They climbed the stairs side-by-side, silently.
Draughts caused the flames to flicker erratically and the shadows to stretch and twist on the walls. The doorway at the far end of the passage was closed, and for the time it took for Alymere to reach it he wished it could stay that way forever. He had no wish to open it and watch someone he loved die, not when, like Bors, he was helpless to change things.
He closed his eyes and opened the door.
His uncle lay on the tangled sheets, fever sweats ringing his weakened body. He looked ten times worse that he had just a few hours before; his breathing came shallow and erratic, each new breath successively more difficult to take. Alymere stood in the doorway, unwilling to enter the death room. The priest rushed to Sir Lowick's bedside and dropped to his knees, then shrugged the sack off his shoulder and began to remove the few things he had brought from the church: first the cross, then the vial of blessed water and finally the Bible. He offered a short prayer from the book. Alymere understood only a little of the Latin, but knew the passage welclass="underline" the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, speaking of the timeliness of the seasons of a man's life, whether in birth or death, in silence or speech, in peace or in war.
The knight stirred, opening his eyes. He reached out with an emaciated hand, resting it upon the priest's cross. There was no strength to be gained there. He coughed; it came out like a death rattle. There was no recognition in his eyes when he saw Alymere in the doorway and said quietly, "You can leave us now, my son." Alymere didn't correct his uncle. He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him, affording Sir Lowick a few minutes alone with his God to unburden his soul.
He paced the passage outside the door, walking back and forth, back and forth. He couldn't sit or stand still for more than a few seconds before he needed to be off again, pacing. Bors left him alone to work his way through the conflicting emotions that ate away at him. His body was tired — beyond tired — but his mind was wide awake, and his mind always won out of the two.
Eventually the door opened and the ashen-faced priest emerged.
He looked at Alymere, but couldn't look him in the eye.
"He would see you now. He is very weak, and his mind is gone, I fear; little of what he says makes sense outside his own mind. The poison is robbing him of his clarity, but there are things he needs to tell you, if you are willing to hear them. It is not my place, my lord, but I think it is important you hear what he has to say. For yourself if not for him. I am sorry for your loss."
"He's not dead yet, priest," Alymere said, more harshly than he intended.
He left the holy man stumbling over an apology and closed the door behind him. He settled into the room's only chair and, steeling himself, said, "I am here, uncle."
Thirty-Eight
The deathbed confession took everything he believed about his life and made a lie of it.
"You were always a good boy," Sir Lowick said. "But I could not be prouder of the man you have become." Even those few words took their toll on him. He sank deeper into the sweat-stained bolster and closed his eyes. His lips moved, and for a moment no words came. His breathing became shallow and erratic as he struggled to master it; he was determined to say his piece. "I remember well the day I went to the king and petitioned for the right to finish your training." He managed a smile. "How could I forget the hot-headed boy I found waiting for me in Camelot? You were so determined to believe I intended to kill you…" He chuckled at that. It was a brittle sound. "But why would I kill my own flesh and blood? My own…" he trailed away into thoughtful silence. For a moment Alymere thought he had died, whatever he so needed to say still unsaid, but he opened his eyes again and said, "If only you had known the truth of who you were to me…"
"Uncle," Alymere said, softly. The word barely carried from his lips, and if Sir Lowick heard it, he gave no sign. He was somewhere else, lost inside his confession. Alymere let him talk.
"But why should you know my shame? Five people kept our secret, three of them have been dead for many years now, and the fourth is about to join them. By rights that ought to mean it is a secret easier to keep. The priest knows now, but he will never tell, and I should let it go to the grave with me, lad… but I can't. Won't. You deserve to know." He broke off, his entire body convulsing with each violent cough. By the time the hacking subsided he was too weak to wipe away the spittle from his lips. "Damn this body of mine. I am not ready. Not yet." He reached out, grasping Alymere's hand with surprising strength. It was the final rally; he would be gone soon. "Boy, I have one last lesson. Take from it what you will. All I ask is that you believe me, because you won't want to. Please remember I have nothing to gain from lies, not now… I have lied for too long. We all have."
"I promise," Alymere said, making another promise with his heart he couldn't keep with his head.
"I can't remember the first time I realised I was in love with Corynn. Your mother was special, lad, a brilliant, beautiful woman. It was certainly before she was married to my brother, though. Long before. Three friends growing up together in this place, it was always going to become two men in love with the same woman. It was impossible for it to be any other way when that woman was your mother, believe me. She was… incandescent."
"I don't need to hear this," Alymere said, but Lowick's grip only tightened and he found fresh resolve. Now was the time; his story would be told.
"I did love her, son, with all of my heart. Did you never wonder why I never took a wife? My heart was already given to another. I tried to stifle it, to kill it, but she was the world to me, and without her my world was nothing more than a broken land. There could be no healing. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't. You have to believe me, son. I didn't mean to do it."
"Do what?" Alymere asked, his heart already sinking. He didn't want to hear the dying man's confession. He didn't want to know. It would change everything. Everything.
"It was the worst moment of my life…" His voice trailed off, barely a whisper now as the last of his strength seemed to ebb out of it. The next few words were lost beneath the rasp-rattle of the dying man's breathing. If not for the fact his lips moved, Alymere wouldn't have known he was trying to speak.
"What are you trying to tell me, uncle?" He leaned in so close he could feel the knight's lips brush against his ear as they moved.
"You are my ghost."
"I don't understand."
"My ghost. You remind me. Whenever I look at you, I see her. See what I did. And remember my weakness. I am sorry, son. I am so sorry. You look like your father," and for a moment that was all he said. Alymere thought he was gone, and felt the sadness of grief well up within him, but before the tears came the knight whispered, "It is my one great regret that you never knew… that you never looked at me and…" another bout of coughing stole his words away. "I loved your mother. I loved my brother. I was weak. He was gone. At war. We were alone. She wouldn't… It should never have happened… I betrayed… myself. It was a mistake… but when I look at you I don't understand how such evil could create such a perfect thing… God forgive me."
And Alymere understood. How could he not?
But he didn't want to. He wanted to live in ignorance. He wanted to be a child again. This was the truth of his happy family; of why his mother would not live in the manor and died scratching about in poverty; of why Baptiste, his father's man, filled his head with so much hate for Lowick; of why the knight had turned up at Camelot two years ago to claim his stewardship; of all of it. He was his uncle's son. His uncle — this man he had come to admire and adore in equal parts — had forced himself upon his mother.
And now, having watched his father die once before, he was going to have to witness it all over again.