Gilded Ashes

by Rosamund Hodge

  “I don’t care whom I have to marry,” says Koré. “I don’t care what he makes me suffer. I will get Thea out of this house.”

  Her voice is a rough thread, thin and desperate and utterly unyielding. It feels as familiar as my own heartbeat.

  We are exactly the same. Almost exactly, because I deserve my doom and can’t escape it. But maybe I can save her.

  “You’re too sick to dance,” I say. “I will go for you. And this time, I will make him promise to marry you.”

  So for the first time in nine years, I admit to my mother that there’s something I want.

  “Mother,” I say, kneeling beneath the tree and trying not to shiver in the chill evening breeze, “dearest, dearest mother, will you grant me a wish?”

  Boneless fingers slide against my cheek. My heart slams against my ribs; I feel fragile and terrified and sure as stone.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I say. “I want to go to the ball—in a beautiful dress and a beautiful mask, just like you used to wear when you were young. I want to drive there in a lovely carriage. Can you do that, Mother?”

  The tree leaves rustle, and I hear a faint laugh. My throat closes up, because it’s the same laugh I remember from my childhood, when my mother was alive and danced with me in the garden and I never had to fear her.

  Then the air comes alive around me. Ghostly fingers pull off my cap and comb my hair free of its pins. They draw me to my feet and peel my dress away from me piece by piece, thread and bits of cloth pattering to the ground about me until I am standing naked in the twilight with my servant’s uniform in shreds around my feet.

  Shadows vein the air like phantom tree branches. My body shudders instinctively, but I am beyond fear. I watch them and I do not go mad as linen and thread, lace and boning swim out of the air and wrap themselves around me into a shift and petticoats and corset. As the corset strings draw themselves taut, the shadows seem to catch on fire, glittering with light; then I realize it is golden thread, great lengths of it corkscrewing through the air. It’s followed by waves of gold satin, honey-colored gauze, and pale, white-gold lace like moonlight. The dress weaves itself around me in great shimmering ripples, and when it’s done, I can barely breathe for wonder.

  “Thank you, Mother,” I whisper, and for once I am not lying.

  The laughter rustles in the leaves; I feel a touch against my cheek, and then she tilts my head up to look at one of the lowest branches, where a golden mask hangs by a red silk ribbon.

  Carefully, I reach up and take the mask, then tie it over my face. It fits as perfectly as the corset, and like the corset it seems to mold me into another person. A lady. It is the most natural thing in the world to curtsy to the tree, just as I did when I was a little girl and we played court together.

  From the other side of the house, I hear the clatter of wheels and horse hooves against the cobblestones.

  “Thank you,” I say again, and then I go to meet my carriage.

  The duke’s palace is different by night: pale, glimmering from the light of a thousand candles, it seems more like a dream or an enchantment than a house built of stone for mortal men.

  The front courtyard, though, is a completely human bustle of attendants and carriages. As we draw to a halt, I see that they are checking invitations at the door, and for a moment I’m afraid that I’ll be turned away and Mother will be angry. But then my door is opened by a servant—white livery and a colorless face that will not stay in my memory a moment after I look away—and he has a creamy envelope in his gloved hand. He gives it to the footmen at the door, and they bow to me, and then I am inside.

  The ballroom is more glorious than I dared imagine: a vast room of marble and gilt, decked out in cascades of vivid hothouse flowers in every color. Swirling through the room are ladies in dresses just as vivid, each one with a gentleman clad simply in black, like a shadow. All of them wear masks, jeweled or painted or gilt, dangling strings of beads or fluttering with feathers.

  The music winds to a pause, and then I see him: Lord Anax, the only one in the room unmasked, bowing to the lady he danced with a moment before. His smile is polite and dead, nothing like the expressions I ever saw on his face.

  Then he looks up, and his eyes meet mine.

  I am masked. He cannot recognize me. I tell myself this as he strides toward me, but my heart still speeds up and my breath flutters against the cage bars of my corset.

  He’s three steps away. Two. One. And then he bows to me and says, “Lady. Would you honor me with a dance?”

  “Yes,” I say, trying to culture my voice into Koré’s polished tones. I am not Maia the serving girl; I am not my mother’s daughter; I am Koré Alastorides, and I am going to explain to the duke’s heir why he should marry me.

  He takes my right hand and starts to raise it; for a moment I think he’s going to kiss it, and a pang shoots up my arm. Then he clasps it instead, draws me out to the center of the ballroom, and lays his other hand on my waist.

  His touch is light, no more than a feather’s brush against the wall of my corset, but it still sends heat rushing to my face, and I wish—

  Then the music starts, and there’s no room to wish or think anything. I have never been so grateful for all the times that Thea forced me to practice dancing with her, but usually I danced the boy’s part, and for a little while all I can do is force myself not to trample on his toes.

  Eventually it gets easier. Eventually I realize that I have been staring at my feet and wasting time. I look up—and he’s watching me quietly, eyebrows slightly furrowed but without any trace of annoyance.

  “I didn’t think you would come,” he says.

  “My lord?” I say blankly.

  “After what I did.” He looks over my shoulder, his face pale and resolute. “I thought I’d never see you again. I thought I’d never be able to apologize.” Then he looks down and meets my eyes. “I’m glad you came, Maia. And I’m so very sorry.”

  “You,” I choke out. “How did you—I’m wearing a mask.”

  He grins. “Do you think I wouldn’t recognize your voice? Or your chin, or your eyes? Or do you think I wouldn’t notice you’re the only woman here with chapped hands?”

  I look down and see my red, cracked hand clasped in his smooth, soft fingers. I feel like a cheap counterfeit.

  He spins me out and back in a sudden twirl. “You know you’re the loveliest woman here,” he says.

  Even in just a few days, I’ve forgotten how much he can see of me.

  “Why did you want to apologize?” I ask quietly. Perhaps, if he’s feeling guilty, I can make him promise to marry Koré as reparation.

  His smile vanishes. “For the last time we met. In the park. It was—inexcusable to seize you that way. When you had given me no permission and clearly had no desire, and needed to fear the power of my position besides.” His lips press together a moment and then he goes on, “I have been very selfish and very stupid all my life. But I promise you, I am starting to learn.”

  “Oh,” I say. My head is spinning as I realize what that day must have looked like through his eyes, because despite how well he understands me, he has still never guessed my most important secret. Anax doesn’t notice my confusion; he plunges on, the words tumbling out as if they can’t be stopped.

  “And once I realized how I’d wronged you, I realized how I’d wronged Lydia. All that time blaming her for my broken heart, because I didn’t want to admit that I had been so blindly selfish, I could kiss a girl without realizing that she loathed it. So I wrote to her yesterday. I told her the truth and I told her I was sorry. I told her that I hoped someday to earn her friendship again, but that she didn’t owe it to me.” He draws a breath. “I would like to have your friendship, too. Someday. If you will let me earn it back.”

  And I know why I came here; I know what I must do. I must win him for Koré and leave him for his own safety. But he is looking so desolate and brave at once, I can’t stop myself.

  “You
do,” I say. “You have always had my friendship.”

  “Thank you,” he says, his voice soft and unfathomably grateful, and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that he is grateful to receive so little from me, and the words flow out of me without any trying, the same way my feet are dancing out the pattern of the music.

  “You were very rude,” I say, “but I didn’t hate it when you kissed me. I didn’t hate it at all. I—” And then finally I manage to close my traitor mouth, but it’s too late. He’s looking at me with dawning wonder and delight, and he can see me. He knows.

  “Maia,” he asks, “why did you come here tonight?”

  I know what I should say. What I should do. But his fingers are wrapped about mine, his hand is on my waist, and the glittering music is swirling us around and around the room.

  “I wanted to know,” I say, and my voice feels like it’s coming from miles away and the depths of my bones at once, “if you really loved me. The way you said when you asked me to marry you.”

  “Then?” His mouth crooks. “No. Not really.”

  “Oh?” I say.

  “I didn’t love you,” he says. “At least, I didn’t know it. I thought you were—lovely, and honest, and the only wife I could possibly respect. But you were right, I didn’t love you. I just thought you were an escape. And then I lost you. These past four days, when I thought you gone forever? Every book I read, I wondered what you’d think of it. Every idea I had, I wanted to ask your opinion. Every breath I took, I listened for your breathing beside me. Then I knew what you meant to me, and what you could have been to me. And then I fell in love with you.”

  He stops dancing and clasps both my hands.

  “So yes. I love you, Maia, daughter of I care not whom. And I will say so as often as you like, to anyone you please.”

  I can’t breathe. Those words are all I wanted in the world, but I can’t hear them. Not when I am my mother’s daughter.

  He will die if he loves me.

  He will die if he loves me.

  He will die, or else he will live beside me as a slave to my mother’s ghost, and I will bear him children who are slaves as well, and I will not do that to him. I will die first.

  I will do any other evil thing first.

  “Will you,” I say, “will you kiss me?”

  His eyes widen. He knows that kissing me here in public is as good as declaring me his bride—that if he does not marry me after, the world will think me wanton and him a cad.

  Then he leans down and cups my face in his hands and there’s nothing, nothing in the world but the warmth of his lips.

  And the depths of my own betrayal.

  I can’t stand it for long. I break the kiss. “Promise that you’ll marry me,” I say raggedly. “Promise you’ll marry the girl with this mask, no matter who she is in the morning.”

  “I swear it,” he says. “I swear by Zeus and Hera, I don’t care who you are. I’ll have you to wife or I’ll have none.”

  I pull out of his arms. “Come to the Alastorides house tomorrow. Ask for their daughter. The one who wore the mask.”

  He catches my wrist. “I thought you were a servant?”

  “It’s a long story,” I say.

  The simple, trusting grip of his fingers burns me with shame. I can’t meet his eyes. “I’ll explain later,” I lie, and then I run.

  When I get home, Koré is sitting up in bed, cheek leaned against the wall, candlelight glinting from her half-closed eyes.

  I kneel beside her. As she straightens, drawing her face back into order, I slip off my golden mask.

  “He promised,” I say, “that he will come to this house tomorrow and marry the girl who has this mask.”

  She takes it from me. Her mouth clenches a moment, and then she asks, “Are you sure?” in the tired, wary voice of someone who has waited too long to trust in hope.

  “He promised,” I say.

  She touches my cheek, as if to wipe away a tear, but there are no tears. I know there are no tears, because nobody is dying. Because I am still, even with my heart breaking, strong enough to smile.

  “Good night,” I say, and leave her to go tell my mother what a lovely evening she gave me and how perfectly, perfectly happy I am.

  Breakfast is a grim meal. Koré is better but still coughing, while Thea can only stare at her plate in exhaustion. Stepmother has forgotten her anger at Koré, but only because she’s too busy being furious at the slatternly chit who danced with the duke’s son and snared him with her scandalous misbehavior.

  For once, her anger doesn’t frighten me. I don’t feel afraid at all, because I know exactly what will happen: Anax will come to our door, smiling and impatient, and I will betray him completely. I know this, and all I feel is a cold, sick horror slowly rising in my lungs.

  The doorbell rings. I flinch.

  Stepmother presses a hand to her forehead. “Maia, I don’t know why you aren’t answering it—this is a noble household, not a stable—”

  I walk to the door. My stomach is knotted, my skin is shivering. I think, I am saving him, but it’s no comfort at all when I pull the door open and he grins.

  “I’m looking for the daughter of this house,” he says, like all the world is an innocent joke, “who danced with me last night in a golden mask.”

  “Right this way, my lord,” I say, stepping back.

  “Maia?” His forehead creases, and a shudder runs through me: he can tell something is wrong.

  I hold a finger to my lips, meeting his eyes. Then I say, “The family will see you in the parlor, my lord. Tell them . . . exactly what you just said.”

  The worry doesn’t go from his face. But after a moment, he nods and silently follows me into the house. Because he trusts me.

  I leave him in the parlor. I don’t know how I get back to the breakfast room. As soon as I step inside, Koré goes taut.

  “Lord Anax is here, my lady,” I tell Stepmother. “He wants to see you and Miss Koré.”

  Chairs squeak and clatter as they’re all on their feet in an instant.

  “Koré, darling, you mustn’t cough at him or I’ll have you whipped,” Stepmother says rapidly. “I’ll give you a moment to compose yourself. Thea, go to your room.” Then she’s gone.

  Thea looks from me to Koré. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing. Everything. Go to your room,” says Koré breathlessly, and bolts upstairs herself. Thea trails after. A few moments later, Koré clatters down again; she has to stop at the bottom of the stairs for a fit of coughing, but when she lowers the handkerchief, her face is the flawless marble statue again.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. The golden mask is clutched in her hand.

  I say nothing. When she leaves, I can’t help myself; I tiptoe after and slip close to the half-open door.

  “Yes,” I hear Anax say, his voice polished and bored, “she’s lovely as the rosy-fingered dawn and I’m sure she plays and sings as well. But I’m here for your other daughter.”

  “You mean—my little Thea?” Stepmother’s voice is like spun-sugar violets, sweet and delicate and utterly false. “She’s so young—but it’s such an honor—”

  “Slightly more plausible since I actually met the girl,” says Anax, “but no. I mean Maia, the daughter you keep in the kitchen. Short, scrawny, red hands from washing dishes. She was at the ball last night, wearing a golden mask. I danced with her, and I’m going to marry her.”

  “No,” says Koré, in her perfect voice like a low note from a silver flute, “you danced with me. I wore this mask, and you promised to marry the one who held it. See?”

  There’s a short pause. Then steps, and Anax flings the door open. He grabs my wrist and hauls me inside.

  “Maia,” he says, “tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” I ask, regaining my balance. I don’t dare look him in the face.

  “What you did last night. When we danced.”

  Stepmother is looking at me like I’m a poisonous spider. Ko
ré isn’t looking at me at all; her eyes are lowered, lashes perfectly displayed as she stares demurely at the carpet, a virtuous and obedient daughter waiting for orders from the mother who will never love her.

  I can feel each one of Anax’s fingers clenched around my wrist. It’s crazy, but in that one grip I feel everything about him: his tense shoulders, his grim half smile, his heartbeat. His fear and his fury and his hope. He will never touch me again.

  “But I never danced with you, my lord,” I say.

  He looks down at me. “What?”

  “Last night,” I say quietly, “Miss Koré asked me to dress her. I helped her into a golden dress and then I tied that mask on her face. I did take her letters to you, but I never went to the dance. You must have been confused. Perhaps the punch—”

  “I didn’t drink the punch,” he says. “And you were there.”

  “They look very much alike, my lord,” says Stepmother.

  “I can tell the difference between your daughters, madam!”

  “You danced with me,” Koré says softly. “You promised.” Her voice is a lifeless marble thing, and I realize she doesn’t have any hope this ploy will work, but she’s like the warriors of old: if she cannot come back from a battle carrying her shield in victory, she’ll be borne back dead upon it.

  “She told me about it as soon as she got home,” I say. “You swore by Zeus and Hera you would—”

  “Enough.” He hauls me out of the room and into the hallway. The door slams behind us, cutting off Stepmother’s shriek.

  “My lord,” I say desperately, “you shouldn’t talk to me alone, I’m just a servant, she’s your betrothed, you kissed her—”

  “Hush.” He grips my shoulders. “You can stop pretending.”

  He’s still not angry. He still believes in me. My throat aches, but I’m far too skilled to cry.

  “I’m not pretending,” I whisper.

  “Maia,” he says, softly and urgently, “I don’t know what they’ve done to you, how they’ve threatened you, but it ends now. We don’t have to make them agree to anything. Just come with me, and they won’t have any more power to hurt you.”