That at Thornchapel, the kings walk to the door.
At Thornchapel, all kings must die.
Chapter Thirty-One
St. Sebastian
The house is quiet when I’m done with the effigy, and I can’t find Auden anywhere. I’m about to go up to his office to look for him when I find Freddie Dansey of all people coming from the kitchen. I stop short, shocked.
The knowledge of the letter in my bag upstairs burns in my mind.
When Freddie sees me, he gives me a beam of pure relief. “I was worried I missed you! I just spoke with Pickles, and she thought you were in the village, and I didn’t have enough time to chase you there.”
It takes me a minute to remember that Pickles is what Delphine’s parents call her for some unknowable reason. I offer Freddie a tentative smile back. I had Richard Davey of course, and back home in Dallas, I was surrounded by uncles and cousins and a gruffly doting grandfather—I’m not unused to father figures. But for so long, since the graveyard at least, I’ve resisted letting anyone into my heart, into my life. And then Poe came here and trampled past all my carefully erected walls; then she let Auden in, like a wolf padding in after her. And somehow I ended up friends with Delphine and Rebecca and Becket too—
I have people in my life now, completely accidentally, and now Freddie’s one of them. And I like it, even if I’m still not sure how to feel about it, or how to act around him.
“I hope you aren’t feeling poorly?” Freddie goes on. “Pickles says she has some kind of flu, but she’s on the mend, she thinks. I told her to come home and let me and her mum dote on her, but you know how she is.”
I’m relieved that Freddie doesn’t know the nature of our illness, and I’m oddly disappointed too. It is something awful about growing up, that your fate is continually in your hands. There’s no parent to make it better, to fix it, to do battle for you. No one is going to close the door for us and then tuck us into bed with a good-night story and a teddy bear.
The responsibility of it all feels very, very heavy all of a sudden.
“Are you here about the results?” I ask him.
He blinks a few times, dark blond eyelashes fluttering, and then his beam returns stronger than ever. “Have they come in? I’ve been away from home this week for work so I haven’t had the chance to see my mail—my God. What did they say?”
He sounds so eager, so happy, like it would do nothing but chuff him to bits to discover he has an adult son who’s an unemployed librarian with an American accent, and I don’t even know what to say or do in the presence of such unearned warmth and affection. I’ve spent so long holding myself in, even from Augie and my adoptive father’s family, so certain pain and rejection were waiting for me.
Being confronted with the manifest opposite of rejection is . . . powerful.
“I haven’t opened them yet,” I say, softly.
“Oh,” Freddie says, looking a little disappointed. But then he brightens. “We could open them now. Together if you like.”
I almost say yes. But I have a promise to make first. “I know this will sound strange,” I start, not sure how to explain, “but I—I would like to wait. If that’s okay with you.”
“You’d like to wait?” Freddie repeats. He doesn’t sound upset, only surprised. “How long?”
“I don’t know.” Knowing he deserves an explanation, I search for the right words. “When I found out I was Ralph’s son, it changed so much of my life. It changed all my plans, my future.”
I don’t mention Auden. I think even someone who used to fuck in the chapel might not be ready to hear about that part.
“I’m afraid that I’ve given it too much control over my life. And I want to choose what I do next on my own, entirely on my own. Without the fear or the relief of the results guiding me.”
Freddie’s honey-brown eyes are understanding. “I’ve never bought into that gloria filiorum patres rubbish, and I won’t start now, even when I may have a son. I can’t say I’m not dying to know the results, St. Sebastian, but I’m content to wait until you’re ready.”
I let go of the breath I’ve been holding. “Thank you,” I say. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”
Freddie touches me on the shoulder, a fond, warm pressure. “You can ask anything of me,” he says, and the sincerity in his words is matched by the honesty in his expression. “I mean that genuinely. Anything at all.”
“I wouldn’t mind going on as if we did know,” I say in a quiet voice. “And . . . and getting to know you. And Daisy. If that’s okay.”
I’m yanked into an embrace. “Yes,” Freddie says fervently. “Yes, that’s more than okay. I would like that very much. Very, very much.”
I return the hug as best I can, and when he steps back, I can see that his eyes are shining. But then he clears his throat and offers me a sheepish smile, like he’s embarrassed to have been caught exhibiting such strong feelings.
“Apologies,” he says. “I am only so very happy to get to know you.”
“No apologies required,” I say. “I’m happy to get to know you too, Freddie.”
He glances down at his watch, one of those older, well-dinged watches that so clearly signals careless wealth. “I should go,” he says regretfully. “I need to be on my way to Plymouth for a late dinner. But I couldn’t be this near to you and Delphine without stopping by.”
We’re walking to the front doors now, and we push them open to find a storm has begun pushing its way over the moors, windy and dark. The fog is blowing away, but the air is tossed with leaves and petals, which whisper and sigh together as they move.
We reach his silver Bentley coupe, and he turns to look back at the house.
“These roses,” he says. “They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Has Auden brought them in?”
He must not have seen the village or the south lawn, or he wouldn’t ask such a thing. It would have been obvious that no human could be responsible for such an invasion.
“In a way,” I answer.
“It’s Halloween today. Samhain.” Freddie’s eyes trace over the rose-covered house, taking it in. “For twelve years, I didn’t miss a single Samhain in the chapel. There was a time when I was here for every cross-quarter feast, every ritual. And now—well, I’d forgotten until Daisy mentioned seeing a child in costume at the shop this morning. Isn’t that funny? I used to order my entire life around these days, and now I forget them like the name of a school acquaintance.”
“You never came back,” I guess. “After that Lammas.”
Freddie nods, tearing his eyes away from the house to look at the trees crowding the edge of the drive. “I was furious with Ralph, beyond enraged. It was never enough to gather us to him, to have us, to make us play whatever games he dreamed up. He had to have more—he had to have that door. And the minute it appeared and opened, there was no doubt that it needed to be closed. You could feel it in your marrow, the unnaturalness of it. And even after it struck me down when I tried to close it, Ralph still insisted we go back on Samhain, that we try to close it together. But I wanted nothing more to do with it, I wanted Daisy and Delphine far away from it too, and so we left. I didn’t come back, I didn’t answer Ralph’s calls or emails. He was my oldest friend, and I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up the phone when he called.”
“But you made it up later, right? Your friendship, I mean.”
“Years later,” Freddie sighs. “And it was never the same after that. There was a new distance between us, and with Adelina’s disappearance—with what we thought was a disappearance at the time. He was so haunted by it, so changed, but even that wasn’t enough to endear him to me again, for me to give him any sort of trust.”
“Why did you trust him in the first place?” I ask. “He seemed awful. I mean, for example, he claimed me to Auden and his solicitor, but personally told me nothing and left me nothing. He was cruel and greedy.”
Freddie looks to me, his mouth twisted in the bitteres
t smile I’ve ever seen on him. “There’s no list of adjectives long enough for Ralph. It doesn’t surprise me that he left you nothing—not because he was famously miserly, but because he would have known the pain it would cause Auden to work out what to do, and I think he was very angry with Auden by the end, very angry indeed.” The bitter smile fades into something more thoughtful. “He was cruel and greedy like you say, but he was so much more—charming and sensual and energetic—he made cruelty and greed feel like gifts when he gave them. And he craved cruelty for himself too—it wasn’t as if he was some aggressive god visiting punishments upon his people. He needed pain, periods of being under someone else’s control, and that passed for humility—it was a performance of humility that we all believed. Even when we were at Harrow, he’d ask me or Ingram Hess to—” Freddie stops himself and a flush appears along his already ruddy cheekbones.
I think I know what he was going to say.
“It is hard to describe,” he says after a moment, “if you’ve never known a person like him. It’s hard to describe how someone can be so magnetic—how they can make you feel so deeply and wonderfully alive—when they also sow such misery inside you.”
But I understand. Auden is not Ralph, despite what I’ve said to him in the past, but he is also a tangle of sensuality and cruelty, possession and charm. He is the monster you want under your bed, the footsteps you want behind you in the dark, and I too have given him my trust and my body, even when I shouldn’t.
“I regret that distance between us sometimes. Even knowing now that he caused Adelina’s death, I—” Freddie gives a tattered exhale. “He rang me the night before Samhain, you know, the night before Adelina went missing. I don’t think she was there yet, he must have still been alone, and he left me this voicemail . . . apologizing for everything, saying he’d found a way to close the door and not to worry. He said it had to happen at dusk, when the veil parted, but before anything could come through, and then he asked if I would come down, because he was frightened of doing it alone. Of course, at the time I had no idea he was talking about murdering Adelina, and it didn’t matter anyway. I refused to listen to the voicemail for several days, and by the time I did, it was too late.” He looks very sad then. “If only I’d put aside my anger for thirty seconds and listened to his message, I could have saved Adelina. It is a terrible thought.”
He looks right at me then. “The door has remained shut, hasn’t it? There’s no sign of it coming back?”
He sounds so hopeful and also so worried, and so the lie comes easily. “No sign at all. Maybe it will never come back.”
Freddie gives me a relieved smile. “We can only pray.”
I’m given a hearty handshake and then he leaves, off to Plymouth to adjudicate horse law or whatever it is he does. I’m walking back towards the rose-framed door of the house when his words finally catch up with me, or rather the mistaken assumption in them.
I think of Poe’s dream of Ralph and her mother in the chapel.
Your father wasn’t threatening my mother, Auden.
He was wearing the torc alone in the chapel before she got there . . .
Ralph hadn’t been calling Freddie to tell him he planned to murder Adelina. Ralph had been calling Freddie to tell him he planned to die himself.
He was frightened of doing it alone.
All this time, it had been Ralph walking to the door, not luring Adelina there. I’m not sure how Adelina died, but I don’t think it was Ralph’s plan to kill her. When the time came to make the choice, he chose to offer himself.
Uneasiness ticks through me. Uneasiness that I can’t name at first, not until I get into the house and realize that I haven’t seen Auden since lunchtime, when he told me he was taking Sir James on a walk to the village.
Stop, I tell myself. Stop it.
Auden is as sensible and grounded as he is arrogant. He’s been the one who’s been against any kind of sacrifice or violence from the first. He would never leave Poe behind—he would never leave me behind—not after last night. Not after he left me sore and well-ridden, murmuring in my ear that he loved me as he used me over and over . . .
The uneasiness has cold fingers on my neck, it scratches along the inside of my veins. I start looking for him, in his bedroom, in his office, in the hall. He wouldn’t, I know he wouldn’t, but I need to make sure. I have to make sure. Because he is not only Auden Guest, pouty, gossipy architect, but he is also the wild god, the horned one, the Stag King. He has eyes like the forest and a heart made of thorns, and if he felt he had to, if he thought it was the only way to keep me and Poe and Becket and Rebecca and Delphine safe . . .
When I burst into the library, I see Becket kneeling in prayer. I don’t care that I’m interrupting him.
“Have you seen Auden?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “I can’t find him.”
“We’re not supposed to meet at the chapel until seven,” Rebecca says, coming into the library behind me. “It’s barely past four now.”
I look outside to where the storm has darkened the world, making a true sunset impossible, bringing on an early dusk.
Rebecca takes in a sharp breath, and I glance over to see her looking at the case of artifacts. “The torc is gone,” she says, her voice expressionless.
For a moment, I’m in the chapel on Lammas, collaring Auden’s strong throat with my hands and calling it a crown. We were only playacting then. But now . . .
“Find Poe,” I tell the others. “I’m going to the chapel before it’s too late.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Auden
I’m certain that in days of old, the Thorn Kings were feted and prepared for their sacrifice. I assume there must have been feasting or fasting, sex or sacred abstention, lots of repose or none at all.
Something to mark the person and the day, to mark both of them as holy and apart.
It is not the days of old, however. It is the days of right now. I’ve written emails, snuck in a confession with a defrocked priest, and dropped Sir James Frazer at Abby’s nephew’s house, where he’ll stay for a few days. I’ve got an email to the others in my outbox scheduled to be sent tonight, and it includes Abby’s phone number and when to retrieve Sir James. It also includes the number of my solicitor, a quick explanation of what to expect from my changed will, the brand of Sir James’s favorite dog food, and where I’d like to be buried.
Here, I think.
I want to be buried here.
At any rate, this wild god has finished boarding his dog, and so now it’s time to die.
I’ve gathered all the things I will need earlier today and put them in the poolhouse. I have to shove aside a veritable curtain of thorns and roses to open the door to retrieve them, but soon I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Torc, knife, candles. I’ve even pulled off the jumper underneath my coat and left it neatly folded on a chair. It’s a Brunello Cucinelli, and it’s too nice to bleed on.
The air is cool on my bare chest and stomach as I start walking to the chapel, and the wind flaps at the bottom and sides of my peacoat, searching with restless fingers for my ribs and back. Leaves in every shade of autumn float through the air—leaves the color of the sun, of dried blood, of oranges at Christmas—and dark petals float too.
Apples fall off trees like offerings of the forest as I walk, dropping to the thick blanket of petals with ripe thumps, and petals keep catching in my hair, keep fluttering like a lover’s fingers against my naked chest. It is like a parade, a procession, my very own Roman triumph. Except instead of citizens, I have trees.
And instead of captives, I have only myself.
There, finally, is my answer. The answer I’ve been looking for since St. Sebastian left me, the answer I’ve been searching for since I was twelve. What unites the two halves of me? What joins the teeth in the night to the tenderness, the love, the sacrifice?
It can only be a humble heart.
Love can be bent and stained, can justify all manner of pain and mayhem, and tenderne
ss can be contingent, arbitrary, fleeting—but humility stays true because it can only ever be itself. It tempers arrogance, lust, and possession; it transmutes my roughest, basest urges into something cohesive and whole. I can have all of it—the kink, the love, the possession—all of it in one body and one heart, so long as I see humility as a gift.
I felt like a general when I knelt to pleasure St. Sebastian.
And I feel like a king now when I walk to the door to die for my friends.
There is power in this kind of submission. A power that means every part of me can be used for good—even the parts of me that would eat the world raw if left untrammeled. And maybe that is the lesson of the Year King, of the Babylonian kings who were slapped during Akitu, of monarchs who kneel to be anointed. Power must come with humility.
They cannot be picked apart. They should not.
I will not.
I’m greeted by the faint beating of drums as I walk through the stone row to the altar. In my world, thunder rolls incessantly, a giant celestial drum of my own. Flashes of bright white lightning briefly etch every bloom and dangling hip into stark, unearthly lines.
It’s dim enough with the storm and oncoming dusk that I can make out the torchlight flickering from across the threshold of the door. I stare at it a moment before I begin . . . I wonder if this means someone is on the other side. Fairies or gods or past kings, maybe. Sisters who loved necklaces or peddlers looking for new wares. Loyal knights who chose to stay with their queens.
I also wonder what unlucky quirk of geography or physics or the intersection of the two means that the door has to be here, in my valley, and made heaven or hell or fairyland or an alternate dimension or whatever it fucking is my family’s responsibility.
And really, who can ever say if it was luck or if it was fate?
Both of them are cruel enough to have done it.
I brought out lanterns a few days before, and I arrange them now, setting candles inside and lighting them as we did on Imbolc and Beltane. I make a circle which encloses the altar, with the circle’s northernmost point against the door, where eerie torches glow and lightning arcs through the sky, just like here.
Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4) Page 35
