“I can’t turn him out,” she said. “I would if I could, but now that the rope’s slipped, the place is more his than mine. The law can be cruel to a woman. I never had cause to think about that before, but now… now…” Her eyes had gone glassy and distant. She would sleep soon, and that was probably a good thing.
He kissed her unbruised cheek and made to get up, but she stayed him. “What did the Covenant Man say to thee?”
“Asked me how I liked my new step-da’. I can’t remember how I answered him. I was scared.”
“When he covered thee with his cloak, I was, too. I thought he meant to ride away with thee, like the Red King in the old story.” She closed her eyes, then opened them again, very slowly. There was something in them now that could have been horror. “I remember him coming to my da’s when I was but a wee girl not long out of clouts-the black horse, the black gloves and cape, the saddle with the silver siguls on it. His white face gave me nightmares-it’s so long. And do you know what, Tim?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side.
“He even carries the same silver basin roped on behind, for I saw it then, too. That’s twenty years a-gone-aye, twenty and a doubleton-deucy more-but he looks the same. He hasn’t aged a day. ”
Her eyes closed again. This time they didn’t reopen, and Tim stole from the room.
When he was sure his mother was asleep, Tim went down the little bit of back hall to where Big Kells’s trunk, a squarish shape under an old remnant of blanket, stood just outside the mudroom. When he’d told the Covenant Man he knew of only two locks in Tree, the Covenant Man had replied, Oh, I think thee knows of another.
He stripped off the blanket and looked at his step-da’s trunk. The trunk he sometimes caressed like a well-loved pet and often sat upon at night, puffing at his pipe with the back door cracked open to let out the smoke.
Tim hurried back to the front of the house-in his stocking feet, so as not to risk waking his mother-and peered out the front window. The yard was empty, and there was no sign of Big Kells on the rainy road. Tim had expected nothing else. Kells would be at Gitty’s by now, getting through as much of what he had left as he could before falling down unconscious.
I hope somebody beats him up and gives him a taste of his own medicine. I’d do it myself, were I big enough.
He went back to the trunk, padding noiselessly in his stockings, knelt in front of it, and took the key from his pocket. It was a tiny silver thing the size of half a knuck, and strangely warm in his fingers, as if it were alive. The keyhole in the brass facing on the front of the trunk was much bigger. The key he gave me will never work in that, Tim thought. Then he remembered the Covenant Man saying ’Tis a magic key. It will open anything, but only a single time.
Tim put the key in the lock, where it clicked smoothly home, as if it had been meant for just that place all along. When he applied pressure, it turned smoothly, but the warmth left it as soon as it did. Now there was nothing between his fingers but cold dead metal.
“After that, ’tis as useless as dirt,” Tim whispered, then looked around, half convinced he’d see Big Kells standing there with a scowl on his face and his hands rolled into fists. There was no one, so he unbuckled the straps and raised the lid. He cringed at the screak of the hinges and looked over his shoulder again. His heart was beating hard, and although that rainy evening was chilly, he could feel a dew of sweat on his forehead.
There were shirts and pants on top, stuffed in any whichway, most of them ragged. Tim thought (with a bitter resentment that was entirely new to him), It’s my Mama who’ll wash them and mend them and fold them neat when he tells her to. And will he thank her with a blow to the arm or a punch to her neck or face?
He pulled the clothes out, and beneath them found what made the trunk heavy. Kells’s father had been a carpenter, and here were his tools. Tim didn’t need a grownup to tell him they were valuable, for they were of made metal. He could have sold these to pay the tax, he never uses them nor even knows how, I warrant. He could have sold them to someone who does-Haggerty the Nail, for instance-and paid the tax with a good sum left over.
There was a word for that sort of behavior, and thanks to the Widow Smack’s teaching, Tim knew it. The word was miser.
He tried to lift the toolbox out, and at first couldn’t. It was too heavy for him. Tim laid the hammers and screwdrivers and honing bar aside on the clothes. Then he could manage. Beneath were five ax-heads that would have made Big Ross slap his forehead in disgusted amazement. The precious steel was speckled with rust, and Tim didn’t have to test with his thumb to see that the blades were dull. Nell’s new husband occasionally honed his current ax, but hadn’t bothered with these spare heads for a long time. By the time he needed them, they would probably be useless.
Tucked into one corner of the trunk were a small deerskin bag and an object wrapped in fine chamois cloth. Tim took this latter up, unwrapped it, and beheld the likeness of a woman with a sweetly smiling face. Masses of dark hair tumbled over her shoulders. Tim didn’t remember Millicent Kells-he would have been no more than three or four when she passed into the clearing where we must all eventually gather-but he knew it was she.
He rewrapped it, replaced it, and picked up the little bag. From the feel there was only a single object inside, small but quite heavy. Tim pulled the drawstring with his fingers and tipped the bag. More thunder boomed, Tim jerked with surprise, and the object which had been hidden at the very bottom of Kells’s trunk fell out into Tim’s hand.
It was his father’s lucky coin.
Tim put everything but his father’s property back into the trunk, loading the toolbox in, returning the tools he’d removed to lighten it, and then piling in the clothes. He refastened the straps. All well enough, but when he tried the silver key, it turned without engaging the tumblers.
Useless as dirt.
Tim gave up and covered the trunk with the old piece of blanket again, fussing with it until it looked more or less as it had. It might serve. He’d often seen his new steppa pat the trunk and sit on the trunk, but only infrequently did he open the trunk, and then just to get his honing bar. Tim’s burglary might go undiscovered for a little while, but he knew better than to believe it would go undiscovered forever. There would come a day-maybe not until next month, but more likely next week (or even tomorrow!), when Big Kells would decide to get his bar, or remember that he had more clothes than the ones he’d brought in his kick-bag. He would discover the trunk was unlocked, he’d dive for the deerskin bag, and find the coin it had contained was gone. And then? Then his new wife and new stepson would take a beating. Probably a fearsome one.
Tim was afraid of that, but as he stared at the familiar reddish-gold coin on its length of silver chain, he was also truly angry for the first time in his life. It was not a boy’s impotent fury but a man’s rage.
He had asked Old Destry about dragons, and what they might do to a fellow. Did it hurt? Would there be… well… parts left? The farmer had seen Tim’s distress and put a kindly arm around his shoulders. “Nar to both, son. Dragon’s fire is the hottest fire there is-as hot as the liquid rock that sometimes drools from cracks in the earth far south of here. So all the stories say. A man caught in dragonblast is burned to finest ash in but a second-clothes, boots, buckle and all. So if you’re asking did yer da’ suffer, set yer mind at rest. ’Twas over for him in an instant.”
Clothes, boots, buckle and all. But Da’s lucky coin wasn’t even smudged, and every link of the silver chain was intact. Yet he didn’t take it off even to sleep. So what had happened to Big Jack Ross? And why was the coin in Kells’s trunk? Tim had a terrible idea, and he thought he knew someone who could tell him if the terrible idea was right. If Tim were brave enough, that was.