Chapter 32

Ferris went white. Horace saw the colour literally drain from his face and his hand went up to his tf in an involuntary gesture of shock. After initially recoiling, the King took control of himself and stepped forward a pace, peering into the face of the grim, grey-bearded man who stood before him.

`Brother?' he said. 'But you can't…' He stopped, then tried to take possession of himself once more, tried to assume an air of dignified mystification. 'My brother is dead. He died many years ago,' he said, the conviction in his voice growing as he spoke. He made a small sign with his right hand and Horace ce heard the large doors behind them open, heard several sets of hurried footsteps on the stone flooring and knew that Sean Carrick and a small group of men at arms had entered the throne room.

He'd been right about the unseen observers, he thought grimly.

`Your majesty, is everything all right?' Sean Carrick asked.

Halt glanced over his shoulder at the group of armed men. He stepped a little closer to Ferris. Instinctively, the King began to back off a corresponding pace. Then he seemed to realise that, by doing so, he was giving Halt the upper hand. He stopped, watching Halt warily. Halt spoke softly so that only his brother and Horace could hear his words.

`If you're frightened, brother, then let Sean stay. He has a right to hear me. But unless you want your men to hear what we're about to discuss – and I don't think you do -send them outside again, where they can see but not listen.'

Ferris looked at him, then at the armed men standing ready by the door. Halt and Horace were both unarmed, he realised, while he was wearing his sword. Sean Carrick was similarly armed and Ferris knew his steward was a more than capable swordsman. That was one of the reasons Sean held the position that he did. Years of guilt and fear, long suppressed, now swam to the surface of his mind. He realised instinctively that he didn't want his soldiers to hear whatever it was that Halt planned to say. He knew it would not show himself in any favourable light. Abruptly, he decided.

`Sean!' he called. 'Dismiss the men to their posts and come stand by me.'

Carrick hesitated and Ferris turned to look directly at him.

`Do it,' he ordered.

Carrick still hesitated another second or two, then nodded to the men. As they turned and trooped out of the room, Sean waited till the doors closed behind them, then strode forward to stand beside the King.

`Uncle,' he said, confirming Halt's earlier suspicion, `what's the trouble? Who is this man?'

He was looking at Halt, frowning. From the relative positions of the three men, Halt and Ferris facing each other, Horace standing a pace or two back, it was obvious now that the Araluan knight was not the leader here, but the follower. And now Sean had that same sense that he'd felt before, that there was something very familiar about the smaller man.

Halt turned to face him.

`Uncle?' he said. 'You'd be Caitlyn's son then?'

Sean nodded. 'What do you know of my mother?' he asked, his tone defensive and a little belligerent. Ferris let out a deep sigh of anguish and turned away, moving to sit on a low bench beside the throne, his head in his hands.

'She was my sister,' Halt told him. 'I'm your uncle too. My name is Halt.'

`NoP Sean rejected the statement vehemently. 'My uncle Halt is dead. He died over twenty years ago!' He looked to the King for confirmation. But Ferris's face remained in his hands and he refused to look up and meet Sean's gaze. He shook his head repeatedly from side to side, as if trying to deny the scene before him. Sean's conviction began to waver and he looked more closely at the small, rather stocky man in the mottled cloak.

The beard was full and covered the face. And the moustache was heavy as well. But if that shaggy mop of hair were drawn back as Ferris's was…

Sean shook his head now. The features were the same. They were more defined in the stranger's face. In Ferris's, they were blurred somewhat by the extra flesh he carried.

A person's features become altered by their actions over their lifetime, he knew. A face is a canvas where the years paint their marks. But if you could strip away the effect of the years from these two faces, remove the excesses, the joys, the pains, the triumphs and disappointments of twenty years or more, then he sensed that they would be identical.

And if you looked beyond the faces to the eyes…

The eyes! They were the same. Yet in one important way, they were different. Ferris, he knew, could never meet your gaze for more than a few seconds at a time. His eyes would slide away from yours uncertainly. That was why Ferris set great store by the fact that people should not gaze directly into the face of a king. But this man's eyes were steady and unwavering. And as Sean Carrick looked into them now, he saw something else, a faint hint of sardonic humour deep behind them.

`Finished looking?' Halt asked him.

Sean stepped back. He wasn't totally convinced, but his mind couldn't ignore the evidence that his eyes were seeing. He turned to Ferris.

`Your majesty?' he said. 'Tell me.'

But the only response from Ferris was a deep groaning sound, and an ineffectual wave of the hand. And in that moment, Sean Carrick knew. A second later, Ferris confirmed it with one word.

`Halt…' he began uncertainly, raising his eyes at last to look at his brother. 'I never meant you any harm. You must believe that.'

`Ferris, you're a lying sack of manure. You meant me a great deal of harm. You meant to kill me.'

`No! When you left I sent men after you to find you!' Ferris protested. Halt laughed, a short, barking sound that had no humour in it.

`I'll bet you did! With orders to finish what you'd started!'

It was too much for Sean. Nobody had ever taken such a tone to the King and the habit of years now made him intervene. He stepped forward, interposing himself between Ferris and Halt, his eyes locked on Halt's, each of them unwilling to drop his gaze.

`You can't talk to the King like that,' Sean said with some force. Halt held his gaze for several seconds before he replied quietly.

`I'm not talking to the King.' He jerked a contemptuous thumb at his brother. 'He is.'

The thought was so outrageous, so directly opposed to everything that Sean had lived by for his entire adult life, that it checked him like a physical blow. Yet he realised it was true. If this was Halt, then he was the rightful King of Clonmel, and Ferris was a usurper. No ceremony of coronation and consecration could change that basic fact. And as he looked into Halt's eyes again, then tried to look at Ferris, only to have the so-called King avert his gaze, the last doubt disappeared from Sean's mind. This was Halt. This was the rightful King of Clonmel.

`Your majesty…'he said and began to sink to his knees before Halt. The Ranger quickly stopped him, stepping closer to seize his forearm and draw him back to his feet. Ferris made a choking sound in his throat. Significantly, Sean thought, he made no protest about Sean's demonstration of fealty to Halt.

`Very kind of you,' Halt said, 'but we don't have time for that nonsense. I'm really not interested in being King. I prefer to work for a living. Now, Ferris, we need to talk.'

Ferris looked wildly about the room, as if seeking some form of escape. He knew that he was about to face retribution for his crimes. So he was quite startled when Halt continued, in a bad-tempered tone.

`Oh, for God's sake, man! I'm not here to steal your throne! I'm here to help you keep it!'

`Keep it?' Ferris, said, bewildered. Events were moving too fast for him. 'Keep it from whom?'

`Let's sit down, shall we?' Halt saw several low benches to one side and he picked one up and brought it close to the throne, gesturing for Horace and Sean to do likewise. Ferris stood watching them, uncertain what to do next, plucking nervously at the hem of his satin sleeve.