by Frewin Jones
“Behold! The lost lamb has returned!” Zara called out as the three of them came into the room.
The bustle and the murmur of voices stopped abruptly as all eyes turned toward them. Moments later, Anita found herself surrounded by an excited crowd of women bobbing and curtsying and staring at her in awe.
She laughed, taken aback by the effect she seemed to have on these people. They were treating her like a movie star at a premiere.
She became aware of three other women approaching her. The green-clad servants parted deferentially to let them pass, and Anita guessed they must be more of her sisters.
“Cordelia,” Zara whispered in Anita’s ear as the first of them came up to her.
Cordelia was wearing a dark russet dress with a collar of red fur. Her red-gold hair was cut raggedly at her shoulders and her wide, smiling face was full of freckles. She had the same piercing blue eyes as Zara, but there was a wariness in her gaze that made Anita think of wild animals.
Cordelia gave Anita a sudden, fierce hug. “Welcome home,” she said.
“Thanks.” The fur collar of Cordelia’s gown pressed against Anita’s cheek. It felt strangely warm. Almost before she had the time to register it, the fur moved and Anita found herself gazing into a pair of bright black beady eyes.
Anita pulled her head back with a gasp.
It was a red squirrel. It swarmed around Cordelia’s neck and gathered itself into a watchful russet ball on her shoulder.
“Oh! Hello there,” Anita said, reaching out a tentative hand. “You startled me. Aren’t you pretty?” The squirrel let out a sharp, high-pitched chirping sound and vanished down Cordelia’s back. A split second later, Anita was aware of a red blur racing across the floor, up the shelves, and onto the sill of an open window.
“Have no fear, little one!” Cordelia called to the quivering animal. “It is only our sister!” The squirrel gave another cry and vanished through the window.
Cordelia turned her head back and smiled at Anita. “He will not listen to me,” she said with a soft laugh. “I will speak with him later and calm his fears.”
Anita stared at her. “I didn’t mean to frighten it,” she said.
“It is of no matter,” Cordelia said. “After dwelling in half-light for so long, the sun has made all the animals uneasy. It will pass.”
A second woman approached, very tall and slim, wearing a brown dress embroidered with vines and leaves and dark flowers, and with dark brown hair that hung loose to her waist. She had the same solemn, noble face and intense blue eyes as Oberon.
“Hopie,” Zara whispered in Anita’s ear. “She is the healer. She has no interest in what clothes she wears. You will see, it will take all my powers to get her out of her brown habit!”
Hopie cupped Anita’s face in her hands and gazed levelly at her. “You have been gone too long,” she said, and her voice was almost as deep and musical as the King’s.
“So people keep telling me,” Anita replied. “But I’m back now.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “For however long it lasts.”
Hopie frowned.
Anita shook her head and smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“Rathina?” Zara called to the third woman. “Will you not come to greet your sister?”
“Indeed, I will,” the woman said. Anita had been half aware that the third sister had been holding back, but now she stepped forward and gave Anita a hug.
“Welcome, Tania,” she said.
Anita gazed at her. She was wearing a scarlet gown trimmed with lace and beaded with ruby jewels. Her hair was long and black and lustrous, and she had the most perfectly beautiful face that Anita had ever seen, heart-shaped with wide hazel-brown eyes, high, slanted cheekbones, and a full red-lipped mouth.
But there was something in Rathina’s eyes and in her voice that made Anita feel slightly ill at ease. A kind of wariness or reserve that made her wonder whether they had ever been close friends.
While Anita was still thinking about this, Hopie turned and spoke to a plump woman who stood nearby. “Mistress Mirrlees,” she said. “I have much work to do; I cannot waste time over gowns. Pick for me something appropriate—in brown.”
“Yes, my lady,” the woman said, curtsying.
Hopie rested her hand for a moment against Anita’s cheek. “We will speak further anon,” she said.
“I’d like that,” Anita said. Hopie nodded and strode out of the room.
“I must go and comfort the squirrel,” Cordelia said to the woman. “Make me a gown that is the color of spring leaves, and cord it with olive and jade.” She smiled at Anita. “We will meet again at the ball.”
“I hope so,” Anita said.
Zara threw her arms around Mistress Mirrlees’s neck. “I want a gown of a blue so striking that all eyes will be on me tonight,” she pleaded. “I wish to out-shine Rathina, were that ever possible.”
“I have the very thing,” Mistress Mirrlees said. “A blue sarcanet as bright as the summer sky.”
“Show me,” Zara ordered, following the seamstress over to one of the tables.
Anita smiled at Rathina. “I don’t really know what to choose,” she confessed. “I’m not used to these clothes yet.”
Rathina gave her a long, slow look. She made a gesture with her hand and one of the servant women approached. “There is a bale of lilac silk,” she said, without even turning to look at the woman. “Bring it to Princess Tania. It will make a gown that will become her perfectly.”
The woman scuttled off.
“Thanks,” Anita said.
Rathina gave a quick, brief smile. “Dorothy, Kat, Martha,” she called. “I would examine the crimson taffeta.” She swept off, followed by three women.
“All this fuss and bother,” Sancha said, frowning around the room. “I shall wear black, whatever Zara may say.” She smiled at Anita. “But I may allow some piping of white and a neck ruff trimmed with pearls.”
“That sounds lovely,” Anita said distractedly. She was still watching Rathina. “Sancha, is there something the matter with Rathina?” she asked. “I get the impression she doesn’t like me very much.”
“You are quite wrong,” Sancha said. “You and Rathina were always the closest of friends.”
“Really? Then why is she being so…I don’t know…so distant?”
“Rathina was with you in your bedchamber on the eve of your wedding,” Sancha said.
“Oh. That was when I vanished, right?” She looked over at Rathina. “Yes, you’re right, she was there when I disappeared.”
“So she was, and the burden of it lies heavy upon her,” Sancha replied.
“I suppose it would freak out anyone,” Anita said. “Your sister disappearing right in front of your eyes and not turning up again for the next five hundred years.”
Zara came running up, draped in electric blue silk. “Tell me honestly,” she said, twirling in front of them. “Does it become me? Shall I have Mistress Mirrlees make me a gown of it?”
“It’s gorgeous,” Anita said.
A serving woman approached, carrying a bale of lilac cloth in her arms. “For you, Princess Tania,” she said, curtsying.
“An excellent choice!” Zara exclaimed, fingering the fine silk. “This will be perfect.” She smiled at the woman. “Princess Tania’s gown should have pinks and slashes in the sleeves and a lining of deep purple shot silk.”
The woman bobbed again and scuttled off.
Anita raised her eyebrows. “Is that it? Don’t I have to be measured up?”
“Mistress Mirrlees will oversee the work,” Zara said. “Have no fear—the gown will fit you perfectly. And now come, let us find something for Sancha.”
“Black,” Sancha insisted.
“No!” Zara said. “Midnight blue, and sewn with stars and trimmed with comets and moons.”
There was a pause, then Sancha smiled. “Yes,” she said. “That would be acceptable.” She glanced
at Anita, her black eyes dancing. “Sobriety must sometimes give way to merriment, especially on such a night as this will be.”
“Absolutely!” Anita went with them as they hunted down a swath of material to suit Zara’s plans for her scholarly sister.
Rathina was at the far end of the room, standing on a footstool to look at herself in a long mirror that was being supported by two serving women. A third woman held different materials against Rathina for her to choose from.
Six sisters, Anita thought. Rathina, Zara, Sancha, Hopie, and Cordelia. But that only makes five.
She looked at Zara. “There’s someone missing,” she said. “There should be seven of us.”
Zara and Sancha looked meaningfully at each other.
“Eden will not come here,” Sancha confided in a low voice. “She is the eldest of us, but she lives alone and does not seek the company of others.”
Zara took Anita’s arm and drew her to the far side of the room. She opened a window and pointed over the rooftops. “Do you see yonder?” she said, indicating a square ivy-clad tower with battlements and a steeply pitched slate roof. “Eden’s apartments are in that tower. She seldom comes forth these days. She spends her time alone thinking dark thoughts.”
Sancha joined them at the window. “She used to go for solitary walks on the battlements when all were abed,” she murmured. “But she has not been seen now for many a long day. Her meals are taken to her, and she leaves the empty plates and cups outside her door. That is the only way we know she is still alive.”
“Sometimes she is seen as a shadow at that window,” Zara added, indicating a small window high in the wall of the gloomy tower. “She watches the world, but will take no part in it.”
“Why is she like that?” Anita asked.
“Once she was a great scholar of the Mystic Arts,” Sancha told her, “second only in power to our father. But she has forsworn her learning and has not practiced her arts since the Great Twilight came down upon us.”
Anita stared at the high, bleak window, thinking of the way Oberon had turned night into day with a sweep of his arms. She assumed that was what Sancha meant by Mystic Arts. “Why did she give it up?”
Sancha rested her hand on Anita’s arm. “Eden witnessed the death of our mother,” she said. “They were together, boating for pleasure on the river. The boat overturned. Eden swam to shore but our mother was lost.”
“They never found her body,” Zara whispered. “Our father was already in deep desolation about your disappearance. When he was told of the death of his beloved Queen, his grief plunged all the Realm into darkness.”
“He had a mausoleum of white stone built to honor our mother.” Sancha sighed. “But it is empty, of course. He never goes there.”
Anita sympathized with them, wishing there was something she could say to ease the grief in their voices. She felt relieved that her own mother was safe and well back home, and they’d be meeting again just as soon as this dream came to an end.
…as soon as the dream came to an end.
Not yet, Anita thought. At least not until after the ball. I wouldn’t want to miss that. She smiled to herself. Especially since it’s in my honor.
Once they had finished their business in Mistress Mirrlees’s workrooms, Sancha went back to the library and Zara took Anita up to a cozy room that lay under the eaves of the roof.
“This is our special chamber,” Zara told her. “No one else comes here but us sisters.” She gave Anita an optimistic look. “Do you remember it at all?”
Anita shook her head. It was a lovely room, like a long gallery, with gable windows set into the sloping ceiling. It was carpeted, and the walls were hung with tapestries; the furnishings were lush and luxurious, with embroidered couches and armchairs deep in velvet cushions. Anita noticed a sewing frame with a half-finished embroidery sampler on it. Next to it was a small table with a chessboard set up and a game in progress. At one end of the room, the floor was raised into a low dais, upon which stood some musical instruments.
Zara caught hold of Anita’s hand and pulled her along the room. “Come, come,” she urged. “Perhaps music will help you to remember.”
Anita stepped onto the platform. Various oddly shaped woodwind instruments stood in a row against the wall, alongside some strange-looking stringed instruments. In the middle of the platform there was something that looked like a kind of early piano, only with a much smaller keyboard and no lid and with the strings running sideways instead of straight ahead.
“That’s a spinetta, isn’t it?” Anita said. She hadn’t been able to picture one when Oberon mentioned the word earlier, but suddenly she knew with absolute certainty that was what this instrument was called.
Zara clapped her hands. “Indeed it is a spinetta,” she said. “Do you remember the duets we used to play together?” She gathered her skirts under her and sat at the instrument. She ran her fingers over the keys and notes cascaded out like a peal of silver bells as she began to sing.
“Come, tarry in the rose garden, while the summer lasts
For soon the flowers that bloom in June shall fall to winter’s blasts
And you must go, and I must stay, a martial music calls
Come, tarry in the rose garden, ere the twilight falls.”
Anita frowned. The words and the melody seemed familiar, but they definitely hadn’t appeared in the leather-bound book. Where had she heard them before?
Zara turned on her stool and picked up one of the stringed instruments. “You will remember better if you play along with me,” she said, as if she could tell what Anita was thinking. “I have kept your lute in tune ever since last you played it.” She smiled. “You see? I always had faith that you would come back to us.”
Anita took the heavy instrument. It had a pear-shaped body and a long, fretted neck that bent backward at a sharp angle.
“Sit,” Zara said. Anita sat down on the edge of the platform and rested the body of the lute in her lap. She stared at the strings—there was one thick string, followed by five pairs of more slender strings. Back home she had made some ham-fisted attempts at playing a guitar, but this thing looked a lot more complicated.
She looked up at Zara. “I don’t know whether to suck on it or blow into it or hit it with a stick,” she said. “I’m no good at this kind of thing.”
“Nonsense,” Zara said. “I’ll play slowly for you, and you will follow.”
The threads of silvery notes came cascading out of the spinetta once more.
“This is going to be bad,” Anita muttered. She leaned over the lute and put her fingers on the fret-board. Wincing, she strummed the strings with the thumb of her other hand.
A pleasant, musical chord rang out.
Anita laughed, amazed. She strummed again. “Hey, I can do it!”
“Sing with me,” Zara instructed. “I will take the part of the descant.”
Anita took in a deep breath and opened her mouth. To her astonishment, the words and the melody began to flow from her.
“The twilight deep all love devours, that gloaming of the soul
And you away to distant fields, the thunderous drummers’ roll
Is louder yet than whispered words, and stirs your errant heart
The twilight deep all love devours, for you and I must part…”
She could hear Zara’s high angelic voice swooping and soaring above the melody and for a few wonderful moments, as she sang out the unknowable words and strummed the mysterious chords on the lute, she felt so perfectly at home that tears of joy welled up in her eyes.
But her contentment was short-lived. The roaring wind and the gut-wrenching pain and sickness came at her like an unseen blow. She doubled over in agony, her fingers faltering on the strings, her singing changing to a discordant groan.
The world churned and boiled around her and suddenly everything was different.
The long chamber now looked like some kind of exhibition room. People in light brown shorts and sneaker
s were peering into glass-fronted display cabinets. Cameras hung around their necks and some of them had headphones on, as if listening to a recorded tour guide.
A man stood by the window with a clipboard.
Anita could still hear the tuneless clang of the fumbled lute, and the man obviously heard it too. His head turned and his face darkened. He took a stride toward her, his mouth opening.
“Hey! You there! What do you think—”
His words were drowned by the howling wind, and his face was lost in glaring explosions of colored light.
The next thing Anita heard was Zara’s complaining voice.
“What a dreadful noise!” she exclaimed. “And you started so well. I see you will need to practice.” Her voice became concerned. “Tania? Are you unwell? You have become quite pale.”
The sickness and disorientation drained away, and Anita turned and gave Zara a weak smile. “Sorry about that,” she said. “I’m not sure what happened.” She paused. “Did you see anything?”
Zara frowned. “What do you mean? What was there to see?”
“There were people in here,” Anita said. “Lots of people.”
“In here?” Zara said. “Oh no, there were no people. We are quite alone.” She twirled out a run of notes. “Shall we continue?”
“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” Anita apologized. “I feel a bit sick.”
“Shall I fetch Hopie?” Zara offered. “She will make you a posset.”
“No, don’t worry,” Anita said, too weak even to wonder what a posset might be. She pointed to a nearby couch. “I’ll just lie down for a while. You can carry on playing if you like.”
She put down the lute and walked unsteadily over to the couch. She stretched out on it, resting her head on the padded arm.
The shimmering notes of the spinetta filled the air as she lay there with her eyes closed.
That was twice now—once in her bedchamber and once up here. Twice that she had been dragged painfully out of this place and into somewhere else.
Again, it had reminded her of modern-day Hampton Court, and again, the people she had seen were all in modern dress. And again, she had been thrust in and out of that other world in a matter of moments.
