The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds Read Free

manner of their continental cousins, they were ever-present.
    Except for one glade deep in the Midlands, at the heart of the ancestral holdings of the jarls of Æthelred. In some distant epoch, the skin of the world here had peeled back to reveal the great granite bones of the earth, from which spat forth a hot spring: water touched with fire and stone. No ravens had ventured there since before the Norsemen had arrived to cleave the island with their Danelaw.
    Time passed. Generations of men came and went, lived and died around the spring. The jarls became earls, then dukes. The Norsemen became Normen, then Britons. They fought Saxons; they fought Saracens; they fought the Kaiser. But the land outlived them all with elemental constancy.
    Throughout the centuries, blackbirds shunned the glade and its phantoms. But the great manor downstream of the spring evoked no such reservations. And so they perched on the spires of Bestwood, watching and listening.
    “Hell and damnation! Where is that boy?”
    Malcolm, the steward of Bestwood, hurried to catch up to the twelfth Duke of Aelred as he banged through the house. Servants fled the stomp of the duke’s boots like starlings fleeing a falcon’s cry.
    The kitchen staff jumped to attention when the duke entered with his majordomo.
    “Has William been here?”
    Heads shook all around.
    “Are you certain? My grandson hasn’t been here?”
    Mrs. Toomre, Bestwood’s head cook, was a whip-thin woman with ashen hair. She stepped forward and curtsied.
    “Yes, Your Grace.”
    The duke’s gaze made a slow tour of the kitchen. A heavy silence fell over the room while veins throbbed at the corners of his jaw, the high-water mark of his anger. He turned on his heels and marched out. Malcolm released the breath he’d been holding. He was determined to prevent madness from claiming another Beauclerk.
    “Well? Off you go. Help His Grace.” Mrs. Toomre waved off the rest of her staff. “Scoot.”
    When the room had cleared and the others were out of earshot, she hoisted up the dumbwaiter. She worked slowly so that the pulleys didn’t creak. When William’s dome of coppery-red hair dawned over the transom, she leaned over and hefted him out with arms made strong bydecades of manual labor. The boy was tall for an eight-year-old, taller even than his older brother.
    “There you are. None the worse for wear, I hope.” She pulled a peppermint stick from a pocket in her apron. He snatched it.
    Malcolm bowed ever so slightly. “Master William. Still enjoying our game, I trust?”
    The boy nodded, smiling around his treat. He smelled like parsnips and old beef tallow from hiding in the dumbwaiter all afternoon.
    Mrs. Toomre pulled the steward into a corner. “We can’t keep this up forever,” she whispered. She wrung her hands on her apron, adding, “What if the duke caught us?”
    “We needn’t do so forever. Just until dark. His Grace will have to postpone then.”
    “But what do we do tomorrow?”
    “Tomorrow we prepare a poultice of hobnailed liver for His Grace’s hangover, and begin again.”
    Mrs. Toomre frowned. But just then the stomping resumed, and with renewed vigor. She pushed William toward Mr. Malcolm. “Quick!”
    He took the boy’s hand and pulled him through the larder. Gravel crunched underfoot as they scooted out of the house through the delivery-men’s door, headed for the stable, trailing white clouds of breath in the cool air. Malcolm had pressed most of the house hold staff into aiding the search for William, so the stable was empty. The duke kept his horses here as well as his motorcar. The converted stable reeked of petrol and manure.
    Mr. Malcolm opened a cabinet. “In here, young master.”
    William, giggling, stepped inside the cabinet as Mr. Malcolm held it open. He wrapped himself in the leather overcoat his grandfather wore when motoring.
    “Quiet as a mouse,” the older man whispered, “as the duke creeps around the house. Isn’t that