Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1)

by Steele Alexandra

  “And you should stop being so prissy. Check the door, Spencer.”

  Wondering how she had conned him into any of this in the first place, Spencer obediently crossed to the door. Daphne was on his heels when he reached out and felt the knob turn under his hand. As the door opened there was a great sighing sound, a gust of rank wind rushed over them and Spencer could not help the uneasiness that took root in his chest as they took a few steps inside the dark chamber that opened up before them.

  “Ladies first,” he said, stepping back for Lorna and Daphne. Lorna quickly jumped back as well, so Daphne sighed wearily and took the first few steps inside.

  The light of her torch revealed a small, windowless chamber that looked as if it had remained undisturbed for many years. “This is probably where the prison guards used to stay,” Lorna surmised, looking from the long abandoned cots to the cold hearth and the rickety, dusty old table. The stools were all toppled over, as were a few old crates and barrels.

  “Well, it seems the beast is not at home.” Spencer observed drily. “Hopefully we’ll find a hiding place before it gets back.”

  They spread out in the little chamber, but Spencer had trouble concentrating on the task at hand. The air smelled like decay, and he was chilled to the bone. “Why not here?” Lorna suggested. She gestured to an old wine barrel, now long since empty and smelling faintly of old hay. It was dry, though, and hopefully with the lid on the barrel, the rats wouldn’t be able to get to the book.

  “I like it.” Daphne seemed pleased that her idea had proved fruitful. “It should be undisturbed here.” She handed Spencer the torch and then stowed the book at the bottom of the barrel. They stood there staring down at it for some time, before Daphne reached back into her mass of curls and withdrew something thin and sharp.

  “What is that?”

  “Hair pin,” Daphne held it up in front of his face. “We’re taking a blood oath.”

  “Not another one,” Lorna sighed.

  “What for?” Spencer asked.

  Daphne took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I, Daphne Lucretius, Princess of the Realm, do hereby swear to keep this book a secret and let it remain here undisturbed for as long as I live. Now you say it,” she said, opening one eye to glare at them. Spencer and Lorna dutifully repeated their lines with equally low levels of enthusiasm.

  Daphne pricked her own finger without hesitation, and then lunged for her sister’s hand before Lorna could sit on it. When his turn came, Spencer offered his hand quickly before she could accuse him of cowardice. The pin flashed once in the torchlight, then was lost to the gloom as Daphne reached for him. She gripped his hand at the wrist, and he braced himself, but somehow the pin point on the pad of his finger still came as a shock. He stifled a hiss at the bite of the metal, and then they were grasping hands over the candle flame, and there was a strange air of gravity. The smiles were wiped from the sisters’ faces, and their eyes were wide and almost fearful.

  “It must remain here forever,” Daphne whispered, leaning forward so that her face was lit by the darting flames of the torch. She certainly played to an audience, that one. Across from Daphne, Lorna seemed to be tolerating her sister’s behavior with the kind of long-suffering acceptance characteristic of younger siblings. After enough time had passed in suitable solemnity, Daphne allowed them to rise from their knees. “Our secret forever,” Daphne murmured in hushed tones as they backed their way out of the dungeon. Spencer rolled his eyes at her theatrics and closed the doors behind them, hoping that this really was the end of the matter. He longed for a quiet night of uninterrupted sleep.

  ***

  “Spencer?” His mother’s voice greeted him immediately upon his return to the Haligorn.

  “Hello.” Spencer couldn’t quite keep his weariness out of his voice. He felt unexpectedly exhausted after his encounter with Daphne and Lorna, brief as it had been. Perhaps it was the atmosphere down in the dungeons that had drained his energy and left him feeling tired and out of sorts.

  “Are you alright?” Spencer’s mother held a hand to his head thoughtfully, as though expecting to find him feverish. Abigail Tattersall was a tall and wiry woman, steady of temperament and stronger than she appeared at first glance. Her hair was the same blonde as Spencer’s, but her eyes were a warm brown, and she had the smile of a much younger woman. Now, however, she was frowning. They had lost Spencer’s father to a fever just eighteen months previously, and neither of them took illness lightly anymore.

  He shrugged away her hand. “I’m fine. I’m not sick.”

  His mother nodded, though she looked unconvinced. “I’ll be back down to fix our supper in just a minute. I have to look in on her ladyship first.”

  “Take your time,” Spencer told her. He wasn’t opposed to having a few minutes alone with his thoughts.

  Mrs. Tattersall frowned at his terse response. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  As she vanished upstairs Spencer wandered into the kitchen and stoked the fire contemplatively. The cat leapt off the table and darted between his ankles, pausing to rub her head affectionately against his shin. Then she too was gone, a nimble shadow in the gathering darkness. Spencer sat at the hearth and stared out of their kitchen window, one of precious few windows in the Haligorn.

  He was not comfortable around the princesses. His new connection to them made him anxious and he was afraid that it might bleed into all aspects of his new life at the castle. His existence in the Haligorn had been quiet so far, and he hoped it would remain that way. Some might have considered Spencer and Abigail’s lives dull, but there was a quiet rhythm to their days which Spencer found comforting. He and his mother rose early, and Mrs. Tattersall immediately withdrew to the topmost chamber of the Haligorn to wake Justine. While his mother was upstairs, Spencer tended to the morning chores, stoking the fire and feeding the cat. Eventually his mother would come downstairs, make breakfast and give Spencer his tasks for the day.

  Mrs. Tattersall was determined that her son would receive the best education possible, but since he was from the countryside and not of castle blood, whatever schools the elite children of the castle attended were off limits to him. Mrs. Tattersall, whose father had been a schoolteacher and an educated man, assigned him books to read and did her best to review his work when she had the time.

  While she sat with Justine, Mrs. Tattersall kept herself busy stitching, and since there were only so many clothes that the two Tattersalls could wear, Mrs. Tattersall often took on extra sewing. They had no way of knowing how long Mrs. Tattersall would retain her job at the Haligorn, and so the extra money brought them peace of mind. Every few mornings Mrs. Tattersall gave Spencer a basket of newly mended clothing, and he delivered them back to their owners all over the castle.

  Since his mother spent much of her day at the top of the Haligorn with Justine, she had little time to clean their living quarters, so much of the day-to-day cleaning fell to Spencer. Mrs. Tattersall had become obsessively tidy since her husband’s death from an infected wound turned morbid. More than once in the dark days after his father’s death, Spencer had woken in the dead of night from a deep sleep to hear his mother scrubbing their floor and crying.

  Though his father had died just a year and half previously, Spencer rarely thought about him. He could feel the memories clawing their way to the surface of his mind every once in a while, but he pushed them away as often as he could. In the past eighteen months it had become an automatic reflex. After those first, horrible months, he had begun to master the art of stifling thoughts of his father before he could really think about what had happened. There was no sense thinking about it. It wasn’t something that could be undone, or fixed, or even made sense out of. He had even managed to block his father out his dreams, at least the ones he remembered, though sometimes he woke with tears on his cheeks and no memory of why he had cried.

  Spencer stretched uneasily, and his glance went to the kitchen doorway and the dark hall beyond. Despite his earlier wor
ds to his mother, he found himself suddenly lonely for her company. Though he felt guilty about keeping his association with the princesses from his mother, her presence was comforting.

  When Mrs. Tattersall came downstairs a few minutes later, it was to find that Spencer was already boiling water for stew, and had put down a dish of milk for the cat. She paused for a moment in the doorway and surveyed her son, taking in his pale face and the shadows under his eyes. The sight of him tugged at her heart, for she could tell that something was bothering him. It frightened her, to see him so wan and troubled, and she could only hope that it was some ordinary teenage affliction— romantic angst, for instance— and not a more serious ailment. She was not the type of woman to push for an answer, however, and so she resolved to wait for her son to come to her, unaware that at the exact same time, her son was resolving to keep her in the dark at all costs.

  After dinner they sat by the hearth in companionable silence for many hours, Spencer with a book and his mother with her knitting. The cat came in as the blue dusk transitioned to black night, and she sat across from Spencer’s mother, watching the flash of her knitting needles with fascination. Eventually the sound of the cat’s purring filled the little room, and Spencer stayed up later than usual, reluctant to retreat from the warm chair to his cold bed.

  Chapter 6

  The night fell clear and silent. Melisande was allowed the luxury of retiring to her bed to sleep, but her dreams were not soothing. One minute she frolicked in her parents’ orchard, dancing between trees with fruit-laden boughs and sunshine-dappled leaves. The next minute, the trees were felled at her feet, and her parents’ cottage was engulfed in flames as a blood-soaked moon rose. She could hear her mother and father calling out to her as her skirt caught fire, the flames crackling and jumping as the fire leapt from her hem to her hands, singing her skin and sending her screaming to the creek.

  She threw herself beneath the water, and then suddenly she was back in the lake, with that horrible apparition. This time the woman was waiting for her, and she howled a cry of triumph into the water, bubbles trailing from her mouth as she paddled for Melisande. The witch’s apprentice struggled to wake, struggled to pull herself from the water, but she could not quite extricate herself from the clutches of the nightmare.

  Melisande tossed this way and that, reaching up with a moan to scratch at her face with sharp fingernails, and as she thrashed, she was circled by a multitude of gleaming scales. The Salamanders, born of flame and her own fury, were drawn by the force of her dreams, and one by one they had crawled from the darkness, scurrying down corridors and slithering down walls, to creep into her chamber. One lay over her head, scaly nostrils flaring at the heady scent of her hair. Another lay at her pillow, forked tail resting possessively over her throat, while a third was at her wrist, nose at her pulse, jealously lapping at her skin. They hovered close to her, feeling the warmth of the same anger that had called them into being, feeding on the power and the hatred and the stifled fury. It nursed them, nourished them and kept their flickering life forces strong. And still Melisande tossed and turned, fighting to reach the surface, fighting to stay afloat.

  ***

  “Who are you?” The whisper reverberated in her dreams.

  Who

  Who

  Who

  It was not the only voice Cicely heard, but it was the most insistent. When she woke struggling to place it, her tapestries were glowing with the white light of the full moon. There were a thousand voices in the castle, a thousand open mouths. The prisoners in the dungeons twitched and shuddered in their sleep, murmuring beseeching words that melted, unheard, into the night. On the other side of the wet, cold stone, the moat lapped at the black rock of Castle Wulfyddia, as if promising to swallow the building whole one day. The moat was darkly vibrant this night, as was often the case on a full moon. The ghosts of the drowned swam deep in that water, singing a lament that rose to the surface of the green glowing water in putrid bubbles, bringing restlessness to the sleep of the moatkeeper. Their voices were compelling, their stories gripping, and Cicely could have lost herself in them, but they were not the ones who had asked who. Tonight, she had only one aim, and that was to follow the conversation that had slipped into her dreams.

  She knew the voice but could not place it. Seeking it, she visited Melisande’s nightmares; the Queen’s bloodstained dreams, and the tormented sleep of the Castle Hangman, who saw faces from his work all night every night. All of them slept. Their minds were busy and troubled, but their voices were silent. The one she sought was awake, thinking and speaking clearly.

  The lost souls of the moat were not the only ones who had answered the white cry of the full moon. There was another who had risen, and he stalked the abandoned dungeon with a hunger that Cicely could feel in her own gut. He was hidden away, isolated and unseen. But Cicely could see him, and from her own bed, with her quilt wrapped tight around her and her eyes closed in concentration, she visited one of the castle’s darkest secrets. But he was not speaking either, only hungering, and thirsting and longing, so she left him aching and her attention went elsewhere. Her ears and eyes sought other sounds and other sights.

  She found her sister awash in moonlight at the mouth of the footbridge, standing barefoot over the Chasm. Justine wore only her white nightdress, as though the bite of the cold wind didn’t bother her. Despite the deathly expanse beneath her, Justine didn’t look afraid as she stepped out onto the footbridge, one hand outstretched as though she reached for someone. Her eyes were dark with fascination. “Who are you?” She asked, extending her hand still farther, offering it to someone. It was only then that Cicely saw her sister’s companion, a woman shrouded in white.

  So Justine had found her— the spirit, the one who had evaded Cicely for so long. There the phantom stood, in a dress as pale as Justine’s, but lit by her own glow rather than the gleam of the moon. Cicely could see the figure, but the face… the face eluded her. She could distinguish no features, so that it was both faceless and voiceless. Whatever message it bore, it did not seek to deliver it to Cicely, and no matter how hard Cicely tried she could not discern a single thought, only that same scent of sweet rot and that lingering air of sadness.

  “Speak to me.” Cicely implored, her words little more than a breath on the wind. The spirit heard her, and Cicely could taste that old frustration as the being began to fade.

  “What? No.” Justine murmured. “Don’t go. Why are you leaving?” Then Justine stiffened, as if she sensed the eyes that were on her, and she tilted her head back. “Sister.” The word was almost a snarl. Justine glared upwards, her gaze seeming to bore into Cicely. Her brows drew low over eyes that were surprisingly hateful. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

  Cicely reeled backwards, at once back in her tower with the tapestries creaking around her, and her sister’s hatred still burning in her veins, paired with the shock that Justine had felt her gaze. Justine was the first ever to have sensed Cicely’s eyes. Cicely could not stifle the feeling that it was all slipping from her hands, from the faceless spirit to her own wounded sister.

  ***

  Deep in the dungeons, where three had unwisely ventured, the beast stalked the shadows. He scented the intruders on their air, tasted them in the blood they had foolishly spilled. Then the spirit materialized at his side, a peaceful, soothing presence, melancholy but sweet, and she reached out for him. She could not touch him, for he was corporeal and she was not, but they were two outcasts together, banished to the shadows, and her presence was all that stilled the rage, all that kept him from prowling free at night, killing at will. And though they could not touch, her hands hovered over him, seeming to stroke him, just a hairsbreadth away from his skin, so that he could feel the hum of her essence, and she comforted him, bringing peace to the darkness.

  Chapter 7

  “You’re sure I won’t get in trouble for this?” Spencer surveyed the court gathering with a knot slowly growing in his stomach. He did not belo
ng here, and he was unsure why he kept allowing the sisters to drag him about the castle on their various excursions.

  “Of course not.” Daphne said dismissively.

  “You’re with us,” Lorna told him. “Don’t worry. Oh look, here comes Grandmamma.”

  Any hope of Spencer not worrying evaporated with her last observation, and he watched anxiously as three rows of soldiers four across marched into the royal hall. They were followed by a handful of old men wearing elaborate suits in brilliant colors.

  “That’s the Royal Guard, and those are the Royal Advisors,” Daphne whispered. She had been standing moments before, but now that she was confronted with her grandmother’s court, she sat down in a high-backed chair and kept her head down. The elderly Royal Advisors were followed by a group of women in outrageous outfits. They were dressed in elaborate gowns, had piled their powdered and curled hair on top of their heads, and wore the strangest shoes Spencer had ever seen, absurdly high shoes, practically stilts really, which made them walk like newborn colts. Their faces were so powdered and painted that it was difficult to tell the old ones from the young ones, especially with the big black spots they’d all painted on their cheeks.

  “Those are the Ladies of Court,” Lorna said dreamily, sounding star-struck.

  Daphne clicked her tongue. “I think they look ridiculous,” she said.

  The women were pursued by a group of very strange looking men. The men were wearing the same sort of high shoes, but much bigger, and their faces were also powdered. Rather than piling their hair on top of their heads, they seemed to specialize in finding creative ways to grow it on their faces. Between them they sported some truly unique moustaches and beards. Spencer stroked his own chin and wondered if there would ever come a day when he would be able to grow such outrageous hair… not that he’d want to.

  “They’re not all natural,” Daphne whispered.