Tim made no reply, but the Covenant Man felt sure he had heard.
Once they were wound to the fullest stop, they always did.
The Widow Smack must have been watching from the window, for Tim had just led a footsore Bitsy up to the porch (in spite of his growing anxiety he had walked the last half-mile to spare her) when she came rushing out.
“Thank gods, thank gods. Your mother was three quarters to believing you were dead. Come in. Hurry. Let her hear and touch you.”
The import of these words didn’t strike Tim fully until later. He tied Bitsy beside Sunshine and hurried up the steps. “How did you know to come to her, sai?”
The Widow turned her face to him (which, given her veil, was hardly a face at all). “Has thee gone soft in the head, Timothy? You rode past my house, pushing that mule for all she was worth. I couldn’t think why you’d be out so late, and headed in the direction of the forest, so I came here to ask your mother. But come, come. And keep a cheery voice, if you love her.”
The Widow led him across the living room, where two ’seners burned low. In his mother’s room another ’sener burned on the bed table, and by its light he saw Nell lying in bed with much of her face wrapped in bandages and another-this one badly bloodstained-around her neck like a collar.
At the sound of their footsteps, she sat up with a wild look upon her face. “If it’s Kells, stay away! You’ve done enough!”
“It’s Tim, Mama.”
She turned toward him and held out her arms. “Tim! To me, to me!”
He knelt beside the bed, and the part of her face not covered by bandages he covered with kisses, crying as he did so. She was still wearing her nightgown, but now the neck and bosom were stiff with rusty blood. Tim had seen his steppa fetch her a terrible lick with the ceramic jug, and then commence with his fists. How many blows had he seen? He didn’t know. And how many had fallen on his hapless mother after the vision in the silver basin had disappeared? Enough so he knew she was very fortunate to be alive, but one of those blows-likely the one dealt with the ceramic jug-had struck his mother blind.
“’Twas a concussive blow,” the Widow Smack said. She sat in Nell’s bedroom rocker; Tim sat on the bed, holding his mother’s left hand. Two fingers of the right were broken. The Widow, who must have been very busy since her fortuitous arrival, had splinted them with pieces of kindling and flannel strips torn from another of Nell’s nightgowns. “I’ve seen it before. There’s swelling to the brain. When it goes down, her sight may return.”
“May,” Tim said bleakly.
“There will be water if God wills it, Timothy.”
Our water is poisoned now, Tim thought, and it was none of any god’s doing. He opened his mouth to say just that, but the Widow shook her head. “She’s asleep. I gave her an herb drink-not strong, I didn’t dare give her strong after he cuffed her so around the head-but it’s taken hold. I wasn’t sure ’twould.”
Tim looked down at his mother’s face-terribly pale, with freckles of blood still drying on the little exposed skin the Widow’s bandagements had left-and then back up at his teacher. “She’ll wake again, won’t she?”
The Widow repeated, “There will be water if God wills it.” Then the ghost-mouth beneath the veil lifted in what might have been a smile. “In this case, I think there will be. She’s strong, your ma.”
“Can I talk to you, sai? For if I don’t talk to someone, I’ll explode.”
“Of course. Come out on the porch. I’ll stay here tonight, by your leave. Will you have me? And will you stable Sunshine, if so?”
“Aye,” Tim said. In his relief, he actually managed a smile. “And say thankya.”
The air was even warmer. Sitting in the rocker that had been Big Ross’s favorite roost on summer nights, the Widow said, “It feels like starkblast weather. Call me crazy-you wouldn’t be the first-but so it does.”
“What’s that, sai?”
“Never mind, it’s probably nothing… unless you see Sir Throcken dancing in the starlight or looking north with his muzzle upraised, that is. There hasn’t been a starkblast in these parts since I was a weebee, and that’s many and many-a year a-gone. We’ve other things to talk about. Is it only what that beast did to your mother that troubles you so, or is there more?”
Tim sighed, not sure how to start.
“I see a coin around your neck that I believe I’ve seen around your father’s. Perhaps that’s where you’ll begin. But there’s one other thing we have to speak of first, and that’s protecting your ma. I’d send you to Constable Howard’s, no matter it’s late, but his house is dark and shuttered. I saw that for myself on my way here. No surprise, either. Everyone knows that when the Covenant Man comes to Tree, Howard Tasley finds some reason to make himself scarce. I’m an old woman and you’re but a child. What will we do if Bern Kells comes back to finish what he started?”
Tim, who no longer felt like a child, reached down to his belt. “My father’s coin isn’t all I found tonight.” He pulled Big Ross’s hand-ax and showed it to her. “This was also my da’s, and if he dares to come back, I’ll put it in his head, where it belongs.”
The Widow Smack began to remonstrate, but saw a look in his eyes that made her change direction. “Tell me your tale,” said she. “Leave out not a word.”
When Tim had finished — minding the Widow’s command to leave nothing out, he made sure to tell what his mother had said about the peculiar changelessness of the man with the silver basin-his old teacher sat quietly for a moment… although the night breeze caused her veil to flutter eerily and made her look as though she were nodding.
“She’s right, you know,” she said at last. “Yon chary man hasn’t aged a day. And tax collecting’s not his job. I think it’s his hobby. He’s a man with hobbies, aye. He has his little pastimes. ” She raised her fingers in front of her veil, appeared to study them, then returned them to her lap.
“You’re not shaking,” Tim ventured.
“No, not tonight, and that’s a good thing if I’m to sit vigil at your mother’s bedside. Which I mean to do. You, Tim, will make yourself a pallet behind the door. ’Twill be uncomfortable, but if your steppa comes back, and if you’re to have a chance against him, you’ll have to come at him from behind. Not much like Brave Bill in the stories, is it?”
Tim’s hands rolled shut, the fingernails digging into his palms. “It’s how the bastard did for my da’, and all he deserves.”
She took one of his hands in her own and soothed it open. “He’ll probably not come back, anyway. Certainly not if he thinks he’s done for her, and he may. There was so much blood.”
“Bastard,” Tim said in a low and choking voice.
“He’s probably lying up drunk somewhere. Tomorrow you must go to Square Peter Cosington and Slow Ernie Marchly, for it’s their patch where your da’ now lies. Show them the coin you wear, and tell how you found it in Kells’s trunk. They can round up a posse and search until Kells is found and locked up tight in the jailhouse. It won’t take them long to run him down, I warrant, and when he comes back sober, he’ll claim he has no idea of what he’s done. He may even be telling the truth, for when it gets in some men, strong drink draws down a curtain.”
“I’ll go with them.”
“Nay, it’s no work for a boy. Bad enough you have to watch for him tonight with your da’s hand-ax. Tonight you need to be a man. Tomorrow you can be a boy again, and a boy’s place when his mother has been badly hurt is by her side.”
“The Covenant Man said he might bide along the Ironwood Trail for another night or two. Maybe I should-”
The hand that had soothed moments before now grasped Tim’s wrist where the flesh was thin, and hard enough to hurt. “Never think it! Hasn’t he done damage enough?”
“What are you saying? That he made all this happen? It was Kells who killed my da’, and it was Kells who beat my mama!”
“But ’twas the Covenant Man who gave you the key, and there’s no telling what else he may have done. Or will do, if he gets the chance, for he leaves ruin and weeping in his wake, and has for time out of mind. Do you think people only fear him because he has the power to turn them out on the land if they can’t pay the barony taxes? No, Tim, no.”