by Prue Batten
Lalita’s eyes filled. I like her. Against all my intentions, I can see what Kholi loved. ‘Was he happy, Adelina, near the end?’
‘Happy? Yes. In as much as one could be happy when one’s young friend has just died and one’s other friends suffer because of it. But were we happy together? Oh, beyond doubt. We were to be married in the Raj in time.’ She looked down at her left hand where Phelim’s lover’s knot ring glistened on her marriage finger. ‘But it was not fated to be. I was unaware that I carried Kholi’s child for a long while, you know. Prison does that to you. You lose touch with your body and your mind. Inevitably though Isabella was born and I thank the day because she is so like her father. She’s a ray of light that binds Phelim and I completely by our love for her.’
‘She is very like you as well.’ Lalita looked across at the infant who lay asleep on Gallivant’s lap, the lamps making spidery shadows of the child’s dark eyelashes.
‘And you,’ replied Adelina. ‘Muirnin, I shall cherish this day.’
Amongst many things, they spoke about Isolde and about the charms.
‘Are you afraid?’ Adelina touched Lalita’s hand.
‘Yes. She is a vicious woman, be under no illusion. She will kill us all if the chance arises. I try to think of a way out of this siege and I cannot for I’m a mere mortal and must trust to Jasper. The charms are bound up in it all and it makes it even worse. Finnian and I wish to see them destroyed, Adelina. But for myself, my wish began the day I found out about Isabella. I wanted to protect her for Kholi.’
‘And yet they are indestructible.’
‘I know. But there must be a way. I would give my life to find it.’
Adelina sat back, frowning. ‘Would you? My dear, I’m aghast. Isabella has just discovered her aunt. Leave it to the Others. They have a way about them. I have lived to see it, I can tell you.’ The elegant fingers bunched into the universal sign against bad fortune. ‘Let’s not talk about this now. Not tonight. We must savour what we have in the here and now.’
Lalita found she agreed with her new sister-friend. This was a night for celebration, not tears. ‘Phelim doesn’t mind about Kholi?’ she asked.
Adelina gave her husky laugh. ‘Why should he? Kholi is dead and Phelim is vital and alive. No, he is too good a man to mind. He shall never begrudge my love for Isabella’s father and he knows I shall always love him as much as my heart is able. But Phelim saved my mind, he saved me and he saved my babe. Your brother, Lalita, was the wisest, most generous man and I know he would never wish for the child and I to live alone and lonely.’ She smiled and the corner of the room lit as if the fog had rolled away. ‘But enough about us, I want to hear about you. There is a bond between you and Liam’s twin. I see it and you can never gainsay a Traveller’s intuition. And do you know, I am content. It closes that broken and torn circle.
‘But you are wrong Adelina,’ Lalita looked at her brother’s lover. ‘There is nothing between us, nothing at all.’
Lalita struggled to sleep. Adelina had unsettled her even more. Happy beyond doubt with having held her niece, delighted to bond with the child’s mother, she had thought she would be content for this night. But her conscience tossed her from one side of the bed to the other. Finnian had done no wrong. More than that – he had been valorously right. Did it matter in the end who delivered the charms to safety? It didn’t matter to Isabella. Was she, Lalita, so small-minded that she must lay claim to the deed? Does he mean something to me then? Do I crave his attention? His affection? She threw herself to the colder side of her bed, the divan creaking in response. What about love? For a flick of a minute she lay very still. I’m not sure I could survive his love. It is tempestuous and tortured and besides, if I make my feelings known, what if he should reject me?
Her stomach was in knots on waking and she jumped from the bed and vomited into a bowl. She retched and retched again until her stomach was purged and on looking in her small mirror, saw a pallid face grimace back and so pinched her cheeks viciously, biting her lips to infuse them with colour. To little avail as she vomited again and Ebba put her head round the door.
‘Poorly are you, muirnin?’
‘I must have eaten something. I am so queasy.’ Lalita lay back on her bed as the carlin wrung out a cloth and laid it on her forehead.
‘Hmm. I think not, child. None of the others are sick and we ate the same food.’
‘Then it’s tension, anxiety over the charms and over Isolde.’
Ebba’s mouth turned down. ‘Well, that could be true. Aine knows you have every reason. But tell me Lalita, how long have you felt like this?’
‘Some days. But it will pass.’
‘Oh indeed it will pass, muirnin. Forgive me if I am wrong, but could you be just a little with child?’
Lalita’s stomach, so lately ill, sank to her toes with a thump.
‘Perhaps two weeks, maybe less?’ the carlin pushed.
No! ‘But it’s too soon, surely.’ No!
‘Sometimes it can show earlier. It can depend on any number of imponderables, not the least of which is how sensitive the mother might be. Phelim’s brother?’
Lalita nodded. Oh what have I done? Aine help me, this is the worst…
Ebba clucked, a measure of delight in the homely sound. ‘As my dear Adelina says, it closes the circle. Blessings on you, muirnin. Goodness, why do you cry?’
Lalita felt as if her heart would break, sobs reaching to choke her throat. ‘Because he hates me. I’ve let him believe I abhor him like the plague and I’ve been indescribable.’
‘Have you indeed?’
Lalita nodded. ‘Besides, we are in a state of siege. Somewhere out there is a woman who wishes to wipe every trace of Finnian from the face of the world.’ Her hand crept over her stomach. ‘She would kill Finnian’s child as quick as she would kill him.’
‘Maybe and if that is the case, then you must tell him you carry his babe. If he’s half a man, he will forgive you everything when he finds out. Now I shall get Margriet to give you some dry toast and ginger tea and I guarantee in an hour you will look as fresh as Jasper’s daisies.’
His child. She growled, a defeated sound, throwing her head back on the pillow. What am I but some whore? This is surely proof. She clasped her hands tightly together, feeling the bones wrap around each other. So I must tell him. And what shall he say? For he hates me and would not want me as the mother to his child. What shall I do?
‘It’s fixable,’ Ebba had said, in that no nonsense manner of a grandmother. But perhaps it was fixable in other ways? The woman was a carlin, she would know how to abort the infant.
Lalita gazed out her window, seeing herself on a bed, drinking some noxious draught and the carlin holding her as the seedling was stripped away. She watched herself writhing with the cramps and heard the carlin say, ‘There there muirnin, it will pass.’
Her hand pressed against her stomach, trying to feel the shape of the life that had been created, half of it hers, half of it his and she knew for her part that she couldn’t rid herself of it, that even if he rejected her and the babe, that she would be its mother, that she would love it and no matter what, she would try to do whatever she could to make sure its life was as perfect and safe as Finnian’s own had not. She would create a new family branch, extend what she had been given with Isabella and her mother, maybe even the rest – Phelim, Gallivant, Ebba. Even Jasper.
But now she must draw as deep inside her as she had when Kholi had died. As when she found herself in the harem, or when her uncle had farewelled her at The Gate of a Thousand Promises. Even when Phaeton had been killed and the Kislar Agha told her that her uncle and aunt had been murdered. What a life! Filled with pain and yet here I stand on the other side, a child inside me and the need to convince its father that I have wronged him, that I have feelings for him.
So many reasons to destroy the paperweights that had them all hanging over the abyss by their fingernails.
‘Finnian please, bef
ore you go about your business, may I have a moment?’ Lalita reached for the muscled arm and touched it, aghast at the sexual tension clutching her belly as she did so.
‘Be quick, Lalita. Phelim waits for me.’ Finnian’s voice froze the air and she almost shrank away in defeat.
But she wouldn’t be denied, so took a breath and began. ‘Finnian, I owe you such an apology. No please, don’t be so. Don’t make me grovel. I have been so arrogant, so ungracious. To owe someone your life requires infinite loyalty in return and it is what I owe you, more than I could ever imagine. Please,’ she reached for his arm again and held it as he tried to pull away. ‘I’m sorry.’
He stood, a dark tower of a man and she longed for him to soften, to smile and accept her abjectness. But he nodded – almost contemptuously, and her stomach writhed. ‘Your apology is noted.’ He brushed past.
‘Finnian,’ her voice wavered and she swallowed on a tear, furious with her wayward emotions for betraying her. She dared not look but was sure he stood at the gate of the stable yard and she knew she had only one chance now and so she walked to him, touched his back and then reached for his hand, lacing her fingers in his, taking confidence from the way he let them slide through and from the way his own curled and locked, imprisoning her hand in his grasp. He turned and looked down at her and the tear rolled and she allowed it to run. His finger came up and he caught it and then he bent and kissed her.
‘Is Isabella what you thought? Was she worth your trouble?’ Finnian sat beside her, one leg stretched out, the other with his arm hooked over.
Lalita stared at the garden as if the infant should come toddling around the corner on her little dimpled legs. ‘Yes. Unequivocally. She’s an incarnation of my brother.’
Finnian plucked daisies from the grass and began fashioning a chain, his fingernail slicing a narrow eye in the stem through which he poked the next stem, the chain growing, a small pile of snowflakes falling on each other in a pile at his side. Every now and then he would glance beyond the fog, shifting when thunder rumbled in the distance. ‘Isabella reminds me of what I have missed with no childhood. A mother’s arms, a mother’s words. What it must be to hear a mother’s voice whisper loving nonsense as one drifts into sleep as Isabella does. I swear if I ever have a child it will have such love. It’s the difference between Heaven and Hell and I’ve known both.’
This is the moment… but I cannot.
Some perverse streak held her back from sharing her condition, some notion to do with the threat beyond them and the charms. She knew if she told him, that he would be capable of locking her in a room where she and his child would be safe from danger. He shall know but not yet. ‘Finnian,’ she said. ‘You have your own family now. What does it feel like?
‘Odd. Different to Isolde, for sure.’ He looked at the daisies scattered around.
‘I keep forgetting that she is yours and Phelim’s grandmother.’ A trickle of fear slid down her back.
‘You know what they say – one is at liberty to choose one’s friends. One doesn’t however, have the same liberty to choose one’s family.’
‘And which am I now, Finnian? Your friend or your family?’
‘As the aunt of my step-niece, you’re family I suppose. As my lover, you must be my friend.’
The arrogance was unmistakable but she let it pass. ‘I owe you so much for my life – apologies, gratitude.’
‘That’s the stuff of acquaintance, not friendship.’
‘I miss your affection, Finnian.’ It was a mere whisper and she kept her eyes down, still not wanting to believe they were each other’s yet. There was still too much acid and irony. But his fingers moved to finish the daisy chain and loop it over her head so that she was forced to look at him.
‘And I yours, muirnin. There’s been a vast measure of distrust, hasn’t there?’ He stood and pulled her up. ‘Let’s go further to the orchard away from here.’ They wandered until they found a secret place.
‘Finnian, will she kill us all?’ She pulled at the clover around her, trying to find the lucky one – for only then would she truly believe in good fortune and her child’s safety.
‘She will try to kill me without doubt and if you get in her way she will kill you. But Jasper has a care. You must not be afraid.’ He looped the chain from around her neck to place it twice around her head.
She played with a three-leaf clover, slipping in a leaf from another to make it four, trying to create luck. She felt no ease from his words. ‘The charms, Finnian. They must go and soonest.’
He nodded. ‘I think it is beyond Jasper, Lalita.’
She tried not to look at him because she knew that he would say he would run with them, far from here and with Isolde behind. The clovers blurred before her, but surprisingly he changed the subject, holding the idea of the charms at arm’s length.
He dug in his pocket. ‘Lalita, this is for you. I stole it from Curiosa because it struck a chord with me. The crescent moon is the Moonlady and I saw the two stars in an entirely fanciful way, deciding they were you and I. I want you to think of us when you look at it.’ He took her hand and folded the fingers out flat, laying the nightime paperweight on her palm and it sparkled as her eyes filled, tears creating a faceted illumination of the striking glass ball, the pair of stars gleaming in their folds of night and the quarter moon drifting weightlessly in the surreal little world.
She remembered back to the seraglio when she had girded herself with the courage of a queen and drew on that now, knowing deep in her heart that something she could not lay her finger on might be short-lived. ‘I have a poem, Finnian. One that matches the paperweight. Shall I tell it?’
He nodded.
Injecting levity into her voice, she began.
‘The lady moon came down one night,
She did, you shouldn’t doubt it.
A lovely lady dressed in blue, I’ll tell you all about it.
They hurried my sister and I to bed, and Auntie said well maybe
that lovely moon up overhead will bring you down a baby.’
Finnian tilted her chin to press his lips against hers, rolling her underneath his body. The day passed into evening and she loved every minute of it and fell asleep exhausted, content that their joined hands lay on her belly where their child grew. I will tell you, Finnian. Soon.
.
Chapter Twenty Three
The path to the lake wound like a river in and out of the orchard and through a densely wooded coppice. The trees hid the stretch of water from on-comers – indeed the shadows were so deep and intimidating as to surely house eldritch beings. Finnian had left Lalita unwillingly and his last sight of her had been a soft form covered in falling white blossom, a sight as pretty and memorable as any he could have.
As he entered the grove, eyes followed him but he was left alone. He cloaked himself in glamour and was another shadow amongst many. The fog parted about his body as he walked, his heart clamouring, hoping that Jasper’s enchantment stretched so much further, just till he, Finnian, had time to find an answer. The oaks, elms and ashes hung over him in a whispering canopy and the harsh beat of wings, like applause from a solitary onlooker, caused him to glance up and spot the snow-white owl leaving its perch. You follow me, do you? And why is that? What sight do you have, bird? What would you tell me if you could?
The lake almost sang to Finnian, as if it were a roane, a veela, or a selkie – drawing him on. Something intangible seemed to waft on the night air, something other than the ribbons of mist that wound amongst the trees, looping over his shoulders and around his legs. He knew he had made the right choice to leave the softness of Lalita’s side – tonight an answer would unfold now there was so much at stake. He sat on a log as bleached as the moon, detritus of wind and flood and which could have revealed a life-story of the silken swathe before him. He was glad the fog stretched so far, farther than he could see and for a moment he wondered at the depth of frustration that Isolde must be feeling for he knew what s
he was like when thwarted. Nothing moved near him and an unnatural silence pervaded, giving him a moment to ponder further.
A door had opened in his life allowing all manner of things to enter – things he’d barely countenanced. Things like hope, companionship, family. He gave a grunt, almost a guffaw but soft in the dark air, a small explosion of wonder. Is this what you wanted, Moonlady? Is this what you meant when you said find something to value and therein find self-worth?
As he sat on the shoreline, foam rolled in and out where a breeze rubbed waves against the banks, a ruffle of beige revealing itself. Bubbles of froth glittered and tiny spheres rose to burst in a shower of minute luminosity, lit only by a small moonbeam that broke through the mists. He lifted his hand and a bubble settled on it and as he turned it in the weak lunar light, he thought he could see the image of a dark-haired mother, a babe across her lap. Fanciful, he mused and blew on the bubble gently, watching it float away to be swallowed by the dark over the lake.
The stretch of water rippled in the welkin wind as he endeavoured to see what lay beyond the shadows of the further water. Still he felt the resonance and contrived to see why. Lighter and darker ripples lay across the lake’s surface and as he studied the patterns in the distance, he saw something else.
Another shadow altogether.
The lake mist parted, revealing a magnificent shoreline frosted with trees touched silver. Two shapes stood immobile, dark, unrecognizable. An arm moved in a distant salute. Finnian jumped up and strode to the water’s edge but the miasma returned, enfolding the far-off shore, the figures disappearing into it. He was left alone again, a familiar sense of deep regret returning. But at last the puzzle unrolled before him like a precious scroll and with an unambiguous message.
He turned to go, loss settling as a bitter aftertaste in his mouth with the profound discovery. Now he knew with unequivocal certainty what had to be done.
