by P. J. Fox
Isla stopped, startled by a familiar landmark and surprised to realize how far they’d come. To her right, a rectangular tomb rose out of the mulch and drifting leaves that covered the forest floor. A sad angel in an old-fashioned tunic rose from the lid, her arm raised in benediction. Lichen covered her in patches, growing thick in the folds of her tunic. Part of her nose had been chipped off. Her eyes looked entirely too knowing, and she radiated an aura of silent disapproval that had made Isla uneasy since she was a child. Her less imaginative siblings made fun of her, daring her to climb up onto the statue when she refused, trembling, to even enter the glade for fear of coming under that gaze.
“There’s…something wrong with this tomb,” Isla said, forgetting for the minute to whom she was speaking.
“Yes,” the duke agreed matter of factly. “There’s a curse. Whoever’s buried here didn’t want to be disturbed.” Isla, who didn’t believe in curses, found this revelation odd in the extreme. He turned to her. Somewhere, an owl screeched. “How do you know?” he asked.
“Know what?”
“That I have no desire for this.”
His question struck Isla as absurd. If she hadn’t been so terrified of her so-called betrothed, she’d have hit him. “Because I’m not beautiful like Rowena, or charming, and even if I were I’m sure there was no great deficiency in either of your last two wives. Or am I wrong?” She shook her head slightly, furious at herself for revealing even this much of her thoughts to the monster before her. She wanted to spend as little time as possible with him between now and—whatever happened. “Furthermore,” she added, “I have no desire to be lied to.”
He considered her statement. “Have you never seen yourself?” he asked.
She frowned slightly, unsure of what he meant.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said. It was a statement of fact, devoid of either interest or admiration. He might as well have been complimenting the build of a horse, or a particular vintage of port. “Of course,” he mused, “you appear to have no mirrors in this backwater, so mine is a reasonable question. I find it entirely possible to believe that you haven’t seen yourself. You’re far more attractive than your sister,” he continued, “who has all the simplistic, bovine charm of a milkmaid.”
Isla bristled at this insult to Rowena. “Why?” she demanded, “why are you doing this to me?”
“Because I find you intriguing,” he replied, turning to examine the statue. He traced his fingertips lightly over the curve of one calf and then nodded, an almost imperceptible movement of the head, as if confirming something to himself. When he spoke again to Isla, he sounded distracted. Like the words were an afterthought.
“Our…union,” he said, “is going to occur regardless of how much you loathe me. Therefore, it seems to me that while there’s undoubtedly a certain quaint charm to lie back and think of the kingdom….”
He turned, his eyes glittering in the moonlight, letting the words hang between them. “If you weren’t so frigid, darling, you might enjoy yourself more.” His words were pointed, his tone laden with meaning as he let his gaze wander over her.
She’d never felt more—more used in her life. From another man, the sentiment might’ve held some perverse romantic appeal. But Isla felt like a piece of meat. Utterly and totally dehumanized.
There had been a playful quality, almost, in his suggestion that she learn to enjoy the experience; and an acknowledgment there, at the same time, that he’d do whatever he felt like doing regardless of her wishes. The duke understood her, and very well. Too well. He knew exactly what upset Isla the most, and why—although how he’d accomplished such a feat, she couldn’t even begin to understand. They barely knew each other. The problem was that he knew, and simply didn’t care; except to the extent that her pain gratified his own amusement.
Disgusted—with him and with herself—Isla turned and ran.
He didn’t follow her. She didn’t think she could have stood it if he had. Back on the terrace, she’d been sure that he was going to force himself on her. Then she’d been sure that he wasn’t. And then, watching him watch her in front of the tomb, she’d been sure once again that he was. He’d made no threatening move; he didn’t have to. He was far, far stronger than she. But even that hadn’t been what had spooked her; no, it was the aura of ownership about him. He had no need to capture her, as he considered her to be his already.
A horrible image flashed in her mind of him pulling her into his arms and forcing her down into the dead leaves, of turning her head and feeling them work their way into her mouth as she inhaled their moldering scent. Of his cold hands exploring her flesh. She knew, without knowing, that his touch would be as assured as it had been earlier in the evening. And as cold. She’d never felt such cold, unyielding flesh except once, as a child, when she’d crept forward to the dais where her grandfather lay in state and touched his withered cheek.
She remembered his skin as being soft and papery, but on this day it had been as hard as concrete. Rigor, her nurse had explained, had set in; meaning that the body was beginning its process of returning to the earth and to the Gods. The duke’s—Tristan’s—hand had felt like that. Still. Cold. And yet horribly alive.
But what struck Isla as most horrible of all was that the image didn’t fill her with nearly the revulsion that it should have but, instead, occasioned a sort of sick fascination. Isla wracked her brain for some comparison, which would explain her feelings—if only to herself, so she wouldn’t go completely crazy. And the only thing she could come up with was the perverse urge to throw herself over the edge that came over her every time she climbed up onto the battlements. The urge that had formed the basis for her lifelong fear of heights; what a tutor had referred to once, rather obliquely, as intrusive thoughts. Things she didn’t want, but couldn’t escape nonetheless. She used to look at the crenellations that lined the edge and worry that she’d hurt herself without intending to; not because she had any secret desire to do so—she didn’t—but because she couldn’t help herself.
She avoided heights, because she hated that feeling of being out of control—and hated even more the nagging sensation that some part of her she didn’t understand lurked deep inside. Some other Isla, motivated by thoughts and fears and needs that were alien to her conscious mind.
She’d reached her room before she realized that she still had his cloak. Cursing, she threw it down on the floor only to look up and see Rowena watching her with wide eyes. She’d obviously been waiting for Isla to come back to her room—waiting for some time, if the dark circles under her eyes were any indication.
“Are you alright?”
“No!” Isla stamped on the cloak. She hated how childish she was acting, and she hated how childish she felt. The cloak was, she noted, so simple in design as to be quite severe but nonetheless beautifully made. The wool itself was of fine quality and colored, she saw, a deep indigo. Some perverse part of her felt bad for stamping on it; that its master was evil wasn’t the cloak’s fault. And why was she anthropomorphizing a piece of cloth?
She threw herself down into her chair with a groan. She wanted to light the cloak on fire and its master with it. Now that he was safely out of sight her terror had abated somewhat, leaving only disgust. Everything about him was awful. And—a curse? What had he been on about?
Of course, she hadn’t wanted to ask him. There was no such thing as a curse, Isla knew that. He’d just been trying to frighten her…hadn’t he?
But what about those claws?
Was it possible that he—that he actually—no. She cut herself off ruthlessly, and stared into the fire. She was focusing on not focusing so intently that it took her a solid minute to realize that Rowena was still talking. With an effort, she roused herself and regarded her sister. “What?” she asked stupidly.
“You were gone a long time.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“You seem ver
y upset,” Rowena ventured.
“Leave me alone.”
“Isla—”
“I said, leave me alone!”
THIRTEEN
After Rowena left, Isla threw herself down onto her bed fully clothed and waited for sleep to grant her oblivion. In the morning, she woke sore and exhausted and grateful that no one had come in the night searching for the cloak. Which was exactly where she’d left it, in a puddle on the floor. Bending down, her arms aching and her lower back as stiff as a board, she picked it up and draped it over the back of her chair before calling for her bath.
She stretched, wincing, as Rose and Alice hauled in the elongated barrel-like tub and began filling it with cold water. The king bathed with warm water, Isla was sure; the rest of the world made do with cold. Even if the water had been heated, by the time sufficient buckets had been carried upstairs to fill the tub it’d have gone cold. And if that wasn’t wasted effort, Isla didn’t know what was.
Thanking the girls, who were preoccupied with some new bit of gossip—probably involving her brother, Hart—Isla dismissed them and stepped into the water. Shivering, she watched the bar of goat’s tallow soap floating between her legs. It was caustic and even with the addition of lavender it still smelled like tanning detergent. Resolutely, she began to scrub.
Isla used her own hair care products that she’d made herself. She didn’t trust the products available in the village. Especially the pricey ones, which were the most useless and frightening of all. Her father had been sold a potion, ah, tincture, to re-grow his hair by his personal physician. The recipe involved boiling together a still-living lizard with the just-shed skin of a snake, preferably a highly venomous snake, until the unfortunate lizard has gasped its last and turned black. Then one added three cut lemons—where one was supposed to get something as exotic as a lemon in Ewesdale, Isla could scarcely fathom—and boiled the whole revolting mess together for another hour. After which one strained the results into a flask and combed it through one’s hair every night before bedtime.
That same physician also recommended massaging the scalp with bacon grease.
Isla washed her hair with a honey-based mixture, to which she’d added a tiny bit of lavender. A tiny bit was all she could afford. Her hair was soft and shiny and if not, as Rowena claimed, as black as a raven’s wing then not terrible either. Using one of her old shifts to towel off, she stepped out of the bath and padded over to her wardrobe.
Half-dressed, Isla poured water from the stoneware pitcher on her dresser into the provided bowl and peered at herself in the beaten brass disk that served as her mirror. They had no true mirrors at Enzie Moor; mirrors were made in the East, and too dear for all but the king and his ilk. Even their wealthiest neighbors had never seen one, except perhaps on a trip to the capital.
Taking a length of pliant green birch, she swirled it in a cup of borage and burnt rosemary until the tip was coated. Then, bending forward to get a good look, she brushed her teeth. After working the mixture into the crevices as much as she could, she gargled with fresh water and spit out the results into her chamber pot. She finished by wiping the surface of each tooth with a soft cloth. Oral hygiene was important; the only remedy for dental pain was extraction and that, apart from being painful, could lead to infection.
She braided her still-damp hair into several braids and swept them all back into a bun. She filed her nails with a slim metal rasp that Hart had given her for Solstice last winter. She splashed violet water onto her pulse points and went in search of something to eat.
Carrying the distasteful cloak over her arm, she walked the still-silent halls—Isla was an early riser and those others who’d gotten up early were already at work, most of them outside.
She wondered how much her father had paid for that tincture and if it was working. Rowena, to remove her leg hair, had been convinced by their stepmother to try a depilatory made of vinegar and cat poop. Isla wondered if that was working, too, but lacked the courage to ask.
She, personally, found waxing to be the least upsetting approach—certainly better than scraping the hair away with a pumice stone. Rowena removed her hair because the queen did, supposedly at least, but Isla was generally considered strange for her interest in hygiene. Morven wasn’t, as a kingdom, known for its hygiene and the Highlands least of all. Ewesdale, Isla sometimes thought, was one giant plague of bed bugs, lice, scabies and clinging mites.
By sheer chance, she happened to come upon Hart as he left the kitchen. “Here,” she said, thrusting out the cloak. “This belongs to the duke.”
Hart’s eyebrow shot up. “Getting a little friendly, aren’t we?”
Isla hit him. Hart, surprised, threw up the piece of bread he’d been chewing. One of his hounds darted in and claimed the prize, stumpy tail wagging.
Isla glared daggers at her brother. “Certainly not!” she replied, indignant. “And what are you doing, drinking ale at this time of morning?” She transferred her gaze to the tankard he held in his other hand, her disapproval evident.
“I’ve been up for hours!” he protested. “I’m hungry!” Both Hart and his equally verminous hound managed to look injured. “And fuck you very much,” he added, “if I’m concerned that my sister is evidently spending the night—if not with the duke, then with his clothes!”
“Oh!” Isla squeezed her hands into fists, impotent with rage at the unfairness of it all. “I hate you!” Deciding that breakfast was for fools, she stormed back down the hall in the direction from which she’d come. See if she needed to eat! She didn’t, if eating meant spending one more minute with Hart. Her stomach growled faintly for the bread and cheese she’d promised herself, but she thrust the desire—and the self-pity that accompanied it—out of her mind. She’d eat later. Next year, perhaps.
“I take it he was a disappointment,” Hart said prosaically, his voice following her down the hall.
Isla refused to dignify that comment with a response. He could damn well return the cloak to his new best friend—or take it to Hell! She didn’t care which. Isla might love Hart, but there were times when she also wanted to toss him out the window. This, she thought, seeing his vacuous grin in her mind’s eye, was one of those times. Spending the night with the duke’s clothes, indeed! That she had, and that Hart’s question was, therefore, perfectly reasonable, only incensed her more.
She’d gotten clear across the hall and all the way to the main library before she’d finally felt her blood pressure return to normal. A dull headache had begun to pound at her temples; but whether from lack of food or fury she couldn’t say. All she knew was that she was now doubly determined to learn the answers to certain questions that had been plaguing her since the small hours of the morning. Since she’d first woken up and, rolling over and staring at the ceiling, began to ask herself why certain facts weren’t adding up.
Seemingly unimportant facts, to be sure…but the longer she’d worked them over in her mind, the more convinced she’d become that she was missing some very important piece of information.
Critical, even. She pushed open the heavy, iron-banded door to the library and stepped inside. ill-used and even more ill-maintained, the thick oak squealed loudly on its hinges. The library smelled of mold and vellum and ink and old, dried out wood paneling and wax polish. Early morning sunlight streamed in through the window, describing a checkerboard pattern on the floor and warming the air to an almost bearable temperature.
Even knowing what she was looking for, Isla knew she’d have to spend a good bit of time searching. The library wasn’t well organized. She was pleased when she found her quarry after only a few minutes; no one ever looked at something as boring as records so, in consequence, they were right where they belonged. Most of the more interesting volumes were harder to find, because they’d been pulled out and haphazardly shelved—often over and over again. No one cared as much about this library as Isla.
Lifting the heavy volume free of the shelf, Isla brushed away the dust and nea
rly choked in the thick cloud that resulted. And she saw that she’d guessed rightly: no one had examined this volume in a very long time. Gasping at the weight, she carried her prize over to the enormous table that dominated the center of the room and laid it down as carefully as she could on the scar-pitted surface. One never knew, with these volumes, how fragile they might be. Often the ravages of time and bookworms left even sturdily bound works as vulnerable to the elements as rose petals.
She seated herself on the bench, and began to read.
FOURTEEN
Births, deaths, and all other important events in the noble houses were recorded—for posterity, for who knew what reason. The Morva were record keepers and always had been, dating back to when Gideon the Conqueror had swept in from the furthest reaches of the North and established himself as king of what had then been a series of barely unified territories. Territories that warred with each other almost constantly and had, thus, been ripe for conquering. Which was why, almost immediately after his victory, King Gideon, First of His Name, had begun an ambitious project of data collection and organization that was still only half-complete at his death some twenty years later.
Since then, going back now almost three hundred years, everything one wanted to know and a great deal one didn’t was available in print. The lowly types, too, kept their own records: at local parishes, mostly, where priests made notes in the their parish logs on behalf of illiterate parishioners.
Isla’s own house, House Cavendish, had a long if not glorious history and the log book their own priest kept listed Isla’s birth as well as Rowena’s. Hart’s was not listed; his mother, Jasmine, had had him registered with the town parish and with the assistance of the priest who had been her confessor. And, some tongues wagged, her father. In any case, after a decades-long and unusually close relationship with his housekeeper, a poor but kind woman who’d escaped an abusive marriage and ultimately come into his employ after spending the better part of a year homeless on the streets with her young son, that much beloved man of the Gods had gone to his great reward. Isla would have liked to question him now.
