A Feast of Sorrows, Stories

by Angela Slatter

  “Are you all right?” I call, and the wail comes again, trickling to a whimper as Armand thunders up behind me. I turn the lemon sherbet door handle and shove.

  A pink cloud that smells like musk and dreams puffs around us as we collapse over the threshold. Any queries as to anyone’s safety or otherwise expire on our lips as we fall immediately into a deep slumber.

  I wake up overheated and flushed, the smell of warm sugar in my nostrils. My face is pressed against something tacky on the floor . . . no, not the floor. The bottom of a cage, a cage made of candy canes shaped and melded into a box, not big enough for me to stand, but I can sit if I slouch. I roll up, pulling painfully away from the gluey surface. My head feels as if candyfloss, blown in one ear, has chosen not to go out the other, but rather take up residence in my skull.

  I look around, blinking. My satchel, with the kitchen knife in it—not to mention my little roll of lockpicks—lies on the flags beside the door, for all the good it will do me. Idly, I wonder how long it would take for me to chew my way out.

  There’s all the usual furniture you’d expect of a little old lady’s cottage, although made of substances not generally associated with furniture: marshmallow armchairs with antimacassars of fondant lace; tables of fudge; rugs of pulled taffy; paintings with wafer picture frames; jelly bean footstools; a peanut brittle bedstead, with chocolate brownie pillows and a coverlet that looks like woven ribbon candy, atop which lies Armand, still unconscious. It all looks adorable and, in spite of everything, my stomach rumbles, and that’s what attracts the attention of the little old lady herself, who’s diligently stoking the fire beneath the enormous oven in one corner. She’s wizened and ancient, shoulders rounded and back bent. She limps over to me, fingers thin and twigish, hair like steel wool, nose crooked.

  “Ah!” She cackles. “Awake, awake, awake!”

  “I rushed in to help you, you know,” I tell her with reproach. “You tricked me.”

  “Well, I’d never get a meal otherwise. People are very particular about not getting eaten. Do all sorts of things to avoid it.” She shakes her head. “Good meals are few and far between for the likes of me.”

  “Bad witch.”

  “We’re all bad witches at some point, dearie. Have you not worked that out yet?”

  I don’t say anything because I know she’s right, more or less.

  “Anyway, though you won’t appreciate this, it’s pleased I am to see you. Far too many skinny girls nowadays, not enough for a filling repast.” She eyes my well-padded flanks. “I’ll have you salted and smoked and put away for the cold months! Meatloaf! Steaks! Chops and ribs! Ah, the soups your bones will make—I’ve got the best pearl barley and dried peas set by. Oh, and black pudding! I’ve not had that in so long.” She fairly salivates.

  “What have you done to Armand?”

  “Nothing. Yet.” She grins lasciviously and she’s missing teeth here and there. I notice the shackle around Armand’s ankle, a genuine iron item in this place of sugar and spice. “He’s a heavy sleeper, still under for now, but I’ll be on top of him soon and that’ll wake him up.”

  I think my jaw drops at that.

  “What? I’ve got needs! I get lonely.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you that fulfilling your own needs at the cost of others is not okay?”

  “Do you think anyone ever bothered teaching me anything?” she sneers, and glares at me for long moments. “Those of us who are on our own, with no one to care for us, we make our own way, our own rules as and how we must.”

  And though part of that makes sense, I can’t see how it justifies turning me into a five-course feast and Armand into a sex slave. I’m about to tell her so when there’s a groan from the bed.

  “Ah. Time to change into something a little less comfortable.” She draws herself up, pats at her dark grey skirts, her iron-sky hair, and begins to whisper a spell. The words come out as a mist, slowly falling and encircling her as it goes, until she’s enveloped in a minty-fresh fog that thickens and thickens until she at last steps out of the cloud of it, thoroughly changed.

  She’s tall and blond; her squinty raisin eyes are large and limpid and green, furrowed lips are full and ripe as cherries, her age-spotted skin is milky and smooth, her cloth of gold dress is a thing to cause Orienne to turn jade.

  “Neat trick,” I say, more than a little envious that someone can change their shape so easily.

  She pulls a swathe of cloth from a shelf and says, “Thank you. Now, I like a little privacy, so don’t take this personally,” and wraps the cloth around my cage as if I’m a bird being put to sleep for the night.

  I hear her move away, begin to coo sweet nothings to the rousing man.

  I examine the lock on my prison: it’s made of metal and I can work with that. My lockpicks might be out of reach, but there are more than enough pins in my hair to make up for it. It takes me a little longer than usual—I’m less skilled with a clip, and I have to try to block out the sounds of her seduction and Armand’s drowsy responses—but eventually I hear a snick. The door cracks open without too much noise, while I, on the other hand, make a racket and a half getting out of the cage. I leave skin behind, my legs are all pins and needles, and don’t want to hold me up as I wobble about, flailing at the draped sheet.

  All of which gives the witch time to struggle off the bed, bodice unhooked, hair dishevelled, skirts getting in the way. Although she’s magicked herself a young woman’s body, she still moves like an old one, and that gives me the chance to grab a metal poker from beside the oven, just as she’s coming towards me, just as she’s raising her hands, just as she’s moving her lips to spill out some curse, some hex, some enchantment that will turn me into a toad or a goose or an entrée.

  I’m faster with the poker than she is with her words, and I split her skull like an egg. The spell shatters as easily as her head does, and both spill out grey and red. In a moment, she’s shrunk to fairy dust and floss, fine and silver as spider webs. I wait for the cottage to dissolve around us, to melt and drip into a sugary apocalypse, that’s generally the way things go, but no. It stays. It sticks. It’s not connected to her like so many magic things are to their masters. Perhaps she didn’t make it, perhaps she just wandered in, found it. Perhaps it just grew up around her, made strange on its own.

  “Rosaline,” mumbles Armand, stretched out on the bed, his shirt lacings loose, his trousers disturbed in more ways than one. “Are you all right?”

  “Uh huh. Nothing a good bath won’t cure.” I move towards him, throwing one final suspicious look at the witchy mess on the floor. Into the oven with that as soon as I get my stepbrother free. I’m faster with the hairpin this time, and have him unfettered in a trice. “There.”

  “Thank you.” He pulls me up to lie beside him, strokes my face, my hair, my lips, my throat, my chest, oh my! Part of me thinks This isn’t for you, this is just what the witch started, but the other part, the hopeful part says He followed you, he came after you, he wanted to keep you safe—and for the love of all that’s holy, this has got to be better than those spotty stableboys!

  When he kisses me my heart feels as if it’s unfurling like the petals of a flower blooming in the sun.

  We can, I think, be together. We can make a future, untethered from our pasts, from our family. We can be happy.

  “We can be happy,” I say aloud, curled around Armand. “We can stay here.”

  “Oh, no,” he answers, blinking. “We have to go. You have to find the loaf of bread that can’t be eaten up and the bottle of wine that never runs out. It’s the only way we’ll make it through winter.”

  “What?” I ask stupidly, all the glowing feelings that were surging through me, thudding happily in my chest, warming my flesh, buzzing between my legs with a lovely throbbing pulse . . . all of them stop, freeze over, feel like a coating of ice on my sweaty skin.

  “We have to bring them back to Mother. She’ll be waiting.” He smiles. “She said you’
d never make it, that you’d never return home again. That’s why I came after you, to keep you motivated.” He slaps my ample backside as if I’m an ornery horse he’s been obliged to ride.

  “Your mother wants me to die out here, Armand, the way all the other sisters have on their fool’s errands.” You stupid bastard, you’ll die too—whatever will Mother say to that?

  He sits up, stares down at me. “Don’t be silly. Mother wouldn’t do that. Mother loves her stepdaughters. It’s not her fault you’re all so unfortunate.”

  He wanted to help her, not me. He’s too thick to realise I’m not meant to succeed. He’ll never believe it of her, has never suspected her of any ill intent towards the children that aren’t her own—no more than my father will. And as I stare into his eyes I can see her there, as a white dot in the pupils, an unmelting ice queen, a woman who’ll always be there before me. Someone he’ll never let go; someone he’ll always love best. I’ll never hold him as tightly as she does. My heart tightens, curls in upon itself, and I realise this is what my father feels every damned time one of the wives lets him down. He allows himself love, to care, and to trust . . . and they requite him so badly. I think I understand him at last.

  “I’m hungry,” says Armand. Armand who’s clueless, who’s blind to what’s beneath his nose; who’ll happily drive me to my doom all to please his murderous mater.

  And I think about secret chambers and poisoned hearts, and lackwits who can’t be trusted. I roll out of bed, find my satchel by the door, and fish out a green orb, crisp and sweet-looking, tempting as can be.

  “Here,” I say, “have an apple.”

  The Jacaranda Wife

  Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes when the winds blow right, the summer heat is kind, and the rain trickles down just-so, a woman is born of a jacaranda tree.

  The indigenous inhabitants leave these women well alone. They know them to be foreign to the land for all that they spring from the great tree deeply embedded in the soil. White-skinned as the moon, violet-eyed, they bring only grief.

  So when, in 1849, James Willoughby found one such woman sleeping beneath the spreading boughs of the old jacaranda tree in his house yard, members of the Birbai tribe who had once quite happily come to visit the kitchens of the station, disappeared. As they went, they told everyone they encountered, both black and white, that one of the pale women had come to Rollands Plain station and there would be no good of her. Best to avoid the place for a long, long time.

  Willoughby, the younger son of an old Sussex family, had fought with his father, migrated to Australia, and made his fortune, in that order. His property stretched across ten thousand acres, and the Merino sheep he’d purchased from John McArthur thrived on the green, rolling pastures spotted with eucalypts and jacarandas. He had a house built from buttery sandstone, on a slight rise, surrounded on three sides by trees and manicured lawns, a turning circle out the front for carriages. Willoughby made sure the windows were wide enough to drink in the bright Australian light, and filled its rooms with all the finest things that reminded him of England. His one lack was that of a wife.

  He had in his possession, it must be said, a large collection of miniatures sent by the parents of potential brides. Some were great beauties—and great beauties did not wish to live in the Colonies. Some were obviously plain, in spite of efforts the portraitists had gone to imbue them with some kind of charm; these girls were quite happy to make the arduous journey to a rich, handsome, dark-haired husband, but he did not want a plain wife. He had not made his way in the world to ornament this place with a plain-faced woman, no matter how sweet her nature might be.

  The silver-haired girl he found early one morning was beyond even his dreams and demands. Long-limbed, delicate, with skin so pale he could see blue veins pulsing beneath her skin—for she was naked, sleeping on a bed of brilliant purple jacaranda flowers, crushed by the weight and warmth of her body. As he leaned over her, she opened her eyes and he was lost in their violet depths.

  Ever the gentleman, he wrapped his proper Englishman’s coat about her shoulders, speaking to her in the low, gentle voice he reserved for skittish horses, and steered her inside. He settled her on his very own bed, the place he had always hoped to bring a suitable wife, and called for his housekeeper. The broad, red-faced Mrs Flynn bustled in. She was a widow, living now with Willoughby’s overseer in a fine arrangement that suited both of them. In Ireland, her three sons had been hung for treason against the British, and the judge who sentenced them decided that a woman who had produced three such anarchists must herself have strong anti-English sympathies. She was arrested, charged, tried, and sent to live in this strange land with an arid centre and a wet green edge. She’d been allocated to Willoughby, and although her heart would always have a hole in it where her sons had been torn away, she had, in some measure, come to feel maternal about her master and directed her energies to making him happy as only a mother could.

  The sight of the girl on the bed, lids shut once again, and the mooncalf look in her master’s eyes troubled her but she held her tongue, pushed her greying red hair back under its white cap, and began to bustle around the girl. Willoughby sat and stared.

  “She’s perfect, Martha. Don’t you think?”

  “Beautiful for sure, Master James, for all she’s underdressed. Who is she? Where’s she from?” Mrs Flynn surreptitiously sniffed at the girl’s mouth for a whiff of gin. Finding nothing, her suspicions shifted; surely the girl was addle-pated. Or a tart, left adrift by a client of the worst sort. Or a convict on the run. Or a good girl who’d had something unspeakable visited upon her. She’d check later, to see if there was any bleeding. “Perhaps the doctor . . . ”

  “Is she hurt?” The urgency in his voice pierced her heart and she winced, like a good mother.

  “Not that I can see, but we’d best be sure. Send for Dr Abrams. Go on now.” She urged him from the room, her hands creating a small breeze as she flapped at him. Turning back to the girl, she found the violet eyes open once more, staring around her, without fear, and with only a mild curiosity.

  “And what’s your name, little miss?” Mrs Flynn asked, adjusting the blanket she’d laid over the girl. The eyes widened, the mouth opened but the only thing that came out was a noise like the breeze rushing through leaves.

  Martha Flynn felt cold all over. Her bladder threatened to betray her and she had to rush from the room and relieve herself outside. She wore her sweat like a coat when she returned (it had taken all of her courage to step back inside). The girl eyed her mildly, a little sadly perhaps, but something in her gaze told Martha Flynn that she had been entrusted with a secret. It moved her fear to pity.

  “Now then, the doctor will be here soon. You make yourself comfortable, mavourneen.”

  “She’s a mute, you see,” explained Willoughby to the parson. “No family that we can find. Someone has to look after her.”

  The Reverend St John Clare cleared his throat, playing for time before he had to answer. Willoughby saved him for a moment.

  “She seems fond enough of me,” he lied a little. She seemed not to hate him, nor anyone else. Even “fond” was too strong a term, but he didn’t want to say “She seems slightly less than indifferent to me.” Sometimes she smiled, but mostly when she was outdoors, near the tree he’d found her under. She was neither grateful for his rescue, nor ungrateful; she simply took whatever was offered, be it protection, affection, or food (she preferred vegetables to meat, screwing her nose up at the plates of lamb and mutton). She did, however, take some joy in the new lambs, helping Mrs Flynn to care for them, feeding the motherless ones by hand, and they would follow her.

  He’d named her Emily, after his grandmother. She had taken up painting; Willoughby had presented her with a set of watercolours, thinking it would be a lady-like way for her to pass the time. She sat outside and painted the jacaranda tree over and over, her skill growing with each painting, until she had at last produced a finely detailed, subtl
y rendered image, which Willoughby had framed. It hung over the fireplace in his study; he would stare it for hours, knowing there was something he was missing, some construction of line and curve, some intersection of colour he had failed to properly see. She would smile whenever she found him thus engaged, lightly drop her hand to his shoulder and finally leave as quietly as she had come.

  “Does she want to marry you?” asked the parson.

  “I think so. It’s . . . ” struggled Willoughby, “it’s just so damned inappropriate to have her under my roof like this! She’s not a relative, she’s not a ward, she’s a woman and I . . . ”

  “You love her,” finished St John. Mrs Flynn had spoken to him quietly upon his arrival. “There’s always a charitable institution? I could find her a position with one of the ladies in Sydney Town, as a maid or companion?”

  “No! I won’t let her go!” Willoughby wiped the sweat from his brow, felt his shirt sticking to the skin of his back. “I can’t let her go. I want to look after her. I want her to wife.”

  St John Clare released a heavy sigh. He was, to a large extent, dependent on Willoughby’s good will—what mind did it make to him if Willoughby wished to marry a mute who’d appeared from nowhere? Younger sons were still kidnapping brides in England—this was marginally less reprehensible. “Very well. I will conduct the ceremony. Next Sunday?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Ah, yes, tomorrow. Very well.” He did not use the phrase “unseemly haste,” although he knew others would. What Willoughby wanted, Willoughby would have, and if it benefited the Reverend Clare in the long and short term then so much the better.

  The ceremony was short, the groom radiant and the bride silent.

  Mrs Flynn had dressed the girl in the prettiest of the new frocks James ordered made for her. It was pink—Willoughby had wanted white, but Mrs Flynn insisted it would wash-out someone so pale and she had carried the day, on territory too uncertain for a male to risk insistence.