Page 7 of House of Furies
“It’s a spot of luck that we found you,” Lee said, taking his bowl of porridge from the old woman and tucking in. He ate precisely, with a nobleman’s neatness. For a stranger, he stood close to us, a mark of a trusting nature. His uncle, by contrast, ate apart. The boy didn’t protect his coat pockets well, and even a fence less proficient than I would have no trouble swiping the coins from him in a wink.
“A spot of luck,” his uncle spat, shaking his head. “This will put us back by hours now. ’Tis folly to linger here on the side of the road in full dark. We are easy fodder for cutpurses.” At this,he gave me a cold, hard stare.
God help me, he wasn’t wrong. The old woman and me, we were the thieves, the threat.
“All that jostling in the carriage has made him grumpy,” Lee cut in with a chuckle. “I apologize on his behalf, and not for the last time, I’m sure.”
“The cold makes curmudgeons of us all,” the crone said, almost politely. “Do not fear overmuch. I travel this road frequently, and it is safer than most.”
She had served up the last of the porridge and now gathered her threadbare clothes close around her, moving away from the fire and toward the cold, dark emptiness of the fields and forests beyond. I watched her go, only half listening to the men discuss the state of the wagon and the most expedient way to mend it. There was an odd sort of deliberateness to the way the crone strode away from us, as if she had suddenly heard something out there in the field.
At first they seemed a trick of the eye, the little lights that began to dance in the dark. But no, they persisted and grew in number and brightness. The others did not notice, only me, and I watched what seemed like a hundred glittering eyes gather in front of the old woman, as if she were consulting a hidden cabal of yellow-eyed minions. A single, sharp hoot came from that direction, and it occurred to me that these were birds, owls, many of them flocking to that one spot near the old woman.
I hadn’t heard them arrive, but I did hear them go. Facingaway from me, the crone gave a solitary nod. There was no telling if she had spoken to these birds or not, but then suddenly they all lifted into the air at once, and I knew it was no hallucination; I felt the buffeting wind of their wings as they departed, and saw the dusting of feathers like snow that drifted down and down and settled softly around the crone’s torn hem.
Chapter Five
It was silly, of course, to look for traces of the owls in full darkness. Still, I fought exhaustion, staring out the window of George Bremerton’s carriage.
The wagon rumbled along ahead of us, driven by the crone, and we followed along closely. The carriage driver, Foster, had suggested they lighten the wagon’s load as much as possible, and keep the back end of it unburdened to avoid further damage to the wheel. The crone would not let them touch a single item under the coverings, and instead ordered me to ride with them in the carriage. I did not see how the loss of only my small frame would be enough to ease the strain on the wagon, but the men were too cross, wet, and tired to argue with her.
“You can sleep, you know,” Lee said quietly. His uncle snored across from us on the opposite bench. The carriage smelled of pipe tobacco and whiskey, a comforting, warm scent I had not experienced in many years. It reminded me of leaving Ireland, of the dock workers who congregated on the waterfront, drinking and smoking, the ones who hooted and called at me and my mother when we boarded the boat for England.
“Nobody here will harm you,” Lee added.
It is not you I fear, oddly enough.
I didn’t take my eyes away from the window and what mightbe in the sky over the woods. “Did you not see a preponderance of owls?”
“Owls?” He laughed a little. “When?”
“Before we left,” I replied.Or ever. What a stupid question. But I had seen the feathers. I had felt the power of those wings beating the air. “In the field not far from the fire... I thought I saw dozens of owls.”
“I must have been too focused on the porridge,” he said. I looked over at him then, and he was blushing by the weak light of the outer lantern. It bobbed along, making tricks of our faces and of the shadows. “I would have liked to see such a thing.”
Belief. It was a strange feeling. Hebelievedme. Miss Henslow would have beaten me for fibbing. She always thought I was spinning wild tales, even when I was certain I saw or heard a thing. Maybe it happened too often for her liking. Maybe it seemed as though I was somehow different, gifted or cursed with the ability to note odd reflections in mirrors or footsteps in the attic at night. I often felt others cringe away from me, even just strangers, as if they sensed something about me not even I understood.
But to be believed? I decided to forget the owls. It was enough that this near stranger did not question the event.
“Where are you from?” I asked, now more than curious about this earnest young man with the startling eyes.
“Canterbury, but I should be in London now,” he said, sounding forlorn. It was his turn to look away and toward thewindow, those eyes less bright and more inscrutable. “Uncle thinks something went funny with my inheritance. It all went to my cousin, you see, when my guardian died. John Bremerton. He’s a proper lord, raised me, but just as a ward.” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice, casting a wary eye in his uncle’s direction. “Uncle George thinks I’m a Bremerton. A bastard one, but still...”
“So the money could be yours,” I finished. How intriguing. “Or part of it, at least. Some sort of entitlement.”
“Precisely. I loved my guardian. He was always kind, always fair, and the money doesn’t really mean all that much to me. The stipend he left me seemed quite generous, in fact.”
“Then why come all the way to Malton and beyond?”
“I suppose the answer is twofold. Uncle wants to visit the spring near Coldthistle for its curing properties. He has an old wound in his ankle that still bothers him. That, and he thinks my mother is working near here, and that she will have proof of my parentage.” He shrugged, and his shoulders sank with a burdensome weight. “Vast wealth does have a certain appeal.”
“A certain appeal?” I couldn’t keep the steel edge out of my voice.A certain appeal. Looking harder at this young man, I began to question my initial perception of him. Had his lovely golden hair and bright eyes stupefied me? Perhaps he was dull; dull and flippant.
He had the good grace to look shocked and then ashamed. Of course I had no business raising my voice to someone soobviously above my social rank, but it hardly mattered—once he was done staying at the boardinghouse, we would part ways, and I doubted very much the crone would mind if he told her of my impropriety. She knew what she was getting with me—a thief and a runaway.
“Heavens, I’m sure that sounded foolish,” he said. One could practically see his collar constricting and choking his voice. “I never wanted for much, and clearly that’s made me careless. Lord Bremerton would be furious. He did not raise a cur.”
Mollified for the moment, I folded my hands in my lap and glanced at his snoring uncle. He had the look of a man who had once been handsome, but age or hard drinking or a combination of the two had turned him soft and red around the edges. His hair was thinning. A perpetual rosiness splotched his cheeks and nose, a beak that reminded me distinctly of an aubergine.
