“Good things?” I asked. She didn’t answer.
We stared out across the beach at the dark and disturbed sea, and after a while Molly slipped her arm through mine. Where it belonged.
“You said . . . Monkton Manse isn’t the way you remembered it,” I said slowly. “Is Hadrian Coll . . . how you remembered him?”
“That’s the problem,” said Molly. “He’s exactly the way I remember him. As though he hasn’t changed at all. How can that be possible, after ten years? There’s a part of me that wonders if he’s just playing a part.”
“For your sake?” I said. “Or the next generation?”
“They seem straight-forward enough,” said Molly. “If . . . inexperienced in the real world. I’m not sure they’re ready to deal with someone like Hadrian Coll. Trickster Man.”
“Good thing we’re here, then. Isn’t it?” I said.
And then we both looked round sharply. From somewhere farther down the beach, stretching far and far away before us, a horse was running. I could hear the sound of its hooves, pounding along the pebbles. The sound was quite clear and distinct, rising above the crashing of the waves. And from the way Molly stood tensed beside me, I knew she heard it too. But no matter how hard I looked, straining my eyes against the distance and the lowering light, I couldn’t see a horse anywhere. The beach just stretched away into the distance, open and empty.
“There’s nothing there,” said Molly. “But I can hear it, clear as day. What the hell would a horse be doing here?”
I murmured my activating Words, and pulled my armour out of my torc to cover my face. The golden mask settled easily into place, and I used its expanded Sight to zoom in on the end of the beach. But no matter where I looked, there was no sign of any horse. Just the sound of one, endlessly running. And then, quite suddenly, it stopped. Gone, between one moment and the next. I dismissed the golden mask and looked at Molly.
“I couldn’t See a damned thing. And look at the beach. A real horse, running on this beach, would have kicked up pebbles everywhere. I can’t see any sign of a disturbance.”
“A ghost horse?” said Molly. “How likely is that? And what would a ghost horse be doing here? A lot of people may have died on this island, but no animals, as far as I know.”
“Maybe it came through the Fae Gate,” I said. “The living and the dead can travel the elven ways.”
“No,” said Molly, frowning. “If I’m remembering right . . . there’s never been any animal life on Trammell Island. Not even rabbits, or rats . . . animals just die here. Even birds won’t land, or so I’m told. Who told me that? Why can’t I remember?” She stopped, frowning so hard it must have hurt her forehead. She looked distracted, almost frightened. “This means something, Eddie. It means something to me, something important that I just can’t remember! Like a word on the tip of your tongue. A horse . . . There’s something significant about that. Something that matters.”
I waited, but she had nothing more to say.
“If you say so,” I said, finally.
“There are gaps in my memory,” Molly said flatly. “Though I never knew that, until I came back here. I’m remembering things I never remembered before, important things, that I’d forgotten I ever knew. But there are still great gaps in my memory of my time here before. How could I have forgotten so much? And not even noticed?”
“Because someone didn’t want you to remember,” I said. “And perhaps that someone was you, Molly. You didn’t want to know. If something really bad did happen here, maybe something to do with the death of your parents . . .”
“I need to know,” said Molly, coldly. “I need to know everything.”
She shuddered suddenly. I took her in my arms and held her, but it didn’t help.
Some time later, we made our way back to Monkton Manse. All the windows were lit now, blazing with bright electric light, and the whole place felt more comfortable, and inviting. It looked inhabited again, the kind of place where people might actually live. It even felt comfortably warm in the hallway as we came in out of the bitter cold, and slammed the heavy door shut behind us. We rubbed our hands together, and stamped our feet, and finally took off our coats and hung them up.
“Coll must have got the old generator working again,” said Molly.
“They’ve blown out your candles,” I observed. “I think I preferred the candlelight. Less harsh.”
“You old romantic,” said Molly. And then she frowned. “I don’t think this place was ever romantic. Or even happy . . .”
“But . . . you had good times here?” I said.
“Maybe,” said Molly.
We made our way through the winding corridors and hallways of Monkton Manse to the main dining hall, where a meal of sorts was waiting for us. We joined the others, all sitting around one end of the long mahogany dining table, eating cold cuts of tinned meat, along with a couple of bottles of half-way decent wine. The food had been neatly arranged on the very best china plates, along with gleaming stylised cutlery. Presumably courtesy of the first and last Lord of Trammell.
We all huddled together for comfort at our end of the table, which stretched away into the massive dining hall. It had clearly been originally intended to seat thirty or maybe even forty people at one sitting. The hall had an oppressively high ceiling, and gleaming wood-panelled walls. No portraits or paintings here, or decorations of any kind. This was a setting for the serious business of food and drink.
We kept our voices low as we talked, and tried not to look around, half intimidated by the sheer scale and opulence of the dining hall. Doing our best to ignore all the extra empty space, and pretend it wasn’t there. Hadrian Coll wasn’t bothered. His great voice boomed out endlessly, telling one story after another as he attacked his food and drink with great enthusiasm. I did my best to seem a little overwhelmed, because Shaman Bond would be, but this was actually a bit more than even Eddie Drood was used to at Drood Hall. This dining hall had been deliberately designed to be too big for people, to put them in their place in the presence of the Lord of Trammell.
I really didn’t like the shadows at the end of the dining hall. There were too many of them, too deep and too dark. And I am not the sort who is usually bothered by shadows.
Coll did most of the talking, often with his mouth full, dominating the conversation by the simple expedient of never letting anyone else get a word in edge-ways. The next generation were overawed enough to let him get away with that, and Molly seemed genuinely interested in everything he had to say. Perhaps because she was checking it all against her memories. Looking for contradictions, and loopholes. I watched everyone else, as they listened to Coll.
“It was a different time then,” he said grandly, refilling his wine-glass with a flourish. “All those years ago . . . the big businesses and the corrupt politicians held all the big cards. And they owned the law. So all we had left to work with was violence, to force change for the better. And yes, that meant playing their game, but when it’s the only game in town . . . We were at war with vested interests, who were never going to be persuaded to change things by reason or logic. Not if it meant giving up power and money. Arguments got you nowhere, persuasion didn’t work, so all that left was hitting them where it hurt. It was all we had.
“Now, things have changed. The Internet means that arguments and philosophies can shoot around the world in minutes, backed up by hard evidence. Information wants everyone to be free. If I’ve learned anything from my time with so many groups and organisations, it’s that you can’t get people to listen by shouting at them. You have to gang up on them, and drown out their lies with the truth.”