by Peter Beagle
It had not been this way on our travels.
Wherever the servants were, they knew how to cook. The rolls were so sweet and warm they hardly needed the honey that pooled in its etched glass pot. It, like the dinnerware, had a fox motif. In fact, hunting was a major decoration of many of my husband’s furnishings. So manly. I wondered if he would mind, now that he was no longer an unwed man, if I replaced a few of his foxes with something more feminine.
I stared down at my plate, at the foxes running along a forested border, outwitting a farmer with an axe, and felt dizzy. Yes. Roses, or perhaps ivy, would be far better for my digestion. Especially since the plates seemed to be telling a story, one that continued around the brim of the salad plate, that blossomed full blown on the side of the teapot. Foxes running, hiding, from foolish-looking men. It would have been cute, even comedic, but for the look on the fox’s muzzled face…
“I’ve lingered longer than I should have,” Joaquin said, standing. I made to stand, too, but he stayed me with a kiss. “Sit, finish your dinner. I will see you in a few days, I promise.”
“Are you sure?”
He took my chin in his hands and kissed me again. “I always keep my promises.” He looked me in the eyes a long moment and I nodded. He stroked my cheek and left, leaving me to sit, wondering what to do next. I ran to the window after a moment, to see him on his white and gray horse, riding down the lane. He had a pair of saddlebags, no more, and I thought that was good. Perhaps he would come home soon. The keys weighed heavily from their chain around my waist, and so I decided to do some of the exploration denied me the night before. I went over to the tube.
“I’m all done. Thank you. It was very nice.” I listened for a long second. No banging of pots, no yelling at skivvies, and certainly no acknowledgement of my speech. Odd, I thought as I went off, keys jingling.
Most of the rooms were not locked. Some of them could be, and I had keys for those to prove it. The library, three stories high and filled with books, was one of these; the key marked with an open book fit in the lock and turned easily. It was a perfectly round room, and a set of stairs spiraled around it, up and up to a small platform at the very top, below the stained glass dome. I walked all the way up, admiring the pattern of the large dome. It was intricately done, a forest filled with flowers and life, like a labyrinth that unraveled itself the closer I got to it. On the platform, with its short iron rail, I could see the words around the very bottom, worked into the pattern of the forest floor. “Be bold,” it said. “Be bold, be bold…but not too bold.” Looking far down to where the bright-colored pattern of the carpet seemed more like a memory than fact, I thought it would take far more than me being bold to ever ascend those steps again.
There were bedrooms done in various colors, and, under lock and key, a nursery, the only place that had any accumulated dust. I pulled the drapes and opened the windows wide, hoping that some of the dust and the underlying stench of decay would fade. I would have to talk to the servants. It smelled as if a rat, or maybe even a cat, had died unattended to. And the dust and webs lay so thick on the furnishings that until I opened the windows I thought they were covered with cloth.
It was the only room in the manor so shamefully taken care of. I took delight in the upper rooms, all of them locked, such as the music room. As I stepped inside it, I was amazed at how airy it seemed, filled with cases displaying all manner of instruments. One corner was taken up with an odd organ that barked nosily at me when I, thinking that I was crossing a different pattern of tile, found myself making music. I did a silly little jig on the wedge-shaped tiles, and every time my foot moved, music came out of the pipes. In front of the windows a many-layered harp sat, speaking softly whenever a whisper of breath from my movements touched it. I opened the windows and stood behind it so that the breeze from outside could play across the strings, and as I stood there I felt as if I was awash in music, bathing in it like something tangible.
Eventually I left. I spent more time than I should admit to in the treasure room, with its small boxes filled with gold coins stamped with symbols from around the world, a chest of nothing but pearls, and a cabinet with various stones of varying hues and sizes. I felt guilty, looking through it, but he had bid me to be free with his home.
And so I was, until I took a wrong turn somewhere, wanting to sneak down into the servants’ quarters. I thought I could creep up on one of them, give them a right talking to about the nursery.
The hall was long, dark, but perfectly clean. A window at the very end of it provided the only light, and there was only one door, outlined in red. There was no other way out, forcing me to go back the way I came. Yet I could hear something on the other side, and as I leaned closer I made out whispering. At first I wondered if it was perhaps the housekeeper or the butler’s room. I placed my hand on it lightly, pressed my ear to the wood. My other hand held the keys silent.
The smallest key dug into the palm of my hand, and I straightened, looking at it. It was not metal, despite its black, all-absorbing color, but glass. I held it in front of my eyes, studying it. The other keys slid away until I was holding only the small, plain glass key in between my thumb and forefinger. Such a tiny key, for such a tiny room, down such a long, plain hall. It looked so harmless. I had seen all his treasures, surely…his gold and his jewels and his strange, beautiful, wondrous things. What things would this room hold? This out of the way, innocent-looking doorway? Besides, he was my husband, was he not? What right did he have to keep secrets from his wife?
Such a tiny, harmless, innocent key. Such a plain door. Just take a peek, prove them all wrong, no one would ever, ever know…
I lowered the key toward the lock. The doorknob was red glass, smooth and cool to the touch.
It would not go well for our marriage, I heard him say, as clearly as if it were yesterday again. I took my hand away from the knob and put it behind my back. I forced myself to drop the keys so that they hit my thigh. Hand joined hand, and grasped each other tightly. I backed down the hall, never taking my eyes off the door, wondering, wondering, what was listening to me in the silence; what might come out to get me?
The only sign of my near fall was that my thumb and forefinger were pink, almost as if the key had scalded me. It faded even as I was sitting down to the tea I had requested from the kitchen, telling the silent servants that I was not interested in lunch, thank you; when footsteps, hard, businesslike boot steps, could be heard stomping up the stairs. I thought about cowering in the corner, but realized that the small room, sunny and filled with plants, the only furniture a spindly table and pair of chairs, would afford me no cover. I could throw the teapot at whoever it was, I thought.
“There you are.” My husband leaned against the door frame as if trying to capture his breath. There was no warmth in his smile.
“You’re home so soon? Was the business that quickly concluded?”
“I hope you’re not disappointed. I wanted to rush home to my bride.” He crossed to me, and offered his hand. I placed my hand in his and he kissed it with cold lips, turning it over so that he could kiss the palm. His eyes lingered on the tips of my fingers. The pink was merely a blush, almost indiscernible, and he kissed those two. He repeated the process with my other hand, and the more he kissed them, the more he looked, the warmer he became, until he gave me a smile of perfect, unspoiled joy and pulled me close. His lips on mine were warmer than summer, and I felt, oddly, as if I’d passed some test, as if I’d made him incredibly, profoundly happy.
I searched the house from top to bottom, but never found the smallest sign of a servant. My husband always changed the subject even if I asked him outright where they where and why I never saw them.
The nursery door was locked again the next time I went to inspect it, and when I opened the door the curtains were drawn once more. I looked at the floor and noticed that there were only two sets of tracks in the dust, one leading in and one leading out. How did they manage to go in and shut the windows
without leaving a sign? I thought it was because they had their own way in. All large houses had a network of tunnels running behind the walls, entrances and exits cleverly concealed by wall seams and wainscoting. I walked around the room, pulling back the curtains and looking for scuffs in the dust beside my own, and came up empty. I stepped into the hallway, pausing for just a moment, wondering if I should prop open the door and go get my husband, when I heard the whisk of the curtains being drawn once more. The door was slammed shut and I heard the lock turn. I fumbled for the keys then stopped, much as I had before another, smaller door, and decided to leave well enough alone.
To quote my husband during a more exasperated moment when I’d been harassing him on the subject, “As long as the food appears on the table on time, the rooms are clean and all of your other needs are seen to, what do you care if you ever see them or not? Most nobles prefer it that way.” I admitted he had a point and decided to let it go.
The servants, or lack thereof, were not the worst part.
Every day or so, I would receive visitors. Sometimes my cousin, but more often other noble women from our circle. People, I’d like to point out, who had had very little time for me when I was merely Weli’s charity case. And had they behaved as the usual busybodies digging for gossip, I’d have probably dealt better with it, but it was…odd. There were no noisy entrances, no silly useless talk or overly exuberant greetings. The show, in short, was gone.
You know what I mean. Every time a lady visits another, a performance is demanded. Her clothes, her friends, her carriage, everything down to a small, yappy pet is part of a performance. The way she takes your hands, kisses your cheek, looks around your home, are all part of a larger thing. They did not do this with me.
They were quiet when they came, and their clothes, while respectable, were darker in tone. They took turns coming, and always came early in the day, well before sunset. The most daunting realization was that, from the closest friend to the most distant near enemy, without fail, they always looked so worried until they saw me, until they took my hand. They would search my face, talk to me, until little by little the worry would fade into an almost palatable relief. I thought as time went on they would stop coming, but they never did. Every other day, early afternoon. I could predict with near perfect precision when and who.
But that wasn’t the worst part, either.
That would be the whispering. Every night on the edge of my dreams. It was a murmur if my husband was there, but it only grew louder when he wasn’t. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the darkness to an empty bed, chitterings and whisperings and moanings echoing between my ears so loudly that sleep was impossible and I could only lie there and wait for my husband’s return. He would come in, naked, cold, damp, and throw himself under the covers. He’d slide his hand into mine, and we’d never speak, just wait until his shivering stopped and the screeching in my head died down to faint whispers once more.
It amazes me still, that I could be obsessed with making him confess the secret of the servants, but never once ask him about the sounds in my head. Perhaps I was afraid that my listening at the door had contaminated me somehow, that it would be a confession of how I’d almost slipped the key in and opened it.
“Be bold,” I said.
He jumped a little, and looked up from his reading. “What did you say?”
We were in his study, and I was standing next to the fireplace. The painting above it disturbed me, continuing as it did the fox motif. I’d never gotten quite comfortable with it, but the picture of it, with a group of farmers hunkered down around a fire, the fox spitted over the flames, was horrifying. I felt bad for the fox, which chased my food around the dishes and followed me in the woodwork of the house. I’d read the brass plaque underneath it.
“That’s what the painting’s called, I suppose,” I said, pointing at it. “‘Be Bold’.”
“No,” he said. “That’s the motto of our house.”
“Be bold? Is that all?”
He nodded and returned to his reading. “It’s enough.”
I looked outside. There were another couple of hours of light. “I’m going riding.” I looked to see if he would jump up and congratulate me on my wonderful idea, but all he did was nod and turn the page. I left the study, feeling nervous. I’d never ridden anywhere by myself, at least not since the last time. His voice echoed down the hall after me, comfortingly, as if he knew my worries.
“I’ll come after you in an hour,” he said, “should I not see you sooner.” And suddenly I felt much braver.
The forest around our home was dense, as if no one had been permitted to thin it, even for a stick of wood to feed the fire. The only thing that made it passable was the trails beat down by horses like mine, and the patches of land where the needles had landed too deep for anything to grow. I had set off meaning to go in a straight direction, stopping when we reached the edge of the land, which I hoped would be marked by some sign, such as a line of low stone fence. This idea was soon discarded. I’d be fine for a long time, until a thicket of brambles and brush forced me to turn right or left. Sometimes I would see burrows dug out of the floor, and as I carefully steered my gentle mare around them, I wondered what lived inside them, and hoped for a glimpse of animal. I saw birds occasionally, but did not hear them sing or even chirp. I startled something large as I came around a corner, and though I heard its panicked flight, I saw nothing. Otherwise, all was silence as steady and as unsettling as inside the house.
I got off the mare, meaning to lead her to the stream I thought I saw through a wall of weed and brush. I knew if there was water, there were animals, thus there would be a way down. And there was. Narrow, muddy, I took the reins and walked down slowly. In her eagerness for a fresh drink she pushed me, and my boots, pretty and pretty useless, skidded in the soft soil. I let go of the reins and fell backwards, skidding until my feet and one hand splashed into the water, managing to keep most of myself out of it. I grabbed a few pale twigs sticking out from the mud to pull me up, but they pulled free, and I fell back.
The sticks felt strange and I opened my fist to inspect its contents. Barely held together by mud and something else, finger bones lay in my hand, surprisingly heavy. In the dying rays of the sun, a ruby winked through the sludge and I realized the rough, filthy lump encircling one bone was a ring.
I went into shock, I think, because I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw the fingers as far from me as possible. I was filled with dread, but not worried. After all, I knew that his wife had been found, and how. The searchers simply missed something. Instead, I sat, got colder, shivered, while I wondered.
Now what does one do? I have been poor, as you might have gathered from my story so far; hungry, putting my coppers and silvers together to buy enough trim to pretty up a dress to keep up appearances when I’d rather be buying bread; watching money I would rather have spent on supper being sent off to pay the previous night’s losses. Knowing this, perhaps, you won’t be surprised that one of my first thoughts was whether or not to keep the ring.
Eventually, I worked my way back up the bank. I saw a curve of bone that I’d earlier confused with a rock. I pulled at it, bringing a skull out of the muck.
And that was when I began to worry; for you see, I knew that they’d found her head. That’s how they would have identified her, his wife, the one who loved rubies. In the hole made by removing the skull, I found something that glittered, despite the mud, and I took it out and walked it down to the water, and rinsed it until the mud was gone. It was a sapphire earring, some of the stones missing, but nevertheless, it was not something a woman who favored rubies would mistakenly wear.
My horse raised her head and nickered, and I shoved the skull and the fingers back into the bank. I pocketed the ring and the earring and walked over to the edge of the path.
I held my hands out from my body, lifting a drenched skirt. Joaquin, from on top of his stallion, winced. “What must you think of me,” I said, walking u
p to him. His eyes flickered over my shoulder, along the bank, and back to me. I kept my smile on straight, just as I had when creditors came and assessed my family’s possessions. He knows, a voice in the back of my head whispered. He knows that they’re there. You had best pray that he doesn’t think you do.
He got down from his horse. I could see that he intended to come down to the river, perhaps disguising his need to look at the grave by fetching my horse.
“Rachel, come now,” I called, and thank God, she actually listened, blocking the path down by coming up it. He grabbed the reins, and in the moment it took him to pull her around, I made a decision. As he made to hand them back to me, I wrapped my arms around him and pressed close, not worrying that I was getting mud and water all over his nice clothes. “I’m cold. Let’s go home. Perhaps you can help me get warm again?” I pulled his face to mine and kissed him, making the meaning behind my words clear. He pulled away, looking down at me with thinly disguised suspicion, but then the hard set of his shoulders loosened, and he kissed me back.
It was late, when we finally sat down to dinner, but the food was still warm.
He awoke me with a kiss.
I unwillingly opened my eyes. It was still quite dark out; a peek out the window showed the last stars of night and a gray line of sky. I flopped back down with a sigh, and snuggled closer to him. He laughed and said, “I have to go.”
“Already?” I wrapped my arms tighter and squeezed my eyes shut. He carefully pulled my arm from around his waist.
“While you were out yesterday I received an urgent letter from one of my business associates. I have matters to attend to. I’ll be back.”
“You didn’t say anything about this last night.” I managed to pry one eye open. This was my favorite time of day, to be honest. He was always softer when we first woke up. He looked younger, gentler. It was easier to delight him.
