The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

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      Francis Malise’s feet danced back another two steps, trying to catch up with his shoulders and head. His head smashed against the stone floor with the succulent thud of an overripe gourd. His lungs whooped like a collapsing bladder.

      John didn’t see him fall. He screamed and clawed at the four men who tried to pull him off the other brother. Then slowly the stillness in the room chilled his fury. He looked where all the men were looking. Francis Malise lay on the stone flags, arms thrown wide at his sides, mouth ajar, jaw a little askew. All eyes in the room watched a small damp patch spread darkly out from his groin across the front of his pale blue silk and wool breeches.

      John buried himself deep in the shadow of the Lady Tree. He leaned against her trunk and embraced her for steadiness. He had become a helpless conduit for the past.

      The silence in the firelit room had continued for five more breaths, then everyone had shouted at once.

      ‘Francis!’ screamed Edward Malise. He jerked free of restraining hands and flung himself down beside his brother’s body. ‘Fetch a surgeon!’

      Henry Porter lifted the head and examined the back of the skull. A man called Witty knelt to place his ear on Francis Malise’s chest although the stained trousers had already announced death. ‘It’s too late.’

      Sir James Balkwell sent a man to find an officer.

      John stared down at the man on the floor. His anger alone had done that, without knife or sword or club. He had never dreamed he had such power. Now everyone shouted at him.

      He looked blindly into their faces. His uncle pushed him across the room, down into a chair. From there, John could see only the soles of the dead man’s shoes and a foreshortened peninsula of kneecap, ribcage, crooked jaw and nostrils.

      Dead. He had done that. He had wanted to burn both of them to death in the heat of his rage. He had not thought that he had the power to succeed.

      His uncle’s face interposed itself intently between John and the foreshortened dead man. ‘Why, John? Can you remember now? Was he the one?’

      ‘Satan was shining from his eyes,’ said another voice.

      All the fire had left John. He shivered. He felt cold, and very young, and confused, burned to ash by his own fire. He had been right to keep memory behind the gate. Now, if he could only force it back again, the man on the floor might sit up again and demand that John be merely beaten.

      Edward Malise raised his head and looked at John.

      ‘Tell me!’ his Uncle George begged. ‘Why did you attack him?’

      ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to kill him,’ said another voice.

      ‘He meant to kill me.’

      John looked into the dark, prey-seeking eyes.

      ‘He meant to kill me,’ said Edward Malise. ‘You all saw him!’

      ‘You killed my parents,’ said John.

      John wept against the smooth grey bark. He shuddered and clung to the Lady Tree. He wept as he had not wept before.

      So much loss, he thought. Mother! Father! The pain of loss! I can’t bear it!

      A hedgehog rustled unnoticed among the leaves. Later, a fox trotted past, unworried by the still figure that embraced the tree. The gamy smell of the fox pulled John back into the present night.

      He felt the chill of his damp shirt-sleeve. He inhaled the night air and slid down to sit on his heels, braced against the tree, a little eased. Memory still flowed through him like the diverted Shir through its cellar pipes.

      George Beester gave a great sigh of satisfaction, straightened and turned to Edward Malise. The other men’s voices died like a wave pulling back. Silence curled tightly around John, his uncle and Malise.

      Malise shook his head as if dazed. He laid one hand on his brother’s body. ‘Forgive me, gentlemen, I can’t get a grasp on this madness …’

      ‘You stood beside their coach and laughed!’ shouted John in fury. Surely all these wise older men could smell out the acting.

      ‘When?’ demanded Malise. ‘What coach?’

      ‘Your men blocked the door so they couldn’t escape, my mother, father and nurse!’

      Malise passed a hand across his eyes and drew a long breath. ‘Can someone else take over this insane interrogation? Make sense…perhaps make this young man understand what he has done …’ His eyes met John’s again, briefly. ‘Unless he is possessed. And then he is beyond any help.’

      John quivered with fury at the note of forgiving compassion in the man’s voice.

      ‘He’s not possessed by any devils,’ said George Beester, ‘but by memories no child should have.’ He raised his voice to reach everyone in the room. ‘When my nephew was seven, some of you will remember, my sister and her husband were burned to death in their coach. The boy was with them but survived. In spite of much time and expense, I never discovered their killers. I knew who might have wanted them dead …’ Beester sighed again and studied Malise with gratified certainty. ‘But I had no proof. The boy himself remembered nothing of that night until this evening, when he saw you and your brother.’

      ‘Your implication is too monstrous and mad for me even to take offence.’

      ‘Then it should be easy to answer,’ said Beester.

      Malise searched the surrounding faces for hostility or support. ‘I swear that I am innocent. I did not kill this boy’s parents, even though some of you must know that I had good reason to hate them, as my family have had for two generations before. The bones of my family were stripped by those vulture Nightingale upstarts. Or do you all choose to forget the plundering barbarities of King Henry? Do you shut his victims out of your thoughts as fast as the Star Chamber was able to forget the meaning of justice?’

      ‘One barbarity never excuses another,’ said Sir James. ‘Nor do old stories of land disputes and exile answer the boy’s accusation.’ He looked severely at Malise. ‘You should be careful, moreover, how you fling around that word “barbarity”.’

      ‘No doubt highwaymen killed his parents – it happens often enough. The Malises are being blamed for the guilty conscience of the Nightingales.’

      ‘Where were you and your brother that summer?’ asked Sir James. ‘August, seven summers ago.’

      ‘How can I answer that, at a time like this …? But I don’t even need to answer it. I’ve been falsely accused by a shocked and frightened boy, whose brain, as his uncle has just testified, was addled by his tragic experience.’

      John opened his mouth but his uncle’s hand closed hard on his wrist.

      ‘Seven summers ago,’ repeated Beester.

      Malise stared into George Beester’s face. ‘It comes back to me now. I remember. My brother and I were both in the Low Countries…serving with a Flemish unit against Spain. We had just engaged the Count de Flores in a pointless skirmish.’

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