The Vampire & Her Witch

”I finally understand, little brother,” Bastian said with a chuckle that contained a great deal of self loathing and the faintest hint of madness as well. ”It wasn’t until I heard him just now that I knew, but seeing our cousin up there on the throne, I should have known a long time ago that there was more to it than just his bitterness over mother going back to Carew March to live with her parents.”

Bastian’s words set off a ripple of murmurs in the crowd as dozens of tongues recalled the rumors that had spread years ago when Baroness Thadela returned to her home in Berenger Barony to the north, ostensibly to care for her ailing mother. Years had passed since then, however, and there had never been any word of her returning home.

There had been speculation that Ian Hanrahan had done something to greatly upset his wife, and when Hugo Hanrahan turned up a few years later, the people of Hanrahan had quietly speculated that she’d discovered her husband’s infidelity and refused to be near him again, but those had only been rumors.

”Little brother,” Bastian said as his laughter grew into a great belly shaking chuckle that made it difficult to speak. ”Did you ever see the ’loans’ that father took out for ’fine silks’, ’fine wine’ and ’rich smoking leaf’? Did you notice how, no matter how much money is in the treasury, he never pays them off? He just sends out his three silver pennies to merchants in Keating or Carew, every month, without fail...”

A person couldn’t do much with three silver pennies. In the towns of Keating or Carew, a person could pay for a small cottage with two pennies a month, and they could feed a family of two or three on the remaining penny if they were careful with their money.

To wealthy merchants who traded in luxury goods, it was even less notable. Such men could easily spend three or even five silver pennies on a single night of entertainment for their family with a sumptuous feast, lively music and jugglers or acrobats. It was such a pittance that even if Baron Hanrahan had stopped paying the loan entirely, the rich merchants who were collecting on the debt might not even notice until several months went by.

”I noticed,” Hugo said with a frown. ”Father always said that they were loans made by merchants who were old friends of the family,” he said as he scratched his chin while he tried to recall the details. ”The loan sheets stated clearly that there was no interest to be levied on the original loan, only that there would be a repayment of three pennies, silver, every month, until the balance was paid.”

”Father said that they were expensive gifts that he needed to present to other lords in the Lothian Court,” Hugo said as he folded his hand over his chest, scowling at his father. ”And when I suggested he just pay them off since there was plenty of gold in the treasury, he said that the relationship was worth more than repaying the loan. Since there was no interest to be collected even if it stretched out over decades, and Father clearly didn’t want to argue about it, I never bothered with it again.”

”You see? It’s right there, in plain sight,” Bastian laughed. All the years that his father had said that there wasn’t enough money to send his son and heir to study in Lothian or better yet, in Keating the way Liam Dunn had, yet there had been ’plenty of money’ in the treasury.

In fact, Bastian had made due with far less than most heirs received. While he never lacked for fine clothing because his father insisted on keeping up appearances, he’d never benefited from the kind of education most noblemen of his station received. Instead of sending his son away to distant academies, he hired tutors who were willing to live in Hanrahan in exchange for modest stipends.

Those tutors, however, turned out to be the sort of men who were so incapable that they had no prospects anywhere else. Bastian’s riding instructor had been a drunkard whose glory days ended when he was injured during the War of Inches, and the man who tutored him on the laws of the kingdom seemed to be a fellow whose extensive knowledge of the law came from years of arguing before magistrates to keep himself out of prison.

Yet for some things, Ian Hanrahan never ran out of money and never complained about spending it...

”I’m willing to bet, little brother, that if anything ever happened to Father, you’d have kept sending the payments on those loans and been none the wiser. But Father warned me once,” the young lord continued as he turned to face his father, pointing accusingly at the portly baron with hands that were still bound in chains.

”You made sure I knew,” Bastian said as he puffed his chest out in a crude imitation of his father’s mannerisms. ”’If ever a young woman turns up with her mother, claiming to be your sister, then you remind her that we’ve already paid what I promised and you send her on her way, or you make sure she never speaks of it again. One way or another, don’t ever let them claim you owe them any kind of status or place in our home!” he quoted as faithfully as he could.

”The loans are a joke,” Bastian said as he turned back to face his half brother. ”’Fine silk’ is how he refers to the skin of a dairy maid named Polly. He said he couldn’t keep his hands off her because her skin was so silky soft. ’Fine Wine’ is how he referred to a widow named Madge who had ’aged a touch past her prime’ but was still plenty ripe. And rich smoking leaf...”

”I think we all understand,” Hugo interrupted before his idiot of a half brother could make things any more scandalous with details that the people didn’t need to hear. While Bastian was exposing his father’s secrets, he was also destroying the reputations of these women by naming them publicly and yet his elder brother didn’t seem to be aware of the harm he was doing to these women just by speaking their names.

In the crowd, some people were already leaning over to their neighbors, whispering about what little they knew.

”You remember Polly, don’t you?” one woman asked a close friend. ”She was the one who turned out the crumbly cheese pressed with herbs.”

”I miss her cheese,” the woman next to her said. ”But one night, she came back from the baron’s feast looking all flustered, and a month later, she had packed up and left. That boy she fancied spent months searching for her before he gave up and spent what he’d been saving on a cottage near the wilderness. Whatever happened to him anyway?”

”You’re saying that your father kept mistresses and paid them for their silence?” Diarmuid asked, holding a hand up high to quiet the crowd and making sure that the accusation was clear for everyone to understand.

”Not just mistresses,” Bastian said as his laughter finally stopped and his expression grew serious. ”If Father took a tumble with a serving girl, he might give her a penny or two to keep her quiet, but to send money every month... He only did that to care for his children.”

”Little brother,” Bastian said as he looked up at Hugo’s figure on the dais. ”Father warned me about strange women showing up with daughters in tow, just like grand aunt Caitlin showed up with cousin Sybyll, because he knew that there were women out there with his daughters.”

”Three of them, Hugo,” Bastian said as he looked directly into his brother’s wide eyes. ”You and I, we have three half-sisters who we’ve never even met because Father keeps them secret...”