He was not even sure it mattered.
'Come here, boy,' Sir Lowick's voice was empty of strength, like wood charcoaled in a spent fire. It was so quiet it barely registered as a sound at all. Alymere could scarcely believe it had come from his uncle's mouth.
Lowick had raised a hand. His eyes were open, but his stare was glassy.
'Go to him,' Bors said, steering Alymere gently toward the bedside and backing away. Alymere knelt and took his uncle's hand. It felt like the fragile body of a bird nestled between his fingers; so thin, and the skin so slack around it, that Alymere feared simply squeezing too tightly would shatter his uncle's hand.
He brought it to his lips and kissed it, then lowered his head, pressing the delicate bones against the scarred tissue of his forehead. He didn't move until he felt the warm wet track of tears on his cheek. Alymere breathed in deeply, willing himself to be strong.
'I will leave you alone,' Bors said softly, and closed the heavy door behind him.
'I can't see you, boy.'
'I am here, uncle,' Alymere said, soothing him. 'You should rest. I will be here when you wake.'
'No, I'll rest soon enough.' Lowick's eyes roved wildly, unable to focus on anything. The veins at his throat fluttered weakly. 'First, I need to make my peace with my maker. There are things I need to unburden from my soul before I meet Him. And then, God willing, I need to make my peace with you. I owe you that much. After that, I can go.' His grip tightened feebly, and a hacking cough wracked his body, leaving blood flecks on his lips. He lacked the strength to wipe them away, so Alymere tended to him, cleaning away the blood with the cuff of his shirt. 'I need you to do something for me, boy,' the knight said at last. 'I need you to bring the priest here. Will you do that for me? Can I count on you?'
'Of course, uncle,' Alymere said at once, immediately hating himself for the sense of relief the request sent flooding through his system. It wasn't until he reached the door, his hand on the iron handle, that he felt anything other than relief that he would be spared the bedside vigil for however many hours more.
'Twice in these last months I have watched over you, thinking you not long for this world, and here it's me that leaves it first. That, at least, is how it should be.'
He turned to look back at his uncle, and in that moment was overcome by almost childish resentment that this man he had come to love was leaving him, and rather than spend the last few hours he had in this life with his nephew, Lowick had sent him away.
Why should he want to make his peace with some unknowable God before he made peace with his own flesh and blood?
He wanted desperately not to think ill of the dying man, but it hurt.
Alymere made the sign of the cross over his chest.
'You were always a good boy, Alymere. I am proud of you,' Sir Lowick said, but Alymere had already closed the door.
Bors leaned against the balustrade, face grave. He looked as though he needed to hit something. Alymere could identify with the feeling. 'What did he say?'
'Nothing,' Alymere said, biting down the bitterness in his voice. He couldn't help himself. 'Save that he wanted me to fetch him a priest so that he might confess his sins, I suppose. So much for hanging on to see me one last time; he was only worried about his soul.'
'Do not be too harsh on him, lad. Dying is never easy, no matter how laboured its step as it creeps towards us. It is understandable that he would seek to put his house in order.'
'Then why leave me to last?'
'Whatever needs be said, I have absolute faith will be said. Lowick is one man who will not go to his rest until he is good and ready, and on his own terms, that much I know,' but it wasn't what Alymere wanted or needed to hear.
Alymere pushed away from the big man and half-walked, half-ran back to his room, his bare feet slapping too loudly in the silence. Bors let him go.
Gwen had gone. He was glad of that. He didn't think he could have taken her sympathy, no matter how well intended it was.
He wasn't dressed for a long ride. He couldn't think straight. He cast about the room, looking at the sum of his life, pitiful as it was, before gathering his travelling cloak, boots, and a woollen over-shirt, and dressing properly. Then, at the last moment, Alymere stopped beside the bed and stooped, reaching under the wooden frame until he found the familiar skin binding of the Devil's Bible beneath his fingers.
He stuffed it inside his shirt, keeping it close to his chest, and left the room.
Sir Bors de Ganis stood at the head of the stairs like a giant guarding the threshold. 'Take Marchante, lad. There isn't a faster horse in your uncle's stable, and no matter my confidence he will live long enough, why make it harder on him?'
'Thank you,' Alymere said, clasping his hand. 'Truly. Your kindness… You have always been so kind and I always sound like a spoilt child. Who would have thought this day even possible when we first met, eh? I was so filled with childish anger and blamed him for everything, for my father's death, my mother's, our exile, and it was only ever fed by Baptiste. It took two years and the wisdom of a king who didn't know me from Adam to show me he was a good man, and now, now that I know it… he's being taken from me. It just… brings back memories and I'm feeling sorry for myself…'
'Understandable, lad. Don't ever apologise for your feelings. They are what will make you a great knight one day. You are so very like your father in that regard. Now go, ride like the flaming wind. I will watch over Lowick 'til you return.'
Thirty-Five
Alymere gave Marchante his head. The sheer power of the great warhorse was incredible; he felt every corded muscle bunch, tense and release beneath him. There was both grace and majesty in the beast's body. Hooves drummed on hard ground so quickly they seemed to become a single incessant sound. The wind whipped at his face and tugged through his hair. For the first time in weeks he felt alive. It was elemental, raw.
He spurred Marchante on. The animal's mane streamed back like the snakes of a gorgon's hair, and still Alymere dug his heels in.
There was a chapel within the grounds of the manor house, but it had been years since a priest resided there; Sir Lowick had served as spiritual leader for his tenants in the priest's absence. The nearest church lay a little over thirty miles due south as the crow flies, where a single holy man tended to the souls of many of the smaller settlements within walking distance. There was nothing to say that Alymere would find him at the church — he was known to walk hundreds of miles a month to share the word of God with farmers and labourers, and others who otherwise would have lived beyond the reach of the Lord. The church stood as a fulcrum of faith in the area; there were four monasteries, one each to the north, south, east and west of it, but each was more than a day's ride. Although, with Medcaut burned, there were only three now, Alymere realised.
The terrain was far from flat, though, so despite the road being good, the journey to the church and back would take well over six hours, even if he ran the horse into the ground — and assuming he could find the holy man in the first place, never mind make his case vehemently enough to convince him to drop everything and ride out with him there and then.
It would be well after sundown before he returned. He could only pray his uncle would last that long.
Alymere gripped the reins tight in his hands and rode with his head down low, close to the horse's neck, urging him on faster and faster, as he raced towards the road.
A dart of black and white in the sky above him caught his eye, and he looked up to see the crow with its streak of white feathers. It flew straight and true, skimming low across the treetops. The fact that the last time he had ridden this stretch of the Stanegate Road, the Maiden Way, another animal had changed his life forever, did not escape him. The bird's flight appeared to mirror the road below, so for miles into the forest, Alymere let himself be led on by the crow.
And the deeper the road took him into the forest, the more aware he became of the Devil's Bible pressing up against his stomach.
