|
Page 25.
Chapter 13. Grandfather Abbot
 As I stood gaping and wishing I hadn't come, he made an absent gesture. "Now that you're here, I suppose I have a few things to explain." He looked at me staring at him and barked. "Sit down, why don't you?"
I spread my feet a bit and folded my arms over my chest. "If you raise your voice to me again, I'm going to cold-cock you and walk out, never to be seen again. Why don't you sit down, you wretched old creep?"
He started to go into one of his rages. His fists flew down, and he rose on the balls of his feet, and lighting sparked in his eyes. He had often frightened me when he got like that, to the point that I nearly wet my pants as a teenager, but now he seemed an impotent elderly man. He caught himself, and sat down. I remained standing for a bit. So we stayed in the library like that in silence, while he rubbed his sparse hair with gnarled hands and seemed not to know what to say. Seeing him that way weakened some of my own anger, and I sat down opposite him. We looked at each other over a deeply glossy, dark-brown wooden table that stretched a long way. Its far end was covered with books and transfers, those plastic things that look like paper.
"We lost the battle years ago with the other side of the Upholder clan," he said.
It took him a while to process that much. He was normally a fairly reticent individual. I could understand now what it must have cost him to speak at length and rescue me from the clutches of Chief Blue and Chief Brown when they were trying to railroad me over the Timony matter in the stairwell. I understood now that there was much more to the affair than I'd ever realized. "Was the e-masked witness at my trial Balesso?" I asked.
He shrugged. "It might have been, very likely. I would be one of the last persons to be told. Balesso is only part of our problem at this point." He gathered his thoughts a moment, and then continued. "I was sworn to total silence, on pain of losing my life and my family's." He held his head in his hands, resting his elbows on the table as he spoke. He seemed to need to wind up to deliver each sentence. "You might have been king one day, but that is now forever gone since the elections have gone to the Upholder side.
"We were allowed to keep our estate in the city, but I was sent to the Temple, and they assigned me to be Abbot in the Granistons. That suited me, because I was never outgoing or political, and it seemed like a quiet, safe place to spend my life.
"Your father—my son—had to try and create a bloody revolt."
It was my turn to hold my hands over my head. "Oh no..." I had thought he died of a heart attack.
"He attacked the palace inside with a few of his agents. They were captured and then executed like dogs in the palace yard. It's something no history book will ever relate. They held a trial and took your mother away about a year later, and she was given poison at the prison hospital."
"No..." I was near tears. My heart was very heavy with all the treachery and deceit. It was as if my life had been a lie.
He continued: "You are my only grandchild. I felt I had failed my son, in that he did something so stupid and surprising, and I didn't know him well enough to anticipate it."
"Maybe he had the right amount of guts," I said, "just not the brains."
"Probably true," the Abbot said. My grandfather. Ick.
"Let me guess," I said. "Timony knew something about all that."
"Oh yes," the Abbot said.
"Of course," I said. What else?
"His parents were involved. They were Eastgardens. They were in the Granistons for the same reason your parents were. It was that or the firing squad."
"The Upholders did that to us?" I said angrily.
He raised a hand. "Easy. I didn't see it coming in my son, but I see it coming in you. For God's sake, leave it alone. It's ancient history. Timony didn't get it, and wound up dying as he tried to save the world."
"By warning me."
"If he'd had more time, he would have spilled all the beans to you on that tower stairwell. It was too long a story to blurt out all at once. He just wanted to save the Popess, who was one of us."
"An Eastgarden?"
"An Upholder."
"But—."
"It's complicated, Farr. Don't let it eat you up. She was an Upholder with Eastgarden connections. When you warned her with your sandbox—trust me, I watched the police films very closely—she touched your forehead in blessing. She knew who you were, Farr. She knew they were plotting against her life. I don't think any of us expected the end to come when and where it did."
"Timony knew."
"I believed Timony. That's why we had the undercover female Swat Guards all around her."
"You mean the two who brought me here?"
He nodded, just a grave declination of the head.
"What did Timony know that you and the others didn't?"
"Good question, and worthy of the next Lord Eastgarden."
"You mean, we're allowed to return to this place?" I was just mouthing words. I had not been able to process a tenth of what we were talking about.
He nodded again. "Yes. I am still Abbot at the Granistons, but I am moving here temporarily until I have done the paperwork and signed this all over to you, house, title, and all. I want no part of it."
TOP
|
MAIN
Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
|
