several days, and the grass is too sparse to satisfy the horses for much longer. It cannot wait. With your permission, I will purchase only a small amount, enough to get the horses through this week, and meet with the quartermaster next week when you have had time to make your poultice.”
Adair held his breath, waiting to see what the old man would do, for if he refused him, it would be hard to come up with another way, in a short amount of time, to trick him into revealing where he hid his money and valuables. The old man shook his head at his servant’s incompetence, then rose and went down the staircase. Adair knew better than to follow but listened with the attention of a hound, picking up every sound, every clue. Despite the thick timber floor, he heard digging, then the sound of something heavy being moved. The clink of coin, then the sound of movement again. Finally, the old man climbed back up the steps and threw a small deerskin pouch on the table. “Enough for the week. Make sure you get a fair bargain,” he grunted in warning.
When the old man left for the night, Adair flew to the cellar. The filthy floor looked undisturbed and it was only after a careful search that Adair found the place where the old man had been working, along the wall, in a dank, mildewed spot littered with rat droppings. Dirt had been scraped away from one of the stones. Adair dropped to his knees and gripped the stone’s edges by his fingertips, pulling it out of the wall. In a small recess, he could just make out a burlap bundle, which he extracted and unrolled. There was a fat money bag and, wrapped in a square of velvet, the seal of the kingdom of his dreams.
Adair took it all and pushed the stone back into place. Kneeling in the dirt, he was flush with success, happy to have found the seal, happy to have one victory over his oppressor after all the injustices that had befallen him.
Adair should have killed his father rather than let him beat his mother or siblings.
He should not have let himself be sold into slavery.
He should have taken every chance to escape and never given up trying.
He should kill the wicked count. He deserved death as an enemy of the Magyar people, and a heathen in league with an emissary of Satan.
He should help Marguerite escape, take her to a kindly family or a convent, find someone to care for her.
The way Adair viewed the situation, it was not a matter of stealing. The physic
On the appointed day, Adair watched the sun overhead as closely and covetously as a hawk eyes a field mouse. The cleric and his mob would be at the keep in an hour or two. The question for Adair was whether he should remain in place and bear witness to the physic’s undoing.
It was tempting. To watch as the villagers dragged the old man from his filthy bed and into the sunlight, his face contorted with fear and surprise. To listen to his screams as they beat him to the ground, pummeled him with clubs, cut him to ribbons with scythes. To urge them on as they ransacked the keep, plundered his trunks, smashed the bottles and jars of precious ingredients to the floor and ground the contents underfoot, and then burned the unholy fortress to the earth.
Even though he was in possession of the seal, Adair could hardly go riding off to the estate without knowing for sure that the physic wouldn’t come after him. But there was one good reason for disappearing before the mob arrived-what if the old man escaped death somehow? If the mob’s courage failed or the old man had given himself immortal powers as well (a possibility-the physic had never said he
He went up to Marguerite as she stood scrubbing potatoes in a bucket of water, took the potatoes from her hand, and started to lead her to the door. She resisted, earnest soul that she was, but Adair prevailed, and had her wait beside him as he saddled the old man’s aging charger. He would take Marguerite to safety in town. That way, she’d not be present during the melee. That would be best. He’d come back to see the outcome for himself.
The sun was fading by the time Adair retraced his way to the keep. He took his time, letting the charger meander on a loose rein down unfamiliar paths through the woods: he wasn’t anxious to run into the party of villagers on their return, flush with excitement and bloodlust.
Adair noticed a plume of black smoke on the horizon, but by the time he drew close to the keep, it had thinned to a miasma. He urged the horse on, through the envelope of wood smoke, until he came to the familiar clearing before the stone keep.
The door was missing off its bolt and the ground in front was churned frightfully. The corral was knocked down and the second horse was missing. Adair slid off the old charger’s back and cautiously approached the open door, black and ominous as a skull missing an eye from its socket.
Inside, streaks of soot ran up the walls as though clawing for escape. The ruin was as he’d imagined it: shards of glass and pottery underfoot everywhere; overturned cauldrons and pots and buckets; the desk broken into pieces. And all the recipes were gone, along with the old man’s remains. Unless… Adair’s blood ran cold instantly at the thought that perhaps the mob’s courage
Other, more frightening alternatives came to Adair: perhaps the physic had managed to escape to the woods or hide somewhere in the keep itself. After all, if there was a small vault behind a stone in the wall, who was to say there wasn’t a bigger hidden chamber? Or perhaps-more dangerous still-he had delivered himself away by means of a spell, or been spared by the dark master himself, moved to intervene on behalf of a faithful servant.
Panic rising in his throat, Adair ran down the stairs into the old man’s chamber. The scene below was even more horrific than upstairs. The air was thick still with black smoke-apparently the main fire had been set down here-and the room was completely empty, except for a smoldering bed of ash where the physic’s mattress and bedstead had been.
But Adair could smell death hidden deep within the smoke and he went to the black pit of ash, crouched down, and raked his fingers through the remains. He found pieces of bone, slivers and nuggets, still hot to the touch. And finally, most of the skull, with a patch of charred flesh and long, wiry hair still attached in one spot.
Adair stood and dusted the soot from his hands as best he could. He took his time in leaving the keep, looking one last time on the place of his five years of misery. It was a pity the stone walls could not have burned down, too. He kept nothing except the clothes on his back and, of course, the seal and a pouch of coin in his pocket. At length, he left through the gaping doorway, gathered up the charger’s reins, and headed east, to Romania.
Adair was able to live on the physic’s estate for a good many years, though ownership did not pass directly to him as he’d hoped. When he arrived at the estate alone, without the physic, Adair presented himself to the caretaker, Lactu, and told him that the old man had died. The wife and son had been fabrications, Adair explained, a story to provide the physic with privacy for the true reason for his bachelorhood: his peculiar leanings. With no heir, the physic had left the estate to his faithful servant and companion, Adair said, and held out the seal for the caretaker to witness.
The caretaker’s doubts were plain on his face, and he said the claim would have to be presented to the king of Romania. If Adair was not a blood descendant of the physic, the king had the right to decide the disposition of the property. The king’s decision took years but ultimately was not resolved in Adair’s favor. He was allowed to remain on the estate and to keep the family’s title, but the king took ownership of the lands.
The day came when Adair was no longer able to remain. Lactu and everyone else had withered and aged with time, while Adair had remained the same as the day he’d returned to the castle. So as not to arouse suspicion, the time had come for Adair to disappear for a while, lay low, perhaps to return in a few decades’ time pretending to be his own son, golden seal in hand.
He decided to go to Hungary, as his heart directed, to track down his family. Adair longed to see them-not his father, of course, whom he hated only second to the physic. By now his mother should be old and living with the eldest son, Petu. The rest would be grown, with children of their own. He burned to see them and to know what had happened to them.
It took Adair two years to find his family. He started at the estate where he’d been taken from them and
