CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Seamus is in the lower field splitting posts and he's just standing up from placing a wedge when I reach him. He doesn't hear me coming. As I clap my hand on his shoulder and spin him around he shouts, surprised, half-raises the maul, and then he sees it is me and his expression changes from alarm to an infuriating complacency.

Without hesitation, without a single thought, I step forward and shove his shoulder with the heel of my hand, hard as I dare. He falls backward. We stare at one another. Splinters of bark pepper him, caught on the sweat. He gets up. Drops the maul at his feet and stands there, flushed, grinning at me, eyes smug and bright, a cat with a canary.

I don't say anything. I hold out my hand.

His eyes drop down to my palm and he breaks into his sunny, insolent smile, unbuttons his shirt pocket. A rough knuckle grazes my thumb. The key in my palm is hot and wet from sticking against his chest. I can't speak. My fist clenches around the key and I pull it back, step forward, swing, punch him with it. He knocks my fist away with a lazy, practiced bat and I lose my footing, half-fall into him. He knees my shin, pushes me back. I swing again and he ducks easily, the ease of someone who's spent his life fighting, the ease of someone who's been waiting all morning for this, and picks up the maul at his feet.

I stare at the maul in his hand, furious, breathing fast and hollow, everything blurred. Now, it is all real. I step forward. I had always feared this could happen, and it is yet now happening- but while I am a man. While I'm fully conscious of right and wrong. And still I'm moving toward him. I am going to take the maul from him, I am going to do what would be done to me.

"Said I'd help you remember," he says, cheerily, and turns, his body an arc, tosses the maul far, far out into the field where it shivers the grass, lands, disappears.

He's won. Without even working for it. The maul was a test I lost. My own rage has beaten me.

He shakes his head at me. "Henry." There's a sardonic remonstrance in his tone, but his eyes are shrewd and his stance guarded. I have no response. My fury has boiled down into clarity. I am miserably ashamed of myself. I bow my head.

"All right," he says, wiping his face in the crook of his elbow. "We've evened up now. You went prowling around and so did I. I see how you liked it. I didn't either. Now we're on the level." He leans forward to kick the post out of our way and looks up at me, a slice of green moving from my face down to my clenched fists. He steps back, spreads his arms, hands open at his sides. "But we can have another go, if you need to."

I shudder and force my fists to relax. I've already lost. He shamed me with the maul, with that easy toss, with the callowness of my own anger. Something in his manner tells me he knows how badly I regret my momentary desire to hurt him. I close my mouth over my fast breathing and we regard one another. There's nothing really left but to turn and leave him there, and so I do.

"It'll be all right," he calls softly after me, "if you can handle it."

.

I stop to rinse my face before going back to Agnes. In the cloudy mirror above the sink basin I see what she meant when she said I looked sharpened. In the sitting room she holds her hand out for the key without looking at it; her eyes are fastened on mine.

"Get rid of him," she hisses.

"I can't, now," I say.

Her voice is shaking. "When he does it again, go find him," she says through gritted teeth. Then her face clears, she blinks at me. "Oh, my God," she whispers. "Forgive me, I didn't mean that." She grabs for my hand. "Oh, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it..."

I can't help but laugh. I knew she had it in her. "I don't think he'll do it again. But it wasn't an accident. He knew what he'd find. He's done it on purpose, and I know why."

"Someone in the village told him. On his half-day. They told him at the inn. They've paid him, they want proof, they've always just needed proof- "

"Possibly, but don't worry. Someone may have told him, but that wasn't why he opened the door. He did it- ," I hesitate on the words, "because he's also hiding something. He meant to put me in a position where I cannot betray him."

Her face congests. "I knew it. The way he speaks to you. Looks at you. Oh, Henry, you've been- you've let him- "

Heat pours through my face. "No, no. Not that. I haven't- not- I mean to say, he's hiding something he's done. He doesn't want me to find it out." I think of his sea-chest, and that nagging thread tugs at me again, that hook of an idea that's been pulling at me since I touched the fur. "Something he did to someone, that he took from someone- he's hiding it." I spread my hands.

"A crime?"

"A secret," I say. As it leaves my mouth I recognize its truth. A secret, not a crime. Seamus is the sort of man who commits his crimes in plain view, laughing, without hesitation. The sort of man who carries about the evidence in his pocket. The only thing he'd bother to hide well is his own vulnerability.

She breathes deeply. "I've told you it isn't wise, what you're doing."

"We'll see. We're on equal terms now."

"No, you are not," she says. Stepping back from me she fades into silhouette, grey against in the bright window. This, I realize, is deliberate; now she can say what she means while sparing me the expression on her face. "You are by no means on equal terms and never shall be. I can't stop whatever is coming, and you won't. It would be wiser to let him go."

The reply comes out of me before I can help it, so artless and childish that I wince hearing it. "I can't let him go. I won't. It's so lonely."

We are both lucky her face is in shadow. There is a long minute before she replies, and when she does her voice cracks.

"Loneliness is the point, Henry; that is the price, and I am so- oh, I am so sorry." And she turns, and is down the hallway, narrow shoulders pulled back, trying her best to hold on, the closest thing I have to a family.

.

But that's not the last of it. Something has changed as I walk through the hallway. Can't put my finger on it. A shift in energy. Something has been removed, like a squeaky floorboard that has been fixed, like a clock that has stopped ticking, like a sour smell that has been aired away. Something that bothered me is missing.

It takes me four slow turns up and down the hall before I see, in the corner of the frame enclosing the portrait of Henri Laurent Brack, the late Lord Harthome, a gleaming golden circle cut out of the dust.

The silver musket ball is gone.