Master of Shadows Read online

  5

  John Grant felt the vibrations of the galloping horses before he heard them. Even as he ran full tilt towards home, he could detect them through the soles of his bare feet as they pounded on the grass. The push was hard upon him now, insistent as a scolding parent. The cottage was seconds away, but still he felt compelled to stop and look back towards the rise and the trees beyond. Now that he was standing still, his heart thumping, the tremors threading up from the ground and agitating his skin like needles were unmistakable. By paying attention to the push he was able to orientate himself so as to face, and therefore pinpoint, the source of the staccato pulse. He was facing in precisely the right direction when he finally heard the sound of their approach, just seconds before a band of mounted men appeared on top of the rise and spilled downhill towards him. They were perhaps a quarter of a mile away. At the sight of him, the leader of the group seemed to begin urging his mount even harder. Seeing this, reading it as more bad news, John Grant turned to complete his dash for home.

  ‘Mother!’ he cried as he covered the last ten yards. ‘Men are coming!’

  He charged through the doorway of the cottage and knew exactly where to look to find his mother’s face. She was tending the fire in the hearth, coaxing enough heat to boil water, but at the sound of his voice, and his sudden appearance in her domain, she dropped the blackened stick she had been holding and turned to face him. Jessie Grant was tall and long-limbed, like her son. Her face was handsome rather than beautiful, so that it was the way she held herself, her balance and poise, that turned men’s heads.

  She saw the alarm on his sweat-slicked face and straightened.

  ‘Why so fearful, son?’ she said, but his manner told her all she needed to know. If he was afraid, then he had good reason. She ran to meet him, taking him briefly in her arms, and then, pushing him behind her, she ducked her head and stepped out into the daylight.

  John Grant followed her and moved around his mother so as to stand by her side, close enough that they were touching. The horsemen had slowed to a trot, and as they arrived in front of mother and son, the leader pulled up his mount and climbed down from his saddle.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Kennedy,’ said Jessie. ‘What brings you to my door … and with so many friends?’

  Her pretence at nonchalance and warmth was convincing enough – perhaps enough to fool the larger part of the audience – but John Grant felt the fine hairs on her arm, the arm touching his own, standing on end. Though her hand was tucked out of sight in her apron, the taut tendons of her forearm told him it was balled into a fist.

  Davey Kennedy smiled but said nothing as he closed the distance between them.

  In the end he came much too close – close enough to place a heavy hand on John Grant’s shoulder and pull him away from his mother.

  ‘Still no father for the boy?’ he asked.

  Davey Kennedy was a head and shoulders taller than John Grant, but the boy took care to thrust out his chin and look the man straight in the eyes.

  Davey cupped John Grant’s chin and turned the boy’s head first one way and then the other, as though considering his worth.

  ‘He’s growing up pretty, is he not?’ As he said it, he turned to the men. They understood the joke and laughed accordingly.

  John Grant freed himself from the man’s grasp and stepped back to his mother’s side.

  Everything about Davey Kennedy’s physical presence radiated threat, like a static charge in the air before a storm. John Grant found the force of it nauseating, and unconsciously he took some steps backwards away from the man, as though to escape a bad smell.

  Davey Kennedy turned fully towards the men and took a few paces towards them.

  ‘Thomas Henderson’s farm was raided last night, Mrs Grant,’ he said, addressing the words over the men’s heads before spinning around on his heel to face mother and son once more.

  ‘Why are you telling me?’ said Jessie.

  ‘Well … something of what we saw reminded me of some of your husband’s handiwork, back in the day,’ he said, now strolling back towards the pair.

  Jessie sighed and looked down at the ground between her feet for a few seconds before replying. Whatever his failings, and they were numerous, Patrick Grant had been no bully and no thief.

  The wife of an absentee husband did not have her troubles to seek, however. She had been both mother and father to the boy for most of his years. For almost all of the time he felt like the blessing he was and she thanked God for him. But at moments such as these she longed to stand behind the protection of a man, and she silently cursed the name of Patrick Grant, wherever he was.

  In the pause while no one spoke, John Grant felt the presence of another, suddenly filling the silence. The hackles on his neck rose and sent a crackling tingle through his body, as though a cold fingernail was trailing up and down his skin. Whoever it was, they could not be in the cottage – he had seen that his mother was alone. If not inside the building, then whoever it was had to be behind it. He felt the push and it turned his head. Still he saw nothing and no one. There was someone there, just the same. He knew it.

  ‘As you well know, Davey Kennedy, my husband has been gone for years – almost all the boy’s life,’ she said. ‘Why you seek to blame him for trouble on the Jardine estate is beyond my reasoning.’

  Jessie smiled at her son. For as long as her fond gaze lasted, John Grant felt like it was just the two of them. His whirling senses were briefly calmed, pacified like troubled water anointed with oil.

  Davey Kennedy strode towards Jessie and punched her on the side of her head with all of his strength. She dropped like a felled tree – still conscious but utterly befuddled, a roaring in her ears.

  John Grant hurled himself at his mother’s attacker, even managed to land a substantial punch that brought a gout of blood from the man’s nose. Davey Kennedy lashed out reflexively and caught the boy across the face with a sweeping blow from the back of one hand, before using it to wipe the crimson from his own face.

  ‘Take the bitch back to her fireside and do what you will,’ he said, standing over his victims. ‘And if she still can’t remember where that bastard husband of hers has been hiding, do it all again until she does.’

  The mounted men leapt from their horses. Suddenly offered unexpected entertainment, they were on the ground and over to Jessie in seconds. Their own Will Kennedy was dead, after all – and who were they to question his grieving brother’s tactics for finding the killer.

  Leaving the boy where he lay, they picked Jessie up between them and carried her clumsily but swiftly into the cottage. Their hands were hauling at her clothes, pushing her skirts up around her hips. There was a burst of oafish laughter from one of them and a groan from the semi-conscious woman.

  John Grant rolled over on to his front and was trying to get up on to his hands and knees, still stunned, when Davey Kennedy kicked him in the stomach. It wasn’t the hardest blow, but was designed instead to humiliate and subdue. The wind was knocked from the boy’s lungs just the same, and he stayed down.

  He was still alert enough to see the giant shadow that rushed from behind one gable end of the cottage and grabbed his tormentor by the neck, lifting him easily off the ground.

  The sound that escaped the bully’s compressed throat was muffled and weak, but still discernible.

  ‘You …’

  The cracking sound that silenced Davey for ever was louder than his last word. His neck broken, he dropped to the ground like the innards of a butchered beast.

  Wordlessly, still uselessly winded, John saw the great shape cross to the doorway of the cottage. Before the man stepped inside, he drew a long, curved sword from his belt. It was already stained with drying blood, from work done earlier in the day. And then, finally, John Grant knew no more.

  6

  Donny Weir would have howled the news of Will Kennedy’s demise for the last mile back to Hawkshaw. Like every whipped dog, he knew how to yelp. The whip
hand had often been Will Kennedy’s, and the urge to share the astounding knowledge of the messy death of his oft-times bully bubbled in Donny’s breast like a rising spring. They had ridden at full gallop and their horses were wide-eyed and flecked with sweat by the time they reached the gates of Hawkshaw’s palisade. The sentry had watched their frantic approach and the way was made open for them.

  ‘Hold your tongue now, Donny. We must tell it first to Sir Robert,’ said Jamie Douglas, the younger head but certainly the wiser. He had been giving the same counsel for most of the ride back and was now repeating it over and over like a prayer. ‘There will be an awful price for this,’ he hissed as they swept beneath the lintel at full speed. ‘You make Sir Robert the last to know now, and you’ll likely end up paying a portion of it yourself.

  ‘Where is my uncle?’ he shouted towards a group of troopers standing near the base of the fortress. He and Donny brought their mounts to a clattering halt and fairly leapt from their saddles. Before any could answer, Donny spotted Sir Robert climbing down from the single, heavily defended entrance to the tower. He thumped Jamie on the shoulder and pointed.

  Jamie reached out and lowered Donny’s clumsy paw, making eye contact with Sir Robert as he did so. Apparently sensing trouble, the master of the house jerked his chin upwards, questioningly, towards the breathless new arrivals.

  ‘Well – where’s Kennedy and the rest?’ he asked, his face dark like a sky bearing storm clouds.

  ‘Mr Kennedy sent us ahead, sir,’ said Jamie, keeping his eyes fixed on Sir Robert’s, though the urge to look at the ground between his feet was all but overwhelming. Uncle or not, Sir Robert Jardine was a hard man to please and the wrong sort to trouble. ‘Will is dead, sir,’ he said. ‘Murdered.’

  Sir Robert blinked but gave no sign of emotion. Jamie knew his uncle well enough to know that the lack of an outward show of feelings meant nothing at all.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Sir Robert, stepping closer to his nephew while the rest of the men looked on silently, careful not to move and draw any attention upon themselves at such a time.

  ‘Mr Kennedy sent Will on ahead of us this morning – to the Henderson place,’ said Jamie. He cleared his throat and swallowed before continuing. ‘When we got there ourselves, there was no sign of … of life. The place was a mess, the house put to the torch, belongings scattered all around.’

  ‘And Will Kennedy?’ asked Sir Robert.

  ‘There was no sign of Will at first,’ said Jamie. ‘Davey told us …’ He glanced over at Donny. ‘Mr Kennedy told Donny and me to check inside the house. So we did. And we found Will alone in the place – dead. His throat was cut … his head was all but severed.’

  At the addition of such marvellous and gory detail, Donny Weir made an involuntary tutting noise with his tongue and shook his head, as though disapproving. Jamie glared at him and Sir Robert made a half-turn of his head that brought Donny swiftly back into the here and now. He rushed a cupped hand to his mouth to reinforce his sudden, mindful silence.

  Sir Robert remained quiet for a few more seconds and then turned away from his nephew to face Donny and the rest of the men who had been listening. More of them had drifted over, keen to hear what was going on but sensing the need to keep their mouths shut.

  ‘Mount up,’ said Sir Robert, his voice clear and strong. ‘Our Will Kennedy is dead, slain by someone who has chosen to make himself my enemy.’

  The undoubted force of the laird’s intent seemed to blow across the courtyard like a gust of wind. Men turned to look at one another, exchanging short sentences that mixed together into a murmur of disquiet.

  A black bird on the highest masonry of the tower house gave out a rasping cry before spreading its wings and taking to the air, as though intent on carrying the news further afield. Before it had time to beat its wings a second time it was pierced through by a long, thin shaft of ash wood, tipped with shining steel and fletched with grey goose feathers. Someone gasped in surprise and all looked up in time to see the crow transformed from a creature of the sky into what looked like a bundle of black rags on the end of a stick. The lifeless heap of it landed a few feet from the bottom of the tower house and a scruffy dog trotted over to inspect the windfall.

  All eyes, Sir Robert’s included, turned then to focus on the archer, though every man in Hawkshaw knew instinctively who it was that must have loosed the arrow – who alone among them had such casual mastery of the art. It was Angus Armstrong. He walked towards them, his longbow of the good red yew held loosely in his left hand.

  ‘Are we going hunting?’ he said, to no one in particular, though all waited for Sir Robert to respond.

  ‘Aye, hunting it is, Mr Armstrong,’ he said. ‘We will ride out to find the rest of the patrol. I tell you all now: I will know the whole story by nightfall.’

  There were shouted orders then as men came to their senses and set about the business of preparing to leave, and on a war footing. Violent death was hardly a rarity in these debatable lands, but Sir Robert Jardine of Hawkshaw was known to be unusually vengeful – even by the standards of the day. He interpreted any abuse of his men as an attack upon his own person. And then there was the matter of the victim. Will Kennedy was feared at best by most of the community around Hawkshaw, but none had expected to live to see the day when any gained the upper hand in a fight with the man.

  ‘Where is the Moor?’ shouted Sir Robert, as he strode towards the stables. Angus Armstrong had recovered his arrow from the crow’s carcass. He and Jamie Douglas and several more of the men trotted over to his lairdship and kept pace with him.

  None of them had offered any immediate reply to Sir Robert’s enquiry.

  ‘Khassan – Badr Khassan? Where is he?’ asked Sir Robert a second time, a note of impatience rising in his throat like gall.

  ‘He’s not here,’ said Armstrong.

  He it was that had been first of all the Hawkshaw men to meet the giant stranger upon his arrival on the road in front of the fortress more than two months before. Having brought him inside the palisade, Amstrong had felt a responsibility for the stranger’s presence ever since. Though he had grown to respect, even to like the man they called the Bear, still he had bothered to keep an eye on the stranger’s comings and goings.

  Sir Robert stopped and turned to face Armstrong, a man he valued above all others and found it worth paying attention to – in times of strife, most of all.

  ‘He’s not here, my lord,’ said Armstrong again. ‘I have not seen him since yesterday, in fact, and I am confident of saying he did not spend last night at Hawkshaw.’

  Badr Khassan had been in the habit of leaving Hawkshaw on his own. If anyone asked him about it, he always put it down to curiosity.

  ‘I am a stranger in a strange land,’ he would say. ‘There is much to see and to know.’

  Sir Robert had been informed of Badr Khassan’s habits and had been content to leave him on a long leash. As far as he was concerned, if people saw the Moor on Jardine land, then he served as a visible symbol of his own ever-present authority in these parts.

  It burned Armstrong to have to admit that he had no idea concerning Khassan’s whereabouts. He did not make mistakes, and yet … and yet it seemed to him that the Bear’s absence at such a time was more than a coincidence. For the first time in a long time he felt he had been – now what was the word … outmanoeuvred. He would not let the same thing happen twice in one day.

  Sir Robert remained stationary, and for a moment Armstrong knew he read thoughts similar to his own on his master’s face.

  Saying nothing, Sir Robert turned and strode faster still, down towards the stable block. A groom had his horse ready, as always – a tall and broad-chested destrier, a warhorse – and he almost leapt into the saddle in his haste to be away. The beast was briefly startled and reared slightly in protest, but Sir Robert brought it quickly and easily under control before wheeling it around and making for the gates of the palisade at a canter.

  Casting
his mind back to the evening before, to his conversation with Davey Kennedy, he stumbled suddenly across memories of Patrick Grant. Along with thoughts of Grant came memories of a woman. Those images were worn and stained, like portraits hung on a wall exposed to too much daylight. Before mounting his horse he had had not an idea in his head of where in his demesne to begin the search for the foe. Now, without knowing quite why, he shouted out their destination. They would head first of all to the sometime home of the man who had wronged him and all his heirs, leaving them with so little when they might have had so much.

  7

  John Grant dreamed he was flying high in the sky, or perhaps swimming in deep water. In any event, he was weightless and graceful as he soared, twisted and dived through an element that offered no resistance. He loved it. And then he hated it. All at once there was an awful dizziness as the world, or at least the world inside his head, began to spin, faster and faster. He felt the contents of his stomach pitch and roll. He closed his eyes as the sensation, so briefly perfect and wonderful, turned into a lurching fall. He was sinking deep or plummeting to earth and he opened his mouth to cry out, or to vomit, or both …

  He returned to consciousness then, helpless and weak like a drowning man dragged from rapids. He lay on his back, his head supported, mercifully, by something soft. The world still spun for him – not the familiar grinding turn of the planet on its axis that he lived by, but a hideously tight rotation. When he opened his eyes he saw not his mother, nor even an empty heaven above, but a huge black face that seemed to be in high-speed orbit around his own sorrowful skull.