The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fic - By Mike Ashley Page 0,71

Artin’s not like that. And Uncle Lurgan almost worships at his feet …”

“Yes, nauseating, I know. But in the early days, everyone over there thought he was the spawn of Evil – couldn’t ship him over to this side quick enough, forget hospitality! Your Uncle Lurgan decided that the nursing might be better done by your mother and father and me rather than him and Aunty Helygen – a delightfully backhanded bit of recognition.”

Niav knew she had a lot to learn about the feud there had been between Uncle Lurgan and her father Diarma – even after he was dead. Things she had a right to know. But what a story! There must have been something in it, because Artin still walked with a limp to this day. And her parents really had nursed Artin the Smith – amazing!

But how strange, too, that story of the black dog. She knew there were tales of living black were-beasts – but more like cats than dogs – out there on the northern headland, but certainly not the east cliff. Imagine that though – Artin lying there in their hut, possibly even where Aunty Grizzel slept now.

Artin had hair the colour of honey and eyes the shade of new-dug peat. His smile was like dark sunlight and when he spoke to you, they said, he made a special moment for you all your own – a special place in time where you would understand, and know the way to go. But Niav herself had only seen him from afar.

“Artin took a long time to recover from the knee injury. Your father designed the first of those famous decorated wooden leg guards Artin always wears – we padded it out with moss to protect the shattered knee.

“He insisted on giving your mum and dad something for their kindness, though of course as healers we made a point of never asking for payment. So we were the first family that Artin showed how to tame bees, since we were fellow magical practitioners, so to speak.

“I think it started to restore your mum’s good name; Shamanistic integrity, as it were, after eloping with a smelly weaver-dyer – from the west bank, like your dad – who had unsuitable ambitions of being a wise man and healer, too.”

It was difficult for Niav to take in exactly what this must have meant, such a long time ago, when Artin was only an injured boy and not almost a demi-god. These days Uncle Lurgan seemed to see himself, somehow, as Artin’s representative when he was not there (which was most of the time). She couldn’t understand why Aunty Grizzel found the whole thing so ridiculous.

“What else can one do?” Aunty Grizzel smiled. “Yes, times do change, Artin had lost everything, but wanted to show his gratitude. He persuaded your mum to let him join me in learning how to make jet beads. He was a stranger and it is meant to be a secret but they let him. That’s Artin for you. We would sit polishing them for hours on those flat shards of sandstone. You know what it’s like, all the dust and oil getting up your fingernails. He was very good at it.”

It was around this time too, apparently, that Artin had made the decorated sandstone plaque that was kept propped high up on the weaving-hut wall, tucked in among all the rugs and shawls that hung there for traders to haggle and bargain for. It showed the mountains and his home valley far away across the world. These days quite a lot of people, both local and visitors who had reached the river mouth by sea – and sometimes even overland – looked on it as a sacred object, and offered Aunty Grizzel the most amazing trade goods for it, but she simply laughed and said it should stay where he had left it.

“It was just a way of him practising decoration before we let him loose on the jet,” she told Niav. “But it’s a nice design – I’ve used it for I don’t know how many rugs since then.

“But he wanted to return to his own family – poor boy. He had at least six brothers and as many sisters and he was the youngest of the lot, so he missed them terribly. He had a mysterious young wife, too, called Orchil. She was somewhere else, he said, and she was in danger. He was desperate to get to her.

“Everyone, on both banks, rallied