C Harris - When maidens mourn

Sebastian pushed to his feet, the flintlock in his hand, his palm sweaty on the stock. He could hear the soft purr of a shovelful of earth sliding down the side of George's growing dirt pile. The fill was loose, the digging easy; the boy was already up to his knees in the rapidly deepening trench.

Moving quietly but quickly, Sebastian threaded his way between thick trunks of oak and elm and beech, the rain filtering down through the heavy canopy to splash around him. The undergrowth of brush and ferns was thick and wet, the ground sloppy beneath his feet. He went just far enough to be out of sight of both boy and man, then slithered down the embankment to the moat's edge. Shoving the pistol into the waistband of his breeches, he jerked off his tall Hessians and his coat. He retrieved his dagger from the sheath in his boot and held it in his hand as he eased into the stagnant water.

Beneath his stocking feet, the muddy bottom felt squishy and slick. A ripe odor of decay rose around him. He felt the water lap at his thighs, then his groin. The moat was deeper than he'd expected it to be. He yanked the pistol from his waistband and held it high. But the water continued rising, to his chest, to his neck. There was nothing for it but to thrust the pistol back into his breeches and swim.

Just a few strokes carried him across the deepest stretch of water. But the damage was already done; his powder was wet, the pistol now useless as anything more than a prop.

Streaming water, he rose out of the shallows, his shirt and breeches smeared with green algae and slime. He pushed through the thick bracken and fern of the island, his wet clothes heavy and cumbersome, the small stones and broken sticks and thistles that littered the thicket floor sharp beneath his stocking feet. Drawing up behind a stand of hazel just beyond the circle of lamplight, he palmed the knife in his right hand and drew the waterlogged pistol from his waistband to hold in his left hand. Then he crept forward until he could see George Tennyson, up to his waist now in the trench.

He heard Hildeyard say to the boy, `That's enough.'

The boy swung around, the shovel still gripped in his hands. His face was pale and pinched and streaked with sweat and dirt and rain.

`What are you going to do, Cousin Hildeyard? he asked, his voice high-pitched but strong. `The Gypsies know what you did to Gabrielle. I told them. What do you think you can do? Shoot all of them too?'

Hildeyard pushed up from the log, the pistol in his hand. `I don't think anyone is going to listen to a band of filthy, thieving Gypsies.' He raised the flintlock and pulled back the hammer with an audible click. `I'm sorry I have to do this, son, but...'

`Drop the gun.' Sebastian stepped into the circle of light, his own useless pistol leveled at the barrister's chest. `Now!'

Rather than swinging the pistol on Sebastian, Tennyson lunged at the boy, wrapping one arm around his thin chest and hauling his small body about to hold him like a shield, the muzzle pressed to the child's temple. `No. You put your gun down. Do it, or I'll shoot the boy,` he added, his voice rising almost hysterically when Sebastian was slow to comply. `You know I will. At this point, I've nothing to lose.'

His knife still palmed out of sight in his right hand, Sebastian bent to lay the useless pistol in the wet grass at his feet. He straightened slowly, his now empty left hand held out to his side.

Hildeyard said, `Step closer to the light so I can see you better.'

Sebastian took two steps, three.

`That's close enough.'

Sebastian paused, although he still wasn't as close as he needed to be. `Give it up, Tennyson. My wife is even as we speak laying information before Bow Street.'

The barrister shook his head. `No.' His face was pale, his features twisted with panic. He was a proud, self-absorbed man driven by his own selfishness and a moment's fury into deeds far beyond anything he'd ever attempted before. `I don't believe you.'

`Believe it. We know you left Kent at dawn on Sunday morning and didn't return to your estate until long past midnight.' It was only a guess, of course, but Tennyson had no way of knowing that. Sebastian took another step, narrowing the distance between them. `She wrote you a letter, didn't she?' Sebastian took another step forward, then another.

`A letter telling you she'd had an epileptic seizure.'

`No. It's not in our side of the family. It's not! Do you hear me?'

`Did she think you owed it to your betrothed, Miss Goodwin, to warn her that you might also share the family affliction? Is that why you rode into town to talk to her? And when you told her you wanted her to shut up and keep it a secret, did she threaten to tell Miss Goodwin herself?' Sebastian took another step.

`Is that when you killed her?'

`I'm warning you, stay back!' Hildeyard cried, the gun shaking in his hand as he swung the barrel away from the boy, toward Sebastian. `She was going to destroy my life! My marriage, my career, everything! Don't you see? I had to kill her.'

For one fleeting moment, Sebastian caught George Tennyson's frightened gaze. `And the boys?'

`I forgot they were there.' Hildeyard gave a ragged laugh, his emotions stretched to a thin breaking point. `I forgot they were even there.'

Sebastian was watching the man's eyes and hands. He saw the gun barrel jerk, saw Hildeyard's eyes narrow.

Unable to throw his knife for fear of hitting the boy, Sebastian dove to one side just as Hildeyard squeezed the trigger.

The pistol belched fire, the shot going wide as Sebastian slammed into the raw, muddy earth. He lost the knife, his ears ringing from the shot, the air thick with the stench of burnt powder. He was still rolling to his feet when Hildeyard threw aside the empty gun and ran, crashing into the thick underbrush.

`Take the gig and get out of here!' Sebastian shouted at the boy, and plunged into the thicket after Hildeyard.

Sebastian was hampered by his heavy wet clothes and stocking feet. But he had the eyes and ears of an animal of prey, while Hildeyard was obviously blind in the darkness, blundering into saplings and tripping over roots and fallen logs. Sebastian caught up with him halfway across the small clearing of the sacred well and tackled him.

The two men went down together. Hildeyard scrabbled around, kicked at Sebastian's head with his boot heel, tried to gouge his eyes. Then he grabbed a broken stone from the well's lining and smashed it down toward Sebastian's head. Sebastian tried to jerk out of the way, but the ragged masonry scraped the side of his face and slammed, hard, into his shoulder.

Pain exploded through his body, his grip on the man loosening just long enough for Hildeyard to half scramble up. Then Sebastian saw George Tennyson's pale face looming above them, his jaw set hard with determination, the blade of his shovel heavy with caked mud as he swung it at his cousin's head.

The flat of the blade slammed into the man's temple with an ugly twunk. Tennyson went down and stayed down.

Sebastian sat up, his breath coming heavy. `Thank you,' he said to the boy. He swiped a grimy wet sleeve across his bloody cheek. `Are you all right?'

The boy nodded, his gaze on his cousin's still, prostrate body, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a quick breath of air.

`Did I kill him?'

Sebastian shifted to rest his fingertips against the steady pulse in Hildeyard's neck. `No.'

Stripping off his cravat, Sebastian tied the man's hands together, then used Hildeyard's own cravat to bind his ankles, too. He wasn't taking any chances. Only then did he push to his feet. His shoulder was aching, the side of his face on fire.

George Tennyson said, `I still don't understand why he killed her. She was his sister.'

Sebastian looked down into the boy's wide, hurting eyes. He was aware of the wind rustling through the leaves of the ancient grove, the raindrops slapping into the still waters of Camelot's moat. How did you explain to a nine-year-old child the extent to which even seemingly normal people could be blindly obsessed with fulfilling their own personal needs and wants? Or that there were those who had such a profound disregard for others even their closest family members that they were willing to kill to preserve their own interests?