"Outwitted (Part 9)" an original work of fiction for #365daysofwrit...

This is today's offering (day 159) for @mydivathings' #365daysofwriting challenge (click here to see her current post))

Today's picture prompt (below) is a Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash

I looked over at the bundle. If my sister was playing a game with me, did I really want to play? Even as a child, she rarely let me win. Now, the stakes were higher, the rules - whatever they were - would be rigged in her favour. On the other hand, what if the serving girl was somehow on my side… could my shadowy acquaintances have managed to place someone this close to my sister? And if so, why didn’t they tell me?

Assuming I was being watched, I tried to appear bored, annoyed at being kept waiting. I stood up, and careful to avoid the place where the bundle sat on the floor, began to circulated the room, picking up objects and examining them with various degrees of feigned interest before moving on. After five minutes of this charade, I was standing beside the bundle. I assumed that - if the girl was on my side - that she had dropped the package in a blind spot, an area of the room that could not be seen through the spy holes, that no doubt had my sister’s eyes glued to them right now. I held a small candle holder, I had picked up to look at. It was dull, and uninteresting, but I turned it in my hand, pretending to be looking for something. And then I dropped it. It landed, as planned onto the package and I swore loudly - to continue my theatrical piece - and bent down as though to retrieve the item. I tore quickly - and as quietly as I could - at the paper that bound whatever it was.

From the corridor I heard hurried footsteps approach. They were not the serving girls. These footfalls were accompanied by the tap, tap, tap of a stick. Grevyl! I kicked the bundle away from me, it slid under a purple velvet covered chair, that sat by a small table by the wall.

The door opened. Grevyl entered quickly, looking at me, at the candlestick I held and then, narrowing his eyes, at the floor around my feet.

“Hello, Grevyl,” I said. “How nice of you to join me.”

He scowled. He had never liked me. He had never had any time for me. Even on the day of my father’s funeral he'd rejected me.

It took my father six days to die after the accident with his horse. Mathilde and I took it in turns to sit by his bed, holding his hand and telling him to come back to us. But he lay still, his breathing ragged and shallow.

Mother was too weak to get out of her bed to see her husband, but she did seem to be improving. Mathilde administered the herbs and potions that Grevyl had prepared for her. She said he knew what he was doing. When I told her of Father’s anger when he had been in to see Mother and how he had shouted Grevyl’s name, cursing him, Mathilde just shrugged.

“Father was angry with Grevyl for other reasons,” she said. She would not tell me what they were, and it took years for me to uncover them. “Mother is improving on a daily basis, dear brother. Grevyl knows what he is doing.” She looked at me, her face serious, and older somehow than her age. “I know what I’m doing.”

She wouldn’t tell me where she had been for twenty four hours, and what magic she used to return. “Some secrets are secrets for a reason, little brother,” she said.

We were both sitting with Father when he took his last breath. Moments before he died his eyes flickered open. His mouth moved and I realised he was trying to say something. I leaned down my ear to his mouth.

“Travel the long road,” he said, his voice more of a breath than a whisper. “It is a lonely road, you will take my boy, but travel it you must.”

When it was clear he had finished talking I sat up and looked at him. His face had changed, he looked different. He looked like my father but not all at the same time. I realised the person I knew as my father no longer inhabited the empty vessel of flesh and bone in front of me.

Later, when my sister asked whether my father had spoken and if so what he had said, I lied.

“He didn’t say anything,” I said. His words were meant for me. And besides, she didn’t deserve to know his last words. I blamed her for his death. And I hated her for not sharing her secrets. Well I had a secret too, now.

Grevyl appeared the next day. Not in a puff of smoke, nor in a shimmering, twinkling dusty cloud of light, like my sister had, but on a horse.

Fade had been missing for a week, and the stable boys told me he had more than likely been found by some unscrupulous ne’er-do-wells and sold at a market far from here. When I saw Fade trotting into the courtyard, for a moment I forgot that father was dead. It was only after looking more closely at the rider that I realised who it was, and the anger that had been building in me since my father had had his accident exploded.

I ran up to Grevyl and reached up to his leg and tugged on it hard.

“Get off my father’s horse!” I shouted. “Get off! Get away from him! You have no right!”

I felt hands take hold of my shoulders and turned to find Mrs Karn holding me.

“It’s alright, boy,” she said, pulling me gently but firmly away.

“It’s not alright!” I screamed, tears flowing down my cheeks. “Nothing about this is alright. Get off my father’s horse, you evil man!”

Grevyl smiled, and swung down from the horse. As Mrs Karn led me away, I saw Mathilde approach the man, and bow to him. Like she was his servant. I hated them both.

The next day, my father was buried. My mother was strong enough leave her room and stood with my sister and I as the coffin was lowered into the ground. We all wept. Mrs Karn, Jake, his father and the rest of the serving staff stood respectfully nearby. Grevyl too.

After the service Grevyl told my mother he was prepared to take Mathilde as his apprentice.

“She has talent, my lady,” he said, the words dripping from his mouth like oil from the lip of a jug. “I wish to help her develop her talent. She will be of great use to our kingdom.”

My mother, weak from her illness and grief, nodded slowly. “My husband trusted you, Grevyl,” she said, seemingly forgetting the reaction of my father when he returned just over a week ago. “And I will do the same. Mathilde, this is what you want?” Mathilde nodded. “Then I am happy to agree.”

Grevyl bowed his head.

“Thank you, my lady.”

“What about me?” I asked, sounding - even to my ears - like a petulant child. “Do I not have talent?”

Grevyl smiled, it was not a pleasant sight.

“What I teach can be dangerous in the wrong hands," he took hold of my wrists and turned them. He made a show of looking at the palms of my hands, studying them as carefully as my father had examined an old manuscript. Grevyl sighed, and released them. "You, young master, have neither the aptitude, nor the right attitude. Something lurks inside you that deeply concerns me." He shook his head, and chuckled softly. "In short, young man, you do not have the right hands."

With that he turned and left the room. And my sister, after kissing my mother, and throwing a sad look at me, followed him.

...

Part 10: @felt.buzz/outwitted-part-10-an-original-fictional-series-for-365daysofwriting

"Outwitted (Part 9)" an original work of fiction for #365daysofwriting challenge