The Service of the Dead

She dropped her head, her heart full.

Berend softly thanked her for recounting the conversation. “He is a good lad. His heart is broken.”

As is mine. Kate forced herself to keep her attention with Berend. “If only Connor had described the man. Still so many questions, so few answers.”

Berend rose with a grunt, raised his arms to the ceiling beam, stretching. “But we know more than we did. We know how Alice escaped.”

Yes, that mystery was solved. “The greater mystery is how William could be so cold, abandoning Alice, the mother of his son, to her fate.”

“Fear for his daughter, Hazel?”

“And his honor. His precious honor.”

Kate started to rise just as Berend settled back down with more ale, reminding her that she had promised to tell him “about the one who died like Alice,” the memory, or rather the ghost who led to her ill-timed attack on William.

“That is the last thing I wish to dredge up before sleep.”

“I confided in you.”

Seeing the challenge in Berend’s eyes, Kate relented. If she meant him to be her comrade in arms, they must know each other so well they could predict the other’s reaction. She fetched more ale, settled back beside him, forced herself to speak of what she had hidden for so long.

“Maud Allen. She was my good friend, and my brother Roland’s true love. Her family’s land bordered on ours, and we were together in the fields and the woods when the weather was fair and our fathers considered it safe. Raids happened mostly at night, but sometimes…” She shook her head. Stay with the story.

“Our particular enemies were the family of Andrew Caverton just across the border. Our families had been feuding for generations. They poached our cattle, our sheep, put fire to our barns when we had them filled with hay. And we did likewise. It took but an instant to light a fuse that would burn for months. That spring, when the roads were muddy, a cart had upended on the way to market and the goods toppled out onto what they said was their property. It was the road, how it went along the border there, that was often the excuse for the troubles. Roland and the eldest Caverton brother, who was called young Andrew, came to blows. Roland sliced open Andrew’s face from his right temple to the right side of his mouth and cut off his ear. From that moment, young Andrew wanted revenge. He was vain, always strutting in front of the women. After Roland disfigured his face, he burned with a hate so fierce.”

“That is a lot for a young man to suffer.”

Tell him about Walter’s hand.

“I do not claim we were better than the Cavertons. But my eldest brother had lost a hand to the brutes a year earlier.”

“I did not mean to judge. Forgive me for interrupting. Maud Allen?”

“Maud was a beauty, a year older than me, and the previous winter she had flowered. That spring she was clearly a woman. Roland and she – both families guessed they had better not delay their marriage. The wedding was planned for after the harvest. The countryside was abuzz with it, so the Caverton boys knew that she was the pearl of great price, the theft that would tear out my brother’s heart.

“They raped her and threatened her with a bloody death if she told, knowing she would. Knowing Roland would see her black eyes and swollen lips, her torn nails, and keep at her until he knew. Or guessed. She told me, she whispered it between sobs. One held her down while the other… They took turns, three brothers. And they had friends come watch. And jeer. And…” Kate shook her head to scuttle the memories.

How sick you were, Geoff whispered. I held you as you heaved in the barn. Then you cried and cried, beating the wall of the stall until your hands were bloodied.

Berend crossed himself. “I am sorry it pains you so to speak of it. But I need to hear it all.”

Will it help to speak of it? To admit my guilt aloud?

It was not your fault, Geoff whispered. Maud told Roland as well.

But not in such detail, Geoff.

“Your twin is here,” Berend said.

“How do you know?”

“I sense it. I feel you as two, not one. I do not mean to be cruel.”

“You are never cruel to me, Berend. It is hard to speak of it. I was a child, and so frightened. I feared that the same would happen to me. My brothers feared it as well.” Kate reminded herself that these were memories, in the past. “Maud did not realize that Geoff would learn all of it from me. There was no hiding anything from him. I doubt she would have shared so much detail with me had she known.”

“But you were her friend. Perhaps the only one to whom she could talk so freely.”

“I know my own part in it, Berend.”

He apologized for interrupting.

“My brothers went mad with grief for Maud, and their hatred of the Cavertons deepened. They planned a raid. They would go as soon as Father returned. He had been called away on some business with the warden of the march.

“One afternoon Geoff and I were out with Lille and Ghent. They were just puppies. We were walking our land with them, familiarizing them with it. As we climbed down a rocky hillside the pups became agitated, hanging back and whining. Fearful. They picked up the scent of blood. Geoff told me to stay there with the pups while he climbed down. He… I could tell when he heard the flies, and smelled blood himself. Just the way he straightened, like a rod had been shoved down his back. Fighting stance. I knew. I just knew it was Maud. I called out to him to come back, we should go for her father. But he moved on.