“What have you done?” screeches the one—Fidelma carries a battleaxe. Orla wields a mace—how interesting to see what is chosen in fear and anger, for slashing and smashing. None of the subtlety we’ve been taught these past months. Not such Quiet Women now. Angry warriors with their blood up.
I turn tail and hare away, back along the passageway, through the kitchen and breaking out into the kitchen garden. I could turn and face them. I still have Gwern’s knife in my pocket, its blade so sharp and shiny, wiped all clean. I could put into practice the fighting skills they’ve taught me these past months. But how many have they put beneath the ground and fed to the worms? I am but a scribe and a thief. And besides: in all they’ve done—to this moment—they’ve been kind, teaching me their art, and I’ve repaid them with deception, no matter what I think of the way they’ve treated Gwern. I would rather flee than hurt them for they have been my friends.
I cross the lawn and launch myself into the woods, ducking around trees, hurdling low bushes and fallen branches, twigs slashing my face. At last, I stumble into the clearing and see the well—and the alder, which is now different in its entirety. The ropes and ribs of mistletoe have withered and shrunk, fallen to the ground, and the tree shines bright as angel wings, its trunk split wide like a dark doorway. And before it stands . . . before it stands . . .
Gwern, transformed.
Man-shaped as before, but almost twice as tall as he was. A crown of stripped whistle-wood branches, each finial topped with rich black alder-buckthorn berries, encircles his head. His pitch-hued cloak circles like smoke and his ebony-dark hair moves with a life of its own. His features shift as if made from soot vapour and dust and ash—one moment I recognise him, the next he is a stranger. Then he sees me and smiles, reaching forth a hand tipped with sharp, coal-black nails.
I forget my pursuers. I forget everything. And in the moment where I hesitate to take what Gwern is offering me—what the Erl-King is offering me—in that moment I lose.
I am knocked down by a blow to the back—not weapon-strike, thankfully, but one of the Misses, tackling me, ensuring I don’t have a fast, clean death. That I will be alive while they inflict whatever revenge they choose. I roll over and Fidelma is on me, straddling my waist, hoisting the battleaxe above her head, holding it so the base of the handle will come down on me. I fumble in my pocket, desperate and as she brings her arms down, I jam Gwern’s knife upwards, into her stomach. I am horrified by how easily the flesh parts, sickened by the doing of something that until now has been an academic concern. There is the terror of blood and guts and fear and mortality.
Fidelma’s shock is apparent—has no one ever managed to wound her in all her long years? She falls off me and rolls into a ball. Orla, slower on her feet, shoots out of the trees and makes her way to her sister. The mace and chain swings from one hand as she helps Fidelma to her feet.
I look upwards at the pair of them, past them to the cloudless blue sky.
Fidelma spits her words through blood, “Bitch.”
Orla, raises the mace with determination.
I am conscious, so conscious of the feel of the grass beneath me, the twigs poking through the torn fabric of my grey blouse and into the bruised flesh of my back. I turn my head towards the alder tree, to the where the split in the trunk has closed; to the empty spot where Gwern no longer stands. I watch as the trunk seems to turn in on itself, then pulse out, one two three, then in again and out—and out and out and out until finally it explodes in a hail of bright black light, wood, branches and deadly splinters sure as arrows.
When my ears stop ringing and my vision clears I sit up slowly. The clearing is littered with alder and mistletoe shards, all shattered and torn. The well’s roof has been destroyed, the stones have been fractured, some turned into gravel, some blocks fallen into the water. The next Murcianii pilgrim will have difficulty drinking from this source. I look around, searching for Fidelma and Orla.
Oh, Fidelma and Orla.
My heart stops. They have been my teachers, friends, mentors. I came to them with lies and stole from them; they would have killed me, no question, and perhaps I deserved it. They stole from Gwern long before I came, yes, kept him against his will; yet I would not have had them end like this.
Fidelma and Orla are pinned against the trees opposite the ruined alder, impaled like butterflies or bugs in a collection. Look! Their limbs so tidily arranged, arms and legs stretched out, displayed and splayed; heads lolling, lips slack, tongues peeking between carmined lips, eyes rolling slowly, slowly until they come to a complete stop and begin to whiten as true age creeps upon them.
I look back at the broken alder; there is only a smoking stump left to say that once there was a tree, a shadow tree, a doorway for the Erl-King himself.
He is gone, but he saved me. And in saving me, he has lost me. I cannot travel through this gate; it is closed to all who might recognise it.
I will go back to the house.
I will go back to St Dymphna’s and swiftly pack my satchel before Alys finds her poor dead girls. I will take the Compendium from its place in the library—it can be returned to the Citadel now the Meyricks will not pursue it. In the stables I will saddle one of the fine long-necked Arabian mares the Misses keep and be on the road before Alys’s wails reach my ears.
Shadow trees. Surely there are more—there must be more, for how else might the Erl-King travel the land? In the Citadel’s Archives there will be mention of them, surely. There will be tales and hints, if not maps; there will be a trail I can follow. I shall seek and search and I shall find another.
I will find one and let the shadow tree open itself to me. I will venture down to the kingdom of under-earth. I will find him and I will sleep in his arms at last.
By My Voice I Shall Be Known
If I still had a voice, I would cry out.
The fabric is thick and my needle blunt—I should have sharpened it before now—so I put too much weight behind my thrust and forced the point. Not only the quilt, but also my finger is impaled. I do not wail, though I long to, determined not to make the hideous grunt that is the only noise left to me. In my memory, I still hold the sound of my voice, but each time I bellow it lessens, chips away at the timbre so lovingly preserved in recollection. Slowly, carefully, I draw the thread fully through, then pull my injured digit off the silver shaft. A scrap of spare cloth is wrapped around the glistening blue-ruby drop, then the needle itself is assiduously cleaned. I set the bulky bundle of material aside and limp, my legs stiff from hours of sitting, to the basin in the far corner of the tiny room Mother Magnus has given me. Washing the injury, applying a salve, then bandaging the deep wound; I look out the window, not really seeing so much as remembering what is there before me.
Bellsholm sprawls along the banks of the wide Bell River, loose-limbed as a sleeping giant; a rough crescent with its northern tip truncated by the bulk of the Singing Rock. In the foothills that hug the edge of the town some few ramshackle houses have crept, not too high, and certainly nothing up on the majestic outcropping of the promontory. At the furtherest boundaries there are farms to supply the markets and businesses best located away from the centre of town, such as the carriage maker, the foundry, the marble worker’s studio, three carpentry and joinery firms, and Ballantyne’s Coffin Emporium where the strange woman employs four apprentices and, rumour has it, keeps a locked room filled entirely with mirrors. There is also the hostelry, where travellers with no interest in the hamlet can rest, eat, exchange their tired horses for fresh ones, then continue their journeys. Down by the river are the docks, brimming and bobbing with great ships from afar filled with all the finest things a prosperous place requires, and small local boats that bring in fish and travel up and down the reaches too narrow for the caravels and barques.
I can hear, dimly, the melodies of the rusalky, wafting up from the base of the Rock, where they laze daily (except Sundays when the sound of church bells sends them into hiding) and serenade any
one who will listen. Murdered maidens, those unfortunate in love, gather their spirits to sit on the rocks, dangling luminescent toes in the water. The weak of will may traipse too close and fall in. Some drown. The locals are, by now, mostly inured to the strains and are all brought up to swim like eels—indeed, Léolin will tell you that as a young man only his strong stroke saved him on the day when he was distracted by a particularly lovely ballad. The greatest danger is to travellers, on ships and on the roads, unfamiliar with our ladies.
My finger aches and throbs and drags me back to the four-walled space with its thin-mattressed brass bed, ancient velvet-covered chaise, stand of drawers, and the single lantern to brighten my nights. I must ignore the pain and get back to my work. To the quilt, the wedding quilt; the wedding quilt that should have been mine.
Adlai made his money on the ships.
I cannot say when we first met, for it seemed he was always there beside me as we two orphans made our way in the world—but our whole time together, reason tells me, could not have been more than three years. So, perhaps we met soon after I first came here, hoping to find a home. I had a voice then. A voice with which to sing and shout, speak and chant, to laugh and sometimes lie. I had a voice to say “Yes” when he asked me to lie with him, to say “Aye” when he begged “Marry me,” to say “Please” when asked if he should read to me that which I could not for myself, and to bid him “Farewell, fair winds” when he sailed off on his very first journey. He—we—had scrimped and saved, set aside the money for his passage and the funds needed for the silks and velvets, the barathea and the bayadere, the cashmeres and organzas he would bring back to Bellsholm.
We had not married—all our meagre capital went towards this endeavour, towards establishing Adlai—but it was, he assured me, only a matter of time. The first trip was a happy success; the exquisite bolts of cloth were demanded by modistes, interior stylists, furniture makers, and craftsfolk whose living lay in creating elaborate curtains and cushions and bed linen for those with more money than sense. We made a profit, some of which was set aside and the rest reinvested in his next buying expedition.
Adlai’s apprenticeship to a gentlemen’s costumier did not satisfy him. He did not see any way that he might rise—even were he to inherit the business from his master some way down the track, he would not reach the heights he desired for himself. There would be no grand house in the Vines district (itself a tiny created island, surrounded by a diverted channel of the river, and accessed by six tidy bridges), no closed fiacre in red and black, no servants, no piles of money gradually accruing interest in the Bellsholm Bank, and—did I but know it—no well-bred wife to admire it. All that life guaranteed for him was continued servitude to those above, measuring coats and breeches, cutting waistcoats from splendid cloth he himself would never wear.
As funds accumulated, so our accommodations grew finer—or rather, so his grew finer. From the garret atop the gentlemen’s outfitter, to a small room in Mrs Xavier’s Rooming House, thence to a larger chamber, then to a suite with two rooms, then three, then four, until finally he purchased a tall house in Lady’s Mantel Court. It was three-storeys high and, by all accounts, equipped with five bedrooms, an attic with space to store seven servants, a subterranean kitchen, and a large tidy garden out back. The facade was smoothed plaster, painted apricot and white, with shimmering filigree touches on the window and door fittings. A high wrought iron fence, black, with gold and silver finials on each spike, kept the common riff-raff on the street where they belonged. A riot of well-tended flowers bloomed in the front garden.
Adlai then handsomely paid those very same furniture makers and interior designers, curtain and linen and cushion makers, who had sought his wares so avidly, to decorate his new home. The perfectly serviceable fittings and furnishings left by the former owners (an importer of wines and his wife and sons, fallen on hard times due to the predations of pirates) were thrown out on the streets, and quickly snatched up by those with less cash and more cunning. The old drapes were piled beside padded chairs, sets of drawers, myriad duchesses and chaises; these textiles, hardly faded, disappeared rapidly, only to reappear not many days later as dresses for girls and exuberant sailor suits for boys. Wallpaper, that had clung vertical for barely twelve months, was scraped off and burned in the basement furnace. Everything, it seemed, must be new.
In the end, the abode at Number Six Lady’s Mantel Court outshone its neighbours. Adlai Alveson’s social status climbed as well—prosperity turned his humble origins into a mere bagatelle, easily overlooked. He became a member of the chamber of commerce, of the town council, and gained in short order a reputation as something of a philanthropist with donations to the orphanage and the home for sailors’ widows. His betters (some still in full possession of their affluence, others rather impoverished but with breeding in spades), soon turned speculative eyes toward him. Few things open doors like a rapidly expanding fortune.
Why did I not move in with him as his lodgings changed? I asked—oh, I did ask!—and was assured it would happen, but not yet, not at that precise moment. He promised most faithfully that it should come to pass, but for the sake of propriety, it would only be after the wedding, the date of which seemed to shift like the horizon each time I enquired. And I did not push, for after all, wasn’t Adlai the one doing all the work? Wasn’t he the one who travelled and travailed to ensure our future? So I remained, faithfully, steadfastly, in the attic room above my place of employ, Sally Sanders Quality Quilts, sewing counterpanes for people’s weddings, stitching in tiny spells and good luck charms to help happiness, fertility, and longevity attach themselves to a couple’s life together. Putting aside the money I made—for I wanted a wedding dress worthy of the name—and making my own quilt out of the lovely scraps my mistress let me harvest from the leftovers of the bedspreads I made for other women.
Adlai would visit, bringing gifts: kid gloves of deepest red, embroidered handkerchiefs, hats so light they seemed made of gossamer and wishes, a thimble, sharp scissors so beautifully crafted they appeared art rather than implement, and an enamelled brooch in the shape of a lovers’ knot, which disappeared almost as soon as it arrived—Adlai said its clasp was loose, he would have it fixed, but it never again came into my possession. These presents, when they ceased, were soon replaced by small piles of coin before he left of a morning—or an evening—but I did not recognise them for what they were: payment for services rendered. He told me fewer and fewer of his dreams, rarely reading to me, never mentioning the time when we would marry and I would join him in his grand home.
Still and all, I welcomed him with open arms each and every time, greeted him with patience and trust—although truth be told I ignored the things that gave me pause. The fear of being alone was too great in those days, of being set aside—if I did not look directly at it, I felt certain I would not see it and if I did not see it then surely it could not exist. So I blinded myself quite willingly, showed him the designs I’d drawn for our wedding quilt, told him of the enchantments and charms I’d created just for us. How this would be my finest work, and we would be bonded more strongly than any lovers had ever been. I did not notice, then, how he changed the subject, nor how he failed to answer questions that pertained to our future. I filled the silences, the gaps between us with mindless chatter, busy useless noise. Had I but known my voice had only a short time to remain, I’d have chosen my words more scrupulously, used my breath more wisely, said things of importance, rather than babbling inanely.
I creep to the edge of the water, hang out over the bank like a weeping branch. The current is fast, the surface touched by a light cold mist that floats up towards me—it will burn off when dawn breaks properly. In the weak pearly light, I can see my quarry, dozing on a horse-shaped rock but a long leap away.
In sleep, the rusalka has lost some of her form. In the sunlight, when they know they’re watched, they are careful to keep the shape they had in life; slumbering, they grow forgetful and let the change
s wrought by experience and death come to the fore. The skin has a greenish tint, the hair a life of its own—not a gentle undulation as if shifted by eddies, but an angry serpentine motion. I can see, if I look closely, the holes in her body where the rot has eaten through.
I select a pebble from the ground and take careful aim. The thing on the rock jerks awake when hit, all grace lost to surprise; she hisses, her teeth sharp, and eyes backlit by an unholy light. I shudder, just a little, but I do not show fear when her glare lands on me. I straighten and begin my dumb show. She calms as she realises there is a deal to be made, and relaxes back into her daylight aspect: long-limbed, golden-haired, smiling, teeth as neat and white as pearls, gaze as blue as a summer sky.
I tap at my eyes, so she knows where things start, then my fingertips patter on my cheeks, miming rain. She cocks her head to the side, lifts an eyebrow; she knows what I want, but wonders what I will give in return. From the pocket of my apron, I draw an embroidered swathe of white cambric and slowly unfold its layers so she may view what lies therein. Her eyes go wide, and I hide a smile, knowing I will get my way in this thing. I look down at the long, thick plait of auburn-rose hair curled around and around, all three yards of it, thick as a baby’s arm. The length that once hung down my back. I brushed it one hundred times to make sure it shone like richest cinnabar, then carefully plaited it before Magnus, protesting at the loss, cut it carefully off with the large, sharp scissors I reserve for shearing through thick fabrics. Magnus swore the murdered maids would find it irresistible, and I would need something irresistible if I was to gain the first ingredient.
The rusalka nods, this bargain too good to refuse, although I cannot imagine what she will use the tresses for; I do not care.
A Feast of Sorrows, Stories Page 15
