by S G Dunster
“Stop that,” Thessaly said, taking the shift from Guzal. “I can dress myself. You must dress, too.”
Guzal’s brows shot up.
“Rosalie,” Thessaly said, turning to the two women who stood in the door still, as if waiting to be invited in, when before they’d burst into her room without permission. “Do you have a gown to spare for Guzal? I believe you two are of a size, or close to.”
Rosalie’s eyes widened. She nodded, but didn’t move, as if waiting for some explanation. Guzal stood frozen in place.
“Guzal no longer serves at our pleasure,” Thessaly announced. “She is a woman equal to any in this room, and if she chooses to continue to serve,” she turned back to Guzal, “it will be for pay.”
Guzal stared, shook her head. “I’m your father’s slave.”
“No more.”
“When he comes back—”
“By that time,” Thessaly said, “I expect I’ll have many tools at my disposal, and that not many will presume to cross my will. Antonio as well.” She gazed at Guzal. “You are free. Now. Forever. I should have insisted long ago.”
A tear slipped down Guzal’s cheek. She wiped it away with an almost savage movement.
“Brava,” Beatrice said softly.
Slowly, quietly, Rosalie came to Thessaly and folded her in soft arms. “You are like nobody I know, Thessaly.” She turned to Guzal and gathered her close for a moment, too.
Guzal allowed the embrace, then stepped out of it, gently removing Rosalie’s hands.
“Supper will be served shortly,” Beatrice said briskly. “Are we attending, or asking for food brought up to our room?”
“I’d like to see the Abbess’s face when you make such a request,” Guzal said. “We shall dress. I shall dress you.”
“And you shall accept pay for it,” Beatrice said.
Guzal hesitated, then nodded as she spread out the yards of white cotton of Thessaly’s clean shift.
“I’ll go get a dress for Guzal to wear.”
“I’m no fine lady,” Guzal said. “I’ve no need of velvets and silks. Perhaps I’ll have a nice woolen dress made after my first pay.”
“Blue,” Rosalie gushed.
“Or pink, or yellow. I shall see what I feel like.” A beatific smile broke suddenly over her face. She hid it by bowing her head in concentration over arranging the laces on the gold silk overdress she’d retrieved.
Beatrice and Rosalie left for Beatrice’s room as Guzal took the soiled clothing from Thessaly’s back, then she washed Thessaly’s body. A musk of old incense filled the air.
Thessaly did not feel in the mood to be dressed up like a fine lady here, but the pain of the tightly-laced chest-panel felt like penance. She submitted quietly as Guzal very carefully and silently dressed her in her finest gown—indigo velvet embroidered in seed pearls over ornate silver brocade, silver-embroidered slippers, and an indigo velvet headpiece with silver lace to crown her head.
Silently, she oiled and coiled Thessaly’s curls until they fell perfectly down her back. Silently, she bound up the front in a silver silk net. As she set the piece on top of Thessaly’s head, her eyes roamed Thessaly’s face carefully, as if looking for moles or lice. “You must look a saint tonight,” she said finally. “Everyone expects it.”
“I’m no saint,” Thessaly replied dully, “and well you know it.”
“You are not, nor am I, but you must look it,” Guzal replied. She turned away, but not before Thessaly saw her face crumple.
“It’s not your fault,” Thessaly said. Her voice, her body, trying so hard to contain what she felt, was wooden. Stiff.
“Aye, it’s not anybody’s save those horrid wytches,” Guzal replied, wiping a tear with a fierce brush of her hand. “But I’ll never forget the sight of . . .” her voice trailed off, and Thessaly was glad. The sight of burning, screaming women? Burning, screaming knights? A belly torn open, a child ripped from the womb, screaming? She would never forget them either, the way the governor of Goa never forgot his first taste of betel and lived until his death with teeth stained red as blood.
The things she felt. The things she wanted. They were terror.
I am no saint, she thought, looking in the small handheld mirror Guzal held up. I am exactly the thing I burned.
She walked into the refectory, and the room stilled.
She felt foolish, walking into an abbey refectory amongst habits, homespun, and the ink-stained garments of second sons and scholars, wearing a crown and finery. But all hushed, and the faces turned to her said they believed her sainthood.
Her godfather waited at the table, Rosalie by his side, Beatrice further down. Beatrice gave her a look—grave concern. Rosalie rose slowly, walked to Thessaly, and laid a hand on her arm. “I am so glad,” she said, her voice shaking. “So glad, Thessaly. We thought you’d never wake up.”
Thessaly allowed Rosalie to embrace her, keeping her muscles and periphery iron as the flames touched and tasted, warming the velvet against her skin, trying to catch at a wisp of Rosalie’s gold hair.
Rosalie pulled away, finally, looking a bit perturbed. Thessaly gave her a smile and sat next to Henri.
He touched her sleeve, and without thinking she jerked it away.
“So it is,” he said to her quietly. “You contain them now.”
Thessaly stared at him. “How . . . . What do you mean?”
“Lady DuCarne robbed you of your magicks. You took them back, along with hers. They were bound in the circle, so you took all of theirs with you. I’ll hazard you are feeling a lot right now.” His pale grey eyes were not happy, not funning. “It hurts, I’d imagine.”
“Godfather,” Thessaly said slowly. “You do not work magicks, yet you know so much.” She rested her hand for a moment in her palm. “Please, if you have anything that may help, find it quick and send it.”
“I shall stay until you are better,” Holystoan replied, putting a hand on the small of her back for a moment. “Or I shall take you back with me, as you wish.”
“Perhaps you ought to take me back,” Thessaly said.
“Aye. If that is what you desire.” He patted her and sat back in his chair. “I shall make the arrangements tonight.”
Thessaly felt an odd relief, and a sadness with it. Hodge, Rye, Robert, and Thom all sat watching her, waiting. As she looked his way Hodge put his hands on his head in the shape of a crown and gave her a brow wiggle.
In any other lifetime, it would have made her feel better, prompted her to rip the piece from her hair and toss it at him. Right now, though . . .
It was not funny.
Beatrice didn’t think so either. She brought her knife to her mouth in quick, abrupt strokes, scowling slightly. She was worried, Thessaly thought. About her? For her?
Thessaly knew she had a room of her own at the abbey now. Dunne’s Tor was emptied, and Hele and Jivette were also taken in, but hadn’t come to dinner. What of them?
Thessaly couldn’t eat. Her insides were iron as much as her outsides, appetites contained. Hungers abated. She had to staunch all of them if she were to staunch any. She ate just to make a show of eating, and she was growing too slender for her gowns. But the frumenty, the fish and fruit and cheese—no doubt a concession to Holystoan’s presence, and perhaps even brought to the abbey by him—went down tasteless as hard bread.
She sat. Ate. Swallowed.
And realized she did not know why. Why was she breathing in? Why was she breathing out? Why did she swallow? What use was it to fix a body when what it contained was so black, so dark, and ought to have burned in the fire with the wytches? Certainly it ought to have burned rather than the brave knights?
A slow, long note sounded through the refectory. For a moment, Thessaly felt like she watched it from a distance—that long note, golden, shimmering in the water cups, glinting in Rosalie’s curls. It held, and then it pulled.
And then, she looked at him.
Dark hair, curling to his neck. Dark, kno
wing eyes, wise smile, and a bow.
He brought it up, and then, holding her gaze across the room, danced it over the strings in an impossible, raucous, playful, lovely spate of longing notes that sung up and down her, filling her with laughter and gold and silver, with hunger and joy.
He turned his gaze from her to others, walking down the spaces between the tables, playing, at times leaning over one of the sisters as she patted his cheek with a chuckle.
But Thessaly was caught, gone.
The fire took over.
She screamed as it seared her inside. Tears poured over her face. She fell and began to shake.
Rosalie shouted. Henri grasped her shoulder.
Hywell was at her side. There was a roar of talking, a tug of different touches, pulling. Rosalie grabbed her face and then yelped, backing away. “She’s hot.”
“A fever,” Hywell said, moving behind to lift her. “I shall take her to my mother. She knows fevers like this.”
“She must be exorcized anew,” Father Bernard declared, striding toward her. “There are demons left in her.”
“No,” Hywell said, his voice sharp, his eyes fixed on Thessaly’s dark, deep, calm. “Look at me. Look at me, Thessaly.”
She did, and something deep stirred inside her. Deep and calm.
A flow of something entered her. Cool. Far. Wild, chasing up and down her body, through her floes.
Loose, she thought. Floes loose.
He looked through her, into her, and his touch was giving it to her, the cool to counter the warm, the breath to counter the flesh, the blood to counter the fire. She sank into a warm, deep, dark place, and his hands tightened around her.
“My ma will know what to do,” he insisted at Henri’s quiet, worried tones. “I shall take her. You may come if you wish, just allow her to try—“
She felt the world go by. Forest passed, shadows. She landed in a soft straw-scented bed with sheep-sweat blankets. The smells mingled with that of damp earth and cows and fowl.
Eseld’s face wavered over her. “Moon purge,” Thessaly heard her murmur to another face—familiar but not, bent over her other side. “But before that, grave’s dirt from the men she buried. She’ll swallow that bitter, but the bitterness’ll keep her contained.”
Thessaly refused the sludgy dark concoction: breath, fire, flesh, blood. Eseld relentlessly tipped it down her throat, and she screamed as it went down—it stabbed, it tore her.
And then, slowly, the world righted. It came into focus—dark eyes, watching, calm. “Eseld,” she rasped.
“Not so much,” the voice replied, warm and melodic.
Hywell, Thessaly thought, as the shape became clearer—a clean-cut man’s jaw, not the softer curve of Eseld’s, and curls of dark hair under the stronger nose, along the cheeks and chin.
He smiled.
“You are very like your mother,” Thessaly said.
“So I warned you,” he replied. His eyes warmed for a moment, then he turned to look across the room.
“She wakes,” Eseld sighed, and came to her. “The full moon’s nearly back. Do you bleed with the moon?”
Thessaly didn’t understand fully what she asked for a moment, and then was taken aback. She looked at Eseld, then, hesitantly, at Hywell. He looked back at her calmly. He didn’t care, she realized. He wasn’t made uncomfortable at the mention of bleeding, nor at carrying her, nor even at finding her running through the abbey clad in a chemise. He was not moved by much, it seemed. Yet, he moved others so easily.
“Well?” Eseld asked, her brow folding in anxious lines.
“Aye,” Thessaly said. “With the moon.”
Eseld blew out a gust of air, like she’d been holding it inside, and seemed to wilt slightly in relief. “That’s good and well,” she said, “or else we’d have to lay you out under the stairs a few months until you did. In two days’ time, we shall purge you of what you took when you burned those cailleach. Do you understand?”
“Are you both wytches, then?” She frowned at Hywell.
Hywell laughed, or not quite—it was a small thing, a gust of air between teeth. “What a question that is,” he said. “Wytch. A hairy word for something that’ll paint the world entire in fire, if we’re not careful. Do you know what a purge of magicks is?”
“Not really,” Thessaly replied.
“You shall, and it will not be pleasant. Yet it will be far more pleasant than keeping such poison inside.” Hywell leaned over her, gazed at her for a long moment. “I feel it with you,” he said. “And I’m sorry for you.” He touched her hair, rose, turned, and walked out the door.
Thessaly let out a breath of her own. “I feel . . . cooler,” she said. “More . . . held back. The things I took, they were asking me to hurt. To burn.”
“He gave you some of his,” Eseld said. “He’s always been of the air and blood, that one. Sees in dreams and animals know him. Like water, all thirst after him, his songs, and fair trouble he can have with it, especially when it comes to girls fancying and men following. He has to keep his careful distance, or he wytches people into doing his every word. It’s an heirloom, passed down many a generation. The Ddas always lead, and always bring men to love or war.”
Thessaly chewed this over, looking into eyes as knowing and as calm as her son’s. “That’s trouble,” she agreed finally. “But it can be useful, too. It’s good to know about that,” she added quickly. “A relief, actually.”
Eseld threw her head back and laughed hard—a bright, warm sound that nearly matched Hywell’s. “Magicks are useful and troubling. They give one way and cut another.” She sighed, smiled. “It will turn out right. Just a bit chancy at the mo. Your godfather will be by to see you later. Rest, that’s the advice I give.” She patted Thessaly’s breastbone and rose.
“May I . . .” Thessaly looked around the room, trying to see anything she might read. There were no books, only drying or dried herbs, censers, pots for cooking, cloths folded, linens. Food, piled on a table for cutting. “Never mind.”
“Try to sleep,” Eseld said. “What’s inside you’ll wear you out fast enough without other things to steal your spirit.”
It was restful, the woman’s purposeful bustling, the simple tasks she made of cutting, shaping loaves. A woman came in with a sickly child, and she made a poultice. Still, Thessaly was a little restless, itching for movement. And as Eseld touched things, stirred things, folded things, Thessaly could sense floes going out of her, seeping into what she made and glowing there, small lights.
Feeling. It was stuffed full, her body. Of feeling. She still sensed the desire, the torrent of hot appetite, beneath the cool, fresh water Hywell had given her.
That’s what it was like, a rolling ocean. Calm, cool. Brushing with feathers of wind.
Did everyone feel the floes differently, then? The women of fire thirsted. Hywell had an ocean inside. And she, ice and flame.
His floes inside felt intimate and roused her in ways different from the burning appetite they smothered. Her heart beat hard, deep, and her eyes seemed to water.
She buried her head in her pillow and tried to sleep.
Someone entered—Thessaly knew who it was, without looking. His very shadow, crossing her, was enough to fill her with too much feeling, running over. Tears spilled across her face. She pulled the pillow tighter over so that nobody would see. She wasn’t weeping, and it wasn’t anything . . . just too much feeling. She’d been overflowed.
“Play,” Eseld said, quietly.
The song started up a moment later, soothing, quiet, tender. The viol.
It sang through her, and made her full and warm, and took the floes in calm waves through her. She sniffed, tasted her tears, and closed her eyes. She didn’t sleep, but her heart slowed and stopped bruising her so deep with each beat, and she rested.
Henri came a few hours later. He bent over her bed and woke her with a cool hand on her cheek.
She stared up into his grey eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said
.
He shook his head. “I’ve got the carriage ready. If you feel rested.”
“I—” Thessaly looked at Eseld, then at Hywell. “I think I shall stay a few more days.”
Henri raised an eyebrow slightly. “You fell in the refectory. What good will a few days serve you better? You need rest, good food. Comfort.”
“Aye, and some help I hope Eseld might provide,” Thessaly said. After a moment, Henri nodded and rose. “I was quite looking forward to having you to myself for a while,” he said. “But,” he smiled, nodded at Eseld, “whatever will make my dear goddaughter easy. And if there is some cure,” he nodded again, this time his gaze more penetrating, cocking his head slightly, “I shall be glad of it.” He turned to Thessaly. “I shall remain in town. I have matters to attend to.”
“The abbey,” Thessaly said, shivering. “The DuCarnes.”
“The Duke has been taken to London. To the tower.”
Thessaly nodded. The twisted feeling edged back into her gut. The tower was a last stop for most. What if the king should hear of her part in the affair? Surely burning half a dozen knights was equal to the crimes the DuCarnes had wrought, however unintentional it was.
She remembered again the feeling, the joy that had come with the power streaming through her veins, exploding from her fingers in a plume of gorgeous flame, the satisfaction as great knights sizzled in her path.
She had liked it. She had enjoyed being a monster.
Chapter 19
S
hem got a good rest, drowsing in the small space. She got a bedstead all to her own. Eseld and Brian, her husband, shared the other, and two girls bedded down near Hywell, who lay by the fire on a sheep’s skin. Hywell’s younger sisters. Thessaly tried not to watch the fire play over his lean figure, sprawled in sleep, the dark curls falling over his face.
