by P. J. Fox
Slipping her fingers through the crook of her arm, she let him turn her and lead her back up the stairs. He smelled clean: of wool, and wood smoke, and the outdoors, with undercurrents of leather and just the faintest breath of scent. How revolting she must smell in comparison, and to the man who’d once observed that he wouldn’t let a man like Hart partake of his table without a good scrubbing. Hart, who even at his worst had never been this filthy. But Tristan, as before, said nothing.
Isla’s family, apparently forgotten, trailed along behind.
Whatever fantasies she might have cherished, Isla’s arrival lived up to none of them.
She wasn’t certain, until that precise moment, that she had cherished fantasies—of any sort. She hadn’t allowed herself, not consciously at least, to consider the issue. There was too much doubt, and too much fear, bound up in the idea that what had once been safely relegated to the world of dreams was now very rapidly becoming reality. What she’d had at Enzie was a dalliance and, like all dalliances, it had contained an element of the fantastical. Which, she’d realized belatedly, was what gave the bards so much reason to sing: an affair remained beautiful, perfect, because it was never sullied by the grimness of reality. By the thousand sordid, petty details that made up everyday life.
Her time with Tristan had, in many ways, been one such tale. A dream. And, like all dreams, malleable. She’d been able to tell herself that she was in love and that he, even if he claimed to have no answering feelings, wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Except here he was, at long last, and instead of rushing to greet her as he might a lover—or even an acquaintance—he was as polite and impartial as a complete stranger. Indeed, he’d been far friendlier when he was a stranger. Even on that first night, at least he’d talked to her. But this…whatever she’d been prepared for, it wasn’t this.
And, she was forced to admit to herself now, her fantasies had included a bit more pomp and circumstance. When her friends had gotten married, those that had, things had been different. When Rowena got married, things would certainly be different. If for no other reason than Rudolph would never miss the opportunity to show off a new codpiece. Nor indeed to prance about for his friends, making sure that his friends understood how thrilled he was and how his bride was most assuredly better than theirs. Whether he truly believed the claim or no. He, like Rowena, lived for show.
Isla shook her head slightly, to clear the thought. Here she was, blaming Hart for changing, when she was just as bad. When had she ever been so bitter, she wondered?
The answer rose up, cleanly, from some inner well of consciousness: since she’d been so disappointed. That was when. Since she’d had the rug ripped out from under her feet and, after a harrowing journey north, arrived only to discover that she was nothing more than one more guest. And not a very important one at that.
Her fantasies—of a warm welcome, of the sort of pomp and circumstance that Apple had clearly expected—seemed ridiculous now. Ashes that tasted bitter in her mouth. They were at the top step now, a guardsman holding open the door. Beyond the iron-banded hulk lay a gloom-shrouded antechamber and, beyond that, a broad hall. Torches flickered in brackets, already lit against the night. She could see little of Caer Addanc’s interior, beyond that it was cavernous and sparsely furnished.
What, she wondered, as she took one final step forward, had she done?
FORTY-SEVEN
Despite having seen Caer Addanc from the outside, Isla was unprepared for its true scale. A scale that could only be understood from the inside, when one stood in the midst of antechambers as large as cottages and halls as large as some manors she’d known. Certainly the great hall, which they’d passed through en route to the small hall, would easily have fit the whole of her childhood home. And with, she suspected, some room to spare.
It wasn’t the height of the wood-paneled walls or the width of the vaulted ceilings that taught one about the scale here, but the size of the furniture in comparison to those things. How small a chair looked, even a generously proportioned chair, next to the fireplace. Except, not the fireplace; one of several fireplaces, all huge and most lit. There were braziers, too, not lit but which would stand guard against coming winter. A grim reminder, as if Isla needed one, that the cold here would be like nothing she’d ever known.
Caer Addanc was beautiful, if grim. Above the paneling, which stretched fully the height of a man’s raised hand, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of trophies decorated the stone. Some of them were precisely the sort of thing she’d expect: shields and swords, stolen from vanquished foes. But others…she had no words. There were banners, some of them ripped and stained with a blackish-brown substance that could only be dried blood. There were spears, bolted upright to the stone. In some cases, clumps of ossified flesh still clung to their points. In some cases, trailing hair.
Talismans stolen from the northern tribes, because surely no one else would wear such a thing: vests like mail shirts, but made of finger joints. A cap fashioned of another man’s skull, the ears wizened down to nothing more than night-black protrusions. Isla felt her gorge rise.
Looking up, hoping for some relief, she found herself meeting instead a row of glittering eyes. Stone, she realized, after a surprised second. Just stone. And yet, in the fitful light, they appeared to flicker. Round, perfectly polished, and blank: the eyes of gargoyles, carved into the buttresses. They’d been carved so cunningly as to seem almost precariously perched; as if any of them leaned out the tiniest fraction further, they’d fall into the room below. No, she revised, not fall. Leap. There was something…salacious in their lolling tongues. Their grins. They were staring down at her, and the other occupants of the room, contemplating as a group their next meal.
Above them, buttresses arched into a series of high vaults. The ceiling, unlike the walls, had been painted: reds and greens and blues and even the occasional hint of gold formed a stylized ode to the hunt. Isla imagined that, in full light, the colors must be quite spectacular to show up so well even here in this gloom.
The great hall—all of Caer Addanc—was magnificent, but she couldn’t even begin to imagine how she’d eat her dinner here.
Servants were everywhere, quiet and serious. As they made their way through the great hall, a group of about twelve women were engaged in cleaning up the rushes and scrubbing the floor beneath, and then laying more rushes. The new rushes, piled to the side and yet to be distributed, emitted a subtle fragrance that caught her nostrils even from across the room. Sweet flag and pennyroyal. Sweet flag smelled sweet, and pennyroyal repelled fleas. A small, private smile quirked at the corner of her lips; apparently even such an august personage as the duke wasn’t immune from the ravages of a life spent with hounds. She wondered, briefly, that there was no magic to simply wish the fleas away.
The women paused and nodded when they passed, but otherwise ignored them. If anything, they seemed slightly afraid. Eyes flickered to the duke and back to the floor, not a word being spoken. Isla felt a chill slide up her spine, making her shiver again even in this comparative warmth. Her momentary flash of good humor forgotten, she thought that this must surely be the most joyless place in all of the Gods’ creation.
Not once since her arrival had she heard a single person laugh.
She wasn’t sure that, now that she considered the issue, she’d heard much laughter in Barghast either.
And then she’d been swept out of the great hall and into a smaller, more intimate space. Because Enzie was a small hall, all the earl had for privacy was his office. But in the great castles, or so Isla had heard, the lord had his own private suite of rooms in which to dine and entertain guests. She was in one such room now, a version of the greater space outside reduced to—relative—miniature. This space was still huge, but at least she could conceive of it as being part of someone’s home.
What first arrested her gaze was the fireplace, which dominated the wall opposite. Formed from blocks of the same marble as the exterior, th
e chimney breast was plain. A shield had been hung there, obviously a piece of considerable age. The mantelpiece below, however, had been carved in an elaborate pattern of barley twists supported on either side by a sort of gremlin figure who clutched the mantelpiece in its uplifted hands. But while this fireplace was still enormous, in comparison with the others it was almost petite. The mantelpiece, Isla guessed, would hit at about her shoulder.
A fire roared in the grate, and she could feel its welcome heat from across the room. A room that, she guessed, was perhaps a quarter the size of Enzie’s great hall. To the right of the fireplace was a sort of small bump-out; the same, she realized with a start, that she’d seen from the bridge. So Tristan had stood here, and watched her approach through those sun-struck panes of glass.
He had known that she was coming, all along. Of course he had. Had she ever truly doubted that?
She dropped her gaze from the window, discomfited. The room faced west, and so the last of the light was still describing patterns on the floor. A floor made from large, square tiles that had been fired an orange-red. To the left of the fireplace began the same linenfold paneling that wrapped the other three walls of the room. A broad arch on the left-hand wall led into a second, smaller study with a more subdued fireplace. A desk had been placed in front of the fireplace; his office, then. Immediately to her left was the landing of an immense staircase, the last leg of which came right out into the room. The nook it created was lined with shelves; the books lining them must be Tristan’s own personal library.
A lord’s library was one of his most prized possessions, whether or not he could read. The meanest, most poorly produced volume was worth its weight in gold. Every letter on every page had to be painstakingly reproduced, by hand, by a trained scribe. Scribes who, themselves, were able to copy well enough to do so without noticeable error were rare enough and generally there was a trade-off in terms of time.
As most scribes were men who’d taken vows to the church, most of the books in Morven had been produced at one of Morven’s abbeys. These men, denialists in the church language, sat side by side at tables stretching the length of a room. Each man murmured to himself as he copied in a never-ending litany of private dictations. Isla had been in such a room, years ago; the whispers sounded like the susurrus of the sea.
Books that weren’t approved by the church had to be imported from other countries, surviving the often perilous combinations of sailing voyages and trips overland. But all books, whatever their provenance, took a year or more to produce.
Vellum, the name of the special parchment on which each page was written, was made from the skin of a calf. The skin was first soaked in a solution of lime, which had to be quarried from the eastern cliffs guarding the thin strip of ocean between Morven and Chad, and vinegar. Then, the skin was stretched on a frame and scraped with a special curve-bladed knife. That also had to be specially produced, and by a blacksmith who knew his trade. As the skin dried, the parchment maker—or, more likely, his apprentices—continued to stretch the skin so that it remained taut.
A collection of four score books would be a treasure trove indeed; Tristan had at least several hundred.
He saw her looking. “The best parchment,” he murmured, “is made from the hide of a stillborn goat.”
Isla blanched.
Resolutely, she continued her inventory of the room.
Tristan led her to a bench and she sat. He sat beside her, for all the world at ease. Isla, stiff-backed and with her hands white-knuckled in her lap, said nothing as the rest of her family found seats. The earl lounged in the settle opposite. Both were quite large, and carved by the same hand to match. Pillows made their hard backs comfortable. Apple sat on one side of the earl and Rowena sat on the other. Hart threw himself into a chair.
A sideboard lined one wall and there was a table in front of them as well as a hearth bench. But other than that, there was no furniture. In forcing herself to make mental note of all she saw, Isla hoped to distract herself from the torment at hand.
Glancing up, her eyes followed the line of the bannister. Unpleasant faces leered back at her, grotesque features contorted to be even more so. This balcony, she realized, must lead to the duke’s private chambers. Chambers she’d soon be seeing. She turned her head, gazing into the fire, to cover her discomfort.
Caer Addanc had been designed to guard its lord’s privacy. This separate entrance meant that he could meet his most favored visitors without the rest of his household being any the wiser, coming and going as they did from this room without ever having to access the rest of the castle. There would be another entrance, of course, one that was far more public. And only certain chambers would have access to this staircase, and these rooms.
A servant appeared—not his page, Asher—and Tristan requested refreshments.
Shortly thereafter, refreshments appeared: mulled wine with bread and cheese, and some sort of small cake that Isla didn’t recognize. While everyone else helped themselves she stared at the platter, mesmerized. Almost as if some atavistic instinct warned her not to touch the food. She remembered, again, the old childhood story about the princess of death. The girl who, in an extremis of hunger, had eaten a handful of seeds and been relegated to the underworld forever. In her lord’s kingdom; in his tomb.
Tristan passed her a cup and, mechanically, she drank.
The wine tasted—off, somehow. The earl was complimenting it, enthusing over Tristan’s choice to use cardamom. Or rather his cook’s. Isla said nothing.
The fire felt too hot. Enormous stand lamps guarded either side of the fireplace, the iron cast to look like an intertwined mass of snakes all writhing toward the light. They hadn’t been lit, yet, of course. Each must be almost heavy enough to use as a battering ram.
“So,” Apple said artlessly, “I hear you have impressive dungeons.”
“Ours has been referred to as a golden age of torture,” Tristan replied mildly.
“So you do have a torture chamber.” Apple sounded entirely too interested.
“The goal of torture should be to cause sufficient distress that the victim feels, ah, compelled to confess. To, as it were, enlighten him as to his best interests without utterly incapacitating him.” Tristan sipped his own wine. “Which would, ah, defeat the purpose of the exercise.”
“It seems to me,” said the earl, apparently oblivious to the irony of his own statement, “that if you hurt someone enough they’ll confess to anything.” He burped. Was he choosing to forget his collusion with Father Justin, Isla wondered? Or merely hoping that Tristan would?
“The purpose,” the earl concluded, having never tortured anybody, “must be to set an example.”
Tristan studied him for a long minute. “If I wish to set an example,” he said, “then I execute him publicly. I reserve private execution,” he added, “for those I respect.” He went on to explain, then, that the preferred method of death in Darkling Reach, at least for those who’d committed serious crimes like intriguing against the crown or the murder of children, was the coffin. Isla had heard of the coffin: a metal cage roughly the shape of a human body that was, once filled, then suspended from a tree. Or, in the case of Darkling Reach, from the battlements of Caer Addanc. Or, if the identity of the victim were particularly instructive, from a scaffold erected along one of the main roads.
“How long does it take to die?” Apple asked.
Tristan shrugged, the smallest of movements. “A week or so.”
The conversation went on to discuss head-crushers, knee-splitters, and breaking wheels.
Isla contemplated the idea, once again, that she might be sick.
Above the sideboard, directly opposite from where she sat, was a lyre made from a human head.
The top of the skull had been sawed off and replaced with a disk of some sort of wood to form the top; the skull itself made the sounding chamber. The eye sockets, still encased in skin, were the sound holes. The twin arms were horns, taken from the head of a
goat. Locks of reddish-brown hair curled down on either side of the ears, which had long ago shriveled to little more than stubs.
Sitting on the table in front of her was a skull, its surface carved in a fantastically intricate pattern of knots.
That no one else had remarked on these things made them ten times more upsetting. Indeed everyone, including Hart, appeared to be completely at ease. Apple was actually enjoying herself. She’d half of the bread and nearly all of the cheese by herself, commenting effusively as she did so that both were delicious. She’d also had her fair share to drink.
The skull stared back at Isla, saying nothing.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that I should lie down.”
FORTY-EIGHT
She was shown to a pleasant enough room, and then left alone.
Tristan had taken his leave of her before allowing a servant to complete the task, his every move achingly formal. He’d raised her hand and kissed it, his lips the faintest brush of cold against her skin. And then he’d bid her enjoy her rest, and stepped back. She’d been left standing alone in the center of the room, uncertain of what to do next. Tristan turned on his heel and vanished, apparently no longer interested in what she did.
She’d stood there a moment longer, hesitant and confused, before a servant had appeared and led her off.
And now here she was.
Her room was, like the rest of the castle, dark. Cobalt blue tile must be beautiful in the sunlight but now the feldspar and silica-infused glaze looked dull. Dormant. The flickering fire in the fireplace, and in the single stand lamp, gave no illusion of life.
There was a garderobe, at least. But after using the facilities, Isla again found herself at odds. There were no books, in this room, and no trinkets to look at. Although given what she’d found downstairs, that might be a blessing. There was no one to talk to, either, and she found that the burden of her loneliness weighed on her most of all. It gave her too much time to think: about the friends she’d never see again, about her family. About her betrothed, who’d all but ignored her since her arrival.
