They all looked at their house. The fittings were shabby but solid and clean, well made. “You are the architect,” Eliza said. “The clever one. Let his financiers show him wealth. We show solid family love.”
* * *
Mihai was tall, broadly built, his clothes cut well to hide how large he’d grown. His cheeks were red and round, his teeth spaced out and yellowed, his breath like cheddar or, Julia whispered, like the Thames in summer. He had long hair brushing his shoulders (Phillip tried to hide his distaste at this), and he topped it with a small grey hat that was almost formless. He had blue lips, like a lizard’s and his eyelids hung low, making him look sleepy.
“Aah, your lovely ladies. So tall! So delicate in the limbs and colourful! All three like princesses of an exotic place. You must all come to dinner at my home now it is complete. I’ll have them serve beef broth and black pudding. That will get some meat on your bones.”
Amara blushed, which made him laugh.
“You know I last saw these two older girls when they were tiny. Just born! All blue in the face and furious,” he said. “How well I remember!”
The three girls barely contained themselves. They chattered all at once, drowning him out, until he burst into laughter and bade them hush.
They all heard his stomach rumble, like a crack of thunder, and Amara giggled. “Oh, you must be ravenous,” Eliza said, “Let’s get you something to eat.”
“He’s not about to waste away, Mildred,” Phillip said.
“Phillip! So rude!” Eliza asked the cook to fix salmon en croute, because she knew they had leftover salmon from her order with the fishmonger. Some servants do it on purpose in the hope of taking the extra home but Eliza wasn’t having that.
The girls raced to their rooms, returning screaming with laughter. They wore salmon pink scarves, all three, to match their food. Even in their rush they exuded grace, their fingers long and delicate, their step light.
“Like angels,” Mihai said.
At dinner, Eliza couldn’t contain herself any longer. “And my dear friend Lucia? It has been so long since we communicated.”
Mihai shook his head. “I bring sad news. My dear sister died in childbirth. She did feel envy of your beautiful three, when she could have none. I’m sorry she no longer wrote to you. Perhaps hearing about your girls and their accomplishments became harder and harder as her years passed fruitlessly.”
“And yet you said she was with child. What joy that must have brought.”
“Ah,” he said.
“So sad that she should pass in the same manner as your wife,” Phillip said.
“Ah,” Mihai said, and Julia wondered at his eyes, how they shifted about, and how he smiled nervously, and how his hands shook.
“Your father is a clever man. My house is something to see,” he said, as the pudding was served, as if they hadn’t seen it five dozen times. As if every meal hadn’t been dominated by talk of this house.
“You’ve certainly changed the way things look,” Eliza said.
“My philosophy: Take something to its basics and rebuild it. Hair will grow back differently on a shaved head.” Eliza thought he was dashing when he first visited, his hair a golden yellow, his shoulders broad.
“But hair grows back easily enough. By its very nature it is meant to fall.”
“Your house is certainly sturdy, if not very beautiful,” Phillip said. He had made many suggestions of design, all rebuffed.
“You know of the tulip?” Mihai said. “It grows weaker the more beautiful. There is little to be said for beauty, much for strength.” Mihai raised his hands and pressed his forefingers and thumbs together like a picture frame. “You are the strongest, Amara. That is clear.”
Eliza well remembered the 200 year old house he’d had torn down to build his home.
He had bade her stand there in the rubble. She was flattered, a young wife with babies; you’d think she’d lost all of her allure. But no, Mihai, the brother of her dear friend (and if she would only admit it, she had made up stories about him at school, when her friend spoke of him and his dashing ways) asking her to grace his home or the foundation of his home. “Stand there,” he said, and bade his man mark where her shadow fell. That was where the foundation stone was laid.
“And now you must prepare,” he had told her.
“For what, Mihai?”
“For your passing forty days from now.”
She had known of this curse but had forgotten. He giggled and did a little hop, odd in a man of his stature.
“It’s a blessing to you. Knowing when you’ll die gives you every chance to make amends, say goodbye, indulge your desires.”
“I have no desires,” but she did, of course. Small, sustaining dreams.
“And yet you are not dead,” Mihai said, taking another large mouthful of salmon en croute, and he roared with laughter. “My blessing failed.”
“But look at my daughters. They are the true blessing. Magdala wouldn’t be here, and who knows what sort of young women Julia and Amara would have been, raised by their father and hired women.”
“What do you know of hired women?” Mihai said, standing up and laying his napkin on his plate. He nodded at Phillip, and the two men withdrew to Phillip’s study.
But the girls weren’t going to miss out. Julia crept into the room next door, the little-used storage space, and heard such things as made her sick to the stomach.
“There is a brothel,” Mihai said, “where the whores dye their skin blue. Glorious. Like the naked bodies taken out of plague houses, a sight I’ve seen and never anything so beautiful.”
Julia wondered how old is this man? Unless there was a plague more recently in Romania?
“These whores hold the same tinge and even more, as the blue fades it begins to look like bruising. Also beautiful.”
Julia noticed her mother kept her and her sisters close and allowed them no time alone with Mihai, whom she had always described as a fearsome man. Julia wondered what her mother feared. What power she imagined Mihai had.
“You could do worse than that man,” Phillip said afterwards, but what his four ladies said in return burned his ears and made him shrink into his collar.
“Are we going to have to poison you to stop you marrying our girls off to awful men?” Eliza said.
The maid stood in the doorway, listening in. She always listened.
“He’s not so bad,” Amara said.
* * *
A week later they travelled for dinner at Mihai’s mansion. The winter chill had set in and even Eliza would have preferred to stay at home. But go they must, Phillip said, and he tried to keep them amused with stories until they arrived.
Outside was solid grey brick, with very few windows. “You see how I save money on the window tax? Your father chose his materials well,” Mihai said, though Phillip had little choice in the matter.
He said, “It will be named for you, Phillip. Your name in brass, over the door.”
Phillip was embarrassed by this. An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work was all he asked for, and a good life for his girls and for his wife to be happy, because her happiness brought joy to his own life.
“No need for that,” he said.
“One of your daughters, then. Julia, Amara, Magdalena. Which one?” and he rubbed his great beard, eyeing them off. Only Julia understood he was teasing them, like the old men in town who tossed foul comments their way if ever the girls walked together.
Inside, all was grey, muted.
He led them (when truly he didn’t need to, because they knew this house as well as their own) to the massive dining room, with its table long enough for forty guests. It was set with dull gold, flat silverware. There were no flowers, no colours.
“Sit,” Mihai told them, spreading his arms. They clustered down one end, leaving the rest of the vast table vacant.
Course after course arrived. The food was rich
and varied, aromas and tastes the girls hadn’t sampled before. Magdalena in particular devoured everything in sight; she was never one for holding back.
“More wine,” Mihai said. “More food.” The girls and their mother fell asleep as the two men finished bottle after bottle.
It was after midnight when Mihai arranged a carriage to take them home. Their father groaned and whimpered all the way, irritating the four women. Silly drunk man. He wasn’t amusing at all, just dull and malodorous.
It was the last carriage ride the family would take together.
* * *
The next morning Phillip did not rise. He was never a lazy man, always up with the dawn, even on the nights he was up well past midnight. But after the amount he drank it wasn’t surprising that he was still not risen by noon.
“Silly fidget,” their mother said. “He’s poisoned himself with wine.”
“Mother!” Julia said. The maid stifled a smile. As ever before she was always far too free with ears and eyes, Julia thought.
There was a loud crash, which startled them all. Mihai, entering their home. “What’s this I hear? A house of women left unattended?” he roared. “Where is Phillip? I expected him an hour ago to discuss further additions.”
“He is wine-ill, still in bed,” Eliza said. “He deserves a small amount of suffering for the noise he made last night.”
The maid heard this as well.
“Real men don’t suffer from the drink,” Mihai said, smiling, “and this is a man who can build a magnificent house. Leave me with him.”
Not knowing why, they left, even the maid.
In the bedroom, Mihai roused Phillip. He gave him a draught and when the man bent over double in pain he said, “I think that wife of yours has poisoned you.”
* * *
The maid gave evidence at Eliza’s trial for attempted murder. “Oh yes,” she said, “I heard them talking about poisoning him.”
* * *
With their father bed-ridden, their mother incarcerated in the women’s gaol, the girls had no one to watch over them.
Mihai made an arrangement with Phillip. If the three girls went into servitude for him, he would use his influence and all the money at his disposal to ask for mercy for Eliza. He would ask the authorities not to put her to death. “I won’t work your girls hard,” he said. “Think of it as finishing school.”
Phillip, never a strong man when it came to resisting Mihai, was in no state, physically or mentally, to resist him now. Phillip agreed to force his daughters into Mihai’s service. After their mother was, after all, put to death, the girls had little choice.
It was not what they imagined. Even in their worst nightmares they couldn’t imagine what Mihai had in store for them.
* * *
Mihai’s closest companion was a cruel, weak man called Cyril. He was the mayor of a town far away but he never seemed to be at home for his duties. Cyril and Mihai drank great goblets of wine, but the girls were given crystal glasses of blue water. There was scant art in the room, much of it dull, and the food served on plain plates. Only the enormous candles brought a warmth and a glow and the crystal wine goblets reflected tiny and numerous stars of light.
“Isn’t it a beautiful hue?” Mihai said. “Indigo water. A rare thing, rare indeed, but fitting for these beautiful tulip flowers I have before me.”
Later, in the lavatory, Amara screamed in terror and the older girls laughed to see how their water had turned blue.
“Look at your lovely ladies,” Cyril said later that evening, his dull eyes glinting in the candlelight of Mihai’s study. “You’d think they were dolls they are so lovely. Or puppets, perhaps. Dance for us, lovely puppets.”
“Go on,” Mihai said, “Do as he says.”
So the girls drew out their scarves and danced. They brought the only colour to the dreary mansion.
“Have them dance on my grave when I’m dead,” Cyril said, and the two men laughed until they fell off their chairs.
* * *
Looking back, the girls would remember that as the best night of their captivity. The last colour they saw. As the sun rose, Mihai said, “And now.”
As he imprisoned them down below, in solid dark rooms, he stared dark and hard and Julia understood that he would not listen to reason.
Each girl had a cell to herself. The cells were bare—no bed, no chair, no window, no light. It took them a while to understand they were there to die. They wondered, did their father build these rooms? Didn’t he wonder what they were for? Or did he imagine coal, or wood, or wheat?
Day by day Mihai told them how long they had to live.
“How good I am to you,” he said. “What a gift I give to you. To know the truth.” He said this every day.
He allowed them water. He passed tall thin jars to them through small cracks in the doors and while they saw nothing in the pitch dark, they knew this water was blue. He told them so, he said, “Your insides will be such a lovely colour.”
Julia thought, this is because of the whores. He wants us blue like them. In her darker moments she thought, He can’t see us in the dark; it is our corpses he wants to see.
Julia could hear nothing of her sisters. The walls were dense, almost absorbent, drawing in all sound and most of the air.
Julia could barely hear herself breathe.
She was so hungry. So very, very hungry. No moss or mould on the walls, no rodents, so day by day she weakened. Her sisters, too, she imagined. Amara would be the bitterest; she alone had believed Mihai would marry her and she would live a life of adventure. Julia pictured her crouched in a corner, her flesh loose, her eyes dull. And Magdalena. Bright, funny, passionate Magdalena; Julia pictured her weak and quiet, her cheekbones sharp.
* * *
When they were all three dead and spirit, they oozed through the grey brick walls, finding each other easily on the other side.
Julia looked back at their prison. She felt such fury at what Mihai stole from her. Not only her own moments of joy, love, success, but those of all the descendants she would never have. He stole her name, her family’s future, he ended her line, and this made her exceeding bitter.
She nodded at her sisters and they tried to re-enter. Julia wanted to terrify him, frighten him to death, but they could not pass through the doors or walls again.
“His time has not yet come,” she whispered. “We will return when that time is near.”
Instead they found a chimney sweep whose lungs were filled with black, and then a woman about to be thrown by a horse, and then a young girl boarding a train about to crash to die at the hands of a butcher, and then, and then, and then, and then. They gave each one the peace of mind that knowledge of death brings, and this sustained them more than anything in life had.
* * *
It was many years until the girls returned to Mihai’s mansion, drawn there by the knowledge, the scent, of his impending death. He had not looked after his home well; perhaps his fortunes had failed. There was no name over the door—Mihai had not even kept that promise.
The grey ladies pressed again the cold brick wall and then flowed through it and once more they were inside the walls of the grey mansion.
There was a great echo inside, as if it had been long abandoned. But no, they could hear moans from upstairs, where Mihai slept.
They flew up the stairs.
There they found him, enormous, bloated and repulsive. He rested in his filthy, broken bed, his chest rising and falling ever more slowly...
Beside his bed rested a great pile of blue bones.
Julia felt something, the memory of hunger, the flickering sense of pain long since forgotten. She knew they were hers, and Amara’s, And Magdalena’s were there, beside this filthy mound of flesh.
With great pleasure she approached him and lifted a finger to his face.
He drew a thick, phlegmy breath. “You have come to tell me what I already know. My pas
sing is soon and I will be in God’s arms.”
Julia shook her head.
“No?” She heard uncertainty in his voice for the first time. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know. What was next. But she shook her head.
He wailed then, knowing as well as she did he’d done nothing to deserve a happy afterlife.
They all three of them watched as he took his last, shuddering breath.
For a moment, a wash of red passed through them, the colour of love, perhaps, and for a moment they clustered, almost remembering, but then they were drawn away, drawn towards, and they found the next door and they knocked on it, and waited.
Ends
The title “Exceeding Bitter” is inspired by “Requiem,” by Gabriel Faure
...ah, that great day, and exceeding bitter, when thou shalt come to judge the world by fire.
A Game of Mages
- The Shattered Sigil -
Courtney Schafer
Lizaveta carved chunks of flesh from the bleeding, mewling ruin of a dancer shackled to the workroom’s anchor stone. The mutilated man’s partner, bound against an iron post beside the gore-smeared obsidian block, shrieked an unending stream of curses at Lizaveta.
“You soulless demon, may Shaikar take you screaming to his innermost hell! May his children rip your cursed magic from your blackened bones! Leave Davan be, gods rot you, stop hurting him—”
Lizaveta ignored the babbled plea, slicing her knife through glistening sinews. Anguish and horror and rage stoked the paltry ember of the watching woman’s ikilhia—her soul’s fire—into a blaze nearly as bright as that of a mage.
Blood flowed dark down the anchor stone’s whorled sides and pooled over the silver spell-channels laid into the stone floor. The maimed dancer’s gasping breaths stuttered. In a broken, slurred gargle, he called his partner’s name.
“Marca...”
Marca’s curses broke into wrenching sobs. Her ikilhia flared wilder yet, as her partner’s ikilhia roiled and seethed with his agony. Both dancers were nathahlen, untalented in magic, despite the skill they displayed in their art.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists Page 23
