His puts his lips—still tasting of Armandine—to hers and carefully breathes her back into herself. There are moments when he is sure he is too late, then she sighs, hiccups, and starts, eyelids flickering like butterflies. She stares at him and he gives his most reassuring smile . . . until she screams.
It is a high sound, a piercing shriek, and he knows it will have been heard by the guards. He slams the door of the steam hut and runs, darting as quickly as he can through the panel, shoving it closed, forgetting his earlier fear of the darkness, and bolting with only his skin to light his path. He has no choice: he must go back the way he came or risk being found by a mortal threat.
Mr Farringdale nurses his injured digit: the right forefinger was badly burned where he touched the egg and he’d cried out.
The pain made him weep, made him angry and vengeful. He would run, the prize be damned. He would have Madame Arkady send two of her largest hoodlums, the ones who’d hired themselves out of the Assassins Market in Breakwater, back here to wait for the youth. To hurt him as much as humanly possible, to get whatever he knew from him, before finally putting him down. And whoever had sent him would know that Isambard Farringdale, right hand of Bethany Lawrence, was not to be taken lightly.
But then he caught sight of the egg, of the lass inside pressed up against the translucent shell, her expression one of concern. And was that . . . a tear glistening on her pale cheek? Isambard held his hand closer, lost himself in the gaze of the girl in the oval, lost himself in how like Bethany she was. That expression, just like the first time he’d found her, the first time he’d loved her, and every time he was able to do so again before he had to hand her over to her sister, the uppity Cordelia.
That expression . . . not unlike the one on Mrs Parsifal’s face several times in the weeks leading up to the family’s grand disgrace. Did she suspect the pillars of her existence were being chipped away? By her nearest and dearest? Isambard feels, though he will not admit it, that the sting of his finger is minuscule compared to Bethany’s and Cordelia’s. He feels a fleeting guilt at his part in causing it, but reminds himself that both acts were done from his love.
The tiny girl in the chrysalis holds his gaze, her compassion and kindness are drugs to him; he thinks she appears poised to dance, like the ballerina in a jewellery box. All thoughts of flight subside as he watches, breathless with anticipation.
The haunt is waiting when Jacopo reaches the bottom of the stairs, drifting back and forth like a stalking wolf. There’s a gleeful expression on its malicious face. Despite everything, Jacopo’s heart becomes cold with fear and his light dims drastically.
This is what the spectre has been waiting for and it swoops at him. The boy falls backwards, cowers, cannot force even one greater glimmer from his skin, which flickers. He watches the creature come closer, closer, closer . . .
Then it stops.
It tries again, throwing itself forward and stopping just short of the prone youth. Jacopo is bewildered, yet grateful. He recalls the new item in his possession: the necklace. A thing the ghost cannot win against? His employer did not tell him its history, but perhaps it is steeped in sins or glory greater than this spiteful wisp ever committed? The apparition hisses in frustration, and over the top of that angry exhalation Jacopo hears the sound of many hands beating on the secret panel not so far above him. He rolls to his feet, his radiance flaring, making the spectre cover its eyes with those horrible hands, and the boy flees, runs for his very life.
Behind him are a splintering of wood as a door is broken down, many boots on stone steps, and then . . . and then . . .
And then screams.
Screams as the haunt of the catacombs finds victims who have none of Jacopo’s protections. Can it go beyond the level of the dead, will it float up and go through the palace at its leisure? He thinks not, senses once again that it cannot. Then he shakes the thought away and concentrates on finding his way back to the cathedral.
Breathless, Jacopo enters Mr Farringdale’s house. The owner had locked the door after his guest left, but locks are no barrier to Jacopo.
The first thing he gazes at is not the egg, but his host’s hands, which hang loosely now, almost touching the floor as he sits cross-legged in front of the fire. The chrysalis remains in its tidy nest, resting between Isambard and the hearth. Jacopo scans the man’s digits and lo! What he seeks is there: a sear mark on the soft pad of the right index finger, its existence given away by a slight glimmer, the same sort of luminescence that Jacopo emits. The youth smiles, secretly pleased to know he’d assessed the man so correctly. Mr Farringdale couldn’t resist touching. Jacopo wonders how long it took between his departure and the moment Isambard’s curiosity got the better of him. He wonders if the wound still throbs and aches. He wonders if the man realised that the thing is made of wax, that strange substance the woman has mastered and made her own.
“Couldn’t help yourself, Isambard?”
The man’s expression is studiedly neutral, but his eyes are filled with fear that this prize will be snatched from his grasp. Jacopo smiles to show he understands. That it’s all right. That nothing has changed. That Mr Farringdale has not ruined his chances. The man’s features relax, and for a moment he glows as if a little of Jacopo’s shine has rubbed off on him.
“Did you . . . ?” Mr Farringdale’s voice is raw.
Jacopo nods, draws his hand from his deep pocket. The necklace drips from his fingers, trailing light and colour.
Isambard catches his breath. He only ever saw it that once, when Bethany showed it to him, just before she gave it to Edvard Parisfal. She’d boasted then how new it was, that everyone who knew about it was dead—except its maker and she was too far away to make a difference—so it was perfect to fill her brother-in-law’s request, to get him further into her debt. She got cocky, he thinks, and things had fallen apart so quickly, though he’d admired how smoothly she’d managed to shift all the consequences to others, to her foolishly blind sister. If she’d not, he was aware, he’d not be living a life that gave him such pleasure; yet he was also aware that she might have used him as a scapegoat, just as easily, had she not needed him for a little longer.
The boy shoves the gleaming thing back into his jacket and breaks Isambard’s meditation.
“And so, Mr Farringdale, you have held up your part of the bargain.” Jacopo kneels on the other side of the chrysalis and the flames from the hearth turn half of him red-gold, throwing the other half into darkness. He reaches out, his long fingers with their carefully tended nails touch the top of the oval, ever so gently, and a word leaves his lips though Isambard cannot hear it for it is only a whisper. The girl looks directly at him and the egg begins to grow.
His breath is trapped in his throat for so long that Isambard fears he may pass out. Just before the thing gets too large, just as he is about to doubt the lad’s promise, about to believe she will get too big, too old, too mature, everything stops.
A crack forms at the top of the shining ovoid and zigzags its way to the floor. The girl raises a small fist and gives a single, sharp punch. The waxen shell shatters into pearly shards and the girl, his girl, his Bethany, steps out and away from the wreckage. Her dress is white, lace and satin, a child’s frock. Her shoes, equally white, have silver daisies embroidered on the straps. Her hair hangs in two thick plaits of darkest gold and her eyes are glittering green, her mouth a rosebud of red-tinted pink.
A great sigh escapes Jacopo as he rises out of his crouch. Mr Farringdale had forgotten, for the slimmest of moments, that he was there. “Good luck, Isambard. You have certainly earned your reward.”
He nods at his erstwhile host, pretends not to see the hand the man offers in farewell, and strides into the darkness. There is no sound of the door opening or closing, but Mr Farringdale does not notice. He turns back to the girl and reaches out.
He brushes one of her plaits and finds it adheres to his fingers. He cannot pull away. His other hand goes to the rescue of the
first, and it too is caught in the spider web of her locks, and against the skin of her neck, which proves equally viscid. The girl makes a noise, something like a snicker, something like a snarl, and she winds her arms around him, pulls him closer and closer until they are body to body, and stuck thus.
No matter how he struggles, Isambard is held fast. The girl is adhesive, a wax baby, a tallow trap. From her very pores, from her mouth and nostrils, eyes and ears, pours forth a sticky substance. It bubbles up, over her owner’s shoulders and down his back, his front, stomach, crotch, legs, until it meets up and covers him and her utterly, sealing both of them in. Or rather, Mr Farringdale alone, for the girl is gone, become a sea of waxy foam that has surrounded him, is in his mouth, his throat, his ears and nostrils, pushing against his eyeballs. Slowly but surely the new chrysalis begins to cool and tighten, to shrink, compressing Isambard, crushing him down and down and down, until there is only a shining pebble on the rug before the hearth.
Jacopo steps from his place in the shadows and pockets the strange stone with barely a glance. His own features have changed, no longer so round and inviting, that gilt sheen of his has dimmed, the face elongated, the jaw is harder and squarer, the cheeks angular, and the nose crooked, showing it was once broken. These features have been lived in, not borrowed; they are his and worn with pride, no longer secret. He is older, a young man, no longer a boy barely out of puberty.
Before he leaves he goes through the drawers and cupboards, liberating any and all valuables he can find in the house—his employer will welcome new funds for her endeavours; the necklace holds significance for her, he is sure, but ready currency is always appreciated. There is also a considerable stash of gold and silver, full coins and bits for change, Mr Farringdale had feathered his nest very nicely indeed. There are other things, however, things that obviously once belonged to some child or another, which he sets aside to deal with properly, respectfully: Jacopo sends them on their way in the hearth, blessed by fire and air so they might find their path home, back to the hands that loved them.
The Burned Woman, the Cinder’s Sister, the new Tallow-Wife, will be pleased, he thinks, and the idea brings a smile to his lips.
Bearskin
Torben knows he has only one shot. The crossbow shakes in his grip. There is a single bolt and even if there were more he has not the strength to reload for the weapon belongs to Uther, the woodsman, who has left the boy to wait in the small, smelly blind set between the trunks of three ailing alders. The walls are of woven rushes and withy. The flimsy roof fell in who knows when and Torben feels the drip-drip-drip of snow-melt from above—not that the weather’s warming up, but it seems the unhealthy branches won’t allow the ice to remain on their limbs much past daybreak.
The boy is cold in his pale wolf furs, despite their thickness. He never had a taste for hunting though Edvard, his father, tried to teach him. Henry, his brother, took to it like a duck to water, but Torben refused to attend what Edvard patiently told him. He has never learned the knack of willing himself warm, of wiggling his fingers and toes to keep the blood moving. Uther does not bother to instruct, or even to try, he simply slaps the boy about the ears each and every time he fails at one rough task or another. Torben suspects the man rather enjoys it and encourages missteps whenever he can. Edvard was always kind and tolerant, going over the same lesson time upon time, never punishing his youngest child’s inattention. Perhaps that’s why the lad suffers so now.
Thoughts of his father bring, as usual, hot tears which the boy wipes away—he does not want them to freeze on his face. He has learned that much. He bites his lip and steadies his aching heart. He dare not think of his mother.
Torben presses an eye against the matting, except there is nothing beyond but a vastness of white broken only by thin naked trees. There is no canopy above of evergreens to offer any cover. He squints, trying to see if Uther is returning, slinking through the forest, quiet despite his hulking size. Yet no, there is not even the icy comfort of Torben’s gaoler on offer.
Gaoler. Not the word Aunt Bethany had used. Guardian. Teacher. Master to Torben’s apprentice. He’d asked over and again why? Why did he need an apprenticeship when Henry had been allowed to go to University. There was plenty of money—all the problems his parents had caused were sorted—why was he not to be given the same chance? Wasn’t that why they’d moved to Whitebarrow? So Henry could study medicine as he’d desired? It was a few more years, certainly, before Torben would be old enough, but his tutor said he was terribly bright for a twelve-year-old, that he had great prospects, great possibilities. It hadn’t occurred to Torben then, though it had many times since, that his repeated interrogations were the reason he now found himself huddled in Edmea’s Wood in the depths of winter, yearning for the company of a man he couldn’t stand. A man whose face wore the scars of a bear attack. A man who’d grown so tired of Torben’s stumbling and tripping, his barely swallowed whimpers, that he’d left the boy alone in the decaying blind with instructions to Fecking wait while he went and checked the traps on his own.
Torben sits back, tries to get comfortable; he can barely feel his feet and his backside has gone to sleep. Everything will hurt when he stands, when the blood flows back into his flesh and muscles—oh yes, he has muscles now, not big ones, but they’ve replaced the baby fat he’d had in copious store before. The physical labour, the sparse diet, have stripped the excess from his bones. He is constantly hungry, a gnawing in his belly day and night, but he doesn’t dare steal. Uther is keenly aware of the quantity of provisions in the larder, and Torben is certain that the quiet, scrawny girl who keeps house for Uther would be unwilling to risk her master’s wrath all for the sake of the plump little rich boy who came to them weeping eight months ago.
He listens carefully in case Uther is sneaking up behind to scare him so he pees his pants again. Torben would have thought that trick one to grow old quickly, but apparently not. All he can distinguish is the wind rattling branches, the creak of frozen wood, the whoosh of his own breath as it makes dragon’s mist in front of his face. Put him in a library and he can identify the title of a book by the sound of its fall, but here . . . here he is lost. He clears his throat; it seems terribly loud in the sighing of the snow. A bird calls overhead, a melodic thing, and he thinks of Victoria, his sister, gone before him. That should have been a warning, he thinks, a sign that Aunt Bethany would brook no dissent no matter how much she professed to love them. Henry will be safe, Torben thinks, Henry has the habit of obedience and Aunt cares for him more, differently, strangely.
There is a noise outside, closer than it should be. Something has stalked him, gotten into proximity, and he all oblivious. To one side it shuffles and snuffles . . . his finger tightens on the trigger of the crossbow . . . whoever or whatever is there moves nearer . . . Torben’s finger twitches and the bolt is released, punching through the withy screen. A thud, then a brief sigh-sob, then the sound of a small body falling to the snowy ground.
Heart in mouth, Torben scrambles up, fighting his way out of the blind; unable to find where the door latches, he tears it in panic. He falls through the rip and discovers that he has murdered a bear cub.
The cub is not especially large and his brown pelt is thick and matted. He should not have been out, thinks Torben in distress, he should have been sleeping the deep winter’s slumber, not wandering about—Torben assumes it’s a “he.” He kneels and feels for a pulse, however, there is nothing. The barb is embedded right where the creature’s heart should be. Blood has dripped, making crimson blossoms on the white carpet. The fur and flesh beneath Torben’s hand are warm, so warm, but he knows the heat will flee soon enough. Copper eyes glazed over, bewildered, snout damp, teeth sharp beneath the sweet upper lip. The boy begins to weep and does not try to stop; tears drop like liquid stars onto the dark coat and stay there, held on the tips of the bristles.
He cries until he hears a new noise, a crashing and a thrashing somewhere amongst the trees of Edmea
’s Wood. Not Uther; the woodsman would never make such a racket. That is when Torben flees; he doesn’t see anything but his imagination has always been worse than what might be real. He struggles through drifts, uncertain if he is heading in the right direction, driven only by the desire to escape whatever is behind. He doesn’t care what punishment Uther will inflict on him for not staying put. He only knows he must run.
It is almost an hour later when he stumbles, more by luck than design, into the white-swept courtyard of the small stone house in the woods to which the woodsman lays claim.
Tove took pity on him when he threw open the door and staggered over to the roaring fire in the large front room. She handed him a mug of heated winter-plum brandy. It was liberally sweetened with molasses and made smooth by a knob of butter and took away what little breath he had left. But it warmed him and quickly, pressing life back into his extremities, even those he was sure had been frozen forever.
“Thank you,” he croaks to the girl. She doesn’t speak and he wonders, not for the first time, if she cannot or simply won’t. He’s never heard her answer Uther, nor have a conversation, not that their master was much of a one for such pleasantries. She watches everything though, he’s noticed that. Her dark blue eyes seem everywhere at once, as if taking in all possible threats, all available exits and places to hide. Torben feels for the first time, as she refills his mug, that he may stare openly at her, at the fine dark blond hair, and the small stubs of antlers that poke through it on each side of her head. They are not fully formed and have not changed in the time he has been here. Tawny velvet covers them and he wants to run his fingers over it.
“I killed a bear cub,” he says as she stirs the stew pot on the fire. She pauses, shoulders tensing, goes back to it, then speaks the first words he’s ever heard from her.
A Feast of Sorrows, Stories Page 30
