by Kelly Link
This last thought struck Lady Abergavenny like a thunderbolt. It was true. It was ghastly. She missed Malvina Potts.
“No use crying over spilt milk,” said Lady Abergavenny aloud and pushed the thought away. She could be very practical when she needed to be. The trees began to thin and Lady Abergavenny sat on a mossy log in a small clearing to breathe the strengthening vapors of the forest. The trees creaked. The pale rays of sun poked through the dark canopy.
“O the feel of the veal,” hummed Lady Abergavenny. She opened her book then put it down. She had read The Foxes of Silicon Fen a dozen times and the story was wearing thin.
“It was more than a meal,” hummed Lady Abergavenny. The pale rays of the sun lit up green moss and yellow needles and wet, black bark. Suddenly, she saw it. Between two trees across the clearing. A flash of auburn. Deep, shining, red-gold, unmistakable auburn the same exact shade as Lady Abergavenny’s hair. She caught her breath.
This was not the first time she had seen it, the thing she called The Auburn. She had glimpsed The Auburn in the mountains of India, in the jungles of the Amazon, in the forests of North America. The Auburn peeking from behind a tree or rock or vine or frond. She would wait, holding her breath, for something more to happen. The more that happened had never been much. She might see The Auburn wink out of sight and reappear, yards away, another flash above a berm. She might hear rustling, snapping branches. She might hear, far off, an eerie bellowing. What did she expect to happen? The Auburn to come forward, to take shape, to charge toward her. . . .
She tried to remember another line of her father’s ballad. It was Lurid but not without Literary Merits.
“She had her way with the veal on a table of deal . . .”
hummed Lady Abergavenny. She picked up her book and pretended to read, peering at the trees over the top of the book. The Auburn had vanished. She heard rustling, snapping branches. The pale rays of sun became paler and the clearing grew dark. She drew her cloak tightly about her. She saw something buff-colored and dun-colored and kid-colored leap between trees.
“My lord?” she called. Sometimes Lord Abergavenny came to check on her during her hours in the forest. He always seemed annoyed when she spotted and hailed him. Perhaps he did not want her to know that he cared. Lords were notoriously reticent with their Ladies about tender feelings. It was the main problem with Lords according to The Foxes of Silicon Fen. That and the pastime of slaughtering foxes.
At that moment, Lord Abergavenny came crashing through the trees. He held something similar to an astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamp but instead of shooting a ray of light it was shooting a snapping blue beam. His black hair was standing on end.
“Lady Abergavenny,” he panted. He fumbled with the device in his hand. The beam vanished. His hair began to drift down around his aristocratic brow.
“Stay where you are,” he said as he backed away again into the trees. “It is only half eleven. You have several more hours to inspire the sweet airs of the forest.”
When she was quite certain he was gone, Lady Abergavenny stood.
“I would rather be married to a veal cutlet,” she said. “There are no two ways about it.” She walked hastily back to the house. The staff did not expect her to return before the usual hour and so she opened the heavy door herself. The hall smelled different than usual. She sniffed. The smell was faint and faintly familiar. What was it? Not one of the regular reeks. Not dark, sour bread and not goose. Not turnips, not beets, not fish, and not stew. It was different, not really even a reek, but a hint of a reek. A light musk. She peeked into the dining room but Max the footman was not there. Instead, Mr. Urquhart, the tiger hunter, was seated at the head of the table with Karthik, his Hindoo servant, standing at attention behind him. Mr. Urquhart was tucking into a goose while supporting his long mustache on a little silver platform attached to a slender silver handle (his own invention, nothing to do with Lord Abergavenny).
“Mr. Urquhart,” cried Lady Abergavenny. “My word, what brings you to—” and she made a noise like choking in the morning on the flakes of a scone. Mr. Urquhart was a childhood friend of Lord Abergavenny. They had stayed in his hunting villa at the foot of the Himalayas. He was most often out hunting tigers, and during the hours she had sat on a stool in the shrubby meadow strengthening her constitution, she had spied him with her husband circling the area, stalking tigers while Lord Abergavenny stalked Boffin birds, Karthik stalking behind them.
“My dear Lady Abergavenny,” said Mr. Uquhart. “I had a run-in with a real man-eater and he did a bang-up job on me. I thought I’d take a break from hunting for the season and ride the engine across the continent. Shouldn’t you be out in the forest? Is it a holiday? I suppose Lord Abergavenny will back soon as well?”
Lady Abergavenny could not answer. Her mouth felt dry and her heart thudded in her chest. She took the glass Karthik handed her and gulped the water. It was a tall glass and she gulped for quite awhile. Finally she finished. She gasped for air and wiped her mouth, staring at Mr. Urquhart. He put down his fork and his mustache platform. His mustache lowered over his mouth like a Venetian blind.
“Karthik,” said Mr. Urquhart. “Help me with my leg.” The Hindoo servant pulled back Mr. Urquhart’s chair. Mr. Urquhart’s left leg stuck out at a straight angle.
“I hope you don’t mind Karthik’s serving luncheon,” said Mr. Urquhart as Karthik rolled up his trouser. “I dismissed your footman. He gave me the willies. There!” Mr. Urquhart rapped on his leg. “Sandalwood! Teak is stronger but this one smelled so wonderful I couldn’t resist. Sniff it.”
Lady Abergavenny bent over and sniffed the wood.
“Wonderful,” she agreed.
“Mr. Urquhart . . .” she hesitated. “I’ve been married to Lord Abergevenny a year now. Happily married,” she added. “What joy!”
Mr. Urquhart winked at her. “Nothing brings the bloom to a lass’s cheek like conjugal harmony.”
Lady Abergavenny grinned in what she hoped was a blooming manner. “And I want to do something special for my husband. He’s known such tragedy.”
Mr. Urquhart nodded at Karthik who rolled his trouser down and pushed him back toward the goose.
“Nothing steels a man’s resolve like tragedy,” he said and swept up his mustache with the mustache platform so he could once again tuck into the goose.
“Nine tragedies,” said Lady Abergavenny. “All those poor Ladies Abergavenny.”
“Hmmphh,” said Mr. Urquhart around his mouthful of goose.
“Did you know them?” asked Lady Abergavenny in a rush.
“I believe I met some of them,” said Mr. Urquhart, swallowing. “But one was much like another.”
“Oh,” said Lady Abergavenny.
“All that shining auburn hair,” said Mr. Urquhart. “Spectacular.” Lady Abergavenny raised a hand to her own shining auburn hair. She shuddered.
“He adores auburn,” she whispered.
She heard footsteps behind her and whirled around, heart hammering harder than ever. It was only the footman passing by. In profile, his nose seemed straighter than before, but much darker than the rest of his face. He had perhaps been drinking. Lady Abergavenny felt herself in need of a drink as well. Something with more of a kick than just water.
“I’m going to see the cook,” she said to Mr. Urquhart. “To let her know we’ve a guest for dinner.” She hurried after the footman into the kitchen. He really was uncommonly tall. He had to duck or his head would have struck the hanging pots. The kitchen door was open. The cook sat in the yard plucking a goose. She looked up and yelled something. It didn’t sound anything like “Max” but the footman ducked out the kitchen door and trotted over to her. He grabbed a live goose by the neck.
Lady Abergavenny turned quickly away. She rummaged through the kitchen cupboards until she found what she was looking for. She poured a glass of potato wine and guzzled it. She sat down at the narrow table in front of the fire with the empty glass and t
he bottle in front of her. She took a pull from the bottle. She lifted a lock of her hair and studied it in the firelight. It shone red-gold. It shone like a hearth. Like a beacon. It had attracted a Lord. But what did he want with it? Why did he drag her from forest to jungle to mountain to woodland and waste? She returned the bottle to the cupboard and fixed herself a plate of gingerbread cookies. The cookies were moist and rich and peppery sweet.
“I would most like to be married to a gingerbread cookie,” thought Lady Abergavenny. “Or to a lemon tart. Or to nothing at all.”
She was just stepping out of the kitchen, when the front door banged open and Lord Abergavenny strode through the hall. She hid behind the doorframe. Soon baritone shouts resounded.
“Urquhart!”
“Abergavenny!”
She crept along the hall toward the voices. She had just reached the open door when a tap on her shoulder made her whirl about. Karthik stood behind her. He had a fragrant leg of smoothed sandlewood on one shoulder, a rifle on the other, and a heavy leather valise in one hand.
“Mr. Urquhart’s things,” said Lady Abergavenny, recovering her composure. “You must put them in the spare bedroom.” There was no spare bedroom and so she pondered this conundrum.
“On the second floor,” she said. “It’s really the library. The books have rotted in the damp, but there’s a chesterfield in quite good condition.”
Karthik was exactly her height and he met her eyes evenly.
“Have you seen one?” he whispered.
“Seen one what?” she whispered back, but even as she whispered she thought of it, The Auburn, how it showed itself in flashes. She thought of The Auburn flashing in the fronds on the other side of the river and The Auburn flashing inside the cave mouth in the mountains and The Auburn flashing between quivering conifers in the forest and The Auburn she had seen just that morning flashing across the clearing. She thought of how her husband often appeared as it vanished. The Auburn peeked at her, but it fled from him.
“What is it?” she breathed, but Karthik gave a slight frown. A warning. Lord Abergavenny poked his head into the hall.
“Lady Abergavenny,” he said. “By all means, join us at the table.” He gripped Lady Abergavenny’s wrist and she was jerked into the room. He dragged her to the banquet table and threw her into a chair. She hit the seat hard with her bum and yelped. She whipped her head around furiously and saw Karthik framed in the doorway.
“Steady now,” Karthik’s look seemed to say as he turned to continue on down the hall. Leaving her with Lord Abergavenny and Mr. Urquhart and the cold carcass of a goose. Abandoning her to her Fate. She straightened and glanced at her husband.
“You’re not at the table,” she said. He wasn’t. He was leaning against the wall lighting a cheroot.
“Would it kill you to sit to a meal with your wife?” she asked.
“I like this one,” chuckled Mr. Urquhart. His teeth winked through a gray slat of mustache. “She’s stout . . .”
Lady Abergavenny glared.
“Of heart,” he finished. “I would wager she doesn’t spook easily in the forest. I wonder if the others ran. That might have been what did it. The running.”
“Enough,” said Lord Abergavenny. He had scratches across his high cheekbones and a tear in his dun-colored trousers. He drew back his chair and sat down facing Lady Abergavenny.
“Goose?” She hacked at the goose with the serving knife and tilted the platter so a hunk slid off onto a plate. She was not feeling very ladylike. She was feeling like Malvina Potts. Lord Abergavenny blinked as she shoved the plate toward him.
“Eat,” she said. He lifted a brow and folded his arms across his chest.
“Eat,” she said. “Or I’m through with brushing my hair. I’m through with sitting in the forest. I’m through with traveling from bleak to bleaker to bleakest regions.”
“What would you do instead?” asked Lord Abergavenny. He took a bite of goose. “Where would you go?”
“Home,” said Lady Abergavenny, although she knew she couldn’t go home. No one on Market Street would take kindly to a woman who left a Lord to sell fruits and nuts.
“Ahh,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Home.”
“You could stay with me in Darjeeling,” offered Mr. Urquhart. “Except I’m not there. My leg is there, buried in the garden under the mango tree. You could go and shed tears over the grave of my leg.” He laughed again, unpleasantly. “The tiger is still prowling though. You’d have to be very stout indeed to face the tiger.”
“This is the first time we’ve eaten a meal together,” said Lady Abergavenny to her husband. She picked a glistening black strip of flesh from a bone and chewed it slowly. “It’s our first anniversary. Give or take a day.” It wasn’t easy to keep track of the days in the region. She leaned forward.
“Tell me, my Lord, have I lasted longer than the other Ladies Abergavenny?”
Lord Abergavenny looked at Mr. Urquhart. “What have you been telling her?”
Mr. Urquhart held up his hands. “Nothing, I swear it.”
Lady Abergavenny shrugged. “Happy anniversary,” she said. “I hope you get pecked in the eye by a Boffin bird.”
“I doubt I will,” murmured Lord Abergavenny, looking at her speculatively.
“I am beginning to doubt it as well,” said Lady Abergavenny. And left the room. She almost banged into the footman in the hall. He blinked at her. His eyes were larger and softer than hers but the sea-green shade was really very like.
“I’m sorry, Max,” she said. “I wasn’t looking.” He sketched a slight bow. A flurry of white shook down from his hair. She sneezed. Definitely flour.
“I don’t think they’re ready to have the plates cleared away,” she said. “But if you would clear them away I’d be greatly obliged.”
As she hurried past him, she heard a low rumbling that sounded something like a laugh.
That night the wind sobbed in the attic and in the distance, mingling with the wind, came howls and bellows and wails. Lady Abergavenny sat at her writing desk. She looked at the quill and she looked at the comb. She could write to her sister, the humble Mrs. Cottenham. She could brush her hair, one hundred strokes with the boar-bristle brush. She did neither. She picked up her candle and snuck down the stairs and tiptoed to Lord Abergavenny’s study. The door was shut tight. The light that came through the crack below the door was strong and bright white and did not flicker. That could mean one thing only. He was using the astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamp for domestic illumination.
“Hypocrite,” she muttered. She pressed her ear to the door.
“. . . miracle she hasn’t been ripped limb from limb,” Mr. Urquhart was saying. “She has lasted longer than your other ladies. Do you think it is because she’s stouter of heart? Purer of soul? Simpler? More childlike? I find her a nasty piece of baggage, assuming and shrewish, but their standards are bound to be different.”
“It’s convenient whatever the reason,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Bloody pain in the arse finding replacements. The color has to be just right and they don’t respond to a wig on a gourd, more’s the pity. She’s working out marvelously. They come close enough for me to shock them and net them and ship them off. That’s what matters, isn’t it?”
“Wish a tiger had bitten my leg off,” said Mr. Urquhart. “I can’t tell you how awful . . . the bellowing, the twisting . . .”
“Have some more brandy.” Footsteps, clink of stopper in decanter.
“Cheers.” A glugging sound.
“It must have been awful for the nine of them,” said Mr. Urquhart. “Losing the leg gives me a new appreciation. You’re a cool one, Abergavenny, to bait a trap with your own wives.”
“I marry bait” came the reply. “What else would I use?”
Lady Abergavenny had had quite enough. She flew down the rest of the stairs and into the kitchen for a knife and into the front hallway for her cloak and out the front door as quickly as she could. T
he wind tore at the throat of her cloak and blew her long and shining auburn hair behind her like a flame. She ducked her head and ran into the wind. She ran through the village and turned off onto the path through the forest, stumbling over rocks and branches until she half fell into the clearing. She had no candle. She had no astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamp. She had no gun or blue shocker to protect her. She had a knife and she raised it high in the night with one hand and held taut a lock of her hair with the other. She struck and she sawed and in one hundred blows she had shorn herself of every auburn strand. Her scalp stung and the cold wind filled her ears like black water.
She gathered the masses of hair and scattered them through underbrush and overgrowth and hung them on thorns and she trampled and kicked at the earth and stamped on the briars until she was satisfied it looked as though her hair had been ripped quite off her body and her body dragged with great violence away through the woodlands and into the waste. Never to be seen again.
She wondered suddenly if the other Ladies Abergavenny had in fact met grisly ends in the forest or if they too had struck and sawed themselves free and fled into the hills. Maybe whatever creatures her husband hunted were gentle and had never hurt any woman at all. Maybe they only ripped the limbs from tiger-hunters and explorers and Lords and other enemies of the natural world. Maybe they only bellowed when pursued or captured.
What were they? All she knew is they were auburn, like she was, and that was plenty. Maybe they weren’t her friends but they certainly weren’t her enemies.
She stood in the clearing peering about her but it was dark and no direction looked better than any other. She took a step. Then another. She stopped. She heard a step. Then another. Not hers. She saw a light, a candlelight flickering. The footman was creeping toward her across the clearing. His nose was further askew than ever and his sea-green eyes gleamed and so did his hair where the flour had blown away in the wind. His hair gleamed auburn. Lady Abergavenny was stout (of heart) and did not run. She clutched her green cloak about her as he approached. When he was right in front of her, she reached out her hand. Her hand trembled slightly but she reached with steadfast purpose. She ripped off his nose. It was made of putty and tied to his face with thin string. Beneath the fake nose his real nose was flat. Two wide nostrils set in the slope of his face. It wasn’t a human nose. She was very glad, very glad to see it.
