The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

  ‘I’m feeling such confidence. Thank you so much,’ Isabella’s tones soured the fresh night air.

  ‘Arrogance, arrogance,’ Nicholas’s voice whispered to her.

  ‘I think your own conscience begins to teach you.’ The Fox Lady smiled, but it was a cunning expression, as if she did indeed know exactly what went on in Isabella’s mind. ‘We won’t speak again for a little. But the days are shrinking, maybe three days, four, five at most and your time will be upon you. Think before you speak. Good fortune.’

  She faded against the white azalea and presently only the faintest chime of the bells reminded Isabella she had spoken to an Other. Eventually there was a night time silence filled only with the trickle of the fountain and somewhat chastened, Isabella hurried to the Master’s and Madame’s apartments.

  *

  She knocked on the door to announce herself, but heard the distant sound of the man and wife snoring in a further room, so she entered quietly and with a grudging respect for the beauty of the lamplit room. She passed under a fretwork moongate, the circle harmonious and inviting. Against the further wall, a lattice screen echoed the moongate with repetitive symmetry. Two silk scrolls unfurled on either side of the screen and a low camphorwood settee stood bare and it was toward this she walked, to lay the garments on top.

  She had meant to leave immediately but the scrolls grabbed at her attention and she examined the left one to see pillars of cliffs and mountains disappearing into fog and a swinging bridge across a chasm. Her heart quickened and she stepped to the other scroll.

  It’s the chasm!

  From the feet of the artist, a bridge extended across an abyss into a mist of nothingness. The artistry was spare, an impression of something created by the almost nothing of superior brushwork. The snoring in the further room broke and she heard a panel sliding and quickly retraced her steps through the moongate, to slide the external panel shut and retreat to her room. She hastened along the verandah, a thing that was forbidden to the staff, having removed her slippers in case anyone heard her and as she reached her own entrance and turned to slide the door open, a hand reached out and she yelped.

  ‘Be quiet if you don’t want the rest of the house awake.’

  ‘Lucia.’ Isabella gasped and dropped her slippers inside her door. ‘You scared me to death. What are you doing awake?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘Lucia, what is wrong with you? I have just finished Madame Koi’s hems and delivered the robe to her apartments.’

  ‘Really. Then who were you talking to in the garden?’

  Her heart began to gallop.

  What did you hear, Lucia?

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘No. I just saw you from a distance and it looked to me as if you were talking to someone.’

  Subterfuge.

  ‘I was I suppose. I looked up at the heavens because they’re so clear tonight and I saw the Celestine Way and I thought of Aine the Mother and I offered up a prayer.’

  ‘A prayer for what? Your escape?’

  ‘Lucia, why do you doubt me?’

  She stepped into her room and Lucia followed and slid the door shut behind her.

  ‘Because you seem to care so little about anything, Isabella, anything but what you left behind. I wish you could see how good the Master is to us. I have never lived so well. And you…you never want for anything. Look at what he gave you for the Festival.’

  ‘You don’t trust me.’

  Lucia had the grace to look ashamed.

  ‘I want to…’

  Hating herself for duplicity, Isabella bent and hugged the smaller woman.

  ‘Then do. I have done nothing wrong. I prayed, that is all. I am terrified about tomorrow. I don’t want to leave here. What if I do something wrong in the Imperial House? I asked Aine to help me, to guide me, to give me eyes that will see the right thing to do.’

  Lucia pursed her lips and looked at Isabella who was shrugging off her outer robe and dragging on a sleeping robe.

  ‘I have said before – you frighten me sometimes. There is something about you. Sometimes I think we will all be better off here when you do leave.’

  ‘Lucia!’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I care for my place here and I care for the Master and that’s the problem. I don’t think you care enough.’

  Isabella would love to have launched into a tirade against the Han, to rail against the cruelty of abduction, against the pain so many families must feel outside the province, against the immorality of it all. But they were stale words, Lucia had heard them before.

  ‘I do, Lucia. He has been kind and I know it could have been worse. I shall repay him by being the epitome of all he could want tomorrow. Please trust me.’

  She squeezed Lucia’s shoulders.

  ‘Don’t let me down then.’

  ‘I won’t. Now get some sleep because it’s nearly dawn.’ She took Lucia by the hand and pulled her gently to the door. ‘Tell me though, why were you up so late?’

  ‘It is my job tonight to keep the fires burning for the kitchens and for hot water for the bath-house. It will be frantic at dawn.’

  ‘Then rest while you can, you silly goose. Goodnight.’

  ‘Night.’ Lucia scurried away over the paths toward the kitchens as Isabella watched her form fade amongst the trees and shrubs.

  Oh Lucia, how you will hate me. Things are not the same, are they? You love a life that keeps you up all night for no return and I hate a life that does that. I hate this place. And I think deep down you know. Better I leave you tomorrow and move on. I think you would move heaven and earth to turn me from my purpose otherwise.

  *

  She woke up later, flying from a dream that left her unsettled and angry and yet she could not picture the dream in her mind. She propped herself against the wall, her body swathed in the esoteric padding of the Han, her lamp turned up so that shadows danced across the walls, leaping like her anger, up down, up down.

  Do they believe that I’m going to just roll over and give up? Aine it’s as well they don’t know me or what I am made of. I will fight for my freedom until the last drop is left in my body, I swear. I will never take this lying down and so help me, as these interminable days lengthen into summer, I shall use every minute I have to further my plans to run away.

  She slid back down into her bedroll, the anger easing to a bubbling fester. Already the seeds were sown. Master Koi had wished to pursue the subject but she had been busy and now the new day lapped at the doorframe. Another hour and she would rise and begin to prepare for this supposedly watershed day.

  She rolled onto her side and watched the light strengthen around the edges of the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nicholas

  ‘Gallivant, please!’ Adelina grabbed his arm away from the fabric. ‘This isn’t a tug of war. You have to tease the fibre out.’ She eased the warp and the weft apart, fraying one thread back from the other. ‘As if it’s as fragile as a spider web.’

  ‘Sink me, Adelina,’ whined the Hob, ‘it’ll take forever.’

  ‘We don’t have forever.’

  The words slapped down in front of the trio, the air souring.

  What do you think, stepmother? That there is some cryptic message in these folds?

  He teased a single silk fibre back down the yardage, easing the paper thread away, paper thread that was the width of the bolt of the fabric.

  You’re right, Gallivant, it’ll take forever.

  He looked across at the four or five paper threads they had released from the weave.

  It must be untwisted, flattened, separated at its joins, then puzzled together. And for what? Some ancient message from far off in the mountains of the Raj.

  He couldn’t help his tongue clicking dispiritedly against his teeth.

  But I would give my life if this contained a message from Isabella.

  The door opened and Phelim took a step into the room accompanied b
y Poli.

  ‘What do you all do for Aine’s sake?’

  Gallivant jumped up, relief rampant as he shook out his knees.

  ‘We think we found the letter ‘N’ in the shifu. The Stitchlady thinks there will be more letters and it may have a message.’

  ‘Adelina,’ Phelim spoke softly, ‘this will take an age.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Adelina spoke with rising intensity, her gaze never leaving the fabric. ‘It could be important, there could be something. I told you, the fabric speaks to me.’

  Phelim and Gallivant swapped a look between them and Poli moved to the table by the window, straightening a pile of parchment and laying a reed pen on top.

  ‘Adelina, it’s late,’ Phelim cajoled her. ‘Look outside. The night is almost fallen and you haven’t eaten.’

  ‘I’m not hungry and shall work through the night.’

  As she spoke, her hands worked with the speed of an experienced weaver and Nico should have felt comfortable with her interest. Instead he marked Adelina’s high colour and her trembling fingers.

  Poli knelt down next to Nico and began to fray a thread and Nico shuffled over, not wanting the man in his space, creating a boundary between them as his stepfather lifted Adelina’s hands. He pulled her to her feet and she looked back at the fabric like a child removed from play.

  ‘Look at me, my love.’ He moved his hand in a glissading sweep, ‘that’s it, look at me.’

  Nico’s breath sucked in.

  A mesmer!

  Nicholas had never seen his stepfather mesmer in his life and knew immediately that Adelina’s mutinous obsession had disturbed everyone in the room.

  ‘You must be tired, are you not?’

  Adelina’s eyebrows gathered and she thought for a moment, rubbing at her eyes.

  ‘Mm. I am a little tired, my eyes ache.’

  ‘Then we shall retire for the night. Margriet shall bring you a tray and we shall sleep and begin again in the morning. Is that not a good idea?’

  Adelina placed her hand in Phelim’s like a trusting child and he led her from the room, Gallivant following as far as the door. Nico jumped up and wrote a hasty note and thrust it in the Hob’s hands.

  ‘Is she mesmered?’ Gallivant smiled sadly. ‘Of course she is. She’d not have gone otherwise. Sink me, my boy, she’s on the very edge of reason with her grief and Phelim can see that. He shall mesmer her to sleep for a long time I should think, else we shall never have the Stitchlady back sensibly in our fold again.’

  Nico raised his palms to question him further.

  ‘I mean that she will be asleep now, an enchanted sleep. Unfortunately, there is a finite length to such sleeps, else the sleeper sinks into something more final.’

  How long, Nico scrawled.

  ‘A month. Two at most. Else…’

  Poli broke in, ‘Else the thought is not worth thinking.’

  Nico swung around, his face snarling like a wolf’s.

  ‘What? You think I shouldn’t speak the truth? Grow up, Nicholas. She grieves to the point of death. So do you in your own way black way. The Hob here suffers as well and Phelim carries you all with his wise and steady ways.’ He grabbed Nico’s arm. ‘Don’t turn away when I am speaking to you. You think I don’t know grief when I see it? When I saw my father die with his guts pouring out of his body and me a child? Or when my mother died from the inside out with a wasting sickness that ate her up so that the physician drugged her with the poppy. So my friend, patronise me. Tell me I don’t understand grief.’

  The library clock ticked away the seconds and finally Nico shook his head.

  You win, mortal. I can’t gainsay you.

  He held out his hand and Poli met it with a firm grip.

  ‘I only want to be your friend. There is no other agenda. As I said to your stepfather, some greater game is at play here. If your grief would let you, you would see it for yourself.’

  Gallivant bustled over with a tray of wine and goblets.

  ‘He’s right, Nico. Think on it. Why are you cursed and why did the Ceasg tell you when she did? Why should you suddenly meet this man who knew your father? Why should Adelina suddenly get a forecast of possibilities from the Travellers? Why did Maeve say we must come here? There is something of Fate in it all and it is pointless fighting against the tide at the moment.’

  Nico nodded and hoped they got the message.

  I know. But I’m afraid of Fate. In my family, Fate has made irredeemable changes and it’s happening again.

  Poli caught the look and cuffed him on the shoulder, passing him a wine.

  ‘I have always felt that battles are fought better with good men at your back.’

  Something caused Nicholas to turn and he saw his stepfather leaning against the door, watching the library proceedings with keen eyes.

  ‘It’s done then?’ Gallivant passed him a filled goblet and he drained it.

  ‘It’s done.’

  He pulled a face.

  ‘It’s for the best, Phelim.’ Gallivant patted him on the arm. ‘The cracks were beginning to appear. One month? Two?’

  ‘One. It places more pressure on us than ever. We have to find Isabella. We have no option. Ah,’ he sighed and ran fingers through his hair. ‘I haven’t used an enchantment since that fateful night in Veniche. Not once. It raises a host of unpleasant memories and a nasty taste in my mouth. I had thought I had shed that skin.’

  Nico listened. He knew the story – how Phelim had mesmered his brother’s murderer and become the Ganconer, seducing the evil woman onto the path of death. How he had mesmered a dagger and wounded Adelina’s rapist almost to the point of death before Jasper had stepped in. And now Phelim’s customary calm had slipped as he spoke and Nico realised Time had become their enemy, irredeemably. Before he could go to his stepfather and show any sort of solidarity however, Poli stepped in.

  ‘I am a mere mortal, Phelim, but I would say you have done your wife a kindness. Her mind and soul need healing time and you have given her that.’

  If nothing else.

  The words weren’t said but they hung there in the room.

  Phelim said nothing, just looked deep into his empty goblet as if he could scry the future. From the open window, a night bird cried and dragged him back from wherever he had retreated and he looked out at the dark heavens.

  ‘The moon is rising. I think we must go to the lake immediately. Time is of the essence. We can work on the cloth tomorrow and tonight Margriet will sleep on a cot by Adelina’s side and Folko will guard them both.’

  He headed for the door and Nicholas’s stomach began to writhe.

  *

  Night wrapped itself around them as they left the sanctity of Jasper’s walled garden, Phelim lighting the way with a lantern that swung like a pendulum in his hand, the shadows shifting as if they performed a macabre dance of their own.

  Surprised that Phelim had invited Poli to accompany them, Nicholas surprised himself more when he realised he hadn’t really given much thought to whether he cared. He could only think of what might happen at the lake. Its air of mystery, the thought that far off in the mists lay a land of eternity where nothing more of life could plague or hurt.

  In its way it was as disturbing as it must surely be if one was mortal and encountering dracules or fuaths. But Poli seemed to be taking it in his stride, as though it were the most normal thing for a mortal to accompany Others to a confrontation with death.

  For that is what it is. Death and the hereafter.

  Nicholas thrust a hand into his pocket as they headed down through the dew-dusted fields and into a densely wooded copse where beech discs rattled together like bones strung on a rope. He didn’t know if he wanted to look upon a man who had been dead for almost twenty years, despite that man being his father.

  And yet he may have the secrets.

  A white owl hooted from above their heads, swooping down in an alabaster flash, then looping back to lead them along the path.


  *

  Without warning they stood on the banks of the lake, its silvered surface gleaming. The moon drifted overhead and a moonbridge stretched its odd reflection from their toes, across the lake and into mists that vacillated like gauze, blocking all that might be seen at the end of the ivory road. Nico exhaled, realising he’d been holding his breath.

  What will he be like? Will he come at all?

  They sat on humps of sedge and on smoothed driftwood and looked at each other and then over the lake, willing something to happen. Needing distraction, Gallivant pulled a flask from his never-ending pocket and passed the wine around, Nicholas glad of the warming, Poli saying so. The mortal’s words stumbled as though he too felt the oddness of the night, surely for him even the fearful nature of this nocturnal meeting.

  They grew cold and Phelim mesmered a fire amongst a ring of stones.

  ‘Why not? It seems I have broken my promise never to be fey again so we might as well use the skill for our comfort.’

  The welkin wind moaned around them, nibbling at their sensibilities and they pulled their coats tighter.

  It seemed hours and Nico woke with a jerk, furious with himself for falling asleep. When he looked around, the others had hunched down around the fire and were snoring, the empty flask lying on its side. His neck prickled and goosebumps rattled up his arms.

  Someone’s behind me.

  He rolled over slowly, a hand at his waist where sat his dagger.

  ‘You don’t need that with me, Nicholas, son of Finnian. I would never hurt you.’

  As he turned toward the woman’s haunting voice, he found a full skirt of midnight blue organza dragging over his shoulder. He caught the flash of silver embroidery, of the moon and a galaxy of stars and wondered if he drifted in some gentle dream.

  ‘It is no dream, Nicholas. Wake properly and sit with me.’

  He heard the crisp rustle of fabric and as he pulled himself up, found he was staring into dark eyes in an ivory face of ageless beauty and around which wafted pale grey hair like spun sugar. Amongst the streaming glory, stars and moons glittered and he thought they might be pearls and diamonds. He went to shake Phelim’s shoulder.