The Tower of Ravens (43 page)

“Ye’ll all stay close, won’t ye? Fettercairn’s a big place, and very auld. Ye willna go wandering about, will ye, or play any silly games like hide-and-seek?”

Rafferty and Cameron exchanged mischievous glances and Felice had to bite back a giggle, but they all agreed solemnly that they would stay close to their rooms.

“Och, good,” Dedrie said. “I wouldna want aught to happen to ye. Wait here, I’ll send Wilma to direct ye. She willna be but a moment.”

The door shut behind her.

“What a weird auld lady,” Felice said. “I swear my blood ran cold when she said ‘stay close’, with
such
a meaningful look. What do ye think she’s afraid will happen to us?”

“Ye might get lost and spend the rest o‘ your life wandering the halls o’ Fettercairn, looking for a way out,” Rafferty said solemnly.

“Happen they have dungeons. Or an oubliette,” Cameron said. “Ye could fall in and no-one would ken where ye were. Someone would find ye in a hundred years, naught but a skeleton wearing a rose-coloured gown.”

“Happen the ghosts would get ye,” Roden said in his high, treble voice. “Oooooooooooooooooh, oooooooooooooooo-ooh.” He pulled his shirt up over his head and ran round the room, wailing and flapping his arms.

Felice shuddered. “Enough!”

“Aye, that’s enough, laddie,” Nina said. “Ye can go and get out o‘ your good shirt now. I just wish I hadna asked for it to be ironed. Look at ye! Ye’re grubby already. Ten minutes on your back, and ye look like ye’ve slept in it. I dinna ken how ye do it.”

Roden whopped with joy, dragged the hated shirt over his head and flung it On the ground. Lulu leapt on top of it, jumping up and down, howling with glee. Laughing, Roden joined her, the little bag of muslin he wore about his neck bouncing up and down on his thin chest.

“Roden!” Nina cried in exasperation. “Ye’ve got your boots on! Look at it now. It’ll have to be washed again. Why do ye do these things?”

“I don’t have to go to dinner!” Roden sang. “Yippee!”

“We’ll go and check on the horses,” Lewen said, “and give them a bit o‘ a walk in the grass, then have dinner just the two o’ us.”

“And a story.”

“Sure, and a story.”

“Ten stories!”

“Three,” Lewen compromised. “And only if ye do no‘ give me any cheek!”

“I wouldna do that,” Roden said in all sincerity, his eyes wide. “Would I, Mam?”

“Never,” she said with a smile, and drew close to Lewen so she could thank him.

“I do no‘ wish to upset anyone, but I canna be easy about leaving Roden with a stranger,” she said softly. “I ken I’m probably over-anxious but all these tales we’ve been hearing… and those poor ensorcelled corpses… I just canna be easy in my mind.”

“Och, that’s grand,” Lewen said. “I’m happy to have a quiet night by the fire.
I
have no desire to get myself all fancied up.”

He caught Rhiannon’s eye and looked away, and she turned her back, feeling unaccountably snubbed. She smoothed down her green silk, shook back her ringlets, and smiled at Rafferty, who shielded his eyes, saying, “All this beauty, I am blinded!”

Rhiannon did not glance at Lewen again as she allowed Rafferty to show her out of the room.

The Great Hall

The maid Wilma was waiting anxiously outside to show them down to the dining room. They went down two-by-two, and were shown into a huge, gloomy room panelled from floor to ceiling in wood so dark it was almost black. Each lofty wall was crowded with the stuffed heads of dead animals— stags, hinds, boars, sabre-leopards, snow-lions, woolly bears, hoar-weasels—their glass eyes shining awfully in the dull flicker of the iron chandelier suspended from a chain in the centre of the ceiling.

Nina’s step faltered as she took in the sight of all the disembodied heads and antlers, and Felice made a face. Rhiannon looked round in interest. She had never seen the taxidermist’s art before but she understood the desire to display such trophies of one’s hunting prowess.

In the centre of the room was a long table spread with a yellowing linen tablecloth and decorated with ornate silver candlesticks and an enormous silver epergne. Lord Malvern sat at one end, looking with displeasure at his watch, and Lady Evaline sat at the other, her face unhappy. There was an old man wearing round eyeglasses sitting on her right hand, and a thin, brown, drably dressed woman sitting on her left, fiddling with her fork. Another elderly man with thin, gnarled fingers and anxious, grey eyes sat a little further along, a middle-aged man with the same grey eyes sitting beside him. All the other guests looked apprehensive, and Lord Malvern was frowning heavily, two white dents driven down from his hooked nose to the sides of his mouth.

“I’m sorry, are we late?” Nina said, crossing the room swiftly.

“Your maid’s fault, no doubt,” Lord Malvern said, standing up and bowing stiffly.

“Nay, I’m afraid we were all rather tired and slow to get ready. I am sorry.”

“No matter,” Lord Malvern said.

The seneschal Irving was there in his sombre livery, carrying a white-tipped stick in one hand. He bowed to Nina and lightly touched the back of the chair on Lord Malvern’s right hand. At once a footman sprang forward and pulled out the chair for Nina, who sat obediently. Irving touched another chair, and a footman pulled it out for Iven. One by one, the seneschal indicated where each person was to sit, showing himself uncannily aware of the order of precedence owed to each and every one of them.

Rhiannon found herself sitting right down the end of the table, next to the old man with the eyeglasses. He peered at her over their rim, mumbled, “My, my!” and then introduced himself as Gerard the Sennachie. Not knowing what this meant, Rhiannon smiled and nodded her head, and discovered, in time, that this meant the old man looked after the family history and papers, and kept the clan registers and library in order. He rambled on for what seemed like a very long time, telling Rhiannon all about the long and distinguished genealogy of the MacFerris clan. They were one of the few great families of Eileanan to have an unbroken line of inheritance, father to son, for a thousand years, he told her.

“Is that important?” Rhiannon asked, bored.

He was surprised. “O‘ course! Though the line is broken now, unhappily. Hopefully my laird can repair the break and restore the line. I ken it is his dearest wish.” Just then the first course arrived, and he thankfully subsided into silence.

Lady Evaline was scanning all their faces with anxious eyes. “Where is the lad?” she asked piteously. “Did I no‘ see a lad with ruddy hair and dark eyes, just like my wee Rory? Is he no’ here? Was he a ghost too?”

Nina hardly knew how to answer, and everyone else sat feeling troubled and uncomfortable. Then Lord Malvern said very lightly, from the far end of the table, “There’s always lads running about, my dear, ye ken that. It must have been some potboy ye saw.”

Lady Evaline shook her head. “I never see lads anymore,” she said sadly. “No‘ anywhere. No’ living boys, anyway. Ghosts, only ghosts. Sometimes it is my Rory that haunts me, sometimes other boys that come and go like will o‘ wisps, never here for long but always crying, always cold and crying.”

Lord Malvern stood up, the white dents appearing beside his mouth. “My dear, ye are unwell. I shall call Harriet.”

Lady Evaline shrank back. “Nay, nay, I am well, indeed I am,” she said. “No need to call Harriet. I am sorry, it’s just… I’m sure I saw a lad, a living lad, but no‘ to worry, never mind, I must’ve been mistaken. I am sorry.”

Lord Malvern sat back down again, his face unreadable. He indicated with a jerk of his head that the footmen continue serving the soup and everyone was able to hurry into comments about how hungry they were, and how good the soup smelt, and how lovely was the table setting.

Lady Evaline’s clouded gaze moved back to Nina’s face plaintively. Nina smiled at her, and turned her gaze to the soup bowl being placed before her.

Rhiannon found her composure unbalanced by the mention of the cold, crying boys, which brought her own dream back to her vividly. She also found the table settings very intimidating, for there were at least four spoons and knives, some quite oddly shaped, and any number of glasses and bowls and platters and tureens. She wished fervently that Lewen was there to show her what to do. She watched what the other girls did and tried to mimic them, with mixed results, since this line of defense was complicated by the fact that Felice and Edithe, as apprentice-witches, were not permitted to eat meat. There was barely a dish on the table without the flesh of some animal in it, which made it hard for Nina and the apprentices to eat without discourtesy. The soup at least was made of some sweet orange vegetable, but otherwise there was a large roasted fish on a bed of spinach, a chicken and leek pie, baked pigeons with asparagus and fennel, a dish of lamb and minted peas, and a buttered freshwater lobster. Rhiannon had been hungry for meat since leaving her herd and so she made an excellent meal despite never being quite sure if she was using the right knife and spoon. She noticed that Cameron and Rafferty also tasted many of the dishes, even if rather surreptitiously, and that Nina noticed too and was displeased.

The drab woman on the opposite side of the table from Rhiannon watched her chomp her way willingly through everything on offer, and said faintly, “Heavens, the appetite o‘ the young. How one forgets.”

Rhiannon regarded her thoughtfully, but said nothing. The old man with the anxious grey eyes, who was apparently the clan harper, smiled at her, and said, “I always enjoy watching young people enjoy their food. I wish I could eat with such joyous abandon, but that is one more pleasure lost to me, I’m afraid.”

“Here,
Dai-dein
, try some o‘ the fish, that is no’ too rich,” his son said.

Further up the table, Lord Malvern was enjoying a lively conversation with Edithe, who had been placed at his left hand, in accordance with her noble birth. The young apprentice was smiling demurely as he said, “But what is your father thinking, to let ye go off to court all by yourself, with no-one to protect ye?”

“It is the way o‘ the Coven,” Edithe said with a sigh. “Indeed, my father was concerned but I was determined to go to the Theurgia and so at last he gave in and let me have my way.”