Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 3, Issue 4

by Melina Marchetta

  ‘Later,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Do you believe in curses and damnation, Lady Celie?’ Argus Laraunt asked, and she saw fear in his eyes.

  Celie shuddered. ‘Oh Mr Laraunt, I’m a Lumateran. My people were torn apart for ten years because of curses and damnation. I’m not the one to ask such a question of.’

  After a sombre supper where the castle guests were reminded of how small a party they had become, Celie excused herself and returned to the Chamber of Chronicles where she had spent most of her time since her arrival at Ferragost Castle. She enjoyed her time in this room of two tiers. It was a smallish space with a bench at its centre, surrounded by shelves laden with manuscripts. A set of winding steps led up to an even smaller upper level where chronicles of great colour and depths were piled high to the ceiling. There seemed to be no proper order to them, although at times, it seemed as if someone had tried.

  Belegonia prided itself on having collected the oldest books in the land, pilfered most of the time from other kingdoms. There were sacred books written in every language. Tales of adventure and mystery. And those with sketches that made Celie’s face burn from their carnal images. Despite her knowledge of only the Lumateran and Belegonian languages, Celie understood some of the words written. Every kingdom in the land of Skuldenore used the same lettering, despite the different tongues spoken.

  But Celie wasn’t here to study pages of lascivious acts or stories of suspense from the Ancients. She was determined to find a chronicle for the Lumateran Priestking written by the Yuts in the third century. So on her arrival, she had begun searching for perhaps a record of every manuscript kept in this chamber, but found nothing to fit such a description. She did find, however, Mr Borealis Luby’s official recordings during his time as Seneschal of Ferragost Main six years past. It didn’t surprise her that he was a sloppy scribe, judging from the pages she read.

  Despite a relentless wind that rattled the window and whistled with fury, Celie stayed well into the night with just the wick of her candle as a companion. She couldn’t help but notice the references of Castellan Banyon in one of the Ferragost Main records. There seemed to have been no love lost between Borealis Luby and the Castellan judging from what Mr Luby had written two years past when decisions were being made to appoint a warden on the isle. By this time Borealis Luby was in the employ of the Duchess and seemed to be quite the decision maker on the Main.

  Celie was halfway through reading a horrifying account of Ferragost justice when she heard a sound in the passageway. She went to call but chose to stay silent. Instead, she extinguished the candle, and staying as still as possible, Celie waited. She heard the sound of footsteps stop outside the chamber and then the long eerie cry of the door opening. And so Celie hid. She called it a premonition or the voice of her goddess in her ear, but whatever it was, she knelt under the bench. She felt her chemise wet against her knee, but she didn’t dare move, her eyes on the wall, watching the flicker of the intruder’s flame bounce across the room.

  It was the sight of the brown knee-length buskins that informed Celie that the Castellan was standing before her. Unlike Argus Laraunt who changed his style at a whim, the Castellan wore the same uniform each day. Dark woollen trousers beneath a brown tunic and his sturdy buskins. Celie felt the pounding inside her chest and kept a hand to her mouth. The Castellan didn’t seem to move and she heard the slow turn of a page of one of the books left on the table. She should have called out when she had a chance, but what had stopped her? Isn’t that what her brother would say? ‘Our Celie always has to make everything more than it is.’ But in an empty castle, the corridors seemed longer, the spaces seemed more haunted, the imagination grew wilder and the memory of Borealis Luby’s corpse on those rocks and her first morning in the Castellan’s chamber made Celie wary.

  When the footsteps turned and retreated she waited and it was some time before she crawled out from under the table. Using her hand as a guide Celie made her way to the door, relieved that it stood half open and that she’d be able to leave the room without having made a single sound. But not even a moment later, she saw the shadow of a man on the wall.

  The Castellan stepped before her, his face illuminated by the single flame of the candle he held. A white scar zigzagged across his chin. Dark eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  ‘Would you like me to accompany you to your chamber, Lady Celie?’

  He had a joyless voice. It matched a face perpetually in a state of impassiveness. This close he seemed younger than she first imagined, although he certainly had a good ten years on her. With a stocky build, the soldier in him had ensured this body had maintained its strength. He wore his hair surprisingly cropped for a Belegonian. Tidy. Controlled.

  ‘Yes, of course, Mr Banyon. My candle burned low and I was attempting to find another in one of the nooks behind the shelves,’ she lied. ‘I thought I heard something.’

  The narrowing of his stare said it all.

  ‘I’d prefer you didn’t wander the castle at night, Lady Celie,’ he said, his voice lower in tone than any man she had ever heard. ‘The Duchess has taken to her bed and we don’t want the King and his people arriving to a household so low in spirit. Perhaps you can spend your day instructing the cook and the village women to prepare for the arrival of the King’s party. That should keep you busy.’

  ‘I’m not one for giving instruction, Sir.’

  His look was dismissive.

  ‘You’re the daughter of a Flatland Lord, Lady Celie. I’m sure you are used to giving such instruction. If not, perhaps you can persuade the Duchess to teach you. She seems to have mastered the art of giving orders.’

  They reached her chamber, he bowed and then he was gone.

  Four

  * * *

  Celie did exactly as she was instructed the next day and sat with the Duchess in her residence.

  ‘When are your people going to marry you off?’ Her Royal Awfulness demanded to know. ‘How old are you?’

  Celie answered the easiest question.

  ‘Twenty-two, Your Highness.’

  ‘I was married three times by that age!’

  Celie nodded politely, and continued with her stitching. She was good at embroidery. She was good at most useless things.

  ‘And do something about that brow,’ the Duchess ordered. ‘I have a sharp pumice stone that may help. Or have the laundress pluck at that hair.’

  The possession of a high forehead amongst the nobility of Belegonia was very sought after. But if there was something Celie couldn’t endure more than criticism from the Duchess, it was her brothers’ ridicule and her mother’s disapproval if she returned home to Lumatere with a hairless brow.

  ‘Go on then,’ the Duchess ordered. ‘Go find the laundress. She’s up from the village and hasn’t anything better to do, the lazy thing.’

  Celie felt the urge to return to the Chamber of Chronicles and hide there, but the chance of running into the Castellan was far less appealing than any other option in her life at that moment. She went searching for the laundress and was directed to the cellar where she found a woman washing the corpse of Borealis Luby as if handling a piece of mutton.

  ‘No need to be squeamish, little pale dove,’ the woman mocked. ‘It’s just his head caved in.’

  Celie stepped closer, peering at the laundress’s work. It sickened her to think that talk of a crushed head gave her a thrill of excitement.

  ‘The rest of him is broken inside, not out,’ the woman named Beattie explained, patting the lifeless belly. ‘I can feel it. Like broken pottery, he is.’

  ‘Poor Mr Luby,’ Celie said, despite the fact that she hadn’t liked him the slightest. When they had travelled across the sea from the Main, he had placed his feet on the seat beside her on the boat, catching her surcoat with his dirty boots.

  ‘Poor Mr No-One,’ Beattie said. ‘Never trust a man who’s her Highness’s snake. Whisperin’ in her ear all the day long. They’re a bunch of murdering scum, I say.
Murderers!’

  When Beattie said the last word, she hissed it and punched a fist into Borealis Luby’s already broken chest.

  But Beattie worked silently after that and Celie was much too curious to leave the conversation behind. What she had come to realise over the years was that people spoke more when they toiled alongside of each other, so she removed a second apron hanging from a hook and placed it on top of her dress.

  ‘I’d best advise you not to make such accusations about the King’s Aunt,’ Celie said quietly. ‘You’ll get yourself into trouble.’

  ‘She’s poison,’ Beattie said, her lip curled in distaste. ‘Everyone onFerragost and the Main knows it. This one knew it.’

  Beattie punched “this one” just in case Celie had forgotten he was there. ‘Did the killings himself if you ask me.’

  ‘Killings?’

  Beattie threw down the bloody cloth.

  ‘Help me turn him over. Back of his head might make you sick a moment or two. That and his fat arse.’

  Perhaps it was delayed hysteria but Celie giggled and couldn’t stop. The woman laughed with her, but Celie sobered up quick enough when she saw the back of the man’s skull.

  ‘Why would the King’s Aunt possibly order Mr Luby to carry out killings?’

  ‘Greedy,’ Beattie said in her low hissing voice. ‘Greedy. Greedy. Greedy.’

  She grabbed Celie’s hand to hold Borealis Luby’s arm upright. ‘When the King’s Uncle died, his wife inherited most of the Main,’ Beattie continued, scrubbing away at a mark at the pit of his arm.

  Celie couldn’t resist a shudder. How cold and hard his arm felt. She didn’t want to think of death, hers or any other person she loved.

  ‘She had no babies,’ Beattie said. ‘No babies.’

  ‘No babies,’ Celie repeated because she felt she was expected to.

  ‘But what if the Lord of the Main bedded his way across Ferragost Main and Isle?’

  ‘The Duchess would have nothing to fear,’ Celie said, peering closer at the skull wound. ‘Heirs have to be legal, don’t they?’ With shaking hands and a shudder Celie removed a piece of clay from the bloodied tufts of the man’s hair.

  ‘All I say is that six years past when the King’s Uncle died, there was killings in Ferragost Main. Killings of the innocent.’

  Celie looked up at the woman, sickened by what she was hearing.

  ‘Talk such as yours, Madam, will get you into trouble,’ she said, her voice cold.

  ‘The gods see everything,’ Beattie said. ‘Everything. And the gods pushed this goat out of that window to revenge the bastards of Ferragost Main.’

  As she undressed that evening, Celie couldn’t help but notice the stain on her chemise at the place where the cloth touched her knees. It was blood. She lifted her undergarment to search for perhaps a wound on her flesh, yet there was nothing there. Perhaps it had happened in the cellar while cleaning Borealis Luby’s corpse, but there was no such mark on the apron she wore, or her dress. She couldn’t help thinking of that moment the night before when she had hid under the bench in the Chamber of Chronicles, and how she’d felt a strange dampness under her knees.

  Celie slept that night dreaming of shattered skulls and the Flatlands drenched in the blood of the innocents. Could she believe a simple woman’s rant about the Duchess and Borealis Luby? Was the strange emptiness of this castle causing Celie’s mind to presume more than what was?

  After breakfast alone in the great hall, she took leave of the castle. She hadn’t walked outside the confines of its walls alone before although she had seen the small village nestled in woodlands close to the shore. The people of Ferragost Isle were considered a strange lot. Some had lived isolated from the Main all their lives and Celie had heard talk about children born between brothers and sisters and fathers and daughters. She had read in the Justice Chronicles of their brand of punishment. About two babies born attached by the arms being thrown onto a pyre with claims of their mother bedding a demon. On Ferragost Isle, the villagers truly believed that any child born disfigured could only be because of its wickedness. Without the King in attendance for most of the year round, the villagers made the judgement and carried out the execution.

  Regardless, that morning she felt safer outside the castle walls. She could only think of Mr Luby’s skull and the piece of clay she had retrieved from his blood-matted hair. She thought of Beattie’s talk of murder. She thought of the possibility of blood on the floor of the Chamber of Chronicles. And of what she saw in the Castellan’s residence that morning of her arrival.

  Celie was suddenly determined to get as far away from these people as possible. She’d travel down the path through the village and onto the shore to try to catch a glimpse of what was taking place on the Main. Perhaps the King and his party were on their way across the inland sea. She could find a fisherman who was willing to brave the winds and take her away from this place. But when she reached the shore she saw the size of the waves, the way they fought against each other, the cruel glimpse of the Main in the distance, half concealed by a low furious sky. No person of sound mind would take the journey today.

  An old villager dragged a net from the sea and she watched him stumble. Removing her shoes, Celie padded towards him, the damp sand giving her a sense of comfort. When she reached the man, she threw down her shoes and gripped the opposite corner of the net, helping him drag it further up shore. She was the daughter of a river girl, and there was something about fisherman that brought Celie solace. The man had a weathered face, resembling the strips of cowhide that hung from the hooks of the tanner’s workshop in Celie’s village.

  She crouched beside him and watched his work.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  He opened his mouth and Celie gasped when she saw that his tongue had been cut off. She felt instantly ashamed at her reaction and stayed crouched until he held out a piece of flint. She took it and retrieved a fish from the net and began to scale, and then gut it. Whenever she had accompanied her mother back to the river villages of Lumatere, she’d watch Lady Abian of the Flatlands in awe. There was something about her mother’s wild spirit that would reveal itself even more when she was amongst her own. Her father had been smart enough to celebrate it and there was a passion to their love that Celie wanted for herself. She knew her mother’s wild spirit was deeply hidden inside Celie herself, beneath the layers of what was expected of her. Her mother saw it too. So did her Queen. Few others did. She wasn’t feisty or outspoken like other girls in Lumatere, but Celie had a fire burning inside of her and she feared she’d never unleash it.

  ‘Lady Celie!’

  Argus Laraunt stood above on the rocks, perhaps sent out to search for her. Celie stared at her hands covered with fish gut and a sliver of her own blood. She walked to the water, washing it all away in the foamy sea. As she passed the old man, his hand snaked out to grip hers.

  She tried to pull free, but his eyes pierced into hers before glancing to where Argus Laraunt stood, and then back to Celie again.

  As if he was giving a warning.

  * * *

  ‘You mustn’t go walking alone, Lady Celie,’ Argus Laraunt said as they took the steep path through the woods up to the castle. Between the copses of trees she could see a glimpse of a tumbledown shack, heard the bleat of a goat.

  ‘And why is that?’ she asked. ‘Should I be frightened of these people?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he replied. ‘I would just hate for anything to happen to you,’ he said with a disarming smile. She could imagine Argus Laraunt getting away with all sorts of mischief with women using such a smile. She remembered Borealis Luby’s mention of the town of Tolliver in Yutlind Nord. Had he brawled over a woman? Did he leave one from town to town?

  ‘This business with Luby has unnerved us all,’ he said. ‘Not to mention being isolated out here with nowhere to go.’

  Argus Laraunt took her hand and squeezed it gently.

  ‘And you mustn�
�t let the Duchess upset you either. Once the King and his family arrive, she’ll have the Princesses to bother.’

  ‘And how do you get away with not being bothered by the Duchess?’ she asked.

  ‘I have a way of making it seem that I respond to her bidding,’ he said with a smile. ‘I can teach you to be as deceptive.’

  She laughed. ‘Well that sounds very intriguing. I’d love to learn. I think it would get me very far in life.’

  They reached the portcullis and found it raised.

  ‘Banyon must be somewhere out on the isle,’ he said quietly.

  Doing what, she wondered. Perhaps it was time to speak to the Castellan about her suspicions. But Argus Laraunt was still holding her hand and she felt comforted by the warmth of it. She was frightened she’d never get the feel of Borealis Luby’s dead hand out of her memory. They walked across the courtyard where the two guards were playing dice to relieve the boredom. Celie heard a sudden curse from Argus Laraunt and watched as he lifted up his boot with disgust.

  ‘Blasted hounds,’ he said. ‘It’s strange how they can be trained for anything, but where to shit,’ he added. He instantly looked contrite. ‘My language—’

  She waved it away.

  ‘I have brothers. Three of them, not to mention another who lives with us who we consider a brother of our hearts. The four of them together outdo each other with their wicked tongues.’

  Argus Laraunt laughed. ‘I look forward to hearing about them at supper,’ he said.

  * * *

  Celie returned to the Chamber of Chronicles and found it shut. For some reason, Mr Banyon was determined to stop her from entering the room and Celie was just as determined to confront him about why. The King would be appalled, she’d explain, to know that the door was locked to Lady Celie of the Lumateran Flatlands who had spent much of her time in Belegonia tutoring the young Princesses. And then, perhaps, she’d talk about Mr Luby’s skull and how she doubted very much that the man threw himself from the window of the east tower.