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loving the idea more than the man. “He will be master of these lands on my death.”
    “Father, Marcus is a brute.” The boy turned to scowl at his brother, who raised a golden goblet of wine in an ironic toast to the truth. “And a bully,” the boy insisted.
    “You will take holy orders.” Perhaps Josiah was determined not to hear anything that would make him regret his decision, rooted as it was in his ancestry, but Kane could have thought he was handing down the boy’s fate as a penance for rebelliousness. “You will join the church as I command,” Josiah said.
    The boy’s eyes gleamed with dismayed rage, and Kane could have wished his youthful self to have been as voiceless as he himself was now. “I do not want to be a priest,” the boy said.
    He was giving voice to all the frustrations of his youth – to being treated as inferior by his father and the traditions of their line and, more maliciously, by Marcus. “What you want is of no importance,” Josiah reminded him so fiercely that the words were echoed from every corner of the venerable hall.
    Marcus watched his brother’s face as if it were a source of delicious amusement and lifted the goblet once more. “Father Simnal is here to take you to the abbey,” Josiah said.
    Kane grew more conscious of the robed intruders as the boy did. All five men were crowned with black caps that had put his young self in mind of a judge about to pronounce a death sentence – a fivefold sentence that would deny Kane the chance to live as he deserved, to enjoy the world to the full. Father Simnal paced softly forward, stretching out his hands in a gesture of acceptance that might have foretokened a benediction, but the boy turned his back on the contingent from the abbey and faced his father. “I will not go,” he said.
    Marcus’s eyes glittered with wicked delight while Josiah’s grew as cold and still as stone. If Kane could have found a means to reach the boy he would have urged him to accept the situation. He was only being sent where he would eventually find a home – in the embrace of religion. He might have found peace all those years ago instead of being driven to seek it as a refuge from all the evil he had committed since. Instead he had to listen to his father pronouncing judgment once again. “If you defy me you will have nothing,” Josiah said.
    The boy gazed deep into his eyes and saw no hint of mercy. His own face grew stiff with resignation, and he turned away to stride down the long room. Josiah’s voice pursued him. “I will cut you off,” it thundered.
    The servants watched the boy covertly as they performed whatever tasks they could find. Kane thought he discerned sympathy on at least one face. Father Simnal took another pace towards the boy, but the hands that stretched forth from the long sleeves looked ineffectual now. “You will be a landless vagrant,” Josiah warned his son, and the priest made to put his hands together in some kind of prayer for Kane if not for obedience. “Is that what you want?” Josiah demanded.
    His words seemed to shake the flames of the candelabras. Perhaps the boy’s flight did. He was set on his course now, and nothing could stop him. He had the sureness of youth – of knowing he was unappreciated and misunderstood. He strode into the corridor that led to the outer doors, but even here his father’s voice was at his back. “Walk out now,” it declared, “and you may never return.”
    Kane knew this was true, and would have grasped his younger self by the shoulder to detain him if he could. The boy seized the rings set in the stout doors and twisted them, and a squeal of metal echoed through the corridor. “Do not defy me, Solomon,” Josiah cried.
    His voice was overwhelmed by the rumble of timber as the boy flung the doors wide. They might have been the entrance to a furnace, because fire was waiting beyond them – waiting for Kane, who could no longer stay separate from his younger self. The