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The boy was a natural on horseback, thought Hannibal, slightly resentfully. It was summer, and the child sweated atop the bay monstrosity with whom he’d clearly formed some sort of devil’s pact. Warm breeze pulled apart the buttons of the count’s shirt, and he closed his eyes, feeling the movement of the animal beneath him, letting Will’s excited prattle float on the breeze.
‘…then Matas just dove through the hedge like water or something except the branches were all sticking out so he got one caught right under his pants and Nojas started to laugh…’
It was pleasant, hearing the boy excited like this, after so many months of silence. After the tragedy that befell his sister.
No, not tragedy, Hannibal corrected himself. She wasn’t the cause of her downfall. And everyone on the estate would do well to remember that. His lip curled distastefully, mood darkening. He looked askance at Will, the sight of him rising and falling as the horse walked through the long grass became a balm on his temper.
‘…he hates it when people laugh at him so he tried to hit Nojas but he was still stuck….’
The child was a godsend. Hannibal wasn’t about to pretend the boy didn’t have a special place in his heart. He was a little wild thing, laughing, running one minute, raging the next. Almost twelve, younger in some ways, much much older in others, it was his curiosity that drew Hannibal in like a siren song. Always poking in books he couldn’t understand, flicking through his drawings. Hannibal had delighted in teaching him, revelled in the confused way he knitted his brows together, a small glimpse of the man he would become. He often drew him out of his duties in the stables to ride, to spend time with him in the evenings, something which he knew caused resentment, but that he couldn’t help. Everything was so extreme, with Will -- he held each new idea in his mind with something approximating lust. Nothing ever tepid, lacking conviction. It’s unseemly, this affection for a child, the others gossiped. He misses Mischa, they said, and it was true. But it was more than that, an affection for the person the boy was, would become.
And of course, there was Will’s sister, more than a sister, a mother to the child, his only family. After her…passing…he needed someone to care for him. God knows what would happen to him without guidance. Nothing good, after something like that.
‘Uncle, look…’ Will spurred the horse on. Uncle, a name he could only use in private, when it was just the two of them. Otherwise, it was ‘your grace’. He’d have no one spreading rumours about the closeness of their relationship. For as long as he could prevent it.
Lazily, he followed Will’s excited trail. If not for the heat, the lovely spring air, lulling him, he might have seen the snake in time, might have been able to stop him. But he only had time for his eyes to fly open before Will’s horse had reared, bolting into the forest, carrying the terrified child on its back.
Hannibal was galvanized, every muscle tensed into action. He wasn’t a natural horseman but he could ride and ride well, man and animal racing behind the pair, branches whipping past, gaze unblinking. He bent close to the animal, pupils large, shirt plastered to his body. Will could be thrown, crushed…not now. Not after everything they both had lost.
He heard a scream.
Rounding the path, he pulled the horse up short, gravel spraying. Will lay on the ground, clothes torn, ankle at a sickening angle. Blood dripped from his cheek. His mouth was open in a silent scream of pain.
‘Oh, vaikas , jūs šiek tiek idiotas , ką tu padarei…’ he murmured quietly, dismounting, falling fluidly to Will’s side. To his horror, the boy looked at him wildly, cowered away from his touch, back forced against the tree trunk.
‘Stop it, don’t touch me.’ Hannibal was confused. Hatred, pain, burned in Will’s large dark eyes. His doctor’s hand hovered above the ankle, arrested in mid-air.
‘Will. It’s me.’ He soothed, quietly.
‘I said, don’t touch me!’ his voice cracked with pain, rasping. Tears streamed down his cheek. Before Hannibal knew what was happening, Will had leaned his head back, and had begun to sob quietly. He knelt by the boy, some distance away.
‘Breathe, Will. You’re shocked. You’re in pain. I’m going to touch your ankle, I need to reset it, it’s dislocated, then we can get you back on Purvas, ride back to the estate.’
‘Just leave me alone, haven’t you done enough?’
Hannibal froze, head tilted to the side.
‘Done enough?’ he echoed, neutrally, trying not to betray the anxiety in his voice.
‘I won’t pretend anymore, I can’t, not after what you did.’ Will ran the back of his hand over his eyes. Hannibal felt sick.
‘What am I guilty of?’
‘You know.’
Hannibal feigned innocence. He felt nauseated. He did know, but it wasn’t true, he would never, had never, done something as foul as that.
‘What do you mean, boy?’ his voice like ice, covering the fear underneath.
‘You took her from me!’ A scream that echoed through the forest, more ragged edge than human voice. Veins standing out in Will’s neck. ‘You…you took her…you…she was nothing to you! She was everything to me! How could you do something like that, touch her like that….’
Hannibal stared at Will. All this time? The months they had spent together, fire warming them, the questions he’d answered, the time he’d spent. All that time, and Will had thought he’d been the one to murder his sister?
An ugly death. They’d found her covered by snow, naked, violated, in the courtyard one morning. He remembered Will’s face, steam still rising from the bucket of water in his hand, shirtless, mindless of the cold. She didn’t look peaceful, like some do in death. She looked tortured.
‘No.’ Hannibal whispered, gently, the sound of Will’s defeated tears covering his dismay. ‘Will, no, never, I would never do that.’
‘Matas said…’
‘Never.’ Hannibal sat next to the boy, close enough to look into his red face. ‘Never.’ He hesitated, unsure whether it would be selfish of him to say what was on his mind. Would it comfort Will, to know what had become of his sister’s murderer? In truth, wouldn’t he be telling him only to clear his name, regain the child’s affection?
‘He said you were guilty, that’s why you take me for rides, because you feel bad…’
Hannibal laughed softly at that. He was many things. Prone to guilt was not one of them.
Will’s voice rose anew. ‘It’s not funny!’
‘No. Of course. I’m sorry. Will, forgive me.’ He pressed his lips together. ‘I didn’t touch her. You have my word. It may comfort you to know the man who did is dead. He died painfully. I personally saw to it. I see now I should have done it publically. I wanted to spare you the details. Wanted to keep you safe from more violence. It was ignorant.’
More than ignorant. Of course Will would find out exactly what befell his sister. Servants talk.
Will looked up into Hannibal’s eyes. ‘You swear?’
‘I swear.’
A distant cousin. He had died a violent, humiliating, death. He had deserved every last lash.
Will hung his head, hand rubbing artlessly at his eyes. Hannibal took the opportunity to swiftly pull the dislocated ankle joint back into place. Will cried out in pain. Panting, he looked up at his patron.
‘I’m sorry, Uncle.’
‘All these months, you thought I was guilty of that? All this time? How could you bear to be in my company?’
‘I …hoped it wasn’t true. And sometimes, I thought of killing you.’ Hannibal smiled. Will’s guileless honesty was what he liked most about him. He gathered the boy in his arms, lifted him. The child’s head rested against his chest, something Hannibal was sure he would only do in private.
He sat him back on his horse. ‘Killing is not for you, Will.’ Not so young. Not now. Maybe never. He would keep him safe from that, he would make sure of it.
He looked at the horse, not at the child. ‘Forgive me?’
Will smiled, and nodded.
‘Let’s ride back.’