted was to go over the story endlessly, but he had to finish what he’d started. ‘The Book of Lies might have deceived us, but it never actually lied. When you stood before it and said you were Damon’s son, it didn’t write down your words as a lie; it glowed in the darkness, the same golden light it used for all truth that it heard. You are Damon’s son.’

  Fergus tore at the sides of his head like a madman, as though his fingers could drive out Marcel’s words. Hopeless. They were already in his mind. His hands returned to his sides and he began to pace around the cell instead. His restless prowling reminded Marcel of Termagant at her most menacing.

  Tears began to leak from Fergus’s eyes. Only when they trickled down his cheeks did he notice them, and slapped them away as though a swarm of insects had attacked him. His face reddened with shame and he glared furiously from Marcel, to Nicola, to Finn, daring them to accuse him of cowardice. But they knew why he wept. What he wanted to believe was wrestling stubbornly with what he knew to be true and he couldn’t bear it.

  ‘We’ll get you free from this cell somehow,’ Marcel said. ‘Then you can come home with Nicola and me to Elstenwyck. The king will take good care of you, even when he learns the truth.’ He took a step forward, intending to lay a comforting hand on his cousin’s arm, but Fergus backed away.

  ‘I’ll come back when Damon is dead.’

  ‘You’re not still determined to kill him?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ said Fergus in a voice that quivered with rage. Every inch of him was tensed like a soldier before the charge into battle. ‘I have more reason than ever. I didn’t want to believe it, but it’s inside me now and I can’t get it out. I won’t rest until I’ve killed him.’

  ‘No, you have to listen to me, Fergus, there’s more and I haven’t told you yet —’

  ‘I’m tired of listening to you, Marcel. I don’t want to hear any more. Go! Get out, leave me alone.’

  His shouting brought the gaoler to the door. ‘What’s all this noise?’

  ‘Get them out of here!’ Fergus demanded.

  ‘No, we can’t go yet,’ Marcel cried as the gaoler unlocked the door. ‘Fergus, you have to give up this obsession before it brings you more torment than you can imagine.’

  Fergus put his hands over his ears and turned away into the corner of the cell. Marcel tried to spin him around, but Finn put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Leave him, Marcel, he’s got a lot to think about.’

  The gaoler took his other arm and, none too gently, Marcel was ushered through the door. ‘But you heard him, Finn. He’s more determined than ever to kill his father. You don’t understand how horrible the curse is. Blisters over his entire body, tormented dreams, a year of agony and a slow, terrible death.’

  ‘You’ll get your chance to tell him tomorrow, Marcel,’ Finn assured him.

  By this time Marcel had been pushed along the narrow passageway to where Fergus wouldn’t hear him even if he shouted. There was nothing more he could do that day. ‘At least in that cell he’s no threat to Damon,’ he sighed.

  ‘Yes, but the opposite isn’t true,’ said Finn thoughtfully.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget I spoke,’ he replied, trying hard to force a smile. ‘I’ll make sure Fergus is safe until we can get him out of there.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Like a Spider

  FERGUS LISTENED TO THE footsteps grow fainter in the narrow passageway until the silence told him he was alone once more. He’d been alone for much of the time since leaving the palace in Elster and so the feeling was a familiar comfort. Only when he’d been forced into Stig’s tiny family had he known human company and even then he’d kept to himself, knowing that Marla despised him. When he’d brought Hein out of the forest, Stig and Marla too had made a warm place for him, as though he was one of their own, yet he’d left that place behind just as surely as he’d fled Elstenwyck. Now he had sent Marcel and Nicola packing.

  ‘Why do I do it?’ he asked the cold walls, but even as he spoke he knew the answer. There was no family for him, no rest, no peace, until Damon was dead.

  He paced the cell, measuring four equal strides before turning to retrace them. ‘Damon can’t be my father,’ he said over and over, but he felt the truth of it seeping into his bones.

  Had he known all along?

  ‘No!’ he snapped in answer to the silent question.

  But you suspected something.

  Fergus wasn’t mad. There was no demon inhabiting his soul who flung these unwelcome questions into his thoughts. They came from his own heart, where he had held them down for so long.

  In the days after Mortregis was destroyed, when Marcel and Nicola settled tentatively into their forgotten lives, Fergus had felt separate from them and alone. Yes, there was that word again. He’d been lonely even then, in a palace full of servants, lords and ladies, his own brother and sister (or so he’d thought), and especially his father, the king. Pelham was a good man and a fine king but Fergus had felt no blood bond between them. Marcel’s story simply confirmed the confusion he’d suffered before his escape on Gadfly. He felt no loss now that the truth was revealed.

  ‘I don’t need a father,’ he said. ‘To me the word means nothing.’

  The torment began to fall away from him, quickly replaced by a familiar heat beneath his skin. He’d set out from Elstenwyck for one reason only, to kill Damon, and whether the man was his father or not, that was still his aim.

  He stepped lightly to the door and peered as best he could into the darkened passageway. No sign of the gaoler. He crossed the cell to the window where a single iron bar blocked the opening. It was only a halfhearted defence against escape, because the real deterrent lay hundreds of feet below on the jagged rocks at the ocean’s edge.

  He grasped the bar near its base and began to work it back and forth. It already moved quite a way insid
e the stone because he’d been keeping himself occupied like this ever since he’d been thrown into the cell. At first he’d just been curious to see if he could loosen it. Now his labour had real purpose.

  Suddenly the bar broke through the crumbling rock and came free in his hand. The loud grating sound brought the gaoler to investigate and Fergus barely had time to wedge the bar back into place before a suspicious growl asked, ‘What are you up to?’ But the gaoler couldn’t see anything out of place and went back to his guardhouse next door.

  There was nothing to stop Fergus climbing through the window now, nothing except a blood-chilling drop to certain death below. Could he make a rope? Not unless he could weave one out of straw. Giving way to his frustration, he kicked at the useless yellow clumps beneath his feet. How could he climb down, or even to a nearby window? Unless …

  He strode once more to the wall, not to turn around as he’d done a hundred time before, but to examine it more closely. This part of the keep was roughly built and the mortar had been slapped between the heavy stones with little care, leaving gaps that made convenient homes for spiders and mice. He slipped his fingers into one of these spaces above his head. Yes, he could get a hold.

  With this hand in place, he searched around until the tip of his shoe found a slot as well. Time to try his full weight and see if these precarious grips would hold. Ready, ease up off the floor and … He slipped, grazing his cheek against the unforgiving stone and ending in a heap among the straw.

  That was his first attempt. He tried again and again, until he lost count of the failures, although a tally of his bruises would have given an accurate number. Each time he became fed up he would sit in the corner and try to think of another way. There wasn’t one. He had to crawl across the wall like a spider or stay in the cell where Damon had put him. This last thought made him stand up and try again.

  AFTER THE SUN HAD dipped beneath the perfect line of the horizon and the moon had taken its place, two soldiers joined the gaoler. He welcomed them so casually Fergus guessed they visited him every night. He listened to the clinking of bottles against glasses and smiled when their talk became more raucous and slurred. Finally, about midnight, the visitors left and soon after he could hear the gaoler’s snoring. Time to get started.