Page 35 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Perhaps a bottle of champagne on the journey would soothe him. It was two hours to Cambridge. A daemon could get well and truly sloshed in that time.

‘Gracious, what is the problem? My feet shall crack if I don’t get these shoes off in an instant,’ said the prim and proper women ahead of them in the line. She wore a ludicrously large feathered hat, which bobbed very close to Silas’s nose. But the ankou didn’t move away. In fact he seemed rather fixated on the downy lilac feathers dangling before him. Pitch tilted his head as the line came to a standstill, curious about the lost look in the ankou’s eyes.

‘Mr Bellingham?’ Pitch said. ‘Everything all right?’

When Silas had agreed to this hurried, clandestine journey, Pitch had nearly whooped with the relief. He could have managed the asylum on his own of course. He’d been a commander of legions once upon a time, but it was far more preferable this way. His growing dependence on the ankou’s nearness was a problem, but he’d deal with that later. When they had what they needed from Edward.

Silas still watched the feathers fluttering before him, his eyes shifting back and forth, as though studying something much larger.

Pitch took full advantage of his dress’s power, which allowed him to rub at the ankou’s arm without causing a fuss. ‘My dear?’

Silas pulled his focus from the woman ahead to the false one at his side. ‘Sorry?’

‘You are a world away.’

‘I was rather.’ Silas watched Pitch’s hand brushing his arm. ‘I told you about the woman in…the vision I saw…in what I believe was my’ – he lowered his voice – ‘last death?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ They were both prone to unwelcome visions.

‘She wore a shade of purple just like that, so it took me back.’ He gave his head a little shake. ‘I just keep wondering…about the place where I die. A loch, did I tell you?’

Pitch shook his head but stayed quiet so Silas might go on. The ankou always appeared so hesitant to speak of what he’d seen when the Morrigan had held him at the bottom of the pond.

‘So it is Scotland, and there is a modest castle there too in later years, and a jetty with a boatshed. But I didn’t tell you there is someone else there…’ Silas ran his teeth over his lip. ‘A man…a boy sometimes…an age in-between on other occasions. He’s there every time, and he tries to help me.’ His smile was grim. ‘Always. He never succeeds of course.’

The line started to move. The unhappy lavender-clad woman tutted and began to complain again about how slowly it was moving.

‘Go on,’ Pitch urged. He had the sense that the ankou was weighing up saying any more. ‘What is it you want to tell me?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Silas was curiously laconic.

‘If you should tell me, or if youwantto tell me?’

Silas flashed him a startled look. ‘A bit of both, I suppose. I mean it is hardly important anyway. Not with all that is going on.’

‘Then distract me with this unimportant information fromall that is going on.’ He was not yet sure if he would tell Silas what he’d realised when the Charters’ financier had smacked him near senseless against the desk. The ankou would only worry, and that would do nothing but give him more facial lines.

Now that the ticket collector was done with his pickled passengers, the line was moving quickly. In very little time, they’d be moving to separate carriages, and he doubted Silas would speak of this again once he’d had time to think on it. Whatever he was considering telling Pitch, it had him bothered.

‘The boy always has cornflower-blue eyes,’ Silas said quickly. He snapped his mouth closed, as though he’d imparted far more riveting information than that.

‘Oh…well, that’s…nice, I suppose.’ And then the penny dropped. ‘Like your lad?’

Silas nodded, his bottom lip now prisoner to the bite of his teeth. Pitch frowned. ‘Like your lad…or itisyour lad you see each time? Gods, don’t tell me he is reanimated too?’ Why that irritated him so much was a mystery. So the ankou and Charlie had shared hundreds of years between them and likely had a deep relationship, so damned what?

‘No. No, it’s not like that. It is Charlie’s ancestors I’ve seen. They are there to…’ He glanced over his shoulder, where a chap holding a small suitcase had moved up close. The ankou was getting much better at glaring. The man moved back quickly, his bowler hat in danger of toppling off his head. ‘They have the bandalore when I am living a normal life. They guard it, I think. And are there to send it back with me, when I go to the grave.’

Pitch wrinkled his nose. ‘Why can’t you have it when you are living?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Silas pressed at his pocket, where Pitch knew the bandalore lay. The scythe had had a good rest of late. At least one player in this game had. ‘It is an instrument of death. Perhaps it’s not mine to keep when I am living.’

‘Charlie is dull but certainly not the undead. Why can he have it?’

Silas had no answer for that or was too distracted with finding where in his coat he’d placed the tickets. There were only a few more passengers ahead of them now before they reached the ticket collector.

‘Did Charlie bring the bandalore to you then?’ Pitch asked. ‘I thought the time you’d met in Wyre Forest was the first?’ Had he sounded too snippy then?

‘It was the first. I don’t know who brought it to the Village. I assumed it Lady Satine, but I know now that is not how it works. It was not hers to give.’