The Taker (26 page)

Still in a stupor, Adair felt the air slow, their bodies again take on a human weight. Then the smells came to him: the musty dankness of the keep, the residue of burning herbs and brimstone hanging in the air. He felt curdled with fear. Dropping to the floor, he opened his eyes a crack and was crushed to see that he was indeed back in the keep, returned to his prison.

The old man walked toward him. He had changed: perhaps it was a trick of angle and perception, but he seemed tall and foreboding, not the old physic at all. The physic’s hand snaked out for the poker, and then he leaned over to fish the ratty blanket from Adair’s straw pallet. Slowly, deliberately, he wound the blanket around the poker as he advanced on Adair.

Adair watched the arm rise, but averted his gaze as the poker came down. The blanket cushioned the blow, kept the iron from breaking the boy’s bones outright. But the blows were like nothing he’d felt before, not the punches and slaps he’d endured from his father, not like willow switches or the lash of a leather strap. The iron bar compressed muscle, smashed the flesh until the bar came in contact with bone. It came down again and again, across his back, shoulders, and spine. He rolled to escape the blows, but the weapon caught him anyway, striking his ribs, his stomach, his legs. Soon Adair was beyond pain, no longer able to move or even to flinch as the poker continued to rain down. It hurt to breathe; white-hot lashings of flame laced his sides with every breath, his insides awash in runny, hot liquid. He was dying. The old man was going to beat him to death.

“I could cut off your hand, you know, that is the punishment for thieves. But what good would you be to me then, with only one hand?” The physic stood upright stiffly, throwing the poker to the floor. “Maybe I’ll chop off your hand when your service is over, so that everyone will know what you are. Or perhaps I won’t release you, when your seven years are over. Perhaps I’ll take another seven years, as punishment for your crime. How could you ever think you’d escape me, and steal from me what is mine?”

His words made little difference. The old man was deluded, Adair decided, to think his servant would live. He’d not see the sunrise, let alone seven years. Hot liquid worked its way around his intestines and organs, up Adair’s throat, into his mouth. Blood seeped over his lips and onto the wooden floor, oozing toward the old man’s feet in a dark, trickling stream. Blood was escaping from every orifice in Adair’s body.

Adair’s eyes flickered. The old man had stopped talking and was staring at him again in that intense way of his. He began creeping on the floor toward the boy, like a snake or lizard, close to the ground, until he was very near Adair, his mouth open, his tongue inching forward, straining. He took one long, bony finger and dipped it in
the stream of blood flowing from Adair’s mouth. A long red trail dribbled down his finger as he brought it to his face and wiped it over his tongue. He rolled his tongue in his mouth and a faint, excited sigh passed over his lips. At that point, Adair passed out and was relieved for it. But the last thing he discerned, as consciousness left for what he was sure would be the last time, was the old man’s fingers stroking the side of his face, and running through Adair’s sweat-soaked hair.

TWENTY-ONE

M
arguerite found Adair in the morning in a terrible state. In the night, his body had prepared for death: his bowels evacuated, his blood-soaked clothing had stuck to the floor so stubbornly that the housekeeper had to swab the spot with rags steeped in warm water to pry him loose.

He lay on his straw pallet, unconscious, for several days, and when he awoke, he found he was covered with large patches of black and violet edged with yellow and green, his skin hot and tender to the touch. But somehow Marguerite had cleaned away all outward traces of blood and dressed him in a fresh linen nightshirt.

Adair drifted in and out of consciousness, his thoughts incoherent as they danced in his head. In the worst of the twilight moments, he imagined someone was touching him, that fingertips glided over his face and lips. Another time he fancied he was being rolled onto his stomach and his clothing disturbed. The latter could be explained if Marguerite was cleaning him, as he was unable to move with sufficient coordination to use the chamber pot. Incapacitated, he couldn’t
move or resist, could do nothing but accept this violation, real or imagined.

Smell was the first sense to return and then taste, the tang of iron from blood and the unctuousness of beef tallow. Once his eyes opened—and it took a few moments for his vision to focus and to be assured that he hadn’t lost his sight—his surroundings became real again and the sensation of pain came back to him. His ribs ached, his gut went wobbly and loose, and every breath stabbed into splintered ribs. With pain came his voice. He flailed at the blanket, attempting futilely to rise.

Marguerite hurried to his side and felt Adair’s forehead, and flexed his feet and hands, looking for signs of discomfort that foretold broken bones, to see which parts he could move by himself and which parts were injured. After all, what good was a laborer without the use of arms or legs?

She fetched broth and then ignored Adair for the rest of the afternoon while she moved through her chores. He had no alternative but to stare at the ceiling and watch time mark its passage as a square of sunlight working its way down the wall, counting off the hours until nightfall when the old man would awaken. Adair spent the time in fearful anticipation: it would have been better to have died that night, Adair decided, than to awake trapped in a wrecked body. How long would it take to recover, he wondered: Would he be whole when his bones had mended? Would the parts mesh correctly? Would he limp or be hunchbacked? At least his face seemed free of scar or disfiguration: the old man had spared his head—had he struck it with a poker, he would have split Adair’s skull open.

When the square of light faded, signaling the end of daylight, Adair knew his time had run out. He decided to pretend to be asleep. Marguerite, too, sensed a confrontation was near and she tried to hurriedly prepare for bed as the old man came up the stairs, but the physic interrupted her, catching her arm and pointing toward Adair’s bed inquisitively. But she had seen Adair close his eyes and
settle into a pose of unconsciousness, so she only shook her head and withdrew into her bed, pulling a blanket over her shoulder.

The old man went to Adair’s bed, crouching low. Adair tried to keep his breathing even and calm and to control his trembling, waiting to see what the old man was going to do. He didn’t have to wait long: the old man’s cold, bony hand touched the young man’s cheek, then his Adam’s apple, then slid down his chest, but only briefly before settling on Adair’s flat stomach. He barely touched the bruised spots and yet it was all Adair could do to keep from curling up in pain.

The hand did not stop, but continued gliding downward: to the abdomen, then lower still, and the shock almost caused Adair to cry out. Somehow he managed to lie stoically while the old man’s fingers found what they were looking for, caressing the irregular piece of flesh, massaging, kneading, coaxing. But before Adair’s manhood could respond, the fingers withdrew, and without a backward look, the old man turned and drifted through the door and into the night.

The panic was almost enough to cause Adair to leap out of bed despite his condition. He was seized by the urge to flee but could not: he had little control of his arms and his legs were entirely unresponsive. The old man was considerably stronger than he appeared; Adair was defenseless against him in good health, never mind in his current state. He couldn’t even crawl across the room to find a weapon to use to defend himself. Sour with despair, Adair realized there was nothing he could do for himself, not now. He could only endure whatever the physic wished to inflict upon him.

He passed the days by thinking of the work he’d done for the physic, the elixirs and salves he’d made, wondering if perhaps there might be something there he could use for his defense. Such thoughts were hopeless; though they served to strengthen his memory of the ingredients that went into these powerful things—as well as the proportions and smells and textures—he was still ignorant of their purpose, for all except the one that conferred invisibility.

He managed to keep up the charade for two more days before the physic realized Adair had regained consciousness. He tested his limbs and joints in the same way Marguerite had done, and prepared an elixir that he poured down the young man’s throat. It was the elixir that gave Adair away, for the potion burned and stung, and he couldn’t help but choke on it.

“I hope you have learned a lesson, so at least some good may come from your deceit,” the physic growled as he stumped around the desk. “And that lesson is that you can never escape from me. I can find you no matter where you go. No journey would be far enough, no hiding spot deep enough to elude me. The next time you try to cheat me out of the service I have paid for or steal any of my things, this little episode will seem like the lightest of punishments. If I so much as
sense
you are being disloyal, I will chain you to the walls of this keep and you will never again see the light of day, do you understand?” The old man wasn’t disturbed in the least by the hateful look Adair gave him.

Within a few weeks, Adair was able to rise from bed and hobble around the room with the use of a walking stick. As his ribs creaked with pain every time he lifted his arms, he was still worthless to Marguerite, but he could again assist the physic in the evening. However, all conversation between them ceased: the old man barked his orders and Adair slinked from his sight as soon as he had fulfilled them.

After a couple of months, with regular doses of the burning elixir, Adair had healed considerably, to the point where he could fetch water and chop wood. He could run, though not for long, and was sure he would be able to ride, if the chance arose. Sometimes, when he gathered herbs in the woods and strayed to the edge of the hill, he’d look over the valley and think about trying to escape again. He wished, fiercely, to be free of the old man and yet … A sickening feeling came over Adair at the prospect of punishment, and with near-suicidal thoughts, he would turn back to the keep.

“Tomorrow, you are to go to the village and find a young girl child. She must be a virgin. You are not to ask anyone for information, or draw attention to yourself in any way. Just find this child, return, and tell me where she lives.”

Panic clawed at Adair’s throat. “How am I to know if a child is unspoiled? Am I to examine—”

“Obviously you must find one who is very young. As for any examination, you will leave that to me,” he said chillingly.

The old man gave no explanation, and by then, Adair needed none. He knew any order from the physic was surely a diabolical request and yet Adair was not in a position to refuse. Usually, he viewed trips to the village as rare treats, when he got to be around the familiar bustle of family life, even if not his own family, but this trip portended no good. In the village, Adair lingered near the houses as inconspicuously as he could to spy on the villagers, but the village was small and he was not unknown to them. As soon as he found some children playing or attending to chores, the parents would usher their children away or threaten Adair with menacing stares.