Mistress of Souls

by Michelle Zink

  There was the bread and jam, two apples—still crisp, despite their months in the root cellar—anchovies, which she opened and arranged on a tea plate. She cut slices of cheese from the wedge she had purchased from Mr. Owning and added a crock of fresh butter. She stood back, eyeing the tray critically. Suddenly, she had an idea.

  She opened the cupboards one by one, her eyes roving the contents until she found a picnic basket in the uppermost recesses of one of the shelves. Retrieving a chair from the kitchen table where the servants took their meals, she stood carefully on tiptoe, hooking the basket with two fingers and pulling until it fell to the floor.

  She stepped off the chair and removed everything from the carefully arranged tray, packing it instead in the basket. Then she added two tea towels and a glass jug filled with water before heading out the back door and making her way to the stable.

  She blinked against the brightness of the sun. It had been many months since it had shone so brightly. Now, it was like a long-lost friend, and she tipped her face to it, feeling oddly content as she continued toward the rear of the property.

  She found James tending to the horses. The stables were clean, the floors clear of debris and manure. His waistcoat was draped over a milking stool, his shoulders pulling at the fabric of his linen shirt as he lifted a pitchfork full of hay into one of the stalls. She had never noticed the breadth of his shoulders, his powerful arms, but she noticed them now and realized with a start that James was an attractive man.

  It would be a lie to say that she had never flirted with him or tried to gain his attention, but it had never truly been about him. It had always been about Lia. About trying to throw her sister off balance by the possibility that Alice could, if she chose, take something of value from her.

  Now Alice saw James anew. He was a man, learned and virile and willing to do the hard work that is sometimes necessary to see a thing done.

  She cleared her throat. “Ahem.”

  He turned to her, his forehead glistening with perspiration. “I’m afraid I was deep in thought. Have you been there long?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all.” She lifted the basket. “I’ve brought you lunch.”

  “It sounds wonderful.” He set the pitchfork against the wall of the stable. Then he reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, using it to wipe his forehead. “It’s quite warm for the season. Shall we take the food to the river? I must admit that I miss it.”

  She was surprised by his mention of the river. It had always seemed a special place between him and Lia, and Alice had stumbled on them more than once, locked in an embrace by the rushing water.

  And then there was Henry. Alice had not been to the river since his death. Was not certain she could confront the reality of what she had done in the place she had done it.

  But James was looking at her, waiting for a response, his eyes alight with promise.

  She smiled. “Certainly. Though I’m afraid I didn’t bring anything on which to sit.”

  He glanced around the stall and reached for a woolen saddle blanket. He shook it out, dust motes floating like diamonds in the sunlight that streamed in through the stable windows.

  “This will do nicely, I think.” He proffered his arm. “Shall we?”

  The ground was wet, but it was warmer than it looked, the sun shining like a million tiny beacons through the gaps in the branches overhead, setting everything aglitter with its reflection off the melting snow.

  The river ran fast. It tumbled over the rocks, rushing past them in a rhythmic roar. They sat on the big boulder on the bank, and Alice removed the contents of the basket. She handed the jug of water to James, watching his throat ripple as he tipped the jar back, emptying it in one long drink. Then she handed him a tea towel loaded with food.

  “Aren’t you going to join me?” he asked, looking at her empty hands.

  She shook her head ruefully. “I’d just finished breakfast when you arrived. I’m afraid I’ve grown accustomed to sleeping late since Aunt Virginia’s departure.”

  He looked chagrined. “You should not have gone to the trouble on my account.”

  “Nonsense! You’ve come all this way to help me with the animals. Providing you with lunch, however simple, is the least I can do. Besides, it is pleasant to have company.”

  He put a piece of bread in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully before speaking. “It must be quiet here with everyone gone. Are you lonely?”

  She searched his face, tried to gauge the tone of his voice, to see if he was again looking for information on Lia. But no. His eyes were clear and gazing at her with sincere curiosity.

  “Sometimes,” she admitted.

  “Why did you let the servants go?” he asked. “Surely it would be easier to maintain the house with their help.”

  She thought about it. Why had she let them go? Money was no concern. And she was mistress of Birchwood, now more than ever. They would not have held sway over her activities.

  But the truth was complicated. How to explain that she did not want the servants privy to her activities in the Dark Room? How to express her fear that they would talk amongst the townspeople? That, while before she did not care when people gossiped about her, now, without the fortress of her family, she felt vulnerable and exposed?

  She answered as honestly as she could. “I simply did not want them watching me, spreading their gossip among the town. And…well, I suppose I was embarrassed.” Her cheeks grew hot with the admission. It was not one she had intended to make.

  “Embarrassed?” he asked. “Whatever for?”

  She plucked at a loose thread on one of the towels. “I don’t know. I suppose I knew they would feel sorry for me. Everyone has left. Lia, Virginia, even Edmund.” She saw James flinch slightly at her sister’s name. “I suppose I didn’t want their pity, or worse, their smug satisfaction that I have finally received my due.” His gaze softened, and she knew he understood to what she referred. “It is no secret that I have not always been kind to the servants. It shames me, but there is little I can do about it now. It would seem rather convenient that I have only become aware of my childish behavior now that I am alone. I would not want anyone to think I was seeking sympathy.”

  He turned to her. “No one is without fault, Alice.”

  “What about you?” she asked, looking up into his blue eyes.

  He shook his head. “Least of all me. If I had to do it over again…” He looked away.

  “What?” she asked. “What would you do differently?”

  He turned back to face her. “I would not let Lia go without a fight. I would follow her and make her believe that I belonged at her side. Now…well, now I fear it is too late.”

  She thought about his words. “I believe the things that are meant to be simply are,” she finally said. “If they are not meant to be, no amount of struggle will make it so, and trying only makes one unhappy anyway.”

  “You speak of fate,” he said. “Do you really believe in it?”

  She wanted to tell him everything. To tell him about her and Lia, about their dark roles in the prophecy, roles that had been predetermined from the very beginning.

  But it would sound mad. Even Lia, who had held James’s heart since childhood, did not trust his love enough to tell him the truth. How could Alice explain it in light of their blossoming friendship, as fragile and precious as a tiny bird in her hand?

  “I do,” she said at last. She laughed a little. “If only because it makes things easier.”

  “Easier? In what way?”

  “It is easier to let go of things that seem impossible when one realizes they are simply not meant to be—and easier to muster the energy to fight when one senses a predetermined victory, is it not?”

  He regarded her solemnly in the moment before a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He nodded, and when he looked into her eyes, she saw not Lia’s reflection, but her own.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “I suppose it is.”<
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  She left the picnic basket at the front of the house and returned to the stable with James, from where they each carried a bucket of milk to the back door.

  “I daresay this should tide you over for a while,” he laughed, setting his bucket down.

  She stood back, surveying the buckets with worried eyes. “I don’t know what I’ll do with it all!”

  “With your permission, I’ll be back tomorrow to check on the animals. Then I’d like to see about sending someone around every other day or so to keep everything in working order, and—”

  “Oh, no! It’s not necessary,” she protested. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Alice.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. It burned through the fabric of her gown, the touch both natural and intimate. “While I respect your desire for privacy, you cannot maintain the grounds and house alone. It is not necessary to have someone underfoot all the time, but having someone come to check on the animals every other day, to check on the workings of the house, to bring you supplies and keep the house, well, that is a simple matter. You’ll hardly know they are here. Do it for me, if nothing else. I shall worry otherwise.”

  She smiled. “Worry? About me?” She flipped a curl, feeling more like her old self than she had in ages. “I’m perfectly fine. Everyone knows that.”

  His gaze grew serious, and he reached out, brushing a lock of hair from her cheek. “You don’t fool me, Alice Milthorpe.” Then he seemed to remember where he was, who he was with. He hurriedly withdrew his hand, and they made their way to the front of the house, where he’d left his carriage.

  “I presume I won’t be seeing you for a while,” Alice said, shielding her eyes from the sun as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Since you’ll send others around to see to the house and animals, I mean.”

  He looked down at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I imagine they will do quite well at seeing to the necessities,” he said. “However…”

  “However?” she prompted.

  His brow furrowed as he searched for the right words. “I have always believed that good company is as necessary to one’s happiness as solitude, don’t you agree?”

  She returned his smile. “I could not agree more.”

  “Well, then. I will consider that my part of the bargain, and will be by every so often to see that you are content and well.”

  He spurred the horses into movement and the carriage clattered down the drive. Alice stood, watching, until they disappeared into the trees. Then, not quite ready to return indoors, she turned for the hill leading to the lake.

  She let her mind wander as she walked, her thoughts touching on James, Lia, and all that had passed in the previous months. When she came out of her reverie, she was surprised to find herself not heading for the lake, as intended, but entering the family graveyard on the knoll behind the house.

  Hesitating, she wondered what strange workings had brought her to the very place she had avoided since Henry’s death. She did not know whether it was the pale spring light or the freedom felt with the sun’s rays on her shoulders, but she was feeling accountably brave, and she stepped through the iron gate into the cemetery, passing by the markers of her far-flung ancestors without a thought. She stopped when she came to her father’s gravestone and looked at it with dispassion.

  Everyone said Thomas Milthorpe had been a good man, and she supposed it was true when one arrived at the conclusion through a certain set of standards. He gave generously to charity, accepted all men as his equal regardless of station, and provided for his family’s security and welfare above all else.

  But he was also cold, distant—at least to Alice. Certainly he had not been so with Lia, for he had spent many hours with her in the library, poring over the rare volumes that the Douglases brought for inspection. Even in the parlor after supper, the two engaged in conversation so focused on each other that they often blinked in surprise when Virginia interrupted or Henry spoke up to share something of his book. Alice had stopped trying long ago.

  It did not matter that others thought he was a great man; Thomas Milthorpe had not been a father to her, not the way he had been to Lia.

  A fountain of emotions rose within her. It was anger and sadness and loneliness so profound that she did not have the courage or energy to face it. She turned away from the headstone and continued to her mother’s grave.

  Her blood cooled as she looked at the stone marking Adelaide Milthorpe’s burial place. It was more difficult to conjure emotion here, for she hardly remembered her mother. In her mind’s eye, Adelaide had been a moody, haunted creature. Alice had often awoken in the dead of night to find her mother sitting on Lia’s side of the bed, watching Alice across the coverlet with wary eyes. She had prowled the house at odd hours, disappeared for long periods of time even when the weather was foul, had so difficult a time sitting still that Alice was always aware of a coiled energy, as if her mother’s soul was a restless serpent within her skin.

  But one thing was certain: Her mother had abandoned her. Had abandoned them all.

  She had known of Alice’s and Lia’s roles in the prophecy but had been so consumed by her own that she had been unable to stay, unable to guide them through the workings of it. Without her intervention, they had been left to Virginia, an insipid substitution who had done nothing to prepare her or Lia for their places in the prophecy, who seemed more concerned with the running of the house and day-to-day life at Birchwood, as if they were any family, instead of one riddled with tragedy of the prophecy’s making.

  She continued on to Henry’s burial place, bracing herself for an onslaught of emotion. The grave was small and still fresh, green shoots standing an inch above the dirt. Wildflowers, Alice knew, that would fill in to a lush purple carpet the way they did in the fields surrounding Birchwood.

  Henry. How to reconcile what she had done to him?

  That day at the river—that terrible, rainy, horrific day—had blurred around the edges. The details were no longer vivid. But still, she knew what she had done. Knew she had pushed Henry into the river in order to keep the list of keys from Lia, the list that would have given her a chance of closing the Gate to Samael forever.

  And in the end, Henry had not even had it. The paper he had been clutching had been a ruse to throw her offtrack. This she had learned later, when it was too late. At the time, it had not even been a possibility in her mind. The Souls had been there, whispering, vying for space inside her head, pushing her to get the list, to destroy it and Henry, too, if necessary.

  Anything to keep Lia from getting hold of it.

  Their voices had urged Alice forward, made her feel confused and disoriented. She’d known she needed to think, to decide the best course of action, but she could not formulate a single thought with the Souls clamoring in her head. In the end, it had only taken a push. One little push to send Henry careening into the river in his chair, the heavy iron sinking beneath him almost as soon as it hit the water.

  But the worst thing of all, the thing she could tell no one, is that she had felt nothing. Her very being had been numb until Lia went in after him. It was only her twin’s peril that had shaken Alice from her stupor, prompting her to race along the bank, the rain plastering her wet gown to her legs as she tried to keep up with Lia’s body as it was submerged again and again, each time the fear that she would not surface a fresh terror in Alice’s mind.

  It was only when they had pulled Henry’s body from the river that she had felt true remorse. Only when she saw his small body, his face so white it was nearly blue, that she felt a hole rip open inside her.

  But then it was too late. Too late for anyone to show her compassion, least of all Lia. And of course, Alice would not have asked for it. Not after what she had done.

  At first she had hoped Lia would accuse her. Hoped she would tell Virginia and James and anyone who would listen that Henry hadn’t fallen into the river. That Alice had pushed him. Maybe then, in the atonement for her sin, she would be
clean again. She would be good again.

  To Alice’s shock, Lia said nothing. She was a shadow of herself, her face drawn, the purple smudges under her eyes making her look as dead as Henry had been when they lifted him from the water. She could barely move, could barely get out of bed, could not walk to the cemetery on the hill for Henry’s burial without Edmund on one side and James on the other.

  Accusing Alice seemed to require energy Lia did not have.

  A few days later, she was gone, and Alice was left to her guilt and horror and still, still, the need to please the Souls, to do their bidding so that someone, anyone, might love her.

  Her heart grew heavy with the reminiscence, a dull ache returning that she had not felt since those dark days after Henry’s death. She turned her back on the marker and left the cemetery without a backward glance. It was the only way. She could not afford to look back. The past was too full of questions, too full of guilt and accusations, of mistakes that could not be undone however much she might wish it. Forward was the only path to survival.

  The sun was beginning to drop in the west, the air colder as she reached the rise above the lake. She stepped forward, close to the edge, remembering how she had teased Lia when they were young, standing too close to the edge until Lia had begged her to come back. She had anticipated, of course, Lia’s fear: that Alice would step over the edge, her body crashing to the rocks below.

  Like their mother.

  Alice had enjoyed Lia’s fear. Had enjoyed the knowledge that she was the one to incite it. It was the only power she had.

  Now, she looked down, imagining her mother standing in the very same place. Imagined her letting go, choosing freedom over conflict, the peace of the Otherworlds over the struggle of this one. She wondered if her mother had thought of them in her final moments. Had she loved them? Had she cared that she was leaving them to face alone the prophecy’s workings? And what would she say if she were still alive? Would she still be imprisoned, as Alice was, by the whisper of the Souls, by their promise of acceptance? Or would she encourage Alice to embrace her role as Guardian? To aid Lia in closing the Gate to Samael? To be good again?