“It belonged to a certain couple of land-owners--a husband and wife pair, both of them greedy as sin. They were best known for throwing tenant families out of their homes when their harvest were poor. Starvation and poverty were the rule in their lands. People turned to other ways to make coin as soon s they were able; any who could leave did. Many were not so fortunate, and were trapped there by debt.” The Highwayman paused, staring down into the fireplace, where the hot ashes were still heaped over the potatoes. He sighed long and hard, and reached for the fire shovel to carefully turn them over.
“And have you nothing else to say, then?” the Hound-master pressed, still glaring at him.
The Highwayman was silent a long moment. Then he set the fire shovel back in its rack and sat back on his haunches.
“The coach was supposed to be empty, or at the most filled with wares the landlord was smuggling off the property. We all knew he would stuff a plain coach full to bursting and have some of his loyal men smuggle it into town, to avoid paying the proper taxes come collection time. I do not know who the woman and the boy were, but I tell you they were not my intended targets.”
“Oh, so that excuses your brutal assault of the coachman an the outriders then, does it?” the Hound-master said.
“I did not say that,” the Highwayman said. “Merely that I thought, ‘gainst the odds, that for once it might be that greedy bastard himself in the coach, instead of extorted goods.”
“Do not not try to tell us there was some secret noble meaning behind these murders, you cutthroat,” the Hound-master said.
“There was not,” the Highwayman said, simply.
The Hound-master scoffed in disgust. “You damned cold-hearted child-murdering son of a bitch! And you have no sorrow, no regret, even now!”
Dismas’s eyes hardened the slightest bit. “Insult my mother again and it will be the last you speak. I told you, that was not my intent--”
“No! Damn you, you bastard, no! You cannot say you killed an innocent woman and child and then wipe away the evil of the murders because you meant to kill someone ELSE!” the Hound-master snarled.
“I ordered a man executed for murder, once,” the Leper said.
All heads turned on their necks to look at him, sitting solitary at the table’s head, with all his stoic princely mien, his down-turned masked face.
“He was a small-thief; chiefly a cut-purse, but for one instance where he was accused of stabbing an old woman to death. The weapon of murder was an old paring knife, itself likely purloined from a stall in the market. Justice was meted out; his head was his payment for the old woman’s life.” He paused a moment, to rest his bandaged, thick-fingered hands on the tabletop, curling them slowly together, the one within the other.
“I thought that matter should be the end. But two days later some constables found some troubling evidence elsewhere; namely, that the old woman’s purse, which had been stolen, turned up in the market.”
“How?”
The Leper shook his head. “The other evidence was some bloody rags, hastily stuffed into a gutter near where the crime took place. Yet the constables caught the supposedly guilty man within moments of the crime; not an hour passed between when she breathed her last and when he was clapped in irons.”
“Then how--how could he have sold her bag?”
“He could have had time to do none of that. He was not the guilty man.” Silence; the Leper exhaled slowly, shaking his head. “And yet he was the one who I ordered to death.”
The entire party was quiet for a long moment, before the Hound-master spoke again.
“But…Master Claville…you had no way of knowing he was innocent. You said yourself he had committed crimes in the past.”
“None worth his life. A sentence in prison, and labor, but a man’s head is worth more than a purse. And the true murderer, of course, walked free.”
“Surely you do not mean to compare your actions to those of some common cut-throat,” the Hound-Master tried again; and Dismas felt the shame welling in his ribs like blood soaking through cloth.
The thought of looking Claville in the face now burned him; he turned away, towards the shadows in the room.
Then to his continuing shock Claville continued, “I must ask you then if a soldier’s actions on the battlefield have no consequence in peacetime; for I tell you with almost complete certainty that my hands are bloodier than his.”

The quiet that followed his speech prickled sharper than shards of broken glass, sharp enough to cut.
Someone actually gasped.
“And I must continue and confess that my actions were for nothing more than glory. I did not raise my sword once because I needed to eat, nor yet to protect myself or others from attack. Pray, tell me now who is a murderer?” Claville said.
But the Hound-Master said, “You did what needed to be done, your lordship; war is ugly business, but not a crime committed in cold blood--”
“The people I cut down are no less dead,” Claville said.
There was a noise of protest from someome, and more talking.

But Dismas had already risen and left the room on phantom-silent feet, his guts in nervous knots and his hands shaking and benumbed.
He strode out into the night, out, out, walking aimlessly, not knowing where he might end up, and too ashamed to care.

~

He ended up at the docks again.
They seemed to end in nothingness, the sea-fog thick and cold as wet flannel, and the stone quays extended off into hollow gray-white space.

“How can you still--look at me?” he asked. “Knowing what I did?”
Claville drew slowly closer still, silent and quiet but for his boots ringing off the cobbles. When he was very close, he glanced around and, seeing no one, drew off his mask.
He sighed; his face was tired, nearly pained. Dismas could see even in the half-light that his eyes were gleaming and almost bloodshot. The realization that the man had been weeping stole upon Dismas suddenly enough that he caught his breath.

“I knew who you were when first we began talking,” he said simply. “I had no illusions.”
Dismas scoffed, miserably. “You cannot pretend you ain’t disgusted with me. And you cannot say you forgive me, for that ain’t your blessing to give. Much as I wish it was.”
Claville regarded him silently, the moment stretching on; his long, oddly graceful face a mournful mask.
He shook his head slowly. “No. I cannot. There is no one in the world who can forgive you, but that you must ever walk the road of atonement.”
Then he looked away, scarcely seeming to breathe; he wavered in the fog like a phantom, the black of his cloak like the pall of night.
“You asked me once why I was here, and not off in some other land, drowning myself in excesses of pleasure in my last days. Very well. Now I must tell you the secret shame that I have nursed close to my heart, which is simply that I know i--and my father--and his father--did more harm than good as rulers, in our time. I was vain and arrogant and hungry for glory, determined to burn out brilliantly on the battlefield as my death; and so when I was no longer able to fight as I once had, I fled, in a fury of shame and self-loathing. I would rather have died as some anonymous traveler than in my own homeland, for fear of the shame it would have brought upon my name! I played at heroism even as I studied statecraft and practiced the bloody, endless art of war. Dismas!” he said, and his hand on Dismas’s arm was a shock.

When he looked back at him, Claville’s eyes were bright, his lips trembling before he spoke. “Did you mean to murder that woman and her child?”
Dismas felt cold all over. He shook his head, feeling nerveless and stupid as a wooden marionette.
Then Claville’s lips formed a piteous, mirthless smile. “Then you are a better man than I. I cut a bloody swath through ever field of battle I ever stepped foot upon.”
“But--”
“No! Do not say that soldiers accept such a fate the moment they become soldiers; for at some points in the war my father waged, we would often find ourselves fighting enemies who were the last dying gasp of an overwhelmed people--feeble old men and boys scarcely old enough to lift a weapon. And we showed neither mercy nor clemency. And I--I was PROUD.”

~

He had no time to thnk Claville for going to his defense before the Lady issued instructions for them to go again on a mission.