‘Clements?’ comes the master’s voice from behind me. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ I assure him, catching my breath. ‘Just a momentary dizziness.’

  He stares at me for a moment and it occurs to me that this is the closest attention he’s paid to me for years. Eventually he nods and moves off to the library, leaving me to my duties.

  Once I’m alone I crane my head out of one of the front windows and look at the sky. It is darkening and it makes me shiver. There is nothing natural in this weather, I know, and when I hear the sound of doors banging in the corridors above me I am only too aware that something is afoot.

  But it’s none of my business.

  Neither is what lies beyond the cellar door, the only part of the house that is closed to me.

  ‘What they want to go locking that up for?’ young Lily, the char asks.

  ‘Never you mind, my girl,’ I tell her. But I catch her looking at it and wondering whenever she passes with her brush and beater. It’s a curiosity that will do her no good. I’d tell her so, but that would only intrigue her more.

  Night falls and the game pie is delivered to the family table, picked at and returned. I take the precaution of disposing of a portion of it before allowing it to be sent back to cook. I wouldn’t want her to know that it had been barely touched.

  After dinner the house settles into itself and the family retire to their rooms as if even they cannot bear to be abroad in its corridors after dark.

  I extinguish the candles and restore everything to its right place, eager to lock myself away in my own quarters.

  It’s as I am moving towards the stairs that I glance towards the cellar door. I feel curious about what’s behind it, just like young Lily. You’re a foolish old man, I think as I walk over to it and rest my hand against the wood. There’s nothing good that can be gained from this and you know as much, I tell myself.

  I ignore my own advice and reach for the handle. Of course it’s locked. Satisfied, I walk away. It is only later, when I come to remove my gloves, that I see the white cotton has been stained by blood from the door handle.

  Thirty

  Brothers in Blood – The Memoirs of Professor Herbert Grost: Volume One (Unpublished)

  KRONOS AND I arrived outside the White Hart Inn just as the weather looked like it might be taking a turn for the worse.

  ‘Summer storm,’ I said, looking up at the clouds. Kronos just grunted and entered the inn.

  He had followed the coach tracks as far as he’d been able but they’d petered out on the edge of the woods as the hardened earth, baked in the sun, was too solid to retain sign of them. We decided to continue on our way to the inn and ask whether a coach had been seen passing. I suspected that Kronos was thirsty. A glass of wine on top of the skinful we had drunk the night before might be the best way to settle our stomachs.

  It was not a nice place. The sort of tavern where one went in order to get thoroughly stabbed after imbibing a little bad beer.

  ‘Wine,’ said Kronos, never one for small talk. The barman brought us each a cup and I looked around. The place was empty except for the barman and, on the far side of the fire, three gentlemen of the cutthroat type. These must be the adventurers whom Marcus had mentioned, I realised, the ex-soldiers who had been staying here on their way to opportunities new.

  I looked away, not wishing to encourage contact, and stared down at my wine. It was like pond water. I wondered briefly if I might have a more pleasing time were I to drink from the inn’s spittoon.

  ‘Did a coach pass this way within the last half an hour or so?’ asked Kronos.

  The barman, a small, bald, sinewy man who looked like a knuckle in a shirt, glanced over Kronos’s shoulder at the three men sitting by the fire. He was clearly scared of his own customers.

  ‘Well?’ Kronos asked, impatient as ever.

  ‘Who’s asking?’ said one of the three men – the leader, I assumed from the fact that he was doing the talking.

  He got up from his chair and came over to us. Oh yes, I thought, definitely the leader: he’s walking slowly so that we realise it.

  He was middle-aged and sported a short beard that suggested laziness rather than fashion. His shirt had once been white but was now the same tobacco-stained colour as the walls. The best thing about him were his boots, knee-length and of fine black leather. Maybe he’d stolen them.

  ‘I said … who’s asking?’ He offered a smile that showed off his teeth in their worst light. Then he spat a spray of tobacco juice onto the floorboards.

  ‘Is there a reason why such information is closely guarded?’ asked Kronos. ‘What does it matter to you who we are?’

  ‘It matters,’ the man said, glancing at me. His stare lingered, taking in the curve of my back. His grin grew wider. ‘Or maybe it doesn’t,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can guess, thanks to your freakish friend.’

  ‘Freakish?’ asked Kronos.

  ‘Kerro …’ said the barman, clearly concerned about where this conversation might lead – though not as concerned as I was.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kerro. ‘Freakish. Deformed, misshapen. As twisted and ugly as a pig’s cock, in fact.’ He laughed at this bit of choice wit and his companions joined in as they stepped across the room to join him.

  They were just as handsome, and the combined smell of old beer and unwashed flesh now that the three of them were close together was almost over-powering.

  ‘You shouldn’t talk about my friend like that,’ said Kronos. ‘You might upset him.’

  ‘And why would that bother me, my friend?’ said Kerro.

  ‘Because then I would be upset too,’ said Kronos.

  Kerro looked at each of his colleagues and they laughed. He turned back to Kronos.

  ‘As you can see, we’re all very scared of you.’ He held up his hands and mimed a scream. ‘Though it’s only fair to warn you that you face three veterans of more battlefields than you have likely heard of, let alone fought on. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many men I have killed, my friend, not because I’ve lost count but because I slay so readily without the least remorse that I can’t say the screams of a single one of them has stuck in my memory. I am a man who kills, sir: it’s what I do.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s better just to show you.’

  He laughed and his hand reached for the grip of his sword. It got there a little after Kronos drew his own weapon. In fact, all three men were too slow – though it took them a moment to appreciate the fact. They stood there, wondering what Kronos had just done.

  ‘I am sorry for the mess, landlord,’ said Kronos, taking a sip of his drink. He scowled. ‘This is not good wine.’

  ‘What mess?’ asked one of Kerro’s colleagues just before he fell over dead.

  Kerro turned to watch the man fall, then stared in puzzlement as his friend followed suit.

  ‘What did you …?’ The faint red line at Kerro’s throat blossomed and his stained shirt turned scarlet as the blood pumped. ‘Oh,’ he said, just before his head toppled back and split the wound in his throat wide. His legs gave way beneath him and he crashed down against a table and a couple of chairs.

  However often I see Kronos at work I will never cease to be amazed by his prowess. Two long slashes of his sword and three throats are cut. It all seems as simple to him as breathing itself.

  ‘So,’ said Kronos, turning back to the landlord. ‘I say again: have you seen a coach pass this way?’

  Thirty-One

  Carla Practises Medicine

  WHILE THE REST of them go chasing off to the forest, I stay at Marcus’s house and try to make the Godawful pounding in my head go away. I decide – not for the first time – that it would be better if I were never to drink wine again. No doubt I will make this promise again one day, just after I break it.

  I am not a girl who is very good with promises, I am the sort of person who likes to be spontaneous and that’s easier if you don’t burden yourself with a whole list of things you mustn’t do.

  Take sleeping with Kronos. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t do that, either. He’s mad, dangerous and not at all the sort of man my mother would be pleased to see me climb into bed with. Which is pretty much an exact list of all the qualities that make a man worth climbing into bed with.

  Still, I’m angry I did it, probably more because he expected that I would, sooner or later, than because I didn’t enjoy it. Because I did. Enjoy it, that is. He was surprisingly considerate. Men as self-obsessed as he clearly is usually act as if they’re on their own and it can be a boring and unfulfilling chore sleeping with them. Kronos was not like that. Not only do I have a headache, I am also extremely tired: that last is entirely his fault.

  But he is a smug sod and I am rather angry that I have helped sustain his belief that women will fall into bed with him at the first opportunity.

  However much fun it was.

  And tiring.

  Oh, my head …

  I decide that, as a doctor, Marcus must have something that can make me feel better. Abandoning the cool dark of the stables, I aim for the main house, giving Clyde Lorrimer a smile on my way past. He gives me a funny look in return, as if he knows something that he’s not letting on about.

  ‘What’s wrong with you this morning, Mr Lorrimer?’ I ask, because you never know, it is just possible that he might give a straight answer to a straight question.

  ‘Nothing wrong with me, miss,’ he replies. ‘Should there be?’

  ‘You just had a look on your face … oh, never mind …’ I am not in the mood to trade words with the likes of Clyde Lorrimer.

  ‘Your master not here, then?’ he asks as I’m about to step inside the house.

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ I reply. ‘He’s not my master. But no, he isn’t here – why did you want to see him?’

  ‘I reckon quite a few folk will be wanting to see him,’ Lorrimer says, ‘on account of what they found on poor old Father Volk.’

  Not dead priests again, I think. They’re what started me off in the first place.

  ‘What did they find?’

  ‘Reckon I’ll not mention that,’ he says, a smug look on his face. ‘Not until later anyway.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ I really cannot be bothered to play the game, not today.

  Inside the house I help myself to a glass of water from the jug left over from breakfast. It doesn’t matter how much water I drink today, it drains away as if I’m a plant that’s been left in the sun for days.

  ‘Now then,’ I say to myself, ‘where does a doctor keep his medicines?’

  I find under the stairs a large cabinet, filled to the brim with jars, bottles and boxes.

  Now I come to my next problem: nothing is labelled at any great length. It simply says what each item is, not what it’s for. Which stands to reason, really: why would Marcus feel the need to remind himself how to do his own job at every step?

  Mother was a nurse and I try and remember what she used to give people when their heads hurt. This would be easier if my head didn’t hurt. I start opening jars and sniffing them in the hope that I’ll trigger a memory once I smell something familiar.

  Then I find the leeches. And drop them. Which is a pain but I hadn’t been expecting to stumble across medicine that actually moved.

  With a sigh that feels so long and deep it could come from the very depths of the earth, I sink to my knees and start picking up the horrible, wriggling things. A job that I’m still doing when Kronos and Grost appear.

  ‘Making friends?’ Kronos jokes. The look I give him is enough to silence any more attempts at humour.

  Grost, lovely kind Grost, stoops down to help me. Something has upset him, I can tell: he is very quiet.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, putting a hand on his arm.

  ‘Nothing,’ he says, quick and petulant, just like a child.

  Kronos gazes down at me. ‘Why would anyone want to put such creatures on themselves?’ he says, looking at the leeches with a sneer on his face.’

  ‘They purify the blood,’ I tell him. ‘My mother was a nurse – she used them all the time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. If you were sensible you’d sit down and let me apply a few now. Why would a warrior not take every opportunity to make himself as fit as possible?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Not scared, are you?’

  Which is how I have him sitting in the front room with his shirt off while I stick leeches all over his back. It may do nothing for him but it certainly makes me feel better.

  ‘Did you speak to Lorrimer?’ I ask Kronos and Grost.

  ‘He doesn’t go out of his way to make conversation,’ Kronos admits. ‘I don’t think he likes me very much. In fact …’ He squirms as I place another leech between his shoulder blades. ‘I get the impression that very few people around here do.’

  ‘At least they don’t insult you,’ says Grost and I guess this is why he is upset.

  ‘Who insulted you?’ I ask and Kronos tells me what happened at the White Hart.

  ‘Am I so repugnant?’ Grost asks. ‘So terrible to look at that I deserve mockery?’

  ‘Beauty is only skin deep,’ I tell him, ‘and withers in no time. A good heart is much more precious and it lasts for ever.’

  He smiles slightly. ‘That’s very sweet.’

  ‘My mother used to say it all the time.’

  ‘Then she was a very wise woman,’ says Kronos, ‘and was worth a thousand of the scum we met today. Besides, don’t take their comments to heart, my friend. They were paid to insult you, after all.’

  ‘Paid?’ asks Grost.

  ‘Aye, paid. Somebody wanted Kerro and his men to pick a fight with us. They chose the easiest way: they insulted my very best friend. It means nothing, though, they would have said whatever they needed to in order to get what they wanted.’

  ‘But if they were paid to attack us …’

  ‘Then someone wants rid of us, which means they feel under threat, which means …’

  ‘That we’re getting closer.’

  ‘Absolutely! So isn’t that worth a few harsh words?’

  Grost smiles. I place another leech on Kronos’s back. He’s covered with them now and they’re all dark and swelling. I don’t know how they are making him feel but my headache’s almost gone.

  ‘Why did you mention Lorrimer?’ Grost asks, having remembered this earlier point in the conversation.

  ‘He was acting strangely earlier. Then he started gloating about something that was found on Volk’s body.’

  ‘What?’ Kronos asks.

  ‘I have no idea. He wouldn’t say, just seemed to feel that it would make people want to ask you questions.’

  ‘Ask me?’

  I nod.

  Kronos gets to his feet, still covered in leeches, and steps outside.

  ‘Lorrimer?’ he shouts. ‘Lorrimer! Where are you?’

  After a few moments the man appears, his axe in his hands. I’m reminded of our initial friendly greeting.

  ‘No need to shout the place down,’ he says. ‘I’m here. Not that I have to come when you call me, mind.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ says Kronos. ‘Thank you for doing so.’

  Lorrimer shrugs. He looks at Kronos, his head tipped to one side. ‘Is there a reason why you never seem to have a shirt on?’ he asks. ‘Is it too hot for you here in England?’

  ‘I’ve lived here since I was a child,’ Kronos says. ‘I am perfectly used to the climate. The cold and wet climate, at that.’ He turns around. ‘I am having a medical treatment.’

  Lorrimer screws up his face. ‘Don’t know as I hold with that sort of thing. Dirty creatures, ain’t they? Live in swamps and marshes – don’t know how it’s supposed to do you any good, having them stuck all over you.’

  Kronos nods his head. ‘To be honest I’m not sure what’s so good about them myself. I am just doing as Carla says.’

  ‘Ah …’ Lorrimer replies. ‘That girl’s doing, is it?’

  I’m only on the other side of the window, my friend, I think, and am happy to come out there and put that axe in you if you’re going to be rude. But I don’t say anything. Kronos is obviously trying to be friendly and chopping people up doesn’t help a man do that.

  Kronos chuckles and nods. ‘I think she’s doing it just to be unkind!’ he says. ‘I think it makes her laugh.’

  Lorrimer agrees earnestly. ‘I can imagine only too well,’ he says. ‘There’s something wrong with that girl. She was talking yesterday about how she had bitten someone’s ear off.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Aye, and spat it into the undergrowth.’

  Kronos rolled his eyes. ‘I think she makes things up sometimes.’

  Come here and say that, I think. We’ll soon see how long it takes to bite off your extremities.

  ‘For example,’ he continues, ‘she was talking to me earlier about what they found on poor Father Volk’s body.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Lorrimer replies, looking nervous.

  ‘Yes,’ says Kronos. ‘A fragment of cloth, apparently.’

  Lorrimer smiles and relaxes slightly. ‘She’s making it up,’ he says. ‘Weren’t no piece of cloth.’

  ‘No?’ says Kronos, sitting down on the large section of tree trunk Lorrimer uses as a bench for chopping wood. ‘But they did find something, then? What was it?’

  ‘Ah …’ Lorrimer realises he’s been caught out. What possible reason can he give for not telling Kronos? ‘It were a button,’ he says eventually.

  ‘A button? Really? Snatched off the coat of the attacker, we assume?’

  ‘Well, maybe something like that, yes,’ says Lorrimer.

  ‘What sort of button?’ Kronos asks, getting up and strolling back over towards the door of the house.

  ‘Well,’ says Lorrimer, ‘a big gold one.’

  ‘I see,’ says Kronos, opening the door and sticking his head inside the building. He smiles at us. ‘Pass me my coat,’ he says. Grost throws it to him and Kronos steps back outside. ‘The sort of button you might find on a military jacket like this?’ he asks Lorrimer.

 

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