Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [109]
The fishing boats disappeared over the horizon. A dazzling yellow sun broke into view. I skipped a few desultory stones over the calm water, then went back to the inn and paid a precious penny for a mug of ale in the taproom. It was too early for ale, but I needed it. The innkeeper’s wife served me and then sat, unbidden, at the trestle table opposite me and rested her rough-skinned elbows on the table.
“Where do ye come from, friend?”
“Many places,” I said wearily. I was in no mood for conversation.
“And where do ye go?”
I didn’t answer.
She studied me. Not pretty, she nonetheless had a healthy vitality, like a strong, young animal. A lively intelligence glittered in her small brown eyes. “I ask because we don’t be having many visitors here, this early in the year. No, not many visitors.”
“I imagine not.” Go away.
“I wonder if ye knew the one here but two days ago.”
“No.”
“That’s too bad. I maun return his things to somebody.”
I sipped my ale, looking pointedly away. I had had enough of chattering women.
“Lookee, I show ye.” She jumped up, opened a chest in a corner of the room, and pulled out a pile of rags. On top of them lay a knife with a curved blade and a wooden handle carved like an openmouthed fish.
Bat’s knife.
“Ah, I see ye know him, after all,” the woman said.
“Maybe. What . . . what happened to him?”
She shrugged. “No one knows. He took a room upstairs—the room ye be having now—waiting for the fleet to put back in. Out several days, they was that time. And he din’t come down. I finally unlocked the door and he be gone, with his clothes on the bed and his knife under the pillow.”
“His . . . clothes?”
“Aye. His only clothes, and naught else be stolen. The door was still barred on the inside, but he was just gone. Somebody still owes me his reckoning. But—how did he leave all naked, and for where?”
How indeed? All at once the taproom seemed cold, the ale tasteless. My stomach clenched. Bat would not have fitted through the upstairs chamber’s one window. The woman had just said the door was barred from the inside. So how—
If Bat had somehow gone back to the country of the Dead, or had been—what?—snatched back there?—then his clothes and knife would have gone with him. The Dead did not cross over naked.
No, the whole story was a lie, a ruse to get a stranger to pay what Bat owed her. My stomach unknotted and I said, “I knew the man only in passing. I owe you nothing.” But I stood, my ale unfinished, and climbed the stairs to the bedchamber.
Cecilia still lay asleep. I stared at the tiny window, the thick door. Two days ago, the woman had said. Bat would then have been back in the land of the living for . . . how many days? I had lost track of time.
Maggie would have known.
But it didn’t really matter. I sat in the chamber’s one chair and watched Cecilia. She had washed her hair last night, a laborsome business involving cans of hot water that I had lugged up the stairs, and now her tresses spilled clean and shining over the rough cotton pillow. The lids of her eyes fluttered, translucent, faintly blue. Her strong young throat lay exposed, and the top of one small breast above her shift. I had never touched that breast, never would touch it. Cecilia looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her, and completely desirable. But I felt no desire.
What am I going to do with you?
I watched her for a long time. Then I woke her; I had no money to pay for this chamber for another night. I could barely pay for breakfast. She didn’t grumble, but her lovely face was sullen. I went to the stable yard and watered and hitched the donkey, who did grumble. After a silent, meager breakfast, I helped Cecilia mount and we started inland, traveling on a track overgrown with weeds, toward what the innkeeper’s wife said was the nearest farm village, several leagues to the northwest. The village was called Ablington. They were having a faire.
“Roger, you’re not listening to me!”
I was not. But I was thinking of her, and also of Bat. I believed the barmaid had been lying, but her story would not leave