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before were still somewhat hazy. He remembered
discovering the girls, he could recall Daphne’s sharp eyes and the way pale
fear had etched itself on Lorna’s face as the minutes passed. Everything had
become an enormous blur once the book was pulled out though. He vaguely
remembered the girls leaving him there, vanishing into the darkness of the
Haligorn, and he suspected that they had taken it upon themselves to visit Justine
before they let themselves out. He remembered the painting too, the first one,
but with a strange fuzziness, as though he had looked at it through a veil.
Ever since he woke that morning the urge had been building in him to have
another look. His next memory was of the door creaking as his mother let
herself in, smelling of rain and wet wool. He had hidden the book under his
mattress, where it had remained until… Well, until that night.
    Next to
him, Rolf cocked his head curiously as he caught something in his net. Spencer
watched as the older boy slowly drew the net in, raising his eyebrows at the
sight of something large and black coiled at the bottom. Without even taking
the time to stand he began to immediately slide backwards over the rough planks
as Rolf slowly brought the dripping net in. Rolf wasn’t a terribly expressive
person, even at the best or worst of times, so Spencer took his companion’s
complete silence for trepidation. Perhaps some horrible creature lay coiled at
the bottom of the net, waiting to strike. When the net finally lay on the dock,
Rolf let out a deep sigh. “Good grief. I thought it was a moat snake.”
    As it
turned out, the object that had been the source of such terror for the two of
them was only a long black garment heaped at the bottom of the net. Rolf dumped
it out unceremoniously onto the planks and then, reversing his hold on the net,
used the warped wooden handle to poke suspiciously at the garment, muttering
something about leeches, before he finally moved to touch it. It was a long
black cloak, complete with a deep hood and long sleeves, and accompanied by
only one black glove.
    “Wonder
where the other one is?” Rolf mused. He frowned. “I hate finding half of a
pair.”
    “Who
throws their clothes in the moat?” Spencer asked.
    “You’d
be surprised what we find in here.” Rolf said darkly. “Anyway, I bet this
belongs to Haudgast.”
    “The
executioner?” The man’s name alone was enough to make Spencer break out in a
cold sweat. “You know him?”
    “He and
my father drink together after work. He wears exactly this sort of getup when
he’s working.” As Rolf spoke Spencer found himself glancing over his right
shoulder towards the castle courtyard where the executioner plied his trade day
after day. Sometimes, when the wind was blowing just a certain way the cries of
the condemned and the fall of the ax could be heard from exactly where he was
sitting now.  “He’s really something,” Rolf remarked. “You’d be surprised how
much you have to know to be castle executioner. He has to know how to behead
people, hang them, burn them at the stake, draw and quarter them...” Rolf
slowed and then fell silent altogether at the look on Spencer’s face. “Guess I
shouldn’t really talk about it like that,” Rolf conceded.
    No,
Spencer thought, especially given that all Rolf or his father would have to do
is forget to pull up the drawbridge one night and an order from the Queen could
easily have them twitching at the end of the hangman’s rope just as fast as
anyone else. “I should probably get back,” he said weakly.
    “Yes,
you shouldn’t keep your mother waiting.” Spencer didn’t miss the faintly
wistful expression that passed over Rolf’s face at the mention of Abigail Tattersall.
The two boys found themselves in opposite situations, since Spencer’s father
was dead while Rolf was without a mother. As Spencer straightened up and
brushed off the seat of his pants he could make out a tall, thin figure making
its way down