My Brother's Keeper by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers [Powers, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, Action & Adventure, Paranormal
ISBN: 9781625799296
Google: z7O6EAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0C32ZYFBT
Published: 2023-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

By the time Branwell woke up, well past noon, the day was bright and clear, and Emily had long since fired her father’s pistol over the churchyard and reloaded it. Over breakfast Emily had told Anne everything she had learned—and had told Tabby too, and in fact the old housekeeper had added a couple of cautions: Carry a new-cut birch stick with one fresh leaf on it, and if the leaf wilts, quick get inside four stone walls; and, Put a bright copper penny under your pillow, and if it’s gone black in the morning you know your dream was an omen. They were old Yorkshire superstitions that the two sisters had heard before, but they both nodded soberly.

When Branwell stumbled down the stairs at last, he had of course missed dinner, but Emily had carefully saved him a plate piled with mutton and potatoes, and he fell to hungrily. Emily directed Anne and Tabby to the parlor and sat down across from him at the kitchen table while he ate. The back door was open, and a warm breeze swirled dust across the stone floor.

When he had eaten everything on his plate, Branwell asked for more of the mutton, and when Emily had fetched it for him he made quick work of it too. When he had finished it all and leaned back in his chair with a sigh, Emily sat down again.

“Good morning,” she said. “Afternoon, actually.”

He looked away from her. “I suppose I disgraced myself again last night.” His fingertips were bruised and Emily saw a streak of dried blood by his ear, but his hair was back to its usual carroty color. “Your man was insulting.”

“Not my man.” She frowned at him. “Branwell, listen—do you know what happened to you last night?”

“I insulted him first—” He rolled his eyes. “Very well, I had some sort of fit.”

“A fit. Yes.” She sat back and stared at him. “Tell me about Adam Wright.”

Branwell’s eyes widened. “I never saw him before yesterday!”

“Don’t be silly, you’ve seen him a hundred times in the village and in church.” Emily cocked her head and smiled. “Tell me.”

Branwell blinked, and a tear ran down his sunken cheek into his once-again scanty chin beard. “You have whisky here someplace.”

Emily got up and lifted the emetic bottle down from a cupboard shelf, reflecting that they would have to find another place to hide it now. She poured a splash into a glass, hesitated, then filled the glass half full.

She had barely set the glass on the table before he had snatched it up and gulped a third of it.

“I told you they have no place for me,” he said on a long exhalation as he set it down. “Not for me. Do you remember the time I came home at dawn, from the moors?”

“Of course. You said you had been out by Ponden Kirk.”

“I—yes, well I saw a midnight funeral there, a funeral pyre. It was for a dead animal, like a big dog.”

Emily nodded, recalling the grieving howls that had rung across the hills that night.

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