Murder in Cormyr - Chet Williamson [53]
There was a small garden to the side of the house, where Looney Liz grew vegetables and potatoes, but the tomatoes had died on the vines, and the lettuces were brown and sparse from the drought. How, I wondered, did she manage to live?
I tied Jenkus to a dead apple tree and went up to the door and knocked. It was for politeness only since the door hung from one hinge like an idiot's grin.
"Who comes, who comes?" the woman croaked from inside. The door stuttered open, and Liz Clawthorn smiled at me from a row of teeth either yellow, blackened, or missing altogether. As short as I am, she was far shorter, nearly dwarven in size, though a human. A smock that might have been washed the winter before covered her from neck to feet, and her long, filthy hair hid all but the unpleasant features of her face.
I had once asked Benelaius if he thought she was a witch, but he had shaken his head gently. "Nay. A poor woman with wandering wits, and that is all." And though there were some who would disagree with him, I daresay he was right.
But this day it appeared that Liz Clawthorn was having one of her more lucid spells. She came up to me as though she had trouble making out the details of my face, and then, to my great surprise, she actually recognized me. "Ah, 'tis Jasper," she said. "Benelaius's lad. Come in, come in, come out of the foul death air." I didn't know what she meant, for the air inside was far fouler than that outside.
I entered and gave her the bag of vegetables and the loaf of bread I had brought for her. "A gift for you, Mother Clawthorn," I said, and her smile grew broader.
"A good lad you are, Jasper, and I thank you. Sit you down." She held up a bunch of carrots. "Fine oranges," she proclaimed, then set the bundle of produce on a worn and dirty table. "Now have ye come for truth or lies or tea? I have no tea, but I have the others."
"Truth, I think, Mother," I said, playing her game.
"You always were a good son to me, Jamie," she said, and I immediately decided not to call her mother again. "So I'll tell ye true." Ah. Well, in that case, 'Mother' would she be.
"You saw a man dressed as the ghost of Fastred some time back, didn't you, Mother Clawthorn? The man named Dovo?"
"I saw the ghost itself, not some Dobo. It was the ghost of Fastred, but when I saw it, Jamie, I thought it was your father, yes, rest his soul, the ghost of your poor father. He swung an axe, yes, the way your poor father did when he cut down the tree, you know, the one with the rope that you would swing on when you were little. And I thought he was after me, I did, and I run away at first, but then I remembered that I never did tell him about that bucket and how it had a hole and to mend it before he got water, so I went back, I did, and then I saw him with his golden hand.
"Your father, Jamie, never had a golden hand, so I knew it was a ghost. And he went on into the swamp, and I followed him, I did, and then he stopped and I stopped too because I knew if he saw me there then he would eat me, and I didn't want to get et, so I hid and was quiet and watched him."
Her eyes widened, staring into the middle distance, and I knew she was seeing what she had seen on that night. "And what did he do?" I asked softly.
"He waved his golden hand," she said, seeing it happen again. "He waved it over and over. And far away across the swamp, another ghost waved back with his golden hand, and they waved at each other for a long time…"
"A golden hand?" I said.
"Yes," she said sharply, turning back to me so that I jumped. "I see them all the time, the golden hands. At night they glow, all golden. In the dark. It's getting dark now," she said, and I thought I heard menace in her tone. Maybe she was just trying to scare Jamie, wherever and