2

The girl, although young, was married.

The boy, although fair, was unstable.

She met him one night in a remote place to tell him their affair, sweet as it had been, must end. He replied that it would never end, it was written in the stars. She told him that might be, but at some point the constellations had changed. Perhaps he began to weep. Perhaps she laughed-out of nervousness, very likely. Whatever the cause, such laughter was disastrously timed. He picked up a stone and dashed out her brains with it. Then, coming to his senses and realizing what he had done, he sat down with his back against a granite slab, drew her poor battered head into his lap, and cut his own throat as an owl looked on from a nearby tree. He died covering her face with kisses, and when they were found, their lips were sealed together with his life’s blood and with hers.

An old story. Every town has its version. The site is usually the local lovers’ lane, or a secluded stretch of riverbank, or the town graveyard. Once the details of what actually happened have been distorted enough to please the morbidly romantic, songs are made. These are usually sung by yearning virgins who play guitar or mando badly and cannot quite stay on key. Choruses tend to include such lachrymose refrains as My-di-I-de-I-de-o, There they died together-o.

The Hambry version of this quaint tale featured lovers named Robert and Francesca, and had happened in the old days, before the world had moved on. The site of the supposed murder-suicide was the Hambry cemetery, the stone with which Francesca’s brains had been dashed out was a slate marker, and the granite wall against which Robert had been leaning when he clipped his blowpipe had been the Thorin mausoleum. (It was doubtful there had been any Thorins in Hambry or Mejis five generations back, but folk-tales are, at best, generally no more than lies set in rhyme.)

True or untrue, the graveyard was considered haunted by the ghosts of the lovers, who could be seen (it was said) walking hand-in-hand among the markers, covered with blood and looking wistful. It was thus seldom visited at night, and was a logical spot for Roland, Cuthbert, Alain, and Susan to meet.

By the time the meeting took place, Roland had begun to feel increasingly worried… even desperate. Susan was the problem-or, more properly put, Susan’s aunt. Even without Rhea’s poisonous letter to help the process along, Cordelia’s suspicions of Susan and Roland had hardened into a near certainty. On a day less than a week before the meeting in the cemetery, Cordelia had begun shrieking at Susan almost as soon as she stepped through the house door with her basket over her arm.

“Ye’ve been with him! Ye have, ye bad girl, it’s written all over yer face!”

Susan, who had that day been nowhere near Roland, could at first only gape at her aunt. “Been with who?”

“Oh, be not coy with me, Miss Oh So Young and Pretty! Be not coy, I pray! Who does all but wiggle his tongue at ye when he passes our door? Dearborn, that’s who! Dearborn! Dearborn! I’ll say it a thousand times! Oh, shame on ye! Shame! Look at yer trousers! Green from the grass the two of ye have been rolling in, they are! I’m surprised they’re not torn open at the crutch as well!” By then Aunt Cord had been nearly shrieking. The veins in her neck stood out like rope.

Susan, bemused, had looked down at the old khaki pants she was wearing.

“Aunt, it’s paint-don’t you see it is? Chetta and I’ve been making Fair-Day decorations up at Mayor’s House. What’s on my bottom got there when Hart Thorin- not Dearborn but Thorin-came upon me in the shed where the decorations and fireworks are stored. He decided it was as good a time and place as any to have another little wrestle. He got on top of me, shot his squirt into his pants again, and went off happy. Humming, he was.” She wrinkled her nose, although the most she felt for Thorin these days was a kind of sad distaste. Her fear of him had passed.

Aunt Cord, meanwhile, had been looking at her with glittery eyes. For the first time, Susan found herself wondering consciously about Cordelia’s sanity.

“A likely story,” Cordelia whispered at last. There were little beads of perspiration above her eyebrows, and the nestles of blue veins at her temples ticked like clocks. She even had a smell, these days, no matter if she bathed or not-a rancid, acrid one. “Did ye work it out together as ye cuddled afterward, thee and him?”

Susan had stepped forward, grabbed her aunt’s bony wrist, and clapped it to the stain on one of her knees. Cordelia cried out and tried to pull away, but Susan held fast. She then raised the hand to her aunt’s face, holding it there until she knew Cordelia had smelled what was on her palm.

“Does thee smell it. Aunt? Paint! We used it on rice-paper for colored lanterns!”

The tension had slowly gone out of the wrist in Susan’s hand. The eyes looking into hers regained a measure of clarity. “Aye,” she had said at last. “Paint.” A pause. “This time.”

Since then, Susan had all too often turned her head to see a narrow-hipped figure gliding after her in the street, or one of her aunt’s many friends marking her course with suspicious eyes. When she rode on the Drop, she now always had the sensation of being watched. Twice before the four of them came together in the graveyard, she had agreed to meet Roland and his friends. Both times she had been forced to break off, the second at the very last moment. On that occasion she had seen Brian Hockey’s eldest son watching her in an odd, intent way. It had only been intuition… but strong intuition.

What made matters worse for her was that she was as frantic for a meeting as Roland himself, and not just for palaver. She needed to see his face, and to clasp one of his hands between both of hers. The rest, sweet as it was, could wait, but she needed to see him and touch him; needed to make sure he wasn’t Just a dream spun by a lonely, frightened girl to comfort herself.

In the end, Maria had helped her-gods bless the little maid, who perhaps understood more than Susan could ever guess. It was Maria who had gone to Cordelia with a note saying that Susan would be spending the night in the guest wing at Seafront. The note was from Olive Thorin, and in spite of all her suspicions, Cordelia could not quite believe it a forgery. As it was not. Olive had written it, listlessly and without questions, when Susan asked.

“What’s wrong with my niece?” Cordelia had snapped. “She tired, sai. And with the dolor de garganta.”

“Sore throat? So close before Fair-Day? Ridiculous! I don’t believe it! Susan’s never sick!”

“Dolor de garganta,” Maria repeated, impassive as only a peasant woman can be in the face of disbelief, and with that Cordelia had to be satisfied. Maria herself had no idea what Susan was up to, and that was just the way Susan liked it.

She’d gone over the balcony, moving nimbly down the fifteen feet of tangled vines growing up the north side of the building, and through the rear servants’ door in the wall. There Roland had been waiting, and after two warm minutes with which we need not concern ourselves, they rode double on Rusher to the graveyard, where Cuthbert and Alain waited, full of expectation and nervous hope.