Jack Frost: King of Thieves

CHAPTER XXX: Burgess

Night fell over Burlington Manor, and after an ample but simple meal like the one they had enjoyed the night before, Sir Sandy retired, claiming to be unusually weary. Jack sat before the hearth again, enjoying the warmth of another blaze. He hadn't been sitting long, however, when one of the servants appeared saying that Sir Sandy had sent her. Elsa was on her feet immediately, but the girl explained, somewhat sheepishly, that the old man had asked not for her, but for Sir Jackson. Jack thought that Elsa regarded him with a touch of resentment as he stood, puzzled himself, and followed the girl up the stairs to Sandy's bedchambers.

The room was dark when Jack entered. He could barely make out the old man's bed, which appeared plain and ancient. Moonlight filtering in through the window alighted gently on the blankets and pillows so that he could see the old man was lying on his back, as still as death. He couldn't see if Sandy's eyes were open or closed, and after waiting for some time for the man to speak, he began to wonder if perhaps in the few minutes it had taken the servant to fetch him, the old knight had fallen asleep. He was just about to turn and quietly let himself out of the chamber when Sandy stirred.

"Frost," he said. As always he turned his head directly toward Jack. Not for the first time, Jack wondered if the man was only feigning his blindness, or if his hearing had grown so acute that he no longer needed his eyes to know what everyone around him was doing.

"You need to know what I know," the old man went on. "Your father was a stonemason." Jack saw him smile in the darkness. "Is that pleasing to you?"

Robin took a breath and nodded. Then, realising the man could not see his gesture, he said, "Yes, it is. A Mason ..."

He trailed off, silenced by the onset of a memory ...

He is in Burgess, his childhood home. In the village centre. The cross of the Celts stands in the middle of the square, gleaming in the sun beneath a sky of purest blue. He feels himself rising and falling. He is being thrown. Exhilarated, scared, laughing. He soars up toward the blue, falls back. And is caught in strong arms, only to be thrown again. Rising, falling, laughing until he can't catch his breath.

Finally, those powerful arms catch him one last time and set him on his feet. Jack looks up into the clear blue eyes of his father. He knows those eyes. He has seen them reflected in a looking glass, and in the gleaming armour of the knights who sometimes come to his town. They are his eyes, too. Clear and blue and honest.

His father kneels down before him and grips his arm gently. "Always keep this day in your memory, and in your heart."

The cross behind his father has a small gap, a single spot where one last stone has yet to be set. His father leads Jack to the base of the cross and trowels cement into the gap where this last stone will be placed. He takes hold of Jack's hand and presses it into the wet cement, making an imprint. He smiles at Jack, who smiles back. Then the stonemason presses his own hand into the cement beside Jacks imprint.

Two other men, standing with a cluster of soldiers, separate themselves from the group and join Jack and his father next to the cross. They press their hands into the cement, too.

The older Jack, the man in a darkened bedchamber in Burlington Manor, who is watching his childhood self and wondering at this long-forgotten image from his boyhood, knows these men. He can almost name them, but that knowledge flutters just beyond his reach, like a butterfly on a summer day, and then it is gone.

Jack's father now walks to where the last stone rests, a chisel nearby. Jack follows and so sees the words carved into the stone on one side. Words that Jack has committed to memory with his father's help.