The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

symbol of his pomposity; now it somehow seemed fitting and almost stately. His hound lay sleeping, slumped beside the bier, as if he knew his master would never wake.

Poor Aunty Helygen looked up at them as they came in. Niav could have sworn she saw her eyes flicker at the sight of the barra at her waist, but she didn’t say a word. Grizzel didn’t seem to register this at all and ran over and folded her in a warm embrace. Helygen clung to her, sobbing fiercely.

Estra left them to it and drew Niav over to the comparative privacy of the woman’s section of the hut. “I am so glad you’ve got here,” she whispered. “However did you find out? The river seems to be running very high — who managed to tell you?”

“Kyle came storming over to us — whatever happened?”

“You haven’t seen Fearn?”

“Not since late yesterday afternoon. If someone stabbed your dad, Fearn hadn’t got the blade then — so when on earth did this happen? Kyle was pretty difficult to get any sense out of.”

“Kyle wasn’t here. He came home just as Father breathed his last. The rest of us were, though. We heard them shouting outside and then Dad came staggering in. It was definitely Fearn, I’m afraid. Whatever came over him?”

Niav gave Estra a brief account of yesterday’s revelations.

“Fearn’s your brother!” Estra almost shouted, her mask of composure cracking for a moment. “And your barra — it seems it’s found you too,” she observed with unconvincing brightness, resuming the whisper.

Niav felt a distinct chill at the odd, widening sparkle in her cousin’s eyes — just as she used to look when she put on her creepy voice and told them all some fearful story. “Oh, your barra will be making itself known to you any day now, I am sure,” said Niav hurriedly. She had no intention of divulging anything about her journey down the well to Estra, who would no doubt construct some completely unwelcome significance from it. Niav did not want yesterday’s simple recovery of two misplaced items to become some esoteric legend of questing for her heritage in the deep.

“Fearn’s your brother!” This time it was Canya, who had stumbled in from the curtained room at the back.

“Oh do go back and lie down, Canya,” said Estra, all concern. “She really isn’t well at all,” she whispered, turning to Niav. “You know the way traumas always go right to her stomach.”

At this point, one of the east-bank ladies came hovering, for Estra’s guidance over something. Probably Grizzel wanted to look more closely at Lurgan’s body. “Your mother says it’s all right dear but …”

Estra swept off with her without a second’s hesitation.

* * *

Canya was very pale, and she had clearly been crying her eyes out. Niav suspected it wasn’t simply her father’s death that had brought her to this state. Niav had no recollection of traumas going to Canya’s stomach at all. She was the most equable person she had ever met, and she had been amazed not to find her there bustling about and looking after everyone.

“Whatever’s the matter Canya?” she said, holding back the curtain to the inner room and settling her down on the nearest stool in there, while she drew up another. “Now tell me all about it.”

She could not help noticing that Aunt Helygen’s herb basket stood open at the table’s end — the long pulley- rope leading up towards the gloomy ceiling.

At first, Canya simply cried, holding her head in her hands. Then at last she looked up at Niav. “I do keep being sick,” she said, ruefully.

Niav made a huge leap of reasoning. “Did you tell Fearn?” she asked.

Canya burst into tears again. “No,” she said quietly.

“Well?”

“I didn’t think Fearn would want to know. He could have anyone. I decided to try giving myself something to help things along a bit. So I winched down Mother’s herb basket.”

“What? The Penny Royal?”

Canya nodded, “It’s what Mother always seems to recommend.”

“For heaven’s sake! How often have you been doing this sort of thing?”

“Only ever Fearn.”

“How long has that been going on?”

“No, no, you don’t understand. It was only the once!”

Well that explained a lot — it could be that she, personally, had had a lucky escape the day before if he was that fertile! “And?”

“Everyone was out. I winched the basket down; Mother is always so careful, but I am afraid I was so nervous, I let it down in such a rush that it hit the table with a huge crash. I was sure I must have broken something, but it was all all right — only the matting she uses to pad the bottom had come dislodged …”

“And you found Fearn’s blade.”

“That made me change my mind; I thought that when I told Fearn about the sword, we ought to have a proper discussion about what to do. It wasn’t just my baby after all. He had a right to know. So I tidied everything in the basket, and winched it back to the roof.

“I was just trying to decide where to hide the blade, when I heard Father and the boys coming home down the hill. I rammed the blade up into the reed roof-lining — near the door as a temporary hiding place — just as they came in with the hound bounding all over the place. But I managed to whisper to Fearn about finding his blade. He wasn’t able to pull it out of the thatch again with Father and Kyle there, so he said he would come round and collect it yesterday evening — I had thought there might be a quiet moment then.”

“And it all went wrong?”

Canya started crying again. “I keep being sick. Obviously Mother and Estra started asking me questions — well, they are professionals and needed to check I hadn’t eaten something bad. But you can’t hide much from them. I didn’t expect them to be quite so angry when I told them it was Fearn’s. I really had no idea they intended Estra to marry him — did you?”

“Aunty Grizzel did.”

“But Estra doesn’t like boys — I didn’t think she felt like that about Fearn.”

Niav laughed. “She doesn’t understand what ‘like that’ means. No, it’s all about her mystic power being fused with his.”

“I am starting to see that now. I had no idea she was so serious about it, or that Father and even Mother were too. It seems completely mad. Mother was determined that I get rid of the baby, she didn’t want me to tell Fearn, and she particularly didn’t want Father to know.

“At that point someone else called at the door and Mother had to go and see to them. She told Estra to winch down the herb basket and mix up the dose. She was horribly firm, not like she was my mother at all.

“Then things got even worse, because Fearn arrived. He had some bee stings — I see why he hadn’t come to you and Aunty Grizzel about that now! He wasn’t like my Fearn at all either.

“I treated the stings for him and then he told us, by way of thanks, that he was going. Just going! I couldn’t say anything to him about our baby, and Estra was standing there, calmly mixing the Penny Royal to kill it.”

“But how did your dad get stabbed in all this?”

Canya put her head in her hands again as she tried to get it straight. “Mother came through from talking to her visitor and, while she had her back to the door, I tried to make sure she and Estra were looking my way — I said something about bee stings; Fearn took the moment to slip past Mother and grab his blade from by the door — it was the least I could do.

“But Father came in through the door and saw what Fearn had in his hand. It was just terrible — Father tried to grab the blade, but there was a scuffle and Fearn got away. There seemed to be a deal of blood, but the wounds did not seem much to me — it was mainly his hands. Mother and Estra rushed about trying to see to it all. You know the way Dad liked to be fussed over. In the end they had him lying back. He said all the stress had gone to his stomach and then spotted the drink standing on the table.

“‘What’s that for?’ he said.

“‘It’s mint tea, dearest,’ Mother said. ‘Poor Canya has been feeling a trifle bilious.’ Then he said that that was just what he needed, and poor Mother reached over and gave it to him to drink down.”