The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,43

have to do with the inheritance? They had come to rob her, they wanted the money. They were angry because she didn’t have it here. As it all became clearer to her, the fear dissipated, replaced by rage. They killed her father over nothing.

Cordaella ran to the door and flung it open. “May God curse you,” she screamed, lunging out the cottage door. The men had been dozing and now jumped up. Dazed, they scrambled with their coats, reaching for weapons. “Kill me too!” she cried, “if you had to kill him, why not kill me too?”

She sounded mad, her heavy accent, the wild grief unsettling the men. They swore, exchanging few words before two dashed off, heading down the mountain. The third one, the one that remained, was young, seventeen, maybe eighteen, and thin. “It wasn’t you we wanted,” he said.

“But why him?” she cried. “He was good.” And the boy broke into a run, following hard and fast on the others.

The sky forked with lightning and the thunder crashed. Again lightning streaked the twilight with crooked fingers of white, the distant hills of the Derbyshire Peaks deep green against the dark horizon. Cordaella slowly tipped her head back until she stared straight up into the fury of the sky. There was nothing but clouds and a play of light.

*

THE RAIN BEGAN to fall steadily after dinner, and by half past eight, it came in pelting streaks, pinging against the lead windows and sizzling in the fireplaces. With the Earl gone, Lady Eton excused herself early. Philip made one final trip to the stables, and Edward was nowhere to be found. Only Elisabeth and Cordaella shared the solar’s fire.

A half hour passed with Elisabeth stitching and Cordaella reading. As the rain continued its steady stream, the drumming pulled Elisabeth from her piece. “Philip said the coroner’s inquest determined today’s fire was caused by one of the farm animals.” She plucked at a loose thread, pulling it completely through the fabric with a dexterous needle. “Is that common?”

Cordaella had been reading the same paragraph for the last several minutes, too wearied to make sense of the archaic prose. She was good at Latin, but Greek was more difficult, especially when she was tired. “Common enough.”

“How? Oxen cannot lay a fire.”

She closed the volume of Plato, fingering the padded leather cover. She looked at her cousin. Why did Elisabeth want to know? “Oxen are not kept near the hearth. Generally, accidents are created by pigs. Or chickens.” She ignored her cousin’s incredulous expression. “This fire could have been touched off by a chicken dropping a bit of burning straw into the cradle, or a pig knocking the fire out of the hearth. Sometimes pigs knock a cradle too near the fire. Since most cottage floors are covered by straw, it only takes an ember and breath of wind to ignite the entire croft.”

“Did your croft ever catch fire?”

“No, it did not.”

“Do you miss it? Your croft?”

“It’s not the building I miss. It’s the mountains.”

“Nobody else lives there. That’s what Father says.”

“It is harder to survive high up. You can’t grow much and the winters are longer, harsher. It’s not much of a life.”

“If it is so hard to survive, how did you?”

Cordaella rubbed the book’s binding. “Papa did it all—found the means to keep us fed and warm. He worked at things, whittling, fur, building odds and ends to trade in the village. Papa always said—”

“Why do you say his name like that?” Elisabeth said, interrupting her. “You always say it the same way.”

“How do I say it?”

“Reverently.” Elisabeth kicked one foot out from beneath her chair, the full burgundy and brown skirts rustling, revealing the lace of her ivory chemise. “Perhaps you aren’t like the wild thing they brought here years ago, but you still talk about him as if he were—” Her mouth pursed. “God.” She stared so hard at her cousin that Cordaella shivered. “He was just a poor falconer. A man with nothing. No work. No home. No name.” There was a minute of silence. Maybe two. “I can’t think why you want to remember him like that, as if he was the very best thing, or very best person, you have ever known. People die, Cordy,” Elisabeth said, sounding almost angry. “They die all the time.”

Cordaella looked to the fire. The wood had burned low, the grate a pile of red coals. “It’s late,” she said at last. “It has been a difficult day.”

“Yes, it has.”