The Third Door

9 - The Chest

With a rueful glance at his wife, Farr re-folded the note and put it back into its envelope. Then he pushed the envelope deep into his jacket pocket. If he had hoped that by removing it from his councillors’ sight he would discourage them from remarking on it, he was disappointed.

‘The same old story,’ sneered Manx. ‘By the stars, the woman never gives up!’

‘Carryl deserves our respect,’ Sigrid said stiffly. ‘She was a great chieftain in her day.’

‘Indeed she was,’ Barron agreed. ‘But she’s … well, she’s very old now, Sigrid, and her mind’s not as clear as it once was. Her obsession with that shambles she calls a museum and what might lie beneath it—’

‘There is nothing wrong with Carryl’s mind!’ Janna broke in. ‘She just sees things differently from other people.’

‘Yes.’ Manx smiled thinly. ‘And that is because she buries her head in the sand in more ways than one. Carryl has never seen a slay. She has never heard the screams of beasts caught outside shelter. She has never seen words of terror scarred in a field, the crop withered as if by a freezing hand.’

‘And she still refuses to believe the stories of beings that prowl at night, setting fires and attacking innocents,’ Barron added, his jowls trembling with earnestness. ‘She calls them rumours and fishermen’s tales, when we all know they’re true.’

Farr glanced at Keelin and frowned. ‘This isn’t the time or place to be discussing Carryl,’ he said. ‘What news do you have for me?’

‘There were hundreds of slays over Fell End and the surrounding farms last night,’ Sigrid said in a low voice. ‘Five Riverside people were found this morning dead in their beds for no apparent reason. And there was another message burned into a tarny field halfway to New Nerra.’

‘And it said?’ Farr demanded.

Barron shrugged, fiddling with the gold earring in his left ear. ‘Oh, the usual,’ he muttered. ‘“Prepare to Die!” Our enemy has no imagination.’

‘This is no joking matter!’ snapped Manx. ‘Farr—the pipeline will be completed tomorrow and the people want you to act! They cannot understand your dithering! They have all heard of the attack on your son. They cannot understand why even that was not enough to move you. They see it as weakness!’

‘That can’t be helped!’ Farr snapped. ‘I can’t act blindly! I have to find out more before taking a step that can’t be reversed!’

‘It’s a big decision,’ agreed Barron. ‘And it’ll be a brave man who makes it. I’m glad it’s not up to me.’

Sigrid curled her lip. ‘I daresay you are. Especially since delay suits you, Trader Barron. After all, you are very fond of money, and the longer the slay attacks go on, the more slay shields you sell.’

‘Sigrid, that was unforgiveable!’ Farr barked, as the red in Barron’s cheeks darkened to purple.

Barron raised his chin. ‘You wrong me, Sigrid of Gold Marsh,’ he said with surprising dignity. ‘I sell slay shields, certainly, but nothing would please me more than to be able to throw all my remaining stock into the sea!’

‘I apologise,’ the woman said stiffly. ‘I spoke hastily. This morning’s news upset me and I—am not myself. But I cannot see the sense in waiting once we are ready to strike. The Enemy has ignored our appeals, our demands, and our threats. Not one of our messengers has returned to us. All are dead, I fear.’

‘Indeed. Six brave hearts sacrificed for nothing,’ Barron mumbled. Suddenly he looked much older.

Farr took a deep breath. ‘We’re all under great strain, friends, but I beg you to be patient. Petronelle is sure Keelin’s memory will return, given time. And she’s sure he knows something important.’

‘You put too much faith in Petronelle,’ Manx said, scowling. ‘She may be your wife’s old nurse, and the nurse of your son, but this does not mean she can be trusted in all things. Any fool can see she has Fellan blood! Those eyes—’

‘Many of Dorne’s old families have a trace of Fellan blood,’ Janna retorted hotly. ‘It may run in your own veins, Trader Manx, for all you know!’

Manx’s thin face darkened in anger.

‘Petronelle’s loyalty is beyond question!’ Janna rushed on. ‘I bless the day my parents chose her to be my nurse. They, at least, had no foolish fears of Fellan blood!’

‘Your mother and father were not born here, Lady Janna,’ Sigrid remarked, inspecting the rings on her fingers. ‘They could not be expected to understand our history.’

Janna looked at her with dislike. ‘My parents may have been born across the sea, Councillor Sigrid, but Dorne was the home of my ancestors. Despite what you tried to claim when you were standing against Farr for election as chieftain, my family’s links with this island are as ancient as his or yours—more ancient, perhaps! Not that it should matter to anyone with sense!’

‘Oh, very true!’ Barron chattered anxiously. ‘I’m sure it doesn’t matter a jot to most people that your parents were foreigners, Lady. I deal with foreigners every day in the way of business, and some are very fine fellows!’

Seeing that Janna did not look in the least soothed he blundered on. ‘And as for part-Fellan—well, I don’t suppose there’s much harm in most of them. As long as they’re watched, you know.’

‘You should ask yourself some hard questions, Farr!’ Manx hissed, ignoring Janna and Barron and glancing coldly at Keelin. ‘What better way for a spy to worm his way into a chieftain’s confidence than to stage a rescue of that chieftain’s only child? How do you know this boy has lost his memory at all? How do you know that this whole affair is not an enemy plot to keep you dangling and hesitating, waiting for information that will never come?’

‘Steady on, old fellow,’ Barron protested.

Manx shot him a disgusted look.

‘I am not a spy!’ Keelin cried, unable to keep silent any longer. ‘I have truly lost my memory—lost myself! My mind is a mass of shadows. I hate it! I swear to you, if I could remember, I would!’

‘So you say,’ Manx sneered, turning away. ‘And while you wander in the shadows, it seems, the whole of Dorne must wait.’

By the time his visitors left, Keelin was grey with exhaustion. He dozed in his chair for the rest of the day, his nurse frowning over her sewing by the window. Only as evening fell did he rouse himself and begin thinking of all that had passed that morning.

‘Did Manx, Sigrid or Barron visit me while I was ill?’ he asked Petronelle, trying to sound merely curious.

The old woman snorted. ‘All of them came at one time or another,’ she said, carrying a bowl of noodles and vegetables to his chair and handing him a spoon. ‘None of them believed you were as badly injured as you were, I could see that. I daresay they all think you and I have hatched a plot between us, and that you are an enemy spy.’

Keelin did not tell her that Manx, at least, certainly held that view. He merely nodded and went on thinking as he picked at his food, throwing scraps to the clink whenever Petronelle turned her back. So, any one of the three councillors could have put the hateful message in his dressing gown pocket.

Despite his lazy day he fell asleep easily when it was time. But in the middle of the night he woke, as suddenly as if someone had whispered in his ear. Moonlight was filtering through the thin curtain that covered the window. Faint snores were rising from Petronelle’s narrow cot.

Keelin slid out of bed. The clink in the fireplace chattered and he glanced quickly at Petronelle, afraid the sound would wake her.

He still had not eaten the cake Zak had given him. Petronelle had left it on the table beside the bed in case he felt hungry in the night. With a mental apology to Zak, Keelin snatched up the cake and padded over to the fireplace.

‘Here,’ he whispered, putting the cake down on the hearth. ‘Now be quiet!’

The clink, a pale glimmer in the gloom, gave one excited squeak as if it could not believe its luck. Then tiny claws grasped the treat and dragged it back into the shadows.

Wasting no time, Keelin crept to the chest in the corner and cautiously raised the lid. Inside were some neatly folded clothes, a cracked belt and a battered pair of boots. He knelt by the chest and took out the garments one by one.

They were all very worn, but they had been washed, dried and pressed so they smelled faintly of soap and sunshine. There was nothing in any of the pockets. The clothes told him nothing. He might never have seen them in his life before.

Fighting bitter disappointment, he lifted out the boots. As he did, something that had been jammed between them and the side of the chest rolled clear.

It was a stick—just an ordinary, smooth stick. Dimly he recalled Zak pressing a stick into his hands during the night on the barge. And had Petronelle not told him that he had run to save the boy with only a stick for a weapon? This must be the very stick! Petronelle had taken it from him at some point, and put it away with everything else.

Curiously, Keelin reached for it. And the moment his fingers closed around it a memory surged into his mind, so violently that he almost cried out.

Crashing waves. The sun burning like fire as it melted into the horizon. Glittering beasts—sea serpents—their terrible, dripping heads and long, spiked necks swaying above the heaving sea …

Keelin leaned panting against the open chest, his head whirling. What did this mean? Where had this memory come from?

But he knew. He knew by the familiar way the stick fitted his hand that he had held it many times before. It was not a makeshift weapon he had snatched up at Fell End, but part of his lost past.

Vainly he struggled to recall more. Dull pain thudded behind his eyes. He shut it out and thought of the beast at Fell End, concentrating on the stick, on the smoothness of the stick. What had happened in the moments before he ran to Zak? What had he seen?

Remember! he urged himself. Prove to Manx and the others that you are no traitor!

Shapes moved sluggishly in the dimness of his mind. None would move into the light.

Hot tears of frustration burned in his eyes. He thrust the stick back into the chest, and was doing the same with the boots when he jumped. His rough handling had dislodged something that had been stuffed into the toe of the left boot. Slowly he pulled it out.

It was a strangely shaped piece of grey fabric, very light and fine. He knew at once what it was. It was a hood—and it belonged to him, he was sure of it. But why had it been jammed into the toe of the boot?

An answer came to him and his heart gave a great thud. Cautiously he tipped the boot and gave it a little shake. With a soft, sliding sound, a small drawstring bag with a long plaited cord fell into his hand.

Keelin’s palm tingled. His skin prickled. Warmth spread through him like flame. The bag was his, just as the hood was his, and the stick. They were more his than the clean, shabby clothes folded in the chest. He did not know why, but he knew it was so.

He opened the bag but could see little of the contents. He felt around with a trembling finger. There was a feather, he thought, and something hard and knobbly—

He fell back with a gasp, snatching his finger away as the bag lit up like a tiny lantern. In the fireplace the clink chittered in fright, and across the room Petronelle mumbled and half woke.

Keelin sat shaking and blinking, his eyes still dazzled by the flash of light. His head pounded ominously. He knew he had to get back to bed. It would not do for Petronelle to find him here.

For who else but Petronelle could have hidden the little bag in the toe of the boot, and used the silken hood as a plug to hold it in place? Why had she done it? And why had she not breathed a word about the bag to him or anyone else?

Quickly he pulled the drawstring tight once more and without thinking very much about what he was doing, looped the cord around his neck, tucking the bag under his nightshirt.

Silently he closed the chest and tiptoed back to bed, the silken hood crushed in his hand. To his relief, the clink had stopped chattering and gone back to its meal. But just as he slid between the covers he heard Petronelle yawning, then the springs of her cot squeaking as she sat up.

He lay very still, his heart pounding, as the old woman got up, poured herself a drink of water and returned to bed. Slowly the pain in his head eased. With the hand that held the hood he pressed the little bag to his chest. It was strangely comforting. He could just hear the small sounds of the clink scrabbling after the last of the cake crumbs in the fireplace.

He had not thought he would sleep—had not imagined sleep would be possible—but the next thing he knew, it was morning.

His head felt clear. Petronelle was still snoring gently in her corner. The drawstring bag was warm against his chest. Now was the time to examine its contents.

He slid out of bed, put on the striped dressing gown and padded across the room. Dawn light was seeping through the curtain. There was another blue pebble on the floor beneath the window. And the clink in the fireplace was dead.